In Pursuit of the Green Lion (46 page)

Three floors below, in the courtyard of the Tête du Maure, he spied something wonderful. There, right at the stable door, was a man putting away his horse. Behind him were two greyhounds. And at his side, on a leash connected to a collar with little bells, was an ape. A real Barbary ape with a hairy body and long leathery hands and feet.

“Where’s
he from?”
Sim’s voice was full of admiration as he prepared to rush down to the courtyard. Then he remembered his promise. “Look after” doesn’t mean “look at,” now, does it? he reasoned to himself. They’ll be mad if he charges around and breaks things, thought Sim. So he changed the towel as insurance against that unlikely event, and then tied the sleeping figure’s hands stoutly together with the rope from the packsaddles, knotting the loose ends to the bed frame.

“With any luck, you won’t wake up,” he addressed the sleeping body. “And if you do, you won’t be running around and getting hurt. And I’ll be back long before then, anyway. They’ll never know. So we’re square, aren’t we? I’ve looked after you fine, Sir Gloomy.” And he sped downstairs in great bounds like a hare.

Gregory might not have awakened if a devil had not chosen to sit on his chest. It was big and gray and shapeless, and so heavy, he couldn’t breathe very well. Get off, he said in his mind, but the thing wouldn’t budge, even when he tried desperately to suck in air. It smelled bad, too, like rotten grave clothes. He tried to push it off, but found his hands were paralyzed. He began to scream and writhe, but he couldn’t move. He opened his eyes wide and looked all about the room for help. Not a soul there. Margaret had left him. He always knew that she would. And the devil; it was so heavy, crushing his life out.

“So be it,”he whispered, and turned his face to the wall. But even as he did it he could hear the click of the latch and the sound of the door swinging open. Curiosity had always been the most powerful impulse within him. “I’ll die later,” he murmured to himself. “First I’ll see who it is.” The devil seemed rather translucent; he could see right through it now, and as he watched the figure come through the door, the gray thing seemed to fade and go, as if it had never been there at all. The air felt good. He took big breaths as he stared at the stranger who’d entered.

The man seemed a pleasant enough sort of fellow, not that much older than Gregory, with a beard trimmed short and hair he’d let go a bit too long—probably to save money, judging by his clothes. He had on a physician’s gown and hat, but both were rather too well worn. Gregory could detect several very neatly made patches, almost invisible, on the most threadbare stretches of the gown. He smiled. Without a doubt, someone Margaret had found. She hadn’t left him after all. She’d gone to get a doctor. She did have a gift for making friends of the shabbier sort. She’d probably traded something, or begged him to come. She didn’t have the money for a successful doctor. He could sense the stranger inspecting him with his dark, whimsical eyes.

“Margaret sent you, didn’t she?” Gregory asked.

“Well, she asked me to come, yes—but I really came because you called. You needed me to come.” He sat down on the bed, as if he were already an old acquaintance.

“I’m sorry I can’t rise to greet you. Look what they’ve done to me.”

“They were just afraid you’d hurt yourself,” said the stranger, “but I know you won’t.” His fingers were busy with Sim’s crude knots.

“I’ve been crazy,” said Gregory. “But I haven’t hurt anyone, have I?” The stranger finished up and took up Gregory’s wrist to feel his pulse.

“Not really,” he said. “Not yet.”

“That’s a nasty mark you’ve got on your hand. I didn’t do that, did I?”

“Well, in a manner of speaking, you did. But it’s not important just now.”

“I’m very sorry. You’ve been here before?”

“All along.”

“Then I really have been off my head, haven’t I—I don’t remember you at all.”

The physician sighed. “You’re not alone in that. Most people don’t.”

“I’m very sorry about that. I take it business hasn’t been good for you here? You should take heart. I had a time in my life like that. Popular to have around when everyone was having a good time, but no real employment. Even my father didn’t like me.”

“Oh, I know all about that. But you see I’ve done especially poorly in this city, even though I inherited my father’s business.”

Gregory felt much better. He sat up.

“It’s all the quacks, you know. People like a big show. Doctors should make pronouncements in Latin over your urine in a glass vessel, and give vile, expensive medicines that poison your body, and do painful things like bleeding and cupping.”

“Are you telling me my business?” The physician looked straight-faced, but his eyes were dancing with the joke of it.

“Oh, no, I didn’t mean it that way at all. But an honest doctor like you, who hasn’t got any tricks—for example, look how much better I feel already and you haven’t even bled me—well, you’re not going to get as many paying clients when you’re in competition with—ah—showmen. You’ll be reduced to treating the riffraff for free.”

“Oh really, the riffraff—like you?”

“Exactly, like me.” Gregory looked very sad for a minute. Then he leaned forward. “Tell me, how did she convince you to come? You know we can’t pay you.”

“Oh, you can repay me. Just tell Margaret that you love her. I want to see her face when you do.”

“I can’t do that. Besides, she knows how I feel. I don’t have to tell her.”

“Why can’t you tell her?”

“It’s wrong, all wrong, you know. I shouldn’t really have married her at all. I—I had a vocation, you know.” Gregory sounded embarrassed.

“Oh, really, a vocation? What sort?”

“You know, the real kind. Serving God.”

“Oh, I see. Other vocations don’t serve God. And if you serve God, you can’t love anything He made. So to prove you still love God, you won’t tell Margaret that you love her, even though you do.”

“Well, put that way, it does sound rather confused and narrow-minded, I suppose.”

“You said it, not I.”

As Gregory thought this over, his face became worried. “But she might leave me—go away, or—or die. That’s why men should put no store by earthly things, and only love something more—well,
substantial
, like God,” said Gregory.

“Tell me,” said the physician, “have you ever observed how Margaret loves?”

“How she—what do you mean?”

“How she throws her heart into the balance, without ever counting the cost? Do you think she is so foolish that she doesn’t know that a baby’s smile, or a man’s life, is the most transitory thing on earth? Who do you think taught her to love like that?”

Gregory was silent a long time. The physician watched him as he thought.

“Doesn’t God Himself love unreservedly? Even those who might be lost to Him?” The physician looked at Gregory’s troubled face. Gregory turned his dark eyes on him and looked long and hard. “Isn’t it rather presumptuous of you to think you can love perfectly, without risks?” The questioner’s voice was not unkind.

“But my heart might hurt,” said Gregory, in a burst of honesty.

“It’s hurting now,” the physician answered.

Gregory bowed his head.

After a long silence, during which Gregory seemed to be thinking very hard, he began to cough again. As he doubled over, the physician steadied him. Then the stranger got up and rummaged about the room just as if it were his own, until he found the half-empty jug of wine. A moment later, Gregory found he was holding a cup between his hands and being assisted to drink.

“Drink something, and the cough will pass.” The physician was being as pushy as Margaret. Gregory finished drinking.

“I should have died there in Normandy, you know. It would have been better. You know what the poet says: ‘A man is worth more dead than alive and beaten.’”

“Which poet is that?” asked the physician.

“Bertran de Born—one of the few my father ever liked. Say, the cough is better. Whatever did you do with that devil? It was too big to be hiding in the room.” Gregory looked around, but every corner of the room was full of sunshine.

“Oh, I got rid of it. As devils go, it wasn’t all that big. What makes you think nobody wants you back? Look at the trouble Margaret went to: pregnant women should be able to sit at home, making little clothes and eating fruit. Here she walked through the mountains, mended a hole in My creation, and fetched you out, at no end of trouble.”

“She’s been doing your mending? So that’s how she got you here. What a disgrace. Taking in mending in a strange city. Did I tell you how rich she was when I met her? Her last husband gave her an easy life, and I’ve given her nothing but trouble. But even so, she didn’t stick at disgrace to pay a doctor’s fee and fetch you here. It’s a shame. A knight’s wife, to take in mending. Even if it was only a purchased knighthood.” Gregory shook his head. The physician took the cup back and put it away. “I can’t believe I’ve been so hardhearted, not telling her what she wanted to hear. After all, I did marry her, so the sin’s mine.”

The physician sat down once more, and then took his pulse again. “Much better,” he said.

“I’ve been ungracious. Yes, that’s it,” Gregory went on earnestly, as if arguing with an invisible scholastic. “After all, consider what she’s done. That’s really unusual, even if she weren’t a woman. Now Blondel had a ballad written about him, when he rescued King Richard. Nobody said King Richard was better off dead; they were glad to have him back.”

The physician looked at Gregory with a long, shrewd look. “You haven’t got it all straight, but you seem to be working in the right direction now. Feeling better? Any more questions?”

“Just one, I suppose. I’ve been having nightmares—hallucinations about my brother Hugo. They’re so real, he almost seems to be here. I hear dreadful music, and then his face appears, quoting horrible poetry. Is there any significance to that? Is it an augury?”

“Actually, he
is
here. Your father sent him after you, and he caught up with Margaret after she found you. Being what he is, he is under the delusion that it is he who rescued you, though he is as yet unsure about the means. As for the poetry, I can do nothing about it. People have free will, even to embrace bad poetry. And now, good-bye.”

“Hugo? And Father sent him?” Gregory’s voice was full of wonder. “Don’t go—please stay longer.”

“I have others I have to see.” The physician smiled, and stood up, leaving a rumpled place on the bedclothes.

“But you’ll be back?”

“Whenever you ask.”

“But is there anything else? Something I should take? Nasty medicine? Clysters? Steam baths? An unpleasant diet?”

“Anything else?” The physician turned back, his hand still resting on the door latch. “Yes, there is. I know two lonely little girls who need a flesh-and-blood father. Give your mind to it when you return. There will be days you’ll yearn for bitter medicine instead. On those days, think of it as a penance, and remember I asked it of you.”

As the physician stooped to step over the threshold of the low doorway, Gregory smiled and shook his head. Where on earth had Margaret managed to find a physician who was such a business failure? He hadn’t even thought of a single way to inflate the charge, though he’d had plenty of opportunity. And as he opened the door, it was possible for Gregory to see that below the frayed hem of his gown, he was barefoot as a peasant on a weekday.

I
N THE COURTYARD OF
the inn I thought I caught a glimpse of someone very like Sim, slipping away in another direction. Of course, if I’d seen the ape, I would have known for sure it was Sim, since he was never a boy to miss out on any rare sight.

“Oh, that boy,” said Mother Hilde, shifting the basket from one hip to another. Malachi, his purchases tucked safely in his bosom, had been following her, picking strawberries out of the basket. Now he took a last one, plucked it bare of leaves, and popped it into his mouth.

“Malachi,” laughed Mother Hilde, looking at the way we had come, “if an enemy were pursuing us, he would have only to follow the trail you’ve laid down.” We looked back and saw the telltale green leaves lying at intervals all the way down the dusty street.

“And you said
we’d
get blotches!” I exclaimed.

“Only a few,” he answered guiltily, his mouth still full. “To see if they were sweet enough for you. Unripe strawberries are unhealthful. We couldn’t have you ill, you know.”

“Oh, Brother Malachi,” I said, in a tone of exaggerated earnestness. “It’s so good of you to take the risk.”

“Thank you,” he answered, swallowing as we mounted the outside stair. “I knew you’d appreciate my efforts.”

I was first to open the door. I was afraid and hopeful all at once of what I’d see. But I wanted to be the first. Maybe he’d be sleeping easily. Maybe he’d be seeing things again, his eyes darting back and forth like a madman’s. But instead, it was something wonderful. Gregory was sitting up in bed. The grayish color had left his face and the circles around his eyes were gone. He was still as thin as a ghost, but at last he looked as if he were mending. His eyes lit up when he saw me. He was speaking, too, as if his mind were working again.

“Margaret?” he said, almost tentatively. “You did come back, didn’t you?”

“Gregory, what’s happened? You look so much better! See here, I’ve brought you a present. You must have known ahead of time. I
told
them you’d be better soon!”

“I suppose you’ll be wanting blotches too,” complained Brother Malachi, but his voice sounded relieved. “It’s just as well I bought the whole basket.”

“What’s that, strawberries? It’s strawberry season already?”

“It comes sooner here, Gregory. It isn’t even June yet. Here, let me take the leaves off for you.”

“You think I can’t even take my own leaves off? Margaret, I’ve been eating strawberries much longer than you.”

“Why, this is worth a celebration!” exclaimed Hilde. Malachi drew the bench closer so we could all sit near Gregory and around the basket.

“If you’re celebrating, then you aren’t mad at me?” Sim’s voice sounded very small in the doorway behind us.