The Illuminator (3 page)

More bells now. Their clappers raucous, strident, like children clamoring for attention, they answered the cathedral's mother bells. Behind the city walls there were churches everywhere, built by wool merchants with cash from Flanders. Bribes to God or monuments to pride? Half-Tom sometimes thought that if the North Folk shire had as many holy souls as it had churches, he'd see more of heaven and less of hell. Though he knew one holy soul— only one—and that no hero, but a woman. He'd planned to visit her today; now there'd be scant time.

He'd left the marshy fens at daybreak, his willow baskets on his back, and run the usual gauntlet of pilgrims, thieves, and beggars on the hard-rutted road from Saint Edmund to Norwich. His stubby legs had pumped hard to make the weekly market by midday. They cramped in protest. His shoulders ached from balancing the bulky pack, and his wits were weary from sparring with runaway villeins and laborers who indulged in a bit of dwarf-baiting to break the boredom of their own journeys. Sport for them. Danger for him. He'd already bartered two eels and a long-necked stoppered eel basket to rogues bent on using him for a football.

The unwieldy pack on his shoulders bumped with every step, chafing the skin beneath his jerkin. Sweat stung his eyes. He didn't see the sow and suckling pig that blocked his path until the beast grunted a warning. As he careened sideways to avoid this last hurdle between him and the town gates, his pack shifted, snapping its leather strap, and crashed to the ground. Its contents spilled higgledy-piggledy into the muck.

“Blast the bishop and his swine to bloody hell,” he cursed.

The hog snorted and shook her snout at him, baring her incisors. A broad frown split the dwarf's round face as he kicked at the empty air, stopping just short of the pig's hind flank.

Half-Tom was angry. But he was no fool.

The sow heaved herself over, crushing a large round basket. The dwarf swore again at the sound of splintering willow. A week's labor shattered under the pig's belly. A whole week, gathering and stripping the willow wands, weaving them lightly, deftly, in spite of his clumsy hands, into the graceful long-necked baskets that would trap the eels or be traded for a bit of cloth or a sack of flour, and if the day was prosperous, a pint of ale. Vain
hope, that. He'd be lucky to salvage enough to buy a half portion of flour.

He flung a string of spittle at the offending beast.

Bloody sow—it was the bishop's hog, aright; he could tell by the notch on the ear—making a stinking hole right here on the main road leading into the third-largest city in all of England. Wallowing in her own offal, living off the leavings of the nobility and gorging herself on food that might have fed a yeoman's starving brood for a month. Her floppy ears, lined in pale gray, mocked him—a bishop's dingy miter.

Half-Tom's stomach rumbled his frustration. The bit of bread and dripping he'd eaten in the pre-dawn was long since gone. He thought of the stiletto blade in his boot and eyed the suckling pig. So what if it was Church property. There was some what thought Holy Church had too much property. There was some what said a man could say his own prayers, didn't need a priest. Heresy, others called it. But Half-Tom reckoned one thing was true—he could say his own blessing over roast pork as good as any taller man, be he Benedictine or Franciscan.

Anyway, didn't the bishop owe him for the ruined baskets?

He wiped sweat from his forehead with the ragged sleeve of his doublet and glanced around. The road lay empty—even the beggars had abandoned the roadside for the town market—except for one lone rider approaching from the south. A mere speck on the horizon. Too far away to notice, if he did the deed quickly. A convenient clump of bushes screened him from view of anyone coming and going outside the gate. There was a peasant's hut behind him, but no sign of life, except for a child—hardly more than a babe, too young to give witness—playing with a chicken in the doorway.

Still, to steal the bishop's pig … It'd be like poaching the king's deer. At the very least a stint in the stocks—a punishment especially painful for a dwarf who drew more than the usual number of tormentors. Maybe even a hanging offense if caught red-handed.

He pulled his scraggly chin hairs. The speck on the horizon was taking the shape of a horse and rider.

Swearing loudly, he kicked the air again, but this time his wooden clog connected with the flank of the sow, and not gently, though with not enough force to satisfy his temper. The hog lumbered to her feet. Half-Tom, preoccupied with inventorying his damaged goods, ignored her.

He ignored, also, the child that wobbled on unsteady legs across the hut's
threshold and out to the edge of the road. Usually, he enjoyed the children who were drawn to him by his child size—not the older, pimply-faced youths who tormented him, but the little ones. He'd even been known to plunder his shrunken purse for a penny to buy a sugarplum or two. But just now, he was too distracted by his anger, and by his temptation, to pay much attention to this blond cherub who watched him with large, round eyes.

The suckling pig—probably the runt of the litter, for Half-Tom saw no others—got to its feet and, squealing indignantly at the interruption of his feeding, followed the sow. Half-Tom looked up in time to see the child reach out a chubby hand toward the piglet. She grabbed at its tempting curlicue of a tail, and holding it in her fist, she pulled. The piglet's squeal became a screech. The child laughed and pulled harder.

“Let go the pig's tail!” Half-Tom yelled, dropping a basket. “Don't—” But the squealing pig had already gained the sow's attention. She was making for the grinning child as resolutely as a thousand-pound mother could waddle. Her warning grunts punctuated the piglet's squeals. Still, the child did not release her hold, but at the sight of the angry animal, the little girl's laughter changed to a whimper. Frozen, she held on stubbornly to the pig's tail.

The sow charged.

The child's cries mingled with the grunts of the hog as the sow knocked her prey to the ground and began to maul it. Her piglet safe—or maybe forgotten at the prospect of the unexpected and oh-so-tender feast—the sow, snorting and slobbering, began to chew on the child's leg.

Half-Tom leaped onto the back of the hog, but he might as well have been a fly on the flank of a horse. The child's cries spiraled into ragged screams. A gaping gash on her leg oozed blood and bits of chewed flesh.

His knife blade flashed in the morning sunlight, and the sow's warm blood spurted onto his face, blinding him. The sickly, sweet smell of it thickened in his nostrils. He wiped his bloody face on his sleeve and slashed again.

And again.

And yet again.

More blood now, not spurting, just pouring, like dark ale from a spigot, until the bishop's hog lay silent, her body twitching, her stained snout pinning the child's leg. A bit of chewed flesh showed between her bared incisors.

The little girl's cries stopped abruptly. Half-Tom lifted her in his short
arms. She was not moving, not breathing. Blood trickled from the ragged wound on her leg and her foot hung awkwardly.

He had not been quick enough.

And he had killed the bishop's swine for nothing.

He looked over his shoulder. The lone rider was closer now; he could hear the pounding of the hoofbeats. Or was that his own heartbeat?

The child's body stiffened and jerked in his arms. A death tremor? Her breath seemed stuck in her throat, like a trapped butterfly struggling to get out. Her throat quivered ever so slightly. His stomach answered with a quiver of its own. He rocked her back and forth in his arms. A fluttering movement of her chest, then a gasp, and she began to cry, a small weak sound that wrung the blood right out of his heart.

“It's all right, little one. Hush, now. Old Half-Tom'll keep ye safe. Hush now,” he crooned, rocking back and forth, back and forth, then muttered to himself, “He may swing for it, but he'll keep ye safe.”

It seemed like hours, but the whole fracas took less than a minute. Half-Tom suddenly became aware that he and the child and the dead hog at his feet were not alone in the world. From the doorway of the hut a woman ran toward them, her arms reaching out, her skirts flying behind her like great gray birds. When she saw her child she began to cry, keening, unintelligible sounds. They writhed in the air like the eels crawling from their ruined baskets.

Enjoying the main road after his two-day journey from Thetford through dense forest and brackish swamp, Finn was, at first, unaware of the struggle between the dwarf, the sow, and the child. Indeed, from a distance, the horseman mistook the dwarf for a child in a tantrum. Green fields, grazing sheep, the warm sun on his back, the thought of a pork pie and a mug of ale before he continued the twelve miles on north of Norwich to Bacton Wood and Broomholm Abbey: all conspired to lull him into a sense of false peace.

Then he saw the woman come screaming from the cottage.

Finn dug his heels into the sides of his tired horse sufficiently to spur his borrowed nag to a gallop. He reined in only long enough to assess the wounded child, the distraught mother, the dead animal. He didn't dismount but shouted at the woman, who held the mangled, silent child in her arms.

“Does she breathe?”

The mother merely stood, looking at her baby dumbly with wide, staring eyes.

“Is the baby breathing?” he shouted again.

The woman did not answer but held the child up to him like one offering a sacrifice to a god. The small form was very still. Finn took the child and cradled her against him, being careful to support the foot. The pig's snout had snapped the bone just above the ankle. The flesh was badly mutilated, but the bleeding had stopped. He thought he detected the tiniest heartbeat.

The dwarf stepped forward. “The babe may yet be saved, milord, she has not turned blue. But you must hurry. There's a holy woman I know who lives by Carrow Priory in the Church of Saint Julian. She will care for the child and pray whatever miracle can be formed. The anchoress at Saint Julian's. Anybody can tell you. Ask for Julian.”

“There's no time to find the way,” Finn said.

And before the little man could finish protesting that he did not wish to enter the city—Finn could well guess why: he'd noted, too, the notched ear on the carcass of the sow, the dwarf's clothing and dagger smeared with pig's blood—he scooped the dwarf onto his horse and headed toward the town gates.

“We'll come back for you later, as soon as the babe's safe,” Finn shouted over his shoulder to the woman, who stood gazing after them as though she'd been turned to stone.

They galloped through the gates of the city, almost colliding with a cart of hogsheads at the first crossing. The dwarf pointed with his right hand. Finn spurred his horse in that direction. His arm ached with holding the child cushioned against the shocks from the pounding hoofbeats. He glanced down only briefly. She was as still as a doll. He prayed there was still a quiver of life in her.

“King's Street and Rouen Road,” the dwarf shouted in his ear. The dwarf was holding on for dear life, making Finn's small-arms belt cut into his side.

Finn reined in his horse in front of a small church built of flint. He was about to head for the heavy wooden doors when the dwarf grunted and pointed to a tiny hut attached to the sidewall of the church, hardly more than a lean-to. Finn recognized immediately the cell-like appurtenance of a hermit, attached to but not contained within the church. In two leaps, he crossed the
patch of herb garden and was at the outside portal, which stood open to the mid-summer noontime.

From within, a woman's voice called in the singsong voice of an oft-repeated litany, “If you're wishing to visit with the anchoress, you should go around and enter through the anteroom at the other end. Tap at her window, and if she is not at prayer, she'll draw back the curtain.”

Finn ducked his head, still holding the child securely in the cradle of his arm, which had gone numb, and entered the small bare room. He was about to protest to the short, wide-hipped woman bent over the fire pit in the center of the floor that he had no time for holy protocol when she turned around. She had a frown on her face and the scolding words obviously already on her tongue. Her gaze halted on the child in his arms.

“Bring her here,” she said, indicating a window with a wide casement that opened into the next chamber. She hastily removed a milk pitcher and used trencher. Finn guessed immediately that he was in the maid's room of the two-room dwelling and this large window was the table where the maid passed the holy woman her food. There was also a heavy wooden door separating the two rooms. It was bolted from the maid's side.

“Mother Julian, you have—”

The face of a woman in wimple and veil appeared at the window and, without waiting for introduction or explanation for the interruption of her solitude, reached through the window to receive the child.