A Vision of Light (48 page)

“What were you doing when it came? Were you praying? Did it come all at once?” How odd that somebody was interested in the Vision. It was a kind of relief to speak of it, even though I didn’t really know how to. Sometimes it’s helpful to have to put things in words.

“No, Father Edmund, I wasn’t praying. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. I thought of Nothing. That’s what I did just now. I set my mind on Nothing. Not what you’d call ‘nothing in particular,’ but real Nothing, which is very large. Do you understand what I’m trying to say? I’m not sure I’m saying it right.”

“You’re saying it exactly right, and I understand it perfectly. Others have done it, but not in the strange, backward manner that you have.” He looked at me and shook his head. “And they don’t use it to run about town
curing warts
! Only a country girl like you would have thought of that. You’re supposed to talk to God, when it comes. Something noble, you understand, on a higher level. You’re really impossible, you know.”

“I’m sorry I’m impossible. I just do the best I know how. I think God wants people to be well—that’s why He lets me help them heal themselves. I wanted to have education, so I could do things the proper way, but I never got any. So I do my best by watching and thinking.” I spoke humbly, because it’s never wise to rile a priest—even one who looks as if he were nice.

He drank up a whole mug of ale, and then another, and then ate some bread and cheese. He looked entirely better.

“What do you charge for this—ah—healing assistance?”

“Nothing, really, but people give me things, depending on how much they think I’ve helped. Vegetables, mostly, or a chicken. Clothes, things like that. Sometimes, if they’re from another ward, they’ll give money. But they’re mostly poor here, you know.”

“I saw that. Aren’t you frightened of the neighborhood? It’s not a safe one, you know.”

“I used to be frightened, but now that I know everyone, it’s not so bad. People are the same everywhere. I’m more frightened of great lords. I met one once, and he was a very scary man. Wild and cruel, because he could do anything he liked.”

“Then you’re comfortable here?” He looked around, but I could tell he was concealing a certain distaste.

“Oh, we do well now. Hilde and I have got some good fees for attending births. Sometimes people come up to me in the street, or in church, and give me money to pray for them. I saved it all, and we mended the roof. Tiles are awfully expensive, you know. Last winter it leaked very badly, and we didn’t have firewood always, so we were very cold. Now it’s better, a lot better.”

“Hilde is your teacher? The one of whom you spoke?”

“Oh, you remember everything! But I’m curious, too, you know. I want to know why you poke about town after miraculous pancakes instead of saying Mass.”

“I’m a theologian. Do you know what that is?”

“A man who studies religion—all about God. Are you a master or a doctor?”

“Oho! You know more than you pretend, Margaret. How does a girl from the country know that?”

“I have a brother who studies theology. He was so very clever that he was sent to Oxford under the patronage of Abbot Odo of St. Matthew’s. My brother told me about it.”

“Well, here is something different! Do you see your brother often?”

I felt suddenly so sad. “Never,” I said. “I have lost him, and don’t know where he is. I’ve lost everyone that was mine, except for the people in this house.”

“That makes sense. Did you lose them before the vision?” He sounded brusque and professional now.

“Yes, of course,” I answered him.

“Hmmm. I think there is a name for your gift. It’s Latin, so you wouldn’t understand it. Did you feel, after the vision, that you had a joining with the universe?”

“I think that’s how it felt. Is it bad?”

“Generally speaking, it’s good. But it’s rare and much sought after through the arts of contemplation. I myself am somewhat envious. I wanted it myself. But God withheld it. And I certainly wouldn’t want to be a woman, and ignorant, to acquire it! Be careful, Margaret, for if you do more than cure poor people, you’ll arouse envy. Great envy in high places, and that’s unhealthful. Well, I must go now.”

He got up to leave but still limped slightly.

“I’ll do the knee for you again in another week, if you’d like.”

“I’d like, I think. I’ll be back. Besides, you brew good ale in this house.”

“I should. My mother was a brewer.”

“A
brewer
? Ha! A brewer. Of course. Why not?” And he walked out the door and down the alley, humming something odd.

A few days later a little page in rich livery came to the door. His mistress needed treatment for a skin condition, and she had thought she’d try me, for physicians had failed her. I thought she must have heard of me through Father Edmund, for I do not travel in such grand circles. The lady was a foreigner, and I did not understand her speech, but one of her attendants, who was a beautiful, exquisitely dressed dark girl, told me what was wrong. Madame had withdrawn from the world and covered her face with a veil, rather than be seen. Her face was a mass of running sores and pustules. She had been bled, cupped, and taken rare medicines made with beaten gold and mercury. Nothing had made it better. Her exasperated physician had finally told her that only prayer would help, so she had called for a priest from St. Paul’s Cathedral.

I was shown into a room of greater luxury than I had thought possible, this side of heaven. It was beautifully warm, but no smoke from the fire marred the place. The fire was in the wall, and its smoke drawn off by a cleverly designed chimney that rose above a richly carved mantel. The walls, above the carved paneling, were a sheet of tapestries, woven with silk and golden threads. The windows let in great columns of light, without admitting freezing air, for they were made of little clear circles of glass, nearly as beautiful as you see in church, set together with lead, in the window frame. She rested on the bed, a great gilded thing draped in brocade, with the veil drawn over her face. Beside the bed, near a round table covered with a richly woven damask cloth, another foreign waiting woman, dressed more beautifully than a queen, sat and read to her from a Book of Hours. Oh, what a wonderful book! It was bound with jewels and filled with curious colored pictures and gilding. Women who could read! With all my heart I wanted to touch the book and examine its lovely pages.

On the table was a brass bowl of early spring blossoms, and beside it a censer that burned something that smelled even better than the incense in church. But I have not told you the best thing about the room. To soften and warm the hard stone floor, there was no matted covering of dirty rushes. Instead, on a floor swept meticulously clean, there lay a huge, thick carpet, woven with designs of fabulous monsters and plants. If I were rich, I thought to myself, I’d never have rushes—just carpets like that one.

But I must tell you of the lady. Her physician stood by her, a foreign man in a long, dark gown, and odd black cap, with black hair and a bristling black mustache and beard. Wordlessly she peeled back the veil. The lady’s dark eyes were pretty, but nothing else was. The face could have belonged to a street beggar with leprosy. I started back slightly.

“Is it leprosy?” I asked her physician.

“No, it is not leprosy, but something else.” He answered with a heavy accent. Then he spoke Latin. They all do. I called for hot water and made a fomentation with sweet-scented herbs, and applied it to her face with a cloth. Then I silently set my mind and placed my hands on the cloth. Maybe it would work more quickly without the cloth, but I have told you I am a coward and don’t like touching nasty things when I can avoid it. We pulled back the cloth. The pustules were draining, and the skin not so angry looking. The lady said it was not so painful. Her attendant held a polished bronze mirror up to her face. She looked wan but pleased. The attendant said, “She says it looks improved. Can you try it again?”

“Tell her once more today, and then again next week. It needs time to rest and heal. She must leave the veil off, so the air can touch it, and she must wash it once a day—once only!—with rose water on a clean linen cloth.” The lady nodded. The physician cocked his head on one side.

“You use only herbs? No metals?”

“I am a simple woman, sir, and use simple things. I believe that if God wanted us to eat metals, He’d have given us a smelter instead of a stomach.”

“Spoken like a man! Are you a peasant woman?”

“No, I’m a freeborn woman, and I think for myself.”

“That is evident, I think.” He fell silent, his dark eyes watching me like a cat’s, as I repeated the process. The face was much improved. The pores were shrinking, and here and there a patch of white skin glistened.

The physician inspected her skin, and looked at me with a sort of grudging admiration.

“I see you, too, are a true physician,” he said with his heavy accent. “Permit me to introduce myself. I am Dottore Matteo di Bologna. And you are—?” His sharp, foreign manners agitated me in some secret way, and made me wonder if he were dangerous. Hadn’t Father Edmund warned me about arousing envy? But it was too late. I couldn’t be rude: it would only look suspicious.

“I am Margaret of Ashbury,” I answered simply, and went on working.

Suddenly the woman stared at me, and her eyes opened wide. She spoke all at once, and I saw she was staring at the cross which shone on my breast.

“Madame says no wonder you have the power to heal her. You wear the Burning Cross.” That again! Well, who am I to turn away belief?

“She says, she’d wondered where it had gone. Her uncle had had it, and it had burned him to the bone. After that, he’d got rid of it. He’d palmed it off on some little tradesman, who was pestering him over a debt.”

What a world this is! Sometimes too many things happen at once.

“Madame says here is your payment. She gives you gold instead of silver, for she wants you to pray for her. Come again next week.”

As I was shown to the door, the foreign doctor followed me.

“What you say, and what you do, do not lack sense. I had a master at Bologna, once, who had studied the medicine of the Saracens. He said things like that too. Have you much success with these methods?”

“When I try them, yes. But I usually do not treat illness. I am a midwife.”

“A midwife! Ah, yes! Some of them are not so stupid.” He looked relieved and left me to walk out onto the street alone.

As I entered our front door, I called, “Hilde, Hilde! Are you home? We’re rich!”

“Well, I’m glad we’re rich, for I haven’t earned a thing today. A man came to the house asking for something to make his mistress lose her baby. ‘We don’t sell remedies like that,’ I said, ‘for it is contrary to the law of Holy Church.’ ‘But you know of such things?’ he asked, and showed me the gold in his purse. ‘No,’ I said, ‘I’ve never heard of such things.’ ‘Then you’re a bad midwife,’ he said. ‘No,’ said I, ‘I’m a good midwife, I deliver live babies.’ Then he left. What do you make of that?”

“I don’t know, but let’s think of supper. Is Sim about? He can go for something.” Sim was playing, but not too far away to call, and he willingly dashed off to the bakeshop.

Just then we heard someone at the door and opened it to find an old woman in tears standing there. She had on a rusty gown, and a countrywoman’s plain gray surcoat, cut like a big apron, and coarse white kerchief. She looked like a harmless old thing, but there was something about her I didn’t like.

“Mercy, what’s wrong?” said Mother Hilde. “Do come in and sit down.”

“Oh, oh, oh,” wept the old woman, “my sweet daughter is pregnant and her lover won’t marry her.”

“That’s very sad. Will she be needing a midwife?” Mother Hilde asked gently.

“Not so soon. What she needs is a wedding. You sell medicines. Can’t you make her a love potion, so that her heartless lover will propose marriage?”

“Oh, dear lady,” I explained patiently, “that’s a black art, for dabblers in magic. We don’t know how to do that. We make teas for sore throats.”

“Oh, you must be able to, I need it so desperately. See? I’ve brought my life savings.” She opened a purse that glistened with gold. How very odd for a poor old woman, I thought.

“Well, my dears,” she said, wiping her eyes, “if you’re quite sure—oh, my, where is your necessary place? I’m so old, my bladder’s failing.”

“Gladly I’ll show you,” I said, and I took her through the back room to the little room at the back of the house, which drained into a pit in the garden. As we passed through Brother Malachi’s room of smells, she eyed everything carefully. It looked like an ordinary room.

“Oh, what’s in that jar there?” she asked with an innocent-sounding voice.

“Honey drops for children’s coughs. They hate bad-tasting things, you know.”

“May I have one?” While I got her the drop, she looked in the other jars and smelled them. Then she popped the drop in her mouth and did her errand. I waited in Brother Malachi’s room for her and escorted her to the door.

“Another one!” exclaimed Hilde. “First they want abortion powder, and then love potions! Next they’ll be asking for candles made of human fat and unbaptized babies’ hands! What does it all mean? I hope we’re not getting a bad reputation! Imagine, someone must think we do black magic here.”