Chapter Two
Lynn, Norfolk (also called Bishop’s Lynn, or King’s Lynn)
Near St. Margaret’s Cathedral
It was a bright new day that had hardly been touched, with birds flying across the expanse of blue overhead and nesting in the great steeple of St. Margaret’s Church.
It was just after Sext, or midday prayers, and while the peasants were filtering out of the church having bared their souls to God, there was a flurry of servants for noblewomen, both young and old, heading for the rear of the church where the entrance to the cloister was located.
They were heading there for a purpose.
Of course, the noblewomen themselves wouldn’t dare rush for this purpose. It was all about piety and propriety with them. Therefore, it was the servants that did the scurrying around to the north side where there was a gate that led into the graveyard and beyond that, the cloister.
A cleric was waiting at the gate, shielded from the view of the church behind brick walls and overgrown trees.
He waited there with a stack of painted, wooden cards in his hands.
They looked like prayer cards, but that was deceptive.
These were not prayer cards; they were far more sinful.
Servants rushed him, handing him two pence, which was the price.
Once a month, the wooden cards would be waiting and it was first come, first served.
No one wanted to miss out.
On the corner across from the gate, three women stood watching the rush of servants and the frantic exchange of money.
Two of the women were rather young while a third was a little older and taller.
They were watching the activity curiously, and perhaps with some glee, as servants scuffled across the dirt street and practically knocked the cleric over in their haste.
They paid their money and rushed away with their painted card, hiding it as they moved.
These were an illicit indulgence for their ladies.
“So many servants,” one of the women gasped as she watched the flurry of servants. “How many cards were there this time, Cadie?”
She was speaking to the woman standing next to her, a woman with long, blonde hair and eyes as dark as night.
Cadelyn of Vendotia had pale skin, like cream, and people had told her on more than one occasion that she looked like an angel, if angels had walked the earth.
Pretty didn’t quite encompass the woman; magnificent was more like it. Magnificent, headstrong, and brilliant.
And very, very naughty.
“We had nearly one hundred,” she whispered excitedly. “Think on it, Lel; think on the money we shall make!”
Her friend, Lily-Elsie, or Lel as she was called, nodded giddily and the two of them grinned like fools. But the third woman in the group stood behind them, watching the flurry of money-throwing servants, and shook her head reproachfully.
“Cards of lewd poetry disguised to look like prayer cards,” she muttered. “And people pay money for these things. The women of this town are sinful deviants hiding behind fine silks and fine families.”
Cadelyn turned to the woman. “That may be true, but their deviant indulgences have made a good deal of money for the clerics and for me,” she said defiantly. “You do not read the poetry, Susanna, so you have no place to criticize it.”
Susanna de Tiegh lifted a dark eyebrow. “Rest assured that I will never read it, but I most certainly will criticize the hypocrisy I am witnessing.”
Cadelyn fought off a grin at her prudish friend.
“Do not judge lest you be judged,” she said as she returned her attention to the clamoring throng.
“But I agree with you; you should not read my poetry. It might make you feel something and God only knows, we do not want you to feel anything. Or think anything out of the ordinary. Keep thinking like everyone else, Susie. You will be nothing more than what you are.”
Susanna eyed Cadelyn, her willful young friend. Or, more to the truth, her willful young assignment. Cadelyn was nearing twenty years now and Susanna had been with her for nearly ten years. She’d watched a brilliant, impish young girl grow into a woman whose mere presence commanded respect and awe.
There was something about Cadelyn of Vendotia that made one stand up and take notice.
In the first place, she was clever… oh, so clever…
in every way. She had taken to her studies at a young age and now was perhaps one of the most educated young women in all of England.
She could speak four languages, do mathematics in her head, recite most of the bible from memory, and a host of other accomplished things.
And in the second place, there was her gift for poetry…
God help them all, her lustful, sinful poetry.
Susanna couldn’t have stopped Cadelyn from writing that tawdry prose had she tried. Night after night, when her duties for the day at Castle Rising were finished, Cadelyn sat up in her bower and wrote indecent verses of love and passion.
At first, it had been a hobby, a hobby that saw the first few poems thrown in the fire by Lady Summerlin, Cadelyn’s liege’s wife.
Lady Summerlin had been incensed at the indecency of it all and that should have been the end of it.
But it wasn’t. After that, Cadelyn grew smart about hiding her work, but that wasn’t the worst of it. She wanted to do something with it.
And she had.
“How long do you think it will be before Father Thaddeus asks Yerik where all of this money he donates is coming from?” Susanna asked.
“Today, you shall make more money than ever and the priests of St. Margaret are going to want to know how a mere cleric is able to come up with so much money. What will Yerik tell them, Cadelyn?”
Cadelyn lifted her slender shoulders. “He does not donate all of it,” she said. “He only donates some of it. The rest, he distributes to the other clerics who help make the cards. They all share in the profits.”
Susanna sighed with disapproval. “You have pulled that poor cleric into your web of shocking behavior.”
“If he did not want to participate, he could have declined the offer.”
Susanna’s eyes narrowed at her. “As if he could refuse you,” she said. “You made a deal with the man that if he and his fellow clerics reproduce your… your lascivious poems and help you distribute them, then they can keep half the money.”
Cadelyn was completely unrepentant. “It is a business deal,” she said. “I am making a great deal of money from it. Why should you complain? None of what I do concerns you.”
Susanna rolled her eyes. She didn’t have anything to say to that, at least not anything she wanted to say.
Anything Cadelyn did concerned Susanna, because what Cadelyn didn’t know was that Susanna had been sent by William Marshal to protect her, a full-blooded Welsh princess, and perhaps one of the most valuable commodities in all of England.
All Cadelyn knew was that Susanna was a lady-in-waiting to Lady Summerlin, but she seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time with Cadelyn.
Susanna liked Cadelyn; she genuinely did, so forming a friendship had not been difficult. She was lively and humorous and full of life, as few people were. She was unafraid to take risks. But sometimes, Susanna wanted to put the young woman over her knee and spank the sass right out of her.
In moments like this, she wished fervently that she could.
As Susanna was thinking about that bold and reckless young woman, the cleric selling the illicit cards at the back of the church abruptly waved off the group that were still clamoring around him and shooed them all away.
As they scattered, disappointed that there were no more cards left, the young man in the rough woolen robes of an ecclesiastical cleric rushed across the road to where Cadelyn and the others were standing.
He was quite excited, as evidenced by his young, sweaty face. He was filled with the thrill of coinage. As he drew near, he held out a kerchief full of money and he jingled it a couple of times, the tinkling sound chiming merrily.
“See how much we have made, my lady?” he said as Cadelyn snatched the kerchief. “A veritable fortune!”
Cadelyn shushed him harshly as she yanked him into the shadows of the doorway where they were all standing.
“Yerik, I told you that you must be more discreet,” she insisted. “I am supposed to remain anonymous, yet you run at me with money in front of everyone. They will know I am the author!”
Yerik was properly mortified, looking around to make sure no one was watching them. Fortunately for him, the servants had mostly returned to their ladies, some with cards, some without. No one seemed to be paying attention to an overexcited cleric.
“Forgive me, my lady,” he said. “But everyone has gone mad for the poem of Bickford and Cedrica by Lady Dark. Not only the noblewomen, but I saw merchant women as well. Word has spread, even to them. You are magnificent, Lady Dark!”
He still had one card left, handing it over to Lily-Elsie, who snatched it greedily as Cadelyn opened up the kerchief to inspect the take.
As she began to count it, Lily-Elsie inspected the card.
It was the size of a prayer card, about seven inches long by four or five inches wide, and made of a shingle of wood.
The design on it was painted by one of the clerics at St. Margaret’s.
There was an entire army of them, talented men who scribed and decorated beautiful books for the wealthy and the pious, but those jobs were few and far between, or very long and tedious, and the work brought to them by Cadelyn of Vendotia, the underground poetess known as Lady Dark, not only brought them much needed income, but it honed their skills.