In Pursuit of the Green Lion (17 page)

“Oh, God help me,” she said to herself. The formless sobbing that perpetually echoed among the stones of the chapel ceased.

“Well, now you have something to weep about, too,” whispered the spiteful voice of the Weeping Lady.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
Sir Hugo dispatched Robert, all bathed and shining in new clothes, with two attendants in livery to Poultney Manor in Leicestershire, where Sir Walter de Broc had deposited his three unmarried daughters and youngest son for the summer. There they were to inspect the eldest, and best dowered, and if they found her suitable in visage and figure, to announce that Sir Hugo de Vilers was coming to arrange the terms of his marriage with her as soon as her father should return. They were to inform the family that should the financial arrangements prove satisfactory, Sir Hugo wished to proceed immediately with the betrothal and wedding, in accordance with his dying father’s wishes and his prior negotiations with Sir Walter last spring in Calais.

“Only fifteen and as pure as a lily, Robert, just think of it.” Hugo was acting love-smitten; he’d tucked a flower behind his ear, and was ordering up new hangings for the wedding bed.

“And beautiful, they say, too,” agreed Robert, who was always anxious to see what was new and female.

“Yes, and with a hundred acres settled on her, and bloodlines that can be traced for three centuries on both sides. Make no mistake about it, Robert: It’s a high marriage—one that might have escaped me, if not for our recent good fortune.”

Robert nodded agreeably. He thought Hugo meant the capture of the French knight, whose ransom he had sold to the King for an immense sum. He and Damien could settle down on it, even with the third they’d had to give to Hugo. The poor bastard had been hauled off in a cart with a half-dozen others in the same fix, stripped of his armor and stiff with the disgrace of it all. The King, of course, would resell the ransom to the man’s family at a steep markup. It was how he managed to live so well. War, after all, is just business carried on by other means.

“And just think, Margaret,” said Master Kendall’s ghost that evening, after the children were asleep. “Here I am, between heaven and earth for a bit of piracy and a few adventures between the sheets—long before I knew you, of course—and these fellows practice on a much larger scale than I ever dreamed of, and get blessed by the bishop for it into the bargain!” He was sitting on the edge of the bed, all smoky in a shaft of moonlight, while Margaret sobbed into her pillow.

“Quit being so gloomy, Margaret, and sit up. I want to show you the trick the money changers use—it’ll make you laugh.”

“How can you be so cheery when Gregory’s dead? You’re not nice at all,” came a muffled voice from the pillow.

“Dead? Who says he’s dead? Do sit up and let me show you the trick—I have to get you to do it, because I can’t lift anything, even a pebble, these days.”

“What do you mean, not dead?” and one eye turned up from the pillow to inspect the smoky form.

“Not dead is what I mean. He may be gone, but he’s not dead. I see everybody who comes through here, you know, on their way up or down, and he’s not among them. You were so concerned, I made inquiries—met a number of the fellows he went over with—all butchered quite awfully, trailing limbs, heads, that sort of thing. They haven’t seen him. Wherever he is, Margaret, he’s not dead. So now, sit up and try my game to please me.”

Margaret could feel the heaviness begin to lighten.

“You swear?” she said, sitting up.

“On my love for you,” said Master Kendall, and he looked so like his jaunty old self that Margaret had to smile.

“Now,” he said, “take that little bit of plaster, there on the floor, and pretend that it’s a false gold piece, and the little pebble there is real money. Slip the first up your sleeve—no, no, not that way, this way—yes, that’s it.” And as Margaret tried the trick out, she began to smile. How like Roger Kendall, who, live or dead, had the gift of being able to make people smile. I’ll never stop loving you, she thought as Master Kendall pronounced her fit to go into the money-changing trade, if she ever needed to.

“Pity you can’t get to London,”he said. “You could make inquiries of the returning knights and find out where he is.”

“But even if I knew, how would I raise a ransom? I haven’t a penny anymore.”

“Ha! And you won’t ever get it from Sir Hugo,” announced Roger Kendall. “He stands to inherit, the greedy dog, so he’d rather have things as they are. No, Margaret, you get to London, and I’ll show you where I have a bit laid by.”

“Laid by? It’s all with the Lombards, or spent on those nasty horses.”

“Oh no it’s not. What kind of merchant would I be if I trusted the world? Our house, the central part at any rate, is quite old. Built by a fellow called Aaron fil Isaac well over a hundred years ago, before the Jews were driven out of England. There’s an escape tunnel to the river no one knows about. And panels! Oh my, yes. A number of secret ones, and hidden hollow stones beneath the hearth, and all sorts of things like that. I’ve got gold and silver cached in them all. I died before I could tell you about them, though I always meant to. Get to London, and I’ll show you where it all is. After all, it won’t do me a spot of good anymore. And why should it be Hugo’s? He doesn’t deserve a penny.”

“That’s true. Just think, when Gregory told me what he thought of Hugo, long ago, I didn’t even understand him. Now I understand entirely too much.”

“Now I’ll just whisk off—I want to see if anything’s doing at Bedford. I never sleep anymore. Just imagine, bored in the day and all night as well! Now, you sleep properly so you can get your mind to working. You can get that ridiculous young man back, if you want him.”

“Want him, oh, God, want him!” Margaret leapt up for joy to embrace Master Kendall, temporarily forgetting his incorporeal state, and wound up freezing her face and arms.

“Oh, Margaret,” he said, looking at her tenderly as she shuddered and wiped off the spectral dampness, “you have no idea how much I regret not being warm anymore.”

C
ERTAIN KINDS OF THINGS
I can’t write down. One kind is the things that are too horrible to talk about, and the other is things I don’t remember. Now, when I lost Gregory, it was too horrible to talk about, and also I can’t remember much, either, because my mind was gone and I had dreams, waking and sleeping—dreadful dreams. I think I dreamed that Sir Hugo rode forth as a groom on a white steed, wearing new clothes and a hat with a peacock feather, after kneeling before his dying father for his blessing. He took with him hounds, attendants and gifts, and a snow-white mare with a gilt sidesaddle on which to bring back his bride. I dreamed that a great feast was prepared for her reception, not as great as if the house had not been in mourning, but great enough. As the pigs and sheep were brought in from the country and, with terrible screaming, made to give their lives for sausage and meat pies, I dreamed that I tended the shrunken shell of the old man that Hugo had left behind, and that he screamed as I changed the dressings. There was a time that I’d hated him, but it had passed by.

“God,” he whispered. “I scream like a woman. It’s the pain. It’s worn me down, and I die like this, instead of on the battlefield. Like a dog. In bed.”

“Lie still, and drink this,” I’d say, and he’d answer, “Horrible stuff. Tastes like the devils in hell brewed it,” in gasps, between sips.

Then, one time he looked at me with his eyes, his once terrible blue eyes, now all sunken in and rimmed with black, as if he were staring out of a cave.

“Save me,”he whispered.

“I’m doing my best. I’ve come with another poultice,” I said.

“No,” he answered. “Save me. Save me with the light in your hands, as you did Urgan.” Sweet Jesu, he’d seen. He’d known all along, and said nothing.

“The bone. You mended the bone and lifted the destrier. Mend me, mend me like that,” he whispered desperately, so that no one else in the hall could hear.

“The power’s not with me now,” I answered.

“You mean that you hate me,” he said with resignation. “It is fair. I did too much. I ask too much,” and he turned his face to the wall.

“No, no,” I said, pitying him so much that I could no longer hold back my secret. “The power can’t be used. I can’t call it up. It’s gone within, as it always does with me, to aid the child.”

He turned his face back and looked at me a long time.

“It’s true then. He did sleep with you after all. I thought he had, but he’d never say.”

“I love him, and I have his child.”

“Loved him, you mean.”

“No. Love. He’s not dead. I know it. He will come home to his child, and to me.”

“You are a fool; I misjudged you. Misjudged badly. I never took you for a lady, when I first saw you there in that rich man’s house. But now I see that you love nobly. Hopelessly, and without recourse. It proves your blood.”

I tell you, there are times even a pitiful half-dead man can make a woman furious. But it’s not nice to shout at sick people. So I said, “I swear it to you; he lives.”

“You’ve gone mad,” he answered, “but I wish to heaven it were true. Madness is more merciful than what I must suffer. If only God would take my life, instead of letting me know what I know.” And he moaned as I changed the poultice. “He’s gone; he’s dead. Are you too crazy to believe the truth?”

“You didn’t look hard enough. He’s alive.”

“Look? I didn’t look? You fool woman! What do you know? I tell you, I searched for days and nights. I went out with the heralds by torchlight, and turned over every corpse as they took down the coats of arms for the death-roll. Every face, every dark head, looking for his. I went through the smoking ruins of that city searching—searching and calling.”

“He’s captured then.”

“We’ve never had a ransom message. No man of rank can disappear without a corpse or a ransom notice.”

“He’s wounded then, and hiding.”

“Hiding? With the French? They’d as soon cut his throat, after what we did there. Make up your mind to it, woman. He’s dead and that child you carry is an orphan, God help it.”

“Never, I say.”

“Mad, completely mad. As I wish I were. My God, my God, he was the good son, and I never knew it until it was too late.” He clutched at my sleeve with his feeble hand. “Whatever you do,”he whispered, “don’t tell Hugo you’re pregnant. If I die, get away—get away from here before the child is born. Hide it. Hugo has become a wolf. The thought of money has turned his head. I know. I see everything clearly now. Too clearly, now that it is too late for anything but bitter repentance.”

“Bitter repentance, eh?” said Master Kendall’s ghost at midnight. “That’s cheap stuff. Pretty plentiful where I am now.” His airy voice drifted above the bed in the dark room. He chuckled softly. “In a way, I’m grateful God let me live long enough to mend my life. I met you, Margaret, and I’ve never repented of anything that came since—except that I had so little time at your side. Ah, me, so I do repent, after all. I repent for my greed at wanting you forever. But you need a live man, Margaret. You can’t make a life with only a cold ghost. Let us lay plans for your search.”

“Oh, Master Kendall, I’ve always been so grateful for your intelligence.” The filmy thing acted pleased—even in the darkness I could sense the movement.

“I may be dead,”he answered happily, “but I’m not stupid.”

But in the days that followed, while we awaited the bridal pair, old Sir Hubert did not die of his bitter regrets, but got better in spite of himself. His color turned from gray to a kind of pale ivory, and sometimes when the fever was up, you could see two hectic spots of red on his cheeks. When the horn sounded from the gate, he demanded to be propped up on pillows to greet the new bride, to the great joy of his steward and Broad Wat, as well as all the other folk of the manor. There was never a more beautiful pair, as they knelt before him for his blessing: Sir Hugo, radiant in strength and youth, beside his graceful, honey-haired young bride, the lady Petronilla.

I looked her over closely when we were introduced. Not a day of sorrow had ever marred her face. Her hair was bound up in thick coils under an exquisite translucent silk veil, held in place by a circlet of gold. She had blue-gray eyes with pale lashes; her nose was straight, with a bit of a turned up tip. Her features were even, and she had a hint of brown in her silky complexion, for she loved the hunt and all out-of-door sports. Her riding was legendary, as was her prowess with the short bow and arrow. Gossip had it that she could sing and play the psaltery. I do admire the sound of the psaltery. Perhaps we’d get along. After all, it was a lonely business, being the sole lady. Two can do a lot more than one.

Her hands were covered with rings, sometimes two on a finger, and she fluttered them when she talked, so that the stones would catch the light. Her kirtle was of deep blue silk, bound at the edge with gold, and her surcoat a rich crimson, embroidered with flowers and curious beasts in gold and silver thread. She knew how to walk with mincing steps in that special way that showed off her trailing train and the tiny slippers that peeped from beneath her hem.

I had seen her lean to Hugo and heard her whisper, “Who is that?” as she looked across the room at me, where I stood with Cecily and Alison in the crowd of well-wishers and retainers. Somehow her glance told me that I was too old, too plain, and too thin with grief.

“May I introduce you, dear one, to Dame Margaret, my brother’s widow,” said Hugo, leading her forward by a single finger held high. The silk in her gown rustled as she moved gracefully toward me. She wore a lot of jewels. She had a great gold cross, set with rubies, and a gold chain, and yet another chain of worked gold set with pearls. I don’t care to wear jewels, myself. They’re cold and hard and get in the way—even if they do look elegant. I wear just two rings. The narrow, plain band of gold engraved with the de Vilers arms that was my wedding ring from Gregory, and Master Kendall’s wide one, which is worked in flowers and leaves, and has
Omnia vincit amor
engraved on the inside. They’re both from somewhere else. Gregory’s was from his mother, and when his father produced it at the wedding, Gregory shouted at him for robbing his mother’s corpse, and it delayed the proceedings considerably. Master Kendall’s was made up for some mistress, I suspect, but either he thought better of it or she threw him over—because there it was, all fancy and ready made when he proposed to me unexpectedly. I’ve shifted it to the other hand, but I’d never take it off. And then there’s my cross, of course. It’s very old and comes from beyond the sea, and has very strange properties.