The Illuminator (20 page)

“I'm gratified that you and your daughter will be safe and snug at Blackingham. Our roads sometimes become impassable when winter sets in. Winter enters East Anglia abruptly. An impatient husband who takes his bride without courtship or ceremony.”

Hearing such an incongruous metaphor from a man whose only company was that of holy men, Finn wondered briefly in what waters the abbot had sailed before running aground at Broomholm.

The abbot held out his hand. “God go with you,” he said.

Brother Joseph said nothing.

The sovereigns were more than enough to purchase the superior pigments needed to finish the manuscript. It was Thursday, market day in Norwich, and Finn reached the city in time to squander some of his windfall. He bought a new ladle for Agnes, who complained that the old one was warped, and presents for Rose and Kathryn: fine leather boots, glove-soft; not stitched cowhide slippers such as they usually wore, and of the newest fashion, straight from London, where the new silver fasteners called “buckles” were a fashion statement. Of the fit for Rose, he was reasonably sure. For Kathryn he was certain. He had held her foot in his hand, his palm caressing her instep, his fingers massaging the heel, the ball, between her slender, perfect toes.

He was eager to get back to Kathryn and to Rose, eager, too, to get started on the new packet delivered to him at Broomholm, the codex from Wycliffe. It would be a different kind of challenge. He'd agreed to the commission at the urging of John of Gaunt, for whom he'd done a Book of Hours last year, though he'd not been aware of the controversy that swirled around the cleric.

He'd been intrigued by Wycliffe's use of English as a translation for the Holy Scriptures, and he liked the idea of a less ostentatious, cleaner artistic expression. Surely a more appropriate illustration for the Gospel story than the gem-encrusted, gaudy display the abbot envisioned. And he'd been impressed by the cleric's forthright, honest manner, plainspoken, equally plain in dress and demeanor. Finn had enjoyed the lack of pretension, having found a surfeit of sophistry and pretense while in the employ of the duke. All in all, he was not sorry he'd taken on the commission, though he now knew enough to be discreet, enough not to open the packet in the presence of the abbot.

He was glad to see that the Oxford seal had not been tampered with.

It was late afternoon when he left the market and mounted his horse. He felt a twinge in his shoulder. The abbot had been right. They were in for a change in the weather. The summer was about to be routed, but that was as it should be. Everything in its natural order. It would be good to spend the cold winter days in the warm cocoon of the redbrick manor house, nesting with his art and the two women he loved. But he had one more stop to make before returning to Aylsham. He turned his horse toward the little church of Saint Julian.

Julian recognized the man who tapped at her visitor's window as soon as she pulled back the curtain. “Finn,” she said. “How good to see you.” She still held in her hand a sheet of the parchment she was working on.

“I knocked at Alice's door and there was no answer, so I came around here to this window. Now I see I've interrupted your work. I'm sorry.”

“You have interrupted nothing but my frustration. And that interruption is welcome. I wish I could offer you refreshment, but Alice did not attend me today.”

“I have already eaten. But I've brought you a fresh loaf and a treat besides.”

He pulled a parcel from inside his doublet and handed it to her through the narrow window. She unwrapped it with a small cry of delight. The crusty loaf was welcome, but the small brownish brick beside it was a treasure indeed.

“Sugar. Oh, Finn, there must be at least a pound here. Too much for one person, surely.” Mentally, she calculated. It would take 360 eggs to barter for a pound of sugar. An egg a day. A whole year's worth. “You must take some back.”

“The abbot has paid me generously, and Blackingham Manor feeds me well. You have many visitors. I'm sure you will find a way to share the sugar.”

His voice was like a reed pipe pitched low. She felt herself relaxing, soothed by its undulating rhythms. He tapped the crusty loaf lightly with his long paint-stained fingers, an artist's hands. She wondered if she would like his work. Somehow, she thought she would.

“The bread is still warm from the oven,” he said. “Eat some before it gets cold.”

“Only if you will join me,” she said, feeling her spirits suddenly lighten. “Come around through Alice's chamber. Alice hides a key beneath the second stepping stone in the garden. We can share a meal through the window into her room. It's much larger than this skinny little portal.”

“It would be my pleasure to break bread in such holy company.”

As she listened for the sound of the key in the outside door, she cut two slices, releasing the yeasty aroma into the close room. She scraped a few precious grains of sugar onto each. By the time she had finished he had already entered and pulled a stool beneath the window.

“I have fresh milk. Alice brought it before she left.” She pulled her own stool over to sit opposite, poured two pewter mugfuls and set them on the window ledge in front of him. Then she poured a saucerful and set it on the floor at her feet. A gray shadow separated from the deeper shadows in the corner and whipped across the room.

Finn laughed and pointed to the smoke-colored cat, who lapped daintily at the milky offering. “I see you have acquired a boarder since last we met.”

“This is Jezebel,” Julian said, breaking a few crumbs into the cat's saucer, stroking its ruff. “Half-Tom brought her to me. He said he found her in the market, half-starved and choking on her own fur.”

“An unlikely name for a companion to a holy woman.”

“Father Andrew, the curate here, named her in a fit of temper. She knocked over the communion wine.”

“And he let you keep her after such a sin?”

“When I pointed out to him the line in the
Ancrene Riwle
—that's the rule book for anchoresses—that specifically says a holy woman may keep a cat within the anchorhold. That—and the fact that she's an excellent mouser— convinced him.”

They laughed together. It was good to laugh. She'd had little cause of late.

They talked as they shared the milk and the bread: about Half-Tom, about Jezebel's grooming habits, about Julian's Revelations. He asked about the bowl of hazelnuts on the wide ledge of the window.

“I give them away to my visitors. As a reminder of God's love. How He loves the smallest thing He has made. Please, take one with you when you leave. It will cost you less than a holy relic. Like grace, it is free.”

She noticed Finn's gaze wander to the manuscript that she had hastily pushed aside. Though the sparse cell was furnished with a small scrivener's desk, she used the window ledge as a shelf.

“You say your writing does not go well?”

She swallowed before answering. “Most of that, my Revelations concerning my visions, was done months ago. I have written little of late.”

“Not since the child,” he said.

“I cannot get past the mother's pain. My failure to comfort her. To show her His love in spite of the death of her little girl.” She picked up a few grains of errant sugar with the tip of her finger.

She was grateful that Finn offered no empty words of condolence, no admonition that grief disavowed faith and was thus a sin. His own grief showed in the tightening of his jaw line as she told him how the little girl had been doing better, her leg healing, until the fever came; how the mother would not be consoled, but railed against a cruel God who would take her child; how she cursed the Church and the pig and the bishop who owned it.

When Julian had finished her story, they sat in silence for a minute, then he asked to see her work.

She pushed the pile of papers toward him, chewed the sweet bread in silence as he scanned the scattered pages of vellum. Jezebel, having licked her bowl clean and washed her face with her pink tongue, bounded into Julian's lap and watched Finn warily, her green eyes half-closed as he read. She purred as Julian scratched between her tufted ears.

Minutes passed. Julian felt uncomfortable. The realization that she craved his good opinion both surprised and alarmed her. Jezebel, as if sensing her disquiet, leaped down and padded toward her shadowy corner. Finally, Finn straightened the pages into a neat stack, neater than when he'd found them, and set them down.

“I'm not a pious man, but I can see how this, your teaching of a loving God, a Mother God, could move some to a truer understanding of the nature of God. This is a text worthy of illumination.”

Despite his disclaimer, she suspected he was very much a pious man, though not in the self-righteous sense that too many displayed with their elaborate rosaries and ornate crosses. And, in spite of the fear that it was a prideful feeling, she was pleased that he liked her work and a little embarrassed. He must be used to eloquence.

“The writing is mostly for my own understanding. To help me understand the true meaning of my visions. I am not learned enough—my Latin is poor. I do not write for others. I cannot write in the language of the Church.”

He smiled, a slightly crooked, enigmatic smile.

“Tell me about your visions,” he said.

She told him about her sickness. It was so much easier to talk about than to write about. He was a good listener, leaning forward intently as she told him how, as a young woman, yearning for salvation, she'd asked three things of God.

First she'd prayed for a true understanding of His passion, desiring to behold His suffering—like the Magdalene who stood beneath His cross—to see, to know, to share His agony, to hear His cry to the Father, to see the bright fountain of His cleansing blood when the Romans pierced His gentle flesh. It was not enough to hear the Scriptures intoned in a language she only half understood. She had to see, to know, to really
know
His passion before her soul could drink from that fountain.

He nodded encouragement as she told him how she prayed for some bodily sickness, a great suffering so that she would be drawn closer to God in patience and understanding, so that her soul would be purified. She told how she begged for three wounds: true contrition, true compassion, and a true longing for God.

She paused to sip from the cup. She could hear herself swallowing.

Finn listened—she'd never seen a man sit so still—whilst she told him about the malady that attacked her body, how she lay three days and three nights at the point of death, how her mother propped her up on pillows so that she could breathe after she became dead from the waist down, and how, when the priest came to offer the last rites, her sight began to fail so all she could see was the light from the cross her curate held in front of her. Only the cross. Only the light.

“It was six years ago, before I came to the hermitage of Saint Julian. I was thirty years old,” she said.

As she told her story, the light in the room was fading, too. She stood up and got a candle and placed it on the windowsill that separated them. Its light illumined his face—the graying beard, the high brow where his hair had thinned. She waited for some signal—a gesture of restlessness, a scraping of his chair—that he was growing impatient with her story. Some did. He asked no questions. Simply waited for her to go on. The bread lay in front of him half-eaten.

“Then suddenly, as I beheld the cross, all my pain, all my fear was taken from me. It simply ceased as though it had never been. I was as right as ever I was before. I felt whole, alive, as I had not felt in weeks. I wanted to get up. I wanted to run. I wanted to sing. I knew immediately that this marvelous change could only be a secret working of God.”

He shifted his weight, leaned slightly closer. “And the visions?” he asked.

“I saw the red blood running down from under His garland of thorns.
Hot and fresh. And lifelike. Just as it was in the time that the crown of thorns was pressed on His head. It was a great agony to watch Him thus, but it was great joy also. A surprising great joy, a joy like, I think, there shall be in heaven. And I understood many things. Without any intermediary, no one between my soul and His. I saw and understood by myself. With no one to interpret or explain.”