In Pursuit of the Green Lion

by Judith Merkle Riley

  This thing about the troubles of today being sufficient—I don’t like it at all. I’d prefer no troubles today at all, but that’s not how it works most of the time. We were still far from anyplace at all when I felt something unmistakable. “Gregory, help me,” I hissed between my teeth, for the waves of pain could not be taken for anything else. “The baby’s coming.”

  “It can’t be,” he said. “We aren’t home yet.”

  “For God’s sake, whoever gave you the idea it wouldn’t come until we’re home? It’s coming now.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Gregory, I’ve had two already. I’m sure, I’m sure as can be. Now please tell Malachi and Hilde,” and he turned and rode ahead to where Malachi was telling Hilde all about Hippocrates’ daughter, who was changed into the form of a hideous dragon by enchantment, and lives on the isle of Langos near Greece, waiting for a knight brave enough to kiss her and change her back again. I was now bent over in the saddle, my hands clasping the sides of my immense belly as if that would somehow slow it all down. The reins slid onto the horse’s neck, and the little mare, sensing that something had gone wrong, picked up her head and began to amble away. The jarring made it worse. I could sense Gregory as he rode in close and grabbed the mare’s reins.

  “Hide me, oh, please. Don’t make me have it in front of all these people,” I wept. Wordlessly, he signaled, and Malachi and Hilde followed. Behind, Hugo broke from the line of march behind us and cantered forward.

  “She’s having the baby,” Gregory told him.

  “Oh, can’t do that. Very risky to leave the line of march just now. Say, Margaret, can’t you just tell it to wait until later?”

  “It’s not waiting,” I said, my face all red and the tears running from my eyes.

  “Well, brother, I never thought I’d do a thing this stupid for you,” said Hugo as he rode ahead to the captain of the mercenaries, and then signaled his men to follow us off the road. There, in a copse of trees that hid the blackened ruins of what had once been a little village, they spread out on guard as Gregory pulled me, gasping, from my little mare. I caught a glimpse of his horrified face as I bent to my work. Somebody had spread his cloak underneath me.

  “Don’t look, don’t look,” I panted. “It’s not decent.”

  “It’s not a question of decency at this point, Margaret,” said Hilde. “The head’s already showing. Now don’t make a peep. Heaven only knows who might hear it here. Bite on this if you feel like screaming.” It was a belt, the one Gregory had been wearing. Thank the Holy Virgin for Mother Hilde! If one must go traveling while pregnant, it is always a good thing if you can have the best midwife in London with you. It was as I felt her hands, so steady and sure, that I knew all at once she had come along for more than Malachi’s sake. The most generous friend in the world had followed me on a crackpot scheme, because she knew all along I couldn’t manage.

  “Keep pushing, Margaret. We’ve almost got the head. Gilbert! Could you kindly avert your eyes? This is women’s business. It’s not for husbands to see. If you are curious, go look in a book.” The effort was big, bigger than I remembered somehow, for God always hides the difficulties from our memory each time, so we won’t be afraid of the next. And to keep silence the while—it was agonizing. It was then I felt a hand holding mine. His hand. It was wrong, I know, and not proper at all. How many times had Hilde and I barred husbands from the labor room? Everyone knows if a husband sees his wife at this time, he won’t love her anymore.

  “That’s it—if you must be here, sit beside her so you’re facing the other way. It’s not proper to be watching every move I make,” Mother Hilde scolded. He rearranged himself, never letting go of my hand. I could see his face against the sky, all shadowy with worry, his dark hair blowing against the aureole of the sun. He was watching my own face intently. Then he leaned over me and took my other hand too. I grabbed them both and heaved.

  “We’ve got it,” Mother Hilde said. “Keep at it.” Gregory’s face looked so shocked, I was about to say something altogether snippy about the male half of the human race, until I realized suddenly what was wrong. He was afraid I’d die.

  “Hold my hand tighter, Gregory.—This is how it always is.—Don’t worry.—I’m strong.—I’ll be fine—” I found myself reassuring him in between gasps and groans. He never said a word, but held on with all the strength that was in him, as if he could give it to me. And it did strengthen me. I could feel it renewing me with each great labor pain.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered, the sweat matting my hair to my face, all decency long forgotten. “Now you won’t think I’m pretty anymore.”

  He found his voice. “I’ll always love you, Margaret. Always. No matter what. And—and you’re still pretty.” Gallant liar, I thought.

  “Why, goodness, Margaret. Who’d have thought it? You’ve got a boy this time. Sir Gilbert, it’s a son and heir. The very first try too. You’re a lucky man.” Hilde held the baby up by the heels until its mewling told her it was breathing well. Gregory turned his head so he could see it. I’ve never seen him look more horrified.

  “That—?”he stammered. “Is it supposed to look that way? It’s not abnormal, is it?”

  “Of course not. You looked exactly the same when you were born.”Mother Hilde was wiping the baby off the best she could with a cloth dampened from her water flask. She delivered the afterbirth and cut the cord. Gregory looked paralyzed.

  “Now, just look at that, will you, Margaret?” said Mother Hilde as she held the naked baby out to me. Its skinny red arms and legs wheeled uselessly. I saw right away what she meant. Dried off, the fuzzy hair looked all brownish, and stood up straight out every whichaway, like the homely fluff on a baby swan. The baby had the most shocked expression on its face. Its mouth worked up and down, and its eyes were wide open, as if with amazement. Without a doubt, it was the oddest, funniest looking face I’d ever seen on a baby. I loved it immensely.

  “You shouldn’t act so surprised. You’re the one who had the idea of being born,” I scolded it. Then Mother Hilde held it up face-to-face with Gregory, so he could see it better. I could see its eyes as it caught sight of Gregory’s face. I know some people think new babies are blind, like kittens, but if they are, then why don’t their eyes stick shut, like kittens’? I think they see, because I watch them see, and because even little babies aren’t stupid. The two of them stared at each other, father and son, their faces mirror images of utter astonishment. Both sets of eyes widened, both jaws dropped in exactly the same way. I’ve never seen anything so droll in my life. I couldn’t help it. No matter how much it hurt, I had to laugh. I tried to stop, and made a weak coughing sound that shook the poor, loose muscles of my belly like the waves in the ocean.

  “You’re laughing?” Gregory couldn’t believe it. “At your own son?” There was something infinitely touching in the way that he rushed to defend the tiny creature against the imagined slight.

  “I’ve never seen such a funny-looking baby in my life. Give him to me, Mother Hilde, so I can feed him before he starts peeping.” And when the baby started to suck, making such vast gulping and smacking sounds that I had to laugh again, Gregory, taken aback, stared and said, “It’s greedy.”

  “You should know,” I said drowsily, for I was very tired now. “You’re something of a trencherman yourself.”

  “Not like that,” he said, as the baby fell asleep after an immense belch.

  “Margaret, he needs to be baptized,” Mother Hilde prompted.

  “I’ll do that,” Gregory answered, looking suddenly pleased with himself. “I’ve just thought of a good name.”

  “You know the form for emergency baptism?” Hilde was always careful. It won’t do to make a mistake at a time like this with something as important as somebody’s soul.

  “Of course. I used to be something of a specialist, as you may recall,” said Gregory. And before I’d really had time to think about it, he’d collected his brother and Malachi
to be witnesses, and splashed water on the sleeping infant’s head from the leather water bag at his saddle.

  “Peregrinus, I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”

  My eyes opened wide with shock, but they were already reciting the Paternoster. It was already done.

  “What have you named my baby?” I said, with rising suspicion.

  “A perfect name, considering the circumstances. Peregrine.” Gregory looked benignant, as if he’d done the baby a great favor.

  “Peregrine? What saint is that?” I was appalled. At the very least, he could have asked me first.

  “It means pilgrim—traveler—or wanderer in Latin,” said Brother Malachi, as if he considered the name perfect himself.

  “Peregrine? You named my beautiful baby Peregrine? Instead of for an evangelist or a saint, or even just a holy martyr?”

  “Why, Margaret, it’s just perfect.” Gregory beamed. “You have to admit not many babies have done so much traveling before they were born—or need to do so much before they get home.”

  “It’s not bad,” opined Hugo. “Not bad at all, except it might have been better to name him for a hero—say, Oliver or Floris, or maybe Gawain.”

  “Oh, worse and worse. Your whole family is the same. A saint’s name is best.” A conspiracy, that’s what it was. A conspiracy of men.

  “Well, best or worst, we’d better get out of here. We have some catching up to do.”

  “Catching up? Hugo? Do you honestly think I can ride in this state? It’s like sitting on a boil. Besides, I’m monstrously tired.”

  “Sir Hugo, you can’t move a woman in this condition. She’ll bleed too heavily.”

  “We’ll all bleed too heavily if we don’t catch up. But I’ll leave her until tomorrow. We’ll post a watch and camp here without a fire. But tomorrow she’s sitting a horse, whatever condition she’s in.” I hardly cared. Tomorrow was a long way away. I fell asleep with the baby in my arms, and never even knew who lifted me onto a bed of boughs in the night. Sometime in the dark, I woke to hear the baby stirring, and fed him again as I looked at the stars. I thought I heard something in the distance. A din. Something bad. But it could have been just imagining.

  In the morning, we were ready to move by dawn. A debris-filled well had yielded enough water for washing up most of the mess of the night before, and I saw that a wet cloak hung behind Gregory’s saddle as he lifted me onto the little mare and handed up Peregrine. I was too exhausted and sore even to care about the shameful state of my dress, as we rode silently to rejoin the road at the riverbank. But there, at the river’s edge, a horrible sight met our eyes. The blazing ruin of one of the barges that had gone ahead of us was drifting downriver with the current. Caught in the eddies, it hung for a brief moment on an outcropping of rock and then slid beyond view. But in that moment, we had all seen more than anyone ought to see. Hacked-up bits of stripped bodies, arranged in obscene ways I won’t even bother to tell you about, could be glimpsed in the charred wreckage. And on the prow of the barge, a severed head had been placed as a kind of hideous travesty of a figurehead. The features were unrecognizable. It was decorated with a sort of imitation of a bishop’s mitre fashioned of parchment. Splashed with water, it had somehow escaped catching fire, but the ink had run in great black trickles down the man’s face. A seal dangled like a blood clot against the temple of the ghastly head. The papal ambassador. If not for Peregrine, it would have been us drifting unburied in the rushing green waters.

  “Ordinarily, I’d think it was English forces,” Gregory remarked calmly to his brother.

  “You’re right. This one, we didn’t do. Our people would never waste a barge like that. It’s not Hawkwood or the Gascons: they wouldn’t have set up the hat.”

  “And none of them would have sacrificed the ransom of a man as high ranking as a papal ambassador.”

  “They’re probably still drunk, celebrating upstream,” said Hugo, as unperturbed as if he were discussing fishing.

  And that is how we learned that the Archpriest, with an army of three thousand mercenary adventurers, had begun his march down the Rhône valley toward the richest prize in Christendom: the papal city of Avignon.

  I WILL NOT WRITE of the days that followed, for they are all mixed up in my mind as if they were one day or a hundred—I really can’t remember, though afterward they told me it was seven days’ march. We left the banks of the river and wandered far into the shattered countryside, evading the forces of the dreadful army of brigands. We did not see them, except once we spied a column of smoke in the distance. But we saw their handiwork everywhere: burned orchards slashed to the ground, or the blasted ruins of convents, villages, and churches. In this dead land, there was nothing, nothing at all. When one of the horses grew lame, the men were so hungry that after they had cut its throat they stripped the flesh from it and ate it raw, for fear of making a fire. When my arms grew weak, I strapped the baby to me. And when I could no longer sit, they tied me in the saddle. But always beside me rode Gregory, silent and straight, leading the mare. It was now that I borrowed the will from him to go on; my husband, my strength and my shield.

  At night he slept beside us, the little pilgrim and I, with his sword drawn. We learned to talk without words, then, for what I thought, he thought, and what he thought, I thought, and we could act together without a single sound passing between us. One night I woke at the sound of a brief, strangled cry to find myself alone in our blankets. Gregory had surprised a straggler from the Archpriest’s army, and, circling around behind him as he crept toward our camp, lopped off his head before his brother had even drawn his sword. The loot the man was laden with was enough to buy a knight’s freedom, but the man had babies’ hands on a string, which they buried quickly in hopes of keeping it from me. But, of course, nothing went on that I didn’t know about sooner or later, for unseen to them, the Weeping Lady was still with us, much depleted, drifting formlessly nearby. Every so often I’d hear her whispering in the darkness, offering her opinions and commenting on what she’d seen. But she wasn’t much use; she had even less idea of where we were than anyone else.

  After that, they decided that we must leave all sight of the river, and go into the mountains, following the sun and stars north. Malachi made it sound easy, since he said he’d followed the route before, and it was a positive shortcut to Paris, and Hugo laughed and slapped him on the back, which was the last laughing anyone did for quite a while. But when we found inhabited villages, the sullen folk in them would give no directions worth having, and I began to fear we were hopelessly lost. But Malachi said he knew exactly where he was, and acted so confident that we forded rivers and clambered through rocky passes at his direction without ever a question being asked. But through all these trials, by day and by night, the Holy Virgin sustained me so that my milk did not dry up, and the little wanderer continued to live.

  When at length we emerged from the mountains and saw a rich, cultivated valley spread before us, we knew we were beyond the path of the madman. At a bend of the green, rushing river that wound through the valley we could see the walls and towers of a prosperous city. No—it was not a city. As we followed the sound of bells rolling across the fields, we spied above the walls the spires and domes of an immense monastery, looking as welcome as the Holy City itself. We rode through the little village and halted at the great gate, all filthy and tattered as we were, and Hugo, in battered and blackened armor, leaned from the saddle to bang on the grille and announce our presence. The grille opened, and part of a suspicious-looking face peered out.

  “Who are you?” a voice asked in French. It was heavily accented, but the langue d’oil. Surely, I thought, we must have come a long way, all the way to the north again.

  “We are from the party of the papal ambassador that was destroyed on the way to Paris by the Archpriest. In the name of God, we beg your mercy.” From behind the gate, voices conferred in Latin. I thought I could hear the words
Norman—English or something very like them, before the first voice called through the grille.

  “You must vow to disarm before you enter our holy precincts.” Once agreed, we entered and dismounted in the outer courtyard, in the shadow of the immense wall, where Gregory pulled me and the baby from the blood-drenched saddle before surrendering his weapon with the others. Even the eating knives were taken. Monks could afford to take no chances in these perilous times, even with their hospitality. As the horses were taken to the stables, lay Brothers showed us to a low stone house huddled just within the outer walls in the shadow of the gatehouse. It had a decidedly humble look, this pilgrims’ guesthouse, with its thatched roof and narrow, unshuttered windows. So did the people lounging about it in the sunny dust at the doorway: an old soldier with a leg gone, gossiping with a pair of ancient fellows whose only pilgrimage was probably from free lodging to free lodging.

  “I say, what’s this? Beggars’ quarters? See here, my men, you have mistaken my quality. Where is your house for noble guests?” Hugo’s voice had risen with indignation. When he turned to spy a velvet-clad lord with long-toed shoes delicately picking his way from the stables to an elegant-looking guesthouse near the church, you could see the veins in his neck throbbing.

  The Brothers escorting us looked at the guesthouse for the nobility. Then they looked up and down at Hugo. Their noses wrinkled the way Frenchmen’s do when the sauce is too salty or the wine is full of cork bits. “Your quality?” said one of them, in a tone too close to sarcasm to mistake. Unshaven and grimy in the padded, rust-stained tunic that had underlain his breastplate, Hugo looked like nothing better than a cobbler’s son turned mercenary. He’d lost weight, too, and the tunic fitted him as if he had taken it off a corpse. The rest of us were, if anything, worse.