The Illuminator (48 page)

“My sweet darling,” he said. “At last. If you could but know how much your father—“ He felt her stiffen. He withdrew, held her out at arm's length, laughing. “I'm sorry if I squeezed the breath from you, it's just—”

She pushed back the furred hood, framing her face.

“Kathryn!”

Not Rose after all. Disappointment first, then elation, but he would not acknowledge any joy the sight of her brought. He pushed it down into the black pit of his heart where it drowned in her treachery. How beautiful she was to him, still, standing there haughty as ever, her back ramrod-straight, her skin rosy and her eyes bright from the cold. He hated himself for noticing.

“I thought you were Rose,” he said. It sounded flat, like words spoken into dead air.

“So I concluded from the warmth of your embrace.”

“Where is Rose? Why did she not come with you?” Fear ambushed him. He reminded himself to breathe. “Is she ill?”

“Don't worry, Finn. Rose is well. I am taking care of her. May I come in?” “The highborn lady of Blackingham is not afraid to enter the cell of a thief and a murderer? Left your jewelry at home, I hope. Aren't you afraid I might bash in your skull just as I crushed the skull of that dead priest?”

She stood rigid as a statue, looking at him with unbearable sadness in her face, her upper lip caught in her teeth so tightly he expected drops of blood to ooze from the lips that he, even now, wanted to kiss. How perverse must be his nature that he would find her still alluring.

“I know you to be neither thief nor murderer,” she said. “I know you to be a good man.” Her face was gaunt and there were shadows beneath her eyes.

“Tell that to your friend the sheriff,” he said, turning away, feeling empty. Without her in his direct gaze, the hate—and the desire—drained away.

“May I have permission to enter?” Her words were softly spoken, laden with breath.

“What permission a condemned man can give.” He stepped back and she crossed the threshold but stopped abruptly, the color fleeing from her face.

“What do you mean, ‘condemned'?”

“Condemned to this.” He waved his arms to indicate his surroundings. She looked around, her eyes lingering on his cot, his worktable. “I imagined worse,” she said.

“It was worse,” he said. “But I've struck a coward's bargain. I have become the bishop's slave.” His hand brushed the air above his worktable with a contemptuous sweep, hovered over the partially painted panel of the Assumption
propped beneath the window. “In return for this bauble to decorate his altar, I'm allowed a pale imitation of life.”

She touched the painting reverently. “It is no
bauble.
It's beautiful,” she said. “As beautiful as all your work.”

Odd how gratifying these words were, how important her good opinion was to him. He shrugged. “It keeps the noose from my neck.”

She shivered at the word “noose,” and that was gratifying too.

“I'm sorry if you find my chamber cold. It often is.” Bastard, he thought. Trying to make her pity you more. “My manners appear as lacking as my circumstances. Please, my lady, sit.” He indicated the lone chair. “Churlish of me to stand in your elevated presence, but there is only the one chair.”

“Finn, don't, please.”

He looked away from her, out the window to a patch of brittle sky with its winter-pale sun.

When he looked back at her, she might have been a figure in a painting. He could paint her thus, seated half in shadow, the light from the fire glazing the blue of her robe, her head bowed, her hands folded in her lap, eyes averted, as still and wan as alabaster. Waiting. A woman whose heart was a mystery. Place a baby in her lap and she becomes a Madonna, he thought. Better yet, paint her holding the bloody head of a wounded Christ.

“Why, Kathryn? I just want to know why?”

She raised her head but didn't answer.

“Was it because you hated what we were together, hated that you had bedded with a man who once loved a Jewess?”

“You know why, Finn. I had to choose.”

“And you chose to lie.”

She closed her eyes, breathed deeply, then opened her eyes, but did not look at him. “Whoever possessed the pearls killed the priest.”

“So, when my daughter said Alfred planted the pearls in my room, you assumed his guilt and sacrificed me.”

“I would have given my own life, would give my life to save you, don't you know that? But… “ She appeared to study the fire as if she could find some answer written in the glowing coals. “If you had to choose between me or Rose, Finn, which would you have chosen? ”

He'd asked himself that many times over the past weeks. “I could not have let them take you away so easily, Kathryn. I would have tried to find a
way to save both you and Rose. I could not have let you go so easily.”

“Easily. You think what I did was easy? I am trying. You don't understand. The sheriff—”

He grunted his disgust. “Your friend, the sheriff.”

“Friend, enemy, his relationship to me is not what's important. He carries the key. I must need be gracious to him. It's not just you he holds over me. He holds Alfred, too. I have not seen my son since he went to be the sheriff's squire. If I could but talk to him, be sure that he was safe, then maybe I could petition the bishop for a—”

“A pardon? Don't delude yourself. Despenser means to keep me here until he tires of whatever this game is, and Sir Guy Fontaigne will never lift a finger to secure my freedom. Be wary of his promises, Kathryn. Don't give him more power over you. Don't make a devil's bargain on my behalf.”

She indicated the table with its plate of biscuits, its two cups of steaming cider. She warmed her hands on one but did not pick it up. “You were expecting Rose.”

Her smile, tight-lipped and sad, tugged at his heart. He steeled himself against her pleading face. He did not say he was glad to see her. Did not even invite her to drink.

“I've been expecting her every day since I wrote to her. Did you give her my letter?”

“I—I gave her your message.”

Either she was lying or there was something very wrong. Rose would have insisted on coming. He knew it.

“You said she was not ill. Is she still with you? You haven't sent her away.” He could feel the panic rising. “I told you, Kathryn, I will pay—”

“I don't want your money, Finn. Is that what you think of me? That I would turn a helpless girl away?”

He laughed at the wounded tone in her voice. “You were quick enough to dispose of your discarded lover. And in such an ingenious way. It could hardly be expected that you would support his Jewish daughter who was left without a farthing to her name.”

“Rose will stay with me even if you are hanged, or freed, or die of old age in your bed. Whichever comes first.”

Good. She was angry. He would not be moved by her anger, as he was by her sadness. The vehemence in her response reassured him.

“You've no right to think that I would turn your daughter out. Do you know how that wounds me?”

He knew.

She stood up and started to pace back and forth, her cloak swirling around her feet. She punctuated her words with clenched fists. He stared at the floor, her feet pacing in front of him. She was wearing the boots with the silver buckles, the boots he'd bought for her.

“I will treat her like my own daughter, Finn, I swear it. She will want for nothing. She will be clothed and fed and cared for as though she were a daughter of Blackingham. Both Rose and the child. I swear it by the Holy Virgin.”

What child? What was she talking about? He sat down heavily in the chair. It was still warm with her body's heat. She had stopped pacing and the edge of her cloak was dangerously close to the grate. He bent over and lifted the edge away from the danger of an errant spark.

He looked up at her towering over him. “Child?” he asked.

“I did not mean to say it so bluntly. It's just that I wanted you to know you can trust me. I know I should have told you before, but things were so strained between us and then the sheriff came … “ She held her gloved fingers over her mouth as if to hold back the words. Her eyes reddened. She gave a choked little gasp and then a second.

She was crying! He had never seen her cry before and he was unprepared for the strange effect it had on him. He wanted to kiss her; he wanted to scream at her to stop. What right did she have to cry? He leaped to his feet and grabbed her wrist, forcing her to stand still. To look at him. She winced as if in pain but did not complain. He lightened his grip slightly.

“What child are you talking about, Kathryn?”

She removed her hand from her mouth as if to unseal her lips. Her voice was husky with unshed tears. “Rose is with child. She will deliver in May.”

His thoughts scattered like birds at the sound of a clapper. He let go her wrist, rubbed his face with his hands. Rose. His Rose. Scarcely more than a babe herself.

“She and Colin were lovers.”

“Colin?”

“You were as blind as I. It was as much our fault as theirs. We left them too much on their own while we—”

“You don't have to remind me, Kathryn. I remember well what we did.” Silence as deep as a gulf between them.

“You sound as though you are sorry,” she said.

“It's a bad seed, Kathryn, that bears bitter fruit.”

Her eyes glittered with tears. “I would not take back one moment. I would not change one of those
bad
seeds for the purest blossoms in paradise.”

“My grandchild will not be a bastard. Your son will marry my daughter.”

She opened her mouth to speak. He held up his hand to silence her. “Don't say they cannot marry because she is a Jew. Don't say it, Kathryn. If I hear those words from your lips, I'll know you for a liar and a hypocrite whose heart cannot love. Don't say the king will not allow it. The king does not know my true identity. Nobody knows but you.”

“They cannot marry,” she said dully.

He wanted to strike her. He grabbed his right wrist with his left hand to restrain himself.

She tightened her shoulders in a flinching motion as though she read his mind. “They cannot marry because Colin has run away. I do not know where he's gone.”

“When?”

“The same night you were arrested.”

“Send your friend the sheriff to find him. Bring him back. Force him to face his responsibility.”

“Colin doesn't know about the baby. He probably left to get away from Rose. The temptation to sin—”

“Are you saying that my daughter, who was a virgin when she entered the
protection
of your house, seduced your son?”

“No. I'm just saying that—Finn, you know the power of temptation.”

She begged him with her eyes. He turned his back to her.

She reached out and touched the back of his right shoulder. Her voice was hardly above a whisper, but he heard every word. “I promise you, by the blood of the Saviour, I will take care of your daughter. And I will see that her child is cared for as well.”

He took a sharp breath, seeking control. His ribs, only half-healed, pained him. The only sound in the room was the sound of Finn's pulse pounding in his head.

“I have to leave,” she said. “The road is dangerous after dark.”

Not trusting himself to speak, he said nothing. When he turned, she was gone.

The only indication that she'd ever been there was the fading scent of lavender, and the burden of the knowledge she'd brought with her. He listened for her footfalls as they echoed fainter and fainter down the stairs. He picked up the pewter cup and flung it against the wall. The cider splayed against the stone wall, then dripped in sticky, dark drops onto the floor.

Kathryn called for the guard to open the door. Her groom, who was warming himself at an open fire in the courtyard, unhitched her horse and brought it forward.

“My lady, just a moment, if you please. I have something that might interest you.”

The constable. She'd forgotten about his request. She wanted to get on her horse and ride, put this miserable place behind her, let the wind dry her tears, the cold freeze her skin, until she couldn't feel the ache in her chest. But there was nothing for it. The fellow stood there expectantly. He had done her one favor already, and she knew she would need another soon.

“Quickly, please,” she said. “It's a long ride back to Blackingham.” She followed him into the keep.

He opened the padlock on a large chest in the center of the round guard tower and withdrew a longish object wrapped in a cloth.

“I thought you might want to redeem this. It belonged to the prisoner. Of course, it cannot be returned to him.”

He unwrapped a thin dagger with a delicately engraved knotwork on its hilt. Finn's dagger. They'd been together—new lovers—in the garden the first time she saw the silver dagger. She had tangled her foot in the ivy and tripped and he cut away the offending vine and wove it into a wreath. “A garland of green for my lady's hair.” And laughing, he'd kissed the tip of her nose as he'd placed it on her hair.