Read Online The Illuminator by Brenda Rickman Vantrease - Free Book Online

deceived.
    â€”C HRISTINE DE P ISAN ,
   
T HE B OOK OF THE T HREE V IRTUES
(1406)
    T here had simply been no other course but to invite Sir Guy to stay for dinner. She had hoped he would plead the necessity to return the priest’s body to Norwich, but he had merely dispatched his men, telling them he would follow.
    Now, as Lady Kathryn sat at table, she listened with half her mind to the small talk going on around her. The other half skittered between the lie she had told and her duties as a hostess. She used those duties to push the implications of that lie aside. Best to deal with them in the calmer light of solitude. And truly, entertaining Sir Guy at the last moment had been challenge enough to keep her preoccupied.
    Fortunately, she had instructed her cook, Agnes, to prepare a more elaborate meal than usual for her new lodgers and Brother Joseph. She had not planned to dine in the great hall, thinking that her lodgers could be led tosettle for a tray in their new quarters—best to set that precedent—while she ate alone with her two sons and Brother Joseph in the solar. But Sir Guy’s presence demanded more, so she had hastily summoned the groomsmen and had the trestles brought in and the board dressed with a silk cloth. Agnes had complained—it was a month until harvest and the larder was depleted—but with characteristic loyalty and cleverness had stretched the simpler fare into something more in line with Kathryn’s unexpected guest’s expectations of hospitality. All this had left her little time to reflect upon the circumstance that had brought him to her door. Now, however, the subject she’d been avoiding surfaced again.
    â€œWhoever the culprit is, the killing of a priest will weigh leaden against his soul,” Sir Guy said as he cut a piece of the larded boar’s head the carver offered. “No respect for holy men. You can blame that on the heretical teaching of the Lollards.”
    â€œLollards?” Lady Kathryn asked, to keep the conversation going. Not that she cared. She was only half listening, her mind preoccupied with the bloated corpse of Father Ignatius. There was an image she’d like to forget. Fearsome enough in life. More terrible in death.
    â€œA bunch of ragtag self-styled
priests,
followers of Wycliffe, who go around mumbling heresy. He’s playing a dangerous game. Oxford has already forced him out.”
    Suddenly alert and thinking of the damning text she’d found in Roderick’s trunk, Kathryn said, “Thanks to the Virgin, no such poison has found its way to Blackingham,” but she wondered how much Sir Guy knew of her late husband’s alliances.
    She motioned to the carver, who placed a double serving of sturgeon on the trencher that Sir Guy, as guest of honor, shared with his hostess. She had scavenged from her impoverished cellar a small leathern bottle of wine, which the butler poured into the silver cup they also shared and from which she took only tiny, pretend sips lest the bottle be emptied before Sir Guy drank his fill. The butler poured ale in pewter mugs for the others who sat at table with them. Colin and Brother Joseph sat next to Sir Guy on Kathryn’s right. The illuminator, Alfred, and the illuminator’s daughter sat to her left.
    Brother Joseph, obviously inflamed by the very name of Wycliffe, leaned his tonsured head in front of Colin so that he could address Sir Guy. “They say the heretic Wycliffe even dares question the Miracle of the Mass. Callsthe transubstantiation of the Host a
superstition!”
His voice cracked with outrage on the last word. “The University will force him out, and what’s more, it’s rumored among the brotherhood that since the king is dead and unable to come to his support, the archbishop is about to bring him up again on charges of heresy.” He stabbed at the air with his knife as though it were Wycliffe’s heart.