Matilda Bone (11 page)

"And the priest?" Effie asked her.

"Father Leufredus found me willing and clever, so he raised me to be saintly, meek, and obedient, above the things of this world. When he left the manor, he brought me to Peg. I had nowhere else to go. But he has not come back or sent for me."

"And what will ye do now?"

Matilda was silent for a moment before replying, "I do not know. I cannot stay in this place. I know so little of what matters here. I cannot heal the sick like Master Theobald or mend bodies like Peg. I am useless."

"Pish. I have been watchin' ye these days," said Effie. "Ye're far from useless. Ye must just use the tools God gave you. Why, a farmer could till a field with a horn spoon if he had to. Find your tools... and ... put them ... to good use." There was silence. Effie had drifted off to sleep.

While Effie slept, Matilda's thoughts ran around and around in her head. She thought about living at the manor, being lonely, using her own tools. Why had she spoken so freely to Effie? Was she right to do so? All the same, she had a sweet, full feeling inside that warmed her, and soon she too slept, and all was silent in the little house with the bright-yellow bone on the door.

Often Matilda and Effie would talk quietly into the night, and Matilda grew fond of her. Too soon she and Hamish were leaving. Effie, her side still swaddled and head wrapped in linen to keep the wound clean, said farewell to Peg and Margery, who hugged and clucked and fussed. Then Effie turned to Matilda. "My prayers stay here with ye, Matilda," she said. "I wish ye well."

Matilda wanted to reply but instead gave Effie a little nod and turned her head to hide her tears.

Unable still to ride, Effie settled herself in a litter swung between two horses. She looked at Matilda once more and said quietly to Hamish, "I long to cuddle her like a babe, and sing to her as my mother sang to me: 'Hush thee, hush thee, dinna fret thee, the Divil willna get thee.' But she be too stiff and proud for cuddling." Matilda, overhearing, thought if Effie tried, she might not find Matilda as stiff and proud as she thought. But Effie did not try.

Matilda watched as the woman was carried away. Would she never be able to ride again? Would she always see the purple heather from behind the curtains of a litter? She lived, which did count for something, but would she never recover? Matilda shook her head. If only Master Theobald had tended Effie instead of Doctor Margery!

Matilda watched for a long while as the riders disappeared into the distance. Peg's little shop would seem very empty now.

Across the alley she saw Walter heading toward the apothecary shop. There was much she had neglected while tending Effie. She had failed to meet Tildy at the well. She had not seen to Sarah—Peg had done that. And she had not thought even once of Nathaniel's troubles. She would remedy this right now, she thought, as she wiped her hands on her skirt, patted her hair, and hurried off to Nathaniel's.

"Who is this here to see me? Do I know you?" asked Nathaniel as she entered.

She hesitated for a moment and then said loudly, "Who is this old man in Nathaniel's shop? Does he know you are here?"

Nathaniel smiled a big smile and nodded at her. "Welcome back, Matilda Bone. We have missed you."

"Has not Peg come to tend Sarah's legs?"

"Yes, but she is not you. People are not as replaceable as ... as boots."

Matilda wondered for a moment if she should look behind her to see who Nathaniel was speaking to. But she knew it was she. He had missed her, and she smiled inside and out with pleasure.

"How is it you come here today, Matilda Bone?"

"Effie has gone, and I found myself wondering how your eyes do. I have not heard that your sight miraculously improved while I have been busy elsewhere, so I came to see for myself."

He shook his head. "No better, but I have Walter's help and my Sarah, so I try to be thankful for those. And what have you been busy elsewhere about?"

Matilda sat and told him about Effie and Hamish, and he listened and nodded. Finally she got up and said, "Forgive me. There is much I must attend to," and she was off.

Talking about Effie had reminded her of something Effie had said, and Matilda decided to try again to help Nathaniel, this time with her own tools. She had already tried her Latin and her prayers, and they had not worked. What else could she do but read and write? (And start fires, brew tonic, and bargain for fish, and she did not know how those could help Nathaniel.) Perhaps a letter? She could write a letter and ask someone very wise for help. Someone wise in medicine. But who?

Her father used to say the wisest minds in England were in Oxford. She would send a letter to Oxford.

Matilda hurried to the market, where she traded her pennies for parchment and ran back to Peg's. She smoothed the page, scraping off a bit of dirt here, a splash of something else there, taking time to smell the beloved, familiar smell. Carefully she took knife to quill to cut a sharp point, touched the tip to her tongue, dipped it carefully in the ink bottle, and wrote in Latin on the precious sheet, enchanted by the look of the words as they tumbled and trailed across the page:

Salutem dico to
the greatest of all physicians who reside at Oxford, whoever you may be, from Matilda of Blood and Bone Alley at the sign of the yellow bone, Chipping Bagthorpe:

There is in this town an apothecary, by name Nathaniel Cross, who is patient and kind and full of loving but lately has been gloomy and disheartened, for his eyes have gone bad in such a way that he
cannot see what is right in front of his face. He looks to starve or die if no one helps him. We have prayed, dosed, salved, and bled, to no end. Have you any knowledge of cures or miracles or remedies that might allow him to spend the days God has given him as an apothecary?

Please send word of any such to me, Matilda Bone, for I can read as well as write, although I fear it is not important like saving souls or saving lives and no one here seems to see the value of it at all.

I know Nathaniel's gratitude will be yours if you can assist him in this matter of seeing.

With all thanks and respect due your great
physicianness, I am yours
,
Matilda Bone

She spit on the tip of the quill and wiped it on her sleeve, cleaned the wooden ruler on her skirt, and capped the ink bottle. She carried her letter back to the market, where she found a tinker who was heading north to Oxford. He would for a price deliver her letter to the physicians' guild. "I have no silver," said Matilda.

"A kettle?" asked the tinker. "Good wooden spoons? A dress, well brushed and gently worn? Velvet slippers?"

"Naught but what I wear," said Matilda.

The tinker reached out and touched her shoulder. "This cloak looks old but of good English wool—I could get a few pennies for it."

Matilda hesitated. Spring was here and summer on the way. She could do without a cloak until fall, by which time who knew where she would be or whether she would need a cloak there. So off it came. The tinker took Matilda's letter, folded it, and tucked it carefully inside his shirt. "A few days only and your letter and I will reach Oxford." He rode away with her cloak and her letter, pots and pans and kettles clanking.

When Matilda returned, Peg was not at home. Nor was she there very often in the next few days. She was with Grizzl, who was failing despite Peg's care and Matilda's prayers. One day when primroses bloomed in the refuse in the alley, Peg and Margery came slowly in. "Grizzl has gone," Peg said to Matilda, her red and freckled face almost unrecognizable in its grief.

Matilda crossed herself. She pictured the little hobbled woman with the big smile. Poor gentle Grizzl was in Heaven now, but Matilda would miss her. Looking at Peg's pain, Matilda thought,
Grizzl should not have died!
And then she said it aloud. "Grizzl should not have died. Master Theobald should have been consulted. He would have known what to do."

"Enough, Matilda," said Peg as she put an arm about Margery's shoulder. "Enough." But still Matilda thought with sorrow,
I should have taken Master Theobald to Grizzl

There was no money for a coffin or a crier to call, "Pray God for the dead," but Matilda joined the small procession that carried Grizzl, wrapped in Peg's best bed linen, to the churchyard. Margery brought all her ends and pieces of candles to add to Peg's and Nathaniel's store, so each mourner had a bit of lighted candle to carry. Violets, buttercups, and columbine basked in the May sunshine and nodded their many-colored heads as the mourners passed by. The small bundle that had been Grizzl was laid in a grave near the apple tree. Matilda heard little of what the priest said because of the voice in her head that was saying she should have fetched Master Theobald, Master Theobald, Master Theobald.

Afterward the setting of bones went on. Alkelda Weaver brought the baby again and again. Peg pushed and pulled her legs; Matilda rubbed in an ointment of bittersweet and chamomile and gave her a decoction of wild strawberry and acanthus leaves to drink. After one visit Matilda offered to hold the child while her mother ate her dinner. The little girl smelled of strawberry and chamomile and warm baby sweat. She reached up and touched Matilda's face as softly as a fairy might. The touch sent warmth right down Matilda's body to her heart. She touched the baby's face in return and whispered, "Hush thee, hush thee, dinna fret thee, the Divil willna get thee."

The west wind blew warm. The May air was sweet with blossoms and sour with the smell of wet earth freshly turned over. The rumble of the dung carts carrying stable sweepings to spread on fields and garden plots sounded on the air like the moaning of lost souls.

Each day Matilda imagined where on the road her letter might be, who was reading it, what great physician was saying at that very moment, "Why, I have just the answer for this girl. Let me write and tell her."

One afternoon Matilda went again to the tanner's yard by the river, and Walter came along to help carry the bundles of hides. They sniffed deeply, reveling in the smell of new grass, baking bread, and drying mud.

On the way back they pulled off their boots and waded in the muck and puddles along the riverside, warmed by the sun. Boats and barges loaded with wood and wool and iron tools crowded the river.

"Aye, it's a grand day," said Walter.

Matilda said nothing but marveled at the beauty of the early summer, which she was accustomed to seeing only through the narrow window of the priest's study. Warmed by the air, she felt her body ease. A breeze blew sweetly like the breath of God, and the air was heavy with the song of birds.

"Never have I heard so many birds," said Matilda.

"They are not just birds," said Walter. "They have names. Those brown spotted birds calling
tchuck-tchick,
those are throstles. And the ones singing their song high in the sky are skylarks."

Matilda stopped still and watched the sky as Walter pointed at the birds. Of course they had names. Everything on God's earth had a name. "How do you know these things?" she asked him.

"I grew up in a village filled with birds like these. I also know about badgers and foxes, teasel and thistle, and many other things. I am at heart a countryman."

"Once," said Matilda softly, "you said my hair was as gold as the belly of an ouzel. What is an ouzel?"

"There," Walter pointed, "on that stone in the stream, that bird with the loud, bubbling song. That is a gold-bellied ouzel."

Matilda laughed. She laughed again as Walter imitated the
ha-ha-ha-ha-ha
of a woodpecker and the sad, sweet song of a willow warbler.

"Throstles, larks, the gold-bellied ouzel, woodpeckers, and willow warblers," said Matilda with pleasure. "I can say 'bird' in Latin and Greek but never knew their names. Now I can name them," and she did:
throstles and larks and gold-bellied ouzels, some woodpeckers and willow warblers.
"And I can sing them," and she did:
throstles and larks and gold-bellied ouzels, some woodpeckers and willow warblers.
Walter joined in and they danced a shy, clumsy dance there by the stream as they sang their summer song.

Soon they had to rest, so they sat side by side in the warm grass as the sky grew the mottled red and blue of the bruise on Matilda's leg left by the bite of one of Samson's geese. Matilda realized she now knew less about Walter than she knew about birds. "Tell me," she said, "how you came to Nathaniel."

"My mum sent me to be apprentice when I was eight," he said, and smiled. "When I first entered the large shop near the east market, my knees knocked together like cymbals. I thought surely I'd be sent home, puny and scared as I was. In my heart I yearned to go, but my empty belly knew that Mum had sent me for my own good."

Walter bent over double and screwed his face into a maze of laugh lines and wrinkles so that he looked more like Sarah than Sarah herself. "'Looks a mite small for doing what needs doing, Nathaniel,' Sarah said. 'I'm stronger than I look, sir,' I said to Nathaniel. 'I can wrestle Matthew down to the ground, and he has two years on me.'"

Matilda watched, fascinated, as Walter changed from Sarah back to Walter and then into a tiny bald-headed Nathaniel: "Then I have no doubt of your strength. How are your brains?'

'"I know A from B and two plus two,' I answered him. 'That'll do. The rest you can learn,' said Nathaniel Cross. And so I stayed," Walter said, turning back into himself. He stretched and began to look about for his boots.

"Did you miss your home?" said Matilda, searching his face.

Walter shrugged. "I cried for Mum some, alone at night on my straw mat in that strange house in a strange town. Never before had I slept without Matthew and Martin snuggled up beside me, and the sound of Mum's snoring saying she was here and all was well. Still I stayed. I am here yet. And never now would I go from here." He looked at Matilda. "What of your mother? Do you miss her?"