In Pursuit of the Green Lion

by Judith Merkle Riley

  “Master Kendall always said he was a good man in a fight. I remember the day he made his will, and named Master Wengrave as Cecily and Alison’s guardian. I never understood what he meant then.” My eyes felt a little itchy thinking about that day, and I had to wipe them a bit.

  “Well, it’s been a fight, ever since you were carried off, according to Mistress Wengrave. He filed suit to recover the girls, and he’s been hounding them in court ever since. He says it’s not proper for Roger Kendall’s girls to rot away in the country, or get locked up in a convent to satisfy some grasping stepfather. Mistress Wengrave says he gets quite wrathy about it. He says it’s not the money, it’s the principle. Something about signaling to the gentry that they can’t rob the City with impunity.”

  “Oh, that sounds like him, all right. That’s what they’d talk about, he and Master Kendall, when it wasn’t Mercer’s Guild business, or the organization of the new wool staple.”

  “So then, what do you want to do, Margaret?”

  “Oh, Mother Hilde, I’ve walked all over until my feet are sore, and the girls howled. I haven’t found out anything except that another convoy of merchant cogs are due soon—they were still loading at the same time as the one that’s just arrived. They’re carrying wounded and some English knights returning home on parole for their ransoms. I’ll meet them when they land, but until then there’s nothing I can do—except, maybe, see about the mess at home.”

  “A half year’s wages for a household, Margaret—that’s no joke. And you’ve come away without a penny on you.”

  “Never mind, Hilde—I’ll just ask Master Kendall. And if he’s right about the money, then he’s right about Gregory, too, and he really is alive. Then I’m not being foolish hunting for news of him. Have I told you, Mother Hilde, how many people have made fun of me today? Even a fishwife! And I’ve had three proposals of marriage, though the men were drunk and it doesn’t really count. And six rowdies at the Unicorn sang a horrible song about how fickle women are, all the while I was talking to some old sergeant. And—Mother Hilde, you haven’t heard that horrible song about the merchant’s wall was high, high, high, have you?”

  “I’m afraid I have, but I wasn’t going to mention it.”

  “They sang that, too, even though they didn’t know it was about me, and I’ve never been so embarrassed in my whole life. It’s more than my feet that are bruised, Mother Hilde. I’ve had a horrible day!” And I started to cry. If Mother Hilde hadn’t embraced me and said, “There, there!” for some time, I’d be crying there still.

  But after dinner, when Hilde and I were washing the dishes, while Bet carried water and Clarice scoured out the kettle with sand, Mother Hilde said thoughtfully, “Margaret—you ought to think of your safety. If any of those relatives of yours remembers about me, then there’s not a way on earth we can prevent them retaking you. You should take the precaution of going to Master Wengrave’s as soon as you can, before they think to make inquiries in the City.” And because I remembered how little they scrupled to leave the bodies of indiscriminately slain commoners behind them, it seemed to me better not to lead them to Mother Hilde’s house.

  So that is how, in the afternoon, I found myself picking my way around the rubbish in the street, with Cecily, Alison, and Lion at my heels. I had a plan: I’d find out where Gregory was, and when Malachi came home, I’d ask him how to go get him, since Brother Malachi has traveled all over the world in his search for the Philosopher’s Stone, and surely that’s a much harder thing to find than a man. Worrying along the street with my own thoughts, I hardly noticed that the girls were occupied with a new kind of game: They had decided to follow Lion exactly and inspect everything he did from a dog’s-eye point of view, so to speak. Now, let’s see, I was thinking to myself—I’ll have to inspect the street very carefully, and perhaps go in by the back door, to make sure I’m not seen.

  It was a relief that Cecily and Alison weren’t pestering me for treats from the street vendors as I worked over everything in my mind, until I overheard a woman say to her little boy: “See that? They’ve turned into dogs. That’s what happens when you don’t obey your mother, and you play alone where the bad dogs can bite you. Now come away, or you’ll look just like them.” And she whisked him around to find all three of them breathing with their tongues hanging out in front of a large rat hole between the stones of the gutter.

  “You quit that this instant! You’re a disgrace! Can’t I go anywhere in public without you embarrassing me?”

  “But Mama, every place you go is boring,” announced Cecily, straightening up.

  “Yes, very boring,” said Alison. “We need to play.” Only Lion looked contrite, and wagged his back end, hoping to be forgiven.

  There was a crowd around the Cornhill stocks. A seller of bad meat, who had charged roasted kid prices for roasted lamb by changing the tail on the carcass, had been exposed to the jeers of the passersby. Just so you’d know what he’d done, the kid’s tail was nailed to the wood by his head. His worn gown was already daubed with the offal that had been thrown at him, and I caught a glimpse of desperate eyes as a poorly aimed stone thudded against the board by his face.

  “Alison, Cecily, don’t stare so! It’s not good for you! You hurry up!” I pulled Alison’s thumb out of her mouth, and dragged her from the comfortable vantage point where she had settled in to inspect the spectacle. It was when I had both children by the wrist, and had looked up to find a way through the crowd, that I thought I saw him. A tall figure, hurrying through the press of people toward the Cheap. I could only see his back, but he was wearing the same familiar, shabby old gray gown in which I’d first seen him. His cowl was up. But his walk, erect and businesslike, as he threaded his way through the crowd of gawkers, was unmistakable. My heart stopped, and I could feel the blood leave my face.

  “Gregory,” I whispered, and began to follow the hooded figure before I lost it in the crowd.

  “But this isn’t the way home, Mama.” I shushed Cecily with a word as I dragged them along behind me. Faster, faster, so I wouldn’t lose him. My heart pounding, I was pulled along as if tied to the mysterious figure. Farther, farther he went, until I saw him slow to pass the press of horsemen around a haycart coming in through Aldersgate. I was nearly breathless now.

  “Gregory, wait!” I called, but the hooded figure never paused. As I got to the gate I saw him turn and plunge into the twisting alleys of the tenement district just outside the walls. Gasping, I followed, only to find that as I turned the last corner down a narrow alley, hard on his heels, that he’d vanished. I was facing the blank back wall of some kind of warehouse. Hard, hard stone, and not a door in sight.

  “Gregory, Gregory, don’t leave me, don’t leave me alone like this! Come back!” I could hear my voice reverberate as I shouted to the echoing wall. There was not a human sound in response, just my own voice, “Come back, come back!” I banged frantically on the wall, looking for a hidden door that the figure might have passed through. “Gone, oh, gone forever,” I whispered to the deaf stones as my knees buckled beneath me. It was then that I heard the terrible cry of a man in mortal agony:

  “Margaret!”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  WHEN I NEXT OPENED MY EYES I SAW a smoky ceiling swaying and shifting overhead, and heard a dog whining, and felt a long, rough wet tongue licking my face. I could hear a voice somewhere in the room saying, “There’s no doubt who it is. The book we found beside her proves it: see the initials? M. K.—that’s her; even without the redheaded girls and the odd dog, it would be certain.”

  “Always the searcher of evidence, Robert. Whatever made you leave the law? You’ve got talent.”

  “The same old sad story, Nicholas. Lack of money. Talent doesn’t take you far without a degree. Besides, God meant me for higher things than growing old over musty lawbooks.”

  “Growing old in taverns is an improvement, I suppose?”

  “It is if someone else is doing the paying. Drink to Sir Ed
ward again, the dear little cockerel, and to his indulgent father’s fortune.”

  “I’ll go you better. To the Earl himself!”

  “Hip, hip, hurrah!” sounded from many throats, and then there was the clank and gurgle of ale mugs being emptied. I could hear the faint sound of a woman’s raucous laughter from another room. A tavern? If so, not a very nice one.

  “Well, I must go, Robert. Unlike you, I have a shop to keep. Let me know if you need help again.”

  “When have I not needed help, Nicholas? But you’ll be repaid a hundredfold by God for casting your bread into an empty wine-tun like me.” More clanking and gurgling. Then a lengthy belch.

  “Aha, your eyes are open, Mistress Margaret Kendall. See? I know you. It’s my powers of observation. I even know there’s a reward out for you, thanks to your gabby little girls, who are now snoring, dead drunk, underneath the table. Whatever put a rich, silly woman like yourself into a dangerous neighborhood like this?”

  “Gregory. I saw Gregory here. For God’s sake, tell me where he’s hiding.” I was still too weak to rise and look for the source of the voice.

  “Brother Gregory? He hasn’t been here since he ran off with that rich man’s widow he’d been tutoring. You, to be precise. Imagine. Practically a grave robber. What a stroke! Swift! Surgical! He beat out half of London—even my little cockerel—who wanted to get their hands on old Master Kendall’s fortune. But did he come back and share with his friends? Buy them a drink or two, by way of celebration of his new fortune? Oh, no, the money made him snobbish so fast that he never came back. I saw him once from a distance, riding on a fine horse near the Inns of Court. All dressed up like a gentleman, he was, riding beside two knights in full regalia—an old one and a young one. Didn’t look to left or right, like a man going to an execution. I hailed him, but he didn’t hear me. And here we’d been the best of friends, except for his rather addle-brained support of nominalism. How many dinners had I bought him when he was broke, the faithless dog? So I revenged myself. I wrote him up as a scurrilous ballad. It’s doubtless dogging his heels at this very moment, embarrassing him. He always had enough dignity for three—I’m sure it’s driving him crazy at this very moment.”

  Suddenly I was so angry, I became strong. I sat up on the bench, and the smoky, low-ceilinged tavern swirled around me. I saw a man with several weaving faces in a well-worn scholar’s gown. He was seated at a bench on the other side of a long trestle table that stood beside the bench on which I’d been laid out. A number of other interested faces surrounded his, but I didn’t care.

  “It’s you who did it. You made up all those nasty lies—and about a dead man. You should be ashamed. Ashamed, I say! The only person you’ve hurt is me—and he never lived to hear your horrid song, you jealous vulture.”

  “Hey, now, those are strong words for a man who’s just picked you out of an alley—gratis—and not even stolen all the little gewgaws you had stuffed in your bosom.”

  “It’s just as well you didn’t—one of them’s poisoned,” I muttered as my head slumped onto the table.

  “Now, none of this. Rise and have a drink, and tell me how you got here.”

  “I saw him—Gregory—walking through the City, and followed him here. Then I heard his death cry. It was from far away. It—it was terrible. Now I know it was his ghost I followed, and he’s gone forever, and I can’t even be buried beside him when my own time comes. And I was so sure he’d come home in time to see his baby. I told them all he wasn’t dead and I’d find him. They tried to lock me up, but I ran away. I’ve looked, I’ve looked. I’ve talked to all the shipmasters and the soldiers coming home. Oh, God, how could it all happen this way!” And I put my head down on my arms on the table again, this time to sob until my breath was gone.

  “Now, now, you can’t cry like that. Not with a baby coming, it’s not healthy.” They’d formed up in a circle around me, and I could feel someone patting my back clumsily. “Tell us what happened.”

  “He—he had a chance to write for the Duke of Lancaster. A—a chronicle. A knighthood. To be in the Duke’s own personal retinue—”

  I could hear their breaths being sucked in, and someone whistled softly and said, “What patronage! The chance of a lifetime!”

  “And chronicles go on forever—not like odes,” I could hear the first voice, the balladeer, saying regretfully.

  “But he had to go to France to do it—it was the Duke’s idea. A new kind of chronicle, written at first hand.” I lifted my head up from my arms. “I told him just to collect everybody’s boasting afterward, when it was safe, but he wouldn’t.”

  “Hmm. Unwise. Yes. Unhealthful, the climate in France right now—” the men around me muttered.

  “You see, he said he had to. The Duke had secured my inheritance for him, and he was obliged. Then there was the law, too—once the income was assured, he had to serve in the military—”

  “Well, well. Caught. Netted like a pigeon. That’s how they catch scholars these days.”

  “—Yes, money and obligation—the bait and the lime.”

  “Who’d have thought it? He was the freest of us all. Money and women trap a man, he always said—and he was right. Oh, pardon, mistress—”

  “He disappeared in the siege of Verneuil—” They nodded their heads gravely. “But I had hope. The heralds never found his body. So even though there was no ransom demand, I knew, just knew he was alive—but now—” I wiped my eyes on my sleeve.

  “You shouldn’t waste your time at the dockside, mistress, with all those other women in black. Do you know where you are?” asked a scholar in a frayed Oxford gown.

  “Why, yes, this is the second-best place in all of Europe to make inquiries for a lost man—the first, being in Paris, would be difficult for you to visit just now.”

  “This is the Boar’s Head, Mistress—um—ah, what was Brother Gregory’s family name, anyway? Did he have one?”

  “I never knew it. Just Brother Gregory, that’s what he went under.”

  “I think maybe it was Scrivener.”

  “Was there a de in it? He did put on airs.”

  “It was de Vilers,” I said.

  “Oh, my, an old name. From the Lincolnshire de Vilerses?”

  “No, from the cadet branch, in Hertfordshire.”

  “Well, Mistress—or is it Madame—de Vilers, this is the Boar’s Head, center of all that is worthy of gossip in Christendom. See this room? Flemish, Germans, Lombards, Gascons—a regular cacophony of nations—all masters of the shaved pate. You’ll hear more Latin than English in this hall, for we are all, before anything else, disciples of Minerva.”

  “Minerva? She owns this place then?”

  “And all of us, all of us too, Mistress Margaret-Who-Foolishly-Wed-a-Scholar. It’s not an elegant place, as you see, but the ambience—it cannot be equaled. The price of ale here is modest, and the women are not. Who comes? See that fellow over there? A monk, sent to buy wine for his priory at Dunstable. He stops here, learns a new ribald ballad, and leaves us with the information that a two-headed calf has been born at King’s Langley. Those fellows over there are jongleurs, fresh from the Continent. Did you know that unfrocked clerics make the best jongleurs? It’s the vocal study, you see. Who else sings as sweetly? They have brought us a story of an English mercenary captain, who has taken a castle in Languedoc, married the widow, and Frenchified his name. Those fellows over there, dicing? Scholars from Padua and Montpellier. They’re on their way to Oxford, but they stop here first, to catch up on anything they ought to know. Those fellows there, with the long faces and the dark cloud of ut infras and lis jub judices over them? Lawyers—real ones, not like me. But filthy-minded, or they wouldn’t be here. They can’t help trading the fine coin of their cases on the exchange here. We heard all about how your father-in-law bribed himself off murder charges for the bodies he left behind when he carried you off. ‘Self-defense,’ ha! It cost a pretty penny, too—all borrowed from your inheritance. The
clerk who drew up the document sups here too.”

  It was true. The snatch of song, the gabble in the corner—all Latin. And despite the motley of foreign robes, monks’ habits, and clerical gowns, every man in the room had one thing in common: a clerical tonsure of one sort or another. A group in one corner had struck up a song in French just brought back from abroad. I could hear bits of it through the clatter and voices:

  Tell me, Lisette, who is the better lover

  The man with sword or him with the pen?

  I’ll have the man of the tonsure anytime

  He’ll be singing love ballads all night long

  When your soldier’s come and gone—

  But it was drowned out by rising shouts from the table of dicers in the other corner.

  “Pardon me a moment, madame,” said my informant, making a flourishing gesture of farewell. “Violence threatens, and that is a friend of mine.” And he and several of the fellows with him moved into the whirling circle of controversy. I leaned over to check on my girls. They really were sound asleep on the matted rushes under the table. Lion sat by them, like an anxious nursemaid.

  “Loaded dice, by God! You think you can get away with that, you Lombard bastard?” could be distinguished from the rumble of angry voices.

  A woman carrying a load of empty mugs sat them down on the table and addressed me.

  “They’re all right, those little girls. Just drunk. I heard the dog, then saw them howling in the alley. I’d gone out to dump the slops. That’s how I found you. I had Robert take some of the boys out and bring you back. The girls were thirsty, and there’s only one drink in this place—so there you are: three sips and they’re out like snuffed candles.”