In Pursuit of the Green Lion (47 page)

“Not if you go downstairs and fetch up supper from the kitchen for us,” said Brother Malachi without even looking up.

“You know that woman shouts. Even though I don’t know the words, it’s bad. She wants the bill paid.”

“Well, then, I’ll go with you and swear to her she’ll be paid before the week is up. I’ve had a brilliant idea.” And with that, he took a farewell handful of strawberries and departed downstairs, sharing them with Sim.

“Hey, don’t eat them all before I’m back,” Sim shouted back up the stairs.

“Now let me show you what I’ve brought,” I said, wiping my hands. “It will make you all well. It’s a book.”

“A book?” he said, curiosity and pleasure lighting his eyes. “What kind of book?”

“Why, it’s poetry.”

“Poetry?” He looked horrified. “Is it good poetry?”

“Why, the best. It’s by some man called Francesco Petrarca, who used to live here. Everybody’s still talking about him.” Gregory looked at me intently.

“Petrarch? The greatest living poet in the world? Tell me, Margaret, did you get the book because you knew it was good, or because it was very thin and you thought you’d get it at a bargain?”

Mother Hilde covered her face with her hands, but I could hear her splutter anyway.

“How did you know I’d got a bargain?”

“Margaret, you forget how well I know you. You’ve never been able to resist a bargain. Even me. Remember when we met? I was one of your bargains too.”

“I bargain very well, Gregory. I get only the best. Admit it,” I said, handing him the book. He wiped his hands in turn, and took the little book, turning it over and over tenderly, looking at the cover.

“Oh, Margaret, do you know what you’ve bought?” he asked.

“Well—not quite. I can’t read a word. But Brother Malachi says you can read it. And I know books make you happier than just about anything.”

“Margaret, it’s love poetry. Petrarch’s sonnets to his Laura.” He looked down at his hands and blushed. The pink color made him look ever so much better.

“And Margaret, there’s something I’ve been needing to tell you for a long time. I love you, Margaret. I’ve always loved you, but I didn’t know it myself at first. Then I did, but I didn’t know how to say it. I thought if I did great things, then you’d know it without me saying it. I guess I was afraid I’d seem silly if I just told you. Or that maybe you wouldn’t love me back.”

I couldn’t help it; I burst into tears.

“Margaret, have I said it wrong? I haven’t made you angry, have I?”

“Oh, no, Gregory, you just don’t understand. I always knew everything would come out right if you’d say it. And now you have, and I know everything will all work out.” As he put the book on his lap and leaned forward to embrace me, I couldn’t help noticing that Mother Hilde had tactfully removed herself from the bench and was across the room, staring out the window. I think I cried for a long time, clutching him very tight, as he consoled me. Still, he seemed so puzzled and taken aback.

At last he said, very mildly, “He certainly never said this is what would happen. I guess I’ll never understand women.”

“He? Who’s he?” I asked, looking up at his face.

“The physician you sent, Margaret.”

“I never sent a physician, Gregory. They’re much too expensive. Also, they usually kill people. Why pay money to be killed?”

“He said you did some mending for him.”

“Mending? I didn’t do that. You must have had another of your hallucinations.”

“That’s odd. He seemed real enough. He was very pleasant. Not snobbish at all. But then, how could he be? He was the poorest-looking physician I’ve ever seen. That’s why I thought you’d sent him. You know, another bargain. Why, he was even going barefoot like a peasant, to save his shoes. Who would have ever thought of such a thing? But when he made things clear to me, then I started feeling well. He couldn’t stay, though. He had a lot of visits to make. He went out the door just before you came back.”

“Well, we certainly didn’t see anyone coming down the stairs,” I said, looking at the door as if it could tell me something.

“No, not at all,” said Mother Hilde at the window.

“Gregory, read us from the book, Hilde and me,” I said. “We want to hear what everyone’s carrying on about so much in town.”

“How do you want it? Shall I turn it into English for you?”

“First in Italian, so we can hear the music of it, and then in English, so we understand. Hilde and I, we know a lot about love, and we want to hear what the poet says.” Gregory read in his lovely strong voice first the rolling sounds of the Italian. Then he paused, and slowly pieced the thing into English, pausing between the harder words and phrases.

“Trovommi Amor del tutto disarmato
et aperta la via per gli occhi al core,
che di lagrime son fatti uscio e varco.”

His voice caught, and it seemed very beautiful, the way it sounded, even before he said what it meant. “Love found me—altogether disarmed,” he translated, and his face looked so grave and luminous with love that I felt my own heart totally disarmed too. “And the way open through my eyes to my heart,—um—which are now the portal and passageway of tears.” Oh, yes. This was very different. This poet knew all about love.

“This Laura—did she love him back?”

“Well, only in a spiritual sense. She visited him in a dream.”

“But she did give him a token, didn’t she?”

“There was her glove—she dropped it and he picked it up. But then she grabbed it back.”

“So—she took back her glove, got mad when he surprised her bathing, and never did more than smile at him—at least, he thinks she did, for twenty-one years? I think he should have found another lady—one who loved him back.”

“Margaret, you just don’t understand higher, spiritual love.”

“Higher
love? If a man followed me for twenty-one years, always trying to run into me on the street, snooping to see if he could see me bathing, trying to steal my gloves or anything else I put down just for the moment, when I hadn’t given him the slightest encouragement, do you know what I’d call it? Puppy love, that’s what! He’s behaving like a silly boy, playing the lute all night at the window of a married woman with six children who’s already gone to sleep.”

“That’s
ideal
love, unmarked by low carnality—and you call it puppy love?” Gregory sounded indignant.

“Well, if it’s so ideal, I suppose he never loved anyone else?”

“Ah—um—he did have a mistress and children.”

“And he didn’t love them, and went trailing after this woman who didn’t love him? That’s crazy!”

“You’re calling the greatest poet alive in the world today crazy? You have a hopelessly bourgeois mind!”

“Well,
I
say he’s crazy, if he spends his life running after someone who doesn’t love him back. It’s not grown-up at all. What do you think, Mother Hilde?”

“I think you are both feeling ever so much better, because you are quarreling.”

“Quarreling? I’m not quarreling at all. I’m right. Italians are crazy.” I was very indignant. Mother Hilde should have taken my side.

“You’re trying to shift ground, Margaret. That’s what you always do when you’re wrong.” Gregory sounded pompous. “You just don’t want to admit that
I’m
right.” I looked at his face. Hilde was right. The argument had made his eyes bright. His color was up. His dear, familiar old arrogance was back. He was as wrong as could be. Most men are, about important things like love. I laughed at him.

“And now you laugh. Never was a woman so arrogant as to set herself up against the greatest love poet in the world. One, I might add, whose work she can’t even read!”

“This Laura—I imagine she was a blonde, wasn’t she?”

“Of course. That’s what it says here: ‘i cape’ d’oro fin’—’ That means hair of fine gold.”

“Well then, that explains everything.”

“And, pray tell, how is that? There’s no logic in that statement at all! Women!”

It was a lucky thing that at that very moment we heard steps on the stairs and a pounding at the door.

“Open, open! Supper’s here, and it’s hot!”

“Why, Malachi,” exclaimed Hilde, throwing open the door. “How did you get so much?”

There at the door stood Brother Malachi, holding with two hands a big iron stewpot by its towel-wrapped handle. A bottle of wine could be seen peeping from the bosom of his gown. Sim clutched a vast loaf of bread, a wedge of cheese, and the long green ends of two big onions that hung almost to his knees. On his head, carefully balanced, was a stack of wooden bowls.

“My silver tongue, love. And when she looked skeptical, I revealed to her the rare alchemical work I shall soon be selling at a fabulous sum.”

“Malachi, you’re selling your book?” asked Mother Hilde, tears running down her face as she sliced the onions.

“Oh, not at all. This one’s the model. I intend to make several. With Gilbert’s help, I can make even more. Everywhere, there are adepts in search of the Secret. Each would be willing to part with no small sum for this precious work. And because it contains the Secret of the Universe, none will reveal to a mortal soul that they have it. Except, of course, to Abraham or his equivalent. And when he tells them it’s worthless, they’ll simply believe it’s in a deeper code, beyond his powers of translation. The most brilliant idea of my life—no one pursuing the honest craftsman with pitchforks and torches, demanding his skin. No. They will all hide their shame, as I have hidden mine. And we shall go home in style, selling a book in each city at which we stop. And now, supper. We must build Gilbert’s strength so we can begin our great work.”

As supper vanished, Gregory looked up from eating, and said, “Theophilus, you old rascal, which part of you is honest?”

“All parts, all parts, Gilbert, you sour and doubting young man. I sell happiness and hope—and at much lower prices than certain large religious institutions I could name. It’s because I have less overhead. Always travel light, I say—‘Light feet and light hands,’ that’s my motto.”

“Oh, Malachi, you have such a generous spirit!” exclaimed Mother Hilde.

“If there were more generous spirits here, they’d have left me better than half a dozen strawberries, and those the greenest of the lot,”grumped Sim.

“Now, Sim,” Brother Malachi intoned, “there is the affair of the Barbary ape, for which we have not yet taken you to task. Best to leave well enough alone.”

“I’m not sharing my skulls, then. And don’t you think you’re selling them for relics, either.”

“Relics? My dear child. A dangerous and unsavory business. I have found a higher calling.—Gilbert, as I recall, you always were good at drawing. I will need allegorical pictures for this effort. Nicely colored ones. I still remember the excellent rendering you did of the rector long ago—the one depicting him with an ass’s head, as I recall.”

“You have colors?” Gregory said cheerfully.

“Just three, plus black and white. It’s all I could afford. No gold leaf. You can mix them, can’t you? I need quality work.”

“Do I get to make up the allegories myself?”

“Now, now—don’t get fancy on me. Just follow the models in the book here.”

“Show me.”

Until the light failed, Gregory and Brother Malachi conferred happily on the new merchandise.

“That’s a lot of copying.”

“Well, you don’t have to be precise.”

“It would be easier if you put some Latin in somewhere. How about a curse?”

“A curse? A master stroke, Gilbert. ‘Curses on anyone who reveals the secret of this work.’ Marvelous. Adds tone.”

“You could split up the pages, too—cryptic groups. Seven times three, things like that. And put in more diagrams between. That takes up space.”

“Oh, excellent. I’ll do the diagrams. I’m well acquainted with the sort needed.”

“This one’s nice. The Green Lion. If I get home in one piece, I’ll add it to my coat of arms.”

“Gilbert, restrain yourself. Someone might prosecute you. Stick to red lions and assorted implements of death. Alchemy goes in and out of fashion with the
noblesse.”

“Again, Malachi, you’re cautioning me. Must you always be such a fussy old nursemaid?”

“Only when you’re a troublesome young jackanapes.”

“What are you doing, Mother Hilde?” I asked as Mother Hilde knelt at the threshold with a bit of rag.

“Malachi’s slopped something, coming in, and I’m going to wipe it up before it hardens. I don’t want foreigners to say that we are dirty—oh!”

She sat back on her heels for a moment, looking at the spot. My eyes followed her gaze. No one else but us noticed. It wasn’t spilled gravy that stained the threshold. It was a bloody mark left by a bare foot. As I watched, Mother Hilde wiped it up carefully, folded the still damp rag, and put it in her pilgrim’s wallet.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

T
HIS SET’S DRY, GILBERT—OR SHOULD I call you Gregory, as Margaret does?” Mother Hilde removed several colorful manuscript pages from the windowsill, where they had been weighted down with old wine bottles to dry in the sun. Below the windowsill, on a rope stretched from the bedpost inside to the great timber supporting the stair outside, the travelers’ laundry flapped like a string of pennants. The sun and the blue sky, almost entirely too gaudy for good taste, as they so often are in the south, had brightened the cramped little room and chased away the stale scent of illness.

“Oh, good, then stack them away with the others,” replied Gregory, who was hard at work, bent over a colorful depiction of a woman in a field of snakes. “I’ve never been able to break Margaret of the habit—hmm, that has the makings of a pun there, if I redo it—having left the habit, I can’t break her of it. No, better yet, I’ve left off the habit, but she hasn’t. See? My wits are mending, albeit slowly. But you may call me what you wish, Mother Hilde.”

“Then I’ll call you Gilbert, as Malachi does. He says that’s what he knew you as back when you were studying in Paris.”

“Now, that’s not entirely fair, I’d say, since I’ve been very careful not to slip and call him Theophilus.” Gregory’s voice took on an exaggerated tone of injury. Then he turned to where Margaret labored with her pen, copying the rows of squiggles from a page of Malachi’s book. “Margaret, have you got the next set of pages ready? This picture’s almost done.”

Margaret picked up the page, and held it this way and that to the light, to admire the effect. It looked altogether mystical, and seemed most admirably like the original, give or take a few little things.

“Here they are,” she announced cheerfully. She was filled with the contentment that accompanies advancing pregnancy. The baby had ceased to roll—there was too little room for that anymore. But she could watch her immense stomach ripple up and down under her gown, as the baby wriggled in pleasure when she told it in her mind, baby, we’re going home. And in style, too, thanks to Brother Malachi’s clever mind. “Look at this. Don’t they look nice? How many books’ worth do we have now?”

“Six,” said Mother Hilde, counting the pages as a mother hen would gloat over the eggs in her nest. “We’re going for seven. That’s a lucky number.” She peeked out the window again. “Why, not only is the laundry dry, but there’s Malachi and Sim coming into the courtyard below, and they look quite pleased with themselves. My, isn’t it wonderful how quickly the hot sun dries linen in this blessed climate? How will I ever manage in the damp and cold again?”

“Best of news!” Brother Malachi burst through the door into the busy book manufactory. “I’ve a client lined up already. I was masterful. I shed a tear, which I wiped away secretly. ‘My chief treasure,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t part with it, but for this terrible necessity.’ Oh, I was good. Sim played my son. The boy has talent. Yes, talent! Oh, if I’d only had the good start that he’s been given, who knows how great I could have become? So, we must have at least one of them ready by tonight.” He drifted to the window and inspected the pages weighted down on the sill. “Lovely,” he said, nodding his head approvingly. “If I bind it tonight—I will need help on the stitchery, ladies—then we can toast it by the fire tomorrow morning. Gilbert—was it you that did bookbinding, or Aimery?”

Gregory blew on a damp spot on his drawing, where the red ink on a snake’s head had not yet dried. He answered without looking up.

“Aimery—you have us mixed up because he wrote drinking songs too.”

“Then I suppose I’ll have to show you how—we have a vast amount of work to do to get them ready in time. We leave day after tomorrow. That’s the other part of my good news. A convoy of armed merchants is leaving up the Rhône for Lyons. They’ve hired guards, and merged forces with a papal ambassador’s party going to Paris. Another one of those entreaties to the French and English kings to make peace. We’ll be as safe as in church traveling in their company. We can toast the rest of the books en route.”

“But Malachi, dear, why toast them? You’ll spoil the pretty pictures. Everything will turn all brown.”

“Exactly, my dear treasure. You foresee my purpose. Who buys a new alchemical book? No one. By tomorrow, one of them at least will be ancient. Besides, the heat will drive off the smell of the new glue.” Brother Malachi was rubbing his hands in anticipation.

“Yes, yes. That’s it. The next big sale we’ll make is in Lyons. There used to be hunters of the Green Lion in plenty there. Surely even war has not diminished their numbers excessively.” He sat down on the bed, arranging dried pages around him, and began to hum.

But Margaret, who entertained a sensible skepticism about all of Brother Malachi’s schemes, broke off her busy scribbling. “But Malachi,” she asked, “what about Hugo and the last of the Brokesford men? He’s been as silly as a goose since he came out of that last audience, and I think he’s run through every penny he brought, celebrating his shining new self, including the ransom money.”

“Haven’t I told you that great minds think of everything? I hired him out to the merchants, and then told him about it. He was, at the time, as they say,
in flagrante delicto
, but he seemed to take the news well enough. So cease worrying, Margaret. My vast and capacious mind has left no detail unhandled.” He went on arranging pages, and added words to his hum. It was “Angelus ad Virginem.”

Margaret went back to her writing, her brow wrinkled, only to look up with surprise when another voice joined Malachi’s. It was a sound she’d never heard before. Gregory’s rolling baritone had added the bass line, and he was singing the words of the angel in Latin. In all the time she’d known him, she’d never suspected he could sing. Though, of course, it made sense, clerics mostly do. She didn’t understand the words, but naturally she knew the song well, for it was a great favorite in English, too, being all about the Angel Gabriel.

“No fair, no fair, Gilbert. Now I shall have to do the treble,” and Brother Malachi switched to a high falsetto to sing the Virgin’s response.

Margaret couldn’t help it: at the chorus, she added the descant, her bright English sounding above the sonorous Latin. After all, it wasn’t at all proper to let men go on thinking that they could sing higher than a woman. As the sweet harmony floated out the window into the bright foreign sky, a set of quarreling voices in the courtyard stopped abruptly, as if someone had turned to listen.

“Why, Margaret, I didn’t know you could sing so well.” Gregory looked up at Margaret with pleased surprise.

“Aha!” broke in Brother Malachi. “That proves it. If you had indeed copied Margaret’s memoirs from dictation—which, by the way, is the most pitifully feeble story I’ve ever heard you come up with, Gilbert—then you would have known she can sing, and very well, too.
Quod erat demonstrandum
—you were up to no good when you used to hang around Margaret’s house.”

“Malachi, you’re wrong. I was as pure as the driven snow. Just because I
copied
didn’t mean I
listened.”

“Now that, I admit, sounds more like you, Gilbert—but it’s still weak, weak indeed.”

“Malachi,” Margaret broke in, “you may as well put a stop to malicious speculation. I’ll show you my book when we get home. I even wrote the last chapter all by myself, after Gregory gave me reading and writing lessons.”

“You disappoint me, Margaret. I’d hoped for a more lurid story. But I must admit, you’re handy with a pen now, and you were totally unlettered when I first knew you. Teaching women, Gilbert. Look where it’s brought you.”

“Yes—to forging alchemical works in the garret of a foreign whorehouse. It’s exactly the sort of end my father always predicted for me,” said Gregory, with some acid in his voice, which led Brother Malachi to change the subject.

T
HE MORNING OF OUR
departure dawned clear and bright. It was barely past mid-April, but there was already a promise of summer heat in the morning air, and I began to hope that the way would be shady. Great barges were bobbing at the river’s edge, being laden with goods. The teams of oxen that would pull against the river’s powerful current were already hitched, the boys who were to drive them lounging about on the bank with their long whips in their hands. Hugo had never looked more resplendent, with Robert mounted at his side, and both in full harness. Hugo’s armor was shining white, the product of Robert’s last-minute nocturnal labors, and the Brokesford pennant never fluttered more gaily. The waiting mercenaries cheered a welcome, while the papal knights and their retainers made a grave formal salutation. I’ve never felt more out of place than in this company, so unwieldy that I could barely sit a horse, and Hilde and I the only women in the whole great party. Curiosity seekers, relatives, and ragamuffins had crowded around to watch the immense procession depart.

Then there was a murmur in the crowd of watchers as a mule litter with a cardinal’s crest, its curtains closed, approached the quay. Six footmen in livery followed it, and two boys ran before, to clear the way. The litter drew alongside Hilde and me and halted, and I could feel stares as the curtain was parted by the heavily beringed hand of a beautiful woman.

“Lady Margaret,” the familiar voice with the coarse accent sounded in English, “I’ve come to say good-bye.” I could see Cis wedged in the uncomfortable darkened confines of the litter, the folds of her rich gown heaped about her. She was in bright violet silk today. Silk and cloth of gold. She leaned her head forward to speak, and the gawkers strained for a sight of the rich headdress set with pearls and cunningly arranged clasps that daringly revealed the curling golden hair at her brow, and the little wisps of hair that escaped from the shining coils of her braids. On her lap was tucked a tiny white dog with a gilded leather collar.

“Na Margaret,” I said (for
Na
is what they call ladies in that country, and
En
means lord), “wear my name well, and God bless you.”

“You were always kind, lady. Not like the others. But I’m saying good-bye to them all, even Sir Hugo, if he’s civil.
He
never even thanked me for the audience I got him—just grumbled that it wasn’t personal, and he should have known I would make him rub shoulders with a lot of garlicky nobodies. But I got the message of thanks you sent by that little boy, so I came. I—I doubt if I’ll ever hear English spoken again. But tell my friends, will you, that I live like a queen. No—better than a queen. No queen in England ever dreamed of the wealth that I’ve seen here. Tell them I’m a lady, and I’ve got chests, and servants, and a lapdog.”

“You had better be careful.” How strange her face looked now, set in these sumptuous surroundings. “You’ve risen fast on men’s favors, and I’ve heard the women here are poisoners. You should keep cats, like that dark lady.”

“Cats?” She laughed, and the sound drew more stares from the uncomprehending crowd. “Those are for witches. I’ve got my little dogs. This is the third, already. We may not be as sly as these foreigners, lady, but we English village girls are shrewd—and fast learners.”

“We? You knew then?”

“Always. I could tell by the slips you used to make that you didn’t start your life where you are now. That, and by your heart. You were my inspiration. I’m not suffering for nothing, I used to say to myself. I’m going to
get
something for all of this. But you have the better man. Here,” she said, fumbling among her clothes. “It’s a gift. For luck on your trip. I had it blessed by the Pope, and my cardinal too, for good measure.” She extended a little silver-gilt medallion on a chain, and watched my face as I thanked her. Already, I thought, she’s getting new habits from playing this dangerous game among strangers. And she and I both knew that she was saying good-bye to more than us. Someday, maybe soon, she’d no longer be able to afford the luxury of a straight heart. “I knew you wouldn’t scorn it,” she said as I took it in my hand. “Think of me, sometimes.” And she gave the signal to her men to move on, closing the curtains once more. I saw the litter pause again before Hugo’s mount. The curtains opened briefly, and she nodded like a
grande dame
, leaving Hugo crimson and spluttering as she departed.

“Now, who would have ever thought it?” Gregory followed her progress with his eyes while he pushed his nag closer to me. He was mounted on one litter horse, and leading the other. They were a sight, the three of them, for they were all equally bony. And the Comte de St. Médard’s vast velvet doublet and woolen hose swam on him. If it hadn’t been for the lordly way he sat on the nag, you’d have thought he was a jongleur dressed in his master’s castoffs.

“She’s given us a present. Put it on for me, will you? I’ve already got a talisman, and I feel like a fool in too many necklaces.”

“Hmm. The Holy Virgin. Considering the source, it must mean something, but I’m not quite sure what,”he said, arching a dark eyebrow. “Still, I’m not one to scorn a blessing. Heaven knows, I’ve been offered few enough.” He hung the little medallion about his neck.

We made slow progress that day, limited as we were by the speed of the barges. The party spread out before and after the ox teams on the bank, armed guards before, after, and flanking the high dignitaries. As the sun beat down on us, even Hilde’s and my big straw hats were little protection. I could see Gregory looking at me with new concern.

“The sweat’s running in rivers down your face, Margaret, and you’re all red. You should be riding in the barge, and not on horseback like this.”

“It doesn’t mean a thing, Gregory—women always feel the heat more when they’re with child. But—you don’t see any freckles, do you?” He inspected carefully.

“Just a few. They’ve come out on your nose.”

“Oh, blessed Mary, not many, are they?”

“Why, thousands and thousands, Margaret. But don’t worry, they’re very nice ones.”

“I must say, that’s mean. I’m going to ask Hilde how many freckles I’ve got. It shows you just can’t trust men about anything really important.”