The Illuminator (8 page)

“Thank you,” she said. “A mother's foolishness makes me weak.”

The illuminator nodded and gave her a half-smile. “A mother's love is never foolish, my lady.” His voice sounded like the sifting of river gravel worn smooth by the current. “And my experience has not found it to be weak.”

Sir Guy's horse stamped and snorted. The sheriff jerked the reins sharply. Having regained strength enough to speak, she addressed him. “A priest, you say, Sir Guy? What has your priest to do with Blackingham?”

He dismounted before answering, and Lady Kathryn motioned for a groomsman. A small knot of servants had gathered around the stable to see what was happening. One of them scuttled forward to hold the sheriff's horse.

Sir Guy nodded toward the body. “I think he's the bishop's legate. And if he is, there'll be hell to pay. Henry Despenser has set up a great hue and cry looking for him. Says he dispatched him to Blackingham to attend your ladyship several days ago. He was expected back at Norwich by compline on Monday.” He strode back to the horse that carried the body. “We found him in the marsh that borders your lands, his head bashed in.”

He drew back the blanket to reveal the muddied cloth of a Benedictine habit. As he dragged the lifeless monk upright in the saddle for her to see, she recognized, through the bloated features and the dried blood, the black-furred eyebrows. Father Ignatius. She turned her face away in revulsion, a natural-enough response that bought her time. Her mind was spinning now, whirling, leaving her light-headed, forcing her to lean once again on the stranger's strong arm. What should she say? Admit the priest had been there? Expose her sons to questioning? Bring her fragile status under scrutiny? Had she mentioned to anyone in her household how threatened she felt, how angry she was at the priest's extortions? Had they guessed? Where was Alfred on that night? Alfred with his father's fiery temper, his reckless impulses. Had the priest provoked him beyond reason? She breathed deeply, then stood upright once again under her own power.

“I knew him to be the bishop's legate, but I've not seen him in many weeks,” she said. Her voice was scarcely above a whisper, but her gaze never wavered. “He must have met with his untimely death on his way to Blackingham.”

The world is full of governors of lord's land and jurisdictions who are intentionally dishonest. Aware of this, the lady (of the manor) must be knowledgeable enough to protect her interest so she cannot be deceived.

—C
HRISTINE DE
P
ISAN
,
   
T
HE
B
OOK OF THE
T
HREE
V
IRTUES
(1406)

T
here had simply been no other course but to invite Sir Guy to stay for dinner. She had hoped he would plead the necessity to return the priest's body to Norwich, but he had merely dispatched his men, telling them he would follow.

Now, as Lady Kathryn sat at table, she listened with half her mind to the small talk going on around her. The other half skittered between the lie she had told and her duties as a hostess. She used those duties to push the implications of that lie aside. Best to deal with them in the calmer light of solitude. And truly, entertaining Sir Guy at the last moment had been challenge enough to keep her preoccupied.

Fortunately, she had instructed her cook, Agnes, to prepare a more elaborate meal than usual for her new lodgers and Brother Joseph. She had not planned to dine in the great hall, thinking that her lodgers could be led to
settle for a tray in their new quarters—best to set that precedent—while she ate alone with her two sons and Brother Joseph in the solar. But Sir Guy's presence demanded more, so she had hastily summoned the groomsmen and had the trestles brought in and the board dressed with a silk cloth. Agnes had complained—it was a month until harvest and the larder was depleted—but with characteristic loyalty and cleverness had stretched the simpler fare into something more in line with Kathryn's unexpected guest's expectations of hospitality. All this had left her little time to reflect upon the circumstance that had brought him to her door. Now, however, the subject she'd been avoiding surfaced again.

“Whoever the culprit is, the killing of a priest will weigh leaden against his soul,” Sir Guy said as he cut a piece of the larded boar's head the carver offered. “No respect for holy men. You can blame that on the heretical teaching of the Lollards.”

“Lollards?” Lady Kathryn asked, to keep the conversation going. Not that she cared. She was only half listening, her mind preoccupied with the bloated corpse of Father Ignatius. There was an image she'd like to forget. Fearsome enough in life. More terrible in death.

“A bunch of ragtag self-styled
priests,
followers of Wycliffe, who go around mumbling heresy. He's playing a dangerous game. Oxford has already forced him out.”

Suddenly alert and thinking of the damning text she'd found in Roderick's trunk, Kathryn said, “Thanks to the Virgin, no such poison has found its way to Blackingham,” but she wondered how much Sir Guy knew of her late husband's alliances.

She motioned to the carver, who placed a double serving of sturgeon on the trencher that Sir Guy, as guest of honor, shared with his hostess. She had scavenged from her impoverished cellar a small leathern bottle of wine, which the butler poured into the silver cup they also shared and from which she took only tiny, pretend sips lest the bottle be emptied before Sir Guy drank his fill. The butler poured ale in pewter mugs for the others who sat at table with them. Colin and Brother Joseph sat next to Sir Guy on Kathryn's right. The illuminator, Alfred, and the illuminator's daughter sat to her left.

Brother Joseph, obviously inflamed by the very name of Wycliffe, leaned his tonsured head in front of Colin so that he could address Sir Guy. “They say the heretic Wycliffe even dares question the Miracle of the Mass. Calls
the transubstantiation of the Host a
superstition!”
His voice cracked with outrage on the last word. “The University will force him out, and what's more, it's rumored among the brotherhood that since the king is dead and unable to come to his support, the archbishop is about to bring him up again on charges of heresy.” He stabbed at the air with his knife as though it were Wycliffe's heart. “He'll hang, if he's not careful. Though I'd rather see him burn.”

The heretofore gentle-mannered monk smiled smugly, as though he would take delight in torching the fire himself. Lady Kathryn could almost see the flames reflected in the little black pupils of his eyes. She felt her throat close as she chewed unsuccessfully on a bit of pheasant pie. Her father had taken her to a burning once, as a girl, and she'd never forgotten the terror in the eyes of the woman who'd been charged with witchcraft. As the bailiff lit the faggots and the smoke billowed up, Kathryn had cried and hid her face in her father's sleeve. But that had not shut out the stench of the charring flesh.

Tiny beads of perspiration popped out around her hairline. She dabbed at them with her silk handkerchief. The long twilight had not dispelled the July heat. Moisture formed in between her breasts, and the linen of her shift clung to her skin, sticky and damp. Odors from the kitchen fires, smoke from dripping fat and roasting meat drifted in through the open windows of the great hall, mingling with the sweat of Sir Guy, whose day in the saddle lingered in his clothing. Was it her imagination, or did his scent also carry a hint of the dead priest's putrefaction?

She should have offered her guest at least a change of linen, but she had been too absorbed with stretching the small repast. If the sheriff stayed the night, and he probably would—even a man of Sir Guy's prowess with arms would be hesitant to ride the twelve miles back to Norwich through wood and marshland during the black of night—she would have to drag out Roderick's smallclothes.

Suddenly, she became aware of silence around her, an awkward, intrusive silence.

“What did you say, sir?” The sheriff, his posture taut, leaned across her, gazing intently at the illuminator.

“Not
sir.
Just Finn. My name is Finn. I am an artisan, not a member of your noble estate.”

There was an archness in his tone just short of sarcasm. His voice had the
same smooth-gravel quality that she remembered from earlier in the day, when he had kept her from falling, only now the edge was honed.

“I said, ‘He'll never burn.' Wycliffe will never burn. And he'll not hang. He has too many friends in high places.”

“He'd better beware lest he be perceived as having too many friends in
low
places.” The sheriff laughed as he split the back of a partridge with his knife before spearing it and raising it to his mouth.

“Ah, I take your meaning,” Finn said slowly and without raising his voice. “But high and low may not necessarily make strange bedfellows. I suspect, if you listen closely, you may hear the devil laugh at many a papal edict.”

Brother Joseph gasped.

Kathryn had to stop this line of talk before it got out of hand. As she clapped her hands for the carver to reappear, she looked askance at this newcomer. She hoped he was not going to bring more controversy at a time when she was trying so desperately to cleanse her household from any stain of un-orthodoxy.

“Please, kind sirs, no more talk of burnings. It is not comely conversation at table. You should not misconstrue the words of my guest, Sir Guy. He's not the humble artisan he proclaims himself to be. He, too, has friends in high places. He's an illuminator of great renown, here on business for the abbot. Perhaps he only seeks to draw you out for the sake of conversation. Here, try some of the smoked herring with murrey sauce.”

She motioned for the butler to squeeze a few more drops from the leathern bottle as the carver ladled a generous portion of the fish swimming in its red mulberry sauce onto Sir Guy's side of the trencher. She placed her hand over her own side to decline, shaking her head. “Give my portion to Brother Joseph, I find the heat has destroyed my appetite.”

Smiling, Brother Joseph eyed the generous portion before him, his shock at the illuminator's heretical words forgotten in anticipation. “My lady's loss is my gain,” he said. “I'll see it does not go to waste.”

As if anything were ever wasted at Blackingham, she thought. The servers with hungry mouths at home would see to that, as he well knew. Still, it was amusing to watch the monk's exceeding pleasure. His little round belly testified that he did not consider gluttony the deadliest sin.

“By the by, milady, I've brought you something from our apothecary for
your headaches,” he said between mouthfuls, “ground peony root with oil of roses.” He reached inside the deep pockets of his habit and produced a small blue phial.

“How kind, Brother Joseph. Please give my thanks to your apothecary as well.”

And she meant it. Hard to believe this gentle man who took such care to assuage her pain was the same firebrand who a few moments ago had anticipated the burning of a fellow human being with the same enthusiasm with which he now attacked his food. And all in the name of God. Well, no matter. She was glad for the medicine. She would have need of it, if this dinner did not end soon. Thankfully, the talk had settled to more mundane things. Colin talked in Brother Joseph's ear of the guild pageants he'd seen at Eastertide in Norwich. Sir Guy interrogated the illuminator about the nature of his commission.

But no sooner was one fire put out than here was another. Alfred had moved closer to the illuminator's daughter and leaned forward to whisper something in her ear. The light from the tallow candles on the wall behind him sparked fire in his red hair. Lady Kathryn heard his familiar, merry laugh and saw the girl's olive skin turn pink like the blush on a peach.

The illuminator had introduced her simply as his daughter, Rose—not Margaret, or Anna or Elizabeth. Just Rose. Like the flower. A strange name for a Christian child, she had thought at the time. It was after the priest's body had been removed, after her sons had wandered in, summoned by the commotion in the courtyard. As soon as she saw the look in Alfred's blue eyes and recognized it for what it was, she decided what her course of action should be. Now, she was more sure of her decision than ever.

Finn inclined his head and spoke low in his daughter's ear, scolding, Kathryn deduced, from the fleeting frown that turned down the corners of Rose's mouth before she lowered her gaze. Her fingers fidgeted with the pendant at her throat, fingering it like a talisman. Kathryn would attend the girl tonight, but she could not play nursemaid forever. Tomorrow she would have to tell Alfred of her decision.