The Illuminator (26 page)

“Do you mean to say, Finn, that you are of a noble house, and you never told me? Do you realize what this means?” The hand that had lately made whorls in his chest hair cradled his chin in its palm, turning it to face her. “If you are of noble birth, we can petition the king to be married!”

He said nothing. Conflicting emotions—irritation, consternation, and dismay—played tag across his face. She waited. The joy leaked out of her with each second of silence. A heat that had nothing to do with passion seared her skin. What if he'd kept quiet precisely because he wanted no alliance with her, thought her beneath him? All this time he'd been laughing at her, watching her play the great lady. Now that she'd flushed this information from him in a spurt of pride-filled arrogance, he'd be forced to reveal the fact that he'd only wanted to bed her. Was it possible that for her what had been a grand passion was for him a mere dalliance—a dalliance for which she was paid?

She felt like Eve after the fall.

She couldn't look at him. She sat up, moved to the edge of the bed, pulling the sheet with her.

He grabbed at the edge of the linen and held it in place before it exposed him completely. “I said
was,
Kathryn.
Was
heir. I am as you have said. Nothing more than an artisan,” he said miserably. “My lands and title are forfeit to the king.”

Forfeit?! That could only mean one thing. He was a traitor, and she was harboring him—literally—in her bosom, in the bosom of Blackingham. She had betrayed her children's birthright. Maybe even endangered their lives.

“You should have told me,” she said. “You should have told me if you have committed treason.”

She could not look at him. By not telling her, he had betrayed her trust, betrayed their intimacy. And yet, she still wanted to hold him to her and comfort him for his loss. What could be worse than losing his land? And she knew him well enough—or thought she knew him well enough until now— to know that he would grieve that loss for his daughter if not for himself.

“If I had betrayed the king, I would have been hanged, drawn and quartered,” he said from behind her. “My head would be on a pole and the crows would have long since pecked out my eyes.”

Those eyes the color of the sea that read her soul, those laughing eyes whose lids she even now longed to turn and kiss, not laughing now.

He sat up in the bed, leaned across her shoulder, touched her cheek. “My land was forfeit because I loved a woman too much. That seems to be a weakness with me.”

Some misunderstanding then, some minor offense that might yet be forgiven, and if his lands were not restored, what did she care? Blackingham, despite his disparagement of it, would be enough.

“Where was your castle?” she asked over her shoulder. She still sat with her back to him, unprepared to meet his gaze.

“In the Marches. On the Welsh border.”

“And the woman? Is she—”

His eyes reassured her. “She was Rose's mother.”

Kathryn felt a great weight lift. She knew how he'd loved his wife. She loved him the more for it. Though some part of her envied the dead woman.

“And the king did not approve.”

It was not a question. An old story, really, easy enough to decipher, Kathryn thought. Finn had been young and in love, had shown his rebellious streak, had imprudently disobeyed the king, married in haste, maybe turning his back on the wife King Edward had chosen.

“The king did not approve,” he repeated.

He paused. She waited, anticipating, with relief, a romantic tale of love requited and against great odds. She wanted to turn back to him, but she would wait a moment longer, wait for further reassurance, punish him for giving her such a scare. She sat upright, her spine stiff, and looked at the ceiling instead. She heard a sharp intake of breath and then a quick exhale.

“I married a Jew,” he said.

At first she thought she had not heard right, but the word hovered up near the rafters. It seemed to write itself in the air, each one writ larger than the last. Jew. Jew. Jew. She sat very still, frozen like a rabbit cowering beneath the shadow of a hawk. Even her breath would not come.

Jew, Jew, I married a Jew,
he'd said. She had taken a man to her bed who'd had intercourse with a Jew. A Christ killer.

He reached out to her, touched her shoulder.

“Kathryn, if you could have known Rebekka—”

She cringed, felt herself pulling away and could not stop until she sat, barely teetering on the edge of the bed.
Rebekka.
And Rose with her olive skin and raven hair, the girl she'd first compared to the Holy Virgin. But how could she have known? She'd only ever seen one Jew, and that an old money lender in Norwich her father had once pointed out to her. She tugged violently at the sheet until it came away. She wrapped herself in it and stood up, her back still turned. She would not have one who consorted with a Jew see her naked.

“I need to go back to the kitchen to see if Agnes has returned to her duties. The household has to be fed.” Her voice sounded small, squeezed tight.

“Kathryn, don't you think we—?”

“You'd better go back to Ro— your daughter. One of my sons may come at any time.”

Alfred and Colin. What if they knew their mother had fornicated with a Jew?

She pulled her shift over her body. She heard his heavy sigh, the whisper of his linen braies as he pulled them over his thighs. As she wove her hair into a thick braid, she felt his breath on her back, a brushing of his lips in the nape of her neck. Her skin prickled.

“Kathryn, please—”

“Another time, Finn. There'll be time, later.”

Would he not guess her repulsion and despise her for her small-mindedness? But she was not like him—did not have the great well of mercy and compassion inside her as he did.

She heard him moving away, his hose rustling against the rushes scattered on the floor.
Call him back. Tell him it changes nothing.

“Later, Finn. I promise, we will talk later.” She fumbled with the fastenings on her bodice. There were her sons to consider. It was unlawful to consort with a Jew.

No answer. She turned to call him back, to lead him back to the bed. But she was too late. She was alone in the room with the sound of the bar slipping into its iron latch as the door closed.

And on the table beside her bed glittered the silver coins the abbot had sent.

Alfred did not come to his mother's chamber that afternoon as expected. He'd already been there, arriving in time enough to see the door close
on
the back of the person entering. A man's back. He'd listened at the door only moments. But long enough. He went straight to the illuminator's quarters, his father's old chamber—how dare she—to confirm his suspicion. It was, as he suspected, empty. He peeked behind the curtain separating the antechamber, only to see the sleeping Rose, a sight which at any other time would have excited his imagination to mischief. But not today. Not with his mother defiling his father's memory and her chaste widow's bed with this interloper.

He fingered the pearls in the pocket of his tunic, the pearls belonging to his mother that he'd found in Simpson's private chamber. No doubt, the sly overseer had pilfered them when Lady Kathryn's back was turned, thinking she would assume she'd lost them. Alfred had looked forward to returning them to her as proof of his competence, had anticipated her smile of pleasure when she saw them. It would be like a gift to her, something she could hold over Simpson's head. But she'd been otherwise engaged, and now his gift was spoiled.

That was why she'd sent him away. All that pretense about spying on the overseer. She'd just wanted him out of the way so she could fornicate with a stranger. She probably figured Colin was too stupid to know what was going on under his very nose. God's Blood! They'd probably even done it in his father's bed. The thought sickened him. His own dam! It was as though his father had been erased. Alfred suppressed a desire to shove, with one fell swoop of his hand, the neat little paint pots from his father's desk—the desk that this … this
shriveled little cod
had dared to appropriate. But no. The noise might waken the sleeping
princess
in the next room. Sure to bring down his mother's wrath on his head. Instead, he picked up a couple of quills and crumpled them in his hands, poking their nibs into the flesh of his palm until he winced.

A leather book bag hung, open, on a peg. A bag that once held his father's books. He shuffled through the loose pages of illuminated script. Hasty examination showed the sheets on top to be John's Gospel. And underneath, more pages, these crammed into the bottom as though less valuable or half-forgotten. He recognized some Saxon words, English words. Unimportant scribblings. Not so angry as to endanger his soul by desecrating a Holy Gospel—especially now that a seed of an idea had occurred to him—he returned Saint John carefully to the bag. Then he took the pearls from his pocket
and arranged the strand in the bag, covering them askance with the loose pages from the bottom, so that if one looked with only half an eye, the pearls would be visible while still having the appearance of an attempted concealment.

Having vented his frustration in this petty act of revenge, Alfred tiptoed out of the room, but not before pocketing a thin sheet of gold leaf—one didn't have to be an artist to know it was costly—and strode down the stairs with a smile on his face. Once outside, he laid the gold leaves onto a pile of dung, smiling to himself at the result. He thought briefly of putting the gilded cow pile in the illuminator's bed, but not wanting to dirty his hands with the fresh dung, shrugged off the urge. Just the thinking of it was enough to satisfy him. Let his lady mother find her pearls in her lover's room. Let him explain that.

Alfred rode straight to the Beggar's Daughter to celebrate his mischief. And to drown his grief. He bought the first pint himself. Sir Guy de Fontaigne bought the second. And the third. And then Alfred began to talk.

Sir Guy, listening attentively, gave the boy an avuncular pat on the back, a sigh of commiseration, and motioned for the publican to pour another pint.

Agnes lingered by the grave, oblivious to the cold. She couldn't leave yet. Not until she said her piece.

“I reckon ye were a good husband to me, John. Except fer the drink. And God'll forgive ye that. He knows 'tweren't yer fault.”

She plucked a long strand of hair from her head—when did it go so gray?—wound it around her index finger in a perfect circle. Then she slid the ashen ring of it from her finger and patted it into the loamy earth. The crows would probably steal it to line their nest, but she had nothing else to give him.

John had wound such a ring for her on their wedding day, a bright circlet of his own brown hair. She'd cried when a spark from the cook fire had singed it from her finger, cried more for the loss than the pain. He'd laughed at her, then held her to him and said he would shave his head and braid all his locks—his brown luxurious locks—into jewelry if 'twould make his bride happy.