A Vision of Light (38 page)

“A dog, eh? It’s not very large. I imagine it barks well. Margaret, we might consider keeping this creature to sound a warning. After all, we must think of the future. Very soon now the house will be piled with gold bars, which will make it very tempting to criminals. It would be a wise precaution to keep a watchdog. Clearly Fortuna is looking out for the details of our new life.”

And so the dog stayed. As if in gratitude he laid a token of his appreciation at my feet the next morning. It was a dead rat nearly half his size.

“My goodness, Margaret,” said Mother Hilde, “he must have had quite a scuffle to get that. He is small, but lionhearted.” That is how he got his name, although most people tell me it’s a silly one. But Lion was very quick-witted, and I enjoyed teaching him some of the tricks I had seen the jongleurs’ dogs perform. Maistre Robert had a wonderful secret that made his dogs as lively as human children. Instead of beating them like stubborn mules, he showed them just one thing at a time, luring them to perfect it with little rewards and kind strokes. It was a very clever way that left his creatures full of love, and I used it with great success. When the little boys would come to visit, they would applaud Lion’s tricks, which pleased him no end, for he was a dog that loved to be admired.

Thanks to my little friends Lion was not the only creature that came to stay during those days. It was late on a windy March afternoon that I answered a timid knock at the door. It was a sad-looking creature that stood there—a scrawny, undersized little boy, nursing a long unhealed cut on his hand. He had many little bruises about his body and walked as if his limbs were sore. When he spoke, I saw his gums were red and swollen. I know this disease well. It comes in winter, when there is not enough to eat.

“Are you the woman who fixes cuts?” he asked.

“That I am,” I answered.

“The boys tell me you mend them for love of a brother that’s gone. He’s not found yet, is he?”

“No, he’s not. But won’t you come in?” He stepped in more cautiously than the cat, looking carefully about to see that nothing menacing was in the room.

“What’s this, Margaret? Another of your boys? What’s your name, and who is your master, for it’s clear enough to me that he treats you very ill.” Mother Hilde’s voice sounded warm and concerned, as she dished up pottage for him from our ever-boiling kettle.

“My name is Sim, and I haven’t any master,” he answered. “My mother didn’t have the fee to set me to learn a trade. Now she’s dead, and I get work where I can.”

“And I suppose you’re not above begging a bit too,” said Mother Hilde. The boy was silent. Mother Hilde thought a bit and disappeared into Brother Malachi’s workshop while Sim ate. Soon she reappeared with a bustle.

“Sim,” she said, “Brother Malachi, who is engaged in a project of greatest importance, has need of a boy to blow the bellows and clean out his vessels. Peter is a total failure at it. Margaret used to do it, before she had so much work. But now Malachi is very worn down with excess labor and frustration. If you take on this work, you may stay in this household. Would you like that?” Sim looked wary.

“There’s no trick. We don’t eat children here, or beat them, and we almost always have good things to eat. Do think about it.” By now the cat had come to sit on Sim’s feet. He thought a bit and said, “Yes, I’ll do it.” Mother Hilde kissed him, and the agreement was made. I washed the cut and brought the edges together, but it was clear to us both that food was this boy’s medicine.

Sim was a handy creature to have about. As he regained his spirits, he worked long hours for Brother Malachi, ate as if he were a bottomless pit, and ran many useful errands. I noticed, too, that as he regained strength, he seemed to have acquired some special stature among the other boys, who gave him great deference.

On the way to market one day I saw Sim in the street, demanding first turn at a game of ball and getting it, somewhat undeservedly, I thought. I caught up with a child hurrying to play and grabbed him by the shoulder.

“Wait a minute, please, and tell me something,” I asked. “Just who is that boy who’s going first, and why is he so well regarded?”

“Oh, lady, don’t you know? That’s Sim. He’s apprenticed to a wizard and has already learned some very powerful secrets. He can call lesser demons and turn his enemies into frogs.”

“He can
what
? I think that’s a very tall tale.”

“Oh, no, it’s all true. He has shown us quicksilver from his master’s laboratory, and water that can dissolve stone.”

“Why, then, I thank you for telling me. A person can’t be too careful of wizards.”

“That’s what I say, too, lady.”

That evening we confronted Sim.

“Sim,” I said firmly, “I hear you’ve been telling the other apprentice boys that you’re apprenticed to a wizard.”

Brother Malachi’s eyebrows went up. Sim looked troubled.

“Sim, that’s a terrible thing,” said Mother Hilde.

Sim hung his head.

“Sim,” I said, “telling tales like that can call the archdeacon down on us. Suppose someone tells him all those things about the frogs and the demons? He’ll arrest Brother Malachi for sorcery. Maybe even all of us. You have to watch yourself.”

Sim looked as if he were about to cry.

“Frogs? Demons?” Brother Malachi was looking fierce, but his mouth was twitching on one side. “Just what exactly did you tell your playmates?”

Shamefaced, Sim told him.

“Sim, Sim.” Brother Malachi shook his head warningly. “I’m afraid you’ll never make much of a sorcerer, or much of an alchemist, either, with a tongue like that—but”—Sim looked up hopefully—“you’ll make a
lightning
salesman! Save your lies for the road, my young friend, and you’ll travel with me when you’re a bit older. In the meanwhile tell your little friends that your master called up a demon so unpleasant that it caused him to repent on the spot, and he has now gone on a lengthy pilgrimage to purge himself from sin. That ought to be sufficient, I think. These things die down, if handled right.”

“But I’ll still get to work the bellows?”

“Of course, of course. I’m beginning a new process of the most subtle and dangerous type tomorrow. There is risk that my materials may fly violently up into the air, with great flame and noise—but it may very well be the gateway to the Secret. Last time I tried it, I nearly burned down the house. This time showers of gold await! But you’ll have to be very courageous—”

“I’m brave, I swear I am.” Sim looked heartened.

“Good—don’t run off tomorrow, and we’ll begin at dawn. But I must be able to trust you absolutely. Do you swear?”

Sim swore. Mother Hilde and I shook our heads. The next day the house was full of a peculiarly noxious black smoke that caused even the insects to flee the cracks in the walls. Hilde and I went off to work to spare ourselves from asphyxiation. Hilde had a new client, the wife of a wealthy saddler, who was bearing her seventh child, which Hilde said was a very lucky sign, and I went off to a shabby tenement on London Bridge to see a woman referred to me by Master Will, the street preacher.

I like London Bridge: those who live or keep shop on the bridge think themselves very special and constantly work some evidence of their uniqueness into their conversation. The air is cold and brisk there, which they say brings better health, and there is something strangely soothing to the spirit to watch the water rush at great force between the narrow stone piers, although it is a dangerous business to put a boat between them. Yet watermen shoot the bridge every day, although their wiser clients disembark on one side of the bridge and rejoin the boat at the other side, for many are overturned and lost taking boats under the bridge. Because of the buildings on the bridge, the high street is but a dozen feet wide, except where it opens in the “square,” on which they sometimes have jousting. The only thing I really don’t care for on the bridge is the drawbridge gateway on the Southwark end, because it is decorated with severed heads, as a way of reminding those entering the City from the south that treason is a serious matter in England. When a new head is put up it is considered something of a holiday, and men bring their families down for a stroll to gawk at it and perhaps also do a little shopping. If the bridge merchants could arrange it they would have a new head there every week, for the increase of trade.

The crowd was very pressing on the High Street this day. Market women displayed their wares on their cloaks and shouted an invitation to buy. In the shadows under the second story overpasses, cutpurses and sneak thieves plied their trade. Beggars, including maimed veterans and children who have been damaged by their parents so as to appear more pitiful, wept and pleaded for offerings in Christ’s name. Those who gave were showered with blessings to the point of embarrassment and surrounded by swarms of additional hopefuls. Sports in search of women, tradespeople and apprentices, jostled each other on foot, while wealthy merchants, mounted on mules, threaded their way through the crowded street. As I approached the bridge square, I could hear several apprentices in deep conversation nearby.

“I say, that sorcerer fellow’s head is all black now.”

“It always was black; it is with sorcerers, especially the bad ones. And this was one of the worst—imagine, trying to put a spell on the prince!”

“You’re wrong; it wasn’t black at all when they put it up, just sunk in a little. I still say it turned black later.”

“Well, it’s coming apart now. They all look alike when they’re old. The new ones are the interesting ones.”

“That’s true. Once the eyes are out, they aren’t much anymore.”

Further speculation was interrupted by a cry from the southern end of the bridge.

“Make way! Make way for my lord the Duke of Norfolk!” A party of armed nobles and their retainers, all splendidly mounted on their traveling horses, followed by their baggage train, crossed the drawbridge at a good, stiff trot. You could see the sunlight glitter on their silver-and-gold embroidered surcoats. The horses’ chests and necks were soaked with sweat from their long, fast ride. The crowd parted before them, but not quickly enough. Mothers snatched at their children, and grown men shoved to get into sheltering doorways. The crowd surged into the narrow “square,” the fortunate ones stepping into the pedestrian recesses in the bridge wall. Someone tripped me and I fell. Then others fell over me, and I was soon smothered under several bodies. My wind was knocked out and there was a searing pain in my leg.

The party on horseback having passed, there was something new of interest for the scandal watchers, as the injured were disentangled, carried to the adjoining bridge chapel, and laid out on the floor. Some were bruised only and soon recovered their wits. One old man had his back broken and had turned all gray in the face, as men do when they are dying. The priest bent over him, anointing his forehead while his acolyte held a candle. Next to me a barber surgeon was strapping a man’s ribs, whistling cheerfully. When he finished, he looked at me and said jauntily, “Now, what have we here?”

“It’s my leg,” I whispered, for it was very painful. The light in the chapel was dim and the gray stone floor hard and uncomfortable. There was the sound of groaning from the dying man, which did little to brighten the atmosphere.

“Oh, lovely!” he exclaimed, as he turned back my dress. “A beautiful compound fracture! Why, here’s the bone!” He had a nasty ginger-colored beard, which matched bristling eyebrows and ill-combed long hair of the same color. His dun-colored wool tunic and dark green surcoat were protected by a wide leather apron, which had many sinister dark splashes on it that I took to be bloodstains.

“For God’s sake, don’t touch it!” I cried, as he looked at the white fragment of bone extending from the break. I was sick with horror. People never like to see their own bones.

“Oh, touch it I will, soon enough. You have family who’ll pay, I take it?”

“Yes—I do,” I managed to answer.

“Then we’ll load you up and take you back to the shop. It’s too big a job for a chapel floor. You’ll have to wait a bit, though. I’ve got an even nicer fracture over in the corner there.” He called for his assistants and, after strapping the leg to a temporary splint, conveyed me to his place of business, only a few paces behind the man with the “nicer fracture.” Carried through the door of a narrow shop front that lay behind a barber’s pole, draped with the red, bloody bandages that signified one could be bled within, we were laid out like sacks of wheat on the benches of his “establishment.”

It was a distressing place. He had a large chair for cutting hair, shaving, and bleeding people. At its foot was a bloody basin that looked well used. A string of teeth hanging on a wall advertised his prowess as a tooth puller. On another wall hung a ghastly array of instruments such as one might find in a torture chamber—knives, saws, pliers, and cautery irons—while a chest contained lancets and other small instruments. On one side of the room there was a sinister apparatus: his battered and well-used wooden surgery table. There were dark stains of dried blood about on the walls and furniture, and the rush-covered floor was dark and matted with filthy stuff, the drainings of many disgusting old wounds.

“So,” I heard him say to the first man, “your leg is pretty well smashed up. These ones usually go bad. Would you like to die with your leg on, or live with it off?”

“Live, I want to live,” mumbled the man. He looked like a decent sort of person, perhaps a carter, in a russet tunic and the remains of gray hose. He lay on his old gray cloak, biting his teeth together to keep from crying out.