In Pursuit of the Green Lion

by Judith Merkle Riley

  And Cecily, turning her wide eyes on her, asked, “If you live at Mother Hilde’s, do you eat sweets every day?”

  “Of course,” said Bet, leaning on her broom. “It’s what we have for meals instead of vegetables.” And before her mother could stop her, she’d launched on such a ridiculous tale that we both had to laugh.

  “Tell us more,” said Cecily, and she and Alison sat down on the bench and tucked their feet up underneath them to listen, as I passed through the back room to find Mother Hilde in the garden behind the house. In Brother Malachi’s dark and shadowy room, I could see his things were neatly packed, all except for the athanor, which is bulky. My eye caught the little crucifix in his oratory corner, and I crossed myself, thinking again of all the mornings—or even the dead of night—when I’d seen him there, praying by the light of a single candle to purify himself before a particularly difficult experiment.

  God, I wish I could see his round figure now, turning around to shush me: “Margaret! I suppose by that infernal thumping you think you’re sneaking by on little mouse feet! Don’t you know better than to disturb me at a time like this? There’s no reason, absolutely no reason at all, to come through this room when I’m working! How many times do I have to tell you to go out the front door and around by the side gate? Is there no respect, absolutely none left in the world, for a man in search of Truth? Unless, of course—ah! Is that food you’ve brought? Set it down on the bench. I’d quite forgotten I was hungry—” Malachi would have choice words about Hugo, and say something humorous that would mend everything, if only he were here.

  For a moment the light at the back door dazzled me, and then I could make out Mother Hilde in the yellow autumn sun. She was spreading chicken manure around her cabbages with a rake, and as she raked she leaned over to speak personally to each cabbage head. She didn’t have to lean very far, not only because she’s not very tall, but because her cabbages are immense—vast green globes all beskirted with great ruffled leaves that stand well over knee height. Everyone thinks it’s the seeds, which she saves especially each year from the biggest ones, but I know the secret’s not in the seeds, but in what she says to them.

  “You’re looking a little yellowish and pale today,” she’ll say, and then cock her kerchiefed head as if she’s listening to it. Then she’ll fetch it a bucket of water from the well, or dig around its roots, until it’s straightened up. That’s how she made roses climb all over the donkey shed, where nothing but weeds grew before. And her herbs, all growing higgledy-piggledy here and there in the garden, have a sharp, wild scent as if they grew in the country.

  “They’re like people, Margaret, you have to put them where they like the company,” she’d say, setting a little marigold among the carrots, or moving a new sprout of fennel to a sunny spot by the shed wall. “Now you must know parsnips don’t need company, Margaret, they’re like contemplatives; they grow by themselves and nobody bothers them. But lettuces, oh, they’re social. And frail. And the minute it gets warm, they’re so frivolous, they just go to seed.” Her bean poles, like little tents, stood among the roses. They’d be needing picking soon. Above this little kingdom, Mother Hilde’s big rooster, as vain a creature as ever lived, postured and strutted on the donkey shed roof, surveying his hens behind the wattle fence and showing off his tail feathers to the world. Within the shed, I could hear the tuneless humming of Peter, Mother Hilde’s last remaining child, who’s not right in the head, as he cleaned out the stalls.

  Mother Hilde’s shapeless gray gown was covered with her big apron—white, like her kerchief, and I could see that she had on her old clogs. Behind her trailed a little dog that looked like a mound of hair very nearly the same at both ends. It was my own dog, who’s named “Lion-heart,” or Lion, for short, on account of his great deeds. He’d been left behind when I was taken off so suddenly, and he must have run straight to Mother Hilde’s, which is what he does whenever he’s let out.

  “Mother Hilde!” I called, and as she turned, Lion gave a great leap of joy and bounded toward me barking like a crazy thing.

  “Why, Margaret!” Mother Hilde exclaimed with delight. “You’re back! I knew you’d come. See? I kept Lion for you. He ran directly here when you left so suddenly.” With Lion leaping on me and wagging his whole body, we embraced there, among the cabbages, and I began to weep for joy and relief in seeing her face again.

  She stepped back at arm’s length, to look me over better. Her face grew serious.

  “What’s wrong, Margaret? You’ve got something cold and dark all around your shoulders, and your bosom’s all lumpy, as if you’d fled with your life’s possessions tucked inside. And where’s Brother Gregory? I thought you’d gone and married him.”

  “The Cold Things are ghosts, Mother Hilde, and Brother Gregory’s in France, given up for dead.”

  “Ghosts? Goodness me, that sounds serious. Come inside and let’s talk,” said Mother Hilde.

  “Now, what do you think of our beautiful new hall, Margaret?” asked Mother Hilde as she checked the contents of her kettle and poured me a mug of ale. “Isn’t it splendid? Malachi took it in trade.”

  “In trade for what, Mother Hilde?”

  “Oh, the Elixir of Life,” said Mother Hilde, giving her kettle a stir. “Sir Humphrey was very happy with it, and sent his own painter all the way from Dorsetshire.”

  I couldn’t help gasping a little, and as my eyes opened wider I put my hand over my mouth, which had dropped open. Selling to the gentry? Malachi was getting bold beyond belief. I could spy Mother Hilde looking up from her kettle with that amused, indulgent look she gets whenever I’m shocked.

  “Mother Hilde, what on earth will Baron Humphrey do when he finds out the Elixir doesn’t work? He’s got one of the nastiest reputations in Christendom.”

  “Well, first of all, he was visiting and isn’t likely to come back for a while, since he’s headed abroad. And second, Malachi told him it wasn’t proof against weapons—only natural death. Any man who lives as wickedly as Sir Humphrey, he says, is bound to be murdered by his heirs anyway. So, Malachi says, there’s no problem at all, as long as he sells the Elixir only to men who aren’t likely to die in bed.”

  “But what was in it, that convinced Sir Humphrey that it worked?”

  “Remember the aqua ardens he used to make for coughs? It makes a man powerfully drunk in absolutely no time at all.”

  “Oh, Mother Hilde, there’s no stopping Brother Malachi, is there?” I put my hand on her arm.

  “That’s because he’s a genius, my dear,” said Mother Hilde with calm pride.

  But then I had to tell everything that had happened to me since the day that Sir Hubert and his retainers had burst into our parlor, fully armed, and left my wicked stepsons in pieces on the floor. By the time I had finished my story, dusk was beginning to fall, and the whole household, consisting of the strange woman, her daughter, Peter, and old Hob, the handyman, had gathered silently to listen.

  “I need him back, Mother Hilde. I’d give anything to have him back. I know I can find him—find the money—anything—if I just try hard enough. He loves me, he said so, and I can’t let him go. Oh, Hilde, he might die alone, and I’d never see him again—”

  And as I wept into the late supper of pottage she had dished from her kettle, she said: “Margaret, after a good night’s sleep, we can come up with a plan. You can always make things come out, if you use your wits. And you aren’t even empty-handed. What did you bring with you?”

  Silently I laid the things out on the table. Gregory’s last letter, with the ink splotch, then my little Psalter. I could see them shudder as the Cold Thing expanded in the room.

  “What is the cold stuff I feel?” said Mother Hilde calmly, just as she speaks when she attends a bad birth, so that she won’t frighten anyone.

  “Master Kendall’s ghost,” I said, “he said he’d come with me to show me how to get money so that I could pay Gregory’s ransom and get him back.”

 
“Advice from ghosts? Really, Margaret, and to think you believe talking to plants is odd. It’s nothing compared to conversing with ghosts. But then, you always did hear voices. Where is he now?”

  “Papa’s over by the fire,” said Alison, pointing with a chubby finger.

  “Yes—he says it’s ever so annoying he can’t get warm anymore,” added Cecily.

  “Well, well. Three of you. Goodness, Margaret, you’re always full of surprises. I wonder how the new little one will turn out? As fey as these two? Oh, don’t start so. You can’t hide these things from me—or even Goodwife Clarice, here, who has just begun to learn from me. How many months along, would you say, Clarice?”

  The woman responded seriously, as if repeating a lesson. “Two—maybe nearly three, it seems to me, Mother Hilde.” I could feel myself blushing.

  “Oh, Margaret, my dear Margaret. You know how well I taught you. Now say, just how did you give yourself away?” I looked down—no one could see through the heavy folds of my bulky surcoat and unlaced kirtle. Then I saw how I’d set my hands, right across the top of my belly. “Oh!” I said, and snatched them away. Mother Hilde laughed.

  “Yes, it was the hands, Margaret. They tell better than words. Now, show me the next thing.”

  “There’s this,” I said, taking out the little casket from the dark lady. “I think maybe I should throw it away. Look.” As I opened the little box they gasped. It was beautiful, that ring, all set with stones that glittered in the firelight.

  “Hugo’s wedding ring—and poisoned with a deadly venom. Don’t any of you dare touch it.”

  “Don’t throw it away just yet,” said Mother Hilde. “Things like that don’t come to a person for no reason at all. Odd, it’s beautiful and terrifying all at once.”

  “That’s just what I thought of the dark lady herself.”

  “Strange, strange,” said Mother Hilde, shaking her head. “She must have loved him a great deal once, to risk so much and come so far. Love into hate, all poisoned, like the ring. And yet in the end, she couldn’t give it to him. You’ve given me a puzzle, Margaret, and I don’t know what it means. Show me what else you have.” I took the reliquary off my neck, and unfolded the tiny pair of shoes.

  “Madame Belle-mère followed them,” I said. “But she’s not here now. She’s probably gone off sight-seeing. She gets bored easily and is very snobbish—this neighborhood wouldn’t please her.” Mother Hilde picked up the little shoes and turned them over in her hands.

  “His, I suppose.” She put them back on the table. “This is very serious, Margaret. I’ll ask for a dream tonight, to show me what it all means. Otherwise, I’ll make a divination with hot wax. But the last thing, you don’t have to show to me, for I know what it is.” A little voice piped up uncertainly. It was Bet, the little girl with the cheerful brown curls and thin, serious face.

  “We’d like to see it, please, since we’ve heard about it.” Without another word, I took out the Burning Cross, which glistened all ruddy in the firelight.

  “Oh,” the girl sighed. “That’s very beautiful. I want to be a midwife someday, just as you were.”

  “Well, don’t be exactly like me, or you’ll wind up before the Bishop—and that can be very uncomfortable.”

  “Tomorrow,” said Mother Hilde, “I’ll go myself to your house and see if Hugo’s been there yet—but now, to bed everyone. Margaret will have plenty of time to answer questions tomorrow.” And for want of other space she tucked us all in with her in the big bed in the front upper room that was hers and Malachi’s.

  It was as she turned back the sheets that Cecily pulled on her apron conspiratorially: “Mother Hilde,” she whispered. “Don’t let Alison in the bed. She wets.”

  “I do not, it’s you!” squeaked Alison indignantly.

  “My dear girls, in Mother Hilde’s bed, no one wets. You’ll sleep on the side with the chamber pot, and remember to wake up. That’s how it always is in my house.” She spoke so assuredly that it simply had to be so, and it was.

  “But since Papa won’t tell us a story tonight, will you?”

  “Papa?” Mother Hilde said quizzically, looking at me for an explanation.

  “Master Kendall’s ghost has been telling them bedtime stories.” Mother Hilde nodded.

  “It makes sense,” she said. “He never had a moment for them when he was alive. My, you must have been having a time, all alone with that strange family in the country.” I didn’t say anything. Then Mother Hilde began the story of the clever beasts that frightened away the robbers, but before she was half done, the girls were asleep, wrapped in each other’s arms. It was lulling, the story. I lay there listening to Mother Hilde’s voice, the familiar creaking of the timbers of the old house, and Lion whuffing in his sleep at the foot of the bed. My eyes were just shutting when Mother Hilde said to me: “You love him desperately, don’t you?”

  “So much my heart’s broken with it,” I whispered into the dark.

  “It’s not easy, loving. Malachi’s not the first, but he is the greatest of my loves. And the last, before I am buried—I hope by his side. You know, Margaret, I’ve come with him a long way. To this city, to another way of life. You’ll have to face much more to get your Gregory back—you’ll have to risk everything.”

  “I know that, Mother Hilde. I am terrified. But my love drives me on. I can do nothing else.”

  “Oh, Margaret, it won’t be easy for you. A woman who loves must be prepared to go into far places. And not all of them—how would Malachi say it?—geographical.”

  “But you’ll help?”

  “Of course, Margaret. I’ve never turned away love in need yet.”

  THE VERY NEXT MORNING, as Mother Hilde went to poke about Margaret’s house by the river, to see if the neighborhood was free from mysterious strangers, including Sir Hugo, Margaret went down to the docks with her little girls and her dog trailing behind her. She had in mind to ask what ships had recently come from the Continent and who had ridden through returning from the great ports of Dover and Southampton. For one thing she knew, and that was that sooner or later, news of everything and everyone must pass through London, which is the hub of all gossip in the entire realm of England.

  “Oh, look, Mama!” Alison’s pudgy finger pointed to an interesting sight on the quay. A foreign galley, bobbing gently at anchor, was being loaded. A squalling black horse, blindfolded, struggled in a sling being lowered into the galley’s hold by ropes and pulleys. Two strong men held another black horse, the last of the team, on the quay, while a boy finished tying the blindfold. Behind the horse, a lavishly carved and decorated wagon had attracted the attention of a crowd of admiring street urchins and loafers. The captain of the dark lady’s guard was shouting orders to the deck crew, as workmen began the task of dismantling the wagon for loading.

  “I think we’d better inquire elsewhere,” said Margaret, hurrying her children away from the docks.

  “Hey, you.” Someone tugged at Margaret’s cloak from behind. “I’ve seen you hunting up and down. It’s news from France you’re after, isn’t it? Bordeaux?” Margaret turned to see a stout woman in clogs, carrying a basket of fish on her head. With the hand that was not aiding the balance of the fish, she still held tight to Margaret’s cloak.

  “No, news from Calais—the Duke’s army, not the Prince’s. But how did you know?”

  “There’s lots of ’em here—women in black, that haunt the dockside. You’re wasting your time here today, mistress. The last ship from Calais came in nearly a week ago, and who knows when there’ll be another? You’d be just as well off asking at the Bridge what troops have come overland from Dover. Or—I know, if you’re lucky, some of the sailors from the last ship might be still lying drunk at the Golden Horn, where you can make inquiries. Then there’s the Keys, where the soldiers stay, but that’s a stew, and a decent woman shouldn’t be seen there. Or try the Castle. The quality stays there on their way inland from the Cinque Ports. There’s lots that ask there. W
hat are you looking for? Father? Brother? Or husband?”

  “Husband,” answered Margaret, thanking her and starting to leave.

  “Then it’s not so bad,” said the woman, surveying Margaret and her daughters with a knowing eye. “You can’t get a new father or a brother, but husbands are a-plenty in this world. Take my advice and get a new man, for the sake of the children.” Margaret looked shocked.

  “Fool,” said the woman, as she watched Margaret hurrying away in the direction of the Golden Horn, a child clutched with each hand and the odd looking little dog trailing behind.

  IT WAS A GREAT relief when Mother Hilde told me that Sir Hugo hadn’t yet thought of searching the London house for me, or mounting a guard on it to snatch me the moment I arrived. But then, I never thought he was the brainy type.

  “Just imagine a dunderhead like Sir Hugo married off to that foreign marquesa. Why, Hilde, she’d be running him about like a lap-dog, she’s so much cleverer than he is. I wonder what possessed her?”

  “Now, Margaret, there’s no telling the ways of love. But I don’t think it would have lasted long, myself. The first time he managed to figure out that she’d used him, he’d have probably strangled her, or beaten her head in, from what you tell me of his character. No—it doesn’t usually work out, matching two minds so unlike. She’s probably better off the way she is.”

  “But tell me, how are things at the house? Is everyone well?”

  “Well for now, Margaret, but not for long. Your grooms, the kitchen boy, the steward, the cook and her assistant, have stayed on out of loyalty to you. But the pantrymaid has run off to be married, and the rest are grumbling because those stingy de Vilerses haven’t paid their wages. The fare’s thin, and you’re lucky they haven’t pawned the silver. I stopped by Master Wengrave’s house next door. Master Kendall’s apprentices all look as if they’re doing well, though Mistress Wengrave is considerably stricter with them than you ever were. I had a chat with her, Margaret, and told her what’s happened. She says you’re welcome there, and you’d be safer than in church. They have enough stout fellows to fend off any number of your in-laws, and since Master Wengrave’s been made an alderman, no one would dare cross him by carrying you or his goddaughters off secretly. Of course, I should warn you I didn’t tell them your suspicions about the Duke. If any of it’s true, they couldn’t hope to keep you.”