The Mercy Seller: A Novel (v5)
Page 30
“He is no burden. Caring for him gives me comfort. And since God gave him over to my care, he is as much my son as if he were born to me.”
Lady Cobham’s brow lifted. “I did not mean any offense. John says that I’m often too plainspoken. It is just that given your condition, you might worry more about the child you’re carrying, if his brother—”
Her eyes widened, her glance darted from Anna to Sir John and back to Anna. Then she gave a little half-smile. “You don’t know, do you? John, I think our young widow here doesn’t know that her husband may have left her with more than his memory.”
“I don’t understand what you—a child?—no, that’s impossible.” But even as she said it Anna knew. It was not impossible. It was something she’d feared, pushed aside whenever the possibility crept into her mind, not knowing how to think about it. The fatigue she’d felt, the nausea on rising that lately did not go away, the courses that had not come for the last two months—she could see the signs copied out on the page from The Sickness of Women. But the manual had also said a woman’s courses might be irregular during difficult times such as famine or hardship or even grief. She could at least lay claim to the last.
Thank God she had told them she was a widow. If they knew the truth, that she had lain with a man outside of marriage, might even now be growing his seed in her womb, might they have turned her away?
“When did you say your husband was killed?”
She did a quick calculation in her head. July. Six months. She would be showing hugely by now.
“In October,” she lied again.
She and VanCleve had first been together in early November, in the little room in Rue de Saint Luc. Three months. She had not told them about the interlude in Rheims. They would believe that the journey that had really taken her six months could be made in three. She should be three months along by now. Scarcely two months from the first time she lay with him in truth. If it were true. Please, God, let it not be true for the sake of the child. Yet part of her wanted it to be true. Wanted it more than she had ever wanted anything in her life. And what a foolish thing that was.
“I fled Prague two weeks after he died,” she said, telling herself that part at least was not a lie.
Sir John chuckled softly. He and Lady Joan exchanged glances.
Anna’s mind still reeled from the hurried calculations. “I had hoped to earn my keep with my pen,” she said. “I’m a good scribe. I’ve copied many a text in Latin and English and even Czech for my grandfather. I’m familiar with the Wycliffe texts. I can write some of them by heart.”
“You are literate, then!”
“Even a little German and French. We copied for all kinds of people.”
He whistled softly under his breath, exchanged glances with his wife.
“It seems, wife, that our Lord has sent us an answer to our prayers.” He looked back at Anna. “Tomorrow, I will take you to a nearby abbey. You may be safer there than with us.” He frowned, bunching up his eyebrows into bristling question marks. “The abbess there is a woman of the true faith. You will be safe there, and she will direct your work to the best advantage.”
“Tomorrow! You’ll do no such thing. She’ll not go until she’s rested. She’s worn out with grief and worry and travel. Not to mention caring for that one.” She gave Bek an awkward little smile of acknowledgment, embarrassed the way so many were in his presence, Anna thought. He grinned back warmly, his head bobbing like a flower in the wind.
“He understands what you’re saying. He’s not deaf. He likes you. He’s grateful for your hospitality, as am I.”
“Yes, well, I like him too,” Lady Cobham said, so awkwardly that Anna almost laughed. Lady Cobham patted the boy’s blond head as though he wore a crown of prickly holly. “I’m sure we will be great friends.” She motioned for her husband to follow her. “Now. We are going to leave the two of you to rest. We shall talk again tomorrow. But you need not worry. You are home. And when you are strong enough, we will take you to the abbey. You will like the abbess. My husband assures me she is no less than a saint. And like you, she is a woman of learning.”
Only after the pair left did Anna realize she was still in Lady Cobham’s sumptuous chamber. Her kindness went deeper than her demeanor indicated. “Did you hear that, Bek? Lady Cobham said that we are home.”
“Ome, ome, An na ome.” Bek lay on his pallet in front of the hearth and chanted low and musically, like a lullaby, drugging Anna into sleep. But it didn’t feel like home. Lord Cobham had said he would take them to the abbey. She wondered if she would be expected to call the abbess “mother.” It was not a word that she had ever used.
“Not today, John,” Lady Joan would say each morning when Sir John poked his head into my lady’s chamber, where the two women nibbled on honey cakes and talked about Anna’s past. Lady Cobham was full of questions about Prague, about the Lollard movement there. She had been visibly alarmed when Anna told her how the students had been beheaded for burning the papal bull that granted the right to sell indulgences.
“Anna needs rest to recover from her journey. Besides, I’m enjoying some woman’s company. Go on off and joust or hunt or do whatever else it is you do whenever you abandon me. And see that the boy is fed and has a companion.”
Sir John pulled a long face, but bussed his wife on the cheek. Anna blushed to see the discreet little pinch he gave her bottom as his hand slid beneath her overskirt. Nor did she miss the easy looks that passed between them, conversing without words. Anna envied them this intimacy. Her mind betrayed her by replacing Sir John’s round face with VanCleve’s.
“I think ’tis time to take down that Druid bush, wife. Break your witches’ spell, else how shall I ever leave?”
“It’ll come down on Epiphany, husband. To do aught else would bring ill luck. Now off with you.”
Anna blushed again. Lady Joan had explained to her the function of the little bunch of mistletoe hanging above the bed. After that first night, Anna had been relocated into another chamber, a pretty little room not far from this one. Close enough to hear the occasional giggle and moan when everyone else in the castle slept.
“It’s just a maid’s room. But it’s comfortable. I want you close by.”
So you can keep an eye on me, Anna thought. And then immediately felt guilty for thinking that Lady Cobham didn’t altogether trust her. Perhaps it was just the memory of Lela that made her see jealousy in Lady Joan’s heavy-lashed cat-eyes.
“Now, madam,” Lady Joan said, when Sir John was finally gone, “let us find you clothes to wear for tonight’s feast.”
It was Twelfth Night, the feast of the Epiphany, and the boards had already been laid in the great hall, not only for the tenants of Cooling Castle but for visiting clergy and nobility as well. Anna didn’t quite know what to expect. Lollard clergy or Roman clergy? Surely Sir John would not be bold enough to mix the two. And as for nobility, that was a concept totally foreign to her egalitarian upbringing.
The closest Anna and her grandfather ever came to entertaining dignitaries was the time Jan Hus joined them. But even though by that time the rector of Prague University was preaching to thousands of people each Sunday in Betlémská kaple, when he was in the parlor of the little town house, he was one of them. All equal in the little gathering in Old Town Square. If some, like Hus or Finn the Illuminator or Master Jerome, were more respected, it was because they had earned the respect.
Not like here. Anna didn’t know the rules here, where some were born to rule and some not, some were the recipients of unearned homage while others more worthy paid that homage. Here, Anna felt a great social unease.
“My lady …” The words felt so unnatural on her lips. Why not just “Mistress Joan”? “If it is all the same to you, I would prefer not to attend the feast.”
“You would prefer?”
Why did the corners of Lady Joan’s mouth twitch as though Anna were a child or half-wit who had no right to state a preference?
Anna knew she was talking about the Lollard cause. Her grandfather, whom she had always thought the wisest man on earth, had been wrong about this one thing. England was no safer than Prague for the Lollard movement. Maybe even less so.
Joan pulled from out of the wooden chest a silk damask houppelande of a light cream color. She shook its long trained skirt vigorously. Little bits of lavender floated to the floor. She frowned, then discarded it in a heap. “No. Better this one, I think.”
The overskirt was a rich green brocade. Joan dug deeper into the chest, pulling out a green velvet bodice with slashed sleeves and ribands.
“A tuck here and a nip there. Your bosom is smaller than mine and your bottom too. And maybe let down this hem—Hilda, fetch your needle and thread,” she called to the servant. Then she set a horned headdress with a gauzy veil on Anna’s head but, much to Anna’s relief, discarded it in favor of a small metal coronet. “With all that hair, you don’t need much more on your head. Where did you get all that red hair, anyway?”
“My grandfather said I inherited it from an uncle. Along with what he called a ‘sometimes tempestuous nature.’ “ She could almost hear him saying it. The memory made her throat tighten with longing.
When the dress was fitted to Lady Joan’s careful standards, Anna stood before the chamber pier glass feeling awkward and overdressed in so many layers of finery. Lady Joan, however, was obviously enjoying herself. She flopped onto a pile of cushions on the nearest bench and motioned for Anna to pirouette.
“ ’Twill suffice,” she said. Again, the corners of her mouth twitched with that irrepressible half-merry, half-mocking smile.
As Anna undid the lacings and stepped out of the heavy brocade houppelande, she felt the heat of Lady Joan’s scrutiny,
“There’s one more thing you need to do before you dress. Here.” And she handed Anna a small cup, almost clear in color. Anna had never seen one like it outside an altar, more bowl than cup, with a wide mouth.
Anna peered into it quizzically.
“It’s not for drinking. You pee into it.”
Had she heard aright? “You mean—”
“Just go into the garderobe and make water into the cup. So we can see if you are going to keep that trim little waist of yours or no.”
Anna felt herself blush. She had been feeling so much better—the sickness almost entirely gone, except on waking, she was sure, almost sure, please let it be so, she’d prayed daily, hourly, minute by minute, promising God she would live chastely the rest of her life.
“But I’m feeling in such good health …”
“Has the bleeding returned?”
“Well, no, but I’ve lost track of the right time.”
Again Lady Joan’s mouth twitched. “Take the cup.”
“But how—”
“Did you ever hear of a piss prophet?”
“Someone who looks at urine to tell the future, perhaps?”
“Well, sort of, your future at least. Certain doctors claim to be able to tell from the smell, sight, even the taste, of a person’s urine the condition of their bodies.”
“You mean, you can tell—”
“Before my last son was born, a piss prophet looked at my urine and predicted that I was pregnant.”
“But can we—can you read it?”
“I paid attention. I always pay attention.” She took Anna’s hand and wrapped it around the stem of the bowl. “Here. We’ll see.”
Anna took the little cup, thinking how like a chalice it looked, the large bowled cup that had become the symbol of the Lollard movement in Bohemia to signify the right of all penitents, not just priests, to take the cup of Christ’s blood. She tried to push that image away, lest she desecrate the cup in her mind, knowing that it was just an image and images held no sanctification. Still, she blushed as she took it into the garderobe. She had scarier things to think about right now than the use and misuse of holy icons. Gilbert had said nothing about a pregnant woman’s urine being different.
The task being accomplished, she handed the cup over to Lady Joan, who was careful not to spill its contents as she peered into it.
“You’re not going to—”
“Taste it. No.”
Anna waited, watching, feeling foolish as in her head she pleaded with heaven, calling up her oft-repeated vows of chastity.
Apparently, God was not in a bargaining mood today.
“Clear, pale lemon, running to off-white with a cloud on top,” Lady Joan recited.
Anna forgot to breathe.
“It looks as though, my dear, your late husband did indeed leave you more than his memory.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
[The lords and bishops] dined on the dais and daintily fared
and many a trusty man below at the long tables.
Then forth came the first course with cracking of trumpet
On which many bright banners bravely were hanging.
—FROM SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT
(14TH CENTURY)
By Twelfth Night Anna’s sickness was replaced by a general sense of well-being, both welcome and surprising—and a ravenous hunger. She eyed the roast capon on the trencher she shared with Lady Joan. Her mouth watered with anticipation as she attacked the bird with her knife, though she was careful, even in her greed, not to get a drop of grease on her borrowed finery. The morsel she slipped into her mouth was succulent and tender. She closed her eyes, the better to savor it, then remembered that enthroned as she was, along with my lord and my lady and three other dignitaries upon the dais in front of the assembled company in the great hall, she should show a bit more decorum in her appreciation of her food.
The feast was well attended by nobility and clergy. Archbishop something or other—Anna couldn’t remember his name, only the sour look on his face as she was presented to him and the quick way he turned away—a cleric by name of Flemmynge, and another bishop occupied the dais along with herself, Sir John, and Lady Joan. Closest to the dais was the knight’s board. Thirty or so knights from Kent and Sussex and even Norwich, who had made the trip along rutted and muddy roads in the heart of winter to celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany in the great hall of Cooling Castle. They and their wives were arrayed like peacocks.
“John hates this,” Lady Joan whispered from behind her hand. “He’d gladly trade his goblet of Gascony wine for a pot of ale with yon yeomen at the end of the hall.”
Anna looked down at the far end of the hall to the cluster of families making merry. They did indeed look to be having a good time. A quick pang of memory reminded her of the gatherings in the little town house in Prague.
“Then why doesn’t he sit with them?”
Lady Joan put down her knife and turned the full force of her gaze on Anna as if she had said something too stupid to be believed.
“My dear, Sir John is a nobleman. He sits in Parliament. He has certain … responsibilities. He can’t sit with commoners when nobility is present.”
She said the word “commoners” as though the word carried fleas upon its back.
“But I’m a commoner, and you are sitting with me.” She couldn’t resist this at least, though it was said more by way of obtaining information than complaint.
Lady Joan heaved an exaggerated sigh. “No, my dear. I’m not sitting with you. You are sitting with me. At my invitation. And that’s a very different thing.”
Anna bit back a retort. She would save her tongue for tasting the apple tartlet nesting beside the roast pork that the carver was placing on their trencher. The smell alone was heaven-sent. Heaven’s scent. Anna picked up her knife again.
“My lady, I’m quite full. May I send the rest of this apple tartlet to Bek?”
“Bek has his own apple tartlet.”
“I didn’t know,” Anna answered, embarrassed lest she had given offense. And then, only making it worse, she added, “I noticed that the fare is humbler down the boards. I just thought—”
“Bek’s dinner is the same as the knights enjoy. Except for the wine, of course. He has milk to drink. You might remember, Anna, even though you’re eating for two, when the babe is gone, you’ll still carry his baggage on your hips, so best to leave off when you’ve had enough. Don’t worry. It’ll not go to waste. We have beggars enough at our back door—especially on a feast day.”
Joan turned her head to whisper in her husband’s ear. He chuckled.
They’e laughing at my ignorance, Anna thought, but there was no malice in their laughter. Strange as her environment was, she felt that she was at least among friends.
Her belly full, she turned her attention to the snatches of conversation around her. On the other side of Sir John was Bishop Henry Beaufort. Lady Joan had whispered to her that he was a favorite uncle of the king’s and probably would have been appointed chancellor had he not been born on the wrong side of the blanket.
“He and the archbishop are enemies. It should be interesting to watch the sparks if, in spite of his low birth, Beaufort gains ascendancy at court.”
Sir John appeared in earnest conversation with Beaufort, but Anna could not make out what was being said. Though she couldn’t help noticing how carefully Lady Joan was listening.
“I always pay attention,” she’d said. And here was proof. Judging from the furrows on her brow and the straight set of her mouth—no amused twitching now—she was not pleased with what she heard.