In Pursuit of the Green Lion

by Judith Merkle Riley

  “Then you thought of doing the same thing yourself?”

  “Naturally. I’m not stupid. You think calling up devils gets results? If it did, we’d have gold already. Devils, they live to deceive. What makes him think Asmodeus wouldn’t deceive us too? So what have we got? Nothing but stink, mess, and bruises. Sending a messenger is much more likely to do the job.”

  “It’s a long way, practically at the end of the earth,” said Messer Guglielmo, scrutinizing the tablet. “What civilized place would be called ‘Bruksfurd Manr’?”

  “I thought we’d send Fray Raphael. After all, he took a vow of poverty, so it’s time he experienced a little hardship.”

  “But the Sieur d’Aigremont needs him in the secret chamber—he has no excuse for leaving—though I’d love to be rid of him for a while. What a whiner. He comes up here to complain, usually when I’m in the middle of some very difficult experiment, and can’t be disturbed. The air’s bad down there, he whines. You’ve got it lucky. Lucky! Slaving all day and all night, sweating in the heat! No ventilation! Horrible smells! Clumsy bumpkins for assistants! No proper food, just a bite on the run! I’m worn to the bone! Just look at me!” He looked down at the offending gown, and saw a gray hair in his long, rough black beard. He plucked it out with an injured look. “Gray! I grow aged in the service of this ungrateful patron!”

  “If you knew what went on in the secret chambers, you’d not complain.”

  “What do I need to know? As long as he gets me the right fixative, it’s not my business how he does it. Unless, of course, he ignores my advice and manages to make a hole big enough for Asmodeus to come through. Apart from that, my only concern is my science. Who says wisdom ever comes without a price? And I’m paying it—suffering, suffering.”

  “You’d do better if you suffered a little more silently, Messer Petrini. If he thinks you know anything at all, you won’t go free when the gold’s made.”

  “They go in, they never come out. What do I care? They’re only peasant brats. There’s too many of them in the world already. They breed like rabbits, these lower orders.”

  “Well then, I suppose the only likely one to go is me. That’s what I feared.” Fray Joaquin sighed. “I’ll tell him I heard of some pretty blond ones in the north, and I’ve gone to inquire after them. That’s the only kind he wants, anyway, and they’ve grown rather scarce around here.”

  That evening, accompanied only by a tall deerhound, Fray Joaquin set off for England on the fastest horse in the stable.

  “MAMA, THAT’S AN UGLY cloak. Why didn’t you buy a pretty one?” Alison was poking through my purchases as I spread them out on the bed in the upstairs room at the Wengrave house. It was hard to hear her, because she was wearing the hat. It was not only very nearly the width of her outstretched arms, but came down well over her chin. The strings hung to her waist.

  “It’s a pilgrim’s cloak, silly.” Cecily was inspecting the money belt and heavy shoes. “It makes you look holy when you’re traveling. Then everybody helps you and nobody hurts you.”

  “Nobody will hurt my mama. She’s pretty. Besides, Brother Malachi will touch all the bad people with his magic wand. Poof! Then he’ll turn them into frogs.”

  “Who says?”

  “Sim told me. Brother Malachi can do anything.”

  “Mama, you’ll come back soon, won’t you?” Cecily’s voice was troubled.

  “Of course she will,” Alison’s little voice piped from beneath the hat as she clambered up and plumped herself on the bed. “Mama never forgets us. She’ll bring presents and sweets. I want a new white pony and five colors of hair ribbons, Mama. Remember I like red and green best. No brown.”

  “Yes, I’ll be back just as soon as ever I can. Remember I’ll be thinking of you and praying for you every night, and be good for Mistress Wengrave.”

  “Not—easy,” announced Alison, kicking her plump little feet, shod in quilted wool slippers, on the side of the bed. “‘Stand up! Bow down! Quiet now! Softer voice, Alison!’ Mistress Wengrave is ve-ry bossy! She’s the bossiest!”

  “Not as bossy as step-grandfather. Nobody’s as bossy as him,” Cecily corrected her sister.

  Was it imagination, or was Alison distinctly pudgier than she’d been a month ago? Cecily was growing again. Her skinny shins were peeping beneath her hem. I need to let it down again, I thought. There’s one more turn in it before Alison gets it. Maybe I’ll trim it with ribbon when I put the hem up again for Alison. Then it will seem more like a new dress. Oh, God, France is so far away. Suppose I don’t live to turn up Alison’s hem? Who will remember that she doesn’t like hand-me-downs unless they’re made pretty for her? No, it can’t happen that way. It mustn’t happen. I couldn’t help the tears that came up in my eyes as I embraced them yet another time and said, “You must never be afraid. God has sent His angels to watch over you while I’m gone.”

  “Angels? Can they make buns too?” And Alison, ever distractible, sat herself down to play with my beads and sing the baby song about all the things that go in a cake.

  “Don’t worry, Mama. I’m big. I’ll look after Alison. I can do anything.”

  “—and saf-fron, and sugar—”

  “You’re Mama’s brave, big girl. Remember, I rely on you—”

  “—I’m big too—and cinnamon—”Alison went on singing.

  “I can do anything a grown-up can do. Even grown-up men were afraid of the big horse. But I wasn’t. And I rode him. I can do anything.” Cecily’s eyes were serious. She meant exactly what she said.

  “You know that I don’t want to leave, don’t you?”

  “I know you have to. I know why too. I hear them whispering in corners when they think I don’t understand. About the convent, and the lawsuit, and the bad people trying to steal away the dowry money our papa left us for marrying. You will come back, won’t you? And then it will be all fixed?”

  “Of course it will. And Master Wengrave is your godfather and your papa’s dear friend. You know you are safe here, and he wants only your good?”

  “I know.” Cecily rubbed her eyes hard. She had become old—too old for a little girl. But sometimes that’s what has to be.

  “—and ten-ty, ’leven-ty pounds of rai-sins,” sang Alison. “Not bad. I made that extra part all myself. The cake in the song is not good enough the old way.”

  “Is that all you think about—food?” said Cecily righteously.

  “Oh, no. I think about Mama coming back. Because she will,” said Alison calmly, looking at her sister as if she didn’t understand anything at all.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  FRAY JOAQUIN ARRIVED AT BROKESFORD Manor mud-stained and infuriated by a lost week of searching for this hole at the end of the earth. The natives were savages: when they spoke French at all, it was some beastly variant of Norman dialect, admixed with the native tongue. Fray Joaquin’s rolling Provençal, spiced with the occasional Spanish phrase, went entirely uncomprehended. People poked each other and pointed when he asked directions. Or worse, they’d guffaw rudely. He was tired of picking the bedbugs out of his clothes and pack after a miserable night jostled by filthy strangers in the sagging beds of a series of wretched inns. At last he’d found a village priest with a bit of Latin. Barely enough for the Mass, and to say “yes,” “no,” and point directions. But it was enough to inform him he was in the correct neighborhood, and Brokesford Manor lay half a day’s ride to the north.

  As usual, even in this little village, it was his horse that excited admiration, rather than himself. A dappled gray Spanish barb, built for speed, with a dainty, square Arab nose and wideset brown eyes like a woman’s. He’d grown used to seeing a circle of gawkers form around it to comment on its points wherever he left it, and to take extra precautions against its theft. Usually, the bared teeth of the massive deerhound were enough to keep people at a distance. Pigs who rode on nothing better than plowhorses ought to stare when they saw what a real horse looked like. Fray Joaquin, who had supervi
sed the breeding stable of one of the most elegant abbots in Castile before coming into the service of the Sieur d’Aigremont, had a fine eye for breeding stock—almost as fine as his eye for selecting a pretty child. Now these English horses were badly bred—but the children he’d seen were quite attractive. Light-haired and rosy-cheeked, the way his Seigneur preferred them. It was a pity he’d come for a woman, when he could probably pick up several children with much less trouble, but business is business.

  As he approached the manor he took note of the heavy horses in the pasture and stallion pens. Not bad, not bad. The man knew what he was doing, but the breed needed more depth in the chest still, and more refinement about the head. A barb stallion was what they needed—the very sort he preferred himself—then you could breed up the size later, when you had the conformation right. A little goose girl with a switch drove her charges beside the road. Barefoot in the freezing autumn mud, she stood barely as tall as the geese. Blond ringlets peeped from beneath her coarse wool hood, and she stared at the strange horse and rider. Fray Joaquin took professional note of her rosy cheeks and wide blue eyes. Yes, it was a pity.

  At the manor, his welcome was less than adequate, though, of course, what could be expected from the so-called noblesse of this backward place? The lord of this tumbledown heap of a house appeared to have his bed set up in the hall, like some ancient lord in a centuries-old romance. True, he had the excuse he was dying from wounds and couldn’t be carried up the narrow circular stair. But wouldn’t it be more dignified to be carried up to die decently than insist on going on living in this squalor? Humph, Fray Joaquin sniffed to himself as he looked at the hams hanging from the ceiling, I’m surprised they don’t keep live chickens in this hall. It wouldn’t add to the disorder in the least.

  Behind the screen, a menagerie of hounds and hawks surrounded the old lord where he lay propped up on pillows to receive the visitor. A bitch had given birth to a new litter of puppies in the straw under the huge bed. True, there was a hollow-cheeked son skulking about somewhere, but he’d been barely civil. He’d sent his garish little wife to the door to greet Fray Joaquin, and she’d snubbed him even before he’d had time to state his mission. They already had noble guests, she’d said, and she hoped he hadn’t brought any company with him. Fray Joaquin loved the proper ceremony, and wasn’t used to being taken for a wandering friar. As the well-born servant of a great lord, he’d expected at least a foot-bath in welcome. But these people didn’t seem like the bathing sort.

  Most insulting of all, the old lord did not rise even an inch from where he lay in his bed in greeting, even though it was clear he was not even a knight banneret, and hardly looked that ill anyway. He lacked the scent of death that a man lying so long wounded should have. He was incredibly thin, but his eyes glittered with a somewhat malicious intelligence, and two feverish little spots of pink marked his high cheekbones. And the way he dispatched servants and heard petitioners, undressed save only for a napkin on his head and a vast fur coverlet pulled up to his shoulders, looked entirely too gleeful. A spider in the center of his web, thought Fray Joaquin. This so-called dying man runs everything behind the son’s back. And something is wrong with the son; he’s all disheveled and looks half mad, with those hollow, burning eyes.

  Fray Joaquin, who lived by his talent of instantly discerning the politics of great houses, took in the scene behind the screen in a flash, as he stood waiting to be introduced. And who was the knight in richly embroidered crimson velvet, sitting on the bed? Doubtless the noble visitor. But an old friend—perhaps a companion-in-arms, to judge by the age, and the wolfish grins the two shared, as if they had just finished enjoying a joke.

  The knight was in fact Sir William Beaufoy, come from the Duke’s household to tell Hugo that his time was up. Since he had not produced Margaret, he must go himself to Sir Geoffrey de Courtenay, the Duke’s lieutenant in Lincolnshire, to explain precisely why he had failed to deliver her. The distasteful duty was one made palatable in Sir William’s mind by the news that his old friend Sir Hubert still lived, and he might yet comfort him on his deathbed. It had been a shock, but a wonderful one, to see that the gray pallor of death had vanished from his old friend’s face, that he sat, ate, and drank, and that his mind was whole again.

  “A little spiced wine, a lot of disgusting boiled water with ugly herb leaves floating in it to drink. Smelly poultices, and not a decent roast—just some horrible soup. She left the recipes with Wat before she fled and he’s been a tyrant about it. I can’t get a soul to bring me a proper bite to eat. But I must admit I’m feeling better.”

  “We at the Duke’s household suspect Hugo of murdering her.” “Murder? Stuff and nonsense. She’s hidden herself as I told her to. Hugo’s in no shape to do murder just now, anyhow. Look at him! All skin and bones! He’s got worries of his own, these days. Marriage worries.”

  “From what I saw, that woman needs a good hiding.” “Oh, he’s in more trouble than that. You should hear him walking about at night like a spook. Sometimes he howls. ‘My soul, I’ve damned my soul!’ Pfah! He deserves it all. I always told him a real man can get what he wants without promising anything.”

  “That aside, Sir Hubert, it’s a surprise to see you so much better.” It was then that they glanced up to see the cold, dark eyes of Fray Joaquin assessing them with a detached, analytical look. Something about the man looked sinister. It wasn’t just the darkness of the cloaked figure, or the black Dominican hood that shadowed the grayish, drawn face. It was something—perhaps just an illusion—that seemed very odd. The glancing beams of autumn sunlight from the window behind the screen seemed somehow to stop short of him, by just a little, as if the light refused to touch him, before it passed on to make a pale yellow splash on the floor. Both the men noticed it, and Sir Hubert shivered slightly, for he had seen the face of death too closely, and too recently, not to know what it meant.

  “I have come with news of your son, Sir Gilbert de Vilers. He is held at the chateau at St. Médard les-Rochers by the Sieur d’Aigremont, Comte de St. Médard, who has stated that he will accept the ransom only from the hand of the fair Dame Margaret, his wife, in person.”

  Despite his rolling accent, the two knights comprehended at once his meaning. Sir Hubert’s face turned rosy with the unexpected joy. He sat up and leaned forward so suddenly that the covers dropped all the way to his navel.

  “Gilbert! Alive! Thank the great God above!”

  But Sir William, who had had bitter experience ransoming a son from the French, replied smoothly, “Why does not the great and wealthy Sieur d’Aigremont, to whom the ransom of a simple knight must be as a grain of sand on the seashore, release him on parole, to raise and return his own ransom?”

  “Ah, that,” replied Fray Joaquin diplomatically. “My most noble lord enjoys his company so much, he hates to let him go. They share in common an interest in poetry.”

  “Ah, yes,” answered Sir William in the same bland tone. “I thought perhaps I recognized the name. Is not the Sieur d’Aigremont that princely soul, as renowned for his lordly hospitality as for his exquisite songs? Is he not called by those of great taste the noble trouvère—or was it the Prince of Poets—if I am not mistaken?”

  “I am delighted that his reputation has crossed the sea. He is precisely that lord.”

  “Gilbert has been living in luxury, harping and singing love ballads, while I worried myself into the grave!” Sir Hubert had become instantly wrathy. Sir William shot him a warning glance. “Don’t look at me like that! I know the ungrateful whelp all too well.”

  “Don’t forget, I do too,” said Sir William between his teeth. For Gilbert had been his esquire long ago, when he was a daft youth of fourteen, before he’d run off to be a scholar, sending his father a rude letter from the safety of a foreign capital.

  “Let me think—hmm. I recall at the court of Flanders, hearing a trouvère sing—um—‘Ode to My Lady’s Tiny Foot.’ That was his, was it not?” Sir William addresse
d the Count’s emissary.

  “Homage. It was homage.”

  “And another—‘Song of the Tragic Lovers’? Is my memory correct?”

  “Never heard of ’em,” grumbled Sir Hubert, and Sir William shot him another warning glance—one not missed by Fray Joaquin.

  “Very, very exquisite. A man of superb talent. And most noble feeling,” Sir William went on.

  “Ballad. It was ‘Ballad of the Tragic Lovers.’”

  “You must forgive me. I am only a simple knight from a harsh, rude land. But I can admire the gentillesse that I lack.” Sir William suddenly leaned forward and fixed his eyes on Fray Joaquin’s cold gray face. “How much?”he asked.

  “Thirty-five florins.”

  “And from the hand of the fair Dame Margaret herself? That’s a curious request.”

  “My lord wishes to see for himself the source and inspiration of so many beautiful songs. He will entertain them both royally.”

  “Of that I’m sure. It will all be arranged as he wishes. Of course, you must allow us, say, a month to raise the ransom and travel to your lord’s court. Will you be staying to return with Dame Margaret and her escort?”

  “No, I shall be returning as soon as possible.” After a discussion involving the exchange of information about safe routes, Sir William slipped a question into the conversation.

  “And just how did my lord of Aigremont, who was nowhere near the front in Normandy, come to entertain Sir Gilbert?”

  “My lord, hearing of his reputation as a poet, purchased his ransom, along with that of several other English prisoners.”

  “Ah, I understand all now.”

  You don’t understand a thing, you stupid English pig, thought Fray Joaquin. If you did, your eyes would start in your head from horror. And I’d love to see it. Especially if your head were on a tray.

  When the sinister Dominican was shown out for refreshment, Sir Hubert whispered fiercely, “How in the hell can you promise him Margaret, when you know she’s gone?”