The Muse and Other Stories of History, Mystery, and Myth

by Lillian Stewart Carl

  He picked up the third one, a fine blade with a jeweled hilt. Raynald’s, he guessed. He drew it from its sheath and turned it back and forth in the dazzling light. Clean. That left two, both simple, very similar, knives.

  Feet shuffled behind him but he didn’t glance around. He plucked the next knife from its sheath and held it close, squinting in the glare. Yes, there, a streak of rust-red forming a thin crust between shining blade and dull guard. Wetting his fingertip, Anselm touched it to the crust. It came away red. If not for the sun he’d never have seen it.

  “This knife has blood on it.” He turned back toward the watching people, blinked away several bright shapes floating in his vision, and asked, even though he knew the answer, “Who does it belong to, Walter or James?”

  For a long moment none of the eyes watching him blinked. Then James exclaimed, “Walter! Have your debts grown so great you coveted Hubert’s money? One sin begets another and yet another, it seems.”

  Walter’s jaw worked—he’d have spat on the floor, Anselm assumed, if he’d been anywhere but in a prior’s parlor. “I have gambling debts, yes. But I didn’t kill the man. Look to your own knife and your own sins, Sir Squire.”

  Raynald caught James’s arm and pulled him into the light. The squire, his lower jaw outthrust, shook him away. “I tell you, that’s Walter’s knife, not mine.”

  One lingering shape in Anselm’s eye resolved itself into a vision of a flaccid leather pouch, spotted with blood. Blood will tell, yes. Blood will confirm. Between thumb and forefinger he picked up the loose fabric of James’s sleeve and spread it before the all-seeing light of God.

  Bending close, he smelled the young man’s acrid sweat. He saw a delicate spray of brown droplets fanning across the cloth. The drops drew an ugly picture—James’s left hand grasping Hubert’s shoulder or hair, his right arm reaching around and drawing the knife across his throat in a smooth, quick stroke. Hubert’s last breath, expelled through the wound, sprinkling his lifeblood over James’s stylishly long sleeve.

  And it was James himself who’d uttered the words that damned him. “You knew that the reliquary had fallen to the ground,” Anselm said. “Only the murderer could have known that.”

  “You killed my husband!” Alianor shrieked.

  James turned on her with a snarl. “It’s what you wanted, you daughter of Eve! Isn’t that why you seduced me there at Castle Rising, when you and your husband came to peddle your wares? He’s old, you said. He’s vile-tempered, you said. Hold me, you said. And then when you’d had your way with me you told me that our passion was sinful, that it would be better to marry than to burn, and that I had no choice but to kill him and take you as my wife.”

  “No.” Alianor took a step back and collided with Isabella, who laid a firm hand on her arm. “No, you’re lying.”

  “You and Hubert did visit Castle Rising,” Isabella said quietly. “I bought a length of baudekyn from you, but none of your collection of relics, false or otherwise.”

  Maud stared from Alianor to James and back. “I heard you talking, the both of you, about a relic. I thought that to be evidence of your piety.”

  “Is he lying, daughter?” Anselm asked Alianor. “Or is he confessing his guilt? What of you? Confess your disobedience and purify your soul.”

  “No,” Alianor said again, her voice stretching thinner and thinner.

  “We made our plans,” James said between clenched teeth. His glare at Alianor was filled with passion, yes, but with hatred, not lust. “She told me her plans, rather, that I, fool that I am, agreed to put into effect. Her old husband, who was no great loss, by the by, wanted to steal the relic of St. Mary Magdalene. A holy theft, he named it. He’d told Alianor to feign a swoon there in the chapel, but in the event she didn’t need to.”

  “It was I who swooned,” Sister Juliana said, not at all shamefaced. “And among those female voices I heard in my dream was one whispering, ‘now, do it now’. I thought the saint was speaking to me, and although I didn’t understand, I didn’t question, as God’s mysteries are beyond human comprehension.”

  The color drained from Alianor’s face. “God and the Holy Virgin help me,” she murmured, and swayed like a broken reed. Maud and Blanche stepped forward to ease Alianor’s sagging body to the floor. She wasn’t feigning a swoon, not now.

  Anselm regarded her sadly. The flesh was weak, and no flesh was as weak as a woman’s. . . . Well, neither Hubert nor James were male exemplars, were they?

  All Hubert had had to do was attach himself and Alianor to the dowager queen’s party. Then, when—someone—provided a distraction and drew the others away, he would steal the reliquary. But Alianor and James had their own plot, parallel to his. All Alianor had had to do was guide her husband to Walsingham on St. Anne’s Day, when Isabella would also be there. Perhaps Alianor and James intended all along to throw suspicion onto Walter. Or perhaps they took advantage of his presence—and his failings—as they took advantage of having a peasant and a Frenchman in the party.

  James took Hubert’s empty purse to make it appear as though robbery was the motive. And he knew that whilst Hubert could have slipped out of the priory with the reliquary beneath his tunic, the hue and cry over a murder would never permit James himself to do the same. So he’d left the reliquary lying on the floor of the chapel, where it’d fallen, most likely, after he wiped his blade on the altar cloth.

  Why then, Anselm wondered, should James and Alianor have been discussing a relic at all? Because they could hardly avoid discussing Hubert’s business?

  Margaret patted Alianor’s cheeks, bringing her round. James watched stone-faced. Wilfrid handed back the knives, giving James’s to Raynald. Thurstan inspected his and then used it to clean a bit of food from his teeth. Geoffrey tucked his into his belt abstractedly, as though feeling he had little to do with the events taking place before him.

  Isabella met Anselm’s eyes with a remote, rueful expression. For just a moment he could read her mind. Her own husband had been no exemplar, either. Her rebellion against him, while wrong, was not inexplicable. Like Alianor she had discovered one very effective tactic: There was no need to wield a weapon yourself if you could beguile a man into doing it for you.

  Isabella had had years to pay penance, humbling herself and showing compassion even for those like Alianor. Especially for those like Alianor. . . .

  And suddenly Anselm saw the plot entire. What else had Hubert’s murder accomplished? It had left Alianor in possession of his property and his business, dealing not only in cloth but in relics. She had no need to plead poverty in front of Isabella and ask for her succor at Castle Rising.

  But Isabella possessed a relic, one she wanted to discuss with Anselm. While Hubert might have lusted after a relic from Walsingham, Alianor lusted after the one from Castle Rising. Perhaps she’d learned of it from James. Perhaps she’d merely used James as a means to her end—not only to dispose of her husband but to claim Isabella’s compassion in her bereavement and thereby gain access to her relic.

  The sunbeam faded, filling the room with twilight. With a quickly muffled groan, Anselm sat back down in his chair. James’s life would end on the gallows, no doubt about it. As for Alianor—well, unlike Isabella, the earl was not known for his compassion. “Wilfrid, have Brother Simon send for the earl’s sergeant-at-arms. Sir Raynald, if you’d be so kind—ladies. . . .”

  “My pleasure, Father.” Raynald and Walter marched James across the room and out the door. He stepped out proudly, as though on parade.

  Maud and Blanche came behind with a stumbling Alianor. “Is there any justice for me, Father? A young woman married against her will to a violent old man—why shouldn’t I look to my own provision?”

  “We shall all stand before the judgment of Christ,” Anselm told her, “and each one of us shall render account of himself to God. All the church can offer you is forgiveness, if you ask for it.”

  Perhaps she would ask, as Isabella had. Perhaps she’d never
find humility. Anselm watched the two young people disappear out the door and felt old and weak and empty.

  The child, Edward, was fretting, making little cries of discomfort. Hawise bent over him and Margaret knelt beside them. Suddenly he sat up in his mother’s lap, coughing violently, his entire body spasming. “Blessed Virgin,” exclaimed Thurstan, “as you loved your own son, help mine!”

  In one great paroxysm the child spat something into Margaret’s hand and lay back, breathing deeply. Isabella set her hand on his face, watching in amazement and, Anselm thought, gratification, as Edward’s skin flushed a rosy and healthy pink.

  “It’s a miracle,” said Juliana, crossing herself.

  Margaret inspected the damp object in her hand. “It’s a bit of nutshell. It must have been lodged in his chest.”

  Tears of joy were running down Hawise’s fragile cheeks. “The day he took ill I was cracking walnuts and he was playing at my feet. Children will put anything and everything into their mouths.”

  “God be praised,” said Anselm, and he surprised himself with a smile.

  “Yes, indeed,” Isabella said. “And God be thanked for giving me such a clear and unequivocal sign.”

  “My lady?” Anselm asked.

  “We were all brought here together for a purpose—the child, Sir Geoffrey, all of us. I see it plain as you saw the blood on that knife, Father Prior, illuminated by God himself.”

  Geoffrey tilted his head quizzically. “Madame?”

  “I wished to ask your advice about a relic, Father.”

  “Yes,” Anselm replied. “I was just thinking of it. If you’d rather wait until some better time . . .”

  “This is the time.” Isabella raised Hawise from the chest she’d been sitting on. Thurstan wrapped wife and child in one long arm and stepped aside. Margaret went to stand beside Juliana.

  Isabella reached into her belt, withdrew a key, and unlocked the chest. Leaning forward, Anselm saw a length of baudekyn, its silk and gold threads shining in the last gleam of light from the window.

  Reverently Isabella rolled back the end of the precious cloth. Inside it lay folded linen. She grasped one end of the linen and pulled it from its wrapping, higher and higher, until she held it unfurled to the height of her own body. Still part of the cloth lay concealed in the chest.

  At first Anselm thought it was ordinary linen cloth such as Hubert sold. Then, very faintly, he began to make out the impression of a man’s body, a bearded face bedaubed with blood, crossed arms wounded in the wrists. The linen seemed to emit a pale light of its own as well as a subtle fragrance. He rose to his feet, slowly but painlessly, drawn by the soft but radiant glow of the cloth and that elusive scent of—myrrh, he realized. The unguent which anointed Our Lord’s corporeal body. . . .

  “It is the burial shroud of Our Lord himself,” Isabella said.

  “What?” Chills ran down Anselm’s back.

  Juliana gasped and fell to her knees, Margaret at her side. “Look, it is the image of Our Lord, wounds and all. Thurstan called upon the Virgin in the name of her son, and through His spirit dwelling in the relic the child was healed.”

  “I doubted whether this cloth was the genuine relic,” said Isabella, “having seen many false bits of bone and rag and such over the years. But here, in this moment, God has shown me—shown us all—the truth.”

  No, Anselm told himself, the miracle was not a matter of perception or a difference in viewpoint. The cloth was exactly as it appeared.

  One by one everyone sank slowly to his knees, save the little boy, who burbled happily in his mother’s arms. The child, made in the image of God, the image now displayed before them. The image of a mortal man, his body like Anselm’s own. What would have been the point of Our Lord’s sacrifice, had he had no body to suffer?

  Anselm felt dizzy, as though a wind was blowing through his skull and sweeping his old perceptions away. Automatically he made the sign of the cross over them all, and then traced the sign again, more slowly, for the first time fully aware—and taking joy in—its physicality.

  Isabella’s voice was a note of music. “I was sent from France to marry Edward the year after my father, King Philippe, charged the Order of the Temple with heresy. He purged them with blood and fire and took their treasure for his own. One of my bride-pieces was a jeweled chest from the Paris commandery. It was years later, long after my son exiled me to Castle Rising for my sins, that I found the false bottom in the chest and this cloth, folded so that only the face of the image could be seen.”

  “The Templars were charged with worshiping a face,” said Geoffrey. “A face with a beard.”

  Isabella folded the linen back into the chest. Its glow vanished into the shadows like the sunbeam disappearing from the wall. Its fragrance lingered, now smelling less like myrrh than like baking bread. After all, Anselm told himself, while man might not live by bread alone, bread was necessary to life. He bounded to his feet like a spring lamb, refreshed, and reached out to assist Juliana and Margaret. But they too, stood effortlessly. Every face was turned to the chest, and every face glowed rosily as though turned to the sun, even in the now-dark room.

  “This is the so-called idol of the Templars,” said Isabella. “They didn’t worship it, they venerated it. I believe they saved it when Constantinople was looted by their own brethren, the Crusaders, and kept it so secret that even my father’s treasurers didn’t know where—or what—it was. The irony of the most sacred of relics falling into the hands of she who was once named ‘the she-wolf of France’, her father’s daughter, has not been lost on me.”

  “God so willed it,” stated Juliana.

  Isabella nodded. “I could, I suppose, present this relic to Our Lady’s shrine here at Walsingham, buying my way into heaven with it.”

  For a long moment Anselm’s mind filled with the image of Walsingham as the greatest shrine not just in England but in the world, drawing pilgrims and their offerings. . . . The thought came to his mind as though a voice whispered it in his ear: I can’t have it both ways. I can either disdain the world or welcome it to my doorstep.

  “And yet,” Isabella went on, “I see that today’s events are a sign from God himself, that my own penance is only a small part of a much greater one. France and England have seen war, plague, famine, death these last few years. This most holy of relics must be returned to the place whence it was stolen, to redeem both my and my father’s pride and to heal both my homelands. Sir Geoffrey, you must take it with you back to France.”

  “My respect to your nephew, my liege lord Jehan,” said Geoffrey with a frown, “but he would destroy the suaire, the shroud, as evidence of the Templars. I could give it to the holy father, the pope.”

  “Who is captive in Avignon, in my nephew’s domain, without hope of ransom. He wouldn’t dare accept such a gift. No, Sir Geoffrey, find some small church which will hold the holy shroud in trust until such time as its presence can be revealed and appreciated for what it is.”

  “I shall give it, then, to my own church at Lirey and conceal its origins.”

  “Thank you,” said Isabella, and, turning to Anselm, “I beg your pardon, Father Prior. I know what this relic would have meant to you here within these walls.”

  “But we can see only part of God’s plan from within these walls,” Anselm told her. “Our Lord himself opened the door of his mother’s house and went out to meet the world.”

  “If there were no outside world,” said Margaret softly, “why should there be need for places like Walsingham?”

  Yes, thought Anselm, without pilgrims there would be no priory. Without the world there would be no pilgrims. Without the body and blood of Christ—the actual, physical body and blood—there would be no faith. That’s why relics existed. How long, he wondered, had he himself been no more than a rag and bone man, never seeing the true significance of his charge?

  Geoffrey brushed the chest with his fingertips, then with a low bow accepted the key from Isabella’s hand. “
Thank you for your trust, Madame.”

  “I have learned,” said Isabella, “to trust in God.”

  “Amen,” Anselm said with feeling. “Who would have thought that a rag and bone man like Hubert would be an instrument of God’s will?”

  “God works in mysterious ways,” said Hawise. Edward was squirming. She set him down and he toddled toward the chest, where he started beating its top with crows of delight. Grinning, Thurstan pulled him away.

  A bell rang outside. “It is the hour of compline,” said Anselm, “the completion of the daily cycle of prayer. Please, come to the church with me, so that we can pray for James and Alianor, and give thanks, and prepare ourselves to begin again tomorrow.”

  “Yes, Father.” Thurstan gathered Hawise close. Margaret supported Juliana. Geoffrey bowed Isabella out the door.

  Anselm waited a long moment, eyeing the room now empty of people but never empty of faith. Then he turned and went out into the twilight, grateful to be part not only of his canonical community, but of the greater community of mankind, saint to sinner and everyone between.

  * * * * *

  Postscript: The artifact now known as the Shroud of Turin can be traced back to 1355, when it was owned by the de Charny family and displayed at the tiny church of Lirey in France. How it got there is anyone’s guess. Since Isabella the Fair (or the She-Wolf, take your pick) had good reason to make her pilgrimages to Walsingham, and Geoffrey de Charny, who was in England in 1351, was known to be an exceptionally pious knight, this particular guess is only slightly less probable than some.

  Author’s Note

  “The Rag and Bone Man” first appeared in Murder Most Catholic, edited by Ralph McInerny, Cumberland House, 2002.

  Some of the research I did on holy relics, mostly for Lucifer’s Crown, went into this story. The post-Reformation verse about the devastation of Walsingham is mentioned in the same novel, but this story takes place at Walsingham’s height as a pilgrim center. I have a wonderful book titled The Pilgrim’s Way, which gives the history of Walsingham, of Canterbury, and of many other medieval pilgrim’s sites. My regret is that, many years ago, I was five miles from Holywell in Wales, the only medieval British Catholic shrine still operating as such, but at the time I didn’t know what it was, so passed up the chance to visit.