The Illuminator

by Brenda Rickman Vantrease

  As Rose worked, she hummed a tune under her breath, a melody familiar to Kathryn, floating somewhere on the verge. That and the scratching of the nibs against the vellum were the only sounds in the room. Suddenly, Rose left off singing, heaved a sigh, and gazed out into the middle distance, her quill poised above the paper. Her face looked thinner, almost gaunt around the wide-set eyes; yet otherwise, the girl looked hearty enough. A watery sunbeam, brushing through the leaded window glass high above her, painted a bloom on her cheek. Except for the heightened cheekbones, there was about her a glow of youth that a woman of Kathryn’s age could envy—if envy were not a sin.

  A draft from the flue drew a current of air across the room from the half-open door where Kathryn watched. The draft stirred the ribbons hanging from Rose’s cuff, brushing them against the paper, smearing the carefully drawn letters. She gave an exclamation of dismay and, one-handed, fumbled to tie up the offending streamers.

  “Here. Let me help with that,” Kathryn said, moving forward.

  Rose looked toward the door, a startled expression rounding her mouth.

  “My lady,” she said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were there. I mean, I didn’t hear you.” Rose got up from her stool and went to meet Kathryn halfway. “Please. Come in.” She dropped a little half-curtsy, a teasing smile lighting her dark brown eyes. Minx. She knew how uncomfortable Kathryn was with noble pretensions.

  “You’re hard at work. I can come back later.”

  Put off finding out the truth. Ignore the problem, and it might go away. But Kathryn was already drawn in, already tying the blue ribbons into perfect bows above Rose’s wrists. She gave the last one a little pat.

  “There,” she said, seeing through a teary haze her own mother making just that same gesture, a mother whose face she could not conjure up even in memory, but whose hands she remembered—long, slender fingers tying blue ribbons into bows.

  “Thank you. It’s hard to tie them by myself. I’d have to be a contortionist.”

  “Of course it is. When a girl reaches a certain age, she needs a lady’s maid to help her dress. Tell your father that. He can afford a girl from the village. The abbot pays him well enough.”

  “I’ve thought about it, but I’m not sure … It’s always just been Father and me, and I wouldn’t want to hurt his feelings. Sometimes Magda, Agnes’s girl, helps me. Other times I just keep wriggling until I get everything hooked and tied.” Rose laughed, glanced at the cuffs, “Well, almost everything.”

  She had Finn’s high forehead. But the wide mouth, the dark eyes, Rebekka’s? Beautiful eyes. How could her son, how could any woman’s son, not be tempted?

  “Please do come and sit,” Rose said, taking her by the hand, drawing her a few feet forward before releasing her. “It is a treat to have your company.” A sudden dimming of the smile, like a shade put over a flame. “Though I suppose you came to see Father. I’m afraid he isn’t here. He has gone to Norwich market to buy gold leaf. He said he would be back before sunset. Will you sit with me until he comes? I would be glad of the company.”

  Perhaps she wasn’t pining for a lost lover after all, Kathryn thought, but merely suffering from loneliness. Kathryn remembered what that was like, how like a sickness … before her children, before Roderick, even, when she had been the only female in her father’s household, the only woman, with naught but Agnes for company. Illness, even loneliness or anxiety, could throw a woman off her cycle. It was a fickle and mysterious thing. Especially in one so young. Or in one as old as she. She’d heard stories how women in convents matched their courses so that the whole company would suffer at one time. How in other convents, once they’d married themselves to Christ, the courses ceased altogether.

  “It’s you I came to see, Rose, not your father.”

  There was such gratitude in the sparkling smile, it broke her heart.

  Kathryn looked for a place to sit. She paused at the foot of the bed, smoothed her skirt in preparation, then stopped herself. Her marriage bed. Roderick’s bed. Finn’s bed, now. The hangings were pulled back, the coverings neatly arranged. He was the cleanest man she’d ever known. Everything about him, his clothes, his surroundings, even his mind reflected order. So unlike the former occupant of this bed who’d had discipline in nothing. A chill started at her ankles and crept up her spine, raising the hair on her neck. A seam in time’s curtain split, the merest glimpse, but she saw for a second, like a flash behind her eyes, the bed as she had last lain in it with her husband: hangings closed, sheets tangled about her limbs, binding, stifling, the pressure of his weight stealing even the stale air, as she lay corpselike beneath him. Her body remembered, too—the violence with which he’d thrust into her and then, cursing, thrust her from him.

  “My lady.” Rose’s voice, bringing her back. “You look unwell. Here, sit on Father’s bed. He’ll not mind.”

  The bed was once again benign, neatly made, curtains drawn back, tassel-draped to their carved posts. The air smelled of clean linen, linseed oil, and turpentine, a smell that Finn carried in his clothes, overlaid with a bit of peaty smoke from the fire. She breathed deeply.

  “No, I’m fine. Your father might not like me to sit on his bed. I’ll choose his work stool, instead.”

  She pulled the stool across from Rose’s own, and they sat facing each other with the scattered sheets of calfskin between them. Kathryn noticed the writing. Something to talk about. She couldn’t just blurt out the question that was making her mouth dry, not without dishonoring the girl.

  “What are you working on? I see it’s what your father calls English.”

  Rose blushed and hastily shuffled the papers, covering up her work. “Oh, it’s nothing to see. A bit of fancy. A Book of Hours for a … friend.”

  Or a present for a lover. Please, Holy Mother, let it not be for my son.

  “I’m glad you have your work,” she said. “You must get lonely here.”

  “Well, sometimes. Just a little. When Father is gone.” Rose dropped her head and added hastily, “But I like it here. Sometimes, Colin brings his lute and sings for me. He’s a good scribe, too. Father says he has a gift.”

  The familiar melody Rose had been humming. One of Colin’s songs.

  “I’m glad he’s pleasant company for you and your father,” she said. “I also enjoy his music.”

  “I’ve … we’ve not seen him much of late.”

  “And Alfred is gone now, too,” Kathryn probed.

  “Alfred? I hardly ever saw him. Though I’m sure I would have liked him.” She added this last apologetically. It was touching how anxious she was not to offend. “It’s just that he was always so busy, or with the overseer.”

  A reassuring answer. It was hard not to like the girl, regardless of the circumstances of her birth. She had her father’s charm.

  “Well, I rarely see either of my sons. I miss them both. Alfred has gone as page to Sir Guy, and Colin … well, I don’t see much of him either, I’m afraid. He spends a lot of time in the chapel since the shepherd’s death. He talks in riddles, about forgiveness and atonement, as though he carries some guilt that somehow he was to blame. But he won’t talk about it. At least not to me. Has he spoken of it to you?”

  Rose averted her eyes, raised a trembling hand to her throat. The corners of her mouth worked. “He doesn’t have time for anything anymore, not even the music. Not since the fire.”

  “He’ll work it out. He must have been closer to John than I knew. I guess a mother can’t know everything about her sons. What about you, Rose? Are you feeling well? Your father has been very worried ever since the night you were so sick. The night I brought you the seed tea. Remember?”

  Rose blinked and nodded. “You were very kind to me. Yes, I think I’m better. Though I still get dizzy sometimes. A kind of weakness comes over me, but most of the time I feel well enough.” A light little laugh crinkled the corners of her mouth.

  Someday, she’d have laugh lines there, like her father, Kathryn
thought. “For weeks I couldn’t eat anything, and now I’m making up for lost time. Last night, in the middle of the night, I woke up and I suddenly had the strongest urge for pickled herring. I don’t even like pickled herring. It puckers my mouth.”

  Suddenly, Kathryn’s own mouth felt dry as ashes. And it had nothing to do with pickled herring. The girl had cravings. Was she so innocent that she couldn’t know what that meant? But of course, what female company, what female counsel had she had to grease her way into womanhood? Kathryn knew what that was like. When her woman’s flow—flowers, some called it—had first come upon her, she had seen the wine-dark blood and thought that she was dying. Had thought so for months until she’d gone to her father and told him. He’d grown red-faced and summoned the midwife, who had explained the mystery to her in terms that did not make her welcome her passage into womanhood.

  How much had Finn told his daughter? He was gentler than her father had been, but might he not, like her own father, have avoided that counsel usually given by a mother or female relative? After all, he had been willing to ignore the implications of his Jewish marriage for Kathryn and her sons.

  “Let us talk frankly, Rose. Woman to woman.” She might have said mother to daughter once, but could not bring herself to say it now. “Have your moon cycles been regular?”

  Rose looked at her uncertainly.

  “Your monthly bleeding, child. Does it come every month?”

  Outside, the sun went behind a cloud. The light in the room dimmed, tinting everything gray, except Rose’s blush.

  “It has been three months,” she said. “But there were other times when it did not come. When I was younger. I thought it might be because I was sick.”

  Silence lay between them for as much as a minute. The sun did not reappear and the room grew cold in spite of the peat fire sputtering on the hearth. Kathryn’s temple began to throb. This was not a conversation she wanted to have. This should have been Rebekka’s duty. Not hers. Did Jewish mothers handle such situations differently? What advise would the dead Rebekka have given her daughter?

  “Rose, it may be tied to your illness, all right, but not in the way you think. It may be the cause and not the result.”

  “I don’t understand.” Almost the whining voice of a child, the child the girl had been a too-short time ago.

  “You maybe … ”

  How else to say it? “You may be carrying a child. The bleeding stops when a woman becomes with child.”

  The girl looked ready to swoon. She dragged a trembling hand across her face. Kathryn stood up and walked over to her, bent over slightly, touched the girl’s chin and tilted it up so that she had to look at Kathryn directly.

  “Rose, have you been with a man?” Each word soft, but clearly and slowly enunciated.

  The girl said nothing, just chewed on her upper lip, her chin trembling. “Answer me, child. Have you been with a man?”

  Kathryn tried to keep her voice low, so as not to frighten the girl, but it was hard. After all, Alfred might be off the hook, but this was Rose.

  “Only Colin.”

  “I don’t mean like that. I mean have you had intercourse with a man? Some knave who may have seen you walking in the garden and taken advantage of you? Even forced you to let him have carnal knowledge of you?”

  Rose started to cry, large tears falling in a fountain over the rims of her eyes, running in little streams, seeking their own grooves, pooling in the corners of her quivering mouth.

  “Only Colin, my lady.”

  Colin?

  “Rose, do you know what carnal knowledge means?” Kathryn said in exasperation.

  Rose nodded, her hands covering her face.

  “Does kissing count? We only kissed. Most of the time.” She paused. Her trembling fingers began to worry the pretty little cross she wore around her neck. “In the wool house.”

  The wool house! Kathryn felt the muscles around her heart tighten.

  Ask that son of yours about the wool house.

  Rose stood up, her skirts knocking the stool over with a clatter, overturning a bucket of steeping hawthorne bark. Both Kathryn and Rose ignored the inky stain creeping across the floor, soaking into the wooden boards. Rose paced, the back of her hand pressed tightly against her throat. She began to sob. Kathryn had to calm her down or she would make herself sick. She put her arms around her and led her gently over to sit on the bed.

  “Rose,” she said evenly, as calmly as she could, “kissing doesn’t count. Now, is that all you did? Did you and my son do anything besides kiss in the wool house?”

  Kathryn could hardly understand her. The word was carried on a little sob that escaped around her hand.

  “Twice.”

  “Twice? Did Alfred have carnal knowledge of you twice, Rose?”

  She started to cry even louder, nodding her head. “We only … twice. But it wasn’t Alfred.” More sobs, ragged breaths. Rose sniffled into the ribboned cuffs.

  “It was Colin.” Her son’s name sailed out on a hiccup. Kathryn could not have been more surprised if Rose had named the pope. She struggled for breath. Beside her, the hysterical girl rocked back and forth, moaning, “Don’t… tell … Father … please,” each word jerked out of her by ragged breaths. Kathryn wrapped her arms around the girl.

  “Hush, you’ll make yourself sick, and that won’t help any of us,” she whispered as she rocked the girl back and forth, all the while thinking Colin. Why had she not seen? But she had. She’d thought them only children at play. “We won’t tell anybody, just yet,” she said. “Mayhap we are wrong. It’s possible, even though you’ve … it’s possible you’re not with child. We’ll wait and see. If you are, well then, there are certain things … For the time being let’s just try to stay calm.”

  Kathryn’s reassurance had a soothing effect on Rose. Her emotional storm subsided into intermittent whimpers and ragged hiccups, but Kathryn’s mind whirled with the implications of the predicament. She knew her reassuring words were as empty as hell’s cisterns. She knew, too, there was no time to lose. She would go to the midwife right away. There were special concoctions … but first she must speak to Colin. Colin!

  She’d promised Rose she would not tell Finn. Better that way. Less complicated. He would be in a rage to learn that her son had deflowered his daughter. Would probably insist that the marriage banns be published immediately. After all, he’d given up everything for the sake of a Jewess; would he not expect her son to do the same? But a son of Blackingham would not marry with a Jew. Not as long as she drew breath.

  She pushed the disheveled girl away, held her at arm’s length.

  “Dry your eyes, Rose. Go to your room and rest. Unbind the curtain lest your father come in and see his pretty daughter in such a state.”

  It would never do for Finn to see his daughter so upset. He would worm the truth out of her as easily as a fat friar breaks wind.

  “I’ll send you up a soothing cup. Try not to worry. We’ll think of something.”

  FOURTEEN

  Foreasmuch as the Bible contains Christ, that is all that is necessary for salvation; it is necessary for all men, not for priests alone.

  —JOHN WYCLIFFE

  Finn approached Norwich from the north. From his vantage above the city, the market unfurled like a corded ribbon streaming from Norwich Castle, massive, hulking, ugly, no longer a military fortress but a prison where souls languished in dungeons. In spite of its creamy veneer of Caen stone glowing golden in the sun, it cast a menacing shadow, looming over the colorful market stalls like a buzzard hunched on a hill. Finn shivered and drew his woolen cloak tighter.

  The lower end of the castle bridge led to an outer courtyard where the livestock market was held. A knot of onlookers had gathered there, beneath a scaffold. Finn knew what the attraction was. Such events were always timed for market days, when they could be sure to draw a crowd. Even from this distance—he would venture no closer; he had no stomach for such things— he heard raucous laugh
ter. If he’d only been a few minutes earlier, he could have missed the spectacle altogether. But now it could not be avoided. He’d already seen the rope being placed around the doomed man’s neck, and now Finn, try as he might, could not avert his eyes. The faceless crowd moaned with one voice, a moan that rose to a keening crescendo. The trapdoor opened. Finn held his own breath as the crowd exhaled in one great collective sigh of near ecstasy. He felt the muscles in his own torso twitch as the body arced, then jerked intermittently before coming to swing at the end of the rope like a side of meat. Thank the Holy Virgin he was not close enough to see the bulging eyes, the purple lips protruding from the swollen face. He pulled his horse’s bridle to the right and turned his own head away, too late to avoid the rising nausea.

  Poor sod, he thought, as he wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and urged his horse forward. Probably some rebellious peasant who’d spoken too loudly and too articulately against John of Gaunt’s new poll tax, the second in three years. Strong price to pay for speaking naught but the truth. His severed head, eyes pecked out by birds, would soon adorn a pole at a city gate, a warning to others. Truth-telling was a hazardous business.

  With the castle behind him, Finn’s gaze now rested on the city’s other architectural wonder, east of the market. Norwich Cathedral, like Castle Prison, glowed mellow in the afternoon light, and to Finn it was only slightly less menacing. However, he had to admit it was a more pleasing structure to the eye. Its Norman square crossing tower was imposing, though spireless. A hurricane had smashed the wooden steeple to toothpicks in 1362, destroying a portion of the apse in the process. Finn smiled, remembering Wycliffe’s calling the hurricane “God’s wrathful breath.”

  The cathedral’s apse had been rebuilt by Bishop Despenser’s predecessor, but other priorities superseded the building of the spire. The cloisters needed rebuilding, too, and a wall to protect the Benedictine monks from rioting villagers. The monks had been burned out earlier, in 1297, by a mob of villagers angry at the Benedictines, whose priests sometimes withheld services, even the Eucharist, pending an offering. They sold the body of our Lord for a penny so they could purchase permits to keep their concubines, Wycliffe had told him. Not much had changed in the almost hundred years since, Wycliffe had said. Finn had agreed with him there.