The Mercy Seller: A Novel (v5)

by Brenda Rickman Vantrease

  “The prince bade me warn you that his duty lies with England and with his Church. Such a debt of loyalty as he might owe you is herewith discharged by this warning.”

  Sir John’s answer came more quickly, rising in a flush of anger. He could not keep the edge from his voice. “Convey to the young Prince Harry my gratitude for his concern and assure him his fears are unfounded. But tell him too that Sir John also knows where his allegiance lies, and he shall be faithful to it. At whatever cost.”

  William Fisher dropped his head. With one finger he traced the interlocking moisture rings etched into the wood of the table by countless tankards, in countless drinking sessions in years past. When he looked up, the mask had slipped and Sir John saw Prince Hal’s face staring at him.

  The prince pushed his untouched drink to the center of the table and stood up, leaning over Sir John. He’d grown taller in the last years. Sir John felt the weight of those years pressing against his heart. Hal touched his shoulder. His touch was light, tender as a woman’s.

  “Jack, a fat man burns hotter than most.”

  But the jest was voiced low, if jest it was, in a hoarse whisper, delivered without mirth, but delivered also without malice.

  Without even a nod to the hostess, who was wiping at the counter as she feigned disinterest, William Fisher drew his hood back over his head and started for the door.

  The sun no longer struck a beam through the dirty window. The tavern room was in deep shadow.

  “Master Fisher, I may have some future need of parchment after all. Perhaps we can meet again,” Sir John called to the slice of sunlight cutting into the gloom through the open door. But there was no answer except the snoring of the drunk slumped in the corner.

  Sir John took a sixpence from his purse and put it on the table. “You’re right, Nell. It’s not like the old days.”

  “Pistol’ll be sorry he missed ye,” he heard Nell call as he shut the door behind him. But he did not look back.

  Will Jaggers had only been in London two nights before he decided being a poor priest was not a lucrative business. It had been good enough in the by-ways and open road, where the peasantry called him “father” and gave him free bread and ale, but it might prove more dangerous in the city than even his former trade of pickpocket. For that a man would only be whipped or put in the stocks. But since coming to London, he’d heard tales of poor priests who were accused of heresy and shut up in the White Tower, never to be heard of again. So when he found a warm pair of breeches and a wool tunic airing on a bush behind a house in Merchant’s Row, he partook of this unexpected largesse.

  Since he was reluctant to part with the good warm wool of the cassock— the nights were getting cold and if he were sleeping in the open in a hayrick, a priest’s cassock could keep him warm—he wadded it up and stuffed it into the scrip in which he still carried the book he’d received at Sir John’s gathering. But it wouldn’t fit. No two ways about it. The wool cloth could keep him warm on those winter nights. He couldn’t even read the book. He remembered passing a bookshop in Paternoster Row. ’Twas Holy Writ. It should at least be worth the price of a pot of ale.

  As eventide approached and Sir John had not appeared, Lady Cobham ordered extra rush lights lit in the courtyard to welcome him. The clopping of hoofbeats sent her to her chamber window to peer out in anticipation. She could see a horse fractured into diamond bits of wavy glass, and even in the dim torchlight there was no mistaking the horse’s rider.

  The droop of his shoulders and the scowl on his face told her his day had not gone well. The abrupt way he dismounted and pitched the reins to his groom warned of ill tidings, tidings he would probably not share with his wife. That was her husband’s one failing. This desire to protect her from bad news, as though not to tell her would in some way protect her from the inevitable consequences. Foolish thinking on the part of an otherwise brilliant man. Not telling her merely robbed her of the means to protect not only herself, but maybe him as well. But she knew it would do no good to confront him. She would have to worm the cause of his obvious distress from him in more subtle ways.

  She didn’t think it was the estate accounts. She no longer bothered with them herself, leaving that to the stewards and to John, but she knew enough to be aware when things were going poorly. Cooling Castle and its environs wore an air of prosperity. The harvest had been good. The pantries, larders, and breweries were full to bursting with winter stores, and the crofters and serfs seemed happy enough. Neither had there been any report of disaster or difficulty from John’s holdings in Hereford—he’d been in a fine mood when he’d set off that morning to meet a parchment maker in London. That left only one thing.

  The Lollard enterprise was not going well.

  Sometimes she wished she’d never involved her husband in Cooling Castle’s troubles with the archbishop. Her lands had been placed under interdiction for harboring Lollard priests before she and John were married, a censure that had not bothered her overmuch, though she’d mouthed appropriate—if insincere—words of penance at the time, buying time and space to practice her faith in secret as she wished. She held no belief in the pope’s power to deny or grant the right to the Holy Eucharist. That was a right granted by God. Neither pope, nor priest, nor bishop could deprive her of that grace which her Savior had bestowed upon her freely. The English Bible told her that.

  “It doesn’t matter, husband. Just ignore it,” she had said when she first explained the interdiction to him.

  He’d looked at her with alarm, the expression on his face destroying the afterglow of their lovemaking, nestled as they were like two spoons in the small bed made for one. They had been on the second day of their honeymoon in the little cottage in Wales. He’d taken her there to the Olchon Valley to show her the place where he’d won preferment with the prince for fighting the Welsh border lords. To show her the place too where he’d been converted from the Roman way of bought indulgences and forced pilgrimages, to show her the place where he’d been baptized in the pool beneath the waterfall that nestled in a hidden wooded glen much like the one he’d re-created on the grounds of Cooling Castle.

  “It matters to the simple folk who will look to me, their lord, for protection,” he had said indignantly. “Each time they are denied the Eucharist because of their attachment to Cobham lands they think they are going to hell.”

  “Then provide them a Lollard priest to give communion. That’s what I have always done. That satisfies them. Some of them, more every day, see it as we do anyway. When enough of them see it thus, it will cease to matter at all.”

  His eyes had flashed with a determination that frightened her. “And what of the others? It is an abomination for them to live in fear that some dissolute Roman priest can deny their rights to heaven because he does not prefer the language in which their masters pray. Or worse, because they do not have the price of a prayer.”

  He had waved his arms about angrily, nearly smashing a pitcher on the table beside their bed. It was filled with daffodils and pussy willows. They had been married in the spring, and every spring when she saw the swelling of the first soft gray-green buds she was taken back to the bliss of that brief honeymoon in the verdant Welsh valley. Bliss that was soon to be broken with worry, for John had returned with her to Cooling Castle and begun his campaign for the Lollard cause as diligently as he had once conducted his military campaigns for Prince Harry. The prince had rewarded him for his military service by allowing him to marry into a noble house. He would not likely reward him for this campaign.

  From below her chamber now she heard his grumbled response to the gatekeeper’s greeting, and, smoothing her linen cap and pinching her cheeks, she rushed down to greet him. She met him at the door and planted a kiss on his lips.

  “Good e’en, husband. I’m glad you’re home,” she said, taking him by the hand, leading him into the solar. “The days are growing shorter, and when the sun goes down a man should be by his own hearth.”

  “Aye,
and right welcome it is,” he said, slumping onto the settle closest to the hearth. But there was no teasing, no flirtation, in the tone with which he greeted her.

  She helped him off with his surcoat, tugged at his boots to remove them, then handed him a cup of honeyed mead she’d kept warming on the hearth for his return. These were all things his chamberlain could be doing, but he preferred his wife to do them for him. She didn’t mind. It was little enough to act the role of servant if it made him happy. She stood behind him, massaging the road from his shoulders.

  “Did the parchment maker give you a good price?”

  “Nay. The cost, I fear, is exorbitant.” This answer came after some hesitation.

  “Then we will just go elsewhere. Surely he’s not the only parchment supplier,” she said, running her thumb up his backbone into his neck.

  He rolled his head, accepting the pressure of her thumb against tendon and bone. “But he’s the one I was counting on,” he said flatly.

  There was something in his tone that told her they were talking about more than the simple cost of parchment. Beneath her kneading fingers, the muscles of his shoulders remained knotted and tense. She bit back more probing questions. Now was not the time.

  “Did you stop for supper?” she asked.

  “I had a bite at the pub where I met Master Fisher. It’ll suffice.”

  When did a bite ever suffice her bear of a man? And what had this Master Fisher done to put her husband in such an ill humor? She removed his cap and ran her fingers through his thinning hair, then bent and kissed the top of his head.

  “Don’t worry, John. Whatever you decide, it will be right. About the parchment maker, I mean. Unless there’s something else you want to tell me. Something else that weighs heavy on you—besides the price of parchment.”

  He pulled her around and into his lap. But still no teasing, no flirting. He touched her face, running his forefinger over her nose and her chin.

  “Nay, my love. There’s nothing else. It’s just the cost, that’s all.” He lifted his hand to the back of his neck, his big hand covering hers. “I may have to reconsider the cost.”

  “Whatever it is, we will pay the cost together,” she said, knowing that they were not speaking about the cost of parchment.

  “That’s my greatest fear,” he said. And he kissed her, a long, lingering kiss filled with more tenderness than passion. Then he pushed her gently from his lap.

  “Come. Let’s to bed. After such a day as this, I’ve a need to sleep under a feather counterpane with my wife’s warm body to chase away the chill. Riding home, I felt the nip of winter at my heels. I fear the summer has been put to rout.”

  TWENTY

  Thou shah not suffer a witch to live.

  —EXODUS 22:18

  Gabriel inhaled deeply, filling his lungs with the cold morning air. Bracing. The open sewers running at the edge of the cobblestones had been washed clean by last night’s rain. A light breeze fluttered the leaves piled by the dawn sweepers at the corner of the square, scattering them like silver pennies at his feet. A glorious day.

  He could not account logically for this feeling of exhilaration. He had certainly not slept well. After a night of restless tossing, thinking about the bookseller and her child sleeping beneath the same roof, he’d risen from an uncomfortable bed—a bed that had heretofore been quite satisfactory—and taken himself out into the early morning sunshine, only to find he had never felt so alive in his life. Or so awake. If he could freeze time here he would. Now. No. Not here in the sunlit square. But last night in the soft candlelight of that intimate space where for the first time in his adult life he felt his soul enlivened by the presence of a woman.

  He should be on his way to Paris to finish the archbishop’s business— should have already been to Paris. Completed his inquiry and returned to England to report to Arundel what damaging evidence he’d found against Lord Cobham. So far he’d found none. But even if Gabriel had to go back empty-handed, he’d decided he would not present evidence gained from Anna Bookman. He would not implicate her in the conspiracy to commit heresy. He would take the translation she made for him, warn her against making it for others, and then burn it. Last night he’d frightened her with his talk of heresy. He’d seen it in her eyes. He just hoped he’d frightened her enough so that she would not go about spouting such Lollard nonsense.

  He surveyed the sun-polished plaza, shading his eyes with his hand on his forehead, trying to remember. Yes. There it was. Just down the narrow winding street leading to Rue de Vesle. An exquisitely carved woodworker’s sign creaked on its hinge next to the barber’s blood-striped pole, and the door was open. If he hurried, he could be back at the little town house before Anna left. It was early yet. Her stall was empty still. The square was almost empty too, except for a few grocers heaping great piles of produce in their stands and some stragglers going to mass at Notre Dame. The sight of them pricked at his conscience—on waking, his first thought had not been of saying the Divine Office but of this errand. It seemed he’d discarded his priest’s identity with his priestly garb. But he promised himself that he would confess the neglect and do his penance later.

  As he entered the woodworker’s shop, Gabriel ducked under the giant squared log that served as lintel, then hesitated as his eyes adjusted to the dim light. The shop smelled of fresh pine resin and the floor beneath his leather slippers was already thick with the morning’s woodshavings. The wood-carver, an older man wearing a thick leather apron, looked up from the apprentice he was instructing in the use of the lathe and greeted his customer with a grunt.

  “I need a special kind of wheelbarrow. A wagon small enough for a child of about six to ride in.” Gabriel said this in his deliberate French, gesturing with his hands just what size and shape the wagon should take.

  “Oui, oui.” The woodcarver fumbled in the pocket of his apron for a bit of charcoal and a scrap of paper and sketched a miniature version of a two-wheeled dray cart.

  “Quatre roues petit es,” Gabriel countered, pointing to the wheels and indicating with space between his hands that the cart should be lower to the ground and the four wheels, instead of two, smaller.

  He pointed to the handle and, unable to remember the word for rudder, indicated that the handle should be made so that it could be pulled by Anna or folded back over the cart and attached to the front wheels so that Little Bek could—Gabriel was sure he could learn—steer himself along with one hand while pushing with the other. The boy’s limbs were weak from misuse, but with use the muscles in his back and arms would thicken. He certainly had strength enough and energy the way he flailed about with his arms, beating at whatever they encountered. But he had some control too. Gabriel had noticed that he did not beat at Anna’s chest when he sat in her lap. He was as still as a child half his size would be when coddled by his mother. An intelligence was locked inside the boy’s head. He was sure of it. An intelligence that might be freed with care and diligence.

  The woodworker scratched his head in consternation.

  “S’il vous plait,” Gabriel said, snatching the paper from the old man and proceeding to sketch out the design himself.

  The woodworker left off scratching his head and squinted his eyes. “Oui. Je vois,” he said. “Aprês-demain.”

  Day after tomorrow.

  “Aprês-demain,” Gabriel repeated. “Merci.”

  It wasn’t until after he’d left the woodworker’s shop that Gabriel remembered. He hadn’t even asked the cost. But blast the cost. After all, the wagon was an act of charity for an afflicted child. God had placed that child in his path.

  And what of Anna Bookman, Friar Gabriel? Did God place her in your path as well? To save her from heresy? Or maybe to test your resolve? But Gabriel had determined, in spite of his talk with Father Francis, that he would not be like too many of his brothers. He would not succumb to the devil’s fleshpot temptations. He had taken a sacred vow. He meant to keep it. He had resisted others. There had been the
woman on the boat from England who flirted with him, and the women of Rheims who sidled glances toward his scarlet merchant’s robes. Anna Bookman was a beautiful woman. But Rheims was full of beautiful women. No. If God had placed Anna Bookman in his path, he was sure it was to save her from the heretical path she’d chosen. He might not be able to change her theology, but he could at least protect her from a heretic’s fire. For the sake of her child if no other.

  Anna was just thinking about packing up her merchandise and going home to her new lodgings when she heard the commotion, shouts and yelps coming from the general direction of the river. She’d had only one customer since her arrival at midmorning. The market was almost deserted. The grocers who always came early and left early had long ago departed. The cathedral shadow was creeping onto the second mark past the apex on the sundial. But in spite of the slow business Anna had lingered, hoping that VanCleve would come by her stall. She was going to tell him that Little Bek was not her son, that she only cared for him for one of the pilgrims who would be leaving soon. She’d lain awake long after he’d gone, thinking how to tell him. It was simple and it was the truth.

  The shouts came from far away, in the direction of Mars Gate, the old Roman ruin where on pretty afternoons children played tag. Anna squinted into the distance. Only a few dead leaves played tag there now, chased by the same light wind that sent a shiver up the sleeves of her thin cloak. In the heat of August her heavy wool cloak had not seemed worthy of its weight, and so she had left it behind in Prague with the rest of her possessions. But she would not think of that now. She thought instead of the little room in Rue de Saint Luc—her room now—with its welcoming brazier. If she left right away, there would still be bright daylight pouring through the window, enough light to translate more of VanCleve’s English Gospel—if he still wanted it. If he did not, well, there would be another buyer.