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friendship with the abbot of Broomholm. Colin was eagerly querying the priest about the proposed lodgers. He would be pleased to have an artist in the house. And Alfred would be pleased to have the girl, no doubt. That could be a problem, especially if the chit had a pretty face. But the friendship of the abbot
and
extra income …
    There was Roderick’s room. It had good lighting. And it was far enough removed from her own not to cause gossip among the servants or endanger her privacy. She and Roderick had been able to avoid each other for weeks at a time.
    Her son interrupted her thoughts, his blue eyes bright with interest. “Mother, what say you to this idea?”
    She could tell from the excited pitch in his voice that he found the plan appealing. He must get lonely. She was always so busy and his connection with his brother seemed to have ended when they exited her womb.
    â€œWhat say you, Colin?”
    â€œI think it a fine and noble idea,” he said, smiling broadly.
    â€œWell, then, I suppose we might give it a trial.”
    She was rewarded by the look of pleasure on his face. “Brother Joseph, you may tell your Prior John and your Father Abbot that I and my household are pleased to be of service. We will prepare to welcome your illuminator and his daughter.”

THREE

    Christ and His Apostles taught the people in the language best known to them
…
The laity ought to understand the faith
…
believers should have the Scripture in a language which they fully understand.
    â€”J OHN W YCLIFFE
    L ady Kathryn spent the next two days supervising the cleaning of Roderick’s chambers. His best clothing she put away for Alfred to grow into. Colin was much too fine-boned. The elegant brocades and velvet finery would hang heavy on his slender frame.
    It was a burdensome chore in the summer heat and fraught with emotional peril, so she was relieved to be at the bottom of the chest when she came upon a folded piece of parchment, half-hidden beneath a moth-eaten tunic, among the residue of aromatic herbs. A love letter from one of Roderick’s many conquests? He shouldn’t have bothered to hide it. She was long past caring. The more paramours he had, the less he claimed from her the onerous marriage debt. But upon examination, the document proved to be no billet-doux but some kind of religious tract headed in scrawling script,
On the Pastoral Office.
It was not illuminated but hurriedly transcribed andsigned simply at the bottom, “John Wycliffe, Oxford.” She recognized that name. That was the man the bishop’s legate called a heretic.
    She might have burned the damning paper immediately, except the way it was written caught her notice. Not the subject or even the style, but the language, if language it could be called. It appeared to be the midland Anglo-Saxon dialect spoken among the peasants and the lower classes, hardly a tongue appropriate for a scholar’s document. Norman French, the language of her father, was the language of books and court documents. Religious documents were written in the Latin Vulgate. Few of the people who spoke this doggerel could read. And they would never be able to afford the cost of books, not even hastily copied parchments such as these.
    Out of curiosity she began to decipher the unfamiliar spellings and found the content even more shocking than the language. No wonder the priest had called Wycliffe a heretic. This document charged that the Church was filled with apostasy, even in its highest offices, and called for the withholding of funds from immoral and negligent clergy. Dangerous language, even for an Oxford master with a patron at court.
    It was not that she disputed the truth of such a position—the bishop of Norwich, Henry Despenser, had certainly shown more interest in raising money to set an army against the French antipope, Clement VII, than in saving souls. It was rumored that the bishop even ordered the withholding