The Wandering Arm: A Catherine LeVendeur Mystery

by Sharan Newman

  “I think so,” Edgar said. “There’s much more I want to learn, but Baruch told me to come to him with any commissions I may be given. He’ll show me how to do them properly.”

  “Your old friends will laugh at you for being so insane as to marry,” Catherine said. “If you are giving up the Church, you shpuld at least do it for an heiress.”

  “You’re looking for reassurance, aren’t you?” Edgar said. “In what form would you like it rendered?”

  “Edgar! Everyone is awake. They’ll hear!”

  “I’ll reassure you very quietly.”

  Suddenly the curtains were pulled aside. Guillaume stood there, grinning at them.

  “Hurry up with that,” he said. “Father wants to get started before noon.”

  Catherine hid her face but Edgar stared up at him coolly.

  “I never hurry,” he informed his brother-in-law. “Come on, Catherine. We may as well get dressed. Guillaume, would you draw the curtain again? We’ll be out in a moment.”

  Catherine was blushing to her ankles. “A room of our own,” she said firmly. “With a door. Oh, Edgar, I can hardly wait to be disinherited.”

  Five

  A small room in the bourg Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois, on the Right Bank of Paris, Feast of the Chair of Saint Peter at Antioch, Saturday, February 22, 1141/12, Adar, 4901

  …multos hypocritas sub habitu monachorum usquequaque dispersit, circumeuntes provincias, nusquam missos, nusquam fixos, nusquam stantes, nusquam sedentes, alii membra martyrum, si tamen martyrum, venditant.

  … a number of hypocrites, in the garb of monks, wander

  about everywhere, circulating through the district, sent from

  nowhere, belonging nowhere, lingering nowhere, abiding

  nowhere. They sell some parts of the martyrs, if they are

  martyrs.

  —Saint Augustine

  De Opere Monachorum

  Their furnishings were nothing special, a bench, two wooden trunks for clothes and bedding, a table, a bed frame that could be folded up in the day or double as a couch, and a couple of three-legged stools. Someone had nailed a shelf to the wall for bowls and platters. There was also a curtain hung on a rope across the corner for the chamberpot, which Catherine dumped out the window early every morning before the street became too crowded. During the day they went down to the communal privy in the back court.

  Johannah had apologized for the room when she brought Catherine to it. It was right over the street and all day one could hear the carts and the peddlers going by. Voices of people, dogs, sheep, pigs and crows rose in a polyglot melange. One of the window frames had warped and rags had been stuffed into the space to keep out the cold. Because the building was wood, the only heat came from the little charcoal brazier, set on tile squares, and from the room below, where the rhythm of the day was set by the thump of a weaver’s treadle. The room was dark most of the time, because the windows, covered with waxed cloth, were shuttered against the winter.

  “I don’t know what your father will say,” Johannah had told her. “I can’t believe he agreed to this. Are you certain you’ll be warm enough here?”

  “Aunt Johannah, you’ve never lived in a convent or a castle,” Catherine said. “This will be fine.”

  “I’ll give you some linen for wall hangings,” Johannah said. “I usually rent this room to students; it’s not really nice enough for you.”

  “I like it,” Catherine assured her. “We don’t even have to go outside to buy dinner. When I hear the talemelier calling, I can just lower down a basket for the nieules and meat pies. It will be fun.”

  Johannah smiled at her. It must seem like a game now. Her childlike delight showed in naming the sweet first. But how long would Catherine enjoy it? Children could end their games and come home. Why had Hubert agreed to this? A cramped room above a weaver’s workshop was not the sort of place she’d have thought he’d let his daughter live. He had mumbled something about letting them set up their own household and see what it was like, but what was wrong with Hubert’s house on the Grève? Now that Madeleine was in the convent, there was no reason Catherine shouldn’t live there. And certainly he could afford better for his daughter, whatever he thought of the man she had married.

  Johannah had promised herself that she would ask no questions, but she had eyes and ears and forty-seven years of watching and listening. They were up to something, including Catherine. She only hoped Eliazar wasn’t part of it.

  So she gave Catherine the key to the downstairs door and a bucket of moss for the latrine so she wouldn’t have to use those little bundles of straw, which were much cheaper but also much rougher.

  “Now remember, dear,” she said, patting Catherine’s cheek. “You can come to me for anything. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Yes, Aunt Johannah.” Catherine kissed her. “Thank you.”

  After her aunt left, Catherine had danced around the room. It was the first time in her life she’d had a room of her own. Well, it was Edgar’s, too, but that made it even better.

  The euphoria had lasted until he came in from his first day of pretending to be a disgraced younger son, hunting for manual work. Her happiness evaporated as soon as she saw his face.

  “Edgar? What’s wrong?”

  He didn’t answer but went to the water basin and washed his hands. He splashed his face, too, and then sat at the table, leaning forward to bury his face in his arms.

  “Do we have any wine?” he asked.

  “Yes, I brought some from Vielleteneuse,” Catherine answered slowly, getting out the cups. “Edgar? You’re frightening me. What is it? Has someone died?”

  He straightened up and took the cup she was holding out to him. Then he looked up into her stricken face and smiled. “No, of course not,” he said. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

  He drank the wine too quickly. Catherine waited.

  He smiled at her again, this time with embarrassment. “I wanted to play a part,” he said. “I thought it would be fun. Also, I wanted to prove that my carvings weren’t just something for a winter evening, to pass the time and clutter the floor.” He took the pitcher from her and poured another cup. “Catherine, no one would take me on, not at any price.” He drained the cup. “They looked at my wood and ivory pieces and the silver brooch and things I made with Baruch and they just shrugged and told me to be off; they didn’t need anyone; they didn’t hire foreigners; what had I done to be masterless?”

  “But that was the plan,” she reminded him.

  “I know.” Edgar laughed in a way that frightened Catherine even more. “It’s succeeding marvelously. In a week or two I shall be ready to take anything offered me.”

  “Then what’s wrong?” She covered his hand as he reached for the pitcher again.

  He took her hand in his and turned it up, studying it as if there were an oracle in her palm. “As I was going from place to place,” he spoke hesitantly, “somewhere in the day, I forgot it was only a ruse. I began to feel that, if I didn’t find work, we’d be thrown out on the street. Catherine, what if it were true? How could I feed us, and clothe us? With no family, no craft guild, no lord responsible for us, what would we do? And children, how could we care for them?”

  “We could set up a tent at the Lendit, travel the fairs,” she answered promptly.

  “You know better than that,” he said, refusing to be reassured. “You have to pay for a stall, be a member of the association. Everything has a fee, even just wandering the street with your wares hanging around your neck. Catherine, as I was rejected and turned away over and over, I started to believe that I would never find anything, that we would starve.”

  Catherine kept her hand in his as she circled the table and sat next to him on the bench. She took his other hand and held them tightly.

  “Edgar,” she said, “I don’t believe you would ever let us starve, no matter what. But if there were nothing else left to us, then I would rather starve with you than be secur
e and well fed in the king’s palace.”

  “I know that,” he said. “That’s what makes it so terrible.”

  They looked at each other, not moving.

  There was a pounding at the door below.

  “Hey, English!” a voice called. “Open up. You have visitors!”

  In a small room at the upstream end of the Île, Natan ben Judah peered into his cup.

  “What did you say this was flavored with?” he said as he eyed the flecks floating in the foam.

  “Just a few herbs.” His companion laughed. “Rosemary, I’d guess. What difference does it make? It’s not the taste, it’s the effect, right?”

  “It could use a stir with a hot poker,” Natan decided.

  The other man reflected that Natan could do with the same. Nevertheless, he took an iron from the fire and let it sizzle in Natan’s mug.

  “There,” he said. “Is that better?”

  Natan sipped, grimaced and then drank the beer. He looked at the third person in the room, waiting for instructions.

  “Just once more?” his friend begged. “We’ll pay double this time.”

  “Very well,” he said grudgingly. “I’ll carry one more load for you, but that’s all. Find one of your own to take the risks. I’m sick of it.”

  “Going back to safe jobs, like dealing with the ribaux?” the first man laughed.

  “At least they steal honestly.” Natan’s voice rose. “Ride through, pick up a few stray sheep, eat them, sell the skin. All out in the open. Not like here, all hot and smoky. Might as well be in Sheol.”

  “We’ll all be in Hell soon enough,” the other one said. “Natan, where are you going?”

  “I need some air,” Natan gasped. “I don’t feel well.”

  He stumbled out. The other two waited a moment, listening to the retching in the passageway. Then the first one got up, shut and barred the door.

  “Unfortunate, Natan,” he said as he settled down by the fire. “You chose the wrong way out.”

  At least, Catherine reflected, their worry that all Edgar’s friends would desert him had been proved baseless. Every evening there was someone there. The English and Scottish students came to give him gossip from home and to stare at Catherine. They learned too quickly that she understood their Latin vulgarities and switched to their own language, which made her resolve to learn it at once.

  Others came to visit, old friends of both of theirs. Solomon balanced on the rickety stool many nights and shared the food Johannah was always sending them. Berengar, who had once been a student of Abelard’s, came to rant about the treatment the master had received at the council at Sens the year before. He usually brought a jug of beer or a loaf along with the scratched-over tablets on which he was preparing a scathing denunciation of those who had condemned his teacher unheard.

  To give them credit, Catherine was forced to admit that they all brought something to share. They didn’t seem to despise Edgar for marrying. Even John, the serious scholar who appeared to do nothing but fast and study, told them that he felt that for those who couldn’t be chaste it was better to marry than to burn.

  “My own brother, Robert, is a parish priest in England, with a wife and son,” he said. “He’s devout and conscientious in his duties, more than I can say for some others who are continent in sexual matters and negligent in all others.”

  “Has the war come near him?” Edgar asked.

  “The war is everywhere,” John answered. “My other brother, Richard, is a canon at Exeter and was much grieved during the siege there. But Robert’s village has been spared so far. Salisbury is, the last I heard, in the hands of the empress. King Stephen’s men came through last year and looted the cathedral at Sarum, may they all be cursed for their sacrilege. But no one I know was hurt.”

  “May God continue to preserve them,” Edgar said. “I heard something last summer about Salisbury. Perhaps you know the truth of it. I was told that, when the canons opened Bishop Roger’s treasury to King Stephen, after the bishop died, it wasn’t just his hoard of gold and weapons that was taken.”

  John looked uncomfortable. “I’ve heard all sorts of tales,” he said, “none of them from sources I would consider reliable. What’s the news of Master Abelard?”

  Edgar accepted the abrupt change of subject. If John wouldn’t speak of it, then there must be something to the rumors. Edgar could wait to find out.

  “The master has been given a refuge at Cluny,” Edgar told him. “Abbot Peter even managed to arrange a meeting between him and Abbot Bernard. They’ve reconciled, it is said.”

  “But Master Abelard’s work has still been declared heretical by Pope Innocent,” Catherine said angrily. “He was allowed no more hearing in Rome than he was at Sens. Abbot Bernard had messengers there and back before the Master even reached Cluny.”

  “I know,” John said. “It seems to me that Abbot Bernard truly believes that Master Abelard’s teachings are dangerous, but it was wrong all the same to condemn him unheard. I wish Abelard had at least tried to refute the charges. He could have easily. Abbot Bernard is no match for him in logic.”

  Catherine agreed. “For a long time, I couldn’t understand why he had walked out of the assembly, without defending himself. Perhaps it was his illness. But I’ve also remembered a sermon he once preached at the Paraclete, on Susannah and the Elders.”

  “He saw the abbots and bishops of France as lecherous judges?” Edgar asked.

  “We all know Master Abelard; decide for yourself,” Catherine answered. “The sermon was about how to respond to an unjust accusation. The only answer, he says, is silence.”

  “But he appealed to Rome,” John pointed out.

  “Susannah appealed to God,” Catherine said. She didn’t add that other sermons on the trial of Jesus had implied that Abelard also compared his own persecutions to Christ’s.

  “Master Abelard might have been better off doing that,” John suggested. “There was no Daniel waiting in Rome to defend him. So, he’s still at Cluny?”

  “As far as we know,” Edgar told him. “His health is not good. Astrolabe saw him at Christmas and said he’s become very frail.”

  “Poor man,” John said. “It’s odd, he’s younger than Master Gilbert but I think of Abelard as aged and Master Gilbert as in his prime.”

  “Is Master Gilbert still lecturing?” Catherine asked. “I’d like to hear him.”

  “You should go, both of you,” John said. “He has many connections in Paris and at Chartres. He might know someone who could find work for you, Edgar. He lectures at the Bishop’s Hall twice a week. The place is as packed as Saint-Denis on the saint’s day. I have no idea how many of those who attend can follow the lecture, but half Paris is determined to try.”

  He picked up his cup and wiped it out with a cloth he had tucked into his belt. From his sleeve he pulled out a small packet wrapped in oilcloth. A gold liquid was oozing from it. He laid it on the table.

  “I’ve given up honey for Lent,” he said, not looking at them. “I’d be grateful if you would save me from temptation.”

  “John …” Edgar began.

  Catherine took the package and set it in a wooden bowl. “It’s very kind of you,” she said. “Gode s . . f . . fsances.”

  John laughed. “Thanc thu, Catherine.”

  “Yes,” Catherine gave up. “What you said. I want to learn Saxon but those blowing noises are impossible.”

  “Never mind,” John said. “You have a nice accent. When the Normans try to speak Saxon, they sound like seals sneezing.”

  They all laughed and he bid them good night.

  Edgar looked at the honey. “We can’t take charity we don’t deserve,” he said.

  “We can take a gift from a friend,” Catherine answered. “Or I can take it to Aunt Johannah tomorrow and she can use it to make cakes for that festival of theirs she told me about.”

  “Which one is that?” Edgar asked.

  “Something to do with the Book of
Esther,” she said. “Tomorrow they fast and the next day they celebrate.”

  “Very well,” he said. “I’ll walk you over and then perhaps visit Master Gilbert. I don’t know how long your father wants me to go on with this. It’s been a week and I’ve learned nothing except that a man without a master can’t find work.”

  Johannah was up to her elbows in dough and delighted to see Catherine and the packet of honey.

  “Set it on the stone counter over there,” she said. “Then you can help me.”

  “I can?” Catherine said. “I thought you didn’t want Christians touching your food.”

  “Some Christians, some food,” Johannah answered. “Lucia touches almost everything. I supervise to be sure she does it properly. There aren’t enough of us to have servants of our own faith. And who has time to do all the cooking and cleaning and attend to business, too?” She gave the dough one last pounding and tipped it into a bowl to rise. “But today is Sunday and Lucia is home with her family,” she continued. “So I thought I’d make some Purim canestel for Eliazar.”

  “What can I do?” Catherine asked.

  Johannah pursed her lips, surveying her work. “I need to prepare the beans for tomorrow,” she said. “Esther ate only beans in the king’s house so she wouldn’t break the dietary laws, so we do, too, along with the cakes. Can you take this basket down to the cellar and fill it for me? Then we can sit and talk by the fire while we shell them.”

  “Of course, Aunt.”

  Catherine put the basket over her arm, picked up a little oil lamp and went down the stairs.

  Edgar found Master Gilbert’s house on the rue de la Porée on the other side of the river, in the bourg of Saint-Genéviève. He hesitated when asked his business.

  “My friend, John, suggested I come here,” he said. “I was once a student of Master Abelard’s and also of Master Robert at Melun.”

  “Master Gilbert lectures twice a week,” the doorkeeper said. “He has no need of new students.”