The Heretic’s Wife by Brenda Rickman Vantrease Read Free Book Online Page A

say.”
    He lifted his gaze and looked directly into her eyes, one eyebrow cocked like a crow’s wing.
    Her heart raced.
An artist or a printer!
The question tumbled out before she realized she was giving her adversary the advantage in negotiation. “Is he . . . is he well?”
    The prisoner shrugged then, looked up at her and gave her the crooked smile of a survivor. Strong, white teeth flashed within a scythe of a smile. The teeth of a predator, she thought. She thought she saw a little gleam of triumph in his eyes, like a man who’d run his quarry to ground. “ ‘Is he well?’ I’d say that is a relative term. He is alive. And he’s not in the cellars.”
    Kate didn’t know what that meant, but she could guess. These last few days she’d learned more than she ever wanted to know about the prisons, such as the hierarchy of bought justice at the Fleet, ranging from the relative comfort of the dilapidated houses of the Liberties outside the prison walls to the rank, putrid condition of the cellars. At least John had access to this window on the street. Or so she surmised.
    She reached into the bag and withdrew a penny. The sentry had left and another was standing guard at the gate. He had his back turned, but he would hear if she screamed. She held the coin just out of the prisoner’s reach.
    “Will you bring him to me here? Tomorrow?”
    “Maybe, if you can spare a coin for poor Tom Lasser.” He nodded, grinning, but it was not a grin that purchased trust. He thrust the shallow tin bowl through the bars. She dropped the coin in. He pulled it back through the window, then frowned when he saw its value. “Either you are truly impoverished or you don’t value your brother very highly.”
    “I will return tomorrow. If my brother is at this window, I will give him money, money enough to see to his needs—and share with another. He will not be ungrateful.”
    Without waiting for a further rejoinder she turned away. “Tomorrow morning,” she said. She walked away to the sound of his laughter.
    As she left the odor of the Fleet River behind her, she reminded herself not to be too hopeful, for what faith could be placed in the words of a felon and a rogue who was even now laughing at how desperate she was, how easily duped? But at least she had something to offer Mary when she reached the little shop in Paternoster Row where the windows were already glowing faintly in the clabbering twilight.

FOUR

Of Merry Margaret
As midsummer flower
Gentle as a falcon
Or hawk of the tower.
—F ROM A F IFTEENTH-CENTURY
POEM BY J OHN S KELTON
    T he next morning Kate returned to the Common Side of Fleet Prison and walked the gauntlet of barred windows along Farringdon Street. She was almost light-headed with anticipation and anxiety as she tried to ignore the obscene hoots and lecherous shouts and pleas for money. This is what I have to do, she thought, and steeled herself to do it. But when she reached the remembered window, one quick glance showed it and the one beside to be occupied by other prisoners. She counted back in her mind. Yes, this was the right window. The woman had been in the first one, closest to the courtyard entrance, and the man in the other.
    The same old snaggle-toothed watchman leaned against the iron post of the gate. His eyes watched her warily as she considered how best to approach him.
    “Yesterday there was a woman in the first cell. What happened to her?” she asked.
    “We change them out regular. To give everybody a chance.”
    Her heart skipped a little beat. “Do you mean to say that everybody gets a turn, then? How often do you change them?”
    “Nay. I don’t mean to say ‘everybody gets a turn,’ ” he mocked. “Just the ones that pay for the privilege.”
    “But the woman—surely she was too poor to pay and she showed no interest in begging at the window. She would hardly take the coin I gave her.”
    “The prisoner in the cell next paid for her. Tom Lasser, I recollect. I tried