The Illuminator (38 page)

'Tweren't working for Rose either. Crying and retching, crying and retching was all the poor girl did. Either from fear for her father, or the burden in her belly, or as a result of the crude pills the girl choked down to please Lady Kathryn. “You want to be healthy when your father returns,” Lady Kathryn would say.

“Do ye know what's in that?” Agnes had asked last time when Rose had gagged on the odd-shaped pill. “ 'Tis as big as a robin's egg and as stinky as a rotten 'un.”

Kathryn had shot her a warning glance. “Just a physick of ordinary herbs.”

Ordinary herbs, Agnes thought. Mixed with hazelwort and birthwort and larch fungus and spikenard and heaven knew what other vile thing Old Gert might have thrown in. Agnes knew what her mistress was up to. She wondered if Rose did. But so far, the girl had not expelled the contents of her womb—only her stomach.

Lady Kathryn would be back from her ride any minute. Agnes checked the boiling pot on the hearth, then glanced out the window. The great hollow
oak—Magda's honey tree—was casting its cold shadow halfway down the hill, all the way to the cisterns. A groan of metal hinges as the door opened— the inside latch was never placed until vespers. That should be Lady Kathryn now. Good. There was enough hot water for whatever noxious brew she might demand.

Lady Kathryn slammed the door shut behind her, as though punishing the oak and the iron. She had so much anger in her. Agnes had only seen her that way once before, when her father had forced her to marry Roderick. That time, she had not eaten for two weeks but had eventually given in for the love of her ailing father. These last few days, Agnes had pondered over the source of the present anger, pitying the poor wretch who might feel its full force. At first she'd feared it might be the girl. But though Kathryn had sometimes been impatient with Rose, she'd seemed to exercise a gentle restraint.

“Agnes, grind these into a fine powder and mix with boiling water.”

Agnes took the small basket of marsh-mallow roots mixed with milfoil, fennel, and dwarf elder.

“How much water? Is it to be an elixir?”

“No, just enough water to make a plaster.”

Agnes sighed. Poor Rose. She would sleep tonight—or not—with the malodorous plaster blistering her belly and her privates.

Pacing, Lady Kathryn covered her face with her hands, massaged her forehead. “I'm at the end of my tether. If this doesn't work, she'll just have to bear the child and then we'll see what is to be done.”

Agnes didn't even want to think what that might mean. She crossed herself and shivered, noticing for the first time that the woman she'd tended since a slip of a girl was growing old. Her white hair—turned thus when she'd not seen thirty summers—had never made her seem old. It was usually bound into a halo of light around her head. Now it lay in a tangled, ratty mass down her back, dragging down the muscles in her face. The skin on her cheekbones was stretched so taut it looked as though the bone might prick through its thin white tent.

“My lady, 'twould not be the first child at Blackingham to be born on the wrong side of the blanket. And I dare say mayn't be the last. What's the harm? The girl is pleasant enough, not lazy, and she could be company to ye. She and her babe could stay on.”

“It's not that simple.”

“Well, nothing ever is, is it?” Agnes ground the herbs in her mortar and pestle. The effort punctuated her words with little puffs of air. “She could at least stay until her father gets out. Can't think why they took 'im in the first place. I know human nature. And Master Finn is no killer.” She ladled water from the simmering pot on the hearth. “Have ye any word from him?”

Kathryn shook her head.

“Does Finn know who the father of the baby is?” Agnes asked, trying to sound matter-of-fact, as though it were not a matter of grave importance.

Lady Kathryn dropped the metal bowl with a clang.

“That is not your concern, now, is it?”

Never mind. Agnes knew who the father was, all right. Who else but young Colin? The two of them were ever together, playing like children. Now Rose was breeding and young Colin had gone “on pilgrimage.” The ways of nobility were hard to fathom sometimes. Why couldn't he just marry the girl?

Lady Kathryn put the bowl on the table. Agnes spooned the hot paste into it. The paste would need to be applied before it cooled and set.

“Be careful not to blister the girl's skin.”

Kathryn gave no response, but threw other words over her shoulder as she exited the kitchen through the butler's pantry, “I have sent word for Alfred to attend me. He'll probably come here to your kitchen first. They all do. When he does, send him to me immediately.”

As fading footfalls echoed on the stairs, another thought occurred to Agnes. Could it be that Finn didn't know about the babe? That would answer in part for Lady Kathryn' s urgency. If Gert's potions worked, the illuminator might never have to know. Women's plots—too tangled for most men to unravel. She chewed on that for a minute, and then another, bleaker thought intruded. If 'twere to be the hangman's noose for the illuminator, it might even be a kindness to let him go to his grave in ignorance of his daughter's plight.

Alfred did not come to Blackingham that day. But the dwarf did. Like everybody else, he always came to Agnes's kitchen first, but she knew it was not for something warming on her hearth. There was a simmering of another sort going on—she'd noticed it in the sly glances he gave her Magda and the funny little way the pointy end of his nose glowed pink whenever she was
around. Thank the Holy Virgin, this day she was not. She'd gone with a basket of victuals to tend her broody mother.

It wasn't that Agnes didn't like Half-Tom, but she wanted more for Magda than a dwarf from the fens, and that made her unusually brusque.

“Be ye not a little far from yer swamp on this wintry day, Half-Tom? If ye've come to Blackingham with a message for the illuminator, he be'int here.”

She didn't offer him a drink, as she had the first time he appeared at her door, looking for the illuminator with a message from the holy woman. If he hoped to find hospitality here now, he would find it of a grudging sort, only in kind and proportion as Christian charity demanded. She busied herself with plucking a brace of partridge and did not look up.

“I know,” he said, shaking his head with a doleful expression. “I heard talk in Aylsham. A wicked business 'tis, too. They've not the brains to find the priest's killer, so they pin it on an innocent man.”

Agnes responded only with a harrumph that communicated nothing. She'd learned long ago to keep counsel with herself in dangerous matters. Besides, she didn't want to encourage him in anything that might lengthen his stay until her Magda returned. Her girl so needful and eager to return love.

The dwarf warmed his hands at the blazing hearth.

“You go on, Agnes, I've a packet for Finn from Oxford. And I'm pledged to put it only in his hands. That being the matter, I thought I'd stop to see if Blackingham has any message for him. All upon the occasion, of course, that I can get into Castle Prison.”

Yes, and then ye can carry it back, she thought. And soon enough, ye'll have excuse to traipse back and forth, back and forth from Castle Prison to Blackingham on the pretense of carrying messages. It was well out of his way from the fens. He had to turn left at the crossroads and go north to come to Aylsham, when he could save daylight and shoe leather by going straight to Norwich. She watched his eyes, set wide in his full-moon face, as they searched the corners of the cavernous kitchen. She knew what he was looking for.

“There'll be no message from Blackingham going to the prison,” she said.

“Shouldn't that be my lady's decision?” His voice was deep, husky, like his powerful shoulders, all out of proportion to the rest of his body.

“You're an impudent fellow. Mistress already told me.” Her fingers plucked the feathers from the birds so fast they bunched in her hands. “She's angry with the illuminator for causing her to harbor a fugitive.”

“But she cannot think him guilty!”

“His guilt or innocence is not a matter for her to decide. If the law says he's guilty, then he's guilty.”

“Well, what of his daughter? Surely she—”

“The illuminator's daughter is too ill with grief to see anybody.”

The lies piled up like the feathers that she swept into a great sack hanging beneath the table to be saved for ticking. “If 'tis news of Blackingham ye wish to carry, ye may tell Finn his daughter is being cared for by Lady Kathryn herself and that no harm will come to her because of him. Now, ye'd best be off, little man, ye've a long trek to Norwich. Here. Take this for yer journey.” She slid a pasty filled with pork and mashed turnips down the length of the long deal table. “I'd not take time to eat it here if I was ye. The light will not last in winter.”

He looked at her with eyes that seemed to read her—too well. Then, picking up the pasty, he nodded his thank-you and waddled to the door. He walks like a fat-breasted bird, she thought. He'd already lifted the bar and put his shoulder to the heavy oak—she'd be rid of him before Magda came back— when, to her chagrin, she heard words that made him pause in his leave-taking. Words coming out of her own claptrap mouth.

“When you see the illuminator, tell him Agnes will say a Paternoster for him.” 'Twas more than was prudent to say. But she couldn't stop herself. She remembered with a pang how Finn had sat in her kitchen last, telling her about the hanging, how it had sickened him. She remembered, too, how he always seemed to be worrying about the plight of common folk. Then there was that quick grin he'd give her in that flirty way whenever he asked for some special treat or an extra glass of ale. She an old crone and he a man still in his prime. A kind man. A rarity.

“Tell him that, for what it's worth, old Agnes knows he's no priest-killer.”

A broad grin split the dwarfs face.

“If I've any news, I'll report it to ye on me way home.”

Agnes brought the meat cleaver down hard on the back of the birds, making the brace a quadruple in one powerful stroke. The heavy door slammed shut, creating a draft that raised a lone brown-tipped feather to float in the air. It landed on the hearth and, singeing, released its acrid odor into the air. With a practiced hand she gutted the birds and flung the entrails into the slop jar.

Colin had been gone four days, and he wondered if he was any closer to Blinham Priory than when he left. Sun on the right at daybreak, he reminded himself each morning when he set out, but for the last two days there had been no sun, only a cold, gray dawn with no redeeming stain of pink. He'd taken the byroad through the forest, thinking that if his mother pursued him, she would take the high road, probably south to Norwich. He half hoped she would follow him, bring him home to Blackingham, home to Rose, assure him it had all been a bad dream: that the fire had never happened, he had never sinned, never deflowered a virgin. But he knew his mother would not think to seek him on this bracken-pocked trail marked by criminals and feudal refugees.

Colin knew about the dangers of the road from eavesdropping on Agnes and John. As a small lad, he'd been often in the kitchens, underfoot, ignored by Agnes except when he got in her way. He went to the kitchen for the marzipan the indulgent old cook gave him. He lingered to hear the stories John told his wife about the camaraderie that existed among these outlaws of the wood. “It's not the hard life ye might think, Agnes. There's a kind of brotherhood. And 'twouldn't be forever. A year or so in the woods until Blackingham gives us up, another year and a day inside a town, and we'll be free, Agnes. Free.”

Colin had known what he meant, even then. But he'd not told. He knew the shepherd would be punished. He didn't want to see him whipped or put in the stocks. And now John was dead and Colin was on the outlaw road. All because of the fire that he and Rose had caused. They had not meant to leave the lantern in the wool house; he wasn't even sure they had. But there was no other explanation. Unless the fire was a sign from God that they had sinned in that place and God had breathed His fiery breath on it as He had done on Sodom and Gomorrah. Either way, the fire and John's death were his fault. Not Rose's. He'd been the seducer. He'd be the one to atone. So, if he was lost and alone in the forest while she slept in her feather bed, if he fasted while she feasted, then that was as it should be. His suffering would buy her redemption. Still, it was hard to pray for her here, hard to beg for John's soul, hard even to think about God when he had to think so much about finding a place to sleep.