The Illuminator

by Brenda Rickman Vantrease

  The room seemed different with the fleeces in it, alive somehow. Even the sound of the music was different. The notes didn’t echo in the emptiness but had a softer, more muted sound. It was calming. Colin strummed and sang a few lines.

  I live in love-longing

  For the seemliest of all things

  Who may me blisse bring,

  And I to her am bound.

  The words were hauntingly, wistfully played, evoking in Rose a longing of her own, though a longing for what, she wasn’t sure. It was a strange, new sensation.

  “Oh, Colin, that is so beautiful. Can you teach it to me?”

  Without saying anything, Colin handed her the lute, then bent over her to show her how to place her fingers to make the notes.

  “You smell good, Rose, like summer,” he said over her shoulder.

  She was glad she had washed her hair in lavender water. She could feel his closeness in a way she’d not ever felt close to another human being—not even her father, who stood so stiff when she hugged him he might have been made of wood, not flesh. He used to cuddle her when she was little. She remembered the roughness of his beard on her child’s cheek. But he’d not done that in a very long time. She wondered if Colin would shrink away if she touched him. She sat as still as a fawn, lest she break the spell.

  “I live in love-longing. Sing it with me and I’ll move your fingers,” he said.

  Her fingers were trembling so, she could hardly press the strings.

  “And I to her am bound.” He sang it softly into her hair, like a lullaby.

  She could feel his breath. She thought of the tangle of legs she’d seen behind the wool sack. She knew what they were doing. She’d seen animals coupling once and asked her father in disgust if that’s what people did. He’d answered curtly, “Pretty much,” and she’d resigned herself to a perpetual state of virginal ignorance.

  But with Colin it might be different. Glynis certainly hadn’t seemed to mind.

  Colin put down the lute and touched her face. If she sat very still, he might kiss her. What would his lips taste like? They looked like ripe cherries. She had an almost irresistible urge to nip his full lower lip with her teeth.

  She closed her eyes and Colin kissed her. A shy, gentle brushing of lips at first and then more urgent, a gentle probing with his tongue, and Rose’s childish resolution melted like snow in spring rain. After the kiss he continued to hold her, burying his face in her hair, singing to her, “Rose, my Rose, to which I am bound,” and the love song sounded like a promise.

  They lay in each other’s arms until the daylight faded into gloom, tentative, exploring, both embarrassed by this newness, when she heard a soft rustling, almost a whisper. She sat bolt upright.

  “What’s that?”

  “I didn’t hear anything.” He nuzzled her neck with his lips.

  “Listen, there it is again.”

  A gentle heaving, like the stirring of leaves in a light breeze, disturbed the quiet of the wool room.

  “Don’t be afraid. It’s nothing. Just the cooling of the wool. See how a mist is forming over the fleeces. They’re warm and alive. The wool is only breathing in the cooling night air.”

  And true enough, as Rose looked more closely, she could see a white mist hovering over the fleeces, could hear the fibers expanding, whispering to each other. It was a nice sound, but there was sadness in it, too, like the ghosts of old lovers sighing for remembered embraces.

  “It’s late, Colin. My father may be worried. We should go.” But her hair had come unbound and was trapped underneath his shoulder. She made no move to disentangle herself.

  “Just one more kiss. Please, Rose. You are so beautiful. I love you. I’ve wanted to tell you. But I was afraid you’d laugh at me. You’re the first, you know. I’m not like my brother.”

  “I would never laugh at you, Colin.” And then some new disturbing thought poked its head like a serpent into her paradise. “Colin, do you think what we’ve done is wrong? Do you think we will be punished?”

  “I love you better than anybody, Rose. Better than anything.” He traced the outline of her lips with his finger, reverently, just as he’d earlier traced the cross on her father’s manuscript. Then he sat up, and propping himself on one elbow, looked down at her. He looked serious, even a little alarmed. “How can it be a sin, Rose? You will be my lady. I will pledge my heart to you like in the song of Tristan and Isolde. I will love you forever. I even love you better than the music.”

  “Then you love me truly,” she said, laughing.

  And as she lay in his arms there amid the hovering mists on the wool room floor, she thought her love for him was as joyful and pure as the white wool fleeces that sighed their approval.

  SIX

  As far as possible, manuscripts should be decorated so that their appearance alone will induce perusal. We know that the ancients took great care to match contents and exterior beauty. Holy Scripture is deserving of all possible adornment.

  —ABBOT JOHANNES TRITHEMIUS,

  DE LAUDE SCRIPTORUM (14TH CENTURY)

  Lady Kathryn surveyed her new lodger’s quarters with approval. An ordered work space bespoke an ordered mind, and there was certainly order here: small pots of color, lined up like sentinels across the back of the desk; brushes and pens, clean and neatly organized by size; stacks of vellum, carefully and lightly lined to guide the artist’s hand—these, she knew, her youngest son had helped to prepare. She approved of this too. She liked to see her sons happy.

  It was Colin she’d come looking for, and she was surprised to find the chamber empty. She’d supposed the illuminator might be drawing in the garden’s fading light but thought to find Colin, for no particular reason, except that she missed the company of her children. She saw little of Alfred since he spent his days with Simpson, and lately even Colin had been stingy with his company. He’d always come to her chamber in the late afternoon. He would sing to her or tell her about some new adventure—a swan’s nest he’d found hidden in the reeds or some new poem he’d discovered among the few volumes Roderick had acquired more for prestige than love of verse. Sometimes, they would say vespers together in the chapel—he would murmur the prayers and she would kneel silently beside him, in communion more with her son than with God.

  Colin must be with the illuminator in the garden, she thought, No matter. She would not begrudge him this relationship, would endure the loss of his companionship willingly if learning a vocation would save him from a monk’s cowl. Too many mothers sacrificed sons to king or Church. She would not be counted in that number. It was good that he could learn from the master artisan. But she must warn him to be careful in his conversation. Not to give away too much. What did they really know about this illuminator? On the surface, he appeared to be who he said he was. Agnes certainly liked him. She even provided him with special little treats, which Lady Kathryn did not begrudge because, after all, the abbot was paying her well for his keep. But then, the cook was a simple soul, easily pleased by a charming manner. Charming manners could cloak a dead heart and a cunning mind. Her husband had been charming. In the beginning. Before he gained control of her lands.

  The chamber was cool after the heat of the day. A last ray of northern light lay on the desk, picking out the brilliant colors on the half-finished page of illuminated text. In Principio erat verbum. “In the beginning was the Word.” The vertical shaft of the initial letter was colored a deep sea-green and exquisitely lined with filigreed knotwork in red and gold. The dropped I sheltered the rest of the text, forming a delicate shrine to Saint John and sprouting green leaves and vines that twined and trailed in an elaborate border so finely drawn, it seemed to be alive. Miniature birds and beasts of exotic shapes frolicked among its various twigs and branches. Their colors leaped off the page. No wonder the Broomholm Abbot was anxious to please Finn.

  She shuffled the page slightly to see what exquisite embroidery might lie beneath it. What she found on this page surprised her even more. H
ere, the border was barely sketched and not yet colored—hardly more than a design. But it was the text that shocked her. Not Norman French at all, but Saxon English! At least it was a kind of English: part old Saxon, part Norman French, stirred together with a few Latinate words for seasoning. Why would Finn, or any craftsman, waste talent and labor on an English text? French was the language of the noble and the rich—only they could afford the luxury of owning books.

  “I trust you find my work worthy.”

  Lady Kathryn whirled around at the sound of Finn’s voice, but feeling her face flame at being caught snooping, bent immediately over the desk once again, hoping that the trailing gauze of her headdress would hide her embarrassment. She determined to brazen it out.

  “Your work, yes. Your subject, sir, less so.”

  Finn cocked an eyebrow. “You do not think Saint John worthy of illumination.”

  “Saint John requires no ‘illumination.’ It’s what lies beneath Saint John I have reference to.”

  “Indeed? What lies beneath Saint John! I would have thought Saint John celibate.”

  In other circumstances she might have found his wit amusing. As it was, his bawdy misinterpretation merely annoyed her. Best to ignore his impudence. She picked up the English text and waved it in front of him.

  “Oh, that,” he said. “It’s a poem by a fellow I met at court. A customs official, a bureaucrat for the king. His name is Chaucer. Mark it well. You may one day hear it again. He has some peculiar notions about language, but he’s a fine poet.” He retrieved the text from her and returned it to the desk, straightened the stack of papers she had disturbed. “He says this is the real language of England.”

  “This?” She pointed to the manuscript on the desk. “The real language of England?” She was sufficiently outraged at such a notion to forget her embarrassment. “There is no language of England. There’s Norman French for the lords and Saxon and Old Norse for the common sort. Latin for the clerics.”

  Finn grinned, obviously enjoying the exchange. “Have you heard of a poem called The Vision of Piers Plowman}”

  “A poem, you call it? Roderick—my late husband—brought it home. I think Colin has it, though I don’t know why he’d want it. It’s a dog’s blend of sounds, difficult in meaning and in the sounding of it. Not flowing off the tongue—hardly worth the nibs it took to scratch it down.”

  “West Midland English,” Finn said, “carries its own beauty, once your ear is attuned to it. In London, they call it the king’s English. King Richard has proclaimed it the official language of the law and of the court. ’Tis hardly surprising, since the king and his uncles have an intense dislike for all things French—even the old northern French brought by the Vikings.”

  “I assure you that I, too, have no liking for France. I am loyal to young Richard. As I was to his father.”

  Even to her own ears she sounded defensive, protesting too loudly. His statement that he had been at court put her on her guard. Could he be spying for the duke of Lancaster? Roderick had made plain his allegiance to John of Gaunt. Was the duke using Finn to sound out his widow and sons to make sure that fealty was still intact? Or worse, what if Gloucester, John of Gaunt’s brother, had sent the illuminator into her household to gather evidence against the day when he would win the power struggle between the young king’s uncles? A familiar pain began to tread the borders of her left temple.

  A straight beam from a low-slung sun shot through the narrow window, then fanned out, marking a path to the door. Finn stood in the light between her and the chamber entrance. As she spoke, she moved away from the desk, toward the door, closer to him, close enough to smell Agnes’s perry on his breath.

  “I’m just a poor widow who knows little about such things. My ear prefers what it’s used to, that’s all. Norman French or Midland English, it matters not as long as our Lord’s words are read in Latin.”

  It had been a cast-off remark, said for the benefit of the abbot’s ears—in case her new lodger carried tales back to his employer—meant to extricate her from the political turn of the discussion, but she detected a tightening of the muscle in the illuminator’s jaw. He started to speak and then changed his mind. This confused her. But then, much about Finn confused her. He was commissioned by the abbot on a holy task, but she had noted a lack of piety in his manners and demeanor, a carelessness in his speech that treated holy matters lightly. He mentioned having been at court, yet there was a bluntness about him that belied the courtier.

  “You’re a simple widow and I’m just a simple artist whose pen is for hire—-be it French or Latin, or Midland doggerel.”

  The curve of his mouth, the spark in his gray-green eyes mocked her. She should make some witty comeback, should challenge his tone that suggested she was something more than a “simple widow,” should question his connections with crown and abbey, make him define his own loyalties. But she said nothing. His eyes reminded her of the sea-green pools she’d bathed in as a child, when she had spent summers in her mother’s little house by the sea, before Roderick, before her sons, before the dead priest had come calling, before she knew more than she wanted of intrigue and greed. They were the exact color of the initial I … In the beginning … It was as though he had dipped his brush into that pool of her childhood summers. Those had been happy times. Times when her mother was still alive.

  “Lady Kathryn, was there something you wanted of me?”

  Startled, she felt the blood rush to her face. Finn was waiting for her to explain her intrusion into his privacy, privacy the abbot paid well to secure for him. She attempted to gather her composure, cast about for some likely explanation, and then seized upon the truth as the best defense.

  “You have caught me snooping, sir, and I beg your pardon. I had no intention to pry into your private affairs or the nature of your work. The truth is simply that I came looking for Colin, and I happened to see your manuscripts. I mean, after all, a mother is allowed some interest in that which robs her of a son. Is she not?”

  “I’m flattered that you want to look at my humble efforts,” he said. But his smile showed more amusement than flattery. “Colin has an eye for color and light. I think, with my tutelage—with your permission, of course—he would make a fine illuminator.”

  At the mention of her son’s name she regained her composure, tore her gaze away from his eyes and focused instead on his paint-spattered smock. She nodded toward the desk beneath the window and smiled apologetically.

  “Please don’t misunderstand a mother’s whining. I’ve seen your work. You have a great gift. If you are willing to teach Colin, then I am, of course, grateful. And I shall just have to find another companion for my quiet hours. Prayer and contemplation are always … profitable.” Her teeth bit the inside of her upper lip.

  “Yes. Good for the soul.” He nodded, not smiling.

  Was there a hint of mockery in his tone? She felt awkward. She moved once again toward the door. He moved with her. She said, “I might even take up reading poetry—dip again into Piers Plowman to find what you so enthusiastically recommend. Then, there is, of course, my embroidery.”

  She stepped a foot or two back, to give more space, so she could breathe better. This time, he did not move with her.

  “I would not have thought the running of such an estate provides you many free hours. What about your other son?”

  “Alfred? He was always more his father’s companion. Anyway, he spends his days with the overseer. He will be of age soon. His sixteenth birthday is two days before Christmas.”

  “And you’ll have plenty of time for prayer and contemplation, unless, of course, a young lord, like a boy king, requires a strong regent’s hand.”

  Was that a veiled comment about Lancaster? The duke of Gloucester, perhaps? Or was he merely mocking her again? She couldn’t see his face. He’d walked over to his desk, where he picked up a fresh sheet of vellum, a couple of quills, and a pouch of powdered charcoal. Her path to the door was unobstructed
. Make your exit now, she told herself, while the hem of your dignity is still intact, and she had indeed almost gained the door when she heard his next words.

  “You’re welcome to join me in the garden,” he said. “There are still a few rays of light left. I just came back here to retrieve my tools.”

  She turned to see that he had followed her to the door, once again closing the space between them. She looked up at him.

  “I don’t think … I wouldn’t want to intrude on your inspiration.”

  “The company of a beautiful woman never intrudes, only spurs inspiration.”

  The angels must have lent him the color for those eyes. Or maybe the devil. And the smile, crooked and a little disdainful, still it warmed her.

  “The roses are very fragrant. Come,” he coaxed. “Bring your embroidery. We’ll sit in companionable silence while you stitch and I sketch. We’ll take advantage of the waning light together.”

  Like an old married couple, she thought and realized, with a sudden chill, how lonely she was. How lonely she had been for a very long time.

  “Well, maybe just this once. I’ll get my needle from the solar and join you in the rose garden.”

  Just this once, she promised herself.

  The jays grew accustomed to the sight of Lady Kathryn sitting with Finn in the garden and no longer protested their presence. She looked forward to the afternoons they spent together. How at ease she felt with him. Each day, she loosened the strings bundling caution until it crept away, and she talked freely in spite of the fact that she had learned surprisingly little about her companion. But she had seen a glimpse of his soul in his art, and she found it trustworthy.

  Today it was quiet in the garden, sultry with the heat of late August. A welcome breath from the sea disturbed the air and sighed against her moist skin, cooling it. Inspired by the red-breasted thrush perched on the sundial, she chose a scarlet thread from the basket at her feet and threaded the eye of her needle. Beside her, Finn’s long fingers darted, sketching with swift, sure strokes the scrolling leaves and twining knots that he would paint on the morrow. She noticed that his gaze, too, flicked between the sundial and the paper. In three bold strokes the redbreast was captured forever on the page, a charcoal promise of future glory. His beak peeked between the leaves of what looked suspiciously like those of the hawthorne tree that shaded them from the dying sun.