The Witch in the Well: A Catherine LeVendeur Mystery (2 page)

Catherine had agreed. Whatever the children did in their lives, they would receive no advancement unless they were well spoken and knew how to behave among the nobility.

Of course, now that Catherine’s children were in the country, they had begun to sound like the peasants who lived near the keep. Added to that, James was learning vulgarities from the men-at-arms that Catherine could only guess the meaning of, despite her classical education.

Still, she reminded herself, Canon Hugh of Saint Victor had written that no knowledge is useless. Perhaps Edgar would explain the words to her when he returned from Lombardy.

Catherine smiled at the thought of the conversation, trying to ignore the twist of worry in her stomach at the thought of her husband so far away. Edgar’s party had been well protected, she reminded herself. The mountain passes were clear in the summer and he wore enough charms and herbal bags to keep him safe even from the sweating sickness. He would return soon. It wasn’t as if he had gone off with King Louis on that disastrous expedition to the Holy Land. There were many women who had already learned that they were now widows and many others who would never know the fate of the men they loved.

“Ow!” Catherine was brought out of her thoughts by a piercing pain in her arm.

“Stop fidgeting and you won’t get stuck,” her maid, Samonie, told her. “If you don’t stay still, I might easily sew your inner sleeve to your robe. A fine fool you’d look then!”

Catherine settled obediently. As a trickle of sweat slid down her back, she wondered again if there might not be some less tortuous way to educate the children.

She was barely sewn together and hadn’t yet started winding the long scarf around her looped-up braids, when she heard a clatter of horses’ hooves on the hard earth of the bailey below. Samonie went to look.

“It’s Lord Guillaume,” she told Catherine. “Whatever is he doing here? He shouldn’t be back for hours. Nothing is ready!”

“Is anyone hurt?” Catherine asked.

“Don’t think so,” the maid answered. “Everyone seems to be upright in the saddle, even young Gerard. Wait! One of the men has something. . .someone slung in front of him. If they’ve brought down some poacher for sport, we’ll have mobs hurling rotten turnips and waving torches by nightfall. Idiots!”

Alarmed, Catherine gave up on style and draped the scarf loosely over her head. Together, she and Samonie hurried down the stairs and out into the bailey, where a crowd had gathered.

“Guillaume!” she called. “Why are you back so soon? What happened?”

Her brother looked down at her and waved angrily at the body slung across the horse.

“Fetch Marie!” he shouted. “Tell her to make up a bed. Some old woman. I don’t know where she came from. One minute the path was clear and the next, she was right there. I couldn’t avoid her!”

Catherine tried to push through the throng. At least the woman hadn’t been hit by an arrow. But if Guillaume’s horse had knocked her down, there wasn’t much hope that she still lived. Ernul was bred for fighting, short and solid with powerful legs. A blow from one of his hooves could cripple a grown man.

As the body was carried past her, Catherine was surprised to see movement from inside the blanket. She grabbed the nearest servant.

“Go! Run for the priest!”

The man nodded and left at once. At least there might be time for the last rites.

Marie was at the top of the stairs to the keep. She took one glance at the slight body in the knight’s arms and moved aside, pointing to the corner where a bed was hurriedly being set up. Before following him in she waved down to Samonie.

“I’ll need your help!” she called.

“Go,” Catherine told the maid. “I’ll be up soon. Call if you need me.”

“Just keep all those louts from stomping around,” Samonie answered. “Good thing we were going to eat in the courtyard tonight.”

Catherine wasn’t sure that would be possible. At the moment, the place was full of horses, hunters, dogs, and various onlookers all getting in the way.

“Watch out!”

A load of nets and snares landed on the ground right next to her. Catherine jumped back and collided with a squire trying to lead three horses to the stables.

“Sorry, sorry, my lady,” he said. But his tone asked what she was doing there instead of being up in the solar at her sewing.

Guillaume was in the center of it all, still mounted, shouting orders. Catherine tried to find a path to him through the commotion, but there didn’t seem to be one. Finally, she grabbed at the first man moving toward the keep and followed in his wake.

“Hamelin!” She touched the man’s shoulder. “What’s going on? Who is that old woman?”

The young sergeant stopped abruptly, causing Catherine to bump against his back. He turned around. His usually cheerful expression was somber.

“I don’t know who she is,” he said. “Not from any of the villages around here, I can swear to that. It was a bad day all round. No game but a few rabbits. Heat that stuck us all to our saddles. Even the forest seemed bent on tripping us up. And then, out of nowhere, this crone leaps onto the path, right in front of Lord Guillaume. It was a miracle she wasn’t killed outright.”

They both crossed themselves. Hamelin shook his head and shoulders, as if trying to cast off the memory of the woman falling under Ernul’s hooves. He leaned closer to Catherine.

“Osbert says that he saw her come out of a tree trunk,” he whispered. “As Lord Guillaume approached, it just opened up and tossed her out.”

He stared at her, daring her to laugh.

But Catherine didn’t. There was something about this day, the long afternoon shadows, the muggy air, the way that even the loudest voices around her seemed muted. She felt the heaviness pressing upon her, like a harbinger of evil.

She took a deep breath to clear her head.

“Osbert may have been mistaken,” she told Hamelin. “That sort of thing doesn’t usually happen outside of Brittany.”

Catherine gave him a doubtful smile. After a moment, Hamelin chuckled, albeit nervously.

“You’re right,” he agreed. “No one else saw it, or will admit they did, at least.”

His laughter helped to dissipate the vague fear that had gripped Catherine’s stomach. She was glad she had asked Hamelin for information. For a young man, he had an air of
gravitas
about him that usually came with years of experience. One reason, she supposed, that her brother trusted him so much. He didn’t come from a great family. He had simply been the man chosen by the rest of his village to fulfill the duty of providing a soldier for the lord’s guard. But his natural talent had brought him to Guillaume’s notice and Hamelin had been rewarded enough to
decide to stay at the keep, earning more responsible positions each year.

Catherine put a hand on his arm. “Thank you,” she said. “Now can you make a pathway for me to get back into the keep without ruining my clothes any further?”

A low cot stood in an alcove off the Great Hall. Marie had called for candles, but for now the only light was what filtered dimly in through a small window of thick green glass. As Catherine approached, her sight clouded after the bright day outside, she thought that instead of a withered crone, a young woman lay on the bed, her face the color of the moss that grows on stones by a stream. Then her eyes adjusted to the gloom, and the woman became aged again, her thin white hair tangled with bits of twigs. She gave a heart-wrenching moan.

“Water!” Marie shouted.

Samonie rushed past Catherine, carrying a pitcher and basin, drying towels, and bandages draped over her arm. She knelt next to the bed and began wetting the cloths.

“Will you need more, my lady?” she asked Marie.

“I don’t think so,” Marie answered. “She doesn’t seem to have any cuts or broken bones.”

She looked at Samonie in amazement, not believing her own words.

“How can this be?”

“Perhaps Lord Guillaume was able to avoid her, after all,” Samonie suggested. “And she fainted from terror.”

Marie shook her head. “No, that’s impossible. I saw the hoof marks on her cloak when she was carried in. They tore through the fabric.”

She felt again all over the body of the unconscious woman. “Nothing. Not even swelling. There must at least be some terrible bruises.” She raised her voice. “Where is the girl with the candles?”

“I’m coming, Mother!”

Evaine entered the hall, carefully balancing a pair of candle-holders.

“There was no fire inside so we had to go to the storeroom for the candles and then to the kitchens to light them. I’m sorry it took so long.”

“Thank you,
ma douz
,” Marie said. “Give one to Samonie and the other to Catherine. Now, you two, hold them up so that I can see her better.”

Catherine hurried over to do her part. The candles tilted as she took the holder, causing the hot wax to drip onto her fingers.

“Ouch,” she said absently, trying to look over Marie’s shoulder. Samonie had the better view from the other side of the bed.

After a moment, she noticed that Evaine was still there. Catherine smiled down at her niece.

“It was good of you to bring the candles,” she told the child. “Don’t worry, your mother doesn’t think the woman is that badly hurt after all.”

Evaine smiled. “Oh, I’m so glad. I was praying for her all the way up the staircase. Who is she?”

“We don’t know,” Catherine answered. “She’ll have to tell us when she wakes up.”

Marie overheard this. “Evaine dear,” she said quietly. “Perhaps you should go find your father and ask if he can come here a moment.”

Even in the dim light, Catherine could see Evaine’s blush. “He went down to the pond with other men to wash, Mama. You told me not to. . .”

“Yes, I did,” Marie answered hastily. “Then could you go to the doorway and watch for Father Anselm? He should be here soon.”

“Yes, Mama.” Evaine gave a sigh and went to sit on the top step until the priest came.

Marie waited until she had gone before uncovering the old
woman’s body. Catherine bent closer, careful not to tip the candles again. “Oh, dear Virgin!” she gasped.

In the middle of the woman’s stomach was the deep black print of a horse’s hoof. The bruise radiated out from it, an ugly purple. The stain was still spreading across her skin.

“She must have landed directly beneath the horse.” Samonie shook her head. “I don’t see how her back didn’t break.”

“Will she survive?” Catherine asked.

“I doubt it,” Marie said. “We can try leeches, if any can be found in this weather, to draw out the excess blood, but that’s the only treatment I know of for such things.”

“I think the damage is too great,” Samonie added. “The blow must have crushed her stomach and bowels. I hope Father Anselm hurries.”

“Do you think she’ll wake?” Catherine stared in horror at the enormous angry discoloration that now covered the woman’s stomach from her withered breasts to her sparse white private hair. She wished Marie would cover the poor thing.

“I hope not,” Marie answered. “Her pain would be horrible. I should have a numbing draught ready, though, in case she does.” At last she pulled a sheet over the woman’s nakedness. “Catherine, will you sit here with her while Samonie mixes the draught? I must go see what preparations are being made to feed the household.”

Reluctantly, Catherine agreed.

Except for an occasional person passing through, the Great Hall behind her was deserted. From outside Catherine could hear the servants calling to one another as they set up tables and benches in the bailey for dinner that evening. She knew the moment when the men came back from the pool by the increase in masculine laughter. It seemed that the hunting party had recovered from the shock of the accident. It was only when she heard the deep, distinctive bark of James’s dog, Dragon, that she realized that her son must have gone bathing with them. That
would undoubtedly mean a number of new phrases for her to try toexplain.

The noise was muffled by the thick stone walls that made the scorching heat bearable. The candles flickered by the bed, their light blending with the green from the window, causing it to appear as if the woman were lying under a willow tree, thin branches passing over her face in the wind. She didn’t seem to be suffering. Catherine murmured a prayer for her comfort and that of her soul. She dipped the end of one of the cloths in the basin and started to moisten the woman’s face.

Suddenly her wrist was caught and held in an iron grip that pulled her down, almost against the woman’s face. She grabbed at the arm with her free hand, dropping the cloth.

The woman’s eyes snapped open.

Catherine inhaled to scream, but only a squeak emerged. Instead of the rheumy, pale eyes of age, what glared at her were a pair of glittering bright orbs, black as polished onyx.

“Wha. . .wha. . . wha?” Catherine forced out.

She tried again to pull free, but now those eyes held her more powerfully than the hand about her wrist.

The old woman forced Catherine’s face closer to hers. She opened her mouth.

“The water,” she croaked.

“Water, yes. I have water here.” Catherine twisted to reach the pitcher.

The hand jerked her back.

“Water,” the woman said again.“They have dammed the spring. Monsters! The evil is coming for all Andonenn’s children. You must save her! Save her before the well is empty!”

“What? Who?” Catherine wasn’t warm now, but freezing. This wasn’t a human being lying on the bed, but some incubus, a servant of the devil.
“Domine!”
she prayed.
“Misereatur mei, dimissis pecatis meis, perducat me ad vitam eternam.”

“Stop babbling and listen!” The woman’s voice was fainter
now but the intensity remained. “You must release her or she will die and all her children with her.”

“But who?” Catherine cried. “I don’t understand! Who will die?”

The hard fingers relaxed their hold on her. The woman’s terrifying eyes lost their focus and began to close.

“Please!” Catherine begged. “Tell me, who must I save?”

The voice was no more than a leaf on the breeze now, a long, long exhalation that took the spirit of the woman with it.