“My daughter-in-law does not approve,” she said with wink. “I am an old woman. What is the worst that could happen? That I might die?” she laughed again, and gestured to the tumbler.
James poured a small amount and her eyes sharpened. He poured another half inch in the glass. She patted his hand.
“How were their lives changed?” Kris asked, forced to wait for an answer as Vilette smiled with obvious pleasure as she took a sip, eyes closed for a few moments. Then they opened and her gaze was sharp.
“Isa was just a child when he was brought to live with them. He was older by a few years, and very handsome,” she added, with a wink at James.
“And aware of his lowly status. Therefore, his fate was whatever he made of himself, and the opportunities given him.”
“Opportunities?”
“He was educated at the university at Notre Dame.”
“A priest?” Kris asked with surprise.
It wasn't uncommon. Throughout history offspring of noble families, usually second sons, devoted themselves to the Church. William the Conqueror's brother, Bishop Odo, had risen through the Church and founded the abbey at Mont St. Michel. Other titled families of Europe, including royalty, were filled with accounts of those who had given their lives to the Catholic Church, including women who became patrons of a particular church and devoted their lives to that calling. But what little she knew about Isa Raveneau didn't mesh with a life of devotion to the Church.
Vilette shook her head. “Not a priest. He was given a commission. It is there in the images she stitched into the tapestry,” she explained. “A knighthood.”
“But how was that possible, considering...?”
“That he was a bastard?” Vilette finished the question.
“It was purchased by his natural father?” James took a guess, causing both women to look over at him.
“It would have been a way of getting rid of him, without the guilt.” He added, “Catholic school—Sister Margaret was an authority on medieval history.”
“Just so,” Vilette replied. “It is said that the commission of knighthood was provided by his natural father, and James was sent to Spain with many others, including two sons of a man called St. Clair on one of the last Crusades to Jerusalem in 1345.”
“They were sent to take the heart of Robert the Bruce to Jerusalem after his death.” James commented with a look from Kris.
“A failed journey that cost many lives, including the two sons of St. Clair,” Vilette added.
St. Clair, or as history along with several books and a well-known film came to know them, the Sinclairs of Roslyn, near Edinburgh.
“1345,” Kris said thoughtfully, remembering studies of the Crusades from college. “Isa Raveneau would have been a young woman then.”
Vilette nodded. “A young woman grown, and very wealthy through both her father's and her mother's families.”
Kris took out the printouts she'd made along with the ones Diana Jodion had provided. She studied the color images of the tapestry.
She was familiar with ambiguities in famous pieces of artwork. That had been part of her early studies in theology. The Mona Lisa came to mind, along with several others from the Renaissance period—images within images, or images that appeared to be one thing but were in fact another, religious images wrapped in alabaster and marble that conveyed an altogether different meaning.
“What about this image?” she pointed out, handing it to Vilette. “This appears to be a woman in knight's armor.”
Vilette nodded. “So you see, and you understand, I think.”
Images within images, or those that appeared to be one thing but were another? A young woman dressed in knight's armor; headstrong, stubborn. Kris realized the only possibility for what she was looking at.
“Isa and James were lovers,” Vilette explained. “But a marriage would not have been accepted by her father. Wealth and titles are power, and he arranged her marriage to another, and sent James away to Spain.”
That was what she was looking at—strength and courage in the expression of the young woman astride the horse. The tapestry was like a series of photographs of a defiant young woman. The question was, what was the truth? Or was the imagejust the willful imagination of a young woman determined to defy her father. Some things never changed, no matter what century they were in.
“What about the Raveneau name?”
“Her mother's name,” Vilette nodded. “She took her name out of anger when James was sent away. The tapestry was her way of telling the world that she defied her father.”
Did it also explain the reason she lived out most of her life at the abbey once she turned her back on her own family?
