“I promised you that I would.”
“Yes.”
There was no sound in the room except a gentle thudding. The little girl amused herself by pounding on the floor with one of the empty oyster shells Finn used as paint pots. He felt a sudden stab of pain, remembering another blond child with bright blue eyes. The child he’d carried to the anchoress, the child who had not lived. A sudden burst of fear, just when he’d thought himself numb to such. It had been a mistake to send for her. To lay himself open again.
“Is she walking yet?”
“A few tentative steps. I fear I hover too much.” Kathryn’s laugh was low and musical, as he remembered. “I’m afraid to let her fall.”
“She is not too much of a burden, then?”
“She is no burden.” Her gaze appeared to be directed at the window, at the hard sunlight striping the shutters. “She gives me reason to live.”
Neither said anything for a minute. Such awkwardness between them. A shyness as though they were strangers. He wanted to say he heard from the bishop that she had other interests to fill her lonely hours. He bit back the words.
“She wears her mother’s cross,” he said. It was on a small but sturdy silver chain around her neck. He quickly turned his gaze away. The sight of it pierced deep.
“It is a family heirloom. It should be passed from mother to daughter. Rose would have wanted Jasmine to have the necklace that her mother wore.”
“Rebekka never wore it,” Finn said, grimacing with the pain of the memory. “She was a converso. She hated it. It was a symbol of oppression for her.”
“Converso?”
“A forced conversion to Christianity.” It was like a fresh wound to the heart, even after all these years. He watched the child playing on the floor as he explained. “There was a purging in the Jewish quarter. Her father’s stationer’s shop was burned to the ground. Her parents perished in the flames. Rebekka recited the confession of faith to save her life.”
“Did they … did they torture her?”
“No. But I think she would have resisted except for me. I begged her.” He reached out and stroked the child’s hair. Rebekka’s grandchild—blond and fair, no hint that she had any Jewish blood running in her veins. “They would have killed her. Or at the least taken her away from me. We were already lovers by then. She did it for me.”
“Where did you meet her?”
“In Flanders. I’d gone there to return my grandmother’s body for burial in her homeland. Even then, I was a fair scribe, and I liked to paint. It was a gift passed down through my grandmother and my mother. Rebekka’s father was a seller of fine parchments. I was going to make a book in my grandmother’s memory. My parents had already died. I was the only heir. I had grand visions of a book collection copied from borrowed books. I still remember the name above the door. ‘Foa’s Fine Papers’—Foa was her family name. Rebekka was minding her father’s shop that day.”
“I’m sure she was very beautiful,” Kathryn said, “like her daughter. You went to find supplies and found the love of your life.” The softness of her voice made Jasmine drop her oyster shells on the floor and turn to look at her as though her name had been called.
One of the loves of my life, he thought. But he could not say it. Not now. Not with all that had passed between them.
“I’ve never seen another cross quite like Rose’s,” Kathryn said. “Instead of a crucifix, it has a circle of pearls. If you look at it just right, the circle looks almost like the points of a star. Except there are six.”
He smiled. His face felt tight with the effort from muscles grown taut with misuse. “You’ve a good eye, Kathryn. It is a star. Magen David. I thought it too cleverly contrived to be discernible.”
“Magen David?”
“It means ‘shield of David.’ A six-pointed star. A hexagram. Some among the Jews thought it warded off demons, a sort of charm. Some alchemists used it. The House of Foa adopted it as a family symbol.”
“But why did you—?”
“ Conversos were constantly watched for signs that their conversions were false. I thought if she wore the cross … I thought the symbol of her family, her heritage would make it not such a hateful thing to her.”
“But you gave it to your daughter, even though Rebekka hated it?”
“It was to protect her. As it was meant to protect her mother. Though Rebekka never wore it.”
“Did Rose know about the star?”
“No. I would have told her if she asked. She never did. She never knew her mother was a Jew.” He felt shame at this, as though he’d failed his daughter, and worse, been disloyal to Rebekka. And now there was no chance to tell her. “I just wanted to protect her,” he said.
Kathryn scooped up the child and walked across the room to his work-table, on which lay a large painted wooden panel. He scrambled to his feet and followed.
“I see how you fill your hours,” she said, still not looking at him. “The painting is beautiful. The bishop must be pleased.”
“The bishop thinks me slow. There are to be five such panels: the scourging of Christ, Christ carrying the cross, Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension.”
“And you are only on the third one?”
“I seem to be fixated on the Madonna standing at the foot of the cross.”
She touched the face of the Madonna with a fingertip. “She is beautiful. She favors Rose and yet not Rose. Is she Rebekka?”
“I have been fortunate in my models.” I saw your queen of hearts.
Kathryn shifted the fidgeting child in her arms, to prevent her reaching for a nearby inkpot. Finn broke off the sharp end of a quill and tickled Jasmine with its feathered end. She giggled and grabbed for the feather. He let her have it and ducked as she tried to comb his hair.
“More quills than sable brushes? Why? When you have no manuscript to— “ A sudden intake of breath. “You’re still translating the Wycliffe papers! Right under the bishop’s nose.”
He shrugged. “What have I left to lose?”
“You have this child.”
Kathryn returned Jasmine to the blanket and sat down beside her. Finn sat with them. He was so close to Kathryn he could see the tiny laugh lines around her eyes, smell her hair. It made him dizzy with desire. He stood up and went to the window, opened the shutter. The chilly breeze cooled his hot skin. The sun was bright. It laid its light pattern across his worktable, highlighting the scene of the Crucifixion, the blue of the Madonna’s cloak. He looked back at Kathryn from this safer distance. When he spoke, his voice was tight.
“I sent for you, Kathryn, because I want to talk to you about my granddaughter.”
She did not say it was late enough coming, but her expression said it for her. He could always read her thoughts.
“I hear from the bishop that you are … that you attended the duke’s revels with Guy de Fontaigne.”
She said nothing, just rubbed her arms as if she felt a sudden chill, though the room was well heated with extra coals for the child’s sake.
“I am naturally concerned that if there should be … an alliance between you … I’m concerned about what would happen to Rose’s child.”
“I see rumors are fleet of foot.” She tossed her head in a gesture he recognized as a flash of anger. “Is that all that concerns you, Finn? Well, you need not worry on that cause. He knows about Jasmine. I intend to make it a term of my—of any—contract with him that she shall remain as my ward.”
So it was true, then. He realized how much he had hoped otherwise. Some demon had sucked all the air out of the room. He looked anxiously at the child. She was busy trying to paint the oyster shell with her feather, dipping it into a patch of light as though it were a paint pot. A gift passed from father to daughter to granddaughter. The light around him swam with color, vibrant, swirling, all the bright hues of his life swirling into a single cord—and that cord girdled his neck, cutting off his wind. He suddenly hated the colors. There should be no col
or left in such a drab universe. Only shades of safe, muted gray.
“You would trust him in such an important matter?” Hardly enough breath left to say it.
“Why not, if I trust him enough to marry with him!”
She was clearly angry with him for some reason that he could not understand. But he fastened to her anger, and it gave him breath.
“And why would you marry with a man like that, Kathryn, a man whom you professed to despise?”
For the first time since she entered the room, she looked at him levelly. Her words were slow and deliberate.
“I am marrying him, Finn, to gain your freedom.”
The colors in the light, in the air would surely smother him. The reds, the blues, all mixing into dark purple, then to black. He fought to hold the light. Inhale deeply, inhale the light. It took an eternity to find his voice. When it came, he was surprised to hear it boom across the room, splitting the colors with a groan. Jasmine looked from one to the other of them, her eyes widening.
“Don’t be a fool, Kathryn.”
Jasmine’s mouth turned down, and her chin started to quiver. He was frightening her, but he couldn’t stop himself. He slapped his hand hard against the wall.
“It’s a trick. Don’t you see? He’s not going to let me go. The bishop likes having his own personal artist slave. And they still have not found who killed the priest. It’s a crime that must be answered for, and I’m the answer. They will look no further. That’s the way scapegoating works. Don’t you understand?”
“What I don’t understand is why you seem reluctant to leave. Is it that you want to stay holed up here forever, buried alive like an anchorite, with your holy paintings? Where you can nurse your grudge against me and spend what’s left of your life grieving over Rose? Finn the martyr. Is that it? Has this cell become more sanctuary than prison? Well, I’ll not let you be buried alive, even if you are willing. Alfred will testify to planting the pearls in your room. Then they have no case against you. And Sir Guy has concocted a scheme whereby the archbishop’s justice will be satisfied.”
“No. No! I will not consent to it.” He crossed the room and seized her by the shoulders. He shook her harder than he wanted to. “Don’t you realize he is not to be trusted?”
Kathryn’s eyes glistened. “I have no choice, Finn. He will see that you or Alfred or both answer for the crime and that my lands are forfeit to the crown. I have no choice. It’s either go into a convent or marry Guy de Fontaigne.” She started to pace. “Don’t you see? I either sacrifice you and disinherit my sons, or sacrifice myself.”
Kathryn in the arms of the hawk-nosed sheriff. Finn shook his head violently as if shaking off the image. The image held on stubbornly, writing itself on his eyelids, searing into his brain. He wished that Guy de Fontaigne were here now. Finn would rip off his head with his bare hands.
Instead, he grabbed Kathryn by her shoulders. “Then, my lady, remember this on your wedding night.” And he kissed her hard, harder than he meant to, a kiss that held all the passion and regret and anger that lived in his nightly dreams.
When he pushed her away abruptly, she swayed for a moment, limp as a child’s cloth poppet, as though she might crumple at his feet.
Jasmine started to wail and tried to climb Kathryn’s skirts. Finn picked her up, but she held out her arms to Kathryn. The hexagram in the star around her neck peeped out at him from its tangle of filigree.
“Remember this, too. If I am released, I will come for my granddaughter and take her away. I’ll not have her in his clutches.”
TWENTY-NINE
Our Fadir That art in heuenes, Halewid be thi name. Thi Kingdom comme to. Be Thi wille done as in heuen so in erthe. Gyve to us this dai oure breed oure other substance and fogive to us oure dettis …
—PATERNOSTER, TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH
BY JOHN WYCLIFFE
Kathryn heard the door to her chamber open and cringed in pain as a shaft of light pierced the semidarkness.
“Mother, is it one of your headaches?” Colin asked.
His shorn head moved like an elliptical moon toward her bed, then hovered just above her. His hand felt cool on her cheek.
“You’re burning with fever! I’ll go get Agnes. She’ll know what to do for you.”
“No.” The bed beneath her rolled as he sat beside her. She fought back a wave of nausea. “Tell them not to come up here. And tell them to keep Jasmine away. Don’t even bring her to the threshold.”
“Then what should I get for you?”
She covered her mouth with her hand, lest her breath cast some foul spell on him.
“Nothing. It will pass. You’ve come too close already. Just go away and let me sleep.”
“I’m not going to leave you sick and alone! God will protect me.”
If he didn’t protect His own Son, why would He protect mine? “Then call Glynis,” she said.
“You’re not Glynis’s mother.” He raised her arm and probed tenderly at her armpit. She knew he was looking for the telltale bubo.
“There’s been a report of plague at Pudding Norton in Fakenham,” he said. Worry abraded the melody in his voice.
She coughed, a wet, strangling cough, and he raised her shoulders and held her until the seizure passed. When she could talk again, she reassured him. “I’ve already looked, Colin. There’s no swelling in my groin, either.”
“But your skin is so hot.”
“It’s just an ague. Tell Agnes to make me a syrup of angelica root and leave it outside the door.” Another seizure of coughing. “Then you go away and stay away.”
He slipped soundlessly out, and she turned her head to the wall and went to sleep.
When she opened her eyes, it was morning and the bright light slicing through the window cut across her eyes like the sting of a lash. Someone—an angel?—separated itself from the light and bathed her face with cool water.
“Drink this.”
The cup’s lip was cold against her mouth. She shivered. Two sips were all she could swallow. The smell of sickness was in the room. Hadn’t she sent Colin away? Yet it was Colin’s voice, Colin’s face, but framed with a stubble of blond hair. Not Colin, who shaved his head each morn before he went out. Colin was on the highway preaching Lollard heresies. She closed her eyes against the throbbing light, but the darkness threatened to smother her.
“Keep the babe away,” she said to the angel who tended her so lovingly.
But instead of her voice, a piercing gibberish rode the air. Its shrillness ebbed and flowed like ocean waves. Demons arguing for her soul. Coming to claim her for her sins. She wanted to cry out to God, to plead for mercy, but there was no priest to plead for her soul. No priest. But the anchoress came. Smiling, gentle, telling her that all would be well. If only she could believe.
I will try. I will try to believe. Her mind clawed at memory, prowling for the words to the migratio ad Dominum. But she could not remember the words her tutor priest had taught her as a child. Receive my soul, Lord Jesus Christ, her mind cried out. But she pleaded in her father’s Norman French, and God answered only Latin prayers. He would judge her prayer profane, the words unworthy. Like Cain’s offering.
The voices stopped, and she slept.
Once she thought it was Finn who tended her so gently. He had forgiven her, then. But it was too late. Her body was as dry as a husk of threshed wheat, and the tongue she would have used to thank him cleaved to the roof of her mouth. She was a moth and her wings would soon be dust. Dust everywhere, sealing her eyes, filling her ears, muffling all sound. So this was dying. This pressing heaviness that drove one’s soul deep inside. Once she thought she heard Jasmine crying, and wanted her. But Jasmine could not come. She would never come again.
The anchoress lay awake in her cell, listening to the cathedral bells toll matins. The midnight silence swallowed the muffled peals, and quiet settled again, eerie and thick. As she recited the Hours of the Cross, Domine labia mea aperie, she thought, Lord, You will
have to open my lips. I cannot. They’re too stiff and cold. Then she repented the unworthy thought and muttered the response, Et os meum annuntiabit laudem tuam.
As she often did, she departed slightly from the scripted response of the Matins Hours, the Deus in adiutorium meum intende, asking not for help for herself but for the souls who crowded into her mind: the poor, the sick, the hungry, the many supplicants who, even in winter, found their way to her window. From outside, she could hear water drops plopping from the long icicles that hung from the church eaves, dripping onto the winter-hardened ground like Christ’s tears. Soon the world outside her tomb would be the green of some long-ago-remembered spring.
And she would be warm again.
It was a sin to think of her creature comforts when so many had died in the harsh winter. A sin too, perhaps, to say her prayers from her bed, where she shivered beneath the single thin blanket she had not given away. The stone floor was so cold her chilblained wrists, wet with the tears of her passion, stuck to it when she prostrated herself before her altar. Holy Church taught mortification of the flesh, especially during Lent, but what mother would willingly see her child’s flesh so punished? And was not Christ her nurturing, loving, gentle Mother?
It was a sin, too, to worry about her security, when she should trust Him in Whom her true security lay. But she’d had no word from the bishop. It had been weeks since she sent him her apologia, her confession of faith, written in English. She supposed his silence to mean he accepted it, or that he thought her beneath further notice, or that he was too preoccupied with the Lollard rumblings to bother with her. She prayed to have enough faith to stop worrying about it. Prayed to feel the warmth of His Love.
Her hands, resting outside the coarse wool of the blanket, held the rosary. Except for the fluttering lips and the slight movement of blue fingers against the beads, she lay as still as a stone effigy carved onto a sarcophagus. Though she still recited the Latin Hours, in recent weeks she had begun to say her personal prayers in the Midland English dialect in which she wrote her Revelations.
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