She had been white-faced with fury, almost incoherent with rage when Joana had found her. Joana, the angel, had come in with a tray when Dona Stefania had just consigned it to the flames, and soothed her with that calmness and calculation which were so much a part of her.
‘They demand the return of their relic? Then you must return it.’
‘I shall not! The thing was promised to us for years. Just because they can see that we’re better suited to attracting pilgrims, that doesn’t mean that they should have it back! It’s why the thing should stay with us in Vigo. It’s worth a fortune to us here.’
‘It is said that the Saint himself can decide where his relics stay,’ Joana said thoughtfully as she poured wine and passed the goblet to Dona Stefania. ‘Perhaps the Saint would prefer to remain here with us, in the quieter atmosphere of the convent. That might be why he has favoured us with so many pilgrims when he did not treat Orthez with such generosity.’
Dona Stefania felt her mouth drop open. Of course there were many stories of churches and cathedrals stealing each others’ relics, and then claiming that they possessed them by right of the Saint’s own wishes — for if the Saint did not wish to be there, he or she could miraculously move him- or herself to another location — but it hadn’t occurred to Dona Stefania to use that argument. Now, though, as Joana crossed the floor and placed the jug on the cupboard, she considered the idea and began to see its merits.
‘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 Dona Stefania 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 Dona Stefania 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, Dona Stefania 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, Dona Stefania and Joana had sketched out the plan. It was much as Joana had originally suggested, but with some minor amendments. First, Dona Stefania 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 Dona 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.