The Difficult Saint: A Catherine LeVendeur Mystery

by Newman, Sharan

  “Put this on again,” he said. “I’ll have to take you back upstairs, but I promise, no more locked doors.”

  He wished she could understand everything he said. But instead she seemed to know all he wanted to say.

  “You won’t let them hurt me.” She put her hand in his.

  As they went up the staircase they met Maria, coming down.

  “What’s she doing out?” she asked suspiciously.

  “I came back from the village and thought that Agnes might like a walk in the garden,” Hermann said. It didn’t sound likely, but it was the best he could manage. “I heard her moving about in her room and knew she was still awake.”

  Fortunately, Maria wasn’t concerned enough to question this.

  “Did you find Margaret?” she asked.

  “No, and Peter won’t come home until someone does,” Hermann aswered. “He sent me back to rest and see that the preparations for the grape harvest aren’t delayed.”

  He gave a rueful smile.

  “Can you believe it? He told me what to do. Not rudely but with firmness. Gerhardt would be so proud of him.”

  “Yes,” Maria agreed, staring pointedly at Agnes. “Your dead, unavenged brother would be pleased with his son. What would he think of you with this kebse?”

  Agnes withered under that look. She had no trouble imagining the words that went with it. Hermann drew himself up and glared at his sister.

  “I am sure Gerhardt would know that I am doing everything I can to protect his holdings,” he said. “And, until another answer can be found, I have kept the suspect imprisoned.”

  “Really?” Maria said. “From here it appears to be the other way around.”

  She continued down to the hall where she met Folmar.

  “I can’t believe it,” she complained. “Only months since our brother died and Hermann’s courting his murderer.”

  Folmar sighed. “Maria, can’t you even consider the thought that Gerhardt might have died from illness or by accident? Agnes gains nothing by his death. Her family would long ago have paid to free her if she hadn’t been so insistant on having her innocence proved. Hermann doesn’t think she did it and neither do I.”

  “If not her, then who?” Maria turned on him. “No sickness causes such sudden convulsions, and if it were an accident then why haven’t we found the cause? You men have been enchanted by a pretty face and form. If it had been my decision she would be locked up in a convent now, doing bitter penance for her sin. Or she would have been tried by ordeal and the truth established.”

  “Yes, my dear, I know,” Folmar said sadly. “But it wasn’t your decision and that didn’t happen. In the meantime we’ve learned to know her along with her family, who are even better born than we. Now it seems that the one being punished is that lovely child, who has done nothing at all.”

  Maria closed her eyes and put a hand to her forehead. “Folmar, this can’t continue much longer. I don’t sleep well; I can’t eat. We’ll never be able to put Gerhardt to rest until we know why he died.”

  Her husband reached for her and then drew back. “Yes, Maria,” he said. “I’ve come to that realization, too. His death must be explained.”

  Solomon had intended to bring Mina some solace, but it was she who wound up comforting him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, wiping his eyes. “I grieve so for you and Simon. I’ll miss him the rest of my life. But finding out that Margaret was persecuted and may have been killed because she was seen with us! It’s more than I can bear. Mina, I swore to her mother at the moment of her death that I would always take care of Margaret. I couldn’t save Adalisa and now I’ve failed to protect her daughter. I wasn’t even there to die with Simon.”

  “So who are you mourning for, Solomon?” Mina asked. “Them, or yourself?”

  Solomon stared at her. Mina was gaunt from sorrow and her eyes lost in dark shadows. But her sadness was for his pain more than her own.

  “I’m angry at myself,” he said. “For my own cowardice. I hate the way we have to live. I despise the people I travel among. It sickens me to trade with men who would be happy to see me dead and to know that sweet, gentle innocents are being brutalized and slaughtered. Yet I’m able to do nothing to prevent it!”

  He laid his head on the table and sobbed, pounding with his fist. Mina waited for his outburst to subside. Then she stroked his dark curls softly.

  “I see,” she said. “Poor Solomon. You loathe yourself because you aren’t the Almighty and you can’t mend the world. What a dreadful thing to find out. You’re only a man, after all.”

  Solomon opened one eye. She gave him an understanding smile although her face was wet with tears.

  “I do hate to believe that, Mina.” He smiled ruefully. “I’ve always wanted to be something better. But, I fear you’re right. With the meager capacity of my imperfect state, is there anything I can do for you and the children?”

  “As a matter of fact, there is,” she said. “Simon was to have taken Asher to his first day at cheder. I think they both would like it if you would take his place.”

  Solomon stood and bent to kiss her on both cheeks.

  “I would be honored,” he said.

  Vinta was growing worried. The willowbark poultice had brought the fever down and eased her restlessness but the girl still wasn’t lucid. Vinta tried to speak with her but she only stared at her with empty eyes or turned her head away. There wasn’t a spark of comprehension. Could the beating have affected her mind?

  Now that she was awake, the child had to eat, but Vinta couldn’t get her to take an interest in it.

  “Now, friedel,” she begged. “I’ve heard your people think they’re too good for Christian food, but I don’t have any of the things you eat. Try this. I made it especially for you, nice gruel with even a bit of honey.”

  She put the cup to the girl’s mouth but it only spilled out and down her chin. Vinta clucked to herself.

  She had more luck with whey, tipped between the girl’s lips through a hollow reed. But it wasn’t enough to sustain life.

  Vinta sighed and ran her hands through her thin hair.

  “I can’t let you die, girl,” she announced. “Then those bastards won’t be denounced. We can’t let them live unpunished. I’m going to wrap you up here and leave a cup on the floor here in case you decide to drink. I’ll be back as soon as I can but I have to go find your kin. Maybe they’ll know how to heal you. I’ve done all I can.”

  She put on a ragged scarf, picked up her walking stick and set out on the road for Trier.

  Inside Margaret lay silent, staring at nothing.

  Catherine couldn’t bear the waiting. She paced around the garden as if on guard duty. Hubert was getting dizzy just watching her.

  “I’ll take care of the little ones,” he said finally, “if you want to go with Solomon and join the search. Your distress is worse for you than the activity would be.”

  Catherine stopped. “Thank you, Father. You should know that I would have gone long ago if there were only myself to think of. Right now, I don’t want James and Edana out of my sight. As much as I want to be doing something to help, I can’t leave them, not even with you. I don’t want them torn from their family as you were.”

  She started circling again, somewhat hampered by Edana’s clinging to her skirts and James running around her on some mission of his own. Hubert regarded her with amazement. What had happened to his headstrong daughter? Marriage and motherhood seemed to have given her a prudence he would never have expected.

  Catherine’s stability was only in her devotion to her children. Even though her body insisted on staying with them, her mind roved freely and now, to avoid fretting about Margaret, it was working fiercely on pulling together all the loose bits of information they had about Gerhardt.

  There were pieces missing, she knew. But not as many as there had been, and a picture was slowly forming. She ticked off on her fingers the facts they had.

  Gerhardt had
taken a vow of chastity.

  He ate no meat, nor cheese nor eggs. But unlike most ascetics, he did drink wine. Perhaps because it was his own, but perhaps because he hadn’t been forbidden it.

  He gave alms, but directly to the poor instead of through his family monastery.

  Finally, there was the house that he had bought in Köln and given to a group that called themselves the “poor of Christ” who were governed by a woman.

  Alone these things meant nothing. Many penitents went to extremes in their fasting. The roads were full of “pauperes Christi,” some seeking Heaven, some just hoping for a better life. But all together, it reminded Catherine of something she had heard of before. It was a new heresy, or a very old one, depending on whom one talked with. It had begun in the east somewhere and rumors of its spread had circulated for the past few years. Its adherents rejected all things of the corporeal world and believed that Jesus had been a bodiless spirit who took the form of a man. They also thought the hierarchy of the Church corrupt and answered only to their own priests and bishops, some of whom were women.

  Actually, from what she had heard, Catherine was inclined to approve of much of their teaching. There was a great deal of it that appeared to return to the days of the apostles when all lived simply with no thought of wealth.

  But to deny the sacraments, especially baptism of infants, was too much. It gave Catherine great solace to know that their stillborn child was safely in Heaven.

  However, the question was not her own beliefs but those of Gerhardt. Had he accepted the teachings of these people? If he had, it might well be a reason for someone to want him dead—many people, now that she thought of it.

  But this was all speculation. They had no proof that Gerhardt was a heretic and even less that anyone else knew of it. If only she could find one more piece.

  “Mama! James hit me!” Edana splintered her concentration with wailing and Catherine was forced to return to maternal duty.

  Vinta hobbled down the side of the road, ever watchful for horsemen or carts that might delight in driving her into the thistles along the verge. She noticed the man coming from the town long before he saw her.

  He had nearly passed her when she called out to him. “Ho, there, man! Stop a moment.”

  Solomon turned and regarded her. He saw a bent hag with scraggly hair and only a few teeth, her face a mass of wrinkles. If he had met her before, it was in a nightmare.

  Still, Johanna had raised him to be polite. He bowed and greeted her.

  “What may I do for you?” he asked.

  “I don’t know yet,” she answered, peering at him. “You’re dark enough for one and have their sort of beard, but it’s hard to be sure. You a Jew?”

  Solomon blinked. “Why do you ask?”

  “I’ve got something for you, if you are,” she answered.

  “And what would that be?” Solomon asked, preparing himself to jump back if she went after him with her stick.

  Vinta shook her head. “I can’t tell you unless I’m sure.”

  “What would you have me do, old woman?” He began to find the situation amusing. “Drop my bruchen for you here in the road.”

  Vinta considered it. She hadn’t seen a nice big ocker in years, but she knew he’d take her request the wrong way. There wasn’t time for dallying.

  “I’ve found something that belongs to your people,” she said. “It’s in my cottage. Come with me and I’ll give it to you. That is, if you promise to give it back to those who had it first.”

  “Back to your cottage?” he asked, starting to move away. “I’m sorry, but I really have to be going. Maybe I could come by with my friends later.”

  At this Vinta made a feeble swing at him with her stick. “You’re all the same, Jew or Christian! There’d have been a time when you’d have crawled through briars for a visit to my cottage, you scum. I try to do some good and all I get is scorn. Never mind. Go swill beer with your friends. I’ll limp into Trier and find her family myself.”

  “Wait!” Solomon took her arm. “Forgive me, good woman. I’m hunting for a lost child, a girl. She may be badly hurt. Do you know where she is?”

  “Maybe.” Vinta looked him up and down. “What is she to you? There are those who’d do like to do worse to her, I fear. Perhaps keep her from naming those who treated her so.”

  “What is she to me?” The answer hit Solomon with the force of a landslide. “She’s the whole world, the sun, moon and stars as well as all that remains of a woman I loved dearly. Please, take me to her. I implore you, kind lady.”

  Vinta gave him her arm.

  “Now that’s the way I like to be spoken to.”

  Hermann felt as if he’d been dropped into a raging river. He tried to tell himself that Agnes was only using him to free herself. How could she care about him after he had kept her prisoner so long? They couldn’t even speak to each other properly. And all the while his thoughts were trying to make some sense out of what had happened between them, his body had to keep up with Edgar, Walter and Peter as they went through every house, hut, barn, mill, kitchen, grainstore and dovecote in their frantic hunt for Margaret.

  “I don’t think the villagers are hiding her,” he told them after they had all become covered in bird droppings while disloging a number of chickens to examine the space behind the nests. “Everyone wants to help, even those who were a part of it. Anything to keep you from destroying their winter stores.”

  Edgar spat out something disgusting and reached for the water bag.

  “If she was as badly hurt as they say, she can’t have gone far,” he said. “Unless someone carried her. So, either she’s hidden in the village or one of your people isn’t telling all he knows. Now, where do we look next?”

  Walter leaned on a garden fence that creaked under him.

  “Edgar, we’ve taken the place apart,” he said. “We were more thorough than the tithemen. She isn’t here.”

  “She has to be, Walter. I won’t leave without her.”

  “Edgar, think of the boy, here,” Walter said. “He hasn’t eaten or slept in nearly two days. He blames himself.”

  “Good,” Edgar said. “I blame him, too.”

  Peter didn’t need the translation for that. He sat disconsolate on the ground wondering if anyone would mind if he hired on as horseboy to Walter and went to get himself killed at Edessa. It seemed the only way to atone.

  He watched without interest as old Vinta came across the fields and between the vines, occasionally whacking something out of the way with her cane. She’d been on the fringe of the village as long as he or most anyone else could remember. There was a story about her. Some scandal almost as ancient as she was, but he had never known what. He wondered where she was going in such a hurry.

  Walter was watching her, too.

  “Who’s that woman?” he asked. “I don’t remember going to her home.”

  “She’s just a laundress for the church and the castle,” Hermann said. “I don’t think her house has a place to hide anything.”

  “She’s coming this way,” Edgar said. “We might as well question her.”

  Vinta didn’t give them a chance to ask any questions. She went straight to Peter and bowed.

  “You’ll be the young lord,” she said. “You look just like your grandfather.”

  Peter nodded.

  “I don’t know that I should have left him with her,” she continued. “He said he was family to her, but I’ve no proof of that. I mean, he wouldn’t even show me his ocker.”

  “He wouldn’t?” Peter said. He looked at Walter for guidance.

  “No, so how could I be sure?” Vinta went on. “But he seemed to know her and was very gentle. He sent me to find her brother, somebody called Edgar, I think. Strange name.”

  “Edgar!” Peter and Walter said together.

  “We’ve found her!” Peter yelled and burst into tears.

  Edgar turned to Walter, not daring to hope.

  “It must be
Margaret,” Walter said. “But I don’t know who the man could be.”

  “Hubert?” Edgar guessed as he ran after Peter, who was off in the direction of Vinta’s hut.

  “Does it matter?” Walter called back. “We’ll take care of him when we get there.”

  But the thought of her being spirited away again by a stranger made them run all the faster.

  Hermann watched them sprint off and decided that someone should return to tell Agnes the good news. He appointed himself.

  Solomon had sent Vinta away only partially from a desire to inform Edgar. He didn’t want the old woman there if Margaret woke and didn’t know him. She’d been like this once before and he’d been able to waken her from the nightmare, but a second time might be too much to ask. He knelt over her and stroked her cheek, a finger circling the bruise under her eye with the cut at the center. There was another cut on her temple and her nose was swollen, if not broken. He was afraid to find out what else had been done to her.

  “Margaret, cossete, my dear, can you hear me?” he said softly. “Oh, Adalisa, I hope you don’t know how badly I’ve failed to watch over your daughter. Margaret?”

  She didn’t wake, but rolled to her side. As she did, her hand fell upon his and her fingers curled around his thumb, holding on tightly. Solomon didn’t move. When Edgar arrived at the hut he found them so, Solomon twisted at a most uncomfortable angle to keep from causing her to lose her grip on him.

  Now that Margaret was found, Edgar suggested that Peter go home and sleep. There was nothing he could do at the moment. When he had reluctantly left, Edgar then ran ahead to tell Catherine and Hubert while Walter brought Margaret cradled in front of him on the horse with Solomon walking alongside to see that she wasn’t jostled.

  Vinta watched them go. They had hardly thanked her. That was the way of men, as she knew all too well. She knelt by the pallet and gathered up the blankets to wash.