“That’s right,” Edgar said. “And today is Palm Sunday. Feelings are strong enough at this time of year without adding to them.”
“I know,” Solomon said bitterly. “I was born here, remember.”
“Even though he was my brother, for what he did to Natan, I would have preferred him to hang,” Lucia said sadly.
When the others arrived, they were shown the arm, still supporting the pillar. They each fell to their knees and gazed at it with reverential wonder. All but Hubert, whose only emotion was simple gratitude that Catherine had survived unhurt.
“Someone is protecting you, child,” he said. “I don’t care who, if only they continue to do so.”
Lucia directed the men from the tavern to take Samson’s body to their mother.
“I’m going with it,” she told Catherine. “I’ll explain as best I can what happened. She’ll have to know what he was doing before she’ll keep silent.”
“Tell her you what you think best,” Catherine said. “I’m sorry it came to this.”
“I wanted the truth,” Lucia answered. “You didn’t create it; you only helped me find it. You needn’t reproach yourself.” She left.
Catherine reproached herself anyway.
“I shall enjoy telling Archdeacon Giles how Saint Aldhelm revealed himself to us,” John said after a few minutes of silent contemplation of the relic.
Edgar was worried. “But what if he sees it as a sign that Aldhelm wants to remain here?” he asked. “I’m not sure that it isn’t.”
“I suppose the answer will come when we try to remove the arm,” John said. “If it won’t be budged, then we’ll have to leave him here, no matter how we feel about it.”
“We should have someone fetch the archdeacon now,” Edgar said. “We need him to witness what has happened. If this doesn’t prove the authenticity of the relic, nothing will.”
Maurice was standing in the middle of the crypt, surveying the damage in the dim light. “I’ll go,” he offered. “Who else should I bring?”
“No one,” John answered quickly. “If word of this gets out, there will be a thousand people in here by morning.”
“I doubt even Saint Aldhelm could survive that,” Maurice said.
Edgar bristled and thought to tell Maurice all the things the saint had survived in the past. He stopped. There was no doubt in his mind that Aldhelm would be safe. But the more people who knew about his, the harder it would be to see that he was returned home.
Solomon went over to Hubert. “I’ve had a look at the pillar,” he said. “It’s fallen on a niche in the wall. The arm isn’t supporting it at all. There shouldn’t be any trouble removing it from underneath.”
“Shssh!” Hubert moved him away from Catherine. “So you don’t think this was a miracle?”
“The Almighty One, blessed be he, saw fit to save Catherine and Lucia,” Solomon answered. “I believe he used the means to hand, that’s all, and within the natural laws he devised.”
“So you don’t intend to ask for baptism?” Hubert smiled.
“That is not something to joke about,” Solomon said. “You should know that better than anyone.”
Hubert closed his eyes and the terror of being dragged through the streets and forcibly baptized returned as if it hadn’t been more than forty years before. No, it was nothing to joke about.
“Don’t tell Catherine and Edgar,” Hubert said. “It won’t convert them, either.”
“I know that,” Solomon answered. “They wouldn’t believe me, anyway. Even when they see where the pillar is, it won’t matter. They need this to be the work of Saint Aldhelm. How could I destroy Edgar’s faith?”
Curious faces kept appearing over the edge of the fallen ceiling but no one else came down. Catherine didn’t think about it until she heard the altercation.
“Don’t you know who this is?” The voice was Maurice’s. “He’s archdeacon of Rouen. Let him pass!”
A lamp glowed on the steps. Maurice appeared, leading Giles du Perche. Lucia followed them.
“There’s a giant at the end of the ambulatory,” Maurice said. “He refused to let us come down.”
“I told Goliath what had happened,” Lucia said. “He’s very upset. He loved Samson and trusted him. But even love won’t condone what Samson did. Goliath wanted to do something to begin to atone for it.”
“That was right,” John told her.
“Then Goliath didn’t know what Samson was doing,” Catherine said. “I’m so glad. I like him.”
Lucia came over to her and spoke quickly. “Of course he knew about the trading going on,” she said. “He helped with that. He wanted to make enough to build a new brewery. But he had nothing to do with Natan’s death, or the others. He swore it and I believe him. That’s all that matters to me.”
John and Maurice were shining their lanterns on the arm, which was still upright, one finger apparently keeping the pillar from collapse.
“You see?” John said. “Catherine and Lucia were under that. Saint Aldhelm prevented them from being crushed.”
“I see,” Giles said. “But I don’t understand what the arm was doing here or how these women knew where to find it.” He looked at Edgar with suspicion. “Perhaps you knew where it was all along,” he suggested.
Catherine gasped, afraid of what Edgar might do. But before he could do more than glare, Lucia came forward. She bowed to the archdeacon.
“My lord,” she said, “I alone knew where the arm was. I knew my brother, Samson, was hiding some treasure that he had come by unlawfully, although not what it was. I couldn’t betray him but it would have been wrong to allow him to profit from his theft. So I gave the box to Saint-Étienne to protect. Catherine and I came here to retrieve it so that it could be returned to your lordship. My brother followed us and tried to take it back. Saint Aldhelm intervened on our behalf, as you see.” She blessed herself. “I swear it, by Our Lord, the Virgin and all the saints.”
“Very well.” The archdeacon accepted the statement. He went over to the arm and studied it. “Are we supposed to assume that Saint Aldhelm desires his arm to be the foundation of a new church in Paris?” he asked.
“Perhaps we should see if he will consent to be moved?” John suggested.
“Yes, I’ll agree to that.” Giles nodded. “I’ll ask him; you two attempt to remove it. Use no unusual force, however. That saint must come of his own free will.”
Giles raised his eyes to heaven. Unfortunately, his view of paradise was obscured by the faces of the unwashed, but now well-fed, poor of Paris staring down at him.
“Go away!” he shouted. “You people have no business here. I’ll have the bishop put you out into the streets!”
The faces vanished. Giles composed himself to pray. He closed his eyes this time.
John got down on his hands and knees. Beside him, Edgar did the same. They approached the relic with great respect and not a little fear. Not sure of the efficacy of the archdeacon’s petitioning, Edgar quietly asked Saint Aldhelm’s permission for what they were about to do.
He put both hands around the reliquary. The wood had bent and cracked when the pillar landed. He thought it might come to pieces in his hands, leaving him holding the bones themselves, something he knew he wasn’t worthy to do.
John held the top of the broken reliquary as Edgar slid the bottom toward himself. It came away easily, leaving the pillar above in place.
Edgar let John take it to Giles.
The archdeacon looked at it. “Oddly enough,” he said, “a certain Canon Simon came to me today with a story of how he had recently discovered an arm in a gold reliquary of English design. He told me that it had been among the goods of a repentant thief who had come to him for absolution. He wondered if it might not be the one I was looking for.” He looked at each of them in turn. “I told him that it might,” he said.
Catherine slept that night in a clean feather bed. Hubert had insisted that they return to his home. There Catherine h
ad had the bathing tub in the back garden filled and heated. Then she had scrubbed and scrubbed herself from head to toe and between the toes to get out the grit, the dust and the shock.
Edgar helped.
She woke up far into the day, feeling like a piece of laundry twisted first one way and then the other before it’s put into the mangle. She opened her eyes to find Edgar staring into them.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
“Sad,” she said. “And grateful.”
She snuggled closer to him.
“Saint Aldhelm saved my life,” she continued. “But he was the reason it was in danger. I don’t understand what he was trying to accomplish, leaving Salisbury and coming here. Three men are dead, four if you include the priest from Evreux, and I can see nothing good that has come of it all.”
Edgar picked up one of her frayed braids and wrapped it around his hand. “I know. I don’t understand, either,” he said. “We can’t expect to comprehend the ways of heaven, of course, but it seems to me that some things could be made clearer. For instance, how could Samson have murdered Gaudry and Odo? Who told him where the workshop was?”
“And was it Samson who found out about Uncle Eliazar and Canon Thomas?” Catherine asked. “I can’t believe that he’s the one who attacked you last year. Even without a knife, he could have killed you easily.”
“Yes, I got the impression of a much smaller man,” Edgar said.
“You believe it’s Suger’s nephew, Simon, don’t you?”
Edgar unwrapped the braid and twisted it the opposite way around. “I do,” he admitted. “He has the connections to have discovered both about Natan’s selling Brother Thomas’s possessions and to be involved in the transporting of the stolen relic. But I don’t think we can prove it. His story about receiving the reliquary that Gaudry and I made as restitution from a thief is plausible enough that anyone who wanted to believe it, could.”
“Father won’t let him escape so easily,” Catherine assured him.
“But if he knows about Thomas’s conversion, our silence may be the price for his,” Edgar sighed.
“I think that’s something we have to let Father and Uncle Eliazar handle.”
“As long as Aldhelm eventually is taken home,” Edgar said. “I only wish he could travel in the reliquary I carved for him.”
“Why can’t he?” Catherine said. “Ask Archdeacon Giles. You don’t need to say it’s your work. The other box is certainly not fit for a saint now.”
“Catherine,” Edgar said, “about that pillar.”
She smiled. “I know. I saw how it was resting. It only shows that Saint Aldhelm is as practical as you. He used the niche to help him protect us.”
“I hoped you would see it that way,” Edgar said.
That evening they all dressed in their best clothes and went to Eliazar’s for dinner.
Catherine was astonished to find Lucia serving at the table.
After the meal she stopped the maid in the hallway.
“What are you doing here?” she asked. “I thought you’d never want to come here again.”
“Mistress Johannah needed someone,” Lucia said simply. “I told her I would stay through Easter.”
“Then what will you do?”
“Mother needs me to help her,” Lucia said. “Goliath does his job if you explain it to him carefully, but he can’t manage the brewing and keeping track of the payments. Someone has to.”
“Lucia, I haven’t said anything about the gold,” Catherine said. “You could use that to start again somewhere else.”
“I don’t have it anymore,” Lucia said. She seemed embarrassed about it.
“Lucia?”
Lucia looked away, then back at Catherine. She sighed. “I told you what the priest at my parish says. The saints have no need of gold. They don’t get hungry or thirsty. They don’t have children to care for.”
“You gave it to Gaudry’s wife, didn’t you?” Catherine guessed.
Lucia nodded. “My brother was the cause of her widowhood. It’s my duty to see that she’s taken care of. Goliath will bring her a cask of our best beer every week and check to see that she and her children are well.”
Lucia hurried back to the kitchen. The last look she gave Catherine was a warning.
Catherine returned to the dining hall slowly. She told herself that she wouldn’t interfere in Lucia’s duty, but that she would see to it that Hubert bought every extra barrel of beer they made, no matter what domestic animal it was wrung from.
A week later, the holy days having been observed, Hubert met at his home with Eliazar, Solomon and Baruch to decide what to tell Abbot Suger about the vipers in his family nest.
“We must tell him something,” Baruch insisted. “At least about Gerard. That can be proved. He not only trades in church property, he cheats on the tolls.”
“Are you positive we can prove it?” Hubert asked. “What evidence do we have for anything? Gerard had apparently been using Natan to do the actual transactions ever since the mayor caught him selling Brother Thomas’s clothes. If Natan wasn’t available, he sent goods to Paris with Goliath. But do you think anyone would credit the word of Samson’s brother against Suger’s nephew?”
“And my word is worth nothing?” Solomon asked.
“Three Jewish witnesses are needed to refute one Christian,” Baruch reminded him. “And it still isn’t certain we’d be believed. And what if Gerard accuses you of robbing him that night?”
“I see your point,” Solomon admitted. “Then what about the tolls? I’m sure there are any number of Christians who would complain.”
“The water merchants’ association has already decided to send a delegation to the abbot concerning his nephew’s extortions,” Hubert told them. “I will add my voice. We’re a powerful group. The abbot may weigh his love of Cistercian wine against the profit Gerard is making and decide that he prefers the wine.”
“And Simon?” Solomon added. “He was the one working with Samson and Natan in Paris. He must have been frantic when the arm was lost. I would wager that it was his idea to kill the smiths when the duplicate reliquary was finished. I’d believe he was the one who kidnapped Silas and hit me over the head.” Edgar rubbed at the sore spot.
“I know,” Hubert said. “But he insists that he came by the box in the course of his pastoral duties. It will be almost impossible to prove otherwise.”
“That archdeacon believes us,” Solomon said. “I was surprised to find myself almost liking him.”
“His orders were to find the arm and the chalice and return to Rouen with them,” Hubert said. “He may leave with a word of caution to the bishop to keep a close eye on Brother Simon.”
“Maurice will keep a closer one,” Solomon laughed. “I would trust him to settle the score with that Simon long before Bishop Stephen does.”
“I would like the criminals punished for their deeds,” Eliazar said, “but I know that in this world that doesn’t always happen. My heart is more concerned with my brethren, and with my brother. Do you forgive me for putting all of us at such risk last year? When that boy came to me and begged for circumcision, I couldn’t deny him.”
“We have said it; you could do nothing less,” Baruch told him. “It is only your secrecy that we regret.”
“Then I ask your forgiveness for that,” Eliazar said.
“I, for one, give it gladly,” Baruch said.
“Of course,” Hubert agreed.
“Solomon?” Eliazar asked.
“Yes, I forgive you, Uncle,” Solomon said. “But I still say you should have asked me. Haven’t I always been willing to carry out your requests?”
“Ah, well, since you mention it,” Eliazar said, “Hubert and I do have another little job for you. Not too long a trip, just to Lombardy and back.”
“Alps.” Solomon put his head in his hands. “You want me to climb those blasted mountains again. When must I leave?”
The little room was cleared out a
nd most of the furniture put on the woodpile. Catherine stood in the center of the empty space and turned around slowly, remembering.
This had been her healing place. Ugly, cramped and cold, it had taken her grief and made her look beyond it. She knew there were people who would think it a palace. Those beggars who slept between the fallen timbers at Saint-Étienne certainly would.
She still didn’t know if their mission had been of any use. Saint Aldhelm was on his way back to England. Edgar had seen the arm laid gently into the box he had crafted so carefully. Catherine had thought he would be proud, but his expression was one she’d never seen before and couldn’t decipher.
And now they were going back to her father’s home. She would settle in with her books and accounts just as if she had never been away. Only Edgar would be there, too.
Doing what?
He hadn’t mentioned it again, but she knew he thought about it constantly. He would have made a bad monk but a good prior. He might even have been happy as a lay brother, working in the smithy at the abbey. But what was left for him here? He wasn’t a knight; he certainly couldn’t lower himself to be a merchant. Knowing that all her father expected was for him to provide grandsons was not good for his confidence. The work he did best was denied him. Marrying her was a step down socially. They couldn’t live the rest of their lives over a weaver’s shop while Edgar peddled handmade spoons.
Pity.
She couldn’t bear to see him so miserable and she had no idea what to do about it.
She picked up the last of the bundles and went down the stairs to where he was waiting with the donkey.
He was silent as they walked, brooding, she was sure, on the mistake he had made in adding her to his life.
Suddenly his head went up.
“Deofoles belg!” he shouted. “Of course! Where else?”
“What is it?” Catherine asked.
“I know where that workshop was!” he said. “I should have realized it at once. So stupid. It just shows that we never see the obvious answer. It was right there under my nose. Hunh! It was right there in my nose.”
The Wandering Arm: A Catherine LeVendeur Mystery Page 33
