“That is the usual occurrence in this state, Malachi dear,” observed Mother Hilde. “Your mind has been just too occupied to notice before.”
“Indeed, Hilde, I defer to your greater wisdom in this area of expertise. Do they all get as large as Margaret here?”
“Larger,” she answered.
A woman pressed by us with a large basket of strawberries on her head.
“Oh, strawberries!” I cried. “Where on earth did she get them in this season? I could eat the whole basket. I must have some.”
“First garlic, then dandelion greens, and now there’s no end to it. Oh, the ceaseless demands of women! Margaret, you must restrain these mad appetites, or you’ll give the baby a birthmark.”
“Malachi—” Mother Hilde pulled at his sleeve. “I’d like some too. It’s been so long—” So while we waited in the shade of the cool stone arch of a long arcade, Brother Malachi pursued the woman, returning, all out of breath, with the entire basket.
“I hope this satisfies you greedy ladies; now we’ll all be covered with blotches.”
But soon enough, strawberries and all, he had brought us to the Street of Studies, where stood the shop of one of the numerous literary entrepreneurs of Avignon. This one was the best and the largest, he’d explained. The proprietor had his own scriptorum, and rented books to the masters of the university, as well as providing for sale fair copies of all the most fashionable and scholarly works, both newly made and previously owned. The presence of the papacy had made Avignon the most cultured city in Christendom, full of illuminators, painters, and masters of fair writing of every sort. We passed the rows of desks for the full-time copyists of the scriptorum, the displays of pens and paper, and stood before the wide, slanted shelves on which the finished books were laid flat for display. The man took no chances; the precious things were chained to the shelves. Many were too wide and heavy for me to lift anyway; some were fabulously bound and decorated. Too expensive, I thought, and looked for the plainer ones. The proprietor, sensing our lack of respectability from the basket of strawberries, hovered immediately behind us.
“You wished?” he said in Latin to Brother Malachi. He had dark, close-trimmed hair with a scholar’s tonsure, and a long, expressive olive-skinned face.
“I want to buy a book.” I spoke to him directly in the French of the north. Switching to that language, he addressed Brother Malachi in response.
“You want to buy a book?”
“She wants to buy a book,” responded Brother Malachi. “I am merely here to help.”
“I want to buy a book for a present,” I said to the man.
“She wishes to buy a book for a present?” the man asked Brother Malachi, as if he were a translator, and women’s words needed to be decoded by him before they could be understood by another man. I was surveying the books. The fatter ones, even plainly bound, looked too expensive. I’d try the thin ones that looked well thumbed. The first was in Latin.
“That’s a theological tract about damnation, Margaret,” said Brother Malachi in English. “I don’t think he’d like it.” I looked at another. The undecorated calfskin binding looked well worn. The lines inside were short, as if they were poetry. It wasn’t Latin.
“This one’s poetry?” I asked. It was the thinnest of all. Sold from an estate, perhaps, or by a student who needed passage money home. I might get a bargain. Besides, Gregory liked poetry, or at least he had liked poetry.
The man burst into a flood of Latin at Brother Malachi. He waved his arms. He rolled his eyes.
“The man says, Margaret, that this is the work of the divine Petrarch, whom he knows personally. He himself is a passionate devotee of the muses, and has captured the most subtle sensations of passion in his own poetry, which was nurtured and encouraged by the great Petrarch himself, at whose feet he sat. He says if you like Petrarch’s sonnets, you’ll adore his, which he’ll sell us even cheaper.” Brother Malachi spoke the French of the north, so that all parties in the negotiation would be aware of what he said.
“Ask him,” I answered in that same language, “just how long he sat at the feet of this Petrarch.” Though the man heard everything, Brother Malachi again had to translate from the female. At length the man responded to Brother Malachi, waving his arms and gesticulating passionately.
“I pursued him. Like the shy roe deer, he vanished. At his inn, surrounded by worshipers, he disappeared out the back door. ‘My poems!’ I cried as he lowered himself secretly from the back window at midnight, ‘you must read them! Tell me, great master, should I pursue my course?’ ‘Pursue!’ he cried as he fled on horseback. So I pursued. Soon I had several slim volumes. My love poetry. My odes. My epic, on the taking of Constantinople. And I knew where to find him. He’d hidden in Vaucluse. I made a pilgrimage to his shrine. What divine simplicity! Like the ancient Romans! He lived alone with a dog. I knocked at the door. ‘My God, not you again!’ he cried. That is how I knew the light of my rising sun had dazzled him beyond measure. ‘My poetry,’ I cried. ‘Read my poetry. You must tell me what you think of it.’ He had to read, though I could see how it pained him to see how he’d been surpassed. ‘These love poems,’ he admitted grudgingly, ‘they’re—unique.’ ‘My odes?’ I queried. ‘Even more unique.’ Ah! Even the greatest minds must wrestle with the serpent of jealousy. But he, the great man, the genius, overcame it! ‘And my epic?’ I asked. ‘The most unique of all.’ ‘Bless you, bless you, maestro!’ I kissed his hands and feet. I fled in rapture, taking my poems with me, so that he could not steal the ideas.”
“How can you sit at feet that are running, Malachi?” I asked in English.
“Now, Margaret. Don’t be saucy,” answered Brother Malachi in that same language.
“Ask him, Brother Malachi,” I resumed in French, “whether, since Petrarch has been surpassed by himself, wouldn’t he give me a bargain on this outmoded old fellow—say, less than his own book, which is so much better?”
“Margaret—” Brother Malachi cautioned. “You go too far.”
The man rolled his eyes up to heaven. Tears appeared in them. “Tell her,” he said, “it is the greatest tragedy of my life that my poetry is not more widely recognized. If I were not trying to build my world renown, I would not be offering it to foreigners at a discount.”
“Tell him,” I said as I dabbed artistically at my eyes with my sleeve, “that my poor husband lies so ill that only poetry can console him, but that he is so weak that if he reads the most powerful poetry first, he might be carried off by emotions. However, if he begins with the feebler verse, he can build his strength to the point that he can absorb the greater work without danger. So he should sell me the Petrarch for less, so I can return for his own work later.”
“Tell her I’ll give it at the same price, no less.” Brother Malachi, of course, had no time to tell anybody anything.
“Done,” I said. And the man said to Brother Malachi, “Tell her I’m a fool, and my tiny babies will starve.”
“Tell him the tiny babies of a great soul never starve.”
“Hilde, Margaret.” Brother Malachi turned to us, and his face was shining. “I’ve just thought of how we can get home.”
SIM HAD EVERY INTENTION of staying at first. Even though it was disgusting how Margaret made over this worthless fellow, he had gone and given his promise to her. The man had done nothing but lie around for weeks, unutterably dull, doing little more than breathing. Some nights he would rouse with a start, open his eyes, and scream as if he saw horrible things; then he was at least interesting, if somewhat dangerous, since he might start trying to fight off the things or claw them off himself, leaving his own skin bleeding.
But awake, that was the worst of all. The fellow was a veritable cloud of gloom. He didn’t even take pleasure in Sim’s lovely new acquisitions, which lay, with shining crowns and hollow eye-sockets, all well polished upon the long bench with which the room was furnished.
“I’ve seen enough of you old fellows,�
�� Gregory would mutter when he opened his eyes and spied the skulls there. “It’s poor conversationalists you’ve been all these weeks. Must you follow me about, staring so? I’ll be in your company soon enough.” Trapped all afternoon with this bore, Sim thought, as he went to look out the window.
Three floors below, in the courtyard of the Tête du Maure, he spied something wonderful. There, right at the stable door, was a man putting away his horse. Behind him were two greyhounds. And at his side, on a leash connected to a collar with little bells, was an ape. A real Barbary ape with a hairy body and long leathery hands and feet.
“Where’s he from?” Sim’s voice was full of admiration as he prepared to rush down to the courtyard. Then he remembered his promise. “Look after” doesn’t mean “look at,” now, does it? he reasoned to himself. They’ll be mad if he charges around and breaks things, thought Sim. So he changed the towel as insurance against that unlikely event, and then tied the sleeping figure’s hands stoutly together with the rope from the packsaddles, knotting the loose ends to the bed frame.
“With any luck, you won’t wake up,” he addressed the sleeping body. “And if you do, you won’t be running around and getting hurt. And I’ll be back long before then, anyway. They’ll never know. So we’re square, aren’t we? I’ve looked after you fine, Sir Gloomy.” And he sped downstairs in great bounds like a hare.
Gregory might not have awakened if a devil had not chosen to sit on his chest. It was big and gray and shapeless, and so heavy, he couldn’t breathe very well. Get off, he said in his mind, but the thing wouldn’t budge, even when he tried desperately to suck in air. It smelled bad, too, like rotten grave clothes. He tried to push it off, but found his hands were paralyzed. He began to scream and writhe, but he couldn’t move. He opened his eyes wide and looked all about the room for help. Not a soul there. Margaret had left him. He always knew that she would. And the devil; it was so heavy, crushing his life out.
“So be it,”he whispered, and turned his face to the wall. But even as he did it he could hear the click of the latch and the sound of the door swinging open. Curiosity had always been the most powerful impulse within him. “I’ll die later,” he murmured to himself. “First I’ll see who it is.” The devil seemed rather translucent; he could see right through it now, and as he watched the figure come through the door, the gray thing seemed to fade and go, as if it had never been there at all. The air felt good. He took big breaths as he stared at the stranger who’d entered.
The man seemed a pleasant enough sort of fellow, not that much older than Gregory, with a beard trimmed short and hair he’d let go a bit too long—probably to save money, judging by his clothes. He had on a physician’s gown and hat, but both were rather too well worn. Gregory could detect several very neatly made patches, almost invisible, on the most threadbare stretches of the gown. He smiled. Without a doubt, someone Margaret had found. She hadn’t left him after all. She’d gone to get a doctor. She did have a gift for making friends of the shabbier sort. She’d probably traded something, or begged him to come. She didn’t have the money for a successful doctor. He could sense the stranger inspecting him with his dark, whimsical eyes.
“Margaret sent you, didn’t she?” Gregory asked.
“Well, she asked me to come, yes—but I really came because you called. You needed me to come.” He sat down on the bed, as if he were already an old acquaintance.
“I’m sorry I can’t rise to greet you. Look what they’ve done to me.”
“They were just afraid you’d hurt yourself,” said the stranger, “but I know you won’t.” His fingers were busy with Sim’s crude knots.
“I’ve been crazy,” said Gregory. “But I haven’t hurt anyone, have I?” The stranger finished up and took up Gregory’s wrist to feel his pulse.
“Not really,” he said. “Not yet.”
“That’s a nasty mark you’ve got on your hand. I didn’t do that, did I?”
“Well, in a manner of speaking, you did. But it’s not important just now.”
“I’m very sorry. You’ve been here before?”
“All along.”
“Then I really have been off my head, haven’t I—I don’t remember you at all.”
The physician sighed. “You’re not alone in that. Most people don’t.”
“I’m very sorry about that. I take it business hasn’t been good for you here? You should take heart. I had a time in my life like that. Popular to have around when everyone was having a good time, but no real employment. Even my father didn’t like me.”
“Oh, I know all about that. But you see I’ve done especially poorly in this city, even though I inherited my father’s business.”
Gregory felt much better. He sat up.
“It’s all the quacks, you know. People like a big show. Doctors should make pronouncements in Latin over your urine in a glass vessel, and give vile, expensive medicines that poison your body, and do painful things like bleeding and cupping.”
“Are you telling me my business?” The physician looked straight-faced, but his eyes were dancing with the joke of it.
“Oh, no, I didn’t mean it that way at all. But an honest doctor like you, who hasn’t got any tricks—for example, look how much better I feel already and you haven’t even bled me—well, you’re not going to get as many paying clients when you’re in competition with—ah—showmen. You’ll be reduced to treating the riffraff for free.”
“Oh really, the riffraff—like you?”
“Exactly, like me.” Gregory looked very sad for a minute. Then he leaned forward. “Tell me, how did she convince you to come? You know we can’t pay you.”
“Oh, you can repay me. Just tell Margaret that you love her. I want to see her face when you do.”
“I can’t do that. Besides, she knows how I feel. I don’t have to tell her.”
“Why can’t you tell her?”
“It’s wrong, all wrong, you know. I shouldn’t really have married her at all. I—I had a vocation, you know.” Gregory sounded embarrassed.
“Oh, really, a vocation? What sort?”
“You know, the real kind. Serving God.”
“Oh, I see. Other vocations don’t serve God. And if you serve God, you can’t love anything He made. So to prove you still love God, you won’t tell Margaret that you love her, even though you do.”
“Well, put that way, it does sound rather confused and narrow-minded, I suppose.”
“You said it, not I.”
As Gregory thought this over, his face became worried. “But she might leave me—go away, or—or die. That’s why men should put no store by earthly things, and only love something more—well, substantial, like God,” said Gregory.
“Tell me,” said the physician, “have you ever observed how Margaret loves?”
“How she—what do you mean?”
“How she throws her heart into the balance, without ever counting the cost? Do you think she is so foolish that she doesn’t know that a baby’s smile, or a man’s life, is the most transitory thing on earth? Who do you think taught her to love like that?”
Gregory was silent a long time. The physician watched him as he thought.
“Doesn’t God Himself love unreservedly? Even those who might be lost to Him?” The physician looked at Gregory’s troubled face. Gregory turned his dark eyes on him and looked long and hard. “Isn’t it rather presumptuous of you to think you can love perfectly, without risks?” The questioner’s voice was not unkind.
“But my heart might hurt,” said Gregory, in a burst of honesty.
“It’s hurting now,” the physician answered.
Gregory bowed his head.
After a long silence, during which Gregory seemed to be thinking very hard, he began to cough again. As he doubled over, the physician steadied him. Then the stranger got up and rummaged about the room just as if it were his own, until he found the half-empty jug of wine. A moment later, Gregory found he was holding a cup between his hands
and being assisted to drink.
“Drink something, and the cough will pass.” The physician was being as pushy as Margaret. Gregory finished drinking.
“I should have died there in Normandy, you know. It would have been better. You know what the poet says: ‘A man is worth more dead than alive and beaten.’”
“Which poet is that?” asked the physician.
“Bertran de Born—one of the few my father ever liked. Say, the cough is better. Whatever did you do with that devil? It was too big to be hiding in the room.” Gregory looked around, but every corner of the room was full of sunshine.
“Oh, I got rid of it. As devils go, it wasn’t all that big. What makes you think nobody wants you back? Look at the trouble Margaret went to: pregnant women should be able to sit at home, making little clothes and eating fruit. Here she walked through the mountains, mended a hole in My creation, and fetched you out, at no end of trouble.”
“She’s been doing your mending? So that’s how she got you here. What a disgrace. Taking in mending in a strange city. Did I tell you how rich she was when I met her? Her last husband gave her an easy life, and I’ve given her nothing but trouble. But even so, she didn’t stick at disgrace to pay a doctor’s fee and fetch you here. It’s a shame. A knight’s wife, to take in mending. Even if it was only a purchased knighthood.” Gregory shook his head. The physician took the cup back and put it away. “I can’t believe I’ve been so hardhearted, not telling her what she wanted to hear. After all, I did marry her, so the sin’s mine.”
The physician sat down once more, and then took his pulse again. “Much better,” he said.
“I’ve been ungracious. Yes, that’s it,” Gregory went on earnestly, as if arguing with an invisible scholastic. “After all, consider what she’s done. That’s really unusual, even if she weren’t a woman. Now Blondel had a ballad written about him, when he rescued King Richard. Nobody said King Richard was better off dead; they were glad to have him back.”
In Pursuit of the Green Lion Page 39