Strong as Death (Catherine LeVendeur)

by Newman, Sharan

  “Yes, so we are taught,” Catherine answered. “Where did you learn that?”

  “Oh, Catherine,” Mondete almost laughed. “When priests are unable to do anything else, they talk. I know my catechism.”

  This means of acquiring a religious education was not one Catherine had thought of. She was not so naive as to assume that all priests were chaste, but she hadn’t considered that they might be both preacher and sinner at the same moment. Well, almost the same moment.

  “I think I understand,” she told Mondete. “Long ago, when the Visigoths captured Rome, the nuns there were raped by the soldiers. Saint Augustine wrote to the women that as they had not acquiesced in or enjoyed the experience, they were still virgins in the eyes of God.”

  Mondete was not impressed with Augustine’s generosity. “They should have been crowned as martyrs,” she said bitterly. “It’s strange, you know. Can you think of one saint’s life wherein she was threatened with rape and had to endure it? No, those women are torn with hot pincers and thrown to lions. They have their eyes gouged out and their breasts torn off, but they always die with their maidenheads intact.”

  Catherine tried to think of an exception. She couldn’t. “Now I’m confused,” she said. “If you mean that you didn’t sin because you never wanted to be violated, that would make sense. But what has it to do with virgin martyrs?”

  “Everything, Catherine.” Mondete was shaking with the intensity of her words. “I would have been happy to be a virgin martyr. But no one gave me the option. Don’t you think I prayed? I prayed to God and the saints. I prayed while Norbert was pinning me down and prying my legs apart, while he was slicing me in half with that horrible thing of his.”

  Catherine wanted to cover her ears, but she couldn’t move. She was as fixed by Mondete’s words as Mondete had been by Norbert’s body.

  “I prayed and then I screamed.” Mondete’s voice grew soft and hollow. “I screamed and screamed, but no one came to save me, even though the keep was full of people. There was no angel to stand between me and shame. No hero to rescue me. No father to run home to on earth or in heaven. They had both abandoned me. Everyone had.”

  She turned her face up to Catherine’s. Her eyes were dry and burning with emotions Catherine could sense but not share.

  There was nothing to say. Catherine knelt on the stone and put her arms around Mondete, holding her until her shoulders relaxed and her head bowed into the folds of Catherine’s cloak … and then they cried together.

  Edgar was waiting for his wife back at the inn. “Your father tells me we’ll start into the mountains tomorrow,” he told her. “They were hoping for the weather to improve, but Aaron says that might not be for weeks. Is something wrong?”

  He touched her arm and she pulled back. “Oh, Edgar,” she said, “I’m sorry. Sometimes I feel terribly selfish.” She leaned against him. “I am so lucky to have found you.”

  Bewildered, but too smart to question, Edgar kissed her forehead. “I’m glad you realize it,” he smiled. “I think I’ve had more than my share of good fortune as well.”

  Catherine was grateful that he asked nothing more. She was still confused by Mondete’s outburst. If the woman had hated the things she had been forced to do, there did seem nothing to repent of. So why was Mondete on the pilgrimage?

  Had Brother Rigaud been one of the clerics who taught Mondete her catechism? Mondete certainly had reason to hate Norbert; and Hugh also lived near Mâcon and might have used her, as Gaucher and Rufus had. Could Rigaud have been another? Catherine refused to believe the conclusions that kept leering in her face. But logic told her that if she didn’t want to suspect Mondete of having been the murderer, she had to find someone else who had a better reason to kill those three men.

  The next morning was cool and still. The fog wasn’t as thick and there was a golden tone to it that indicated the sun might burn through. As soon as there was light enough to find the road, groups started out. The small church on the edge of town was full of those asking one last blessing before facing this great challenge. Small offerings of candles or flowers, or coins worn almost thin enough to see through, were left next to the altar.

  Edgar’s fear of the steep path ahead was so great that he became unnaturally jovial, calling out to the others, laughing loudly at the slightest joke, making an uncommon amount of noise with the harness. Solomon, who had crept upstairs just before dawn, wasn’t amused.

  “What did you drink last night?” he demanded. “Or is it the air up here? They say that some men go mad from being so close to heaven.”

  Edgar sobered at that thought. “I can well believe it. Saint Anselm dreamt once that the throne of God was on a mountaintop. But I think it’s more likely that the way to heaven from here is straight down.”

  “Your Saint Anselm dreamt of the Throne?” Solomon asked, suddenly awake. “What was it made of? What did it look like? What was it resting on?”

  “Oh, Solomon, not now!” Catherine appeared, carrying her bundle of clothes. “Anyway, I don’t think there was a description of the throne in his account of the dream. Now find a place for this, would you?”

  Solomon took the bundle and began tying it to the rest of the packs with leather thongs, muttering all the while.

  “You can go on forever speculating on the nature of the universe. You can spend hours spouting nonsense to prove that your three gods are really one, but if I ask one little question about the merkavah, then, ‘Oh no, Solomon, it’s not the right time, we’re all too busy.’”

  Catherine overheard him, as he intended, and laughed. “You’re feeling better,” she said. “I’m glad. I should thank our hostess for cheering you. We won’t let that nasty Brother James near you again if he makes you such boring company. Has anyone even seen him since we left Moissac?”

  “I did,” Edgar said. “I think. He looks oddly familiar. I keep wondering where I saw him before.”

  “I had the same feeling,” Solomon said, cinching the packs tightly. “And I don’t want to know. I just don’t want to see him again.”

  Catherine patted his back in sympathy. “You know, I don’t think he likes women any more than he likes Jews. The few times he’s passed me, he always turns away, crossing himself as if I were a demon about to pounce on him.”

  “Oh, would you, Catherine?” Solomon laughed. “It would be worth what he put me through to see him quail.”

  “Don’t tempt her!” Edgar said. “I was nervous enough when you were taken. All I need is to have to defend my wife on a charge of demonic possession. Are we ready? Aaron just signaled that his party is leaving.”

  They crossed the stream that would soon become the River Nive and started up the path.

  “I can’t believe it,” Catherine said to Edgar as they followed the long line of pilgrims. “Tonight we’ll sleep in the hostel at Roncevalles and worship in the church built on the rock Roland split. We’ll see where he and Olivier fought the Saracens. And after that,” she told him reassuringly, “it will be downhill all the way to Compostela.”

  Edgar closed his eyes. “Catherine, haven’t I explained? Down is much worse than up. When we’re descending, I can see even more clearly how far I might fall.”

  The promise of sunshine was never fulfilled. The fog lifted to become a hard, biting rain, augmented by sudden gusts of wind whenever they rounded curves in the path. They went up and up and the earth fell farther away on their left, until only the occasional bleat of a wandering sheep was all that told them there was land at the bottom of the precipice.

  Despite his terror, Edgar insisted on walking on the outside, keeping Catherine on the other side of the horse, nearest the mountain. When it was too narrow to walk three abreast, he still kept her on the inside as he led the mount.

  He didn’t speak, and Catherine was afraid to break his concentration with the wrong words. She didn’t tell him how much she wanted to look over the edge. Clouds were drifting far below them, swirling about and giving glimp
ses of rivulets and what might be tiny settlements. She thought of Mondete’s river maidens. If they hadn’t been driven away but stayed and married humans, then this was the sort of place she could imagine them living. It was so frustrating not to be able to climb down into the valleys to see if it were true.

  Looking up into a tree overhanging the road, Catherine was startled to see a face looking back at her, upside down. It was just the sort of person she had been imagining: half-human, half-spirit, with skin so white it was almost blue, great eyes of grey, like Edgar’s, the color of the storm. But instead of the fine blond Saxon hair of her husband, this apparition had long straight braids as black as Catherine’s own.

  She started to cry out, but the face vanished, leaving her to wonder if she had created it herself from her daydream.

  They stopped once to rest and eat, although there was no way of telling if it were morning or afternoon. Partway up the long climb, there was a huge stone cross, said to have been erected by Charlemagne in memory of Roland and the brave men who had died with him. Around it were hundreds of smaller crosses, most of wood, that pilgrims had pounded into the earth to mark their passing. Here the latest pilgrims leaned against the rock cliff and munched on hard cheese, washed down with raw wine that tasted of the untanned skins they carried it in.

  Catherine wondered if the Lady Griselle had somehow managed to stay dry. It would have comforted her greatly to see those fine silks bedraggled with mud and the fur lining of Griselle’s cloak matted and sticking to her skin. She told herself sternly that it was an unworthy desire. But it would have been so satisfying.

  It was also not to be. Griselle was far ahead of them, traveling in the shadow of the monks and their guards. By the time the rest of the pilgrims arrived at the hostel, Griselle would have had time to put on dry clothing and have Hersent arrange her hair and sew her into a clean chainse. Catherine felt the drops trickle off the end of her nose and the ends of her braids and tried to remember that suffering willingly endured was good for the soul. But her mind kept drifting to hot soup.

  She caught up to Eliazar, leading his horse just in front of them. “Do you think we’ll be across by dark?” she asked.

  “We’ll have to be,” he answered, pulling his hood closer to his chin. “Don’t worry, sweet. If that noisous nephew of mine can get through here in one day when the snow is waist-deep, then we can do it despite a bit of wet.”

  Catherine knew mendacious reassurance when she heard it, but resolved to try to believe it all the same. She slipped back to Edgar and took his hand.

  “How are you?” he asked.

  “Wet to the skin, chilled to the bone, and the sound of the squelch in my boots is enough to induce hysteria,” she answered. “How are you?”

  “About the same,” he said. “What shall we think of to make the journey less unpleasant?”

  Catherine started to smile, then remembered Mondete. In part, she wished the woman had never said a word to her. It made her ashamed to be loved and cared for and to take such joy in the body of a man when other men had done unspeakable things to Mondete.

  “Now what?” Edgar asked with a trace of impatience. His feet were cold and wet, too.

  Catherine squeezed his hand, although her fingers were so numb she could hardly feel it. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s something I have to think through. Perhaps when we’re dry again, and warm and alone, I’ll tell you about it.”

  “If all those things ever happen,” Edgar sighed, “I’d rather we didn’t settle in to a long discussion.”

  The light stayed the same forever, Catherine thought. No morning or noon, only fog. They had been walking steadily uphill since the beginning of the world and they would go on climbing for all eternity. Even though she hadn’t seen it on a church sculpture, she was sure that endless walking in inclement weather must be one of the torments of Hell.

  Suddenly she heard cries from far ahead. “What is it?” She clutched at Solomon. “Are they being attacked?”

  This was where the heroic rear guard of Charlemagne’s army had been destroyed. Catherine could see all the brave knights in her mind. Was it happening all over again?

  Solomon grinned. “No, silly. Put away your old stories and listen!”

  The sound was distorted by the wind, but she soon realized that she wasn’t hearing a clash of metal or the screams of wounded men and horses. It seemed strangely like … cheering. She looked at her cousin for confirmation.

  “Roncevalles,” he said. “Not far ahead at all. The hostel is just beyond it, on the lee side of the mountain.”

  Catherine and Edgar felt like cheering, too. After all her talk about seeing the site of the famous battle, her only vision as she urged herself that last mile was that of a roaring fire and her stockinged feet steaming before it.

  The first thing she noticed as they reached the summit was the wind. The rain was being blown sideways, and the openings in cloaks were caught and pushed at until the people looked like giant wounded birds flapping wildly across the plateau.

  It was not the scene Catherine had imagined.

  Fourteen

  The pass of Roncevalles in the Pyrenees, Friday, May, 29, 1142; The Feast of Saint Restitute, who was starved, chained, chased by Satan with a flaming sword, bitten by scorpions and finally beheaded. But, thanks to her guardian angel, she died a virgin.

  Halt sunt li puiet li val tenebrus,

  Les roches bises, les destreiz merveillus.

  Le jur passerent Franceis a grant dulur.

  High are the mountains and gloomy the valleys,

  The rocks gray and brown, the narrow gorge awesome.

  The French spend the day in great misery.

  La Chanson de Roland

  Laisse 66. 11 814—816

  Caught and spun around by the wind, Catherine lost what little sense of direction she had. The ends of her scarf flapped across her face, stinging her eyes. The blowing rain made it impossible to see more than a step or two ahead. She had let go of Edgar’s hand to grab her flapping cloak as they came out onto the plateau and now she couldn’t find him.

  “Edgar!” she cried, but the words blew back at her. “Edgar!”

  She stumbled toward what she thought was the path, but found no one. All at once she tripped over a root and was thrown down a short incline and into a tangle of prickly plants. The stems were sharp and slippery and she couldn’t right herself.

  “Edgar!” she called again.

  She tried to pull out of the gorse, but only slipped farther down. The angle became steeper, and she wondered how close she was to the edge of the plateau. She tried to dig her toes into the dirt but only kicked pebbles loose. Gritting her teeth against the pain of the thorns, she grabbed and pulled on one of the plants, which came up by the roots, spraying her face with mud. She could feel herself starting to slide again.

  “Help!” she cried as she spit out bits of twigs and dirt.

  “Emadazu escua!” someone shouted from nearby. “Andrea! Emadazu escua!”

  A hand appeared in front of her face and she grasped it in both of hers. She heard her clothes tear as she was pulled up the slope out of the gorse and at last set on her feet.

  “Cer dembora icigaria!” a man’s voice said.

  Catherine managed to unstick her scarf from her face and peer through the rain at her rescuer. Her eyes widened in fear and disbelief. It was the face she had seen in the tree on the road; pale as snow, hair straight and black as a raven’s wing. Human, or demon?

  The man saw her terror and held both his hands up in front of himself, open to show that he had no weapon. He was dressed in a rough wool tunic that ended above his bare knees. His boots were of thick, unshorn sheepskin, as was his vest.

  “Eman gaiten atherpean,” he said, grabbing her hand again and pulling her in the other direction. “Ez beldurric izan.”

  “No, let go of me!” Catherine cried. “What are you doing? Where are you taking me? Edgar!”

  She tried to
dig her heels into the ground, but only slid in the brown mud. The man stopped and looked at her in exasperation. “Eman gaiten atherpean,” he repeated slowly. “Ez beldurric izan.”

  “I don’t understand you,” Catherine answered mournfully. “Please, help me find the others. My husband, my father.”

  He pulled on her again. “Etorri, Andrea!” He drew his knife. The rain slid easily across the sharp blade.

  Catherine gave up and let herself be dragged wherever the man was going. “Saint Catherine, help me!” she begged.

  The man stopped with a half-smile. “Catherine,” he said. “Cattalin.”

  “Yes, my name saint.” With her free hand, Catherine pointed to herself. “Cattalin.”

  “Etorri, Cattalin,” the man said, more softly. “Ez beldurric izan.”

  He sheathed the knife, but didn’t let go of her wrist.

  Somehow, having managed even that much communication with the man gave Catherine the hope that he did not intend to hurt her. She followed with no further protest. They rounded a huge rock in the plateau and emerged from the wind.

  “Catherine!”

  She fell into Edgar’s arms.

  “Oh, carissime!” she said. “I lost you and couldn’t find my way through the storm and then I fell and this man …”

  She turned around. The man was gone. She stared for a moment at the place where he had been, then shivered. Edgar held her more tightly.

  “I thought you’d gone over the edge,” he said, trying to catch his breath. “I heard you cry out but couldn’t reach you.”

  “I’m all right,” she said. “The man in the tree pulled me off the mountainside.”

  Edgar turned her face up to his. Her teeth were chattering.

  “Leoffaest, you sound feverish,” he said. “We have to get you to the hostel at once.”