The Tutor (3 page)

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ir Edward sat in the library. He was holding a book, but his focus was elsewhere; he was staring at a moth circling the flame of an oil lamp on the table before him.

“May I come in?” Katharine asked from the door.

“Dear Kate, I would treasure it.”

Her uncle was not a man to boast, except when it came to his books. The walls of his favorite room were lined with many volumes, and as far as the family knew he had the largest library in the north. New books arrived weekly from the bookstalls at St. Paul’s churchyard in London, and new shelves were added every year. What would happen when the shelves reached the ceiling? Katharine wondered. Where would Edward put his books then? It was in this room, when she was a child fresh from the loss of her own family, that her uncle taught her to read and to write English, then Latin and Greek. He had found her one morning surrounded by his beautiful leather-bound books. She had pulled the books off the shelves and was looking through them—before she could even read a word on their pages.

Edward did not scold her, nor did he make her put the books back, but
he sat down on the floor with her, picked up his prized volume of Chaucer and started to read “The Knight’s Tale” to her. Katharine remembered listening to the story and the powerful authority with which the strange words issued from her uncle’s mouth. Her own father had never read to her, so this listening was new.

Lufanwal Hall had been altered several times over the centuries. When Katharine’s grandfather expanded the old Norman manor, he built the library that her uncle Edward turned into a magnificent book-filled sanctuary. The white plaster ceiling was festooned with patterns of honeysuckle and vines that echoed the frieze around the oak-paneled walls. Two tapestries framed the carved alabaster chimneypiece: one depicted the suicide of Lucrece, and the other, smuggled from a doomed monastery by old Father de La Bruyère—who had tended to the family before Father Daulton—showed the winged and feathered Saint Michael, his sword raised, weighing a departed soul, while the Virgin Mary, in crown and golden halo, placed her rosary on the soul’s side of the scales in an attempt to save it.

Katharine sat across from her uncle, put her elbows on the table, cupped her face in her hands, and watched him gaze at the moth.

“It will burn its wings,” he said finally, “and our sport will come to an end.” He looked over at her. “You look five years of age.”

“The light does not serve you, Uncle. The lamp needs a new wick. And you scarce knew me when I was five.”

“You still hold the curiosity of a child. You keep the rest of us young, my sweet Kate, or at least from remembering we are ancient.”

Edward’s straight blond hair had gone white in the last years, and his once-fair cheeks were stained red, but his azure eyes were still spirited and bright.

“You are kind,” Katharine said. She didn’t confess she felt her youth had gone stale. “I met a curious fellow last night in the old chapel. He claimed he dealt in horses.”

“I’ve exchanged no gold for horses this fortnight,” said Edward.

“He was lying on the table and did comport himself in an odd and familiar manner.”

“I’ll speak to Quib. Let us pray he knows of this stranger’s business. We are not safe, Kate, we may never be.” Edward was quiet for a moment and then said, “Did you know Father Daulton well? I saw you sitting in the gardens with him, at other times walking.”

“He found solace, I believe, in my company,” she said.

“I never warmed to Father Daulton. He rarely broke bread with us. I suppose my allegiance stuck with De La Bruyère. Thank the Lord it was nature that took De La Bruyère from us.”

Old Father de La Bruyère had been caught in another time. He had come from the abbey at Furness when King Henry dispatched the monasteries. Katharine remembered the old priest sitting with his wine, shaking his white head and sighing over the dashed dreams of Queen Mary’s reign. “All too brief,” he’d mumble wearily. “All too brief.”

“Father Daulton was not a man of flattery or false words,” Katharine offered. “It was a struggle for him to say his thoughts. He found it easier to speak the word of God.”

“Indeed, he seemed a solemn fellow.”

“One time he tried to make a joke, but the words hung together all wrong—like an ill-fitting doublet. I tried to make him laugh. It was a task.”

“If any person could bring a stone to life, it would be you.”

Katharine was caught by Edward’s wistful tone and looked closely at him. He seemed to talk of one thing while his mind pursued another path.

“A shame to think laughter such a rare commodity,” he said. “Let us hope, before the hardness took hold, this man of the cloth knew how to make merry.” He paused, then added, “Methinks, my dear Kate, our young priest was in love with you.”

“No,” she said.

“Yes,” he said simply.

She’d never thought of that before.

“One would have to be blind to miss the way his dark eyes fixed on you.”

“I assumed his intensity was religious, not amorous.”

“He would never have said anything.”

Katharine thought of the Bible Father Daulton had given to her.

“Whatever the direction of his heart,” Edward continued, “he was a noble soul.”

They were silent.

“Kate, why have you never married again?”

Katharine was not expecting this. Sir Edward was her father’s older brother, and when she came to the hall as a child after the fire, her grandfather was still alive and lived at Lufanwal as well. At eighteen she had married Thomas Hightower, who died two years after they wed. He was thrice her age, the second son of the Earl of Danby and a widower, and his wealth and property went to his sons, who were older than Katharine. After Thomas’s death, she had returned to Lufanwal and lived there ever since. Why had she never married again? Edward’s question seemed a labyrinth with each path blocked and no apparent exit.

“I have a million reasons but no good answer,” she tried.

“Lend me one,” he said.

“I am set in my ways.”

“Another.”

“I am a widow with a meager dowry.”

“I promised I would augment it.”

“No man I’ve met is cunning enough or . . .”

Sir Edward waited for her to continue.

“Has adequate wit.”

“True cunning takes time to measure, and wit is dangerous when it masks the soul.”

“I haven’t met a man who reads . . . as much as you do.”

“I’ve spoiled you rotten with the honey’d words of others.”

“’Tis true. I live too much in the tales by men who write of war, fairies and romance. You’ve ruined me.”

“Reading, my sweet Kate, is no replacement for living.”

She narrowed her eyes and pretended to frown, then said, “I have your answer, dear uncle!”

“Speak.”

“There is no man equal to you, my lord, no man even close, and I’d rather stay sans
husband than to have to leave you.”

He chuckled, then reached over and patted her hand. “Did Father Daulton talk of his family, Kate?”

“I learned not to ask him too many questions. Much was locked inside. He seemed to take comfort in knowing I was an orphan, and I came to believe he was an orphan, too. Perhaps the plague took his family. He mentioned study abroad at the Catholic colleges in Douai and then Rheims. I gathered he was one of the students who helped the priests with the translation of the English Bible. He moved on to Rome and became a Jesuit. He was clearly English, but he mentioned a Spanish grandmother, never a mother. He spoke of his desire to live in a cottage by the sea, but I don’t believe he had ever lived by the sea. He knew his profession put his life in danger. He accepted that possibility.”

“There was pain in the young priest. I regret I did not take the time nor make the effort to open him up a bit,” Edward said, “help him with that which he kept hidden.”

Edward was usually precise with language—his mind one step ahead of his words. But tonight Katharine noticed he was circling something but couldn’t quite get at it. She was distracted by this tension but
mesmerized by the moth, for now she, too, couldn’t pull her eyes from the flutter of its gray velvet wings.

“The Tudors have opened a Pandora’s box that will never be shut,” Edward said, rising from his chair and walking to the open window. He was wearing his favorite robe, gold and red brocade, fraying at the hem, and a simple white linen shirt and black breeches. Age had not diminished his presence. He still had an athletic build and sat a horse well.

“I was served with the Oath of Supremacy. I refused to sign, and now this blood on my doorstep.” He gazed out the window. A bullfrog’s gloomy horn heralded from the brittle reeds below.

“But you are no priest,” Katharine said, looking up from the flame.

Edward turned to her. “No, but my coffers are full. In spite of what the queen has stripped from me, in spite of the land I’ve had to sell to pay preposterous fines for my religion, I still have quarries, forests crowded with timber, fields of plantings and hills rich in minerals. I still have my turf, and I still have my faith. She needs what I have. She imprisoned me for a year and could not keep me, and when the Mary business was on, I am sure the queen was convinced our northern geography meant we had a hand in that poor Scottish queen’s conspiracies. If Her Majesty or her spymaster Walsingham could have pinned any of that on me, they would have seized the chance.”

“Sir Edward, I must caution . . .” Katharine rose quickly, shut the door, and sat down again.

“My own servants? Spies? Oh, Kate, I am too old for this. Our queen wishes me as barren in land as she is in babes. And now rumors of another Spanish-led armada against our shores feed the queen’s flame anew and bring trouble to our door. I’ve never cared for life at court. I have no ambition for it. I’d rather open a book than bow to a queen. I have stayed out of her way. The old virgin must need new targets now, so she threatens me.”

“You are certain Father Daulton’s death was by her orders?”

“Why else the gift of his corpse on our land?” Edward returned to the table and sat down. “The official report is that our schoolmaster was attacked by robbers. The village doctor said his wounds were so fresh that he met his fate where he lay.”

The moth took this cue to fly into the flame, where its wings caught fire. Katharine wondered if this fiery show was a sign from the dead priest—his soul finally released to heaven. The moth struggled, fell into the oil, slowed its movements and then sank to the bottom.

“We are all Icarus,” Edward said wearily, staring at the oil-entombed creature.

“I shudder to think the ill-mannered stranger I met last night was connected to this gruesome deed.”

“The murderer lodging here? This tale tears further at our house. I’ll send my men to search the grounds.”

“He’s gone by now, I imagine,” Katharine said. “Perchance he was a traveler, a wanderer, seeking shelter for the night, whose nimble words did mollify the men at the gates.”

“Let us hope,” said Edward. He picked up a gilt-tooled leather-bound book and showed it to her. “You speak of nimble words, my dear. Well, here is the new work by Edmund Spenser.”

“It arrived!” Katharine exclaimed.

“I could not resist,” Edward continued, “though I don’t relish the thought of lining that scoundrel’s pockets. Spenser would brand us papal-lovers and slit our throats if he had the chance.”

Katharine had heard at one of Sir Edward’s lively banquets how Spenser, the king of English poets, had traded on his lyric title to take advantage of land stolen from Irish Catholics by the British Crown. He became one of the new English settlers, making his home on thousands of acres on the Munster Plantation, next to the tens of thousands of acres appropriated by the newly emigrated, Catholic-hating Sir Walter Raleigh.

She reached for the gleaming book, which Edward playfully held from her.

“This volume commences with a letter from Raleigh. ‘And all for love, and nothing for reward,’ he says. ‘All for love.’ I would like to think that is true,” said Edward.

“Oh, Uncle Edward. You miser.”

“Let me tonight, while the earth is opening beneath my feet, let me sit here awhile and read his
Faerie Queene.
I am tired of mortals.”