The Mercy Seller: A Novel (v5)

by Brenda Rickman Vantrease

  It was just as well. Anna had planned to leave the band somewhere in France, anyway, to find her way to England. But it would have been hard to leave the known for the greater uncertain wilderness that lay before her. The burgher from Flanders had told her there was a river, a body of water that separated England from France.

  “Bigger than the Rhine?” Anna had asked, remembering with what difficulty they had forded that expanse. Had it not been for Bera’s ingenuity they would have lost a horse and wagon.

  “Oh, much bigger. More like a small sea. England is an island. You will have to take a boat.”

  So when Bera proudly announced that once they got to Rheims he was leading the Roma to Spain to visit the holy shrine at Santiago de Compostela, where they could see the sarcophagus containing the body of Saint James, Anna knew that Lela would get her wish sooner rather than later.

  The little band would turn south, Bera said, pointing toward a crude map marked with X’s and circles that one of the pilgrims had drawn for him, toward Paris and Chartres.

  And Anna?

  Anna would head west toward England across a small sea. Her heart hammered in her chest, just thinking about trying to make such a journey alone. But it was what her grandfather had wanted. There she would find Lord Cobham. There she would find protection.

  What was more, she finally had a plan. And thank heaven and all the saints, it did not include the sewing of pilgrim badges. She had given up on the intricate stitches of the cross, settling for an embroidered scallop shell for the pilgrim followers of Saint James. But she pricked her finger so that it bled all over the blue silk pillow. Apparently, the handling of a needle required a very different skill from the handling of a quill. Nor did Anna’s new plan include Lela’s elaborate schemes and spells for finding her a husband. Walking stark naked by the light of a full moon around a field, casting behind her at every step a handful of salt, would bring her someone other than the lover of her dreams, Anna was sure.

  Her new plan—why had she not thought of it first?—involved doing the one thing she could do well: the making of books. There were paper and quills in her traveling chest. Even a small bottle of ink, and when she ran out she knew how to make more. So while Lela healed, and Bera played his dulcimer and schemed, and Jetta washed and cooked and tended the cook fires, and Little Bek sang in his high, plaintive voice, Anna copied the Pilgrim’s Guide by candlelight and torchlight until her fingers were stiff with cold and fatigue.

  But at night as she worried about her future and listened to the drumming of the rain upon the barrel-vaulted roof of the Romani wagon, more than once she dreamed about the town house in Staroměstké náměstí and wondered if she would ever again find a place that felt like home.

  Gabriel was rummaging in his valise for his razor and sharpening stone when one of the novices knocked on his cell door. Gabriel recognized Arundel’s seal on the rolled-up parchment the boy handed him. He dismissed the messenger and opened it apprehensively. But perhaps this is good news after all, he thought, as he read Arundel’s instructions. A long trip at the onset of winter would ordinarily have been most unwelcome. But surely the hand of God was here—divine intervention, providing him time for his spiritual sickness to heal before returning to Cooling Castle.

  The archbishop’s instructions were clear. Brother Gabriel was to leave Hastings immediately for France to investigate the possibility of French suppliers of the banned texts to Sir John Oldcastle, the good Lord Cobham. A great rebellion had erupted in Bohemia. Pope Gregory had excommunicated Jan Hus and threatened to put the whole city of Prague under interdiction. A cleric by the name of Jerome, who traveled between Prague University and Oxford University, had given evidence, under torture, that many of the texts brought to Prague were supplied by a member of the British Parliament. If the Church could find proof that he had purchased quantities of the transcribed heretical texts from the Paris Guild, or even from booksellers in Rheims or Cologne, then that would be proof enough to send a man of Oldcastle’s power and influence to the stake.

  Rome would be grateful for such an effort. Arundel had hinted that there might even be a cardinal’s hat for someone who performed well—though Gabriel was sure he meant for himself. The archbishop had warned that it would not be easy. The wars with the French, not to mention the existence of the rival papal throne in Avignon, would not make the French disposed to aid the English in any such investigation. Arundel had said he would go himself, but he was afflicted with bad humors. He was sure that Brother Gabriel could ferret out the necessary information on his own and bring favor upon both himself and his archbishop.

  Since he would need to travel in the guise of a rich merchant, he should not wear his friar’s garb—he was being granted special dispensation to set it aside for this mission. He also had permission to cease the shaving of his tonsure until the mission was accomplished. The antipope’s spies were everywhere, and if he should be arrested, the Holy See would have to pay his ransom. He was further authorized to use whatever monies he had collected from the sale of his most recent indulgences to pay his expenses, bearing in mind the needs of his Church in the shepherding of such funds.

  Gabriel ran his hand over his no longer bald pate. It appeared he wasn’t going to need his razor after all. The monthlong stubble would stand him in good stead.

  On a fogbound autumn day, Brother Gabriel headed up the coast to Dover, where he embarked for Calais. Instead of his priestly garb, he wore a merchant’s scarlet cloak and square cap to hide the shadow of his tonsure. On the day that he had donned his habit as a novice, Brother Francis had told him, “This holy garment will keep the devil and his temptation off your back.” The cloth had been rough and so coarsely woven that Brother Gabriel thought any devil who sought to sit upon his shoulders would find it a mighty uncomfortable ride. But he had grown accustomed to it, and now the finely woven red merchant’s cloak left him feeling almost naked.

  Was it his imagination or did the other passengers on the boat that ferried him across the Channel treat him differently when he was dressed like this? One woman actually flirted with him! He felt himself flush remembering Brother Francis’s advice, but he had resolved he would not take that path. He would stay true to his vows or he would not stay a friar. So he turned away in consternation and pretended to be gazing out on the gray vista of a veiled sea. She moved on. The Channel was smooth.

  In Calais he hired a carriage to take him over the rutted, muddy roads to Rheims. He was deep within the French countryside, listening to the drumming of the rain on the roof, the pounding of hoofbeats, and the occasional sound of the coachman’s horn, when he remembered. He had left his hair shirt behind in Battle Abbey. His back and shoulders would prove a comfortable perch for whatever devil might want to hitch a ride.

  SEVENTEEN

  In a place named Lorca, east of Puenta la Reina, flows a river called the Salty Brook; …

  Beware of drinking … for this river causes death … On its banks two Navarrais

  Sharpen their knives … to skin the mounts of the pilgrims who drink this water and die.

  —FROM LIBRI SANCTI JACOBI, BOOK V

  (l2TH CENTURY)

  Gabriel had been in Rheims a week and had learned enough to know the burghers of that city were too distracted by violent political struggles between the powerful dukes of Burgundy and Orleans to worry about the less immediate danger of hellfire. In the guildhalls, where his scarlet costume gained him admittance, there was talk of the king’s levies but none of heresy.

  He sat, chatting, with the resplendent cloth merchants on benches lining the walls of the hall. The mercers welcomed Gabriel so completely that he had to remind himself to keep his mouth shut, to be on his guard. To the question of his origin he mumbled, “Je suis de la Flandre. Un negociant en tissu.” From Flanders. A cloth merchant. They merely nodded, handed him a cup of dark red wine, and went on complaining about the high taxes the mad king imposed for arms to fend off the English raids.

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bsp; “Sacré’s chiens Anglaises.” Gabriel’s understanding of the French language was good enough, close enough to the Norman French still spoken among the older nobility in England. Of his accent he was less confident, so he spoke carefully lest he be discovered as one of the “damned English dogs” against whom the merchants railed for ruining their economy. His merchant’s disguise earned him more candor than his priest’s cassock would have done. When he asked about the Church, one of the guildsmen rolled his eyes and complained about the corruption, the vice, even the Council of Pisa that was supposed to rid them of the extra pope and instead had imposed a second Italian. Since the first Italian refused to give up his See and the Avignon pope refused to abdicate his, now the schism had calved a third pope.

  When Gabriel made a casual inquiry regarding the proliferation of Wycliffe or Hussite heresies, a tapestry weaver from Paris shrugged and told him if he was interested in religion he should go to Avignon. But he’d be more likely to find a fine-feathered nest of splendid plumed birds than black-robed rooks and poor priests.

  “Are you overtaxed to provide luxuries for the papal courts? Do not the people complain?” Gabriel had asked in his careful French, thinking to flush out dissenters.

  “They complain more about the dauphin’s upkeep than the pope’s. And the king’s arms against the English. At least the Church spends money to keep its cardinals and bishops in finery.” The tapestry weaver winked. “Better French fur on His Holiness’s cope than Italian leather on his slippers. As for the poorer lot, I guess they feel closer to heaven with having the pope at their own back gate.”

  But he’s not the pope—he’s a pretender. Gabriel bit back the retort just in time. He lifted his glass in a false toast to his companion’s sentiment, then sipped, enjoying the fine French wine in his mouth. This comes too easily, he thought, as he drained his glass. For the sake of his soul he needed to make quick work of this mission. He was becoming altogether too used to the taste of French wine on his tongue and the feel of fine silk next to his skin. Even the blisters on his back were healing.

  After leaving the guildhall, Gabriel inquired about a coach for Paris.

  “Demain à une heure de l’aprês-midi.” The coachman wiped down the foam-flecked horses as he repeated, “Demain.”

  Tomorrow it would have to be, then. Unless he hired a private coach. But that would be expensive. He already felt as though too much was being spent on this mission for so little return. Though he had high hopes that when he got to Paris, where the largest guild of bookmakers and scribes resided, he would find some evidence. Lord Cobham had to get his copies somewhere.

  But with no coach leaving until tomorrow, he had the remains of the day to kill. The afternoon was well on, a bright, sunny afternoon with the golden autumn light pouring into the square outside Notre Dame Cathedral of Rheims. The cathedral itself looked cold and forlorn, stiff in its peaked collar of stone lace. The first time he’d seen it, he’d been moved by its beauty, but today he found the sunlit square, alive with people and color and noise, more welcoming. A street sweeper, wearing raised wooden clogs on his feet to protect himself from the offal he sluiced into the gutter, bumped against Gabriel, almost treading on his fine leather shoes. Even that did not dampen his spirits. The autumn sun warmed his skin. The mercers’ wine warmed his belly. And he was becoming acutely aware of the interested glances darted in his direction from the ladies in their fine-furred mantles who picked their way daintily among the cleaner stones of the pavement.

  Voices collided around him: French, German, a smattering of English now and again, all hawking their wares in the marketplace. With time to kill and no place to go, Gabriel considered. There was the cavelike darkness of the cathedral, where he would kneel before a candle-banked altar and offer his prayers. But he would learn more by visiting some of the stalls operating in the square. And wasn’t that why he was here?

  He was weighing these choices when he saw her.

  It was the hair he noticed first. A gleaming nimbus of copper, a sun-sparked mass surrounding a face that was a flawless oval set with eyes as clear as Murano glass. His eyes drifted downward from her hair to her full-bosomed figure. Not a girl’s figure. A woman’s figure, but well shaped, with a waist a man could enjoy measuring with his hands. No, he would not let his mind stray to that forbidden place.

  He was about to turn back toward the cathedral when he noticed that the woman looked to be selling something. She turned the pages of a codex in her hand. She was a bookseller. He should investigate. That’s why he’d come, wasn’t it? To investigate? To listen in the marketplace?

  She tossed her head. Her bright fringe of curls rebelled against a faded velvet caplet that adorned rather than confined them. She leaned toward the customer, pointing to something in the book, then smiling as the customer exchanged his ducats for the small, crudely bound codex. As she leaned forward, her breasts strained against the lawn of her bodice, the cleavage deepening. The book, Gabriel, you are interested in the book, not the woman.

  Her attention was fastened on her customer. She scarcely seemed to notice as Gabriel approached. A child with spindly limbs and a blond head too big for his thin body—too big also for his elfin face and reedy wrists that flailed about, beating empty air—sat on a bed of rags immediately behind her, his eyes trained on the woman. The boy’s eyes were quiet pools, the only stillness in his frenetic body. The boom of the cathedral bells startled him. He blinked large gray eyes and began to whimper. The sound of it was disconcerting. It took Gabriel a minute to realize why—the child’s whimpers marked the precise tone of the cathedral bell, perfectly pitched, though two octaves higher than the bell tones. It was as though the bells with their doleful toll had suddenly been made flesh in the thin, pitiful voice of the boy. It made Gabriel’s skin creep.

  The woman, without breaking her conversation with her customer—a pilgrim, judging from his cloak and staff, and German, judging from his heavily accented French—reached behind her with one hand and gently stroked the child’s blond hair until the bell ceased its tolling. The gesture, for some reason that he couldn’t fathom, precipitated a pricking behind Gabriel’s eyelids. It also quieted the child.

  “The book’s title is Libri Sancti Jacobi. If you are on the Pilgrim’s Way, it is a perfect guide,” the bookseller said. Her voice was pleasant, well modulated, the voice of an educated woman. “It is in Latin, but I’ve provided a translation beside it in English and an appendix summary in French, though my French is probably crude. I’m not fluent in that.” She apologized. “I’m sorry I have no German text. Though I know a little, I would not attempt a translation.”

  “I can read the English as well as the French,” her customer said, this time in English. “But I confess that though I recite the Latin prayers, the words have little meaning for me.”

  Gabriel’s ears perked. Familiar with the English? How familiar? From whence came that familiarity? An English Bible perhaps? Such a knowledge of languages could put both bookseller and customer under suspicion. But it was not a Bible she was selling, just a pilgrim guide, he reminded himself.

  The child had ceased his whimpering. The woman removed her hand from his head and used it to turn the pages of the book. “Pay special attention to Book Five,” she said. “It is a warning to be well heeded. If you are headed south, you must cross a stream that can be deadly if you drink from it.”

  She paused and looked out over the crowded plaza as the customer examined the page she’d indicated. Her face lost some of its animation, became more sober in aspect. “I wish I could post a sign at the river’s edge,” she said, “in every language of the world, a sign to warn the travelers of the perils there.” Her bosom heaved as she sighed. Gabriel could almost feel the breath of that sigh against his skin. “But I suspect the evil men who bide there would only tear it down.”

  The weariness in these last words bespoke experience with evil. Gabriel wondered what her story was. The pilgrim thanked her for the warning an
d slipped his purchase into his scrip. She slid the coins into the reticule hanging from her belt but hidden in the folds of her skirt. The German completed his purchase and wandered off, inspecting the pages of his find. Gabriel moved closer, appeared to inspect her wares.

  “Bonjour, monsieur.”

  He looked up at her across the table that separated them.

  His throat constricted. Eyes of clearest Murano blue looked even bluer against pale skin and bright hair. She reminded him of a picture of the Magdalene he’d seen in Rome. But more innocent. More wise. If only for the suffering honesty of her gaze. If he were a painter, he would paint her thus, surrounded by her books. But he was not. He was a cleric posing as a merchant, he reminded himself.

  “Hello,” he said in English, fearful that her knowledge of both French and German would far exceed his and find him out as an imposter. “I’m glad you speak in English. I do much commerce with the English and am grateful for a chance to practice it.”

  She looked suddenly wary. “Are you an alderman, sir? If you’ve come to inspect my license, I have it right here.” She bent to rummage in the basket at her feet. He could see the shapely curve of her hips. He averted his gaze to a gargoyle on an ell of the cathedral overhang behind her. “My husband, Martin, was a stationer in Prague. As his widow I have inherited his guild right and gained permission to sell within this city.” She unfurled a rolled parchment, handed it to him.

  Gabriel glanced at the official-looking seal beneath the words femme sole and the name Anna Bookman of Prague.

  Prague. The seat of heresy. The ultimate destination for Lord Cobham’s train of heresy.