Cursed in the Blood: A Catherine LeVendeur Mystery

by Newman, Sharan

  Edgar felt numb. He sat staring into emptiness, not letting himself comprehend what he had just been told. This hadn’t happened. Catherine was fine. She had survived so many dangers before, even giving birth to James. God wouldn’t give them to him and then take them away. There was no sense in such cruelty.

  All around men were shouting, crying, raging at the air, demanding that Oswin tell them if their families had escaped.

  “Only the keep was burned,” he told them. “But the people are scattered. I don’t know who survived.”

  Waldeve watched it all, uncharacteristically silent. But Edgar paid no attention. He was lost in his own world, trying somehow to make this news mean something else than what had been said.

  “Edgar.” Someone was shaking him. “Edgar, come back. They’re not dead, I tell you. They’re not dead.”

  Edgar blinked and looked into the shaggy face of his uncle.

  “Listen to me,” Æthelræd said carefully. “You know I’ve always known where to find you? I came to meet you at Berwick, even though you hadn’t planned to land there. I felt it when your brothers died. I knew when my father had died, although I was in Denmark then. No one in this damned family dies without a piece going out of me. Your son survived; I’m sure of it. Margaret, too. And if they did, then it stands to reason that their mothers are also alive.”

  “Catherine?” Edgar still didn’t understand.

  “They didn’t die in the fire,” Æthelræd said again. “Nor did Robert. I would stake my soul on it. Edgar!”

  Æthelræd shook him again. “Do you hear me?”

  “Yes,” Edgar said from far away. “You say they’re alive. Of course they are. They have to be, or I’ve died, too.”

  Æthelræd sighed and rubbed his forehead. The boy was too far gone into shock to talk with now. The best thing was to get a sleeping draught into him and hope he’d be more aware when he woke.

  They were inside a silent bubble in the middle of chaos. Æthelræd helped Edgar to stand and walked him over to the gate of the bishop’s palace. With his free arm, he pushed aside anyone who got in the way.

  “I need your infirmarian,” he told the guard at the gate.

  “We don’t have one,” the guard said. “There’s a monk in the cathedral who tends to our wounds. That’s all. But you can’t go there without permission from the bishop.”

  “Fine,” Æthelræd answered.

  He shouldered Edgar once more and went back to the crowd, pushing his way through. From there he eased out the other side and toward the path leading to the cloister.

  As they were about to vanish among the trees, Waldeve spotted them.

  “You two!” he shouted. “Get over here. There’s work to be done!”

  Æthelræd ignored him and steered Edgar to the north door of the cloister. Taking the key from his scrip, he opened it and dragged Edgar in.

  Waldeve watched them go with impotent fury. He couldn’t reach them through the mass of men around him, begging him to take them back to find their families. He had nothing but contempt for his followers. Men who vented their feeling like this were of no use to him. Grief must become anger and anger hate or a man would lose the desire to fight. He had to regain control of them at once.

  “You, stop that howling!” he screamed, hitting at the nearest man with the flat of his sword. “Crying won’t avenge them. And going home will only take us into a trap.”

  The man only winced and continued sobbing.

  Waldeve’s anger grew. “Saint Finian’s flying farts!” he bellowed. “Aren’t there any men left here?”

  “Waldeve, leave them be.”

  Waldeve looked up. Standing in front of him was William Cumin, erstwhile bishop of Durham. “They are torn with fear for those they love. You have lost much more than they. Why aren’t you grieving with them?”

  “My Lord Bishop,” Waldeve said perfunctorially. “I learned years ago that my tears bring no one back. They only sap my strength, leaving me too weak to fight. My men are no good to me in this state.”

  “If you let them voice their sorrow, they’ll be all the stronger when you lead them into battle,” Cumin said. “I’ll say a Mass for the souls of your wife and child tomorrow morning. Have the men attend. It will do them good.”

  Waldeve forebode mentioning that half the men would refuse to participate in a Mass said by an excommunicant. He was doubtful himself about the efficacy of any devotions Cumin might give for someone’s soul. Mightn’t they rebound and actually cause the soul to endure more hellfire?

  He could see there was no way to get anything done until the first waves of emotion had abated. Waldeve returned to his tent and ordered a flask of wine from one of the bishop’s servants. While he waited for it, he wondered if any of the horses had been saved. It was good that the best were with him. They would be harder to replace than his wife.

  Edgar woke up slowly, unsure of where he was or why he felt as if the world had just ended. There was a familiar face hovering over him, one that he thought he had left behind years ago.

  “Brother Lawrence?” he whispered. “What’s happened? Why are you here?”

  The monk patted his arm gently. “Don’t worry about that, my boy. Just rest for now. I’ll tell your uncle that you’re awake.”

  Edgar ignored the monk’s advice and sat up. Yes, he was in the old infirmary at Durham. The last time he had been here was when he had the spotted fever. He’d been delirious for days, they told him. He wondered if the same thing had happened again. He looked at his hands. No spots. Also, he realized that they were the hands of a man. He wasn’t a student here anymore. He hadn’t become a priest after all. He had gone to France and met … Catherine.

  It all came back to him with tidal force. His hands balled into fists that he beat against his forehead, trying to drive the knowledge out. It was all his fault. No matter what the danger in Paris, they would have been safer there than in Scotland. If they had died, at least it would have been together, as Catherine had wanted. Now she and James were both gone and he was left behind. What was he to do?

  Æthelræd came in and grabbed him, pinning his fists down.

  “Edgar, listen to me,” he said. “Please believe me. Your wife and son are alive. They escaped the fire. I know it. You must stop this. I need you to be calm. Everyone else from Wedderlie has gone mad, including your father.”

  Edgar stared at him dully. “Uncle, I know you mean well, but this isn’t one of your games. The keep was attacked and destroyed completely. There’s no hope.”

  “Nonsense!” Æthelræd exclaimed. “What do you mean ‘my games’? I have the sight, just as my grandmother did. How can you doubt it? I saw you in Berwick and I felt the deaths of your brothers. And I see Robert now, heading toward us. He didn’t get here before Oswin because he’s carrying that dog of his, but he’ll arrive by afternoon.”

  He sounded certain of himself, Edgar allowed. What was even more convincing was that Æthelræd also sounded exasperated at Edgar’s scepticism. Edgar wanted desperately to believe him, but he knew he couldn’t bear hoping and then having to face the truth again.

  “Robert is coming this afternoon?” he asked.

  Æthelræd nodded decisively.

  “Before the bells ring for Vespers, he’ll be here,” Æthelræd’s forehead creased in puzzlement. “I just don’t understand why he’s carrying that damned dog.”

  Catherine had thought they were an odd-looking group: one man, two women, two young girls, a baby and a pale, pathetic creature tied to a mule to keep him from falling off. But the people they passed on the road gave them little more than a glance. Once a pair of soldiers rode by, causing them to jump quickly into the brush and nearly toppling Lazarus from the mule.

  “What’s wrong with them?” Catherine protested, as she checked to see that the dust of their passing hadn’t blown into the baby’s face. “Couldn’t they see we need help?”

  It was Willa who explained it to her.

 
“We’re just more peasants and refugees,” she said. “Look at us, Mistress. We’re no different from most of the others on the road. No one stops to help them.”

  Adalisa agreed. “The North is full of people just like us, thrown from our homes by the wars. In a way, it’s our best protection. No one will look closely enough at us to recognize us. But, oh, how my feet hurt!”

  “Is it much farther?” Solomon asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Adalisa said. “We should be there by tomorrow. Then we only have to wait on the tide.”

  Catherine stopped in dismay. “I forgot it was an island! We’ll have to take a boat.”

  “No, no, don’t worry, ma douz broiz,” Adalisa reassured her. “The island can be reached twice a day, when the tide is out, on foot. We only have to be careful that we aren’t caught by the incoming water.”

  Catherine found that much less frightening than the thought of setting out to sea again.

  “What will happen when we get there?” Solomon wanted to know. “Do any of the monks there know you?”

  “No, but I think I can convince them of who I am, and they will take us in in any case,” Adalisa said. “We can send a message to Durham from there. And we can stay on the island until someone comes for us. After that, I don’t know. Waldeve will tell us.”

  Solomon had no intention of waiting on Waldeve’s whim. As soon as he was sure that his charges were in good hands, he intended to set out again, first to Durham to report to Edgar, then on a quest of his own. There was a man in Berwick who shouldn’t be there. He had to find out what that man knew and whom he planned to tell. There was no point in surviving this if they were to be arrested as soon as they got back to Paris.

  Catherine wasn’t thinking of Paris, except in a wistful sort of way, as she remembered the wooden tub in the back garden. She wasn’t really even thinking about Edgar, except as a pang of loneliness. All her concentration was on James. He had become fretful in the past day, quiet only when eating, which he wanted to do more often than usual. She didn’t know what was wrong. Wasn’t she supplying him enough milk? Or were the sores from the swaddling hurting him? Perhaps all this moving about had brought on an illness. He had no fever, as yet, but what could she do if he developed one?

  “My love, my precious, my darling child,” she sang to him, “Saint James, protect him. Keep him safe. Keep him well.”

  Lazerus whimpered constantly, as well. The jolting gait of the mule upset him and he threw up the little they had gotten him to eat. He kept his eyes shut tightly until Margaret suggested that the sun might be too bright for him. They made him a hat of willow branches that Willa wove together. She put it on his head and tied it under his chin with the string from her chainse.

  He twisted back and forth to rid himself of it, then slowly opened his eyes. His hand moved up to investigate. Willa stood close by, in case he should try to remove it. He didn’t. After pulling on the string a few times, he let it be. A few moments later, Willa noticed that he was sitting up straighter and looking about.

  “Lazarus is waking up,” she said to Adalisa.

  “He is, indeed.” Adalisa smiled. “Perhaps he will awaken enough to tell us who he is someday.”

  “You really have no idea?” Catherine couldn’t believe a woman could be that ignorant of what was going on in her own household.

  “Truly I don’t,” Adalisa answered.

  “But there must have been someone that Waldeve was having a dispute with at that time, some neighbor or follower of his lord,” Catherine insisted.

  “Yes, but there always was,” Adalisa explained. “Waldeve isn’t alive if he isn’t asserting his rights over someone. The only thing I can remember from then was some trouble with the villagers, something about the way the tithes were assigned.”

  “That sounds normal,” Solomon commented. “Everyone complains about that.”

  “That’s true, but this seemed worse than usual,” Adalisa said. “I could hear them shouting from my room. Waldeve threatened to have the leaders hanged, but no one was.”

  “And he brought Lazarus home soon after this?” Solomon asked.

  “At night, I think,” Adalisa paused. “It was so long ago and I was still weak from the birth. Margaret was reluctant to enter the world, my dear wise child. But I seem to remember the sound of the horse coming back later than usual. I suppose I thought Waldeve had simply been with one of his women. Then I heard the crying and pleading.”

  “He spoke?” Catherine asked.

  “I’m not sure anymore,” Adalisa closed her eyes to see the past better. “It may have been just the tone. The words would have been indistinct anyway.”

  “How long had Waldeve been gone?” Solomon asked.

  “Since Tierce, or thereabouts,” Adalisa said. “He wasn’t away overnight all that month. Oh, I see!”

  She looked on Solomon with admiration. “I never thought of that. Lazarus must have come from nearby. But then why did no one come for him?”

  They all turned to the bony figure balanced on the back of the mule. Lazarus was staring at the light slipping between his fingers. He held his hand up so that the afternoon sun beat against it. He seemed completely enthralled and oblivious of the others.

  No one said anything. But each of them wondered if the boy had been as simple as the man appeared to be. Who, then, would make an effort to rescue him?

  They had left the forest now and were traveling across the marsh. Adalisa pointed out the plants that grew between the wood and the sea.

  “That’s liverwort,” she told Catherine. “We call it pérèlle in France. If you gather and dry it, pound it to powder and mix it with urine, it comes out a lovely purple that you can use to dye wool.”

  “I must remember that,” Catherine said.

  The gulls and curlews were swooping overhead. The land was open and empty except for the wind that came off the sea, filling the air with the scent of brine. Even on this warm day, it cut through them. They had all wrapped themselves in the cloaks or blankets that they had been able to grab in the fire. James was whimpering, but there was nothing to be done for him until they found shelter for the night.

  “There’s a plant that grows only on Holy Island that one can get both oil and salt from,” Adalisa continued. “In ale it’s good for dropsy, and if one inhales the aroma of the oil, it reduces hysteria.”

  Catherine thought they might all have need of it soon. She understood why Adalisa was rambling on so. They were no longer hidden. On this landscape, anyone watching from the land above could spot them at once. They all felt it. Willa and Margaret walked together, holding hands. Solomon kept looking over his shoulder. Adalisa talked and Catherine shivered.

  “Only one more day,” she told herself. “One more day and we’re finally safe.”

  If only Edgar knew they were all right. Catherine couldn’t bear to think of what he must be enduring now. Then an even worse thought struck her. What if he were in danger, as well? Oh, why hadn’t they stayed together?

  Edgar was asking himself the same question, over and over. Despite the protestation of Æthelræd that Catherine and James were still alive, he despaired. He had lived too long in rational France to have any faith in family legends of vision and prophecy.

  He took no solace from the fact that without any effort on his part he had been able to tell Brother Lawrence the message he had been charged with, of the election of William of Saint-Barbe as bishop of Durham and the massing of an army to come free them.

  Brother Lawrence didn’t seem terribly surprised by this.

  “I knew Saint Cuthbert would take care of us,” he said.

  Edgar reflected that he had always been unbearably sure of himself.

  “What am I doing here?” he complained to Æthelræd for the hundredth time. “If Saint Cuthbert can take care of his own, then I don’t need to bother. My father certainly shows no need of me. All he’s asked me to do is talk to clerics, all of whom he could have conversed with easily
himself. I say, damn them all. Let me at least go back to Wedderlie and give my wife and child a proper funeral.”

  His tears splashed into his winecup. Æthelræd had thought he was doing well to get Edgar out of bed and down to the tavern, but Edgar took it as just another way to deaden his pain. The wine was strong and he hadn’t been cutting it with water at all.

  “Edgar.” He touched his nephew’s shoulder. “I wish you could trust me. Your grief is unnecessary.”

  Edgar looked up blearily. “Right,” he said.

  There was a commotion in the street outside the tavern. People were laughing and taunting someone. Æthelræd turned to see what it was. Laughter of any sort was rare in Durham these days.

  The doorway was blocked with gawkers. Æthelræd went up to see over them.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  One of the men turned around.

  “Just some poor fool in rags heading up to the cathedral,” he said. “Looking for a miracle, no doubt. Got a three-legged dog on his back.”

  “Hope it’s not a bitch.” Another laughed. “Everyone knows Saint Cuthbert can’t tolerate females at his shrine.”

  Edgar raised his head. Æthelræd looked smug.

  “It’s Robert, you’ll see,” he said. “Carrying the dog, just as I said. Now do you believe me?”

  It was ridiculous but a tiny flare of hope started in Edgar’s heart. He got up and went after Æthelræd who was already pushing his way through the gawkers to reach the man climbing up the street.

  “Robert!” Edgar shouted at the man’s back, on which poor Lufen was strapped.

  Robert turned around.

  “Edgar!” It was more of a wail than a greeting. “They burnt my farm and trampled the fields. Lufen and I escaped with our lives, but look at her! If she dies because of this I’ll have someone’s head.”

  They had caught up to him now. Robert embraced his brother and uncle, his tears dripping onto their tunics.