The Illuminator (28 page)

She closed her eyes to exorcise, or gather strength to endure, the familiar pain, and to await the overseer's coming. Why did she let the man bother her so? He was servant. She was master. She should let him go, but where was his replacement? She heard the shuffle of feet across the floor, then the murmur of voices. She opened her eyes to see not only Simpson but her son as well. Of course, why had she not assumed Alfred would be with him? Alfred— when had he grown so tall and handsome?—stood beside Simpson. The dread shifted, eased. She straightened her spine and raised her chin.

Alfred reached for her hand, brought it to his lips as he dropped to one knee in a courtly gesture.

“I trust my lady mother is in good health.”

He's practicing his court manners, she thought. How like his father he is in some—too many—respects. But he belongs to me. He suckled at my breast. That bond is strong. And he'll make a strong master for Blacking-ham. She smiled to think how her father, the first lord of Blackingham, would have been pleased with his sturdy heir.

There was much she needed to say to Alfred—she'd put it off too long— but she was mindful of Simpson, who stood behind him in a posture, but not an attitude, she noticed, of submission.

She motioned for Alfred to stand.

“I am well enough, considering. It is good that you've decided to finally attend your mother. Your absence has been conspicuous during this recent misfortune”—here she glared at the overseer—“and your absence as well. You should have attended mass.”

Behind Alfred, Simpson smirked. She could read what he dared not say: a funeral mass for a common peasant was an affectation and beneath him.

Alfred colored slightly, his eyes flashing resentment.

“My lady mother, it was not my intent to be neglectful. I have been busy about the task you assigned me.”

Pretty words, but the tone she was less sure about.

“I came to my mother's chamber the afternoon of the shepherd's funeral, thinking to lend what support a dutiful son may lend in troubling times, but I found the door closed and my lady mother closeted with another. Not wishing to intrude, I departed.”

The overseer was smirking, but she scarcely registered it, so taken aback was she. The afternoon of the shepherd's funeral, he'd said. The last time she and Finn had been together. She felt the blood drain from her face.

The door had been barred. She was sure of it. He could not know whom she entertained or the intimate circumstances. She decided to brazen it out. The best defense was an offense. At least that had always been Roderick's strategy.

“You should have knocked. I'm sure I was alone. My sons are always welcome. I needed to speak with you. I have some questions concerning the fire, or any activities you might have had that took you into the wool house prior to the fire.”

Was it her imagination or did Simpson fidget? If he'd lied about Alfred, now let him explain it.

“The fire?” Alfred looked puzzled, then his flush deepened. She recognized the color of his temper. “Surely you aren't going to blame me! I was there only once, maybe twice to … to help John lay out the fleeces.”

“It's just that someone saw you go in the morning of the fire, I thought you—”

“Thought I what? Started the fire? I'll wager you didn't ask Colin about his whereabouts.”

Another glance at Simpson showed him to be suddenly interested in the vaulted ceiling of the great hall, but he was listening, she was sure, gloating on every word. He made no attempt to hide his smirk.

“We shall discuss this in private, after the accounting,” she said.

Simpson stepped forward, handed the pages bound with leather lacings to Alfred, who handed them to Lady Kathryn. She perused them carefully enough to see that the balances were in line with last year's harvest reckoning, which she had already studied in preparation.

“These seem to be in order.” She placed the account book on the table that separated her from her son and Simpson. “Well done, Alfred. Your
supervision seems to have had an efficacious bearing on Simpson's figures. This time there is no shortfall.”

This wiped the smirk from the overseer's face.

“You may go now, Simpson. I will speak with my son in private.”

His bow was as abrupt as the slam of a coffin lid.

As his footfalls receded, Alfred maintained his businesslike posture, reluctant, Lady Kathryn thought, to relinquish his grown-up mantle.

“We are alone, now, Alfred. Don't be so sullen. Come, give your mother a kiss to settle our quarrel.”

He made no move to render the requested kiss. If anything, his posture became more rigid. He reached into his doublet and drew out a parchment tied with a silk cord.

“I have a petition for my lady mother.”

There was about him a new reserve. She thought of Colin lying prostrate before the altar in Saint Margaret's chapel, and stifled a sigh. Her boys would soon be men. Already, she could feel them slipping away.

She nodded sedately, determined not to undermine his newfound dignity. “You may present your request.”

He handed her the parchment. She recognized the seal. Sir Guy de Fontaigne. Curiosity mingled with unease.

“This is the seal of the sheriff,” she said. “I thought you said it was your petition.”

“The request is mine. In the absence of my father, Sir Guy stands as sponsor to me in my request.”

“I see,” she said, running her fingers quickly under the seal, breaking the wax. “You have made a formidable alliance.”

“An alliance formed by my father and in accordance with his wishes, as you will see.”

She scanned the contents, then riffled the pages frantically, reading incredulously. Dread pressed her into the chair. She wanted to go to him, wrap her arms around him, crush him against her bosom, but she feared she could not stand.

“Alfred, are you sure this is what you want?” was all that she could manage.

“It is what my father wanted for me. It is what I would have done if he had lived.”

“But is it what
you
want?”

“It is what I want. In the service of Sir Guy I will learn to be a knight like my father. I have already tried on my father's mail. It fits me well. I shall take it with me and Sir Guy will provide me with a mount.” Then, stonily: “With your permission, of course.”

She felt suddenly old. The great hall loomed larger than ever around her. In the high expanse of the rafters a crow flew in under the eave and pecked at an abandoned wren's nest. She examined the parchment again, Sir Guy's scrawling signature, sharp and angular as the man himself, above the official seal of the high sheriff. She knew she could not refuse. Sir Guy would only petition the boy king and his regent John of Gaunt. They could turn her son against her, maybe declare Blackingham, even the part that was her dower lands, under Alfred's control. She would be shunted off into some desolate abbey to eke out her life under the “protection” of the king. With only Colin to speak for her.

Christi Eleison.

No, she could not afford the enmity of Sir Guy de Fontaigne.

“I will miss you,” she said in a small voice.

“I'm sure you will find other company to take my place. You were glad enough of my absence before.”

“It is not the same. I knew you were close by. I could see you whenever I wanted.” She pointed to the accounting ledger. “Your absence was a necessary sacrifice for Blackingham.”

His only answer was a tightening of his jaw muscle, a firm-jutting jaw, Roderick's jaw.

“You will come for the Yuletide feast? It is to be a birthday celebration for your brother and you.”

“If Sir Guy will give me leave.”

His young body stood before her at attention, rigid, unyielding. She knew if she put her arms around him, embraced him, he would remain so. She would not invite that kind of rejection. “Go with your mother's blessing, then,” she said, her voice hardly above a whisper.

He bowed slightly, turned to leave.

“Not even a kiss, Alfred?”

He bent across the table that separated them, a mere brush of her cheek with his full lips. She had a flash of that same mouth, his infant bow-shaped
mouth fastened on her breast, greedily sucking. So reluctant to let go then, so anxious now.

She resisted the urge to call him back as he strode toward the door. She had no power to order him. He had gone into the world and made other alliances. She would only make herself look foolish.

“Take one of the grooms with you to serve you. I will not have you go to the sheriff's household in poverty. You will go a man. Have your father's armor polished.”

He turned to her and for a moment she thought she saw in his eyes the boy who'd hidden his tears in her skirts when his father beat his sons “to toughen them.” But it must have been her imagination, for there was no mistaking the swagger in his walk when he saluted farewell from the doorway.

She had not asked him the other question that had been nagging for so long: where he was on the day the priest was murdered. Months had passed. It probably no longer mattered—except to her. She was already mourning the loss of her son, and a warning bell sounded in her mind. By entering into service with the sheriff, Alfred brought him into the circle of their affairs. And while she had never ridden to the hunt with a falcon on her wrist, she knew a predator when she saw one.

Kathryn sat for a long time in the silence of the great hall, pondering her double loss. Within the space of seven days, two of the three most important men in her life were absent from it. And the third was pulling away.
Christi Eleison. Lord have mercy.

The crow sat still as well, perching on the ceiling rafters, its beak poised over the nest, as if waiting for the return of the wrens. The slant of afternoon sun pierced the narrow windows, turning its wings to giant shadows that hovered over Kathryn, small and alone in her great oak chair.

She knelt upon him and drew her dagger with broad bright blade to avenge her son, her only issue.

—B
EOWULF
   (8
TH-CENTURY
A
NGLO
-S
AXON EPIC
)

U
pon rising from his bed, skins piled on the floor of hewn poplar (a dirt floor would not harden in the fens), the dwarf poked his banked fire into life, then went outside to relieve himself. Early morning: the smell of hope aborning, the world stretching, not yet fully awake. Here and there, a tentative peep penetrated the hush of nocturnal creatures, yawning into day sleep. He breathed deeply of the mist rising over the swamp. A young ghost of a sun struggled to form itself behind the fog. Half-Tom had seen enough such mornings to know that the sun would win. The day would emerge a fine one, a rare gift for mid-November—Martinmas, the Feast of Saint Martin, November. But Half-Tom kept no saints' days. Neither did he go to church, not even to the splendid new Saint Peter Mancroft, the market church in Norwich, with its raucous bells. He reckoned his calendar by the changing phases of the moon.

With the notches he marked on a willow wand, he kept track of market days, not holy days. A glance at his notched wand showed the second Thursday in November, market day in Norwich. If he left now, there was
still time to make it by noon, time to catch the tag end of the trading day. The signs augured a harsh winter; it might be his last chance until spring. He could treat himself to a pint or two. There would even be time for a visit to the holy woman. He thought about the long trek home at night. If need be, he could take shelter in some cotter's haywain until the waxing moon came up. Then he could pick his way home across the white wetlands.

He went inside to get a flat cake and a dried fish for the journey. He'd built his one-room hut from a wind-bent poplar, thatched the roof with reeds from the Yare River. The hut was surprisingly tight, providing protection from the winter winds that swept out of the east. It provided sanctuary, too. His tormentors lacked the courage to follow him into the heart of the swamp. The muddy throat of the fens could swallow horse and rider in seconds, sucking its pleading victims beneath the sand.

The peaty fire, smoking on the hearthstone in the center of the room with its comfortable chair in front, argued against his journey. That chair fit his child's stature perfectly, cleverly fashioned as it was from a curve in the tree where the wind-chiseled trunk looped back on itself. But there would be plenty of time during the long winter nights to sit in front of his fire, plenty of time for weaving his baskets—beehive, stoppered eel, fish kiddles, pole carriers—from the willow rods he'd cut in spring, stripped in summer. Plenty of time for dreaming, too. Time for singing to himself the songs he'd heard from the wandering minstrels who came to the monastery where he'd spent his childhood, songs of the heroic exploits of the mighty Beowulf.

In these winter reveries, Half-Tom's own soul inhabited the great warrior. After he'd eaten his bit of dried fish and drunk his turnip broth, the dwarf would leap about the room challenging the flickering shadows with his willow-stick sword. In his imagination, Half-Tom
was
Beowulf. It was Half-Tom who swore fealty to the Lord Hrothgar, Half-Tom who wielded the flashing sword against the monster Grendel, Half-Tom who sighed with satisfaction when the dagger plunged into the yielding throat flesh of the huge sea troll. He could almost feel the hot spurt of blood. Did it smell like pig's blood? It was Half-Tom, tall, a giant among men, and brave—the scops sang his fame—who tracked Grendel's vengeful monster mother to her swamp lair. It was Half-Tom who “thrust at the throat, broke through the bone rings” of Grendel's mother. It was Half-Tom who watched the steel of his sword melt in the poison of her blood.