CHAPTER ONE

AT THE WEST END OF THE GREAT NORMAN nave of St. Paul’s Cathedral in the City of London, a tall, angular figure in a nondescript, threadbare old gray gown lurked by a pillar, intently watching the throng of merchants, pious ladies, servants, and clerics as they went about their business. St. Paul’s was a good place to find work: at one pillar unemployed servants stood, waiting for offers, while at the north Si quis door, priests did the same thing more discreetly, posting neatly written little notices that they were available for any vacancy. Here at the west end twelve scribes of the cathedral sat at desks to write letters and draw up documents for the public; it was around this place that Brother Gregory had prowled for the last several days, waiting to snap up any copying business that might fall unattended from their tables. Two days ago he had written a letter for an old woman to her son in Calais, but since then there had been nothing, and Brother Gregory had begun to have indecent dreams of sausages and pig’s knuckles.

It was odd how voices reverberated and were lost in the nave. From somewhere far away the thin thread of a melody descended, to be interrupted by the rattle of voices from one of the nearby bays. A knight had entered by the main door without remembering to remove his spurs. There was a chatter and a flurry as white-surpliced choirboys swarmed around him to demand their customary tribute. As Brother Gregory watched the scribes’ desks, he noticed a young matron, followed by a serving girl, as she went up to the first desk, but the sound of their conversation, although it was fairly close, floated away and was lost. He watched her walk to each of the desks in turn. As she paused at the second desk, the clerk at the first desk turned to see what his colleague would do. When the second clerk looked down his long nose at her as if he smelled a bad fish, the first clerk laughed behind his hand. As she turned to go to the next desk, Brother Gregory could see her profile. Her chin was set hard.

A stubborn woman, thought Brother Gregory, as he watched her stand behind an old man waiting at the third desk. Stubbornness is a bad quality in a woman.

Then she passed to the next scribe. This one, a fat red-jowled cleric, laughed in her face. Then he leaned conspiratorially over to his colleague and whispered behind his hand. The next man whispered in turn to his colleague on the other side, who, when she stood at last before his tall desk, pointed over in Brother Gregory’s direction. She turned suddenly and stared at Brother Gregory across half the width of the nave, to where he stood by his pillar. She looked a little puzzled and disappointed but then started toward him.

She didn’t look as old as he’d supposed at first. Not more than a year or two over twenty, he thought. A dark blue cloak with the hood pulled up covered her dress entirely, revealing only the edges of her white linen veil and wimple. She looked well off: the cloak was lined in rich fur and fastened with a gold filigree brooch. She had come through the spring mud on foot, her wooden pattens were still strapped beneath her embroidered morocco-leather slippers. She was of medium height, but even on the high, carved pattens she seemed smaller than she actually was, for she was slender and fine boned. Brother Gregory thought he saw a sort of lost look on her face, but some women seem always to look a little confused. After all, many of them were incapable of dealing with a man’s world and really should not be allowed out-of-doors alone. It couldn’t be much of a job she wanted done, if all the cathedral scribes thought it was a joke, Brother Gregory mused to himself. Well, it would be better to take a small job than have none at all. These unpleasant dreams had been interfering with his meditations; maybe he’d get a good dinner out of this woman. Then he could continue his search for God undisturbed.

The woman hesitated for a moment, looking Brother Gregory up and down, and then said firmly, “I need a clerk who can write.”

“That is self-evident,” responded Brother Gregory, inspecting her more closely. Rich, very rich, he concluded. And self-willed too.

“I mean write, really write.” They’ve played a joke on me, those cathedral clerks, thought Margaret. The man’s a beggar—one of those vagabond thieves who dress up like friars to get money. He probably can’t read and write at all. He’ll make a great show of it for a while, until he’s paid, she worried. Then he’ll walk out, leaving me with pages of meaningless markings and everyone laughing at me for a fool. And I’ll be lucky if he doesn’t take the silver spoons as well. Horrid, horrid Voice! Why didn’t it bother someone else?

“I can write,” said Brother Gregory, with calm arrogance. “I can write in Latin, French, and common English. I will not, however, write in German; it is a barbaric tongue that curdles the ink.”

He speaks properly, thought Margaret. Not like a peasant or a foreigner. I’ll try him. So she plunged on: “I need a clerk who can write a whole book.”

“A copyist for a book of prayers? I can do that.”

“No—a book, a book about women. A book about me.”

Brother Gregory was shocked. He was dimly conscious, too, of an amused glitter in several pairs of eyes at the scribes’ desks, as they watched the negotiations from a distance. Brother Gregory glowered at the woman. She was spoiled to the bone. What foolish rich man was indulging these insane fantasies? Clearly she thought that money would buy everything, even a man’s integrity. He was as courteous as possible under the circumstances, but soon enough he sent her off under the sharp eyes of the cathedral scribes.

As Margaret turned to go, she looked back intently at him, and a shrewd look of calculation passed over her face. It was the arrogance that had caught her attention. All the ones who can really read and write are like that, she thought. She watched intently as Brother Gregory stood at his full height and looked down his nose at her, as if he had a hundred dinners waiting for him, and her work didn’t interest him in the least. Her eyes followed him as he turned to see if he could find other business.

By late that afternoon Brother Gregory’s luck hadn’t turned, and he wandered disconsolately into the muddy churchyard. He was feeling rather hollow inside, and the bare branches and the section of the church wall above his head seemed to heave and whirl in the gray sky in a most unusual fashion. He had just stopped for a moment to lean against the churchyard wall when that woman again, who had seemed to come out of nowhere, was tugging on his worn sleeve, her maid standing behind her. He looked down at her while her face went on talking and talking, and followed her through a maze of alleys to a little bakeshop in Cheapside, where she seemed to think they could discuss her project in greater privacy. Here she sat Brother Gregory down in a corner and ordered quite a bit more food than she needed, which she placed in front of him. Brother Gregory ate very slowly, until the smoky bakeshop ceiling quit moving about, and all the while she pleaded with him in the most humble and self-effacing way. It didn’t seem so wrong, what she wanted, especially if one took into consideration the fact that she’d been told to do it by a Voice. It just had to be seen in the right light and it wasn’t so bad, not so bad at all. And so Brother Gregory agreed to come the next day to her husband’s house by the river to begin the work.

The very next morning Brother Gregory threaded his way among the laden donkeys, horsemen, and merchants on Thames Street, following it as it wound along the bank of the river, searching for the house of Roger Kendall. The street was a favorite place for merchants who dealt in imported goods to locate their houses: Brother Gregory recognized the house of a noted vintner a few doors down from his destination. Then he stopped for a moment before an imposing, three-storied house that looked like the right place, inspecting it up and down. The front was crisscrossed with elaborately carved and brightly painted timber supports, and from the corners where the timbers joined, there stared out the curiously carved and gilded faces of angels and beasts, while under the high, pointed eaves, painted owls’ faces were hidden at the roofline. The lead gutters at the end of the eaves were finished off with a pair of fancifully cast leaden gargoyles, whose open mouths formed the drain spouts.

Even from the street Roger Kendall’s love of comfort was evident, and Brother Gregory could easily understand how his wife was so spoiled. The windows were unusual for a private residence: between brightly painted green and red carved shutters, there were panes of real glass, set in thick little circles joined together with lead. On the great timber above the front door, between two deeply cut crosses, the motto of the house had been carved beneath a representation of Kendall’s coat of arms: DEXTRA DOMINI EXULTAVIT ME.

Brother Gregory inspected the seal above the motto: yes, this was surely the place. It certainly looked like a merchant’s seal: there was not a lion on it, and probably it wasn’t even registered with the College of Heralds. Three sheep, a balance, and a sea serpent. The man certainly made it plain how he had made his money. Brother Gregory lifted the heavy brass door-knocker. In a few moments he had been shown to a place where he might wait in the great hall. As he sat on a bench, inspecting the painted seal on the chimney over the great hearth, his matted sheepskin cloak beside him, he wondered how long it would be before she tired of the project. After all, how much could a woman have to say? In a few days, perhaps a week, she’d find some new form of self-indulgence, and he could return to his meditations in peace. The firedogs glistened in the flames; the great hall was pleasant and warm. He could smell dinner being made in the kitchen beyond the wide screen at the end of the hall. Yes, with any luck, he could count on just a few days before he could set out again, newly fortified, on his search for God.

 

“WHERE DO YOU WISH to begin?” asked Brother Gregory.

“At the beginning, when I was little,” answered Margaret.

“So you’ve been hearing voices since you were little?” Brother Gregory’s own voice was bemused.

“Oh, no, when I was little I was just like everyone else. The only voices I heard were mother’s and father’s. They didn’t like the way I was turning out. But that is the way it is with parents. Some children just work out better than others. So I thought I’d start there—with my family, and how things began differently than they ended.”

“Very well, it is always best to start at the beginning,” said Brother Gregory, with a certain irony, sharpening a quill with his knife. Margaret didn’t notice anything odd about that statement at all. It seemed just right.

 

I SUPPOSE IT WAS about two summers after our mother died that our lives took a new turning that set us on the very different paths we now tread. By “us” I mean my brother David and me, of course. I was a little girl, seven, or maybe six, if I recall it right. David and I were as close as two twins, even though he was a year younger. We did everything together. Our favorite things to do were sitting in our apple tree, eating apples and spitting the seeds down on the ground, and, at planting time, running about and screaming and waving our arms to frighten away the birds from the seed corn. Everyone said we were very good at that. With mother dead, father didn’t care for us much, so we roved about together like a pair of wild things, speaking an odd language we had made up that nobody but us could understand. Even though he was a boy and I was a girl, we thought we could go on forever that way.

But nothing goes on forever, even if it seems like it at the time. Take our village, for example. It was as old as God’s footprints in Eden, but it’s gone now. The plague turned it into a sheep pasture. The only place it’s the same is in my mind. I can still see the naked northern hills rising in jagged wedges behind the flat, tilled land on the valley floor, and the brook running like a narrow gash, separating the church, square, and the larger houses from the cottars’ huts on the other side of the stone bridge.

Ashbury was at that time the least of the villages of the great Abbey of St. Matthew, but it was on the high road, and that should be counted a distinction. From our front door you could see the square Norman tower of the church beyond the trees, and the curve of the road before our house led directly to the churchyard. It gave our house a sort of prominence, even if it was not large. Father made us different too. He was freeborn and held his own land. And besides being the best bowman in the demesne, he was also the best piper and the best drinker in Ashbury, which always counts for a great deal in the country.

The day I’m thinking about was really the day all the changes started. After that nothing could be put back together again, even David and me—though it didn’t all become clear to me until later. It was warm and summery, and David and I were sitting in the dusty road in front of our door. Two doors down Goodwife Sarah and her gossips were also sitting in the sun, chattering as they took turns using a fine-tooth comb on each other’s hair. David and I were playing: we were seeing who could pick off the most fleas the quickest. I had pulled my skirt up to expose my shins above my bare feet, where I found three good-sized ones crawling leisurely up my leg. Quick as a flash I caught one, but the other two leapt away into the dust.

“You are much too slow, Margaret; you’ve let two of them get away,” said David, in the superior tone that he sometimes used, and he cracked the two that he held between his fingers. Neither of us looked up to see the figure of our parish priest, Sir Ambrose, toiling down the dusty road to our house.

“That’s because my blood’s strong. It makes my fleas faster than your fleas,” I answered in a lofty tone.

“Why, the only way to see if that’s true is to prove it,” replied David, and he set to drawing a circle in the dust with his toe.

“There,” he said. “Now, you put two of your fleas in the center, and I’ll put two of mine, and we’ll see which hops away the fastest.”

The thing was quickly done, and his fleas hopped out of the circle in a single great leap, while mine crawled miserably away into the dust.

“So there!” he exulted. “You see?” Sometimes even a brother can be irritating. Especially one who’s younger and always has to prove he’s better. I was so annoyed, I didn’t even notice the sound of greetings from the gossips as Father Ambrose approached.

“Well, I won’t have any fleas at all, if they can’t be fast ones,” I said. David dug his toes in the dust. He had no hose or shoes, just a tunic and a belt. We didn’t own an undershirt between us. Maybe someone in the village did, but we had never seen it.

“Ha! You can’t do that. Everyone has fleas!” he gloated.

“I can so, I’ll wash them off!”

“Well, they’ll just hop right back on again,” he pointed out, reasonably enough.

“I’ll just wash them off again, and again!”

“You are a silly, for you’ll be bathing all the time. Just how often do you think to do this?”

“Why, I’ll—I’ll do it every week! Every day!” I cried, without even thinking.

“Then your skin will come off, and you’ll die,” he said. “Everyone knows that.”

The shadow of the parish priest, who had come upon us, extended across our dusty circle. I looked up to see his sharp blue eyes staring down at us. His wrinkled, stubbly face looked disapproving and suspicious.

“Have a care, little maiden, how boldly you speak of such vanities,” his deep voice intoned.

“Why, good day, Sir Ambrose!” David turned his glorious, great blue eyes on the priest. “Have you many visits to make today?”

“Why, yes, David.” His face lit up as he looked at David’s intelligent, pretty one. David had our mother’s narrow, oval face, her white, white skin, and a mop of great, dark curls that could only have come from father.

“I have only begun my day’s visits,” the priest said, squatting down to address David face-to-face. “First, I visited old Granny Agnes, who has a sickness in her joints, and I carried her the Host, because she can’t leave her bed. Next I must go to see Goodwife Alice, for she wants her cooking-pot blessed. She says there is a demon in it which causes all her food to be burnt, and her husband threatens to leave her if the demon spoils any more dinners. But right now, little man, I have business with your father.”

“With father?” I asked.

He stood and regarded me very carefully, as if counting every feature. People often did that, usually ending by shaking their heads and saying, “You look just like your mother,” as if they somehow disapproved. “Too pale,” they’d say, “and those eyes—hazel’s not a fortunate color. They look yellow, like a cat’s, in this light. Too bad they’re not blue.” I felt more and more embarrassed as the priest stared, and wished that I had a better dress. Maybe if it were not cut down from mother’s, and turned three times at the hem for growth—or perhaps if it were blue, instead of common russet, he’d like me better, as he did David. Instead he never ceased his sharp, hard look as he spoke to me.

“Yes, my business is with your father, who has great need to be reconciled to Mother Church. And you, little maid, must take care that you do not follow in his footsteps through vanity. A true Christian neglects the body in favor of the spiritual life: too many washings and self-adornings are the sign of un-Christian thoughts at work, and will lead to damnation.”

Warming to his subject he continued on:

“Why, it was just through such excessive bathing that our late martyred king, Edward the Second (God rest him!)” —and here Father Ambrose crossed himself—“became so weakened that he failed in battle, and was overthrown by his own wife. Thus was his death accomplished by washing, and you must take heed of this example provided by God.” Sir Ambrose looked pleased with himself, the way he usually did when he delivered a homily he considered to be especially cleverly done. I looked at him intently: sweat had glued his gray hair to his temples; I could see something small and dark crawling up his neck from under his collar. But it was by his fingernails that I could see that he was a very holy man. Here was a problem: did this mean that old William the Ploughman was even holier after a day loading the dung cart? Luckily, this time I was silent. Questions like that have made a lot of trouble for me all my life.

“Children, is your father inside? I have not seen him at work today, and am told he is home sick.”

“Yes, he is inside sick,” I told the priest.

“Sick with ale, Father,” chirped David, who was sometimes as righteous as a little old man.

“Ah, poor children! I guessed as much. These infernal funeral-ales cannot be stopped. Any man who sang so long, played pipes so late, and drank as much as he did would doubtless be—ah—‘sick.’”

The priest entered without knocking and we heard voices, or, rather, a voice answered by groans, inside the darkened house. As the voices rose, we could hear what was being said.

“A man doesn’t shit in his hat and then put it on his head.”

“You have been knowing her carnally for some time and must wed or appear before court.”

“Pay a fine? I haven’t any money and you know it.”

“Have you already squandered the great dowry brought you by your wife?”

“Those were investments, Father.”

“Investments? I say, investments in sinning! Aren’t you even ashamed that her children sit outside in the dirt, idly counting fleas, and you have not brought them to church for a fortnight?”

“Children are a great trial. No man should be expected to raise children.”

“Then wed the widow, man! She will raise the children.”

“She’s too fat.”

“Not too fat for you to sleep with.”

“She’s too old, and has a loud voice.”

“She is prosperous, and has two large, strong sons who can help you with your land.”

“Two big mouths, with even bigger bellies, you mean.”

“Spoken like a peasant, and not like the freeman you are.”

“I am a free man, free of marriage, and that way I intend to stay.”

“And I tell you, miserable sinner, that unless the banns are published in the next week, I shall see you locked up until you repent!”

A groan, and then a creaking sound, as the prone one rolled over in bed.

“Very well, then, publish and may the Devil fly off with you.”

“It’s you I’m snatching from his claws, you vile, blasphemous piece of rotting flesh!”

A few angry strides and Sir Ambrose was out the door. We sat innocently together as if we had heard nothing. As the priest stepped over the threshold, he spied us and wiped all signs of rage from his face. Looking again at David, he said, in a persuasive tone, “Are you a good little boy?”

David nodded.

“No lies, no stealing of fruit?”

“No, Father.”

“Little David, I have need of a very good little boy to assist me at Mass. If you come to help me, you will swing the censer and hear the holy words up close. If you are very, very good, you will see the myriads of angels that cluster in the sanctuary whenever the Blessed Mass is sung.”

David’s eyes widened. How could the priest have known how many hours we had watched the sky, hoping to catch a glimpse of the angels behind the clouds? But I knew what really moved Sir Ambrose. As I watched his eyes survey David, I knew he was already imagining that beautiful face surrounded by a white collar, and hearing in his mind David’s luminous little treble singing in Latin. It was something everybody thought of when they saw David. Even dirty he looked that way.

“I would like very much to assist you, Sir Ambrose,” said David in his stiffest, most formal voice.

“Good, then. Join me after Vespers today, and I will explain matters further to you.”

As Father Ambrose walked away down the road again, to the tree-shaded porch of the old stone church, I could hear him mutter, “There are yet souls to be saved in that house.”

 

AND THAT IS HOW, only a few weeks later, our new mother came to our house, riding atop her bedding and cooking pots in a great cart pulled by two oxen. Behind was tethered a milk cow, and beside it ran two husky boys, our new stepbrothers, Rob and Will, driving the oxen. Ahead of the cart ran several nondescript dogs that the new brothers kept for their favorite sport: dog fighting. In baskets tied to the outside of the cart rode four geese, several hens, and two fighting cocks in splendor. Even from a distance you could smell the stink of her box of ferrets. The new mother must be a hunter, too.

Her cousins in the village had said that she was rich and full of pride. From the first it was clear that they were right. She had a square chest filled with a half-dozen sheets, a set of carved wooden spoons, her needles and distaff, four fine, sharp knives, and even a little sack full of silver money. She put on airs because she was from St. Matthew’s itself, the town that sat at the foot of the abbey. As the cart creaked along our main street, she had acknowledged the cries of urchins with a cold nod, turned up her nose at the village church, murmured, “The abbey’s is much greater,” at the village fishpond, and pursed her lips at the green, with its little market cross and stocks that displayed not a single miscreant of note.

“Be careful how you lift that chest!” she exclaimed shrilly, when my father came to unload her possessions. With her pale, fishy blue eyes she wordlessly took in our disheveled house, my mother’s ruined herb garden, and the roses that had run wild along the wall. Having surveyed all, tethered her cow, stowed her ferrets within, and released her fowl, she said curtly to my father, “Hugh, this place wants fixing up.”

And fix she did: she swept the dog bones and the trash out the back door, put the coverlets out the windows to air, made up the smoldering fire, and set her kettles to boiling. Then she grabbed me by the ear and told me that I should now be a proper little girl, nodding grimly when she found out that I did not know how to spin. When Rob and Will, those big, loutish sons of hers, grinned at my treatment, she turned and clouted their heads with the stick she always seemed to have in her hand. They yowled and fled, a prudent course that seemed to have already been taken by David, when he had first seen the cart pull up.

The more I looked at the new mother, the less I liked her. I could no longer remember my own mother’s face, but I was sure it had been much more beautiful—and certainly I remember my own mother smelled a good deal better. Some people are sour all over, in looks, in speech, and in smell, and that’s how the new mother was. My real mother could sing sweetly, and I do remember that she had soft hands. People stared at her, too, and still talked about her now that she was with the angels. She had some secret thing about her that made even the priest, who was always hard on women, deferential. I always wished I knew what it was. Now we watched the new mother waddle about the house, her pale, stringy hair wadded under a greasy kerchief, hitting at whatever annoyed her and shrieking her complaints. I used to wonder how father could ever have done such a thing, having once been wed to mother. Maybe it was the money.

My father wed the new mother before the church door at Lammastide, and thus began our new life. But it was only a few weeks after the wedding that it became apparent to all who cared to notice, that Mother Anne’s fatness was not the product of greed alone, and that the baby would be coming soon. It was at Martinmastide, after the village cattle were killed and salted, when father was slaughtering our pig, that she was seized with pains. The kettles of corn and oats for blood-pudding were boiling on a great fire outside, and spices set out for sausage making, when a strange look passed over her face.

“Margaret, go and fetch Granny Agnes, and be quick about it, for my time is coming.” By this time father and my brothers had hoisted the hideously squealing pig by its hind legs. As she took up the great wooden bowl, father plunged his sharp knife deep into the pig’s throat. Sweat shone on her face as she caught the rivers of blood that gushed from its neck. Frightened, I ran all the way to the midwife’s little round hut, and carried her basket all the way back as the old woman hobbled slowly behind me.

Even before we reached our door, I could hear Mother Anne’s screaming inside. Father was leisurely finishing off the jointing of the pig; the sides of bacon were already carved, and the great bloodless head sat on the block, its piggy eyes sunken and glazed, the tongue protruding. Several good-hearted neighbor women were there at work, to finish the tasks my mother had set out, for none would wait the day. One was pouring rendered lard into a bladder, another, having washed out the guts, was tying sausages, and the third, taking time from finishing the blood-puddings, had gone within to hold mother’s hand. When her moaning and howling would stop, her gossip would pat her hand and let it fall, returning outside to her task. Mother, her face running with sweat, barely acknowledged the midwife’s greeting. She sat on the low birthing stool, her back braced against the wall, all her strength bent on her work.

Granny was all business. “Margaret,” she said, “set warm water in a tub for the baby’s bath, if there’s a tub left in the house. There’s plenty of work here.”

There was no tub, so I rushed outside to the neighbors’ and brought back one that would do. When I returned, Granny was holding mother’s hand and chanting in threes, “Lazarus, come forth,” in her cracked voice, to speed the labor. Tears oozed from mother’s eyes, and her face was red. Then both women gave a cry, as the head finally began to appear. Granny knelt between mother’s upraised knees, assisting first the head, then the trunk and limbs, to be born.

“A boy!” exclaimed Granny, and mother whispered the words over. As the baby started to wail, it turned from blue to pink. Mother stared at it wearily, while Granny delivered the afterbirth and severed the cord. The neighbors had broken off their work to witness the great moment, and stood crowded in the doorway. Women can never resist a new baby, and these were no exception. Granny had light work from that moment on, for they washed and swaddled it themselves and then stood about making cooing noises. While they were occupied with exclaiming over its features, Granny got father for the christening. David was dispatched to fetch the godparents as father, mother’s gossips, and the midwife carried the baby off exultantly to church. I waited with Mother Anne, who was tense with worry. Suppose the baby didn’t cry at the font? That would mean the holy water had failed to chase the Devil out of him. An ill omen, that would be. Both her older boys had slept contentedly through their baptisms.

But it was not long before he was returned, all red faced, to nurse at Mother Anne’s big breast. As father paid Granny in bacon and she repacked her basket, mother’s gossips joyfully reported that the baby had howled horribly as the holy water touched him. With mother safely holding the baby her gossips departed, happily discussing what dishes to bring to the churching.

That’s another thing I thought about that day, and that has bothered me ever after. A festivity is very nice, and I have seen some very grand churchings since that day. But why must a woman kneel outside the church door to be purified after having a baby? Does that mean it’s wickeder to have a baby than to be killing things, like a soldier, or as father did the pig? Why shouldn’t father kneel before the church door? I still don’t really understand why God thinks women making babies is worse than men making sausages—or corpses.

But still, when I think back on that day, and how frightened I was, and how little I observed, I cannot imagine how I ever had the makings of a good midwife in me, or that someday the practice of that art would become the most important part of my life.

 

“YOU DON’T LOOK LIKE a midwife,” Brother Gregory interrupted, as he blew on a page to make it dry. His face was averted to conceal his distaste. It is one thing to describe, say, the Virgin with angel attendants, but this woman had no discretion at all.

“I’m not one anymore,” replied Margaret, looking at him coldly.

“That is self-evident; it’s not an art practiced by women in respectable circumstances,” said Brother Gregory, looking around.

“It ought to be the most respected profession in the world—midwives witness how God makes the world new,” said Margaret; gritting her teeth in a way that made it plain to Brother Gregory that he would have to choose between his literary taste and his dinner in the kitchen.

“Witness to the dropping of the fruits of sin,” he growled to himself.

“You said?” She looked at him.

“God wishes to humble us by the manner of our origin,” he said aloud—and especially me, he thought to himself, thinking about the smell from the kitchen.

“I’m glad you see it my way,” said Margaret. “Now you can put this new part at the top of that page, there. Write it large, it looks nice that way.”

 

BUT I WANTED TO have written down about how the events of this time started Fortune’s wheel turning to separate David from me forever, and that I must do. What with the new mother, and the new brothers, and the new baby, David escaped to the rectory more and more often.

“What do you do at Father Ambrose’s all the time, David?” I asked when he came back one evening.

“Why, he’s showing me and Robert, the tanner’s boy, all kinds of splendid things. He sent away the cooper’s boy for lying, but he says we are good, and learn well.”

“What do you learn, besides serving at Mass?”

“Oh, lots of things. Look, sister!” And he drew several letters in the dirt with a twig. “That’s my name! David!” he said triumphantly.

“Oh, that’s so fine, David! Can you write Margaret too?” His face fell.

“It has an M in it, I know, but it’s awfully long. Maybe Father can show me, and then I’ll show you.”

“For sure?”

“For sure, really and truly.”

“Well, show me the M now, so I’ll know it.”

“Maybe I should ask Father first. He says there are some things properly secret and not fit for women—”

“But M is not a secret. You’ve told me already, so it’s not secret at all, not a tiny bit. Besides, I’m not a woman, I’m your sister.”

David’s face looked long with worry. “Oh, all right. Let me make it for you here.”

And that is how I learned the letter M, with which I make my mark, rather than a cross, as other people use.

“What are you doing there, Margaret, wasting time?” Mother Anne’s shrill voice, accompanied by the rising howls of the baby, came from the house.

“I am spinning, mother, spinning and talking to David.” But it was not true, for the distaff had lain idle since I first saw David coming up the road.

“With David?” Her head popped out of the door, the baby making greedy sucking noises at the breast.

“Come in, child, come in—it’s cold out here, and there’s a good stew for supper. What are those marks? Writing? How very, very clever! Why, you might be a priest already!” She beamed at David. To be the mother of a priest filled her with glorious imaginings. What a grand place it would give her! How they would bow, when she appeared with her son, the priest! Even the mother of a boy with only a first tonsure had respect. And suppose someday he got a parish, and was called “Sir David”? Then she looked down and saw my poor attempt at spinning, lying on my lap.

“And you, Margaret, what’s that mess in your lap? Spinning, you say? Such lumps and tangles as you make are a waste of good wool. If idling and gossiping so spoil your work, you must apply yourself closer to it and give up chatter. Well, come in quickly, or the cakes on the griddle will burn.” We hurried in to join our father, the two large ones, and the hired man for supper.

Night fell quickly in these cold days of Advent, and so we were soon in bed, the banked fire’s dull glow giving the house its only faint light. In those days, before our house was made larger, it was still only one great room, with the fire at the center and a kind of partition at one end where the cattle might be kept at night. At this back end there was a good lot of straw, where the oxen and the hired man slept. The fire in the center was surrounded by flat stones, with the kettle hanging over it. A round, flat griddle and some lesser pots stood beside it. The smoke rose above it to the blackened thatch, where it hung about the hams and sides of bacon that were suspended from the rafters before it wandered out through the smoke hole.

We all slept in the same big bed at the front of the house, the baby in the cradle so it would not be overlain. But even when the big boys did not thrash about, sleep was not always easy, for the new baby, christened Martin, did poorly after his auspicious beginning. Something about the cold weather made him fret and whine and roll his head at night, and feeding did not relieve it. Day and night his nose ran. Sometimes David and I would lie awake for hours, listening to the baby scream. Will and Rob stuffed wool in their ears. Nothing bothered the hired man, for besides being toothless, he was also deaf. But mother’s face sagged, and deep shadows appeared under her eyes. Sometimes in the day her head nodded over as she stirred the kettle. Father grew more and more irritable, for, as he said, “A man who works as hard as I do during the day deserves a little rest at night.”

This night mother slept too hard to hear the baby’s first whimpers. Then the snuffling cries changed to a thin little thread of sound rising and falling, which roused David from his sleep beside me, as I lay awake.

“Devil take you, you little bastard,” rumbled a heavy voice from under father’s place in the covers. “Shut your little yawp.”

“YeeeeeEEEEEeeeEEEEEEeeeeee!” rose from the cradle.

“Anne, Anne”—he pushed mother’s shoulder—“do something about that child of yours.” Mother groaned and turned but did not wake.

“Shut up, shut up, little monster,” growled father, rising from the bed and addressing the cradle. “I’ll show you not to wake a workingman!” And he picked up the swaddled baby and gave it a hard shake. The wailing stopped.

“There, that shows you. Now you’ll be a little more respectful, hah?” He shoved the baby down and climbed back into bed, where he pulled the covers over his head.

Silence woke Mother Anne as noise had not. With one sleepy hand she felt for the cradle in the dark. Finding the baby displaced, she felt again and opened her eyes to lift it with both hands. The head bobbed unnaturally on the neck. She looked closer: there was a thin bloody froth on the baby’s colorless lips. She touched it with her fingers and felt the neck again.

“Blessed Virgin and the saints!” She let out a howl. “What have you done, what have you done?”

“By God’s body, woman, shut your trap! First one noise, then another. A man needs sleep!”

“Hugh, the baby’s dead!”

“S’not dead, it’s finally asleep, leave me alone.”

“He’s dead, he’s dead, I say, and it’s you that’s done it!” she hissed. That woke father up properly. David’s eyes shone huge in the dark. We lay as still as death itself, for fear that father would notice us, and serve us the same way. Fully awake, father now took in the scene at last. Mother’s eyes started in her head with horror as she looked at the cold limp little body. Then she turned on father with such a look of loathing and disgust as I have never yet seen again.

“Look, just look what you have done to your own son!”

At that point something strange happened. Father’s face sagged and all the lines on it crumpled up as he said in a whining voice, “But I didn’t mean to do it, I didn’t mean to!”

Mother extended the child silently, its head bobbing.

“I swear before all the saints, I didn’t mean to. Don’t you understand, Anne, I didn’t mean to?” Whining and apologetic he fumbled and picked at the bedcover.

From that very moment on our house changed absolutely, for mother ruled in all things. She had only to say, “And where is Martin?” or, “Give me back my son,” and father would quit blustering, look shamefaced, and agree to whatever she proposed. Little Martin had the finest linen shroud that was ever seen in the village, but aside from that, nothing was ever remarked, for many babies are buried in wintertime.

It was that spring that mother decided to take up brewing, an art which she understood well. Father was becoming more useless all the time, and she thought that this would be a way to repair our fortunes. And father let her do anything now. Not only did he lack the will to oppose her, but all he thought of was ale anyway. So of course he agreed it was a good idea to have a large supply of it in his own house. The cooper made mother some good, large barrels, and when the first batch was ready, she hung the ale stake with its bush in front of the house, in token of its being a public house, and took to calling herself “Anne Brewster.”

Her reputation spread quickly from the day that the abbot sent the ale taster to test the quality of her work. After a long belch that worthy said that it was the best he had tried in the last twelvemonth, and stayed to drink for the rest of the day. And mother gave good measure, flowing over. She wasn’t like those cheating brewsters you hear of, who get put in the stocks right next to their false-bottomed measures. Mother Anne soon did well enough to arrange for the enlargement of our house, with a large front room furnished with benches for the drinkers, another room at the back of the house, set on at an odd angle, and a loft over the central room, for us children to sleep in. With judicious gifts and flattery she won over Father Ambrose, who despised all such dens of sin, to the degree that he grudgingly said that if such a place had to exist, it was well that it were honest.

I enjoyed helping mother with her brewing, for brewing well is a fine art, which requires a judicious and observant character, as well as a great deal of good fortune. At these times mother was too occupied to be cross, and she would even hum to herself in a tuneless voice.

It was the second summer after she had taken up brewing, when we were engaged in making mash in several large kettles over an open fire outdoors, that Sir Ambrose came looking for us at home.

“I have been looking for your husband, goodwife, for I have business with him,” called the priest. “I have not found him in his field, so I seek him here.”

“Yes, he’s inside, Father. He’s taken ill again,” she responded agreeably. “But surely you’ll have some ale as a remedy against the heat.”

Sir Ambrose, sweat rolling from under his wide-brimmed hat, answered, “It is a kindly offer, Mother Anne, and one that I’ll accept this day.”

As she left me to tend the kettles, she explained apologetically to him, “The boys are all at the haying, but the heat affected him too greatly. He’s not getting younger, Father.” Her voice faded into the house. I left my work at an auspicious moment and peeked in at the low, open window. I could see them both standing by the wide, sagging bed where father sprawled.

“Hmm, indeed, the heat has affected him greatly,” Father Ambrose said, wrinkling up his nose at the smell of stale drink that rose from father.

“Wake up, arouse yourself, good husband, for Sir Ambrose has business with you,” said mother, hiding her embarrassment with busy, fluttering motions of housework. Father groaned and sat up in bed.

“I have important business, business that should bring you great pride and pleasure.” Sir Ambrose shouted a little, as if father were deaf. Father winced.

“Pleasure?” mumbled father, getting his bearings.

“And pride,” prompted mother, who had begun to suspect, as I did, what the business was about.

“Goodman Hugh, your son David is a boy of talent, possibly great talent.”

“Oh?” Father was scratching and blinking.

“I have taught him all I can. He drinks in learning like a sponge.”

“He drinks? When is that?”

“Drinks learning, drinks learning, husband, dear,” prompted mother.

“I propose that he be sent to the abbey school at St. Matthew’s. I myself will recommend him.”

“School, doesn’t that cost money?” grumbled father.

“The fees are not great. And remember, they include feeding and housing. So they count even less if you think of the savings at home. Not all boys are capable of learning. You must not deny him his promise.” Sir Ambrose certainly did have the gift of flattery when the occasion demanded.

“Pay to send him away? Those monks should pay me for him. I need him here. There’s a lot of work that I need him for.” Father looked annoyed as he stared drunkenly at the end of the priest’s nose.

“Think of the honor, husband!”

“He needs higher teaching, if I can make you understand that,” said Sir Ambrose, in a condescending tone.

“Teaching?” protested father. “I teach him!”

“Not the rustic arts, my son, but the higher learning is what I speak of.” Father Ambrose was growing annoyed.

“Higher learning? Higher learning?” Father’s voice was sarcastic.

“It’s very great, this proposal of Sir Ambrose’s. You must consider it.” Mother put her hand on father’s shoulder in a conciliatory fashion.

“Hah, what do you know?” Father whirled on mother in a rage.

“Why, it’s, it’s—higher, that’s what, and higher is better.”

“Better than what, better than his old father? I’ll teach him higher! Higher than being an old eunuch of a priest, who battens on tithes!” Sir Ambrose looked furious and turned to go. But before he could speak, mother grabbed his sleeve and begged him, “Oh, please, please, worshipful Father, consider this great thing for David! Don’t take it from him out of rage. Come tomorrow, or better yet, I’ll send my husband with his own answer to the church tomorrow. Oh, think of the boy, and not of his father!”

Mollified, the priest looked sharply at her.

“Tomorrow, then,” he said. “I’ll wait until Compline, then no longer”—and he strode away.

The brewing could be left no longer, and as I turned to attend it, I heard mother shrieking through the open window, “I tell you, I will have it! Had Martin lived, he would have been even greater than that!” That winter David went up to the abbey, and mother’s fine ale paid the bill.

 

BROTHER GREGORY STOPPED AND sighed. This was going to require tact.

“This writing is very long,” he said. Silently he swept his mournful, intelligent dark eyes across the neat rows of small letters on the last page. It was good Italian paper, and the effect was nice. But Brother Gregory was not admiring his work. He was hoping that no one would ever recognize his handwriting.

“Are you worried about the cost? There is more paper, and we have more of these too.” Margaret picked up a quill and felt its softened, splayed tip. Then she cocked her head and peered at the writing with the shrewd stare of an illiterate who is determined not to be cheated.

“Just read me back that last bit, so I can hear what it sounds like,” she said firmly, as if she were bargaining for an oxtail in the market.

Brother Gregory read it gravely. The serious expression on his face, tinged with vague annoyance, made him look older than he really was. The impression was reinforced by the shapeless, shabby, ankle-length gray gown that he wore, which had given Margaret the vague notion that he might be a Franciscan. It was entirely threadbare at the elbows and the seat, the two weakest points in any scholar’s wardrobe. On a worn leather belt he wore a purse, a pen case, an inkhorn, and a knife in a plain sheath. On cold days like this one he wadded a pair of battered leggings under his sandals and put a sheepskin cape, its matted wool facing outward, over his gown. Shaving being an expensive habit, his tonsure and beard had begun to grow out, and his fierce dark eyebrows were now overshadowed by an unruly tangle of black curls.

Margaret nodded as she heard him read back what she’d said, and found herself wondering how old he really was. Very old, maybe thirty. No, perhaps not that old. Maybe really not that much older than she was. It was the serious look he had when he was concentrating on his writing that made him look old. Margaret had formed the habit of observing Brother Gregory very closely as he worked. At first there was the matter of the spoons. And then there was the problem of the writing, which went on for pages and pages. It seemed to look real: that is, it was all different, as well as being neat and small. Margaret watched the curiously delicate movements of Brother Gregory’s big hands as they traced the looping line of ink across the paper. She knew from her own sewing that fine movements like that can only be the product of long training. Still, she would test the process after each few pages by having him read back a bit aloud. It was always a relief to hear him say it back exactly as she’d said it.

The late afternoon light sifted through the thick lenses of leaded glass that made up the small windowpane, and left a narrow, luminous track across the oaken writing table. The clatter and bang from the kitchen suggested supper soon ready. A clamor of shrill voices was followed by the crash of a door and scurrying footsteps.

“Mistress Margaret, Mistress Margaret, the girls are fighting again! It is only a trinket, a trifle over a doll’s dress. I would have shaken them both for disturbing you so, but you said no hand should touch them but yours, and so I have come!” The old nurse shook her head and muttered to herself, “Vixens, vixens both! They’ll never mind without the rod! How often must I say it?”

“Bring them here, and I will speak to them.”

“Speak? Speak? As you wish it, mistress.” And the old woman waddled out, still shaking her head and certain that she served a madwoman who must be humored at all costs.

“I was thinking not of cost, Mistress Margaret, for I see you live in comfort,” resumed Brother Gregory, somewhat irritated by the interruption. His eye swept around the luxurious little room, an innovation even by London standards. On the ground floor with Roger Kendall’s hall, kitchen, and business offices, it was devoted entirely to his comfort and pleasure. Here the family could gather to hear readings, or simply talk and admire the roses in the back garden, which could be seen in somewhat distorted fashion through windows covered with real glass. Instead of the usual flooring of rushes, a brightly colored Oriental carpet spread beneath Brother Gregory’s feet. A rare, carved chest stood in one corner, and in the wide, ironbound locked chest that stood next to the writing table, could Brother Gregory have seen through its heavy lid, Roger Kendall’s greatest treasures were arrayed. There were, in addition to knickknacks that he had brought home from his travels abroad, nineteen beautifully copied volumes, handsomely bound in calfskin. When Brother Gregory had first been shown into this room, he had inspected it carefully and sniffed to himself, “A rich man, but of too luxurious a taste for decency in one not gently born.” Now, with careful gravity, he addressed the spoiled girl-wife of this luxury-loving worthy in what was probably going to be a fruitless attempt to instill some sense of literary taste into her writing.

“It is not the cost of paper which is the issue here,” he went on. “Rather, I was thinking of the example of the Saints, the Sages, and the Ancients. They tell things to the point, with not so much digression.” He gestured to the sheets of writing. “Then can one gain benefits from their holy thoughts, and observations of God’s wonders.”

“Are you saying that because I am a woman, I talk too much?”

“Not that so much, but—well, yes. You digress too much and have no point. Each section, for example, might be based on some important moral lesson or reflection, and all worthless trivia pruned away from the important idea. But then,” he said, cocking his head sardonically, “on the other side, it might be said that elevating the trivial is a fault not exclusively confined to women.”

“Still, I must go on as I began, for it is the only way I know.”

Any further thoughts were cut off by the banging of the door flung open, as the nurse dragged in two furious, noisy little redheaded girls, only a year and a half apart in age. The elder, barely four years old, clutched the object of the quarrel, a bedraggled, half-dressed doll. Her great blue eyes sparked with righteous indignation. Her mop of auburn curls, never fully tamed by her hair ribbon, had shaken loose, giving the impression that a great struggle had just taken place. Her little gown was disordered, and even the freckles spotted across her nose seemed to blaze with wrath. The younger girl was a study in contrasts: her normally placid little face, which still retained the plump contours of babyhood, was swollen and tracked with tears, consciously shaped by its owner into a portrait of wronged grief.

“She p-pulled my hair!” wailed the little one, pointing a pudgy finger at the silky, strawberry-blond waves above her ears.

“Did not!” snapped the elder.

“Girls, girls!” their mother addressed them in the calm voice of adult admonition. “Quarreling and lying, and in front of visitors, as well! Aren’t you ashamed?” They turned and stared at Brother Gregory, clearly not only unashamed, but sizing him up as a potential ally.

“Sisters must love each other! They should help and share, not fight!” The older girl clutched the doll tighter and gave a righteous smirk to the younger. The nurse, plainly disgusted by this performance, let them go and begged to be excused.

“Yes, but stay near, for you must take them back when this is settled.” The nurse unobtrusively rolled her eyes heavenward, as if she considered it might never be settled.

“Now, whose doll is it?” asked Margaret, in an even voice.

“Mine!” snapped the older girl.

“B-but the dwess is mine!” sobbed the younger. “Sh-she said I could play if I lent it!”

“Cecily, did you say that Alison could play with your doll if she lent you her dress?”

“Yes, and I did let her play,” the righteous one pronounced.

“For one little tiny bit, and then she grabbed it!”

“And then what did you do, Alison?” the mother questioned gently.

“I kicked her.”

“And so, Cecily, you pulled her hair?”

“Well, it doesn’t count, because she kicked me first!”

“Girls who fight disappoint their mama.” The girls looked unrepentant. “Girls who fight make their papa sad.” The girls looked at each other with alarm. This might be serious. “So to keep sisters from fighting, I shall take the doll, and put her in the chest, here, until the sisters kiss each other and apologize, and promise to play together nicely.” With a swift gesture Margaret detached the doll and placed it in the chest in the corner. “And if you fight again today, she’ll stay there a whole week,” said Margaret firmly.

With a horrified gesture the sisters clutched each other.

“But, mama, we need her!” they protested.

“If you need her, you’ll kiss and make up.” With grumpy distaste the sisters embraced each other and exchanged pecks. The doll was removed from the chest and the nurse called. The last words that Brother Gregory, somewhat appalled, heard floating back through the half-opened door were “Well, if you must play with her more, then you will be the nurse, and I will be the mama….”

“Well,” said Margaret, “you were telling me about the Ancients.”

“If you will permit me to offer a suggestion, whether you write in the worthy style of the Ancients or not, you will never finish any book if you permit such trivia and everyday matters to interfere.”

“That is what you have said already.”

“About your writing, madame, but not about your life,” responded Brother Gregory, somewhat tartly.

“It is good you are honest,” said Margaret, trying to mollify her crusty amanuensis. “But I have never been able to avoid doing what was necessary at the moment, and so I will have to keep on doing my best in that way, since I know no other.” Brother Gregory shook his head. Length, he supposed, would increase his fee, but this was all going to be a more complex project than he had imagined.