In Pursuit of the Green Lion

by Judith Merkle Riley

  So I plunged my hand deep into the hole, oblivious of spiders, and took out the bigger bag. While they were exclaiming, I stowed the little bag unnoticed. But when I’d paid everything, there was nothing but a single silver penny left. It certainly did look small, sitting there in the palm of my hand. Not enough. Not enough with twelve florins, either, even if they are good gold. Why, even if I could ransom him, it wouldn’t be for this sum; it was all his own fault for going and getting knighted. It raised his price. I felt annoyed all over again, just thinking about it. And let me tell you how proud knights are of their ransoms. The more you cost, the more honor. And there are knights that set their ransom so high, they can’t go home for ages, just so they won’t be shamed when they return before their fellows. “I’m a big man, set me high,” they say. And then they hunt and wench on parole with their captors, who are really more like hosts, while the folks at home scrimp and borrow. And, of course, folks who are judged not capable of raising ransom are chopped to pieces. So the arrangement, like most such arrangements, benefits the rich and not the poor.

  “This won’t do; I need an expert in money,” I said to myself as I tucked the coin into the purse at my waist.

  “Who’s that? A banker? Master Wengrave knows of several very reliable ones.” When Mistress Wengrave spoke, I realized with a start I’d been talking out loud.

  “No,” I said. “Bankers make loans, and there’s not a one on the face of the earth who’d help me. I need someone who can pull money out of nowhere. I need Brother Malachi.”

  “This sounds altogether interesting,” said Master Kendall’s ghost, cheering up. “Margaret, you always were a young woman of infinite resourcefulness.”

  And so, that very afternoon in the pouring rain, Mistress Wengrave dispatched a boy to Mother Hilde’s house to find out if Brother Malachi was home yet. And as the little creature dried himself out before the fire, we all exulted to hear that Brother Malachi, with his usual cat’s instinct for finding comfortable spots, had returned home with Sim just before the bad weather had set in, and was all abubble with good news.

  “SO YOU SEE, Brother Malachi, I have a very large-sized problem.” I was seated on a bench by the fire, extending my damp shoes and mud-splashed hem toward the warmth. My muddy pattens stood on the hearthstones; the two grooms from Master Wengrave’s were drying themselves off, too, and trying to pretend that they weren’t listening. Brother Malachi was comfortably ensconced on a big cushion in the household’s only chair; Mother Hilde and little Bet were on the bench beside me, stringing dried apples while Clarice, seated on a stool with a big basket on the floor beside her, finished her mending. In the corner behind the woodpile the cat was nursing a new litter of kittens. Peter and Sim, who were supposedly minding the fire under another one of Brother Malachi’s experiments in the back room, had taken advantage of the diversion to stand in the door to listen. In short, the little room Hilde and Malachi called their “hall” was full of people and the smell of damp wool and cooking cabbage, the way it usually is in bad weather.

  Brother Malachi was so full of his own good news that he found it difficult to listen. His face was all pink and round with contentment, but he managed to make it look long and sad as I spoke.

  “Margaret, how many times have I told you that everything has two sides? I remember when you sat in this very place, weeping because the Bishop had put you out of business. And then what happened? Why, the richest old man in town proposed marriage so you could fix his gout on a permanent basis! You see? Two sides! In every bad thing, a good thing is hidden, if you know how to look.”

  “But, Brother Malachi, what if in every good thing, a bad thing is hidden? That’s two-sided too.” Brother Malachi’s face clouded over for a moment, but then brightened again.

  “It can’t possibly be—for then inside the bad thing is hidden another good thing. So you see, the bad things must be taken as opportunities. And where would we all be without opportunities? That is why the world becomes constantly better.”

  Mother Hilde sighed with pleasure. “Oh, Malachi, I never tire of hearing your philosophy. How fortunate I am to live with the wisest man in the world!” She rose from her work to put another log on the fire under the kettle, while Malachi waved his hands airily to explain his theory further. And as he explained his positives and negatives, rising always to a better state, his arms rose higher and his face grew happier. He hesitated briefly when he reached the point where he would have to choose between the comfort of remaining seated and the pleasure of standing to allow his hands to rise in elaboration of his theory concerning the improvement of the world. He rose but an inch briefly before he decided for comfort, wiggling his fingers toward the shining constellations between the bright, red-painted beams in the low ceiling to depict infinite height, and adding “and so forth and so on” to conclude his discourse as he sank with a satisfied plop back into his chair, which was located exactly beneath Ursa Major. The gaudy red and azure and the incongruous painted stars, more suited to a chapel or some nobleman’s bedchamber, made the room somehow seem all cheerful and odd-looking, not unlike Brother Malachi himself.

  “I’m afraid I’m too dense for your theory, Brother Malachi. It’s all ideas, with no illustrations. Bad things turning into good, improving the world—that’s too hard for me,” I said.

  “Let’s take me for an example, then. Here I was, sweating and suffering on the road for an honest penny. The mule had got a stone in his shoe, my feet were sore, and Sim was getting a fever. That’s the negative. The positive: We were near Southampton, where my old friend Thomas the Apothocary, who is one of the small circle of true philosophers and seekers, owed me money—so we’d stay with him. Perfect! We got to his house—it was in mourning. He’d died. A tragedy. And what’s worse, all his equipment had been sold to pay his debts. Not a trace of his work left. And here he’d let me know he’d got as far as the peacock’s tail. Can you imagine how much I wanted to see the work he had left? A tragedy—a tragedy of the first order. That’s the negative. But remember the positive. Not only did his widow and daughter entertain us well for old times’ sake, but it turned out he’d left me a book in his will. The positive! And wait until you see the book, Margaret. It contains the dream of my life.”

  “The Secret? He was after it too?” I was astonished. Brother Malachi put his finger across his lips and smiled.

  “A wonderful book. He left me a letter. It seems he’d labored in vain over it. He couldn’t read a word of it. And so he’d left it to me, the greatest living master of our art, to pay off his debt and to assist me in my search for the Ultimate. Who would have thought it from a sour, envious old tightwad like Thomas? But no, his last illness led him to a higher frame of mind. His wife, whom I last saw laboring in rags, was clad in a new dress, his daughter decently dowered, and even I—once the main object of his envy—had been remembered generously. Ah, thus do we reform when faced with the Infinite.” Brother Malachi paused briefly for a pious prayer for Thomas’s soul, and then continued. “But—in the positive, another negative. The entire text is unreadable. What, do you say, could be the positive? I plan a splendid and mentally enriching trip abroad in search of a translator.”

  “But, but—what about Hilde? And your household?”

  “Why, that’s the most positive of all—if Clarice hadn’t come to us in a moment of need, then she would not be here to handle Hilde’s business and look after Peter and the household.” I looked at Hilde, who seemed very pleased, and Clarice, who nodded as if it had been all arranged. Outside, the rain had stopped, and we could hear the shutters on the second stories bang open, as women leaned out to get a bit of air and shout the most confidential gossip to each other across the muddy alley.

  “Now, first, according to my theory, you must inspect your difficulty from all sides,” said Brother Malachi, fixing his eyes on me. He looked completely pleased with himself at the opportunity of demonstrating how his theory worked. Shrill voices rattled among the da
mp rooftops. Someone’s goose was honking in the alley.

  I looked at my hands. Gregory’s narrow gold ring was on my left hand, and old Master Kendall’s elaborate one on my right. “It seems pretty hard to me: my husband’s given up for dead, and he may well be if I can’t retrieve him. His lord wants to marry me off to someone else, his brother wants to kill me for the money Master Kendall left me, and I haven’t the funds to get him back. So where do I begin?”

  “It seems to me that there are two ways,” said Brother Malachi. “One is easy and the other one difficult. So, let’s deal with the easy one first. How do you feel about him, Margaret?”

  “What do you mean?” There was a long, uncomfortable silence.

  “I mean,” Brother Malachi went on, “do you love him? The easiest way, you see, is simply to send a message to the Duke’s court, telling them where you can be found.” His eyes looked very shrewd, as if he were calculating something.

  “Malachi!” Mother Hilde was indignant.

  “I don’t want another man, if that’s what you’re thinking about. Everybody seems to think that’s all a woman needs. But it’s him I love, and I don’t want to give him up. Oh, I want him back so badly! I’d give anything to hear him grumping about Aquinas or see him prowling about the kitchen, sniffing in all the pots like a hungry wolf. He went and changed, Malachi—all he did was spout about honor and who sat where and whether he should have his personal coat of arms redone and, and, whether or not he should buy a stupid—pavilion. Can you believe it? And it was all bad for him. Just look how it came out.”

  “Oh, my. That sounds exactly like him, all right. He always did fling himself into whatever he was doing. Were they versifying in pothouses? Why, then he had to be the best—ha, I remember one time in Paris when he was carried through the streets after some triumph in a tavern poetry contest. Was metaphysics in fashion? Then he was the most fluent elaborator of the quattuor causae. Then he heard about God-seeking. Ha! The most mystical mystic I ever met—until even the Carthusians wouldn’t have him. Though why, I don’t know. Nobody could outdo him for extravagantly ragged clothing and all-night vigils. Now, I take it, he’s doing chivalry.” Brother Malachi chuckled. “I imagine he’s quite unendurable. He often is, at the height of these fancies. Though I must say, in all our long acquaintance, he never gave the impression that he had a family.”

  “Long acquaintance? You’ve known him a long time? I never knew that—he never let on, in all the time I talked about you.”

  “Talked about me? Oh, yes, the fable of the memoirs. Of all the surprises I’ve had today, by far the greatest is the possibility that he might have been telling me the truth when he said he met you by copying your memoirs. Really, Margaret, what ever put such a notion in your head? You haven’t lived long enough to have anything to say. Imagine. And here I thought he was over there seducing you all this time.” Brother Malachi shook his head as if there were no end to the wonders of the world. It annoyed me greatly, and I bit my lip so I wouldn’t tell him I thought he was very unfair, and vulgar-minded too. He saw the look and laughed.

  “Be fair, Margaret—who else but you would take such a fancy into her head? You have to expect people would believe the worst. Besides, when you told him about me, you probably didn’t know I’d changed my name since I’d last seen him. That was quite a while ago, when I had to move on very suddenly—” Sadness crossed Brother Malachi’s normally sunshiny face like a cloud, but was soon gone. “But I must say, I was mightily surprised when he turned up to borrow the money to abduct you. Something about hiring a horse. Goodness, I hadn’t seen him since Paris, where he went about under the nom de guerre of Gilbert l’Escolier, writing scurrilous theological tracts and satirical verse. A man of singular talents, Margaret, the chief of them being that he is always right and everyone else is wrong. Snobbish, obnoxious, and witty as the Devil—though I never thought he was interested enough in women to make off with you in that way. And half of London in pursuit! That Gilbert’s never managed to leave any city without a scandal yet. Did I ever tell you how they burned his book in Paris? The idiot! He told me he had twelve irrefutable theological proofs that they were wrong—so of course he stayed and they caught him. Impractical—yes, eternally impractical and stubborn, is Gilbert the Righteous.”

  “It seems that we see him about the same way.” I sighed. “Now, how do I get him back?” Brother Malachi looked speculatively into the air.

  “Well, Margaret—that’s the difficult way. It seems to me that we might combine all of our problems into one supreme solution: yes—yes, it makes sense. Of course, there’s the expense—but—hmm. How many florins did you say? Ten? Yes. Multiplication is in order, especially if you’re to go with us.”

  “Oh, you can multiply it—I just knew you could. Can you make enough to buy him back?”

  “Not from the Comte de St. Médard, Margaret. He’s eccentric, and already rich. He probably has some completely superfluous reason for not setting the ransom already. But—and here’s the useful part—admit, Margaret, you couldn’t do without me—he’s well known to us hunters of the Green Lion. So I imagine I might very well be able to work a trade. I’ll offer him the one thing he simply can’t refuse, and back it up with what’s left of my reputation. Did you know I was once celebrated, Margaret? And then, having retrieved Gilbert, it’s heigh-ho for the great centers of learning and my translator.”

  “I don’t understand, Brother Malachi. Hunters of the Green Lion? Trading? And why can’t you get a translator in England, anyway?”

  “Ah, thrifty, thrifty little Margaret. Your head’s transparent, as usual, and I can see all the thoughts in it. You’re thinking about the last of your florins, aren’t you? Do you think I’d hoodwink you like some foolish bumpkin from the country? Aren’t we old enough friends, Margaret, for you to know I don’t practice my skills on my own family? Yes—you’re a sort of family, just like Clarice and little Bet here. Things haven’t changed just because you left for a grander life.”

  “I’m sorry, Malachi. I guess it was small of me. I’ve just been around Gregory’s relatives too much.”

  “Very well, apology accepted. Come into my laboratorium; I’ll show you my book, and that will convince you of everything.” He looked toward the low door to the back room and for the first time noticed Sim. It was odd about Sim; even though it had been several years since I first saw him, he’d never really grown. He was still as short as an eight-year-old, though I’d figure him to be anywhere from twelve to fourteen or so. His head was large and a little misshapen, his teeth had gaps between them when he smiled, and he had the shrewd, dark little eyes of a boy who’d grown up fending for himself on the street. But he’d taken to us like a stray cat when we’d fed him, long ago, and from that day to this, he’d stuck to Brother Malachi like a burr. Sim had been listening, taking in everything on the quiet, the way he always does.

  “Sim, you devil! Why aren’t you minding the fire? I tell you, if it’s gone cold, you’ve ruined it! Heaven save me from the lazy tricks of apprentices!” Sim scampered into the laboratorium ahead of us and poked up the fire with a great show of energy, while I ducked to follow Brother Malachi through the open door to the back room. Mother Hilde followed us and shut the door, so the grooms wouldn’t hear.

  “It’s not as if I haven’t hunted far and wide for a translator here,” he said, puffing, as he removed a stack of books from the top of a little chest hidden in the corner of his oratorium. “Pothooks, I said to myself, looks as if it might be Hebrew. I’ll take it to the university at Oxford. Seems there was a fellow named Benjamin Magister, a Jew with a license to remain in the kingdom to translate the Old Testament. He was dead. Found some dismal doctor of theology who looked down his nose at me and said since the Old Testament was already translated, there was no need for any more Jews at the university. Phoo! What kind of scholar is that? Made inquiries. Went off on a hunt for one Isaac le Convers, said to be in Sussex somewhere, finally found his elderly
daughter—she couldn’t read a word.”

  Malachi lifted the little chest and put it carefully in the middle of his worktable. Then, as he rummaged about for the key, he continued.

  “I chased all over the realm, leaving no stone unturned. Finally I was so desperate I came back to London and betook me to the Domus Conversorum, even though everyone knows there hasn’t been a convert there for a generation. Once the king had the Jews driven out, there was no need to maintain a house for converts. Except that by then it made a nice income for the Warden of the Domus, renting out the rooms. ‘Oh, no,’ says the Warden, ‘I’ve done my duty as a Christian—I’ve got a Spanish sailor here on full allowance who says he’s planning to convert.’ Ha! What people won’t do to keep a position—especially a cushy one like his! So I spent nearly a day with this fellow, who calls himself Janettus of Spain. He really was Jewish. ‘Oh, my, this is too difficult for me,’ he said. ‘I’m a simple man, and only know a few prayers—this is full of arcana. I can’t make out a word. You need a great translator and scholar, the greatest in the world. You need Abraham the Jew.’ I was all ablaze. ‘Where can I find him?’ ‘Oh, he moves about. When I heard of him he was living in Salamanca—but some say he was invited to Paris by the King of France, others that he went to Montpellier, or perhaps he is at Avignon, by invitation of the Pope.’ Hazy he was, entirely hazy. But it’s clear. Spain or France. He’s somewhere. I’ll find him. Take him into my confidence. The Secret—I feel it’s so close that I wake up at nights, trembling all over.”

  Brother Malachi had at last located the key, and opened the little chest, lovingly taking out a packet wrapped in oiled silk. He cleared a space among the jars and odd-looking vessels of smoky, swirly colored glass on his table, and wiped it clean with his sleeve. Then he laid the packet reverently in the space. Hilde and I leaned close to him on the high table, to watch him unfold the silk.