In Pursuit of the Green Lion (19 page)

“Mother Sarah, the girls?”

“Oh, mistress, right there in the corner, playing with dolls.”

“I don’t see them.”

“Oh, my good mistress, they’re gone!” And so we hunted high and low, but without success until the forenoon. As the trestle tables were being laid out for dinner, I found them upstairs, strangely well washed on the hands and face. The front of Alison’s dress was sopping wet.

“What on earth are you doing? Where have you been?”

“Washing,” said Cecily. “Alison’s dress was all sticky, so we washed it.”

“Yes—icky, icky, sticky. All washed now,” chanted Alison.

“And just what
made
it that way?” But I had only just asked when three blasts from the horn at the gate announced a visitor—a visitor of high degree.

“Oh, Mama, let’s see!” cried Cecily, rather as if to distract me, as I recalled later. And since I no longer needed to rush to the hall door to greet visitors, we all hastened to the window seats above the main entrance to peek out.

It was an astonishing procession that crossed the courtyard. Foreigners—wealthy pilgrims, I imagine, on the way from one of the northern ports to Canterbury, which is where all the foreign pilgrims want to go. There were twenty outriders, all in the same scale mail and black and silver surcoats, embroidered with a device no one recognized. The first two carried black pennons, with three swans worked on them in silver. In the midst of the riders was a beautiful wagon, such as a queen might ride in, pulled by four black horses, two of them ridden by boys in the same black livery. The wheels, the body, and the broad hoops that held the stretched hide cover, now partially rolled back to admit the golden autumn sun, were all elaborately carved and brightly painted with flowers and vines. Beside the wagon rode a Dominican on a little bay cob, his hood thrown back to reveal his aquiline features and tonsured skull.

But in the wagon, that was the amazing sight. Four women were seated on a pair of high benches behind the driver and grooms. Two of them were very elegant, in a foreign sort of way, dressed in strangely cut gowns of gray and black, all trimmed with something that seemed to shine in the distance, and only a bit dusty from the trip. Their high headdresses bobbed as they gossiped with one another, not paying the slightest attention to their surroundings. But on the foremost seat, that was the strangest sight of all. The first woman, from her simple clothes, was a nursemaid, who held on her lap a little black-haired child, possibly two years old, with a fat face, all swathed in a black and silver embroidered garment such as I have never yet seen on a child. But the other woman, she was enough to make your mouth fall open with astonishment. She was dressed all in black, from her head to her toes. Black, with the swans all worked in silver on her bosom, and a black foreign headdress from which a black silk veil enveloped her head and shoulders, and floated behind her too. Even seen from the upper window, the color of her face was unusual. White, white as milk against all that blackness. And beautiful. Perfect and all frozen still, like the face of an ancient statue. She sat as straight as a swordblade on that bench, looking neither left nor right. A queen. She must be a foreign queen, and those her ladies.

We didn’t want to miss a thing, so we hurried downstairs to see her enter and be greeted by the new mistress. Lady Petronilla bowed low before her as she offered the hospitality of the house.

“Welcome to the hospitality of Brokesford Manor, great lady. We are honored by your presence. My husband and lord, Sir Hugo de Vilers, is out hunting, but will be back very soon to greet you in the manner deserved by your high degree.” Lady Petronilla’s French was not her strong point. It was harshly accented and mixed with many English words, for she had not been raised at court or tutored abroad or in a convent.

“Sir Hugo de Vilers? Your husband?” the lady said blandly, without changing her expression in the least.

“Yes, we were wed this week past.”

“Just this week past? My, such a little time,” and I sensed the strangeness in her even tone.

She wrinkled up her nose as she stepped from the bright sun into the shadowy hall. She rolled her great brown eyes when she saw the hams and sides of venison hanging from the rafters in the smoke from the fire in the center of the Great Hall.

“English,” I could hear her say softly to herself in French, in a soft, rolling accent I couldn’t quite place. I was nearly behind her, crowded out and unnoticed in the little ceremony. “Savages all,” she whispered as she smiled at her hostess, showing her lovely even little white teeth, like a baby’s set in pink gums. Lady Petronilla simpered at her, suddenly looking coarse and luridly colored beside the dark stranger. The dark lady took a step—and the fabulously jeweled and worked silver and gold necklaces and bracelets she wore tinkled like little bells.

“My father-in-law is convalescing from a wound and could not stand to greet you, but I will present you to him now,” said Lady Petronilla, and took the dark lady behind the screen, where I could not see what was going on. When the two ladies emerged, the stranger was offered the seat of honor, which she took.

“I will await Sir Hugo here,” she said in her strange accent, with perfect calm and self-possession. The nurse sat on a nearby bench, while the fat baby sucked contentedly on a sugar-tit. Every so often the nurse would grab the ragged end of the sugar-tit to keep him from swallowing it entirely. He was an unusual-looking child—vast and peaceful, with rolls of fat around his wrists and his little bare ankles. He had thick, raven black hair like his mother, and milky white skin and great brown eyes, bigger than a calf’s, it seemed to me. When he crowed, you could see lovely light pink gums, and a set of four tiny, pearly little teeth. He was as indulged as the prince of Perse, and looked benignly at the world as his nurse chucked his fat chins and jiggled him about, constantly murmuring a stream of endearments to him in a foreign tongue. He even had on a tiny necklace and locket and little tinkling bracelets of his own, and it pleased him to wave them and hear the sound.

“Mama, we want a baby like that,” whispered Cecily. “All fat and beautiful.” The dark lady overheard her whisper, and turned and nodded graciously to Cecily, never losing for a moment her erect and queenly posture.

The sound of the hounds, the clatter of hooves, and the jingle of harness announced Sir Hugo’s return, even before a huge buck, legs tied to a pole and head dangling, was brought into the hall for display. Hugo came bounding up the steps and through the door at the head of his companions, only to stop dead at the sight of the dark lady seated at the center of the hall. He staggered slightly, and turned white as a fair linen napkin, before his wife addressed him and he recovered himself.

“My lord husband, a noble visitor is come within our gates; the lady Giuseppina, Marquesa di Montesarchio, who is mistress of wide estates in far places,” she said in French, with her nose all pinched. Without a sign of agitation, Sir Hugo offered her the hospitality of the house once again, and enquired her business.

“I travel to fulfill a most sacred vow of pilgrimage made by my late uncle on behalf of my father in his last illness. I have already prostrated myself before the holy martyr on his behalf, and for the soul of my lord and husband so recently deceased. But as for the rest of my business, that, you know full well,” responded the lady very formally, in her sweet-sounding, rolling, accented French. She looked as if she were an empress, there in the Sieur de Vilers’s great chair, and Sir Hugo a petitioning peasant.

“But I have come too late, it seems, to remind you of your betrothal vows.” There was shock and agitation in the hall. Lady Petronilla’s eyes opened wide in shock, and she put her hand to her face. After all, betrothal is as serious as marriage—it takes an act of the Church to undo, even if it’s only a few words spoken in private, as a prelude to a conquest. Two betrothals, and one not undone? Lady Petronilla’s marriage might well be judged a bigamous union—invalid. Sir Hugo was stock-still, but his eyes searched the assembled faces rapidly, and caught the look on his bride’s face.

“Lady,” said Sir Hugo coolly, “great as you are, you appear to have made a mistake. I do not know you. I have never had the pleasure of intimate acquaintance with any foreign Marquesa.”

“Then you deny that this child is your son?”

“Absolutely—why, look at how dark he is. He certainly isn’t one of ours. Why, for all I know, he isn’t even a boy, with those big eyes, all swaddled up like that. I cannot imagine your reason for so disturbing my bride, most exalted lady, but that child is certainly none of my getting.”

The lady’s eyes narrowed, almost imperceptibly, but the iron control of her beautiful white face never slipped.

From behind the screen there was groaning, as the old lord heard the exchange of words and asked to see what was going on. Four men moved the huge carved wooden screen, and pulled back the bed curtains to reveal the skeletal figure of the old lord, dressed only in the napkin wrapped around his head and heaped with fur coverlets.

“Ask them to strip the child and bring it here,” whispered the old lord to Broad Wat, who repeated it aloud. The dark lady raised a finger, and the nurse removed several layers of embroidered garments. The baby acted pleased to have them gone, and waved his fat arms and legs, crowing with joy. You could see he was most certainly a boy. And he had an odd dark birthmark just below the navel.

“A fine boy, madame,” whispered the old lord as the child was displayed to him. “One that could be nourished with honor in any knight’s house.” The words were repeated to the dark lady, who nodded in acknowledgment. “Ask Hugo,” he whispered in English to Broad Wat, “if he still denies all, having seen the birthmark.” The old man was so weak, his lips barely moved.

“Why, Father,” replied Hugo in that language, so the dark lady would not understand, “how could you? Of course I do! When would I have ever stooped to betrothal to get any woman I wanted into my bed? I’ve never seen this woman. And as for the birthmark, there’s lots of those in the world. A woman eats some tainted meat, or too many dried mushrooms, or gets a fright while carrying the child, and there it is. She ate too much—that’s why it’s got the mark, and is so fat. And besides, women have no seed, so the child takes the father’s image—and look at that child. Its father was a dark man, as you can plainly see.” He spoke rapidly, nervously—as much to his bride as to his father.

The dark lady, never rising from her seat, inspected the little scene from a distance. Then, as if she had made up her mind about something, she spoke suddenly, in a clear, strong voice. All heads turned her way.

“Are you prepared to swear, Sir Hugo de Vilers, that this child is none of yours, and that you were never betrothed to me?”

“Why—why, yes,” said Hugo, looking around the room like a trapped hare.

“Good,” she said. “You have settled everything. Fra Antonio, bring the box and the paper.” She stood up and bowed before a little gold reliquary with a peaked roof, all richly decorated, that the Dominican had produced. Then she kissed it and took it from his hands, extending it toward Hugo.

“Put your hand on this, and swear what you have said before these people.”

Sir Hugo’s knees trembled slightly, and his voice shook as he placed his hand on the little box, and Fra Antonio, seated at the unset table dormant, took down his words on the paper.

“I, Sir Hugo de Vilers,” he said in a voice higher than usual, “have never sworn betrothal with this strange lady, the lady Giuseppina who is Marquesa di Montesarchio, and I deny that I am the father of the child that she brings with her and calls her son.”

“Good,” the lady said. “Have him sign and seal it with his ring, Fra Antonio. Witnesses?” And two of her men, still in armor, stepped forward to make their marks beneath Fra Antonio’s neat signature. Everyone in the room was as still as death.

“The box, good lady,” asked the lady Petronilla. “Just what was in it?”

“A splinter of the True Cross, Madame de Vilers,” said the dark lady, as she signaled her men to prepare to leave. Lady Petronilla smirked, then begged to be allowed to kiss the box.

“Of course, dear lady,” said the marquesa. “Sir Hugo,” she announced to the stricken looking knight. “You have freed me. I go now to unite my lands and life with a greater lord than you will ever be. Remember, in the future, that fate does not always scorn a woman without fortune.” She turned to address the company.

“We will not stay the night here. We go to the hospitality of the Austins at Wymondley and then home. I will never again set foot on this miserable, barbaric island.” Her men and priest assembled, she walked to the door, her jewels tinkling, followed by the nurse and the baby. Then she turned suddenly, and stretched out a hand. I was beginning to understand that the dark lady was a mistress of the dramatic gesture, so I knew what was coming. So did everybody else.

“And you, Sir Hugo de Vilers,” she said, pointing her finger at him, “take my curse with you to the grave: May your marriage bed be forever filled with abominations.”And she departed, as folk clustered at the door to see the rattling wagon disappear on the dusty road.

As for me, as I watched the folk all standing and staring, I knew suddenly what I had to do. As quietly as could be I slipped away from the commotion, leading my girls by the hand upstairs, where I grabbed our cloaks and put a few things in the bosom of my gown. Then, swiftly and silently, we made our way down the rickety wooden stairs from the back of the tower and through the unattended sally port, to hurry across the meadow to meet the dark lady on her way to the Augustinians at Wymondley.

If we had not known the short way to meet her at a bend in the road by Sir John’s woods, we would have had to tramp all day to the monastery. Of course, even with the short walk, Cecily got a stone in her shoe, and Alison whined to be carried, though she is much too large. Then she fell to exaggerated limping, in imitation of her sister, and groaning—although I have seen her run all day in play, and never sit down once. Luckily it was not long before we had cut ahead of the road, and scrambled down a steep incline just in time to meet the dark lady’s slow-moving outriders and wagon. They halted, and I ran up to the wagon and begged her: “For the love of our Blessed Mother, good lady, take us with you as far as London.”