The Illuminator

by Brenda Rickman Vantrease

  “And what am I trying to do?” Lady Kathryn asked, her voice low and even, her gaze direct, challenging.

  “You’re trying to poison my baby so … so it will go away. You want to punish me because I accused Alfred.” Then, with less confrontation, more pleading in her voice, pleading for her child, for Colin’s child: “But I only told the truth.”

  She half-swallowed the last word. Her throat was dry, sticking together, and her eyelids pricked, but she was determined not to cry in front of Lady Kathryn. “You hate me because Colin ran away. If his baby dies inside me, then you can send me away, too.”

  There. She’d said it. Her greatest fears given voice.

  Kathryn was standing beside the makeshift altar, holding out the cup like a poisoned chalice, her other hand resting on the Madonna. She didn’t answer immediately. She traced the outline of the Jesus Child with a finger, like one who noodles an object in deep study. Rose couldn’t read her expression. She looked thinner and frail, and Rose would have pitied her had she not felt so threatened by the wreck of a woman who towered over her, shadowing her. Lady Kathryn stood between her and the window. The cold light filtered through a veil of gray cloud, highlighting her pallor.

  “I could send you away anyway,” she said quietly, almost as if she were talking to herself. “Colin doesn’t know about the babe. Would never have to know.”

  Rose thought she was going to faint.

  The candle flame on the altar danced erratically. Thunder rumbled in from an unseasonal storm born far out at sea, miles from Blackingham. Lady Kathryn moved toward the window. With another gust of wind, more thunder growled, like the gut of a hungry man. Lady Kathryn paused, looked down at the contents of the cup in her hand, then looked up at Rose as though she were seeing her for the first time. Rose said nothing. What was there to say? Should she beg for the sake of the child? Would it make a difference to this woman she no longer knew?

  A chilly breeze blew a strand of hair across Kathryn’s face. With her free hand, she pushed it back, combed the tangled mass with her fingers. Something—a dried bit of leaf—fell onto her woolen kirtle. She brushed it away, then, with a puzzled expression, picked at a dried stain. When she looked back at Rose, she had the look on her face of one who was awakening from a troubling dream.

  She lifted the cup and flung the contents out the window.

  Rose jumped at the sudden movement as though she had been slapped.

  “You need not drink it anymore,” Kathryn said, then added, with a shrug of her shoulders and a bitter little laugh, “it wasn’t working anyway. ”

  Rose pulled her shawl tighter. She could not stop shivering. “My lady, I only want—”

  Lady Kathryn held up her hand to stop her. “Nobody is going to send you away, Rose. Nobody is going to hurt you.” She glanced down at the empty cup dangling from her hand. “No harm will come to your child.”

  The words rang in Rose’s ears like prophecy.

  “You can go back to praying if you want.” Lady Kathryn’s hand went to her mouth as though she was holding back a cry. She reached up to shut the window, her back to Rose, and added in a small voice, “You might pray for me as well.”

  Rose exhaled, her breath coming in a heavy, ragged sigh. “Thank you, my lady,” she said. “Thank you. I will pray for us all.”

  She wanted to embrace Lady Kathryn, who was a pitiable sight with her disheveled hair and stained clothes, a shadow of the proud woman she had been. But the older woman held herself straight and withdrawn in posture, as if to say that too much raw feeling had passed between them already.

  As Kathryn started to leave, she paused at the door and said without looking back, “I’ll tell Agnes to send Glynis with something nourishing, a posset made with milk and eggs.” Then, almost as an afterthought: “When she comes, tell her to bring me clean linen and ointments. I need a good washing.”

  Julian heard the evil tidings about Finn from her servant, Alice.

  “Ye remember that Welshman that brought ye the babe that died? Well, he’s in Castle Prison.” She pushed the news through the window with a steaming bowl of pottage.

  Julian could not hide her shock. “On what charge?”

  “He’s charged with murder. A priest’s murder!” Alice made the sign of the cross, as though the evil of which the illuminator was accused might rush into the room and grab her by the throat. “I told ye there was something sly about him. All that Welsh anger bottled up behind those cloudy green eyes. Never trust a Welshman, that’s what I always say.”

  Murder! Alice had to be wrong. Idle gossip she’d picked up in the marketplace. Julian’s mind whirled with questions, but out of habit she admonished her serving woman for her prejudice. “For shame, Alice, the way you rush to judgment. God created the Welsh out of the same earth he created your own Saxon flesh.”

  Alice’s head bobbed, ignoring the reprimand, rushing to offer details for which Julian had not asked. “He’s guilty right enough. I knew he would come to no good the first time I ever laid eyes on him. In spite of all his comely manners. Mark my words. He bashed that poor priest’s skull in, just smashed it like a rotten turnip.” She shivered and crossed herself again. “Brains and blood splattering everywhere.”

  Julian was alarmed as she watched the violent image in Alice’s mind contort her pleasant round face into a mask of ugliness. Mild-mannered Alice, who tended her so carefully! Who knew what horrors lurked in the human heart? How much we all stood in need of grace.

  “Alice! Enough! Calm yourself before you scare yourself witless. We will pray on Master Finn’s behalf. I’m sure of his innocence; there is some mistake, some case of wrongful identity, perhaps, or false witness. All will be well.”

  There were no more conversations with her servant about Finn’s guilt or innocence, but it had not been idle gossip. Julian made inquiries through Tom. The evidence appeared damning, at least what she heard, something about pearls found in Finn’s possession that the mistress of Blackingham had given to the dead priest. But no evidence would alter the one thing she knew. The man who had cradled the wounded child in his arms as tenderly as any mother, the man who had taken the blame upon himself for killing the bishop’s sow to save Tom: that man was not capable of cold-blooded murder.

  Tonight, as every night, the anchoress knelt in the flickering candlelight before her altar and said the compline prayers from the Book of Hours. As she recited the Hours of the Virgin, followed by the Hours of the Cross and the Hours of the Holy Spirit tonight, as she had for a fortnight, she prayed an intercessory prayer for Finn. Her lips prayed in Latin: Domine Ihesu Christe … Her heart prayed in English: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, interpose Thy Passion, Cross, and Death between Thy judgment and me. But as her mouth formed the ritual pronoun, in her mind she called Finn’s name. She prayed on through matins as the midnight shadows gathered. Her body grew stiff and began to ache—Deus in adiutorium meum intende. God come to his assistance—substituting the masculine pronoun in place of her own.

  The Book of Hours lay open on the altar to the picture that was her inspiration and her comfort. She saw it with her eyes closed, her Suffering Saviour, the bleeding Christ. At first, it was the artist’s flat rendering that painted itself behind her eyelids; the image of her Lord on calfskin vellum, skin ash-white, thinly streaked with crimson paint from the wounds. The corners of the suffering eyes drooped; the body sagged; the head slumped slightly forward. But as she concentrated on the mental picture, the body began to pulsate, slowly at first, then more rhythmically, transforming and reforming itself in the light it generated, until it became three-dimensional, life-size. The head lifted. Blood trickled, tiny pearl-like drops: drip, drip, dripping from his brow, then flowing more freely from a crown of thorns so true, if she dared touch it with her own hand, its thorns would prick her fingers.

  This was her Christ. The Christ of her vision, the vision her Mother God had granted her as she lay dying—a Christ whose blood flowed so freely from
the Crucifixion wounds, from the scourging, from the pierced side, from the bleeding brow, until it rushed in a veritable fountain, gushing, pulsing not with death but life, enough life to nourish all the souls of hungry humanity that He would gather to his breast.

  She recited the prayers from memory, transfixed before the glory of her Lord, eyes closed against the flickering candle flame, her mind transported, her body denied. The candles guttered out, and the nightingale signaled lauds. It was the purest part of the night, rich and deep, like the blood, like the love of her Jesus. She and her Christ, her Friend, her Lover, her Mother God—alone together while the rest of the world slumbered. Exquisite pain. Sublime joy, Her mind was bathed in peace—peace and warmth and light, her body transcended, until her soul was free to touch His.

  I shall make all things well.

  And she knew it to be true.

  Shortly before the bells tolled prime, a sound penetrated Julian’s trance. It was the sound of the great oak door, the door that sealed her tomb, creaking on its hinges. She was suddenly alert, acutely conscious of the darkness around her, the hardness of the floor beneath her body, the film of moisture forming between her open palms and the floor. Would some outlaw dare to violate the sanctity of her anchorhold? Some angel sent from God? Or some demon come to torment her? She stood up and turned away from the altar to face the door.

  With one great groan, it opened. The morning sunlight sliced through the door, almost blinding her. She closed her stinging eyes, then opened them, squinting. Her cell had not been filled with so much light since the day she had been sealed within its walls.

  She could just make out the bishop silhouetted in her doorway.

  She was so exhausted from her night’s devotion that when she bent to kiss his ring, the room began to whirl, and she would have fallen against him had he not reached out his hand.

  “Forgive my unsteadiness, Your Eminence. I have spent the night in prayer and it sometimes leaves me unsteady on my feet.”

  “But firm in your faith, is that so, anchoress?”

  His accusing tone, a tenseness in his manner, the way he scowled at her signaled displeasure, as though she had in some way given offense. And why had he chosen to break the seal of her enclosure? He sometimes visited her, but on such times they communicated through her visitor’s window or through Alice’s window. This was not a routine visit. He always came much later in the day and sent a servant ahead with his chair, a basket of cakes, and a saucer of milk for Jezebel. He sometimes brought her books from the library of Carrow Priory. Today he was empty-handed. The rigidity of his posture, the way he absently fingered the ornate cross hanging at his breast as he frowned at her eye-level-to-eye-level—she was a tall woman—told her he had not come to discuss theology.

  “My soul is much refreshed, Your Eminence. It is only my body that is weak.” She looked at him evenly, answering the challenge in his words, in his gaze. “Do you question the faithfulness of my devotion?”

  His fingers massaged the heavy chain holding the cross. “Not the faithfulness of your ritual, anchoress. But something has lately come to my attention that causes me to question your faithfulness to your Church.”

  He went over to her writing table where he perched on her stool. She sank gratefully onto the edge of her cot. It was nerve-racking to have him inside her cell, a violation of her vows. He of all people should know that. The only other human that she’d been this close to since her enclosure was the wounded child.

  From the high stool, he towered over her, so close that the ermine fringe of his bishop’s robe touched the hem of her own plain linen garment. His jeweled fingers rifled through the pages strewn on her desk. It was as though he was looking for something. He shoved the papers aside, his mouth still molded into a hard line.

  She did not answer his charge of unfaithfulness, did not know how. Protestation of her piety would be empty unless she had proof. How does one prove the contents of one’s heart?

  “Why do you not write in the language of your Church?”

  Was that the source of his disapprobation? That she did not write her Divine Revelations in Latin, but in English? But surely, that was hardly enough. “Is the language of Rome the language of our Lord? Latin, Aramaic, English: what does it matter if the truth is told?”

  “Had you chosen French, I could better understand. But this Midland dialect, this English is the language of common villeins.”

  “Have common villeins not need of the truth?”

  “Have common villeins not priests to instruct them in the truth?” “Many among the guild classes can read. Would their faith not be strengthened if they could read about His love, even the Holy Scriptures, for themselves?”

  His eyes narrowed. “I see the influence of evil reaches even into the anchorhold. The devil must surely laugh to have a holy woman make his argument.”

  Anger was an emotion she had almost forgotten until now. “But surely you cannot think—”

  He held up his hand to stop her protest. “Know this, anchoress, that so common a translation profanes Holy Writ. Furthermore, the laity has neither the wit nor the wisdom to interpret Scripture. They would only use it to dispute with their more learned betters to the detriment of their souls.”

  Was that a slur, a warning intended for her, or just an observation? Either way his statement was an inaccurate one. Many of the clerics from whom the masses gained instruction were not learned at all; they could scarcely read and write beyond a few rote Vulgate phrases. But she thought that was better left unsaid. Instead she said, “English is widely used in London. It is not just the language of the commoner. It is the language of the court.”

  “At court, you say. I know of one at court, John of Gaunt, the king’s regent, who would agree with you. But the duke is no friend of Holy Church. He is a supporter of John Wycliffe, who sends his mumbling Lollard preachers out across the countryside with his English pamphlets, haranguing the bishops and the priests with false charges of corruption and apostasy.” He punctuated his words by pounding his fists on her writing table. “Stirring up the rabble with false doctrine, false notions of equality.” The eyebrow just above his left eye had developed a tic. “He writes in English also. Anchoress, I hope you have not come under his influence. He preaches heresy. And heretics will not be tolerated!”

  Finn had talked of Wycliffe. Was that why he was imprisoned on false charges?

  The bishop reached inside his sleeve, pulled out a sheaf of papers and, leaning forward, waved them under her nose. “Do you recognize these?”

  She took the papers, glanced at them briefly. “They are my writings, my Divine Revelations. But how came they to be … ?”

  “We have arrested a man on suspicion of murdering a priest. These, along with a profane copy of the writings of Saint John the Evangelist, Wycliffe’s English translation, were found in his possession. And I wonder, anchoress, how you can explain the fact that these writings bear your name.”

  “They are mine,” she said simply, “and I gave them to him.”

  “Your own the writings then. You admit giving them to him.”

  “Yes. He showed an interest.” She did not say that it was the illuminator who first suggested that she should publish her writings in the language in which they were written precisely because it was a language for the masses.

  “It seems this Finn has an interest in many seditious writings.”

  Had she heard him right?

  “Your Eminence, are you saying that my Revelations are seditious?”

  He snatched the papers from her. “I would hardly call this orthodox theology.” He slapped them against her writing table. “This talk of a Mother God. What is this, anchoress, some kind of pagan goddess cult?”

  “No, no, Your Eminence. If I may be so bold as to say, you misunderstand my meaning … if you would but read the rest.”

  ‘And the second person of the Trinity is our Mother in kind … For in our Mother Christ we have profit and increase’
—Jesus Christ is not a woman!”

  He rose to his feet, knocking the stool over.

  “ ‘He,’ Your Eminence,” she said, lowering her voice in an attempt to tamp down the rhetoric, “if you will read on, I said, ‘He is our Mother of mercy.’ Motherhood, the gentle, loving, caring mercy of motherhood is like the love of our Lord Jesus: that is all I’m saying. The quality of love, the quality of Christ’s infinite mercy is most like a mother’s love for her child. That is all I’m saying here.”

  He slapped his free hand hard against the table. Her inkpot sloshed, spilling precious drops onto clean vellum.

  “It is not well said. And it is in English.”

  She hastily blotted the ink. “I am sorry if you do not find my simple language to your liking, but I’m not writing for priests and bishops who I assume already know the depth and breadth of His love. I’m only trying to explain God’s love, His infinite mercy in a way that was revealed to me so that the unlearned can understand. What difference does it matter what language I use, if I speak the truth?”

  “It calls your loyalty into question. It is a matter of alliances. Alliances and appearances.”

  And if that’s all it comes down to for you, bishop, then my heart fears for your soul. She pinched her lips together to hold back the words.

  He had tortured the sheaf of papers into a scroll-like roll during their exchange. He stood for a long moment tapping them against his knee, apparently weighing her comments. At least he seemed calmer after his outburst.

  “What do you know of Finn the illuminator?”

  “I know him to be a good man,” she said, a little taken aback at the abrupt shift.

  “Do you accuse me of falsely imprisoning an innocent man?”

  “I accuse you of nothing, Your Eminence. Those were your words, not mine.”

  He scanned the room. “Where is your cat?”

  “My cat?” Had she convinced him? Was that why he was changing the subject? She tried to smile at him, reluctant for him to see how violated she felt to have him standing inside her anchorage. But he was her bishop. Perhaps he had the right. “Jezebel has been gone for about a week. It’s not the first time. She’ll come back when she’s ready.”