The Heretic’s Wife by Brenda Rickman Vantrease Page A

blissful sleep, listening for the sound of a key turning in the lock. He recited Homer in his head as he’d done in the fish cellar to keep his mind working and alert, trying not to think of Clerke and Sumner dying in his arms, as they begged for water in the fetid cellar, trying not to think of the despair at the end. God had saved him from the fish cellar and that could only mean one thing. He had more work to do.
    He’d forced himself to stay awake ever since the old nun left, trying to work out a plan. When none was forthcoming—he’d gone over in his head all the ways Ulysses had escaped his peril and none seemed adaptable to this situation—finally, he’d decided to just wrap the woolen blanket under his armpits and flee barefoot into the fresh, sweet-smelling air of the night. He’d worry about clothes once he was outside. Of course if the beadle were about, and he would almost surely be, he would be picked up soon enough as alunatic, in which case he could plead robbery, but that would land him in a magistrate’s residence giving witness and that was the last thing he needed. My mind is going in circles, he thought, longing for sleep.
    For hours now, he’d heard only the snores and groans of his ward mates, punctuated by the creak of a wooden bed frame as some tormented soul thrashed about. When he was sure he could stay awake no longer, the chimes at midnight startled him to wakefulness. Shortly after, just as the old nun had said, the sound of keys jangling in the door made his heart race.
    By the time the last chime had sounded, the porter had already lit two rush lights at each end of the ward and was collecting the first of the chamber pots; the clink of his bucket echoed down the ward. In the flickering light, the man was a bent shadow flitting between the beds.
    The porter approached his cot and bent to retrieve the pot at the foot.
    “Thank you,” Frith whispered to his back.
    The man, a smallish, old man with a bent back, rose up and looked at him with a mixture of alarm and curiosity.
    “You talking to me?”
    “Yes, I just wanted to say thank you. It’s a very valuable service you perform.”
    “Sorry to wake you,” the old man grunted.
    “It’s good to be awake. That way I know I’m alive.”
    The man stood up, holding the chamber pot in his arms, apparently unperturbed by its foul contents. He favored Frith with a toothless grin. “Never thought about it like that,” he said, and took a step toward Frith’s cot.
    “Don’t come too close. I’ve had the sweating sickness,” Frith whispered.
    “I beint worried about that. I’ve seen it all. Never caught anything yet. A man’s got to piss and a man’s got to eat. I carry out your piss, I get to eat.”
    Frith smiled. “I never thought about it like that.”
    Frith watched him as he collected the pot of his nearest neighbor. This time he did not go to the outside door but went to the center window, opened it and flung the contents out. He came back and bent to put the pot back in its place.
    “I’ll leave the window open, so you can get a night breeze,” he said.
    And the smell it carries with it, Frith thought, but he supposed the porter no longer noticed the smell.
    “It’s hot enough to roast a chicken in here, and you’ve got that blanket pulled up like it was January. You feverish? I might could wake one of the nuns.”
    “They took my clothes away.”
    “Aye.” He nodded knowingly. “Not much chance for a man to keep his private parts private in here. I probably burned yer clothes. If you’re contagious they burn your clothes. Some porters give them to the ragpickers. But not me. Everybody might not be as hardy as me. It’d hurt my conscience like a scourge if some innocent person caught the pestilence on account of a farthing I might get.” He lowered his voice to an even lower whisper, as if the mention of death might bring distress to some of the occupants who overheard their conversation. “If