Colin and Alfred.
In trying to keep them, she had lost them forever. She felt a stab of grief, raw and bright as new blood. She pushed it aside.
“And Blackingham is gone?” she asked.
“Aye, milady. Blackingham is lost to us.” Agnes’s voice choked on the last word.
It was her home, too, Kathryn thought. Her home, as much as mine. Kathryn wanted to offer words of comfort, words of gratitude, but she lacked the strength.
Agnes removed the bandage from beneath Kathryn’s eye. As the air hit it, Kathryn sucked in her breath with the pain. Agnes dressed the burn, gently, with a soothing ointment of comfrey leaves and flowers of Saint John’s wort; then she laid on a cooling compress and reapplied the loose linen bandage. The ointment, or Agnes’s touch, was soothing. Kathryn felt the muscles in her face relax.
“Ye know, milady, ye should never have sent the illuminator away. I never saw a man so besotted with a woman.” Agnes wiped her hands of the ointment, and reaching into her voluminous skirt, withdrew an object. “He left this. He wanted you to take something of him to your grave. He told the prioress it was all he had.”
Agnes laid the hazelnut, set in its little pewter backing like some great saint’s relic, in the palm of Kathryn’s right hand. She recognized it. Finn had said it was a gift from the anchoress. She wrapped her fingers around it, clutching it until the pewter bit into her flesh. The whole world in the palm of God’s hand—or something like that. She couldn’t remember what Finn said it meant, exactly. But it was enough that he had left it for her. Enough that it had once rested against his skin.
She lay against the soft pillows. The room receded until all she could see was Agnes’s stern face in the glow of the candle.
“If the prioress—if I—had not sent Finn away, he would be dead by now,” she said. “Or worse. He would live out his life as Henry Despenser’s slave.” It was hard to form the words. Then, murmuring low, more to satisfy herself than Agnes: “Finn has Jasmine. She will keep his spirit whole.”
“And you, milady, what do you have?”
I have the memory of the forgiveness in his eyes. I have the memory of him.
“I have you, Agnes. And you have me,” she said. “And that will have to be enough for now.”
Her left hand had started to twitch with a tic, each tic a stab. “Now, I think, I’ll have the tiniest sip of your special medicine to help me sleep. You need sleep, too, Agnes.” She pointed to the pallet beside her bed where Agnes had kept her faithful vigil. “Don’t sleep here tonight. The chapel bell tolls matins. There is a lot of the night left. Find yourself a bed of your own in the guest house. Tomorrow is soon enough for us to contemplate our future.”
“If you are certain, milady. These old bones would like a soft bed, sure enough.”
Agnes blew out the candle, but left the rushlight on in its sconce. It had burned low as well, casting long shadows in the room. Kathryn felt the sleeping draught begin its work, softening the edge of her pain. She clutched the hazelnut in her hand. Such a tiny thing.
A current of air stirred the room. She heard a sound, almost a whisper.
All will be well.
“Agnes, did you say something?”
But Agnes was gone. There was only silence in the room and the flickering shadows.
It must be the medicine, she thought. Or mayhap some inner voice, reminding her of Julian’s words. She closed her eyes, searching for the dream, or memory, whichever it had been, that brought her comfort.
Again the whispered words filled her head.
This time each word was distinct and clear.
All will be well.
And Kathryn almost believed it.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction, but the characters of Bishop Henry Despenser, John Wycliffe, Julian of Norwich, and John Ball are historical figures whose histories I have braided with the lives of my fictional characters. Henry Despenser is best remembered as the “warring bishop” for the bloody and violent manner in which he put down the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 and for his subsequent unsuccessful military campaign against Pope Clement VII during the Great Schism of the West that divided the Roman Catholic Church. He is also remembered for having made a gift of a five-paneled altarpiece, known as the Despenser retable, or Despenser reredos, to Norwich Cathedral in celebration of his bloody triumph over the Peasants’ Revolt. He had the reredos framed with the coats of arms of the families who assisted him in this massacre. This altarpiece may be seen today in Saint Luke’s Chapel, Norwich Cathedral. During the Reformation it was turned upside down and used as a table to hide it from the reformers and then forgotten for more than four hundred years. As the story goes, during the middle of the last century, someone dropped a pencil beneath the altar cloth and, bending to retrieve it, found the wonderful paintings of the five panels depicting the Passion of Christ. The painter’s name has been lost in history.
John Wycliffe is remembered as the “morning star of the reformation” because of his efforts at reform within the Church and because he was the first to translate the Bible into the English language, thereby reshaping not only Church history but cultural history. He was charged with heresy, dismissed from Oxford, and his writings were banned. But he was never brought to trial and continued to write and preach until his death by stroke in 1384 at his home in Lutterworth. His entire translation was completed by his followers in 1388, seven years after my story ends. In 1428, Pope Martin V ordered John Wycliffe’s bones to be dug up, burned, and his ashes discarded in the river Swift. The Lollard movement he founded continued to thrive underground and eventually merged with the new Protestant forces of the Reformation.
John Ball was excommunicated around 1366 for inflammatory sermons advocating a classless society. According to historical sources, he urged the killing of lords and prelates. He was incarcerated in Maidstone Prison when the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 broke out but was released by Kentish rebels and accompanied them to London. After the rebellion collapsed, Ball was tried and hanged at Saint Albans.
About Julian of Norwich we know very little outside of her writings. She was the first woman to write in the English language. Her Divine Revelations have lately enjoyed a resurgence of interest, largely fostered by feminists who were intrigued by Julian’s concept of a mother God. A close reading of her work certainly shows her to be an independent thinker for her times and a woman of deep and abiding faith. Historical documents indicate that she was still living as a recluse in Norwich as late as 1413, seven years after the demise of Bishop Despenser.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wish to acknowledge the readers who have given me valuable feedback during the writing of this book: Dick Davies, Mary Strandlund, and Ginger Moran, who critiqued my work when it was in its formative stage, and Leslie Lytle and Mac Clayton, who worked with me in the completion of it. Thanks also to Pat Wiser and to Noelle Spears (my youngest reader of seventeen), who read and commented on my final draft. A special thank-you is due to my writing partner of many years, Meg Wake Clayton, author of The Language of Light, who suffered with me through many drafts.
I wish also to acknowledge a debt to the writers from whom I have learned. Thanks to Manette Ansay for her valuable tips on the integration of internal and external landscape in fiction. Thanks to Valerie Miner for her excellent teaching on evoking a sense of place—one of the Half-Tom scenes developed from a writing exercise in her wonderful workshop in Key West—and thanks to Max Byrd for his excellent lecture on rhetorical devices delivered at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers workshop and for his timely and personal words of encouragement.
To my agent, Harvey Klinger, for rescuing me from the slough of the slush pile, and my editor, Hope Dellon, for her editorial skill and literary instincts, I offer heartfelt gratitude. I feel truly blessed to have two such consummate professionals on my side.
In the life of a writer, the importance of the role of encourager cannot be overstated. I wish t
o thank those who, with their words and actions, have helped me nurture my fragile dream of publication: Helen Wirth, who edited my first published short story; Dr. Jim Clark, for his professional advice and words of encouragement; the family members and friends who expressed interest and belief in my abilities, and finally, my love and appreciation to my husband, Don, whose unwavering support sustains me. Last, and most important, I thank the One from whom all blessings flow.
The Illuminator Page 48