The Mercy Seller: A Novel (v5)

by Brenda Rickman Vantrease

  “You’re not serving the Church, Father.”

  Notice he says nothing about serving God, just serving the Church. But that was Anna talking in his head. To serve the Church is to serve God. That’s what Brother Francis would have said.

  The priest lapsed into French, harder for Gabriel to follow, accustomed as he had become to the king’s English that he and Anna spoke at home. Gabriel could see the silhouette of his confessor’s profile. His double chin quivered whenever he talked. His voice was raspy, not pleasant.

  “You’re wasting the Church’s resources, Brother, on this unholy dalliance. You should be in Paris, fulfilling your bishop’s orders. If heretical teachings are being copied you will learn of it in Paris, where the largest guild of scribes and illuminators operates. You will find the proof you seek in Paris—not in Rheims. The people of Rheims are devout.” A flutter of the priest’s hands as he made the sign of the cross. “Receive your penance.”

  And then the priest told Gabriel he must not touch “the woman” again. Must leave her immediately. Must spend the night in prayer, praying for forgiveness.

  “Abstinence, Brother, is the bread of piety. Celibacy its wine.”

  There was a rustle of cloth sliding on wood and then the slamming of the little wooden door. Justice dispensed. Grace departed. As easy as that, Gabriel thought. Not easy at all.

  Of course he had always known it. Known that at least he would have to leave her for a season. Until he could make arrangements for her to follow. He had it all worked out in his head. He’d lain awake at night watching her sleeping, the moonlight lining the sweep of her lashes against the curve of her cheek, the wild bloom of hair spread across her pillow, his mind spinning a web of intrigue for a half-life together with her.

  A small cottage in Kent—no, that was too close to Brother Gabriel. A seaside cottage near the South Downs where she could care for Little Bek and copy her books to supplement the income he would give her. A cottage where VanCleve could visit, a sanctuary where Brother Gabriel never went. An Eden where the serpent never entered.

  But the confessor was right. Brother Gabriel had a job to do. He would go to Paris, practice being apart from Anna. The only evidence he had gained was evidence that implicated Anna as a Hussite, but she was not remotely connected to Lord Cobham. Not that he would have betrayed her. He’d sooner betray himself. He was sure to uncover a source in Paris. Oldcastle had to get his copies somewhere.

  And Brother Gabriel could perform his penance—at least in spirit. He would not touch her for a while. Brother Gabriel would deny his flesh to atone for VanCleve’s sins. Or was it the other way around?

  “He understands what you’re saying. He doesn’t want you to go.”

  Van Cleve picked the boy up.

  “You’re getting positively plump, you know that? You’ll be a man soon. Look after Anna for me while I’m gone.”

  “An na, An na.” The child’s head wobbled an affirmative. VanCleve set the boy on the floor at his feet, then looked directly at Anna, who was avoiding his gaze.

  “I will be back, Anna, your heart should tell you that. A fortnight. No more.”

  There was a small space between them. Neither attempted to close it.

  “The heart sometimes tells the head what it wants to hear,” she said.

  She looked up at him then, and he could read the uncertainty, the trouble clouding her blue eyes, bunching the fine winged brows into little worried knots. How could VanCleve be expected to perform Brother Gabriel’s penance? He leaned toward her, closing the gap between them. He could smell the scent of her, the fragrance of jasmine.

  Brother Gabriel be damned. At least VanCleve would carry the taste of her with him.

  “Then both your heart and your head can hear this.” And he kissed her. But her response was not what it had been. She held something in reserve.

  As they broke apart, Little Bek looked from one to the other, then grabbed hold of VanCleve’s leg. Anna reached down and gently disengaged the boy’s pale, thin fingers. They looked almost boneless, transparent, grasped in Anna’s pink ones. Her voice was raspy with unshed tears and her tone with the boy less gentle than usual.

  “Let him go,” she said to the child.

  Little Bek’s eyes widened and he started to whimper, but he let go.

  “A fortnight, Anna. I promise. Then I’ll return and we will talk … we will come to some more permanent arrangement.”

  She said nothing, only nodded as she held open the door of her chamber for him to go. It creaked on its iron hinges, as if the heavy oaken door also protested his leaving. She did not look at him as he walked through it. He turned back, hoping for one last word. Instead she just stood there, waiting, clutching the hand of the child whose large eyes were like wide, opaque pools.

  “One more thing, Anna. I don’t want the English translation. It is far too dangerous an enterprise. It is a banned text. Do not have it in your possession. Burn what you have already done.”

  But she had already closed the door. He would burn it himself when he returned if she had not. Anna Bookman would have no evidence in her possession.

  Brother Gabriel could go to the devil, if he had not already done so.

  Anna did not burn the Gospel of John. Not because she had not heard what VanCleve said. But she could no more burn the pages of truth than VanCleve could spit upon the crucifix. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was God.

  The Word and the word. That was her legacy from Ddeek. And nobody could separate her from it. Not only did Anna not burn it, she finished copying. I am the way, I am the door, I am the vine, I am the bread of life, I am the light of the world, I am the resurrection. How could she burn this Word, this one book that Jan Hus from his pulpit in Betlémska kaple had called the heart of the gospel? So many times she had sat with her grandfather listening to John’s six signs of Christ’s divinity, listening as Jan Hus preached in the language of the people, watching the hundreds who listened with her.

  When she had finished copying the gospel she looked at it and frowned. It was plain and unadorned except for one imperfect effort at the first capital. She could not reproduce the beautiful illuminated letters her grandfather had made. As a girl she had tried, but when her colors were not as pure as his, nor the lines as fluid, she had given up in frustration and contented herself with copying the words in the most careful, beautiful hand she could use. At least the words were pure and true, and she would be proud of her graceful lines.

  The next day she went to the tanning yard to buy a leather cover. Heating a small stylus in the brazier, she carefully burned the title into the leather and then, beneath it, the words “copied for VanCleve by Anna Bookman.” Then she wrapped it carefully in silk and put it in the bottom of the chest, next to the Wycliffe Bible, to await VanCleve’s return.

  At the beginning of the second week the first snow fell. Would that delay him? she wondered as she looked at the large flakes piling up against the leaded panes of glass. Was he warm? Was he safe? Was his business going well? What exactly was his business? He’d mentioned something once about the cloth trade. When she’d asked for more details, he’d said it was just buying and selling. Nothing very interesting. And he had changed the subject. But the smallest detail of VanCleve’s life would have been interesting to Anna. She wanted to know everything, but all she knew was that he had not spoken of marriage. “We’ll make a more permanent arrangement,” he’d said. And she’d been too ashamed to question him further.

  There was no purchase in going to the square today, she thought, watching the color of the garden floor change from brown to white. Few would linger in the cold and freezing snow to buy a book. And Little Bek had started to sneeze. When she wiped the stream of rnucus that flowed perpetually down the carved little snot path above his lips, she thought he felt warm. She dosed him with an infusion of elderflower and rosehip tea and put him to bed, watching anxiously until he nodded off.

  Outside the snow piled up in dr
ifts. He slept all through the long day and all night. Anna dozed too, wishing she had some work to do. She already had more inventory than she could sell. What she needed was commissioned work. Maybe she could find work in the Jewish quarter. She would ask at the stationer’s shop. The monks and the guilds would not copy for the Jews, and there was always more book work there than the rabbis could do. She couldn’t read the Hebrew, but her eye was good enough to copy the Hebrew letters. She’d make a sample to show the rabbi what she could do. She dozed off, the Hebrew letters dancing in her head like flames.

  In the morning Little Bek was much better, his brow cool. She carried him to the window. He squealed with delight when he saw the patch of garden blanketed in a down coverlet of white.

  “Snow,” she said.

  And to her delight he repeated, “Snow.”

  “Yes, yes, snow, snow.” And she whirled him around the room.

  He started to sing “snow, snow, snow” up and down the scale, pitching it high, then lower. She joined in singing it with him, dancing with the melody of it, until they formed a kind of polyphonic sound. She laughed and wished VanCleve were here to hear them, to join in the snow dance with them.

  When she put the boy down, he reached for his crutches and, half hopping to the corner, pulled his hooded cloak from a peg and held it out to Anna.

  “You want to go out?”

  “Out.” He nodded.

  “But we can’t. It’s cold. B-r-r-r,” and she gave a mock shiver.

  He burred his lips, forming spit bubbles on them as he mocked her. “Out.” He grinned, begging her with his eyes. Then started to sing the word up and down the scale he’d learned.

  “It would be nice to have some hot soup,” she said, thinking that all they had was the cold meat and cheese the landlord left outside the door. The old woman who cooked her pottage over an open fire might be in her little corner of the square. She would have a good business today just feeding the firewood vendors and gatherers. Something hot would be good for Little Bek, and best of all they could get out for a little while. The cozy little room was beginning to feel like a prison.

  She bundled the boy into his wagon with an extra blanket until all she could see were his wide gray eyes.

  “You look like a bunny,” she said.

  He made the b-r-r-r noise with his lips again, and grinned.

  When they opened the door, a blast of wintry air greeted them and Anna immediately had second thoughts, but the boy laughed with delight. “Here, we’ll put this between your knees,” Anna said, placing beneath his blankets the lidded beaker that she kept warming on the brazier. They could empty out the hot water and bring back the hot soup in it, and it would keep the boy warm both going and coming.

  Pushing against the snow piled against the threshold, they stepped out into a white world so pristine and pure that the beauty—or the sharp cold— brought tears to Anna’s eyes. Foolish girl, she said to herself, reminding herself that like so many things it would not last, that underneath the snow dead leaves were decaying into a mass of slime, and when the snow at long last left, the mud and muck would be ankle deep. Nothing pure can stay, she thought. And wondered if that was true in Paradise.

  She pulled hard to make the wagon’s wooden wheels turn in the five inches of snow. A few flakes had started to drift down again. But in the distance at the corner of the square she could just make out the figure of the old woman bent over her cook fire, its smoke scenting the air. She looked back at Little Bek. His nose had started to run again, but so had hers, from the cold. He was holding on to the sides of the wagon for dear life as she tugged it through the snow, but he had a grin on his face. She couldn’t feel her feet— or her face—anymore and her hand was frozen against the wooden handle of the wagon, but that look on his face was enough to keep her trudging.

  At least when they returned to the warmth of their little chamber, they would be glad to see it. And there would be hot soup for supper.

  Maybe VanCleve would return tomorrow. Maybe the snow and the cold had forced him to turn back. Two weeks, he had said.

  And one week and three days were gone already.

  TWENTY-TWO

  In His love He clothes us, enfolds us and embraces us;

  that tender love completely surrounds us, never to

  leave us …

  —JULIAN OF NORWICH,

  REVELATIONS OF DIVINE LOVE

  Reverend Mother, you said to call you at nones.”

  The voice beyond the thick oak door was soft and muffled and accompanied by a diffident knock.

  “Thank you,” the abbess called, then listened for the receding footfalls. A light tread. Probably one of the novices.

  I should not have sent her away. Not without opening the door. Not without inviting her in and listening to the loneliness that always shadowed the young ones. I am mother to them now.

  But she hated it when they called her “mother,” she who was so unworthy of the title. Perhaps they were too near the age of that other girl who had once looked upon her as “mother.” Perhaps there was too much pain of memory there.

  The abbess knew she was regarded among the novices and younger sisters as formidable, both in tone and aspect. The tone she tried to change, making efforts to praise the sisters when praise was called for and scolding softly when they neglected their duties, as young girls—even young girls who are to be wed to Christ—were wont to do. But the aspect she could not change. The face veil would not be lifted. She would not bare her marred face even for these, her spiritual daughters. With the death of her old servant who had fled the fire with her, more than knowledge of the abbess’s ruined face had passed. The last vestige of an abandoned life had died with the old cook of Blackingham Hall. Or so the abbess thought. But that was ten years gone and memories swirled within each shaft of autumn light shooting through her chamber window.

  The Reverend Mother laid down her pen. Her hands trembled with fatigue. Laborare est orare. To work is to pray. And she had labored these thirty years. Pages of Julian’s Revelations of Divine Love were spread out on the desk in front of her. These, thankfully, she did not have to copy in the tedious Latin or even translate into English because they were written in English, and thankfully also they were not contraband. Somehow, the holy woman of Norwich had maintained that fine balance between orthodoxy and heresy, clinging to the former while courting the latter.

  Safe works such as these the abbess usually gave to the nuns whose loyalty she questioned—such as Sister Agatha. But Sister Agatha had been consigned to the kitchen garden for a spell and there was a commission for a copy of the work—a particularly fine copy. (The abbess sometimes marveled at the miracle of her steady hand despite her age. Surely a gift from God.) The abbey needed the money, and at this particular season in her soul, she needed the comforting words.

  “All will be well,” the anchoress of Norwich had written. “All will be well,” the last words the abbess had copied, lay now beneath her quill. She prayed it would be so. Lord, I know you are as close as my breath—and because of this veil my breath is very close. Let me know that all will be well. But she could feel pressure building at her back, pressure for the abbey, pressure for those who dared dissent. And she feared for all who embraced the Lollard cause.

  She had asked the novice to call her—sometimes she became lost in her work, especially when it was Julian’s words she copied—because there was still the tedium of the duty roster to do: who will clean, and who will cook, and who will read at meals. Who will wash and who will scrub and who will tend the fields.

  Labor ar e est or ar e.

  But first, to rest her eyes, she stood up stiffly and went to the window that looked out over the cloisters. Its three-tiered fountain dropped water into the lavabo where the sisters gathered water for bathing. She did not allow them to wash in it, as was customary, but required them to dip water into basins lined up on a bench on the sunniest side of the cloister. Only on feast days and holy days were they
allowed to dip their hands into the water, in a kind of ritual cleansing, after they’d already washed them.

  It was not a large abbey. The fountain was an extravagance, chosen for its beauty and its clever engineering. A cistern behind it provided an almost endless supply of water. Like Grace, sometimes it trickled and sometimes it cascaded in a clear stream. Today it was scarcely a trickle; the autumn had been dry. But light gathered in the drops that overflowed into the smaller basins, so that each drop looked like a precious jewel. Soon they will become tiny frozen jewels, she thought. She dreaded the coming of winter, when the cloisters were shrouded in gray and even the fountain slept, dreaded too when her fingers ached too much to write. But she would not think of that. She would only be grateful for this moment, for the beauty of the brown leaf floating down into the light that hovered like an aura over the fountain.

  She longed to sit in that light, to feel its rays on her ruined face. The dying autumn light always brought to the Reverend Mother more than the reminder of human mortality. Thin with remembered warmth, it evoked memories of the self she had long ago abandoned. In the glorious color of an English autumn, Kathryn had first loved Finn.

  She turned away from the window and once more picked up the duty roster. With a determined sigh, she dipped the nib of her pen into the ink cup on her writing table and began to assign the daily tasks.

  Labor are est or ar e.

  If to labor is to pray, then Jane Paul had spent all of her life in prayer. But now it was over. The old man was dead. Just this one last thing for Mistress Clare to do. One last vigil to sit, she thought as she washed the old man’s body, careful still not to tear his skin, her touch made almost gentle by the memory of what he had once been. The Grim Reaper had crept in during the night. She’d heard nothing, and she slept lightly, listening always for his cough, his feeble call. Brother Francis had not even put up a struggle when the death angel came.