Beauty (41 page)

Henry V is King. He will not be king long, poor boy. Edward III was King when I left in 1350. He was succeeded by his grandson, Richard II, and he by his cousin, Henry IV, and he by his son. This current King Henry will die of a flux of the bowels in France, and his son will die in the Tower, having spent a good deal of time, on and off, as a madman. However, Henry Five's widow will have a grandson who will be Henry VII, and it is all very interesting and complicated. I must be careful not to mention any of this lest I seem to prognosticate. According to the tinker, they are still burning poor old women whenever some busybody gets a gnat up her ass and thinks she's been bewitched. I must also be careful not to seem a Lollard. They are also burning Lollards. I'm not sure I remember what Lollards are. I mean, I know what they are but not the things one must not say if one doesn't want to appear to be one, and I am afraid to appear heretically ignorant if I ask.

The other interesting thing the tinker had to say is that the peasants have left the land and gone searching for better pay. I had read about that, but it all seemed frightfully unlikely. Now, here, seeing the vacant fields, I can tell it has really happened. The nobles have tried to put a stop to it, of course, but it's done no good. It used to be that a man could not leave the land, for there would be no place for him elsewhere. Every lord had his own serfs and little need for more. Now, however, the Black Death has killed so many that there are places begging for any good man. Well, I remember that from Wellingford, from the Dower House. It was hard, even then, to get anything done, and the Death has been back several times since then. Strange, isn't it. Men are more valued when there are fewer of us. Which is what I tried to tell them back in the twentieth. Which is what Puck said, too.

The tinker is a youngish man, but he has traveled these roads since he was a child. All Wellingford is empty now, he says. He does not know where the people went who used to live there. He remembers hearing of the King and Queen who were driven from their home over the seas, but he doesn't remember where that home might have been. He will take me within a very short distance of East Sawley Mill, which still stands, and there I will ask about to see if anyone remembers.

ST. JUSTIN, MARTYR, FIRST DAY OF JUNE, YEAR OF OUR LORD 1417

I got down from the cart in front of an inn. What passes for an inn in these times. Outside it, sitting on a bench, was a straight, slender old man chatting with a friend. When he saw me standing there in the road alone, he came forward to offer his assistance.

He looked at me for a long time. I felt dizzy from that look.

"Catherine?" he asked. "It is Catherine, isn't it?"

For a moment I didn't know him. When I did, I felt everything whirling, like a tornado of feeling, swirling me around with it. "Giles? Oh, Giles. Is it Giles? But, you're dead. They told me you were dead!"

He held me, and for that moment I was thirty again. My heart was as strong as it had ever been and that instant became an eternity for me. He wasn't dead. Giles wasn't dead. He knew me when he saw me, though I cannot imagine how. He called me by the name he knew me by, Catherine. He put his hand out to touch my face, and he smiled, as though he had expected me. He told me he had expected me every day for the past fifty years. He said he has thought about me every day during all that time, and he knew I was somehow his own lost Beauty come back to him.

I cried when he said this. I cry every time I think about it. We are of an age. He is still straight as a lance, though his stride is shorter than I remember and he does not see as well as once he did. His hair is as white as mine, but it is still full and soft and falls over his forehead as once it did. I wept and begged to know what had happened to him, and he told me a tale of being waylaid by an impress gang, one of whom he had killed, defending himself, before he was overpowered and dragged away. It was that man who had been buried beside the road.

I told him I had gone there and laid flowers on the place, and he laughed, saying I was the only one to grieve over that ruffian. Because the horse was there, with the king's arms upon it, the witness had not considered it might be one of the gang who had died rather than the man they had assaulted.

The impress gang was working for a merchantman who had a royal contract to carry supplies to France and not enough men to man the ships. They kept Giles for months, sailing back and forth across the channel, and when he escaped at last, I was gone. He had dwelt here about East Sawley since, he said, waiting for me to return, knowing that I would.

"If I'd known you were here, I'd have come long ago," I told him. And I would have. I'd have come long, long ago.

"After what had passed between us, no little wait seemed at all worrisome," he said. "I have lived all my life in the memory of those three nights."

What can any woman say to that? I went into the privy behind the inn and wiped my face, telling myself I'd been a fool to go to the twentieth for vengeance sake when I could have stayed for love's sake, a fool to stay there for pride's sake, thinking there was anything I could do. But then, I never said I was not a fool.

When I spoke of them, Giles remembered the little royals, and he also remembered the name of their kingdom: Ponte Marvella, somewhere in the high mountains where Aragon and Navarre and France come together in a tangle. I told him about Elly marrying the prince and their having a daughter, my granddaughter. He says he will come with me to find her. Here we are, two old pots, though seemingly fairly hale for all that, going off over the seas. The boots would have taken us there in a moment, but now that he is with me we will travel as other persons do, to see the sights. Giles might not like the idea of the boots. Explanations would be complicated, and perhaps too risky. He loves me for what he thinks I am. So I will try to be what he thinks I am.

Giles has taken some of my smaller gems to turn into coin. He will hire a conveyance to take us to Bristol, a three day's journey. Once there, I can have a few more gowns made. The styles have changed somewhat. More people are speaking English, though it sounds very strange to me, because of all the accents clashing up against one another. Before the Death, no one traveled that much. Now everyone moves about, going and coming, here and there. The vowels slide about with the speakers, some say
ae
and some
ai
and some
ao.
It is almost easier to read lips. Giles says some years ago the Parliament attempted to make English the official language, but the lawyers all refused, saying they couldn't argue in it. Pish. Even in the twentieth they say that! They spend their careers making up words so no one will know what they're talking about! If lawyers had to write in plain English, nine-tenths of them would be out of work!

ST. BONIFACE'S DAY, JUNE 5, YEAR OF OUR LORD 1417

Bristol. The only rooms we could find here are in the pilgrim hostel. There are no ships. King Henry has commandeered them all to carry his army to Normandy. There are pilgrims waiting who have been waiting for weeks, running about each time they hear a rumor that some new ship may have come into port. Remembering Papa, I said something to Giles about such travel being of little use, and he hushed me. Lollards disapprove of pilgrimage, and speaking so may make people think I am a Lollard. I asked Giles, in a whisper, what Lollards are, meaning what are they like, and he told me they are followers first of John Wycliffe, who translated the Bible into English, much to the annoyance of the priests, and later of Sir John Oldcastle, who was condemned for heresy but escaped the Tower and plotted against the King's life. Though his followers were caught and executed, the man himself remains at large.

As to what they believe, Giles says, to my dismay, they believe much as I do. They doubt the efficacy of the sacraments because they are magical, which is just what Puck said. Lollards read the scriptures in English, which I have done for years. They consider works to be as important as faith, and the pursuit of relics to be wasteful of money that could be used to relieve suffering. It is obvious I must not talk about religion or I will be taken as a heretic. I must be still and rather pious appearing. Giles is worried about me. I can tell from the way he strokes my hand when we sit outside the hostel in the evening, drinking a little watered wine and wondering if a ship will arrive tomorrow.

I remember the feelings we had on the terrace that night, that last night we were together. They are as clear in my mind as the sound of the bell from the monastery. I can remember each shudder of delight, each spasm of ecstasy, and yet my body sits calmly while I remember. My mind knows, but my body does not mind.

I told Giles what I was remembering and asked if he ever feels that urgency. He says he felt it last many years ago, remembering me. He remembers it still, sometimes, in dreams. In recent years, the greatest urgency he feels is early in the morning when he must get up quickly or risk wetting his bed.

Perhaps it was the way he said it. We laughed until our sides hurt.

CORPUS CHRISTI DAY

A procession in honor of the Blessed Sacrament came winding through the streets today. Outside the hostel a crazy woman had a fit when she saw it and had to be dragged away, screaming and yelling. I am told her name is Margery Kempe. In the twentieth they would probably give the poor thing tranquilizers and put her to bed, but in this time she is quite notorious. She goes on incessant pilgrimages, falling continually into these hysterical fits, and she has evidently been doing so for years. While there is no doubt she is seriously disturbed, she is also quite lucky about getting where she wants to go. At least, so Giles and I have been told. If we want to get to Aquitaine, it is suggested we keep close watch on Margery Kempe, as she will probably find a ship before the rest of us do. She wants to go to Santiago de Compostela, which is not far from where we want to go.

LATER

A ship has come in from Brittany and is loading for a journey to Coruna, in Spain. The madwoman has bought passage upon it, and so have we. Now the other pilgrims are muttering among themselves, plotting to keep the madwoman from embarking with us, as, so they say, her doing so is a sure invitation to disaster, storm at sea, shipwreck, and all manner of terrors. They have accused her of being a Lollard, so the authorities tell her she must go to Henbury to be examined by the bishop. The other pilgrims hope a wind will come up while she is gone, so they may depart without her.

LATER

Margery is staying with the bishop at his home in Henbury. Evidently he knew her father. There has been no wind.

THREE DAYS LATER

Still no wind. The pilgrims are beginning to regret their hostility. I heard one say today there would be no wind until Margery Kempe returned, that no matter what the pilgrims may think, God is with her.

LATER

We have been waiting ten days for wind. This morning Margery Kempe arrived, escorted by the bishop's retainers, and with her came a stiff breeze. There is no satisfying some people! Now the pilgrims assert she is a witch who can summon storm, and they threaten to throw her overboard if there is not a calm passage. I do not know what power Margery has, but I am tired of this nonsense. Mama taught me how to handle such matters. We will have a calm passage no matter how much I must weary myself in assuring so.

LATER

We have had four days of sailing south in light weather. Grumpkin has much enjoyed the ship. There has been good mousing, and the sailors approve of him heartily. The pilgrims have been put ashore here at Coruna, where some will go overland and some will take smaller boats down the coast to the port slightly nearer Compostela. Once there, they will ascend into the city, into the great Romanesque church where they can kiss the statue of St. James and receive the title "Pilgrim to St. James." I know all about it. Papa described it to all of us, over and over. It was Santiago Matamoros that most interested Papa, St. James the Moor Killer. Poor Papa. He did want to do something brave and dedicated against the infidel, but it never really worked out.

I told Giles there was no hurry in finding my grandchild and asked him if he wanted to go to Compostela, but he said no. He is no more interested than I in parts of people's dead bodies, saints or not. Saints' bodies are supposed to be incorruptible, but Giles says he has seen mice dried up in a grain sack who were also uncorrupted. We giggle, like naughty children. Old people find odd things funny. He told me about a time during those years we were apart, when he was in Italy to pick up a cargo which included a crate of relics. He was sent to the workshop where they were created, and there he saw them making miraculous shrouds.

"The workman smeared a naked man with flaxseed oil and wine lees," he said, "then the man lay down on a linen strip and it was folded over him and patted gently to take the print of his face and body. Then they hauled him up, without messing the print on the cloth, and put the cloth in the sun. When it had been in the sun for a time, they brushed off the dry lees and it was like a painting."

"Who was he supposed to be?" I asked.

"Oh," said Giles, "he was all different saints. In the crate I took back to the ship there was one shroud of St. Stephen, with lots of arrow wounds painted on afterward, and at least half a dozen of Christ. It was enough to make a man sceptical."

Well, since he does not wish to go to Compostela, we will stay on the ship for another few days as it runs along the south shore of the Bay of Biscay to Bayonne, where we will disembark to begin our search for Marvella. Bayonne, so everyone says, is as English as Bristol. We have had it ever since Eleanor married King Henry II, except for a brief time when the French took it back during the long war, while I was away. Despite our people being thoroughly familiar with the area, they do not seem to be familiar with Ponte Marvella. No one knows where it is. The captain of this ship has heard of it, but he has never been there. Certain other of the travelers aboard have heard of it. They have never been there. Surely in one of the larger ports near the mountains, someone will know how we can reach the kingdom where my granddaughter must be, by now, a plump and contented matron. Unless she was long ago married off to some petty kinglet. I hadn't thought of that before! She may not be there at all! Well, if she is not, we will go where she is. I hope it may be by horseback or in a carriage. Otherwise, I must use the boots, and we are having such a sweet and gentle time without.