‘They’ll soon beg for the Bishop to return it if we refuse.’
‘Oh, I think the best thing would be to go to Orthez and give them back their relic in their box,’ Joana said, ‘but then come back to Compostela and ask the Bishop what he would advise.’
‘That’s no good! If I deliver it to them, we’ll never get it back.’
Joana ignored her scathing tones. ‘They won’t have it back. You will give them the box, but with another small bone in it. We shall keep the original bone here, in our own little casket. We can have one made specially for it. Then, when you come home from Orthez, you can stop at the Bishop’s palace and ask him for his support. All you need do is point out that the Saint has made his will clear by showing you how to deceive the men of Orthez. Surely no Bishop would go against the plain will of the Saint himself? And then you can come back here to our little convent, and arrange a feast in honour of the Saint who has so honoured our little chapel.’
The scheme was breathtaking in its simple beauty – and in its purity of revenge against Orthez – but Doña Stefanía felt a certain irritation that the suggestion had come from her maid and not from herself.
There were plenty of precedents for such action, after all. There were stories of an English church which had lent a relic to a French one, but who then had demanded its return. The French sent back a relic, but later, when they were trying to tempt back more pilgrims, they let it be known that in fact they had sent back an imitation and had kept the original. The pilgrims dried up in the English church and began to drift towards the French church again, but then the whole story grew more confusing when the English declared that they had never sent the genuine relic in the first place. Knowing that their French brothers were unreliable in sending back loaned relics, the English had sent a copy themselves. The French had stolen a fake.
This could have been true. Certainly Doña Stefanía knew perfectly well that the French and English clergy were about as unfriendly as their secular lords; all were at daggers drawn over the English territories like Aquitaine, which the French King had confiscated only thirty years before. Since then there had been continual disputes in the English lands. French churches also vied with each other for possession of relics. Vezelay had the relics of Saint Marie Madeleine, but Aix-en-Provence claimed that these had been stolen from them.
Yes, it was a bold plan, Doña Stefanía acknowledged. More, if they could pull it off, the Bishop himself would have to approve. Otherwise, he was overruling the Saint, and that would never do.
In less than an hour, Doña Stefanía and Joana had sketched out the plan. It was much as Joana had originally suggested, but with some minor amendments. First, Doña Stefanía was not prepared to let the genuine relic out of her sight, so she had asked for this little box to be made, and now she carried it with her all the time; Joana had also suggested that there should be a small guard to protect the ‘relic’ which they would deliver to Orthez. That was why Domingo and his men had gone with them, travelling up through Castile and Navarre to Aragon and then over the passes. The smug, fat priests in Orthez had been slimily grateful, thanking her with such obvious contempt, that it had been difficult not to laugh at them. They were so obnoxious, with their clear disregard for her and her convent, and so delighted to have their bauble back, that she longed to tell them that she had exchanged their relic for an old piece of pig’s bone which she had found in the rushes on the floor of her refectory and left in manure for a week to stain it a rich, dark colour.
Joana and she had collapsed in tears when they left the town, but not for the reasons which the fat clerics would have expected or understood.
In Doña Stefania’s purse nestled the piece of the Saint’s finger still in its little casket. It was there now, and she pulled it out to look at it once more. The gold of the cross gleamed in the candlelight and she kissed it reverently. This was the saving of her convent.
It was late. She must return to her room, for she didn’t wish to tempt Providence by going abroad alone in the dark, unlit streets. The place was full of pilgrims, which meant that there were bound to be cutpurses and other vagabonds wandering about. Pilgrims were easy prey to the nightwalkers of a large city. Walking out through the great door, she went down a side street, and had just turned up towards the square when a low voice almost made her heart stop.
‘My lady.’
Her hand rose to her breast, and she felt suddenly light-headed with fear, but relief washed over her when she saw that it was only the grim figure of Domingo. He had been behind her, and now he overtook her.
‘I wondered who it was! Foolish fellow, leave me alone,’ she commanded. ‘I am going to my room.’
‘I lost my son for you, lady,’ Domingo snarled. ‘Don’t patronise me.’
‘I didn’t tell you to have him killed,’ she snapped. ‘If you were a better leader, he would be alive yet. Now leave me before someone sees us. I don’t want anyone to know that you are with me – understand?’
‘My men need food and drink but we haven’t any money.’
‘So?’
‘Lady, you brought us here. It’s your fault we starve. We need some money.’
‘What happened to the sum I paid you? I gave you plenty of gold before we left Vigo.’
‘That was enough for us to live on for a month, but we’ve been travelling for fifty days now. It took twenty-five days for us to get to Orthez, and another twenty-four to come here. What do you expect us to live on – grass?’
‘I don’t have any more cash with me now.’
‘You have a full purse there, lady.’
‘There is little in it,’ she shot out, a hand covering it.
Domingo was tired of her commands and penny-pinching. He had lost companions to Sir Charles and Dom Afonso, including his own poor lad, and now he needed food, and was desperate for wine. This woman, who had hired him and his men for the whole journey, hadn’t warned it would take so long, and now she was prepared to see them go hungry. With a quick sense of the injustice of her actions, he growled deep in his throat, then grabbed her sleeve and drew her to him. She gave an incoherent squeak of fear, and then his hand was on her purse.
It was impossible! He couldn’t! ‘No! Don’t touch that! There’s nothing in it!’ she said and flailed at him with her fists.
‘Do you really think I’m that stupid that I don’t know what you carry about in your purse?’ he sneered. ‘I know what you took out and stared at each night, Doña Stefanía. Me and my men, we guarded you all the way up here, even though you treated us like shit! If you want to have our protection still, you can pay for it.’
‘There is only the relic, you fool,’ she hissed. ‘Touch that, try to steal that, and the Saint will see you die in the most foul and degrading manner!’
He stared at her a moment, and she was sure she’d won. Her argument carried the authority of the Church, and she rose to her full height. Clearly the threat of a Saint’s enmity was enough to cow even the dimmest churl. ‘Now leave me, you idiot. I shall be returning to Vigo soon, and I want you and your men to be ready to come with me.’
‘You want us to come too?’
‘Of course.’
‘I see. You call me a fool, Doña, but you stand there like a stuffed tunic talking about us coming to guard you on the way back to Vigo, but you’re prepared to see us suffer until you’re ready to go? Think again. You have enough in that purse to buy us all food and drink for a year, don’t you?’
‘Don’t be so stupid!’ she said, but then she realised that he had drawn his little knife from his belt, and she saw the wicked gleam of steel before her eyes. She slumped with terror. Never before had anyone drawn a dagger on her. It was terrible. She herself had hired this felon, and now she was suffering the consequences; he would kill her! Her mouth fell open but she couldn’t even scream, her terror was so complete.