The Illuminator (71 page)

Half-Tom looked at Magda. Magda looked at Half-Tom and nodded.

“Master Finn, we will take the child and care for her. We only thought … ”

The child leaned toward the horse's head, reaching for the bright bits of metal on the bridle, and Finn saw that, next to the little silver cross, she too wore a hazelnut on a string. He could almost hear Dame Julian's voice explaining to him gently as she handed him a hazelnut—the hazelnut he'd left with Kathryn—from the wooden bowl on her writing table.
It lasts, and ever shall last; for God loveth it.
She had been so sure of that Divine Love. So sure that the Creator loved the created world which He held in the palm of His hand. And Finn had wanted to believe in that love too. But the anchoress was shut away, out of the world, away from the hurt and the pain and the calumny and the suffering of the innocent, with only her own pure heart for company. She did not see the world he lived in. And he could not feel the love she talked about.

He could not feel it now. But he had seen it. He'd seen it in Kathryn's sacrifice for her sons. He'd seen it in Rebekka's love for Rose. And he remembered. He remembered how he'd felt that same love for his daughter. But could the memory of that love cut through the numbness he felt? How could he, penniless, on the run, care for a child?

“Master Finn?” Half-Tom asked with his eyes. “It will be dark soon.”

Finn held out his arms to the child. She went to him willingly, climbed up beside him, patted the horse's head. “Horsie,” she said.

The tired horse pawed at the ground as if rejuvenated by the child's touch.

“I have nothing for her. I have nothing to buy food for her. I cannot even buy clean linen to wrap her in.”

Magda smiled. “Sir, she is bright. She will tell you when she has to go. She will tug on your sleeve.”

Tug on his sleeve.
Finn felt as though he had been ambushed. Ambushed by Dame Julian's Mother Christ. How could he hand her back, surrender the gentle weight of her to another, this child of Rose, this child of his beloved Rebekka? Kathryn's grandchild. His grandchild. His child.

Magda reached into her pocket and withdrew a small parcel wrapped in linen. “I brought her some clothes from my mother's house. They are not fine, but they are clean.” And she handed him the bundle. He watched as tears formed in the well of her eyes. She knew it too, this mother love. Even though she had never borne a child.

“Here, take this.” Half-Tom, his voice raspy with emotion, pressed a small bag of coins into Finn's hand. “ 'Tis not a lot, but it'll stand for a meal or two.”

But Finn's mind was already working with strategy. “You keep it, Tom. You'll need it for your new bride. I'm too much in your debt already. I can sell the horse in Yarmouth. It should fetch fifteen pounds. More than enough for passage to Flanders and papers and pens and food for the two of us.”

“Horsie,” Jasmine said. She looked up at Finn, then at Magda, as though she was about to cry, held out her hands to be taken back. Magda patted her, whispered something in her ear. Finn couldn't hear what she said, but the child nodded, bravely fighting back her tears. She gave a subdued little sniffle. “Here. Look what I made for you,” Magda said, loudly enough for him to hear. And she thrust a crudely stitched rag doll into Jasmine's arms. The child played with the doll for a minute before settling her head against Finn's chest.

“Ye'll not make Yarmouth tonight, Master Finn. Best to stop at Saint Faith's.”

He could feel the weight of the child against him, oddly comforting.
I shall make all things well. I shall make all well that is not well and thou shall see it.

Did he see it? All he saw was the sleeping child with her head resting against his breast. All he felt was the burden of his grief. He was too weak to choose, but the child had chosen for him.

Finn turned his horse toward Yarmouth.

Behind him, he thought he heard Magda give a stifled little whimper, but when he turned she was waving courageously and smiling at him. Half-Tom stood beside her with his arm around her.

With the dying light behind, he looked like a much taller man.

K
athryn woke slowly, pulled from her dream of Finn carrying her in his arms, his face close to hers, his eyes no longer cold and unforgiving. In her dream, he carried her lightly, as though her body were made of air.

In her dream she felt no pain.

But now Finn was gone. He
was
gone,
wasn't
he? Fled to safety with the child? Finn was gone, unless she'd dreamed that, too. And the pain was back. But not more than she could bear.

Her scalp felt tight, and her left hand ached with a drawing sensation. A burning pain crept up her neck and into her face, tingling, pricking. Her fingers touched a bandage beneath her cheekbone where the burning took root. She winced, and a soft groan escaped her lips.

Immediately, Agnes was there, bending over her, scolding.

“No. Don't touch your face.” She held a cup to Kathryn's lips. “Here. Drink this. 'Tis wine laced with milk from the seedpod of a poppy. It will take away the hurt.”

Kathryn pushed it away.

“It will take away my sense, too.” The words felt clumsy on her lips. “The pain is tolerable. If I am to live, then I must live in this world. Not in a fog of dreams.”

Agnes placed the cup on a chest beside her bed, no bigger than a cot, but soft with a down mattress. Kathryn lay on her back, propped up slightly on feather pillows. Apparently, her back was not burned. She shifted her weight tentatively, and the only pain that answered was along her left side.

The light from an east-facing window sliced into the cell-like room, hurting her eyes.

“Where are we?” she asked.

“Saint Faith Priory. I came here two weeks ago, like you told me.” Agnes hesitated briefly. “The illuminator brought you.” Her tone carried some accusation that she did not voice.

So Finn did carry her here, Kathryn thought. That part, at least, had not been a dream. And the forgiveness in Finn's eyes?

“Did he find Jasmine?”

“Ye don't remember? Aye, he found the little one. Magda kept her safe from the fire. She and the dwarf brought the babe to Finn. But I thought ye knew. Ye took naught for the pain until we heard.”

She frowned as she said the next, her tone registering her disapproval. “Ye told the prioress to send Finn away. Ye deliberately deceived him.”

Kathryn sighed with relief for the child and closed her eyes. The left eye closed slowly, sending a stab of pain shooting from its stretched lid. But she could feel the warmth from the candle flame on her right cheek. Its warmth was strangely comforting, reminding her of the vision of Julian's Mother Christ, glowing with life above her flaming bed, reminding her, too, of the faces of her sons bathed in holy light.

Colin and Alfred.

In trying to keep them, she had lost them forever. She felt a stab of grief, raw and bright as new blood. She pushed it aside.

“And Blackingham is gone?” she asked.

“Aye, milady. Blackingham is lost to us.” Agnes's voice choked on the last word.

It was her home, too, Kathryn thought. Her home, as much as mine. Kathryn wanted to offer words of comfort, words of gratitude, but she lacked the strength.

Agnes removed the bandage from beneath Kathryn's eye. As the air hit it, Kathryn sucked in her breath with the pain. Agnes dressed the burn, gently, with a soothing ointment of comfrey leaves and flowers of Saint John's wort; then she laid on a cooling compress and reapplied the loose linen bandage. The ointment, or Agnes's touch, was soothing. Kathryn felt the muscles in her face relax.

“Ye know, milady, ye should never have sent the illuminator away. I never saw a man so besotted with a woman.” Agnes wiped her hands of the ointment, and reaching into her voluminous skirt, withdrew an object. “He left this. He wanted you to take something of him to your grave. He told the prioress it was all he had.”

Agnes laid the hazelnut, set in its little pewter backing like some great saint's relic, in the palm of Kathryn's right hand. She recognized it. Finn had said it was a gift from the anchoress. She wrapped her fingers around it, clutching it until the pewter bit into her flesh. The whole world in the palm of God's hand—or something like that. She couldn't remember what Finn said it meant, exactly. But it was enough that he had left it for her. Enough that it had once rested against his skin.

She lay against the soft pillows. The room receded until all she could see was Agnes's stern face in the glow of the candle.

“If the prioress—if I—had not sent Finn away, he would be dead by now,” she said. “Or worse. He would live out his life as Henry Despenser's slave.” It was hard to form the words. Then, murmuring low, more to satisfy herself than Agnes: “Finn has Jasmine. She will keep his spirit whole.”

“And you, milady, what do you have?”

I have the memory of the forgiveness in his eyes. I have the memory of him.

“I have you, Agnes. And you have me,” she said. “And that will have to be enough for now.”

Her left hand had started to twitch with a tic, each tic a stab. “Now, I think, I'll have the tiniest sip of your special medicine to help me sleep. You need sleep, too, Agnes.” She pointed to the pallet beside her bed where Agnes had kept her faithful vigil. “Don't sleep here tonight. The chapel bell tolls matins. There is a lot of the night left. Find yourself a bed of your own in the guest house. Tomorrow is soon enough for us to contemplate our future.”

“If you are certain, milady. These old bones would like a soft bed, sure enough.”

Agnes blew out the candle, but left the rushlight on in its sconce. It had burned low as well, casting long shadows in the room. Kathryn felt the sleeping draught begin its work, softening the edge of her pain. She clutched the hazelnut in her hand. Such a tiny thing.

A current of air stirred the room. She heard a sound, almost a whisper.

All will be well.

“Agnes, did you say something?”

But Agnes was gone. There was only silence in the room and the flickering shadows.

It must be the medicine, she thought. Or mayhap some inner voice, reminding her of Julian's words. She closed her eyes, searching for the dream, or memory, whichever it had been, that brought her comfort.

Again the whispered words filled her head.

This time each word was distinct and clear.

All will be well.

And Kathryn almost believed it.

T
his is a work of fiction, but the characters of Bishop Henry Despenser, John Wycliffe, Julian of Norwich, and John Ball are historical figures whose histories I have braided with the lives of my fictional characters. Henry Despenser is best remembered as the “warring bishop” for the bloody and violent manner in which he put down the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 and for his subsequent unsuccessful military campaign against Pope Clement VII during the Great Schism of the West that divided the Roman Catholic Church. He is also remembered for having made a gift of a five-paneled altarpiece, known as the Despenser retable, or Despenser reredos, to Norwich Cathedral in celebration of his bloody triumph over the Peasants' Revolt. He had the reredos framed with the coats of arms of the families who assisted him in this massacre. This altarpiece may be seen today in Saint Luke's Chapel, Norwich Cathedral. During the Reformation it was turned upside down and used as a table to hide it from the reformers and then forgotten for more than four hundred years. As the story goes, during the middle of the last century, someone dropped a pencil beneath the altar cloth and,
bending to retrieve it, found the wonderful paintings of the five panels depicting the Passion of Christ. The painter's name has been lost in history.

John Wycliffe is remembered as the “morning star of the reformation” because of his efforts at reform within the Church and because he was the first to translate the Bible into the English language, thereby reshaping not only Church history but cultural history. He was charged with heresy, dismissed from Oxford, and his writings were banned. But he was never brought to trial and continued to write and preach until his death by stroke in 1384 at his home in Lutterworth. His entire translation was completed by his followers in 1388, seven years after my story ends. In 1428, Pope Martin V ordered John Wycliffe's bones to be dug up, burned, and his ashes discarded in the river Swift. The Lollard movement he founded continued to thrive underground and eventually merged with the new Protestant forces of the Reformation.