The Mercy Seller: A Novel (v5)

by Brenda Rickman Vantrease

  The landlady put her hand to her forehead, its wide square palm covering her button eyes, pushing her mobcap absurdly askew.

  “I am sorry, Anna. I have my husband to think of. He’s not well. This house provides our only living, and if I allow you to stay, it could be forfeit.”

  She turned to leave. Anna was too stunned to try to stop her.

  “Your grandfather had paid the rent through the end of the year. I will refund your money. You can change your name, find a place in a new town. None of us is safe as long as you are here. You must understand.”

  But Anna understood nothing. Except that now she was alone. And she was soon to be homeless as well.

  “Please try to leave by tomorrow, Anna. You need to be gone when the soldiers come back, and I don’t want to know where you are going. I am sorry.”

  Anna didn’t turn around. She heard the door close behind her. She just stood there, frozen, among the strewn papers and rumpled linens. A goose feather, disturbed by the waft of breeze from the closing door, floated down and settled on Lela’s fanned red skirt.

  A whirlwind of anger and fastened rage, Anna started with her grandfather’s worktable and restored it to its original orderly status. The soldiers had not disturbed the upstairs rooms. Either they didn’t notice the recessed door leading to the stairway or they were only interested in this one room because that was where the Bible study meetings were held, and Anna almost had this room back to order. She had to do that first, before she could even think about leaving. She had righted the chair, cleaned up the spilled milk, thrown out the ruined cushions, all with tears streaming down her cheeks, muttering to herself angrily, a behavior she had thought she left behind with her childhood. She was straightening the contents of the chest when she heard a knock on the door.

  Mistress Kremensky come to say she had reconsidered? Or even to beg her to stay? Well, at least, to give her more time. Anna tried to straighten her face, wiped her eyes and her dripping nose, and going to the door, she lifted the heavy bar. Anna spoke above the sound of the creaking hinge to the crack in the wooden door.

  “I’m so glad you’ve come—”

  But it was not her repentant landlady who stood silhouetted against the late afternoon light in her doorway.

  “Jetta was right! We have found you at last,” the king of the Gypsies said. “I have come to see the holy book.”

  And he said it in a whisper, conveying to her with his smile and his wink that he knew it was not a secret to broadcast in the street.

  When the soldiers came again at the beginning of the following week, the little house in Staroměstké náměstí was swept clean. Not even a paint pot remained in testimony of its former inhabitants.

  “My tenant left in the middle of the night. I don’t know where she has gone.” Mistress Kremensky stood in the middle of the room mustering a look of indignation. Tiny dust motes floated in a sunbeam around her. “If you find her, she owes me rent for the month of August.”

  Satisfied, the soldiers left.

  Anna left nothing behind in the city of Prague except a woven wreath encircling the little stone cross in Týn Churchyard. Its flowers had already begun to fade by the time the little band of Romani pilgrims entered the dark forest on their way west.

  ELEVEN

  The man who is wise and earnestly intent on guarding his salvation watches always with such great solicitude to repress his vices that with the belt of perfect mortification he girds his loins.

  —FROM THE MONASTIC IDEAL (11TH CENTURY)

  But I’ve already been baptized, husband,” Lady Joan Cobham said to her husband. “Proper. With a priest.”

  It was a warm September day at Cooling Castle as Sir John led her by the hand across the courtyard. Past the gatehouse. Past the stables. Through the hedge lining the garden boundary and into the woods where acorns and last year’s dry oak leaves crunched underfoot, down, down, until the leaves gave way to a cushioned carpet of moss.

  “It’s not baptism I’m thinking on, wife. It’s another of the Holy Sacraments.”

  He drew her into the circle of his arms as they emerged into a small clearing where the sun shot an arrow of light into the dark green forest walls. “I want to show you to what other use we can put this holy pool.” His breath came in little huffs from the steep descent.

  Lady Cobham looked down from the outcropping of rock on which they stood. A pool of clear water sparkled sapphire bright beneath the shaft of light. Now it was her turn to gasp.

  She had watched throughout the summer, wondering, as he’d scooped out the earth, dammed up a spring, moved more earth, planted rocks, planted trees, until he’d transformed the only hollow between Gravesend and Cooling Castle into a hidden sylvan glen. “A secret baptismal pool,” he had said. Like the one in which he’d been baptized just six years ago in the Olchon Valley deep in the heart of the Welsh Black Mountains. Now here, spread out before her, was the proof of his labor.

  A trickle of water from the overhead rock tantalized. Huffing, John shifted a couple of rocks, angled a log, and the trickle became a cascade of water spilling and splashing from the outcrop into the pool below.

  “Oh, John!” It was all she could say.

  “Come on. Let’s cool off.”

  “Dare we? I mean, it was made for a holy place.”

  “So was Eden. Come on.” And taking her hand, he led her down through a curving path, stripping off his jerkin as he went.

  She could feel him watching her as she unlaced her own chemise. She, a widow who had buried two husbands, felt like a maid when he looked at her that way. She resisted the urge to cover her breasts with her arms.

  “You first,” John said.

  She waded into the pool, feeling the shock of the cool stream swirling around her ankles, glad for even the warmth of her unbound hair falling over her neck and shoulders.

  “Go on. You’ll get used to it. Stand under the spray,” he urged.

  She felt the water first on the top of her head and the curve of her back, then turned, face up, watching, as droplets played in a stray sunbeam, scattering pink and green and yellow before landing on her skin. I’m playing in a rainbow, she thought. She heard him splash into the pool, not tiptoeing as she did, then she felt his arms around her.

  A shadow crossed above her. Some movement among the trees. A rustle in the undergrowth above them. And then the stillness returned.

  “I brought soap,” he whispered into her ear. “The kind you like.” And he began to wash her, releasing the sweet lavender smell of it into the fragrance of moss and wet earth and sunbaked rock. His hands slid in a froth of bubbles against her skin.

  “My turn,” she said, laughing, and taking the soap from him, began to bathe his large shoulders, the whole broad expanse of his chest and belly.

  “That’s enough.” He laughed. “ ’Tis not fit that a man should smell overmuch of flowers.”

  He tossed the soap beneath the cascade. Little bubbles floated in the water, popping around her feet in tiny bursts of color and light. But he drew her closer, warming her with the warmth of his own body. She felt his lips in the hollow of her neck.

  “Oh, John,” was all she had breath enough to say.

  As Sir John crossed the courtyard early the next morning, he recognized the familiar regalia of the Roman Church on the horse carrying its black-cassocked rider. Since attaching himself to the nearby abbey as confessor to the sisters, the friar was always around on some pretext or other.

  Sir John stifled a sigh. He was no fool. Brother Gabriel was spying for the archbishop. Why else was he always underfoot uninvited? In the kitchen, chatting up the cook whenever Sir John went for his wife-rationed allotment of small beer—no strong sack in buckets now, just enough to keep his throat from parching—or in the solar laughing with Joan, pretending a holy interest in the Wycliffe text, pumping his wily wife for information.

  So this morning, Sir John was neither surprised nor pleased to hear himself hailed in his ow
n courtyard. He wondered on what pretext Brother Gabriel came today. Today, of all days! Two Lollard priests were visiting, and there was to be a meeting later this week of all the lay priests in Kent and Suffolk counties. Sir John had planned to pass out the new Wycliffe tracts the abbess had promised would be ready.

  “Brother Gabriel, to what do we owe the honor of this visit?” He tried to keep the edge from his voice.

  As the friar leaned down from his horse, he looked oddly dispossessed of his usual ease. His gaze was directed away, like a man catching another in a state of undress.

  Sir John stroked his little pointed beard, to make sure it was not coated with grease from his morning repast, then, satisfied, glanced down to make sure the lacings in his breeches were secure. No, everything seemed to be in order. Odd how the man’s discomfort was catching. He’d never noticed that

  unease in the friar before. Usually he was an affable, hail-fellow-well-met sort.

  Finally, the monk’s gaze met his. “I am on my way south to the ports to bring the Grace of our Lord to sinners there. I wished to say my fare-thee-wells to you and Lady Cobham.”

  Well. Here was good news. They were to be rid of the spying Dominican. Sir John should have guessed it from the way the pardoner was dressed in rich black robes and from the large velvet pouch carrying the “Grace” of which he spoke, the papal bulls and indulgences to be exchanged for coin. Time to refurbish Arunde;’s coffers? he wanted to ask.

  But what he said was, “What about the sisters at the abbey? Who will administer the sacrament while you are away?” Even though he knew the abbey had its own resident priest, knew the pardoner’s presence there was a mere pretext. Though Sir John wasn’t worried about the sisters. The abbess was a woman of intelligence and faith. She would not give away more than she should. And in truth, he worried less for all those who pushed the Lollard cause since he’d helped move the law through Parliament whereby all accused heretics were to become prisoners of the crown rather than the Church. This was important to Sir John because he had friends in high places at court. Very high places. Though there had been recent talk that Prince Hal had laid claim to piety.

  But he couldn’t quarrel with that. He’d got a hefty dose of religion himself. He and the soon-to-be king might be on opposite sides, but with Christ in the center—Christ, and the good times Prince Hal and Merry Jack had shared—how far apart could they be? Let Arundel and his spy do their worst. The old archbishop would be giving his own reckoning before his maker soon enough, if appearances could be believed. And wouldn’t Sir John like to be around for that accounting! Still, he was glad to see the backside of the priest. Things would be easier both at Cooling Castle and at the abbey near Rochester without the archbishop’s lackey poking his head out from every corner.

  “The old curate at the abbey can provide while I’m away. His infirmities still allow for a simple mass, though they say he sleeps in the confessional.”

  But not you, I’il wager, Sir John thought. Your ears are as perked as a hound’s on the scent of a fox.

  “Then the sisters will miss you. How long will you be away?”

  “I’ll be back before the roads turn bad with winter rains. I plan to spend some time with my own father confessor. He is very old and almost blind. I fear he might not make it another year.”

  “Is he in Canterbury?”

  “No, in the South Downs. Battle Abbey.”

  “I’ll call Lady Cobham, then,” he said, feeling suddenly generous and lighthearted as a schoolboy granted recess. “She will want to bid you good journey.”

  This sentiment was true. Joan was fond of the fellow in spite of both his vocation and his avocation.

  But Brother Gabriel uncharacteristically demurred. “No. Please.” His skin flushed to the roots of his hair. “I would not want to disturb her.”

  What was this sudden shyness? He’d never seen the priest reluctant to engage his lady before. Indeed, their discourse was often quite lively, with Joan poking gentle fun at his orthodoxy, toying with him, teasing him with information but never really giving anything away.

  “Please convey my fare-thee-well to her.”

  The pardoner’s horse tossed its head, jingling the gold bells on its scarlet harness, as if in agreement.

  “Tell your lady I shall call on her upon my return. I really must be away.”

  The fellow seemed as flustered as a schoolboy.

  Sir John watched as the friar trotted the elegantly outfitted horse back across the courtyard, past the gatehouse, and through the barbican. The sun polished the blond rim of his tonsured head. The skin inside it was as pink as a new spring berry. Could it be? Now it was Sir John’s turn to blush, for he also had heard the rustle in the bushes as his wife undressed to enter the sylvan waterfall. He had put it down to the bolting of a curious hare, not pursued it, not wanting to break the moment, not wanting to alarm his wife. Could it be that the serpent was voluntarily quitting Eden? he wondered.

  Not bloody likely, he thought.

  But at least they were to have a respite. He could meet with the Lollard priests in peace.

  Within the priory garden the abbess sweated beneath her veil and wimple. It was early afternoon, just past sext, and the sunlight pressed the fragrance of sage and rosemary into the air. The floating gauze of her face veil trapped her breath. Tiny beads of moisture gathered in the creases of her cheeks, but it never occurred to her to remove the veil—not even in the privacy of the cloistered garden. The semitransparent veil was like a skin covering her face, and she felt raw and exposed without it, though she sometimes, as now in private, lifted the right side of the veil so that she could see unobstructed by the thin black gauze.

  As she hunched over, gathering the berries of the shrub Vitex agnuscastus that grew in the right quadrant of the garden, she became aware of footsteps above the plopping of the water drops in the center fountain. They were heavier than the footfalls of the sisters and they were accompanied by a masculine voice.

  “Sister Agatha said I would find you here.” A resonant voice. Familiar and jolly. The abbess straightened up, lowering the veil fully before turning to greet her visitor.

  “Sir John. I expected you earlier. How is Lady Joan?”

  “My lady is well. She sends her warm regards. She would have come with me, but she is preparing for tonight’s prayer meeting. We are expecting upward of fivescore, and after prayers and Bible reading, she plans to feed them all.”

  “Will they overnight?”

  “Some of them. They’ll spread their bedrolls. Some in the hall. Some in the courtyard.”

  “Sounds like a grand encampment.”

  “That’s the plan. To send them back out well fed and well fired. Preachers of the Word.”

  She smiled, her spirit buoyed by his enthusiasm. The Lollard cause—her cause these twenty-seven years—was enhanced by such a man.

  She lowered herself onto one of the stone benches inside the colonnade that squared the garden, inviting him with a gesture to sit on the opposing bench across the cloistered walkway. The sisters often sat thus in the late afternoons after dinner and before vespers, the one time of the day when they could chatter together as women were wont to do. But the cloister walk was empty now at midday, the nuns all busily at work in the scriptorium. The only other occupant was a butterfly that hovered. It flapped its butter-colored wings and disappeared, disdaining the company of human intruders. The abbess quickly surveyed the garden, making sure they were alone, their conversation witnessed only by the carved saints circling the capitals of the columns.

  “I would have been here earlier, but your monk delayed me,” Sir John said as he arranged his bulk on the seat. “It seems you are to be without his company for a while.”

  She laughed. “And you are to be likewise deprived of his fellowship. Though I think we both will survive. But I must say that Brother Gabriel is popular in our little cloister of women.”

  “A bit of a fox in a henhouse, aye?”
>
  This time, her laughter was full throated, echoing in the garden. “My nuns are all devoted. It does no harm to them to look upon a comely face. But Brother Gabriel is very careful never to be alone with any of them. He hears confessions only from the safety of the enclosed confessional. I suspect celibacy is his particular cross. For his journey he took the last of the monk’s pepper from the infirmary.”

  She held out a gloved hand to show a handful of round little berries that she had taken from the chaste tree. “That’s why you found me in the herb garden. Replenishing our supply.”

  “If I’m not making too bold to ask, Abbess, why does a company of women need monk’s pepper?”

  Sir John’s question was accompanied by a flash of strong white teeth above his pointy little beard. If he hoped by his blunt sexual innuendo to have a bit of sport at her expense—well, two could play that game.

  “The chaste berries help with female problems too. At certain times of the lunar cycle, some in our community of women become irascible and cantankerous. Surely a man of the world such as you must have noticed that phenomenon.”

  Her guest’s rotund belly heaved with a chuckle, causing the wooden bench on which they sat to shudder. She had a momentary concern for its stability. But it was of good English oak. Surely it would hold one frail old woman and one sturdy knight.

  Sir John leaned forward, picked a sprig of peppermint. “Good for the stomach,” he said as he began to chew. “You’d best give some of your chaste berries to Sister Agatha, then,” he said. “She was cross as an old broody hen. Pointed a turnip at me like it was a dagger.”

  The abbess sighed. “Ah, Sister Agatha, she’s—I’m afraid her ill temper is not of the kind that waxes and wanes with the moon. Sister Agatha has been sowing wild tares for weeks. She doesn’t want us to copy the Wycliffe papers or the English Gospels.” She weighed the chaste berries in her hand, their juice staining the glove that covered the scars on her arms. “I don’t know what to do with her. She’s one of my best scribes, but I’ve banished her to the vegetable garden. I thought working with God’s growing things might improve her temper.”