Heresy

by Sharan Newman

  Catherine felt for the chamber pot, not wanting to leave the children alone. There didn’t seem to be one. She resolved to speak to the monastery porter about it in the morning. But that didn’t help her problem now.

  It was while she was sitting in agony, wondering if Dragon, the dog, was enough to guard Edana and James while she was down the passageway, that she heard the ringing of the entry bell beneath her window.

  Who could need admittance at this hour? she wondered.

  She tried to see through a crack in the shutters, but they were barred fast.

  And what was keeping Samonie so long?

  With a growing sense of disquiet, Catherine found her shoes and belt and put them on. She was sleeping in shift and hose already. She quickly pulled the long bliaut over them and went to the door.

  “Catherine!” Astrolabe stopped himself from knocking on her face instead of the door to her room. “I came to tell you that Samonie is hurt. I left her with some peasants; the porter is sending two of the lay brothers and a donkey to fetch her here.”

  “What?” Catherine stared at him. “How did she get… What were you doing with her?”

  “That isn’t important now,” Astrolabe told her. “She came to the tavern for me. Something about a visiting monk who has been asking questions. Do you know anything about it?”

  Catherine shook her head. “And I didn’t even notice she was gone until a moment ago. What is this all about? Is she badly hurt?”

  “We won’t know until she gets to the infirmary here,” Astrolabe said. “Her breathing was regular when I left. She said there was a cleric here, asking about my father. Did you see him? Do you know why that should have worried her enough to come fetch me?”

  “I can’t imagine,” Catherine said. “There are a number of monks of other orders staying here. But I haven’t spoken with any of them. What could this be about? Samonie has kept things from me in the past, but I thought we understood each other now.”

  “Mama, I have to make pipi,” Edana’s plaintive voice came from the bed.

  “Of course you do,” Catherine sighed. “And so do I.”

  She went back and picked the child up. Edana slumped half asleep across her shoulder.

  “Astrolabe,” Catherine said, “I don’t know what’s going on here, but will you stay with James while I take care of this? Then I can try to concentrate while we wait for the monks to return with Samonie.”

  When she returned, she tucked Edana back in, lit the oil lamp and sat down opposite Astrolabe.

  He told her the whole story, including the spectral cleric who had helped him.

  “Do you think he could have been the same man who was asking for me?” he asked. “All I know is that his accent was Norman.”

  Catherine was torn between worry and anger. “I don’t know, since you couldn’t describe him. And I never heard him speak. Oh, Samonie! What could she have been thinking of?”

  The monks arrived soon, with Samonie on the donkey, shaky but awake. Catherine sent Astrolabe down to see to her.

  He found her sitting on a bench in the entryway. His questions faded as he saw the gash on her temple.

  “God’s eyes!” he exclaimed. “What could you have fallen on?”

  Samonie touched the cut gingerly. “I don’t know, but my head feels like I’ve drunk a vat of wine on an empty stomach.”

  She squinted at him, trying to bring him into focus.

  “I came to with my face in a sheep’s bottom,” she said calmly. “What exactly was I doing with you?”

  “You don’t remember?” he asked.

  She started to shake her head and winced. “No, I only remember that I went out looking for you. I must have found you. Did I say why?”

  “You were just about to when you fell,” Astrolabe explained.

  “Did I?” she asked. “How stupid of me.”

  She started to rise but fell back again as one of the monks returned with a bowl of warm water and a bandage. Astrolabe waited quietly while he ministered to her. When he had finished, the monk helped her to stand.

  “Can you get her up the stairs to the guest room?” he asked Astrolabe. “We have no place in the infirmary for a woman. I believe that all she needs is rest and time to heal.”

  “I can travel tomorrow, can’t I?” Samonie asked worriedly.

  “In your cart, perhaps,” he said. “But the blow might well cause you nausea for a few days and headaches for some time after. You are all welcome to stay until you’re more fit.”

  “No!” Samonie answered. “We must continue.”

  She looked up at Astrolabe. “I only wish I could recall why it’s so important, but I know that I should send you all on without me. You need to keep going! Someone… something about a heretic. I’m sorry, I can’t remember any more.”

  She shook her head emphatically, then winced at the pain.

  “Samonie, let me help you to the room,” Astrolabe said soothingly. “Catherine is waiting for us. We can get you to bed and discuss it in the morning, which is almost here.”

  He yawned. Samonie was instantly apologetic.

  “Of course,” she said. “I’ll go at once. And I’ve kept Mistress Catherine up as well. If only I knew why.”

  Her distress was so obvious that Astrolabe ignored his irritation with her and took her up to the room.

  Catherine was waiting.

  “Samonie!” she cried. “I’ve been so worried. Here, come lie down. The children have kept the bed warm. Astrolabe, thank you.”

  She noted how drawn he seemed.

  “Would you tell the other guards that we’ll rest here one more day?” she told him. “We could all use some time out of that cart, and that will live Solomon and Edgar a better chance to catch us up.”

  Astrolabe saw no reason to protest. He looked at Samonie, who still seemed perturbed by the idea, but made no comment. She was already sagging onto the bed. He bade them all good night and went to look for a corner where he could snatch a few hours of rest.

  Catherine bit her lip in worry when she saw the shape her servant was in.

  “I’ll put you on the outside of the bed,” she told Samonie. “And I’ll take the middle. Then I can check you from time to time.”

  Samonie nodded, too exhausted to do anything but obey.

  They arranged themselves, pushing the sleeping children closer to the wall. It would be colder for them but safer. Catherine feared that, in her present state, Samonie might overlay one of them and smother the child without waking.

  Catherine closed her eyes.

  Questions piled up in her mind. Why had Samonie gone out? Why bad she needed to find Astrolabe? Was someone following them? Were they in danger? Most of all, she wondered, what was keeping Edgar and Solomon?

  Her mind speculated on these for some time, the answers becoming more and more implausible until, at last, she fell asleep.

  The monk Arnulf stomped his boots on the stone outside the tavern. It had taken him the rest of the way from the cottage to regain his equilibrium. What was that guard doing with the woman from Paris? He had guessed her to be loose legged when he had first spotted her at the monastery, but he was amazed that she would have gone out for a topple so late and in such weather. He sincerely hoped she wasn’t badly hurt and wondered what she and the guard had been doing when she had hit her head. Something sinfully acrobatic, no doubt, he thought wistfully.

  He entered the tavern, reeling at the sudden gust of heat, sweat and beer. In one corner was his friend from Paris, Canon Rolland. When he saw the cleric, the canon got up and climbed the ladder to the sleep loft above. The cleric followed.

  “Did you spot him?” he asked Rolland. “He wasn’t at the abbey.”

  “There was no one with the guards,” the canon answered. “Perhaps he didn’t come with them after all.”

  “I tell you my information is that a man left from the Blue Boar with the Jew and entered the house of Edgar, the English merchant,” insisted Arnulf. “I
was sure they had smuggled him into the cart with the family. I wish you had been the one to ask at the monastery.”

  “You should be able to spot him,” Rolland said, “if he’s really old Peter Abelard reborn. You knew his face well enough.”

  “That I did,” the cleric answered. “And hated it. But I saw no ghost of Abelard wandering the streets tonight. Only that servant woman out whoring with some soldier.”

  “We’ve missed something,” Rolland insisted. “He’s either with them or with the merchants. We must find him before he gets to the Paraclete. Once under his mother’s protection, we won’t have a chance to have him condemned.”

  “Not even for murder?” Arnulf asked.

  “Idiot! Once it’s known who he is, the worst that would happen is that he’d be given a heavy penance, a pilgrimage barefoot or something.” Rolland lowered his voice. “But if we can prove he’s a heretic, then he’ll never have peace again, even if he doesn’t burn. The scandal will ruin him. Oh, it will be such a joy to shame that Astrolabe even more than his cursed father did me.”

  He drank his beer, grimacing as if it were vinegar. Arnulf moved away from him a bit. There was something about the bitterness of the man’s anger that unsettled him. It was important to Arnulf that Astrolabe take the blame for Cecile’s death. But there was no need to be so passionate about it. Murder and heresy were not to be made instruments of revenge.

  Nor, he reflected, could they be allowed to go unpunished because the criminal’s mother was friends with half the nobility of Champagne and his father had taught half the bishops. It would have been better if the man had been no one of any importance. Still, Arnulf reflected, the choice had not been his.

  Far to the north of the Paraclete, another friend of Heloise was awake in the dark winter morning. Faintly she could hear her new baby crying, but that didn’t concern her. The wet nurse would be feeding him in a moment.

  Sybil, countess of Flanders, had more serious matters to worry about. Her husband, Thierry, had also gone to the Holy Land, leaving Sybil to run the country, care for their four small children and deliver the fifth safely.

  No sooner had he left than their old enemy, Baldwin of Hainaut, had attacked the country. Sybil had immediately been faced with the task of raising and directing an army. She had managed to arrange a truce for the last month of her pregnancy, but no sooner had Peter been born, even before she had been churched, than Baldwin had made more incursions. Sybil wasn’t surprised. A man who would break an oath made to the pope wouldn’t be intimidated by one sworn to her.

  Normally, the absence of the count would not have been a disaster. Sybil had allies of her own. But most of the lords had left with the king. Her brother, Geoffrey of Anjou, was fully occupied with seeing that his son, Henry, inherited the duchy of Normandy and the throne of England. That left few whom she could turn to in her need.

  And now word had come that the count of Treguier had dared to remove Cecile of Beaumont from her convent. Sybil had not yet told Cecile’s sister, Annora, who was living in the castle under Sybil’s protection. She had sent one of her men to Brittany to find the count and see that the girl was returned at once to her proper cloister. It angered her that this was necessary at a time when she needed every one of her knights.

  Sybil was proud of her army and the loyalty of her men. They had fought off Baldwin’s attacks and even taken the battle into his own territory. Nevertheless, Baldwin had sworn to keep the peace while Count Thierry was on pilgrimage, and he had broken this vow. It was up to Pope Eugenius to see that he was punished. To acquire papal help, she needed the support of people of undoubted piety and wisdom.

  She had decided to present her case before the pope, his cardinals and the bishops of Europe when they convened at Reims next month. The ignominy alone might be enough to convince Baldwin to withdraw his forces, although she would prefer more concrete aid. But first she would go to the Paraclete. Heloise would know whom to approach and how. She could also lend her voice to the demand that Henri of Treguier be punished for violating the sanctity of the convent of Saint-Georges-de-Rennes.

  If Pope Eugenius couldn’t convince Baldwin to stay in his own land, then she had only one other recourse. Sybil would take the drastic step of unleashing the full force of the censure of all the women religious she knew. She had friends or family in all the great convents of Christendom. All those women had fathers, brothers, sons and nephews who listened to them. And they would all counsel these men to protest Baldwin’s aggression and Henri’s blasphemy.

  Having made her decision, Sybil returned to her bed. In his keep, miles away, Baldwin whimpered in his sleep.

  Solomon regretted suggesting that they make haste on their journey. The roads were deadly for two men going this quickly on horseback. He expected any moment to be thrown as his poor mount went down on the icy trail.

  “Edgar, there’s no point in pushing us like this,” Solomon complained. “We left Paris too late to catch up with the cart. They’ll all be nice and warm at the Paraclete by now.”

  “All the more reason to get there soon,” Edgar answered, panting. “Catherine will worry until she sees us.”

  They were riding as quickly as the road allowed, too quickly for Solomon.

  “Look, vieux compang, it’s cold enough to freeze the balls off a pagan statue,” he said. “Even Jupiter would cover himself against this wind. And what will Catherine say if you show up with all your parts iced over and ready to break?”

  “She’d be furious and tell me that there were some things she couldn’t live without,” Edgar laughed. “Very well, we’ll stop at the next town.”

  “Sooner, Edgar,” Solomon begged from beneath the wreath of scarves he wore. “I can’t feel my nose at all and am all too aware of the rasping of the saddle on my ass. And the light will be gone soon.”

  They had come to a rise in the woods. Edgar stopped and scanned the horizon before they descended again. He rose in the saddle, exposing his nether region to a chilling blast.

  “I can see smoke rising over there,” he pointed to the north. “It may be a village or a company of ribauz- Do you want to risk it?”

  “Right now I’d rather have my throat slit than continue freezing. At least I’d die in warm blood,” Solomon answered. “Besides, a lot of the ribauz are no more than charcoal burners or peasants driven from their land. I don’t mind paying well to share their fire.”

  “Be on your guard all the same,” Edgar said. “We’re no match for a troop of desperate men, even if we’re better armed.”

  “At least we haven’t much to steal,” Solomon said philosophically as they made their way in the direction of the smoke. “It was a good idea of yours to put all the money under the straw in the cart.”

  It was farther than it had looked from the road to the source of the fire. Edgar had begun to fear that they had passed it among the trees when they came upon a trail that seemed more worn than the deer runs they had been following so far. About a hundred yards later, they entered a clearing.

  “Amazing!” Solomon exclaimed. “We seem to have chanced upon a rich hermit!”

  Edgar was also surprised to find, instead of some rude lean-tos, two well-built houses on either side of a small stone oratory. There was also what looked like a grain shed behind one of the houses.

  Solomon made for the nearest house, but Edgar held him back.

  “There’s something odd here,” he said. “Listen. No chickens clucking, no dog. Not a sign on the ground of sheep or goats. No pigsty. What sort of hermit doesn’t even keep a goat?”

  “Why don’t we ask him when we get inside,” Solomon suggested. “Perhaps he gave everything away to the poor. Do you think he’ll let us stable the horses in his church?”

  “He’ll have to,” Edgar said. “There’s no place else.”

  Solomon accepted that. Every now and then Edgar got a tone in his voice that reminded one that he had been born a nobleman, not a merchant. If the owner of the orator
y refused their request, Edgar would simply order him to obey. Usually, people did. The worst thing was that he seemed totally unaware of it. As a Jew, Solomon had been forced too often to seek protection from lords who had no intention of ever letting him forget that his safety depended on their power. The mere sight of them made his bile rise. Edgar was his best friend. Solomon didn’t want to be reminded that he came from this same stock.

  Of course, he sighed, he was more than willing to use Edgar’s assumption of authority when he needed it.