A Vision of Light (37 page)

“Hilde, Hilde, I must do that! It looks just like flying!” I could hardly breathe for passionate craving.

“Margaret, you’re crazy! That’s not fit for women! Do you see a single woman or girl there? No? Then forget about it! You’ll just get into trouble.”

My face fell. What a stupid idea. Flying only for boys?

“Hey, you, boy, what makes you go so fast?” I called to a little boy in a russet hood and sheepskin cloak.

“Skates, ma’am,” he answered, slowing a little.

“Show me,” I asked, and he obligingly turned up one foot, balancing on the other. On the bottom of his foot was tied a roughly shaped sheep’s shinbone.

“Can I try them?”

He made a rude face and prepared to speed off. Just then his friends came up behind him.

“Yah, yah, Jack’s got a
lover
!” they jeered.

“Kissy, kissy!”

“That’s sure a big girlfriend you’ve got!” The little boy blushed crimson and shouted, “I do
not
, she’s just a big old girl I don’t even know!” Together they slid joyously away. But the pleasure was short-lived. A larger boy, being chased by a friend, barreled right into them, scattering the little group at full length upon the ice.

“Hey, Jack, get up, we’re going.” They clustered around their friend.

“Can’t, my foot’s broke.” His face was stoic.

“’Tain’t broke, just wiggle it.”

“Ow! Keep your hands off of it, it’s
my
foot.”

“How are you going to get home on that?”

“Can’t you fellows carry me?”

“Hey, look, if we take too much time, Master’ll know we’ve been out playing.”

“What about me? If I come back with a broke foot, he’ll beat me. My master’s much tougher than yours ever was.”

This was too much for me. I stepped gingerly across the ice to the little group, ignoring Hilde’s warning look, and offered to help.

“Hey, here’s your girlfriend back.”

“Mmm, going to kiss it and make it better?”

“Kiss me,
this
is where I hurt.” This last was accompanied by a vulgar gesture.

“I
can
help, you know. I’ve got a trick that makes things better. But it’s
not
kissing”—and here I glared at the vulgar one.

“Then you’d better do it, lady, or he’s in a lot of hot water.”

Gently I felt the foot and ankle, while he winced. Then I put my hands on both sides of the sprain and set my mind. Out-of-doors no one could see the odd light at all. I couldn’t myself. I was barely aware of it as heat. I took my hands off. Carefully he moved the foot—then he wiggled it back and forth.

“Why, it doesn’t hurt anymore. Thanks, lady.” Then he suddenly became suspicious. “You don’t charge anything, do you?” I thought quickly.

“Yes, I do. I want to try your skates.”

He looked appalled.

“Go on, Jack, it’s fair.”

“What’s wrong, Jack, don’t you pay your debts?”

“Well, all right,” he grumbled, “but you’ll fall over.” I was aware of Hilde behind me, torn between shock and amusement, wondering how it would come out.

The skates were short on my feet, and the poles were short too. I took a few steps and fell with a thump.

“That’s enough, now. See? I told you you’d fall.”

“I get another chance.” I was indignant; I wanted to speed. I could even imagine myself flying over the ice. It was just that my feet wouldn’t do it.

“Ya, Jack, that’s fair. We all fall the first time.” His friends backed me up—possibly only to enjoy his embarrassment. I would ordinarily have been embarrassed, too, at the cluster of little boys around me, making raucous remarks. But I wanted to fly too badly to care. I took one step; then I glided, then I poled, and then I was speeding!

“It’s just like flying!” I exclaimed to them with joy. Then I tried to turn back and fell down again. I scrambled up, laughing for the first time in months. They were laughing too.

“Can I come back?” I begged them. They poked each other and laughed again.

“We’re butchers’ apprentices. We’ll get you bigger skates, if you come back. But you have to be all our girlfriend, not just his.” And that is how I took up skating, and also got my clients. For there were many injuries on the ice, and those who were not too proud to ask, I helped. Soon there was a steady stream of little boys who had made their way down Thieves’ Alley to knock on my door and show me black eyes and broken fingers. Sometimes there was a girl, but not often, for although there are girl apprentices in many trades, they are not allowed to run wild through the streets the way the boys are. Or possibly it is that they cannot seize their freedom the way boys do—for I am sure many of those boys are supposed to be at work or running errands, when they suddenly discover the charms of dawdling, football, or fighting. And if enough of them are together, who can stop them? These days I no longer felt that London was a city of strangers, all happy enough to be without me. Instead I saw it as a city of children. For nearly everywhere I went, there would be some little creature who would break out of a group at play or stop on his way to deliver a message and say, “Why, there’s Margaret! Hello, Margaret!” It made everything different somehow.

“I’m glad to see you laughing again, Margaret,” said Hilde one evening at the fireside. We had all supped lightly that day, out of necessity, for Brother Malachi’s money was all gone, and Hilde did not bring in enough for four people to live well. We saw a great deal of brown bread, beans, and onions these days. It didn’t bother Brother Malachi at all, for he was so very close to the Secret that he would often forget to eat, out of excitement, and have to be reminded. Peter didn’t mind, either, for all things tasted alike to him, I think. Hilde was always a strong one about hard times. But I minded. I was as hungry as a young she-wolf from roaming and skating, and at times it bothered me greatly.

“It’s a decided improvement,” added Brother Malachi, who for once was sitting with us, rather than working in back. “You must admit you’ve been sulky and morose, Margaret. It’s very wearing on a person like myself, who must constantly breathe the etheric air of enthusiasm in order to carry on this difficult and exacting search.”

“I’m dreadfully sorry. It’s just that I’m ashamed that I haven’t brought in any money. I haven’t done my share, and it makes me grouchy,” I admitted. But they both fussed at me and said I did my share in the house, and although I didn’t feel that was quite the same, I told them a funny story I’d heard from the apprentices, and we all laughed again.

But it bothered me—not getting even one job, when I knew I was as good as many others. And it bothered me that the dreadful dragon-woman next door constantly spied on my comings and goings and concluded loudly to whoever would listen to her that I was a woman of ill fame. And it wasn’t fair, either, because the neighborhood was full of other people she might have gossiped about instead of me. There was a receiver of stolen goods, who had many night callers. There was a slender fellow who I think was a cutpurse, as well as several large, bulky fellows who would do anything, no matter how unsavory, for money.

Then one day my chance came. I had stayed home to sweep out and to brew, for that is one thing I do very well, and in my opinion the water in the City tastes too strange to drink. There was a knocking at the door, and when I opened it, there stood a tall, shabby fellow in a long, threadbare black gown. He had a long, bony face, like a weary dog’s, that made him seem older than he was. He was a priest in minor orders, who was married and seeking a midwife. Hilde was gone, so I told him I was one. He looked disappointed.

“I was hoping for the older one,” he said.

“I know I’m young, but I have assisted at many births and delivered children successfully, although not in London. The ‘older one’ is my teacher, and I do things just as she would.” I defended myself boldly, but something in my eye caught his notice.

“You’re not working so much here?” he asked.

“No”—I sighed—“for I haven’t been long in London, and it’s very hard to get established, particularly in this business, if you don’t look old.”

“Then you’re not so different from me,” he said. “I came because London is a city of gold, but none of it has wound up in my pocket. Married priests never get advancement. I get a little work copying, singing psalms. I bless houses occasionally—” he looked around hopefully. “You wouldn’t want your house blessed, would you?” All the sweeping in the world had not made the house less shabby, and we didn’t have money for whitewash. It’s just that we’d got tired of noticing it, so we quit. It was always a jolt when a stranger reminded us how bad it looked.

“I’m afraid this house is beyond blessing.” I sighed, looking around.

“That’s too bad, because”—here he broke off, but I knew what was coming—“because,” he went on, “I’d, um, hoped to defer payment until—somewhat—later.”

I knew the proper answer, and although I was disappointed, I did want to prove myself.

“I’ll do the work for the love of Christ,” I told him. His face brightened.

“Are you sure you’re as good as the older one? My wife and I have been married only a year and a half, and don’t they say the first one is always the hardest?”

“It depends on the strength of the mother,” I answered reassuringly.

“Well, then, I’ll come back and bless your house anyway. No house is beyond blessing. Maybe this house just needs a larger-than-usual one.”

“Perhaps that’s so. I fear the previous occupants may have come to no good end.”

And so we settled it, and when his wife’s time had come, he himself fetched me, and I raced to keep up with his long steps as we walked the streets to an alley very similar to ours, in another part of Cornhill, where he lived in a decrepit cottage. The delivery was not a hard one, as those things go, but it took longer, as it does with a first child, and she was deathly frightened. When both mother and child were safely bedded, I went to him where he was waiting, in the cottage’s other room, with his head in his hands.

“They are both well, and your child is a girl,” I told him. He looked up, his long face pleased and radiant.

“Truly so? I thought when I heard cries—”

“No, they’re well, both well indeed.” I followed him in and watched enviously as I saw the tender look on his face when he admired them both.

“Why, she’s very pretty, isn’t she?” he exclaimed over the child, and his wife smiled happily. And I thought secretly to myself, If I could have chosen, I’d have had a love match like that one—and if I can’t have that, then I won’t choose any. But fate taught me later that it’s a rare woman who gets any choices in matters that men think they have a right to direct.

This was the beginning of better luck for me, for the first client always recommends the rest. And this shabby priest got around. Sometimes I would see him on a street corner exhorting the passersby against sin, his threadbare gown whipping about him in the wind. He had a number of favorite themes, some of which were enough to get him put in the stocks, and how he escaped I do not know. He said it was the sins of the wealthy and the great that had caused the plague, and he denounced the selfishness of the rich, as well as that of the career-minded celibate clergy. “Chastity without charity” was what he called it, and he said that purchased pardons could not save the buyers from hell, but only God could pardon, and would do so without regard for money. Poor people liked to hear him, and more than once I saw a crowd surround him and whisk him out of danger when it looked as if he might be taken by the authorities. That was the problem with the new clients he sent me—they were all as poor as he was, and paid in vegetables. Still, that’s better than nothing at all, and life started looking up.

It was perhaps a sign of our new prosperity that everything homeless seemed to sense that there might be a welcome and something to eat at the narrow house in the alley. One morning, when I went to feed Moll, I found that a shabby orange cat with a torn ear and missing tail had slept the night in the shed. With that kind of insinuating flattery that cats have, she wound her skinny body about my legs until she had acquired a bit of milk for breakfast. After that she seemed to take possession of the house and yard and soon was as fat as a prosperous burgher. Hilde was pleased, because she had often regretted having had to leave her old mouser behind and had often thought of buying another cat when times were easier. A cat improves the garden wall in sunshine, and the hearth in foul weather, so we began to feel the house was not so dreary.

Then, one rainy afternoon, when I was returning from a job, with payment in the form of butter and eggs neatly wrapped in my basket, I nearly fell over something lumpy curled up at the front door. It looked exactly like a pile of unraveled rope, and even when it got up and pushed itself hopefully into the house behind me, I wasn’t altogether too sure what it was, for the front and back ends looked more or less alike. So I got a bucket of water and a comb, while the creature pattered about after me, and then I settled down at the back door to wash it until I’d found out whatever it was.

“What on earth is that you are washing there?” inquired Brother Malachi, who had come forth from the Smellery to take air.

“I’m not sure, but it seems more or less like a dog,” I answered, combing out the tangled fluff. The truth is, I had been greatly taken by a pair of merry bright eyes, and a mouth that looked always like a smile, that I had found beneath the matted hair. But a dog does eat, and it wasn’t right to keep it if the others objected.