A Vision of Light (3 page)

“Pay a fine? I haven’t any money and you know it.”

“Have you already squandered the great dowry brought you by your wife?”

“Those were investments, Father.”

“Investments? I say, investments in sinning! Aren’t you even ashamed that her children sit outside in the dirt, idly counting fleas, and you have not brought them to church for a fortnight?”

“Children are a great trial. No man should be expected to raise children.”

“Then wed the widow, man! She will raise the children.”

“She’s too fat.”

“Not too fat for you to sleep with.”

“She’s too old, and has a loud voice.”

“She is prosperous, and has two large, strong sons who can help you with your land.”

“Two big mouths, with even bigger bellies, you mean.”

“Spoken like a peasant, and not like the freeman you are.”

“I am a free man, free of marriage, and that way I intend to stay.”

“And I tell you, miserable sinner, that unless the banns are published in the next week, I shall see you locked up until you repent!”

A groan, and then a creaking sound, as the prone one rolled over in bed.

“Very well, then, publish and may the Devil fly off with you.”

“It’s you I’m snatching from his claws, you vile, blasphemous piece of rotting flesh!”

A few angry strides and Sir Ambrose was out the door. We sat innocently together as if we had heard nothing. As the priest stepped over the threshold, he spied us and wiped all signs of rage from his face. Looking again at David, he said, in a persuasive tone, “Are you a good little boy?”

David nodded.

“No lies, no stealing of fruit?”

“No, Father.”

“Little David, I have need of a very good little boy to assist me at Mass. If you come to help me, you will swing the censer and hear the holy words up close. If you are very, very good, you will see the myriads of angels that cluster in the sanctuary whenever the Blessed Mass is sung.”

David’s eyes widened. How could the priest have known how many hours we had watched the sky, hoping to catch a glimpse of the angels behind the clouds? But I knew what really moved Sir Ambrose. As I watched his eyes survey David, I knew he was already imagining that beautiful face surrounded by a white collar, and hearing in his mind David’s luminous little treble singing in Latin. It was something everybody thought of when they saw David. Even dirty he looked that way.

“I would like very much to assist you, Sir Ambrose,” said David in his stiffest, most formal voice.

“Good, then. Join me after Vespers today, and I will explain matters further to you.”

As Father Ambrose walked away down the road again, to the tree-shaded porch of the old stone church, I could hear him mutter, “There are yet souls to be saved in that house.”

A
ND THAT IS HOW
, only a few weeks later, our new mother came to our house, riding atop her bedding and cooking pots in a great cart pulled by two oxen. Behind was tethered a milk cow, and beside it ran two husky boys, our new stepbrothers, Rob and Will, driving the oxen. Ahead of the cart ran several nondescript dogs that the new brothers kept for their favorite sport: dog fighting. In baskets tied to the outside of the cart rode four geese, several hens, and two fighting cocks in splendor. Even from a distance you could smell the stink of her box of ferrets. The new mother must be a hunter, too.

Her cousins in the village had said that she was rich and full of pride. From the first it was clear that they were right. She had a square chest filled with a half-dozen sheets, a set of carved wooden spoons, her needles and distaff, four fine, sharp knives, and even a little sack full of silver money. She put on airs because she was from St. Matthew’s itself, the town that sat at the foot of the abbey. As the cart creaked along our main street, she had acknowledged the cries of urchins with a cold nod, turned up her nose at the village church, murmured, “The abbey’s is much greater,” at the village fishpond, and pursed her lips at the green, with its little market cross and stocks that displayed not a single miscreant of note.

“Be careful how you lift that chest!” she exclaimed shrilly, when my father came to unload her possessions. With her pale, fishy blue eyes she wordlessly took in our disheveled house, my mother’s ruined herb garden, and the roses that had run wild along the wall. Having surveyed all, tethered her cow, stowed her ferrets within, and released her fowl, she said curtly to my father, “Hugh, this place wants fixing up.”

And fix she did: she swept the dog bones and the trash out the back door, put the coverlets out the windows to air, made up the smoldering fire, and set her kettles to boiling. Then she grabbed me by the ear and told me that I should now be a proper little girl, nodding grimly when she found out that I did not know how to spin. When Rob and Will, those big, loutish sons of hers, grinned at my treatment, she turned and clouted their heads with the stick she always seemed to have in her hand. They yowled and fled, a prudent course that seemed to have already been taken by David, when he had first seen the cart pull up.

The more I looked at the new mother, the less I liked her. I could no longer remember my own mother’s face, but I was sure it had been much more beautiful—and certainly I remember my own mother smelled a good deal better. Some people are sour all over, in looks, in speech, and in smell, and that’s how the new mother was. My real mother could sing sweetly, and I do remember that she had soft hands. People stared at her, too, and still talked about her now that she was with the angels. She had some secret thing about her that made even the priest, who was always hard on women, deferential. I always wished I knew what it was. Now we watched the new mother waddle about the house, her pale, stringy hair wadded under a greasy kerchief, hitting at whatever annoyed her and shrieking her complaints. I used to wonder how father could ever have done such a thing, having once been wed to mother. Maybe it was the money.

My father wed the new mother before the church door at Lammastide, and thus began our new life. But it was only a few weeks after the wedding that it became apparent to all who cared to notice, that Mother Anne’s fatness was not the product of greed alone, and that the baby would be coming soon. It was at Martinmastide, after the village cattle were killed and salted, when father was slaughtering our pig, that she was seized with pains. The kettles of corn and oats for blood-pudding were boiling on a great fire outside, and spices set out for sausage making, when a strange look passed over her face.

“Margaret, go and fetch Granny Agnes, and be quick about it, for my time is coming.” By this time father and my brothers had hoisted the hideously squealing pig by its hind legs. As she took up the great wooden bowl, father plunged his sharp knife deep into the pig’s throat. Sweat shone on her face as she caught the rivers of blood that gushed from its neck. Frightened, I ran all the way to the midwife’s little round hut, and carried her basket all the way back as the old woman hobbled slowly behind me.

Even before we reached our door, I could hear Mother Anne’s screaming inside. Father was leisurely finishing off the jointing of the pig; the sides of bacon were already carved, and the great bloodless head sat on the block, its piggy eyes sunken and glazed, the tongue protruding. Several good-hearted neighbor women were there at work, to finish the tasks my mother had set out, for none would wait the day. One was pouring rendered lard into a bladder, another, having washed out the guts, was tying sausages, and the third, taking time from finishing the blood-puddings, had gone within to hold mother’s hand. When her moaning and howling would stop, her gossip would pat her hand and let it fall, returning outside to her task. Mother, her face running with sweat, barely acknowledged the midwife’s greeting. She sat on the low birthing stool, her back braced against the wall, all her strength bent on her work.

Granny was all business. “Margaret,” she said, “set warm water in a tub for the baby’s bath, if there’s a tub left in the house. There’s plenty of work here.”

There was no tub, so I rushed outside to the neighbors’ and brought back one that would do. When I returned, Granny was holding mother’s hand and chanting in threes, “Lazarus, come forth,” in her cracked voice, to speed the labor. Tears oozed from mother’s eyes, and her face was red. Then both women gave a cry, as the head finally began to appear. Granny knelt between mother’s upraised knees, assisting first the head, then the trunk and limbs, to be born.

“A boy!” exclaimed Granny, and mother whispered the words over. As the baby started to wail, it turned from blue to pink. Mother stared at it wearily, while Granny delivered the afterbirth and severed the cord. The neighbors had broken off their work to witness the great moment, and stood crowded in the doorway. Women can never resist a new baby, and these were no exception. Granny had light work from that moment on, for they washed and swaddled it themselves and then stood about making cooing noises. While they were occupied with exclaiming over its features, Granny got father for the christening. David was dispatched to fetch the godparents as father, mother’s gossips, and the midwife carried the baby off exultantly to church. I waited with Mother Anne, who was tense with worry. Suppose the baby didn’t cry at the font? That would mean the holy water had failed to chase the Devil out of him. An ill omen, that would be. Both her older boys had slept contentedly through their baptisms.

But it was not long before he was returned, all red faced, to nurse at Mother Anne’s big breast. As father paid Granny in bacon and she repacked her basket, mother’s gossips joyfully reported that the baby had howled horribly as the holy water touched him. With mother safely holding the baby her gossips departed, happily discussing what dishes to bring to the churching.

That’s another thing I thought about that day, and that has bothered me ever after. A festivity is very nice, and I have seen some very grand churchings since that day. But why must a woman kneel outside the church door to be purified after having a baby? Does that mean it’s wickeder to have a baby than to be killing things, like a soldier, or as father did the pig? Why shouldn’t father kneel before the church door? I still don’t really understand why God thinks women making babies is worse than men making sausages—or corpses.

But still, when I think back on that day, and how frightened I was, and how little I observed, I cannot imagine how I ever had the makings of a good midwife in me, or that someday the practice of that art would become the most important part of my life.

“Y
OU DON’T LOOK LIKE
a midwife,” Brother Gregory interrupted, as he blew on a page to make it dry. His face was averted to conceal his distaste. It is one thing to describe, say, the Virgin with angel attendants, but this woman had no discretion at all.

“I’m not one anymore,” replied Margaret, looking at him coldly.

“That is self-evident; it’s not an art practiced by women in respectable circumstances,” said Brother Gregory, looking around.

“It ought to be the most respected profession in the world—midwives witness how God makes the world new,” said Margaret; gritting her teeth in a way that made it plain to Brother Gregory that he would have to choose between his literary taste and his dinner in the kitchen.

“Witness to the dropping of the fruits of sin,” he growled to himself.

“You said?” She looked at him.

“God wishes to humble us by the manner of our origin,” he said aloud—and especially me, he thought to himself, thinking about the smell from the kitchen.

“I’m glad you see it my way,” said Margaret. “Now you can put this new part at the top of that page, there. Write it large, it looks nice that way.”

B
UT
I
WANTED TO
have written down about how the events of this time started Fortune’s wheel turning to separate David from me forever, and that I must do. What with the new mother, and the new brothers, and the new baby, David escaped to the rectory more and more often.

“What do you do at Father Ambrose’s all the time, David?” I asked when he came back one evening.

“Why, he’s showing me and Robert, the tanner’s boy, all kinds of splendid things. He sent away the cooper’s boy for lying, but he says we are good, and learn well.”

“What do you learn, besides serving at Mass?”

“Oh, lots of things. Look, sister!” And he drew several letters in the dirt with a twig. “That’s my
name
! David!” he said triumphantly.

“Oh, that’s so fine, David! Can you write
Margaret
too?” His face fell.

“It has an
M
in it, I know, but it’s awfully long. Maybe Father can show me, and then I’ll show you.”

“For sure?”

“For sure, really and truly.”

“Well, show me the
M
now, so I’ll know it.”

“Maybe I should ask Father first. He says there are some things properly secret and not fit for women—”

“But
M
is not a secret. You’ve told me already, so it’s not secret at all, not a tiny bit. Besides, I’m not a woman, I’m your
sister
.”