The Illuminator (62 page)

Kathryn prayed that the snow would linger, that the harsh winter would keep the sheriff away. His proposal of marriage hung over her head like the ice
daggers suspended from Blackingham's eaves. She knew Guy de Fontaigne was not a patient man. But maybe she could put him off a year.
Yes, Kathryn. And maybe the time is out of joint and the snow will never melt and the trees will never bud and the spring will never come.

And indeed, some days it did seem as though the bleak winter—at any other time a circumstance to be complained against—could hold him at bay forever. But on a raw day in March when the roads were scarcely passable, Guy de Fontaigne sent a message saying he would call on her at Eastertide. The next day, Half-Tom came with the message from Finn.

The day had finally come that Kathryn had longed for and dreaded for a year. It was early morning and Kathryn, her son, and granddaughter were in the warm, cavernous kitchen. Prying a poppyseed cake from Jasmine's fist, Kathryn answered her wail of protest. “We're going bye-bye, you want to go bye-bye, don't you?”

The child's eyes brightened, and she chattered “Bye-bye.” Cake crumbs spilled out along with the words. Kathryn hastily wiped Jasmine's bulging cheeks.

“You look so pretty, my little sweeting. Doesn't she, Colin?” Kathryn asked her son.

Colin only nodded, patting the child absently on the head as Kathryn dressed his daughter for the journey into Norwich. He was pulling on his own homespun garment, making ready for his daily trek down the highway. A cloak worthier of a rag picker than a young nobleman—where did he get such a piece of trash? At least nobody would recognize him. If he was going to shave his head and stand on the street corners preaching, thank the Holy Virgin he had the good sense not to dress in Blackingham blue.

Jasmine squirmed as Kathryn tried to stuff her into the little rabbit cloak and mittens.

“Do be still, darling, you're mussing your pretty curls. We're going to see your
grandpère
today. You will sing for him, won't you? Like you do for Magda and me?”

Kathryn tried to distract the wriggling child, singing “La, la, la, la” up the scale. Jasmine blinked her blue eyes, stopped squirming, and jabbered to the melody.

“My little songbird,” Kathryn said, kissing away an errant poppy seed that rested like a beauty mark on the child's cheek. “Your father was a songbird too,” she said pointedly.

Colin didn't hear her; he'd already left. But Kathryn was not going to let her obsessed son ruin this day. Finn had asked to see her. “Tell me his exact words,” she said to the messenger. “Tell Lady Kathryn I need to see her,” the dwarf had repeated.
Need.

It might be the last time she would ever see him. She would store up the memory of his eyes, the curve of his jaw, the way he wrinkled his brow, his beautiful hands: store all the memory of him so that when she thought she could not bear it all, she could take it out and remember.

It was a good sign that he'd asked to see the child. A sign that his heart had not turned to stone after all.

Should she tell him of her plans?

“We're ready,” Kathryn said to the dwarf, who opened the door.

Finn sat on a blanket on the floor with his granddaughter. Kathryn sat in a chair positioned between the child and the hearth. Each avoided looking directly at the other.

“She's beautiful.”

“How could she be anything else? Born of your daughter and my son?”

He stroked the child's red-blond curls.

“You have taken good care of her. She looks happy.”

“I promised you that I would.”

“Yes.”

There was no sound in the room except a gentle thudding. The little girl amused herself by pounding on the floor with one of the empty oyster shells Finn used as paint pots. He felt a sudden stab of pain, remembering another blond child with bright blue eyes. The child he'd carried to the anchoress, the child who had not lived. A sudden burst of fear, just when he'd thought himself numb to such. It had been a mistake to send for her. To lay himself open again.

“Is she walking yet?”

“A few tentative steps. I fear I hover too much.” Kathryn's laugh was low and musical, as he remembered. “I'm afraid to let her fall.”

“She is not too much of a burden, then?”

“She is no burden.” Her gaze appeared to be directed at the window, at the hard sunlight striping the shutters. “She gives me reason to live.”

Neither said anything for a minute. Such awkwardness between them. A shyness as though they were strangers. He wanted to say he heard from the bishop that she had other interests to fill her lonely hours. He bit back the words.

“She wears her mother's cross,” he said. It was on a small but sturdy silver chain around her neck. He quickly turned his gaze away. The sight of it pierced deep.

“It is a family heirloom. It should be passed from mother to daughter. Rose would have wanted Jasmine to have the necklace that her mother wore.”

“Rebekka never wore it,” Finn said, grimacing with the pain of the memory. “She was a
converso.
She hated it. It was a symbol of oppression for her.”

“Converso?”

“A forced conversion to Christianity.” It was like a fresh wound to the heart, even after all these years. He watched the child playing on the floor as he explained. “There was a purging in the Jewish quarter. Her father's stationer's shop was burned to the ground. Her parents perished in the flames. Rebekka recited the confession of faith to save her life.”

“Did they … did they torture her?”

“No. But I think she would have resisted except for me. I begged her.” He reached out and stroked the child's hair. Rebekka's grandchild—blond and fair, no hint that she had any Jewish blood running in her veins. “They would have killed her. Or at the least taken her away from me. We were already lovers by then. She did it for me.”

“Where did you meet her?”

“In Flanders. I'd gone there to return my grandmother's body for burial in her homeland. Even then, I was a fair scribe, and I liked to paint. It was a gift passed down through my grandmother and my mother. Rebekka's father was a seller of fine parchments. I was going to make a book in my grandmother's memory. My parents had already died. I was the only heir. I had grand visions of a book collection copied from borrowed books. I still remember the name above the door. ‘Foa's Fine Papers'—Foa was her family name. Rebekka was minding her father's shop that day.”

“I'm sure she was very beautiful,” Kathryn said, “like her daughter. You
went to find supplies and found the love of your life.” The softness of her voice made Jasmine drop her oyster shells on the floor and turn to look at her as though her name had been called.

One of the loves of my life, he thought. But he could not say it. Not now. Not with all that had passed between them.

“I've never seen another cross quite like Rose's,” Kathryn said. “Instead of a crucifix, it has a circle of pearls. If you look at it just right, the circle looks almost like the points of a star. Except there are six.”

He smiled. His face felt tight with the effort from muscles grown taut with misuse. “You've a good eye, Kathryn. It is a star. Magen David. I thought it too cleverly contrived to be discernible.”

“Magen David?”

“It means ‘shield of David.' A six-pointed star. A hexagram. Some among the Jews thought it warded off demons, a sort of charm. Some alchemists used it. The House of Foa adopted it as a family symbol.”

“But why did you—?”

“
Conversos
were constantly watched for signs that their conversions were false. I thought if she wore the cross … I thought the symbol of her family, her heritage would make it not such a hateful thing to her.”

“But you gave it to your daughter, even though Rebekka hated it?”

“It was to protect her. As it was meant to protect her mother. Though Rebekka never wore it.”

“Did Rose know about the star?”

“No. I would have told her if she asked. She never did. She never knew her mother was a Jew.” He felt shame at this, as though he'd failed his daughter, and worse, been disloyal to Rebekka. And now there was no chance to tell her. “I just wanted to protect her,” he said.

Kathryn scooped up the child and walked across the room to his work-table, on which lay a large painted wooden panel. He scrambled to his feet and followed.

“I see how you fill your hours,” she said, still not looking at him. “The painting is beautiful. The bishop must be pleased.”

“The bishop thinks me slow. There are to be five such panels: the scourging of Christ, Christ carrying the cross, Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension.”

“And you are only on the third one?”

“I seem to be fixated on the Madonna standing at the foot of the cross.”

She touched the face of the Madonna with a fingertip. “She is beautiful. She favors Rose and yet not Rose. Is she Rebekka?”

“I have been fortunate in my models.”
I saw your queen of hearts.

Kathryn shifted the fidgeting child in her arms, to prevent her reaching for a nearby inkpot. Finn broke off the sharp end of a quill and tickled Jasmine with its feathered end. She giggled and grabbed for the feather. He let her have it and ducked as she tried to comb his hair.

“More quills than sable brushes? Why? When you have no manuscript to— “ A sudden intake of breath. “You're still translating the Wycliffe papers! Right under the bishop's nose.”

He shrugged. “What have I left to lose?”

“You have this child.”

Kathryn returned Jasmine to the blanket and sat down beside her. Finn sat with them. He was so close to Kathryn he could see the tiny laugh lines around her eyes, smell her hair. It made him dizzy with desire. He stood up and went to the window, opened the shutter. The chilly breeze cooled his hot skin. The sun was bright. It laid its light pattern across his worktable, highlighting the scene of the Crucifixion, the blue of the Madonna's cloak. He looked back at Kathryn from this safer distance. When he spoke, his voice was tight.

“I sent for you, Kathryn, because I want to talk to you about my granddaughter.”

She did not say it was late enough coming, but her expression said it for her. He could always read her thoughts.

“I hear from the bishop that you are … that you attended the duke's revels with Guy de Fontaigne.”

She said nothing, just rubbed her arms as if she felt a sudden chill, though the room was well heated with extra coals for the child's sake.

“I am naturally concerned that if there should be … an alliance between you … I'm concerned about what would happen to Rose's child.”

“I see rumors are fleet of foot.” She tossed her head in a gesture he recognized as a flash of anger. “Is that all that concerns you, Finn? Well, you need not worry on that cause. He knows about Jasmine. I intend to make it a term of my—of any—contract with him that she shall remain as my ward.”

So it was true, then. He realized how much he had hoped otherwise. Some
demon had sucked all the air out of the room. He looked anxiously at the child. She was busy trying to paint the oyster shell with her feather, dipping it into a patch of light as though it were a paint pot. A gift passed from father to daughter to granddaughter. The light around him swam with color, vibrant, swirling, all the bright hues of his life swirling into a single cord—and that cord girdled his neck, cutting off his wind. He suddenly hated the colors. There should be no color left in such a drab universe. Only shades of safe, muted gray.

“You would trust him in such an important matter?” Hardly enough breath left to say it.

“Why not, if I trust him enough to marry with him!”

She was clearly angry with him for some reason that he could not understand. But he fastened to her anger, and it gave him breath.