The Illuminator

by Brenda Rickman Vantrease

  “I wouldn’t set my heart on it, Kathryn. The bishop likes having an artisan of the man’s particular talent under his thumb. He will be loath to let him go without explicit proof of innocence—or strong influence. And then there’s the matter of the heretical papers found in his possession. Anyway, if the illuminator is exonerated, the matter of the priest’s murder goes unresolved. The archbishop pressures the bishop, and the bishop pressures me, and we have to begin the search all over again. You see how complicated it all is?” He heaved an exaggerated sigh. “Of course, if as my wife you found the circumstances revolving around the illuminator distressing, I would feel obliged to speak to the king’s regent. The king has already given permission for an alliance between our houses. As wife of a knight of the Garter, your testimony would carry considerable weight.”

  Kathryn reminded herself to breathe slowly. “You overstep your bounds, sir, to speak to the king without my permission. And even if I agreed to such a scheme, would you not still have the problem of solving the priest’s murder?”

  “Kathryn, Kathryn.” He shook his head and made sucking sounds with his tongue. “You surely know that as a widow, the king can place you under his protection and seize your lands at any time; then your sons would be disinherited. An alliance with me will prevent that. Your sons retain their heritage; you gain a greater status and can use that influence on behalf of your friend. As for the murder? Easy enough. Blame it on some Jew.” His mouth curved at her quick intake of breath. “Yes, I quite like that. The archbishop will like it, too. It is quite a politic solution.”

  “You would blame an innocent man!?”

  “Why such surprise and indignation?” He examined his fingernails, his ringed fingers, slender and effeminate. “If the particularity of it bothers your sensibilities, I can uncover a general plot.” He brushed a sooty flake from his new mantle. “One emanating from the Jews in Spain, exact perpetrator unknown.”

  “No less scurrilous, sir, to charge a whole people wrongfully.”

  “Wrongfully? Jews? Not possible, I should think. Surely, Kathryn, you are not a Jew lover! That would be a dangerous affinity indeed.” He scowled a warning against further protests. “What does it matter if they’re blamed for one more crime? They are known to spread plague; they poison our wells; they steal the king’s wealth; they even sacrifice our youth at Eastertide in mock Crucifixion.”

  He was referring to the nefarious charge of blood libel, never proved, often cited. And now there would be added to their burden of allegations the brutal murder of priests.

  “The addition of the priest’s murder would be a mere fly riding on a cart of dung. Think about it, Kathryn.” He smoothed a gold thread on his surcoat. “What choice do you have?”

  What choice, indeed? She had known it would come to this, but had not thought that he would mount such a frontal assault or that he would catch her when her defenses were so down. She was too tired to think. Her meeting with Alfred had offered such hope, and now that was dashed, too.

  He stood up, and reaching for her hand, brought it to his mouth. His lips scarcely touched her, but her skin crawled.

  She stood up too, and drew herself up to her full height. She was almost at eye level with him. “And you, sir, what do you gain from such an alliance?” she asked.

  “You named it already. I admire your lands. There is only one fiefdom between your holding and mine.”

  She was surprised. She had not known his lands were as vast as that, though Roderick had spoken more than once and warily of the sheriff’s ambition.

  “What assurances do I have that you will intercede for Finn after such a marriage?”

  “My word as a knight of the Garter. I hope that you do not question my honor. Think about it, Kathryn. I will be in Suffolk mopping up this little rebellion. When I return, I will call upon you and we will draw up the terms of our betrothal. I repeat, what choice do you have?”

  “Has it not occurred to you that I could go to a nunnery? The abbess at Saint Faith Priory will gladly receive both me and my lands into their keeping.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Yes, you could do that. But think about the consequences to your sons. To your ward. And if you do that, I warrant on my honor as a knight of the Garter that your lover will never place his feet on terra firma again.”

  He opened the door, and the cold air from the hall rushed in. Sleet had started to fall, pinging against the narrow window at the end of the hall.

  “Choose well, Kathryn.” He bowed mockingly and backed away.

  She shivered in the hall, listening to the sound of his descending footfalls. Where was Glynis? Probably warming herself in the arms of some soldier. Her serving girl, a serf, had more freedom than she did. She turned back to finish her packing, foraging in her mind for some tactic to answer this new threat. The sheriff had left his impression in the feather ticking. Angrily she beat at it until it was obliterated.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  By contrition we are made clean, by compassion we are made ready. And by true longing we are made worthy. By these three medicines it behooveth that every soul should be healed.

  —JULIAN OF NORWICH, HEIRLOOMS

  Finn played his queen of hearts. The bishop trumped it with the king Finn knew he held.

  “You have lost your queen of hearts. A tragedy to lose such a lovely queen.”

  “It was inevitable, Eminence.”

  The challenge of the game was to let Despenser win and yet play well enough to keep him interested. Finn was hungry for company, even dangerous company, and each time the bishop came he brought some small amenity. The brazier fire was now well stoked, and there would be sweetmeats to enjoy until the next visit—if he rationed them carefully. Best, of course, was the ready supply of paints and papyrus and quills and ink.

  “You have a weighty burden of correspondence, Illuminator,” the bishop had complained as his attendant piled the bundles of supplies beside the worktable.

  “I’m writing my philosophy to pass the time.”

  “I thought that you were painting my altarpiece to pass the time,” the bishop said.

  “On these winter days the light is too poor to paint, Eminence. And confinement is a stingy muse.”

  The bishop’s eyes narrowed to slits as he said, “I should like to read this philosophy of yours.”

  “You would not enjoy my philosophy. I write in English.”

  “It’s well enough for the common sort. Good enough for lists and ciphers, mayhap even good enough for your philosophy.” The bishop pointed to the captured queen. “I saw her at the duke’s Christmas revels.”

  “You saw the queen of hearts?” Finn asked casually. The bishop often bragged about his amorous conquests.

  “ Your queen of hearts.” He stroked the card as though it were a woman’s breast.

  “My queen?”

  “The lady of Blackingham. I don’t wonder you took her for your model. A bit overripe for my taste, but quite striking.” He shuffled the cards, peered at Finn from beneath lowered eyelids. “She was companion to Sir Guy de Fontaigne. He’s the sheriff, you may remember.” His eyelids fluttered like a girl’s, setting Finn’s teeth on edge. “But of course you remember.”

  Finn said nothing. He got up from his seat to stoke the fire, turning his face away to hide his distaste and the unease this information stirred in him. What did he care whom she supped with—whom she bedded, for that matter? Whatever he’d felt for her was long dead, killed by her betrayal.

  He told himself that each time he woke from dreams of her.

  “They made a striking couple.”

  “Did they?” Feigning unconcern, Finn poured himself a glass of the bishop’s wine.

  Despenser held up his goblet to be refilled. “She wore crimson velvet. It clung to her bosom and was girdled about the waist with a silver cord draped in a V-shape”—he demonstrated with his free hand—“to show off the curve of her hips.”

  A drop of wine splashed onto the floor, just
missing the pointed end of Despenser’s velvet shoe. “You are trembly today, Master Finn. Not a touch of the palsy, I hope.”

  Finn returned to his seat, picked up his cards, fingered them restlessly, laid them down. The queen of hearts stared up at him. “I feel a touch of the ague, Eminence. I fear I am a less worthy opponent than usual. Perhaps another day.”

  His face grew hot beneath Despenser’s knowing look.

  “You will forfeit, then?”

  Finn sighed, obsequiousness dripping in his voice. “You would have beaten me anyway, Eminence. I fear you are the better player.”

  “Don’t patronize me, Illuminator. My goodwill is not boundless. I’m not altogether pleased with your progress on the reredos. You should have completed more than three panels by now.”

  He rose, motioned for his attendants, who draped his ermine robe about him. His furred mantle made angry swishing noises against the stone flags as he paused at the door for a parting shot. “I suggest that before we meet next you devote yourself more to the work of your Church and less to your philosophy.”

  “Tell Lady Kathryn I need to see her,” Finn said to Half-Tom two days later. “And tell her I want to see the child as well.”

  What would happen to Rose’s daughter? That had been only one of several thoughts that had disturbed Finn’s sleep for the last two nights. He’d always known the sheriff had designs on Blackingham and its lady. He’d figured that out long ago, though he’d thought Kathryn honorable and strong enough to resist the advances of a man she professed to despise. Unless, of course, her disdain for the sheriff was as inconstant as the love she had declared to him. What of her promise to care for the child? Was that as mutable as her affections? That he could not chance. He would have to see Kathryn one more time. Even though the thought of facing her, the exquisite pain of it, made him weak in the knees.

  Half-Tom said, “If I take her ladyship such a message, she’ll light out straight away, and the snow is drifting high.”

  “Kathryn’s tall. The snow will scarce be past her ankle.”

  “Comes up to my waist. Would be a hard journey for a gentlewoman and a child.”

  “Then tell her to come as soon as the weather clears,” he said.

  The weather did not clear. The snow drifted so high that Half-Tom could not even leave the city walls lest he be buried up to his eyeballs. At night, he camped out around the prison yard, earning his bread by running errands for the guards—all but Sykes, whom he avoided as he would plague. In the day, he struggled the two furlongs down King’s Road to visit the holy woman of Saint Julian, gathering fuel along the way for her tiny brazier. He noticed the chilblains on her hands, and when he asked why her fire was so puny, what happened to the coals he’d brought her the day before, she just smiled and said others had greater needs. Easy pickings were all gone. Sometimes he had to struggle in the snow drifts outside the city walls just to gather her fuel. He was feeding the fires of the city’s poor when all he’d really wanted to do was to keep one holy woman from freezing.

  At night he shared the beggars’ fires. It was there he learned that the city was threatened by more than winter. There was a stirring among the peasant classes. A restless, angry spirit waited for the rising of the sap, hovered around the poor men’s smoky fires.

  “ ’Twixt the king’s poll tax and the bishop’s tithe, don’t do no gain for an honest man to work.”

  “ ’Tis naught to me. I’ve nothing to tithe. And the excise man took my last pig for Lancaster’s war with the Frenchies.”

  “Then the bishop’ll take the shirt off’n yer back.”

  “Aye, and the wee king’s uncle will have yer pants.”

  Mirthless laughter all around. The dirty men with their rag-wrapped feet, filthy tunics and scraggly beards huddled under a haphazard tent they’d constructed to shield them from the elements. The twin tent poles wobbled from the weight of the snow and the patched awning sagged. Half-Tom stamped his feet and blew on his hands, edging between the last speaker’s legs to get closer to the fire. He thought of Blackingham and the little kitchen maid. He hoped she was warm. He had more than the illuminator’s message to spur him to trek the twelve miles to Aylsham. But the snow was still falling in big feathery flakes, covering Castle Prison, decorating the eaves of the great cathedral and painting the beards and slumped shoulders of his companion white in the firelight.

  “Nobility don’t care if ye starve. Last Boxing Day ’twas sure meager pickings.”

  “Aye. All them great lords and fancy ladies in their palaces pleadin’ poor.” The speaker ate a handful of snow, then coughed a wet, phlegmatic wad and spat it into the fire. “All the while they’re gorging on fine vittles and sendin’ picked-over bones and moldy bread to the alms gate. They don’t know what poor is.”

  “Maybe ’tis time they learned.”

  “Aye, burn one of them fine homes to the ground, that’d be a start.” Half-Tom held his hands out to the flame. From behind, he heard the growling of a hungry stomach.

  The fire spewed a shower of sparks against a black sky. Half-Tom rolled himself in his blanket and lay down close to the beggars’ fire. Footprints, frozen ridges in the mud, dug into his back. He envied the old man who snored beside him, escaping the misery. At last, Half-Tom closed his eyes and slept too.

  And he dreamed of going home.

  He is in his hut at the edge of the fens. There, his clay hearth is warm, and his kettle bubbles with a rich eel broth. There, his nest of piled beaver skins makes a bed soft enough for young King Richard. There, he wakes to birdsong in a pearl dawn as fresh as a new-cracked egg. It is a welcome and familiar dream.

  But on this mid-winter night, in this particular dream of homecoming, there is a difference. In this dream he is not alone in his velvet marsh. Magda is beside him. It is summer. He shows her how to strip the willow bark and weave the baskets, how to set the traps, how to dip the oar into the water soundlessly as they glide among the rushes.

  In this dream he is tall.

  When Half-Tom woke from his dream of home, the beggars’ fire had puddled to charred ash in a creeping, dirty dawn. And he was once again alone, except for the snow-covered corpse of the old man who no longer dreamed beside him.

  Kathryn prayed that the snow would linger, that the harsh winter would keep the sheriff away. His proposal of marriage hung over her head like the ice daggers suspended from Blackingham’s eaves. She knew Guy de Fontaigne was not a patient man. But maybe she could put him off a year. Yes, Kathryn. And maybe the time is out of joint and the snow will never melt and the trees will never bud and the spring will never come.

  And indeed, some days it did seem as though the bleak winter—at any other time a circumstance to be complained against—could hold him at bay forever. But on a raw day in March when the roads were scarcely passable, Guy de Fontaigne sent a message saying he would call on her at Eastertide. The next day, Half-Tom came with the message from Finn.

  The day had finally come that Kathryn had longed for and dreaded for a year. It was early morning and Kathryn, her son, and granddaughter were in the warm, cavernous kitchen. Prying a poppyseed cake from Jasmine’s fist, Kathryn answered her wail of protest. “We’re going bye-bye, you want to go bye-bye, don’t you?”

  The child’s eyes brightened, and she chattered “Bye-bye.” Cake crumbs spilled out along with the words. Kathryn hastily wiped Jasmine’s bulging cheeks.

  “You look so pretty, my little sweeting. Doesn’t she, Colin?” Kathryn asked her son.

  Colin only nodded, patting the child absently on the head as Kathryn dressed his daughter for the journey into Norwich. He was pulling on his own homespun garment, making ready for his daily trek down the highway. A cloak worthier of a rag picker than a young nobleman—where did he get such a piece of trash? At least nobody would recognize him. If he was going to shave his head and stand on the street corners preaching, thank the Holy Virgin he had the good sense not to dress in Blackingham blue.

&nb
sp; Jasmine squirmed as Kathryn tried to stuff her into the little rabbit cloak and mittens.

  “Do be still, darling, you’re mussing your pretty curls. We’re going to see your grandpère today. You will sing for him, won’t you? Like you do for Magda and me?”

  Kathryn tried to distract the wriggling child, singing “La, la, la, la” up the scale. Jasmine blinked her blue eyes, stopped squirming, and jabbered to the melody.

  “My little songbird,” Kathryn said, kissing away an errant poppy seed that rested like a beauty mark on the child’s cheek. “Your father was a songbird too,” she said pointedly.

  Colin didn’t hear her; he’d already left. But Kathryn was not going to let her obsessed son ruin this day. Finn had asked to see her. “Tell me his exact words,” she said to the messenger. “Tell Lady Kathryn I need to see her,” the dwarf had repeated. Need.

  It might be the last time she would ever see him. She would store up the memory of his eyes, the curve of his jaw, the way he wrinkled his brow, his beautiful hands: store all the memory of him so that when she thought she could not bear it all, she could take it out and remember.

  It was a good sign that he’d asked to see the child. A sign that his heart had not turned to stone after all.

  Should she tell him of her plans?

  “We’re ready,” Kathryn said to the dwarf, who opened the door.

  Finn sat on a blanket on the floor with his granddaughter. Kathryn sat in a chair positioned between the child and the hearth. Each avoided looking directly at the other.

  “She’s beautiful.”

  “How could she be anything else? Born of your daughter and my son?”

  He stroked the child’s red-blond curls.

  “You have taken good care of her. She looks happy.”