if I called upon the bishop and claimed for myself the honor of saving the child? I have some connections with the abbot at Broomholm. That would surely add weight to a reasoned argument.â
Finn didnât know whether to read discomfort or relief in the dwarfâs face. A mixture of both, probably. But after a brief hesitation, his fear won out over his pride.
âIâll be in your debt,â he said. He didnât look as if the prospect made him altogether happy. âFor the rest of my life or yours, whichever ends first.â
The anchoress thanked Finn with her eyes.
With Aliceâs help, Finn discarded his bloody tunic and sponged the stains from his shirt. He did not want to distress the mother with the sight of the bloodstains.
She was still standing by the roadside waiting. She looked as though she had not moved.
âYour child lives. Iâll take you to her.â He held out his hand.
She did not answer but climbed dumbly onto the horse, behind him. âPut your arms around my waist,â he said.
As they rode, he could smell the fear on her, pungent and biting, mingling with the smell of rancid fat and smoke from her cottage cook fire. He thought about what the anchoress had said, about the power of a motherâs love. His own daughter had never known that. But he loved her. Hadnât he provided for her every need? Sometimes, they had to hire an extra cart just to carry her satins and laces. But the anchoress had implied that a motherâs love was greater in some mysterious way than a fatherâs. Under other circumstances he might have hotly disputed that with her. Roseâs protection and comfortguided his every decision. No father could be more devoted. It was a vow heâd made on Rebekkaâs deathbed. And heâd kept it.
He urged his horse faster. The day was fleeting, and heâd not yet found suitable lodgings. Rose, housed at Thetford with the nuns, was unhappy about the separation. Heâd promised to find a place for them today, but now there would be no time.
Had he been too rash in offering to take the blame for the dwarf? True, he was well connected and his reputation commanded respect, but he had secrets of his own, secrets that would not endear him in certain society. And then there was the matter of the papers. He should, at least, dispatch those before he called on Henry Despenser. It would delay his meeting with the abbot at Broomholm and mean another night in an inn, but it couldnât be helped. If the illuminated texts were found in his possession, it would prejudice the bishop against him, make him ill-disposed to consider the slaughter of the pig as the only reasonable action. It might even cost Finn the abbotâs patronage.
The hedge lining the field to his right painted a short shadow. After he delivered the mother to her child, there would be time to find a messenger to carry the papers to Oxford. He wouldnât send for his daughter until he had settled this affair with the bishop. It could be a tricky business.
Behind him, he thought he heard the childâs mother start to cry.
TWO
Will then a man shrink from acts of licentiousness and fraud, if he believes that soon after, but with the aid of a little money bestowed on friars, an active absolution from the crime he has committed may be obtained?
âJ OHN W YCLIFFE , 1380
L ady Kathryn of Blackingham Manor pressed the heel of her palm hard against the bridge of her nose as she paced the flagstones of the great hall. Damn that sniveling priest! And damn the bishop he pandered for! How dare he come here again, for the fourth time in as many months, peddling his indulgences.
The pressure under her left cheekbone was excruciating, but it was no use sending to Norwich for a doctor. He would hardly stir his learned bones in this heat to tend the monthly migraine of a woman no longer in the bloom of youth. He would send the barber surgeon to bleed her. Bleed her! As