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 wasthat 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, somewithout. 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 ofBickford and Cedricaby 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.
The cards, the first of which had been produced only six months before, had been distributed at first without cost to wealthy women on Market day, and they caught on like a wildfire. Not only did the cards speak of things no decent woman would openly speak of, but they were absolutely beautiful to look at. That first poem, calledOswalda’s Secret, created a rush the likes of which no one had ever seen, and the wealthy of Lynn now flocked to St. Margaret’s on the first of every month for the newest cards.
The demand exceeded the supply.
Lily-Elsie was the lucky one with the very last card. She closely examined this particular shingle, with the poem in the middle and the border decorated with branches from an apple tree and a snake. There was even some expensive gold leafing on it and the author of the poem, Lady Dark, printed down near thebottom. As Cadelyn counted out the money to Yerik, Lily-Elsie began to read softly.
“Bickford and Cedrica…
His blood touches Cedrica, o’er the miles
His praises, she sings,
In the dead of night, she calls to him,
Feeling him against her, of flesh and soul
The magic of creation
As his lips touch her nipple.”
Dreamily, she sighed, holding the card against her breast. “This one is more beautiful than the last one, Cadie,” she said. “I thoughtAlvina’s Lamentwas my favorite one, but I adoreBickford and Cedrica.”
Susanna was watching their surroundings for anything threatening considering they had a great deal of money out in the open, but she paused long enough to cast Lily-Elsie an impatient glance. Lily-Elsie, the feisty lass with a sappy romantic streak, stuck her tongue out at Susanna.
