A Vision of Light

by Judith Merkle Riley

  DAYLIGHT WAS FAILING AS Brother Gregory put up his pens and inkhorn. He looked wearily at Margaret and massaged his right hand with the thumb and fingers of the left.

  “You are weary and the hour is late, Brother Gregory. Will you not stay to supper? It is not a great meal with us, on account of my husband’s gout. But he loves a learned man for conversation at his table, and you would be most welcome.”

  What remained of Brother Gregory’s annoyance was stilled by the thought of a much welcome supper taken in unaccustomed comfort, and a bit of serious male conversation. Since he had started writing, he had been hearing all over town that Roger Kendall was a man as well traveled as he was wealthy, a wonderful raconteur with an inexhaustible store of curious stories from foreign lands. When Brother Gregory’s friends had badgered him one day to find out whether a particularly tall tale about Kendall had any truth in it, the slumbering serpent of Brother Gregory’s Curiosity had been roused once again.

  But despite the proddings of his Curiosity, Brother Gregory had so far only managed to get a brief glimpse of the celebrated merchant when he had gone to ask about the reading lessons. Kendall had been standing by the window in his office off the great hall, inspecting a length of newly received crimson that his two journeymen had unfolded for him. A clerk stood beside him, tablet and stylus in hand. A ray of light from the window caught the folds of deep red, and he could see Kendall incline slightly to catch the rich scent of the dye that rose from the fabric as he took it up between thumb and forefinger to test its “hand.” Kendall had glanced up at the open door when the little apprentice boy had tugged at his sleeve and repeated Brother Gregory’s message. In a pleasant but somewhat curt voice he had answered, “Yes, of course,” and nodded in Brother Gregory’s direction. Now, at last, Brother Gregory would have a real talk with Kendall and find out if his reputation was merited.

  “With pleasure I accept your invitation, madame, for I know it is well meant.” Brother Gregory bowed slightly. Occasionally he showed himself capable of being courtly, although in him courtesy often was cloaked in a certain sarcasm. Now he paused and then reflected, “I propose we call a truce to arguments, since I have, at any rate, thought of an irrefutable proof, and it would not be proper to defeat you completely before accepting your hospitality.” Brother Gregory was a very stubborn man, especially when it came to questions of blood and the proper order of the universe, and he had in mind a quite devastating rebuttal. He had just remembered where he had seen those odd, gold-colored eyes before.

  “Very well, Brother Gregory,” smiled Margaret. “But now to supper; hard proofs are best planned in the absence of hunger.”

  But Brother Gregory was deeply shocked when Margaret called the nurse to make the children ready for supper. His eyes opened wide.

  “Surely, Dame Margaret, your daughters are fed separately?”

  “On great occasions, yes, but this is a family supper. Are you surprised that they sit at the head table? It is the way of our house.”

  And of peasant houses, thought Brother Gregory grumpily to himself. Brats like that give a stomachache to people with more refined digestive systems. Out loud he spoke suavely, “Dame Margaret, you are an eccentric.”

  “Not eccentric, Brother Gregory; I have my reasons.” Margaret looked pensive. “My husband is not young, and it is important for his daughters to have all the benefits of his fine mind and wise conversation as much as possible. He speaks to great ones almost daily, and has a wide experience of foreign places. For every word they hear from him, even at their tender ages, Cecily and Alison are much improved.”

  Oh, thought Brother Gregory, and you are fond of hearing all that gossip yourself, I imagine. Well, who’d have thought it? A January and April marriage with some genuine sympathy involved. Maybe she doesn’t have affairs after all.

  “You look moody, Brother Gregory. Come, come! Put away your cares for the evening and tell us a good story!” Roger Kendall addressed Brother Gregory in his habitually jovial voice. It was rumored that the great trader had once lived for years at the court of the infamous Sultan Melechimandabron himself. And a man who can charm an infidel, let alone trade with him, can charm anything living. But whether or not the rumor was true, many decades ago Kendall had learned that a sour face sells nothing, and so he had added to his habitual good nature a kind of professional cheer that shed its radiance on all people alike, whether great or small, as does the joyful sun himself.

  Brother Gregory, for his part, had already been annoyed by several things this evening. First, the supper, although well prepared, was very simple. At the head of the table, where he sat with Kendall, there were only two meat dishes that wouldn’t have filled up a thimble. He noticed they were eating more heartily below the salt. Now, fasting is one thing, but when a person’s mind is set on a good meal, then it’s very disappointing to have something skimpy on the table. Why, he’d had to take second and third helpings, and thus appear greedy, when he had been anxious to display his holiness on his first real meeting with Roger Kendall. It was annoying to have Kendall order the trencher filled again, and push more wine on him as well, all with that jovial voice! It all caused Brother Gregory to remember how much he disliked overly friendly people. He considered them insincere and shallow—a permanent irritation, like fleas, sent by God as a penance. That annoyed him even more.

  Also, he noted that even though it was not Lent, Margaret took no meat. How utterly annoying that she succeeded in showing off her austerity in the face of his hunger pangs. He’d begun to hope she wasn’t capable of such heights of hypocrisy. Then, when he’d asked the blessing, he noticed that those wily little redheaded girls had masked their true natures sufficiently to murmur a pious “Amen!” As the supper proceeded, he noted that they appeared to hang on their father’s every word. Their eyes big, they’d ask, “And, Papa, what then?” and Kendall would expand like a bullfrog under their worshiping gaze.

  Oh, his irritation was becoming more intense, and partly it was irritation at himself, for having been drawn here by Curiosity. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t brought every bit of it upon himself, as if he couldn’t have guessed ahead of time how it would be. He could feel the blood mounting up in his neck and his courtesy become more waspish.

  As Brother Gregory fumed inwardly, Roger Kendall inspected him at leisure. Kendall had not become wealthy by failing to observe details. Most of the impecunious clerics Margaret invited to dinner annoyed him greatly with their offensive, plebeian table manners. There was, for example, that Austin friar who put his hands in the sauce above the knuckle and spat into the rushes entirely too frequently, or worse, that obnoxious Franciscan, who had skewered his meat on his knife and rubbed it about in the saltcellar, and drunk from the wine-cup with greasy lips. This Brother Gregory was an odd one, though. He carved himself a second helping from the joint with the exquisite precision of a squire at service, and all the while he was talking, he removed a few grains of salt from the cellar on a clean knife tip, with an unconsciously graceful gesture. How odd to see a man whose clothes look ready to fall off him with a courtier’s manners.

  “Brother Gregory, you’ve got a broad wrist. It didn’t get that way by holding a quill, I’d venture to say,” Roger Kendall prodded.

  “Master Kendall, you’re an observant man. I was a soldier before I left the world. But I’d judge your wrist is too muscular to have spent a life in the counting house.”

  “A man must make money before he counts it. Why, in my time, I was a fierce man with a short sword. I’ve fought off many a pirate and robber chief! By land or by sea it’s no easy matter to bring goods from abroad in these times. But tell us your story first, then I’ll tell mine.”

  Wine was beginning to change Brother Gregory’s outlook. He was starting to feel nostalgic. He obliged with a tale of his service in France, as an esquire in the great force commanded by the Duke of Lancaster. Kendall smiled secretly, as if he had confirmed something he was thinking, and then told a tale
of his own, an adventure among the Saracens, complete with a description of the fine points of fencing with a scimitar.

  “They’re lighter, you know, and the blade is sharper—why, you can split a hair with it!”

  “A hair? You go too far now, Master Kendall.”

  “Hah, yes, a hair. Here: I’ll show you with the knife I carry. It’s Saracen as well and holds the same edge.” Kendall solemnly plucked a gray hair from his head, and held it to the blade. After an abortive try he grumbled, “Ah, this old age! My eyes don’t see the hair properly. You try it for me.” And he proffered both hair and knife to Brother Gregory.

  The blade glittered darkly in Brother Gregory’s hand, as he took note of the complex gold-and-enamel design on its handle, which was studded with precious stones.

  “Hmm. Yes. Aha, it is done. The hair is split!” Brother Gregory held it up for the admiring company.

  Brother Gregory’s hand moved over the curving designs on the handle of the knife.

  “Tell me, is this writing?”

  “Yes, it is Arabic.”

  “What does it say?”

  “Allah is great.”

  Brother Gregory put down the knife as if it were a snake.

  “You’ve a heathen saying on your knife? Praising a false God?” Brother Gregory was appalled.

  “No, my friend, it’s a statement praising our God, who is the God of heaven and earth. They may understand other things wrongly, but they know of God. I’ve been places in the world where things are far different than that.”

  Gregory shuddered.

  “No man can live a just life without the Christian faith. You’ve moved in dangerous places, where your soul might be lost forever.”

  “Have no fear, friend, my soul’s no better or worse than anyone else’s in this land. I am shriven regularly, and have donated a chantry where masses are sung continually for the souls of merchants who have died abroad without the final consolation of Mother Church.”

  Margaret nodded, and said firmly, “My husband is a very godly man, Brother Gregory, very godly!”

  “Still,” Kendall went on, “I must take exception to what you say. For by your argument no man among the Ancients, before Our Lord’s earthly incarnation, was capable of living a just life. Would you not say, in the common understanding of the word, that Socrates was a just man? Or Lucretia a virtuous woman? Yet if they knew not Christ, then are their souls not damned?”

  An argument! What could Brother Gregory love better on earth? His dark eyes kindled with delight at the prospect of sport. Kendall leaned back in his chair with a grin, for he loved to try his sharp wit, and what he lacked in theology, he made up for in marvelous examples culled from abroad, about which he had given much thought. With the close of supper the argument was transferred to the room by the garden. The candles were almost entirely burnt down when an exhausted Margaret took her leave, sharing with the nurse the burden of carrying two sleeping children to bed. They had not even stirred when they were lifted up from the cushions on the window seat.

  As she left the room, she heard Brother Gregory’s voice saying firmly, “As Aquinas says…” and the bantering voice of Kendall, replying, “But the Bragmans, who worship a six-armed idol, live in such perfect virtue that…”

  “Not good, not good at all for the gout,” Margaret said to herself.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE FOLLOWING FRIDAY, WHEN BROTHER Gregory arrived for the reading lesson, Margaret was busy in the kitchen, smelling the fish that had been brought from the market.

  “The boy said it was caught just this morning,” Cook was reassuring her.

  “Yesterday evening is more like it.” Her voice sounded suspicious. It wasn’t mistrust of Cook or the boy, but a mistrust of certain Billingsgate fishmongers whom she knew. Some were likely to “sweeten” a measure of fish by putting new ones on top of the old, and you had to be careful to look through the whole basket to make sure someone in the household was not poisoned.

  “This one, and this one at the bottom, must go,” she announced, putting the offending fish to one side. “The others will do, but they need a spicy sauce. I don’t think they’re perfect even now. Is the grain in the kettle?” She peeked into a boiling pot. Goodness, she thought to herself. It’s only just started, and it takes so long to burst. I hope it’s done in time. Then she skirted Cook, whose broad form was bent over the chopping block, and the little boy who sharpened the knives, to unlock and check the contents of the spice boxes on the kitchen shelves. As the sharp smell of peppercorns and cloves mingled with the aromas from Cook’s efforts, Margaret felt a delicious tingling spread from her nose all the way down inside her. How lucky, how lovely, to have a kitchen full of good things to eat! How nice to see every living human creature in the house with a full, pink face, and never feel a tugging on one’s skirt, and look down to see a pair of hungry eyes looking up!

  Margaret started to think of the frumenty she was going to make when the wheat burst. It was one of her husband’s favorite dishes, and the girls’ too. She could already imagine the spicy steam from the kettle rising to her face as she stirred the pot. Master Kendall didn’t really seem to understand that when you can do something really well, it’s hard to give it over to someone else—and besides, by now even Cook had gotten used to her ways. And she knew he really appreciated her brewing; no one in the City could do better, and everyone praised the ale in Kendall’s house.

  No one baked better than she did either. It’s a gift, getting the bread to rise up feathery light, and not everyone has it. Once, on baking day, she had run out to greet Kendall still wrapped in her big apron, with flour up to her elbows, and a white smudge of it on her nose, and he had laughed with pleasure at the sight. “If you knew how pretty you were like that, little poppet, you’d wear a smudge on your face every day and start a fashion at court,” he’d said, and she didn’t know if he was making fun of her or not. That’s how it is with men, she thought. Everything they say means three or four things at once.

  Then Margaret saw that the kitchen water reservoir was empty and sent the kitchen maid to fill it, checked to see that the beds had been shaken and aired, the ashes cleared from all the fireplaces, the corners swept, and new lavender put in the stored linens. Lucky, lucky, she thought. I’m not hauling water myself anymore. She had been up before dawn and, with the exception of meals, would very likely not sit down until evening. She stayed up last of anyone in the house, as well, for that is the time all sensible housewives go from room to room to make sure that every candle is out and every fire properly covered. Anyone fool enough to skimp on that task risks being accidentally burned alive in her bed some night. A lot of things are like that now, she thought. I don’t have to do them myself, but I have to see that everyone else does them right, and that’s just as much work, in a different sort of way.

  But the luckiest part about her new life was the lessons. She could sit down and use her head then, which was a luxury no other woman she knew had. It had all started when Master Kendall had asked her if there was a gift she’d like, one evening when he was feeling mellow. She’d been tired, the man with the wood hadn’t come, and the girls had been very cross that day, and she’d wanted to answer, Time, or Time just by myself, to think. But she knew he couldn’t give it, and she didn’t want to disappoint him, so she said something that popped into her head, instead: “I’d like to learn French, so I can speak with your friends, and you’d be more pleased with me.”

  “I’m always pleased with you, sweetheart,” he’d answered. “But that’s really not a bad idea, not bad at all.” And he’d hired the widow of a knight, who was down on her luck, to come and speak almost every day to her and the girls, and now even little Alison called her dress a robe de chambre.

  But her book was the best thing of all. She’d have never dared think of it if the Voice hadn’t been so pushy, but a person should never ignore a voice. She wasn’t quite sure why it was such a good idea, but it really was. And it wa
s the one thing in the whole world that was really hers, just hers, and no one else’s. It was turning out so beautifully, all those pages and pages of neat black writing. Here and there she could even make out a word or two, which made it even better. And when it was read to her it sounded right, just right. Maybe someday, someone would read it and understand what she wanted to say, and not give her a lecture on what she ought to want to say. And when they did, well, maybe things would be different then. Or maybe it would be a different world. The kind of world where people can listen to what other people have to say, even if they’re not men. My goodness, yes, the Voice had had a very good idea, that time.

  By this time Brother Gregory had become bored with waiting and brooding on a bench in the hall. With his hands clasped behind his back, and his long nose stuck out ahead like that of a curious hound in pursuit of something interesting, he prowled toward the kitchen. Through the open door he could see Margaret, wrapped in a big apron, inspecting a tub full of cabbage heads, freshly cut and put to soak until any worms that lived inside had crawled out. Margaret hated to bite into a worm in an apple, or all cooked into a cabbage, although some people are not so fussy. Her head was cocked to one side, and she was tapping her foot with impatience, watching the worms slowly rise to the surface of the water. Nasty things, she was thinking. You should live in somebody else’s cabbages, not mine.

  Clearly, Brother Gregory thought, she’s doing nothing at all but annoying me by keeping me waiting, and so he came poking into the kitchen after her. But as he stepped over the threshold, a raucous voice shouted, “Thieves! Thieves in the butter!”

  “What on earth…?” Brother Gregory exclaimed involuntarily, and looked in the direction of the voice. Everyone in the kitchen looked up at him and grinned.