The Mercy Seller: A Novel (v5)

by Brenda Rickman Vantrease

  He glanced up at the castle on the hill, his eyes widening in mock terror. “Don’t tell me I’ll be taking a blue blood to bed as wife.”

  “My grandmother was lesser nobility. But we climbed down from that hill long ago. If you take me, you will be taking a humble artisan’s granddaughter to wife—with a dowry to match.”

  “Well, that’s a relief. Not the dowry part, maybe.” He grinned. “Did you know her?”

  “My English grandmother? Only her name, Kathryn. She was not Ddeek’s wife. His wife was named Rebekka, and she died giving birth to my mother. Kathryn was my father’s mother, but she and Ddeek knew each other. I think they were lovers. Though he seldom speaks of her, I think he loved her very much. She died when I was hardly more than a babe. I have this faint memory—more dream than memory—of her singing to me. She called me ‘poppet’ or ‘moppet’ or something. And she took me to see Ddeek. He was shut up in some kind of castle.”

  Anna looked up at the hrad and shivered. The sun had gone behind one of the pillow clouds, turning its underbelly gray. The castle looked even more menacing under the sunless sky. “A castle on a hill like that but more … fortified. ‘Castle Prison,’ they called it. Whenever I think of England, I think of that awful place.”

  “Did you know your parents?”

  She shook her head. “My mother died when I was born. I was scarcely old enough to walk when my father died.”

  “In battle?”

  She wished he hadn’t brought it up. She didn’t like thinking about it, but she supposed if he were to be her husband he was entitled to know her history.

  “He died in the Lollard cause. Killed by the bishop’s soldiers. Kathryn died in a peasant rebellion when they burned her manor house. The Church blamed the Lollards for the uprising and killed everyone they could find. My grandfather and I escaped from England to the Continent.”

  Martin whistled low. “So you come from a royal line of heretics. And your grandfather continues in the cause. A wonder that he never returned to England. Old Jerome says in England some of the nobility have embraced the idea of reform. It might be easier there.”

  “He says there is nothing for him there but painful memories. Why should we want to leave Prague? We have been happy here. He has his art and his friends from the university. I have friends here too.”

  She tried to make her tone teasing, playful, but talk of so much death had spoiled the mood. As they neared the square, he slid his arm around her waist, pulling her back toward the cover of the twisting street. She shook her head and pointed to the great two-faced astronomical clock.

  “Hurry, Martin. Look. It’s almost three o’clock. My grandfather will be worried, and he gets cross when he’s worried. Besides, I still have to prepare his supper. It will have to be fish now; there’s no time for anything else.”

  The sun did not reemerge from behind the cloud, and suddenly it seemed to Anna that the joy—like the sunlight—had drained from the day.

  “Don’t walk with me the rest of the way. You do not want him to think you’re the reason that he must have fish and not a nicely roasted joint for supper.

  “No. I want him in a good mood for what I have to ask him,” he said. “Why shouldn’t I ask him now? Before he finds out about the fish?”

  Anna looked across the street at their little town house of baked brick and half-timbers with its pretty carved door standing open to the square. By now her grandfather would have finished his day’s work, cleaned his brushes, neatly stacked his paint pots along the window ledge, and would be napping in his chair.

  “Not now, Martin. Give me a chance to prepare him.”

  He frowned. “That’s what you said last week, Anna. How much longer do you want me to wait?”

  “Just a few days more, I promise.” She reached up again and brushed his hair away from his eyes—eyes that flashed his frustration as she turned to leave.

  Now I’ll have both of them angry. In trying to please both, I’ve pleased neither. She sighed as she hitched up her skirt so she could make it to the fishmonger before he closed shop for the day.

  TWO

  CANTERBURY, ENGLAND

  12 JULY 1412

  But though his [the pardoner’s] conscience was a little plastic

  He was in church a noble ecclesiastic. Well he could read the

  Scripture or saints story, But best of all he sang the offertory.

  For he understood that when his song was sung

  That he must preach and sharpen up his tongue

  To rake in cash, as well he knew the art

  —PROLOGUE TO CHAUCER’S

  THE CANTERBURY TALES

  Friar Gabriel had set up his indulgence table just outside the portal of Canterbury Cathedral. He was almost hoarse from a day of preaching and bone-weary from witnessing so much misery in the faces of the penitents.

  “Find pardon for your sins. All who are contrite and have confessed and made contribution will receive complete remission for all their sins,” he cried in his best preacher’s voice.

  Hands reached toward him from all sides, pulling on his black habit, entreating him to take their ducats and shillings and pennies in exchange for the little pieces of paper he carried in his velvet pouch. The pouch was embroidered with the Jerusalem cross and held bits of parchment tied with ribbon. Receipts of grace dispensed, penance paid. His pouch also held the papal bull that granted him his pardoner’s rights. This he displayed on a gold-embroidered banner and—unlike the many counterfeit pardoners—his was real. He’d received it himself from the pope’s own hand.

  “Listen to the voice of your poor father, your poor mother, who nurtured you and loved you and who now suffer torment, pleading with you for the pittance that will release their souls from purgatory. As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs.”

  A well-rehearsed refrain, but his heart was not in it. It was late in the day and the crowd of pilgrims was thinning. The bells tolled vespers. Their peals, muffled by the rising fog, crept across the valley like the ghosts of saints long dead. Something about the bells saddened him. There was a loneliness in the approaching eventide.

  For the first time in hours, he sat down on the velvet-cushioned stool he’d borrowed from the chapter house and surveyed the last of the pilgrim line. A bloated sun draped a mantle of light, like a blessing, on the shoulders of the penitents: old men, young men, maids, wives, widows, masters, and vassals, garbed in plain pilgrims’ smocks and hooded capes as they crawled on their knees into the great cathedral, into Trinity Chapel, a muddy river of them, oozing up the stairs to worship at the jewel-encrusted shrine of the martyr Thomas à Becket.

  The veterans among them sported multiple badges on their cloaks and hoods, small lead pins from Little Walsingham shrine, cleverly contrived, holding tiny receptacles of the virgin’s tears, or the image of Saint Peter or Saint Paul from Winchester shrine. Both were stops along the Pilgrim’s Way—the penitential way. He noticed with a smile that all the pilgrims wore Canterbury bells and little tin bottles of water from Becket’s well. The tiny Latin inscription below the bottles read “Optimus egrorum medicus fit Thomas bonorum.” Thomas is a good doctor for the worthy sick. Thomas was also a good doctor for the coffers of Church, town, and crown, Gabriel reflected. Like the souvenir sellers in Mercery Lane, his pardoner’s collection box was heavy with coin.

  The price of mercy was not cheap: six gold florins for a duke or earl, four for lesser nobility, two for a wealthy merchant, and on down the social ladder. He even had an allowance for dispensing free pardons for those who could not afford to pay and who could not perform their penance. But the guidelines were strict and he had already exhausted that. It was time to close up shop, he thought, and rose to do so. He had promised to preside over the Divine Office.

  “Please, Brother, how much?”

  He turned around to see the pilgrim that matched the voice. A young woman. A very pregnant young woman.

  “I cannot
climb the steps to the chapel on my knees.” She smiled and blushed. “I can’t even get on my knees.”

  She had traveled far. He could tell by the condition of her cloak, not the “pilgrim’s cloak” that so many purchased just for the journey, but a too-small mantle well-worn and threadbare. Her scrip was a bundle tied with a rope knotted high over her protruding belly.

  “Where are you from, mistress?”

  “I come from Charing. This was the closest shrine.”

  A journey of several days on foot, harsh for a pregnant woman, he thought, cursing in his mind the priest who had given her such a penance. Her eyes were red and shadowed by deep circles. Dust and grime from the road covered her bare feet.

  “What was your crime, that your confessor thought such an untimely penance necessary?”

  “I desecrated the host.”

  Oh, he thought. She’s one of those. One of the Lollard dissidents, who question the truth of the Eucharist, one who denies that it is the real blood and body of the savior. His sympathy faded.

  “That is a grievous sin,” he said.

  “I know, Brother, but I did not do it on purpose. When the father went to put the wafer in my mouth, his furred sleeve tickled my nose and I sneezed. The wafer fell to the ground.” Her eyes grew round and frightened at the recital of her great sin.

  Gabriel might have laughed had she looked less pitiable. Instead, he felt a little swell of anger. He could almost see the parish priest who, infuriated at this young woman’s interruption of his performance, lashed out at her with this ridiculous penance. He knew the kind: pompous, pulpit-proud. Any compassionate priest would have known it was an accident. Then, of course, many of his brethren denied the possibility of an “accident.” Everything was the result of direct intervention by either God or the devil.

  She gestured toward the cathedral doors. Her voice was soft and carried a slight tremor. “I thought I could do it. I did not know there would be so many steps. But I’m afraid if I … I have money for the indulgence,” she said. “My husband sold our cow to pay for my pilgrimage. He would have come with me, but he stayed behind to care for our little girl and gather in the grain. I have two shillings left.”

  “He sold your cow?”

  She looked down at her large belly, meaningfully. “Brother, I cannot go into labor in a state of mortal sin. I might not—”

  She couldn’t even finish. But she didn’t have to. Even from within his insulated cloud of ignorance, he knew how many women died in childbirth. He reached in his pouch and withdrew one of the bits of parchment, untied the ribbon, and handed it to her.

  “Is that it?” she asked, peering at it. “What does it say?”

  “It says that you have found pardon in the eyes of the Church and God. It says your sin has been forgiven. And it is good for two months. That should get you through.”

  She closed her eyes and grasped it as though it were made of gold and precious gems rather than paper and a bit of ink. A tear tracked its way from the corner of her eye down her dusty cheek. She rolled the parchment up carefully, retying the ribbon, and put it in her bundle, then withdrew the two shillings and put them on the table. He pushed them back at her.

  “You sold the cow. You’ll need the shillings to buy milk for your children. You have completed most of your penance anyway by making the journey.”

  After she had stooped as low as she dared to kiss the ring upon his finger, after he had dismissed her with the admonishment to “go and sin no more,” he gathered up his indulgences and went into the great cathedral to say vespers, wondering as he went why God had called him for a job to which he seemed so ill-suited.

  Only midafternoon and already the drunkards gathered in the taverns. Friar Gabriel steered his horse through the north gate of London Bridge. He looked forward to enjoying a cool drink himself on the other side of the river. The sun beat down on his tonsured crown and his horse was foaming and restless as he waited for a parade of royal barges to make their slow and splendid progress beneath the bridge. No doubt a cutpurse or three in this crowd, he thought, cursing the mayor of London under his breath that he had not cleared the bridge for the archbishop’s conference.

  “Make way. Make way,” he shouted when finally the bridge was lowered and he spurred his horse to the front of the heavy foot traffic. He ignored the curses and grumbled imprecations from the carter his horse nosed aside. Others in the crowd also muttered their dissatisfaction, but he ignored them. The peasants always nattered against the clergy—until they needed them.

  The closeness of the multistoried houses and shops huddled along the bridge fed his claustrophobia. He had almost forgotten the stench of South-wark. It wafted up from Lambeth marsh. Not just the swampy, brackish smell of the Thames south bank in summer, but the smell of squalor and lust boiling out of the stews and brothels of Bankside Street. Open sewers, refuse, rotting offal, even a bloated carcass washed up at the river’s edge added to the foulness of the heat-burdened air. Animal or human? It was hard to tell from the south gate of London Bridge. But huddled on the bank of the river he saw a tavern, THE TABARD INN, the sign said. A familiar name, yet he was sure he’d not been there before. It looked a decent enough place to enjoy a cool drink.

  The room was long and low and blissfully dim after the hot summer sun. He chose a spot by a window in the corner, away from the midafternoon carousers who were entertaining themselves by flirting with the barmaid. The innkeeper approached him.

  “A little surprised to see you here, Friar.”

  “Oh, how so?”

  “Just the reputation of this place. Thought you might not appreciate it. Might take offense.”

  “I’d like a tankard of beer, please. From your cellar, if you have one. Why would I find your establishment offensive, publican? Do you water your beer? Or fail to give good measure?”

  “Best beer this side of the river and poured with generosity. Bailey. My name’s Harry Bailey. This be the Tabard Inn.” He waited expectantly. “Of the famous Canterbury Tales.”

  That was where he’d heard of the Tabard Inn. The poet Chaucer. With his unflattering portrait of the pardoner.

  “And why should that offend me?” Gabriel took a slow, deliberate sip of the beer. It was good and cool to his parched throat.

  The publican had the good grace to look embarrassed. He pointed to the velvet pouch with the Jerusalem cross. “I see you carry the indulgences. You’re a pardoner as well as a friar.”

  “An honest pardoner, Master Bailey. My papal indulgences are not counterfeit like those of the poet’s pardoner. Every dime I collect goes to Rome to build hospitals and feed the poor. I’m sure there are charlatans in every business, wouldn’t you say?” He took another sip. “Even in the tavern business?”

  The tavernkeeper only shrugged and moved on with his tray of tankards to the next table. Gabriel swallowed a few sips, relishing the cool liquid. His gaze traveled around the room. Little knots of yeomen, a trio of pilgrims— more literary than holy, judging from the way they nudged each other and pointed to the placard above their table that said GEOFFREY CHAUCER SAT HERE. The publican laughed with them as he gave them their drinks, then pointed to the crudely drawn illustrations, probably by his own hand, of the Canterbury pilgrims along the walls. The portrait of the richly dressed pardoner was the most offensive, charlatan to the core. A clever caricature. That was all. He looked nothing like Gabriel in his black habit.

  On the other side of the room, a scarce two tables in breadth, the only other person who sat alone, was another cleric. But there the similarity ended. He looked like one of the self-styled poor priests, as barefoot and threadbare as the Franciscans, though these belonged to no holy order. The priest in his brown cassock sat near the other window, studying a crudely bound book.

  Gabriel cleared his throat loudly to draw his gaze. The poor priest raised his head, looked straight at Gabriel, and went back to reading his book.

  What had he expected? That the Lollard priest wou
ld be so intimidated by Gabriel’s Dominican habit that he would rush to hide his book? Maybe. In a world where the Divine Order was not being threatened by rabble-rousers and spiritual dissidents. Or maybe he wasn’t reading a Bible at all, but another English book. Perhaps the house copy of The Canterbury Tales. The proud innkeeper was sure to have one poor copy for his patrons’ enjoyment.

  Gabriel motioned for the publican.

  “Buy yon priest a tankard and tell him Friar Gabriel would like to discuss with him the book which makes such great claim upon his attention.”

  The innkeeper raised his eyebrow in surprise, took a mug of beer to the poor priest. Gabriel could see him whispering and gesturing in his direction. He came back shortly. Alone.

  “He thanks you for the drink, but says to tell you he has no desire to debate with you. However, if you wish to see the Holy Word in English he will be privileged to share it with you.”

  How brazen they’d become! No wonder Archbishop Arundel was calling his special council on orthodoxy at Lambeth Palace. Lollardy was a cancer growing in their midst. Their growing following threatened the very foundation of the Church, its teaching, its power.

  “Tell him to enjoy his drink in peace, and one day soon he’ll perhaps have the opportunity to share his English Bible with the archbishop.”

  Gabriel finished his beer in one gulp and made a great show of withdrawing twopence to pay for it and the Lollard’s, not waiting for the innkeeper to offer it to him gratis as he might have. The coins clinked on the wooden deal of the table.

  “Perhaps I’ll read Mr. Chaucer’s poetry sometime. You seem to recommend it so highly,” he said as he left.

  He mounted his horse and headed for Lambeth. But the experience at the inn had made him ill at ease. He should not have come this way. He should have ridden around to the west and crossed by the ferry closer to the archbishop’s residence at Lambeth Palace. Gabriel’s mentor, Friar Francis, would not have sullied the hem of his habit with Southwark dust.