The Illuminator

by Brenda Rickman Vantrease

  As she approached the house—why had she not worn sturdier shoes; the rough clods of earth in the rutted road bruised her feet—she saw smoke curling from the double chimneys. Thank God that was one chore she’d not have to do.

  As she crossed the courtyard, she heard a man’s familiar voice. The sound of it made her forget her weariness and her sore feet. She picked up her skirts and ran into the kitchen. Rose was there, and so was Finn, breaking eggs onto a smoking iron griddle.

  “You’re back,” she said, feeling stupid, wanting to rush to him and fling her arms around his neck, and knowing that she should not—not in front of Rose.

  “My condolences, my lady, Rose has told me about the fire,” he said, but she read something else in his face, some secret language that lovers speak with their eyes and not their mouths.

  Suddenly she was ravenously hungry.

  “Have you enough eggs to share?”

  He laughed his honey-graveled laugh. “We prepared them for you; however, we will be honored if you invite us to share.”

  But halfway into the meal of bread and cheese and eggs—whenever had such simple fare tasted so good—Rose turned green and rushed outside to disgorge hers on the ground of the courtyard. Finn rushed after her, held her head, and when she had done retching, wiped yellow-speckled spittle from her lips with his lawn handkerchief.

  “I think I’d like to lie down awhile, Father, I feel faint,” she said when she had emptied her stomach of the offending eggs.

  Lady Kathryn held the back of her hand to Rose’s forehead. “She is not fevered. It is probably just her reaction to all that’s gone on in your absence. She’s been a very brave girl and a great help to me. A true daughter of Blackingham could not have served better.”

  The girl smiled wanly at this praise delivered in front of her father, but she was still a sickly shade of green.

  “Take her to your quarters and put her to bed. I’ll bring her a soothing tea, a physick I used to make for my father whenever he was bilious.”

  Finn led his daughter away, looking for all the world like an old mother hen, while Kathryn tried to make good on her promise. After a cursory search—she was becoming more acquainted with the innards of this kitchen than a lady should be—she found a mortar and pestle and pounded anise, fennel, and caraway seeds to a powder. By the time she’d taken the seed tea upstairs, Rose was already in bed. Her father clucked over her, tucking the coverlet under her chin, unhooking the heavy tapestry over the window to shut out the early-afternoon light.

  “I feel better. I think I can get up now. I should help Colin mix the colors. You’ll be wanting them now that you’re back, Father.”

  “Colin is resting, too.” Kathryn held the pungent tea to the girl’s lips. “I haven’t seen him since the burial. It has been an ordeal for us all. I’ve instructed Glynis to take a tray to his room, and left some bread and cheese and a glass of wine for Agnes.” She glanced at Finn, sent a signal with her eyes. “I’ll be seeking my own respite soon.” But he was too preoccupied with Rose to read her invitation. If invitation it was. Even she was no longer sure. She thought she could sleep forever. Rose drank her tea and when her eyelids began to droop, Kathryn tiptoed from the room. Finn was sitting beside Rose’s bed and didn’t appear to hear her leave.

  A sluggish fire had been laid in her chamber and Kathryn was poking this back to life when she heard a knock at her door. Probably Alfred. Come to make amends after the fight. He always did. Would he have to be fed, too? Or had Simpson’s housekeeper given him breakfast before he left? More like, he’d drunk a morning repast in a friendly Aylsham alehouse. Wearily, she pulled a robe around her—she’d stripped down to her shift.

  “My lady, may I come in?” A throaty, husky pleading. Not Alfred.

  She moved to the door, lifted the bar but opened it only slightly. “Shouldn’t you be with Rose?”

  “She’s sleeping like a babe. My presence would only disturb her. As you said, it’s probably just a girl’s nerves. Open the door. I have something for you.

  Temptation. Just to be held. To be able to forget the grinding-down abrasion of the last two days. “Not now. Not in my chamber. Colin or Alfred might come.”

  “Would that be so bad?”

  She remembered how circumspect he’d been with his own greeting in the kitchen, how he’d not embraced her in front of his daughter. The blood rushed to her temples. She should just send him away.

  “Come on. Open the door. We’ll just talk.”

  Kathryn was warmed at last, less by the neglected fire on the hearth than by the sinewy body curled around her. The room was pungent with smoke from the sputtering embers and the smell of their lovemaking. A delicious lethargy covered her like wool. If she could just stay thus forever, her limbs entwined with his like tangled skeins of silk thread; her lips touching the smooth crown of his head where the hair had thinned to a perfect O.

  She was aware of every rhythm of his body when they lay together, his breath matching hers, long after their passion had burned itself out. There was a great mystery in the way the “two became one flesh.” It seemed no less a miracle than the Holy Eucharist, the transformation of the bread and wine into Christ’s blood and bone. That miracle she was only told about, having never experienced the taste of flesh and blood in her mouth—was that because she was unworthy? In her mouth the wine remained wine and the bread, bread. But this sacred rite, this communion of two souls, she experienced for herself. It had never been like that with Roderick. In her marriage blessed by Church and king, she had been nothing more than a brood mare, and her husband a stallion, copulating according to their natures.

  “I brought you a present from the market at Norwich,” Finn said.

  “I don’t need a present. Having you here with me is present enough.” Each word was a feathery kiss against that perfect $$$.

  “Ah, having me here. I understand. The abbot sent your fee for ‘having me here.’ And a heavy purse it is. Must be a burdensome task indeed.”

  His words were teasing, and he smiled and chucked her under the chin when he delivered them, but she bristled. She knew he judged her to be selfish, thought her uncaring of those not of her own noble estate. She remembered their discussion about who should pay the poll tax for her servants. As he kissed her throat and lifted a strand of hair to expose a bare breast to his tongue, she pushed him away—gently—and pulled the coverlet up, securing it under her armpits.

  She propped herself up on one elbow, facing him. “Don’t mock me. That’s not what I meant by ‘having you here.’ I merely meant your presence. Though I’ll not deny I’m glad enough of the abbot’s generosity. Especially now that I’ve lost the wool house. Not to mention the profit from the wool sack.” Why did she say that about the profit? Because she knew it would annoy him?

  Because his tone had held an unpleasant insinuation. He’d practically called her a whore—not something to joke about.

  “You didn’t mention the shepherd.”

  “Well, of course the shepherd. He’ll not be easily—or cheaply— replaced.” Might as well feed his low opinion of her greediness.

  He lay back, arms crossed behind his neck. He wore a hazelnut mounted in a pewter casing on a leather thong around his neck. She had asked him about it, and he said it was a gift from a holy woman. Suddenly she found it annoying, as though it represented some hidden part of him withheld from her. She pushed it aside, tracing the outline of his breastbone with the tip of her finger, lightly, teasing. But he was no longer smiling and had stopped looking at her, frowning instead at the ceiling as though he watched demons cavorting in the recessed shadows of the tarred roof timbers.

  “Is that the only reason?”

  “What do you mean, ‘the only reason’?”

  “Profit. Is profit all you think about?”

  “Obviously, not all,” she said, indicating the disheveled bedcovers with her hand.

  Where was he when she was bathing the shepherd’s corpse? Wher
e was he and his overblown notions about charity when she was comforting Agnes? He was hobnobbing with bishops, discussing philosophy with holy women. Dining on wine and cakes in the fine luxury of the abbot’s quarters.

  “I have the welfare of my sons to think of. I have their inheritance to protect. You, on the other hand, are an artisan.” She saw his eyebrow lift and regretted the heavily inflected “artisan.” “I mean, you can depend on your skill to support your daughter. That’s not something that Church or king can wrest from you.”

  She sensed a quickening in his blood, a tensing of his limbs, the muscles in his face, his whole body as taut as a harp string newly tuned. She touched the hollow beneath his rib cage where the skin was loose, the muscles slack but not gone to fat. No slackness now.

  “I depend upon my skill as an ‘artisan’ because I have no choice. King and Church have already stripped me. As clean as a willow wand.”

  Her hand remained on his stomach, her fingers weaving tiny whorls in the hairs surrounding his navel.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What I mean, Kathryn, is that you’re not the only person to feel the heel of tyranny pressing on your neck. Ask the crofter who cards your wool; ask the yeoman who tills your fields for a pitiful wage; ask the villein whose labor you own. But for them it’s your dainty foot that presses their faces into the mud.”

  Her hand ceased its exploration.

  “You may be a fine dabbler in paints, Master Illuminator, but you know nothing of what it takes to run a fiefdom the size of Blackingham.”

  His hoot of derision resonated with righteous indignation and wounded pride. His eyes were not smiling. He was genuinely angry, his pride wounded.

  “This little brick enclosure with its few acres of sheep! I’ll have you to know, my lady, that I once was heir to a holding—a stone castle with motte and bailey, a retinue of my own retainers—that makes Blackingham look like a … like a guild master’s house.”

  Had she heard him right? Her hand flew to her throat to still the jump of pulse.

  “Do you mean to say, Finn, that you are of a noble house, and you never told me? Do you realize what this means?” The hand that had lately made whorls in his chest hair cradled his chin in its palm, turning it to face her. “If you are of noble birth, we can petition the king to be married!”

  He said nothing. Conflicting emotions—irritation, consternation, and dismay—played tag across his face. She waited. The joy leaked out of her with each second of silence. A heat that had nothing to do with passion seared her skin. What if he’d kept quiet precisely because he wanted no alliance with her, thought her beneath him? All this time he’d been laughing at her, watching her play the great lady. Now that she’d flushed this information from him in a spurt of pride-filled arrogance, he’d be forced to reveal the fact that he’d only wanted to bed her. Was it possible that for her what had been a grand passion was for him a mere dalliance—a dalliance for which she was paid?

  She felt like Eve after the fall.

  She couldn’t look at him. She sat up, moved to the edge of the bed, pulling the sheet with her.

  He grabbed at the edge of the linen and held it in place before it exposed him completely. “I said was, Kathryn. Was heir. I am as you have said. Nothing more than an artisan,” he said miserably. “My lands and title are forfeit to the king.”

  Forfeit?! That could only mean one thing. He was a traitor, and she was harboring him—literally—in her bosom, in the bosom of Blackingham. She had betrayed her children’s birthright. Maybe even endangered their lives.

  “You should have told me,” she said. “You should have told me if you have committed treason.”

  She could not look at him. By not telling her, he had betrayed her trust, betrayed their intimacy. And yet, she still wanted to hold him to her and comfort him for his loss. What could be worse than losing his land? And she knew him well enough—or thought she knew him well enough until now— to know that he would grieve that loss for his daughter if not for himself.

  “If I had betrayed the king, I would have been hanged, drawn and quartered,” he said from behind her. “My head would be on a pole and the crows would have long since pecked out my eyes.”

  Those eyes the color of the sea that read her soul, those laughing eyes whose lids she even now longed to turn and kiss, not laughing now.

  He sat up in the bed, leaned across her shoulder, touched her cheek. “My land was forfeit because I loved a woman too much. That seems to be a weakness with me.”

  Some misunderstanding then, some minor offense that might yet be forgiven, and if his lands were not restored, what did she care? Blackingham, despite his disparagement of it, would be enough.

  “Where was your castle?” she asked over her shoulder. She still sat with her back to him, unprepared to meet his gaze.

  “In the Marches. On the Welsh border.”

  “And the woman? Is she—”

  His eyes reassured her. “She was Rose’s mother.”

  Kathryn felt a great weight lift. She knew how he’d loved his wife. She loved him the more for it. Though some part of her envied the dead woman.

  “And the king did not approve.”

  It was not a question. An old story, really, easy enough to decipher, Kathryn thought. Finn had been young and in love, had shown his rebellious streak, had imprudently disobeyed the king, married in haste, maybe turning his back on the wife King Edward had chosen.

  “The king did not approve,” he repeated.

  He paused. She waited, anticipating, with relief, a romantic tale of love requited and against great odds. She wanted to turn back to him, but she would wait a moment longer, wait for further reassurance, punish him for giving her such a scare. She sat upright, her spine stiff, and looked at the ceiling instead. She heard a sharp intake of breath and then a quick exhale.

  “I married a Jew,” he said.

  At first she thought she had not heard right, but the word hovered up near the rafters. It seemed to write itself in the air, each one writ larger than the last. Jew. Jew. Jew. She sat very still, frozen like a rabbit cowering beneath the shadow of a hawk. Even her breath would not come.

  Jew, Jew, I married a Jew, he’d said. She had taken a man to her bed who’d had intercourse with a Jew. A Christ killer.

  He reached out to her, touched her shoulder.

  “Kathryn, if you could have known Rebekka—”

  She cringed, felt herself pulling away and could not stop until she sat, barely teetering on the edge of the bed. Rebekka. And Rose with her olive skin and raven hair, the girl she’d first compared to the Holy Virgin. But how could she have known? She’d only ever seen one Jew, and that an old money lender in Norwich her father had once pointed out to her. She tugged violently at the sheet until it came away. She wrapped herself in it and stood up, her back still turned. She would not have one who consorted with a Jew see her naked.

  “I need to go back to the kitchen to see if Agnes has returned to her duties. The household has to be fed.” Her voice sounded small, squeezed tight.

  “Kathryn, don’t you think we—?”

  “You’d better go back to Ro— your daughter. One of my sons may come at any time.”

  Alfred and Colin. What if they knew their mother had fornicated with a Jew?

  She pulled her shift over her body. She heard his heavy sigh, the whisper of his linen braies as he pulled them over his thighs. As she wove her hair into a thick braid, she felt his breath on her back, a brushing of his lips in the nape of her neck. Her skin prickled.

  “Kathryn, please—”

  “Another time, Finn. There’ll be time, later.”

  Would he not guess her repulsion and despise her for her small-mindedness? But she was not like him—did not have the great well of mercy and compassion inside her as he did.

  She heard him moving away, his hose rustling against the rushes scattered on the floor. Call him back. Tell him it changes nothing.

  “L
ater, Finn. I promise, we will talk later.” She fumbled with the fastenings on her bodice. There were her sons to consider. It was unlawful to consort with a Jew.

  No answer. She turned to call him back, to lead him back to the bed. But she was too late. She was alone in the room with the sound of the bar slipping into its iron latch as the door closed.

  And on the table beside her bed glittered the silver coins the abbot had sent.

  Alfred did not come to his mother’s chamber that afternoon as expected. He’d already been there, arriving in time enough to see the door close on the back of the person entering. A man’s back. He’d listened at the door only moments. But long enough. He went straight to the illuminator’s quarters, his father’s old chamber—how dare she—to confirm his suspicion. It was, as he suspected, empty. He peeked behind the curtain separating the antechamber, only to see the sleeping Rose, a sight which at any other time would have excited his imagination to mischief. But not today. Not with his mother defiling his father’s memory and her chaste widow’s bed with this interloper.

  He fingered the pearls in the pocket of his tunic, the pearls belonging to his mother that he’d found in Simpson’s private chamber. No doubt, the sly overseer had pilfered them when Lady Kathryn’s back was turned, thinking she would assume she’d lost them. Alfred had looked forward to returning them to her as proof of his competence, had anticipated her smile of pleasure when she saw them. It would be like a gift to her, something she could hold over Simpson’s head. But she’d been otherwise engaged, and now his gift was spoiled.