“Hugo, don’t rile them,” Gregory hissed between his teeth, but Hugo was beyond caution.
“My quality, you base-blooded French psalm-singer! You insult a lord, the heir of Brokesford!” His face turned red and swelled up, and he grabbed for the place his sword hilt should have been. Gregory and Malachi grabbed his arms to restrain him, but he puffed up like a wrathful gander, and their pleas to calm himself only made him louder.
As the commotion increased a number of other Brothers arrived on the scene to confer. Suddenly, at a gesture from one of them who looked to be important, the two lay Brothers with the group broke away to show us to our quarters. The building was divided by an interior wall into two large bare-looking halls, each with a separate door. Evidently one hall was for women, the other for men. As Hilde and I stood in the low stone doorway, surveying the plain, whitewashed walls of the hall, furnished only with a bench, a row of straw beds, and an old blind woman humming and rocking like a bundle in the corner, we could hear Hugo still shouting on the other side of the building.
“You thickheaded numskulls, you have no idea how a man of great blood should be treated! You deserve nothing better than to have this whole place burned down around you! I deserve a special place, I tell you, and not this hovel!”
“A special place?” I heard them answer as the shouting subsided. “Yes, my lord, you are right. We’ve made a mistake. You’ll have a special place. Let us escort you there, most noble guests.”
But I was so tired that even a straw bed in a bare hall looked good. It was not until we awoke hours later that we found that the door had been sealed from the outside.
“BROTHER, I AM SORRY,” said Gregory. The chains rattled as he stretched out his long legs on the stone floor of the Abbot’s prison. A thread of light found its way through the narrow slit above them and made a long streak of light on the heavy studded door. Gregory was feeling very gloomy. He’d been listening to the Latin outside the door, and it did not bode well. What he’d overheard was a discussion of how the Abbot couldn’t decide whether to flay them alive or merely behead them before he hung them from the walls as a warning to other mercenaries. So this was where it all ended. It seemed altogether depressing. Still, Hugo was happy. So why spoil his last minutes on earth by telling him? He owed him that much, at least.
“Nonsense, nonsense,” Hugo said cheerfully. “It’s all a mistake. It’ll soon be settled. I’ll just talk to the Abbot here and get it cleared up. That’s all. I probably set them off by insulting their rather shabby hospitality. You know these foreign monks. Touchy, all of them. It will be set right in a trice, as soon as I apologize. We deserved better places, and we’ll get them as soon as he hears. After all, we were traveling under a papal safe-conduct. He owes us consideration.”
“Hugo, the papal safe-conduct is floating downstream on the ambassador’s head. You can’t prove a thing; we can’t even prove we’re not mercenaries. There’s not a chance, without the paper.”
“Gloom and doom, Gilbert. You’re still sick, that’s what. I’ve got better ways to occupy my time. I think I’ll make a prison song. They’re all the rage now; it may very well make my reputation. Let’s see—a noble soul’s too great for walls of stone—that’s me, of course. And then there should be birds flying free. That’s the symbolism. I took three lessons on symbolism, did I tell you? The trick is to get the symbols to rhyme. I should have stayed for a few more lessons, I think. Did I tell you he’d sat at the feet of Petrarch?”
“Several times, Hugo.” Grief was giving way to profound irritation. Hugo, eternally Hugo, to the end.
“Let’s see—tumpty, tumpty—ta—hmm. First I must get my meter. Have I told you that poems need meter?” Gregory ground his teeth.
“Brother, I am trying to clear my soul of a lifetime of sin by confessing to you. Can’t the poem wait?”
“Confession? Whatever for? You’re acting like a condemned man. Let’s see—what rhymes with oiseau?”
The listeners at the aperture leaned forward. Almost invisible, the narrow air shaft penetrated the cell so that every word a prisoner spoke could be heard in the tiny room beyond.
“Hst! He’s about to confess!”
“But do we have to take down the poem?”
“The Abbot said put them together after the first questioning, and then take down everything. He has to be sure. You take the poem, I’ll take the confession.”
“You always do this to me—the poem is dreadful.”
“That’s not my fault, now, is it?” And two styluses hovered above wax tablets as Hugo, having switched oiseau for hirondelle, tried again.
“Brother, I envied you for being first. I crave your forgiveness.” Gregory’s voice was grave. He’d agonized a whole month over this point, and examined the sin of it in several different ways, all of them theologically interesting.
“First? Of course you envied me. Why not? It’s only proper. I get the title, you get nothing. That’s how it is. That’s how it always will be. You never did know how to accept the obvious. I, on the other hand, learned to do it long ago, and put envy aside.”
“Envy? You, envious?” Gregory’s gloom shifted to shock.
“Of course. I envied you your freedom. Do you think it’s a pleasure, playing handmaid to a stingy old tyrant like Father? And when you got all that money without even going to war for it, I went absolutely crazy with it. Luckily, it passed like a disease. And now, of course, I’ve found the Muse—which muse did you say poetry was?”
“For your kind of poetry? Erato, I suppose.”
“Yes, that muse. Tell me, since hirondelle doesn’t seem to be creating any inspiration, I need another French bird. What do you think of alouette?”
“So, have they revealed anything?” a patrician voice sounded behind the listeners.
“My lord abbot!” The listeners whirled about. It was indeed Abbot Thibault himself in full hunting garb, a pomander in one gloved hand to ward off the smell of the place. His other hand grasped a leash that restrained a pair of mastiffs on a hunting couple. Behind him pattered his favorite greyhound and his private secretary, Frère Guillaume. The newcomers, man and beast, filled the narrow room behind the wall to bursting.
“One of them—the dark one—is trying to confess, but the other persists in interrupting him with a poem he’s making.”
“A poem? By God, the man has sangfroid. Take the coward first. We need to speed things up.” The Abbot made a languid circular motion with the pomander hand. “We need to find out who they are spying for before their confederates are on us. I wouldn’t be surprised if it were the Archpriest himself, his war chest renewed with the Holy Father’s bribe. Sparing Avignon will have left him hungry.” He paused to inspect the clerk’s notes, then turned toward his secretary. “It is just as well that boastful fellow let their plans slip like that. I do like to have warning when I prepare a defense against siege engines. Frère Guillaume, you’ve told them to double the watch?”
“Yes, of course, my lord abbot.” Frère Guillaume bowed as he spoke, though sadly hampered by the number of bodies in the room.
When the heavy door swung open, Gregory was not surprised that it was him that they wanted. Last to be born, first to be skinned, he thought. That’s how it’s always gone in this family. When they went through the ritual of showing him the instruments, he said sarcastically, “Certainly. What would you like confessed?”
“The truth,” said the Abbot, handing the leash to Frère Guillaume and sniffing his pomander.
“I can do that without all this trash,” said Gregory, waving a hand at the Abbot’s modest but very modern collection of truth extractors. The Abbot spoke to his monks in Latin.
“I thought you said he was the cowardly one.” Gregory’s ears burned, but he said nothing.
“I think you don’t take us seriously,” said the Abbot, returning to face Gregory.
“On the contrary, I take you very seriously indeed,” replied Gregory.
“Then tell us how you got here.”
“I’ve told you already. We escaped the Archpriest on the Rhône above Avignon.”
“Now I know you are lying. No one escapes the Archpriest,” replied the Abbot as he gave the signal for the next stage in the process. Gregory was a bit too long for the rack bed, so it took a while to adjust things properly.
“My, he’s bony,” remarked one of the laboring Brothers in Latin, surveying the stripped figure in front of him.
“A regular starveling,” agreed his colleague. “You can always tell these peasant robbers—haven’t a muscle on them. Now the other one’s much sturdier looking. I wouldn’t be surprised if that one turned out to really be of the noblesse.” A livid stain of rage rose up Gregory’s neck and flushed his face. If there was one thing he was touchy about, it was about bloodlines and the clear visibility of the proper order of the universe.
“Why, look,” said Frère Guillaume to his master, “I believe the fellow understands Latin.” The Abbot’s eyes flicked across Gregory’s crimson face.
“This makes it interesting indeed,” the Abbot said, sniffing his pomander once more. “A renegade priest, perhaps. All sorts of riffraff are joining the écorcheurs these days.” He crossed the room and leaned close to Gregory’s face, speaking in Latin.
“Tell me who your master is.” He gestured absentmindedly with a gloved hand, and the slack was taken up on the infernal machine.
“The Duke of Lancaster.”
“Aha. That’s better. The English duke. So what are you doing here, so far from Normandy? And why should we not turn you over to the authorities in Dijon for that alone?”
“Because we travel under a papal safe-conduct. Besides, why Dijon? Isn’t Paris closer?”
“Paris? Do you know where you are?”
“Not really. We could not keep up with the party when my lady wife’s time came most inconveniently upon her. We hid long enough for her to give birth, then traveled roundabout to avoid the écorcheurs. We thought we’d traveled northwest.”
“You are at St. Michel Archange in Burgundy.”
“Burgundy? My God. That damned Malachi. He said he knew the country.” A glitter caught the Abbot’s eye. A silver-gilt medallion of little value, lying on the écorcheur’s bony torso. He recognized it—one of the thousands blessed annually at the Holy See. A pilgrim’s souvenir. There were several exactly like it at the abbey.
“From whom did you steal this?”
“Didn’t—steal—it. Given—for good luck—on the trip. Good luck—hah.” The Abbot looked up from his work at a discreet cough from behind him. A lay Brother with a message had come in and spoke to him in low tones. Gregory could catch a few words: confession, woman, and the Abbot saying, somewhat louder, “a curious name, that. Not the sort they’re partial to. You’d expect a saint’s name—” He felt his breath freeze. Margaret. They’d hurt her. The Abbot returned to his business.
“You are the English duke’s spy.”
“No—what spy—takes along his pregnant—wife?”
“What are you then?”
“His chronicler.” The gloved hand signaled once more.
“HIS CHRONICLER?” BROTHER MALACHI’S mouth was full of capon as he spoke. He was pouring another cup of wine from one of several full jugs that graced the well-set table in the comfortable house established for guests of the higher sort that sat in the very shadow of the immense, arched abbey church. Tallow candles fended off the dark, and a cozy fire crackled on the hearth.
“Yes, that’s what I told him, and he said, ‘Ah, a scholar. That explains why your son is Peregrinus. You should have called him Fortunatus, for he has saved you twice.’ Then we were oh, so jovial. ‘You wouldn’t put anything bad in your chronicle about me, would you?’ ‘I’m a generous man,’ I said. ‘I can forgive everything if I’m well treated. My wife, for example, is very tired and hungry, and hasn’t a thing to wear.’ He looked annoyed. ‘I suppose the Duke knows where you are.’ ‘Of course he does, I send him regular dispatches,’ I told him. ‘And don’t let that unworthy thought I see cross your mind,’ I added, ‘lords who slay chroniclers live in infamy for eternity. The brotherhood of scholars sees to that. Surely you, an educated man, should understand how that works. Isn’t everlasting glory a better alternative?’ ‘I’ve got my own chronicler,’ he growled. ‘Nice for a local reputation,’ I said, ‘but I’d be surprised if it were even worth a line in one of the really great chronicles. Now, my master the duke is lord in two nations—that’s a chronicle worth being mentioned in. I imagine you’d have a whole paragraph.’ ‘One?’ he asked. ‘That scarcely does justice to me.’ ‘The Duke of Burgundy has only two,’ I told him. ‘That shows you how scarce space is in a truly significant chronicle.’ ‘Only two?’ he said, and his face got all suspicious. ‘How many did you give the Abbot of Cluny?’ ‘The current abbot?’ I said, sounding innocent. ‘Why, he doesn’t have a half a line, and that only in conjunction with the Duke.’ His eyes narrowed and he thought for a while, then he said, ‘I want three,’ and I knew I had him. ‘I’m worth a lot more than the Duke of Burgundy, it’s my spiritual reputation, you understand—’”
“Try this wine, Sir Hugo,” interrupted Malachi, taking the bottle away from Sim.
“This pheasant is excellent,” pronounced Hugo, wiping his mouth on the tablecloth. “Do take a sample, Old Fox,” and Hugo exchanged bird for wine. “It’s the sauce, you know. These French certainly do know how to make sauces.” He stifled a comfortable belch. “Now I, for my part, offered to write the man an ode of gratitude, but he said he was too modest to accept such tributes, and demanded that Gilbert and I go see his scriptorum. And his library. Absolutely full of books—no wonder these foreigners have soft minds. Tomorrow we have to go see his holy spring and collection of shrines, as well as the waterwheel he had built for his mill. Tallest in the region, he says. What a windbag.” Robert, who was cheerfully drunk, had given up eating and was lying propped up against the wall, plinking his lute discordantly and singing:
“Byrd one brere, brid, brid, one brere,
Kynd is come of love, love to crave….”
“Let’s drink to Clio, the muse of history,” proposed Brother Malachi, renewing his cup.
“What about Erato?” Hugo asked almost plaintively.
“Her too,” said Gregory, “though she’s been a troublesome mistress.”
“Mistress? And here I thought you were a tiresomely married man,” said Hugo, his voice slurring.
“That I am,” responded his brother. “And I wish they’d bring me the news of Margaret that I asked. That’s the only problem with this place. They’re great sticklers for segregation of the sexes. Did I tell you that tomorrow we’ll be dining at the high table at the Abbot’s right hand? At least the Latin speakers will. You’ll be at the head of the guest table, Hugo. No, no—he doesn’t mean to insult you—he says clerical jokes make most noble visitors very bored, even if they aren’t in Latin.” He broke off at the arrival of two lay Brothers.
“Your lady wife does well, my lord chronicler. She is sitting up in bed with her hair all hanging down, giving the baby suck, eating sweetmeats, and complaining. Such is the way of women.” Gregory looked at the man’s horrified face, and a strange, ironic smile flitted across his own.
“Complaining? What about?”
“She says the featherbed is not soft enough, that the maid we sent from the village is not quick enough, and that the bath we had drawn does not have rose water in it. She says it is a great hardship to bathe without rose water.”
“Brother, this does not sound like your wife; it sounds like mine.”
“Wait a moment,” said Gregory, shushing him. “I want to hear more.”
“Oh, how could it ever be doubted that she is a very great lady? She says the linen shift we sent was too coarse, it damages her skin, and she wants new swaddling bands and a basket for the infant to travel in. She says she wishes to be churched, and we must have a f
east, or she will always believe we are of little consequence.”
“Oh, she is a tyrant, a shrew,” muttered the second lay Brother. “The man who marries is a fool, lured by a honeypot into the Devil’s own existence.” He shook his tonsured head. “And of all women,”he went on bitterly, “those of great blood are the worst.”
“Have you any idea of what she said to me?” The first turned to his associate for support. “She said I was rude! Imagine! God spare me from the wiles and wickedness of women!” The first lay Brother blessed himself.
“I thank you for your news. Send my lady wife this dish from our table, and assure her that she has my favor.” Gregory spoke in the arrogant, reserved tone of a grand seigneur. When they’d left, he laughed. “I needn’t worry about Margaret; she’s having fun.”
“Fun? I say she’s become spoiled in an instant. You need to beat her again, brother.”
“Whatever for? Didn’t you say your wife acts like that? How many months do you think Margaret observed her? You underestimate Margaret, Hugo. She’s a grand mimic, and she’s having sport. She’s convincing them that she’s a great lady by behaving exactly as they expect. I think she’ll like the dish. It looks to be all vegetables.”
UP IN THE CORNER, I could see something misty swirling. “That was well done,” announced the Weeping Lady. “Yes—I couldn’t have done any better myself.” The swirling seemed decidedly self-satisfied. “You can always tell a lady by her tantrums.” There was a tinge of cheerful arrogance in the spectral voice. She surveyed the elegant little room and nodded approvingly at the comfortable furnishings, the well-set table, the little cradle, and the high, soft featherbed. The guesthouse for women of rank even had a high-walled garden before the front door, so that a duchess or queen might take the air without tempting any of the brethren with her bright garments or flashing eyes.
In Pursuit of the Green Lion Page 43