Margaret of Ashbury 03 - The Water Devil

by Judith Merkle Riley

  “How did you know?”

  “Balam, the demon of inappropriate laughter, has been making a few visits lately.”

  “That, that—deceptive, lying, conniving—I was fond of that groom I sent away—” Hugo stormed back up the solar stair.

  “Well, well, there goes Hugo to pound on Asmodeus, the demon of excessive spending.”

  “Margaret, I'm shocked. Have you turned to learning demonology?”

  “No, I just made that up, too,” I answered.

  “It was a mistake to let her out of that room. She's everywhere all at once, and as hard to lay hold of as quicksilver.”

  “Speaking of that, my lord husband, look behind you out the window—no, not like that, just from the corner of your eye, or she'll see you.”

  “See what I mean? Like quicksilver. How did she get there?”

  “She went up to her room, then out down the tower stair.”

  “But why? She didn't know Hugo has just gone up looking for her.”

  “Because she is going to make another grand entrance while you're here. I saw her planning the first one. Don't you know she's trying to attract your attention?”

  “She has. That awful gown. Those noisy, pop-eyed dogs. Yes, you're right, here she comes again.” There was a sudden increase in the yiping and yapping of the little dogs.

  “Oh, my poooor little sweetsie Doucette, does 'oo wants 'oo's mummy to pick 'oo up?” Petronilla had paused directly behind Gilbert, where he was facing me on the bench. Odd, how in this comparatively sane state, she was more irritating than ever. Gilbert's eyes opened wide in horror. I just looked down at my sewing and smiled.

  “Oo's crying. Is there something sharp in 'oo's tiny paw?”Gilbert's eyes spoke volumes. What shall I do to get rid of this ghastly woman, was what his eyes were saying. I made a little gesture with my chin that said turn around. She won't leave until you speak to her, I mouthed silently, as she fumbled over the dog she had picked up. Gilbert turned, a look of acute distaste on his face.

  “Oh, Sir Gilbert, there's something sooooo terribly sharp in my pooooor dear little baby Doucette's paw, could you find it with your big, manly hand?” I tried so hard to keep from laughing that tears started to run out of my eyes. I looked over at Madame. Her face was turned to the wall, and her shoulders were shaking. Gilbert turned quite crimson. In the embarrassing silence that followed, he fumbled until he found a rose thorn in the dog's paw, and drew it out. “Oh, you are so clever, Sir Gilbert. I do admire a clever man so,” said Petronilla, looking up through her eyelashes at him. Gilbert looked appalled. Still clutching the little dog under one arm, she turned so that she managed to bump against him, then put her hand on his arm to steady herself. Then, just in case he didn't understand, she ran her fingers lightly down his arm. Then, disengaging her hand, she sidled off, casting a backward glance of smoldering passion through half-lidded eyes.

  “Oh, my God, I need to wash,” said Gilbert.

  “Don't do it in this house. She'll leap on you in the bath,” I answered.

  “What on earth is going on with her?” he asked.

  “It's easy. She can't get what she wants at the pond anymore, and you're the current choice.”

  “But, Margaret, that's—that's disgusting. What shall I do?”

  “Well, when you're not with me, I suggest you keep company with Hugo—she does everything to avoid him.”

  “The cure is as bad as the disease,” he grumbled.

  “My lord husband, there's nothing she wouldn't stop at, this I know. She put that thorn in the dog's paw herself. I saw her pause at the door to do it. She is infinitely more dangerous now that she's been let out of confinement and cured of all those devils. Watch her—her mind is sparking like flames in the wind, she has become as swift and sly as the devil himself.”

  “Well, I did notice her speed.”

  “Her mind is working that way, too. Swift and wild. We need to get out of here, Gilbert—”

  “I thought I heard those despicable little dogs down here,” said Hugo, coming in the front door of the hall. “I've looked everywhere—has that wife of mine come through?”

  “She's gone right up the solar steps.” From the corner where the children were playing, sharp, sarcastic little voices came.

  “Oooooh, Sir Knight, my tiny, 'eeny, little sweetie puppy has made a big poopie. Can you scoop it up in your big, manly hand?” At this, Hugo's eyes rolled, and he bounded off in hot pursuit of his errant wife. Gilbert, on the other hand, seemed rooted to the spot for an instant. He turned purple, his eyes started, and then, suddenly, burst into action, reaching the corner in a few big strides.

  “Gilbert, don't you dare,” I called after him. “They have good reason not to like her either, you know.”

  “Sir Gilbert, justice must be tempered with mercy,”said Madame, drawing at his sleeve with her narrow, pale hand. But her face for once was most becomingly pink, and I myself had seen her wipe the tears of laughter from her eyes with the back of her sleeve. “Madame, they must learn not to mock their betters.”

  “It was not their better that they were mocking,” said Madame very quietly.

  “Father, we're sorry, sorry, very sorry,” said Alison, who was always quick to look after her own advantage.

  “Father, she's very false,” said Cecily. “You aren't going to wear her favor, are you?” Gilbert looked horrified.

  “Whatever made you think a terrible thing like that, Cecily?”

  “Well, that's what we're learning about chivalry just now, but it seems very wicked.”

  “And so it does to me, Cecily. You know I'd never wear any favor but your mother's. God didn't send me back from France to be false.”

  “I'm glad, father,” said Cecily. “Stay away from that lady. She's tricky and bad.”

  “That I shall, even at the cost of seeing more of Hugo than I'd like.”

  “See Peregrine's puppy, papa. His eyes were all closed. Now they're open, and he can walk. Papa, were my eyes closed like that?”

  “When you were born? No, they popped right open. I saw it myself. People aren't like puppies, you know.”

  “Oh, too bad,” replied Peregrine. I had put down my sewing and come to look at the puppies, too, where they tumbled about Sir Hubert's favorite bitch hound. They had been given to the children, all four of them, to take away “as soon as possible, if not sooner.”

  “They aren't so bad, if you don't think of them as dogs,” said Gilbert, cocking his head to one side to inspect them.

  “I think they're lovely. They're going to look just like Lion, only bigger.”

  “That's exactly what I mean. I have never seen the use of a dog that looks exactly the same at both ends.”

  “Well, he seemed to know the difference,” I said, picking up one of the puppies.

  “Margaret! In front of the the children!” I couldn't help smiling at the shocked look of reproof on his face. Something about my Gregory had never left the monastery, even after all this time.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  THE CHAPEL AT BROKESFORD MANOR was very cold and gloomy, for being one of the oldest parts of the house, it had stone walls twelve feet thick and was lit by the narrowest of cruciform slit windows, designed to keep any stray arrows from penetrating the sanctuary. Whatever whitewash or holy paintings it once boasted had in some previous century fallen victim to the oozing damp in the walls. And though it was attached to the great hall, the alterations in the ancient stonework made to accommodate later extensions of the hall had left the chapel connected by a narrow and inconvenient stone corridor that cut it off from the general traffic to and fro in the hall and increased the general sense of isolation of that chamber.

  This tall, circular room, its ceiling blackened by candle smoke and its flagstone floor colder than a sheet of ice, contained little but a stone altar decorated by a cloth gray with antiquity, and a couple of cheap iron candlesticks. But in com- pensation for this lack of sacred furnishing, it was used for st
oring old furniture, harnesses in need of mending, and what paper and writing implements the manor possessed. It had also once possessed a ghost, but even she had given up on the place. The Lord of Brokesford liked his chaplains drunk and his penances light. This meant that every so often he lost one, usually to the steep outer tower stairs or the fishpond in the dark, or sometimes just to that overbalancing of the bilious humor which turned them yellow and rendered them incapable of further service. But the general effect of this turnover in spiritualadvisers was that the chapel tended to be neglected, which made it gloomier still.

  Madame, with her passion for renewing altar cloths, had thought the place a worthy project. But the village church was so much more cheerful and it was so much more delightful to sit in the sunny garden to sew whatever was needed, that the chapel rarely echoed to her footsteps. Margaret, having paid a perfunctory visit, suddenly remembered all the gloom and grief she had once experienced there, and decided that she would worship God in Nature, except on Sundays, when the village church was full of joyful comings and goings.

  Only Gilbert frequented the place, and he rarely, coming just to renew his paper, ink, and sand, for he was deep in the throes of creation. It had come to him in the middle of the night, a powerful inspiration for a lament in the old style, concerning a Christian knight held captive by Saracens. It involved a whole series of new thoughts that he, a master of satiric verse and theological polemic, had never entertained before. These thoughts involved a very complex and delicious self-pity, and why they had come to him during this visit to his father's house, which he considered the very antithesis of art and learning, escaped him. Margaret was very happy to see him mentally occupied, for he was at his best when inspiration struck. It made his eyes bright and his face rapturous. People who didn't know him thought he was in love.

  At this very moment, in fact, Gilbert was penning the line, “sorrow is my only companion save you, Christ Jesus—” and practically tearful thinking of the poor captive Crusader when his quill went splutter, splut, and he dipped it into his inkhorn only to find it empty. Damn! Completely preoccupied with holding the rest of the inspired and tragic line in his head, he jumped up from the window seat in the solar and hurried down the circular stair two steps at a time. In a flash he was in the chapel where he dove down behind the altar where the chest with the old vestments and writing things were kept. He had just laid hands on the ink bottle when he heard a voice above his head.

  “Look up, my bold lover, and see what I am offering you.” First he looked at the ground and saw two bare feet beyond the chest. Then he looked farther, and saw bare ankles, and after that bare knees. He kept looking, and he saw all of Lady Petronilla, quite naked and covered with gooseflesh in the chilly air of the chapel. He observed that her arms and legs were covered with unpleasant, bristly hair, and that hair went all the way up her belly to her navel. Her skin was pallid and froglike in the dim chapel light. She had kept on her headdress and earrings. It was the most unappetizing and irritating sight he had seen within remembrance. Furious at the interruption, he kept repeating his last line to himself, so he wouldn't forget the end of it. “I see your color changing. The fierce blood of warrior cannot be restrained,” said his brother's wife in a seductive half-whisper.

  “Can't you see I'm busy?” he said, still on his knees in front of the open chest.

  “Put down that ink bottle and put your hands on something more exciting,” said Lady Petronilla, running her fingers through his dark, curly hair.

  “Get your hands out of my hair, you floozy,” he said, standing up abruptly and still holding the ink bottle.

  “Who better than a brother, to make up for what a brother lacks? Together, we will make the true heir of Brokesford.”

  “You're as crazy as ever. I'm going,” said Gilbert, turning on his heel to stride from behind the altar.

  “You do, and I'll ruin you. I know your greatest secret. Aha, now that makes you turn your head and regard me! You'll go to jail for ever and ever, and so will your father, when I tell what I know.”

  “What makes you think you know anything?”

  “I know, I know who buried the chest that day out there in the ruined hermitage by the spring. I saw you do it. And I have kept my secret so that you would love me.”

  “I have no desire to make love to you,” said Gilbert.

  “Ah, but you must, you must. Hugo's seed is no good. I need a man, a man, don't you understand? I must regain my seat of honor.”

  Lady Petronilla's eyes were wild. She looks more like a frog than ever with her eyes popped out that way, thought Gilbert. I'll try to calm her down by reasoning with her.

  “His seed's perfectly good. He has bastards on two continents. What more proof do you want? Stick to Hugo and quit bothering me.” But there was no reasoning with a crazy woman.

  “Oh, no, I know that you love me in secret. You crave my white body. I know—the signs—your eyes are bright with hidden desire—” She put her hands on Gilbert, and he jumped back, horrified.

  “Get off, get off!” he cried, and as he leapt backward he tripped over the altar step. Sprawled backward and unpleasantly bruised on the stone, he was doubly exasperated that the madwoman took it for an invitation and leapt on him. Oh, curses, he had lost his line. Wretched interruption. Rudely, he pushed her off and scrambled to his feet.

  “I swear, I'll ruin you. I'll tell the world!” she cried.

  “Tell and be damned. No one will believe a madwoman,” he said, looking back over his shoulder. But as he stormed out, he saw he was not alone with the desirous Petronilla. “Oh! Madame! Have you been here all along?” Before him, standing in the doorway of the chapel, stood Madame, firm and disapproving. In her hands were a pair of attractive, wrought iron candlesticks. He looked back. Behind him was Petronilla, naked as a plucked chicken. My God, he thought, what will Madame tell Margaret?

  “I have been here long enough to know that you are a man of honor,” said Madame, who smiled faintly when she saw that he was still clutching the bottle of ink. “Your ink, is it broken?” He looked down and saw the slow drip.

  “Oh, I've ruined my doublet. What will Margaret say?” he said, feeling rattled and foolish.

  “She will say that a woman who strips herself naked and leaps on her brother-in-law behind the holy altar of the family chapel ought to be confined again,” said Madame. There was an awful shriek from Lady Petronilla.

  “You'll never, never do it. I'm cured. I had four devils. I'm a marvel. No one will ever consent.” Petronilla's screeching echoed in the chapel as Madame accompanied Gilbert down the crooked little stone passage. While he walked, he was transferring the ink from the bottle to his inkhorn, which was a fairly complex undertaking, involving asking Madame to hold the cork for him.

  “Dressed or undressed, that woman is preposterous,” said Gilbert, beginning to be absorbed back again into his plainte. The line had come back, and he was imagining how it would sound set to music. “Oh, the cork. Thank you, Madame. I'm glad you heard everything, otherwise who on earth would believe me?”Amicably, they walked through the great hall, beneath the ham and venison laden rafters, and Gilbert was so relieved he never stopped to ask himself what else Madame might have heard, if she had heard everything that transpired behind the chapel altar.

  “AHA, THERE YOU ARE, Gilbert. Ink down your clothes again, just as I was beginning to have hope for you! Oh, and Madame. Have you any IDEA how many of his clothes he ruined before he ran off? The idea that he would ever CONSIDER trying to enter a Carthusian monastery—when they go about in WHITE! Ha!” Gilbert's ears turned red and he bit his lip. Sir Hubert turned again to glare at his ungrateful spawn.“You revert, you REVERT, Gilbert! A hiding would do you good!” The lord of Brokesford planted himself directly in front of his second son so that he could progress no farther. “STOP daydreaming and LISTEN! I need to take counsel with you privately.” Irritation, irritation, thought Gilbert. Why does the world conspire against my creative
inspirations?

  “Well, don't try the chapel is my only suggestion, Father. It's full of Lady Petronilla dancing about naked.”

  “Not AGAIN! What did I pay that canon FOR, if not to get rid of all those devils? Pah! Never mind. We'll go outside.”And grabbing his second son by the arm, the old knight led him to a place where wildflowers grew in the grass, and no ears but the Brokesford mares and their foals could hear.

  “Listen, I need your opinion about something. We're both into this thing up to our hips now. The lawyer has given up his suit.”

  “Well, that's good isn't it?” Gilbert hoped to brush him off quickly, before his plainte dissolved again into the divine ether from whence it had come.

  “Good except for one thing. The abbey has purchased his deed.” “Well, that means the abbot thinks he can win the case when the lawyer cannot. It probably means he can mount an even bigger bribe to win over the king's magistrate.”

  “Oh, you think so? Then I'm relieved. I thought maybe he knew something—had guessed something. If he can prove our deed's forged, then that Westminster magistrate that's coming here for the settlement might well open us to retribution by the King himself. Think of it, Gilbert. An abbot with lands that would be bordering ours, and the the family in prison, and unable to defend—”

  “He can't prove a thing, no matter what he guesses—or wishes. Malachi's the best in the business.”

  “Malachi, Malachi! Thanks to you, you daydreaming mooncalf, I've put my life and lands in the hands of a lunatic alchemist! What on earth could have led me to such stupidity?”

  “But, Father, you're no worse off than before, when you had no case at all.”

  “I was better off! We have more to lose now! All I needed was a better bribe for the judges at the assizes, and you were too selfish to mortgage the house you got by marrying that London widow!”

  “Margaret is not ‘that London widow,’ she is my wife that I have pledged to God to care for, and I would never mortgage her house, because I can't pay it back!”