The Illuminator (56 page)

The harvest finished late, but by September the last haywain had been stacked and the rye and the barley stored safely in the barns for winter threshing. The Michaelmas geese, grown fat from gleaning the fallen grains among the stubble, were roasting on the kitchen spits for the harvest-home feast. Kathryn anxiously counted her casks of mead and cider and ale, all home-brewed, along with the twenty gallons of beer she'd purchased for fifty shillings to supplement her store. She dreaded the evening's feast. It would be a night of drunken revelry, and though Kathryn did not begrudge the laborers—she knew they deserved the feast—her purse was as thin as a hermit's. Twice during the two weeks
of
harvest, Simpson had come back to her demanding largesse for the yeomen. Thank God the quarter-day rents were due. He was collecting them today and would give his accounting at the feast.

Kathryn lifted her veil to wipe the sweat and called for Glynis to lay the board in the great hall. Where was the lazy girl, anyway? Agnes and the little kitchen maid were working themselves into the ground. Magda's hands were as busy as her tongue was still. She had retreated back into her silence since the episode with Simpson. Unfortunate happenstance, but fortunate that the dwarf had come to Kathryn for help. She supposed there were others, both willing and unwilling, upon whom Simpson had heaped such abuse, but there was little she could do about it. She shouldn't worry about them. Hadn't God ordained their lot in life?

She surveyed the long boards laid out on trestles in the great hall. There would have to be a dais. Not fitting that she should sit below. But who would sit there with her, a widow, mistress of the manor, with no sons to attend her? Simpson? She shuddered. Anyway, he was not noble born. He would sit at the long table. The priest at Saint Michael's would sit on the dais with her to bless the feast, but below the salt.

She had sent Half-Tom to Norwich to find some entertainment. The harvest workers were entitled to a little mirth. It was her duty to provide it. “Not too many,” she'd instructed. “A juggler or two, a pretty sound upon the lute is all Blackingham can afford.”

Garbed in her second-best brocade gown and braided coronet, Lady Kathryn sat alone. The hall was aromatic with newly strewn herbs among the rushes, and the smoky smell of roast geese found its way from the kitchen into the hall. The board appeared abundantly laid under the weight of harvest fruits. Agnes was an alchemist. She might not be able to turn base metals into gold, but she could always turn yesterday's broken meats into wonderful suet puddings flavored with spices and colored with saffron (at least the color of alchemist's gold) to disguise their age.

Kathryn watched from her elevated carved chair as the entertainers slipped in at the other end of the great hall. One wore the skeletal costume of the grim reaper to parody the harvest of souls; another wore a hooded cape—in this hot weather—and carried a lute slung over his shoulder; a third one wore only breeches knotted around his loins. The muscles of this one's body rippled beneath well-oiled skin. He entered first, turning cartwheels down the long hall, coming to rest finally in front of my lady's chair, where he did a handstand and juggled three colored balls with his feet. Lady Kathryn applauded and the crowd echoed her approval.

Half-Tom augmented the small company of minstrels by playing at hide-and-seek with the grim reaper, making rude gestures and taunts to the macabre figure, who chased him around the hall with his scythe. The peasants hooted with laughter. Here was a chance to make death the butt of their jokes for a change. At the other end of the hall, the lute player strolled along the long table and strummed. Kathryn could not hear his song above the raucous laughter and applause for the contortionist and the reaper. And just as well, the music of the lute only made her think of Colin and she didn't have time for that now.

Simpson came late to the feast, entering well after the banquet had begun. An insult to the workers. An insult to her. He sat down, silent, sulking, nursing his cup. As steward he was entitled to wine, but Kathryn had watered it well, both for economy and for prudence. From the way he swaggered into the hall, she judged that this was not his first cup of the day. After the last course, the
raffyolys,
patties of chopped pork and spices, had been served, he progressed on unsteady legs to the dais, and laying the bag of coins, the quarter-day rents, in front of her, mumbled with slurred speech that the accounting was inside the bag.

“It's short,” he muttered. “The villeins plead the king's poll tax.”

She weighed it in her hands and sighed. It felt light, and she was sure if she read the accounting she would find more promises than coin. She would have to take her rent in chickens and eggs and vegetables from the small garden the crofters scratched out in the dust beside their huts.

She laid the bag beside her trencher and stood and gave the required toast to the harvest and its lord. But at the conclusion of the salute, the hall remained silent. The yeomen did not lift their voices in hurrahs.

A few men at the other end began to beat the table with their fists in a steady rhythm. The pounding rippled down the board until the sound filled the hall and echoed in her head.

“Largesse, largesse. We demand largesse.” The cadence began low and rose to a crescendo.

Hardly the response she'd expected. They were a greedy lot. Did they think to rob a poor widow? She would not stand for such insolence. She stiffened her back, raised her hand.

The chanting stopped.

“Where's the gratitude you owe for the largesse already given? Twice I gave Harvest Lord extra pence to augment your wages.”

One, emboldened by drink, stood up and shouted back at her, “Harvest Lord gave us nothing. He promised largesse at harvest home.”

A chorus of agreement and the chanting and the pounding began again.

Largesse. Largesse.

Kathryn glared down at Simpson who, still seated, stared into his cup. “What's the meaning of this, Simpson? What did you do with the extra coin?”

The pounding was deafening.

Largesse. Largesse.

He looked up, not at her but past her, and shrugged. “I had to use it to hire extra hands.”

“The harvest was late. And there are no more than the usual number here.”

“Some quit and moved on.”

They were shouting above the din when, abruptly, the pounding stopped. A hush fell over the hall. No one moved except the hooded lute player, who had stopped strumming and was walking toward the dais. Was he about to ask for more money, too? The room suddenly felt very close. She clutched
the edge of the table for support. This was the last straw. The steward's perfidy knew no bounds.

“You are a thief and a liar, Simpson.” She said it loudly enough for all in the hall to hear.

He just sneered at her.

“I'll suffer your insolence and your calumny no longer. The meanest serf of Blackingham is worth more than you. And I'll not have you on Blackingham land any longer. If you are still on manor property tomorrow, I'll have you whipped.”

There was absolute silence. At the other end of the dais the priest coughed discreetly. The only other sound in the room was the endless chorus of the summer crickets from outside.

Simpson's drunken laugh rose high and shrill, hanging in the pregnant silence. “And where, your ladyship, will you find a man to do the whipping?”

She swept her arm out in a gesture meant to gather the workers to her, an encompassing gesture, allowing her gaze to sweep across the tables, willing them to take her side. “These men from whom you've stolen will show their loyalty to their lady.”

But there was no chorus of support. The peasants looked from one to the other as if not knowing whom to believe, trusting neither.

“Good men.” Kathryn stood as she addressed them. The smoke and heat in the hall made her dizzy, but she steeled herself for what she had to do. “You have worked hard for Blackingham Manor. I value your service. I hold your loyalty in greatest esteem, and I'll see that you receive the largesse this greedy steward has stolen from you. Come to the gate tomorrow at prime. For tonight—”

“More promises,” a few muttered, but there was a scattering of applause and a cry of “Let her finish.”

Encouraged, she held up her hand for silence and continued. “For tonight, enjoy the feast our kitchens have prepared for you.” And she motioned for the cellarer to pour another round of cider. “Enjoy the entertainment that you have earned.”

Half-Tom and the reaper began again to mime their macabre antics. One or two in the hall still muttered complaints, but the solidarity was broken, the gathering temporarily appeased.

As Kathryn was wondering where the extra coin was to come from—she
would demand it of Simpson; she'd just proved she still had some authority—the lute player approached the dais.

“My lady.”

That voice. A trick of memory?

The lute player bowed before her as he threw back his hood. The pale skin of his bald head was startling in its whiteness. She had a flash of memory: a mother's hand, her hand, washing such a hairless pate, caressing the shape of each skull bone. But before she could even draw out that vision full-blown, the young lute player looked up at her. Jasmine's eyes stared back at her.

She stumbled down from the dais and crushed him to her.

He returned her embrace, but it felt different somehow, more restrained. He had grown. It was the muscled shoulders of a man that she embraced.

“Colin! Oh, well come, my son, well come.” She wiped tears from her eyes when she held him out at arm's length to drink in his face.

“You've grown. More a man. Less a boy,” she said. “What have you done to your beautiful hair?”

“An act of propitiation,” he said, not smiling. His voice was deeper, too.

She waited for him to say more, but he did not explain.

“Why are you on the dais alone?” he asked. “Where's Alfred? And the illuminator? ”

A familiar grief threatened her joy.

“You do not ask about the illuminator's daughter. Why do you not ask about Rose?” Just a touch of condemnation, a hint of bitterness crept in.

“Has something happened? Have they left?”

She sighed. “Much has happened, Colin. Your leaving was only the beginning.” She instantly regretted the sound of recrimination in her voice. The fault had been hers alone. She must not chase him away again. She patted his hand. “I've much to tell you, but it must wait until after this business with Simpson is complete. It is good that you've come. He will be less truculent when he sees I'm not a woman alone.”

She turned to continue her confrontation with the steward, but his seat was empty. The bag of receipts was gone too.

After the feast of harvest home ended and the revelers had all staggered to their beds—the hovels, cots, stable, even the occasional ditch where they
slept—Kathryn instructed Colin to come to her chamber. The trials of the evening had worn her down, but she knew what she had to tell Colin would not wait for daybreak.

They sat at a small table in the corner of the room where she had sometimes supped with Finn, the two of them alone in her chamber, enjoying the intimacy of a shared meal. But she could not think about that now. It was her son who sat with her, and she had to think carefully about what words she would say.

“It was foolishness, you know, your leaving. You've come home to stay, I hope.”

“Aye, Mother, I've come home to stay. I found I am not suited for the life of a monk, after all.”

He had changed. The shaved head was unnerving—she mourned the loss of his beautiful hair, and the blue eyes had lost some of their innocence, replaced by a burning, restless brilliance.

“You've been traveling with the players since you left?”

“Most of the time. Did you get my letters?”

“Letters? Only one. And I had no way to answer, or I would have told you already what I have to tell you now.” How to begin? She offered him a glass of wine. He declined. She took a drink. “Fortune has not been kind to Blackingham since you left, Colin. As I told you, your leaving was the beginning.”