No cassocked priest this time.
He recognized his visitor immediately.
“Master Fisher, you’ve come to offer sympathy, I suppose. Though it is pardon for which I beg.”
“Beg? The proud Lord Cobham?”
John felt a flush of anger. “Very well. I do not beg favor from my king. I press payment against an old debt from a comrade-at-arms.”
“Then we must hurry,” Harry said. He drew from out of his shirt a black habit and pitched it at Sir John. “Put it on. The archbishop thinks his king has just left the presence chamber to take a piss.”
John felt himself grinning. “Like old times, eh, Hal?”
Master Fisher did not return his grin. “The sport has gone, Jack. This is a dangerous game you’re playing.”
“And the brother that wore this robe?” asked Sir John, struggling to make the robe go over his large frame. “Is he hiding somewhere naked?”
“He’s already on his way to meet his wife, wearing the simple breeches and doublet of a man of much humbler ambition.”
“Ah.” Sir John pulled the cowl over his head. “That is good. She’s a good lass. She deserves an honest husband. Besides, I’d hate to have his death on my conscience.”
“I understand that sentiment, my lord. But there are some deaths we cannot prevent. You will be wise to remember that in the future. There are some loyalties greater than friendship.”
“I could not agree more, Your Grace.” He wasn’t smiling either.
When Master William Fisher and a Dominican priest stepped into an empty hallway and down the stairs of Tower Prison, the lackey at the gate paid scant attention. “G’day to ye, Brother,’ he called, never noticing how much the tall, lanky friar who had entered less than an hour ago had grown both in girth and stature.
The king, the chancellor, and the archbishop were talking of coronation matters when the messenger entered the room. Arundel left and came back quickly. His face was the color of old ash. He darted a hostile glance at Beaufort, then whispered in the king’s ear.
“What do you mean, he has escaped?” the king blurted out in feigned outrage to the frowning archbishop. He noted the look of satisfaction on his chancellor’s face. Beaufort was no Lollard lover, but anything that put the archbishop in his place was bound to gratify.
“How? When?” The exhilaration of the game was such that Harry could scarcely keep the smile from his face. He wished for a moment that Sir John were here to share the satisfaction. But if all had gone as planned, Sir John was already down High Street, headed for Wales, still wearing the habit of a Dominican friar. “Did he have help?”
The archbishop looked as though he were delivering a hard stool into the piss pot. “It seems a parchment maker from Smithfield conspired with a viper in our very midst. A certain Brother Gabriel, whom I trusted.”
“Tsk, tsk,” Beaufort smirked. “Another monk gone bad. My, my, Archbishop, can you not keep your troops in line?”
“May I remind you, my lord Beaufort, that you were bishop before you were chancellor? And bishop you might one day be again. And I might someday have cause to say the same to you.”
“Lads, lads. Don’t fight,” the king clucked. “We will put out the hue and cry against Lord Cobham on the morrow. Maybe the exchequer can find enough for a reward. For now let us continue with our plans. England needs its king to be anointed.”
The strain still showed in the archbishop’s face. But all he said was a grudging, “As you wish, Your Grace. I suppose tomorrow will be soon enough. He’ll not get far.”
Gabriel made Hastings by first light. It lay a few miles southwest of Appledore. He stopped just long enough for one last visit to the abbey at Saint Martin’s.
He stood in the chapel and looked down at the spot in the floor where Father Francis was buried. And felt nothing but: regret. Everything he’d thought he believed in lay buried there, rotting, like the flesh beneath those stones. What had begun as a wrenching pain twisting inside him had settled into a great numbing void.
Gabriel was no longer sure about the Dominicans—or the Lollards. He wasn’t sure whether the pope was the true descendent of Saint Peter or whether he was the Antichrist, whether pardon came from the the father in Rome or the Father in Heaven. He wasn’t sure if God preferred prayers in Latin or Czech or English. He wasn’t sure if the wine turned to blood in the mouth or only in the heart.
He didn’t know if any of it, the dogma, mattered at all.
But he knew that someday, when his son stood over his father’s grave, he did not want him to feel this emptiness. And he knew something else. He knew that God did hear prayers—in any language. How could he believe otherwise? Even though he had abandoned his Church, he’d felt the Paraclete, the true Spirit, with him in these last days, like a wind at his back, giving him courage, nudging, beckoning him in directions he might not have gone. Pastor Dominus est, The Lord must be my shepherd now, he thought, now that I have no other.
On his way out, he stopped in the prior’s office. “There is a horse in the stable that belongs to the archbishop. See that it is delivered to Canterbury,” he said to the secretary there.
The brother looked as though he were struggling with recognition. “Is there any message, yeoman … ?”
How much we are defined by our costume, Gabriel thought.
“You may tell the archbishop that Friar Gabriel is returning his property. He no longer has any use for it.”
The monk was still staring with his mouth open in recognition when Gabriel left.
He caught a ride with a carter headed toward Appledore—to his mother and Anna and their son. He didn’t relax until he could smell the sea. A fine September sun was burning off the fog. There was a ship rocking in the harbor waves. He didn’t know its destination. He didn’t need to. Tomorrow or the next day or next week, whenever or wherever it set sail, Gabriel and Anna and baby Finn would be on it. God—and Anna—willing.
FORTY-TWO
You often cannot hear what the church preaches about
salvation except from your priest or chaplain. … If
our lesson should reach your ears, remember it so that
the ignorance which could mislead you will not hinder
your salvation.
—CHRISTINE DE PISAN IN THE BOOK OF THREE
VIRTUES (15TH CENTURY)
Mistress Clare bent over her grandson’s cradle, bundling him for the hundredth time. He was bent on kicking off his blankets in spite of the chill in the room. The smoke from the peat fire had clogged his breathing, so she had tamped down the brazier and moved the cook fire outside.
The room darkened as a shadow filled the doorway. She turned to see Gabriel’s tall silhouette, stooping beneath the low lintel. He crossed the threshold, pausing just inside the door. He looked haggard, his face drawn and covered with the stubble of a beard.
“Where is Anna?” He pointed to the cradle, concern rasping the edges of his voice. “Why is it so cold in here? Is he well?”
“Your son thrives. He is hardy like his father.”
In spite of her assurance to Anna, Mistress Clare was relieved that Gabriel had returned, relieved not because she had feared his intent but because she knew the terrible power he must stand against. She wanted to hug him to her. But too much distance lay between them. What if he pulled away? She could not bear that rejection more than once in a lifetime.
“He breathes better without the smoke from the fire. He is bundled tightly and I keep warm bricks beneath his cradle.”
“You? Where is Anna?” His voice rose.
“She has gone back to the abbey to—”
“The abbey! You mean she has abandoned him? She would not. I know she would not. I’ve seen her—”
“Of course she has not abandoned him, Gabriel. Calm yourself. The abbess, her grandmother, is very ill. Maybe dying. Lord Cobham’s gatekeeper came for Anna. I told her to go.”
He scrubbed his face with his palms in a gesture of
frustration. “How could you do that? It may be a trap. You don’t understand.” He paced in a circle—like a desperate animal in a too small cage. “I have betrayed the archbishop—if he knows she is my wife, he’ll use her to get to me by—”
Mistress Clare spoke in deliberate, measured tones to calm him. “Anna is aware of the danger. She will be careful. She had to go, else she would live with regret her whole life. I know what it’s like to live with regret.” Then she added, because she’d promised she would, “She said to tell you not to come after her, that if she does not return, you are to take the child and flee to the Continent.”
But he was already out the door and headed down the path toward Appledore. She called him back.
“Wait. You’ll need money to hire a horse,” she said, plundering once again her small horde.
He thrust the coins into his pocket and wrapped his arms around her. “Take care of yourself. Take care of my son. I have made some powerful enemies this day. If I don’t return, you may have another son to raise.”
She held him out at arm’s length, locked her gaze with his. “Don’t you worry about him. I lost one son to the church. I’ll not lose another.”
Anna did not weep when Sister Matilde met her with the news.
It was just before dawn. They had made the whole journey dawn to dawn, stopping only long enough to rest the horses. At Headcorn Manor the old gatekeeper borrowed a second horse for Anna so they could move faster. They’d stopped again in Maidstone for refreshment, but Anna had eaten only one bite before the food clogged in her throat.
For all their hurrying, they had not arrived early enough.
“I’m sorry, Anna. Mother died last night,” the sister said, her eyes glittering with unshed tears. “She died very peacefully. She just smiled and closed her eyes as though she were seeing some wonderful heavenly dream.”
“I want to see her,” Anna said.
“She is laid out in the chapel. Some of the sisters are sitting vigil. You need to rest first. To ride so far, so recently after giving birth—Anna, you must rest.”
“I will rest after I have seen her,” Anna said quietly.
“Very well, then.” When they entered the chapel, Sister Matilde motioned for the sisters to leave. “We’ll be right outside,” she said as they shuffled across the floor.
The chapel was lit only with the flickering candles at each end of Kathryn’s bier and a few torchlights along the wall. The candle flames danced as Anna approached the bier. The smell of incense, cloying and sweet, failed to mask the smell of death and threatened to overcome her. She felt dizzy, but fastened her attention on the face in front of her.
Anna still did not weep.
She stood mutely at the altar, numb of mind and body, staring at the woman who had so lately entered her life and yet had always been a part of it. She is beautiful laid out in her snow-white linen habit, Anna thought. No wonder my grandfather loved her so. Her wimple was pulled forward, framing the perfect oval of her face, almost hiding the scarred cheek, and the fine smooth line of her brow, even the few lines around her mouth, looked as though they were carved in alabaster. She looked like a statue of some venerated saint to whom the pilgrims prayed. She is my grandmother, Anna thought. Where are my tears? She was all I had. She loved me. She deserves my tears.
She stood there for a long time in the flickering candlelight, her body so stiff she felt she could not move, her engorged breasts heavy and aching. From outside she heard shuffling and the murmuring voices of the sisters, a bell tolling the little hours.
She loosened the lacings of her bodice. Her shirt was damp, and she worried that her child might be hungry, worried too that her milk might dry up before she could return to him. The silver cross hanging around her neck had fallen inside her tight cleavage. It pricked her breast. She unfastened the clasp, and as the necklace fell into her hand, she remembered the day her grandfather had given it to her, passing it down from her grandmother Rebekka and her mother, Rose. She remembered too how Kathryn had repaired it for her. It had been the key that brought them together.
With trembling hands she raised the little filigreed cross to her lips and placed it in Kathryn’s clasped hands. The silver cruciform gleamed against her scarred left hand, the tiny pearls of its star glowing creamy against the marble whiteness.
“When you see Finn the Illuminator, give him this,” Anna said softly. “Then he will know I kept my promise.”
The rushlights danced in their sentinel sconces. Anna’s footfalls whispered against the flagstones in the silent chapel as she walked away from Kathryn’s body lying cold and still as the stone on which it rested.
And still she did not cry.
Anna was standing alone over Kathryn’s grave when Gabriel came for her.
It was evensong of the next day and the last shovelful of dirt had been heaped upon the coffin. The faint voices of the sisters singing the vespers mass for Kathryn echoed from the choir. In the gathering dusk, she mistook the approaching man for the grave-digger who had finished setting the cross in place, the charred cross from above Mother’s desk. Anna had insisted they use it as a marker. Sister Agatha had protested the melted, disfigured crucifix. “You can’t even tell it is a man,” she harrumphed. But Anna had been firm. She knew the story of that cross. “It guarded her in life. It should guard her in death. The next abbess will have no use for it, anyway.”
“Anna,” he said.
Her body stiffened at the low, sad sound of her name in Gabriel’s voice, urgent, pleading, yet still carrying the vestiges of clerical authority. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I know you are grieving. But you must come back with me. You are not safe here and our child needs you.”
The heart that she’d thought frozen gave a little jerk. She turned to face him. “Have you seen him?”
“He is all right, Anna. He is well cared for.”
“Your mother is a good woman. Our child is safe with her.”
A frown twisted the fine line of his mouth into a scowl. She wanted to reach up and straighten it with her fingers.
“Yes, she is a good woman,” he said. “But a child needs a mother.”
“I do not need that reminder, Gabriel, when I’m standing over the grave of the only woman I ever called ‘mother’ and that so lately come.” She swallowed hard, surprised by a sob clotting in her throat.
From the shadowy stand of yew trees bordering the graveyard came the mournful call of a turtledove to its mate.
“Anna—” He reached out his hand to her, but she pulled her shawl tighter, drawing into herself, unable to take his hand.
“What news of Sir John?” she asked.
“He was condemned to death.”
“Gabriel, no. Please, God, no.” The words blended with the murmuring of the yew branches, as though they too were praying for Sir John.
His hand rested on the hem of her shawl. “You can take some comfort. He has escaped and is safe away.”
“Where?”
“Wales, probably. I do not know. I do not want to know.” He did not look at her as he answered. His fingers worried the fringe of the shawl, brushing against her skin.
His touch sent warmth surging through her and yet she shivered, remembering the predatory look in Arundel’s eye the day he’d come to arrest her, remembering too the nobleman whose cushion she was given in the prison. His noble estate had not saved him either. Hugging herself more tightly, she withdrew from Gabriel as if to deny her body the comfort of his touch, lashing out instead in anger.
“What was your part, Brother Gabriel? Did you testify against him? Did you help the archbishop condemn a good man to death for daring to spread the gospel of the same Lord you profess to serve?”
She held her breath, sorry for the coldness of her tone, sorry too that she had raised her voice in rancor here, beside her grandmother’s grave. She was not even sure how she wanted him to answer. If he said yes, that he had testified against Sir John, then he would have betrayed her onc
e again. If he said no, then it would mean that his life was worth less than the instruments of torture they would use on him. Her life as well. And the life of their son.
“I testified for him, Anna. I helped him to escape. With that action I may have condemned us all.”
She bent away from him, toward Kathryn’s grave, feeling hot tears sting her eyelids. It was the answer she most wanted, and most dreaded.
“I am a hunted man, Anna, as long as Arundel lives. If I stay here, my life and yours, our son’s, even my mother’s, will be in danger. I mean to be on the next ship out. I don’t know if I will ever be able to return. The archbishop—if he learns of our marriage, and he may already know—will think I’ve abandoned you as I’ve abandoned my other vows. You will be safe. He’ll have no further use for you. You and our son can stay at Appledore for a season. Then maybe you can return home to the abbey.”
“Then the archbishop would be right about one thing, wouldn’t he? Isn’t that exactly what you are doing? Abandoning me? It wouldn’t be the first time, would it, Gabriel?”
Return home to the abbey! Without Kathryn, what was there for her here? Even Sir John and Lady Joan would be gone, in hiding, or worse. Grief surged over her, bringing with it a blackness she hadn’t felt since that day on the bridge when she’d fallen into the water. But here there was no river to receive her, only raw earth. Her knees sank into the damp mound of Kathryn’s grave.
A light rain had started to fall. It was as though the sky had labored all day, piling up its doleful clouds, gathering its tears to release them now in concert with Anna’s—a torrential flood of tears, running down her face with the rain. A great tearing sob racked her body, and another, and then she could not stop. She beat upon the mounded earth with her fists, clutching the soil in her hands, mingling great handfuls with her tears, smearing it on her hands, her arms, even her face, tasting the grit of it on her lips, smelling the heavy clay.
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