CHAPTER THREE

BROTHER GREGORY SAT FUMING BY HIMSELF in a corner of Master Kendall’s great hall. A new shipment of goods from Asia had arrived that morning, and the household was in an uproar: journeymen and accountants hurried through on mysterious errands, there was hubbub in the kitchen and the stables, and even the voice of Master Kendall himself could be heard through the open door of his business office, requesting that a certain length of silk be held for the wife of the lord mayor to inspect. Margaret was nowhere to be seen.

“She’s probably forgotten—or given up—without bothering to let me know. That’s the way this sort of people are.” Brother Gregory felt very sour. He had come without breakfast, which doesn’t bother most people, since dinner is at eleven in the morning. But it made him grouchy all morning long. He felt even grouchier when he overheard voices floating out of the kitchen: “Mistress does find some funny ones, doesn’t she? Remember that fellow in the black gown who went around blessing everything?”

“How about those heathen foreigners with the little black boy who followed them about? Master found those.”

“They’re two of a kind. But this one is the grumpiest they’ve found yet—that’s what I think.”

“Then you don’t remember that fellow with the yellow face from Venice.”

“Italians don’t count—they’re all crazy.”

“Not as crazy as Germans, that’s what I say.”

“That does it,” said Brother Gregory to himself. “I’m leaving, and she’ll just have to come and find me and beg. My Curiosity is cured.” He got up and took several angry strides to the front door, only to come close to losing his nose when the door was flung open to admit Margaret, who was followed by a footman with an empty basket.

“Why, Brother Gregory! Not going already?” Margaret took in at a glance the annoyance that was rising from Brother Gregory in the kind of waves that you see over a grain field in the heat. She was in a feeding mood. These overwhelmed her at times. They were a product of all the cooking and feeding she had been raised to do on the farm. She had been out feeding the poor, having caught and fed her daughters and all the apprentices earlier. Now she fixed Brother Gregory with a sharp eye. He clearly needed feeding.

“You haven’t had breakfast, have you? You’re much too tall to go without breakfast. You’ll become weak and ill.” (She told short people they were growing, when this mood came upon her.) “Now, you just turn around and sit over here, while I see if Cook has a little something.”

It is impossible to deny a woman in a feeding mood. It is as if they look right through you, to that small, weak part that has been there since you were a baby and that doesn’t know how to defy authority. Brother Gregory was completely docile as she sat him down while bread, cheese, and a mug of ale were brought. She stood over him while he ate, and when it was clear that his mood was rapidly becoming mellower, she said, “There! Isn’t that what you needed? Now, if everybody in the world ate breakfast, there would be no more wars.”

Brother Gregory’s natural contentiousness had returned, and with his mouth still half full, he responded, “That is an entirely illogical statement. The Duke of Lancaster, who is a great warrior, eats breakfast every day. But I know of a holy abbot who goes without eating for days at a time, and he doesn’t even kill flies.”

“You can’t prove anything with just two examples.”

“You just tried to prove an outrageous non sequitur with only one example—me,” said Brother Gregory primly.

“Oh, Latin, that’s what you’ve run to hide behind.”

“I’m not hiding anywhere, I’m right here in the open, reminding you that your book isn’t being written,” said Brother Gregory, chewing up the last of the bread.

“Oh, gracious, there’s hardly any time left!” exclaimed Margaret, and so they set to work almost immediately.

 

MY SUITOR’S NAME AND praises were on everyone’s lips. Lewis Small, how grand, how elegant! How lucky Margaret is, too lucky, really, it’s entirely unfair, they all said. It didn’t matter how many times I said, “I don’t want him! He frightens me!” It was just “Lucky Margaret, she’s a selfish girl who doesn’t appreciate what anyone does for her. She’s always been that way, now that we think about it.” They say that only fools struggle against fate. But I don’t think it’s foolish at all. After all, you don’t know how things will come out afterward until they have, so why settle for them ahead of time? But there was no one to turn to, no one at all. So I went to Father Ambrose and wept. After all, your confessor has to listen to you, even if he doesn’t want to. Surely, I said, wiping my eyes, God doesn’t think people have to get married even when they don’t want to? But to my surprise the priest’s face grew hard when I told him that Master Small’s face frightened me. I had to conquer fear, he lectured me, to do the will of my parents, which was the will of God.

“But—but couldn’t I be a nun, then, instead of marrying?” I ventured timidly.

Sir Ambrose stood up in a towering rage and shouted down where I knelt, “You? A bride of Christ? You have no vocation that I have ever seen—Mistress Light Foot, the Dancer, Mistress Gay Voice, the Singer, Mistress Stay-up-at-Night-to-Steal-Kisses! Do not blaspheme the Holy Sisters! Ask Christ to steady you and make you grateful for marriage to so fine a man as Lewis Small!”

“Fine a man?” I looked up at him.

“Why, fine indeed! Finer by far than your own family. And although not noble in birth, noble in thought, noble in deed, and noble in his love for Mother Church. He has already made an offering sufficient to repair the roof. And on the day the wedding vows are made, he pledges a window for the nave. Would you deny a holy place the beauty of a stained-glass window for your own selfish desires? Repent, repent now, and be forgiven, and marry in all modesty and humility, as becomes a maiden!”

How I hated that penance! Why does God do these things to us? It was then that it came to me that the reason must be that God is a man, or rather, that men and God think alike. Now, if God were a woman, things would be entirely different, it seemed to me. Certainly She wouldn’t make a girl get married when she didn’t want to. She’d let the women do the choosing, and the men would have to wait to be chosen, and obey in all modesty and humility. It would be very, very different in this world, if women could make their own choices. But that isn’t the way things are, so marry we did, before the church door, with Sir Ambrose all conceited at the thought of his new window.

Since mother was a brewster, the bride-ale was even greater than when the hayward’s only daughter at St. Matthew’s married. But the food and drink were not even half consumed when my new husband summoned his men and, leading me to a gaily bedecked mule, assisted me to mount with a showy gesture.

“Ah!” exclaimed the women, who thought Master Small looked exactly like the hero of a romantic ballad as he lifted me into the saddle. But Richard Dale, who had now lost all hope of the dowry he once coveted, watched without a word, his face pale as a ghost’s. I almost felt sorry for my former suitor. As the mule train began to make its way from the churchyard I turned back for a last look, and saw the men coaxing Richard Dale to take a drink, and then another. I felt sure that by the time the remnants of the party made their way to our house, he would be falling-down drunk.

A long trip gives a person a chance to think. I should have been all anticipation, dreaming about my new home and the grand estate to which I had risen, all because a wealthy stranger’s glance had chanced to light on me. Instead I kept wondering, Why me? It’s true I had a good dowry for a village girl, but wasn’t that nothing to a man who could buy a window? So it couldn’t be that he was in debt. They said that he was mad with love, captured by my beauty. But when he spoke of my burning glance, I really couldn’t recall any. He didn’t look very lovesick to me. Maybe men of the world conceal it better? And why travel so far to find a bride when the towns, they say, are full of beautiful women, all dressed in crimson and gold? Oh, it was all a mystery to me. Besides, there was something about him that made my skin crawl. I felt more and more depressed. Ahead of me, on the narrow, dusty track, rode my bridegroom and his friends, passing the time by singing songs about the fickleness of women. Behind me rode his armed retainers in silence. Now I know how a bale of goods feels when it’s being transported, I thought.

A flight of blackbirds rose suddenly from the barley field beside us. Why couldn’t Margaret fly away like that? I imagined, for a moment, running away. But it couldn’t be done. It’s impossible for a woman not to be married. You’ll end in a ditch—everyone knows that. So it all had to be. I tried to tell myself it wouldn’t be so bad. Everyone says you get used to it, and besides, there’s babies, and they make it all right. That’s what they say, at least. A pretty baby, that wouldn’t be so bad. Then I wouldn’t really have to think about him anymore.

It wasn’t long after the church spires, low town wall, and the castle towers of the town had come into view that the mules were being led into the stable of Master Small’s establishment. It was more or less like the other petty merchants’ houses that flanked it on either side. The front of the house was flush with the street, and the lower story was just one long room divided up, the great hall at the center, with the kitchen, servants’, and apprentices’ quarters behind, and a shop at the front. There was an attractive little walled garden at the back. Below the hall were basement storerooms that stank of pelts, and above a bedroom and solar. In the first room, which was our own chamber, there stood a great curtained bed, with a chest at its foot for valuables. There was also a table and another chest by the window, which looked out upon the street. At the table my husband did his accounts. In the second room, where women’s work such as sewing and weaving was done, slept his son by his first marriage and the boy’s nursemaid. The room also had an empty cradle and another empty bed. It was clear that Lewis Small was expecting more children at the earliest possible date.

Even if the servants had not been so grave and quiet, it was clear to me from the start that something was not right in the house. I thought I knew why when the nurse brought Master Small’s son to greet him. He was a pale little boy, not yet five years old, who stared unknowingly at his father with the wide, shining blue eyes of an idiot. He was incapable of speech. As I looked at his narrow, unhealthy face, I had a sudden mean little thought: I can make better children than that. I saw Small’s eyes narrow as he ordered the boy removed in a quiet, hard voice. A vain man, I thought, who cannot bear the public disgrace of a simpleton for an heir. But it was really I who was the simpleton. It didn’t take me long in Master Small’s house to find out how simple a girl with no experience of the world can be. If I had ever suspected how much less simple I was soon to become, I would have been more frightened than I was at the time.

Having sent the child away, my husband called for water to wash the dust of the journey from his hands and face, and had a boy run to the vicar’s with word that he was back. This worthy soon arrived, followed by a boy with a censer, to bless the marriage bed and pray for sons. A crowd of people—I wasn’t sure yet which were relatives—stood about the bed, as the priest prayed at endless length for sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons, sprinkling the bed with holy water and censing the room.

Outside, in the summery dusk, his friends howled and whistled in the street beneath the window. Small’s eyes flickered nervously at the sound, just as the candles flickered in the black iron sconces on the walls. The room was completely silent, except for his breathing, as he slowly looked me over, still dressed in my wedding clothes. His look frightened me, and I sat down on the edge of the bed, while he stood with his hands on his hips, still looking at me wordlessly. Then he suddenly strode across the room, bolted the door, and turned and addressed me, without any smile at all.

“Take them off. I want to see what I’ve got.” He blinked rapidly, like a reptile. I looked at him in bewilderment. I could not imagine a wedding night without kisses and sweet words.

“Didn’t they tell you your duty was to obey your husband in all things?” His voice was soft and sibilant, and a shadow of his cold smile had returned. “So kindly hurry, to show your desire to be obedient—and quit hiding under the covers; I didn’t buy a bride in a blanket.” I couldn’t bear looking at him; I hid my face in the coverlet.

“Obedience means in everything. Nothing that a man does in marriage is improper. Do you understand? Just how much do you know?”

In spite of myself I blushed. You’d have to be brought up in a box not to know quite a bit.

“Enough, I see,” and he grabbed away the coverlet, his pale eyes glittering. But, having seen enough, he began to murmur nervously to himself, “This will be a night’s work, a night’s work indeed.” I was taken aback. What on earth did he mean? Things weren’t like this at home.

He stood and removed his tunic, so that he stood in his long, white linen undershirt. He paced around the room, as if trying to make his mind up about something. Then he stripped off the shirt to reveal his baggy linen underbreeches. The same belt that held up his underbreeches also upheld his hose, suspended in front by two long laces. There is something droll about a man in underbreeches and hose. It just isn’t dignified. As he stood there, his eyes blinking, I began to be amused. It was even more amusing when it became clear to me that the man was as useless as a drowned earthworm. What a comical way I was going to be saved from my noxious marital duties! He made several fruitless attempts to do what is proper before he exclaimed in a rage, “The Devil is in this somewhere! This is witchcraft! Someone’s put a curse on it!”

Something humorous rose like a bubble within me, and I was too slow in hiding my face. He saw the twitch at my mouth and turned on me suddenly, his eyes now wide and blazing.

“You are the witch! You, just like the other! Well, I won’t be cheated again. I’ll beat that smile off you, you sly little slut!” He crossed the room and picked up the riding whip that lay on the linen chest, and strode back to grab me by the arm. “You need training, wife,” he said, with a flicker of that cold smile of his, “and I’m going to break you in properly.”

I won’t go into the nature of his training, except to say that it was very painful. But it was then that I began to learn several new and unpleasant things about Master Lewis Small. The first was that he was excited by blood. As he inspected his work, he began to shake with lust. For a moment he paused, his eyes flicking me over in the same way that a snake inspects a mouse it is about to devour. Then all at once he renewed his attack, and when he had at last finished, without even a word, he opened the window shutters to hear the ribald congratulations of his friends, that strange icy smile stretching the bottom half of his face out of shape. After that he wrapped himself up in the coverlet and turned over to sleep.

That night he slept as if nothing at all had happened, snoring horribly, as I sat up in bed weeping. And over and over again, I asked myself, Why me, why me? Why did he have to travel so far to find me and spoil my life, when there are dozens of girls in this town alone he could wed, girls with bigger dowries, girls with golden hair? Why would a rich man like him need a girl from the country? In answer to my unspoken thoughts I seemed to hear a sighing sound in the stillness of the room. The darkness seemed full of undiscovered grief.

The next morning Small sat up in bed fully refreshed, though I did not feel so well myself. But it seems that fate had decreed that I had made an insufficiency of discoveries. That was the way it was with Small—always something new. As I hid my face from him, he said coolly, “A wife’s duty is to rise early and serve her husband. Sloth is a deadly sin. A woman should never add willful sin to her own naturally foul being. Must I use discipline to keep you from your own wickedness?” When I had staggered up he leaned over in bed, and picked up the whip from the floor, where he had dropped it beside him the night before.

“Now,” he said, calmly, with a pleasant smile, “in token of your future obedience, I want you to kneel and kiss the rod and thank me.”

“No,” I whispered, backing into the corner. I wasn’t going to let him near me so easily this time. I’d fly at him and scratch his eyes out if he came at me again.

“No?” he said, never raising his voice. “Do I need to break you? Or will it be sufficient for me to tell you what happens to disobedient wives? I am a very lenient husband, for I do not wish you to lose the son you are doubtless carrying after last night. But were I not so thoughtful, I might break both your legs. It’s been done before, you know, and the man who did it was praised for a gentleman, because he arranged with a surgeon to set his wife’s legs before he did it. But of course, then she could not serve him, could she?” he asked, fondling the whip. My skin crawled with horror.

“But I am a Christian, a civilized, forgiving man. I’ll overlook this disobedience if you mend your ways. You’ll live very well. Other women will envy you. But if you persist—do you know how many ways there are to discard a willful woman? I’ll have you declared mad, if you displease me with your rebellion. By the time you’ve been chained in the dark a few weeks, with no company but blabbering lunatics, you will be authentically mad. Then I’ll be free to forget you there forever, and seek a more pliant woman.” He smiled again. “And now, will you change your mind and kiss the rod?” I stared at him with horror. Never, in my whole life, had I imagined such a thing.

“Come now,” he said. “Be forgiven, and I will buy you a new dress.” Oh, God, how shameful. I’d rather go naked.

“You’ve taken one step, now take another. You have only three more,” he said, with that awful, cool smile. “Now kneel,” he prompted. He watched every movement with his icy eyes. “Now, was that so hard? Bow your head and kiss it.” He fondled my bent neck. “You see how simple it is? Please me, and bear my sons, and keep my house, and I will keep you. If you prove stubborn and disobedient, I will not.” Then he bade me rise and calmly called in his manservant as if nothing had happened.

It was when his man came to barber him that the last shred of illusion, if I could be said to have had any left, vanished. I suppose I was curious, so I watched from the corner. First the man helped him with his shirt, tied up his points, and took his gipon and surcoat off the perch where they hung and smoothed and tidied them. Then he set a long-handled iron rod in the fire to heat while he shaved him. Having finished, he took the mysterious rod and held it up to Small’s head, winding his hair about it. A sizzling smell filled the room. When the hair was unwound, it was perfectly curled! Another winding, some more stink, and the next bit was done. Soon rows of even ringlets had sprung up around Small’s head. I stared like a fool. But as if that were not enough, the barber took out a little jar and dipped his fingers in it. With a swift little gesture he spread its contents on his patron’s cheeks, and before my eyes the ruddy color that the village women had admired so was restored. Having finished admiring himself in a little bronze hand mirror, Small suddenly spotted me goggling and spat out, “Seen enough, you backward little wench? Now get out before I have to teach you your place again!”

So off I went to the kitchen to begin to learn the many things I needed to know to order his house and servants.

It was no easy task for a girl fresh from the country, only fourteen and a half. I went and stood alone by the kitchen fire, probably looking as lost and forlorn as I felt, suddenly too shy to ask what must be done. The cook left her work and, with a cluster of silent serving maids, stood before me. After looking at me a very long time, as if measuring me, she began, in an oddly gentle sort of way, to explain the household schedule to me and show me where things were located in the kitchen. In the end it was the servants themselves who taught me how to go to market and order appropriate quantities of things for the household, to detect spoiled meats and doctored goods, how to plan meals, order sewing and the care of linens, and handle the great bunch of keys I now wore at my waist. Many kinds of supplies, such as spices, were kept under lock and key, besides the storerooms below and the chests containing valuables. It was all a great deal different than in the country.

“Don’t trust Cook with salt or sugar,” said Nurse, “she steals.”

“Don’t trust Nurse with wine, she drinks,” said Cook. Both women agreed that apprentices and hired men should be locked away from anything edible, and that dinner, our main meal, should be served by ten-thirty in the morning or the sky would fall. In this way my training in housewifery proceeded until I could direct the affairs of the household tolerably well. And I did throw myself into this work with all my energy, for grief only grows with idleness.

But work could not cure the horrors of the night. I felt I could not bear the upstairs room. There was something in it, I fancied. Something invisible that filled me with a strange, heavy grief whenever I entered it. I tried to determine what it was in the daytime, when the dark and my fears would not cloud the picture. There was nothing to make it horrible then—no strange bloodstain or rotten smell that would betray some secret wicked deed that had been done there. The room was clean and finely appointed. The walls were neatly whitewashed, and no cobwebs hung from the rafters. Clean rushes were strewn on the floor, intermixed with sweet herbs. Neat iron candle sconces guaranteed light at night. Several smallish, bright wool hangings on the wall kept the chill from oozing in, and well-fitted shutters kept the cold night winds from coming through the unglazed windows. Several stout chests, one of which held my husband’s tallies and records, and a table at which he could do accounts, completed the picture. If it had been in another man’s house, I suppose I might even have liked it.

I was relieved on the second night when my husband simply fell asleep without bothering me, and I lay there a long time looking through a half-opened bed curtain at the corner of the ceiling. I tossed and turned that night, dreaming of something in the room that I could not quite make out. The next day I awoke feeling weak, with my face pale and dark circles beneath my eyes. No one made any comment as, day by day, the circles grew deeper, until my eyes looked sunken. By that time I was weary with lack of sleep and my husband’s nocturnal attentions. I had never imagined that life could be this dreary and painful, and I began to wish I would fall ill and die.

The only person who seemed not to notice was my husband, who went about his business with the same cold energy as ever before. Did nothing, nothing at all, ever touch his heart? I began to observe him, to try to discover what hidden thing moved him. It was as useless as trying to discover the thoughts of an insect wandering up and down a crack in the floor. But as he came and went, I gradually began to understand that there are degrees of wealth, even among the wealthy, and that Lewis Small was one of those little creatures doomed to wait forever at the door of great society, hoping that by some lucky chance of dress or association, he might be admitted to the company of his betters. It was this craving to be among the great that informed his every action. God, how he wanted to rise! Like the busy insect that has carried off too large a crumb to push into his den, he poked and prodded, pulled and pried—all entirely in vain. His endless, useless efforts to better himself at any cost were what kept him busy, and explained the many contradictions in his life.

Once I had discovered this principle, I found that observing him from the outside, as if I were a stranger, changed the things that would ordinarily make me ashamed of being near him into a source of endless interest. I got a sort of spiteful pleasure in watching his endless efforts to push his too large crumb, and knowing that it would never fit. The slightest opinion of any grand person was his unfailing guide, and since grand persons have many opinions, he was constantly in motion, trying first one thing and then another. He paraded me to Mass in blue, only to find that green was more fashionable. And so I went in green, even though it turned my complexion yellow. When the head of the merchant guild conducted his business at Mass, receiving petitioners and sending orders in a loud whisper, then so did Small. When piety was in vogue, then Small knelt and rolled his eyes heavenward. His sleeves grew long and short, his shoes elongated their points, only to have them retreat again, his manners and the dishes on his table all varied according to the words that blew on the wind of fashion.

But my newfound source of interest in his activities by day did nothing to abate the terrors of the night. My new clothes began to appear large on me, and when I combed my hair, it seemed to have lost its shine. A small thing, I suppose, but it made me feel like another person. When I looked in the little bronze hand mirror to fix my braids and set my veil over them properly, I thought I gradually saw my face take on the contours of another. Some other woman, pale and sunken-eyed, stared out with deep grief. Sometimes I was so tired that I fell asleep in the day, like an old woman instead of a young one. At night I turned and sweated. Something, something was there in the dark. I think I was dreaming, but sometimes I was awake and staring, or dreaming I was sitting awake and staring—who knows which?

Then for a while, his efforts took a new direction, one that gave me solace while it lasted. It seems that Small had overheard a greater merchant than himself praised for a love of learning that gave him “nobility of character.” Now, Lewis Small kept his accounts with tallies, and if he wished letters written or read, he hired a clerk, as most people do, for he could barely write his name. In short, he had no more learning, or love of it, than an old boot, and what many assumed to be intelligence in him was in fact not a high quality of mind, but a low craftiness and guile raised to its ultimate level. Thus he hired a poor priest as a reader, to beguile his evenings with high and holy works, that he might let it be known about town. While the man read, my husband inspected his fingernails, or the hem on his gown, or looked distant in a way that I knew meant he was speculating on a sharp deal. But the readings were not wasted. I gained much consolation, not only from the Psalms, and tales of the suffering of kings and noble ladies of old, but also from the elevated thoughts of Bridgit of Sweden and other holy anchorites, and the beautiful songs of Richard the Hermit. I have never since doubted why it is that wives turn to religion.

But when my husband heard no one praise the learning of Lewis Small, he got tired of the priest and sent him off. Now he found someone even more interesting to engage himself with. He had made a new friend, who became for a while the arbiter of all things fashionable. This man’s trade was, I believe, to fasten himself on men such as my husband, who craved association with the great, and would settle for any semblance of it they could get. This John de Woodham was a landless fellow, a permanent esquire who lived on a dubious claim of great descent through bastardy. His stock in trade was an infinity of associations in noble houses, and a fund of extravagant tales that would test the belief of a five-year-old child. But my husband, always so sharp in the trade of furs, was dazzled into blindness by any story in which the name of a grand person was interwoven. And so he swallowed whole the account of the heir apparent’s tastes, the favorite pastimes of the queen’s ladies, and other such tidbits.

“In the highest circles everyone agrees that learning is for monks, not for men of the world,” decreed John, and the priest was banished. Soon Small gave up his “old-fashioned” long gowns for a short doublet and particolored hose in imitation of Woodham’s, and his cheeks became ever ruddier in mimicry of Woodham’s youth. Evenings, Woodham would often arrive to take supper, his buggy blue eyes all bloodshot, and his coarse features already flushed with wine. Some nights he would lead my husband on a tour of bawdy houses, and others they would lock themselves in the front bedroom, the closed door muffling strange noises and laughter. On such nights I would sleep with the boy and his nurse. It was good enough then to get out of the horrible room. At times I was almost grateful to Woodham.

By now my state had become a scandal in the household. The servants would shake their heads when they thought I was not looking. The little boy’s nurse became solicitous. In the morning, when I had no appetite, she would order sops in milk, or some other delicacy, to tempt me to eat. I thought perhaps it was all explained when I missed my time of month and began to vomit. I was pregnant. It was hard to imagine that it was once something I had wanted with all my heart. But I felt no emotions, none at all but a great weariness, weariness of life itself.

“Eat, eat, and then rest again,” said Berthe one morning, as she usually did.

“I can’t eat, I just can’t. I should be at work.”

“There is no work that can’t wait. None that someone else can’t do. Just lie down, and if anything needs to be done, just tell me, and I’ll arrange it all.”

“Oh, Berthe, no rest will help me. I never sleep at night anymore at all. There is something dark in the room that steals my sleep and gives me bad dreams.” Berthe looked grim and quiet.

“You have a baby to think about. You must rest and eat dainty food. Just lie down, and no man or woman in the house will let your husband know you’ve been sleeping in the daytime.”

“You’re very good, Berthe, but I must dress and go out to market. Maybe the air will make me feel better—oh, Jesus, where’s the basin?” And so I would manage to live through another day. But how many more would there be before my life slipped away entirely?

But nothing, nothing, that went on with me made my husband pause in his efforts to rise, which went on in all directions at once. Even Woodham could not occupy all his energies. And so, ever hopeful, he began to court the doddering old steward of the castle. He invited him to a fine dinner party and saw me decked out gaily in a low-cut gown, seated next to the old fellow. I suppose he thought the old man was too nearsighted to see how pale and ugly I was growing, and would find it a pleasant distraction to try to peer down my front with his rheumy eyes. After all, the steward was a knight, though not a very great one, and had been said to have spoken with the king himself on the occasion of royal visitations to the castle. A man like this must be flattered, and besides, he was on the point of placing a very profitable order. But Small, this time, had overcalculated. The steward, poor trembling old thing, became excited, and in this distracted state missed his mouth with his spoon, sending gravy spilling down the bosom of his fine gown. Lewis Small, always assiduous, did not miss a moment. Fond as he was of his clothes, he set down the cup and, with a smooth gesture, spilled exactly the same amount of gravy on his own front from his spoon, even as he offered the fellow his napkin! As I watched him smile the cold grimace that passed for a sign of friendship, I couldn’t help thinking, not bad! I had become a connoisseur of flattery, observing Small, but this time it was exceptionally well done, like an acrobat’s somersault, and deserved applause.

Once the steward started visiting, Woodham should have been more attentive to protecting his livelihood. But no, so secure did he feel in my husband’s attentions that he grew greedier than ever. In the end he overreached and finished himself off. He did the one thing a professional parasite should not do—he humiliated his patron before others, although inadvertently. It never takes more than once, you know, and my husband was one of those who never forgave the tiniest insult or embarrassment, real or imagined.

It seems that Woodham was not the sort of fellow to be content with one bed when he could have two. One night, when he had finished his cavorting in the front, I heard in my half-sleep, besides the sound of heavy snoring, the inner door softly opening. Even before my eyes were open, I was aware of a heavy weight upon the cot and drunken, fumbling hands roaming on my body beneath the covers.

“What in God’s name…?” I cried as I sat bolt upright, and recognized the swollen face of my husband’s companion.

“It’s all right—he denies me nothing—why not this little thing?” His voice was slurred, and his breath stank.

“Get off! Get out!” I shouted, and at this the nurse awakened.

“Why, Master Woodham, what are you doing? Stop it, stop it at once!” The nurse was very firm about what she considered proper.

“She wants it—they all want it. You want it?”

I gave a tremendous kick that threw him out of bed. “I do not want it, you whoremonger!” I hissed.

By this time the clatter had awakened the men downstairs. Since they thought better of interfering, they piled up the outside staircase and crowded into the open door to get a good look, grinning silently and poking each other. By this time even the little boy was awake, staring at us all with his mindless eyes. Only my husband snored on with his powerful snore. Woodham, whose simple mind could apparently hold no more than one idea at a time, stood up to renew the attack, an idiot look of desire on his face. It was a warm night, and he had slept stark naked, as did everyone else in the house. A half-moon illuminated the scene to the satisfaction of all onlookers.

“A li’l kiss—you’ll love it—” He extended his arms. Moonlight glittered on his body, making it appear white as a slug’s. Irreverent whispers filtered in from the stair.

“Do you think he can keep it up?”

“I don’t think he’s got it up, the old bugger.”

All the pent-up hate and rage I had felt since my wedding night came pouring out like a poison. “I’ll kiss you, you bastard,” I cried, and kicked as hard as I could where it would do the most damage. He doubled over with a yowl, and a chorus of guffaws came from the stair.

At this new burst of noise even my husband could sleep no more, and he came to the open door, clutching a sheet about him. Woodham lay rolling beside the bed, tears of anger and pain streaming down his cheeks. I stood above him in a towering rage. As Lewis Small took in the scene, what clearly annoyed him most was the presence of many witnesses, and the general merriment they exhibited. If there was anything my husband hated, it was to be laughed at.

Woodham looked up at him and said through gritted teeth, “Women—are—out—of fashion!” Rolling waves of laughter filled the room.

“I’m afraid you are out of fashion, my friend,” replied my husband, with one of the few dignified answers of his life. “Dress and go immediately.” A cheer resounded from the stair.

As my husband remarked in the morning, it was all for the best anyway, since his great friend the steward believed that particolored hose lacked dignity, and a long gown became a man of business best. Besides, his short doublet was quite spotted with gravy and would have to be given away….

Things were different after that, for I found that I now had the hearty, partisan sympathy of every other member of the household. As I overheard the stableman remark several weeks later, “Mistress Margaret’s a good woman married to a bad man.”

 

BUT I HAVE NOT yet explained the answer to the riddle of my marriage, which became clear only after Woodham had left us. Then, of course, I had to return to my husband’s bed in the front room, and so the nightmares began again the very night after Woodham’s departure. It was deep in the night, as I turned over and over, trying to find a comfortable way to sleep, that the old dream came back. I was sitting up, and saw the elusive something moving beneath the rafters. It was a dark thing that swayed gently. And there was something very dreadful about the swaying, which should have been a graceful motion, like the wind blowing a curtain. Then, bit by bit, I could gradually make out a shape. It was a face—a woman’s ghastly face! It shone bluish, and lanky brownish blond hair clung like wet string around the temples. The eyes bulged hideously from the bloated face. From the mouth a hideously swollen, blackened tongue protruded. It was strangled!

The face swayed gently in the space below the rafters, its bulging eyes seeming to see me. I cried out—in my dream I think I said, “Jesus save me!” and when my eyes opened, I was sitting up and shaking violently. Did I see a faint shining under the rafters, where I had dreamed that the face had been? My husband snored insensibly beside me. Nothing ever seemed to disturb him, sleeping or waking. He never dreamed. I knew that a hundred swaying faces in the room, all calling his name, would never cause him to lose an instant’s sleep.

For several nights after, I saw the strangled face again. Sometimes the hair floated about it, and sometimes it clung as if wet. Always the eyes stared at me. I felt I was going mad. Either mad, or there was some sort of demon in the room. I had never seen a demon before, not a real one. Now father, he had seen several. They were very tall, with horns and flaming breath, and long claws and goat’s feet—in short, exactly the way demons should be. I have never heard of a woman demon with only a head. So perhaps I was mad? Now Master Small really would lock me up in the dark forever.

In this mood I gradually began to lose my self-control and say whatever I felt like saying. In the morning when Berthe asked how I felt, I said flippantly, “Oh, quite well, but the strangled head would keep me up again with its groaning.” She crossed herself. “You think I am mad? Yes, I am quite mad, and I’ll never sleep again. The pretty brown lady’s swollen eyes follow me about the room all night, and her blackened tongue seems ready to speak. On the night it speaks, ask God’s blessing for me, for I’ll be gone forever.”

“For God’s sake, never, never again speak of this!” she cried, and throughout the day everyone in the house avoided me. My husband went about his business, which was dispatching mules to London, to bring back a load of fine foreign sables and miniver, without the slightest notice. Nothing much ever bothered him, unless it had to do with something that might mar his efforts to rise in the world.

Indeed, almost to the degree that I had faded, he had prospered. Not content with his trade in cat and coney skins, he had moved up to finer things, as a way of making regular contact with the great and fashionable. He had invested heavily in this shipment, and felt he would be a made man when it came in. At last, at last, he would join the wealthy and fashionable! As I watched him gloating in anticipation, I realized suddenly that even if he were successful, he would be unbearable. What else could one expect from a man whose favorite entertainment was a good execution?

In the absence of any lively slaughtering he made do with bad news about other people, which was very nearly as satisfying, or with stories about the doings of witches, which aroused his concern for the state of society.

“Witches,” he’d say, and shake his head, “—they’re everywhere these days. No man is safe from them. Why, even I have suffered—look at my son! They dried up his wits, just as they dry up the milk!” And his friends would shake their heads somberly in agreement.

But before they’d managed to agree on what to do about the menace of witches, new tales came from Melcombe Regis to gladden whatever it was that monster had for a heart. It had been seen in Bristol, too, said his friends—a new pestilence so deadly that it was transmitted by glance alone. Why, you didn’t even have to step within a victim’s house to catch it, for it flew through the air. If you felt the fever, then you might as well make your will, for death would come before the night was out.

“Black spots?” said the dreadful man with relish, as he ascertained the details. “And they die too quickly to be shriven? Ah, me.” And he crossed himself as he rolled his eyes up to heaven. “Doubtless caused by witches,” he added, crossing himself again. “We are fortunate that Bristol is so far away.” And he smiled his ghastly smile at me, and at his friends, who always seemed to take that expression at face value.

But I meant to tell you of the head, for it was on the very night after this day that it did indeed speak. And what it said was more frightening than its presence.

That night I had waited up, thinking that if I did not go to sleep at all, I would not dream of the terrible head. I lay very still until I heard my husband’s breathing change into snores, and then I propped myself up sitting.

As the time crept by, I know not how slowly, I ceased to hear steps in the street below, and everything grew completely silent. Even the timbers in the house had stopped creaking.

“So, dream! I have you now! I’ll just stay up forever and ever, and you’ll never come back!” I whispered boldly into the dark. By this time my stomach was becoming larger, so I locked my hands around it and my knees, and looked about the room.

But I had spoken too soon. When I glanced beneath the ceiling, this time with my eyes wide open, I saw a dim light, like a single flickering candle, in the area beneath the rafters. It was long and oval and glimmered as it swayed gently above the bed, just visible beyond the canopy. Once it had caught my eyes, I could not turn my head away from it. Gradually form took shape within the barely visible light. A shadow, shifting within the soft glow, like a drapery—a hand, I could see a hand, or something like it, hanging limply among the folds. And as I stared, the folds swirled to reveal the dreadful head, swollen and dangling. It was the body of a hanged woman, swaying gently from the rafters!

The rope was a thin trail of light above the poor, strangled neck. Long, ashy brown hair clung to the temples and swirled about the shoulders. A woman, holy Jesus! Was it me? No, it must not be me, it could not be me—there was a tiny cleft in the chin. I felt my own chin—it was still smooth and narrow. I looked at my hands—they did not have the childish plumpness of the hand among the soft, shadowy folds above. No, it was not me, even if it looked like me. It was not a vision of my own end, but of something else.

The rushing sound that my ears made in the silence sounded like silent weeping. If this were a ghost, it must have a purpose. As it swayed, the body turned, and the glazed eyes turned toward me. I blessed myself.

“I will pray for you,” I whispered into the darkness, “I will light a candle for you.”

“Do not pray for me. I have many who offer prayers for me. Pray for yourself. You are in a house of death. You will leave it only when you are dying. Pray for yourself, so that you will not be eternally damned, as I am.” Her soft voice was like an urgent whisper on the inside of my ears. Even while I heard it, it was at the same time completely silent in the blackness of the room. How can one hear and not hear? Who had this woman been, this girl-woman, and how had she been damned? The rope slowly unwound and the body swayed again. The hair swirled about the head as if caught by an unseen wind, and the head straightened up as if living. The glowing face of a pretty girl looked directly at me. Square and charming, it was marked by a neat, short little snub nose and a pointed chin with a little cleft in it, like a pretty baby’s.

“I hanged myself,” said the sweet child face, “because I gave my love to the Evil One himself, in human form.” The soft light began to fade, and the threadlike glow of the rope had vanished utterly. “I have come to warn you. You are wedded to him now, and only with God’s help may you save your soul.”

Darkness engulfed the swirling figure, as dread overwhelmed me. My life was given up, and my soul itself at risk! Not an insect, but a demon from the underworld! It put a whole new complexion on things. Through no choice of my own I had been wedded to a demon. A demon that passed among men as respectable. What had the girl said? That she’d loved him, chosen him. Well, maybe that’s how we were different. I hated him. I always had. I had begged to be saved from him, but he had blinded everybody. Being a demon explained it all. That’s how he’d tricked them, even my mother and the priest. But now I was married for life to a demon. Why hadn’t anyone listened to me?

But the next day, as close as I looked, my husband seemed to be engaged in no diabolical business. In fact, he seemed very pleased with himself, for a message had arrived to say that his goods might be expected on the morrow or the day after. In the afternoon his mood gave way to annoyance, for we had been invited to the wedding feast of the daughter of William le Draper.

“It is just his way of displaying the fact that he has three great sons,” remarked my husband with annoyance.

“But does he not honor his daughter as well?” I asked.

“Fah! He just shows off that he has got a son-in-law who has already made his fortune.” It rankled my husband that he had but one son, and that one, simpleminded. Perhaps what annoyed him even more was that he considered that William le Draper ought to be no greater than himself, but through some quirk of good fortune he had found favor with higher patrons than had Lewis Small. William le Draper had never sought my husband out, and unlike so many others, who thought my husband a pleasant fellow, William le Draper usually avoided him unobtrusively, even though they must see each other nearly daily in civic activities.

“A feast, a dance, how William does display himself and his good fortune,” remarked my husband sourly.

“You, too, will have good fortune,” I remarked with the proper wifely submission.

“When my son is born”—and he glanced at my swelling belly—“I will have a great christening feast—much greater than this wedding, you may be sure.” Then a little flicker of insecurity passed his face, but only for an instant, as he turned it away. “And you, Margaret, will take greatest care until then. I want nothing to befall my son through your carelessness”—and the friendly smile with the icy eyes showed as he turned his face back toward me.

“Husband, may I ask a favor of you?”

“Why, just ask, and if it is proper, you shall have it,” he answered blandly.

“May I go to church this evening?”

“Why, to pray for my son? Take Robert with you, for if you return at dusk, the streets are not safe for a woman.”

“Thank you, and may I have money for a candle as well?” No penny left his hand unaccounted for. It was best to be direct. He was in a rare mood of accommodation.

“Have two or three candles, if you wish,” he responded, and dug the pennies out of the wallet he wore, and then departed.

As I went to get my cloak, Berthe asked why I was going out. I looked at her directly, and said quietly, “I go to burn a candle for the hanged woman.”

“Merciful heaven!” she whispered. “Who told you? Who dared to? He’ll kill whoever talked.”

“She told me,” I answered. “And he can hardly kill her twice. Every night she hangs in the room where she died. She breaks my heart with her grieving, and I must pray for her soul if I ever want to sleep again.”

“You see her?”

“I see her, and in my mind I see her now. Her face is black; her eyes stick out. It is too gruesome to be borne.” Berthe crossed herself.

“That is just the way she looked when we cut her down, poor lost soul. And she had been so pretty too.”

“She was his first wife, wasn’t she?”

“Yes, his first wife, and a love match as well, at least on her side.”

“Love? That’s impossible! How could it ever be?”

“She was so pretty, and so young. Her father was a man of consequence, a dyer with city property. Small saw her in church, accompanied by her mother, and behaved so graciously to both that she fell in love with him, and her mother approved. At first they saw each other in church, but then Small sent a go-between to see if he could secure her hand. Her father opposed it, for Small had no particular means to speak of, and he wanted a better match for her. But Small was young and handsome and well spoken, and the women prevailed upon the father to secure the marriage. She was just past thirteen when she entered this house, which her father had bought for them.” Berthe wiped away a tear with the back of her hand.

“Go on, I must hear.”

“She was soon with child but, because of her youth, was not strong enough to bear easily. The boy was late and, as you can see, simple. Small was furious. She was soon pregnant again, but he screamed at her and beat her. She threatened to tell her father and flee home to him. Small did not want that, for she was an only child, and her father’s heir. He nearly strangled her that night, and in the morning the baby was born too soon.”

“What a dreadful thing—but the child was not lost, was it?”

“Not lost, not right away at least. But it was a terrible judgment on him. For it had no face.”

“No face? How could that be?”

“Well, it had part of a face. It had eyes. But where the nose should be, and the top of the mouth, there was nothing but a great hole. It mewled for days, but because it had no mouth it could not take milk, and so it gradually starved.”

“This is a terrible story. I have never heard of such a thing.”

“He said she was a witch, for she could bear only monsters. I say he was a devil, who could only beget monsters. But no matter what anybody says, after that she waited until he was gone one day and hanged herself in the bedroom, there. The child found her, you know. And from that day to this he has never spoken. He used to say a word or two, and sing, too, when he had a mind to, but now he only stares.”

“Thank you for telling me, Berthe. It makes it easier for me. Now I understand why she said others pray for her.”

“She said that? Poor girl. Her father died of grief, you know, and that left Small wealthy, for he deprived the widow of everything in court.”

So the mystery was explained. What honest parents who knew this story would ever place their daughter in the hands of such a man? If he wanted heirs, he must go far afield for another wife, to a country place, where the news couldn’t travel. In this town, surely, all decent parents must close their doors to him. Oh, mother, you shifted me from the kettle to the fire when you wed me to wealthy Lewis Small in place of poor Richard Dale!

So I took myself to Vespers, to kneel before the statue of the Virgin to light my candle and pour out my grief. All Saints’ was far larger than the little painted stone church of my childhood. The guilds had decorated it with many chapels and shrines. Offerings of silver glittered among the reliquaries and painted statues of the saints that lined the nave. But most beautiful of all, in my mind, was the statue of Our Lady that had been commissioned by the Merchants’ Guild. I often went to the Lady Chapel, for there was something in the face of the statue that reminded me of my own real mother. No matter what my trouble, it seemed to float away in her serene presence.

In the fading twilight the Lady Chapel sat in a cloud of silence that, like a solid thing, seemed to make the world outside fade and vanish. The last slanting rays of the sun through the rose window illuminated the high, shadowy arches of the church with shafts of colored light, which fell at last in bright, circular whorls upon the floor. In the half-dark where Our Lady stood, a forest of little candles lit before her flickered and shimmered. The sweet scent of beeswax and incense swirled about the carved hem of her gilded garments. Nearly the size of a living woman, she looked at the world with a gentle, solemn expression, the long ripples of her hair descending from beneath her heavy crown, cloaking her shoulders and sleeves. On one arm she held her plump and placid Son, and beneath her tender, bare feet lay a trampled, half-human demon, writhing in its death agony: Sin itself, unable to touch the Immaculate One, conquered by the force of love. The carved wood of her floating garments was richly painted and gilded. Only her face, hands, and feet were the naked wood, pale and polished, like living flesh. Her eyes, inset ivory and lapis lazuli, caught the glancing flickers of light, shining as if alive.

I had bought a very fine candle, and joined it to the melting forest before her. With all my heart I prayed that she intercede on behalf of the hanged girl, for cannot Our Lady perform any miracle she desires? As I prayed, I felt the bleak feeling in my heart dissolve. The shadows lightened around her, and as I gazed into the serene face, I thought I saw something—a trick of the candlelight, perhaps. The living eyes blinked and turned their gentle gaze on my upturned face for a moment, before lifting to stare once more outward to the souls that entered the Lady Chapel. As surely as if she had spoken, she had given me my answer.

The next day I began my duties with a calm detachment that was quite unlike me. The vomiting had long ceased, and I felt new energy. I had slept well in the night, and the dark shadows under the rafters contained no secret shapes at all, except for a little spider descending silently on her silken thread. There was a great hubbub in the house, for the returned mules were being stabled, the servants and the two apprentice boys were loading the new goods into the storeroom below, and a very large dinner was in preparation by way of a celebration. In the morning the silent child had wandered off, but was retrieved with ease, sitting in the gutter only two streets away. Very little trouble had marred the journey from London. There had been no attempted robberies, and the only event of note was that one of the grooms had taken ill on the return trip and been left to recover at a guesthouse on the road. Lewis Small was expansive, almost generous, and gave out rewards to those who had brought his goods safely home.

After dinner one of the apprentice boys had to be put to bed with a bellyache from too much gobbling. When Small had finished his lecture on the sin of Greed, I took the boy an infusion of peppermint, where he lay alone in his bed below.

“Mistress Margaret, I do hurt so, and I am very hot.” He could barely speak, and he lay all curled in a ball, on his side.

“Don’t worry, now, I’ve brought you something,” I said soothingly, as I passed my hand over his forehead. He was burning hot! This was no child’s disease, but a dangerous fever. I resolved to wait with him awhile, and got cloths wrung out in cold water to place on his head and body. When I had done what I could, I left him, promising to return soon. And when I had finished my few errands and returned, I noticed, as I bathed him in cold water, that huge swellings had grown on the back of his neck and under his arm. He was nearly incoherent with fever now and asked me for his mother. It was then that I saw the black spots, like ugly black blisters, that had begun to form on his body. There were, as I searched, only one or two, but it was clear that before nightfall, they would be accompanied by many more. This looked like a thing that could not be dealt with lightly, so I sent word to my husband, who was out courting a client, that he should return at his earliest convenience. He returned in a fury with me for cutting short his work.

“Husband, something very important has happened. One of the boys has a fever, and I think there is a dangerous sickness in this house.”

“What sickness is this, that the loss of an apprentice should interfere with my business?”

“No sickness that I have ever seen before, but a very swift one that ravages within hours.”

Small lifted an eyebrow.

“Come with me to see, for this is not a light matter,” I said. “I have already sent for the priest.” Small lit a candle, the better to inspect, for the downstairs room where the apprentices slept had but one tiny window and was dark even at midday. As he held the candle high above the bed, it was clear that the poor boy had breathed his last before the priest could even arrive at the house. The circle of light from the candle, as Small moved it slowly the length of the corpse, revealed clusters of black spots, marring the skin of the belly above the coverlets and making of the face an unrecognizable mask.

“I know this thing,” he said evenly. “You did well to inform me, wife.” He moved with a swift stride to his storeroom. “Follow me, wife, and do everything exactly as I tell you.”

At the door of the broad storeroom he paused, candle held high, and smiled his terrifying smile.

“Lads!” he cried. “I’ve neglected a happy duty! Take the finest of this new shipment from London to the house of William le Draper as my personal gift to his daughter in honor of her marriage! And take these sables, here, to William himself, and tell him that it is my gift of love, and that I wish all differences between us to be resolved in Christ’s name. Hurry, hurry! And mind you make sure that you show them to him personally!”

Then he grabbed my wrist hard, blew out the candle, and dragged me swiftly to the chamber above.

“Get your traveling cloak and things,” he said, proffering an open saddlebag. With his key he opened his great chest and took gold from within, loading a moneybag and the hollow heels of his wooden pattens with gold coins. Strapping on both clogs and money belt, he took his cloak, sword, and buckler.

“Where are you taking me?” I asked, shocked at this sudden silent whirl of activity. He gave me an icy look.

“It is not you I take, Mistress Small, but my son.”

In a moment we were downstairs and in the stable yard. The chickens scattered away from his angry feet, as he hurried to roust the stableman to saddle his ambler and my riding mule. Small himself tied on the saddlebags as the old man helped me to mount, for I was very cumbersome.

“Have a care, Mistress Margaret, and return soon to us,” said the kindly old man. “And to you, too, Master,” he added as a respectful afterthought.

As our mounts clip-clopped out of the stable-yard gate, Small rode ahead in silence, his jaw set as hard as a statue’s. His face did not relax until we were well beyond the town gate, in the open country.

“Where are we going,” I ventured to ask, “and why so swiftly?”

“Why should you care where you are going, if it is your husband’s will? Yet I will tell you this: There’s a man deep in the countryside who’s in my debt, and there will we go for a while, until we can return to our household.”

“But it is not seemly to leave so quickly, without farewells, dropping all obligations,” I fretted.

“I am the judge of what is seemly in this case,” he answered, and he flashed his terrifyingly cold smile. “If you listened better and talked less, you would know what I knew in an instant. Those skins from London are tainted. They are plague goods, and have brought black Death himself within our house.”

“Sweet Jesus!” I blessed myself. “Then the wedding gifts—?”

Lewis Small’s smile was so sweet that it was almost tender as he replied, “I believe in sharing my good fortune with friends.”

With horror I imagined William’s smiling daughter stroking the soft pelts on the eve of her wedding, perhaps in the company of her bridesmaids, friends, and relatives, who had come to admire her gifts. The gift of death itself! Her honest father, who, deceived by the Christian message, has already received the sables in his hand, may be resting, for he feels a bit unwell, and does not want to mar the festivities. In the meanwhile our own boys, the unwitting messengers of death, have decided to stop off at a tavern on the way home, for who will notice a quick drink, taken on the sly? The taint of death leaves the tavern, and like the flames of hell, sweeps through the city. At our own house the priest has called, and in blessing the poor corpse carries home to the church the dreadful gift. What a perfect and efficient mind Lewis Small had! At one stroke he had taken vengeance on his enemy, and on the world as well for the loss of his goods.

We plodded on in silence and did not stop as night fell, for there was a bright moon, and Small wanted to ride all night, to put distance between the town and ourselves as quickly as possible. The stones on the narrow track glittered under the cold stars. As dawn broke, I complained of hunger, for I am as ravenous as a wolf when carrying a child, and Small said we should ride on, for there was a village not far.

He was right, for soon the dusty track wound through the alleys and past the common of a little village, no bigger than the one where I was born. Where the ale stake was hung to signify refreshment, we stopped briefly, turning away all questions as we ate and drank.

As we left I heard the goodwife say, “Poor girl, he is returning her to her parents for bearing another man’s child.”

“No,” said another old woman, “for she herself told me that they are returning for the blessing of her old mother, who is dying.”

Before midday I could go no farther. I am not a person to ride day and night without sleep, even now.

“Please, husband, just a moment’s rest, for the sake of the child.”

These words were the only key to his heart, and he dismounted, tethered his horse, and aided me to dismount and lie down beneath a tree by the side of the road.

“Have you water? I am very thirsty,” I asked, for I felt suddenly very weak. He searched for the leather bottle he had brought with him. But then, suddenly, he turned on me with a suspicious look. With a swift step he returned and knelt, feeling my forehead.

“Why, wife,” he said calmly, “you seem to have a fever. Lie here and rest, and I will hurry and fetch help from the next village.” He tethered my mule to his saddle and mounted with a single smooth movement.

“Remember, I’ll soon be back,” he called, and he smiled at me. And by that smile I suddenly knew that I would never see him again, and that no help would be coming from any village. As I closed my eyes against the now painful light, my last memory was of the jingle of harness and the soft clop-clop of hooves in the dust, as he departed forever.

 

BROTHER GREGORY NEVER LOOKED up. As he put a neat little curlicue at the end of the last letter, his face was stony. Margaret could see his jaw clenched tight, and she began to fret to herself. Maybe he was going to quit and go away after all. Brother Gregory was so prim and easily offended. He was probably getting ready to quote some unpleasant Authority and make her regret that wretched Voice another time. Just thinking about how horrid he was probably going to be caused her to give her needle a vicious jab through a French knot in the embroidery she was working on, sticking her finger. As she nursed the sore finger, she couldn’t help thinking how hard it is just to plan how to say a thing, even without anticipating a lecture on what is proper. And after all, how can you get to the point of a story, which is at the end, without going through the middle?

“Have you seen many ghosts?” Brother Gregory turned and looked at her speculatively.

“No, just that one,” said Margaret into her embroidery.

“Too bad,” said Brother Gregory. “I knew a lay brother once who had regular warning visitations. They were most convenient, especially around planting time.” He couldn’t help watching the needle as it moved up and down among the spreading foliage in the embroidery frame. A spot of blood lay half hidden behind a leaf. She looked innocent enough—but who would ever have supposed that, like some whited sepulchre, she was already twice married? Had the first one died, after all? He’d probably soon enough find out that she had proposed to the second husband over the coffin of the first, like the woman in the joke. Found some old fellow who’d let her run wild, and bewitched him with rolling eyes and tight lacing. A pity. Discipline wears off quickly in women and hounds. They need consistency if you’re going to get any permanent results. I’d tell her, he thought, for her own good, but she’s probably not capable of hearing it without some infantile outburst. Inadequate Humility. The disease of the modern world.

“I suppose it’s to be expected that you don’t know much about demons,” he said. “It requires special study. Observation is not enough.”

“Then you’ve observed many?” said Margaret, looking up.

“Only one or two. But I know of a very holy Father who is capable of vanquishing quite large ones. I learned some useful things from him.”

“Then you see that the ghost was right, and the proof that he was a demon is what he did—killing all those people secretly.”

“You’re gobbling down conclusions before you’ve looked at the premises, Mistress Margaret. That’s superstition at work on your part. You must know first of all whether the victims had any sins on their consciences. Pestilence can be an expression of God’s will, you know. He wishes to warn us to set no store by the things of the earth.”

Brother Gregory leaned back and put his chin in his hand, and his brow wrinkled up with thought. His passion for theology could not be long suppressed, and it was especially likely to bubble to the surface when confronted with the everyday horrors of life. On viewing the displayed corpse of a dismembered traitor, Brother Gregory was likely to wonder all of a sudden in what part of the body the soul resided. A ghastly accident might call forth speculation on God’s will, and once, long ago, he had walked in blood-spattered armor through a battlefield of corpses pondering on the nature of the Trinity.

Now he was reminded of the Pestilence. That was a hard one, finding God’s purpose there. He remembered men howling like dogs about the open pits where the bodies lay stacked like cordwood, and women, screaming hideously with the pain, running stark naked through the streets. God must mean us to think only of the Heavenly City, when He makes the earthly one like this. But just as he almost had it figured out, an anxious voice interrupted his reverie.

“But surely, God, if He is good, would not use as an agent a man bent on revenge.” Margaret was very concerned.

“A point, definitely a point to consider. But it wouldn’t prove the fellow was a demon. He could just as easily have been a human under contract to the Devil. It is something that merchants and moneylenders, especially, are tempted by. The buying and selling, you see—they think they’re better bargainers than ordinary folk. First they charge interest, then they cheat honest knights out of their inheritances, and soon they’ve passed to dropping poison in wine-cups. After that, it’s nothing to think they can outfox the Devil on a contract. These men of business are like that—no honor to begin with. It predisposes them, you see.” But the idea appeared too complex for Margaret, at least to judge by the lack of understanding on her face. She clenched her teeth, set down her sewing, and said in a very even tone, “It seems to me that Lewis Small was totally selfish, without any thought except for his own benefit. Complete selfishness is the personification of evil, is it not?”

“Women’s talk, Mistress Margaret, women’s talk. The essential thing is to determine, first, if the hanged girl who said he was a demon was a dream or a simple ghost, in which case her word is dubious, or, secondly, a warning visitation sent by God, which would make her word more significant, or, thirdly, whether she was herself a demonic manifestation or devil, which would again change the interpretation of her word. Tell me, are you certain that you both saw and dreamed her, or that you only saw, or, alternately, only dreamed her?”

“I think at first I dreamed, then saw her in the dark before my eyes. But I was much disordered. I was pregnant and alone in the house of a wicked man. So it could have been either.” Margaret sounded thoughtful.

“You need to think more clearly than that, if you wish to analyze the meaning of your vision accurately.” Brother Gregory was very self-assured. He had, after all, the benefit of professional training in these matters.

“This is too complicated for me to follow.” Margaret looked puzzled. “How can you tell what’s real and not a delusion? Or the delusion of a delusion?”

“Ah, that’s a hard one. If you’d had holy water about you at the time—no, wait, I’ve thought of something. Did you ever note Lewis Small’s nostrils?”

“His nostrils?”

“Devils may take any human form they wish, as necromancers well know. But always they have only one nostril. In this they differ from humans. And if any mortal looks into that nostril, they will see right up the demon’s brain, which is nothing less than the fires of hell itself. No man can see this without going mad, and his soul is doomed utterly. Of course, these demons try to get people to look into their nostril, but those who know their tricks never do so.”

“I don’t remember looking at his nostrils, but I think he had two.” Margaret put her fist under her chin as she pondered the question.

“Are you sure? Perhaps God planted such a dislike of him in you to keep you from looking too closely at his nostril.”

“That might be so, for I disliked looking at his face and almost always averted my eyes from it. That would have been very good of God to have done that, for at the time I was worried that my dislike dishonored the sacrament of marriage. But if God did it, then it was right. Maybe he did have one nostril, and I never looked closely. But I really can’t say, thinking back.”

“In any case you were very fortunate, for even a human under contract to the Devil can steal many souls. Look at how he tempted his first wife into suicide. Surely her soul is damned, as all the Authorities tell us, and the Devil paid Small for it.”

“But, Brother Gregory, I truly believe in the merciful intervention of Our Lady. Don’t you? The girl’s was the smaller wrong.”

Brother Gregory looked at Margaret’s earnest face. He could think of several very interesting theological points. But as they would all be wasted on her, he was silent.