The Illuminator

by Brenda Rickman Vantrease

  “I miss seeing her on your lap.” A bit of a smile. Mayhap the storm had passed. “I will send a servant with some curds to coax her back. And something for you as well,” he said.

  “You are kind, Your Eminence.” She sighed with relief as he laid the rolled-up papers on her desk. Thank the Holy Virgin his visit was coming to an end.

  “In the meantime, if you wish to maintain fellowship with Holy Church, you are to write an apologia for this deviation from orthodoxy. Explain your understanding of the Godhead and Holy Trinity. It must state your loyalty to Holy Church doctrine and must be appended to any published copy of your English writings. Since your Latin is deficient, you may transcribe a copy of the apologia in Norman French for my keeping.”

  He might have been reading off a list of supplies, his tone was so detached. Was she hearing him right? Was her right to the anchorhold threatened?

  “Until such a document is in my hand, you will abstain from the Holy Sacraments.”

  Even her right to the Eucharist!

  “I warn you to be circumspect in your associations and careful in your language. Heresy is a serious charge. It can bring eternal damnation to your soul and death to your corporeal body.”

  He moved to the door. She had risen when he did, so as not to be sitting in his presence, and now her head was spinning. She dropped to her knees in a half-curtsy, half-swoon.

  “I will send for the document tomorrow, and I will send also writings on the Holy Trinity. Church-sanctioned writings, which I admonish you to review for the instruction of your soul.”

  He extended his ring for her to kiss. Trembling, she raised it to her lips. “I will not visit you again,” he said.

  She stayed on her knees, not out of reverence, but because she lacked the strength to face him. She heard the heavy scraping of the door, the bolt being shot with the dead finality of the first time, leaving her alone once again in the smothering darkness of her cell.

  Father Andrew was preparing to celebrate Candlemass at Saint Julian’s. It was the feast of the Virgin’s Purification. The candlemaker brought the candles to be blessed early in the day and grumbled as he handed over his merchandise. The vestibule was so cold you could see the man’s breath as he spoke.

  “If all my customers were as tight in the purse as you, Father, my children would go hungry.”

  He was right; of course. The Church set the price, not the chandler, and Father Andrew knew that it was scarcely enough to pay the cost of the beeswax.

  “The candles are used in the service of the Holy Virgin. Your sacrifice will not go unrewarded. Your soul will profit.”

  It was an answer he gave by rote. He knew full well it meant little to the man who wanted honest pay for honest goods. As a young priest, he’d tried to communicate his own sense of honor at being allowed to serve his God, hoping it would inspire others. It never did. Now, he just delivered the official Church response for services rendered, never thinking about the words. He delivered the mass in like manner.

  The chandler mumbled something about the Church being rich enough to pay a poor man proper wages. Father Andrew only smiled and nodded as he shut the heavy doors, shutting out his complaints with the frosty air. These days, nobody seemed to understand how important it was to maintain the house of the Lord. Just let the plague come calling to Master Chandler’s house. He’d be begging to donate his wares to the Holy Virgin for free, the curate thought as he stored the candles in the cupboard behind the altar.

  He opened the left side of the double doors and put in the candles, neatly stacking them one by one, placing the half dozen or so left from last year aside to be used first—they had already been blessed. While he was there, he would get a fresh stole for the mass. He opened the right side. The door sagged on its hinge; the iron bolt had worked loose. Now he would have to find a carpenter. No easy task when most were busy rebuilding the steeple on the cathedral, and the ones who were not did inferior work. Even these found excuses to put him off, looking for more lucrative employment. Filthy lucre. The contaminant of the soul.

  The acolytes were careless, too. Where the folded, newly mended vestments should be there was a pile of rumpled linen. He picked up the altar cloth to fold it and saw that it was stained. Mildew, probably, a perpetual problem in the dark interior of the chapel. But even in the winter-dim interior of the chapel, he could see it was not mildew. It was darker—and stiff. It looked almost like a bloodstain. His pulse quickened. A bloodstain? He unfolded the cloth, held it up to the light from the window. He squinted his eyes. The stains were in blotches and spots, broken, but there was no doubt about it. The spots connected in the shape of a cruciform. Domine Ihesu Christe. The Holy Rood! It was the Saviour’s blood. A miracle. A miracle, here, at Saint Julian’s Church. On his watch. The Church of Saint Julian had an anchoress, and now it had a miracle. God was smiling on this church. God was smiling on him.

  He looked at the great crucifix hanging above him, half-expecting the blood to begin dripping from the ivory legs, but there was no sign of life, no tears flowing from its painted eyes, no drops of blood. No matter. The Saviour had granted them a miracle. This was the blood of Christ on the altar cloth. He, Father Andrew, curate of the Church of Saint Julian, would take it to the bishop, who would pronounce it authentic and commission a gold reliquary. With great ceremony—in which he already saw himself playing a significant role—they would place the holy relic on the altar. Pilgrims would come from as far as Thetford and Canterbury, maybe even London, to see it. Saint Julian’s would be famous for its miracles.

  His heart was hammering so fast he could almost hear it. No. That was not his heart—unless his heart shuffled more than beat within his chest. The noise was coming from the back of the cupboard. They sometimes had trouble with rats, but not lately. That’s why he suffered the anchoress to have a cat. He carefully folded the stained cloth, pressed it to his lips and placed it gently on the altar. Then he reached his hand back into the cupboard to retrieve the rest of the vestments to make sure they had not been soiled with mouse droppings. His hand encountered something soft and wriggling, a tongue rough as pumice licked his fingers. He jerked his hand out of the cupboard and reached for his crosier. He swiped its crook once against the back of the cupboard and drew it out.

  A pair of kittens, their eyes barely opened, lay curled and purring within its crook.

  Disappointment carries the taste of bile, and it filled Father Andrew up, spilling into his mouth bitter as quinine. Here was his miracle. The she-cat that the anchoress sheltered was responsible for this. That devil’s familiar had profaned his altar, daring to drop her unholy spawn beneath the image of the Saviour.

  By now the kittens had discovered their new environment and begun to explore, tumbling over the shepherd’s staff with wobbly legs. His crosier would have to be reconsecrated and the whole altar cleansed. There would be three of the things now and the next litter would be larger. Jezebel—an apt name. The whore of Babylon, she was out whoring now, probably, satiating her evil nature, abandoning her babies.

  In a fit of resolution, he went to the vestry, where he prowled in a closet. Muttering imprecations inappropriate to his calling, he came back shortly with a rope, a grain sack, and a large stone. In a matter of seconds he had scooped up the kittens, thrown them in the sack with the stone, and secured the top. The sack writhed, forming and reforming into little bumps of desperation. So much crying and mewling for such small beasts. He had a moment’s—just a moment’s—pang, and then he looked again at the soiled altar cloth, his non-miracle.

  He slung the bag over his shoulder and was headed toward the door when he heard a hiss behind him. He turned in time to see the mama cat fling herself at his face, claws outstretched for his eyes. He grabbed her by the neck, but not before she had torn a bloody gash in his cheek (which scar he would bear into old age). He wrung her neck as though she were a chicken, then opened the sack and threw the dead mother in with her kittens.

  He flung th
e lot from Bishop’s Bridge into the Wensum River.

  “Father Andrew, have you seen my cat?” the anchoress asked after she finished her confession. “She’s been gone almost three weeks. She’s never been gone that long before.”

  Julian watched him as he fingered the bandage on his cheek.

  “Not for many days,” he said.

  There was an abruptness, almost an irritation in his voice when he addressed her, and a disengaged look in his eyes. It had been thus ever since the bishop’s visit. Had the bishop spoken to him about her? Maybe he had instructed him to deny her the right to communion? She had wondered this daily, each time the priest had offered her the Body and the Blood in the same distracted way. Mayhap it was just her imagination. Perhaps the bishop had relented or merely forgotten to instruct the priest that she should be denied. Each time she took the host onto her tongue, she did so with great relief.

  “Father, if you will come around to Alice’s window, I’ll dress your wound. It has been three days since we changed it.”

  A few minutes later he entered through Alice’s room and sat opposite Julian on the other side of the window. His shoulders slumped forward. He didn’t seem to want to look at her. What was so interesting about her floor? Or was it that he couldn’t look at her because he knew she was about to be charged with heresy or driven from her anchorhold? She retrieved her sewing scissors to cut away the dressing.

  “It’s healed nicely,” she said, leaning through the window to examine it. “It no longer needs a bandage.”

  “It still smarts.”

  “The bishop sent me some books from the library at Carrow Priory last week.” She tried to keep her tone light, conversational as she traced a line of ointment down the scar with her finger. “Did he send you some too?” she asked, even though she had never known Father Andrew to be a student of theology. They had never really talked of spiritual matters. Not talked about anything, really. He was her confessor, that was all. He appeared daily at the chapel window through which he celebrated the mass. Their relationship revolved around the ritual.

  “The bishop does not often seek me out,” he said.

  “He visited me Tuesday week past. I thought you might have seen him then.”

  “I was called away to Castle Prison Tuesday past, to say the Office of the Dead for a hanged man.”

  Her hand froze on his scarred cheek. Dare she ask the name?

  “Last rites for the condemned? Is that usual?”

  “When the criminal asks to confess, the Church tries to comply.”

  “Was this man … was he … what crime had he committed?”

  “He poached the king’s deer.”

  Not Finn, then, but some poor peasant, some father, or husband, or son, had died because he dared get meat for his table. Her hand resumed its ministrations.

  “I will pray for the poor man’s soul,” she said as she replaced the stopper on the ointment jar. “Take this with you. Put it on your wound daily. I’m afraid you may be left with a narrow little scar as a reminder to be more careful when you are pruning thornbushes.”

  “Thornbushes? Oh. Yes. I will. Be more careful.”

  “You were blessed in that the branch missed your eye when it snapped back.”

  “Yes, I was fortunate,” he said, and then, as though it were an afterthought: “I have an altar cloth that needs mending. The embroidery threads have been snagged … careless acolytes. I will leave it in the chapel window for you to mend. After you’ve finished reading the books the bishop sent, of course.”

  “I’ll do it right away.”

  He rose as if to leave, then hesitated. Was he going to say something about the bishop? Was he gathering the words to approach her on matters of orthodoxy?

  “Anchoress … ”

  “Yes?”

  “About your cat.”

  “Oh, my cat. Jezebel. Yes?”

  “She will probably not return after so long a time.” A pause. He seemed to be looking past her, through the communion window into the shadowy chapel interior. “I will get you another cat.”

  The next day, an old torn appeared at her garden window. He was fat and slow and lazy, a retired mouser fresh from the kitchens at Carrow Priory. He spent most of his time dozing in the garden window, ignoring the mice that scurried in the chapel.

  NINETEEN

  Eleven holy men converted all the world into the right religion; The more readily, 1 think, should all manner of man be converted, We have so many masters, priests and preachers, and a pope on top.

  —WILLIAM LANGLAND,

  PIERS PLOWMAN (14TH CENTURY)

  Half-Tom had tried twice in the last two weeks to get to Finn. Each Thursday, he’d made the difficult trip to market, not because he had much to sell—buyers and sellers alike were rarer in winter—but he persisted in the hope that he could see his friend. Each Thursday, he’d been turned away, once by the surly guard who had tormented him in the Beggar’s Daughter (the time that Finn had come to his rescue), and once by an impatient bailiff who said he knew nothing of the prisoner. Neither had any patience with a dwarf from the fens.

  This time he was determined, and he had a plan. On Wednesday, he made the long trek to Blackingham, and for more reasons than to eat the old cook’s pottage—lately she’d taken a dislike to him—or to catch a glimpse of the pretty kitchen wench who’d frighted him so with her singing in the bee-tree. He could not add inches to his stature, but he could add inches to his status by wearing the livery of a noble house. A ducal house would have made him a giant. But since he knew no dukes, he’d have to settle for a knight’s household.

  “A short groomsman,” he’d said to Magda as they conspired together to steal the uniform from the laundry at Blackingham.

  Now she’d returned with her stolen trophy, and they were alone in the cavernous kitchen, cozy with the great fire and the smell of simmering stew on the hearth. She laughed at him when he draped the blue tunic over his head. But he didn’t mind her laughter. He waved his arms in the air, flapping the excess fabric about like a jester, to inspire more of it. To him, her laughter was as heady as mead—and just as rare, for she seldom bestowed it on anyone.

  “Ye’ll snare no respect looking like a scarecrow,” she said, tears of mirth spilling down her cheeks. “They’re like to toss ye in the dungeon with Master Finn.”

  That was more words than he’d ever heard the girl string together. He hopped about on one foot, tripping over the too-long leggings, hoping for more. Instead she screwed her mouth into a pout of concentration and, reaching for a kitchen knife, commanded him to climb upon a stool.

  She slashed at the excess fabric: first the sleeves, then the legs. “Stand still. Ye don’t want to be gettin’ blood on Lady Kathryn’s livery.”

  He stood motionless, as if he were watching deer feed in the forest, afraid to breathe lest he startle her and break the spell of her closeness. He wanted to reach out and touch her hair, but he dared not. He’d already heard the sound of the heavy oak door groaning on its hinges—Agnes returning. She would not welcome any sign of affection from a half-man for the girl she treated like a daughter.

  “What foolishness are the two of ye up two?” Agnes asked as she set down a basket of turnips.

  Magda paused in her tearing and slashing. “ ’Tis cold. Ye should’ve sent me to cellar to fetch those.”

  “What’s he gussied up for? Yule’s well past. Season for tomfoolery’s over.” She picked up the torn rags of cloth from the floor, peered closer. “Lands, that’s Blackingham livery you’re destroyin’, girl! What are ye thinking? That fine blue cloth don’t come cheap. Lady Kathryn will have all our hides— though at least one amongst us wouldn’t be worth much.” She glared at him.

  Half-Tom explained his plan.

  Arms akimbo, her brow puckered with frowning, she considered for a long moment. Half-Tom grinned at her. He didn’t doubt, despite her gruffness— and who could fault her on that score for wanting to guard her treasure—t
he goodness of her heart. “ ’Tis the only way,” he said.

  “I’ll fetch my needle to hem the edges,” the cook said. “Save them pieces, Magda. Cloth’s too fine to waste.”

  The next day Half-Tom presented himself before the head constable at the castle keep.

  “I’ve a message from the lady of Blackingham for the prisoner Finn.”

  The constable looked him up and down without getting out of his chair. Half-Tom waved a rolled-up parchment in front of the officer’s nose—not a letter at all, but an old purchase order for goods for the Blackingham kitchen. Magda had helped him reheat the seal so that it appeared not to have been broken. The constable reached for it. Half-Tom pulled it behind his back.

  “Lady Kathryn says the seal is to be broken only by Finn. Private matters between a man and his daughter. Lady Kathryn asks that I be allowed to visit the prisoner so his daughter will know that he is not being ill-used.”

  The constable appeared to be considering, but did not move.

  “Lady Kathryn is a friend of Sir Guy de Fontaigne,” Half-Tom said.

  “The sheriff has given his approval?”

  “If she has to ask, she would have to explain that you refused her request, wouldn’t she?” He heaved an exaggerated sigh. “And that might make the sheriff angry.”

  The constable grinned good-naturedly. “You negotiate like a full-grown man.” He stood up. “Follow me.”

  Half-Tom followed the constable up two flights of curving steps, where he opened an iron-grated door with the large keys on his belt and ordered Half-Tom to wait in the hallway. “He’s a particular favorite of the bishop. If they’re playing at chess, His Eminence would not like to be disturbed.”

  “The bishop?”

  “Aye. He visits at least once a week. They have animated discussions about theology.”