Bilious guffawed, and clapped his hands. “As you’re so eager to know, I will show you,” he said. “Allow me to place something small in the pocket of your cloak.”
“I’ll allow it,” she said, smiling a little, in anticipation of the outcome of the trade. “Is it small as, say, a pearl, a pretty, a jewel?”
“Wait, wait,” Bilious said, and indeed slipped something into her pocket.
“Wait, wait,” he said again when Minka reached for the pocket, and so she put her hands on her hat, resigned to whatever game Bilious would play. He stood back, and with a sly look unfastened the small brown satchel that hung newly from his shoulder.
As Minka watched, out from the satchel came first a pair of tiny tufted ears, followed by a russet-furred little round head and bright black eyes.
Minka drew back. “Noo,” she began.
In an instant the creature leaped from Bilious’s satchel to the ground and ran daintily up Minka’s cloak, scarcely disturbing its drape, and dipped into her pocket and out again, as all the while a guttural sound was building from a low, deep place in the very core of Minka’s being, up, up, up and out her throat.
“Nooooooooo!” Minka hopped about, arms wild in the air. “No, no, no, and no again, no!” she cried. “Get the beast off me! Get it off, I say!”
“Pip is hardly a beast,” said Bilious, calmly welcoming the little red squirrel, for that was what it was, back into his small sack, first taking from it the prize picked from Minka’s pocket: a halfpenny.
“Pip? Pip? The beast has a name?”
“Of course he has a name, Minka, as you have a name and I have a name, and he likes shiny things, same as you.”
“You would compare a wretched rodent to a human being made in the image of God?”
“Certainly, for he is a pet with wit and charm in great abundance. Pip will make a right jolly addition to our party.”
The squirrel poked his head out of the sack, and Bilious scratched the fur between his ears. Minka leaned against the cart and fanned herself with her hat.
“What a profitable morning it’s been,” Bilious went on. “I’d just accomplished the trade for the cup of coconut, if you can imagine—”
“I can well imagine the rare thing!” Minka wailed.
“—when a young lad happened by in need of a gift for his bride. The lass is all a-sneeze around Pip, says the lad, but myself? I wonder if she sneezes more at petty thieving than at the humble squirrel, who is clean as a whistle, after all, with no dander to speak of. Anyway,” Bilious went on, “the lad was pained to part with his pet, what he’d trained to, yes, pick a pocket, but also to do little flips and capers for show.”
“A regular squirrel cirque,” Minka muttered.
“Precisely my thought! Pip will draw a crowd to my wagon, and increase my trade.” He rubbed his hands together gleefully. “Beautiful.”
Minka rolled her eyes. “As you say,” she growled, “it’s all in the angle of the squint.” She slapped her hat against her leg to knock the dust out, and then plopped it back on her head. “I’d have rather had the coconut cup.”
Margaret and Bertram walked until their shadows stretched not so far ahead of them as when they’d started out upon the road. Soon they came upon a group of gray-robed travelers breaking their fast beneath a stand of silver birch. A pair of old men sat on the ground upon a cloak, playing a game of dice. A plump woman sliced rounds of sausage as quickly as her little girl could gobble them up. The smile that split Bertram’s face and showed his crooked teeth told Margaret what she wanted to know: this was Bertram’s traveling party, and she was safe.
“Come, Margaret Hopalong,” he said, grabbing a piece of coarse bread and some sausage and passing it to her, “come and meet my cousin Henry. I am bound to him in service, and have been these seven years.”
Bertram led her to a man of an age better than Father Bernard but less than the bishop, sitting upon a fieldstone. A dark felt hat’s broad brim did not obscure the nose, which squatted left of center and was flattened at the bridge. He wore a heavy woolen cloak fastened with a pewter pilgrim’s badge. At their approach, he leaped from his perch and reached a hand to Bertram. His cloak opened to reveal a plain brown cross stitched to the front of his cassock.
“Bertram, back from the wars, you’ve found us once again. I was sure you’d been et by wild pigs.” Henry smiled at Margaret, curiosity lighting his eyes, and removed his broad-brimmed hat. She saw his head was shaved above the temples, leaving a ring of red hair all around, tonsured in the manner of a friar or monk.
“I see, Bertram,” the man went on, “that you’ve collected a friend! I am called Brother Henry, friar of the Brethren of the Holy Cross, and I note we’ve something in common. My brotherhood in Dale’s End is known commonly as the Crutched Friars!” He chuckled and pointed at her crutch and at the same time patted the crutch, or cross, on his torso.
Margaret frowned, tucking the crutch Bertram had given her behind her back. The friar seemed kindly, but she didn’t like her infirmity to be spoken of so openly.
Brother Henry’s face gentled as he sensed he’d troubled her. “Come and sit, child,” he said. “I must know how you came to be in Bertram’s company, which I trust has been gentlemanly.”
Bertram bowed regally, sweeping his arm low along the ground, and then introduced Margaret, relating the story of her capture and rescue, while she sat beside the friar and ate the bread and sausage, too hungry and weak to add a word to Bertram’s dramatic retelling.
“You’ve no need to worry,” said Henry when Bertram was done. “With us you’ll find safety and companionship, and never a threat shall harm you.”
Though his gaze was serene and sure, the friar seemed ill equipped to carry out such a promise. Doubt must have shone in Margaret’s gaze, for in the next moment the holy man sprang from the rock and, dark robes whipping all about, turned a set of perfect cartwheels! One, two, three!
Margaret, who couldn’t have been more surprised if fire had spewed forth from his ears, dropped the rest of her bread and clapped.
“Well done, Cousin,” said Bertram, laughing. Margaret noticed how laughter was never far from Bertram’s lips, and what a nice laugh it was.
Brother Henry settled himself beside Margaret once again on the rock and caught his breath. “Though you may not imagine by the cut of my clothing and the cut of my hair, I was once capable of great feats of strength. Oh, yes. I could leap upon my destrier fully armed, without putting foot to stirrup. I could scale the underside of a siege ladder, using only my two strong arms. Indeed, it was not uncommon for me to turn cartwheels in full armor!” He raised a hand skyward in triumph, then let it fall to his lap. “And in a coat of mail,” he said softly, “to dance.”
“But…” Cartwheels in full armor? Warhorse? Dancing? He was a holy man!
“I was not always Brother Henry, under vow of poverty and chastity. In another life, another time, I was a knight, you see,” Henry explained, as if hearing Margaret’s unspoken doubts. “I served Ranulph, the old king, among others,” he added. “I was a fine knight, if I say it myself.” He stroked his chin. “Oh, and such a fine red beard I had,” he said. His voice trailed off wistfully. “But,” he declared, slapping his thigh, “if beards funded salvation, then all goats would be saved.”
Bertram laughed heartily. “Perhaps they are, Cousin!” he said.
“Blasphemy!” roared the friar, and he switched Bertram on the rump with a willow wand. Bertram howled, dancing about, knees high, as if his bottom were on fire. Margaret couldn’t help but snort.
“Maaaaa!” Bertram was bleating and tugging on his chin as if he were a billy goat. Then his eyes lit, and he leaped to a sack upon the ground and pulled from it his bagpipes.
Margaret cringed when he inflated the bag and blew a few tentative notes.
“Getting better all the time, Bertie!” said Brother Henry, shouting to be heard above the din. “Keep up the good work, but”—he pointed v
aguely in the direction of the woods—“mayhap over there….”
Bertram’s face reddened with effort, and he waggled his eyebrows and moved off a bit.
“Here, Margaret, I’ve gone and told you something of myself, and you’ve told me nothing,” said Brother Henry. Margaret had meant to keep her own counsel. But the friar was so kind that everything spilled out—Minka’s plan to marry her off, the soothsayer’s prophecy. The magic mirror.
Henry stroked his chin where his legendary beard once was and said nothing for a time.
What must the friar think of her? Margaret wondered. Might he imagine her burning in hell for heeding a soothsayer’s prophecy? For courting images in a magic mirror?
But when he spoke, it was a cipher. “Things are not always as they appear,” he said. “You are now on a journey, magic mirror or no, and none may travel that journey for you.”
“But all is lost! The mirror is gone, and I know not how I shall find the wild-eyed man without the mirror’s aid.”
Henry fingered the ring on his littlest finger, head down, deep in thought.
Who was he to advise this young girl? Henry’s thoughts traveled back in time across the fields of his own life. All is lost. On his own darkest day, had he not uttered those very words?
How well he remembered that day, and his failure.
After the king consort Armand died, Henry had been kept on at court, but grudgingly. He’d been riding the countryside on a fool’s errand—sent by that ape Lord Geoffrey, Queen Isobel’s new husband. He was always inventing ridiculous quests to occupy the knights in the new time of peace. Then word came that Isobel’s child, heir to the throne, had gone missing and was feared dead. “The queen lies ill and dying of grief,” the messenger said. “All are to return to court and join in the search for the missing child.”
Henry was making ready to leave when a crone approached, her face in the shadow of a shawl.
“The queen yet lives, and so there is hope,” said the crone.
“All is lost, I fear,” said Henry.
“Not all, not yet.” The old woman withdrew from her apron a small package wrapped in linen, tied around with twine and sealed with wax. Henry looked upon the object with curiosity. “Take this to the queen without delay,” she said, “for it may yet be of use. But mark me: take it only to the queen, the queen alone, and do not open it. Do I have your word?”
The crone peered up from her stooped posture and fixed him with a dark, bright eye. He promised his word was true, and true it was. He would not break a lady’s trust.
Henry squinted at the sealed, linen-wrapped package. His heart beat with a strange curiosity. “But what is the gift, good woman?”
She glanced at him, her gaze troubled with—what? Mistrust? Had she doubted him, then? It turned out she was right to doubt.
“Let us say it is a tool of truth,” the old woman said, and pressed it into his hands. “Take it. I beg you, take it from me!” She closed her eyes and turned away. “Now ride.”
And so Henry mounted his horse, a massive pied destrier called Gilly, and rode away at top speed. And as he rode, his mind went back, again and again, to the gift he bore, this tool of truth. What truth might he learn, were he to open the package intended for the queen? And while he picked and plucked at the package in his mind, foolishly craving whatever it might yield, he scarcely noticed the travelers on the road. Trees and fields and hedgerows were all a dizzy blur, and then—
His horse reared up and roused him from his stupor. In a flash he saw a river, a man, a woman. But before he could act, Gilly’s hooves, with unlucky precision, struck the man down. He tried to rein the horse back around and saw the man’s head, bludgeoned beyond reach of life, before Gilly, wild and out of control, carried him off.
He had taken life before, in service to God and the old king in time of war. But as he clung to his panicked steed, he vowed that if he survived this ride, he would not take life again. The guilt of his carelessness settled heavily on his shoulders. Let God take a life, not him. Not him.
Later, when Gilly had calmed, he rode back to the scene, but the people were gone and the doors of the town were shut. Sick and trembling with remorse, he feared his mind was playing tricks: He thought he saw the crone, held captive by the royal messenger, crying, “She needs me!” The queen? He squeezed his eyes shut against the vision—cruel taunts of a guilty conscience!—and went to the river. Something blinked in the moonlight, and he knelt and found a silver ring in the dirt along the riverbank. He wore it to remind him of his vow. Over the years, the ring had dug a gully in his flesh.
“Brother Henry?” Margaret said. The friar seemed lost in thought, fingering the little ring he wore. A token of his faith, no doubt.
The friar cleared his throat. “Tell me what you saw in the mirror,” he said.
“The man, and…blackbirds flying from the spires of what must be Knightsbridge Cathedral. I think,” Margaret added. “At least, it had a great stained-glass window.”
“Round? A rose window?”
Margaret nodded.
“Ah,” said Henry. “This is why you travel west.”
She nodded. “To find the green-eyed man of the seer’s prophecy.”
Bertram had wandered near, and now his bagpipes deflated gustily. “But the seer foresaw death and danger with the man in the glass. Would it not be wiser to travel in the direction opposite? It’s foolish!”
“It’s brave!”
“Peace,” said the monk, laughing gently. “You knew to travel west. You wisely left the mirror behind, as you value your life, and the life of him who came to help you,” he added, nodding to Bertram. “You’ve charted a course, alone and friendless.”
Margaret smiled at Brother Henry. “You are too kind, sir,” she said, with a sharp glance at Bertram.
The friar slapped his thighs. “As we are heading west ourselves, you must continue your journey with us. In the royal city we may bide awhile. My old friend Father Sebastian is at the great cathedral and will ensure we have a place to sleep. Let us walk together.”
“I fear I am quite slow, and will tire,” Margaret said.
“How came you by your infirmity?” asked Henry.
“I believe I was born thus,” Margaret said. “I know not my true history.”
Henry nodded again. “One need not know his history to know his nature. In fact, for some it is best to walk away from that history with deliberate strides, and pray to discover one’s true nature on the path.” Pensive, he twirled the ring on his finger, then stood and offered Margaret his arm. She rose. “We will be fine companions, for I am strong but weary of spirit, and require frequent rest along my way.”
The friar’s rugged, broken-nosed face clouded, and Margaret imagined secret regrets and lost loves, pictured him dancing, dressed in his coat of mail.
Now the sun was high, and the warmth felt good on Margaret’s bones, which were stiff and sore from bumping for miles in the tinker’s wagon and spending half the night tied up in John Book’s camp. Bertram walked slowly beside her and never seemed to mind the pace.
“It’s a good fit?” Bertram said, pointing to the crutch he’d cut for her.
“It does me fine,” Margaret said. “I did have a good crutch,” she added, “but I traded it.” Her face flushed. “For the mirror.”
“A right fair trade!” Bertram assured her. “The adventure!” he cried. “The hope! The very nerve of the trade!” he exclaimed. “Margaret of the Quest, I’ll call you.” His expression went thoughtful, and his fingers moved as if playing the pipes. “Deserving of a song, I’d say.”
Margaret suppressed a smile. “I’ll not introduce myself so grandly,” she said. “When I meet the man in the mirror, if ever I do, I will say, ‘I am Margaret Church. Who are you?’ ”
“A fine introduction, none finer,” Bertram said. “And will you curtsy?”
Margaret flourished her free hand and bent low her good knee.
Bertram bowed i
n return. “May I have this dance?” he said, and grabbed her around the waist. Margaret spun about in his arms, laughing, her new crutch flailing wide, her cheeks grown warm.
Bertram released her, and they began to walk again. “Sometimes I dance or skip to relieve the steady step-step-step,” Bertram said. His face turned serious. “Henry walks with a burden. I know not what it is, but he has confided that he has done harm to another. Grave harm, for which he must atone.” But as quickly as his face had darkened, it cleared. “Many’s the tale of what relics of the saints we’ve seen along the way,” he said, glancing at Margaret with a sly grin. “St. Francis’s hair shirt, for one,” he said, “and the Virgin Mary’s milk. At Wimborne, some hairs from Christ’s beard and a shoe of St. William, and a tooth from the grin of St. Philip! It’s astonishing what remains of the saints, and how gloriously the bits and parts are enshrined!”
Margaret shuddered gleefully. “What else?”
“Toenails!” Bertram drew his bagpipe more comfortably across his shoulder as he warmed to her curiosity. “And I near heaved when I saw the finger St. Thomas used to touch the rib of the risen Christ, I can tell you!” he said. “In one holy shrine, some desperate soul bit off a piece of the holy cross and stole it away in his cheek!”
“Desperate, or hungry,” Margaret said.
“Ha! He’d have done better with the piece of manna we saw in Santa Croce, a relic of the miraculous food God fed to the starving Israelites!”
“I fear I would not have saved the manna for the ages,” Margaret said, “but et it on the spot.”
Bertram burst out laughing. “I never thought it,” he said, “but now I do wonder what starving Israelite chose to store instead of eat this God-sent food!”
Bertram suddenly stopped grinning. “But of course! Come with us to St. Winifred’s Well, where we are bound! I know you’ve a quest, but won’t your way be easier if you are healed by the waters? St. Winifred is the patron saint of the crippled, as you must know! I mean no offense,” he added hastily.
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