Death Comes As Epiphany: A Catherine LeVendeur Mystery

by Sharan Newman

  “Oh, Father,” she cried. “Will you please tell everyone that I’m not a saint and I just want to be left alone.”

  “Are you sure you want me to?” he asked. “The situation might have its advantages.”

  He hugged her tenderly, if with a hint of exasperation, then turned to the women hovering near.

  “You heard my daughter,” he said. “Leave us alone.”

  He waited until the room was empty, then sat down next to the bed. His face was grave and not at all reverent. Catherine steeled herself to face his anger. Instead of shouting, he took her right hand in his and unwrapped the bandage, examined the wound and rewrapped it.

  “I had a long talk with Abbot Suger last night,” he said finally. “Most of what we discussed does not concern you. However, I made particular inquiries about this apprentice of Garnulf’s.”

  Catherine started guiltily. Hubert nodded.

  “Everything about him is amiss. According to the master builder, the man simply showed up one day and asked for Garnulf. Somehow, he convinced the old man to take him on. None of the other workers had seen him before. No one knows who he is or where he comes from, beyond his nationality, which is all too evident from his face and accent.”

  “But Garnulf was very happy with his work,” Catherine said.

  “Yes. And trusted him.” Hubert looked at her sternly. “And Garnulf is dead. Since you met this man, you have been in danger of death more than once. Is that coincidence?”

  “No. Yes! I would be dead if Edgar hadn’t been at the abbey to push me out of the way. He saved me from …” Catherine bit her tongue.

  “From some danger you wouldn’t have been in if you hadn’t met him,” Hubert finished. “No, don’t tell me. I’m old and gray enough as it is. I don’t know what you’re playing at, but whatever you’ve got the rest of the people here to believe, I don’t for a moment think you spent last night wrestling with the devil, unless it was by your own design.”

  “Father! What do you think of me?”

  He pounded his fist into the coverlet, jarring her and raising a cloud of dust.

  “Oh, Catherine, Catherine! Will you, just for once, listen to the voice of experience? This man may not be the devil’s minion. He doesn’t have to be to bewitch a young woman, just home from the convent.”

  “It’s not like that!” she insisted, suddenly afraid that it might be.

  “I don’t care what it’s like or how you dress it up with your Latin phrases. I know very well what you were doing last night. You were helping a man who is certainly an impostor and quite possibly a thief and a murderer.”

  “Father, I had to,” she said. “They were going to kill him.”

  “Who?” he asked. “Not your brother?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I couldn’t tell who spoke. I overheard them through the pipes.”

  She couldn’t read his expression, but felt a sudden tensing.

  “Worse than I feared,” he muttered. “But which one is it?”

  His lips compressed and she shrank back, sure the anger was directed at her. Instead, he took her in his arms and held her again, smoothing her tousled curls with one hand.

  “I wish you could have known your grandmother, child,” he sighed. “You are more like her every day.”

  “I wish you would tell me about her,” Catherine said.

  “Someday, I may be able to. But not yet,” Hubert answered. “I spoke to the abbot about you, too,” he went on. “We both agreed that the Paraclete has not been good for you. Suger has agreed to recommend you to the abbess of Fontevrault.”

  “No! Father, no, I can’t go there! Please! I’m sorry. I’ll do anything else you ask. Whatever punishment you want. But don’t send me away!”

  “Punishment has nothing to do with it.” He gave her an infuriated shake. “Can’t you understand, girl? This isn’t a schoolroom exercise. It may surprise you, but I love you and want you kept safe. The only way I can think of to do that is to put you behind high walls in the company of the strictest nuns I can find.”

  Things were moving too quickly for Catherine, especially after the strain of the previous night. She cast about wildly for some objection.

  “But I thought you needed me to help you,” she said.

  “Nothing is more important than your safety, Catherine, and that is final. I told you before and I mean it. You leave immediately after Christmas. Make up your mind to it.”

  Catherine lay back and pulled the blanket to her nose. “I will do as you wish, Father, but I really think …”

  “Don’t you dare!” he shouted.

  Without another word, he got up and stalked out.

  Marie was as upset as Catherine about Hubert’s ultimatum.

  “It’s all over, then,” she said. “I counted on you to find that paper. Do you think the flames of Hell feel any hotter than the kitchen fire? I heard the bishop say once that the torment would be in our minds, not our bodies. How could it be worse than the torment I have now?”

  Catherine grabbed her despite the pain in her hands.

  “Don’t say such things! You can’t despair. I’ll think of something.”

  “Of course you will, Catherine.” Marie grimaced and rubbed the small of her back. “And when you do, you must write a treatise on it. But it’s too late for me. I wonder all the time what Guillaume will do when he discovers what I’ve done. Would he hurt our son? And this child I carry. What if it were given my punishment? Are the sins of the mothers visited upon the generations, too?”

  The tonelessness of her voice frightened Catherine more than anything. How could she return submissively to the contemplative life and leave so much undone? How could she avoid it? Her father had never been so obdurate, and when Madeleine had stopped her prayers long enough to agree with him, there was no recourse.

  There was only one person who might help her. When he returned, she would have to enlist Roger to fight for her. He had always insisted that the cloister was no place for her. She hoped he would hurry back. They had been gone for hours. If only they would give up hunting for Edgar and come home. Why couldn’t Guillaume and Roger assume, as so many others had, that Edgar had been spirited away to another world?

  “Catherine?” Marie was watching her. “Do you have a plan?”

  Catherine shook her head. “But I will. I promise,” she said. “Now, please, for your own sake, try to occupy your mind with something else.”

  Marie gave a harsh laugh. “Of course. I can easily distract myself with household duties. The composition of a meat sauce is so absorbing. It should surely keep me from thinking about such a little thing as the end of my world.”

  She started to go, but stopped at the top of the stairs.

  “I wish I’d never told you,” she said. “Now I’ll always wonder if you’ll use what I’ve done against me.”

  “Marie, never,” Catherine said. But Marie had left.

  Roger and Guillaume came back late that afternoon, cold, muddy, and, to Catherine’s joy, unsuccessful.

  “Where is my sainted niece?” Roger asked Marie. “Has she recovered from last night?”

  “She’s still resting,” Marie told him.

  “I want to talk with her.” Roger scratched his unshaven chin. “We found footprints. He’d scuffed them out, but a few were still clear. I can’t believe Catherine would have … He must have threatened her.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Roger.” Marie went back to her work.

  Roger went to report to Hubert.

  “There were marks under the chapel window,” he said. “The hay had been disturbed. That has to be how he got out. What do you think he did to make Catherine aid him? How could he possibly make her lie for him?”

  “Roger, you don’t believe this nonsense about Catherine being one step from canonization, do you?” Hubert asked.

  “Why not?” he answered.

  “Roger, we are speaking of Catherine. She is eighteen and not
unsusceptible to a stranger with a sad story.”

  Roger’s mouth twisted. “No, not my Catte,” he said. “What kind of story? A miserable childhood, a sick mother? ‘Help me, Lady, for charity’s sake’?”

  “He was an apprentice of Garnulf. We know the old man was getting suspicious. I warned Suger. I thought that when Garnulf fell, that would be the end of it. What if he told this Edgar something?”

  “And he repeated it to Catte? What could he have said so terrible to make her turn on us?”

  Hubert looked around quickly. “We don’t discuss business here,” he said. “I swear every corner in this blasted place has someone lurking in it. That English boy may have told her something about the jewels. Are you sure you and Prior Herveus were never seen?”

  “As sure as I can be,” Roger answered. “The abbot gave orders for everyone attached to the abbey to be occupied elsewhere.”

  “And you smoothed over the mortar?” Hubert asked.

  “As best we could. Neither of us is a mason.” Roger paused. “Catherine was asking me about a ring Agnes tossed in at the last dedication. I don’t remember it among the things we took out.”

  “That’s what I feared,” Hubert answered. “That boy may be part of a conspiracy by the workers to steal from the abbey. All the more reason to get Catherine back to the convent as soon as possible.”

  “Oh, Hubert, is that really necessary?” Roger asked.

  “Absolutely,” Hubert answered. “Catherine has seen too much already. And she has a soft heart where that grubby stone carver is concerned. Soon she’ll start putting the pieces together and I don’t want to have to face her when she starts seeing a picture.”

  “You may be right,” Roger said. “But I still can’t believe she was taken in by that avoutre. The next time I find him, I’ll run him through.”

  “For now, just get rid of the last shipment,” Hubert said. “You were insane to bring it here.”

  “I had to; there was no time,” Roger answered. “Stop worrying, Hubert. My Catte would never betray us.”

  Catherine heard the men return. The clatter of their armor resounded through the halls. Their annoyed orders reassured her that Edgar had eluded them. She only hoped they weren’t preparing to go out again. Why didn’t someone come up to tell her what was happening?

  She squirmed in her bed. She felt foolish, languishing there all day when she felt fine, except for the scrapes on her palms. They itched. She rubbed the bandages and wondered if she could ever live down the story. One of the maids this morning had asked for a lock of her hair. She wanted to soak it in holy water and use it as a medicine. Horrified, Catherine had tried to explain that such a thing was blasphemy. She had only further convinced the woman of her humble sanctity.

  Your humble hypocrisy, don’t you mean? the voices whispered.

  Catherine sighed. I know, Mother Héloïse and Master Abelard would be appalled at what I’ve done.

  And are you repentant? they asked.

  Edgar got away. Catherine smiled. I’m not repentant at all.

  Her voices subsided in disgust.

  Catherine lay a while longer, growing more impatient. Where was everyone? Why did no one come up and tell her what was happening?

  Finally she got up, wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and went to the stairs. There were voices below, but they weren’t coming closer. She took a few steps down, wincing at the cold coming through her slippers. She reached a turning and casually glanced out the window.

  Roger and her father were loading a wooden chest onto a cart. They seemed to be having some trouble. She wondered why they didn’t call some of the men to help. As they finally managed to slide it on, the chest tilted and the lid flew open. Catherine saw a gleam of something silver. It seemed familiar. Roger quickly shut the lid and fastened the catch. He looked around, as if checking for witnesses. Catherine drew back. Had he seen her face, peering out the narrow window?

  There was a cough from behind her. Catherine turned around. She was blocking the way. Waiting for her to move were Agnes, Sir Sigebert and Sir Jehan.

  “We were just going to the towers for some fresh air,” Agnes explained. “I thought you were still in bed.”

  “I just had to use the latrine,” Catherine said. “I’m going right back up.”

  The three stared at her as she climbed to the landing leading back to her room. As she reached it, she heard Sigebert clearly.

  “I didn’t know saints ever had to …”

  Catherine slammed the door shut.

  She sat down on the bed, furiously scratching at her bandages.

  What was her father doing with one of the jewelry boxes from Aleran’s hut? Even from a distance, she had recognized it. The one she had dropped. The one holding Roger’s ring, or Marie’s. How had they come by it? Roger couldn’t have been that lucky with dice. The voices Edgar had heard from the hut, could they have been someone else robbing the dead? Someone like Hubert? But then he would have known what to expect there. Someone like Roger? But Roger hadn’t even known the hermit, had he?

  What do you think?

  Catherine refused to even imagine it. Yes, her father had secrets, too. But there were many aspects of his business he would not think it appropriate for his daughter to know. That didn’t mean he was involved in murder and certainly not heresy.

  And yet, why had he never spoken of his parents? Who had killed his mother? She had always assumed robbers or marauders. What if his family had been the ones outside the law? What if they were—and it terrified her to consider it—even heretics? Could that be what her mother had been repenting of all these years, the reason she felt God was punishing her? If she had knowingly married a heretic, then she was as damned as he was.

  “No, not them!” she cried into the coverlet. “There must be another answer.”

  There were too many fragments here. They didn’t make sense and yet, somehow, Catherine felt they all would fit if she could only clear her mind of emotional side issues. Even her psalter was part of it. But that led back to Saint-Denis, as did the ring and Garnulf and Edgar. Hubert had seemed genuinely shocked at the evidence of sorcery in the hut. He hadn’t been pretending; he had expected to find something else. Something that he needed her to help with. What?

  She could read Latin; he couldn’t. Could he have been looking for the psalter or the contract Marie had signed? How could he have known about either one? Or was there some other evidence that she knew nothing about?

  Aleran. Who was he? What had he to do with this? That was where she had been looking from the wrong angle. Aleran wasn’t the center of the problem. He was the piece that didn’t fit. What did he and his horrible contracts have to do with her psalter? What kind of person at the abbey—they were all reasonably educated men—would be such a fool as to have anything to do with a man who, when one came down to it, was nothing more than another fake hermit/saint, preying on the poor and gullible?

  You’re going to Fontevrault in three weeks, her voices reminded her. Your father has ordered you to stop prying into these matters.

  I know, Catherine answered. But I cannot.

  There was a knock at the door. Catherine, for once, welcomed the interruption.

  “Come in.”

  It was Adulf, honored to be entrusted with Catherine’s dinner tray.

  “What is it tonight, Adulf?”

  “Lentil soup, my lady, with turnips and even a little meat,” he said.

  Lentils and turnips. If she had that, she would spend all night in the privy, thereby disproving her sanctity, to Sigebert at least. Catherine didn’t think her stomach could manage it.

  “You can have the soup, Adulf,” she said. “Just give me some of the bread. Go on, eat it now. I know you won’t get fed again until everyone else in the castle has eaten.”

  “Oh, thank you!” He took his spoon from his scrip. “Are you sure it’s all right? Lady Marie said I was to give it to you.”

  “But I don’t want it and y
ou are much too thin,” Catherine assured him. “Go on. I won’t tell. You and I keep our secrets, don’t we?”

  He nodded. “I have lots of secrets,” he said. “And I never tell, not even to Father Anselm.”

  He scooped up the soup eagerly, scraping the bowl for the last bits. It took her longer to finish the bread. Poor little thing! Someone should remember how hungry little boys got.

  “When I was a child, Agnes and I would sometimes sneak into the kitchens and filch some dripping bread before dinner,” she told him. “Otherwise, we might not have survived until our elders were through and it was our turn to eat.”

  Adulf smiled gratefully and rubbed his stomach. “Now it won’t be making noises while I’m serving,” he said. “Thank you.”

  He took the tray and went downstairs.

  The evening dragged on. There was a traveling juggler in the castle that night and everyone was crowded into the great hall to see him, except, of course, the newly beatified Catherine. She stayed up in her tower, alone with her rarefied thoughts.

  Murder, theft, sacrilege, heresy. And one more. Over and over, Catherine tried to think of what someone at Saint-Denis could have in common with the hermit. What was there that made Aleran different from other hermits who sold charms and potions along with their prayers?

  The memory of his face as he leaned over her came back like a lightning flash. That was it. A madness that had become pure evil.

  Gold was just a diversion. Garnulf’s death had nothing to do with greed. Someone at Saint-Denis was wickedly insane.

  Alone in her bed, Catherine, in her terror, prayed. She begged the help of every saint she had ever recited a response for. She prayed directly to the ineffable Holy Spirit, the comforter of the Paraclete. She prayed for guidance, for protection, for courage. Most of all, she prayed for Edgar, out in the cold world, not knowing what the shape of their adversary really was.