Free The Heretic’s Wife by Brenda Rickman Vantrease Page B

she must have felt for her baby brother. It was a beautiful face. Kate wondered about the model. She looked so different from the women Kate knew—exotic somehow, with a fall of dark hair and almond-shaped eyes and tawny skin that glowed.
    How could she could bring herself to sell such a book?
    She sat for a long time on the cool stones of the hearth, tears pooling in the wells of her eyes. She thought of Pipkin and his little lamb and how she should have gone with them but knowing that she could not for she would surely wither like a flower in winter without her books or literate companions, with only Pipkin and his little lamb for company—and the worst part: she would be existing on the charity of others. She was turning the pages absently, no longer absorbed in the parade of colors but mired in her own gray loneliness, when she came to a folded piece of parchment interleaved and stuck so tightly that she thought at first it might have been bound with the text. She tugged gently and it came away.
    She wiped her eyes, her little wallow in the slough of self-pity momentarily banished by her curiosity. She unfolded the yellowed parchment and squinted to make out the faded ink. No brilliant pigments here but just a few words written in the familiar hand of the rest of the Bible and centered like a poem in the middle of the page.
    My dearest Anna, please hold these words in your heart until you believe them: “All shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well. For this is the great deed that our Lord shall do, in which He shall save His Word in all things—He shall make well all that is not well.” These are the words of a holy woman I once knew. Now that I am an old man I understand them better—though not completely. I spent so many years grieving that I sometimes overlooked the treasure that I had been given in you. I hope one day you will understand these words too. I hope you know that I have always loved you. You were the fulfillment of this promise in my life.—Your loving grandfather, Finn.
    Anna squinted at the date:
14 June 1412
—over one hundred years ago. She had a sudden curiosity about this Anna. Had she found all things well? Had she even found the note? They had certainly never found it in all the years they’d had the Bible. Had it lain, hidden for over a century, perhaps a message to her and not to the Anna for whom it was intended?
    In which He shall save His Word in all things,
the note had said. What would John make of it? Would he see the reference to the “Word” as affirmation, or would he read it as condemnation? He had certainly been carrying out the family tradition of helping save the Word—at least until recently. Or did the “Word” refer to some promise that had more to do with the hope that was carried in the Word than the actual preserving of the Scriptures? It was a cryptic message—hard to decipher without knowing the writer and his Anna, this ancestor who might have been bone of her bone, flesh of her flesh.
    She wrapped the great Bible back up and hid it beneath the hearth, then placed a big iron pot over the loose stone. She placed the note there, too, but separate from the Bible; even if she sold the Bible, she would keep the note. It was like a gift from the past to give her courage. “All will be well,” she repeated, and then, “He will make all things well.” But Kate needed hope now, not when she was old. She needed money and she needed somebody to love and be loved by. If He was going to make all things well now would be a good time to start.
    The only place she knew to make discreet inquiries about selling the Bible was down on the docks. John had often had dealings with a man named Humphrey Monmouth of the Merchant Adventurers League. He would know where she could sell the Bible. There was still light enough to go there and be back before dusk.
    At least it wouldn’t hurt to ask.

SIX

A purgatory! There is no one only, there are two. The first is the Word