The Illuminator (32 page)

And she was entitled to some happiness.

Upon entering the kitchen, Kathryn went straight to the breadboard, cut herself a slice and, placing it on a toasting fork, approached the cook fire.

“Let Magda do that, milady,” Agnes said, looking up from the basket she was filling. “Ye should not have to break yer fast by gettin' yer own victuals. I was about to fix a tray, but I stopped to do your bidding. Glynis said you—”

“I'll toast it myself. Like old times, Agnes. Remember when I was but a chit of a girl? You were quick enough then, to hand me a crust and a fork.”

“But ye be mistress now. And it's not fittin' for ye to toast yer own bread.”

Agnes nodded at the kitchen girl, who tentatively reached for the fork and turned it carefully, browning the bread evenly. When it was golden and
crusty, Magda smeared it with currant jam and presented it to Kathryn on a clean napkin. Kathryn noticed that her hands were clean, too.

“This girl turned out very well, didn't she, Agnes?”

“Well enough.”

Kathryn chewed the toast in silence and considered the particularly taciturn response from a woman whom she'd never known to be parsimonious with words.

“Are you out of sorts today, Agnes? If you're not well, maybe we can hire the smithy's wife to come in, and you can take a rest.”

But not too long a rest, Kathryn was thinking. Not too long, at a penny a day.

Agnes glanced over her shoulder, jerking her head sideways, indicating the door. “Go out to the smokehouse, Magda, cut a rasher of bacon,” she said as she placed a crusty loaf of black bread in the alms basket.

“Two rashers,” Kathryn said.
Good works. Atonement for sins past. Sins yet to come.
“And cut them thick.”

A blast of cold air stirred the ashes on the hearth as the girl shut the heavy oaken door behind her. Agnes chewed on her upper lip. Kathryn chewed on her toast. Finally, Agnes spoke.

“I'm not ailin', milady. But I do 'ave somewhat on my mind.”

Kathryn drummed her fingers impatiently on the handle of the alms basket. “If you have a problem, Agnes, tell me about it. If it's about the poll tax, you need not worry. I've already decided I'll pay your tax. It's only fair. You are a good and loyal servant.”

“Ye're kind, too good to me, milady, and grateful I am fer it. But it not be about the taxes.” She pushed the basket aside to wait for the last offering, the bacon from the smokehouse. “Ye know I'm not one to carry tales … gossip being the devil's tongue and all, but… “ Agnes wiped her hands on her apron, fluttered her hands nervously.

“If it's something I need to know, then it's not gossip, Agnes. Tell me.”

Kathryn swallowed the last bit of toast, licked the sweet crumbs from her fingertips. Probably some squabble between the yeomen and the serfs. Rancor was always breaking out over wages paid the former. But maybe whatever it was this time, Simpson could handle it.

“It's about the illuminator's daughter,” Agnes said. “She's been finicky lately, and yesterday she sent back her victuals.”

Kathryn felt herself relax.

“Oh, I wouldn't worry, Agnes. She
was
ill, but I think she's better now.” Poor Agnes, every snotty nose was a herald of the plague. She had an unreasoning fear of the black death. “You know young girls. Probably the vapors. Or maybe Eve's curse.”

Agnes pursed her lips, shook her head. “Nay, milady. 'Tis not Eve's curse. The laundress says she's had no bloody linen from the girl in three months.”

Kathryn poured herself a beaker of ewe's milk. “The girl may not be regular in her courses. Some are not in the beginning. You know how gossip spreads among the—”

“Aye, I do. That's why I questioned the laundress meself. Regular as the sun sets for three months and then nothing.”

“Are you suggesting … ?”

“I'm only saying what the laundress says. I thought you should know.” There was the sound of the door scraping open, and Agnes took the smoked bacon from the girl, wrapped it in a clean linen rag, and placed it in the basket. Kathryn picked up the basket and nodded to Agnes.

“This is information best kept between us for now.”

“Aye, milady. Ye have no reason to doubt my loyalty.” And then, to Kathryn's retreating back: “Give my good wishes to the tanner's wife. Tell her to try the marrowbone broth in the bottle. It'll strengthen her.”

Once outside Agnes's discerning eye, Kathryn paused on the other side of the door, leaning for support, hugging the alms basket to her, conjuring an image of Rose, teasing with her father or with Colin, the enchanting smile that reached to her eyes. Was there a woman's knowledge in those flashing eyes? No. Rose was an innocent. She'd bet a bale of wool on it. There had to be some other explanation. After all, hadn't that been why she'd sent Alfred away? At least she thought he'd stayed away. But what if he'd been meeting the girl all along? Meeting her in secret places? “Ask that son of yours,” Simpson had said when the wool house burned.

Holy Mother of God.

Kathryn found Rose alone in Finn's chamber, so engrossed in her work that she didn't even look up. The door was half open to let in extra light from the passageway that joined the master's bedchamber with the garderobe and
smaller rooms. Kathryn stepped across the threshold with only the slightest rustle of her slippers against the stone.

Rose sat on a high stool at one end of the desk. She leaned slightly forward, her mouth pressed in a pout of concentration, her hand moving swiftly across pages spread in front of her. Kathryn recognized Finn's sure, light strokes, but executed by his daughter's dainty hand, made to appear even daintier by puffed sleeves and beribboned cuffs. The girl looked as cosseted as any Norman lady. She wore a gold brocade skirt and matching bodice that flattened her bosom until it rose in two gentle swells above the square neckline, a virginal promise of a woman's fuller cleavage. A shirt of fine French lawn matched white horizontal inserts banding the skirt. A flowing scarf of the same finely woven linen covered her head and played peekaboo with her dark hair. Elegant dress for an artisan's daughter. Elegant dress for a Jewess. And there was the cross she always wore. She said her father gave it to her, a gift from her mother. A cross from a Jewess? Or a clever ruse by Finn, a Christian talisman to protect his daughter?

As Rose worked, she hummed a tune under her breath, a melody familiar to Kathryn, floating somewhere on the verge. That and the scratching of the nibs against the vellum were the only sounds in the room. Suddenly, Rose left off singing, heaved a sigh, and gazed out into the middle distance, her quill poised above the paper. Her face looked thinner, almost gaunt around the wide-set eyes; yet otherwise, the girl looked hearty enough. A watery sunbeam, brushing through the leaded window glass high above her, painted a bloom on her cheek. Except for the heightened cheekbones, there was about her a glow of youth that a woman of Kathryn's age could envy—if envy were not a sin.

A draft from the flue drew a current of air across the room from the half-open door where Kathryn watched. The draft stirred the ribbons hanging from Rose's cuff, brushing them against the paper, smearing the carefully drawn letters. She gave an exclamation of dismay and, one-handed, fumbled to tie up the offending streamers.

“Here. Let me help with that,” Kathryn said, moving forward.

Rose looked toward the door, a startled expression rounding her mouth.

“My lady,” she said. “I'm sorry. I didn't know you were there. I mean, I didn't hear you.” Rose got up from her stool and went to meet Kathryn halfway. “Please. Come in.” She dropped a little half-curtsy, a teasing smile
lighting her dark brown eyes. Minx. She knew how uncomfortable Kathryn was with noble pretensions.

“You're hard at work. I can come back later.”

Put off finding out the truth. Ignore the problem, and it might go away. But Kathryn was already drawn in, already tying the blue ribbons into perfect bows above Rose's wrists. She gave the last one a little pat.

“There,” she said, seeing through a teary haze her own mother making just that same gesture, a mother whose face she could not conjure up even in memory, but whose hands she remembered—long, slender fingers tying blue ribbons into bows.

“Thank you. It's hard to tie them by myself. I'd have to be a contortionist.”

“Of course it is. When a girl reaches a certain age, she needs a lady's maid to help her dress. Tell your father that. He can afford a girl from the village. The abbot pays him well enough.”

“I've thought about it, but I'm not sure … It's always just been Father and me, and I wouldn't want to hurt his feelings. Sometimes Magda, Agnes's girl, helps me. Other times I just keep wriggling until I get everything hooked and tied.” Rose laughed, glanced at the cuffs, “Well, almost everything.”

She had Finn's high forehead. But the wide mouth, the dark eyes, Rebekka's? Beautiful eyes. How could her son, how could any woman's son, not be tempted?

“Please do come and sit,” Rose said, taking her by the hand, drawing her a few feet forward before releasing her. “It is a treat to have your company.” A sudden dimming of the smile, like a shade put over a flame. “Though I suppose you came to see Father. I'm afraid he isn't here. He has gone to Norwich market to buy gold leaf. He said he would be back before sunset. Will you sit with me until he comes? I would be glad of the company.”

Perhaps she wasn't pining for a lost lover after all, Kathryn thought, but merely suffering from loneliness. Kathryn remembered what that was like, how like a sickness … before her children, before Roderick, even, when she had been the only female in her father's household, the only woman, with naught but Agnes for company. Illness, even loneliness or anxiety, could throw a woman off her cycle. It was a fickle and mysterious thing. Especially in one so young. Or in one as old as she. She'd heard stories how women in
convents matched their courses so that the whole company would suffer at one time. How in other convents, once they'd married themselves to Christ, the courses ceased altogether.

“It's you I came to see, Rose, not your father.”

There was such gratitude in the sparkling smile, it broke her heart.

Kathryn looked for a place to sit. She paused at the foot of the bed, smoothed her skirt in preparation, then stopped herself. Her marriage bed. Roderick's bed. Finn's bed, now. The hangings were pulled back, the coverings neatly arranged. He was the cleanest man she'd ever known. Everything about him, his clothes, his surroundings, even his mind reflected order. So unlike the former occupant of this bed who'd had discipline in nothing. A chill started at her ankles and crept up her spine, raising the hair on her neck. A seam in time's curtain split, the merest glimpse, but she saw for a second, like a flash behind her eyes, the bed as she had last lain in it with her husband: hangings closed, sheets tangled about her limbs, binding, stifling, the pressure of his weight stealing even the stale air, as she lay corpselike beneath him. Her body remembered, too—the violence with which he'd thrust into her and then, cursing, thrust her from him.

“My lady.” Rose's voice, bringing her back. “You look unwell. Here, sit on Father's bed. He'll not mind.”

The bed was once again benign, neatly made, curtains drawn back, tassel-draped to their carved posts. The air smelled of clean linen, linseed oil, and turpentine, a smell that Finn carried in his clothes, overlaid with a bit of peaty smoke from the fire. She breathed deeply.

“No, I'm fine. Your father might not like me to sit on his bed. I'll choose his work stool, instead.”

She pulled the stool across from Rose's own, and they sat facing each other with the scattered sheets of calfskin between them. Kathryn noticed the writing. Something to talk about. She couldn't just blurt out the question that was making her mouth dry, not without dishonoring the girl.

“What are you working on? I see it's what your father calls English.”

Rose blushed and hastily shuffled the papers, covering up her work. “Oh, it's nothing to see. A bit of fancy. A Book of Hours for a … friend.”

Or a present for a lover. Please, Holy Mother, let it not be for my son.

“I'm glad you have your work,” she said. “You must get lonely here.”

“Well, sometimes. Just a little. When Father is gone.” Rose dropped her head and added hastily, “But I like it here. Sometimes, Colin brings his lute and sings for me. He's a good scribe, too. Father says he has a gift.”

The familiar melody Rose had been humming. One of Colin's songs.

“I'm glad he's pleasant company for you and your father,” she said. “I also enjoy his music.”

“I've … we've not seen him much of late.”

“And Alfred is gone now, too,” Kathryn probed.