“Gershom the butcher has been accused of murdering a Christian man,” Solomon said.
Yehiel paled. “Gershom? That’s nonsense!”
He turned to the other men.
“This man brings evil news,” he said. “We must return to Troyes at once.”
Solomon explained as much as he knew.
“Our families!” one man exclaimed. “Is this accusation known in the town?”
“The streets were full when I left,” Solomon said.
No one needed to hear more. They called for their servants and their horses and left.
“By the way,” Solomon asked Yehiel as they rode out, “which of the Christian debtors wants to pay in wine?”
“Several do,” Yehiel answered. “But the worst is that deacon at Saint-Aventin, Peter. And I suspect that he was trying to repay us with wine he had stolen from the church.”
“In that case, the law is clear.”
“Yes, then it would be for sacrifice and we couldn’t accept it. That may be why the elders didn’t argue the point more strongly,” Yehiel agreed. “You don’t seem surprised. Have you had dealings with this man, too?”
“I have heard of him,” Solomon said. “His reputation among his own people is not good, either.”
After that, they reached the main road, which was smooth enough for speed. The elders spurred their horses on through the growing darkness, driven by fear, and Solomon had no more breath for questions.
The shouting began in the hours before dawn.
At first it blended in Catherine’s mind with a dream about being lost in Paris, hunting through the streets for Edgar and finding only empty cloaks or bland-faced students. Then the cloaks filled with hoofed demons that were chasing her through the twisting alleys of the île. She could feel their fiery breath on her neck.
With a scream, she woke.
“Edgar!” she cried. “I thought you were lost!”
She reached out for him and felt only empty blankets. In a panic, she pulled on the first piece of clothing she touched and hurried into the corridor. That was when she realized that the screams and clanking were coming from the Rû Corde, outside the window on the other side of the riverbed. She rushed down the stairs and into the Great Hall.
There was chaos there as well. Countess Mahaut was directing the accumulation of buckets and blankets by one group while Nocher shouted orders to the knights and men-at-arms.
“Just keep them from entering the palace grounds,” he told the men. “And be on the watch for fires. Half of those people are drunk and the other half insane. They won’t care what they burn.”
He strode over to the countess.
“We’ve had a messenger from Bishop Hatto,” he told her. “He’s sending out his men to protect the synagogue and the streets around it, but he wants to know if you’ll take in the women and children here, until he’s sure it’s safe for them. It seems most of the men have gone off somewhere.”
“Yes, of course,” Mahaut said. “Ebeline! Don’t soak all the blankets! We need some for warmth. No, you can’t use the salt cellars for buckets! You have enough. Go and soak down the roofs and cover the henhouse and the dovecote with wet blankets.”
She waved the people out. Nocher started to order his men to go bring in the threatened Jews.
“Wait,” she called to him. “Make sure they understand that they don’t have to come if they don’t want to. Tell them I only want to keep them safe, not make them convert. Is that clear?”
Nocher bowed. “Of course,” he said. “Gunther! Jehan! Hear that? See that your men don’t scare them more than the mob.”
Catherine shoved her way through the scurrying people, hunting for Edgar. In the crush, she bumped against Jehan, who was waiting for his men to gather up their equipment.
“Avoi!” he said. “Watch where you’re …”
He stopped upon recognizing her. A slow grin spread over his face as he looked her up and down. Catherine followed his glance. Her mouth dropped open in horror.
She was standing in the middle of the Great Hall of the palace of Troyes dressed only in Edgar’s chainse. The sleeves fell far below her fingertips but the hem came only halfway to her knees. She could feel her braids tickling the backs of her legs.
“Well?” Jehan’s grin widened.
“I was looking for my husband,” Catherine said, crouching a bit in an effort to cover herself more.
“I saw him a moment ago, in the other half of your costume, helping wet down the outbuildings,” he answered. “You two can only afford one set of clothes?”
Catherine didn’t bother to explain. She ran out into the courtyard, bumping against people until she collided with Edgar, wearing only his braies.
“What’s happening?” she shouted over the commotion.
“Someone in a tavern decided there was a plot to kill all the Christians and take over the tanneries,” Edgar answered. “The next thing anyone knew, there were fifty or so drunken men breaking into the Jewish shops and heading for their houses with torches and cudgels. The countess had the gate to the old city shut, but it didn’t hold. And now they’re throwing flaming rags over the walls.”
He stopped and looked at her.
“Why are you wearing my chainse?”
“Do you want it back now?” she asked, annoyed.
“Saint Melania’s mantle! Of course not!” he answered. “But go cover yourself before you get raped.”
It was good advice, but Catherine was not about to go up to their alcove and root about for her own clothes. She went back inside the hall and looked around. There, in a corner, was the pack of the travelling poet. He was nowhere to be seen. Catherine went over and found, as she had hoped, his extra pair of braies. Quickly she slipped them on. Her hips were a bit wider than the underfed performer’s and the braies stayed up without the need for a belt. Satisfied, she rejoined Edgar, who was making up part of a bucket brigade.
His eyebrows rose when he saw her.
“Oh, that’s much better,” he said. “Here, take this.”
She grabbed the full bucket and passed it on to the next person.
“Have you seen Solomon?” she asked. “Is he all right?”
“He’s not come back,” Edgar answered. “Careful!”
An empty bucket fell from the roof and landed on the ground next to Catherine. She picked it up and passed it on, took a full bucket from the person next in line and passed it to Edgar, over and over, soon falling into the rhythm. She had grown up in Paris and knew the constant fear of fire in towns made largely of wood. If one of those blazing rags caught on a roof or even a pile of straw, Troyes could be cinders by morning. Her arms began to ache but she didn’t stop.
A few moments later the palace gate opened as the guards herded in a frightened group of women and children, clutching the few belongings they had had time to gather up. They stood close together in wary silence. Nocher shouted at them to go on into the hall but no one moved.
“What is it now?” he called. “You all know me. We buy wool from you, Bella! Go on in!”
The woman he had addressed stepped forward.
“We know everyone out there, lord,” she said. “They buy wool from me, too. We get our water from the same well and our children skin their knees playing at the same games. And, tomorrow, after they’ve burnt our homes and stolen all their pledges back, they’ll be very sorry, but it’s our fault for not believing in your god, what else should we expect?”
“By the sword of Saint Maurice,” Nocher muttered. “What else should you expect?”
He spoke more loudly. “You are under the authority of the bishop and the count. They have sworn to protect you and your property. No one in here will harm you. Just go in to the hall and wait until we can restore order.”
Bella conferred with the others. Finally, with shrugs of resignation, they followed Nocher’s order. Bella stayed behind, stopping to speak with him privately. But Catherine was close enough to hear.
> “My son and some of the other boys have gone to the yeshiva to protect the holy books,” she told him. “They will fight anyone who dares attack them. If the bishop and the count aren’t able to control the people of this town, there will be Christian blood as well as Jewish spilt tonight.”
Nocher took off his helm and wiped his forehead. “There will be no more murder done,” he said. “And those who break the count’s peace, whoever they are, will be punished.”
“Then tell the bishop to look to his own for those who set men to violence,” Bella countered. “That deacon of Saint-Aventin and his partner were in the streets tonight, preaching holy destruction.”
With that she turned her back on him and joined the others in the hall.
Catherine’s body continued swaying even after someone had taken her place in the line and gently pushed her away. She and Edgar stumbled toward the cookhouse, where someone was dishing out squares of cold, congealed porridge. They ate it avidly, licking their fingers.
“Edgar,” Catherine said, sucking the last of the grease off her thumb, “it just occurred to me; we haven’t had a whole night’s sleep since we were married. I might as well have stayed at the Paraclete and recited the night office.”
“And missed all this fun?” he asked, putting his arm around her.
She leaned her head on his shoulder.
“Catherine?” he asked after a moment. “Are you asleep?”
“I was just thinking,” she said.
“About what we should do next?”
“No,” she yawned. “I was just thinking that you have a wonderful nose. I’m so fond of your nose.”
It was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to him. Edgar adjusted her more comfortably on his shoulder. They fell asleep leaning against a cart in the courtyard and didn’t awake until well past dawn.
Bishop Hatto had gone out himself that night, leading the knights and showering his wrath upon the rioters. Whether through fear of excommunication or of the swords of the knights, the people were finally convinced to disperse without completing the destruction they had planned on. When the parnassim arrived the next afternoon, they found their wives at home, putting away the valuables, and their sons in the square in front of the church of Saint-Frobert, treating the knights of the count and the bishop to a barrel of their best wine.
The elders gave this move their approval and divided the cost among the families. Then they selected a delegation to the court to negotiate the release of Gershom, the butcher.
Catherine had been greeted, upon awakening, by an angry poet, demanding the return of his pants. When that and other matters had been sorted out, she returned to her concern about Solomon.
“I think we should go out and look for him,” she told Edgar.
“Catherine, Solomon is better able than either of us to defend himself,” Edgar answered. “He proved that when he saved me from your friend, Jehan, last winter.”
“All the same, he may need help,” she answered. “And, anyway, I want to see if we can discover just what, or who, worked everyone up again. I thought things were calm in the town after we proved that Lisiard was killed here in the palace.”
“You think it was Peter of Baschi, as that woman told Nocher, don’t you?” Edgar asked.
“Yes, don’t you? But I keep wondering who his partner was. It couldn’t have been Joseph,” Catherine said. “Do you think it was someone else from Peter’s church?”
“Somehow I got the impression that the other man wasn’t a cleric,” Edgar said. “If that woman knew him, perhaps others do. Shall we go to the square by the tanneries and see what we can overhear?”
The streets were littered with debris from the night before, broken crockery, wooden stalls smashed in, puddles of spilled beer, covered with flies. On their way to the square, they were nearly tripped by a handcart being pulled into the road.
“Watch where you’re going!” Edgar shouted.
But instead of getting out of the way, the man pulling the cart stopped and studied them. Catherine studied him, as well, and found little to interest her. The man was stooped and had a leg so twisted he seemed to be walking on his ankle. He was unshaven and his hair was matted.
“I don’t know you,” the man said. “I know everyone in Troyes. You’re strangers. Wellborn by the look of your clothes. You’d be the people who ruined it for the ones who killed Lisiard, wouldn’t you?”
Edgar let his hand slide casually over his knife, unhooking the sheath.
“What would you know about that?” he asked. “Who are you?”
The man smiled. What teeth he had were brown.
“I’m Lascho,” he said as if that explained everything.
They waited.
“I’m the dung collector,” he went on. “And I saw the men who put poor old Lisiard in Gershom’s shop.”
Fourteen
The Great Hall of the palace, Feast of Saint Leo,
Thursday, April 11, 1140
ve‘ilu shekufin ’oto lehotzi’: mukkah shechin … vehamekametz,
vehametzaref nehoshet vehaburesi …
And these are those who are compelled to free their wives: one who suffers from boils on the skin, … and the collector of dung, and the smelter of copper, and the tanner …
—Mishnah Ketubot 7:10
“I’m the best dung collector in Troyes, my lady,” Lascho told the countess. “I can tell just by looking what sort of animal left it. The horse and cattle droppings I sell to the farmers, the dog dung to the tanners. Human’s good for nothing. I just dump it in the canal. But I keep it nice and divided in my cart. And I get it all. When was the last time you stepped into a pile on your way to Mass?”
The countess Mahaut regarded the man standing before her as if he were another species. He was brown all over, with wisps of hay sticking to his hair and clothes. He and his occupation seemed to have merged. Yet his identity and honesty had been vouched for by the required number of people of the town. So his testimony must be listened to.
“I’m pleased to hear that you perform your job so well,” she said. “I will bring it to the attention of Count Thibault when he returns. Now, these people say you have information regarding the murder of the man, Lisiard?”
Lascho’s forehead creased in his effort to form his answer. He had been warned of the dangers, here and in the hereafter, of giving out misinformation.
“Well, not about the murder, exactly,” he hedged. “I didn’t see the man killed. I’d have gone to the bishop or Count Nocher, here, if I’d seen that. But I did see them who took him away and hung him up like a poor dumb beast. I did see that.”
He stood alone in the middle of the hall, a mixture of terror and bravado. It was the grandest place he had ever been in. Since the death of his mother, he had rarely been allowed inside a house. The tanners let him use their sheds on cold or rainy nights or he slept in the entrance to one of the churches. For food he paid when he could and begged when he couldn’t. He was the least noticed human in Troyes.
And now everyone was looking at him.
“Tell us what you saw, then,” Mahaut prompted.
Lascho took a deep breath. “It was nearly dawn, only a few stars left, on the night before last. I was sleeping in the porch of Saint-Urbain but I knew the canons would be along soon and I wanted to be gone before they came and tripped over me.”
He paused. “They do that sometimes. They don’t see me. Then they swear and that makes them angry so they kick me for good measure. I was crossing the court to Saint-Jacques, where it’s not as warm but they don’t get up so early, when I saw these two men, dragging something.”
“It was still dark,” the countess said. “How could you see what it was?”
“Oh, I couldn’t,” Lascho said. “But it didn’t seem honest to me, dragging things about before the sun rises, so I ducked behind a row of barrels and watched. They passed right by me and I heard one say, ‘Christ, he’s heavy!’ and the other one answered, ‘Damn br
icon spent all his time in the kitchens. We’ll never get him up on that butcher’s hook.’”
Catherine joined in the collective gasp at this revelation. Poor Lisiard! Mocked even by his murderers. But there seemed no doubt that the dung collector was telling the truth. He couldn’t have known about Lisiard’s preference for food over fighting. He wouldn’t have been allowed close enough to a kitchen to hear the gossip.
Mahaut waited for the exclamations to subside. Then she leaned forward in her chair and asked quietly, “Did you recognize the men?”
Lascho twisted his fingers through his beard in his nervousness. He spent a minute in the effort to untangle his hand. Then he shook his head.
“It was too dark,” he said. “One was tall and broad in the shoulder; the other much smaller. They said nothing else; I didn’t know the voices. I’m sorry. Do I still get a loaf of bread?”
“What?” Mahaut was polite, but puzzled.
“Those two said if I came with them and told the story, that I could have a whole loaf, not ever dripped on by anyone, and a mug of beer.”
He pointed at Catherine and Edgar. Edgar stepped forward.
“I did promise him food if he told you what he had told us. Forgive my presumption, my lady countess,” he said.
Mahaut nodded and gestured to her chaplain, Conon.
“Have this man taken to Isembard,” she ordered. “Tell him that Lascho has been most helpful in the search for the murderers of his nephew and that he is to be given whatever he wishes to eat and drink.”
The dung collector was stunned to tears by this largess.
“Thank you, lady, thank you,” he repeated. “May Our Lord reward you for your kindness.”
Mahaut smiled as he was led out.
“The blessings of the poorest reach God’s ears first,” she said. “Are the men of his community here to testify for the butcher?”
“Yes, my lady,” her chamberlain said. “They have spoken with Gershom and are waiting outside to give pledges as to his innocence.”
The Devil's Door: A Catherine LeVendeur Mystery Page 18
