“That was kind of you,” he said, feeling his way, still not sure what she wanted of him. He rubbed his leg to ease the pain that had only worsened when he sat down on the hard bench.
“Make yourself a warm hip bath and soak in it,” she said. “That will help the pain.”
“Thank you for that advice.” And then searching for something to say to the woman, “Did he die peacefully?”
“He died in his sleep.”
“I thought of him as a father, you know.”
“And well you should. He was your father.”
“Yes, my spiritual father. But more than that. He was really the only father I ever had.”
“Yes, he was. That is why I stayed. To tell you. I thought you should know. As long as he was living, he forbade it.”
He was thinking how well spoken she was for a common charwoman. None of the heavy Saxon accent one might expect in a woman of her class. She must have adopted the speech and vocabulary of the upper class she tended.
“Pardon me, please. My attention must be diverted by the pain in my leg.” He rubbed the shank of his leg. “What were you saying about Brother Francis forbidding something?”
“He forbade me to tell you that he was your natural father.”
A cloud passed over the sun outside and the rosy light grayed, turning her skin the color of the stone wall behind her.
Had he heard her right? For the briefest moment he wished it could be so. But no, the woman had merely picked up some gossip. She had not come to stay with Brother Francis until late in his life. She could not possibly know of what she spoke. She was merely repeating some devil’s gossip she’d heard, probably to gain some advantage over him now that her livelihood was at an end.
“You are mistaken. He took me as a ward of the Church when I was about six years old.” He could not bring himself to say his mother had been a whore. “I was an orphan.”
“You were no orphan. You were his natural child. He took you from a brothel in Southwark. Took you away from your mother. Brought you here. Gave you an education.”
“How dare you repeat such idle gossip? I—”
“Your mother used to visit you from time to time when you were very young. Then he sent her away. His plans for you did not include a mother of her class.” She said this bitterly then added in a low voice, “Do you remember that? Do you remember her visits?”
Suddenly he was eight years old and his mother was kissing him goodbye. There were tears in her eyes. He could remember that, though he couldn’t remember her face. But she had golden hair. One curl had escaped her cap, a cap of green velvet with a bit of lace tied at the chin. Its lace and her curls had brushed his cheek. He had not kissed her back.
“There was a scent she always wore …” He could hardly get breath enough to form the words. He wasn’t sure he said them out loud.
“The attar of roses. It was her favorite.”
“Her name was Jane. Jane Paul.”
His throat was tight with shame and longing and a kind of anger. Anger at Brother Francis for the great lie, even though he knew it was for his own good, anger at her for revealing it now, and anger at that small boy who had sent his mother away that one last time without a kiss or even a good-bye.
“How do you know this?” he asked.
“One does not serve a man as long as I served your father and not learn everything about him. If you still doubt the truth of what I tell you, you have only to look in a mirror. Notice the little line that is beginning to run from your temple down your cheek to your chin. One day it will be a deep crease like his. The jut of your chin, that small dimple that forms on the left side of your smile, even that pain you have in your left leg—all are gifts from your father. Along, of course, with your fine mind and your strong body.”
The rainbow of light had shifted. It no longer fell on her face. She sat with her hands cupping the caps of her knees, each hand a different color in the light from the window. She had long fingers, once graceful, now red and rough. But the shape reminded him of his mother’s. He remembered her touch, light, warm. She’d once stroked his cheek with such hands, or was that the wishful dream of a child and not a memory at all?
No. It was all a lie, a trick. Next the woman would ask him to pay for silence. Then he would know it was all a sluttish, self-serving lie.
“My leg has never hurt before. I slept badly last night.”
“You are about the age your father was when his began to hurt.”
He never complained to me, Gabriel thought. And then he summoned a vision of Brother Francis rubbing his thigh. Another trick of memory, some suggestion put in his head? But his memory or his imagination conjured too the occasional grimace of pain, the infrequent times that his confessor walked with a limp.
She said it as though she read his mind. “His pain would come and go. It was subject to bad weather.”
“His hair is … was dark, almost black.”
“Your mother had blond hair.”
That much also was true.
“Did you know my mother? Did you know Jane Paul?”
“I knew her once.”
“Once? Where is she now?”
He waited for her answer, unaware that his breath did not come, wanting and yet not wanting to know.
She closed her eyes, as if the light hurt them, even though her face was in shadow.
“Jane Paul is dead,” she said.
He breathed.
“Why are you telling me this now?”
“Because I was forbidden to tell you before.”
“What good can come of my knowing?”
“I thought that you should know, lest the son repeat the sins of the father.”
“Sin? You judge him, then?”
“God will judge him. He was not a bad man, I suppose. Perhaps he could have been a better man. He took a vow. He broke a vow. Your father valued high office more than he valued people. He has set you on the same path. I would have you know his faults before you set out to copy him; that is all. And to know that you were not the by-blow of some drunken lout in a London stew. Your mother was not a whore. Brother Francis took her when she was very young. She never knew another man. Perhaps—”
There was a movement in the chancel, a rapid shuffling of feet. A discreet clearing of the throat before he looked up to see the young novice.
“Begging your pardon, Father, but I have been sent to summon you. The archbishop is with the abbot and is asking for you.”
She stood up. “I will be leaving now. I just wanted you to know, that’s all. The knowledge may be instructive, may hold a mirror to your own path.”
He stood too, so distracted by the summons—I’m being called to give an accounting! Now of all times!—that he scarcely saw her as she turned and walked away.
Only later, much later, would it occur to him that he should never have let her go without finding out where she went.
On Tuesday of the next week, Anna was again in her stall with Bek at her feet. The sun had come out, but the day was cold and windy. Few customers came by her little booth.
The old broth seller had warned her that the customers would not return until spring, when the pilgrims started to move from shrine to shrine. She had been right. Only she and Anna and one lone charcoal vendor braved the weather today. A few customers bought soup and charcoal. None bought books.
“Cold, An na. Bek cold,” the child behind her whined. “Go.”
It was hard to refute his logic when she’d not sold a single book all day.
She was taking down her awning, packing up her basket, when a man came by, a man of means judging from his furred mantle.
“Giving up so early?” he asked.
“You’re English. It’s nice to hear English,” she said, strapping down the tent.
“Oh? You’re English also?”
“No. That is—well, I’ve lived on the Continent all my life. My grandfather was English.”
The man was about the age of
her grandfather. He had kind eyes, and his beard was neatly trimmed. He thumbed one of Anna’s guides.
“You write a good hand. Too bad you do not live in England. I’m a master scribe at the customs house in London. I could get you journeyman work during your slow season, though of course, being a woman, you’d not be a full member of the guild.”
“Go. Cold.” Bek’s voice was adamant.
A woman had joined the scribe. She had her hands wrapped around a cup of hot soup. She held out the cup to her husband. He shook his head.
“This is my wife. She insisted on coming with me, said she’d never seen Paris. We’re on our way home.”
He laid the book down. Anna started to try to interest him in another and realized the futility of that. One didn’t sell bread to a baker.
“I think she’ll be glad to get back to London,” he said. “She finds Rheims less desirable than Paris.”
“We’ll be leaving on Friday,” the woman said, rolling her eyes. “And it can’t come soon enough for me.” She sipped her soup.
“Go! Anna!”
Anna looked out over the empty square. She had not made a farthing in two weeks. Nor had she heard from VanCleve. He’d gone back to his wife or his other life. He’d probably forgotten all about his promise of a “more permanent arrangement.” This might be her only chance.
“I’m going to England also,” Anna said. “I was wondering … as I am a widow, would it be possible … that is, do you think my son and I could travel with you? I have money to pay for my passage. We would be no burden. It’s just that traveling alone is dangerous for a woman and a child. I was hoping for a party of pilgrims, but …”
The man peered over her shoulder at Bek, whose shivers were becoming so violent his arms were flailing about. “Well … I don’t know if—”
“Of course you may come with us,” the woman said. “I’ll be glad of the company. We will be leaving on the morrow. We will meet you here. If you still want to go, be ready.”
“An na, go!”
Anna turned around to scold him. “Hush, Bek. We’re going,” she said, trying to keep the irritation from her voice. When she turned back to affirm her appointment the couple had already crossed the square. The woman waved back at her.
“On the morrow,” Anna called.
The woman answered back, but Anna couldn’t hear what she said. Apparently she was engaged in some kind of argument with her husband.
Well, she thought, if they don’t come back, what have Host?
TWENTY-FIVE
Old apple tree, old apple tree, We’ve come to wassail thee,
To bear and to bow apple enow,
Hats full, caps full, three bushel bags full,
Barn floors full and a little heap under the stairs.
—YULETIDE WASSAILING SONG
Good Christian though she considered herself, Lady Joan Cobham had no intention of denying herself the seasonal pleasure of the old ways. She saw no harm in lighting the Yule log and hanging the green. Every mantel of Cooling Castle was draped with yew and laurel, every doorpost garlanded with ivy and riband. A great Christmas bush of greens hung from the rafters in the great hall where the feasts would be held—the feasts and the Lollard meetings—permeating the air with the prickly scent of resin. But pride of place was given to the mistletoe that hung from every door lintel and twined itself with ribands around the four posts of the bed she shared with her husband.
Joan still believed somewhat in the magic of the pale little leaves with their bloodless berries. The old ones said they carried aphrodisiac powers. Not that she and John had ever had need for such. Until now. Of late John had been preoccupied, not his usual eager self, not since the meeting with the parchment maker. So Joan had tied the mistletoe around a wooden frame and embellished it with puffs of satin and velvet streamers to make a kissing bush. This she hung inside the canopy over her bed.
“Now do your stuff,” she whispered, watching the little bush shiver as she fastened it overhead. She gave the streamer a little push for encouragement.
Sighing, she climbed down from the stool and smoothed her skirt, brushing off bits of fallen greenery. She had put a few Druid herbs in the kissing bush for goodly measure, sacred herbs that would ripen her womb to grow John’s child: henbane and primrose and wolfsbane. She had her daughters from her first marriage and one son from her second but they were all grown up and gone. A pretty round-faced lass with a merry laugh and John’s glinting eyes, tossing a bladder ball with her father in the garden or screwing her pretty mouth into a pout as she struggled over her clumsy child’s embroidery, a little girl to grow into a gentle lady who would comfort her mother as she tiptoed into old age—that was the desire of Joan’s heart.
But it had not happened. And with John’s preoccupation with the Lollard cause there had been little opportunity of late. Fewer and fewer opportunities for fun of any kind. The wassailing, for example. What harm could there be in the mere lighting of bonfires, hitting the trees with sticks, or creating a loud ruckus with howls and blasts from a cow’s horn while dancing around the most abundant tree?
But when she’d ordered two barrels of finest cider set aside for the wassailing to drink to the health of the guardians of the trees, John had frowned, his little pointy beard stabbing into the soft flesh of his second chin, tickling the skin of his third. He’d scratched it with the tip of his forefinger as he was wont to do when he was displeased.
“I’ll take no part in it, wife. And—”
“But John. It is the custom. The servants expect it.”
“And neither will you. If they wish to indulge, it will be on their souls. We will provide no cider for any drunken revelry connected with Druid worship of trees.”
“Druid worship! Husband, it is but an empty, harmless ritual. Just a bit of celebration.”
“Not to some. Too many still cling to the old ways. Mixing their Catholic ritual and their pagan rites in a hodgepodge of superstition that the Church winks at until it becomes inconvenient.”
“The peasants work hard. Their lives are bleak. You would deprive them of a little revelry, husband? That is harsh.”
“Invite them to one of the Lollard meetings. Serve them temperate cider, roast meats, and poppy seed cakes soaked in hippocras. I am not an ungenerous man. But we must teach them to be drunk with the Spirit of Christ. That kind of drunkenness does not lead to vomit and regret in the morning. It is decided. We will replace the old way with a new one. Replace, wife. Not add on.”
She did not remind him that the servants and the apple trees as well as the earth in which they were rooted belonged to her. It would not have occurred to her. He was lord. His word the last.
Almost.
“Husband, I think you are in need of a purgative. And I shall blend it for you myself.”
With that parting shot she had gone to the herb garden. A pinch of Helleborus niger—a tiny bit of the root from the Christmas rose. She foraged beneath its green-tinged, downcast blooms, the ugly winter-blasted jagged leaves, to pinch a bit of the root. A bit more. Her John was a big man. But maybe not that much. She didn’t want to kill him. Just rid him of a little bile.
But now, judging from the sounds coming from the garderobe, the groans and squirts and rumblings, she surmised that she just might have misjudged the amount after all. Putting away her scissors and ribbons, she bustled off to the kitchen and was back within a span of minutes. John was still enthroned and the look of misery on his face piled on more remorse.
“Here, husband, drink this.”
“Hair of the dog, wife? I’ve had enough of your elixirs for a while, I’ll be thinking.”
“Now, John,” she said sheepishly, holding the small glass beaker with one hand, stroking the crown of his head with the other. “It is a tea made with fennel seed and peppermint. It will soothe your innards.”
She lowered the wooden lid on the hole beside him and sat down, trying to ignore the smell. Fresh herbs for the floor after th
is. She made a mental note as she reached for the tussie mussie, the little bouquet of herbs hanging above the seat, their flowers dry and brittle now. She pressed it to her nose and breathed tentatively. Not much help there.
John drank the tea and gave a loud belch.
“I’m sorry, John. Mayhap I overdid the purgative just a bit.”
“Mayhap,” he grumbled wryly.
A tentative knock on the garderobe door, “Milady?”
“What is it?”
“Visitors, a cleric by name of Flemmynge. Says he is an emissary from the archbishop. Says he has an urgent message for Sir John.”
John grunted. “Too bad for old Arundel if my bowels and my own good wife kill me before he gets his turn.”
“You are only saying that to get back at me. It’s wicked to tease about such things.” But her heart skipped a beat.
Another squirt echoed down the hole that emptied through the sloping drain into the marsh between the castle and the sea. She lifted the flowered tussie mussie reflexively to her nose and sneezed heartily.
“Oh. Something offends my lady’s delicate nose? Get out of here. Let me at least suffer this indignity in private.”
“John—”
“Go on. I think this potion may be more efficacious than the last. Leave me in peace. Go get rid of Flemmynge.”
She stood up reluctantly. But she didn’t need to keep the archbishop’s emissary cooling his heels too long. It wasn’t prudent. “I’ll be right back.”
“And fetch me some more arse wipes.” He handed her the empty glass. “Get several,” he called after her. “And speaking of arse wipes, tell the archbishop’s lackey that Sir John is indisposed and will wait on him another day.”
“John! The servants!”
But she heard him mutter as she closed the door, “When the devil’s balls get frostbite. That’s when Sir John Oldcastle will give an audience to the archbishop’s lackey.”
She also heard his innards grumbling in agreement.
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