In Pursuit of the Green Lion

by Judith Merkle Riley

  “Gregory, what happened there?” Margaret sounded suspicious. Gregory had thought the Duke too stern, too unbending, and too undevoted to matters of the mind and soul previously.

  “You’ve no idea what a spiritual force he is …”

  “Gregory, what’s made him a spiritual force, since he’s just as he always was?”

  “And his insight …”

  “For God’s sake, tell me what he has done.”

  “Why, Margaret,” said Gregory happily, “he’s made me a gift—enough to pay off all the debts on the property.”

  “A gift? What on earth for? Great men don’t give gifts for nothing.”

  “Of course not. I’m entering his service. I’ll be going to France in his personal suite. Can you believe the good fortune? I tell you, there’s many a good family that can do nothing but dream of an honor like that. He’s arranged for me to be knighted, Margaret, knighted! It was never in my future, you know, Father couldn’t afford the fees. Why, you’ll be a lady—aren’t you pleased? He knights twelve of us on Whitsunday next. And that’s not the end of the honors he’s granted me. I’ll be personally writing down his noble and courageous acts in preparation of the greatest chronicle of our times. Just think, a chronicle of action and chivalry, not the stale maunderings of some dried-up cleric. My name will be celebrated forever! He said there weren’t many capable of doing it—a scholar who was also a soldier—”

  Margaret’s eyes widened in horror.

  “—a man of ancient family, who understood chivalry as well as letters—”

  Margaret turned pale.

  “A noble commission, nobly granted—”

  “Not France,” she said. “Sweet Jesu, not France.”

  “But Margaret, it’s an honor,” Gregory said gently.

  “I’m all alone here. I haven’t anyone but you, Gregory. Don’t you see, if anything happened—doesn’t our marriage mean anything?” she asked, putting her hand on her heart.

  “The greatest honor of my life—”

  “Couldn’t you just talk to people when they got back, and write it down that way?”

  “That’s not what the Duke has in mind, Margaret. Don’t you see I’m a new man? Why, I could go on to anything. We might even be at court someday. Aren’t you even grateful? He’s secured your inheritance and cleared the debts on the property, all with one princely gesture. And now—why, I’ve got a patron for my poems, the work on meditation that I plan to write—”

  “Oh God, oh God,” said Margaret, clutching his sleeve. She was shaking all over. Gregory put his arm around her and gently led her to one of the benches along the wall of his father’s hall, directly opposite the fire. They sat there in the midst of the noise and confusion as if they were entirely alone.

  “You have to understand, Margaret. I’ve got my life’s work back.”

  “I know,” said Margaret, snuffling into her sleeve, “I only want what’s best for you.” He’s caught you, that old hunter, she thought. Caught you like a hare in a net, and you don’t even understand it’s been done.

  Hugo strode by the little scene.

  “You really have a town woman there, don’t you, brother? A true lady’s heart beats with fierce joy when her lord rides forth to smite his enemies,” he announced. And he passed on without waiting for an answer to see that his breastplate was being properly cleaned up after the battle for Withill Manor. Margaret lifted her head from her arm and stared after him, red-eyed.

  “That’s because if he’s anything like you, she’s glad to be rid of him,” she said spitefully.

  “Margaret!” Gregory was shocked.

  Margaret bit her lip as she sniffed. She’d had a number of conversations with the Weeping Lady on this topic, and knew exactly what she was talking about.

  I COULDN’T BELIEVE WHAT he told me that day. My God! I’ve never heard of a more harebrained idea in my life. That’s how it is with the great ones: They get a touch of brain fever and everyone else has to run off and get killed for their half-baked schemes. And all the while bowing and saying, “Yes, my lord! Brilliant, my lord!”

  It’s one thing to go off to a nasty, dangerous place like France, where everybody hates the English goddams, if you enjoy killing and raping and looting. It’s much more difficult to enjoy these occupations at home, where it makes the neighbors mad. Whereas in a foreign country, you can have your sport and come home rich—if you don’t come home dead. Or rather, part of you comes home. Usually your heart in a sealed casket, since it’s easier to ship. I tell you, you can always tell when something’s too unpleasant for a sensible person to get involved in: they call it an honor, every time.

  But what business is it of a man who plans to write a book of meditations going to France? It’s not as if he’s going to come home either rich or happy. In fact, you can pretty well bet it won’t work out. But who asks a woman? Now, given the way old soldiers like to brag and lie around the fireside, I’d say, if you have in mind to write a chronicle, write it all when you can stay cozily at home. You’ll only get into trouble if you write the truth, anyway, since it might contradict all the tall tales they want to tell.

  But do men hear good sense when they’re all puffed up with deeds of chivalry and courtoisie? Oh, no. It’s their upbringing, I think. It makes them gullible. And especially they don’t want to hear good sense from their wife. Myself, if I were a man, I’d pay the fine, avoid the knighthood, live comfortably as a squire in the country, and keep my arms and legs in the bargain. There’s plenty who do. In the City, they think it’s a sign of cleverness, not cowardice, to pay off one’s service. The fine is just part of the price of doing business, and a sensible investment. Master Kendall explained that to me when he paid off the fee himself, being “too old for the honor,” as he put it in his letter to the King. But, of course, Gregory couldn’t get away with it—not with his family, and not if he hoped to win his court cases and collect his rents someday and pay off his debts. So glory and honor sweetened the agreement, and turned his head in the bargain.

  Still, I could see the temptation to believe it was all for the best. That night at supper his father and older brother kept staring surreptitiously at him, as if he’d done something really unexpected and admirable. Every so often Gregory’s father would look him up and down, thoughtfully—the way you’d inspect a colt with bad conformation that has outrun the best stallion in the district. Silently, marvelingly. And he’d mutter, “The Duke’s personal suite. Imagine!” as if no one could hear. Gregory didn’t say a thing, but gloried in it. And you know, when men decide to box one of their number into a corner with some “honor,” the victim can’t usually back out, no matter how much he wants to. It’s like having a marriage arranged that you don’t care for. You can’t just run off. You have to go through with it and hope it works out for the best. But in my experience, it usually doesn’t.

  But they do love the trappings of war, men do. Even Gregory got that serious, self-absorbed look about him as he announced he needed a new cuirass and helm, more suited to his new dignity, and went off to the London armorer’s to equip himself. He returned with all sorts of this and that, including a long military surcoat with the three cockleshells and the red lion of the de Vilers arms embroidered on it, cut fore and aft to the waist for the saddle. It was as if he’d caught a disease. I missed his sense of irony, the easy self-mockery with which he’d catch himself in a particularly pompous moment, the sharp way he could see through the shams of the world. Now he was all caught up in the glory of the things he’d once poked fun at: who sat where, who got served first, how many retainers should he engage, how would he modify the family coat of arms to serve as his personal one, how many horses should he go into debt for, and should he order a pavilion, and what kind? And, of course, he started treating me the same way. One day he came in all hot from exercise with the identical rolling horseman’s gait his father and brother had, and addressed me as “my lady wife,” in all seriousness.

  “Gre
gory!” I was shocked.

  “Please respect my station,” he said, and in vain I searched his face for a trace of his old sardonic smile. “You may call me my lord husband, or, after Whitsunday, Sir Gilbert. You should get used to it, so you won’t lower my dignity before others.” I turned and fled. By our Blessed Lady, I thought, it won’t take much more of this before he’s turned into his father. I needed to hide, I needed to think, but everyplace was aswarm with family or grooms. So I ended on the cellar steps, with the spiders, wiping the tears off my face and the grime onto it.

  “Good Lord God, how are we to deliver men from their folly?” I wept. But God, who is often so talkative about some things, was entirely silent about this point. I waited a long time, until the tears were worn out. “A lot of use You are,” I said, picking myself up and dusting off my skirts. “I’d think if You were considerate, You’d be offering Divine Guidance when I’m needing it so much.” I smoothed my surcoat down and found a clean bit of sleeve to wipe the smudges off my face. “So,” I said to myself, “that’s how it is. Well, women have been married to fools since the world began, and they’ve never yet managed to change the situation. I’ll just have to do my best, there’s no more I can do.”

  AND SO WE WENT to Leicester to see Gregory knighted in a mass ceremony on Whitsunday. There were a few spindly young sons of great families—too great to speak to anyone, of course. But for the most part, I felt right at home in the crowd of rich woolpackers and vintners and soap-sellers who’d put down good hard money for themselves or their sons for the honor and celebration of it. I even knew a couple of them who were from the City, and one had the gall to jostle me before the entrance to the church service and say, “So, Mistress Margaret, we do bring ourselves up in the world, don’t we?”

  All freshly bathed and looking somewhat hollow-eyed from their all-night vigil before the altar, the candidates went up one by one in church, then knelt to take the blow from the Duke before receiving the belt and sword. Gregory’s father and brother buckled on his spurs themselves, and he was so set up that he unhorsed three men in the tourney afterward and was never unseated himself, though he took a hit very nearly at the center of his shield.

  But at night, after all the feasting was done and the great dancing chamber at Leicester castle emptied, instead of rejoicing, he looked haunted. We sat up together in the big guest bed and I put my hand on his lean, scarred arm.

  “What’s wrong, Gregory?”

  He started. “Don’t call me that anymore, I’ve already told you.”

  “My lord husband, I never do in public. Can’t I save some little bit of our first feeling for private?”

  “It reminds me of—of what I’ve done. And of what I am, instead of what I should be.” I took his big, rawboned hand into my two small ones and held it tight. Even in the shadows beneath the curtains I could sense the trouble and the worry in his dark eyes.

  “And what have you done, but save my life and give me hope again?”

  “All this honor, on a dead man’s grave,” he muttered to himself. “I wanted to dedicate myself to God, and then I sinned, and instead of being flung into the fiery pit, I was rewarded with the honor I’d never dared dream of.”

  “Oh, husband, put it from your mind. How else do heirs get titles but on another’s grave? So how is it different, that Master Kendall should die, and that you should be lifted by his inheritance to a life of ease?”

  “But Margaret, I didn’t inherit you, I stole you.”

  “But not while he lived. You always acted with honor. You had his trust and friendship. That was more than his sons ever had.”

  “Trust—my God, that’s worse. My mind is eaten up by what we’ve done together—he trusted me; I took his wife. I’ve violated God’s commandments for this sweet, sweet sin. I can’t pray with a clean heart …” I could feel him shudder. “If it weren’t a sin to marry a widow, then why would the Church forbid it to me?”

  “Calm your conscience, Gregory. It’s in the wrong place, entirely. There’s a hundred men quick enough to snatch up a widow for her money without the tiniest fragment of your guilt. They’d do nothing but rejoice, as you should be doing.”

  He sounded horrified. “Even you—you think I did it for the money—for this”—he swept his arm around to gesture to his new world—“and for—oh, God, for—”

  “Gregory, I know you didn’t. Doesn’t that count for anything?”

  “I suppose it does. It must,” he muttered feverishly.

  WE RETURNED TO BROKESFORD for the last days of preparation before the ride to the coast to sail for France. Everything was in a turmoil: Sir Hubert rode through the village, making his final selection of those who were to go with him, and there was much weeping and wailing in the little cottages by the muddy lane. Gregory had acquired two boys to mind his horses and a stolid, spotty-faced squire named Piers, who complicated my life by claiming he was in love with me as with the untouchable stars. When I told him to stop, he said it was a holy passion that burned with unquenchable zeal and beat on his breast, before he went off in pursuit of Cis, who pushed him into a watering trough. The girls sat awestruck while Damien tried on his armor and polished the horse gear. They asked to feel how sharp the edge of his sword was, and he told them they didn’t dare—and besides, the grease on their hands would spoil the blade. So of course Cecily managed to cut her finger.

  In short, everyone rushed about, posing and putting on airs in the way that is common before a military campaign. All except Gregory. After the morning’s exercise, he would sit silently at Father Simeon’s little octagonal writing table in the corner of the chapel, writing without cease from late afternoon into the night. Finally I couldn’t stand it any longer. Why wasn’t he out bustling and boasting, and getting drunk with the rest of them?

  The sun was already setting, and most of the household in bed already, when I sought him out in the chapel. By the light of a single flickering candle, a feeble replacement for the vanishing daylight, he was deeply engrossed in his writing. The pen traversed the page in his right hand, followed a few inches behind by the little knife for scraping out mistakes in his left. I called quietly to him, so that I wouldn’t startle him. If he were startled, he might make a blot, and Gregory is a great perfectionist about his writing. If he makes a blot, there’s no speaking to him for hours sometimes.

  “Margaret?” He looked up from his writing. “What are you doing here?”

  “Come to ask the same of you,” I answered. And when the ink was safely put away, I stood behind him and embraced him, kissing him on the neck.

  “Oh, Margaret,” he said in mock reproach. “Truly it is written that women’s appetites are unquenchable. Doesn’t any other thought ever cross your mind?”

  “Yes, it does—I want to know why you’re writing all the time. After all, the Duke hasn’t done the great deeds you’re supposed to write about yet.”

  “Oh, yes, he has, Margaret, and I’ve got to put down the already has been before I write the will be.”

  I looked over his shoulder at the writing. It was in Latin, but I could make out some words. “But I just see writing with angeli and Deus and—that looks like Adam and Eve down there, and—that thing, there, that looks like the Tower of Babel.”

  “You know, Margaret, it may be a mistake to teach women how to read, if they’re not going to have an education.”

  “That’s mean, I must say. So why don’t you remedy the defect by explaining it all to me?”

  He sighed, and explained very slowly and clearly, as if to a simpleton or a deaf person.

  “All proper chronicles start at the beginning of the world, Margaret—and I have a long way to go to catch up to now. I’d hoped to do it all before we leave, but things have been so disorderly around here lately.”

  “Why don’t you just write about the Duke, and leave out the Tower of Babel?”

  “Margaret, if you were educated, you’d understand that a chronicle that just starts now is not
hing but gossip. It lacks substance.” The room had grown dark as we spoke, and the flickering candle threw his handsome features into relief, as he raised one dark eyebrow and smiled that faintly mocking smile of his.

  “I’m sorry I don’t know all about the Classics and the Authorities the way you do—I just thought it would save time.” I still think it’s a good idea, no matter what men think.

  “I suppose I shouldn’t fault you, Margaret. But writing is not a matter of common sense, like buying fish in the market. It’s a matter of adherence to a proper discipline and form. It’s like that notion you once had that everything should be written in English, because more people speak English than Latin. Sensible, except that people who speak only English can’t read, and nobody who can read respects a work that isn’t in Latin. By adherence to correct form, one avoids foolish mistakes and embarrassment. That’s why the standards of civilization are absolute and universal. It’s like truth: you can’t have two kinds.”

  I still think that idea of mine was a good one, too, even if it does have a few little rough spots to work out of it. But I’ve never told him that either. Besides, he’s so charming when he gets didactic. His face grows all serious, and his eyes shine, and then he’ll tell you all about Saint Augustine or Aristotle or somebody else who’s been dead a long time.

  “So you see,” he went on, “just as Latin adds substance to a work, so does starting at the beginning of the world.”

  “Did Aristotle start at the beginning of the world?” I asked.

  He smiled. “Oh, Margaret. You’re a ninny, but a dear one. Aristotle didn’t write chronicles. But I assure you, he always began at the beginning.”

  So that was the end of it. But there were certain advantages. I’d lie in bed with my eyes open and staring, waiting for him because I couldn’t sleep without him. And when I saw the candle nodding and bobbing through the dark, as he picked his way around the dogs on his way to bed, I’d rejoice that everyone else was sound asleep. Because then, oh then, we set the sweet darkness on fire.