The physician looked at Gregory with a long, shrewd look. “You haven’t got it all straight, but you seem to be working in the right direction now. Feeling better? Any more questions?”
“Just one, I suppose. I’ve been having nightmares—hallucinations about my brother Hugo. They’re so real, he almost seems to be here. I hear dreadful music, and then his face appears, quoting horrible poetry. Is there any significance to that? Is it an augury?”
“Actually, he is here. Your father sent him after you, and he caught up with Margaret after she found you. Being what he is, he is under the delusion that it is he who rescued you, though he is as yet unsure about the means. As for the poetry, I can do nothing about it. People have free will, even to embrace bad poetry. And now, good-bye.”
“Hugo? And Father sent him?” Gregory’s voice was full of wonder. “Don’t go—please stay longer.”
“I have others I have to see.” The physician smiled, and stood up, leaving a rumpled place on the bedclothes.
“But you’ll be back?”
“Whenever you ask.”
“But is there anything else? Something I should take? Nasty medicine? Clysters? Steam baths? An unpleasant diet?”
“Anything else?” The physician turned back, his hand still resting on the door latch. “Yes, there is. I know two lonely little girls who need a flesh-and-blood father. Give your mind to it when you return. There will be days you’ll yearn for bitter medicine instead. On those days, think of it as a penance, and remember I asked it of you.”
As the physician stooped to step over the threshold of the low doorway, Gregory smiled and shook his head. Where on earth had Margaret managed to find a physician who was such a business failure? He hadn’t even thought of a single way to inflate the charge, though he’d had plenty of opportunity. And as he opened the door, it was possible for Gregory to see that below the frayed hem of his gown, he was barefoot as a peasant on a weekday.
IN THE COURTYARD OF the inn I thought I caught a glimpse of someone very like Sim, slipping away in another direction. Of course, if I’d seen the ape, I would have known for sure it was Sim, since he was never a boy to miss out on any rare sight.
“Oh, that boy,” said Mother Hilde, shifting the basket from one hip to another. Malachi, his purchases tucked safely in his bosom, had been following her, picking strawberries out of the basket. Now he took a last one, plucked it bare of leaves, and popped it into his mouth.
“Malachi,” laughed Mother Hilde, looking at the way we had come, “if an enemy were pursuing us, he would have only to follow the trail you’ve laid down.” We looked back and saw the telltale green leaves lying at intervals all the way down the dusty street.
“And you said we’d get blotches!” I exclaimed.
“Only a few,” he answered guiltily, his mouth still full. “To see if they were sweet enough for you. Unripe strawberries are unhealthful. We couldn’t have you ill, you know.”
“Oh, Brother Malachi,” I said, in a tone of exaggerated earnestness. “It’s so good of you to take the risk.”
“Thank you,” he answered, swallowing as we mounted the outside stair. “I knew you’d appreciate my efforts.”
I was first to open the door. I was afraid and hopeful all at once of what I’d see. But I wanted to be the first. Maybe he’d be sleeping easily. Maybe he’d be seeing things again, his eyes darting back and forth like a madman’s. But instead, it was something wonderful. Gregory was sitting up in bed. The grayish color had left his face and the circles around his eyes were gone. He was still as thin as a ghost, but at last he looked as if he were mending. His eyes lit up when he saw me. He was speaking, too, as if his mind were working again.
“Margaret?” he said, almost tentatively. “You did come back, didn’t you?”
“Gregory, what’s happened? You look so much better! See here, I’ve brought you a present. You must have known ahead of time. I told them you’d be better soon!”
“I suppose you’ll be wanting blotches too,” complained Brother Malachi, but his voice sounded relieved. “It’s just as well I bought the whole basket.”
“What’s that, strawberries? It’s strawberry season already?”
“It comes sooner here, Gregory. It isn’t even June yet. Here, let me take the leaves off for you.”
“You think I can’t even take my own leaves off? Margaret, I’ve been eating strawberries much longer than you.”
“Why, this is worth a celebration!” exclaimed Hilde. Malachi drew the bench closer so we could all sit near Gregory and around the basket.
“If you’re celebrating, then you aren’t mad at me?” Sim’s voice sounded very small in the doorway behind us.
“Not if you go downstairs and fetch up supper from the kitchen for us,” said Brother Malachi without even looking up.
“You know that woman shouts. Even though I don’t know the words, it’s bad. She wants the bill paid.”
“Well, then, I’ll go with you and swear to her she’ll be paid before the week is up. I’ve had a brilliant idea.” And with that, he took a farewell handful of strawberries and departed downstairs, sharing them with Sim.
“Hey, don’t eat them all before I’m back,” Sim shouted back up the stairs.
“Now let me show you what I’ve brought,” I said, wiping my hands. “It will make you all well. It’s a book.”
“A book?” he said, curiosity and pleasure lighting his eyes. “What kind of book?”
“Why, it’s poetry.”
“Poetry?” He looked horrified. “Is it good poetry?”
“Why, the best. It’s by some man called Francesco Petrarca, who used to live here. Everybody’s still talking about him.” Gregory looked at me intently.
“Petrarch? The greatest living poet in the world? Tell me, Margaret, did you get the book because you knew it was good, or because it was very thin and you thought you’d get it at a bargain?”
Mother Hilde covered her face with her hands, but I could hear her splutter anyway.
“How did you know I’d got a bargain?”
“Margaret, you forget how well I know you. You’ve never been able to resist a bargain. Even me. Remember when we met? I was one of your bargains too.”
“I bargain very well, Gregory. I get only the best. Admit it,” I said, handing him the book. He wiped his hands in turn, and took the little book, turning it over and over tenderly, looking at the cover.
“Oh, Margaret, do you know what you’ve bought?” he asked.
“Well—not quite. I can’t read a word. But Brother Malachi says you can read it. And I know books make you happier than just about anything.”
“Margaret, it’s love poetry. Petrarch’s sonnets to his Laura.” He looked down at his hands and blushed. The pink color made him look ever so much better.
“And Margaret, there’s something I’ve been needing to tell you for a long time. I love you, Margaret. I’ve always loved you, but I didn’t know it myself at first. Then I did, but I didn’t know how to say it. I thought if I did great things, then you’d know it without me saying it. I guess I was afraid I’d seem silly if I just told you. Or that maybe you wouldn’t love me back.”
I couldn’t help it; I burst into tears.
“Margaret, have I said it wrong? I haven’t made you angry, have I?”
“Oh, no, Gregory, you just don’t understand. I always knew everything would come out right if you’d say it. And now you have, and I know everything will all work out.” As he put the book on his lap and leaned forward to embrace me, I couldn’t help noticing that Mother Hilde had tactfully removed herself from the bench and was across the room, staring out the window. I think I cried for a long time, clutching him very tight, as he consoled me. Still, he seemed so puzzled and taken aback.
At last he said, very mildly, “He certainly never said this is what would happen. I guess I’ll never understand women.”
“He? Who’s he?” I asked, looking up at his face.
/> “The physician you sent, Margaret.”
“I never sent a physician, Gregory. They’re much too expensive. Also, they usually kill people. Why pay money to be killed?”
“He said you did some mending for him.”
“Mending? I didn’t do that. You must have had another of your hallucinations.”
“That’s odd. He seemed real enough. He was very pleasant. Not snobbish at all. But then, how could he be? He was the poorest-looking physician I’ve ever seen. That’s why I thought you’d sent him. You know, another bargain. Why, he was even going barefoot like a peasant, to save his shoes. Who would have ever thought of such a thing? But when he made things clear to me, then I started feeling well. He couldn’t stay, though. He had a lot of visits to make. He went out the door just before you came back.”
“Well, we certainly didn’t see anyone coming down the stairs,” I said, looking at the door as if it could tell me something.
“No, not at all,” said Mother Hilde at the window.
“Gregory, read us from the book, Hilde and me,” I said. “We want to hear what everyone’s carrying on about so much in town.”
“How do you want it? Shall I turn it into English for you?”
“First in Italian, so we can hear the music of it, and then in English, so we understand. Hilde and I, we know a lot about love, and we want to hear what the poet says.” Gregory read in his lovely strong voice first the rolling sounds of the Italian. Then he paused, and slowly pieced the thing into English, pausing between the harder words and phrases.
“Trovommi Amor del tutto disarmato
et aperta la via per gli occhi al core,
che di lagrime son fatti uscio e varco.”
His voice caught, and it seemed very beautiful, the way it sounded, even before he said what it meant. “Love found me—altogether disarmed,” he translated, and his face looked so grave and luminous with love that I felt my own heart totally disarmed too. “And the way open through my eyes to my heart,—um—which are now the portal and passageway of tears.” Oh, yes. This was very different. This poet knew all about love.
“This Laura—did she love him back?”
“Well, only in a spiritual sense. She visited him in a dream.”
“But she did give him a token, didn’t she?”
“There was her glove—she dropped it and he picked it up. But then she grabbed it back.”
“So—she took back her glove, got mad when he surprised her bathing, and never did more than smile at him—at least, he thinks she did, for twenty-one years? I think he should have found another lady—one who loved him back.”
“Margaret, you just don’t understand higher, spiritual love.”
“Higher love? If a man followed me for twenty-one years, always trying to run into me on the street, snooping to see if he could see me bathing, trying to steal my gloves or anything else I put down just for the moment, when I hadn’t given him the slightest encouragement, do you know what I’d call it? Puppy love, that’s what! He’s behaving like a silly boy, playing the lute all night at the window of a married woman with six children who’s already gone to sleep.”
“That’s ideal love, unmarked by low carnality—and you call it puppy love?” Gregory sounded indignant.
“Well, if it’s so ideal, I suppose he never loved anyone else?”
“Ah—um—he did have a mistress and children.”
“And he didn’t love them, and went trailing after this woman who didn’t love him? That’s crazy!”
“You’re calling the greatest poet alive in the world today crazy? You have a hopelessly bourgeois mind!”
“Well, I say he’s crazy, if he spends his life running after someone who doesn’t love him back. It’s not grown-up at all. What do you think, Mother Hilde?”
“I think you are both feeling ever so much better, because you are quarreling.”
“Quarreling? I’m not quarreling at all. I’m right. Italians are crazy.” I was very indignant. Mother Hilde should have taken my side.
“You’re trying to shift ground, Margaret. That’s what you always do when you’re wrong.” Gregory sounded pompous. “You just don’t want to admit that I’m right.” I looked at his face. Hilde was right. The argument had made his eyes bright. His color was up. His dear, familiar old arrogance was back. He was as wrong as could be. Most men are, about important things like love. I laughed at him.
“And now you laugh. Never was a woman so arrogant as to set herself up against the greatest love poet in the world. One, I might add, whose work she can’t even read!”
“This Laura—I imagine she was a blonde, wasn’t she?”
“Of course. That’s what it says here: ‘i cape’ d’oro fin’—’ That means hair of fine gold.”
“Well then, that explains everything.”
“And, pray tell, how is that? There’s no logic in that statement at all! Women!”
It was a lucky thing that at that very moment we heard steps on the stairs and a pounding at the door.
“Open, open! Supper’s here, and it’s hot!”
“Why, Malachi,” exclaimed Hilde, throwing open the door. “How did you get so much?”
There at the door stood Brother Malachi, holding with two hands a big iron stewpot by its towel-wrapped handle. A bottle of wine could be seen peeping from the bosom of his gown. Sim clutched a vast loaf of bread, a wedge of cheese, and the long green ends of two big onions that hung almost to his knees. On his head, carefully balanced, was a stack of wooden bowls.
“My silver tongue, love. And when she looked skeptical, I revealed to her the rare alchemical work I shall soon be selling at a fabulous sum.”
“Malachi, you’re selling your book?” asked Mother Hilde, tears running down her face as she sliced the onions.
“Oh, not at all. This one’s the model. I intend to make several. With Gilbert’s help, I can make even more. Everywhere, there are adepts in search of the Secret. Each would be willing to part with no small sum for this precious work. And because it contains the Secret of the Universe, none will reveal to a mortal soul that they have it. Except, of course, to Abraham or his equivalent. And when he tells them it’s worthless, they’ll simply believe it’s in a deeper code, beyond his powers of translation. The most brilliant idea of my life—no one pursuing the honest craftsman with pitchforks and torches, demanding his skin. No. They will all hide their shame, as I have hidden mine. And we shall go home in style, selling a book in each city at which we stop. And now, supper. We must build Gilbert’s strength so we can begin our great work.”
As supper vanished, Gregory looked up from eating, and said, “Theophilus, you old rascal, which part of you is honest?”
“All parts, all parts, Gilbert, you sour and doubting young man. I sell happiness and hope—and at much lower prices than certain large religious institutions I could name. It’s because I have less overhead. Always travel light, I say—‘Light feet and light hands,’ that’s my motto.”
“Oh, Malachi, you have such a generous spirit!” exclaimed Mother Hilde.
“If there were more generous spirits here, they’d have left me better than half a dozen strawberries, and those the greenest of the lot,”grumped Sim.
“Now, Sim,” Brother Malachi intoned, “there is the affair of the Barbary ape, for which we have not yet taken you to task. Best to leave well enough alone.”
“I’m not sharing my skulls, then. And don’t you think you’re selling them for relics, either.”
“Relics? My dear child. A dangerous and unsavory business. I have found a higher calling.—Gilbert, as I recall, you always were good at drawing. I will need allegorical pictures for this effort. Nicely colored ones. I still remember the excellent rendering you did of the rector long ago—the one depicting him with an ass’s head, as I recall.”
“You have colors?” Gregory said cheerfully.
“Just three, plus black and white. It’s all I could afford. No gold leaf. You can m
ix them, can’t you? I need quality work.”
“Do I get to make up the allegories myself?”
“Now, now—don’t get fancy on me. Just follow the models in the book here.”
“Show me.”
Until the light failed, Gregory and Brother Malachi conferred happily on the new merchandise.
“That’s a lot of copying.”
“Well, you don’t have to be precise.”
“It would be easier if you put some Latin in somewhere. How about a curse?”
“A curse? A master stroke, Gilbert. ‘Curses on anyone who reveals the secret of this work.’ Marvelous. Adds tone.”
“You could split up the pages, too—cryptic groups. Seven times three, things like that. And put in more diagrams between. That takes up space.”
“Oh, excellent. I’ll do the diagrams. I’m well acquainted with the sort needed.”
“This one’s nice. The Green Lion. If I get home in one piece, I’ll add it to my coat of arms.”
“Gilbert, restrain yourself. Someone might prosecute you. Stick to red lions and assorted implements of death. Alchemy goes in and out of fashion with the noblesse.”
“Again, Malachi, you’re cautioning me. Must you always be such a fussy old nursemaid?”
“Only when you’re a troublesome young jackanapes.”
“What are you doing, Mother Hilde?” I asked as Mother Hilde knelt at the threshold with a bit of rag.
“Malachi’s slopped something, coming in, and I’m going to wipe it up before it hardens. I don’t want foreigners to say that we are dirty—oh!”
She sat back on her heels for a moment, looking at the spot. My eyes followed her gaze. No one else but us noticed. It wasn’t spilled gravy that stained the threshold. It was a bloody mark left by a bare foot. As I watched, Mother Hilde wiped it up carefully, folded the still damp rag, and put it in her pilgrim’s wallet.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THIS SET’S DRY, GILBERT—OR SHOULD I call you Gregory, as Margaret does?” Mother Hilde removed several colorful manuscript pages from the windowsill, where they had been weighted down with old wine bottles to dry in the sun. Below the windowsill, on a rope stretched from the bedpost inside to the great timber supporting the stair outside, the travelers’ laundry flapped like a string of pennants. The sun and the blue sky, almost entirely too gaudy for good taste, as they so often are in the south, had brightened the cramped little room and chased away the stale scent of illness.
In Pursuit of the Green Lion Page 40