The Illuminator

by Brenda Rickman Vantrease

  After that, Rose found again her former cheerful demeanor. Her appetite even returned. The winter stores were running low, but Kathryn saw that Finn’s daughter had more to eat than dried and salted meat and moldy rye. She ordered that two lambs be slaughtered—much to Simpson’s chagrin— he’d dared to gainsay her orders, arguing for an old barren ewe. He stormed off grinding his teeth. What business was it of his? She’d also instructed Agnes to prepare Rose’s favorite blancmange at least once a week.

  Rose’s belly was pleasantly round. She carried the baby high. It’s going to be a girl, Kathryn thought.

  On a day in April, when Kathryn thought the sound of the rain with its incessant drumming would drive her mad, her granddaughter was born.

  “She’s not breathing,” Rose gasped after the midwife cut the cord and laid the tiny babe, still wet and slick, on her breast. The midwife lifted the child by its legs and held it upside down—ignoring Rose’s cry—and cleared the mucus from its lungs. Kathryn felt a great relief at the thin but insistent cry.

  “Hold ’er close, so she can feel yer heart beat,” the midwife said after she had cleaned the babe and wrapped her in a blanket.

  “I want to call her Jasmine,” Rose said to Kathryn as she cradled her child. “Father said my mother always smelled like jasmine.”

  “That’s a pretty name, Rose, but wouldn’t it be better to call her some more common name like Anne or Elizabeth?”

  “I could call her Rebekka after my mother.”

  Rose looked so young, Kathryn thought, hardly more than a child herself, though she’d borne the birth pangs better than some women, screaming out only once when the babe crowned. She’d clutched Kathryn’s hand so hard a bruise was already showing on her wrist. Rose’s hair was still damp with sweat. One curl, the one she’d cut for her father, had plastered itself to her cheek. Kathryn stroked her forehead, smoothed the curl back in its place, thinking of Finn’s high forehead. Thinking, too, about the problems a child with a Jewish name would encounter, about how it would make all their lives harder.

  “Jasmine is a prettier name than Rebekka, I think. And it honors your mother’s memory. It suits your little girl. She’s as small and pretty as a jasmine blossom.”

  Born four weeks early by Kathryn’s clearest counting, the babe was so small she could almost hold it in her cupped hands. After it had sucked, she took it from its mother and swaddled each limb, the tiny fragile torso, even the head, in soft linen bandages to prevent curvature of the soft bones.

  “It’s a wee mite,” the midwife said as Kathryn paid her. “But it shows spirit. Ye needn’t worry about its soul. As it was crowning, I baptized the babe in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. I gave it a Christian name. Anna. For the Virgin’s mother. I baptize all my newborn girls with that name. It entered this world a Christian child, and will leave it the same way. Though if it lives, of course, ye’ll probably want to do it proper in the church.”

  It is a Christian child, Kathryn thought. Colin’s child, and she noted with relief how the fuzz on the infant’s head was drying to a pale reddish blond. Not a Jew child.

  “Your baptism would be sufficient, wouldn’t it?” she asked.

  “Oh, ’twould for sure.” The midwife fished a vial of holy water from her pocket. “Father Benedict blessed it hisself, trained me in the words to say, in cases where the child’s life is in danger.”

  After the midwife left, Kathryn kept watch beside Rose’s bed. Had Rose been baptized? Wouldn’t Finn have insisted? But then she thought of how much Finn had loved his Rebekka. Maybe she hadn’t converted? Would he have married her anyway? She was thinking about the little filigree cross around Rose’s neck when she nodded off to sleep, reassured.

  The next time the babe needed feeding—it seemed like only minutes with Rose sleeping and Kathryn dozing by her bed—Rose had nothing, not even the pale viscous substance that preceded the milk. Jasmine protested in a thin wail, pushing at the distended nipple of Rose’s right breast with her rosebud mouth.

  “Try the left one.”

  But Jasmine only cried harder, screwing her tiny face into a pink rage. Rose, still weak from her long labor, began to cry too. Two crying children, Kathryn thought and sighed. She was bone-weary. She felt almost as tired as if she had borne the child.

  “You just need to rest now, Rose,” Kathryn said, “You’ll have more milk. We’ll take care of the babe until you’re better. We’ll give her ewe’s milk on a rag in the meantime or get a nursemaid from the village.” She was cursing herself for letting the midwife go. She would have known where to get a wet nurse. Kathryn didn’t know where to start.

  She didn’t notice the kitchen wench gathering the soiled linens in the corner until Magda tapped her gently on the elbow. “B-beg pardon, milady, she may be satisfied just to suck the tip of your finger until you can find m-milk. See, like this.” And before Kathryn could stop her, she picked up the wailing infant and stuck the tip of her finger in its mouth. She crooned to it softly, “Lulay, lulay,” as it sucked a few times and fell asleep. The girl laid it gently in its crib.

  Kathryn was amazed. “You did that very well, Magda. I think we can use you in the nursery.”

  The girl flushed with pleasure and dropped a quick curtsy. “Please, milady, if it’s a nursemaid you need right away, me mum still has milk. Would you like me to fetch her?”

  Would I like you to fetch her! Kathryn could have cried with relief. She knew that some of the peasant women carried toddlers, well past weaning age, still sucking at their sagging breasts, thinking that as long as they nursed they would not become pregnant again. Others, suffering from malnutrition, dried up too soon and their babies died. At least she could prevent this from happening to Finn’s grandchild.

  “Yes, please, go right away,” she said to Magda. “Tell your mother she will be well paid.” Then, taking Rose’s hand, “See, Rose, we already have a nurse. You just rest,” she said. “Everything is going to be fine. I’ll keep watch over your babe until Magda gets back.”

  Magda knew her mother would be pleased. This would mean more food for her hungry brood. Her family had not recovered from the poll tax of last year. They’d not had the eight shillings, one shilling per head, that King Richard demanded, so the collector had taken the pig that was to have seen them through the winter. And Cook said there was talk of another tax to fund the duke’s failing Spanish wars. “Taking food from the mouths of babes to fund men’s vanities” was how Agnes had put it. Magda’s family would be assessed less this time, six shillings instead of eight because Agnes had said she would ask Lady Kathryn to pay for Magda. And her little brother had died—one less mouth to feed, one less head to tax. Nobody had seemed to mourn the little boy but Magda, though she’d since seen her mother, more than once, weeping over three small mounds in the churchyard. Six shillings: it might as well have been a duke’s ransom for a family such as hers. And they’d already taken the pig.

  The dirt floor of the peasant hut was slick with mud. Her mother sat on a stool at a table made of rough deal boards, the room’s only furniture other than the cot where Magda’s parents slept. Beside the cot, there was a makeshift willow crib, perpetually occupied. The other three children slept in a low loft above the animals. In winter, the animals were protected from the elements, and the heat their bodies generated helped to warm the children.

  All in all, it worked pretty well. Except on a day like today, when the wind and the rain forced the peat smoke back down the smoke hole cut in the thatch roof, and the hut stank of the muck from the chickens and the cow. The smoke stung Magda’s eyes. She wondered how her mother could sit, so oblivious to the pandemonium around her, holding her youngest at her breast while she kneaded bread with her free hand. Another child, a four-year-old, clung to her skirts, crying. She thought of the quiet, clean rooms at Blackingham, the feather beds, the cavernous kitchen with its hearth soup always on the boil.

  “Where’s Father?” She announced her a
rrival at the low door, shouting to be heard above the din.

  “Magda!” Her mother’s gaunt face was almost pretty when she smiled, but that was seldom. “I don’t know where he’s gone.” She pushed a stray string of hair back beneath its kerchief binding. “He said he was going that crazy, shut up with us. He stomped out into the rain. Just as well. He fouled the air with his bitterness.”

  As if the air could be any fouler, Magda thought. “Then I guess he’ll have b-bitterness to eat instead of dried apple t-tartlets.”

  She shook the rain from her mantle and proudly placed a basket of treats on the table. Her little brother stopped crying and started to climb his mother’s skirts. The other three, who were engaged in chasing the squawking chickens under the loft, ran over and reached up with grubby hands, grabbing at the basket.

  “Careful.” Magda snatched it back. “There’s enough for all. I brought a sack of fine-milled flour, too, and a side of b-bacon.”

  Her mother gave a little cry, a sharp intake of breath, and then her eyes glittered with tears. She reached up and touched Magda’ s face.

  “I thank the Holy Virgin for the day that I took ye up to Blackingham, child, though I’ll have to admit I cursed yer father enough times for making me do it. He said ye were simple ’cause ye didn’t talk. I reckon ye just didn’t have naught to say.” Her mother paused, searching her face, as though she was asking forgiveness or confirmation that in giving her daughter away she had done the right thing.

  “They’re kind to me, Mum. Even milady. Nobody calls me simple. Though I miss the little ones. And as long as I’m at Blackingham, ye’ll not starve.”

  Her mother looked alarmed. “Ye didn’t steal?”

  “Of course not, Mum. Cook packed the basket herself.”

  “I wish yer father were here to listen how ye’ve found yer tongue. He’ll not believe how well-spoken ye are.”

  Cat’s got yer tongue, he used to tease, cajole her into talking when she was little. She remembered how she used to sit in his lap and reach for the circle of red light around his head, and how he’d box her ears when she pulled his hair, and later beat her when she would not talk.

  “Don’t be too hard on yer father, lass. His life’s not been easy.”

  “Nobody’s life is easy, Mum.” She told her mother why she’d come, how Rose didn’t have enough milk to satisfy even the tiny infant. She’d been able to feed the baby only twice and then she’d seemed to weaken.

  “I’ll go right now,” her mother said, “if ye’ll tend this one while I’m gone.”

  “Will there be enough milk for both?” She looked at her littlest brother tugging greedily on his mother’s nipple, cutting his big round eyes at her as though he knew something was afoot.

  “Billy’s big enough to wean. I only kept him at the breast because … well, never mind why. There’ll be no need now.”

  In the smoky dim light of the room, her mother seemed backlit by a beautiful violet glow, but Magda had learned not to talk about the colors, not to tell about the souls she read the way other people read faces. Someone would say she was simple.

  Kathryn kept close watch, dividing her time between Rose and the child. The baby thrived. Rose did not. She continued to bleed steadily. Nothing alarming at first. But then, when it should have lightened, the flow increased. “Flowers,” that’s the name men gave to this secret property, this monthly purging of women’s bodies, a woman’s flowers, a pretty term to mark the natural properties of a woman’s body. Unnatural now, dark flowers, soaking sheet after sheet of clean white linen.

  Candles burned for Saint Margaret, day and night, in the room where Rose bled. Kathryn had moved her into Finn’s bed. The small antechamber where she usually slept was now a nursery. Magda’s mother made the two-mile trek from her own cottage each day to tend and feed Jasmine. Kathryn had asked what arrangements she had made for her own children and was told that, since the fields were flooded, her husband had naught to do anyway but tend the little ones. Once or twice, Kathryn had seen a small boy in the kitchen with Magda and Agnes, but she said nothing. As long as the woman cared for Jasmine, she would allow her the comfort of having her own child nearby.

  Each day, Rose grew paler. The veins in her small round breasts looked like tracings of blue lace beneath transparent skin. She kept trying to feed her child, and when there was no milk, the babe cried. After each futile effort, Kathryn would take Jasmine away and give her to the nurse, and Rose, exhausted, would lie back wearily on her pillow. She would say nothing, but Kathryn learned to watch for the little stream of tears that formed in the crevices between her nose and cheeks.

  Kathryn placed a healing stone of jasper beneath Rose’s pillow and drowned her in tea of honey and motherwort. She soaked linen rags in an infusion of lady’s mantle and packed heavy compresses between her legs. On the fourth day, Rose’s skin was hot to the touch, and she no longer tried to feed the baby; once, when she heard it crying in the antechamber, she cried out as though she was frightened, asking, “What’s that noise?”

  Kathryn moved the nurse and the baby to her own chamber. She had tried once before. She wanted this child close to her, but its mother had protested. She did not protest now.

  Rose’s fever proved stubborn. She became delirious, singsonging bits of nonsense, love songs—Colin’s songs, Kathryn remembered—and calling out—sometimes for Finn, sometimes for Colin, in muttered half-whispers. Kathryn bathed her in cool water, but still the fever climbed.

  On the fifth day, Kathryn sent for the priest at Saint Michael’s. Rose’s soul must not be unshriven.

  “Tell the groom I will have him beaten if he does not return with the priest before nightfall,” she said when told that he complained that the road was too slabber’d and sost. “He’ll not melt. I’ll have his hide if he tarries.”

  She sat by Rose’s bedside, murmuring prayers and endearments.

  By nightfall, the priest arrived, shaking the water drops from his cloak like a shaggy beast.

  “Where is the girl?” he asked, obviously not happy to be called out on such a night.

  Kathryn took him to Rose’s bedside. She lay as still as a corpse, eyes closed, their lids thin and blue-veined, her skin as pale as bleached linen. The last time Kathryn had removed the dressing from between her legs, just two hours ago, it had been as dark and sodden as the rain-soaked earth outside.

  “We’d better hurry,” the priest said, arranging his vestments, taking out his holy water, his crucifix. He began to recite the Commendatio animae.

  “Qui Lazarum … ”

  The girl opened her eyes just once during the Office of the Dead and looked wildly around the room. Her eyes were wide with fear and something that looked like surprise—but weren’t the young always caught unaware by death? Or was it the priest’s presence that alarmed her? Her gaze fastened on Kathryn. “Jasmine,” she whispered, clawing at the air as if the babe were being handed to her.

  “Jasmine is asleep,” Kathryn said in her gentlest voice, though she was fighting her own fear and surprise, and she’d seen death aplenty. I’ll take care of your little girl,” Kathryn said. “I will guard her with my own life, Rose, I promise you. She will be my daughter.”

  The girl nodded, lay back down and was very still. Her breath was so slight that once Kathryn held a candle flame to her face to see if it flickered. After a while, Kathryn felt a gentle pressure on her hand. She had not even been aware that she was holding Rose’s hand.

  “Tell Father”—Kathryn leaned close in to hear—“tell Father I’m sorry.”

  Kathryn sat beside Rose’s body for a long time, listening to the hissing of the rain. It came down in torrents, leaked into the flue, making little sizzling noises and filling the room with smoke. Kathryn touched Rose’s face. It was already cold. The priest had gone to the kitchen seeking his supper and then his bed. In the morning he would baptize her grandchild properly, in the lady chapel, dipping the baby three times in the font with Kathryn standing
as godmother. But there would be no celebration. The child’s mother would be lying beneath the baptismal font, below in the family crypt—consecrated ground—beside Roderick. Roderick sleeping for eternity beside a beautiful woman, sleeping beside a Jew. The only fruit he could not despoil.

  There would be no father at the christening, either. Had Colin reached the Benedictines now? She’d had word from a tinker who’d been with his troupe at Colchester that he was safe. He might even now be singing his pretty love songs, blissfully unaware his love had died.

  When the roads dried out, she’d send a message to the monks at Cromer. Knowledge of his child might bring her child back to her.

  She started to pull the bell that would summon Glynis to assist her in preparing Rose’s body, and then she remembered. There were those who said that Jews bore some special marking, some deformity on their bodies— Roderick had said he’d heard it on good authority that the women’s clefts were horizontal like a mouth. Well, she knew that to be a lie. Rose’s womanly parts had been like her own, though she had to admit, she’d had an anxious moment before summoning the midwife. She had finally decided, spurred on by Rose’s pain, that if that was true, the midwife’s silence could be bought.

  She gathered a basin of lavender water left in her own chamber and began to bathe each limb, washing it carefully. There were no marks, no deformities. Everything about Rose was perfectly formed. Kathryn braided the dark hair, winding it in a coronet around her face, weighted the eyelids with two coins, and tied a blue silk band around her head and under her jaw, then dressed her in her father’s favorite dress. She looked like a bride in her pale blue dress, as beautiful in death as she had been in life.