A Vision of Light

by Judith Merkle Riley

  So, a little reluctantly, he pulled his nose in out of the fresh air, closed the shutter, and returned to the table. He stacked the dried pages up neatly, then picked up his inkhorn and writing case and hung them on his belt. With his pen tucked jauntily behind one ear, he sauntered down the rickety outside staircase, humming to himself. He was off for Little Britain, that grubby maze of alleys beyond the wall, where his friend Nicholas had his shop. It wasn’t the biggest or the best of its kind, but he’d never think of patronizing another: Nicholas was the only person who’d been willing to advance credit to him when he’d first come to town, and he owed him more than money. Besides, there was always good conversation there. You never knew who would come to look at the books, or buy paper and ink; the place was usually full of more arguments than sales. Sometimes things might come close to blows over a hotly disputed topic such as the precise nature of the Arian heresy or the relations between Reason and Necessity in the creation of the visible world, but Nicholas’s calming genius seemed to always prevent bloodshed.

  How Nicholas supported a widowed sister and three growing nephews on the penniless customers who frequented his shop was anyone’s guess. But everyone respected him. He was writing a treatise on philosophy, which, when it was done, would explain the entire nature of the universe. But what with bookbinding, buying and selling books, and a spot of copying, the work was progressing more slowly than he had anticipated. That’s how it always goes, thought Brother Gregory: women and trade—they pull a man down from the life of the mind. Still, it was hard to imagine Nicholas being any other way than he was.

  Stepping lightly around the puddles, Brother Gregory arrived at Aldersgate, whistling merrily. It was one of the rowdy old goliard songs they used to sing in Paris, he and his friends, when they crowded into some tavern after a particularly disputatious lecture, to argue and drink. It was too bad it had all ended as it had, but even after they’d burned the book, he’d never regretted throwing everything over for a scholar’s wandering life. Besides, the authorities had never got hold of his poems, nor had they ever discovered who had written the scurrilous essay enumerating twenty significant errors in the theological writings of the bishop of Paris.

  And now, now there was Contemplation. What a magnificent vista of eternal sublimity it opened up! To think, he might never have realized that his true vocation was Contemplation if they hadn’t brought such an untimely end to what he now perceived as his entirely too worldly passion for scholarship. That just showed that God planned everything for the best, after all. Soon enough he’d be seeing God personally, and then he’d go back and devote all of his time to Contemplation, free of all the hindrances this messy stuff of life made for him. Wasn’t it amazing how life made chains for a man? No money, too much money, property, family—it was astonishing how they all tie down a free soul. When you get down to it, there are only two things worth having in life, thought Brother Gregory happily—freedom and thinking. Those are the best of all. And with that he saw that he had finished his walk, for there before him at the end of a crooked alley was the door of Nicholas the Bookseller’s little shop.

  Nicholas greeted him with that quiet, vaguely humorous way that he had, and after they had made the arrangements for the binding, he sold him ink and a half-dozen reed pens.

  “I see you’ve finally sold the Ovid,” remarked Brother Gregory, with a glance at the tall, slanted shelves where nearly a dozen books of varying sizes lay flat on display.

  “At long last, and it fetched a fine price, considering that you’d read it through often enough to commit it to memory,” responded Nicholas. He was a slender man of medium height, not yet forty, with thinning reddish-brown curls, a closely trimmed beard, and intelligent, whimsical gray eyes.

  “I don’t believe I’m the worst offender you have here,” replied Brother Gregory, looking over to where two threadbare clerks, one in an Oxford gown, were examining Nicholas’s wares.

  “I’ve got a new one here that’s more your style these days,” said Nicholas, picking up a smallish, plainly bound volume.

  “Ah, the Incendium Amoris—you tempt me, Nicholas, but I’m trying to avoid Property these days, since I intend to retreat from the world again once this last job is done,” Brother Gregory said complacently, taking the book in his hand and beginning to peruse its contents.

  “Enjoying the use of an object is one of the definitions of property,” Nicholas reminded him.

  At this the first of the readers looked up in annoyance at the interruption—then he recognized Brother Gregory.

  “Gregory? I hardly knew you, you’re looking so prosperous. Your face is fatter.”

  “Why, Robert—what a surprise—and my face is not fat,” remarked Brother Gregory placidly, looking up from the book.

  “I didn’t say that, you old horse, just fatter. You used to look like death warmed over.”

  “If you continue to insult my physiognomy, Robert, you’ll dine alone today,” replied Brother Gregory calmly, turning a page.

  “I hope you don’t imagine I’m paying for your dinner again, you human tapeworm.”

  “I was imagining, Robert, that when I invite Nicholas and his brood out, I might ask you as well. I said I was divesting myself of Property, these days, and I was paid yesterday.” Brother Gregory looked up from the book and raised one eyebrow at his old friend, and his brown eyes glittered with amusement.

  “Good Lord, have you found a gold mine? Or have you taken up cutting purses?” Robert answered. The Oxford scholar closed the book without putting it down and moved closer to listen. He was painfully thin, and a bit white around the mouth.

  “No, I’m giving reading lessons these days. And every time I go, they stuff me indecently. I’ve let my belt out two holes since I started there. But you, Robert, are you still copying for that merchant?”

  “No, I’ve found a better patron—an earl’s son who likes odes written in his honor and is fond of literary drinking companions.”

  “Robert, you must beware the snares of the Devil in a service like that; you have been tempted by high living,” said Brother Gregory, shaking his finger in mock admonition—but Robert, being a friend, knew that it was meant seriously as well.

  “Don’t be such a monk, Gregory, or I’ll think you keep a discipline and flog yourself at night, instead of drinking, like a regular fellow should.”

  “Well, it’s drinking I intend to do now, if Nicholas will call Beatrix and the boys and shut up shop.” There was a time Brother Gregory would never have noticed Beatrix, who was older than Nicholas, and moved like a silent shadow when she was in the room with men. But after a month or two of writing for Margaret, he had looked at her suddenly one day and seen the look in her eyes. She’s given up, he thought suddenly, and there had sprung for a few seconds into his mind an alien thought: it was a vision of laundry tubs and yoked water buckets and cooking and ash carrying and scrubbing unforgiving and eternal dirt, and never going out, except to market and church. And after that he was never again quite the same. It was the idea that a person could give up hope that way that filled him with sadness. He himself lived on hope; it was the one thing that had never failed him. He wanted to give it back to her, to everyone who had lost it, somehow, and so save himself. But he couldn’t really think of anything to do, except, when he invited Nicholas out, to take her along too—something that never would have occurred to him before.

  “I still have a customer,” Nicholas reminded him gently. Brother Gregory looked at the scholar. You could almost see through his pale, thin hands, as he held the book, pretending to read.

  “I would be honored if you would accept my invitation to join us,” said Brother Gregory with grave courtesy. The scholar looked up. You could see his jaw twitch. He was going to say no. Brother Gregory knew exactly what he was planning to do. He would put his cold hands inside his patched sleeves and walk back to St. Paul’s, where he’d hope that something might turn up. “I take it you’re writing,” said Brothe
r Gregory, “I’d enjoy hearing about it.”

  “Why yes, I am writing,” the scholar answered, “how did you know? I’m working on an analysis of Aristotle’s Metaphysics.”

  “I did a bit of writing myself, before I got into the business of teaching reading,” said Brother Gregory, with a certain irony in his voice. “But then you must know Greek. I’ve always wanted to know Greek, there are several places in Plato that I find difficult to reconcile with Christian doctrine, lacking a full understanding of the text.” The scholar brightened. It seemed less than a moment before they were all installed at the second best table at the Boar’s Head Tavern, with an entire spit of birds before them, and several pots of the best ale in the house. It was a piece of luck, how the table had come free. It had been occupied by a group of rowdy matrons, who had spent the last hour in drink and gossip. Suddenly one of them stood up and laughed, “Mass is over,” and by this token everyone in the room had known that they had deceived their husbands by telling them that they had gone to church, and had met here secretly for some fun. Now in place of a loud discussion about the unsatisfactory nature of husbands, an equally loud argument about the precise composition of the soul was heard around the table, which went on until everyone was sated with food and conversation.

  Walking home later that afternoon with his ink and pens, Brother Gregory was dividing his attention between something that he had seen in the book and reflections on the entirely satisfactory nature of dinner. The scholar was good company, quite a find, in fact, and he had learned several new and interesting things. Then there was the question of the correct way to address the Deity. Rolle, in the Incendium, seemed to think sitting a superior posture to prostration, or the attitude of adoration. Now, just exactly why should this be? Then there was the excellent way he had avoided the sin of Wrath, which had threatened to spoil everything, when a fat priest had come in with his doxy on his arm. When the man found out all the birds had been sold, he passed by the table and made a nasty comment about starveling scribes. Gregory had glowered, turned red, and slapped his hand onto the place where his sword hilt should be—and had come up with his writing case instead. Nicholas had laughed, and put his hand out to restrain him. It seemed that the best vengeance was the Lord’s—Nicholas knew the woman, and prophesied correctly that she would despoil the priest of money and clothes and vanish, when their original business in the back room was completed. Before the happy company had left, they had the satisfaction of hearing the shouting from the back room and had departed, delighted with the commotion.

  But just as he was preparing to mount the rickety stairs to his room, his landlord came out with a letter that had been left for him in his absence. Brother Gregory opened it, looked at it, and his face became grim. It was from father. Somebody had obviously given him assistance in composing it, for besides the usual paternal threats of mayhem were darker hints of the great array of extraordinarily unpleasant things that awaited unfilial sons: anathema on the earth and hellfire beneath it, as a sampling.

  “It’s not as if I wouldn’t come if he invited me courteously,” growled Brother Gregory, crumpling up the letter in annoyance. Now he’d have to go home for Christmas and make it absolutely crystal clear about his plans to give up the world. It was a pity he hadn’t seen God yet—it would be nice to confront his father all suffused with a vague luminosity, so that the old man would be forced to realize that he hadn’t a claim on his son anymore. But there was no use worrying about that now—in the state of perpetual agitation that existed around father, nobody ever saw God, so he’d have to put off his own plans until after he’d dealt with father. And it meant leaving town too soon. He’d have to tell Margaret it was his last visit to the tall house on Thames Street, and she’d make a fuss, because she wasn’t finished yet.

  “The world is not arranged correctly,” growled Brother Gregory.

  WHEN BROTHER GREGORY WAS shown in to write for Margaret that afternoon, she noticed he was preoccupied. He looked all about the room, as if he were trying to fix everything in it in his mind, and then he knitted his brows and looked as if he were going to say something painful to him. But it never came out. Instead he busied himself with sharpening his pen and elaborately brushing all the little shavings off the table, before he set out the paper.

  WE CITY MIDWIVES KNOW that spring is on the way by different signs than one sees in the country. Business gets better, for one thing, for everything that is female bears young. Even before the buds were bursting, at our house alone, the cat had her kittens by the hearth, and old Moll had her foal. Hilde and I were kept running about town, to the point that Brother Malachi complained about the food, for, as he said, “Ready-cooked dishes do not strengthen the heart the way food made at home does.” The second sign is this: that people who have been inside all winter go mad with the idea of being out-of-doors.

  The first episode of spring madness was seen in Brother Malachi. He announced that the Secret that had eluded him all winter could wait for a month or two while he made some money.

  “It’s a disgrace to be supported by women,” he said, as he labored over parchment in the now quiet Smellery. Even Sim had spring fever; he did not blow the bellows but ran wild now, refusing all errands so that he could lounge about the streets.

  “What on earth are you doing now?” I asked, as Brother Malachi heated hot wax.

  “Getting ready to go on the road again, child. I think I’ll go north this time: Boston, King’s Lynn, York. They haven’t seen me for a while. I can’t run this business in London anymore, I’m too famous.”

  “Will you be selling alchemical equipment there too?”

  “No, silly goose, it doesn’t travel well, not well at all. These, however, are light.” His old pack was spread out on the floor, as if he were judging exactly how much would fit in it.

  “What are they, with all that writing?” I thought I might know, but since I couldn’t read, I had to ask.

  “My dear, are you discreet?”

  “The very soul of discretion. It’s my business, you know.” I was feeling very smug about being a successful midwife. Now I knew lots of secrets, for being a midwife is not too different from hearing confessions. We see a lot too: what child does not look like the father, who has had an abortion, who has used sorcery to get a child—things like that.

  “Well, little businesswoman, as one businessperson to another, I will tell you that this is my business stock. See this lovely thing?” He held up a metal seal, with a picture of a man in a tall hat like an egg on it, and some other things as well.

  “Who is that, do you think?”

  “A great king,” I responded.

  “The greatest. It is the Pope himself. This is the papal seal.” He held it up to admire it in the light.

  “Really and truly? May I touch it?” It was always well to humor Brother Malachi; he can get touchy about his trade, and he is very changeable.

  “Almost really and truly. It is just as the Pope would have wished it, if he could have known about it. I had it made up in Paris. Paris is not so far from Avignon, so it is from the proper country, so to speak. Very nice workmanship too. It would be hard to get something so handsome made up here.” He turned it this way and that, smiling to himself. Then he set to sealing the papers he had written with the hot wax.

  “These,” he said contentedly, “are my newest stock of indulgences, all properly done in Latin. The blank spot here is for the name of the man who buys it. I give excellent value. I charge less than my competitors and forgive much, much more.”

  “Oh, Brother Malachi, another of your dreadful deceptions!”

  “But, my dear little thing, I am licensed to provide these. There’s many a money-grubbing monastery sells this type of paper without any license at all. Think of how honorable I am, and be ashamed! See? Here is the papal bull!” He produced a weathered parchment from an inner fold of his robe.

  “Look at how many seals there are! Look and tremble, and ask my forgivene
ss for so cruel an accusation!”

  I looked closely. The biggest seal was the same as that on the indulgences. Oh, dear, we’ll certainly lose him, I fretted to myself. He’ll never come back if they ever catch him. But to please him I feigned idiotic delight and begged to kiss the document, like the silly peasants who formed the bulk of his purchasers.

  “Ah, ah! Not without pay. Even for you, dear thing, I can’t give away the store!” And he returned to his work, whistling.

  Hilde heard him and poked her head in at the door to the Smellery.

  “Dear Malachi, for how long will you be leaving us?”

  “A month or two, my dears, but don’t grieve. Hob can help out now.”

  Hob was another sign of spring. He was a skinny, sad man of indeterminate age, who had run away from an estate in Kent. He had come to our house one day, begging for work, pretending that he was a free laborer. It took no magic to know that he was a runaway serf, for he had already been branded once. How he eluded his lord’s patrols, I do not know, for he never spoke. But now he had to stay in town only ten more months, and they would not be able to reclaim him. A lot of folks know that we are good for a free meal, and Hob must have heard about it somewhere, for he turned up exactly at dinnertime. Hilde and I had been prospering, and needed a man to help out, and getting someone to help these days isn’t easy. And Malachi was worse than useless, for the search for universal truth took all of his time. So Hob stayed. He didn’t eat much. That’s how everything in the house seemed to arrive: it just wandered in.

  So we had Hob, and Malachi got ready to wander forth for a season. As he put it, “Light feet and light hands. Then the Lord loves you. In honor of this house I think I shall be called—hmm—Brother, um, Peter. Yes, this time, Peter.” And so he disappeared for a season, with Hilde’s passionate tears soaking the shoulder of his newly unpacked long dark pardoner’s cloak, and on his back a large bundle of his “stock in trade.” He packed his alchemical gear, so that “clumsy-fingered cretins” would not destroy it in his absence. This was fortunate, as it turned out later, for in his absence the house looked like an herbalist’s, and not a house of black arts, littered with the evidence of his nefarious schemes.