The Mercy Seller: A Novel (v5)

by Brenda Rickman Vantrease

  His gaze met hers unflinchingly. “It means the end of my advancement in the Church.” Then he added, in a tone she could only describe as filled with discovery, something akin to wonder even, as though he were just now coming to realize some truth, “And that no longer matters to me.”

  “It might mean more than the end of your advancement, or even of your Dominican habit. If the archbishop discovers your alliance with Anna, he will say that she bewitched you. You may be subjected to his soul-saving devices as well.”

  But he seemed not to even register her words. As if now that he’d found his purpose, he’d found his courage too, and could not be bothered with things like personal danger. She could see his mind already racing. That gave her more hope.

  “They took the books as evidence, I’m assuming,” he said. “Arundel is nothing if not thorough. What else did they take? Do you know if they found anything else incriminating?”

  “The abbey was clean. Thanks to the warning of a friend—whose name I have forgotten. An old woman’s memory, you know.” She smiled and he smiled back weakly, a new fellowship between them. Then she added, “They took what was on Anna’s desk in the scriptorium. Nothing incriminating. A book of poetry. Some music she was copying for Bek.”

  A new concern crossed his face. “How is Bek? He was very attached to Anna. Is he all right?”

  She liked that he asked after the boy. Rome had not robbed him of his compassion. “Sister Matilde looks after him. They have developed a bond of sorts. She is teaching him to ring the chapel bells.”

  “The chapel bells! But he hates the sound of bells.”

  She felt the pull of her scarred face as she smiled. It was good to think of these small successes. “Whatever things are lovely, think on these things,” the Apostle Paul had written in his letter to the Philippians. Good advice for troubled times.

  “He doesn’t hate them if he can control them. He composes the changes for them and Sister Matilde helps him write them down. Of course, he still chants Anna’s name at bedtime. His version of compline prayer or a lullaby that helps him sleep.”

  “Give him a message for me when he wakes up? Tell him VanCleve has returned. Tell him VanCleve has gone to bring back Anna.”

  “Will you rest before you go?”

  “I cannot rest, Mother. Not until I’ve seen her. Not until I’ve asked for her forgiveness.”

  “Then go with God,” she said.

  The bells for prime chimed out, not just one monotonous bell tone but a cacophony of glorious sound, startling in its energy.

  “Those are Bek’s bells,” she said. “He has a different melody for every office—if melody such joyous clamoring can be called—some mathematical sequence he keeps in his head.”

  Gabriel smiled. “That alone is proof enough of miracles, Mother. Now pray for another.”

  As he rode away, Kathryn joined the processional to the chapel. April third. The Feast of Irene, the fourth-century maiden who was burned for reading the Holy Scriptures. How ironic, Kathryn thought. No. That was just fatigue infecting her mind with such troublesome thoughts. All would be well. Brother Gabriel would find the girl. He would use his influence to see that she was safe. Henry IV was dead. The old order had passed. Please, God, let the new king be more tolerant of the cause.

  Exhausted, the abbess fell asleep halfway through the office.

  “Mother, the office has ended.” It was the novice who attended Kathryn, shaking her gently to waken her.

  “Yes, yes, of course,” she said and then murmured the last line of the Te Deum, grateful for the veil, hoping the girl would think her consumed by contemplation and not fatigue. Stiff with sitting so long in the same position, she took the young hand offered her. As they exited the chapel, she felt the sudden warmth of sunlight on her face.

  She paused. “I think I’ll linger here to meditate a little longer.” And then she thought of the day’s chores that lay ahead. “Maybe not,” she said and sighed.

  They were just outside the door of the little room where Anna had stayed. The horror of that situation came settling back on her. “I’m going to pack a small chest for Anna, then perhaps we can find someone to take it for us …” But even as she said it she was thinking, Who? There was no one left at Cooling Castle—not with Sir John and Lady Joan both fled. If only she could get a message to Anna. Some reassurance. Clothes. Some money even. She’d heard that prisoners had to pay for their own food. The girl had been taken away with nothing but the clothes on her back. She didn’t even know where they’d taken her. Godspeed, Brother Gabriel, she prayed. Godspeed.

  In the meantime, she would write a letter of inquiry to the archbishop’s office demanding to know of Anna’s whereabouts. After all, she was an abbess and a friend of Sir John Oldcastle’s, who was a friend of the king’s. Surely someone in that office would respond! Unless they were themselves too afraid of the taint of heresy.

  It had been three days since they’d taken Anna away. Little Bek had moved in with Sister Matilde—her cell was closest to the bell tower—and Anna’s room had a musty, unused smell. Kathryn unhooked the oiled parchment from the window to let in the fresh air. She took down Anna’s two dresses, folded them carefully, and put them in the bottom of the chest. These would need to be let out soon. She would add a needle and some thread to the chest. Perhaps the needlework would take Anna’s mind off the misery.

  If there was enough light to do needlework. She took three precious candles from her store.

  The contents of the chest still lay strewn across the bed just as the archbishop’s men had left them. She folded two clean chemises and added them to the pile, then tucked in a bar of sweet-smelling soap and a clean linen rag from beside the washstand. And Anna’s hairbrush. She smiled at the memory of that wild chaos of curls and added a small net snood.

  A beam of sunlight fell across the bed, snagging a shard of light on the silver necklace. Kathryn picked it up. She would have the chain repaired and send it also. Anna had said it was a family heirloom. It would give her comfort to have it close to her.

  It was an unusual necklace. There was something a little different about the cross. She’d seen someone else with one like it, something about the way the pearls were placed. She closed her eyes—she really needed to get herself some kind of tonic to balance her humors, to stir up her old blood. Clutching the necklace in her fist, she fingered the tiny filigreed crossarms with their random scattering of pearls. No. Not random at all. But cleverly designed. A hidden star. A six-pointed star!

  Kathryn sat down heavily on the bed. She studied the cross, prodding old memories left too long to lie. And what memory offered up was an image of that same cross around the slender neck of a young woman with raven hair and striking eyes and skin like cream. Nothing like the girl Anna. Anna with her hair as bright as … as bright as Alfred’s had been! And eyes as blue as Colin’s. And smooth white skin like Colin’s. Kathryn’s sweat bloomed on her forehead, even in the coolness of the little chamber. She saw herself trying to coax a squirming little girl with bright curls and milk-white skin into a fur jacket. Her old heart ached with the memory of it.

  No. This was reaching far beyond the bounds of reason to fulfill some buried wish. That child had been called Jasmine.

  “I gave her a Christian name. After our Lord’s mother, “the old midwife had said. “We named her Anna, “she told Finn. Anna who was fired with a temper inherited from her uncle. Anna with the cool clear eyes of her father. Anna who spoke so lovingly of her beloved old grandfather.

  Finn. The grandfather for whom Anna grieved.

  Finn, the love of Kathryn’s life, and the man she had betrayed.

  Her old heart fluttered like some wild bird. A sharp pain in her chest traveled down her arm. She tried to get up, to call out, but her legs folded under her.

  “Mother, are you all right?” It was Sister Matilde bending over her.

  The abbess heard the sister calling her name but had not the breath to respond.
All her thoughts, all her energy were directed toward fathoming the answer that pricked her mind.

  “Go to the apothecary. Ask the sister for some foxglove,” Matilde shouted to the other sisters who were gathering.

  Jasmine! It was Jasmine whom the archbishop had taken away to prison, Jasmine, the child whom Kathryn had coddled and loved and been comforted by when she had no other. No. God was not some cruel jester. He would not send her the child only to take her away. To take her away as her grandfather had once been taken away in shackles from Kathryn.

  She felt the squeezing in her chest. Struggled to get her breath. Struggled to calm her old heart. She could not die now. Not now. Not when Jasmine needed her.

  She owed that much at least to Finn.

  Lady Joan paid the messenger and greedily tore into the packet of letters, ignoring the pleas of her two-year-old grandson, who tried to climb her skirts. She had taken him into the courtyard to give her daughter, Lady Brooke, some respite from the child’s incessant whining. They all spoiled him mercilessly because her last child had been stillborn and the one before had died of a fever at fifteen months. “In a minute, poppet.”

  “Up. Up.” He held out his chubby arms and pumped his fists. She sat down on the low stone wall surrounding the courtyard, and heaved him into her lap. With the other hand, she held her letter into the sunlight to read it.

  Her John was safe at Herefordshire, unmolested! Thank God and all the saints!

  Her eyes scanned the page hungrily. He had answered the ecclesiastical summons with a written statement of his beliefs disputing the sale of indulgences, the confession of priests, and insisting that only doctrine founded in Holy Scripture to be the truth of the gospel.

  How else, good wife, I argued, can a man (or woman) know that truth unless they be allowed to read and interpret the words of our Lord for themselves? Must they put their faith in greedy priests and unholy friars, who would sell them that which God in His word offers freely to all mankind?

  But her eyes quickly scanned John’s theological treatise searching for the words she longed to hear. And there they were. Not even in code, but said boldly—he must surely think the storm had passed.

  I fully expect excommunication will be the worst Arundel can offer, and since my Christ and not some Antichrist pope holds the keys to the true Kingdom of Heaven, I do not fear such. As for you, my love, your lands have ever been under interdiction, so it is probably safe enough for you to return. Without royal writ—because of the act we pushed through Parliament—the archbishop has no power to harass us further. I will bide here awhile to let old ArundeVs fire burn out. Henry IV is dead and the crown has passed to Harry. It is my hope that he will prove more tolerant for the soldiers’ bond we once shared. Before ere long we can return to our “normal pursuits.”

  How much faith he put in comradeship!

  In the betwixt time, good wife, return to Cooling Castle and call upon our friends and advise them to be circumspect and wait patiently for my return. I shall hold you in my arms ere long, though I may have to come to you under cover of night until the lay of the land is clearer, but when was the nighttime anything but friend to us?

  Standing up, she shifted the child from her lap to her hip and strode into the hall.

  “Bridget,” she called to her maid. “Pack my traveling chest. We are going home!”

  A sennight later, Sir John lay with his wife in the high curtained bed in the lord’s chamber at Cooling Castle. The room was chilly in the predawn because the chamber fires were not yet lit. She had not called for coals at bedtime. She and John between them created enough warmth.

  “It’s good to be home, sweet wife. But I cannot tarry. I must be on my way before the cock crows. As long as I am within Arundel’s diocese, I am subject to the archbishop’s authority here and too easily found.”

  “Are you so sure, then, my lord, that your friendship with the new king can stand such a test? Arundel will not give up easily.”

  She had not told him at first, not wanting to break the glad spell of their reunion. He’d other things on his mind that pushed aside the urgency of political and religious matters. But he would have to know.

  Her head lay in the crook of his arm. She felt his lips brush the crown of her head.

  “Did you check in on the abbess? Is all well there?” he asked.

  As if he’d read her mind.

  “The abbess has been very ill. But they say she’s better now. Twice I’ve taken her coltsfoot infused in honey and mince conserve. The last time she seemed stronger. We passed an hour together in the spring sunshine, watching the first green shoots of spring. Though she talked but little. I could not tell behind the veil, but the way her head nodded I think she dozed. Once she woke to ask me if I knew her granddaughter. When I pressed her for more information, she laughed weakly and said that she’d been dreaming. That was all.”

  “Well, she has plenty of time to take a rest. There will be no more copying for a spell, I fear. I thought Arundel would search the abbey.”

  “He did.”

  “But he found nothing, right? The nest was clean. She’d burned everything, right?”

  “I’m afraid not quite everything.” She hated telling him, she knew he’d been fond of the girl. Would feel responsible for having placed her in harm’s way—as did she.

  “The young widow from Prague. They found a Wycliffe Bible in her possession. And another book as well—a book of Jewish spells. They arrested her, John. Took her to Lambeth Palace for questioning.”

  He swore under his breath. Outside, they heard the first crow of the cock. “There’s my signal, good wife,” he said, getting up and reaching for his breeches, which he’d flung across a chair in his haste. “I’ll go to Harry. I’ll demand the girl be released.”

  How like him, to take action first, without thinking it through. Straight on and damn the consequences! That had earned him an award of valor on the battlefield. But this fight was not so straightforward.

  “Husband, think! Arundel means to question her to gain evidence against you. He’ll use the witchcraft charge to pressure her. What girl could withstand the threat of burning? If you go to the king in her behalf, you but abet his case against both you and her.”

  “But we cannot leave her to—”

  “Brother Gabriel has gone to petition the king.”

  “Brother Gabriel!”

  “There’s much that’s come to light, my love, during your absence. But it grows light and you must be away.” She got up from the bed, wrapping the bed linens around her to protect her goosefleshed skin. “I will tell you all later. Just know that Brother Gabriel is doing all at court that can be done to secure her release.”

  “But I thought—”

  “Shh. You hear that? The servants are stirring. You must be away before they even know you are here. Gossip spreads quickly.”

  She kissed him good-bye, and only minutes later as the first gray light appeared at the window, Bridget tapped at her door.

  “Milady, I’ve brought coals for your fire.”

  “Come in,” she said, snuggling back into bed. The covers were still warm from his body.

  As Bridget stirred the fire, Joan heard the fast clip-clopping of a horse, its footfalls rapidly fading.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Who therefore resists the ruling power, resists the

  ordinance of God, … For it is not the ruler’s own act

  when his will is turned to cruelty against his subjects,

  but it is rather the dispensation of God …

  —FROM THE NATURE OF A TRUE PRINCE

  BY JOHN OF SALISBURY

  Two archery slits set high in the wall in Anna’s tower chamber testified to the castle’s many-purposed use. Each morning she stood on the stone base betwixt floor and wall to see the world outside. Sometimes, in the thin afternoon sunlight, girls in colorful gowns and court dandies clad in fur-trimmed tunics and silk stockings played at bowls in the green expanse below. T
his morning her fingers encountered frost on the stone lip as she grasped it to pull herself up while balancing on her tiptoes. The green below was empty and blanketed with a hoarfrost. The only movement came from the black-winged ravens swirling and diving in the morning air. It was a frozen, silent world. Even the Westminster bells had finally stopped. They had tolled incessantly for the first two days.

  “The king is dead, long live Prince Harry,” the old warder who fed her once a day had growled in answer to her question. That first day she’d had only scant bread and a little water, but she’d not complained and had thanked him graciously, knowing he was her only link to the outside. Such restraint had cost her much—her tongue was sore with biting—but her courtesy and seeming meekness had paid off. The next day the quantity, if not the quality, had improved, and yesterday she’d been given an egg with her bread. Today, he’d brought a gray sliver of boiled mutton and two chunks of bread. She’d saved one for later.

  The arches in her feet hurt and the woodsmoke curling from the castle’s many chimneys stung her eyes. She stepped down gingerly from the stone base, careful lest she lose her balance and injure her babe. She had no fire by which to huddle, but she had discovered that one wall of her chamber abutted another with a fireplace and some warmth leaked through the stone. She had pulled her pallet up against that wall. She sat down on it now, her back supported by the almost-warm stone, and pulled her cloak tight about her. She closed her eyes and wondered how she could get through the day. One could only sleep so much before the dreams intruded.

  After some time—she had no measure of counting the hours, except for the streaks of light that crept across the stone floor from the two narrow windows—she heard the lock scrape in her door.