The Illuminator

by Brenda Rickman Vantrease

  As they followed Finn into Sir Roderick’s former chamber, now transformed into an artisan’s workroom, Sir Guy was struck by the neatness of it. The girl, the illuminator’s daughter, stood in one shadowy corner of the room. She was pretty, he thought idly, but not of Norman blood, be noticed again—probably a by-blow begot on some infidel—and her eyes were red and swollen as though she had been crying. Lady Kathryn went to stand beside her. An enigmatic look passed between them.

  The sheriff pulled back the covers of the large carved bed, used his sword to empty out a large chest, as though its contents might be dirty, leaving Finn’s carefully pressed linen lying in a rumpled heap. He rifled through a few paint pots, leaving them also in disarray, carelessly overturning one, then apologizing with a variation of his practiced smile, glancing at Finn to measure his discomfort.

  “The pigments are expensive and paid for by the abbot of Broomholm,” the illuminator said.

  Sir Guy tried not to laugh, but the irritation in the illuminator’s voice was so gratifying. In an attempt to provoke him further, Sir Guy stirred the neatly stacked pages. The candles in the wall sconce above the tables cast a flickering light across the sheets of calfskin. “You do passing work, Illuminator. I might allow you to do a book for me.”

  The illuminator said nothing.

  Sir Guy measured the width of the chest with his eye, tapped it on the side with his sword. Ah, a hollow sound, then denser. The chest had a false bottom. He nodded to the serjeant, who turned it upside down and pounded. The wooden lining slipped out, emptying its contents onto the floor. Papers fluttered down in a shower.

  “Please, sir, my father’s work—”

  The illuminator shook his head to silence his daughter. Sir Guy bent to retrieve some of the papers from the top of the pile, more out of curiosity than courtesy.

  “Hmm. What’s this? A text from Saint John? Not very colorful. I thought you did better work than … “ He stood up, moved closer to the wall sconce to examine the papers in the light of the flame, his eyes squinting with the effort. “Saint John in English! The profane text of Wycliffe.” The smile that broke out on his face was not contrived. “Master Illuminator, the abbot would be interested to know he is not your only patron.” Then, more to himself: “The bishop might be interested as well.”

  The horsefly was buzzing closer, hovering, almost in reach.

  He shuffled the papers beneath the light. “ The Divine Revelations of Julian of Norwich. And in Midland doggerel, too. The bishop should also know how his holy women spend their time.”

  Sir Guy knelt to explore the rest of what was turning out to be a treasure trove of useful information, information he could trade for the bishop’s favor. Henry Despenser’s goodwill had lately been withheld because the priest’s murderer had gone unpunished, and the bishop was probably feeling the archbishop’s wrath. This little morsel might distract him. Henry Despenser hated John Wycliffe and his Lollard preachers with a visceral fury. Mayhap there was more to be mined in this innocent-seeming pile of script.

  His hand touched something hard and smooth and round beneath the pile of papers. He picked it up and, gloating, held it up to the light, where it glowed creamy and luminous.

  The insect had landed.

  It was a string of perfectly formed pearls, the same pearls listed on the inventory of the dead priest.

  SWAT!

  Lady Kathryn stared at the necklace. It was the one that had belonged to her mother. The same one Father Ignatius had squeezed from her on the day his skull was cleaved in twain.

  “My lady’s pearls, I believe,” the sheriff said.

  He held the sword out to her, the necklace dripping from its tip. How did he know it belonged to her? And why the look of exultation? Was he so eager to gain evidence against her? His eyes, usually the dead gray of lichen in winter, gleamed like wet stones.

  “ ‘One string white pearls, perfectly matched, one black pearl in center clasp.’ That’s what the dead priest’s inventory said. I believe these are they.”

  “Mine, yes. I don’t deny … but, how came they to be … ?”

  “Exactly so, my lady. How came they to be indeed?” His voice was low, each word drawn out in menace. “How came a string of pearls listed on a dead man’s inventory to be in the possession of Master Finn? That’s a question our illuminator will have to answer for the bishop.”

  Rose emitted a small cry. Finn drew his distraught daughter into a half-embrace. The sheriff gloated. The necklace had been the object of his search all along, and to find them in Finn’s quarters, a man for whom he nursed an obvious antipathy, was gratifying indeed.

  “Truly, there is some mistake. I know Fi—— I know the illuminator well. He has not the temperament of a murderer!” She reached for the pearls, more to assure herself that they were not an illusion than to reclaim them.

  The sheriff retracted the sword just out of reach and caught the pearls in his left hand. They drooped between his fingers. The black pearl, in its gold-filigreed clasp, glinted in the torchlight. No one moved.

  A slice of moon rose through the narrow window behind them. A small cloud floated over it. No one spoke for a long moment until voices, loud, gruff, from the men below, set them back in motion like players in a mystery play.

  Sir Guy unlatched the mullion pane and shouted down, “Call off the search, Serjeant. We’ve run our fox to ground.” With a serpent’s grace, and just as swift, he flashed the tip of his sword at Finn’s throat. “Come on up and bring the shackles.”

  “No! You can’t.” Rose clutched at Finn’s sleeve with fingers white at the knuckles. “My father would never hurt anyone! Let him go!” Her face was the color of whey. Kathryn feared she might swoon.

  “She’s right, Sir Guy,” Kathryn said, her voice rising. “In spite of how it looks. There’s a mistake, I tell you. This man is no murderer. There’s another explanation. There has to be.”

  “My lady, your affection, dare I say ardor, makes you shrill. Of course his daughter pleads his innocence. What other explanation can there be? Here is the evidence that offers proof. Proof, too, that your ladyship was less than honest in former testimony. But that’s a fact which, now that we have our culprit, need not gain scrutiny.”

  His condescension and his insinuation infuriated and frightened her.

  Finn cleared his throat loudly. “There is another explanation,” he said. “The pearls were planted in my bag by an intruder. I found them two days ago.”

  The sheriff hooted in response. But Kathryn grasped for this explanation as readily as a child grabbing for a silver rattle. He could not be so calm with the sheriff’s sword at his throat unless he could prove his innocence, could he? She wanted to ask him why he had not mentioned finding the necklace, but held her tongue lest drawing attention to his silence contribute to his appearance of guilt.

  “It’s true,” Rose insisted, her pallor even more ashen. She held on to her father with both hands, tugging at his arm, seemingly oblivious to the threat of the blade should either of them make any sudden move. “Somebody else did place them there. I saw him.”

  “Him?” the sheriff asked.

  She glanced at Kathryn and then at her father before answering defiantly.

  “It was Alfred. The young lord of Blackingham.”

  Did she say Alfred? “Alfred! Rose, why would you even suggest—“ “Let the girl finish. I will not have it said that the sheriff of Norfolk rushed to judgment.”

  “It was the night I was ill. The night of the shepherd’s burial. I was sleeping. I awoke to the sound of someone in Father’s chamber, going through his things. I pretended to be asleep because I was afraid. I knew it wasn’t Father.”

  “How did you know it wasn’t your father? And with your eyes closed, how did you know it was Alfred?” the sheriff asked.

  “He walked with the gait of a youth. My father’s footfall is more steady. As he passed my entrance, I saw through a crack in the curtains that he—“ Rose paused,
tossed Kathryn an apologetic glance. “He had red hair.”

  Kathryn could tell by the way Sir Guy screwed his features into a mask of concentration, as though testing the weight of her testimony, that even he was half-inclined to believe her. If Kathryn was frightened before, now she was terrified. First Finn, now Alfred. Surely God would not make her choose between the two. To choose between a man she knew to be innocent and a son whose innocence she was less sure of.

  Had Alfred in his youth’s intemperance killed the priest because she’d complained about his greed? Was her son capable of such a thing? He was Roderick’s son too, a thought that did not plead his innocence. He could have planted the pearls in Finn’s room as a prank or out of jealousy.

  But how would he have come by the pearls if he’d not killed the priest?

  “When I heard the intruder leave, I got up and ran to the door.” Rose had stopped crying, reassured by the sheriff’s attention to her story or by the need to concentrate. “It was Alfred that I saw retreating down the hall. I came back into the room and saw that my father’s paints had been disturbed, and that his worktable was in disarray.”

  “Did you cry an alarm?” Sir Guy was all interrogator now. He had lowered the sword. Although it still pointed at Finn’s midsection, it no longer made contact with his body.

  “No, I felt dizzy, so I lay back down to wait for Father. I must have gone to sleep. When I awoke, the room was back in order, so I thought that I had dreamed it all until Father found the pearls in the bag.” She blushed, bringing two unnaturally bright spots to her ashen cheeks. “I thought he’d bought them for me.”

  “But you didn’t actually see Alfred put the pearls in the bag,” Kathryn interjected.

  “Perhaps I have been hasty,” the sheriff said. “Lady Kathryn, as chatelaine of Blackingham, have you knowledge of any intrusion into the illuminator’s quarters? Do I need to question your son in this matter?” He looked at her directly. “Or can you give surety for his movements during the time in question?”

  He knows what he’s asking me, Kathryn thought. Give testimony against the one and the other goes free. He’s delighting in it. She hated the hawk-nosed sheriff.

  Kathryn heard heavy boots on the stairs, the sound of the shackles dragging against the stone steps. She read the pleading in Rose’s eyes, felt the same pull to sympathy as when she’d learned of Rose’s dilemma. Her dilemma, too. Finn’s arrest would buy time. Time to question Alfred herself, time to let him escape, if he’d murdered the priest to protect his mother. Time, too, to purchase some concoction from the old woman in the woods to uproot the seed that Colin had planted.

  If Rose’s story was true—Heavenly Mother forbid—if Finn had found the pearls two days ago, why had he not come to her? It was not up to her to decide his guilt or innocence. It was up to her to protect her sons. And the bishop would not condemn an innocent man. She would pray daily, hourly, to the Holy Mother in his behalf. If Finn was innocent, he would be freed in time. And time was what she needed now.

  She could not look at Finn or his daughter as she betrayed them both. She looked out the window at a piece of cloud eating the moon. “I’m sorry, Rose, but you had to be dreaming. Probably brought on by the seed tea that I gave you as a physick.”

  The serjeant crossed the threshold, pausing inches away from Finn.

  Kathryn heard the lie as it slipped from her lips. Her words. Her voice as in a dream. “Alfred was with me the entire evening. I was upset by the loss of the wool and the barn … and a valuable servant. Alfred stayed to comfort me.” It had not been her son who gave her comfort—such a brazen sinful lie—but she could not think of that now. “He slept on a cot in my chamber.”

  A grin cracked the sheriff’s face. He nodded at the serjeant, who stepped forward and began to place Finn’s wrists in irons. Kathryn opened her mouth to call back her lie but nothing came out. Rose gave one long shrieking “No” as the serjeant peeled her arms from her father’s neck.

  “Rose, it will be all right. Don’t worry,” Finn said. “It will be all right.”

  The serjeant shoved Rose, and she sank onto the bed. Kathryn wanted to go to her but couldn’t move. She could feel Finn’s gaze on her, his eyes burning like blue flame, charring her flesh, melting her bones until her lying, shriveled soul lay exposed like the hideous black lump that it was.

  Outside the window, the wedge of moon had disappeared, eaten by the cloud. The night was as black as pitch.

  SIXTEEN

  Westron winde when will thou blow? The small raine down can raine; Christ, if my love were in my arms, and I in my bed again.

  14TH-CENTURY ANONYMOUS LYRIC

  Blackingham hosted no celebration for its sons to mark their sixteen years in the year of our Lord 1379. Nor was the remnant of last year’s Yule log brought out to kindle a new one. “ ’Twill bring ill fortune upon our house,” Agnes said, “not to hang the green and light the Yule fire.”

  Her mistress merely looked at her and hooted in derision. “Ill fortune, you say. What have we left, you and I, old woman, that we should fear ill fortune?” Agnes liked neither the bitterness in Lady Kathryn’s voice nor the fierce look in her eyes, liked even less the unkempt manner of her dress.

  It had been twelve days since the sheriff took the illuminator away in chains, twelve days without word of his fate, twelve days in which her mistress had not changed her clothes or bound her hair. Glynis reported that she had been barred from milady’s presence, “after she thro wed a hair brush at me, nearly blacking me eye.” The slattern told the tale to all that would listen, in spite of Agnes’s warnings that she should keep her trap shut. People in the village were talking enough. In answer to nosy inquiries about the lack of Yuletide festivities, Agnes retorted, “My lady is suffering from the ague and is too ill to preside over open house, but has instructed her kitchens to provide a feast. ’Twill be held in the great hall as usual and all are welcome.”

  That preening overseer would be more than happy to preside. He loved putting on airs and playing lord of the manor. That would hardly make a festive atmosphere, but what else was to be done? It was unworthy of a noble house to be niggardly at Yuletide. Even during the plague, Kathryn’s father had spread an adequate if doleful board for his serfs and yeomen and crofters.

  But Lady Kathryn had no interest in preparation for a feast of any kind. She had ridden off into the woods for the third time this week whilst Agnes labored in the kitchen, trying to plan a semblance of a Christmas banquet out of ordinary fare. Each time, her mistress had come back hours later with some noxious concoction stirred up by Old Gert—never mind that it was heresy to consult a witch. Not that Agnes believed the old woman was a witch, just an aged crone selling her herbs and potions to eke out a meager existence. Herbs and potions that usually didn’t work. At least they hadn’t worked for Agnes. Not a twit. Twelve years ago, she’d scraped together enough courage to go to Old Gert for something, a spell, a potion—she didn’t really care—anything to open her plugged-up womb. The only thing she’d gotten from the devilish brew was a noisome biliousness.

  ’Tweren’t working for Rose either. Crying and retching, crying and retching was all the poor girl did. Either from fear for her father, or the burden in her belly, or as a result of the crude pills the girl choked down to please Lady Kathryn. “You want to be healthy when your father returns,” Lady Kathryn would say.

  “Do ye know what’s in that?” Agnes had asked last time when Rose had gagged on the odd-shaped pill. “ ’Tis as big as a robin’s egg and as stinky as a rotten ’un.”

  Kathryn had shot her a warning glance. “Just a physick of ordinary herbs.”

  Ordinary herbs, Agnes thought. Mixed with hazelwort and birthwort and larch fungus and spikenard and heaven knew what other vile thing Old Gert might have thrown in. Agnes knew what her mistress was up to. She wondered if Rose did. But so far, the girl had not expelled the contents of her womb—only her stomach.

  Lady Kathryn would be back
from her ride any minute. Agnes checked the boiling pot on the hearth, then glanced out the window. The great hollow oak—Magda’s honey tree—was casting its cold shadow halfway down the hill, all the way to the cisterns. A groan of metal hinges as the door opened— the inside latch was never placed until vespers. That should be Lady Kathryn now. Good. There was enough hot water for whatever noxious brew she might demand.

  Lady Kathryn slammed the door shut behind her, as though punishing the oak and the iron. She had so much anger in her. Agnes had only seen her that way once before, when her father had forced her to marry Roderick. That time, she had not eaten for two weeks but had eventually given in for the love of her ailing father. These last few days, Agnes had pondered over the source of the present anger, pitying the poor wretch who might feel its full force. At first she’d feared it might be the girl. But though Kathryn had sometimes been impatient with Rose, she’d seemed to exercise a gentle restraint.

  “Agnes, grind these into a fine powder and mix with boiling water.”

  Agnes took the small basket of marsh-mallow roots mixed with milfoil, fennel, and dwarf elder.

  “How much water? Is it to be an elixir?”

  “No, just enough water to make a plaster.”

  Agnes sighed. Poor Rose. She would sleep tonight—or not—with the malodorous plaster blistering her belly and her privates.

  Pacing, Lady Kathryn covered her face with her hands, massaged her forehead. “I’m at the end of my tether. If this doesn’t work, she’ll just have to bear the child and then we’ll see what is to be done.”

  Agnes didn’t even want to think what that might mean. She crossed herself and shivered, noticing for the first time that the woman she’d tended since a slip of a girl was growing old. Her white hair—turned thus when she’d not seen thirty summers—had never made her seem old. It was usually bound into a halo of light around her head. Now it lay in a tangled, ratty mass down her back, dragging down the muscles in her face. The skin on her cheekbones was stretched so taut it looked as though the bone might prick through its thin white tent.