A Vision of Light (42 page)

But at home I drooped over supper. The pie was cut with exultation, and Brother Malachi pronounced the kind of flowery blessing that he felt was in keeping with the greatness of the occasion. All but me put their hands into the pie joyfully, but I just couldn’t.

“What’s wrong, dear? You’re not eating this lovely feast,” Brother Malachi inquired with his mouth full.

“I just can’t—there’s something that makes my stomach hurt.”

“Come, now, dear Margaret, you must eat and be merry, for who knows what might happen tomorrow?” Mother Hilde put her hand on my shoulder.

“I
am
merry, it’s just—just—”

“Just what, dear?”

“I can’t eat anything with
eyes
!” I wailed.

“But pie has no eyes,” argued Brother Malachi, reasonably enough.

“But it
had
eyes!” I protested, full of consternation.

“She means the sheep had them, before it was pie, dear Malachi.”

Peter made the grunting noises he usually makes when he eats.

“Cheese doesn’t have eyes, Margaret. Try this instead,” Mother Hilde urged. I picked at it. It was all right. I took more.

“Hurrah!” cried Brother Malachi.

“If you aren’t eating your piece of the pie, then may I have it?” The butcher’s boy was recovering.

“See if Brother Malachi wants it first—you might have to share,” I answered.

“Three ways, Margaret,” added Sim.

Three ways it was, and I have made it my practice to eat nothing with eyes ever since. I can’t really say why. It just hurts my stomach. It’s a funny thing: sometimes I’m fooled by a fancy dish, but always my stomach hurts afterward. And, after all, who would willingly eat something that makes their insides ache? I seem to have taken no harm from the practice, though some have said that I would sicken and die. My biggest problem is that some think I’m very holy, and others that I am a great hypocrite, for keeping Lent all year. But it’s really simpler than that. I don’t believe in pain.

We sent Sim back with the butcher’s boy, and Sim had to run all the way back to be home before curfew. But that night I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t sleep at all. I kept seeing the big head trying to be born and imagining that I could somehow pull it out. The next night it was the same, only I dreamed my fingers were very long, long and thin and strong. I pushed them in against the powerful labor pains and pulled out the head. The child lived, that night in my dream.

I was very languid the next morning. Brother Malachi was tactless enough not to let it pass, as we divided up the last of the cold supper from the previous night to break our fast.

“Margaret, don’t lie to me! I have the All-Seeing Eye! I know you’re not sleeping!”

“Oh, Brother Malachi, does it take the All-Seeing Eye to find black circles under my eyes?”

“What keeps you up? Ghosts again? Something nasty buried under the house that moans to be let out? I’ll bless it out of existence for you.”

“Not so dreadful. It’s just a dream. A dream that’s bothering me. It’s something that I need to know, but I can’t quite see it.”

“Easy, easy—that’s no problem at all. I have just the thing for it.”

“More saints’ knucklebones?”

“Hard-hearted child—no. Something much more efficacious.” He rummaged around with one hand in the pouch that he always wore on his old leather belt, making little grunting sounds as he searched.

“It’s here—somewhere—aha!” And he held up an odd eight-sided stone between his thumb and forefinger. It was pale blue, and translucent, but it did not shine.

“What’s that, and how did you make it?” I asked.

“I didn’t make it—it’s found that way in nature.”

“And it is—?” I was insistent.

“A dream crystal, Margaret. The last of several that I had. The others I sold to highborn ladies, that they might dream of their lovers’ faces.”

“I don’t need a lover, Brother Malachi.”

“That, my dear Margaret, is self-evident. But you do need your dream. This marvelous stone will—ah—solidify it for you, make it manifest, and you’ll see exactly what it is you’ve been trying to dream about.”

“Oh, Brother Malachi, I know you’re wonderfully clever—but dream crystals? It’s like that fragment of the True Cross that you manufactured out of house timbers and sold to that idiot in Ely.”

“Not at all, Margaret. Have a little faith in me for once, will you?” he wheedled, and extended the crystal in his open palm. It did look pretty. I wanted to hold it.

“Just put it under your pillow tonight. You’ll sleep like a baby, and remember the dream in the morning.”

“Thank you, I’ll try it after all. You are considerate to think of it.” What harm could there be?

That night I slept uneasily. I awakened several times, and the bed was damp with my sweat. I had the dream again, two or three times, waking up each time when the baby was saved. Then I fell hard, hard asleep. As I began to stir awake in the morning, I saw the dream again. Only this time, as I tugged out the baby’s head, I looked down at my hands as they grasped the precious creature. My fingers were made of steel!

“Steel fingers!” I cried, sitting up. “I’ve been dreaming of steel fingers!”

“Aw, shut up, Margaret.” Sim rolled over. Peter made piggy noises in his sleep. The dog got up and made clicking sounds with his toenails on the wooden floor.

“Quiet out there!” cried the sleepy voice of Brother Malachi from the front bedroom.

So I sat silently, dreamily contemplating the steel fingers. If I had something—something like the pincers you take hot things out of the pot with—but with rounded steel fingers at the end—I could pull on the head, as I did in my dream. No, not fingers—they would poke. You might punch a hole. A baby’s head is soft. Hmmm. A rim around the fingers, perhaps?

Later that morning we broke our fast together. Brother Malachi was washing stale bread down with a huge mug of ale, when he suddenly broke off to look at me. His bristly face twitched with annoyance.

“Now I remember it all. It comes back, yes it does. Some fool woke me up in the wee hours of the morning, shouting. Could it possibly have been you, Margaret?”

“Surely not, Malachi,” Mother Hilde put in a kind word. “I slept like a baby—and I didn’t hear a bit of shouting.”

“You wouldn’t. It is
I, I,
who am the sensitive soul in this house. And I’m exhausted. I was extremely close to the Secret last night, if I had not fallen asleep. Just an hour or two, I thought, to rest my poor, weary, sensitive mind, and the Secret will be mine at last. But no, Fortuna willed it otherwise. My stars, my cruel stars, betrayed me! My pitiful hour of repose was shattered by raucous noisemaking.”

“I’m truly sorry, Brother Malachi, but it was all the fault of your dream crystal, anyway,” I apologized.

“Oh, yes, the dream crystal,” he said with an affectation of weariness. He gestured with a hand to belittle it. “Something favored by idiot lovesick women. Not the thing for a True Seeker.”

“But you gave it to me yourself.”

“Only to quiet you so that I might rest my sensitive mind the better. Have I told you that the brain is like a delicate plant? It bruises easily in a harsh, noisy environment.”

“But don’t you want to hear what the dream was?”

“I suppose I must, if only to guarantee your later silence.”

“I dreamed of a thing like the tongs for the pot, but with long steel fingers on each side—round, like this.” I held up my hands to show him.

“It
was
you who woke me, then. And for this? You’d have been better off dreaming of a lover, like the others.”

“No, wait a minute, Malachi. What were these things for, Margaret?” Mother Hilde broke in.

“You know when the baby’s head won’t move, and the labor can’t push it out? With the steel fingers you could reach inside and grasp the head, so that you could pull it out. Just like a hand, but thinner, you see, so it would fit.” Hilde looked very interested.

“You’d have to make it just right, or it would smash the head. Then where would you be?” she asked. Then she thought a bit. She moved her hands, as if grasping a baby’s head. “Hmmm,” she mused. “It’s here you must take it, and nowhere else. Right across the cheekbones, where it’s hardest.”

“Women! Always talking shop! I go to uncover the secrets of the universe! Sim, come with me—I need you to blow the bellows. The fire must be quite hot for my next attempt.”

“Wait, wait, Brother Malachi—could you make me a model of this thing?” I asked.

“My dear girl, you don’t need me—you need a man who works with fine steel. An armorer, for example.”

“An armorer? What sort of armorer?”

“The best, dear, the best. You don’t want some hobbledehoy blacksmith. The work will be too rough, and the material of poor quality.” Malachi was disappearing into his Den of Smells.

“But I don’t know any armorers.”

“I do—ask for John of Leicestershire—I knew his brother, once—he’s out in Smithfield, with most of the other good ones.” And he was gone.

“Margaret, I’ve got great faith in your dreams,” said Hilde. “You don’t have many, but when you do, they’re good ones. We should consider trying this.”

“Oh, Hilde, armorers don’t make things for free. They’re way beyond our means.”

“It’s not such a big thing. It’s plain and simple. It just must be strong and light. So how could it be costly? I’ve the best part of my fee left from those twins. Try it, Margaret.”

“But how shall it look?”

“It was your dream, didn’t you see?”

“It seemed easy in the dream, but now that I think of it, every baby has a head a different size and lies differently. The shape must be just right—perhaps adjustable in some way.” We referred again to the kitchen tongs. Perhaps if it came apart and then joined together this way—Hilde used her hands, and I used mine, mimicking the motion that was needed. When we’d decided on a shape, we put the tongs in my basket for future reference, and Hilde took out her money. Then we set out for Giltspur Street, in Smithfield, outside of the City walls beyond Aldersgate, where the armorers have their shops. Some armorers, who are not good enough to be masters of great shops, work in the guild armories in the City; others work for great lords. But Smithfield is where the greatest tournaments are held, and so business there is the best. It was here that we went to find John of Leicestershire.

The armorer’s great shop was a hive of activity. There were dozens of apprentices and journeymen at work, hammering, shaping, and tooling pieces from great size to the tiniest imaginable. Racks of swords, daggers, and knives of every description were displayed for sale. Finished and unfinished pieces hung along the walls by the laboring men: great breastplates for horses, armor for dogs, delicately traced tournament armor hanging like bits of dismembered bodies, and chain mail that reminded me of laundry hung out to dry. One man was putting together tiny little pieces like finger joints. Next to him at the workbench was another man completing a strange shape like a dragon’s wing, but the size of my palm. For what part of the body is that, I wondered.

“You want the master?” asked a journeyman, wiping his face with his sleeve before one of the several forge fires in the great stone room. Everyone turned to stare. This was no women’s place. Some of the men worked half naked in the heat, and the air was thick with powerful oaths. We could hear the
cush-cush
sound of mighty bellows being worked, and the clatter of hammering.

“Hey, John, have they come to collect a debt?” some wag shouted.

“No, it’s delivery service. Master John believes in doing everything convenient.” There was raucous laughter. John was at work before the central forge fire, shaping a great two-handed sword as tall as my body.

“Shut up, you lot, I can’t pay attention to your yammering now,” growled John. He was a mammoth of a man, balding, with a huge red-brown beard. He was working without a shirt, a wide leather apron protecting his body.

“Maybe we’ve made a mistake, Margaret, we should go after all.” Hilde pulled at my dress nervously. But I was rooted to the spot with fascination. John had taken the huge sword, glowing cherry-red, and plunged it into the temper bath, with a horrifying
hisssssss!
such as devils in hell must make. What a fabulous skill to own! He called a journeyman to him.

“Finish this off, I’ve got company,” he said.

With that he turned and looked down from his huge height on us. His leather apron and heavily muscled arms glistened in the light of the forge fire.

“I don’t need to buy anything,” he growled.

“Please, sir, we’ve not come to sell; we’ve come to buy.” I spoke as boldly as I could.

He threw back his head and laughed. “And what have you come to buy? Surely women like you do not need a set of tournament armor.”

“We are midwives. We need something made up,” ventured Mother Hilde timidly.

“What, a buckler or a helmet to protect you from dissatisfied customers?”

“No, sir,” I answered. “It’s like a weapon, more. A weapon in the battle for life.”

He looked interested. “You look like a sweet little fool. Don’t you know you can’t afford my prices? I put dukes in debt.”