The Illuminator (59 page)

“My lords, the meat is on the board.”

The great hall filled with noise again as the guests sounded their approval.

“Your appetite is small, Kathryn. I hope it is not because you weary of your companion.”

“Weary of you, Sir Guy?” An effort to keep the sarcasm from her voice. Just one more night, she told herself. “Of course not. Indeed, your company is congenial, and I'm honored. But I'm a little surprised that you chose me to be by your side at such an important celebration. I'm sure there are others more worthy—”

“Come, Kathryn. Don't play the coy maiden. By now it must be plain to you that I seek an alliance between us.”

Such bluntness. For a moment she almost lost her breath. Well, she could be blunt, too.

“Is that meant to be a proposal of marriage, my lord? If so, it is an untimely one. In this age of chivalry, is it not custom for the wooing to precede the proposal? Truly you have been an attentive companion, but I hear no declaration of love.”

“But you hear a declaration of intent. Isn't that worth more to a well-seasoned woman than pretty vows of courtly love? But I can assure you, madam, there is much about you I admire. And I can offer you protection.”

Well seasoned!
She pierced the meat in front of her, then dropped her knife. It clattered against the silver plate. “So it is a practical arrangement that you propose. Tell me, sir, is it me you admire, or my land?”

He merely shrugged.

At least there was no deceit in him. “As for your offer of protection, I have my sons to protect me. Colin has come home.”

“I know.” His nose appeared even more beaklike when he smiled, and his eyes narrowed as though he were about to release an arrow. “I saw him preaching at the crossroads in Aylsham.” He shouted to be heard above the noise.

The marshal of the hall waved his white cane at the trestles below the dais. “Speak softly, my masters.”

The noise level subsided a little at this admonition. Kathryn answered softly as she picked up her knife to separate a sooty feather from the swan's breast. “Don't forget about Alfred. He is Roderick's heir, too.”

“I haven't forgotten about Alfred.” Sir Guy offered the shared wine cup. She shook her head.

“I hoped to see him among your retinue. All my attempts to correspond with him have been”—she could not say rebuffed—“futile.”

“There was a small uprising in November. Rebels incited by the Lollards. The king called for men bearing arms. I sent what men I could spare.”

Of course, she knew it would come to this. Alfred was, after all, in training to be a retainer of the king. She had tried to avoid that thought even at the jousting tournament the duke had sponsored for their entertainment— the tournament where Sir Guy had unhorsed his opponent and then kneeled half-mockingly before her to beg a token. She'd winced at the clanging sound of lance against hauberk and helmet and told herself she was glad that such sport was for men; told herself that Alfred was yet a boy.

“I suppose it is to be expected that a boy king would send boys to do his battle,” she said.

“Please, Kathryn, make your tone less strident or you may be even beyond my protection. It wasn't Richard, of course, it was John of Gaunt who put out the call to arms. An irony. It was he who fostered Wycliffe in his heresies in the first place. Seems Lancaster prodded a cub and baited a bear.”

And what of my cubs? Kathryn thought. What's to become of them? One who dances with the bear and one who will be sent to kill the bear?

Sir Guy drained the cup and motioned behind him for his cup bearer. “Alfred is no longer a boy,” he said.

The cup bearer served Sir Guy from behind his shoulder but on bended knees, with downcast eyes, as he had each night. Kathryn had paid scant attention to the arm that reached for Sir Guy's empty cup.

Until she noticed this one was different.

This one had fine red hairs that covered it, and squarish moons on his nails, like Roderick. Like his father. Alfred's arm. Alfred's hand. She turned around, greedy for a sight of the face that matched the arm.

“Alfred.” She dared not touch his cheek for fear he would shame her by pulling away.

But his face was a mask of courtesy, none of the insolence she'd seen at their last meeting. “My lady mother,” he said, acknowledging the greeting politely.

He bowed to Sir Guy and retreated to wait beside the cup board with his fellows, according to custom.

“He is much changed. More subdued. I trust you have not broken his spirit. His father would not have liked that.”

Sir Guy laughed. “A squire's training involves more than battle skills. He serves me well. He will be a fine knight one day. Already he sleeps in the knights' hall.”

“Thank you for that,” Kathryn said sincerely. She knew this was a sign of favor. Most squires slept wherever they could find a corner to make a berth. In winter this was especially a hardship—she could not bear to think of him sleeping on the cold ground.

“I show him favor because I was a friend of his father.” He took another drink from the silver cup they shared. “And because I desire marriage with his mother. But we will speak of that later.”

Something else to avoid. The duchess had not returned. Kathryn should have used her hostess's indisposition as an excuse to escape. But then she would not have seen Alfred.

“In the meantime,” the sheriff said, “would you like me to summon your son so that you may speak privately with him? After the banquet, of course?”

“Oh yes, please.”

He speared a sliver of swan's breast with his knife and held it to her lips. “Now, we must not offend the duke, must we?”

She opened her mouth and slipped the bite from the blade of the knife with her teeth. He smiled his predator's smile.

…
rivers and fountains that were clear and clean they poisoned in many places.

—G
UILLAUME DE
M
ACHAUT
   (14
TH-CENTURY
F
RENCH COURT POET
)

E
ight bells. Mayhap now she could excuse herself from the feast without being rude, Kathryn thought. The table linens had been drawn and the mead and ale and cider replenished until the noise level in the hall rendered polite discourse impossible. A few of the revelers, deep in their cups, lay in snoring heaps between the trestles. The duchess had not returned, and the remainder of her gentlewomen had retired—all but one who flirted outrageously with the knights around her, apparently delighted that her sisters had left the field to her.

“Will you have need of Alfred much longer?” Kathryn shouted in the ear of her mess mate. Sir Guy held his liquor well, but she didn't want him to forget his promise. This might be her only chance to speak with her son.

He sloshed the liquid in his half-filled cup, appraising further need for his cup bearer. “I'll send him to you later,” he said.

“I'll be waiting.” She removed a silver ribbon from her sleeve and laid it in front of his trencher. A shiver crawled up her spine. “To remind you,” she said.

As Kathryn passed the duchess's quarters, she paused. Since she was leaving at first light, she should thank the duchess for her hospitality. But as she suspected, her ladyship was still indisposed. Kathryn made the obligatory inquiries, thanked the women and asked that they convey her thanks to her hostess. “Tell the duchess I will pray to Saint Margaret for her lying-in.” This sentiment she sincerely felt. Kathryn doubted the woman could survive a difficult birth.

As she climbed the last of the steps, she saw that her door was ajar. Good. Sir Guy had not been too drunk to remember. She paused just outside the half-open door. Alfred's back was to her. Her pulse quickened; her palms began to sweat. He was talking to Glynis, and the flush on the girl's cheek and her high-pitched laughter revealed her delight in finding Master Alfred at last. The laugh died when she looked up to see Kathryn framed in the doorway. She bobbed her usual attenuated curtsy.

“Glynis, you may leave us.”

“But, milady, I'm not done with the packing, and it's cold in the hall—”

“You can go to the kitchens and gossip with the others. You'll be welcome there to sit by the fire. When you come back, we'll do the packing together.”

Blushing, Kathryn suspected, now more with anger than pleasure, the girl dropped a hurried half-curtsy and retreated, flinging a last flirtatious glance in Alfred's direction. Her son looked embarrassed.

“I can't blame her,” she said when the girl had gone. “I would be reluctant to leave such a handsome young man were I still a maid.” She held him out from her extended arms, like a length of fine silk. His hair and the faint stubble of a fledgling beard glowed rust-colored in the candlelight. She stroked his jaw lightly, a tentative touch, lest he draw back. “You've your father's beard.” A slight inversion of his head? Her imagination? Or a signal that his mother's touch was unwelcome? “Sir Guy's livery becomes you.”

He said nothing. How to fill the awkward silence? If she embraced him, would he draw back? She had never understood that last meeting, the hard flint of his eyes the day he'd asked her permission to go to Sir Guy. Had his eyes softened? Or were his courtly new manners merely a mask?

“Have you no kiss of greeting for the mother you've not seen in months?”

He reached for her hand, lifted it to his lips. She jerked it back. “I want to hold you in my arms,” she said, pulling him to her. He didn't hug her back,
but neither did he pull away, and when she released him she thought she saw a glittering wetness in his eyes.

She sat on the bench in front of the fire, patted the pillow beside her. His maroon-stockinged legs scissored beneath him gracefully, and he sat, not beside her but at her feet, facing away from her. His back rested against the bench.

“I've missed you, Alfred,” she said to the back of his head as she picked at the gold embroidery on his shoulder. It was hard to keep her hands off him. She wanted to stroke his hair. At least
he
still had hair.

“You had Colin … and the illuminator to comfort you.”

The illuminator. So that was the source of his anger. How long had he known?

“I had neither to comfort me,” she said, still speaking to the back of his head. Then she told him about Colin leaving. About Rose and the baby. Suddenly, she had his full attention. He turned to face her.

“Colin! Sweet, innocent little brother deflowered a virgin!”

There was a bitterness in his laugh that Kathryn didn't like. She would never be able to tell him that Rose was a Jewess.

“It's too bad about Rose. She was very beautiful,” he said wistfully. “It's funny, isn't it, Mother? You were so afraid that I would make trouble, when all along it was Colin you should have sent away, sweet, honey-voiced Colin, instead of me.”

He hugged his knees up to his chin and said nothing for a long moment, apparently rolling this new knowledge around in his head. “So, I'm uncle, then. Uncle Alfred. Jasmine. A funny name. But I like it. The world is peopled with too many saints already.”

He flashed a grin, reminding her of the merry, irascible Alfred who had always made her laugh even when he needed whipping for his misdeeds. Was that little boy somewhere in this austere young man with his courtly manners?

He frowned and the bitterness was back. “I don't understand why Colin ran away. I should have thought Saint Colin would have stayed to pay the piper. Rose was comely enough to be his wife, that's for sure. He could not likely do better.”

“No. He would not likely have done better. Rose was as good as she was beautiful for all her youthful indiscretion.”
Goodness in a Jew?
Kathryn shook off the voice in her head as she explained. “Colin didn't know about the babe
when he left. He left because he felt guilty about the shepherd's death. He and Rose had used the wool house as their trysting place. He thought it was his fault, all of it, and he would go away and—I don't know—atone by shutting himself up in some dark monastery.”

“What a damn-fool way to think! How like him. Glynis and I were—“ He squirmed and turned away.
“If
I had been in the wool house, I wouldn't think that the fire was my fault. John was probably drunk, started it himself, or maybe it was Simpson, covering up his thieving.”

He leaned forward and poked at the fire, then half-turned so she could see his profile. His shoulder touched her knee. He did not look at her. “You were right about him, Mother, that's what I was coming to tell you, the night I saw—the night I found your pearls.”

“You found my pearls?” Kathryn's throat tightened.
It was Alfred. It was the young master of Blackingham who placed them there,
Rose had said. “Then why didn't you bring the necklace to me, Alfred?”