“And Hugh of Auxerre is not only bishop under Raynald’s brother, the count of Auxerre, he’s also a distant relation of Abbot Bernard and a former monk of Cîteaux,” Edgar added. “Any meddling on our part to discredit Raynald might only make things worse in his opinion.”
“It seems as if we’ll be damned whichever way we go.” Astrolabe didn’t sound very concerned.
“Then we may as well continue as we planned,” Edgar yawned.
There was the sound of scratching from Astrolabe’s side of the room.
“I think,” he said mildly, “I’ll mention to Mother that, now that Lent is over, Brother Baldwin should be encouraged to change the straw in this bed.”
“I remember a bathhouse in Paris where the estuveresses sing as they wash your hair,” Edgar said, half asleep. “I’ll take you there when we get back.”
“Do you think Catherine would approve?” Astrolabe laughed.
The image came to Edgar of a huge wooden tub filled with steaming water and Catherine sitting next to him, clothed only in the dark disorder of her curls, soapy and smiling.
“Edgar?”
Edgar was grateful for the darkness. His imagination was affecting his body strongly. Suddenly, he was wide awake.
“Approve?” he said. “Why not? They’d just wash our hair. But what about this business here? We can’t ignore it. Catherine definitely wouldn’t approve of that.”
“But where could we start?” Astrolabe asked. “We can’t simply accuse Raynald of murder and demand trial by combat.”
Edgar shuddered at the thought. He’d seen enough of those at home.
“We could try to eliminate Walter of Grancy as a suspect,” he suggested. “Or prove his guilt. He probably has a group of friends and tenants all willing to swear to his innocence, but we could ask locally about where he was when the countess was attacked. People are more likely to tell the truth when they’re not asked to swear to it in public.”
“Yes, that would be a good start,” Astrolabe said. “First we take my father and Catherine back to Paris and then we’ll set out on our own private crusade.
C’est tes acors
?”
“Ç
’est mes acors
,” Edgar agreed. He wondered how Catherine would feel about being left behind in Paris. He wondered how he would feel about leaving her. Both speculations were unsettling.
“How many locks does the Paraclete have?” he asked suddenly. “Brother Baldwin has been gone a long time.”
“Maybe we should go see if he needs any help,” Astrolabe said.
Edgar agreed. They stopped at the hostel to see if Brother Baldwin was there, but there was no sign of him. Growing worried, Edgar picked up a stout iron-tipped hoe from the toolroom, just in case.
Catherine heard the whispers for some time before she woke enough to realize what they were. There were men hissing in the herb garden under the infirmary window. Yes, men, of course, not the snakes and dragons of her dream. Sister Melisande slept the sleep of the hard-working and pure of thought. She didn’t stir when Catherine crept closer to the window to make out the words.
“It’s your duty, old man,” someone said. “There’s a traitor in there.”
“Whom did they betray?” The voice was Brother Baldwin’s. “One of your lords? That’s nothing to me. I have no earthly allegiance now. I only serve God and his daughters here.”
“And what if one of them broke the laws of God?” the man insisted.
“Then I would leave her to his justice,” Baldwin answered. “Now go from this place. You have no business prowling about here like the soldiers at Christ’s tomb. The night is for grave robbers and heretics.”
“We’ll have her,” the other man said, “if we have to burn this place down to do it.”
“God won’t let you.” Baldwin’s voice rose. “And neither will I.”
Through the shutter, Catherine saw the glint of a dagger being raised and pointed at Brother Baldwin. She reached for the first heavy object she could lay her hands on. A solid earthenware pot.
“I hope there’s nothing expensive in this,” she thought as she pushed the shutter open and dropped it on the head of Baldwin’s attacker.
There was a thump and a cry. The knife dropped. Baldwin picked it up with a swiftness that belied his new profession.
“What did I tell you?” he said calmly. “God has spoken. If I slit your throats right here, I’ve no doubt I’ll be doing his will. I cut enough of them at Antioch and Jerusalem and the pope himself blessed me for it. Are you ready to meet your creator?”
Catherine couldn’t make out the faces in the dark, but she could tell that there were two men facing Baldwin. Their ages combined were probably half his, but the charisma of the crusader was on him and they were uncertain as to their next move.
“Brother Baldwin!” someone called.
The men turned. Edgar and Astrolabe had followed the intruders over the garden hedge and were running toward them. Catherine heard the sound of steel being unsheathed. She knew neither Edgar nor Astrolabe were trained to fight and she feared neither one had a weapon. She felt around. What else was there to throw?
“
Montjoie et Saint Denis
!” Brother Baldwin gave the old battle cry as he leaped at the men who were now advancing upon Astrolabe and Edgar.
“
Hâlig Cuthbert ond Ædward Cyning!
” Edgar shouted back as he charged the knights with the hoe.
Catherine added to the confusion by throwing as many small objects as she could reach from the shelf next to the window.
Caught by sudden attacks from two sides and above, the knights veered suddenly and made for their horses, tethered to a tree outside the hedge.
Edgar and Astrolabe reached Brother Baldwin as the knights rode off.
“Did they hurt you?” Edgar asked.
“Hardly,” Baldwin responded, tucking the knife in his rope belt. “I had them well in hand and only spared them for Our Lord’s sake, of course. That was some advance you made, young man. I wouldn’t have thought one of you scholars would have enough pendans to fight.”
“My father would have been surprised, too,” Edgar said.
“I wasn’t,” Catherine announced.
They all looked up.
“Was that you showering rocks at us?” Baldwin said. “I haven’t been so pelted since the siege of Antioch.”
“Have we wakened the whole convent?” Astrolabe asked.
“I don’t think so,” Catherine said, remembering to lower her voice again. “The dorter is on the other side of the cloister. Even Sister Melisande hasn’t stirred. What did those men want, Brother Baldwin?”
“Robbery and rape, most likely,” Baldwin said.
“I heard more than that,” Catherine told him. “They were looking for a particular woman.”
“Catherine, we can’t discuss this here, shouting up at you,” Astrolabe reminded her.
“You’re right, I’ll come down,” Catherine answered. “It’s not far. If I hang from the window, will one of you catch me?”
“Catherine! You can’t do any such thing!” Edgar was as horrified as Sister Bertrada would have been. “It’s the middle of the night!”
“I know that,” she said as she climbed over the sill. “And all the gates are locked and barred. But I really must get out somehow and not just to talk to you. I have a definite problem. I just discovered that the first thing I threw at those men was the infirmary chamberpot.”
With that, she dropped into Edgar’s waiting arms.
“Now,” said Catherine when she had returned after taking care of immediate business, “it sounds to me as if the count sent someone back to see that Paciana never revealed what she knew about the countess Alys.”
Edgar agreed. “The abbess should be warned. What if they come back and bring a larger troop?”
Brother Baldwin seemed more perturbed by the troop standing around him.
“The other brothers and I can fight off such men,” he insisted. “Or we’ll send to Anseau of Trainel for aid. But there really can’t be any danger. Think of what you’re saying, son. No one would attempt to attack a convent, at least not openly. Especially not this one. Not a house in Christendom would be open to such a man.”
That was true. Not since the days of the heathen invaders, hundreds of years ago, had a convent been destroyed by force. Even in tales like
Raoul de Cambrai,
such an act was done only by the greatest villain and was punished most horribly by God and man. The walls of the convent were not for defense. They were a symbol of the division between the worlds of the sacred and the profane. As Catherine had proved, it was not difficult to leave and anyone determined to enter could, welcome or not.
“Still, my mother and father must be told,” Astrolabe said. “The protection of the Paraclete is their duty.”
“Of course,” Catherine said. “But I don’t think Count Raynald will lay siege to the Paraclete. He only wanted to remove one woman, and quietly, by night, it seems.”
“Then this is not the place to look for the answers,” Astrolabe said.
“No, we have to find out what happened some other way,” Catherine agreed. “Edgar, do you think we could wait until after Ascension to be married? I want to see Alys’s mother, Constanza, and it would be easier to go alone.”
“Forty days more!” Edgar forgot to keep his voice down. “Why not wait until Pentecost or Michaelmas or Christmas? Perhaps you’d like to forget the whole idea?”
For an instant, Catherine was startled by his reaction. For another instant, she was angry. Then she realized what he was really saying.
“Then why not tonight, now?” she asked. “Consent is all that’s required and we have that.”
“Well, unless you can think of a way to get back into the infirmary tonight, that might be the best idea,” Astrolabe said.
“Oh, no!” Brother Baldwin interrupted. “I don’t think much of almost-consecreated nuns leaving the convent for marriage, but if you do it, you go out by the front gate, with the blessing of the abbess and the sisters. I have the keys and I’m taking you back now. What you do tomorrow or Michaelmas is not my responsibility, but tonight, it is.”
He took Catherine roughly by the elbow and marched her to the little door leading from the garden to the infirmary. He unlocked it and unceremoniously pushed her inside, making sure to lock the door after her.
“Now, let’s have no more sacrilege done tonight,” he said when he returned to Edgar and Astrolabe. “Not in all my years here have I had such an evening.”
“Reminds you of the old days, does it?” Astrolabe asked.
“Ah, yes,” Brother Baldwin smiled. “I could have run those
avoutres
through the heart as easy as slicing bread. It’s shameful how they’re training men these days. A knight who loses his concentration just because a pot falls on his head won’t last long in this world.”
Edgar paid them little attention. Forty days! He’d already waited four months. That was enough. And what did Catherine have in mind regarding the mother of the countess? Did she intend to disguise herself as a laundress and uncover secrets among the dirty sheets? Did she think for a moment that he would let her go alone into a place that might harbor a murderer?
Edgar stopped. Of course she did. For the first time, he realized why Catherine’s father had sighed when he accepted the dower for her. He had thought it was a sigh of regret. But now he knew it was relief.
Despite himself, Edgar grinned. Life with Catherine was going to be fun.
The Paraclete,
dawn, Easter Sunday, April 7, 1140
Inde est, quod omnes credimus:
illo quietis tempore,
quo gallus exsultans canit,
Christum redisse ex infernis
.
And so it is, as we all believe, that at this quiet moment, when the cock crows in exultation, Christ returned from hell.
—Prudentius,
Cathemerinon
T
he entire community stood on the hill outside the convent to greet the Risen Savior. Father Guiberc and Abelard came first. Then the sisters arrived in procession, Abbess Héloïse leading, their faces illuminated by the candle each one carried. The tiny drops of light flickered through the mist of the morning twilight like splinters of hope. Sister Hersende raised her hands. There was a long silence as everyone watched her. She gave the signal and all the candles were extinguished by the joyous breath of the Alleluia given at the first ray of dawn.
Many of the townspeople of Saint-Aubin had come to attend this Easter service, which was special to the Paraclete. Edgar and Astrolabe looked them over carefully to be sure none of Raynald’s men were among them. But only local people made up the gathering; peasants, craftsmen, and the minor knights and their families, hardly better dressed than those who tilled the fields.
Catherine stood with them, participating in the responses of the laity. She knew all these people, from the poor knight, Felix, who gave them the fish from his pond at Bossenay, to Walter the bargeman, who gave the convent land and tithes, to Paul and Emmelina the vintners, who had brought their children, still half-asleep. The family set aside an arpent of vines every year to make wine for the nuns. Even Emma Rebursata had come, her bristly hair covered as well as possible. Catherine had always felt a certain comradeship with Emma, whose hair was so untamable that the children called her Emma Hedgehog. All these people were as much a part of the Paraclete as the nuns. They tithed themselves to support the convent and depended on it for prayers and comfort.
So it was not so foreign on this side of the choir, after all. Catherine went with the town into the church by the common door, her hand resting lightly in the crook of Edgar’s arm.
She cried through the entire services of Easter Lauds, not noisily, but as snow melts in the sunlight. When it was over, she had mourned her old life and knew she was ready to rejoice in the new one.
“Are you going to do that at our wedding?” Edgar asked as they left.
“Very likely,” Catherine admitted, returning her sodden handkerchief to her sleeve. “Ceremonies always make me cry. But I feel absolutely wonderful when I’ve finished.”
“I won’t wait until Ascension,” he told her.
“I must find out about Countess Alys,” she said.
“We’ll find a way to do it together,” he answered. “We should start as we mean to go on.”
“And what of the accusations against Master Abelard?” Catherine asked.
Edgar shook his head. “We can do nothing about those except to be prepared to stand with him should he continue in his determination to debate Abbot Bernard.”
“Together?”
“Yes. Do you doubt me?” Edgar asked.
Catherine looked away. “I think that you mean it at this moment. But a part of me is still afraid. In law you will have the power to beat me and to forbid me what I want most. Other men do this.”
Edgar considered that. Technically, his father had that same power over him, his brothers and his stepmother. It had never occurred to Edgar that he would have any more luck exercising that power than his father had.
“Do you know what Master Hugh of Saint-Victor says?” he asked.
“About beating your wife?” Catherine said. “What would he know about that?”
Edgar went on. “He says that Eve was made from Adam’s rib to be his equal companion. If she were to have been his mistress, she would have been made from the head; if his slave, from the feet. He also says that marriage is a reciprocal compact in which we each become debtor to the other, and Catherine, I very much want to start paying my debt.”
Catherine feared she might start crying again.
“Oh, Edgar,” she said, “I’m so glad you’re well read. I think we should be married the moment we get to Paris.”
“That is an arrangement I can tolerate,” he answered. “The very first moment.”
“Agreed.”
The next morning, as they were preparing to leave, Sister Thecla came to the infirmary to see Catherine.
“There’s a man at the gate,” she said. “He says he needs to see you and Master Abelard before you go.”
“Do you know who he is?” Catherine asked.
“I’ve never seen him before. His accent is of Paris,” she answered. “He says he’s a messenger of your father’s.”
“Father?”
“I asked him to wait in the guest’s entry, but he said he’d rather stay outside. He looks quite a bit like you,” Sister Thecla added. “Don’t you have a brother?”
“Yes, but he doesn’t look …” Catherine got up. Not her brother, but her cousin, her Jewish cousin. Although she had known him all her life, she had only discovered their relationship the previous autumn. But that was something Sister Thecla wasn’t ever to know. Her father would be ruined if anyone in Paris learned he had secretly returned to the faith of his parents.
“I’ll come down at once,” she finished.
Solomon was waiting with Edgar, Astrolabe and Master Abelard by the gate. They looked far too serious for a wedding party.
“
Diex te saut
,” Catherine greeted him shortly. “What’s happened? Is my father all right?”
“He’s well,” Solomon answered. “He sent me to tell you that you mustn’t come to Paris now. Your mother has returned home unexpectedly.”
“Oh, dear, that is inconvenient.” Catherine tried to think of an alternative. “Couldn’t I come stay with Eliazar?”
“No,” Solomon said. “Hubert thinks it would be too dangerous. Your sister tries to keep your mother under guard, but you know how she wanders from church to church. What if she saw you in the street?”
“From what I understand of your mother’s condition,” Abelard said, “she firmly believes that you ascended to heaven last Christmastide from the tower of your brother’s castle and that you are among the blessed saints.”
Glumly, Catherine nodded. “Agnes says that she’s built a shrine to me up there between the bake oven and the guard’s urinal.”
“Just think what it might do to her, if she met you one night, walking through the Juiverie,” Abelard reminded her. “She has found her own way to reconcile herself to losing you. She might not be strong enough to endure the joy of having you back.”
“But it’s so embarrassing,” Catherine said. “And difficult. What can we do?”
“Your father has given me orders concerning that,” Solomon told her. “I’m to take you to Troyes.”
Catherine stared at him, shocked. She turned to Edgar. He looked at the ground and shuffled his feet. She made an attempt to control her anger. She failed.
“The only way you’re taking me to Troyes is trussed up like one of your parcels, and you’d better gag me, too, or you’ll hear what I think of you every step of the way!” she began. “How dare my father send me off like a horse to market!”
“Now Catherine,” Edgar began.
“And aren’t you going to do anything about this?” she yelled at him. “Does one partner just stand there writing in the dust while the other one is stolen into slavery?”
“It’s hardly that …” Solomon tried again.
“And what would you call it, if you were picked up and taken somewhere you didn’t want to go, without any consultation?” she shouted.
“Catherine!” he shouted back. “Why do you think I’m here now? Have I ever had a say in where I go or what I do? I’ve been so long running from one faire and trading town to another that I haven’t even had time to find a wife of my own. I just returned from Mainz; do you think I was eager to turn around without washing the dust from my clothes and race here to be abused by you?”
They stood nose-to-nose, mirror images of fury. Suddenly, Catherine’s lip twitched. She started to laugh.
“Solomon,” she giggled. “It’s just like when we were children. We never could play without fighting.” She pulled herself together quickly. “But I still won’t go to Troyes.”
The gate opened and Mother Héloïse came out.
“I’m sorry to lose your voice for the choir,” she told Catherine. “It carries so well.”
“Mother, do you know what they want me to do?” Catherine was still too upset to submit to the rebuke.
“I believe everyone from here to Nogent does,” Héloïse replied. “I don’t know all the particulars, but if you would consider following your father’s request, there are some things I would like you to do for me in Troyes. Could we please come inside and discuss this?”
“Catherine, I had no intention of letting you go anywhere without me,” Edgar said as they all went through the gate.
“You might have said so at once,” Catherine muttered, but she was already ashamed of her outburst. She looked back at Solomon. His face was thin and drawn. She shouldn’t have taken her anger out on him. It was as stupid as killing the messenger who carried bad tidings.
Solomon hesitated at the threshold, then shrugged in resignation and entered. Héloïse led them to the gatehouse. Abelard sat in the chair reserved for honored visitors and the others in a row on a bench against the wall. As always when worried, the abbess paced the room. When she stopped, her fine fingers still moved, lacing and unlacing themselves as she spoke.
“I have found a puzzle in the charters,” she told them. “I need your help to explain it.”
She turned to Master Peter. “You know our situation; the Paraclete exists on bits and pieces of things. People don’t give us great tracts of land the way they do for the monks. We get eggs and cheese and a third of the grinding of a mill. Or the right to some woodland for fuel or building.”
“I thought the people here had been generous to you,” Abelard said. “Are you in need? Do they deny you subsistence because of your association with me?”
“Of course not,” she said too quickly. “What I meant was that I am accustomed to many small donations, which together provide for us very well and in a true Christian spirit of sharing. Countess Alys gave us one such small piece of land, in the forest of Othe. We had the use of it in her lifetime and were to receive it in full if she died after making her profession here.”
She paused. “At least, that is how I interpret the charter. Count Raynald disagrees with me. He wants us to return the land at once. I don’t understand his vociferousness. The gift is not extensive and the land, as I recall, is extremely rocky. We have done nothing with it since the donation, as it’s useless for farming or grazing.”
“Then why is Count Raynald so determined not to let you have it?” Astrolabe asked.
“That’s what I would like Catherine to find out in Troyes. I believe there are people there who will know why this unimportant bit of land is so valuable to Raynald,” Héloïse answered. She turned to Solomon. “Where did Sieur Hubert plan on Catherine staying, at Nôtre-Dame-aux-Nonnains?”
Solomon was distinctly uncomfortable. He did not like being anywhere near a convent and he hated pretense. What should he tell her?
“I think Father had intended that I stay with a family of his acquaintance,” Catherine spoke up. “At least, I presume so. Another merchant who might be going back to Paris soon.”
Héloïse looked from Catherine to Solomon.
“Are these people coreligionists of yours?” she asked.
Solomon nodded.
“And they would take her in?”
He shrugged and nodded again.
“As you know, Mother,” Catherine said, “my father has many business dealings with the Jews. Since, by their laws, they are not allowed to loan money to each other, he often acts as an intermediary.”
“If her safety could be assured,” Abelard spoke slowly, considering, “she would have much more freedom of movement there than if she went to another convent.”
He faced Catherine. “You have made it clear that you do not wish to go to Troyes. Would you change your mind for our sake?”
Throughout the discussion, Edgar had sat staring at the floor, seemingly lost in his own thoughts. Now he took Catherine’s hand.
“Master Abelard … Father Peter,” he said, “Catherine and I, we seem to be constantly brought together only to be separated again. There is nothing I must do in Paris, unless you have a commission for me. If she must go to Troyes, I want to go with her … honorably.”
“Oh, yes,” Catherine said. “I think that would be the most logical thing to do. Edgar would be a great help, Mother. We work very well together. Master Abelard, we have all the contracts signed, everything we need. Will you please witness and bless our vows here, now?”