The Witch in the Well: A Catherine LeVendeur Mystery

by Newman, Sharan

  Seguin spoke more calmly but with the same passion. “Your children are of our blood, Edgar, no matter how diluted. If Boisvert falls, they will die, too. Only Andonenn’s power has kept us strong all these centuries. Now it’s fading and Empress Judith’s curse will doom everyone. Only together can we defeat her. You must believe me.”

  He motioned to Odilon to move away from Edgar. The man didn’t budge.

  “Odilon!”

  “Yes, cousin,” the knight answered grudgingly.

  “Apologize to Lord Edgar for your rash words,” Seguin ordered. “You didn’t mean to insult him so, did you?”

  Odilon’s jaw tightened. “No,” he forced out. “I spoke without thought. I beg you to forgive me.”

  Edgar looked at him for a long moment. Then he laughed.

  “How could I deny such a heartfelt and eloquent petition?” he said. “I wish no bad feelings between my wife’s family and me.”

  “Thank you.” Seguin relaxed, not noticing that Edgar had not accepted the apology. “My son, Aymon, says that he has spotted Lord Guillaume’s party approaching. They should be here within the hour. Perhaps you’d like to tell your wife. I’m sure she’ll want to be there to greet him.”

  Edgar took this as a dismissal. He bowed to both men and signaled Martin to accompany him.

  “Did you find anything out?” he asked when they were clear of the stables.

  “Only that this legend seems to have taken hold of everyone here,” Martin answered. “The stablehands are worried that the line is failing and the castle will fall to the Angevins under Lord Olivier.”

  “Do they know about the well?” Edgar asked.

  “They didn’t mention it. They seemed more concerned that there were so few left of the family. They don’t like being ruled by such an old man, even if he has otherworldly protection.” Martin paused. “They know something’s wrong. Everyone here feels it. It’s like the hours before a storm.”

  They both looked up at an unrelentingly clear sky.

  “Not yet, anyway,” Edgar muttered. “Martin, go tell your mother that I want us to be ready to leave if I don’t like what I learn at this revelation we’re to receive tonight. I’m going to see if Catherine’s found out anything useful. Do you know where she is?”

  “I saw her and Lady Margaret this morning,” Martin said. “I think they were planning on spending the day knitting.”

  “Knitting?” Edgar asked. “I don’t think either one of them knows how.”

  Martin shrugged. “I must have been mistaken. Shall I help you look for them?”

  “No,” Edgar said. “I’m sure someone will know.”

  The walls of the tunnel were ragged stone that glinted with bits of mica and quartz. Narrow rivulets of water dripped through layers of moss that dangled from the ceiling. The torchlight shone only a few steps ahead. The floor was slippery and uneven so that Catherine and Margaret had to keep the light at their feet most of the time.

  “This isn’t a place where people come often,” Margaret said, her voice hollow.

  They were holding hands as they inched down the passage. With their free hands, Catherine clutched the torch and Margaret gripped the thin strand that stretched into the darkness ahead.

  “No, this doesn’t even look as though people made it,” Catherine said. “But we don’t seem to be going down anymore.”

  Margaret suppressed a moan of fear. “We don’t seem to be going up, either.”

  Catherine squeezed her hand.

  “I’m sorry, dear,” she said. “Do you want to go back and take our chances in the lit sections?”

  “No,” Margaret answered. “We could wander forever. At least we know that someone has been this way recently.”

  Or something. They both thought it, but neither wanted to be the first to say it.

  The torch began to flicker. At the same moment, Catherine felt a breeze on her face.

  “We may be coming out,” she said. “Once we get above ground, we can find our way back to the keep.”

  This cheered them both.

  “I wish I’d brought a mantle,” Margaret commented. “We’ve been down in the cold so long that I’m chilled through.”

  Catherine looked at her with concern. The girl’s face was more than usually pale.

  “It can’t be much farther,” she said. “Just around the next bend.”

  It wasn’t the next bend, but the one after that that opened up into a small chamber. The sound of running water was loud and seemed to come from over their heads.

  “Where are we?” Margaret’s eyes searched the chamber for a passage out.

  “In the cave of Andonenn,” a voice said from the darkness.

  Both of them screamed. Catherine dropped the torch.

  It did not comfort them that they had found the person they had been following.

  Edgar was becoming annoyed. Catherine and Margaret hadn’t been seen all day. Samonie had given Peter gruel when the other children ate, but he still whined for his mother’s milk.

  “She didn’t say where she was going,” the housekeeper told Edgar. “But she must have meant to be back before None. Lady Margaret was to attend prayers with Lady Elissent. One of the servants was looking for her a while ago.”

  “Catherine should know better than to leave without telling anyone,” Edgar said. “Or at least Margaret should. Where could they have gone?”

  He asked everyone he could find in the household. The guards at the gate swore they hadn’t seen them leave. The women confirmed Martin’s story of the yarn. But after that, they had simply vanished.

  “It’s the curse,” Odilon said, giving Edgar a smug look. “You didn’t take it seriously and now Judith has spirited your wife away.”

  Edgar glared at him and then at the circle of guards, servants, and relatives, all waiting to see what he would do.

  “If that’s so,” he said at last. “Then I’m going to find out where and bring her back. If you’re all too terrified to go with me, so be it. Martin!”

  “Master.” Martin was at his side. “Lord Guillaume has arrived.”

  “About time,” Edgar said. He turned to Seguin. “You have until dawn tomorrow to show me a reason not to take my family and leave the rest of you to your madness.”

  Catherine chased the flaming torch as it rolled across the floor, scrabbling to get it before the flame was extinguished. As she reached for it, a hand came down and caught it. A feminine hand, with long white fingers. Catherine looked up.

  “I know you,” she accused. “You were old and you were dead. Then you were in the tree in the forest. Are you some kind of demon? What do you want and why have you led us into Purgatory?”

  Ten

  A cave beneath the castle, perhaps.

  Li ver en sont rimé par grant maistrie

  D’amor et d’armes et de chevalerie.

  The verses are put in rhyme masterfully

  Of love and of war and of chivalry.

  —Der Anseis de Cartage, II. 6–7

  I am no demon!” The woman gazed at them with scorn. “I am Mandon.”

  She waited for them to react. Margaret looked at Catherine. Catherine shrugged and shook her head.

  “Mandon,” the woman repeated. “The guardian. Has no one told you of me?”

  Catherine looked at the woman with light, flowing hair sitting calmly in her clean flowing robes and then she looked at Margaret, shivering and dirty but determined. Something in her exploded.

  “No!” she screamed. “No one mentioned you. Not one person told me to beware of an insane old crone who leaps under horses, then sheds forty years and runs off. No one said, ‘Don’t go into the tunnels beneath the keep because the same madwoman likes to turn people around until they can’t find their way back.’ Saint Thecla’s barking seals! All I’ve heard are rumors and legends and garbled history. Now, will you take us back up or did you lure us here to slaughter and feed to your master?”

  “What are you talking ab
out? I have no wish to harm you.” Mandon stood with a flowing movement, Catherine noted, and faced them.

  She was tall, like the women of the north. The firelight caught a shimmer of gold thread on her bliaut and a sparkle of jewels on her fingers and about her neck. It was far from the worn gray robe she had worn in the outside world. Despite herself, Catherine felt a tinge of awe.

  “So then.” She stopped, unsure what to say next.

  Margaret had caught only one thing.

  “If you don’t wish to harm us, then why did you trick us into coming to you?” she demanded, fighting not to cry like a sick child. “Why did you untie my yarn?”

  Mandon studied her in puzzlement.

  “You are not one of Andonenn’s children,” she said at last. “What are you doing here?”

  “Freezing in the middle of summer,” Margaret answered. “I don’t care about your curse or your woes. I want to go back up to the sunshine.”

  Mandon reached out to touch the tear on Margaret’s cheek. She seemed confused.

  Catherine stepped between them.

  “I don’t know what you are,” she said. “But you’ve played your mischief on me for the last time. You must have brought us here for a reason. If you aren’t going to kill us, then tell us what it is and let us go.”

  Mandon moved away from them, back into the shadow.

  “The stories are all true,” she said softly. “The spring has been chained and the well that has kept us alive for centuries is drying. You must read the message and free Andonenn, or we are all doomed. Yes, even I shall die. She is my mother, too.”

  “What message?” Catherine asked. “The legend says nothing about a message.”

  “You have part of it,” Mandon told her. “All the children do. She bade me see to it and I did, though at great cost. Join them; find the meaning. It will tell you what to do.”

  “Why don’t you just tell me!” Catherine tried to shine the torch on the corner where Mandon was standing.

  It was empty.

  “Catherine!” Margaret’s tears stopped. “She vanished. What do we do now?”

  Gingerly, Catherine approached the corner. The wall was the same rough stone as the rest of the room. She had heard no creak of a door opening and closing. Mandon must be inhuman to. . .

  “Wait.”

  The corner wasn’t really a corner. As she came up against it, Catherine realized that there was a space where the walls should have joined. Instead they overlapped. In between there was room for a person to squeeze through.

  “Look, Margaret.” She laughed in relief. “There was no magic. She escaped through here.”

  She waved the torch behind the front wall. “And we can, too. This must be how she got up into the keep the other night. There’s a staircase.”

  It seemed that they climbed forever. Catherine lost count of the steps after a hundred. But eventually they reached another dark opening. For a moment, both of them hung back, fearful of where they might come out. Then they heard the deep barking of a dog and the cries of children.

  “Dragon!” Catherine called out joyfully. “James! Edana!”

  She rushed through the doorway and was stopped by a soft barrier that threw her into Margaret’s arms.

  “Catherine?” Edgar’s voice came from beyond the wall. “Where are you? We’ve been looking all over.”

  Catherine picked herself up. She realized now where they were.

  “Margaret,” she giggled in relief, then sneezed as dust filled her nose. “This is the Great Hall. We’re behind the tapestry next to the hearth.”

  They emerged into a world of warmth and sunshine, filled with loud, normal people. Catherine ran to James and hugged him hard. The ghostly feeling of the tunnels had half-convinced her that, if she ever found them again, her children would have grown beyond her knowing. Edana was jumping up and down, her tunic torn, as usual. Catherine had never seen her look so beautiful.

  “Yes, yes, Mama’s home. Everything’s fine.” Edgar disentangled Catherine from her progeny and pulled her to her feet. “Now, where have you two been and what were you doing behind the tapestry?”

  “Edgar, you won’t believe it,” Catherine began when Agnes bore down on them.

  “Margaret, Catherine! Look at yourselves!” Agnes stepped back from them, her face an image of shock and distaste. “You’re both filthy, your clothes crumpled and your hair! Saint Cunegund’s red hot plowshares! You’ll never be ready in time. Come with me at once!”

  “But I must tell Edgar,” Catherine protested.

  “At once!”

  Agnes was not to be gainsaid or interrupted. She shooed Margaret and Catherine like a pair of chickens toward the stairs.

  “Agnes, I really think Edgar should know this,” Margaret panted as she tried to climb one more set of steps.

  “Is there a fire?” Agnes asked. “An army at the gates? If not, then it can wait. It will take more time than we have to make you two presentable by the time Guillaume arrives.”

  Edgar frowned as he watched them go. He was glad that no harm had come to his sister or his wife, but they should have known better than to wander off without telling anyone. It was the sort of thing he’d expect from James and Edana.

  He went over to the wall hanging. It was old, done in the style of the Byzantines. He wondered if it had been brought back by one of the knights who answered Pope Urban’s call to free the Holy Land. He felt the material. No, the moth holes were older than that. It hung flat against the wall, so how had Margaret and Catherine managed to hide behind it with no one noticing?

  Edgar slid behind the hanging, feeling his way along the wall. He started when he saw a light that seemed to be coming from within it. Then his wrist felt empty space.

  The light was coming from a torch lying on the staircase just where it turned, a few steps from the top. Edgar went down and picked it up. A cool breeze wafted up from the darkness, bringing with it the smell of mold. For a moment, Edgar was tempted to investigate, but he decided to wait until Catherine gave him her report.

  Of course, there was no harm in asking one of the residents.

  Edgar carefully snuffed the torch against the wall before returning to the hall. He looked around.

  “Aymon!” He called the young man over.

  “The passage behind this tapestry,” he asked. “Where does it lead?”

  Aymon gave him a look. “Nowhere, Edgar. It’s a wall. They usually stay where they’re put.”

  “No, I mean. . .” Edgar decided on another tack. “When was the last time these hangings were taken down?”

  “How should I know?” Aymon answered. “Do I look like a laundress? Ask my mother.”

  “Thank you,” Edgar said. “I will.”

  Aymon left, shaking his head. Edgar looked around for Elissent, but she wasn’t in the hall. He watched Aymon directing servants as they set up the tables for yet another welcoming feast. How likely was he to be lying? He’d spent his whole life in the keep. He should know what lay under it, shouldn’t he? But perhaps not. If one assumed there was a solid wall behind a hanging, who would bother looking for a door?

  Edgar had thought his family home in Scotland was strange, but this was beyond anything he had experienced. Boisvert was too big, too old. The people living here now skimmed along the surface of the place like flies on a pond. It worried him that in the depths there might be a gigantic pike, watching them all, waiting to snap.

  He wished Solomon were with them. These relatives of Catherine’s were all either mad or hiding something. Edgar felt a strong need for someone to watch his back. There was no man at Boisvert whom he could completely trust.

  The bustle was increasing and the musicians had appeared. They gave every sign of intending to practice. Edgar decided it was time to take the children and find a quieter place to await the arrival of Catherine’s brother.

  “James,” he called. “Come with me. Bring your sister.”

  “What about Dragon?” the b
oy complained.

  “He’ll follow us,” Edgar said sternly. “It’s Edana you need to watch out for.”

  “Master?”

  Martin suddenly appeared at his side. Edgar gestured to where James was resentfully tugging Edana toward them.

  “I have to keep an eye on them and I need you to help me,” he told Martin. “I don’t like the way people come and go so quickly here. Is there something you wanted to tell me?”

  “Yes, Master.” Martin also watched the children as if he were keeping them safe with his eyes alone. “My mother says that Peter is sleeping. She wants to know if Lady Catherine needs her.”

  “Probably not,” Edgar said. “Agnes has maids enough for a cohort of women. As long as someone is watching over him.”

  The children had reached them. Edana held up her arms to her father.

  “Not this time, deorling,” Edgar said. “You’re more than normally sticky and this is my best silk tunic.”

  “Come to me.” Martin reached down to her. “I don’t need to be fine for anyone.”

  Edana happily climbed into his arms.

  Edgar watched Martin as he teased the little girl, all the while carefully mopping up the worst of the grime on her face with the tip of his sleeve. It dawned on him that he did have a man he could trust completely. He had been used to thinking of Martin as an odd-job boy, someone to run errands and hold the horses. Yet, on their recent trip to Lombardy, Martin had proved himself to be quick-thinking and utterly reliable.

  “Martin,” Edgar said. “I need your help.”

  Catherine and Margaret were rushed up to Agnes’s room and divested of their outer clothing before they could do more than give a weak protest.

  “Agnes, listen,” Catherine tried as one of her sister’s maids came at her with a comb and a determined expression. “We were lost down under the keep. Do you know how many tunnels there are down there? It’s like a rabbit warren.”

  “Catherine, sit still so poor Mina can try to fix your hair,” Agnes interrupted. “She may need goose grease to make it lie flat.”