The Difficult Saint: A Catherine LeVendeur Mystery

by Newman, Sharan

  Bernard sat in the speaking room, surrounded by monastic secretaries and piles of parchment and writing tablets. He was a man of middle height, thin and pale from ascetic fasts. Yet there was nothing weak about his spirit. All the energy he might have spent as a warrior, lord and husband he had channeled into his quest for God and the service of the faith.

  The abbot looked up from the letter he was reading.

  “Nicholas,” he said.

  The clerk was beside him in an instant.

  “Are the encyclicals ready to be sent out?” Bernard asked. “Have you finished copying the letters for me to sign?”

  “All complete, my lord abbot,” Nicholas answered. He was an energetic young man, with sharp eyes and an air of competence.

  “Have them ready for me after morning work,” Bernard told him. “Have you ordered that crosses be made to give out to the pilgrims?”

  “Yes, lord, the cellerar has arranged for the nuns of Jully to cut them for you.”

  Nicholas bowed, waiting for another command to perform perfectly.

  Bernard only nodded. “Excellent, as always, my son. Now, I should like to retire to my cell for a time to meditate alone. Thank you for your assistance.”

  The monks bowed and left. Nicholas remained a moment.

  “Is there nothing more I can do for you, my lord?”

  The abbot shook his head. He eyes had already closed as he prepared to pray. They opened again.

  “Yes, Nicholas,” he said quietly. “Please close the door when you go.”

  Nicholas returned to the scriptorium, where a dozen men were making copies of the abbot’s writings.

  “Brother Geoffrey,” he said, looking over the monk’s shoulder. “I believe the ablative form is called for in this sentence.”

  Geoffrey looked up. Nicholas could tell he was almost biting his tongue in half in the effort not to make a sharp retort.

  “The accusative would be more appropriate, in my estimation,” Geoffrey said finally. “But I shall, of course, change it according to your wishes.”

  “Not mine!” Nicholas held up both hands in denial. “Abbot Bernard’s. All I do is at his command.”

  Geoffrey returned to his work. Once he was certain that Nicholas was out of the room, he allowed himself to mutter his disbelief. The monk next to him nudged him.

  “Don’t worry, Geoffrey,” he said. “The abbot is too trusting of his friends, but one day even he’ll see the truth about Nicholas.”

  “And until then?” Geoffrey scowled.

  “Do what I do.” The monk smiled. “Offer up time spent with him as a penance.”

  Geoffrey considered. “Yes, I suppose I could also pray that he receives a martyr’s death, as such a saint deserves.”

  He went back to his work in a much more cheerful frame of mind.

  Jehan returned to the convent to tell Agnes that her family would call upon her. She met him in the portress’s hall. As always, her frail blond beauty took his breath away. He never understood how she could be sister to Catherine, who was dark and headstrong. Jehan had long suspected that Catherine was some sort of demon insinuated upon Hubert as a false daughter in order to destroy the world. She seemed very talented at destroying his.

  “I don’t know why you insist on seeing your family,” he complained to Agnes. “They haven’t changed at all. I saw that Jew when I left, coming in as if he had a right to be there.”

  Agnes cringed.

  “That’s why I won’t have them interfering in my life,” she said. “I only want what’s mine by right. Afterwards I plan to get as far away from them as possible so they can’t shame me before my husband’s family.”

  It was Jehan’s turn to cringe.

  Agnes noticed. She put her hand on his arm.

  “I’m sorry, Jehan,” she whispered as the portress looked on, guarding against any improprieties. “And I’m very proud of you for planning to join the soldiers of Christ and find glory in the Holy Land.”

  “Yes,” Jehan answered, mindful of the woman listening. “It is, of course, the closest a man like me can come to the religious life.”

  His expression suggested that it was a lot closer than he had ever intended.

  “I plan to come to Vézelay.” Agnes tried to cheer him. “To see you receive the cross from the hands of Abbot Bernard, himself.”

  “The day will be that much brighter because of your presence,” he answered, his voice toneless.

  When he had left and Agnes was alone in the guest house, she sank down onto the bed. After a moment, she pulled herself onto her knees, reached out and slid the curtains shut. Then she allowed herself to lie flat, her face in the pillows, crying silently but thoroughly.

  The winter rain streamed down on the house, causing sudden eruptions of steam in the hearth. It was barely past midday but gloomy and dark out. Catherine, Solomon and Edgar sat on pillows by the fire, baby Edana asleep on Catherine’s lap. James, his brown curls perpetually tangled, was being chased around the hall by twelve-year-old Margaret. Edgar and Catherine had brought her back from Scotland with them after her mother died. Her long red braids had come undone and, as she passed Solomon, he would make a feint at catching the loose hair. She would get close enough to make him think he could grab her and then slip away laughing.

  Hubert sat on the one comfortable chair next to the fire and watched them with a lump in his throat.

  This is how it should always be, he thought. Why do moments like these never last?

  As James went flying past, Edgar reached out with his good hand and caught him, tumbling him onto the pillows.

  “Aren’t you ready to take your nap yet, young man?” he asked.

  “No, Papa.” James grinned. “First I kill the dragon.”

  He got up again at once and began racing the circuit of the room again, yelling battle cries.

  “I almost think he does see a dragon,” Catherine said.

  “At his age, I always did.” Edgar smiled.

  Catherine gave him a sideways glance. Having met Edgar’s uncle Æthelræd, she was half inclined to believe he had. She decided to change the subject.

  “Shall we all go to visit Agnes this evening?” she asked. “Perhaps seeing the children will soften her heart.”

  “Or convince her never to have any of her own,” Solomon suggested as James careened into him. “I’m not your dragon, Sir James!”

  James, switching roles, roared at him.

  Edgar watched them. “I think James and Edana can remain here,” he decided. “I don’t remember Agnes as being that fond of small children, do you?”

  Catherine was embarrassed to realize that she didn’t know.

  “It’s been so long,” she said. “I don’t know my own sister anymore.”

  She bit her lip in worry.

  “What am I going to wear?”

  Catherine settled for a proper matronly bliaut of green and blue embroidered with spring flowers at the collar and hem. With some effort, she had managed to get all of her hair braided and covered so that no stray curls emerged from under the scarf. That didn’t keep her from being ridiculously nervous as they were ushered into Agnes’s presence in the convent visitor’s room.

  Agnes looked at them all as if meeting strangers. Then her eyes widened as she saw Edgar’s left arm.

  “Saint Ambrose’s three-tailed whip!” she exclaimed. “What happened to you?”

  She stopped. “I mean …” she started again.

  “It’s all right, Agnes,” Edgar said. “I got between a man with a sword and his victim. That’s all.”

  “I … I see.” Agnes couldn’t keep her eyes from the emptiness at the end of the arm.

  “Is that what you called us here for?” Catherine asked, ever protective of Edgar’s feelings. “If so, we can leave at once.”

  “Catherine!” Hubert’s voice was sharp. “This is as hard for her as it is for us. Agnes, I’m very happy to see you again. You are more beautiful than ever, just like yo
ur mother.”

  He paused at her expression. He shouldn’t have mentioned Madeleine.

  Agnes took a deep breath. “Perhaps we could all start again,” she said. “Father, Sister, I wanted you to rejoice with me at my contract of marriage. I ask nothing from you but the dowry and property that is rightfully mine.”

  She was daring them to object.

  Hubert nodded slowly. “I trust that your grandfather investigated this man before he allowed you to agree to the contract.”

  “Of course,” Agnes answered. “Grandfather is old, but as sharp as ever. Sharper. This time he made sure that Gerhardt’s family was also above reproach.”

  “Agnes!” Catherine shouted. “How can you hurt our father so!”

  She wished she were still young enough to pull Agnes’s hair and rub her face in the mud.

  Agnes faced her, fury barely in check. “I see that you at least, are just the same, beloved sister.”

  Catherine heard the scorn in Agnes’s voice. She pressed her lips together to keep from answering in anger.

  “I was once just that, Agnes,” she said softly. “Just as you were to me.”

  Her sister blinked hard for a moment, but no tears escaped.

  “That was long ago,” Agnes stated. “Now we have only duty holding us to each other. I am here to ask if you’ll fulfill yours.”

  Hubert answered for all of them.

  “You are welcome to all we have, Agnes, to impress your new husband. I’ll send a troop of men to guard you and find waiting women. We wish you well in your new life.”

  Agnes’s expression didn’t change. She might have been carved from the wall she stood before.

  “Very well,” she answered. “That’s all I need from you. You may go.”

  “Agnes, please!” Catherine stepped toward her.

  “Don’t touch me!” Agnes was on the edge of screaming. “All of you. Don’t try to pacify me. There’s nothing you can do. All I want is my share of Mother’s jewels and never to see any of you again.”

  “Of course, child,” Hubert said. “If you insist. But you must understand …”

  “I do, Father, all too well.” Agnes turned away from him. “You chose those infidels instead of me, instead of my poor mother and instead of Our Lord. I refuse to be damned along with you. There’s nothing more to say.”

  She fumbled with the latch on the door and swore under her breath. Then the door opened and she was gone.

  Edgar, Catherine and Hubert looked at one another.

  “That didn’t go very well, did it?” Edgar said.

  Hubert’s face was grey. “My beautiful, golden child. What have I done to you?”

  Catherine put her hand on his shoulder. “We are all to blame,” she said. “I could have helped her understand when she found out you and Eliazar were brothers. Even earlier, I ignored her for my books. I should have helped her more when Mother began to fail. But it’s too late for regret.”

  Hubert sighed. “My poor Agnes; I only wish I could win back her love.”

  “Father,” Catherine said. “She’s made it clear. She doesn’t want our love. She doesn’t want us at all.”

  In her room, Agnes sat and unfolded a square piece of vellum. She touched the wax seal, feeling the pattern beneath her fingers. It was her betrothal contract, her last chance for the security she craved.

  Happiness was more than she expected.

  The castle of Gerhardt of Trier was perched north of the city high above the east bank of the Moselle River. It had been rebuilt in stone by his father only ten years before. The walls were still raw from the quarry and the ruts made in the earth from dragging the the blocks up the hill were still deep in the road. Below, the slope was covered in vines all the way down to the river path. Grapes were his family’s gold. They owed the land and military service to the archbishop, but the vines had been theirs since the time of Constantine and Gerhardt was as proud of the wine from them as any other craftsman of his work. As he should be; the wine was among the best in the region. Gerhardt oversaw its production personally. He was the one who decided the days for picking and pressing and when the barreling should end. It was a long family tradition.

  This day he was being unpleasantly reminded of another long family tradition.

  “How could you do this without asking me!” he wailed at his brother, Hermann.

  “We did ask you,” Hermann said patiently, glancing around at the rest of the family, consisting of their sister, Maria, her husband, Folmar, and Peter, Gerhardt’s thirteen-year-old son.

  “He did, Father,” Peter confirmed. “I said I wanted a new mother and you said you hadn’t time to find me one and so Uncle Hermann said …”

  Gerhardt put his hands over his ears.

  “I know what Hermann said.” He glared at them all. “But I can’t believe he would act on it. I don’t want another wife. I can’t marry again.”

  “But, Gerhardt, you signed the contract!” Maria was shocked. “You can’t change your mind now!”

  “But I never made up my mind!” Gerhardt uncovered his ears only to tug at his long, blond hair. “How could I have signed a contract?”

  Hermann coughed. “Well, do you remember when I gave you those documents having to do with the purchase of the property in Köln?”

  “The houses I bought from the monks of Regensberg.” Gerhardt nodded. “Of course. You and Folmar handled that well, Brother.”

  “Yes, thank you.” Hermann smiled tightly. “The fourth one, and I told you quite clearly, was the contract of betrothal to Agnes de Bois Vert, of Blois.”

  Gerhardt sat stunned. He hadn’t been paying much attention at the time. There were so many other things to do. Could he have signed himself, body and soul, to some woman from France? He shivered. It was possible. And it was impossible. He rounded on his brother-in-law, who had stayed silent up to now.

  “Folmar, how could you agree to this?” he asked. “You know well that I can’t remarry now!”

  Folmar gave a gesture of helplessness. “I wasn’t consulted, Gerhardt.”

  Gerhardt raised his eyes to heaven, but no advice came from that direction. So he pounded the wall with his fist.

  “There is no way I will marry this woman!” he shouted.

  Maria took his hand and gently examined his fingers to see if any were broken.

  “Wie gehabet ir dich so?” she asked her brother. “From all accounts this Agnes is beautiful, docile and pious. She comes with a fine dowry and an excellent lineage on her mother’s side. Her father is a wealthy merchant of Paris—very wealthy. I don’t believe there is any thing you can find fault with in our selection, Gerhardt. It’s not as if our family were that well born.”

  “It’s not that.” Gerhardt knew he couldn’t give them the real reason for his intransigence. They’d never accept it. “I don’t want to remarry. I’m happy as I am. I have a fine son. There’s nothing more I need, least of all a French bride. You have to cancel the contract.”

  Hermann pursed his lips. “We can’t do that, Brother,” he said. “We swore oaths before witnesses and you signed the contract. By now the girl’s most likely ordered new robes and begun packing. No, if you don’t want to marry, you’re going to have to tell Agnes yourself, and take the consequences.”

  Gerhardt groaned. They found his misery baffling and a bit amusing. Even Peter, his own child! They all thought that once he saw she was a perfectly nice young woman, he would accept his fate and go happily into wedlock.

  But Gerhardt knew that to do so would be to send himself straight to hell. And, if he revealed his reasons, he feared that the fires would reach him long before he died.

  Two

  A field outside Vézelay. Sunday, pridie kalends April (March 31), 1146; 15 Nisan, 4906. Easter Sunday, the first day of Passover.

  Anno Verbi incarnati millesimo centesimo quadragesimo sexto, gloriosus rex Francorum et dux Aquitanorum Ludovicus, regis filius Ludovici, cum esset viginti quinque annorum, ut dignus
esset Christo, Vezeliaco in Pascha baiulando crucem suam, agressus est eum sequi.

  In the year of the Incarnation of the Word 1146, the glorious king of the Franks and duke of Aquitaine, Louis, son of King Louis, in his twenty-fifth year, in order that he might be worthy of Christ, at Vézelay on Easter resolved to follow him by carrying the burden of his cross.

  —Odo of Deuil

  Book I

  De profectione Ludovici VII in orientem

  The crowd in the field was so thick that Catherine couldn’t see the men standing on the platform. Someone jostled her and she would have fallen if there had been space. As it was, she was pushed back into Edgar’s arms.

  “I’m glad now that we left the children with Willa and Margaret at the inn,” he said, setting her upright with his good hand.

  “I suppose they’re too little to remember anyway,” Catherine agreed. “I only wanted them to be able to tell their children that they had heard the preaching of Bernard of Clairvaux.”

  “We may be too far back to hear it ourselves,” Edgar said. “In this mob, there’s no hope of getting closer.”

  Catherine looked up at the platform tower at the north edge of the field. It had been built hastily when it was realized that the number of pilgrims come to take the cross was far more than would fit safely in the cathedral. Edgar shook his head when he saw the rickety structure, muttering that he hoped Saint Mary Magdalene, the patron of Vézelay, was guarding those present for it would be a miracle if anything built so roughly on that damp and sloping earth survived.

  Catherine felt out of place among the mass of the faithful. She and Edgar had no intention of pledging themselves to a pilgrimage. They had already taken one to Compostela and received the miracle of James when they had almost given up ever having a living child. It would be hubris to ask God for more. But the excitement of the moment had drawn them to come and cheer those who did take the cross.