The Illuminator

by Brenda Rickman Vantrease

  Magda shivered and scratched the scab of a fleabite on her leg until the blood trickled. Maybe she could stir the embers, find some fuel at the stable. It wasn’t far to the stable. She’d scrape courage enough to venture there. She picked up the huge poker with both hands and scratched among the dead coals until she found sparks in the ashes. The ostler’s boy had laughed at her, called her “girlie,” but his soul was green, and she’d never known anyone whose soul was green who treated her unkindly. He would help. Agnes would be glad in the morning that she had kept the fire from going out—and she would not sleep cold.

  Finn had made his bed on a pallet by the hearth in the inn’s common room rather than risk sharing a moldy mattress with two strangers in one of the closetlike cells at the top of the twisted stairs. He listened in disgust to the snores of the six or seven travelers, pilgrims on their way to Canterbury, sleeping on the floor around him. The one closest looked as if he hadn’t washed his beard and hair since last year’s wheat harvest. Clumps of suet and crumbs hid out with God only knew what else among the stringy mass of matted hair. Finn pulled his blanket closer and wondered just how far a flea could jump. He wondered, too, how many cutpurses lay among his sleeping companions. He adjusted the heavy pouch tucked inside his shirt so that it would not reveal itself whilst he slept. But, alas, he shouldn’t have worried. Sleep did not come. His general fastidiousness conspired with his sense of unease to keep him awake.

  The day that had started so auspiciously for him—the abbot’s generous payment, his shopping trip among the colorful market stalls, his visit with the anchoress—had rapidly deteriorated after he left the little Church of Saint Julian. He’d been tempted to follow King Street outside the city walls and head for Blackingham, but that would have put most of his journey in darkness. Instead, he followed the Wensum River a mile or two north to Bishop’s Gate. There, in the shadow of the great cathedral, he was sure to find an inn.

  He’d been forced to wait at Bishop’s Gate while a great entourage entered the city. Most of the other travelers had dismounted in a show of obeisance to the Church’s seal, which was affixed to the scarlet drapery of the touring wagon, but Finn had remained astride his horse, which snorted impatiently as the gaudy carriage lumbered by. This put him eyeball to eyeball with the worthy inside the carriage.

  Henry Despenser, bishop of Norwich.

  Finn looked away to avoid eye contact, but it was too late. Recognition flickered between them. The great carriage creaked to a halt. The crowd murmured its surprise as the wagon disgorged a footman in scarlet livery. He approached Finn.

  “His Eminence, Henry Despenser, bishop of Norwich, would speak with you,” the footman intoned, jerking his plumed hat in the direction of the carriage.

  Finn had a sudden inclination to refuse and simply ride away. But stupidity was not one of his faults. He dismounted and handed the reins of his horse to the splendidly garbed attendant, who looked somewhat abashed but nevertheless stood by the horse, holding the reins as though he had something nasty between his gloved, ringed fingers.

  “Guard this horse well,” Finn said. “He carries valuable manuscripts from Broomholm Abbey.” Glancing nervously at the Oxford packet, Finn approached the parted curtains of the window. “Your Eminence,” he said to the haughty face framed therein.

  The crowd pressed slightly forward, silent now, as if listening with a collective ear. The bishop murmured something to another footman and the door to the carriage opened. A fringed and brocaded footstool was placed in the dust of the road.

  Finn didn’t move but looked at this second, this equally splendored, attendent quizzically.

  “My lord the bishop will speak with you privately.” His tone clearly said that he thought this simply robed horseman not worthy of such distinction. The crowd sighed as Finn parted the curtain and entered the drapery-covered wagon.

  Once inside the equipage of Holy Church, this palace on wheels, Finn was at an immediate social disadvantage. Did he sit without being asked, or did he remain hunched over in this awkward position, his height putting him in a decidedly clumsy and uncomfortable position? The bishop’s smirk showed that he was aware of Finn’s discomfort, and after a pause sufficient in length to reveal Henry Despenser to be a man who enjoyed the discomfort of others, he waved toward the velvet-covered bench opposite. “Sit, please.”

  Finn sat. He said nothing.

  The silence lengthened as guest returned the even gaze of host. From this close perspective, and in the fading light, the bishop looked even younger than Finn had remembered. Young in age, mayhap, but his arrogance was ripe. Despenser spoke first.

  “You are the illuminator who has been engaged by the abbey at Broomholm.”

  “Yes, Your Eminence.”

  “The one who has a taste for pork.”

  Finn did not rise to the bait. Did not acknowledge the veiled reference to their last meeting. Despenser continued. “Since our last meeting under”— he smiled cattily—“unfortunate circumstances, I have inquired about the nature of your work. The abbot informs me that I was wise in my generous forgiveness of your irreverence for Church property. He sings your praises.”

  Finn still did not acknowledge the former meeting and accepted the compliment with only a nod and a smile. What was this about? Was the bishop just playing with him? A smile like the anchoress’s cat, he the mouse caught between her dainty paws.

  “You are a man of action, it seems, rather than words,” the bishop said. “Well, then, I’ll get right to the point. I may have a commission for you. I wish you to paint a reredos, an altarpiece, for me.” He paused as if just now giving thought to the subject of his commission. “To depict the Passion, the Resurrection, and Ascension of our Lord.”

  Well, here was a surprise. Was this some kind of a trap? Was Despenser plotting revenge for the butchered pig?

  The bishop continued, “I know what you’re thinking—why do I not go to one of the guilds?—but I’m a man of certain aesthetic standards, and your superior ability, so the abbot assures me, is not easily found.”

  High praise, and from a high patron. This should have made him comfortable. It did not. The close interior of the wagon with its heavy drapery was too confining, almost like a prison. The bishop, in spite of his youth and his ermine-edged robes, didn’t smell all that sweet; his body carried the distinct smell of old garlic and stale perfume.

  “You do me great honor,” Finn said carefully. “But I’m afraid that I must plead incapacity at the moment. The abbot has given me much work, and he has proved himself to be a generous patron. I would not want to disappoint him.”

  Almost before the words were out of his mouth, he knew they were wrong.

  The bishop’s face flamed. “You would choose to disappoint a bishop rather than an abbot, then? Broomholm is not even an abbey of great distinction. I must wonder at your ambition, Illuminator. And your wisdom.”

  “Not disappoint, Your Eminence. Merely postpone, until such time as I could do the altarpiece justice.”

  Despenser’s thin lips tightened. That had been the wrong thing to say, too. He should have seen that the bishop would not appreciate being put behind the abbot. Was that why he’d said it? An unconscious desire to needle this upstart of a churchman who represented everything he hated about the Church? He tried again.

  “I am truly flattered at the confidence of so noble and esteemed a patron, but, as I’m sure Your Eminence would be the first to concede, in serving the abbey I serve the same Lord that I would be serving if I carried out your commission. To choose one over the other for personal gain would be a sacrilege against the Holy Virgin to whom I have dedicated my art.”

  “A pious and circumspect answer, to be sure. And a shrewd one.” But his tone indicated that neither piety nor shrewdness was what he desired in an artist.

  Finn pleaded that he worked in miniature, that the scale of such a work was outside his ability. “I suggest, with your permission, that your altarpiece might be bette
r served by one of the Flemish artists.”

  The bishop had fidgeted at that answer, just as Finn fidgeted now on the hard floor of the crowded inn.

  “Well, of course, if you’re incapable, I shall look elsewhere,” he’d said sharply, then waved impatiently at the footman who stood outside the window. The door opened abruptly and Finn backed out of the carriage into the settling chill of early evening, barely getting clear before the coachman whipped the horses and the wagon lurched forward.

  I botched that bit of business. I may have made a powerful enemy, he thought. But for now, he was more bothered by the snores and farts of the sleeping flotsam of humanity around him. Give it up, Finn, you’ll not sleep tonight, he told himself. So, before daybreak, he went out to roust the ostler and claim his horse. By the time the first bleak morn of winter had shown its grayed underskirt, he was outside the walls of Norwich, headed for Blackingham.

  Finn’s early-morning journey was not as pleasant as yesterday’s promise. He was filled with a restless anxiety, the kind of loneliness and foreboding that usually comes at the close of day rather than at dawn. Even the weight of the gold florins around his neck and the thought of the gifts in his saddlebags did not lighten his mood. His eyes were grainy from lack of sleep and his back ached. He was getting too old to sleep on the floor. Or maybe he was spoiled by his comfortable quarters at Blackingham. Blackingham. That gouged too. Like an ill-tied knot in his braies. He knew about the cost of love.

  What would be the price for his brief respite from loneliness? And brief it would have to be. Indeed, if it were known that he and Kathryn had relations … but his past was well behind him. And when his work was finished, he would move on. Not because he wanted to. But because he had no choice. As long as their affair was secret, Kathryn’s position would not be compromised. Still, perhaps he should rein himself in, lest the price for this short-lived happiness be exacted in a coin he could not afford.

  A pall of cloud stole the sun’s warmth as he paused to let his horse drink from a marsh pool. Maybe it was the weight of the Scripture carried in his saddlebag that burdened his natural optimism. Or maybe it was the weight of the secret he carried buried so carefully that sometimes even he forgot. Was it right to keep it from her? But ignorance would be her only defense.

  He peered at a nonexistent horizon. Gray sky washed into marshland and marsh washed into sea like a seascape painted by a somber child with only the color gray in his paint box. A landscape so flat, it seemed one might walk off the edge of the world—not one little hill, not even a bump on the watery landscape to shelter him from the wind. How had he found this flatness, this huge, unsettling sky beautiful? The long summer with its clear golden light had beguiled him, but he had a sense that the long summer had ended. The cold north wind, rushing down his neck, confirmed it.

  Blackingham loomed before him, its red brick face a relief from the pall that had settled on his spirit. Only a thin spiral of smoke snaked from the kitchen chimney, hardly visible against the gray sky, but Finn read a welcome there and spurred his horse toward Rose and Kathryn. Rose and Kathryn.

  Colin spent the night prostrate on the cold floor of the chapel where morning found him, agonizingly conscious, as he’d been all night, of the shrouded body laid out before the altar. Its charred smell made the vomit rise in his throat. Its pale linen shroud reflected a ghostly light from the lone torch left burning in its sconce, keeping watch over the dead man until morning came and the shepherd could make his last journey. Colin kept watch, too. Pater Noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum. Adveniat regnum tuum … How many times had he said the Our Father? His throat was parched, his tongue thick with saying it. Libera nos a malo, libera nos a malo, libera nos a malo. Deliver us from evil. But in his heart he feared it was too late. It was all his fault. Why had he not seen it sooner? The devil had used Rose’s beauty to tempt him into mortal sin. He had seduced a virgin, and now the shepherd’s blood stained his soul and hers.

  Had they put out the lamp? He couldn’t remember. But it didn’t matter. God spoke through the fire. The wool shed was God’s judgment against them. Et dimitte nobis debita nostra, he mumbled between sobs into the cold silence of the chapel. No white dove perched on the narrow slit of window; no angelic vision of light promised redemption. Only a rat rustled across the floor. He’d really not expected any supernatural manifestation. His sin could not be so easily expunged. It would take a lifetime of Paternosters to save his soul, and Rose’s, too—Rose, who’d been the first to call what they did a sin.

  Hadn’t he always known he belonged to God? He’d denied his calling, and the devil, not content with such small booty, had snared him. And now there was blood on his hands. And Rose’s, too—beautiful, innocent Rose, tarnished by his lust. He’d spend his life in prayer for her salvation. But it would not be as he had imagined it. There would be no music. There would be no chorus of harmonious voices. No glorious hymns of plainsong praise offered to heaven. He would choose a tuneless abbey, maybe Franciscan. He would take a vow of silence, spend what was left of his youth and all the days of his life in unbroken stillness, praying for the Rose he’d soiled, growing old without the solace of his music. He would atone.

  His skin felt hot despite the chill of the chapel. Maybe he would catch an ague and die. Escape. But he could not wish for death outside a state of grace. Besides, there was Rose. Her soul needed him.

  The bell in the courtyard tolled prime, calling the faithful to morning prayers. Calling him. This sniveling in front of an altar that had seen too few prayers bought no grace. With dawn’s gray light, the room appeared even more ghostly, but it no longer frightened him. He rose stiffly, like an old man. He would dress himself in sackcloth and ashes and follow behind the cart as it transported John’s body to Saint Michael’s. He would himself lift it from the cart, carry it through the lych-gate into the holy ground where it would be received. And then? He felt a weight shift within him, not removed, just shifted, to be better borne.

  Then, he would confess his sin to the father at Saint Michael’s, and his life as Colin, youngest son of Blackingham, would be over.

  Sir Guy de Fontaigne also rose with first light. He’d no wish to tarry at Blackingham. He’d slept badly after eating a scant portion of cold pigeon stew provided by his apologetic hostess. So the cook’s husband was the lout who’d died in the fire. So what? She was a servant. Her first duty was to the household she served. If he were master of Blackingham—an idea of which the sheriff was becoming more and more enamored, especially since he had lately learned that Blackingham had been Lady Kathryn’s dower lands and by rights reverted to her at her husband’s death—such laxness would never be condoned. Not that he would deny the woman her grief. Even peasants and villeins were entitled to that, he supposed. She could use her tears to flavor the victuals. But victuals there would be. And served in a timely fashion. Duty, like one’s station in life, was ordained by God, else Sir Guy’s ambition would have seen him king. That might be out of his grasp, but Blackingham Manor was not.

  But first, he must woo Lady Kathryn, and just now, with a gnawing in his belly and no fire laid in his chamber, he was not in a wooing mood. He’d fetched the priest last night, as she’d requested, and tried to divert her petulant son—also as she’d requested. Roderick had often brought the other twin hunting. Alfred was more to the sheriff’s liking, a merry lad, full of fun and occasional mischief. This pale one of the silken hair and pretty features had come hunting with them only once and cried at the sight of a wounded stag. Roderick had mocked him and sent him home. “He’s sucked too long at his dam’s pap. He’ll never make a man.”

  Well, by God’s Body, he’d made a poor companion. He may as well have been a deaf mute for all the response he gave to the sheriff’s determined attempts at diversion. They’d returned within an hour, priest in tow, to this inadequate hospitality. All this over the death of a shepherd. Blackingham truly needed to be taken in hand, and he itched to do it. The proud w
idow was a bonus. If he should marry Roderick’s widow, her dower lands would come under his control.

  He dressed quickly in the first chilly dawn of winter, cursing briefly that there was no water in his ewer, then quickly tied on his sword and dagger. As he strode across the deserted courtyard to the great kitchen, nothing stirred in the sepulchral house. He entered the smoky cavern hopefully: mayhap there was a fat sausage sizzling somewhere after all. But no sign of life was here, either, just a scullery maid sleeping before a half-hearted fire.

  He clanged the flat of his dagger among some overhead pots. The sleeping girl jumped like a kicked dog, her body involuntarily scrunching, as though trying to make itself invisible.

  “Look to, wench. Where’s your mistress?”

  The girl only blinked large sleep-encrusted eyes.

  “God’s Body, girl. Are you daft? What must a man do to get a crust of bread here?”

  The girl leaped up, like a cat on all fours, her eyes suddenly alert. She grunted something unintelligible, but she scampered to a cupboard. She brought him a half-round loaf, covered in a moldy cloth, and stuck it out to him.

  “Bread,” she said. Then she laid the loaf on the table between them and cringed back into the shadow.

  “She’s offering you the food from her own hoard. It would be churlish not to accept.”

  Sir Guy spun around at the sound of a man’s voice behind him. He held his dagger at the ready, lowering it only slightly as he half recognized the grinning man behind him.

  “More churlish to eat rotten food, I would say.” He returned his dagger to his belt but kept his hand upon the hilt. Recognition nagged. “You were here the night the bishop’s legate was killed. You’re from the abbey, an artist of some kind.”