“What’s she saying now, Margaret?” asked Mother Hilde. She was seated in a wonderfully carved little chair, happily counting over the treasures in her pilgrim’s wallet. I must say, I’ve never seen anyone so set on souvenirs as Mother Hilde. Sometimes I think she’d rather have the remembrance than actually be at the place itself. She says that if you’ve only been somewhere, then it’s just in your head, but if you have a souvenir, then everyone else knows you’ve been there, too, and respects you for it. Of course, I think you could just make up a tall story about any old rock or fingerbone, and get the same effect—and you’d think after all the time she’d lived with Brother Malachi, she’d know that too. But oh, no, she says false things don’t light up your memory the same way, and she’s surprised at me. So I repeated the Weeping Lady’s words to her, since she couldn’t hear them as clearly as I can.
The poor silly village girl they’d sent, who spoke heaven knows what kind of dialect, crouched in the opposite corner, as far as possible from the Weeping Lady’s damp mist, trembling and weeping. I must say, she was a useless thing. What on earth possessed them to send such a spineless, hopeless creature to assist us, I do not know. And not a word we said seemed to penetrate her head.
“Now, did I understand it right? You’re in Burgundy?”
“Yes, Madame Belle-mère.” I could see the wall painting—the virtuous maidens with their lamps lit—right through her, she seemed so much less stormy and agitated than before.
“Well then, that is very fortunate. My sister, the one who married so well, lives in Brabant. She has a splendid big house and is always hospitable to relatives. That’s where you must go. There’s many a messenger to and from the court of Hainault to there, so you can easily return home by that route. You see? It’s ever so simple.”
It didn’t seem all that simple to me, but I never contradict Madame Belle-mère. She seemed content, and went her way, as she always does. Perhaps it was a fancy, but she appeared decidedly thinner, or perhaps one should say more vaporous, and hadn’t manifested herself half as much since the incident with the dreadful count.
“She’s gone, Margaret. Let’s try the dish that Gregory sent over. My, weren’t those two lay Brothers droll! I imagine they come in pairs to protect each other from us.” She held up a little stone, all smooth, with little bits of color in it. “Look at this, Margaret, it’s a new one. They’ve a holy spring within the wall, near the village entrance, with a fine-looking shrine over it, all hung about with crutches from crippled people cured by the waters. Malachi showed it to me this afternoon, when he and those lay Brothers took me to see the relics in the church. ‘Well, Malachi,’ I said to him, ‘when I told you I wanted to travel and see new places and people, I didn’t mean this place or these sour-faced Brothers. But since it’s turned out all right, I’ll have a souvenir.’ So I took this little pebble.”
I wish I could go out, I thought. They seem to think I need confinement. And I suppose they don’t want me walking most places, since I’m unchurched. If I’m kept here much longer, I think I’ll have to have another tantrum. They’re certainly more satisfying than I ever suspected. I can see why a person would get in the habit of it.
“Just think, Mother Hilde,” I observed, “if every pilgrim takes a pebble, in a hundred years, the little spring will be naked.” I just couldn’t help teasing her a bit.
“Oh, no, Margaret,” she assured me. “God will grow new pebbles there so that everybody can have one. Now do try the spiced wine that the Abbot sent over. It will be good for your milk.”
“Not as good as ale, Mother Hilde, and you know it too. I wish we were home.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” said Mother Hilde with a faraway look in her eye. “Now that everything’s fine, I’d like to see a few more new places. And who knows? Maybe someday—Cathay.”
“Mother Hilde, you’re incorrigible.”
“You think I’m bad? Wait until you’re this old, Margaret—just you wait.”
IN THE MIDDLE OF the night I heard a sound just like my dog, Lion, scratching at the door to be let in.
“Lion, go away, I’m sleeping,” I muttered, and turned over in the nice soft featherbed Mother Hilde and I were sharing. It was hard to go back to sleep. The village girl, sleeping at the foot of the bed, snored so. And she slept so hard, even the baby’s cries couldn’t wake her. Exactly the sort of girl monks would find to help a new mother.
“Lion?” I sat up suddenly. “But we’re not home yet—who’s there?” I whispered. Mother Hilde opened one eye.
“I’d be very surprised if it wasn’t your man,” she said, taking advantage of my rising to roll up in the entire bed coverlet and go back to sleep.
“Gregory? Is that you?” I whispered.
“Of course. Open the shutters,” the whisper came back.
“Why didn’t you come sooner?” I asked, opening the tall shutters and peering into the dark. “They told me you were being feted, and didn’t want to see me, so I had a tantrum and they brought me all these things. I decided it meant you were well. Come in the door, now, I’ve missed you.” I could just make him out in the shadows, standing between Malachi and Hugo.
“We can’t. There’s too much moon. We came in the shadow of the church wall so they wouldn’t see us. They built the gate in your courtyard wall so that they could see it from the dorter windows. But this window is hidden around the corner in the shadow.”
“Then climb in the window.”
“Can’t. I got racked this afternoon—or at least the beginnings of it. I’m much too sore.”
“Oh, those treacherous liars! They told me you were well.” Now I could see that Hugo and Brother Malachi weren’t standing on either side of him. They were holding him up. “You’re drunk, too, aren’t you?”
“Drunk as a king—no, drunk as an emperor. It helps a lot. But don’t make a fuss, it’s supposed to be a secret from you.”
“Yes, we had to take an oath,” said Hugo. His speech was all slurred. He seemed almost too wobbly to stand, himself.
“Standard procedure with ecclesiastical torture,” hiccuped Brother Malachi. “But they’ve really been quite civil about it, so you can’t start carrying on now. There’s not many would own up to a mistake like that. Easier to get rid of the evidence.”
“Oh, that’s horrible, horrible! And I’m supposed to say nothing?”
“Absolutely,” Gregory’s voice came to me as I leaned out the window.
“Malachi,” I whispered down to them in the dark. “You and Hugo boost him through the window right away. My strength is back, and so is the Gift.”
“Gift? What gift? Tosh!” I heard Hugo say.
But Malachi just said, “Shut up and push, and you’ll see.”
He fell through the window in a sort of shapeless, groaning bundle. I straightened him all out and went to work. I ran my hands over his joints, barely touching them. I could feel the warmth that radiates from injury.
“Not too bad,” I said to myself.
“Margaret, what are you doing?” he asked as I rubbed my palms together and brought my mind to the place where the Gift begins.
“Fixing your joints, as I used to fix Master Kendall’s gout.”
“Moonshine,”he said, and his voice was all slurred. “If you persist in this fantasy, you’ll become altogether crazy, and then what will I do?”
“Shush, you, I’m working.” I’d reached the place. The familiar orangish-pink light began to glow in the corners of the room. In the dark, of course, it was very bright. Then it sprang up all around, warm, comforting, healing.
“You’re back,” I said to it, as the heat coursed up my spine and the lovely presence filled the room. “Thank you.” I had a dim perception of Malachi closing the shutters as Hugo muttered something. I could feel Gregory’s eyes. All around me the light surged gently. How can I ever doubt the goodness of God when it’s with me, folded around me like a living cloak? I put my hands on each of the places, and t
hen sat back on my heels, feeling the light fade away as the sweetness of it softly drained from me.
“Margaret,” he said. “It doesn’t hurt anymore. You fixed it.” I could hear the movement as he felt himself over in the dark. “You fixed it and—and you took away my drunk. Do you have any idea how long it took me to get this besotted? Now I’m as sober as a wretched saint, lying here with all my troubles just pounding on me. I tell you, the pain was easier! I liked my pain! And if ever a man deserved to be drunk tonight, it’s me! Especially now! After all that has happened to me, I turn out to be married to a woman who glows in the dark, like some phosphorescent old bone! What will Father say? What will my friends say, especially the ones who know all about my devotion to Contemplation? They’ll hoot! There goes the ex-Brother Gregory, who wanted to see God, but instead he fell from grace with a woman who glows. What’s he do now? Why, he bought himself a knighthood and lives on her money! How’s the holiness business, ‘Brother’ Gregory? My God! I can’t ever go home!”
I grabbed up the decanter of spiced wine from our table. It was nearly full. “Here,” I said, shoving it into his hands. “Drink it all now, you ingrate.”
He propped his back against the wall and he drank. I could hear him glug-glug-glug in the dark.
“Good, but not enough,” he said, and I could feel his eyes glaring at me. I whirled across the room and felt about to find two additional jugs, different kinds of red and white wine that Hilde and I hadn’t even touched.
“Drink these, too,” I whispered, all in a rage. “And when you’ve done, you just slither back out that window, you snake.” There were more drinking sounds, and I heard the sound of a half-filled jug being set down.
“Margaret,” he said, and his voice was slurred again, “you look very beautiful when you’re glowing.” Then there was the sound of him stumbling as he rose. He pushed open the shutters, and I could see his curly head silhouetted against the stars.
“But don’t take it for approval,” he said as he put his feet over the sill and dropped to the ground.
“Feeling better?” I heard Malachi inquire outside.
“Worse,” he said as I closed the shutters.
“Oooooh! Men!” I stamped across the cold floor and popped into bed again.
“What did you expect?” said Mother Hilde.
“You were awake through it all? You heard everything?”
“Of course. How could I not be? Lights! Voices! A dead person couldn’t sleep through it. No, I take that back—only that girl who’s supposed to help you could.”
I was sitting up in bed, all rolled up, clutching my knees and my grievance very tight. “Well, how could he be so awful? You just answer me that! I just can’t believe he’d be so horrid!” I’d begun to weep with rage.
“Oh, Margaret, you are so very young,” sighed Mother Hilde, patting my shoulder.
“What do you mean? I’ve done everything for him, suffered everything!” I’d rolled over now, and was soaking the pillow with burning tears.
“Margaret, you silly, silly goose. Can’t you understand that he wishes he could glow too?”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
WE DID NOT DEPART FOR THREE more days, but when we did, it was in style. Our horses were fat and rested, and I not only had a basket with a little canvas sunshade stretched over it strapped behind the saddle, but was mounted on the prettiest little ambling mare you ever did see. All cream-colored, she was, with gaits as smooth as silk, so her going didn’t jar the baby. We were newly clad, Gregory and I, though we had paid them for it. A tunic’s hard to repair when it has been cut off a person from head to heel, and my gown could never be made decent again. And though I suppose it might have been recut to get rid of the stains, I didn’t want to be the one who did it.
Hugo led the party, with Robert beside him, both in full harness, for, after all, who knew what the road might bring? He gave off that air of contentment concerning himself that always settled about him when his armor was new-polished and his pennant fluttering from his lance tip. I couldn’t help thinking that being dense has its advantages. Little things could fill Hugo with happiness: the way his feet looked in the stirrup, sporting newly shined sabatons over mail chausses, for example. You could see him stretch them out to admire them as he mounted, and hear him wiggle them just a bit to savor the chink of expensive metal on metal. Or there was his foolish smile at the scent of a posy he’d pass under his nose before he tucked it jauntily behind his ear to go off courting some equally foolish woman. And then there was the way that sometimes the light from a stained-glass window would fall upon his upturned face in prayer, just at the very moment he was praising his Creator for making him the very model of a preux chevalier. It was all good, and he never questioned it.
Gregory, who rode just behind them, his buckler and bascinet tied to his pommel, looked pale and morose. He’d been drunk for three days straight, and now even the birds that sang by the road seemed to sense he had a terrible headache, and redoubled their efforts as he passed by, causing him to wince.
“And what do you expect when I had to write pages of praise about that damned perfumed psalm-singer?” he’d growled at me that morning as he strapped his gear up behind his saddle. “I certainly couldn’t do it sober.”
“You’ve written it already?” I’d asked.
“Of course,” he responded, giving his saddle girth such a vicious yank that his horse started, and blew out the immense breath it had swelled itself up with. “That was part of the agreement. I had to swear on a ton of relics, and he’d see the draft before I went. Then he corrected it, in the margins, no less. Added a whole bit about how despite his outward splendor, he was a modest and humble man. Phaw! Blessed Jesu, my head—it feels as if it had been chewed on by devils.”
“I’m not fixing it.”
“I didn’t expect you to,”he’d snapped, and turned on his heel.
So of course I rode beside Brother Malachi and Mother Hilde, where I could chatter with someone in a better temper.
“That’s how it is with people who have minds,” I told them. “They have problems thickheaded folks can’t even imagine. Can you imagine Hugo worried about ‘historical accuracy’? Why, he hasn’t even got to ‘artistic veracity’ yet!” I rolled Gregory’s long words out of my mouth just as he’d say them himself. Malachi laughed.
“I always thought Gilbert had met his match when he tangled with you, Margaret” was his cheerful pronouncement.
“One thing puzzles me, Malachi. Why did the Abbot trade me this nice ambler for that rough-gaited little dun? I don’t believe for a minute all the high-flown things he said.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” answered Brother Malachi, looking into the distance. Mother Hilde, who rode behind him with her arms about his waist, stifled a smile. But it was too late, I’d seen it.
“Mother Hilde, you know, don’t you!” I accused her.
“It’s for Malachi to tell, or not at all,” she answered, looking very pleased with herself.
“Oh, all right.” His grumpy reticence was all pretense. It was clear he was dying to expand himself. “Well, Margaret, my dear,” he rumbled happily. “It seems a certain holy confessor of yours was so overwhelmed by the Abbot’s good works and manifest devotion, that he felt that the monastery of St. Michel Archange was the only appropriate place to deposit a rare treasure he’d been given in deepest trust.”
“And just what treasure was that?” The germ of suspicion had already stirred in me.
“Five great perfectly matched emeralds from the crown of the Queen of Sheba herself, entrusted to me on his deathbed by one Abraham the Jew—in return, of course, for my instructing him in the Christian faith—in which faith he died. May angels sing him to his rest. Alleluia! I gather they are planning a very splendid shrine.”
The audacity of it, even for Brother Malachi, caught me by surprise. My eyes opened wide and one hand flew to my open mouth. He looked supremely pleased with himself. Then I thought a bi
t.
“But, Brother Malachi, what will those monks do when they fade?”
“Why, find another alchemist to dip them again, if they have any sense. By that time they’ll have probably made back the price of the mare in increased offerings. And remember, she was a trade. Oh, yes—my value’s always fair. Besides, it was in a good cause.”
“I hear you laughing back there. You’re talking about me. Just quit it, will you? I’ve had entirely enough of this.” Gregory had turned in his saddle to shout back at us. Of course, it didn’t faze Hugo up ahead. He was singing one of his own creations as gaily as a lark. I suppose I haven’t mentioned it before, but Hugo doesn’t sing in tune either.
“As the wise Cato says, the suspicious man thinks everyone is talking about him, Gilbert,” Brother Malachi shouted back.
“I don’t think, I know. You’re all laughing at me.” He put his hand on his head to stop the pounding his shouting had made.
“When next we water the horses, Margaret, you absolutely must fix Gilbert’s headache. I require it of you; I beg it. He has grown altogether waspish,” Malachi addressed me in a loud tone of exaggerated confidence.
“You see? I said you were talking about me,” came the pained voice from in front of us.
“I was indeed talking about you, Gilbert. I was saying, you are the most hardheaded young person I have ever met—even harder-headed than Margaret here.” Gregory turned his head slightly to catch the sound in his ear, but refused to look back at us. “Who else would,” Brother Malachi went on, “after saving us all at the price of his intellectual honor, ride ahead of us in a veritable cloud of stubborn arrogance and self-pity, spurning the possibility of riding among us and basking in our admiration and gratitude?” Gregory’s horse began to slow. As we caught up with him, Malachi said firmly: “Gilbert, you will allow Margaret to fix your head and you will return to the human race.”
Ahead, Hugo burst into a joyful exclamation. He had finally managed to rhyme hirondelle with immortelle.
In Pursuit of the Green Lion Page 44