The Witch in the Well: A Catherine LeVendeur Mystery (4 page)

“You’ll have to go to Hell to do it!” a man from the crowd cried out.

There was a chorus of agreement from the people in the bailey.

“She was a demon,” one of the nursemaids said flatly. “Didn’t Osbert say she came from inside a tree? We’re all cursed!”

Catherine felt a shiver start at the nape of her neck and run down her spine. Logic was rapidly evaporating. The eerie vision of the woman, both young and old, now seemed less a dream. But if what she had said was true then. . .

“It’s not a curse!” Catherine said abruptly, thinking aloud. “It’s a warning.”

The silence was as sudden as a thunderclap. Everyone turned to look at her.

“Catherine,” Guillaume said, his voice blade sharp. “What are you running on about?”

Marie rushed to her side. “It was just a dream she had. It means nothing!”

Catherine stopped her next words. “Yes,” she said with an effort. “Just a dream.”

Her brother glared at her and then nodded toward the keep. Catherine knew she would soon be interrogated thoroughly. For now, she remembered that Guillaume was the lord here and to be obeyed. Marie tugged at her sleeve and the two women returned inside, leaving the lord to restore order.

It was midafternoon before the villagers were convinced to return to their homes and the servants to their work. They went muttering and grumbling, but they went. Guillaume gave a sigh of relief. At least for now his authority held.

He mounted the steps to the keep slowly, trying not to show how weary he was. He wasn’t looking forward to talking with his little sister. Catherine had always been a puzzle to him, too bookish and, in his mind, not gifted with much useful learning. His rare conversations with her always left him wondering how they could have been born of the same parents. His other sister,
Agnes, was much more sensible. It was a shame she’d married so far away in Germany. He doubted that he’d ever see her again.

He sensed the man climbing the stairs behind him and his hand automatically went to his knife.

“My lord!”

Guillaume relaxed slightly.

“Hamelin.” He spoke without turning around. “Have you found what happened to the woman’s body?”

“No, my lord.” There was a pause. “I swear that no one passed me during my watch in the night. Is there no other way from the keep? Some passage known only to a few?”

Guillaume’s back stiffened. “Are you suggesting that someone close to me is in the habit of stealing corpses?”

“No! I mean, of course not.” Hamelin tried to find words that would not earn him dismissal. “But there must be a sensible explanation. You don’t think she simply vanished, do you?”

Now Guillaume did face his knight. He smiled without mirth.

“Or that she turned herself into a serpent and slithered through a crack in the stones?” he asked. “No, I don’t. I think that someone went in and got her, either living or not. I want to know who and why. And, if Bernat is being honest when he says nothing passed him, I want to know how.”

Hamelin’s face went red.

“My lord, I will find the answer,” he said. “Even if it earns me expulsion from your service.”

Guillaume’s expression softened. “If you made no plans to deceive, nor were bribed to look the other way, then you needn’t fear my anger. This woman may have some power over the minds of others. If so, we must discover her reason for using it on us. I can think of nothing in the keep or the village that anyone would desire enough to contrive such an elaborate illusion.”

Hamelin’s shoulders relaxed. He could face anything but being cast out of Guillaume’s service. Even demons.

They had reached the entry to the keep. Marie was waiting for her husband. She didn’t need to ask if the body had been found.

“Come in,” she said gently. “There’s a basin of water and cloth to wipe the grime from your face and hands. I’ve put a platter of new cheese and strawberries on the table by the hearth downstairs. Take what you like, Hamelin.”

The knight didn’t need to be asked twice. It was the most refined dismissal he had ever received.

Guillaume followed Marie up to their private room.

“You know that things like this only happen when Catherine is staying with us,” he grumbled.

Marie handed him a damp towel.

“I didn’t realize we’d ever lost a body before,” she commented. “You can’t blame your sister. She is as puzzled as the rest of us.”

“Hummph,” Guillaume said from behind the facecloth. “Well, then, she shouldn’t be. All that learning she’s supposed to have, she could give us the profit of it.”

Marie took the cloth and handed him a cup of flat beer and cucumber juice. Her husband sniffed it and then drained the cup.

“Foul stuff,” he said. “But it cools the throat. Now, have you managed to learn what my clever sister meant by ‘a warning’?”

Marie pursed her lips, trying to find the right words.

“She had a strange experience while watching the woman.” Marie paused while she thought of a way to describe it without alarming Guillaume. “I’m sure Catherine had fallen asleep and dreamed the whole thing, but she told me that the woman came to life and told her that the well was drying and she had to save her mother. Total nonsense, of course.”

“What?”

She couldn’t believe the croaked word had come from Guillaume. She’d never heard her husband sound so frightened. Marie moved closer to where Guillaume had just sat heavily on their bed.

She sat down next to him and put her hand on his cheek, turning his face to hers.

“This means something to you?” she asked. “Is your mother in danger? I thought she was safe in the convent.”

Guillaume’s face was pale and his skin cold to her touch. His eyes were a hand’s breadth from hers, but Marie felt he wasn’t seeing her.

“What’s wrong?” She tapped his cheek to bring him back.

Guillaume gave her a look as bleak as damnation.

“The prophecy,” he whispered. “It can’t be. Why now? Who could want such retribution? What could we have done?”

“My dear.” Marie swallowed and started again. “Husband, you are making my blood freeze even in this heat.”

“It can’t be!” Guillaume stood up so abruptly that Marie was thrown to the floor. “I won’t believe it. It’s only a legend, a tale for children. Catherine made it all up just to scare me. Does she think we’re back in the nursery? I’ll get the truth of this from her now.”

He strode from the room.

The sun was taking a long time to set that day. Long arrows of light pierced the woods around the village and keep. They glistened on the ripples of the Seine, turning the water gold. The rising wind picked up dust from the arid fields and roads and splashed it onto the sere plants. The color of the world was shades of brown.

The two horsemen approaching the castle keep did nothing to alter the monotony of the landscape. They wore dull beige cloaks of light wool and dark brown felt hats to fend off the sun. The watcher at the edge of the forest had the impression that they were in a hurry, but the heat was forcing them to little more than a walk.

“Any water left in the skin?” the rider in front slowed to ask.

“Enough,” the other answered, tossing a flopping leather bag to him. “But it tastes of the mule.”

Solomon took a long drink anyway. The bag deflated. He wiped his mouth and then pushed back his hat and sprinkled the last drops onto his thick black hair.

“Sorry,” he told his partner. “We’re almost there, though, and you at least can be sure of the offer of a beer and a bath from your lout of a brother-in-law.”

“So can you. After the reaming Catherine gave him the last time you were there,” Edgar chuckled. “Guillaume will make no more comments about a Jew polluting his pond.”

Solomon’s expression was sour. “There are times when it would give me immense satisfaction to tell him that he and I are first cousins.”

Edgar’s pale skin blanched even more at the idea. He knew, well, he was fairly sure, that Solomon would never do such a thing. The knowledge would tear Catherine’s family apart. She and her sister, Agnes, knew that their father was a convert. Agnes had been horrified, but agreed to say nothing. However, their brother had no suspicion, and Edgar prayed he never would. Guillaume barely tolerated his father’s many connections with Jewish traders and that only because it gave him the extra funds to live like the lord he wanted to be. There was no telling what he would do if he found out that many of those merchants were his relatives.

Solomon laughed at his friend’s face.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not eager to claim him as kin, either. And I don’t want him to throw me out until we find out what that message means.”

“It may be just as much a mystery to him as to us,” Edgar commented.

At that moment they rounded a bend in the road and saw the village and keep of Vielleteneuse only a league away. Edgar tried to push his flagging mount to a trot. The horse simply walked more slowly.

“It looks peaceful enough there,” Solomon said. “There’s washing flapping from the crennels.”

“The messenger said that this was his next stop.” Edgar looked worried. “You’d think there’d be more activity.”

“Not if Guillaume knew it was all nonsense.” Solomon pushed back his cloak. The heat was worse than the dust. His faded green tunic was dark with sweat.

Edgar took off his hat and fanned his face with it. His pale blond hair stuck damply to his forehead.

“Old Gargenaud may have gone mad,” he conceded. “He’s got to be almost as old as Adam by now. But then why would anyone be willing to humor his delusions enough to send messengers out in this weather?”

Solomon yawned, shaking his head. They were in the village now. Most of the houses were set in a long row, with the fields stretching out behind up to the forest. Edgar noticed first that there seemed to be more people about than usual. They were clustered in groups where the fences joined or around a beer barrel in the common green. Although he had known most of them for years, the women barely nodded at him as they passed. The men just stared.

“Saint Mungo’s sacred salmon!” Edgar shouted at the group by the beer. “What’s happened here? Why are you all standing about like this?”

One of the men disengaged himself from the spigot and came over as Edgar dismounted. The man’s eyes carefully avoided the strap around the stump at the end of Edgar’s left arm.

“Ask at the keep, my lord,” he told Edgar. “There’s curses and sorcery about and it’ll bring famine this winter, mark me. If we aren’t all blighted with boils before.”

The bleak despair in his voice filled Edgar with dread. He spun about and put his foot in the stirrup, catching the strap around his wrist on the pommel to steady himself, and swung up again. Before his rear touched the saddle he heard a shrill voice.

“Papa! Papa!”

James came racing down the narrow path from the keep. He
was pulling Edana by the hand. Right behind them strode Catherine, barefoot, with Peter on her hip.

Edgar’s relief rolled him back out of the saddle and onto the ground where he was pounced upon by his entire family.

Solomon watched them a moment with a wistful air. Then he, too, dismounted. Catherine reached up an arm for him to pull her to her feet.

“You’re sooner than expected,” she said as she hugged him. “Not that I’d ever complain. You won’t believe the strange thing that happened yesterday.”

“Uncle Guillaume caught a witch when he was hunting,” James was telling his father. “She magicked herself dead and then ran away.”

Edgar looked up at Catherine.

“A bit terse, but those are the main points,” she admitted.

He managed toget up, children still clinging to him. Peter was trying to pull on the loop still hanging from his father’s left arm. Solomon plucked him up and swung the child to his shoulders.

“Piss on me, young man,” he warned. “And you’ll find yourself back with your nurse before you finish dripping.”

Peter laughed without understanding. He gripped Solomon’s thick hair with both hands and bounced.

“Solomon, that may be the bravest thing you’ve ever done,” Edgar said.

“Not at all.” Solomon grinned. “I can’t see Guillaume aiming a crossbow at me if I’m carrying his nephew. I’ll take these barbarians up with me.”

His progress up the path would be slow, since James and Edana were doing their best to trip him as they grabbed at his sleeves in the hope of finding presents. It gave Catherine and Edgar a moment to speak privately.

Catherine filled in James’s account of the mysterious woman, including the conversation that Marie still insisted could not have taken place.

“I know it’s strange,” she ended. “But I’m sure it really happened.”

Edgar put his arm around her.

“I missed you,” he said.

Catherine gave a deep sigh and pressed against him, despite the amused stares of the villagers.

“Perhaps the heat and my lack of marital comfort caused me to see things,” she said thoughtfully. “Do you think we could sneak out to the field beyond the pear orchard tonight? It would be so much cooler.”

“What makes you think we could find a spot?” Edgar kissed the top of her head. “Half the people we know will be there.”

“Maybe not,” she smiled. “They might stay in for fear of the witch.”

Edgar stopped and looked at her sharply. “
Carissima
, I know you are an ardent wife but I can’t imagine you inventing a chat with a dying woman just so that we could secure a place to lie alone.”

“No.” Catherine became serious again. “I wish I had.”

Edgar sighed. “I wish you had, too. This makes it harder to discount the message from your grandfather.”

“Message? What message? When?”

Edgar started back up the path, more quickly now.

“You should have had it by now,” he told her. “The rider left early this morning, well ahead of us. Lord Gargenaud has ordered all his family to come at once to Boisvert. ‘Every descendant,’ the man told me. He said to tell you that if the spring dries, then all who are of the blood of Andonenn will die.”

Vielleteneuse, that evening.

La fontaine estoit bele et clere et delitouse;