The Mercy Seller: A Novel (v5)

by Brenda Rickman Vantrease

  Joan had no more than got rid of Master Flemmynge and called for clean linen and fresh wash water to be placed in Sir John’s chamber than the maid was back again with news that someone else was asking for Sir John.

  “Whoever it is, just inquire about his business and send him away. Sir John is poorly. I need to tend to his needs now.” Her tone was harsher than usual and she knew it, but she could not keep the irritation from her voice. It seemed as though some of John’s bilious humors had infected her.

  “ ’Tis a her, milady, not a him.”

  “Him. Her. Whoever. I have more pressing needs.”

  “Aye, milady.” The girl curtsied and left, but Joan could tell she was not happy with that answer. Bother. Joan had a good relationship with her maids; she worked hard to keep it thus. Their eyes and ears were important in such perilous times, their loyalty crucial. But she had more pressing matters to see to now. John’s bowels had settled somewhat but not his mood. And she couldn’t say she blamed him, she thought, as she rushed to his chamber through the adjoining door to her own to answer his querulous call.

  “And shut the damned door! The draft is cold enough to shrivel the manhood of Zeus!”

  Invoking a pagan deity, husband? How very impious of you! But she swallowed the retort, planted a placating smile on her face, and shut the door, drawing the heavy brocaded curtains across the leaded-glass window to shut out the draft.

  “Here, my love.” She took down his warmest tunic from a row of pegs, brushed its red fox lining brusquely. “Put this on. It’ll warm you. I told cook to send you up some hot broth.”

  They both ignored the rumbling of his gut as though it rebelled against the promise of victuals.

  “What did Flemmynge want?” he grunted as he pulled on his breeches.

  She reached to help him with the front lacings, sensing that this was not the time to let her fingers wander playfully. She moved on to the lacings of his clean lawn shirt, which still smelled of the lye from the laundry. Her John might be a tad portly, but he was neatly turned out, his beard well trimmed, his clothes fashionable, and his linen immaculate. She’d noticed that Master Flemmynge’s ballooning sleeves, though they were of the finest weave, had sauce stains around the cuffs, and she wondered how his wife could let him go about on church business in such a state.

  “He said to tell you that there is to be a holy processional to Becket’s shrine in Canterbury for the saint’s day on December twenty-ninth. The archbishop requires of you a cadre of armed men, an honor guard in full Oldcastle livery, to stand along the processional route.”

  “By the saint whose moldy bones he kisses! I’ll have no part of such a tawdry show.” He shoved her gently. “Old Arundel knows that to have the livery of Sir John Oldcastle providing protection for such a show as the Romans put on with relics will be tantamount to a public endorsement of everything I preach against. I’ll have no part in it. Get out of the way. I’ll go tell him myself!”

  She held out a restraining arm. “ ’Twill do naught but add fuel to the fire, John, to anger him. He said Prince Harry will be in attendance, and he specifically asked for your men to line the processional.”

  “Hal?” He scratched his beard. “The feast of Thomas à Becket, the saint who was martyred because he provoked a king. Yes, I suppose he did.” A bit of a smile then a chuckle. “Hal was ever one for laying down the gauntlet.”

  “John, this is no game with the two of you facing each other across a board. This is serious.”

  “Game or not. It makes no difference. I’ll not do it. Is Flemmynge still here?”

  “No, his feathers were ruffled that you refused to see him. He said he would not wait, that he’s on his way to the abbey on business for the archbishop. I don’t like that man. He quite puts on airs. Very officious in his demeanor. He said the archbishop has instructed him to make sure that the talents of the sisters are ‘being employed for the glory of the Church and not some frivolous or heretical cause.’ I didn’t like the tone in his voice.”

  “Send a messenger to the abbey to warn the abbess of his coming. Flemmynge is sly, all right. More than once, I’ve heard him speak with praise of Wycliffe’s teachings, and now that he’s been appointed ‘inquisitor’ he’s suddenly seeing heresy under every stone. Better still, I’ll ride to the abbey myself. I’ll warn the abbess and confront Arundel’s toady myself.”

  “No, John, you’re in no condition—I’ve already sent a messenger. The abbess is too clever to be outmaneuvered by the likes of—”

  A knock at the door interrupted her.

  “Yes?”

  The maid’s voice answered through the thick oaken door. “My lady, I have the victuals for Sir John.”

  She opened the door to receive the bowl of steaming broth and was about to close it again when the maid dropped a timid half-curtsy and continued.

  “My lady, the woman I told you about. Beggin’ your pardon, but I think you might want to see her. She’s asking to see Sir John. Says it’s a matter of the gravest importance regarding”—here the maid lowered her voice and Joan opened the door—”the Lollard cause.”

  “I told you Sir John is seeing no one.”

  “Please, milady, just you see her then. I can tell from her speech, she is a gentle woman, not one of the peasants. And she seems in much distress and almost faint with being tired. She says she will not leave without seeing Sir John. Says she has come all the way from Bohemia. Says she comes from—I can’t remember the man’s name. I think it was Finn. An illuminator of fine books or something for the university.”

  The maid looked up to the face of Sir John, who had joined his wife at the door, and added, “She has a child with her. He appears sick or crippled. She was pulling him in a kind of wagon bed.”

  “You say she is from Bohemia? Then she may have news of Jan Hus and the Lollard cause there. I will see her.”

  Joan sighed. The maid had guessed aright. She knew a woman with a sick child would not be turned away. And of course, John would not turn away any who shared his cause. “No. I will go down myself and meet her. I will bring her to you, if I think—” She turned her back to the maid and lowered her voice. “You are too trusting, John. Does it not occur to you that this woman could be a spy for Arundel?”

  Turning back to the maid, she said, “Give the visitors food. I’ll wait upon them presently.”

  Sir John was pulling on his beard. “She’s from Finn the Illuminator. I know him by reputation. I should go to her at once.”

  “I am mistress here, John. Matters of hospitality are at my discretion. Don’t worry. You will see this girl for yourself if I think she’s who she says she is. But first eat your broth.”

  Joan closed the door and followed the maid downstairs to the castle kitchens, determined not to let her guard down. A woman and a child traveling all the way from Bohemia—that was somewhere in the heart of the Continent, she was sure—an unlikely tale, to say the least. She would hear her out, give her a few pence, and send her on her way.

  TWENTY-SIX

  The River Ebro gives good water … its waters filledwith fish …

  at Estella the bread is good, the wine excellent,

  meat and fish abundant.

  —LIBRI SANCTI JACOBI, BOOK V

  (12TH-CENTURY PILGRIM GUIDE)

  Anna was chilled to the bone. She sat on a three-legged stool next to the wide hearth and cradled her hands around the beaker of hot broth the cook had given her. She tasted it carefully. Cool enough to drink.

  “Here,” she said, handing it to Bek, who sat with his legs curled around the wooden chest in his small wagon. It had been a tight fit, but she had squeezed both boy and box into the narrow space without damage to either. And the box was lighter now. She’d sold the other books. All that was left was the Wycliffe Bible and the Hebrew book of spells hidden beneath a change of clothing for each of them. The Gospel of John she’d left with the landlord. “When Monsieur returns,” she’d said, giving him both the book a
nd a note explaining where she’d gone.

  “Hold the broth carefully. It’s hot,” she warned.

  The cook handed her another. Anna sipped it gratefully. They had ridden all day in the back of a dray cart from London to get here, and the fare to the farmer had taken her last ha’penny. She was almost numb with fatigue. Too numb to think what she would do if Sir John turned her away. But he would not. Would he? Her grandfather could not have misjudged him so. But the maid said Sir John was indisposed. What if he were too sick to see her? What if he were dead? Or gone mad? Or the servants wouldn’t let her see him? She’d threatened the poor maid terribly, but that threat had drained her of her last spark of energy.

  They should have stayed in London with the scribe and his wife. He’d offered her a job. But when she’d learned Sir John Oldcastle was only a few hours away, she knew she could not wait another day. I’m here, Grandfather. fve kept my promise. The rest is up to God. She leaned her head back against the wall.

  “You look worn out,” the cook said. He had a snaggle-toothed smile and a jolly manner. His face was red from the heat of the brick ovens that lined the wall. The warmth of the room made Anna drowsy. The morning’s clouds had churned up a cold rain and dusk was coming on. Would he let them sleep on the floor beside the kitchen hearth? The stone flags would be hard, but Bek had his blanket and she her cloak. At least they would be out of the weather.

  “Just sit awhile and warm yourself by the fire.” He turned toward the great brick oven and withdrew a large metal tray with several loaves of bread. The smell made her mouth water.

  “Would it be too much to ask for a slice of that for my son? We’ve come a long way. I don’t have any money left to pay, but I’m sure you have some pots that need scrubbing.”

  He cut off a heel of the warm bread, spread it with sweet cream butter, and offered it to Bek, who looked at Anna for permission and only took it when she nodded her head at him. Then he cut off another slice and handed it to Anna. “Them hands don’t look like they’ve done a heap of scrubbing!”

  She looked down at her pale fingers wrapped around the mug of broth. Even the warmth of the broth had not brought color to them. “True enough,” she said. “But I’m a fair scribe. Maybe you have a letter you need writing.”

  He laughed. “Me? No, I’m just cook’s helper. Though cook might find something for you to do. You might could help him with inventorying the pantry. Do you cipher too?”

  Trying not to gulp the bread, she reached out and wiped a bit of drool from Bek’s mouth.

  “What’s wrong with the boy? He’s not sickly, is he? If he is—”

  Anna hastened to reassure the young man, whose good will seemed to be melting like the butter on the hot bread. “No. He’s healthy. He’s just had this affliction from birth.”

  “Well,” he said grudgingly. “Even if he did have the ague or something even worse, milady wouldn’t have me turn you out on a night like this.”

  Anna felt weak with relief.

  “But I don’t know if milady will see you or not.”

  “It’s Sir John I’ve come to see,” she reiterated. “I have a message for him, and I’m to give it to no other.”

  He laughed. “Beggin’ your pardon, but at Cooling Castle ain’t no woman will ever get to Sir John without first going through his wife. ‘Specially one that looks like you.” His cheeks seemed to redden even more.

  “Where is the wench demanding to see Sir John?”

  Anna looked up to see a plump, pretty woman, with eyes as amber as the honey silk she wore, bustling toward her. Anna stood up clumsily, her bread falling to the floor, and dropped an even clumsier curtsy. Her head felt light, as though she’d drunk too much mead.

  “My lady, I have come from Bohemia with a message of importance for Sir John. If I may be—”

  The curved archway lining the kitchen wall opposite the brick ovens began to crawl like snakes. Anna tried to shake her head to clear it. “My lady, if I—”

  She heard Bek crying her name as she fell in a heap at Lady Joan Cobham’s feet.

  The abbess couldn’t really say the exact moment that it happened—but no, she could if she really thought about it; it had been the day the priest came. She had taken one look at the handsome cleric with his Roman ways and known what he was about. After that, it had built steadily, this sense of foreboding, this anxiety that pressed against her chest, this certain knowledge that the activities of the abbey were becoming more and more perilous.

  And not just for herself, but for the sisters in her care. For Sir John. For the Lollard cause they served. Even for the pardoner, blinded like Judas by his false allegiance.

  The need to hide the other—as she now called the clandestine manuscripts even in her mind, not daring to speak the heretical Lollard name, not even calling it the English Bible—lest the snooping priest or others of his ilk pop in. The secrecy was wearing her down. The pardoner had a way of inserting himself into the most innocent-seeming conversation, lulling his prey into a slip of the tongue. The abbey had enjoyed a brief respite from his snooping these last three months. But last week Brother Gabriel had returned. And so had the pain in her head.

  She shut her eyes against the flickering light of the candle flame in the gathering twilight. Thank God, this infirmity had lessened with the advancing years, though it still plagued her in nervous times. But the pain was no longer so pointed in one place. Perhaps it was God’s way. Not to take away the suffering that strengthened her soul but just spread it out into her hands and back and ankles, because He knew that an old woman’s heart could not take the pain in one foul dose inside her head.

  She had begun the clandestine copying so many years ago, not knowing how the manuscripts would ever be distributed. Copying as much to assuage her loss as for the cause her copying served.

  In the beginning she had copied only to ease her grief. A memorial to her heart’s great loss of everything that mattered, an emptying out of her self through the strokes her pen made upon the calfskin. It was as though the blood drained from her heart into her hands and emptied into the quill.

  Scratch, hiss … two sons lost …

  Only the sounds of the pen penetrated the well of silence around her.

  Scratch, hiss … a lover’s loss, her heart’s desire … the pretty little girl child more doll than real … scratch, hiss … into the great silence, the sound of her heart so faint she wasn’t sure it beat at all.

  But with the copying the Scriptures had seized her soul.

  Scratch … hiss … In the beginning was the word.

  The Word.

  God had spoken creation into being. The word that separated man from animals. The gift of language, making men as gods, discerning good and evil. This ability to express one’s thoughts, one’s feelings, and then to use that word to talk about the Word made flesh. What higher cause could she serve? But high or low, she had no other cause.

  The manuscripts had grown in number. First the Psalms of David, “The Lord is my Shepherd.” Balm for her wounded heart. Then the beatitudes: “Blessed are the meek. Blessed are the poor.” Then the blessed Crucifixion story and the stories of the Magdalene and the other women who supported Jesus, the first witnesses to his resurrection. (Why had no priest ever pointed that out?) The copies piled up as her body and her spirit healed at Saint Faith Priory, but she worried about the safety of the house that had taken her in should she be discovered.

  And then one day Sir John had come to Saint: Faith Priory and boldly commissioned a copy of the English Scriptures as though he were asking for no more than a common book of hours. She still remembered how he chortled the day she trusted him enough to deliver the stack hidden inside her chest. It was he who funded the breaking away into a smaller house, close by Cooling Castle, to serve Gravesend and Rochester, an abbey not powerful enough to invite suspicion, whose secret mission would be the copying of the English Scriptures and the Wycliffe texts.

  The prioress at Saint Faith had g
iven her blessing, even allowing Kathryn to take three of her best scribes, but Kathryn could tell that she was relieved to see the backs of them, these heretics she harbored in her bosom.

  The little abbey at the back of nowhere—a tiny cluster of buildings: chapel, priory, scriptorium, cloister, and refectory—had been able to produce these contraband texts unmolested. Until now. But lately there was something in the air that called up to her senses the dreaded smell of burning pitch.

  She feared the hounds of hell had caught again the scent.

  The abbess put down her pen and stood to stretch her back and flex her hand, rubbing the knob of her distended knuckle. Maybe it was just the dreariness of the bleak midwinter that pressed upon her spirit and made her joints hurt. Maybe the priest was not a spy for the archbishop. Maybe it was just the rain and the heavy workload that made her knuckles ache and crooked the fingers in her right hand so that it was not steady against the parchment.

  The rain, or the devil. Or both.

  With the narrowing of daylight, it was harder to see. Even her uninjured eye was growing weaker. When she could no longer do the work, who would supply Sir John with the English Gospels for the Continent? Only one or two of the sisters could really be trusted. Sister Agatha had been a loss; though she’d been released from the kitchen duty and sent back to doing the work of a scribe, the abbess was careful to see that she was given only secular works to copy. Even more vigilance would be required now that the priest had returned.

  She couldn’t quite put her crooked finger on it, but there was something changed about him. For one thing, he looked tired, almost gaunt. And his eyes had lost some of their certainty. When she’d inquired if all was well with him, he’d said he was grieving over the loss of his father confessor. But he’d offered to hear the confessions of the sisters—a convenient enough method for spying out the conscience torn between orthodoxy and the Lollard heresy—though he’d confined himself to the guest quarters for the most part.