The Illuminator (64 page)

Outside, an icicle broke away, splitting the silence with a crack, and crashed to the ground. She placed her hands, still clutching the rosary, beneath the blanket and sank into a deep sleep filled with visions of her weeping Christ. As she slept, the blood oozed from her chilblained wrists, forming a crusty bracelet.

Agnes was worried. She'd never known Kathryn to be sick so long. Even as a girl she'd never been sick for more than a day or two. It had been a week. And young Colin would not even let Agnes in the room, but made her leave the healing potion she brewed for her mistress outside the door.

“Just see that Jasmine is taken care of,” he said.

He looked sick himself. She wondered how long he could keep vigil. “Aye, young master, don't worry on that cause. Magda watches the babe well. Let me tend milady awhile.”

But he refused.

When Glynis returned with the tray, the maid just shook her head in answer to her unasked question. Agnes emptied Kathryn's still-full bowl into the slops for the swineherd.

“The sheriff's in the hall demanding to see Lady Kathryn,” Glynis said. “What'll I tell him?”

“Tell him she's too sick to see anybody.”

Agnes knew what he wanted. The thought of it filled her with dread. And not just for Kathryn. Agnes had no desire to be a serf of Guy de Montaigne. There was talk in the village of rebellion. And of safe places for runaways. All those times that John had talked of freedom and she had refused. How could she be thinking of such now that she was so old and tired and John in his grave? Though times were different. Even some churchmen preached against the old order. But it was too late for her. In Sir Guy's household her mistress would need her protection more than ever—poison was a too-easy way for a man to shed himself of a wife who'd outgrown her usefulness. Then there was the little one. And Magda. They needed her protection too. Whether Lady Kathryn lived or died.

“Tell the sheriff it might be plague,” she said.

When Kathryn woke, the light had shifted. It no longer hurt her eyes. She was thirsty. She tried to sit up and knocked a goblet from the chest beside her bed. The slumped figure, sleeping in a chair at the foot of her bed, jerked to its feet. No angel, then. Angels did not sleep.

“Mother, you're awake. You're back with us,” Colin said, stooping to
gather up the goblet and refill it. He held it to her mouth. She gulped as though she had not drunk in days. Where had this terrible thirst come from? When she brushed the water from her mouth with the back of her hand, the skin on her lips felt as rough as bark.

“Back? Where have I been?” The words came out heavy with breath.

“You've been very ill. I thought once you might leave us, but your fever broke last night.”

“Did you send for a priest? I dreamed—”

“I sent for a priest. But none came. I prayed for you myself. I wrestled with God for your soul, like Jacob wrestled with the angel.” He was smiling, half teasing her.

“I'm glad you won. Hand me that ointment on my dressing table. My lips are so cracked they're bleeding.”

“Let me,” he said as he dabbed the lanolin on her lips.

She did not protest. Her hand trembled when she tried to do it.

“You stayed with me the whole time, then?” she said, lying back on her pillow. “It must have been a while. Your hair has grown out.”

“Two weeks.”

“If I had tarried at death's portal a little longer, you would almost look like my son again.” She smiled, and winced when her lips cracked. “Is the baby … ”

“Jasmine is well. Magda and Agnes looked after her.” He pulled the bell beside her bed. “I'm going to get you something to eat.”

Glynis came and Kathryn was able to take a little broth with Colin's help. Afterward, she lay back, exhausted.

“You had a visitor while you were ill, milady,” Glynis said.

“A visitor?” She had not dreamed it then—Finn and the anchoress. “The sheriff,” Colin said. “He was rude, insisted on seeing you when I told him you were indisposed.”

Her disappointment was a physical hurt. But, of course. This was no fevered dream. This was the real world, and in the real world Finn and the anchoress were alone in their solitary prisons, their solitary hermitages.

Glynis collected the broth cup and dropped her little curtsy, then added, on her way out the door, “His legs couldn't carry him away fast enough when I said plague.”

“I suspect that's why the priest never came.” Colin frowned.

And they had Latin prayers to protect them, Kathryn thought wearily. But at least, her illness had bought her a little time with the sheriff.

“I'd like to sleep now, Colin,” she said. “You look tired. You do the same.”

When she woke, a little after three in the afternoon by the sundial scratched on the wall, Colin was still there. But he had changed his clothes. A clean shirt and leggings. No friar's cloak? “I thought you'd be gone now that I'm better. You're a good son, Colin, and I am grateful, but you don't have to stay with me every minute. I feel stronger. I know you're anxious to get back to your preaching.” She tried to keep the disapproval from her voice. She at least owed him that.

“Not so anxious as I was. I needed a respite. Time to think.”

“You're rethinking it, then? The whole Wycliffe notion?”

“Not rethinking, exactly. Wycliffe's ideas of dominion founded on grace, I agree with that. Even the right for every man to own property, a right given by God, I agree with that, too. But some have taken his ideas too far. I heard John Ball telling a bunch of yeomen and villeins assembled on Mousehold Heath that they should kill all the apostate priests to purge the Church from sin!”

“Kill the priests!” It came out in a hoarse croak. “He said that aloud at a public gathering? Surely, even he would not be so bold. You must have misunderstood.” Kathryn lay back, grateful for the pillow. The room still had a tendency to spin if she moved too quickly.

Colin shook his head. “No, I heard the words myself. He said that poor men should plunder the wealth of the Church and the nobility. He's spreading poison among the people, inciting them to abominations. That's not what Jesus taught. When I said so, John Ball railed at me and called me a tool of Satan.”

“He's a madman, Colin. I'm glad you're giving it up.”

“I'm not giving up the preaching. It's right. But I'll not be connected with rabble-rousing. I'll keep preaching. Like Saint Francis, I'll preach the Peace of our Lord. I'll not preach hate.”

“Then you'll be aligned with neither faction. For they both teach hate. And you will make enemies of both camps.”

“But don't you see, Mother, that I must be about spreading the truth as I see it? We are all held bondage by a Church that has abandoned us. Greed is now her master, not God. She is the Great Whore of Babylon. Look at Henry
Despenser, building his grand new palace. Where do you think he gets the money for the gold and alabaster they say he's lining the wall with? Or for all the stonemasons it takes to build the largest cloister in all of Christendom? He takes the bread out of the mouths of the poor.”

And robs widows of their jewelry, she thought. She was too tired for this discussion, but a mother had to take her moments when they came. She saw a hanging thread in the garment of his devotion and she must unravel it if she could.

“But, Colin, you admit John Ball, who preaches sedition and murder, is not the way. And John of Gaunt—doesn't he just want an excuse to raid the Church's treasure to enrich the royal exchequer?”

“But not Wycliffe, Mother. He seeks nothing but to spread the truth about the abuses of the priests and the need for every man to be able to read the Holy Book in his own language.”

She would not argue the gist of what he said. She had prayed in her father's language, in her language. Had God heard? Did He even need a language? Could He read hearts as others read words?

“But what if this truth, if truth it be, is being twisted by evil men for their own desires?”

“That is not my concern. I must tell the truth as I see it and not worry about the costs.”

Her head hurt with so much talk; still, she persisted. “Colin, you are just a boy. I know another, and he a man, a good man, who did not concern himself enough with cost. If he was no match for such enemies, how do you think you can be? If you will not consider your mother, then have a thought for your daughter.” She started to cough.

“It's of my daughter I'm thinking. And others like her. But let's not argue, Mother. You need to rest.” He kissed her on the cheek, then retrieved his tattered friar's robe from a peg behind the door. “I'm just going out for a little while.”

The cough had left her too weak to answer. After he was gone, she groped beside her bed for her rosary and spied it hanging on a peg across the room, but she was too weak to get it. She murmured the Our Father in her native tongue. And wondered aloud to God why His mercy was meted out by the dropper and not the bucket.

And so the gospel pearl is cast abroad, to be trodden underfoot of swine; and what was dear to clergy and laity is now rendered as it were, the common jest of both; so that the gem of the church becomes the derision of laymen, and that is now theirs forever.

—H
ENRY
K
NIGHTON
,
    C
ANON OF
L
EICESTER
(14
TH CENTURY
)

S
ir Guy was not surprised when the call came from Essex for help. It was May, and the bailiffs were making their rounds in the warm spring weather, collecting the king's taxes. Some resistance was to be expected in small pockets, among the poorest classes. And then a gang of peasants took a pitchfork to two of the king's excisemen and set fire to some abbey hayricks. Such blatant insurrection must be met with unwavering force. Must be stopped before it spread to his shire. He had his own troublemakers to deal with, but he'd send what he could spare. So he dispatched a coterie of young squires, green like Alfred—who was among them—green but sufficient to put down a few ragtag rebels armed with scythes and pitchforks. The experience would be good for them.

The word came two weeks later. The rebellion was spreading like pestilence, and a peasant army of Kentish and Essex men was marching toward
London under a rabble-rouser named Wat Tyler. The sheriff gathered more retainers—battle-hardened men this time. Guy de Fontaigne knew what was needed. Torture a few of the miscreants, cut out their tongues, crush a few knackers, and the rest of the rabble would get back to their fields and guilds soon enough. Find the head of the snake and cut it off. He couldn't get his hands on the cleric Wycliffe, not as long as he was under the protection of the duke of Lancaster. But he could find John Ball. And that was a notch he'd enjoy putting on his girdle.

Still, the timing was a nuisance. There were other gates he'd planned to storm. No black flag flew at Blackingham Hall, though his spies told him its lady had indeed been at the point of death. She was still frail, but it didn't take much strength to plight a troth. Nor to consummate one. At least on her part. All she had to do was lie on her back with her legs apart.