The Water Devil (35 page)

“He tried to rouse the nurse when Petronilla stole the baby, then bit at her legs and she kicked him. He looks as if he'll be fine, now,” said Gregory. “I saw to him myself. Besides, I have mended my opinion of him. I must say, for a ridiculous looking dog, he is very gallant.” Lion opened one eye at the praise, and thumped his tail languidly on the coverlet.

“Lady Petronilla,” I said, “don't let her in here. Promise me you won't let her in here.” I felt suddenly agitated, terrified. “She hates me, there's nothing she wouldn't do.”

“She's not going to be let in anywhere, unless it's in through the gates of hell. She has committed suicide.”

“Suicide? Her? Not likely,” I said.

“Father has sworn it at the inquest.”

“Then he did it, Gregory. Just like he'd drown a sackful of puppies he didn't want.”

“Sh, Margaret. What he says is what is. But this much I know, I've never seen him look so bad over something. He's looking quite hollow eyed. For once, he's got a bad conscience over something.”

“Not hollow eyed enough, as far as I'm concerned. He's cost us our new little one, without ever giving it a second thought.”

“It's not his fault, Margaret, it's my fault, all my fault, for not listening to you and taking you away as soon as you asked me to.”

“Why is it that whenever your father misbehaves, you always get the bad part of it? And now you're taking his blame. Don't you dare. He did it, not you, with all his quarrels over deeds and money and—and ancient drinking horns. And he's sold my precious girl's marriage for his own advantage, and even talked her into it behind my back. And
she's
such a baby she agreed because she thinks Brother Malachi is going to turn her into a boy before the wedding night. It's all, all your father, this trouble, every bit of it. Wherever he goes, he makes trouble.”

“But he couldn't help it—”

“Oh, yes, he could. If he were a better manager instead of a spendthrift, none of this would have happened.”

“But, Margaret, there's nothing to manage. When all is said and done, he doesn't clear a shilling off this land—”

“He would if he had sense. Madame says that if he raised sheep instead of horses, they'd be bringing him money instead of eating it all up.”

“Sheep? That's ridiculous. A knight doesn't raise sheep.”

“Why not? Knights sell fish, knights import wine. Why shouldn't knights raise sheep? It's better than skinning the French for a living. Besides, then he'd quit trying to borrow money from you.”

“Oh, Margaret, Margaret, I refuse to argue with you, even if it is making your cheeks pinker. Father would rather sizzle a thousand extra years in purgatory than do anything practical, even if I do grant you that you are theoretically in the right.”

“Theory's not good enough, Gregory mine. How do we get Cecily untangled from this betrothal? I don't want to have that scheming, money hungry magistrate in my family. Besides, that boy of his
is a spineless toady who's as ambitious as his father. Cecily needs someone more thoughtful, more appreciative of her, someone with a nice family—like Walter Wengrave.”

“Well, we'll have to be patient. Seven years is a long time, and the boy is older. He may find some other girl and break the engagement himself. In the meanwhile, I want you to be nice to the magistrate because he's promised to pry that awful old monk out of father's bed and take him back to the canons at Wymondley when he leaves. The old fellow's drinking up all the apple wine and just lies up there in the tower room singing in some language nobody understands—”

“Madame is wrong. Your father shouldn't raise sheep, after all. He should convert this house into a lunatic asylum—he's got a good start on it already.”

“Margaret! You're being rude!”

“Not as rude as that awful old father you have. Something has to be done about him.”

“Now, now, Margaret, we'll manage,” said my lord husband, stroking my hand and then feeling my forehead, as if I were somehow delirious and could not be held responsible for anything I had just been saying.

That night I was feverish, and as I sweated and turned in the stuffy, damp bed, I had a very strange dream. I was back at the pond, hunting between the columns of the strange old yew-temple for something I had lost, but I could not remember what it was. Was it a thimble? A little silver boss from my best girdle? It was very important to me, and I had knelt down to the ground, all puzzled, scrabbling around but finding nothing. Then as I was hunting, I saw two watery feet, ebbing and flowing, all green in front of me. I looked up, and what I saw surprised me so that I sat back on my heels. It was a woman, all green and mossy, clad in a wet gown green with pond scum. Her hair was dark and shadowy, like water-weeds seen at a depth. Her eyes were hidden caverns, where fish could swim in and out, and she flowed and swirled like the tides. Behind her, clinging to the hem of her gown, was a little girl with a high, white forehead,
and curling black hair. Her chin was pointed, like mine, and she had my Gregory's sorrowful, intelligent brown eyes.

“You don't have to look any more,” said the water woman. “I've kept her.”And then I knew that I had not been looking for a lost button or a shoelace or a ring, but my own heart's delight that could never be held in human arms. “She was fading so fast, so fast, and could never have lasted long enough to be yours—and I was lonely. Centuries lonely,” said the water woman. And as I looked longingly at the little girl, taking in every feature with my hungry eyes, I saw that she seemed very frail, and held together with water weed and dreams, and that only the magic of the green woman was making her live.

“Be good to her,” I said. “She is very clever, and will be mournful without her mother. You must make her laugh.”

“Oh, I have thousands of beautiful things in my green hall,” said the water woman.“And I'll love her like my own. We'll play and tell jokes and spin fishes here beneath the yews. It's not your fault that your little light was not strong enough for two.”

“I thought it was, I thought I could will it so,” I said. “I was greedy, and I was terribly punished. But how could I make a choice, and still have a mother's heart in me? And now my light's gone, and I have to pretend to be the same as ever.”

“Why do you need to pretend?” asked the pond creature, and the caverns of her eyes were curious.

“Because I wish it were my turn to fly free to heaven, but I have children to raise, and a husband to look after, and I need to free my Cecily from that wily old fox of a magistrate.”

But the water woman laughed a laugh like golden ripples on the surface of a river, and she said, “Is
that
all?” as if it were nothing in the world. She sat down beside me and put her watery arm around me while she held my baby on her lap. And this is the curious thing: her green arm was warm and liquid, and smelled sweet, like the heart of growing things, and it flowed all around me as if I were swimming. “Don't worry about those girls of yours,” she said. “They'll always manage. Alison has made herself quite fat on my
honey-cakes, and Cecily wore my green shoes to her betrothal. I promise you, if the man she marries doesn't meet all of her conditions, there isn't a river in all of England that won't reach up and drown him.”

“You are in all the rivers?” I asked, suddenly curious.

“Oh, no, I never travel from my own place. But we waters are all related. That's how we were made by the Great Creator.” She laughed again, like the gurgle of a brook over stones.“And you,” she said, “be merry again. Your dream-child will sing sweet music in my hall—a lot better, I might add, than that tuneless
kyrie
that boring priest keeps humming—and besides, look you there: your little light was just resting, and it springs up again. See? It was worn out.” I looked down and I seemed to be underwater, with my clothes all floating out in billows around me, and deep under my skin, like the glow of blood, a faint tinge of orangeish pink was shining and flickering, like a candle coming to life after a cold draft.

“Ah! There it is! That's how I first knew you—by the little light, all soft and warm. You used to come and dip up my water for beer.”

“And very good beer it was, too,” I said.

“Aha! I said to myself. I have made little frogs and fishes with shining scales, but never before have I made beer. Not good beer, at any rate. I thought to make your acquaintance, but you went away.”

“I don't live here, ordinarily.”

“So I found out from my cousin the Thames, and he said,‘why do you want such a little one?'And I said,‘I had a man with a cold blue light that was so very strong, and he never once listened to me, for all that he lived for forty years in the hermitage beside me. He thought I was the voice of Sin. But now you are listening to me, even if all you ever did was brew and do laundry from me. That's how it is. We women of sense can always come to an understanding. I need you, Lady Margaret. I need you to talk to the shining ones above for me. The Maker who knows all. I know you can. I've heard you do it. You go into the house of stone and I can hear you and see your light brightening, like the pink light of dawn.”

Now as you can see this dream didn't make much sense, but it
also made all the sense in the world, especially since I had seen what they took away in the basin—a jumble of flesh like liver and a bubble of jelly with no baby at all. When I saw it I knew all at once that my child was only imagining, since she had never quickened, and the soul flown down from heaven to dwell in her, as the priests say happens. Yet in my heart she had been strong dreaming, as strong as the water woman talking in the night, who was real and not real. It was my dream-child she'd kept, as soulless and ageless as herself. My own, but now hers.

So because I was dreaming, I just asked the water woman what it was that she needed, instead of fussing and weeping, and she said she was terribly worried about her lovely green hall and her singing fountain and her sighing yews and oaks that were full of rooks and saucy squirrels. She explained that she
was
them, and if they were all spoiled she'd die, because she didn't have a soul apart from her green and growing body. She said that it really wasn't a horrible pagan, heathen thing to look after her interests, but really more like praying for the sick, which all good Christians are enjoined to do. I was not so sure about this, having already once fallen into disfavor with the Inquisition for doing healing without the proper credentials, which I explained was very frightening, and I almost got burned alive, except that I recanted.

“You need to get them on your side,” I said. “Perhaps you should change your name to something Christian.”

“Change my name? What an insult! I haven't got a name! Do you know how old I am? I was made just after light was divided from dark. I'm older than names. And don't go suggesting ‘Edburga.’ That's the ugliest name I've ever heard. Besides, did you ever see that Saint Edburga? A mean-spirited old woman who went around terrifying people with tales of hellfire. She's not my style.”

“What about something like ‘Marywell'?” I asked, making my voice sound as humble as possible. Wind and water, stars and sea, one should never go around rousing up elementals.

“The ‘well’ part is all right, because that's what I am. But who's this Mary?”

“The Queen of Heaven. You can't go much higher,” I said.

“Marywell, Marywell,” said the water-spirit, rolling it around inside her like a current of bright liquid. “Not bad. Maybe she'd help out with my trees and my singing birds and my lovely dark eels and shining fishes.”

When I woke up in the morning, the sun was already poking through the deep, narrow solar windows. The sheets were wringing wet, and my hair was soaked through. Everyone was up already, and I could hear the ring of the blacksmith shoeing horses outside in the courtyard. In a panic, I felt suddenly for the place that Peregrine had lain, but he was gone. Then I heard, “woof, woof, woof, woof,” and looked over the side of the bed to see Peregrine crawling about on all fours with the puppies, barking like a hound. “Look, mama,” he cried. “I'm teaching them to
bark
!” On the bench beside him sat an alert, capable looking young village woman wearing a big apron and wooden clogs. She was spinning and smiling.

“Oh,” she said, “I'm so glad to see you're finally up. You had a dreadful fever in the night, and they all despaired.”

“I—I've had the most amazing dream. The pond must be renamed ‘Marywell.'”

“‘Marywell'?” said the girl. “Why, that's a beautiful name. Surely we will all be blessed if the heathen waters are called Marywell. Prosperity will return with a name like that.”

N
OW HERE IS WHERE I HAVE TO CONFESS that I was wrong about one thing: Gilbert's father did not borrow money from us for the wedding gown. He just borrowed money for the wine, the spices, and the delicacies he ordered up for the wedding feast, which Gilbert said would have been cheap at twice the cost given the new mellowness that had seemed to settle over his father's temper with the benificent influence of Madame Agathe. But in a chest with a number of odd things he had brought back from France in a prior campaign, he had a length of silk all patterned with figures and fit for an empress, though I rather suspected it had been originally intended for some French bishop's dalmatic. So he gave me charge of the sewing women, and Madame herself supervised the cutting of it, and I must say, she had a very sharp eye for fashion, for a lady who had worn the plainest of black for many a year.

“Lady Margaret, you won't harbor any ill will toward me, for taking up this place in the world, will you?” she asked as we sewed on the magnificent gown.

“Madame Agathe, if you can ever tame that old he-bear, you will have done us all a service that is beyond price. I, for one, will be happy to call you mother, and pray for your good fortune always.”

Madame seemed relieved, as if it had been eating at her heart for a while.“I do have a few little ideas for improving this place,” she said. “After all, a gallant warrior like Sir Hubert cannot be expected to have to worry about tiny details. His mind must be on the affairs of the great world.” She looked a
little pinker to me as she spoke, and a faint smile seemed to cross her austere face for a moment. Goodness gracious, I thought, who would have believed it? She's actually in love with that horrible old man.