A Vision of Light (61 page)

“I haven’t got it here.”

“Did you give it to your lover?”

“Yes, yes, I gave all the papers to Brother Gregory.”

“So where is he now?”

“I don’t know—he went away and said he’d be back.”

“You don’t
know
? Brother, I think she’s lying,” said Thomas.

Just then there was a tap at the downstairs door.

“Answer that!” roared Lionel to the men downstairs. One of them got up from where he had been sprawled by the fire, drinking up Kendall’s ale. As he staggered up, he stumbled over Lion, who had been lying by the fire too.

“Goddam dog,” he said, giving him a kick that sent him against the wall. As he opened the front door to see who was there, Lion ran yelping outside. There was a boy standing at the door, a brazen little boy with freckles, who announced he had a message for Mistress Margaret Kendall and stuck out his hand for a tip.

“I’ll take it,” said the tough.

“My tip, mister,” demanded the boy.

“Get out!” roared the tough, and slammed the door in his face. Then he yelled upstairs in a mocking falsetto,

“Message for Mistress Margaret!”

Lionel read the message with a wolfish smile.

“She wasn’t lying, brother,” he announced. “This is from her lover—he says he’ll be coming in three days to
‘check her spelling.’
Ha! I can guess how he checks it, all right. Dots all the
i
’s with his prick, I’ll bet.” Everyone in the room guffawed, and Margaret blushed crimson with shame.

“Well, it’s a three-day wait, then, brother,” said Thomas.

“I say, lock her in the cellar until then, and prepare a little surprise reception for the lecherous friar,” Lionel replied. “He won’t want to talk, either, you know. He’s doubtless planning on sharing the spoils with her in some little love nest somewhere. And he’s a lot tougher and more cunning than she is.”

“I have to give him credit. It’s a bold scheme. No woman could have thought of it by herself.” Thomas appreciated people more cunning than he was, even though it wasn’t a useful sort of appreciation. Now, having appreciated the wickedness of Brother Gregory, he turned to appreciate the wickedness of his older brother, who had clearly thought of something deliciously ugly. Lionel, having turned matters over in his mind, said to his brother and the receptive audience of hired men, “I say we have fun and vengeance all at the same time. Someone has to give these filthy clerks a lesson. It might scare off a few others, sometime, if we set a good example with this one. We’ll hold a grand reception for this cunning friar! String him up, just like Abelard, and geld him right in front of Margaret here. Then we’ll beat the hell out of him until he talks.” The toughs nodded and growled their appreciation. “And now, stepmother, dear, we will escort you to the cellar.”

Margaret was sick with apprehension as they locked her alone in one of her own storage rooms in the cellar. All night she grieved, sleeping fitfully as she sat propped up against a barrel. She worried and wept over her children, she thought about how badly she missed her husband. But what made her feel particularly wretched was that in her anxiety to save her children and her book, she had betrayed an innocent man to the butchers. She was so frantic with grief that she didn’t remember even once to congratulate herself on the absence of rats from her storeroom.

Margaret might have felt somewhat better if she had known that Lion had been kicked out the door. He did exactly what he always did when he was let out. He went straight to Mother Hilde’s.

When, in the early hours of the morning, Mother Hilde came home from a long delivery, she was very surprised to find Lion, looking like a bundle of rags, lying forlornly on her doorstep.

“Why, what’s this, Lion? You’re bleeding! What could be wrong?”

Lion whined and snuffled, and tried to lead her to Margaret’s house. Hilde followed him as he trotted through the streets. Being an astute woman, she did not knock on the front door, but listened by a window. She saw lights, long after the household was usually in bed, shining through the shutters of the kitchen. She heard unfamiliar voices and the raucous sound of drinking. Lion pulled on her dress and whined, leading her around the house to one of the heavily barred slits that opened into the basement. He dug at the slit and whined. The whining woke Margaret, who wasn’t really sleeping very well anyway, and she called out softly, “Who’s there? Is that you, Lion?” She was overjoyed to hear Mother Hilde’s whisper answer back.

“Margaret? What on earth are you doing in the cellar at this hour?” Under the cold stars that shine brightest just before dawn, Mother Hilde crouched in the snow at the window to hear Margaret tell the story of the awful ambush that was being laid for Brother Gregory.

“You must hurry, hurry to warn him, Hilde. I’ve done a dreadful thing to him, and you must save him.”

“But what about you, Margaret?”

“I’m sure Brother Gregory can think of something. He’s clever. Ask him what to do; just hurry, Hilde, and warn him!”

It was soon the pink hour of dawn, when the gates are opened and the City rises. Mother Hilde, with some trouble, had found the house where Brother Gregory lived, and with Lion dancing at her heels, she puffed up the rickety outside staircase to the tiny room under the eaves that he had been renting, and planned soon to leave forever. Her frantic knocking disturbed Brother Gregory at a delicate moment. Having said his morning prayers, he was meditating. He had decided that the best thing to begin with was the Wounds of Christ, but he was not getting on very well. For one thing, he was hungry. He always was after rising, and it distracted him. For another thing, Christmas with his father in the north had not worked out very well, and he was still nursing a bruise across the side of his head, where his father had clouted him during the raging argument they had had over his decision to devote his life to solitude and prayer. In fact, the moment Brother Gregory had stepped over the threshold, the old man had become so wrathy that he had immediately restored Brother Gregory’s weakened will on this matter. The sooner, the better, had been his conclusion after the first angry exchange of words with his father.

The ear on the side his father had clouted still buzzed inside, and that interrupted his thoughts considerably. He was annoyed: why on earth had he let his father hit him like that, when he was a grown man? Well, he mused distractedly, it was either that or hit the violent old man himself, which really wasn’t proper. Looked at in another way, one might even see it as admirable that he’d taken a blow for his decision. Why, it showed the abbot had been entirely wrong! He had not a speck, not the tiniest speck of Pride at all! Brother Gregory began to feel pleased with himself. He’d been very Humble and had only shouted back a little bit (and that bit entirely justified under the circumstances) before his father had laid him out with the powerful blow. He was feeling better and better. The abbot would certainly be impressed with this degree of Humility and admit that he was wrong.

With this rosy light cast on the affair, he began to feel quite mellow. He wondered how Margaret had liked the Psalter. She’d recognize the writing, of course, and probably admire the attractive capitals, but she’d never guess he’d done the translation too. That was his secret. She wasn’t so bad, for a woman, and it was a pretty farewell gift. He’d kept the commission, of course—that was fair, he thought—but he’d put the rest of the fee into the poor box at St. Bartholemew’s. When you got right down to it, Brother Gregory really didn’t care about money very much—he felt that God was always ready to support an admirable fellow like himself, and something would always turn up. Besides, it’s common to worry about money, and Brother Gregory prided himself on never being common.

The meditation seemed to have strayed a bit, so Brother Gregory tried to think about Humility awhile, before he got back to the Wounds of Christ. It was at this point, prostrate on the floor before his crucifix, that Mother Hilde knocked.

“Who is it?” he said in an irritated voice, getting up off the floor.

“It’s Mother Hilde, and I must tell you something very important.”

Mother Hilde? The famous Mother Hilde. He’d never seen her. In fact, Brother Gregory was almost the last person in town who had not yet heard of Roger Kendall’s death, for he had been away until the last day or so, and though he’d planned to clear up his business here before leaving, he still hadn’t been to see anybody yet.

He opened the door, and Mother Hilde’s sharp eyes took in his narrow little room at a glance. It was hardly big enough to turn around in, and at its highest point, the ceiling, canted at the angle of the roof, hovered only a few dangerous inches above Brother Gregory’s head. Plain, whitewashed walls adorned only with a crucifix, a plaited straw mattress on the floor, a little writing table, a cold brazier in the corner, and a tiny window with a leaky shutter—there are worse rooms in London, she thought, and some of them have whole families inside of them. Nevertheless it was clear he didn’t live in the legendary luxury of the self-indulgent clerics she had seen.

Mother Hilde’s breath made little misty puffs of fog in the cold air of the room as she spoke.

“Brother Gregory,” she panted (for the stairs were steep), “Margaret has sent me to warn you of a dreadful plot against you.”

Brother Gregory’s austere nod of greeting changed to a look of faint surprise. “A plot?” he said, eyebrows raised. “By whom?”

“By the sons of Roger Kendall, who hold a grudge against you. They have intercepted your note and plan to attack you when you come at the appointed hour. She says they have planned to ‘treat you like Abelard,’ whatever that means.”

“How on earth can Master Kendall allow such a thing? Or is he in on it?” asked a somewhat more alarmed Brother Gregory.

“You didn’t know? Master Kendall is dead this fortnight.”

Gregory was taken aback. That’s quite dreadful, he thought. Even if he was too much of a freethinker, he was a good old fellow—better than some old men I could name—I will have to pray for him.

Mother Hilde went on, and explained how they had taken over the house, and held Margaret and her daughters as bait to entice him back.

“What in heaven’s name for?” Brother Gregory asked.

“They think you have a copy of a will more favorable to their interests. Someone told them that Margaret gave you papers, and they think that it’s a hidden will, and that you forged the present one.”

Brother Gregory was deeply annoyed. First, his meditation had been broken, and it was clear he wouldn’t be able to get back to it for some time. Second, he didn’t like to think of Margaret manhandled by such repulsive characters. Third, it is very insulting when baseborn people threaten the son of an old family—even a second son—with such a disgusting form of attack. And, finally, there was the worst thing of all. There was only one possible thing to do about it, the last thing on earth he wanted ever to do. Brother Gregory’s face grew grim, and the muscles in his jaw twitched. Then he paced fiercely about the room, thinking to himself and hitting his right fist into his open left palm. At last he stopped abruptly and said, with the deepest of sighs, “We’ll have to see father.”

“Father who?” asked Hilde.

“Father. My father,” said Brother Gregory, “and it won’t be easy. He’s already clouted me on the head once. I may go deaf if he does it again.”

“Oh, my goodness, yes, that’s quite a bruise,” agreed Hilde.

“We have three days,” said Brother Gregory. “That’s enough time to go and come back if I don’t walk. Has Brother Malachi still got the mule?”

“How do you know about Brother Malachi?” Mother Hilde bristled defensively.

“I know a lot—more than is good for me,” responded Brother Gregory morosely.

“Then you should know the mule is old and slow,” said Mother Hilde, with a sharp look at him. Brother Gregory thought it over. He looked dejectedly at his hands.

“Then I’ll have to hire a decent horse. You wouldn’t happen to have any money about you, would you?”

“Not here,” said Mother Hilde, “but if you come back with me, I have some.”

Brother Gregory took his little bundle and added his crucifix to it, following Hilde out the door. Lion jumped at his feet joyfully.

“I still don’t think it’s proper for a dog to look the same at both ends,” grumbled Gregory as they descended the stairs together.

They walked along icy streets, making their way about the mounds of muddy snow that in places nearly barred their way, to an alley that Gregory had written much about but had never seen. Ducking to enter the low door of the house, Brother Gregory smelled a familiar smell—the smell of an alchemical laboratory.

“Home already?” a voice called from the back, and the short, somewhat stout figure of Brother Malachi emerged from the low door at the back of the main room. “I’ve been thinking a bit of something to break our fast might be very welcome—oh! Good Lord, what are you doing here, Gilbert?”

“I might ask the same of you, Theophilus of Rotterdam,” answered Brother Gregory quietly.

“Just getting along, just getting along. What are you here for?”

“Actually, I’m borrowing money to hire a horse,” responded Brother Gregory.

“Borrowing from women? You’ve sunk low, Gilbert. By the way, do you still write? Or are you teaching again?”