In Pursuit of the Green Lion

by Judith Merkle Riley

  “I’m afraid that is so, my lord,”answered the Sieur de Vilers, head bowed, hat in hand, on his knees among the rushes on the floor. His two sons, each in a similar posture, flanked him.

  “I knew old Kendall,” said the Duke, letting his gaze wander out the window. Outside, a brisk wind was pushing clouds across the blue spring sky. Crocuses were poking up through the dead earth in search of the sun, and you could hear through the unglazed window the lapping of the water in the wide artificial lake that surrounded the castle on three sides. “He sold me a number of rarities. And, of course, no one was a better judge of a length of crimson than he.” It was one of the Duke’s weaknesses, the smell of the fabulously expensive dye on a length of new crimson as it was unfolded. And Kendall had made a great deal of money catering to it. “A shrewd eye he had, a collector’s eye. And no finer piece than his little dolly. I saw her dancing last winter at my masque, when I opened the Savoy to the London merchants. Did you know that? A lively little thing she was, who seemed to know all the most fashionable new steps.”

  “No, my lord, I had no idea.”

  “She turned down every go-between in the City,” he said, the distant look still on his face. Including mine, he thought. And quite ungracious of the little wretch, considering that I expect gratitude when I stoop to a merchant’s wife. He paused a moment, as if thinking things over. Then he stopped. He inspected Gilbert at leisure. It had been nearly a decade since he had seen him last, the maddest of an impetuous lot of new-made squires nourished in his household at Leicester. It was hard to believe that the tall, austere figure kneeling there in the threadbare, mended brown velvet surcoat was the same one who featured in the raucous new ballad that was sweeping London. It was something about how the old merchant’s walls were high, high, high, but his wife was young, young, young, and a bold young squire, dressed as a humble friar, had sneaked in by the kitchen door, kitchen door. He’d have to have his minstrel sing it again tomorrow night, after they were gone. The melody wasn’t much, but there were several quite lurid verses describing goings-on in the chambers while the old man slept. If they hadn’t been borrowed wholesale from another ballad, they might have seemed more serious. But Gilbert?

  It wasn’t something he’d have ever suspected of Gilbert, and he believed he was a good judge of men. How could anyone ever forget that prank where the other squires had substituted a pair of naked laundresses in place of themselves in the bed that two of them shared with Gilbert, just to see the horrified expression on his face when he woke up and found them there? Just what was it he’d shouted as he’d snatched up the sheet and run off? He’d forgotten, but it had been very funny, even at the retelling over dinner all that long time ago. Even then, Gilbert had acquired a reputation for being a bit more priggishly holy than is proper in a military man. Of course, that had never bothered the Duke much. As long as a man fought like a fanatic on the battlefield, he could do whatever he liked with the rest of his time. Even pray and scourge himself, if that was his preference.

  “So it’s your son Gilbert who snatched her up, is it?”

  “Yes, my lord. But he hadn’t the slightest suspicion that Master Kendall had left everything to her. It’s unseemly. An allowance maybe, or a lifetime interest in the house. But everything? None of us thought it possible. But now, you see, our honor requires that we keep it.”

  The situation had its entertaining side. A faint smile crossed the Duke’s face. A little thought flitted across his mind: It’s a good thing they can’t see my face in that posture.

  “Sir Hubert, rise, and your sons also. The honor of the de Vilerses is dear to me. Just what was it the Earl said?”

  “About the shabby cadet branch of the de Vilerses?” said Sir Hubert, rising. The veins stood out in his temples just thinking about it. Sir Hugo’s nostrils flared. And Gilbert, looking tall and somber, clenched his jaw.

  “No, the other bit—”

  “Oh, the part about the palsied claws of an aging patron?”

  “The Earl is young, and needs to be put in his place. How many men do you need?”

  “We could do with thirty. He can’t mount nearly as many.”

  “I’ll send fifty. Sir John”—and he gestured to the aide who stood beside the bed—“go and see that two score and ten men at arms are prepared to depart for Sussex on the morrow. I assure you, I am wrathy that the Earl should interfere with my knights’ livings on the very eve of my new campaign in France. Brother Athanasius”—and he gestured to one of the two clerks that always stood by him, wax tablet and stylus in hand, when he heard petitions—“I will need a letter written to the magistrate, informing him that the de Vilers matter concerns me, and another one to my lawyers in London.” The clerk bowed and left with a swift step. Sir John left, giving orders, as men moved in and out of the bedchamber.

  “The new destrier, Sir Hubert. I’ll try him when my foot permits.” The Duke was at his best when he was at the center of a hive of activity. He sounded positively mellow, now that the formalities were over.

  “Beautiful mouth, my lord. You’ll never find a better anywhere.”

  “Of that I’m sure. You’re getting quite a reputation for your horses.” Sir Hubert turned red with pleasure. The Duke had the key to his heart. “And you’ve brought me two fine sons, as well.” Sir Hubert seemed a little taken aback, and glanced at Gilbert furtively. He still looked exactly the same. Less than he ought to be.

  The Duke shone the light of his charm on Hugo in turn.

  “Sir Hugo, your father’s courage in my service has been measureless, and you look to be like him. I’ve had my eye on you for quite a while. I expect great deeds of you.” It was Hugo’s turn to look content beyond words. The Duke could charm the birds out of trees when he wished, or men to their deaths in the mud of foreign places, all for glory.

  “And you, Gilbert. At long last you will be joining us.” Gregory looked surprised. “Better you than these fishmongers and soap-sellers’ sons I’m plagued with.” Gilbert looked puzzled. “Surely, Kendall’s manors, once secured in your name, will bring an income over fifteen pounds a year, will they not?”

  “Why, yes—that is, once the debts are paid off,” responded Gregory, still puzzled. He had been over the accounts himself. The income, though considerably more than a poor knight’s fifteen or twenty pounds a year, was irreparably mortgaged for many years in the future to lawyers and to the Bishop. For having a university degree had meant that he was automatically in minor orders, and marriage to a widow would have brought penalties for bigamy except that the Bishop, for a tidy sum, had exempted him. Then there were the loans to cover the bribes for getting murder charges dismissed as self-defense, and for the repair of the roof of the hall at Brokes-ford Manor, which his father had said he was owed for his trouble. Then there were all the curious inheritance taxes, which included the best beasts on each estate being driven off by the overlord and the priest. Even elopement isn’t simple, he’d found: a web of indebtedness and financial ruin stretched like a nightmare before him. All at a stroke, by becoming rich, he had become poor.

  “You are aware of the new law, surely? It has been in force for the last three years. Not, of course, that a man of honor would require a law to point out the right course of action.” Gregory still looked puzzled. He had become addled with laws lately, and couldn’t tell what was meant.

  “My lord, I need to be informed. I was in the Carthusian monastery at Witham for most of that time, and heard nothing of the outside world.”

  The Duke absorbed this piece of information, paused, and spoke again: “For the past three years His Majesty has required that every landholder with rents over fifteen pounds a year take up the obligations of knighthood and required military service. Our next ceremony will be at Whitsunday.” The Duke looked contentedly at Sir Hubert’s exultant face. “It is a good thing when lands are removed from the hands of the merchants and bankers. Gilbert de Vilers, you’ll mount many a good man from these lands of Kendall�
��s. I have made a good bargain for the King this day.” When he did not see the appropriate look of gratitude on Gregory’s face, but rather one of shock, he continued suavely, his canny eyes never leaving Gregory: “Gilbert, they tell me you’re a scholar. It’s a curious activity for a scholar, carrying off a woman at sword’s point. But then, how many soldiers are scholars?” Gregory never moved, but looked unspeakably embarrassed.

  “Did you know that even I have given thought to my soul’s health? I am composing a book of meditations that might well interest a scholar’s eye. One like yourself, who is something more than a scholar.” The Duke watched with satisfaction as Gregory’s curiosity stirred, and showed itself on his face.

  “I often think, perhaps a scholarly mind, one that has given deep thought to the sacred, of course, would be able to offer comments to improve my little work.”

  “It’s all in the composition. If you have a felicitous arrangement, you have everything, my lord,” Gregory blurted out, being unable to contain himself.

  “That is what I thought—what do you think of ordering the be-wailment of sins according to the parts of the body?”

  “Why, that’s brilliant,” said Gregory, and he really meant it. The Duke looked pleased with himself. Sir Hubert and his eldest looked uncomprehendingly at each other.

  “I suppose I should tell you,” said the Duke, as if the thought had not just occurred to him the previous day, when he’d been told the de Vilerses were here, “I have need for a man in my personal suite in France. Someone who’s a scholar, but not a useless one. A soldier, a gentleman of good family. I’ve been thinking that a chronicle of my campaign—written right there, not by some sleepy monk who’s never seen anything of life and understands nothing about chivalry—would be a worthy thing to have.” He watched as Gregory’s mind started working over the idea. He knew it was not the princeliness of the offer—the glory of the Duke’s service, or the handsome rewards that a great patron makes to a chronicler—that would turn Gilbert’s head, but the fact that it touched his weakest spot, his vanity about his intellect. And while, for amusement, the Duke collected women, his serious work in life was collecting men. He had made it his study and his art, and he understood the wellsprings of men’s actions perfectly. It was why he had grown great, when others remained small. And now that he was growing older, he would sometimes awaken in the night, when not on campaign, and think what a fine thing it would be to have his greatness all recorded in black, red, and gold. Illuminated, of course, at least in the final version. It was not quite as great an idea as the one he’d had about charming God Himself with a book of meditations, but it was very nearly so.

  “Would you—”

  “My lord!” exclaimed Gregory with unfeigned joy.

  IT WAS WATKIN THE herdsman’s middle boy, standing barefoot beneath the new leafed willow at the brook’s edge among his woolly charges, who first spied the mounted party. A row of dark shapes in the distance, silhouetted against the rolling first green of the spring meadows, they toiled slowly along the narrow track to Brokesford Manor. As they approached you could make out the figures of Sir Hubert and his two sons in the lead of a half-dozen mounted retainers, two laden sumpter horses, and a clear dozen hounds, including the old spotted bitch that never left the old lord’s side.

  The child ran across the field shouting, “They’re back! They’re back!” to tell the manor folk to open the main gate. The Lords of Brokesford did not look like men who had come home empty-handed, though even the hounds that ran beside the packhorses looked wearier than when they’d departed.

  Margaret had left the low, thatch-roofed malthouse well content with the progress of the reforms there. She was wrapped from neck to ankle in a big borrowed apron, and had now settled into the bakehouse to sniff the new leaven in the crocks that had just been lifted from the cool earth of the floor. The wide brick ovens stood cold this morning, the ashes newly raked out of them. Tomorrow would be baking day. She wrinkled her nose at the acrid, sweetish smell of the yeasty brew in the last crock. It was good, all good. And what’s more, she’d taken advantage of everyone’s absence to browbeat the steward with the proximity of Easter and the need to placate a particularly demanding Lord, whose eye was not only on the sparrow but on the dirt in the corners. Several old layers of rushes had been dug out of the manor house and thrown on the compost heap, and new ones laid on the scrubbed stone. Even the chapel was whitewashed in a manner that the Weeping Lady pronounced to be adequate, but still beneath her.

  “What the—?” said Sir Hubert as he rode through the great gate. The kitchen midden and attendant pigs had been banished from the forecourt. As he dismounted and saw the horses led off, he noticed that the piles of muck in front of the stable, which somehow never managed to be removed, but instead grew higher all winter, had been carted off, with a subsequent diminution of flies. Well, that at least is not an altogether bad idea, he thought, though I wouldn’t want her to know it—it might make her think she had a right to shift everything around.

  “Where is that wife of yours, Gilbert? Don’t City women know how to greet a returning lord?” At that very moment Sir Hubert was gratified to see a figure streaking from the bakehouse to the kitchen door at the end of the hall, stripping an apron off as she ran. By the time the bowing steward had welcomed him back to his hall, Margaret, still breathless, stood beside him, holding out a large cup of ale from her own brewing. Greeting the old lord in the accepted fashion, she offered him the cup. Only Gregory spied the vague air of well-controlled sarcasm in the elaborate gesture. His father took it as his due. She’s coming along, the old man thought. That beating Gilbert gave her did her no end of good. A few more and she’ll be entirely trained to the family standard.

  Sir Hubert lifted the cup to his lips and drank deep; the look on his face changed to astonishment. He passed the cup silently to Hugo, who drank and said, “Better than the Duke’s,” looking with surprise at his father. Then, remembering himself, he passed the remainder to Gregory, who finished it off without any surprise at all. After all, everyone in London knew about the ale at Master Kendall’s house. It had been one of the attractions of his tutoring job there, back when he had been a free soul meditating on the Godhead. In a way, you could almost say that everything had been caused by that ale; it had kept him coming back despite every annoyance caused by Margaret’s daftness. Margaret remained kneeling in front of them, waiting for the answer to be witnessed by the entire household, which had crowded silently into the low, arched curve of the open door to watch. They backed into the hall, and one or two of them even held infants on their shoulders to let them have a better view. There wasn’t a soul in the shire who didn’t know about the strange bargain the lord had made in a moment of weakness. And when news that the new ale was stronger and sweeter than any in Christendom had spread to the neighboring manors, interest had mounted daily in anticipation of his return. How would he keep his promise? How could he keep such a promise?

  “It is good,”he said.

  “Better than yours, as I swore,”reminded Margaret.

  “Yes, better,” he said. He didn’t want to puff her up. Puffed-up women are one of the original sources of trouble in the world. If anyone knew that, it was he. He counted it as one of his duties to mankind to keep women from puffing themselves up, though it had been a most monumental duty in his own marriage. A job requiring a hero. It was one of those things that God, being male, questioned you about before you were let into heaven, and he was proud to say that he hadn’t neglected it.

  “Hear how a knight keeps a bargain, even one made in a moment of weakness,” Sir Hubert addressed the assembled crowd in a lordly fashion.

  “Dame Margaret”—he addressed her in the polite form—“you may have pen and paper when you wish them, if your duties are fulfilled, and you may read books.” Shocking. The people looked at each other. “But only when a man of this household is present, preferably Father Simeon.” Oh, admirable. A lordly judgment. Heads no
dded in agreement at the old knight’s wisdom—a Solomon, fit to chop a baby in half anytime.

  Margaret thanked him and rose. Her face was totally expressionless. The old lord looked benignant as he thought he detected a look of humble gratitude in her eyes. But he was deceived: Margaret was suppressing a powerful urge to tell him exactly what she thought of him. Now, tongue, she was telling herself, just stay out of trouble this once, and I’ll write down what I think of him later, that pompous, ignorant, rapacious old hypocrite.

  “And now, dinner,” boomed Sir Hubert, breaking the silence. “A celebration is in order, for the retaking of the estate at Withill. And I shall keep Saint Edward’s Day with a great feast, for justice has triumphed in a world full of iniquity.”

  “Your father is very mellow,” said Margaret in greeting Gregory as the milling knot of retainers and gossips dissolved to see to the laying of the tables.

  “We’ve got it all, Margaret, except for the law cases that are pending. And those should go our way too, now. We did sap the walls of Withill Manor and burn part of the roof, so the hall will have to be rebuilt. The stables went up, too—the thatch was just like tinder. But we pried every one of the Earl’s men out of the place, and sent them packing. Didn’t lose a man, either, although old John took a swordstroke. And can you believe, after it was all done, the Earl sent a message that his steward had overreached himself against his orders, and he’d never meant to offend the Duke? It just goes to show, winning is everything.” They were standing now beneath the wall forested with antlers. A shaft of light from the high window caught the rich green folds of wool of Gregory’s heavy fur-lined cloak.

  “That’s a new cloak, isn’t it?”

  “From the Duke. Hugo’s got a velvet gown, and Father a new brace of hounds—those brindled ones, over there. Margaret, you’ve no idea how gracious, how admirable he is—how far-sighted and noble! The greatest and most perfect leader of men in all of England, save only for the Prince, and of course King Edward himself.”