The Devil's Door Read Online Free PDF Page B

think I’m d … done now. Thank you.”

    The apothecary room, where the infirmarian, Sister Melisande, slept, was upstairs from the infirmary proper. On one wall were the shelves of oils and powders from distant lands that were bought each year at the faire at Troyes. Hanging from the ceiling were herbs grown and dried at the convent. On a long table in the center of the room were clay bowls and wooden pestles, as well as vials for measuring. When Catherine entered, Emilie was bent over these, grinding at something which scraped against the bowl in a way that set Catherine’s teeth on edge.
    “Will you do this a while?” Emilie asked. “I’m trying to make a powder of cinnamon and eggshells to mix with fennel and pomegranate juice for Alys.”
    “What will that do?” Catherine asked as she took the pestle and went to work.
    “Fennel may help bring the fever down and I hope the rest will keep the bleeding from starting again,” Emilie answered. “Oh, that’s better. My arm was aching.”
    “Emilie, do you know who attacked the countess?”
    Emilie took down a bottle labeled πεπλισ. Catherine recognized it as one that her father had brought. She tried to remember enough of the Greek Mother Héloïse had taught her to sound out the word. Emilie opened it and sniffed before adding it to another bowl.
    “Walter of Grancy, of course,” she finally answered. “Everyone knows that. He and Raynald have been feuding for years.”
    “But this wasn’t the first time,” Catherine insisted. “She’s been beaten before.”
    “Who hasn’t?” Emilie didn’t look up from her work.
    “Not like this, Emilie.” The cinnamon shattered under Catherine’s anger. “Not over and over to leave scars, laced across each other. What do you know of her family?”
    “Her father married twice,” Emilie said after a moment’s thought. “The first marriage lasted only a few years. His wife died quite suddenly. There was a child, I think, who also died. Alys is from the second marriage. After he died, Alys’s mother married again.”
    Catherine sorted it out. Paciana must have been very young when her mother had died, but why would Emilie think she had died, too? She opened her mouth to ask, then held her tongue with difficulty, remembering her promise to Paciana.
    “Mother Héloïse said that Alys’s property came from her father’s family,” Catherine told her. “What happened to the dower of his first wife?”
    “I don’t know.” Emilie stopped stirring and closed her eyes, trying to trace out all the family connections. “Let me think. Alys’s father was a castellan of Count Thibault. He had control of several towns when he died and I’m sure much of the land was heritable. I don’t know much about the first wife. She died before I was born. I think she was some relation to Count Thibault, which was why they did so well. I remember my mother mentioning that the count gave her the tithes of five mills and a vineyard near Troyes as a wedding gift. Alys’s father may have kept them or they may have reverted to Thibault. Mother Héloïse. might know, or Sister Bietriz. She’s niece to Thibault’s former seneschal, André de Baudement, you know.”
    “I had forgotten that,” Catherine said. “Perhaps I’ll ask her. It’s odd that a count like Raynald, with his connections, would marry the daughter of a castellan.”
    “If enough land or money came with her, and if the connection with Count Thibault were strong enough, I don’t suppose Raynald would care.”
    “No, I suppose not.” Catherine was doubtful. The count of Tonnerre struck her as a man proud of his lineage. And Tonnerre was not a poor area. Still … “I wonder what she did bring to the marriage and where it goes if she dies childless.”
    Emilie shrugged. “I no longer have an interest in such things.”
    Catherine bent over the mortar in embarrassment. “I’m sorry to ask you about them. It is not appropriate to your new status to