Anna felt one sudden stab of pain, a shock, until she remembered. Gilbert’s book, The Sickness of Women, had said the first time would hurt and there would be blood. The landlord would see it when he changed the linens. He would know what VanCleve—what they—had done. She felt her face burning with shame. You should have stopped him, Anna. You should have stopped him. You should have left when he kissed you. And then he said her name again, but this time it sounded like a prayer and carried so much sadness in it.
He rolled onto his side, still close, pinning her against the wall. He whispered her name again, a mere sigh of breath against her cheek. A sting of burning tears pricked her eyelids. What would she say to him now? How could she look into his eyes and see the reflection of her shame? She could not even plead drunkenness for her sluttish behavior. She could not plead that he had taken advantage of her. She had not even resisted him!
When she heard him snoring—rhythmic, gentle snores—she thought to push him from her, but that would only wake him, and she would have to confront her embarrassment. The solidness of his body pinning hers against the wall was also oddly comforting, she thought as she lay there wondering what she should do.
Is this the way it would have been with Martin? she wondered, and felt a wash of guilt as though she had betrayed him somehow. And not just with her body. For she felt more bonded to this man she hardly knew than she’d ever felt with Martin. But I do know him, she thought. I know his soul because I’ve seen his kindness. I’ve watched him with Little Bek. I watched him risk his life for Jetta.
She looked at his body beside her, memorizing the line of his shoulders, his waist, his hips. His hair looked more silver than gold in the moonlight, and at the crown there was a spot, a perfect circle, where the hair was shorter than the rest, hardly more than stubble. She wondered about that idly. She would ask him when he woke. How can he be lying here beside me, naked? How did this come to be!
She held her breath, unconsciously matching it to her lover’s. Her lover. She, an unmarried woman, had taken a lover. A grievous sin. She heard some sound from outside, the call of a nightbird? Or Little Bek, awake and frightened. She listened again. No, it was only an owl.
A bad omen, Jetta would have said. Jetta. She closed her eyes, waiting for the tears to come again. None came.
She listened again, hoping she would not have to go to the sleeping child, knowing that she would if he called out to her. But the only sound she heard was VanCleve’s gentle snoring, a kind of lullaby.
When Anna awoke again, the sun was pouring through the open window and she was alone in VanCleve’s bed. She got carefully out of bed and pulled back the coverlet. A small red stain, hardly bigger than a teardrop, lay on the sheet. She pulled her chemise around to inspect the back of it—a larger spot there, already dried and stiff.
Here was the proof that she was no longer a maid. Proof that might be required from any future husband, proof too that she was at last a woman, no longer a maid—a woman heavy with regret.
How could she have given her maidenhead away so causally? And to a man she hardly knew! Maybe even a man with a wife. A man with children. Foolish, stupid girl. She hoped desperately that VanCleve did not return before she could clean herself up. Embarrassing enough to face him at all—at least she should be dressed. She bolted the door, took off the soiled chemise, and rolled it into a ball. Good. There was fresh water in the bowl and more in the bucket on the floor beside it.
She wet a rag and ran it quickly, more briskly than warranted, over her face and body—it smelled of the tiny bits of lavender floating on the surface—then employed it between her legs. Carefully at first—why, Anna? That which should be unbroken has already been broken—then more thoroughly, squeezing the water up inside, washing away what she could of the life force that had spilled inside her.
What had Gilbert’s book said about the first time? Wasn’t it harder to conceive the first time? Please, God, let it be so.
Wetting the rag again, she dabbed at the small stain on the sheet, widening it, lightening the evidence of her spoiled maidenhead to the brownish tinge of spilled ale.
She poured the dirty water from the basin into the chamber pot beneath the bed, ignoring her own full bladder, anxious to leave before VanCleve returned. When next she saw him, she wanted it to be under more commonplace circumstances and more neutral territory. Perhaps he had guessed that. Or maybe he regretted what had passed between them too and was already confessing his sin to a priest. At the very least fornication. Or, God forbid, even adultery. No. She could not think that. He’d said he was not married. But what if he had lied? Was she an adultress if she didn’t know he was married? The very thought of VanCleve in a confessional, her name forming on his lips—the same lips that had whispered her name last night, breathing it into her hair, into her neck—made her feel ill. Soiled, that the priest should hear her name and envision them together. God saw you, Anna. But he would understand. He would forgive. The priest would not understand and he could not forgive. And yet VanCleve would think he left his sin behind him in the confessional. She almost envied him that.
As she stepped into the hallway, she listened for the sound of Little Bek. He would be awake now and wanting her to help him onto the chamber pot. Another stick of guilt heaped upon her already heavy bundle. It bothered him when he soiled himself.
By Heaven and All the Saints! How her life had changed in the blink of an eye. Two short days ago she had been a maid—albeit on her way to spinster-hood and her with no sibling’s hearth on which to spin—but she’d only had to worry about herself. Now, she was maid no longer, but a fallen woman with a child to care for, and no ordinary child either. But what else could she have done? God had given her the child. Given him to her because with Jetta’s death there was no one else to care for him. Truly, even when Jetta was alive, it had been Anna who cared for the boy most. She knew when the Romani moved on they would abandon the boy in Rheims, where he would join the crowd of beggars—leperous, filthy cripples and divers wounded souls—who languished at the alms gate of the priory, howling their misery at passersby.
She paused at the door, listening. No whimper. Not even the restless movement of his limbs brushing against the bed, the sound she’d become so used to she no longer heard. “Little Bek,” she called softly, opening the door.
The sunlight filled the pretty little chamber with warm light, cutting across her empty bed. She should have known not to leave him on the bed, should have known he’d fall off. “Where are you, Little Bek? Answer me. This is not a game.”
A quick inspection of the room showed his pallet empty and the floor as well. A half-empty cup of milk and the remnants of a washing-up were in the bowl on the stand in the corner. There was only one possible answer. The child had set up a great clamor and the landlord had come to his aid, maybe even taken him out into the garden. A glance out the window showed only a lone scarlet leaf, a last hanger-on of autumn, floating down onto a carpet of brown. Well, one thing was sure. He hadn’t got up and walked out by himself, and surely he was with a kind soul. Who else would trouble with such a child? Unless the angel Gabriel had come down and spirited him away. But she could not go looking for him until she took care of her own nature’s call and found a clean chemise.
She was fumbling with the ribbons on her shirt when she heard a commotion outside. Little Bek’s high voice squealing in delight. She whirled around as the door opened and there stood VanCleve, bearing the child upon his shoulders, stooping like a clown to try to enter the low lintel without bumping the squealing child off.
“I hope you don’t mind, Anna,” he said with a big wide grin, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, as though last night had never been, as though her world had not been turned upside down. “But you were still asleep. And Bek needed to make water. So I took him outside and showed him how to be a boy.”
“Boy!” Little Bek’s big head bobbed on his slender neck affirmatively. “Boy!”
“Now, let’s go see if we can find some food. I’m starved,” VanCleve said.
TWENTY-ONE
… a monk outside his discipline and rule
is like a fish outside his pool.
—GEOFFREY CHAUCER, PROLOGUE TO
THE CANTERBURY TALES
For Anna those first days after Jetta’s death wore the heavy twilight color of pain and grief—and guilt. So much guilt. Why had she hesitated at the river’s edge? Why had she not gone into the water to repay the debt she owed? For Little Bek, she told herself. She did it for Little Bek. But it lacked the ring of truth. Anna knew she hesitated because she was afraid. Her craven soul had remembered the weight of the water and turned from it.
And then there was the other. She had promised herself it would not happen again. Just because one slips into the mud doesn’t mean one must wallow in it. Had VanCleve not been always underfoot she might have kept that promise. But she could not deny Little Bek VanCleve’s company when the boy delighted in it so. Could she?
The time Anna spent with VanCleve was opiate to her pain and balm to her spirit. His smile, his touch, replaced sorrow with gladness and pain with joy. At first, she’d made it a condition of their time together that there should be no more passion between them, told him it was the influence of her grief, that she was not that kind of woman. He’d agreed and begged her pardon for taking advantage of their shared grief, for indeed he did seem deeply troubled by the injustice of Jetta’s death even though he hadn’t known her.
But all of Anna’s senses were heightened in VanCleve’s presence. Even the hues of autumn set her senses quivering; the golden brown and dusty reds, like spices freshly sealed in a glass jar, waiting to unleash their heady scent. Whenever her mind summoned his face, his voice, a whirlwind danced inside her, quickening her beating heart and stealing her breath away.
Her resolve tore easily. It had only taken three days and hers had been the first move. She had felt wanton and ashamed as she reached for his hand and raised the smooth palm to her lips, the palm that had just handed the blue stone to the laughing child, but she could not stop herself. She kissed the palm. He tried to withdraw his hand, his frustration evident, his glance darting at the boy, but she did not stop until she’d brushed her lips against each fingertip. And that night, after Bek had gone to sleep, Anna had appeared at VanCleve’s door.
“No, Anna. It’s best if we are not alone. I—”
I love him. How can this be wrong? she thought as she stopped his protest with her mouth. She was to ask that same question of herself many times. But he only spoke of love in the heat of passion and never of marriage—and she never asked. He was always careful to withdraw before he spilled his seed inside her. For that she was grateful.
How could this be the same girl who’d made poor dead Martin wait when he’d spoken to her of love, begged for marriage? But it wasn’t. That girl had died with Ddeek and Martin.
Anna knew nothing of VanCleve’s past and longed to know, but was afraid to know. Yet she knew enough to love him. He had stood on the bank like a hero from romantic courtly legend to save Jetta. He had taken the afflicted child to his bosom as though he were a much sought-after lost lamb, laughing with each new thing the boy learned, even rigging crutches for him out of sturdy sticks, crossed and padded. The boy had actually learned to drag himself from bed to wagon—the wagon that VanCleve had also provided, making Anne’s life much easier, and more melodic. For Little Bek sang incessantly.
Anna wondered at the complexity of tones that came from the child’s mouth. And sometimes there were words. The boy almost never spoke, but Anna heard meaning in the gibberish he sang in his own language: it was a mixture of Roma, and Bohemian, and English sounds all melded together, yet she could understand him.
“Anna, interpret. Tell me what the whelp is saying. He’s too smart for me. I can’t understand this language he makes up in his head.” VanCleve would wink and Little Bek would grin, showing he had understood every word.
Only once did she and VanCleve argue after they lay together. Only once—when Anna spoke about her grief for Jetta. They were in their leaf-strewn bit of garden, playing in the autumn sunshine. She was standing over him as he knelt beside Little Bek, teaching him how to maneuver his new wagon. “I wish Jetta were here to see how he progresses,” she said, and suddenly the tears she’d thought had gone away welled up.
VanCleve stood up and wrapped her in his arms, wiped her cheek with his silken cuff. “We will buy an indulgence for her soul.”
Choking on her tears, she only shook her head in protest.
“I’ll pay,” he said. He stroked her hair, smoothing its wildness.
“No. No indulgence.” She sniffed. “You know I—”
He waved her objection aside with an abrupt gesture and a quick shake of his head. “I have money to pay for remittance of her sins. You should do this for your friend.”
“No! I will not pay some pope’s lackey to do that which we can do ourselves. And you will not pay either.”
She felt his body grow rigid with tension. He removed his arms from around her. When she looked up at him, his face had set into the same hard lines she’d seen when they had first argued about the English Bible. She’d not seen that look again till now. Yet she could not let his disapproval stop her. “If there’s any praying to be done for Jetta’s soul, I shall do it myself! I don’t need some money-grubbing priest. I am surprised you would suggest it. I would have thought the good people of Flanders more enlightened than that.”
His face flushed dark and anger sparked in his eyes, but he made no rejoinder, just gave Little Bek’s wagon a push. “Turn the handle! Turn the handle!”
When Little Bek didn’t turn the handle, the wagon thudded against a tree. Little Bek squealed and VanCleve reached out to pull it back, moving the handle to show the child. “Anna, there’s—”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “That sounded insulting. I know you are devout. My tongue is too loose sometimes, but I was always encouraged to speak my mind. I’ve been told that is not always a desirable trait in a woman.” She tried to laugh to lighten the mood.
He was kneeling now beside the boy in the wagon, his back to her. “We’ve had this discussion before, Anna, remember. These are dangerous times for loose tongues,” he said. “Be more careful of what you say and to whom you say it.”
The harshness of his tone unsettled her. It was almost as though VanCleve had disappeared and in his place some austere stranger had appeared. It was her fault. She had offended him personally by suggesting he was ignorant. She bent to kiss the top of his head where the hair had grown out in a fine blond layer, kissed it gently so as not to disturb the wound for which he said he’d shaved the spot, though she saw no sign of a scar.
“Let’s not quarrel over such silliness as pardoners and priests,” she said. “They have nothing to do with us. You were right to remind me that Jetta is in the hands of a merciful God. It is a glorious day. The landlord is bringing us a picnic. We shall take it here in the garden. These golden days are a gift this late in November. We should enjoy them while we can. You shall play my knight and I shall play your lady.” She took his hands and pulled him gently toward her.
“And Little Bek? Who will he be?”
At least he was smiling again.
“Why, he shall be the court musician,” she said. “And we will have wine and bread and cheese and celebrate his beautiful singing.”
The boy began to sing as though he’d understood every word and was entering into the spirit of play. Anna thought that even the angel Gabriel would have laughed to hear him.
VanCleve did.
Gabriel opened the door to the confessional, settled his scarlet mercer’s robes onto the polished wood of the narrow seat, fumbling clumsily to open the little wooden door. The confessional was a rare experience for him: Brother Francis had always been his confessor, and he’d knelt before him to receive both penance and blessing. As he waited for the doo
r on the other side of the confessional to open, waited for the priest’s shadowy profile to show itself, he thought about how reluctantly Anna would have entered that little wooden closet with its smell of human sweat and old wood. How she would scoff at him if she knew.
He could almost hear her voice, its melody strident with indignation. He is just a black-robed Roman lackey, just a man like any other, she would say. No different from you. No. No different at all, he’d thought and cringed at the scorn she had heaped upon the Roman clergy. He had bit back his own anger at her profanity, his righteous protest silenced by the shame of his deceit. But he had determined then and there that she would never know Brother Gabriel. She would only know VanCleve.
The door slid open. A silhouette settled on the other side, emitted a phlegmatic cough. He could smell the priest’s garlicky breath. A man just like any other. No, not like any other. Like himself, ordained by God, called of God. He must remember that. It had been too easy for Gabriel to pretend that he was like any other man, pretend that he was entitled to the love of a woman, pretend that Anna and Little Bek were the only responsibilities he had in the world. He was in danger of believing his own pretense.
“Father, forgive me, for I have sinned.”
He made his confession in Latin, but not confessing all, not confessing that his allegiance was to the pope in Rome and not in Avignon—that bit of Church politics the French priest did not have to know. It was enough to confess his sins. But the priest seemed not as interested in Brother Gabriel’s sins of the flesh as in the fact that he was using Church funds to support his dalliance and that Brother Gabriel was neglecting his ecclesiastical duties.
The Mercy Seller: A Novel (v5) Page 23
