Strong as Death (Catherine LeVendeur)

by Newman, Sharan

  “He would have bled more, and struggled as he died,” James explained. “Your poison again, I presume. Therefore, Griselle, as he died innocent, you may have provided him with a direct path to paradise.”

  “No.” But for the first time, Griselle was doubtful. “He was one of them. He treated Bertran as a catamite. All of them were evil and they all deserved to die.”

  Her eyes, unseeing, searched the room as she tried to make sense of what the abbot had said. Finally, she found a response.

  “Would you have had me break my oath?” she asked. “When a man swears to avenge the death of a kinsman and does so, he is honored. I have done the same.”

  There was a murmur of agreement from those assembled. Everyone knew that an insult to one’s family must be avenged. How could society exist otherwise?

  Peter sighed. “Our Lord forgave His killers from the cross,” he reminded her.

  “But as you have told me, I am not Our Lord,” Griselle snapped back.

  Bishop Stephen tugged at Peter’s robe. Peter bent to hear his advice. After a moment, he nodded and straightened.

  “The good bishop is right,” he said. “It’s clear that you are not only arrogant, but also sadly in need of instruction if you are to be made aware of the enormity of your sins. Therefore I sentence you to finish the pilgrimage you set out on.”

  Griselle stared at him, waiting.

  “But you are not to ride a fine horse or be attended by servants,” he pronounced. “You are to go barefoot and in rough cloth. And you must carry upon your body five chains, each one the measure of the length of each man you deprived of life. I will set guards on you to be sure this is done.”

  Griselle showed no emotion. “May I be allowed to distribute my possessions before I leave?” she asked.

  “There’s more,” the abbot told her. “After you reach the shrine of Saint James at Compostela, you shall be taken to our convent of Marcigny, where you will spend the remainder of your days in service to the sisters there, who will attempt to correct the many flaws in your theology and bring you to a true repentance of your acts.”

  “I would rather you hanged me,” Griselle said flatly.

  “Perhaps, but I hope that you will one day thank me for not doing so,” Peter said.

  He signaled the guards to take her away, and the party rose to leave. Hubert had been watching from the corner, not even sure why he had come to see this. Now he found himself stepping forward to address the abbot.

  “My lord, I ask a favor,” he said hesitantly.

  Peter stopped and looked at him, trying to place him. He seemed familiar.

  “My name is Hubert LeVendeur,” Hubert said. “I’m a merchant of Paris and, like Brother James, a convert to Christianity.”

  Peter smiled. “Welcome. What is it you request?”

  Hubert couldn’t believe he was doing this, but the words spilled out of him. “The Lady Griselle is not as strong as she would like you to believe, my lord,” he said. “The lengths of iron that you have enjoined her to carry will weigh more than she does. She might not survive to reach Compostela under such a burden.”

  “That is her concern,” Peter answered, but his tone left room for more debate.

  Hubert took a deep breath. “I offer myself to go with her,” he said. “I will walk beside her and carry the chains myself.”

  Griselle turned to him in horror. “No, Hubert!” she pleaded. “You mustn’t!”

  The abbot was about to agree with her, but something in the faces of the two before him made him stop to consider. “Why would you do this for her?” he asked Hubert. “Is she your mistress?”

  “No, my Lord Abbot,” Hubert said. “My reasons concern the state of my soul, alone.”

  “I must consult on this.”

  Peter and the other clerics held a brief discussion. At the end, Bishop Stephen nodded. Peter turned back to the assemblage.

  “Very well, Hubert of Paris,” he said. “I give you leave to take this task upon yourself. But once the chains are wound about you, they may not be removed until you stand before the shrine of the Apostle James.”

  “I understand,” Hubert told him.

  “No,” Griselle wept. “Not for me, you mustn’t, no, no, no!”

  The guards took her out, still weeping. Hubert squared his shoulders. He had a much more difficult task before him. He had to tell Eliazar what he had just agreed to do.

  “That whore has bewitched you!” Eliazar shouted. This was, so far, his mildest reaction. “To take on her punishment, you must have been cursed. Why? She can’t mean that much to you … can she?”

  Eliazar leaned across the table separating him from his brother. Catherine sat next to her father, holding his hand. She had no more idea than Eliazar what had caused Hubert to take on Griselle’s burden, but she felt somehow that it must be her fault. Edgar sat on the other side of her, equally certain that the whole matter had nothing to do with them. From across the room, Solomon watched them all. He had no intention of taking either side; he had already chosen his own way.

  Mondete sat on the floor by the cold hearth. She was holding a comb, one that had belonged to Hersent. She had found it on the floor after the maid’s things had been packed to send to her children. Mondete had no idea of what she would do with it.

  Hubert had still not answered Eliazar’s question. He could feel all of them staring at him. Why had he done this? Was it a misplaced passion for Griselle? He had been so close to loving her. Did he think this would win her? Could he want her now, knowing what she had done? Did he have any answer to give his horrified family?

  “I think …” he started. “I’m not sure I can explain it, even to myself. Eliazar, what would you do if you found the men who murdered our mother and sisters?”

  “I’d slit their throats,” Eliazar said. “Starting from the crotch. You don’t think that Gaucher was one of them, do you?”

  “Of course not,” Hubert said. “But he could have been; any of them could have. And if he had been, would you be so quick to condemn Griselle? We are also taught that vengeance is in the hands of the Almighty, that we should forgive our enemies, but if you had found those who killed our family, would you have been merciful, or would you have acted as she did?”

  Eliazar was silent. “I don’t know,” he said at last.

  “Neither do I,” Hubert said. “And that is why I have decided to carry the chains for her. Perhaps by the time I reach Compostela, I will have found the answer.”

  Epilogue

  Santiago de Compostela, Saint John’s Eve, Tuesday, June 23, 1142.

  Libet iam et hunc claudere librum; sed in calce aliqua velim vel ante dicta quasi epilogando repetere, vel addere praetermissa.

  We can bring this book to a close now, but here at the end, as an epilogue, I would like to repeat some things which have been said before, or to add some things which have been omitted.

  —Bernard of Clairvaux

  On Consideration, Book IV

  There were more mountains between Najera and Santiago. There were dry winds and burning-hot days. There were storms with lightning splitting the sky and striking the earth, setting brush fires in the hills to the north. The pilgrims also walked through fields of heather that reminded Edgar of the countryside around the home in Scotland that he had abandoned for a clumsy, impetuous woman with untamable black hair and eyes of Norman-blue.

  Catherine and Edgar accepted the discomforts as minor. They put aside their worries over the coming child, on whose behalf they had set out so many weeks before. Their quest seemed almost trivial beside those of the people who traveled with them. Catherine knew that her sorrow was as nothing compared to that of the other pilgrims, nothing to that of Hubert, who took each step bound in chains of iron.

  “I can’t bear to watch him,” she wept one evening. “How can that woman endure it?”

  Edgar had been watching Griselle. “I don’t think she can. Abbot Peter was wiser than we realized. If she had carri
ed the burden, she would have felt it a kind of martyrdom. Now it’s her torture.”

  “And mine.” Catherine took her cup and went over to give her father a drink of water.

  Of them all, he was the one most at peace. “I heard a seagull calling today,” he told her. “We should come to Santiago in another day’s journey. This is the last of the mountains. How are you feeling, daughter?”

  “Well,” she assured him. “The nausea has passed and I’m stronger. I would help you bear these chains the rest of the way.”

  “You already do,” he smiled.

  He wasn’t the only one in chains. Many had imposed the punishment upon themselves or at the request of their priests. There were many others now; the road was clogged with those limping, carried on litters, lepers with their wooden clappers of warning, the aged hoping to die at the feet of the saint, parents with children ill or born with deformities, and those who appeared whole but were bent under the weight of their sins. Among them were also those who came on a pilgrimage of thanksgiving, who had left their crutches and chains behind. Their joy gave the others hope.

  Mondete could no longer walk apart from the others, for there was no end to the procession. She chose to stay near Hubert and Griselle. Solomon had planned on leaving the party at Astorga, when Maruxa and Roberto did, their pilgrimage complete when they saw their children running toward them. But something pulled at him to see the ending. Eliazar had turned south with the traders from Toulouse. Since his entreaties had had no effect upon Hubert’s decision, he told them that he would see them again in Paris, when this madness, he prayed, would have passed.

  Brother James did not complete the journey either. The emperor had been victorious in his siege, and the abbot and his party had gone to meet him and to discuss the matter of the payment of back tithes. James was not as relieved as he expected to be to part from his newly reunited family.

  “Perhaps you are a Christian,” he told Hubert when they parted. “If you should pass by Cluny sometime, remember that we have a hostel for travelers.”

  “And your son?” Hubert asked.

  “That hasn’t changed,” James answered. “I have no son.”

  When the abbot’s party departed, Solomon wasn’t there to see them or to be seen by the man who wasn’t his father but whose eyes searched the crowd for him all the same.

  It was customary, the night before arriving at Compostela, for all the male pilgrims to go down to the river and bathe themselves, not just their faces and private parts, but totally. Solomon had no intention of joining in, but he wandered down that way just the same.

  There by the water’s edge, upstream from the celebrating bathers, he found Mondete. She had put her hood back and was holding Hersent’s comb, rolling it from one hand to the other. Solomon noticed with surprise that her hair had begun to grow again, a brown stubble that was already beginning to curl at her ears.

  “So you found what you were seeking?” he asked as he seated himself next to her.

  “Yes, strangely enough,” she answered. “It was Griselle who taught me. All these years, I hated God because He wouldn’t help me. My parents sold me; Norbert raped me; all those other men hurt me over and over. And no matter how hard I prayed, God was silent.”

  “And He’s spoken to you now?” Solomon wasn’t sure what he wanted her to answer.

  She laughed. “In a way. You see, Griselle didn’t have any more faith than I. All her pious posturing was just that. Really, I think she hated God as much as I did. That’s why she decided to deal out revenge herself.”

  “And?” Solomon prompted her. “A voice came to you out of the sky telling you not to follow her example?”

  “My very dear cynic—” Mondete put her hand on his cheek “—you never really understood why I came all this way, did you? I didn’t want revenge; I wanted peace. My hatred was destroying me, but I didn’t have the strength to give it up. I still don’t know why I was made to suffer so. I still don’t think it was right, but in the past few days I have realized that my request has been granted. Grace has descended upon me, and at last I have forgiven God.”

  Solomon held her hand against his lips. “That is a rare gift,” he said. “I shall have to continue my search, I fear, for nothing like that has happened to me.”

  “Where will you go?” she asked.

  “Toledo, Granada, Alexandria, to the equatorial fire if I must,” Solomon said. “Until I find the answer.”

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t give it to you.” She took her hand back.

  Solomon grinned. “Don’t be. Sometimes I find the search so interesting that I’m afraid I’ll come to the end too soon.”

  “In that case, I wish you joy along the way,” Mondete said. “And that is the most I’ve ever wished any man.”

  It may have been that the guards had not fettered Hubert very carefully. It may have been that he had grown thinner with the effort of carrying them, but as they approached the gate of the city, the iron chains slipped from his body and rattled to the ground.

  Griselle stared at the heap of metal. “Thank you, Hubert LeVendeur,” she said.

  “I also needed to learn humility,” he told her.

  “But I have only learned despair,” she answered. “I don’t think that the nuns of Marcigny will be able to teach me otherwise.”

  She seemed to be waiting for him to go. The guards from the abbey were growing impatient. Hubert could think of nothing to say that would comfort her. He bowed.

  “I have been glad to serve you, my lady,” he said.

  Griselle’s lip trembled. “Hubert,” she said. “I wish …”

  He nodded. “So do I.”

  The guards took her away.

  Catherine didn’t know what she had expected Santiago to be like. If challenged, she would have admitted that her vision of ivory turrets and eternal spring were not likely, but she hadn’t expected every street to be lined with souvenir sellers.

  “Scallop shells! Sacred shells! Each one painted with the cross of Saint James!” an old woman shouted over and over.

  “Solid silver chains!” someone else called. “To hang your shell from! Crosses made from the cedars of Lebanon! Holy water from Jerusalem! Thorns from the crown worn by Our Lord at His passion!”

  “Wine! Fresh in from Rioja!” This peddler was doing a brisk business.

  At the shrine itself, the statue containing the body of the saint was surrounded by pilgrims, some pushing into the line ahead of the weak and the slow. Catherine and Edgar looked at each other in confusion.

  “We’re here,” Edgar said. “Now what do we do?”

  Catherine thought for a moment.

  “I suppose we go home.”

  February in Paris was a world away from summer in Spain. A slushy rain beat at the shutters. The heat from the hearth reached only a few feet into the hall. Edgar sat alone, a blanket over his shoulders, half-asleep. Next to him was a wooden cradle with a rod above it to hang a curtain on. From the rod hung a silver scallop shell, embellished with a cross of Saint James, painted in red.

  The door to the hallway creaked, and Edgar was alert at once. “What is it?” he asked, taut with fear.

  “Only me,” Catherine’s maid, Samonie, said as she came in. “Well, not only me. I’ve also brought you your son.”

  The baby was wrapped in swaddling and wool so that it seemed to Edgar that Samonie was carrying a bundle of laundry. He didn’t move at first. It wasn’t possible; Catherine’s pains had started only a few hours before.

  “Catherine?” he asked.

  “She’s fine,” Samonie said. “You can see her in a moment. She’s dreadfully smug, seems to think she’s finally learned the trick of it. Don’t you want to hold him?”

  Edgar held out his arms.

  There wasn’t much to see in all the wrapping, just a small red face, with mouth, eyes and nose in the proper places. The baby looked rather bored, considering he had already been to Compostela and back before he was born.
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  “He’s whole and well?” Edgar asked.

  “You can count the fingers and toes tomorrow,” Samonie laughed, “but I assure you, they are all there.”

  Edgar stared at the crumpled red face in awe.

  “Catherine wouldn’t tell me,” Samonie said. “What have you thought to name him? After your father or hers?”

  “Neither,” Edgar told her. “We’ve decided to call him James.”

  Acknowledgments

  It has been a constant source of delight and amazement to me how many fine scholars are willing to take time from their own work to help me with mine. Those listed here have been of invaluable assistance. I thank them from the bottom of my heart. I also want to assure the reader that any historical inaccuracies are solely due to my own muddled understanding of the data and not in any way the fault of my advisers.

  Professor C. Julian Bishko, who sent me references and advice on the probable route of Peter the Venerable, even though it meant having Peter leave the story for a while.

  Professor Fredric L. Cheyette, Amherst College, for sending me a draft of his work on the twelfth-century south of France and for being willing to do research in archives all over that inhospitable region.

  Dr. Judith Cohen, Toronto, for sharing her knowledge of Spain and the jongloressas and for making their music live in her recordings. Maruxa’s voice is hers.

  Jeff Davies, who sent me guides to the pilgrim trail and is mad enough to want to do the Compostela route by bicycle.

  Dr. E. Roseanne Elder, Cistercian Press, Kalamazoo, Michigan. For graciously permitting me to quote from translations of twelfth-century authors published by the press. The work of Cistercian Press has made it possible for non-Latin readers to learn about medieval scholars from their own writings. As a slow reader of Latin, I appreciate it very much.