In Pursuit of the Green Lion (45 page)

“These are indeed Hebrew letters,” said Abraham. “But I will need to be paid in advance.”

“I can’t let the book go. Will you translate it in my presence?” Brother Malachi’s voice was unusually controlled, considering the state of high excitement he was in.

Abraham the tailor took the book and they sat together at the broad table on which he did his cutting.

“Let me see—hmm.” He turned the pages carefully. He sighed. He looked again. He sighed another time, a long, resigned sigh.

“In my opinion, this book is a fraud,” he said.

“What do you mean, a fraud?” Brother Malachi was agitated.

“Whoever wrote it didn’t know any Hebrew. They just put down letters any way it suited them.” He looked at Brother Malachi’s face. The man looked as if he’d been struck by lightning. “Still, the illuminations are very nicely done,” he added consolingly.

“But—but couldn’t it be a corrupted text—or perhaps a code—a cypher?” Brother Malachi’s world was dissolving around him.

“A corrupted text would have meaningless words that had been miscopied mixed in among words with meaning. Here, there is not a syllable of meaning anywhere.” Abraham pointed with a callused finger to the rows of letters on the page. His eyes missed nothing as he watched grief and shock alternate on Brother Malachi’s face.

“But a cypher?” Malachi scrabbled for a last word of hope.

“Well, who knows? Perhaps it is. But large numbers of letters aren’t even correctly written. See this one here? It’s as if you wrote an
m
with five humps—and over there, three, and then again four. This leads me to think that the person who wrote it didn’t know what he was doing.”

“But the diagrams—the squares, the pentacles?” Brother Malachi sounded desperate now. They all do, thought Abraham. It’s so sad, letting them down gently. No wonder no one but me is willing to do it. I’m becoming a specialist in the art.

“I will transliterate the letters. Perhaps then you will find a clue to another language—one which I do not know.”

Brother Malachi put his elbows on the table; he buried his face in his hands.

“A fake—a fraud. Who would have thought it? Me, of all people, taken in by a fraudulent bunch of paper. Still, it has a kind of justice in it. God must have willed it.”

“Why do you say that?” asked Abraham, who had rarely seen any of them take the news this calmly. So many of them became dangerous at this point.

“Because of my business—hm—my former business, I mean, before I became a wool merchant, that is.”

“And what was that?”

“I sold indulgences,” said Brother Malachi, and then he looked at the beautiful book and began to laugh. Abraham’s eyes glittered with the irony of it, and he began to laugh too.

Malachi laughed even harder, until the tears stood in his eyes and his breath came in sobs. It felt almost like crying, but of course it was much better than weeping. And as Malachi laughed, Abraham laughed harder too. Life had not been all that easy for him in Avignon either.

“Thank you,” said Brother Malachi as he wiped his eyes.

“Thank you,” said Abraham the tailor, doing the same. “Do you want the transliteration now?”

“Can I come back tomorrow? I need to walk about and think a bit,” said Brother Malachi.

“Of course,” said Abraham. But the false wool merchant had already tucked the volume into his bosom and left with his head bowed down.

“Too bad,” said Abraham the Jew. “There must be hundreds of those things floating about the world, and somehow they all end up here.”

T
HE PSEUDO WOOL MERCHANT
, hands behind his back and head sunk low, wandered for a considerable time until he emerged from the maze of narrow alleys into the tiny, cobblestoned square before the massive Gothic portals of the church of St. Pierre. There in the jostling crowd emerging from the dark interior of the church, he saw a comfortable looking older woman in pilgrim’s garb, escorted by a bored looking little boy. Even from the back, the figure was familiar.

“Hilde, Hilde, wait!” called the wool merchant, and she turned. She had spent the morning walking all over town; she had visited six churches as well as the cave where the most blessed Saint Martha, hostess of Our Lord, had dwelt with her servant Marcella when she preached the Gospel and conquered the dragon with holy water. She was still in a dazzle with the grandeur, the gold and incense, the high shadowy vaults where God so obviously dwelt, and the multitude of enshrined relics. Kneebones, fingerbones, skulls, fragments of cloth and vials of blood—even the very girdle with which Saint Martha had bound the dragon—they’d all moved her to tears. She’d had such a lovely time envisioning the martyrs they’d belonged to and dabbing at her eyes, her heart was all full of it. It had been an absolutely ecstatic morning, one of the few she’d treated herself to in many days of being shut inside helping Margaret.

At the cry, she looked up and waved. Then she said something to the restive little boy, and he sped off in the opposite direction more swiftly than a bolt sent from a crossbow.

“Hilde, I’ve been gulled.” Brother Malachi was puffing as he caught up with her. “Can you believe it? Me? Of all people.”

“Surely not, Malachi, you’re very clever.”

“Not this time. I tell you, that Thomas always had it in for me. Jealous, he was, because I was farther along than he was. He’d never even got as far as the dragon. I told him he was going in the wrong direction, and he said I was trying to trick him into failure, so I could keep the gold for myself. I imagine he died laughing, after he’d signed the will leaving me this thing. ‘If I can’t have it, neither can he—I’ll send him off on a hunt he won’t come back from.’ I’m just lucky he didn’t make it up in Egyptian, I suppose.”

“He may have been a friend, Malachi, and been fooled himself.”

“Him? Not likely. Did I tell you about the time he visited my lab-oratorium and dropped some powder out of his sleeve into all my experimental vessels? Turned everything green—ruined six months of work. And to top it off, he confided he’d seen the Peacock’s Tail, which was entirely untrue. Made me morose for weeks.”

“Morose? Oh, Malachi, you’re not morose. It’s not in your character.”

“Not since I found you, O Jewel of My Existence. It is impossible to be morose in the presence of your lovely self and that marvelous onion pie that only you can make so well.”

“Oh, Malachi, you are so brilliant and genial.” Mother Hilde took the wool merchant’s arm as they strolled beneath the new-leafed trees. “I’m very lucky that some other woman didn’t make you onion pie first.”

“It would have been imperfect, Hilde. No, I was looking for the perfect onion pie and the perfect woman. With whom else could I share my life? Still, I am very sorry to have brought you on this wild-goose chase.”

“Sorry? Malachi, I’ve always wanted to travel. Without you, where would I have ever been, except the village where I was born? And now—why, we live in London! I’ve met princes, dukes, counts—even though that last one wasn’t much, I must say. And look in here—” She opened her pilgrim’s wallet. It was full of pressed tin pilgrim’s badges from the shrines she’d visited. There were pebbles and little pottery vials of this and that, all stoppered with wax. “See those? When I was a girl, Malachi, I’d see the pilgrims ride by, with their badges on their hats, and I’d be envious. They’ve
been
somewhere, I’d say to myself. Now I’ve been somewhere too. How amazing. After enough life for two women, I have another. A life of travel and adventure with the cleverest man in the whole world. I don’t understand why you’re sorry about that.”

As she spoke Brother Malachi’s face began to relax. It regained its normal pinkness, and the deep lines started to fade away.

“Hilde, I’ll make it all up to you. We’ll go back. I’ve learned a lot on this trip, though not from that wretched book. I’ve a new idea I’ll set to work on. You’ll see. Someday, I’ll make you rich beyond your dreams.”

“Malachi,” she said, smiling at the everlasting optimism that always made him seem so eternally youthful, “I already am that way.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

H
E’S FEELING LOW, MALACHI, I CAN TELL.” I’d been hanging out the window, trying to catch the spring sun on my face. The heat had come early, making the room under the eaves stifling. I was crazy with being inside too long, doing little but listening to Gregory’s gasping breath, or the strange words he said when his mind was wandering. So when I saw Malachi puffing up the outside stair to the garret room, I was ready to burst for wanting to tell him my idea.

“Low?” Even Malachi had to duck when he crossed the threshold to the little room. “You’re worried about him feeling low? He’s alive! If that isn’t sufficient cause for rejoicing, I don’t know what is!” He glanced briefly at the sleeping figure on the bed. “In the meanwhile, I worry about serious things, such as the fact we haven’t money or means to get home again. But am I low? No! My brain is churning with plans. I occupy myself with useful thoughts. And it’s me that ought to be low! I deserve to be low, and lie in bed all day with people worrying about me and offering me wine and fruit. My book, my wonderful treasure that sent me off on this foolish chase, is a worthless forgery. Just tell me what else could make a sensitive soul like mine lower?”

There’s no dealing with Brother Malachi in a mood like this, you just have to distract him.

“Brother Malachi, I need your help. Hilde and I had an idea, and we’re going shopping. But we need an expert like you to assist us.”

“Don’t think to distract me with that sly, flattering tone, Margaret. Where did you get any money, besides what you gave over to me?”

“I sold a few things I didn’t want.”

“What—?” He scrutinized me closely, to see what was missing.

“I want to buy him a present. He needs a book.”

“Margaret, I see your hood’s missing, but that won’t buy a book.”

“It’s summer. We’ll be leaving soon, and I don’t need it.”

“What else, you foolish woman?”

“Those nasty mourning clothes. I mended them and sold them. Everyone needs mourning clothes, it’s the plague season. Everybody except me. I’m not sad anymore. They fetched a good price—that horrible lilac water smell made them seem more genteel. Ugh. Lilac water.” I couldn’t help shuddering.

“Tsk, tsk. You’re shuddering, Margaret,” Malachi remarked. “You’ve been rather hasty in divesting yourself of clothing, I fear. But I can tell from your face you’ve gone behind my back. What else did you sell?”

“Just the horse litter.”

“Just the—what? And, pray, how do you think to get him home again without it?”

“He’ll ride when we leave, Malachi, because he’ll be well. Once he gets his spirits back, he won’t do anything
but
ride.”

Brother Malachi shook his head. “Margaret, you are a hopeless dreamer and a madwoman. The fever comes and goes; he still hallucinates, and when he’s himself, he’s become so morose, he doesn’t speak. So with the harebrained notion you’ll cure him with a book, you have stripped yourself of your last worldly goods. Consider this: You have grown as large as a small mountain. Shouldn’t you have better bought a cradle and swaddling clothes?”

“That’s why I need you to help me find the book. It has to be just right. See? Here’s Hilde back again, so we can go.” Indeed, Mother Hilde had returned with a bucket of water. Setting it beside the bed, she felt Gregory’s forehead where he slept, his eyes all sunken in, and wrung out a towel in the cold water. Laying it across his forehead, she motioned Sim to sit with him and renew the towel when it was needed. Sim nodded, but I could see he took it ill that we were going out when he had to stay.

The wonderful early April sunshine brightened the whole world. Spring comes so soon in the south. It’s really more like summer with us. High white clouds floated in the blue sky. The towers of the papal palace shone like the blessed Jerusalem itself. Below it, the narrow streets were crowded with fruit and flower vendors, strollers, and the grandees with which this town abounds.

“Oh, Malachi, look,” cried Mother Hilde. “Who is that? The Pope?” A score of outriders were pushing aside the crowds to make room for an elaborate gilded horse litter to pass. In it sat an elderly gentleman, all dressed in silk like the King of Heaven, sniffing at a pomander to keep the street smell from him. From the hounds and horses and members of his household in livery that accompanied him, he looked like a very great lord indeed. Behind his mounted escort came a half-dozen heavily draped mule litters, and a train of sumpter mules and attendants of all description, on foot and mounted. It was a most sumptuous procession; everyone had stopped to gawk.

“No, it’s a cardinal,” said Brother Malachi. “You can tell by the coat of arms. He must be removing his household to his summer palace in the Venaissin, now that heat has brought the season of illness to the town.”

“Malachi, look at the woman.”

“Margaret, I thought you knew enough not to be shocked by a little thing like—oh, my goodness—” Brother Malachi had seen what I had seen. Riding in the gay cavalcade in a covered mule litter with the cardinal’s coat of arms displayed in the gilt carving was a woman. The curtains of the litter had been tied back to give her air. She was all blond and white, glittering with jewels and clutching two tiny white lapdogs. Behind her ran two little black boys in turbans and a half-dozen liveried footmen. I stared like a fool, then smiled and waved, because I just couldn’t help it. She turned her head—she’d seen me, but she didn’t nod in acknowledgment. She’d fixed her gaze straight ahead, so that everyone could admire her profile and jeweled headdress. It was Cis.

“Well, well,” said Brother Malachi. “Isn’t the world full of strange things? Here, Margaret. Take my arm over these cobblestones—you must admit you’ve become totally unwieldy lately. Who’d have ever thought that a slender young thing such as you used to be would become unable to see her own toes?”

“That is the usual occurrence in this state, Malachi dear,” observed Mother Hilde. “Your mind has been just too occupied to notice before.”

“Indeed, Hilde, I defer to your greater wisdom in this area of expertise. Do they all get as large as Margaret here?”

“Larger,” she answered.

A woman pressed by us with a large basket of strawberries on her head.

“Oh, strawberries!” I cried. “Where on earth did she get them in this season? I could eat the whole basket. I must have some.”

“First garlic, then dandelion greens, and now there’s no end to it. Oh, the ceaseless demands of women! Margaret, you must restrain these mad appetites, or you’ll give the baby a birthmark.”

“Malachi—” Mother Hilde pulled at his sleeve. “I’d like some too. It’s been so long—” So while we waited in the shade of the cool stone arch of a long arcade, Brother Malachi pursued the woman, returning, all out of breath, with the entire basket.

“I hope this satisfies you greedy ladies; now we’ll all be covered with blotches.”

But soon enough, strawberries and all, he had brought us to the Street of Studies, where stood the shop of one of the numerous literary entrepreneurs of Avignon. This one was the best and the largest, he’d explained. The proprietor had his own scriptorum, and rented books to the masters of the university, as well as providing for sale fair copies of all the most fashionable and scholarly works, both newly made and previously owned. The presence of the papacy had made Avignon the most cultured city in Christendom, full of illuminators, painters, and masters of fair writing of every sort. We passed the rows of desks for the full-time copyists of the scriptorum, the displays of pens and paper, and stood before the wide, slanted shelves on which the finished books were laid flat for display. The man took no chances; the precious things were chained to the shelves. Many were too wide and heavy for me to lift anyway; some were fabulously bound and decorated. Too expensive, I thought, and looked for the plainer ones. The proprietor, sensing our lack of respectability from the basket of strawberries, hovered immediately behind us.

“You wished?” he said in Latin to Brother Malachi. He had dark, close-trimmed hair with a scholar’s tonsure, and a long, expressive olive-skinned face.

“I want to buy a book.” I spoke to him directly in the French of the north. Switching to that language, he addressed Brother Malachi in response.

“You want to buy a book?”

“She wants to buy a book,” responded Brother Malachi. “I am merely here to help.”

“I want to buy a book for a present,” I said to the man.

“She wishes to buy a book for a present?” the man asked Brother Malachi, as if he were a translator, and women’s words needed to be decoded by him before they could be understood by another man. I was surveying the books. The fatter ones, even plainly bound, looked too expensive. I’d try the thin ones that looked well thumbed. The first was in Latin.

“That’s a theological tract about damnation, Margaret,” said Brother Malachi in English. “I don’t think he’d like it.” I looked at another. The undecorated calfskin binding looked well worn. The lines inside were short, as if they were poetry. It wasn’t Latin.

“This one’s poetry?” I asked. It was the thinnest of all. Sold from an estate, perhaps, or by a student who needed passage money home. I might get a bargain. Besides, Gregory liked poetry, or at least he had liked poetry.

The man burst into a flood of Latin at Brother Malachi. He waved his arms. He rolled his eyes.

“The man says, Margaret, that this is the work of the divine Petrarch, whom he knows personally. He himself is a passionate devotee of the muses, and has captured the most subtle sensations of passion in his own poetry, which was nurtured and encouraged by the great Petrarch himself, at whose feet he sat. He says if you like Petrarch’s sonnets, you’ll adore his, which he’ll sell us even cheaper.” Brother Malachi spoke the French of the north, so that all parties in the negotiation would be aware of what he said.

“Ask him,” I answered in that same language, “just how long he sat at the feet of this Petrarch.” Though the man heard everything, Brother Malachi again had to translate from the female. At length the man responded to Brother Malachi, waving his arms and gesticulating passionately.

“I pursued him. Like the shy roe deer, he vanished. At his inn, surrounded by worshipers, he disappeared out the back door. ‘My poems!’ I cried as he lowered himself secretly from the back window at midnight, ‘you must read them! Tell me, great master, should I pursue my course?’ ‘Pursue!’ he cried as he fled on horseback. So I pursued. Soon I had several slim volumes. My love poetry. My odes. My epic, on the taking of Constantinople. And I knew where to find him. He’d hidden in Vaucluse. I made a pilgrimage to his shrine. What divine simplicity! Like the ancient Romans! He lived alone with a dog. I knocked at the door. ‘My God, not you again!’ he cried. That is how I knew the light of my rising sun had dazzled him beyond measure. ‘My poetry,’ I cried. ‘Read my poetry. You must tell me what you think of it.’ He had to read, though I could see how it pained him to see how he’d been surpassed. ‘These love poems,’ he admitted grudgingly, ‘they’re—unique.’ ‘My odes?’ I queried. ‘Even more unique.’ Ah! Even the greatest minds must wrestle with the serpent of jealousy. But he, the great man, the genius, overcame it! ‘And my epic?’ I asked. ‘The most unique of all.’ ‘Bless you, bless you, maestro!’ I kissed his hands and feet. I fled in rapture, taking my poems with me, so that he could not steal the ideas.”

“How can you sit at feet that are running, Malachi?” I asked in English.

“Now, Margaret. Don’t be saucy,” answered Brother Malachi in that same language.

“Ask him, Brother Malachi,” I resumed in French, “whether, since Petrarch has been surpassed by himself, wouldn’t he give me a bargain on this outmoded old fellow—say, less than his own book, which is so much better?”

“Margaret—” Brother Malachi cautioned. “You go too far.”

The man rolled his eyes up to heaven. Tears appeared in them. “Tell her,” he said, “it is the greatest tragedy of my life that my poetry is not more widely recognized. If I were not trying to build my world renown, I would not be offering it to foreigners at a discount.”

“Tell him,” I said as I dabbed artistically at my eyes with my sleeve, “that my poor husband lies so ill that only poetry can console him, but that he is so weak that if he reads the most powerful poetry first, he might be carried off by emotions. However, if he begins with the feebler verse, he can build his strength to the point that he can absorb the greater work without danger. So he should sell me the Petrarch for less, so I can return for his own work later.”

“Tell her I’ll give it at the same price, no less.” Brother Malachi, of course, had no time to tell anybody anything.

“Done,” I said. And the man said to Brother Malachi, “Tell her I’m a fool, and my tiny babies will starve.”

“Tell him the tiny babies of a great soul never starve.”

“Hilde, Margaret.” Brother Malachi turned to us, and his face was shining. “I’ve just thought of how we can get home.”

S
IM HAD EVERY INTENTION
of staying at first. Even though it was disgusting how Margaret made over this worthless fellow, he had gone and given his promise to her. The man had done nothing but lie around for weeks, unutterably dull, doing little more than breathing. Some nights he would rouse with a start, open his eyes, and scream as if he saw horrible things; then he was at least interesting, if somewhat dangerous, since he might start trying to fight off the things or claw them off himself, leaving his own skin bleeding.

But awake, that was the worst of all. The fellow was a veritable cloud of gloom. He didn’t even take pleasure in Sim’s lovely new acquisitions, which lay, with shining crowns and hollow eye-sockets, all well polished upon the long bench with which the room was furnished.

“I’ve seen enough of you old fellows,” Gregory would mutter when he opened his eyes and spied the skulls there. “It’s poor conversationalists you’ve been all these weeks. Must you follow me about, staring so? I’ll be in your company soon enough.” Trapped all afternoon with this bore, Sim thought, as he went to look out the window.