The Illuminator (53 page)

The great drops of blood fell down from under the garland like pellets; they seemed to come straight out of the veins … but in their spreading forth they were bright red.

—J
ULIAN OF
N
ORWICH
,
D
IVINE
R
EVELATIONS

F
inn was unable to find the color for the Virgin's robe. He had given it up and was hunched over his worktable, the Wycliffe papers spread out before him. Maybe he should have tried mixing it with cinnabar, he thought, as he copied the Gospel of John. A shadow passed behind him, a mere lessening of the light. He slid the papers beneath the blotter, shielding them from view with his back, thinking probably not the bishop. He wouldn't approach with so light a step and without ceremony. Unless, of course, he was trying to catch his prisoner out.

Finn quickly, but carefully, poured a few drops of the precious luzerite powder onto his palette, pretended to mix it. Another step behind him. Tentative, uncertain. He arranged his face in a mask calculated to show the artist absorbed in his work, but when he turned to confront his visitor, the mask crumpled. He dropped the glass vial containing the ground blue
stone. It shattered. The powder spilled, bleeding bright blue onto the floor.

“Kathryn!” He gaped at her, startled as much by her appearance as her presence. Her cloak was mud-splattered; her disheveled hair escaped in white strands from its netted snood, now slightly askew. Muddy footprints tracked her progress across his threshold. Anxiety etched fine lines around her mouth and eyes, lines he'd not remembered.

“Is it Rose?” he asked, feeling his pulse quicken. “Has her labor begun?”

She looked for a moment as if she didn't know how to answer. His breath snagged on a shard of fear.

“Rose's labor is over, Finn,” she said finally.

He exhaled deeply, the fear dissipating.

Her gaze wandered around the room, fixing on the spilled pigment on the floor. Why wouldn't she look at him? So unlike the lady of Blackingham who never shied from confrontation. He could feel the weight of her guilt pressing down on him, and might have reveled in it, but his relief that Rose's ordeal was over was so intense it gave way to grace for the messenger. He restrained himself from wiping the mud from her skirt and straightening her hair.

“What about the child?” he asked.

She didn't answer.

“Kathryn, does the child live?” His heart skittered against his breastbone.

She drew a long breath. “The child thrives. You have a granddaughter. Rose named her … Jasmine.”

Jasmine. Rebekka's favorite flower. “A granddaughter, Jasmine,” he said, liking the graceful sound of it, liking the way it left his mouth formed in a smile as he said it. He touched Kathryn's shoulder. “You've come a hard journey to bring me this news. I'm grateful. No wonder you are tired. Sit down. I'll call for some refreshment. And I'd be very grateful if you would do one other thing for me, though I know you've already done me a great service.”

She did not sit. Just kept looking at the broken vial of blue powder on the floor.

He was giddy with relief, his words as frenzied as his pulse. “Your visit is well-timed. I need you to deliver a packet of papers for me. I've been copying for Wycliffe. The bishop would not be pleased. If you could just take the papers to the anchoress who lives by Saint Julian's, she'll see that Half-Tom delivers them to the right place. I certainly can't afford to anger the bishop now, can I? Not when Rose needs me so. Kathryn, I can't tell you how—”

She shrugged his hand off her shoulder and dropped to her knees. “You've spilled the luzerite,” she said softly. “Let me help you.” She brushed the blue grains into a pile with her gloved hand.

“I was so surprised to see you.” He knelt beside her, started to sweep the blue onto a scrap of parchment. “It was too strident for the Virgin's cloak anyway. Tell me about my granddaughter.” She said nothing, just answered him with a sniff. Had she caught an ague in the weather? A small drop of moisture wet the back of her glove. Where had that come—“Kathryn? Are you crying?”

He took the reclaimed pigment from her, stretched to lay it on the work-table.

His breath refused to come. “Kathryn, is it Rose?”

The top of her head nodded, barely discernible, except for the stirring of a strand of hair escaping its golden net.

“Kathryn, for God's sake. Look at me. Answer me.” He gripped her shoulders and together they rose from a kneeling position. “Is it Rose? Is she not well?”

When she raised her face to him, a smudge shadowed her cheekbone where she'd wiped at her tears with a blue-stained, muddied glove.

“Kathryn, you said …”

She wiped her eyes again, spreading the blue stain beneath the other eye. Her face looked bruised. For an instant he saw the face of his weeping Madonna, his Crucifixion Madonna. And he knew what it was she could not bear to tell him.

He choked on the words, his mind refusing to accept what his eyes read in her face. “But you said her labor was over, Kathryn.”

“Her labor is over, Finn. She is with the Holy Virgin.”

Kathryn sat beside Finn for a long time on the floor, watching helplessly as he held his head in his hands and cried for his daughter. Kathryn cried for them both. She told in a voice hoarse with emotion how tenderly Rose had been cared for, how her last words had been for him, how they'd buried her in the family crypt, in consecrated ground. When he responded to none of this, but still sat with his head in his hands, she sought to move him by telling him how they'd found a nurse for little Jasmine, what a treasure the child
was, and how she brought hope to Blackingham, should bring hope to him. She vowed to raise the child until Finn could come for her.

“I will treat her like my own daughter, Finn. No child will be more loved. I swear it, dearest heart.” She had called him that the last time they had lain together. The word had just crept in amidst her grief, surprising her. But he took no notice of it. “Finn, I swear it by the Virgin's milk that nurtured our Lord.”

But she might as well have been giving her promises to a statue. Finally, she heard footsteps coming up the stairs. The nurse was at the entrance with the baby. Kathryn wordlessly took the baby from her, motioning for her to wait outside. She knelt beside Finn with the baby in her arms.

“I've brought Rose's daughter for you to see.”

She touched him lightly on the hand, careful not to startle him. “Finn.” She thought he was going to turn away, shrug her off. But he didn't move. With her free hand, she arranged his arms in the shape of a cradle. She placed the sleeping babe there. He looked at the child as though it were some strange, exotic creature, his eyes unblinking, his lips parted. He sat like that for what seemed an eternity to Kathryn. The babe slept soundlessly.

Kathryn urged softly. “Finn, this is Jasmine. This is Rose's gift to you. She was baptized as Anna, but Rose called her Jasmine to honor Rebekka.”

“Rose's gift,” he repeated dully.

Kathryn stroked the baby's cheek. Jasmine opened dark blue eyes and blinked at him.

“She has Rose's mouth, Finn. And see, she has Rose's high, noble brow.”

He held her out in front of him, studying her as though she were one of his half-completed manuscripts. Kathryn had never seen his eyes look so cold. When he spoke, his voice was low and flat. Kathryn had to strain to hear. “She has Colin's fair complexion,” he said. “She has Colin's eyes.” His tone chilled Kathryn to the hard bone.

He handed the child back to her. “I've lost three women that I loved,” he said. “I've not the heart to lose another.”

Finn didn't know when they left. It was the bells ringing none, mid-afternoon, that roused him. He was alone in the prison cell. Maybe it had all been a dream, he thought, a dream sent by the devil to torment him. The weight in his body began to ease. But the papers were gone—the papers he'd hidden when his
visitor approached. And at his feet was the broken vial. A pile of blue powder, mingled with dust, lay on his worktable where the Wycliffe papers should have been.

Grief hit him full-force, sucking his hope. He wanted to break something, anything, to leap from the high window into the river, to hurl his body against the wall until the blood splattered its stones. He cursed and roared at the empty air around him, bringing the constable.

“Bring me opium, I am in pain.”

“I don't know—”

“Bring it. Now!” he screamed. He pounded his fists on the table and continued pounding until a guard brought him a goblet of strong wine laced with opium.

He woke later to the sound of vespers bells. He felt feverish. His heart hammered, and his head kept time. He felt like a man in a downhill race who could not stop.

He took up the Annunciation panel. With shaking hands, he mixed the arabic gum and the strident blue powder. A shard of broken glass gleamed up from the blue. He laid it in the palm of his hand to examine the tiny glass dagger. He closed his palm against it and waited, hoping for the sharp prick of pain.

When he opened his palm, a small drop of blood welled up. Stigmata. But self-inflicted. No miracles here. Not for him. Not for his Rose.

The drop of blood mingled with the blue powder in the crease of his palm. With the index finger of his left hand he scooped the sticky mixture onto his palette and began to stir it. His hands no longer shook. Carefully, methodically—he might have been merely mixing cinnabar to tone the blue— he stabbed his index finger.

He squeezed a drop. Stirred the mixture.

Stab. Drop.

“Aurea testatur.
“It is witnessed in gold.

Stab. Drop.
Sanguine testatur.
It is witnessed in blood.

Stab. Drop.

Now he had it. The perfect shade of blue for the Virgin's robe. A deep blue-stained royal.

It was the color of his granddaughter's eyes.

Yet in all things I believe as Holy Church preacheth and teacheth … It was my will and meaning never to accept anything that could be contrary thereto.

—J
ULIAN OF
N
ORWICH
,
D
IVINE
R
EVELATIONS

T
he anchoress awoke from her nightmare to the sound of a light tapping at her supplicant's window. She'd dreamed the devil was choking her—a devil who bore a remarkable resemblance to the bishop—and at first found herself disoriented, so real had the dream been. She was drenched in sweat in spite of the chill she had felt during the prayers of mid-afternoon. Had she fallen asleep reciting the none office? No wonder the devil approached her. How long had she slept? From her communion window, she could see afternoon light picking out the colors on the windows deep inside Saint Julian's shadowy interior.

Tap, tap, tapping again. More urgent this time. Unmistakably, voices coming from outside, women's voices. She'd not had many visitors since the rains began. She missed her visitors. But she dreaded them sometimes, like now. Who was she to offer holy comfort? The Paraclete had departed from her, leaving a paucity of comfort.