The Illuminator (22 page)

Magda shivered and scratched the scab of a fleabite on her leg until the blood trickled. Maybe she could stir the embers, find some fuel at the stable. It wasn't far to the stable. She'd scrape courage enough to venture there. She picked up the huge poker with both hands and scratched among the dead coals until she found sparks in the ashes. The ostler's boy had laughed at her, called her “girlie,” but his soul was green, and she'd never known anyone whose soul was green who treated her unkindly. He would help. Agnes would be glad in the morning that she had kept the fire from going out—and she would not sleep cold.

Finn had made his bed on a pallet by the hearth in the inn's common room rather than risk sharing a moldy mattress with two strangers in one of the closetlike cells at the top of the twisted stairs. He listened in disgust to the snores of the six or seven travelers, pilgrims on their way to Canterbury, sleeping on the floor around him. The one closest looked as if he hadn't washed his beard and hair since last year's wheat harvest. Clumps of suet and crumbs hid out with God only knew what else among the stringy mass of matted hair. Finn pulled his blanket closer and wondered just how far a flea could jump. He wondered, too, how many cutpurses lay among his sleeping companions. He adjusted the heavy pouch tucked inside his shirt so that it would not reveal itself whilst he slept. But, alas, he shouldn't have worried. Sleep did not come. His general fastidiousness conspired with his sense of unease to keep him awake.

The day that had started so auspiciously for him—the abbot's generous payment, his shopping trip among the colorful market stalls, his visit with the anchoress—had rapidly deteriorated after he left the little Church of Saint Julian. He'd been tempted to follow King Street outside the city walls and head for Blackingham, but that would have put most of his journey in darkness. Instead, he followed the Wensum River a mile or two north to Bishop's Gate. There, in the shadow of the great cathedral, he was sure to find an inn.

He'd been forced to wait at Bishop's Gate while a great entourage entered the city. Most of the other travelers had dismounted in a show of obeisance to the Church's seal, which was affixed to the scarlet drapery of the touring wagon, but Finn had remained astride his horse, which snorted impatiently
as the gaudy carriage lumbered by. This put him eyeball to eyeball with the worthy inside the carriage.

Henry Despenser, bishop of Norwich.

Finn looked away to avoid eye contact, but it was too late. Recognition flickered between them. The great carriage creaked to a halt. The crowd murmured its surprise as the wagon disgorged a footman in scarlet livery. He approached Finn.

“His Eminence, Henry Despenser, bishop of Norwich, would speak with you,” the footman intoned, jerking his plumed hat in the direction of the carriage.

Finn had a sudden inclination to refuse and simply ride away. But stupidity was not one of his faults. He dismounted and handed the reins of his horse to the splendidly garbed attendant, who looked somewhat abashed but nevertheless stood by the horse, holding the reins as though he had something nasty between his gloved, ringed fingers.

“Guard this horse well,” Finn said. “He carries valuable manuscripts from Broomholm Abbey.” Glancing nervously at the Oxford packet, Finn approached the parted curtains of the window. “Your Eminence,” he said to the haughty face framed therein.

The crowd pressed slightly forward, silent now, as if listening with a collective ear. The bishop murmured something to another footman and the door to the carriage opened. A fringed and brocaded footstool was placed in the dust of the road.

Finn didn't move but looked at this second, this equally splendored, attendent quizzically.

“My lord the bishop will speak with you privately.” His tone clearly said that he thought this simply robed horseman not worthy of such distinction. The crowd sighed as Finn parted the curtain and entered the drapery-covered wagon.

Once inside the equipage of Holy Church, this palace on wheels, Finn was at an immediate social disadvantage. Did he sit without being asked, or did he remain hunched over in this awkward position, his height putting him in a decidedly clumsy and uncomfortable position? The bishop's smirk showed that he was aware of Finn's discomfort, and after a pause sufficient in length to reveal Henry Despenser to be a man who enjoyed the discomfort of others, he waved toward the velvet-covered bench opposite. “Sit, please.”

Finn sat. He said nothing.

The silence lengthened as guest returned the even gaze of host. From this close perspective, and in the fading light, the bishop looked even younger than Finn had remembered. Young in age, mayhap, but his arrogance was ripe. Despenser spoke first.

“You are the illuminator who has been engaged by the abbey at Broomholm.”

“Yes, Your Eminence.”

“The one who has a taste for pork.”

Finn did not rise to the bait. Did not acknowledge the veiled reference to their last meeting. Despenser continued. “Since our last meeting under”— he smiled cattily—“unfortunate circumstances, I have inquired about the nature of your work. The abbot informs me that I was wise in my generous forgiveness of your irreverence for Church property. He sings your praises.”

Finn still did not acknowledge the former meeting and accepted the compliment with only a nod and a smile. What was this about? Was the bishop just playing with him? A smile like the anchoress's cat, he the mouse caught between her dainty paws.

“You are a man of action, it seems, rather than words,” the bishop said. “Well, then, I'll get right to the point. I may have a commission for you. I wish you to paint a reredos, an altarpiece, for me.” He paused as if just now giving thought to the subject of his commission. “To depict the Passion, the Resurrection, and Ascension of our Lord.”

Well, here was a surprise. Was this some kind of a trap? Was Despenser plotting revenge for the butchered pig?

The bishop continued, “I know what you're thinking—why do I not go to one of the guilds?—but I'm a man of certain aesthetic standards, and your superior ability, so the abbot assures me, is not easily found.”

High praise, and from a high patron. This should have made him comfortable. It did not. The close interior of the wagon with its heavy drapery was too confining, almost like a prison. The bishop, in spite of his youth and his ermine-edged robes, didn't smell all that sweet; his body carried the distinct smell of old garlic and stale perfume.

“You do me great honor,” Finn said carefully. “But I'm afraid that I must plead incapacity at the moment. The abbot has given me much work, and he
has proved himself to be a generous patron. I would not want to disappoint him.”

Almost before the words were out of his mouth, he knew they were wrong.

The bishop's face flamed. “You would choose to disappoint a bishop rather than an abbot, then? Broomholm is not even an abbey of great distinction. I must wonder at your ambition, Illuminator. And your wisdom.”

“Not disappoint, Your Eminence. Merely postpone, until such time as I could do the altarpiece justice.”

Despenser's thin lips tightened. That had been the wrong thing to say, too. He should have seen that the bishop would not appreciate being put behind the abbot. Was that why he'd said it? An unconscious desire to needle this upstart of a churchman who represented everything he hated about the Church? He tried again.

“I am truly flattered at the confidence of so noble and esteemed a patron, but, as I'm sure Your Eminence would be the first to concede, in serving the abbey I serve the same Lord that I would be serving if I carried out your commission. To choose one over the other for personal gain would be a sacrilege against the Holy Virgin to whom I have dedicated my art.”

“A pious and circumspect answer, to be sure. And a shrewd one.” But his tone indicated that neither piety nor shrewdness was what he desired in an artist.

Finn pleaded that he worked in miniature, that the scale of such a work was outside his ability. “I suggest, with your permission, that your altarpiece might be better served by one of the Flemish artists.”

The bishop had fidgeted at that answer, just as Finn fidgeted now on the hard floor of the crowded inn.

“Well, of course, if you're incapable, I shall look elsewhere,” he'd said sharply, then waved impatiently at the footman who stood outside the window. The door opened abruptly and Finn backed out of the carriage into the settling chill of early evening, barely getting clear before the coachman whipped the horses and the wagon lurched forward.

I botched that bit of business. I may have made a powerful enemy, he thought. But for now, he was more bothered by the snores and farts of the sleeping flotsam of humanity around him. Give it up, Finn, you'll not sleep tonight, he told himself. So, before daybreak, he went out to roust the ostler and
claim his horse. By the time the first bleak morn of winter had shown its grayed underskirt, he was outside the walls of Norwich, headed for Blackingham.

Finn's early-morning journey was not as pleasant as yesterday's promise. He was filled with a restless anxiety, the kind of loneliness and foreboding that usually comes at the close of day rather than at dawn. Even the weight of the gold florins around his neck and the thought of the gifts in his saddlebags did not lighten his mood. His eyes were grainy from lack of sleep and his back ached. He was getting too old to sleep on the floor. Or maybe he was spoiled by his comfortable quarters at Blackingham. Blackingham. That gouged too. Like an ill-tied knot in his braies. He knew about the cost of love.

What would be the price for his brief respite from loneliness? And brief it would have to be. Indeed, if it were known that he and Kathryn had relations … but his past was well behind him. And when his work was finished, he would move on. Not because he wanted to. But because he had no choice. As long as their affair was secret, Kathryn's position would not be compromised. Still, perhaps he should rein himself in, lest the price for this short-lived happiness be exacted in a coin he could not afford.

A pall of cloud stole the sun's warmth as he paused to let his horse drink from a marsh pool. Maybe it was the weight of the Scripture carried in his saddlebag that burdened his natural optimism. Or maybe it was the weight of the secret he carried buried so carefully that sometimes even he forgot. Was it right to keep it from her? But ignorance would be her only defense.

He peered at a nonexistent horizon. Gray sky washed into marshland and marsh washed into sea like a seascape painted by a somber child with only the color gray in his paint box. A landscape so flat, it seemed one might walk off the edge of the world—not one little hill, not even a bump on the watery landscape to shelter him from the wind. How had he found this flatness, this huge, unsettling sky beautiful? The long summer with its clear golden light had beguiled him, but he had a sense that the long summer had ended. The cold north wind, rushing down his neck, confirmed it.

Blackingham loomed before him, its red brick face a relief from the pall that had settled on his spirit. Only a thin spiral of smoke snaked from the kitchen chimney, hardly visible against the gray sky, but Finn read a welcome there and spurred his horse toward Rose and Kathryn. Rose and Kathryn.