The Illuminator

by Brenda Rickman Vantrease

  “My lady, ’twould not be the first child at Blackingham to be born on the wrong side of the blanket. And I dare say mayn’t be the last. What’s the harm? The girl is pleasant enough, not lazy, and she could be company to ye. She and her babe could stay on.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “Well, nothing ever is, is it?” Agnes ground the herbs in her mortar and pestle. The effort punctuated her words with little puffs of air. “She could at least stay until her father gets out. Can’t think why they took ’im in the first place. I know human nature. And Master Finn is no killer.” She ladled water from the simmering pot on the hearth. “Have ye any word from him?”

  Kathryn shook her head.

  “Does Finn know who the father of the baby is?” Agnes asked, trying to sound matter-of-fact, as though it were not a matter of grave importance.

  Lady Kathryn dropped the metal bowl with a clang.

  “That is not your concern, now, is it?”

  Never mind. Agnes knew who the father was, all right. Who else but young Colin? The two of them were ever together, playing like children. Now Rose was breeding and young Colin had gone “on pilgrimage.” The ways of nobility were hard to fathom sometimes. Why couldn’t he just marry the girl?

  Lady Kathryn put the bowl on the table. Agnes spooned the hot paste into it. The paste would need to be applied before it cooled and set.

  “Be careful not to blister the girl’s skin.”

  Kathryn gave no response, but threw other words over her shoulder as she exited the kitchen through the butler’s pantry, “I have sent word for Alfred to attend me. He’ll probably come here to your kitchen first. They all do. When he does, send him to me immediately.”

  As fading footfalls echoed on the stairs, another thought occurred to Agnes. Could it be that Finn didn’t know about the babe? That would answer in part for Lady Kathryn’ s urgency. If Gert’s potions worked, the illuminator might never have to know. Women’s plots—too tangled for most men to unravel. She chewed on that for a minute, and then another, bleaker thought intruded. If ’twere to be the hangman’s noose for the illuminator, it might even be a kindness to let him go to his grave in ignorance of his daughter’s plight.

  Alfred did not come to Blackingham that day. But the dwarf did. Like everybody else, he always came to Agnes’s kitchen first, but she knew it was not for something warming on her hearth. There was a simmering of another sort going on—she’d noticed it in the sly glances he gave her Magda and the funny little way the pointy end of his nose glowed pink whenever she was around. Thank the Holy Virgin, this day she was not. She’d gone with a basket of victuals to tend her broody mother.

  It wasn’t that Agnes didn’t like Half-Tom, but she wanted more for Magda than a dwarf from the fens, and that made her unusually brusque.

  “Be ye not a little far from yer swamp on this wintry day, Half-Tom? If ye’ve come to Blackingham with a message for the illuminator, he be’int here.”

  She didn’t offer him a drink, as she had the first time he appeared at her door, looking for the illuminator with a message from the holy woman. If he hoped to find hospitality here now, he would find it of a grudging sort, only in kind and proportion as Christian charity demanded. She busied herself with plucking a brace of partridge and did not look up.

  “I know,” he said, shaking his head with a doleful expression. “I heard talk in Aylsham. A wicked business ’tis, too. They’ve not the brains to find the priest’s killer, so they pin it on an innocent man.”

  Agnes responded only with a harrumph that communicated nothing. She’d learned long ago to keep counsel with herself in dangerous matters. Besides, she didn’t want to encourage him in anything that might lengthen his stay until her Magda returned. Her girl so needful and eager to return love.

  The dwarf warmed his hands at the blazing hearth.

  “You go on, Agnes, I’ve a packet for Finn from Oxford. And I’m pledged to put it only in his hands. That being the matter, I thought I’d stop to see if Blackingham has any message for him. All upon the occasion, of course, that I can get into Castle Prison.”

  Yes, and then ye can carry it back, she thought. And soon enough, ye’ll have excuse to traipse back and forth, back and forth from Castle Prison to Blackingham on the pretense of carrying messages. It was well out of his way from the fens. He had to turn left at the crossroads and go north to come to Aylsham, when he could save daylight and shoe leather by going straight to Norwich. She watched his eyes, set wide in his full-moon face, as they searched the corners of the cavernous kitchen. She knew what he was looking for.

  “There’ll be no message from Blackingham going to the prison,” she said.

  “Shouldn’t that be my lady’s decision?” His voice was deep, husky, like his powerful shoulders, all out of proportion to the rest of his body.

  “You’re an impudent fellow. Mistress already told me.” Her fingers plucked the feathers from the birds so fast they bunched in her hands. “She’s angry with the illuminator for causing her to harbor a fugitive.”

  “But she cannot think him guilty!”

  “His guilt or innocence is not a matter for her to decide. If the law says he’s guilty, then he’s guilty.”

  “Well, what of his daughter? Surely she—”

  “The illuminator’s daughter is too ill with grief to see anybody.”

  The lies piled up like the feathers that she swept into a great sack hanging beneath the table to be saved for ticking. “If ’tis news of Blackingham ye wish to carry, ye may tell Finn his daughter is being cared for by Lady Kathryn herself and that no harm will come to her because of him. Now, ye’d best be off, little man, ye’ve a long trek to Norwich. Here. Take this for yer journey.” She slid a pasty filled with pork and mashed turnips down the length of the long deal table. “I’d not take time to eat it here if I was ye. The light will not last in winter.”

  He looked at her with eyes that seemed to read her—too well. Then, picking up the pasty, he nodded his thank-you and waddled to the door. He walks like a fat-breasted bird, she thought. He’d already lifted the bar and put his shoulder to the heavy oak—she’d be rid of him before Magda came back— when, to her chagrin, she heard words that made him pause in his leave-taking. Words coming out of her own claptrap mouth.

  “When you see the illuminator, tell him Agnes will say a Paternoster for him.” ’Twas more than was prudent to say. But she couldn’t stop herself. She remembered with a pang how Finn had sat in her kitchen last, telling her about the hanging, how it had sickened him. She remembered, too, how he always seemed to be worrying about the plight of common folk. Then there was that quick grin he’d give her in that flirty way whenever he asked for some special treat or an extra glass of ale. She an old crone and he a man still in his prime. A kind man. A rarity.

  “Tell him that, for what it’s worth, old Agnes knows he’s no priest-killer.”

  A broad grin split the dwarfs face.

  “If I’ve any news, I’ll report it to ye on me way home.”

  Agnes brought the meat cleaver down hard on the back of the birds, making the brace a quadruple in one powerful stroke. The heavy door slammed shut, creating a draft that raised a lone brown-tipped feather to float in the air. It landed on the hearth and, singeing, released its acrid odor into the air. With a practiced hand she gutted the birds and flung the entrails into the slop jar.

  Colin had been gone four days, and he wondered if he was any closer to Blinham Priory than when he left. Sun on the right at daybreak, he reminded himself each morning when he set out, but for the last two days there had been no sun, only a cold, gray dawn with no redeeming stain of pink. He’d taken the byroad through the forest, thinking that if his mother pursued him, she would take the high road, probably south to Norwich. He half hoped she would follow him, bring him home to Blackingham, home to Rose, assure him it had all been a bad dream: that the fire had never happened, he had never sinned, never deflowered a virgin. But he kne
w his mother would not think to seek him on this bracken-pocked trail marked by criminals and feudal refugees.

  Colin knew about the dangers of the road from eavesdropping on Agnes and John. As a small lad, he’d been often in the kitchens, underfoot, ignored by Agnes except when he got in her way. He went to the kitchen for the marzipan the indulgent old cook gave him. He lingered to hear the stories John told his wife about the camaraderie that existed among these outlaws of the wood. “It’s not the hard life ye might think, Agnes. There’s a kind of brotherhood. And ’twouldn’t be forever. A year or so in the woods until Blackingham gives us up, another year and a day inside a town, and we’ll be free, Agnes. Free.”

  Colin had known what he meant, even then. But he’d not told. He knew the shepherd would be punished. He didn’t want to see him whipped or put in the stocks. And now John was dead and Colin was on the outlaw road. All because of the fire that he and Rose had caused. They had not meant to leave the lantern in the wool house; he wasn’t even sure they had. But there was no other explanation. Unless the fire was a sign from God that they had sinned in that place and God had breathed His fiery breath on it as He had done on Sodom and Gomorrah. Either way, the fire and John’s death were his fault. Not Rose’s. He’d been the seducer. He’d be the one to atone. So, if he was lost and alone in the forest while she slept in her feather bed, if he fasted while she feasted, then that was as it should be. His suffering would buy her redemption. Still, it was hard to pray for her here, hard to beg for John’s soul, hard even to think about God when he had to think so much about finding a place to sleep.

  He’d been lucky last night. At twilight, he’d stumbled upon a rough plank shelter hunched beneath a big oak tree like a giant mushroom. An abandoned hermit’s hut? An outlaw shelter whose inhabitant might return at any moment, accusing him of trespass? But John had talked about the brotherhood of the forest. Maybe the rightful owner of the shelter would take pity on him and offer him hospitality, maybe even share a crust with him. Finally, Colin had fallen asleep on the rush-strewn floor, grateful to be out of the wind.

  He dreamed of Blackingham.

  He dreamed of Rose.

  He woke at daybreak to the sound of a lone calling bird, brushed bits of rush straw from his clothes, then, when all the straw was gone, kept right on brushing for the warmth, stamping numb feet to start his curdled blood flowing. A hen, sitting a nest in the gable of the rafter, set up a loud ruckus, clucking and fluttering down from the low crossbeam. Colin reached up over his head and swept the nest. One egg. While the hen clucked her outrage, he cracked the egg and sucked its contents, careful not to spill a drop. It gave a pleasant, albeit too brief, respite from the gnawing in his stomach. He eyed the hen with purpose, but she flew up to the top of the rafter just out of reach. Just as well. To steal an egg was one thing, the producer of the egg quite another. Though he hoped the hen would stay out of reach to remove temptation. He’d not eaten since yesterday, when he’d gleaned a withered apple from beneath a pile of leaves. And he’d encountered no members of John’s brotherhood. Indeed, although he often felt as though he was being watched, he’d met no other soul on this road.

  It had snowed during the night, two inches, judging from the size of the white stripes that drifted between the thatch and the rough boards. He emerged from the hut and surveyed his surroundings. The world looked new. He stretched and breathed deeply; it smelled new, too—and so silent he fancied he could hear the breathing of the foxes sleeping in their dens. Time to go. But which way? No footsteps in the virgin snow, and now the half-trail had disappeared. Sun on the right at daybreak. But there was only a pearly, silent mist. The boy shrugged and headed south—in the opposite direction of Blinham Priory.

  When he came to a main road several hours later, it was well past midday and he’d seen no other soul. His footfalls made no sound in the snow, except for the occasional crunch of a brown twig or cone that echoed alarmingly in the quiet. The whole forest slept beneath a down blanket. The numbness in his feet had spread into his calves. He inhaled the sharp smell of bruised pine and wiped his dripping nose on his sleeve. It had begun to snow again, and he longed to sit, but feared if he lay down in the snow he might not get up. So when he came to the wide road, although he knew it meant that he was off course, he almost cried with relief. To his dismay, he soon found this road to be as empty as the forest—no pilgrims or peddlers abroad on this wintry day—but at least, if he kept trudging, he might come to a barn where he could rest. And, if he was lucky, there might be another nesting hen.

  At mid-afternoon, although he saw no signs of civilization, he smelled the smoke from a peat fire. The snow was falling harder now, and he didn’t know how much longer he could go on. He was almost past it—the landscape was erased by the swirling snow—when he saw a long pole extending from the header of a cottage door. The sign of an alehouse. He’d once been to such a place with his brother. There would be food and drink for sale, he thought excitedly, before he remembered he’d not a farthing to his name. At least, he could warm himself by the fire.

  As he crossed the innyard, he heard boisterous laughter. A gaudy wagon loomed, larger than life, in the small yard. He’d seen that kind of wagon before, a flatbed cart tented with colorful awnings that could be removed to form a stage. It probably belonged to a troupe of players who had gone inside. All the better. He could slip into a crowd, unnoticed, maybe glean a scrap of bread. The discarded trenchers the dogs ate would stop the gnawing in his belly.

  Colin opened the door tentatively to shouts of “Shut the door. Y’er lettin’ in the bleedin’ cold.”

  He fastened it quickly. “Sorry.” He ducked his head, so the publican would not see how young he was. Alfred would have bluffed his way. Colin was too self-conscious of his boyish, and unkempt, appearance.

  “Over here, landlord,” a voice shouted from the dim interior.

  Grateful for the diversion, Colin leaned against the door, took a minute to get his bearings. The air was thick with peat smoke and the smell of birds roasting on the spit. His stomach clutched with hunger pangs. He squeezed behind two jugglers, one slight and wiry, one more muscular, who were arguing good-naturedly among a knot of brightly clad performers. As he warmed himself by the fire, trying to ignore the sensation the smell of the roasting meat created in his belly, he listened with half an ear.

  “The dowager made me a gift of this velvet tunic. ’Twas to show ’er appreciation for my silken voice.” This from a preening dandy who sported a plumed hat to match the crimson tunic.

  “Well, I’ll match that and see you better: his lordship gave me a gold purse,” the muscular juggler said, flexing his forearms.

  “I can best both of you. Her ladyship gave me more than a gold purse.” The wiry fellow wiggled his eyebrows and gave a lewd grin. “She expressed a particular partiality for my contortions.”

  Guffaws all around.

  “Better’n gold, I’d say.”

  “Nay. Not really. Not nearly good as Maud there.” The contortionist raised his voice and his goblet as he winked at a serving wench across the room, who was pretending to ignore him. “Just one more thing us common folk do better, right, Maud?”

  Maud didn’t answer, but the muscleman did. “I’ll raise a glass to that. Never did see a nobleman could scratch his arse and pick his nose at the same time.” He took a swig of beer and frowned. “All them lords and ladies, puttin’ on airs, gorging themselves on swans and hummingbird tongues while poor men starve and their wives go mad from eating moldy rye. They strut around like fat pigeons in their fine clothes, ignoring the ragged beggars at their door. It’s like that preacher John Ball says. I heard him preachin’ after mass at Thetford. Remember that name. John Ball. Ye’ll likely be hearin’ it again. Ball says God created all of us outa the same clay dirt.”

  “Sounds like one of those Lollard preachers to me.”

  “It may be Lollardy, but there’s a lot of truth to it. Who needs a priest anyway? Let every man b
e his own priest, I say.”

  “Aye and spend his own tithe.” The plume on the feathered hat bobbed in enthusiasm.

  “What do you know of tithes?” The muscular one grinned, his good humor apparently returned. “Whenever the summoner comes around to collect the tithe, you’re always pleading poverty.”

  “I guess he could give the summoner that fancy velvet sleeve for a tenth,” the contortionist said.

  “Yeah, and you could give him one tenth of what her ladyship gave you.” The feather shivered with mirth. “If he’s willing to search between the sheets.”

  Everybody laughed.

  Colin, who was not used to such ribald humor, hoped his red face would be attributed to his proximity to the fire.

  As Maud made her wide-hipped stroll among her customers, Colin watched her. Her womanliness—the way her bosom strained at the lacings on her peasant bodice—ignited his now-informed boy’s imagination as much as the crude humor. He wondered what her soft thighs would feel like wrapped around him. This thought disturbed him. It reminded him of that part of himself that had led to what he now thought of as the great sin. And it reminded him, too, of all that he was giving up.

  Maud approached the jugglers with a tray of full mugs. The muscular one retrieved one from her tray. The contortionist reached out and pinched her breast. She slapped his hand and twisted skillfully away.

  “If it’s fool’s gold ye’re looking for, ye can go back to her ladyship. I’ve no gold to squander on fools. I’ve naught but beer to give ye,” she said as she emptied a full glass over his head.

  The others applauded and hooted in derision. Colin, too, had to suppress a smile at the expression on the miscreant’s face.

  “I guess ye’ve been baptized right enough.” The plumed hat shivered again.

  “Aye, and by a fairer hand than any cleric.” The victim stuck out his tongue and licked his lips. “Tastes better than holy water, too.”