The Mercy Seller: A Novel (v5)

by Brenda Rickman Vantrease

  “Do as I say, Anna. The paper.” His voice was hoarse. He closed his eyes to gather his strength, listening to the sound of shuffling papers, the clatter of a jar of ink. When he opened his eyes, she was hovering over him, the quill poised in her hands. She is humoring me, he thought. But no matter. She would do as he asked. She would remember his instructions.

  “Sir John Oldcastle. Lord Cobham.”

  “No, Ddeek. This is foolish. I will not—”

  “Write it, Anna. Cooling Castle, Kent, England.” He croaked out the last syllables over the scratching of the nib. “That’s where you are to go, if anything happens to me.”

  “Nothing is—”

  He ignored the pleading in her voice.

  “Sir John is a powerful man. And a good man. He will protect you for the cause we share. Did you write his name? Repeat it back to me.”

  “Sir John Oldcastle.” Her voice quivered with emotion.

  “Jerome will arrange for your passage. Sell the household goods. There’s

  some coin in my purse and some in the chest beneath the Bible. Our lease is paid up, but Mistress Kremensky is a fair woman. She will refund any balance you don’t use. Do not sell the Bible. Take it with you. Show it to Sir John. It will be proof of who you say you are.”

  “Ddeek, please. You are frightening me. Do not talk so. Jerome has gone for the doctor.”

  She was crying openly now, her tears spilling onto his chest. But he was too tired to respond. He closed his eyes and slept fitfully. Each time he opened them, she was there, holding his hand, wetting his parched lips with her fingertips dipped in cool water. They smelled of jasmine. His little jasmine flower. A tiny child playing among his empty paint shells on the floor, “painting” with a broken quill from the light of an errant sunbeam.

  “The paper?” he tried to ask her. Had she written it down? But it came out of his mouth a jumble of words even he couldn’t understand.

  “It’s here, Ddeek. I have it right here. Sir John Oldcastle.”

  The last time Finn woke, Anna’s head was lying on his chest as though she were listening for his heartbeat. He could feel the imprint of the cross she wore around her neck engraving itself into his chest. The cross he’d given her. The cross he’d made for her grandmother Rebekka. The cross that was all she’d ever had from her mother, Rose. “It would please me if you’d wear it always,” he’d said when he gave it to her, “to remind you of your heritage.” Though God knew he’d told her little enough about that heritage. Though God knew, he’d meant to. One day.

  The room was darker. It must be late in the day. The light was filtered through the red of her hair, making the room all rosy like the afterglow of a sunset.

  He closed his eyes, but the light remained, grew even brighter at its center. He thought he saw his grandmother standing in the light, holding out her hand to him. And Rebekka, his young bride, beside her. And their daughter, Rose, was there too. They smiled at him, beckoning him. They were beautiful women, more beautiful even than in memory.

  The whole room filled with the scent of jasmine. He inhaled deeply, the heady fragrance making him dizzy with delight. The pain that had been so long his companion, so that he’d forgotten what it felt like to be without it, was gone. And in its place was a feeling of extreme well-being, so intense it almost gave him back his breath.

  Then he noticed that of the women standing in the light, one was missing.

  Kathryn was not there. Kathryn was not standing in the light.

  He heard again the words the prioress had spoken to him. That Kathryn had signed a corrody before she went to sleep. “To sleep,” she’d said. Not “died.” And later, “her lands are sufficient to see to her needs.” In his grief, he thought she’d meant for praying masses for her soul. “We’ve done all that we can do,” she’d said. The prioress had not lied to him, but she’d let him believe that Kathryn had died.

  It was suddenly as clear as the light around him, and his old heart laughed with the understanding of it. Kathryn was not there among the souls of the dead because she had tricked him. All those years they’d spent apart when they might have been together! But no, that was not true. There had been no other way. And in the purity of that light around him, anger could not take hold. Nor regret. It was enough that Kathryn lived.

  And Kathryn lived in England.

  He was not leaving Anna to make her way in the world alone.

  Find Kathryn. He tried to breathe the words into Anna’s ear. But the only sound in the room was her quiet sobbing, which, strangely enough, did not disturb his peace as it once would have. For in that tear in the fabric of time when the passing soul brushes against the fibers of the curtain separating us from paradise, Finn’s soul whispered to Kathryn’s.

  Then he was swallowed by the light, and could no longer hear Anna’s unquiet sobbing.

  EIGHT

  It is no pampered glutton we present

  Nor aged counselor to youthful sin

  But one whose virtue shone above the rest

  A valiant martyr and a virtuous peer

  —PROLOGUE TO SIR JOHN OLDCASTLE (1600)

  It was late in the afternoon of the next day when Lady Cobham found her favorite peregrine falcon with its neck wrung. It had strangled itself with the twisted strings of the little hooded bonnet covering its head. She would have cursed when she saw it had not the stable boy been present. What was worse, Sir John’s favorite mare had gone off its feed. And she’d been informed that very morning that the broody hens refused to lay. Lady Joan was not a superstitious woman, not given to star watching and casting lots for lucky numbers—she sought her prophets in Holy Writ—but she knew such happenings were not auspicious. Of course, with Sir John gone how could it be a good day, even if the stars were perfectly aligned? Which obviously they were not, because her portents had augured aright.

  It had not been a good day.

  Now to add to this catalogue of aggravations her chamberlain was telling her that an emissary from Canterbury was seeking an audience with his lordship. Her first inclination was to send him away, saying Lord Cobham was not at home and Lady Cobham was indisposed. But good sense warned against such an action. If the legate had come from Thomas Arundel, she should not turn him away. Sir John was already crosswise with the archbishop for ignoring an earlier summons demanding his attendance at Canterbury. In place of giving these worthies the benefit of his hearty personality and rotund person, Sir John had sent an equally substantive statement in writing designed not to anger the archbishop, while at the same time not compromising his beliefs.

  “Tell the friar I shall attend him in the solar,” she said, thinking that the afternoon sun would have heated up the air in there so that the monk would be less likely to linger.

  No. It had not been a good day. And not likely to be a good night either. She would be sleeping alone again tonight, nesting against her husband’s comforting girth only in her dreams. Dreams she could not get to until after she’d dealt with this interloper.

  Gabriel followed the red and silver liveried servant into the solar of Cooling Castle. He should have waited until the morning, when it was cooler, but better to get it behind him than to dread it. He disliked pretense. But the archbishop’s instructions were clear. “Don’t challenge Oldcastle outright. Give him enough rope to hang himself. You are only there to gather evidence of his heresy.” Gabriel felt the moisture beads pop out on his forehead at the very thought of his being the means whereby someone might be burned. Even a heretic.

  “I will bring you a basin of water and a cloth to refresh yourself, Brother. Would you like a cool drink?” the servant asked.

  “Yes, please.”

  The servant moved away on silent feet, leaving Gabriel to wipe the dust and sweat from his face.

  Gabriel had been told that Sir John had married well. He had earned a knighthood for his service in the French wars, an annual stipend of 40 pounds, and a wealthy royal wife as well. The widow Cobham had brought him
a seat in Parliament and Cobham lands. The tapestries in this room alone were worth a king’s ransom. Not to mention the books lying on the table. Some were richly bound in tooled, jewel-encrusted leather, others plain and unadorned. He opened one of the plainer ones.

  By all the saints! The fellow was nothing if not bold. Here, right in plain view, was a Wycliffe Bible. Brother Gabriel shut it quickly. Fool! Do you think some taint of heresy will float off its pages and infect your soul through your eyes? But one thing he did know. Spying out evidence of heresy here would be child’s play—for one who liked that sort of game.

  The servant returned with a ewer of water. “My lady will attend you presently,” he said, pouring water into a basin in which a few bits of dried lavender floated. He handed Gabriel a scrap of linen.

  The cool rag felt good to his face. The servant poured a cup of cider and left. Gabriel dabbed at his underarms with the scented water. He would not want to offend a lady—even a lady against whose husband he was gathering damning evidence.

  Both basin and ewer sat on a small table beneath a narrow window that looked out over a lonely marsh. A sea breeze wafted in and refreshed him. Cooling Castle, splendid in its isolation, stood sentinel on a peninsula that jutted out into the North Sea—one of those castles granted license to protect England’s shores from French marauders. It was an easy enough place from which a man could plot the overthrow of his church. The archbishop had said Oldcastle held clandestine meetings here, where artisans, peasants, even some nobility mixed together to read the Wycliffe Bible. A kind of adulteration of the holy mass.

  “Brother, I am afraid I must tell you that Sir John is away. He is in Herefordshire, seeing to his holdings there. But Cooling Castle will be honored to offer you hospitality against your return to Canterbury.” The voice was low for a woman’s voice, throaty and full of breath.

  Gabriel had not heard her enter the room. He looked up, his hands still holding the cloth with which he had recently bathed. He felt his fair complexion burning as though his thoughts hung in the air for her to read. He knew Lord Cobham was away. The abbess had told him, but he thought his initial foray into the enemy camp might be easier under such circumstances. He could sound out the wife. Being the weaker sex, she would be easier to read.

  “I see my servant has already given you a modicum of hospitality. May I offer you food before you begin your return journey?”

  “You are kind, Lady Cobham. But I am fine. The sisters at the abbey refectory fed me dinner. With so much light left in the day and vespers already done, I thought to call on Lord Cobham.”

  Her pretty heart-shaped face screwed itself into a frown. Fine lines fanned out from the corners of her mouth. A chestnut-colored strand of hair snaked out of its snood and framed her face. He noticed too the way her cleavage pushed above its tight bodice. He quickly averted his eyes. This temptation of the flesh was another of the demons he fought, and this demon always ambushed him when he was weak in his spiritual resolve—as now. He was here to catch Sir John out—not to ogle his pretty, plump wife. He laid the rag down on the table, withdrew his hands into the full sleeves of his habit.

  “I fear, Brother, you have wasted your trip. Lord Cobham may be away for weeks, surely your duties—”

  “Then I will serve his household in his absence. The archbishop has sent me to serve as confessor to a nearby abbey. Perhaps I can serve your ladyship in that capacity as well. If you have no resident priest, that is.”

  Her face hardened into a mask of disapproval, making her lips less full, less tempting, a little half-smile that curved at one corner of her mouth.

  “Brother—”

  “Gabriel. Brother Gabriel.”

  “Brother Gabriel, you may tell His Excellency that Cooling Castle and its inhabitants require no confessor. We confess our sins directly to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”

  Her boldness almost took his breath away. It seemed there were two Cobham heretics to be rousted out.

  “I am somewhat in sympathy with that feeling, myself,” he said. He would do penance later for the lie, a light penance for a lie told in the service of his Church. “I fully understand. I have often wondered what it would be like to preach to those who brought a … personal understanding to the Word.”

  Was it his imagination or did the lines of her face relax a little? But her amber-colored eyes remained wary. The late-afternoon sun was drifting in a haze in front of the glazed window, picking out dust motes floating between them. One or two settled on the wide window casement. The air was very close, as was she. She fiddled with the petals of a rose on the window casement, brushing away the dust, pinching away a withered petal, bruising its wine-red skin, releasing the heady smell into the overheated room. Gabriel was sweating beneath his cassock.

  “You said the archbishop sent you?”

  “Only as confessor to the abbey. I merely thought … of course if you have no need of a priest …”

  “We have no need of the services of a priest of Rome.” She said it firmly, and then to soften it, “But we would not be inhospitable to a neighbor. It grows late, and it is six miles back to Rochester. You are welcome to stay here tonight and return to the abbey tomorrow. Unless of course the sisters need you for the prime office.”

  “It is a kind offer, my lady, and truth to tell, I do not welcome the ride back at such a late hour. As to prime, the old priest to whom I am offering respite is an early riser.”

  The answering nod of ascent was just a split second too delayed. It did not cover her disappointment.

  “My needs are simple,” he said. “Just a cot in a very small chamber is sufficient.”

  “Cooling Castle will see that you are comfortable, Brother Gabriel,” she said, avoiding his gaze. She rang a tiny bell to summon the servant. Her full hips swayed gently as she turned to go. “We are known for our Christian hospitality.”

  “My lady. There is one more thing. I have heard that Sir John has a Bible that gives the words of our Lord in the English tongue. I wonder if I might trouble you to see it.”

  He made a tent with his hands. A nervous habit he was trying to break. He let his hands fall to his side. Her gaze glanced off the Bible on the table behind him, appeared to come to rest on the windowsill.

  “But you read the Word in Latin. Why—”

  “It has long been a dream of mine to see it as it might appear to humbler men. To divine there some truth for all.”

  A little of the suspicion left her face, softening it. She looked like a woman trying to make up her mind.

  “There is such a Bible on the table behind you,” she said. “I cannot deny access to any who ask with pure intent. Your intent is pure, is it not, Brother Gabriel?”

  The scent of the bruised rose petals mingled with the heat, squeezing his breath. “I assure you, my lady. My intent is very pure.”

  Sir John Oldcastle rode his horse hard from Rochester. He was determined to make it home tonight. His ample belly heaved a sigh of relief when he saw the white rock face of Cooling Castle ahead. He could smell the sweat of the foam-flecked horse. Could smell too the brine and the marsh grass and the evening mist rolling in from the sea. It smelled like home.

  He whispered in the horse’s ear as he leaned low in the saddle. “Just a little farther, Jack. There’ll be a bag of fresh oats for you, old boy.” He dug his heels in hard to the hunter’s side.

  The wind on his face felt good after the heat of the day. A fresh bag of oats for the horse. A cellar-cooled tankard of beer for the rider. And tonight he would sleep in his own bed with his loving wife beside him. Ah, it was going to be good to be home!

  As the horse clattered to a stop in the courtyard, Sir John flung the reins to the gatekeeper.

  “Welcome home, milord. We’ve missed you,” the old man called.

  “Glad to be home, Tim. Tell the ostler to give old Jack an extra bag tonight. And see that he’s properly cooled. He bore a heavy burden well and fast.” A heavy burden just to carry h
is rider from Herefordshire. Heavier still, with what he carried in his saddlebags from the abbey in Rochester.

  “Aye, milord. Will do. Her ladyship was not expecting you afore tomorrow. Shall I send for her?”

  “Nay, Tim. I’ll sneak up on her.” He winked at the servant.

  But first he secured the contents of his saddlebags in their hiding place below the entry stairs. A psalter and two Gospels of John, one Gospel of Saint Matthew, and one Acts of the Apostles. It was a good haul. And one he’d had to collect himself. He could not risk compromising the secrets of the abbess by sending even his most trustworthy aides.

  He stowed the books carefully, making sure no sign clung to their wrappings to link them with the abbey. Then he hesitated just a moment. God’s wounds, he was hungry!

  But he was hungrier for the sight of his Joan.

  He went first to the solar. That’s where she would probably be. Having a bit of supper by herself. More fun to share hers, anyway.

  He heard the mellow tone of her low laughter before he got to the door. How he had missed that laugh! The fact that she was not alone, not pining away, registered with him at about the same time he crossed the threshold of the solar.

  His lady was with a man—though they seemed engaged in an innocent enough activity. With their backs to the door, they were sharing a repast of what looked like a roasted capon and peas. The succulent smell hung in the air. Definitely a roasted capon. Two cups and a bottle of his cellar’s best stood on the table between them. He surveyed the situation in a hare’s leap, before they were even aware of his presence. They were that engrossed in conversation. It was with considerable relief Sir John noticed the cleric’s cassock, though truth to tell, a cleric’s garb was not something he usually relished seeing.

  “I’m away only a fortnight, and already my lady has taken a lover.” A joke for her, a barb for the friar, a slur on the reputation of his order.