CHAPTER SEVEN

DURING HIS FORTNIGHT’S ABSENCE Brother Gregory had made the best of an unpleasant time at home with a cheerful distraction. He had allowed his Curiosity free rein to follow the flash of remembrance he’d had about the odd, gold-shining eyes. Now he was all a-bubble with a new piece of knowledge that would force Margaret to admit she’d been entirely wrong in her argument with him. It was only a pity, he thought to himself as he trudged down to the river, that the raging quarrel at home couldn’t be resolved as perfectly. It was all doubtless waiting until he should see God, which really shouldn’t be all that long a time to wait, now, since father always managed to add immeasurably to his Humility in one way or another.

Brother Gregory did not realize how much he was capable of missing the house on Thames Street and its occupants, until he rounded the corner and saw it there, looming ahead of him like the brightly painted superstructure of a galleon. Directly in front of him, lounging in the slime of the gutter, was a great sow, eyes half closed in ecstasy as her piglets sucked at her teats. One little rebel had not joined in the family meal but was rooting happily in a great pile of stable muck that nearly blocked up the street.

And not raked up yet! thought Brother Gregory with annoyance. A person can hardly get through! It wasn’t like this in the old days. There’s no order anywhere now. Pigs loose! Trash! Now you can’t get an honest workman to do anything! Greed, it’s just greed! Nothing is right since the plague. Greedy workmen, runaway serfs, crazed women who need to write books! Things are just coming apart! So intent was Brother Gregory in his worry and in negotiating his way around the pigs and the rubbish, that he failed to hear the shout of “Gardy-loo!” from above. A brawny servant woman’s arm appeared from a window in an overhanging second story across the street. A heave—and warm liquid splashed about Brother Gregory, wetting his gown down one side. Gregory shuddered and jumped aside too late, stubbing his sandaled toe on an uneven paving stone in the process. He was so distressed, he did not even have time to reflect on the anarchy that allowed each householder to pave the little portion in front of his house with whatever material, at whatever height, that suited him.

“By the Body of Christ, you fool woman—!” He shook his fist at the closed shutters above.

“Why, Brother Gregory, I thought you disapproved of vain oaths?” Roger Kendall had been approaching his own doorstep from the opposite direction when he had seen the mishap to Brother Gregory two doors down. He was flanked by the clerk who assisted with his accounts and an apprentice boy, who sniggered.

“I do, I do,” responded Brother Gregory ruefully. “It was a weakness of the flesh; I’ll have to do penance for it.”

“I see your sleeve and hem are quite wet. You shall come in and be set right.” Master Kendall’s voice sounded annoyingly cheerful.

“I’d best go home; I’ll need to wash up,” grumbled Brother Gregory. He was inspecting his sleeve with a black look on his face. “The day started out well enough, but who knows what Fortuna has in store for us before it’s over?”

“If this is the farthest Fortune’s wheel puts you down, then you’re a lucky man indeed. But you’re not leaving my house until you’re as tidy as you came.”

“But I’m not in your house,” protested Brother Gregory.

“You are now, friend.” The door was opened from within, and Gregory was whisked inside. Handing his clerk a packet of papers Roger Kendall called a servant to him.

“Tell my wife that Brother Gregory has had a mishap in the street, and have her send Bess to draw a bath.”

“This is very inconvenient. I’ll go now,” complained Brother Gregory.

“On the contrary; it’s quite convenient. More so than just about anywhere else in London. We have a marvelous tub, just for bathing, with a little tent about it so you won’t take chill. It’s almost always set up. My wife is the bathingest woman you can imagine. I tell her that her skin is bound to come off, and then what will she do—but she never stops. Bath, bath—once, even twice a week! She’s not vain about her jewels, as you may have noticed, but this bath thing makes up for it. Rose water, oil of almonds, there’s no end to what she wants. And linen! She keeps an entire laundry in constant business with all her linen changing, I tell you. ‘Loosen up a little, dear, there’s health in good dirt,’ I tell her. ‘Health for beans and posies, but not for people,’ she says. Well, maybe she’s not all wrong. There’s been less sickness in the house since she came. Or it may be her praying. She has a funny trick with that—have you noticed? Her face lights up.”

“No, I hadn’t. But this bathing—no smelly things! I have enough problems with the vanities of the world already.”

“Don’t worry about that. Besides, I keep you here for selfish reasons. I’ve a favor to ask. But I won’t ask it until you’re repaired.”

He slapped Brother Gregory on the back. Brother Gregory flinched. He did not like familiar gestures. Also, his back was sore. He had been flagellating himself, trying to see God, and was not fully recovered yet. It seemed only a moment before Brother Gregory was shown into a back room of the house, where the tall, wooden, ironbound tub was already set up. Two neatly clad serving-women in white kerchiefs were busily carrying brass jugs of hot water to fill it. When the bath was done, they would have to carry every drop of water away again.

“All waste and vanity,” grumbled Gregory, as he examined the scene before him. Steam was rising to fill the pretty colored linen tent above the tub, which was partially pulled aside for the filling. With a practiced gesture the servant woman reached for the little bottle of rose water, to scent the bathwater.

“No fool lady-smells!” Brother Gregory roared, and she looked shocked at his ill humor and fled. Kendall had sent a manservant to help him into the bath and take his clothes, for he was sensitive to Brother Gregory’s nervousness about being too close to women. The man set a changing cloth on the rush-covered floor for Brother Gregory to put his bare feet on. Because of the danger of water stains this room was uncarpeted, unlike most of the rooms used by Kendall and his family. It vaguely reminded Brother Gregory of long ago in his father’s house, when he and his brother used to stand attendance each morning at his father’s bedside as the valet knelt and put out the changing cloth before he helped the old man to dress. Except that that house was hard and cold, and this one warm and comfortable.

“We’ll soon have these right for you, sir,” said the russet-clad manservant, as he took away Brother Gregory’s putrid clothes. With a groan Brother Gregory lowered his sore, naked body into the tub. He felt deeply humiliated. Would it have been so shameful to walk home without bathing?

He thought seriously of the alternatives. Both involved mockery, and Brother Gregory hated mockery more than just about anything. And then, his narrow little room, at the top story of a shabby building of rental rooms, had no such fine facilities for washing up. It was convenient here—but, on the other hand, in his room he wouldn’t have to parade his shame in the house of strangers. Considerate strangers, but still, it wasn’t proper.

Pensively he put a hand out of the tent and felt for the little jar of rose water. Did it really smell that nice? He pulled the stopper and sniffed. It was nice. It smelled like Margaret. Then he closed it and hurriedly put it back.

Settling deeper in the water, he winced as it touched his back. A dark scum spread over the water’s surface. Brother Gregory scrubbed at his folded-up knees. Little black dirt-rolls peeled off his skin. He splashed water idly on one dirty shoulder. Did God think washing was a sign of vanity? Well, perhaps only in hot water in a tub with a gaudy tent. It wasn’t all so bad to be clean. Now, cold water, that was surely all right with God…. Should he give up and wash everything? With a sign of pleasure Brother Gregory dipped hot water over his head and rubbed vigorously. The tonsure at the back of his head was growing out, and his dark curls had become wild again with lack of trimming. In theory Brother Gregory was clean shaven, but even now that he had some money, he would never have considered being shaven once a week, like some dandy, and so his version of clean-shaving was less exacting than most. Now he dipped more water on his head to rinse it off. Little gray dots, which a careful eye might perceive to be tiny insects, joined the scum floating on the water.

Suppressing the urge to hum a lovely Stabat Mater that he had just heard, Brother Gregory found that the warm water had summoned up Lady Memory to occupy his mind in place of the dolorous Virgin. He still did not fully comprehend why he had been sent back into the world by the abbot, when it was so clear to him that his was a mind most perfectly suited to the art of Divine Contemplation. Actually this astonishing self-revelation had come to him some time before, on the passage from Calais, as he gazed over the ship’s rail at the boundless ocean, brooding over the blazing end of his literary career. A passage from the Mystica Theologica of Dionysius had risen unbidden to his mind: “Men can attain this hidden deity by putting away all that is not God.”

Now, Dionysius had made it very clear that those who live by earthly knowledge are incapable of perceiving divine teaching, and especially incapable of experiencing the Divine Presence itself. And so it came over Gilbert the Scholar all at once that the book burners had freed him spiritually to perceive God, while, by chaining themselves to earthly knowledge in the form of obnoxious and entirely incorrect theological argumentation, they had guaranteed that they themselves would not. It pleased and consoled him so much, this thought, that he had immediately gone and presented himself to the most austere monastery in all of England as a postulant, full of passion to lose his identity in oneness with the Deity.

Of course, it was only natural that a person such as himself would, in the divine peacefulness of the monastery, reach a level of sublimity of thought that many an ordinary person might envy. But just as he was quite, quite ready to take the final vows that would commit him to a lifetime of contemplation, the abbot, obviously incapable of perceiving that he was in a very sensitive place in his spiritual growth that required greater consideration from others, had called him in.

Brother Gregory still remembered quite vividly the long, unpleasant wait, kneeling on the cold stone floor, before Godric the Silent actually spoke.

“You have been preserving and extending your Pride,” said the old man, his lashless lids blinking slowly over his pale eyes. Pride? thought Brother Gregory. Why, the man had to be incredibly shallow not to see his extraordinary aptitude by this time. As the old man sat silently inspecting Brother Gregory, Brother Gregory thought the matter over. The man was completely wrong, like so many who have overinflated reputations. After all, who but Brother Gregory could kneel the most hours without fainting, fast the most days without growling, and cite the most authorities in learned disputation? Besides, he had just been on the verge of seeing God when the abbot had called him in. That probably had something to do with it too. Then the abbot had said something that showed he really didn’t understand anything at all. What was it? Oh, yes.

“Go until you can find out whether you are fleeing the world or seeking God. You may come back and tell me when you know the difference.”

It was probably jealousy at work, thought Brother Gregory. That was it. Jealousy and politics, which you just can’t escape anywhere. The other brethren’s complaints had obviously influenced him. That’s what happens whenever you mix commoners together with men of high lineage—even if they are only younger sons—and tell them they’re all equal before God. Jealousy takes over. It was a pity he had been too sincere to take jealousy into account beforehand. It was altogether improper that final admission to the house depended on a vote of the members. After all, does God take votes on salvation?

Brother Gregory had wanted to argue. He knew thousands of powerful scriptural reasons why his own way to salvation was best. But that’s the problem with someone who’s known as “the Silent.” You can’t argue with such a person at all.

It would have been a dreadfully hard blow to some spiritual weakling, but Brother Gregory did not consider himself a spiritual weakling. He had been there long enough for them to have given away his old gown at the almshouse by the monastery gate. And so, on that dark January morning, when he had peeled off the coarse white habit of the order, Brother Gregory found himself departing on the long road south toward London in the shabby, nondescript gray robe and grubby sheepskin abandoned by some lay brother. Well, that was all right. It had entirely suited his morbid mood.

So it was that in the midst of a hard winter, Brother Gregory had been flung into the world of wandering clerks who copy letters, pray at funerals, and sing the psalms for small money. But in the midst of this test of faith Brother Gregory had been absolutely sure of two things: that he had a vocation for contemplation, and that he was never, never going home again.

“When I go back and tell the abbot I’ve seen God, then he’ll admit he was wrong,” Brother Gregory grumbled, idly splashing water over his stomach.

“Ho, Brother Gregory, you’ve been in there a long time, so I’ll just have to come and converse here. I’m sorry about that, but I need to be across town in an hour, and I can’t leave until I’ve put my request to you.” Kendall’s jaunty voice pierced the steamy mist in the tent and rudely broke into Brother Gregory’s reverie.

That’s how it goes in this house, thought Brother Gregory. Strip a man naked and then ask him a favor when he can’t run off. Oh, well. And he poked his head out of the tent.

“How go the reading lessons, Brother Gregory?”

“The what?”

“The reading lessons. Can Margaret read yet?”

“Simple things, yes. She’s doing well. She’s very clever for a woman, you know. But her spelling is awful. Purely barbaric.”

“How well do you think she’ll read by Christmastide?”

“Well enough, I think, at this rate. Why do you ask?”

“I’m planning a gift for her, and I thought I’d consult you.”

“A gift? What kind of gift?”

“A book. I have an idea for a new kind of Psalter. You’re just the man to help. I want one line in Latin, the next line in English, and so forth. That way she can read it herself and look at the Latin as she goes along.”

“That’s a dangerous idea, friend. It’s not proper to have the Psalms in English. They lose their sacred character.”

“I’ve had lots of dangerous ideas in my time. Let’s not argue until you’re out of the bath. Just tell me now before I go. Can you tell me of a good copyist, and perhaps a translator with a poetic turn of mind, who can do this for me? I don’t need illumination—just decorated capitals will do nicely. But it’s got to be bound in time.”

“I know people suitable for this work, yes.”

“If you can organize the whole thing and get it done for me on time, I’ll give you a good commission.”

“I’ll go see the people I know and come back tomorrow and let you know. But I’m sure it can be done, even on such short notice.”

“Good, then, good—tomorrow”—and Master Kendall’s footsteps could be heard departing. Gregory pulled his head in like a turtle. The water was cold. He could also hear a stirring outside the tent.

“Mistress has sent these clothes to wear until yours are dry. They’re right by the fire, but it will still be a while before they’re dry. There is a towel here by the tub. I’m leaving now.”

Merciful Jesus, what next? Some jester’s outfit in crazy colors to crown this series of indignities. Brother Gregory pulled himself out of the bath and inspected the clothing as he dried himself. All was well. Margaret, who had a delicate sense of his needs, had provided him with the sober black gown and hose that Master Kendall had worn to his mother’s funeral. They were a little bit wide and short for his tall, lanky form, but with a few adjustments here and there, they fit well enough. As he put them on, he looked again at the unforgiving blackness of them and wondered if Margaret were making fun of him in some subtle way. When he went downstairs, and Margaret greeted him with a cheerful “All dry again, Brother Gregory?” as if she didn’t even see the ridiculous black gown, he gave her a sharp look. She was getting entirely too presumptuous and deserved to be pulled up short.

But the smell of the ink and the look of the fresh empty paper began to soothe him as it always did. As he started writing, the familiar technique of making elegant, blotless copy first diverted, and then absorbed his whole mind. Margaret’s voice receded into the distance as he contemplated the lines of letters extending under his hand. He’d save his surprise for later.

 

IT WAS AFTER CURFEW, when the streets of London are dark, and every proper citizen has doused his lights and gone to bed, that Hilde, Brother Malachi, and I were awakened by the doleful wailing of two drunken lorimers, staggering down the muddy alley in front of our house.

“BRO-thers for EVer, in Christian charitYYYY,” they sang, or attempted to sing, the fraternal anthem of their guild. The sound rose and fell like the howling of wolves. A shutter banged open across the alley.

“Shut up!” a man’s voice bellowed. On the other side of us another voice called, “You, old Tom! I’ve heard better singing from cats in heat!” There was a swish and a crack. Someone had thrown an overage egg, which had splattered harmlessly on the uneven pavement. A sensitive nose could catch a faint whiff of sulphur. Suddenly the drunks reeled and stopped, supporting each other.

“Thish ish the place,” announced one of them, and he pounded on our door. As we all lay there, wishing most heartily that they would go away, the door of the neighboring house was flung open.

“Watt, you come inside this minute! The night watch will put you in the lockup again!”

“Oh, there you are, Kate. What are you doing in the house next door?”

“I am not in the house next door; this is your house, and you are banging on the door of those new people, like a fool.”

“I’m no fool. This is the right house, and you’re next door—and just what are you doing next door?” he asked, with a rising tone of suspicion in his voice.

“You’re drunk! And late! Just what did you do after the guild feast? Speak up and answer!”

“Why, sweetheart,” he said, in an exaggeratedly conciliatory tone, “I stopped off at the house of one of the brethren—on business.”

“On drinking business, you mean! And just who is that with you?”

“’Nother brother. His wife won’t let him in, he says, so I says, my Kate’s a hospitable woman. Stay over with us. But you’ve locked us out, and now you want us to stay next door—”

There was a sound of footsteps as the woman came and grabbed him by the ear and pulled him away from our door.

“Ow! My ear!” we heard him cry.

“You are disgusting! Come in this minute and get away from that woman’s door. She’s a whore, and I know it!”

“She seems nice ’nough to me.”

“She’s no better than she should be. Midwife, ha! She’s far too young. She couldn’t midwife a cat. This neighborhood is going down, I say—” The door slammed, and we heard no more.

That was my problem. The streets of London may be paved with gold, but you need the right sort of shovel to dig it out. I couldn’t get any clients at all. It’s very hard to start up business where you’re not known. It’s a lot different from the village. When we first arrived, we had all of us stayed in a single room, partitioned off at the back of a bakeshop in Cheapside. It was a lot less costly than an inn, because bakeshop owners aren’t allowed to keep overnight guests, that being the business of the Innkeepers’ Guild. But Brother Malachi was something of a master at saving money by living on the shady side, so there we stayed, until he could rent a house for himself and his “tragically newly widowed cousins, whom he supported out of charity.” One day he came back rubbing his hands together.

“Well, my dears, haven’t I always said that the other side of disaster is opportunity? We could never have hoped for such a splendid place before the pestilence made so many rentals free! We would have lived in a rented room forever, but now, thanks to my ingenuity, we have a fabulous great house, perfectly suited to our interests. Envision a veritable palace, with only a slight air of aged dignity!”

We retrieved Moll from her rented stall and together threaded our way through the narrow streets to Cornhill, where, after rounding a corner, Brother Malachi gestured to the right and announced that this was the place. Goods were displayed for sale on the street, mostly odds and ends: some hoods and gloves, cups, spoons, a cooking pan, some knives of various sizes.

“Where is the street?” I asked. “I don’t see any.”

“Right in there,” he gestured. “Secluded, yet central to everything.”

Sure enough. Between the houses fronted by the street vendors, there was a narrow opening with a long, crooked alley visible beyond. It was hardly worthy to be called a street: it was more of a winding gutter, only four or five feet wide, suitable for draining sewage out to the main street. It seemed sunk in shadow, for even in bright daylight the sun could not penetrate between the close-set houses. As we entered the alley, my heart started to sink.

“What’s this place called?” I asked.

“Once it was known as St. Katherine’s Street, I believe, but lately it has acquired the name of ‘Thieves’ Alley.’ Those things for sale out front—they’re mostly stolen, I’m afraid. But the house is a find. Here it is.” Brother Malachi looked very pleased with himself.

One look at the house, and my heart fell all the way down into my shoes. I looked at Hilde, and Hilde looked at me. Her face was long. I thought, I won’t cry for Hilde’s sake. But my eyes pricked and stung. It was the awfulest, ugliest place I could imagine. It was true, it was large. The other houses were shabby two- and three-story tenements, and the far end of the alley was closed off by several tumbledown single-story cottages.

This house was a narrow, two-story old horror, wedged like an aged drunk between two equally drunken companions, a pair of shabby three-storied houses divided up and rented by the floor on either side of it. None of the trio was more than ten feet in its frontage on the alley. There was an arched door with a little gate in it on the left of our house, which gave access to the back garden. Perhaps the house had once been nice. There was a shattered, unpainted window box that held a few scraps of dirt, sagging between the flapping, rotted shutters of the front window below the eaves.

The second story overhung the first by a good three feet, pitching the front door into permanent shadow, and preventing a mounted man from ever being able to ride the length of the alley. Whoever had added the overhang that extended the upper story had given no thought to symmetry, and that, plus the age of the supporting timbers, gave the drunken appearance to the house. The high, pointed roof was missing so many tiles that it reminded me of a gap-toothed smile. There was not a sign of a gutter under the eaves. The house had not been painted in a very long time, and great chunks of faded plaster had fallen out of the outer walls. I heard a rustling sound and saw a great rat leap through one of the holes.

“Don’t look so crestfallen, my dears. It has a real tile roof and a lovely garden in back. You’ll find it quite cozy in time. I got a special discount on the rent in return for the promise of fixing it up.”

Of course. It was a bargain. That explains everything. The roof wouldn’t hold out the slightest drizzle, I thought morosely. Brother Malachi pushed open the side gate. It opened on a narrow walkway that led to both the outside staircase to the second floor and the back garden. We all followed, leading Moll slowly down the hard-packed dirt of the narrow path. The garden was a sunny patch of weeds with a shed for animals. We left Moll tethered in the garden and entered by the back door, which was very smelly from the uncleaned necessary-place that drained into a pit in the back garden. The ground floor consisted of a large back room, with a chimney, and a smaller front room, also with a chimney. Someone must have cared about the house once. Chimneys are rare in old houses. They must have been added later. The upper floor, we were soon to find, also had two rooms. There was not a stick of furniture. The walls had lain unwhitewashed for a good long time, and were crumbling into piles of plaster dust on the floor. Spiders had draped the corners with their webs.

“This back room is quite perfect for my work. A nice corner for my oratory. And it has its own chimney, which is quite convenient, as you’ll soon find out,” announced Brother Malachi. “And now, good-bye for a while, my dears. I must retrieve some goods I have stored with a friend. I’m sure you’ll know what to do.” We watched as he departed out the back door. There, among the weeds, Peter sat, waving a long stalk and grinning cheerfully. Inside, everything was dark and filthy. The rooms smelled of decay. I looked at Hilde, Hilde looked at me, and we embraced and wept.

They say there is nothing that restores a woman so much as cleaning up, and we certainly had a great deal of opportunity for self-restoration in the next few weeks. As we swept and scrubbed, Brother Malachi whistled and arranged strange-looking things in the back room. He had a bellows such as you see in a blacksmith’s shop, and other things much stranger. One he called a crucible, for making very hot fire; there were odd copper jugs with long spouts that he called pelicans, as well as a big jar made of glass with a crooked, pointed mouth that drooped down and sideways. There were stands and tongs and little jars and boxes full of odd-smelling things.

“Ah, ah, don’t touch, little nosy one, some of these things, used wrongly—or, I might add, sniffed up your pretty little nose—could prove deadly,” he cautioned me.

“But what is all this for?” I would ask him.

“No, NO, Margaret, if you must pick up the vas bermeticum, don’t set it down so hard you crack it.” Brother Malachi kept on bustling, as if he had something in mind.

“But can’t you tell me even a little?”

“Another time, perhaps, I will confide in you, but just now I must ask that you never speak of it to anyone.”

“You needn’t worry, Brother Malachi,” I’d answer. “I don’t know anyone to tell.”

And it was true, I didn’t. I was young, but I didn’t feel like other young people anymore. And older people don’t want to know a widow without money. It’s suspicious, they think, and besides, they might have to lend her something. Hilde had introduced us to the priest at St. Michael le Querne, where we went to worship, and had convinced him of her competence and honesty as a midwife by demonstrating that she knew the correct form for baptism and explaining that she had buried nine children of her own. But I looked too young to him and had buried only one child, so he saved his recommendations for Hilde. For a while I was content to go with Mother Hilde and add to my own store of knowledge by assisting her. But I soon grew despondent and stayed home, where I would mend, sweep, cook, and snoop in Brother Malachi’s workshop.

“Could you kindly blow the bellows just a bit harder, dear? It needs more heat, this process,” he would say.

“And just what is it you’re doing?” I would ask him.

“Making aquae regis by a process known as distillation,” he answered. “The fire causes the spirit to rise, here—and it is trapped—there—and moves down to reappear—right there.” There was something dripping into a container.

“How many times must I tell you not to touch, Margaret? It will dissolve your finger.”

“Well, at least it doesn’t smell as bad as some of the things you do in here. Can’t you ever tell me what it’s all for?”

“Hmmm,” he said, fixing me with a serious stare. “I guess you can keep a secret. Margaret, I am very, very close to the Secret of the Ages.”

“What secret is that?” I was thrilled.

“The secret of Transmutation. When I have penetrated this secret, I will be able to change base metals into gold. I have been working on it for years. I intend to be very, very rich someday.”

My goodness! That was a mighty Secret. I was very swelled up that I knew about it. Brother Malachi swore me to secrecy, not only because of the large amounts of gold we would soon have in our house, but also because some ignorant souls thought that alchemy—the kind of work he was doing—could only be pursued by those who had sold their souls to the Devil.

I was suddenly very concerned. “You haven’t done that, have you?”

“Don’t fret yourself in the least, dear child, I would never consider it. I wish to be wealthy and have my soul as well. It wouldn’t be as much fun the other way.”

The smells from the back room got much more unpleasant as the weather got colder and we could not air out the house as easily. When we acted terribly annoyed, one day, he said he would show us something we would like and be grateful for. Setting up the distillery, he made something he called “spirits of wine,” a clear liquid that could be ignited by fire.

“What on earth is it good for?” we asked. When he said it could be drunk, we tried it, but it tasted nasty and made our noses burn.

“It’s completely useless, just like the other things from your room of smells, Brother Malachi,” I chided him.

“Well, Margaret, it’s useful for other things too. One use for which it might find greater approval in your ungenerous heart is as cleaning fluid.” So when we had it, that’s what we used it for. That, and Brother Malachi sealed some in little jars for medicine, which he sold quite successfully at the fair at Cheap.

Eventually I acquired a clientele, but it was a very odd one that brought me no payment at all. However, it raised my spirits considerably, and so it is worthy of mention. Fall had passed without work, and it was now winter, and walking the streets without money had become a dull pursuit. I liked to escape the Smellery as much as possible, and so I wandered out-of-doors by myself, oblivious of any danger. At first I enjoyed the wandering. There were grand palaces to see on the Strand, and the comings and goings of great lords on horseback, followed by their liveried retainers. I would go down to Galley Quay to watch the foreign ships come in. Some were tall, brightly painted vessels with sails, and you could hear the sailors singing in strange tongues. Others were galleys, some with double or triple rows of oars, that bobbed gently at anchor as bales of precious things from the Orient were unloaded.

If you walk along the bank of the river, you can see them bringing the fish into Billingsgate Wharf—but if you don’t buy there, they shout insults. In rough weather I would wander to the great cathedral. There, right in the nave of St. Paul’s itself, every kind of business is transacted; laborers offer themselves for hire, people sell things of dubious origin from underneath their cloaks, and boys play ball. But if you’re a woman alone there, people think you’re seeking an assignation, so I couldn’t stay. It’s not all that cheerful, walking about, wrapped up against the wind in your old cloak, looking at all the houses and places where people have things to do and happy families waiting for them, and knowing that when the street vendor calls, “Hot pies!” you haven’t got a penny for that or anything else. It makes you wonder what’s going to happen to you, and whether you have any purpose being on earth.

So Mother Hilde, who was always busy now, thought to cheer me up by asking my assistance at a confinement outside the walls, where the woman was “big enough for twins.” Together we walked through the twisting streets to Bishopsgate, and into the shabby suburbs beyond. It turned out that it was not twins, but triplets, all born dead, though we saved the mother. She, poor woman, consoled herself for her loss with the thought that she could not have fed all of them anyway. Returning by Moorfields, we saw that the marsh was quite frozen solid and aswarm with little boys sliding on the ice. You could see their breath coming in frosty white puffs as they shouted to each other. Some were pulling each other, and others were holding mock battles, tilting at each other with sticks. But best of all, some sped like the wind. They had something slippery on their feet, and pushed themselves along with two little poles, like crazy things. I was completely taken by it.

“Hilde, Hilde, I must do that! It looks just like flying!” I could hardly breathe for passionate craving.

“Margaret, you’re crazy! That’s not fit for women! Do you see a single woman or girl there? No? Then forget about it! You’ll just get into trouble.”

My face fell. What a stupid idea. Flying only for boys?

“Hey, you, boy, what makes you go so fast?” I called to a little boy in a russet hood and sheepskin cloak.

“Skates, ma’am,” he answered, slowing a little.

“Show me,” I asked, and he obligingly turned up one foot, balancing on the other. On the bottom of his foot was tied a roughly shaped sheep’s shinbone.

“Can I try them?”

He made a rude face and prepared to speed off. Just then his friends came up behind him.

“Yah, yah, Jack’s got a lover!” they jeered.

“Kissy, kissy!”

“That’s sure a big girlfriend you’ve got!” The little boy blushed crimson and shouted, “I do not, she’s just a big old girl I don’t even know!” Together they slid joyously away. But the pleasure was short-lived. A larger boy, being chased by a friend, barreled right into them, scattering the little group at full length upon the ice.

“Hey, Jack, get up, we’re going.” They clustered around their friend.

“Can’t, my foot’s broke.” His face was stoic.

“’Tain’t broke, just wiggle it.”

“Ow! Keep your hands off of it, it’s my foot.”

“How are you going to get home on that?”

“Can’t you fellows carry me?”

“Hey, look, if we take too much time, Master’ll know we’ve been out playing.”

“What about me? If I come back with a broke foot, he’ll beat me. My master’s much tougher than yours ever was.”

This was too much for me. I stepped gingerly across the ice to the little group, ignoring Hilde’s warning look, and offered to help.

“Hey, here’s your girlfriend back.”

“Mmm, going to kiss it and make it better?”

“Kiss me, this is where I hurt.” This last was accompanied by a vulgar gesture.

“I can help, you know. I’ve got a trick that makes things better. But it’s not kissing”—and here I glared at the vulgar one.

“Then you’d better do it, lady, or he’s in a lot of hot water.”

Gently I felt the foot and ankle, while he winced. Then I put my hands on both sides of the sprain and set my mind. Out-of-doors no one could see the odd light at all. I couldn’t myself. I was barely aware of it as heat. I took my hands off. Carefully he moved the foot—then he wiggled it back and forth.

“Why, it doesn’t hurt anymore. Thanks, lady.” Then he suddenly became suspicious. “You don’t charge anything, do you?” I thought quickly.

“Yes, I do. I want to try your skates.”

He looked appalled.

“Go on, Jack, it’s fair.”

“What’s wrong, Jack, don’t you pay your debts?”

“Well, all right,” he grumbled, “but you’ll fall over.” I was aware of Hilde behind me, torn between shock and amusement, wondering how it would come out.

The skates were short on my feet, and the poles were short too. I took a few steps and fell with a thump.

“That’s enough, now. See? I told you you’d fall.”

“I get another chance.” I was indignant; I wanted to speed. I could even imagine myself flying over the ice. It was just that my feet wouldn’t do it.

“Ya, Jack, that’s fair. We all fall the first time.” His friends backed me up—possibly only to enjoy his embarrassment. I would ordinarily have been embarrassed, too, at the cluster of little boys around me, making raucous remarks. But I wanted to fly too badly to care. I took one step; then I glided, then I poled, and then I was speeding!

“It’s just like flying!” I exclaimed to them with joy. Then I tried to turn back and fell down again. I scrambled up, laughing for the first time in months. They were laughing too.

“Can I come back?” I begged them. They poked each other and laughed again.

“We’re butchers’ apprentices. We’ll get you bigger skates, if you come back. But you have to be all our girlfriend, not just his.” And that is how I took up skating, and also got my clients. For there were many injuries on the ice, and those who were not too proud to ask, I helped. Soon there was a steady stream of little boys who had made their way down Thieves’ Alley to knock on my door and show me black eyes and broken fingers. Sometimes there was a girl, but not often, for although there are girl apprentices in many trades, they are not allowed to run wild through the streets the way the boys are. Or possibly it is that they cannot seize their freedom the way boys do—for I am sure many of those boys are supposed to be at work or running errands, when they suddenly discover the charms of dawdling, football, or fighting. And if enough of them are together, who can stop them? These days I no longer felt that London was a city of strangers, all happy enough to be without me. Instead I saw it as a city of children. For nearly everywhere I went, there would be some little creature who would break out of a group at play or stop on his way to deliver a message and say, “Why, there’s Margaret! Hello, Margaret!” It made everything different somehow.

“I’m glad to see you laughing again, Margaret,” said Hilde one evening at the fireside. We had all supped lightly that day, out of necessity, for Brother Malachi’s money was all gone, and Hilde did not bring in enough for four people to live well. We saw a great deal of brown bread, beans, and onions these days. It didn’t bother Brother Malachi at all, for he was so very close to the Secret that he would often forget to eat, out of excitement, and have to be reminded. Peter didn’t mind, either, for all things tasted alike to him, I think. Hilde was always a strong one about hard times. But I minded. I was as hungry as a young she-wolf from roaming and skating, and at times it bothered me greatly.

“It’s a decided improvement,” added Brother Malachi, who for once was sitting with us, rather than working in back. “You must admit you’ve been sulky and morose, Margaret. It’s very wearing on a person like myself, who must constantly breathe the etheric air of enthusiasm in order to carry on this difficult and exacting search.”

“I’m dreadfully sorry. It’s just that I’m ashamed that I haven’t brought in any money. I haven’t done my share, and it makes me grouchy,” I admitted. But they both fussed at me and said I did my share in the house, and although I didn’t feel that was quite the same, I told them a funny story I’d heard from the apprentices, and we all laughed again.

But it bothered me—not getting even one job, when I knew I was as good as many others. And it bothered me that the dreadful dragon-woman next door constantly spied on my comings and goings and concluded loudly to whoever would listen to her that I was a woman of ill fame. And it wasn’t fair, either, because the neighborhood was full of other people she might have gossiped about instead of me. There was a receiver of stolen goods, who had many night callers. There was a slender fellow who I think was a cutpurse, as well as several large, bulky fellows who would do anything, no matter how unsavory, for money.

Then one day my chance came. I had stayed home to sweep out and to brew, for that is one thing I do very well, and in my opinion the water in the City tastes too strange to drink. There was a knocking at the door, and when I opened it, there stood a tall, shabby fellow in a long, threadbare black gown. He had a long, bony face, like a weary dog’s, that made him seem older than he was. He was a priest in minor orders, who was married and seeking a midwife. Hilde was gone, so I told him I was one. He looked disappointed.

“I was hoping for the older one,” he said.

“I know I’m young, but I have assisted at many births and delivered children successfully, although not in London. The ‘older one’ is my teacher, and I do things just as she would.” I defended myself boldly, but something in my eye caught his notice.

“You’re not working so much here?” he asked.

“No”—I sighed—“for I haven’t been long in London, and it’s very hard to get established, particularly in this business, if you don’t look old.”

“Then you’re not so different from me,” he said. “I came because London is a city of gold, but none of it has wound up in my pocket. Married priests never get advancement. I get a little work copying, singing psalms. I bless houses occasionally—” he looked around hopefully. “You wouldn’t want your house blessed, would you?” All the sweeping in the world had not made the house less shabby, and we didn’t have money for whitewash. It’s just that we’d got tired of noticing it, so we quit. It was always a jolt when a stranger reminded us how bad it looked.

“I’m afraid this house is beyond blessing.” I sighed, looking around.

“That’s too bad, because”—here he broke off, but I knew what was coming—“because,” he went on, “I’d, um, hoped to defer payment until—somewhat—later.”

I knew the proper answer, and although I was disappointed, I did want to prove myself.

“I’ll do the work for the love of Christ,” I told him. His face brightened.

“Are you sure you’re as good as the older one? My wife and I have been married only a year and a half, and don’t they say the first one is always the hardest?”

“It depends on the strength of the mother,” I answered reassuringly.

“Well, then, I’ll come back and bless your house anyway. No house is beyond blessing. Maybe this house just needs a larger-than-usual one.”

“Perhaps that’s so. I fear the previous occupants may have come to no good end.”

And so we settled it, and when his wife’s time had come, he himself fetched me, and I raced to keep up with his long steps as we walked the streets to an alley very similar to ours, in another part of Cornhill, where he lived in a decrepit cottage. The delivery was not a hard one, as those things go, but it took longer, as it does with a first child, and she was deathly frightened. When both mother and child were safely bedded, I went to him where he was waiting, in the cottage’s other room, with his head in his hands.

“They are both well, and your child is a girl,” I told him. He looked up, his long face pleased and radiant.

“Truly so? I thought when I heard cries—”

“No, they’re well, both well indeed.” I followed him in and watched enviously as I saw the tender look on his face when he admired them both.

“Why, she’s very pretty, isn’t she?” he exclaimed over the child, and his wife smiled happily. And I thought secretly to myself, If I could have chosen, I’d have had a love match like that one—and if I can’t have that, then I won’t choose any. But fate taught me later that it’s a rare woman who gets any choices in matters that men think they have a right to direct.

This was the beginning of better luck for me, for the first client always recommends the rest. And this shabby priest got around. Sometimes I would see him on a street corner exhorting the passersby against sin, his threadbare gown whipping about him in the wind. He had a number of favorite themes, some of which were enough to get him put in the stocks, and how he escaped I do not know. He said it was the sins of the wealthy and the great that had caused the plague, and he denounced the selfishness of the rich, as well as that of the career-minded celibate clergy. “Chastity without charity” was what he called it, and he said that purchased pardons could not save the buyers from hell, but only God could pardon, and would do so without regard for money. Poor people liked to hear him, and more than once I saw a crowd surround him and whisk him out of danger when it looked as if he might be taken by the authorities. That was the problem with the new clients he sent me—they were all as poor as he was, and paid in vegetables. Still, that’s better than nothing at all, and life started looking up.

It was perhaps a sign of our new prosperity that everything homeless seemed to sense that there might be a welcome and something to eat at the narrow house in the alley. One morning, when I went to feed Moll, I found that a shabby orange cat with a torn ear and missing tail had slept the night in the shed. With that kind of insinuating flattery that cats have, she wound her skinny body about my legs until she had acquired a bit of milk for breakfast. After that she seemed to take possession of the house and yard and soon was as fat as a prosperous burgher. Hilde was pleased, because she had often regretted having had to leave her old mouser behind and had often thought of buying another cat when times were easier. A cat improves the garden wall in sunshine, and the hearth in foul weather, so we began to feel the house was not so dreary.

Then, one rainy afternoon, when I was returning from a job, with payment in the form of butter and eggs neatly wrapped in my basket, I nearly fell over something lumpy curled up at the front door. It looked exactly like a pile of unraveled rope, and even when it got up and pushed itself hopefully into the house behind me, I wasn’t altogether too sure what it was, for the front and back ends looked more or less alike. So I got a bucket of water and a comb, while the creature pattered about after me, and then I settled down at the back door to wash it until I’d found out whatever it was.

“What on earth is that you are washing there?” inquired Brother Malachi, who had come forth from the Smellery to take air.

“I’m not sure, but it seems more or less like a dog,” I answered, combing out the tangled fluff. The truth is, I had been greatly taken by a pair of merry bright eyes, and a mouth that looked always like a smile, that I had found beneath the matted hair. But a dog does eat, and it wasn’t right to keep it if the others objected.

“A dog, eh? It’s not very large. I imagine it barks well. Margaret, we might consider keeping this creature to sound a warning. After all, we must think of the future. Very soon now the house will be piled with gold bars, which will make it very tempting to criminals. It would be a wise precaution to keep a watchdog. Clearly Fortuna is looking out for the details of our new life.”

And so the dog stayed. As if in gratitude he laid a token of his appreciation at my feet the next morning. It was a dead rat nearly half his size.

“My goodness, Margaret,” said Mother Hilde, “he must have had quite a scuffle to get that. He is small, but lionhearted.” That is how he got his name, although most people tell me it’s a silly one. But Lion was very quick-witted, and I enjoyed teaching him some of the tricks I had seen the jongleurs’ dogs perform. Maistre Robert had a wonderful secret that made his dogs as lively as human children. Instead of beating them like stubborn mules, he showed them just one thing at a time, luring them to perfect it with little rewards and kind strokes. It was a very clever way that left his creatures full of love, and I used it with great success. When the little boys would come to visit, they would applaud Lion’s tricks, which pleased him no end, for he was a dog that loved to be admired.

Thanks to my little friends Lion was not the only creature that came to stay during those days. It was late on a windy March afternoon that I answered a timid knock at the door. It was a sad-looking creature that stood there—a scrawny, undersized little boy, nursing a long unhealed cut on his hand. He had many little bruises about his body and walked as if his limbs were sore. When he spoke, I saw his gums were red and swollen. I know this disease well. It comes in winter, when there is not enough to eat.

“Are you the woman who fixes cuts?” he asked.

“That I am,” I answered.

“The boys tell me you mend them for love of a brother that’s gone. He’s not found yet, is he?”

“No, he’s not. But won’t you come in?” He stepped in more cautiously than the cat, looking carefully about to see that nothing menacing was in the room.

“What’s this, Margaret? Another of your boys? What’s your name, and who is your master, for it’s clear enough to me that he treats you very ill.” Mother Hilde’s voice sounded warm and concerned, as she dished up pottage for him from our ever-boiling kettle.

“My name is Sim, and I haven’t any master,” he answered. “My mother didn’t have the fee to set me to learn a trade. Now she’s dead, and I get work where I can.”

“And I suppose you’re not above begging a bit too,” said Mother Hilde. The boy was silent. Mother Hilde thought a bit and disappeared into Brother Malachi’s workshop while Sim ate. Soon she reappeared with a bustle.

“Sim,” she said, “Brother Malachi, who is engaged in a project of greatest importance, has need of a boy to blow the bellows and clean out his vessels. Peter is a total failure at it. Margaret used to do it, before she had so much work. But now Malachi is very worn down with excess labor and frustration. If you take on this work, you may stay in this household. Would you like that?” Sim looked wary.

“There’s no trick. We don’t eat children here, or beat them, and we almost always have good things to eat. Do think about it.” By now the cat had come to sit on Sim’s feet. He thought a bit and said, “Yes, I’ll do it.” Mother Hilde kissed him, and the agreement was made. I washed the cut and brought the edges together, but it was clear to us both that food was this boy’s medicine.

Sim was a handy creature to have about. As he regained his spirits, he worked long hours for Brother Malachi, ate as if he were a bottomless pit, and ran many useful errands. I noticed, too, that as he regained strength, he seemed to have acquired some special stature among the other boys, who gave him great deference.

On the way to market one day I saw Sim in the street, demanding first turn at a game of ball and getting it, somewhat undeservedly, I thought. I caught up with a child hurrying to play and grabbed him by the shoulder.

“Wait a minute, please, and tell me something,” I asked. “Just who is that boy who’s going first, and why is he so well regarded?”

“Oh, lady, don’t you know? That’s Sim. He’s apprenticed to a wizard and has already learned some very powerful secrets. He can call lesser demons and turn his enemies into frogs.”

“He can what? I think that’s a very tall tale.”

“Oh, no, it’s all true. He has shown us quicksilver from his master’s laboratory, and water that can dissolve stone.”

“Why, then, I thank you for telling me. A person can’t be too careful of wizards.”

“That’s what I say, too, lady.”

That evening we confronted Sim.

“Sim,” I said firmly, “I hear you’ve been telling the other apprentice boys that you’re apprenticed to a wizard.”

Brother Malachi’s eyebrows went up. Sim looked troubled.

“Sim, that’s a terrible thing,” said Mother Hilde.

Sim hung his head.

“Sim,” I said, “telling tales like that can call the archdeacon down on us. Suppose someone tells him all those things about the frogs and the demons? He’ll arrest Brother Malachi for sorcery. Maybe even all of us. You have to watch yourself.”

Sim looked as if he were about to cry.

“Frogs? Demons?” Brother Malachi was looking fierce, but his mouth was twitching on one side. “Just what exactly did you tell your playmates?”

Shamefaced, Sim told him.

“Sim, Sim.” Brother Malachi shook his head warningly. “I’m afraid you’ll never make much of a sorcerer, or much of an alchemist, either, with a tongue like that—but”—Sim looked up hopefully—“you’ll make a lightning salesman! Save your lies for the road, my young friend, and you’ll travel with me when you’re a bit older. In the meanwhile tell your little friends that your master called up a demon so unpleasant that it caused him to repent on the spot, and he has now gone on a lengthy pilgrimage to purge himself from sin. That ought to be sufficient, I think. These things die down, if handled right.”

“But I’ll still get to work the bellows?”

“Of course, of course. I’m beginning a new process of the most subtle and dangerous type tomorrow. There is risk that my materials may fly violently up into the air, with great flame and noise—but it may very well be the gateway to the Secret. Last time I tried it, I nearly burned down the house. This time showers of gold await! But you’ll have to be very courageous—”

“I’m brave, I swear I am.” Sim looked heartened.

“Good—don’t run off tomorrow, and we’ll begin at dawn. But I must be able to trust you absolutely. Do you swear?”

Sim swore. Mother Hilde and I shook our heads. The next day the house was full of a peculiarly noxious black smoke that caused even the insects to flee the cracks in the walls. Hilde and I went off to work to spare ourselves from asphyxiation. Hilde had a new client, the wife of a wealthy saddler, who was bearing her seventh child, which Hilde said was a very lucky sign, and I went off to a shabby tenement on London Bridge to see a woman referred to me by Master Will, the street preacher.

I like London Bridge: those who live or keep shop on the bridge think themselves very special and constantly work some evidence of their uniqueness into their conversation. The air is cold and brisk there, which they say brings better health, and there is something strangely soothing to the spirit to watch the water rush at great force between the narrow stone piers, although it is a dangerous business to put a boat between them. Yet watermen shoot the bridge every day, although their wiser clients disembark on one side of the bridge and rejoin the boat at the other side, for many are overturned and lost taking boats under the bridge. Because of the buildings on the bridge, the high street is but a dozen feet wide, except where it opens in the “square,” on which they sometimes have jousting. The only thing I really don’t care for on the bridge is the drawbridge gateway on the Southwark end, because it is decorated with severed heads, as a way of reminding those entering the City from the south that treason is a serious matter in England. When a new head is put up it is considered something of a holiday, and men bring their families down for a stroll to gawk at it and perhaps also do a little shopping. If the bridge merchants could arrange it they would have a new head there every week, for the increase of trade.

The crowd was very pressing on the High Street this day. Market women displayed their wares on their cloaks and shouted an invitation to buy. In the shadows under the second story overpasses, cutpurses and sneak thieves plied their trade. Beggars, including maimed veterans and children who have been damaged by their parents so as to appear more pitiful, wept and pleaded for offerings in Christ’s name. Those who gave were showered with blessings to the point of embarrassment and surrounded by swarms of additional hopefuls. Sports in search of women, tradespeople and apprentices, jostled each other on foot, while wealthy merchants, mounted on mules, threaded their way through the crowded street. As I approached the bridge square, I could hear several apprentices in deep conversation nearby.

“I say, that sorcerer fellow’s head is all black now.”

“It always was black; it is with sorcerers, especially the bad ones. And this was one of the worst—imagine, trying to put a spell on the prince!”

“You’re wrong; it wasn’t black at all when they put it up, just sunk in a little. I still say it turned black later.”

“Well, it’s coming apart now. They all look alike when they’re old. The new ones are the interesting ones.”

“That’s true. Once the eyes are out, they aren’t much anymore.”

Further speculation was interrupted by a cry from the southern end of the bridge.

“Make way! Make way for my lord the Duke of Norfolk!” A party of armed nobles and their retainers, all splendidly mounted on their traveling horses, followed by their baggage train, crossed the drawbridge at a good, stiff trot. You could see the sunlight glitter on their silver-and-gold embroidered surcoats. The horses’ chests and necks were soaked with sweat from their long, fast ride. The crowd parted before them, but not quickly enough. Mothers snatched at their children, and grown men shoved to get into sheltering doorways. The crowd surged into the narrow “square,” the fortunate ones stepping into the pedestrian recesses in the bridge wall. Someone tripped me and I fell. Then others fell over me, and I was soon smothered under several bodies. My wind was knocked out and there was a searing pain in my leg.

The party on horseback having passed, there was something new of interest for the scandal watchers, as the injured were disentangled, carried to the adjoining bridge chapel, and laid out on the floor. Some were bruised only and soon recovered their wits. One old man had his back broken and had turned all gray in the face, as men do when they are dying. The priest bent over him, anointing his forehead while his acolyte held a candle. Next to me a barber surgeon was strapping a man’s ribs, whistling cheerfully. When he finished, he looked at me and said jauntily, “Now, what have we here?”

“It’s my leg,” I whispered, for it was very painful. The light in the chapel was dim and the gray stone floor hard and uncomfortable. There was the sound of groaning from the dying man, which did little to brighten the atmosphere.

“Oh, lovely!” he exclaimed, as he turned back my dress. “A beautiful compound fracture! Why, here’s the bone!” He had a nasty ginger-colored beard, which matched bristling eyebrows and ill-combed long hair of the same color. His dun-colored wool tunic and dark green surcoat were protected by a wide leather apron, which had many sinister dark splashes on it that I took to be bloodstains.

“For God’s sake, don’t touch it!” I cried, as he looked at the white fragment of bone extending from the break. I was sick with horror. People never like to see their own bones.

“Oh, touch it I will, soon enough. You have family who’ll pay, I take it?”

“Yes—I do,” I managed to answer.

“Then we’ll load you up and take you back to the shop. It’s too big a job for a chapel floor. You’ll have to wait a bit, though. I’ve got an even nicer fracture over in the corner there.” He called for his assistants and, after strapping the leg to a temporary splint, conveyed me to his place of business, only a few paces behind the man with the “nicer fracture.” Carried through the door of a narrow shop front that lay behind a barber’s pole, draped with the red, bloody bandages that signified one could be bled within, we were laid out like sacks of wheat on the benches of his “establishment.”

It was a distressing place. He had a large chair for cutting hair, shaving, and bleeding people. At its foot was a bloody basin that looked well used. A string of teeth hanging on a wall advertised his prowess as a tooth puller. On another wall hung a ghastly array of instruments such as one might find in a torture chamber—knives, saws, pliers, and cautery irons—while a chest contained lancets and other small instruments. On one side of the room there was a sinister apparatus: his battered and well-used wooden surgery table. There were dark stains of dried blood about on the walls and furniture, and the rush-covered floor was dark and matted with filthy stuff, the drainings of many disgusting old wounds.

“So,” I heard him say to the first man, “your leg is pretty well smashed up. These ones usually go bad. Would you like to die with your leg on, or live with it off?”

“Live, I want to live,” mumbled the man. He looked like a decent sort of person, perhaps a carter, in a russet tunic and the remains of gray hose. He lay on his old gray cloak, biting his teeth together to keep from crying out.

“Sensible fellow. I’ll have it off in a jiffy. You’re not in the hands of one of those ordinary, butchering surgeons, you know. I can take off an arm or a leg so fast you hardly feel it. ‘Lightning John’ is what they used to call me in the army.”

Lightning John needed no preparation, for he was already wearing his spattered apron. His assistants donned theirs, and they lifted their victim onto the big wooden surgery table. Then all four of them (and they were very muscular, as surgeon’s assistants must be) pinned the man down with their full weight—his shoulders, torso, and good leg—so he could not writhe and spoil the surgeon’s work. The cautery irons were already sitting in the fire, red hot, minded by an apprentice. Lightning John tightened the tourniquet as the man screamed, and then went to work. He was a modern surgeon: he didn’t just hack off the limb at a blow, trusting to providence that he would place the axe right. Instead he slashed it to the bone, which he sawed through with a few rapid strokes. Despite the tourniquet blood spattered everywhere, renewing the marks on the wall and floor, and the hideous screams of the amputee made my own blood stop in my veins. In only a moment his apprentice had put the handle of the cautery iron into Lightning John’s hand, and with the ghastly sizzle and stink of seared flesh the victim gave a piercing shriek, before he mercifully lost consciousness.

“Nice job, boys,” announced Lightning John, wiping off his tools. “I think he’ll live. Clear the table and we’ll do the woman next.” The two muscular journeymen came to lift me up.

“Don’t touch me until you’ve wiped that table. I don’t want to lie in anyone else’s blood,” I said.

“Women! Ha! Always fussy. Well, I aim to satisfy. Albert, wipe off the table, the lady wants to keep her dress clean.” When I was on the table, he began to whistle again.

“Now, sweetheart, do you want to die with your leg on, or live with it off?”

“I’ll die with it on,” I said through clenched teeth. “Just set the bone.”

“Pity. It’s much safer to have it off,” he answered. “Well, it’s not so bad as that other one. You might have a chance, if it doesn’t go putrid on you.” I turned my head; I could see his assistant taking the man’s leg, to throw it out with the trash. I felt sick.

“Set it straight. I don’t want to be a cripple.” As he inspected the leg, I grabbed his hand and held on, so he’d look me in the face. “Say you’ll set it straight, no matter what,” I begged him.

He looked surprised. “So now you’re prescribing for yourself? There’s no end to what women want. You should beware of vanity, young woman. It’s what kills you all so quickly. Low-cut gowns in winter, tight lacing. If there’s ever a decision to be made, a woman always lets her vanity guide her—straight into the arms of death! Now that fellow over there, he knows how to make decisions—chose like a real man, for life! Setting will take much longer, and I can’t guarantee the results. It may just have to come off anyway. I’ll ask you once more—will you have the lesser pain? I can have it off in no time at all.”

“Never, never, I say. You just set it straight, and I’ll absolve you of my death.” I spoke through my gritted teeth, for the leg was very painful.

“So it goes,” he said cheerfully, poking at the bone. “But I can’t have you screaming like that. It breaks my concentration. Setting is much harder than taking off, and you said you wanted it straight.” He gave orders to have fresh boneset brought in and had its root smashed to a paste. Linen cloth was wrung out in the liquid extracted from the plant, as he got out the long, trough-shaped splint.

“Here,” he said, proffering a heavy leather strap with a lot of tooth marks on it. “Bite on this. I can’t have you making a lot of noise. Besides, you may break a tooth otherwise. Primum non nocere, I always say.”

It is a rule of nature that when people are in a position in which they are unable to talk back, they are spoken to much more than they would desire. Lightning John was a master of one-sided conversation. As I writhed in speechless agony under the dead weight of his assistants, he continued his cheerful flow of conversation.

“Now, where’s the other side—aha, there you are! Both bones broken clean through! Hmmmm. Some people think it a strange place to practice, the bridge, but it’s a grand place—plenty of business, day and night. Accidents, fights, drownings—there’s not a week goes by that you can’t hear the screams of some boatman overturned below. Don’t wiggle so, I’m just getting it right. Oh, yes. You have to understand that the other side of disaster is opportunity. Opportunity! When times are slow, which is rare indeed in this excellent location, I remind all these healthy merchant folk that the best way to remain in health is regular bleeding, at least four times a year. Once a season—balances the humours. I’ve told you already to hold still—you’ll spoil the work! Now it’s straight, we pack it in boneset. You know, you don’t have any scars on the wrist and ankle. I can tell you don’t look after your health. How you got this far without a simple precaution like bleeding, I don’t understand—now we strap it up—your humours are probably very unbalanced at this moment—you can’t preserve your health short of a miracle if your humours are out of order—hmm, yes. A nice piece of work, if I do say so myself. Isn’t that nicely done?”

“Why, yes, Master John,” chorused his assistants.

“Now we’ll send a boy around to tell your people to pick you up. Where did you say you lived?”

I was as limp as a wet rag. I could barely whisper, “Cornhill, St. Katherine’s”—when they took out the gag.

“‘Thieves’ Alley?’ By the bones of Christ! I might not have set it if I’d known that!”

“Don’t worry, you’ll be paid.”

“Well, I’m glad of that—clear the table, boys, we never know when the next opportunity may arise.” Master John went about whistling as he put back his instruments and readied himself for the next customer. He was a man who enjoyed his work.

While there are things I count more embarrassing than being borne through the streets in a surgeon’s litter, I still rank it very high on my list of annoyances. It would help, of course, to be bleeding and unconscious, which is more dignified, if not less painful. But I felt like a tremendous fool when Brother Malachi arrived, looking somewhat annoyed at being drawn from his work, accompanied by two great louts from the neighborhood that he had hired to convey me home. He paid the rental fee for the litter and arranged with the surgeon to settle his bill in two parts. I was relieved when they loaded me up and conveyed me out of the surgeon’s establishment. The gloomy horror of the place weighed me down. We made quite a procession, the louts, the litter, Brother Malachi in his old singed and stained brown habit, and a surgeon’s man, who was going to return with the litter.

“This is what comes of wandering about, Margaret. I’ve always said you were lucky not to be attacked or robbed. I hope from now on you build your practice in the immediate neighborhood. You’re just not clever enough to look after yourself in a big city.” On and on he scolded, by which token I assumed he had grown fond of me, despite his professed rootlessness. By the time we approached our own neighborhood, we had collected a train of idle little boys, most of whom knew me.

“Hey, Margaret, it’s too late for skating! How did you do it?” they shouted gleefully.

“Someone stepped on me,” I answered.

“Must have been an elephant!” joked one little boy.

“Margaret was stepped on by an elephant!”

“No, ninny, it must have been a horse.”

By the time we turned up our alley, news had spread that a hundred knights in full armor had galloped into the City on a military mission, trampling dozens of women and children to death on the bridge. Soon it appeared that the French might have landed on the coast, and while it took several days to squelch the invasion rumor, the one about the smashed babies was never quite eradicated.

By the time I was carried into the house and deposited by the fire, the neighborhood dragons had arrived, ostensibly to help, but in fact to gather supposed eyewitness information. I was too weary to deny them their fun.

“They say,” said the neighbor woman who was so fond of denouncing me, “that the street ran with blood.”

“Oh, yes, there was a lot of blood.”

“And children screaming?”

“There was hideous screaming—praying, too, just as if the Last Judgment had come.”

“They say there were eighty knights on destriers, fully armed,” broke in another woman.

“Well, I didn’t see so many—” I protested.

“Of course she didn’t,” interrupted the first woman. “She was already trampled; you don’t see much when you’re trampled.”

Soon they were telling each other what had happened, and got it better and better as they worked at it. Hilde dished out pease porridge left from supper for me, and still they had not left. My leg hurt, and I could feel a fever coming on.

“How was it with the woman you went to see?” Hilde asked me quietly, while the gabble continued.

“The child is not dropped yet; it will be a while,” I answered.

“That is the sort of thing my midwife said,” broke in one of the women. “But she was a fool, the baby came so quickly that it tore my insides all up—I’ve never been the same.”

“You? Torn up? Why, you can’t imagine the pain when I had my fifth child. He came backward. I was crippled for months.”

“My dear, it is only through God’s intervention that you live to tell that tale. Now, my cousin’s daughter had a child come backward, and it killed her. They buried her with the baby in her arms!”

Soon they were happily exchanging symptoms and horror stories. Every so often one of them would turn to Hilde or me for corroboration and we would nod silently. Eventually, surfeited with gossip, they took their leave, chattering happily.

“Oh, Hilde,” I said when they had gone, “I hope they don’t come back.”

“You are wrong to hope that. I hope they do. Women like that can make your reputation.”

“But I’ve worked hard to make my own reputation. Those people are just chatterboxes.”

“What you do matters very little,” responded Hilde. “It’s what people say about what you do that is what counts.” Hilde was a wise woman, much wiser than I, as I soon discovered. Now that I could not climb stairs, I slept with Lion by the fire and sat daytimes with my foot up on the bench, doing mending and other sedentary chores. There I heard one day through the open window the neighboring dragon explain to someone else that she had discussed important matters with me and had found my conversation “sober and godly.” What a joke, I thought ruefully, all I’ve ever done is nod my head while she did the talking.

“She appears young, but she is a pious widow and, I hear, a very good midwife,” came the voice from outside.

By the time I could go about my business on a crutch, the neighbors hailed me from their windows. When I was fully recovered, I found they had been recommending the “little midwife,” as very nearly as good as the “big one,” and much cheaper. I had done as well during my convalescence as if I had delivered a hundred babies safely. It all goes to show that reputations are made in odd ways in a big city. I knew now that I would always be able to make a living in London.

 

THE NATURAL CONTENTIOUSNESS OF Brother Gregory had been diminished greatly with his change of clothes, so he was content to wait until the writing was done to spring his surprise argument and sit back to relish Margaret’s annoyance.

“You look well in black, Brother Gregory. Very dignified,” Margaret commented, looking over the sheets of writing she was holding. She could still not make out everything, but the profound pleasure she felt at seeing the dark squiggles on the paper resolve themselves into the words she had spoken had not diminished in the least over the past few weeks.

“I feel like a fool.” Brother Gregory looked down at the dark fur-lined gown and plucked at it disconsolately.

“Lots of clerics have taken to secular clothing these days, and some of it very dandyish. Why, just the other day I saw a friar in particolored hose, who’d given up the tonsure. Now, he looked like a fool, I’d say.” Margaret was sitting on the cushioned window seat, turning pages slowly and squinting ever so slightly when she met with a difficult passage.

“That’s because they are not true Seekers. It’s all the times. Since the great pestilence, priests walk out on their congregations, and swarm to London hunting easy jobs as chantry priests. Ignorant, money-hungry fellows who can’t tell A from B, let alone speak Latin, have swarmed into religion. It’s a disgrace, as far as I’m concerned. But it’s no different in any other walk of life. The old virtues are forgotten. We’ve abandoned God’s way of life.” Brother Gregory looked gloomily at his clean fingernails.

“God’s way of life? When did God ever intend for us to live like this? Or as we did before the pestilence? Or as the Pope and the cardinals at Avignon, with all those mistresses? Surely God has better ideas than that. I really don’t remember that virtue was any greater in the past. You’ve just worked yourself into a state from gloomy thinking.” Margaret’s voice was firmly righteous, as she opened the secret drawer in the chest and put away the most recently completed portion of the manuscript. As she turned to face Brother Gregory, he sprang his trap.

“But surely, whatever God’s plan, isn’t it a sin to oppose it?”

“I suppose so, but first one must know what it is.”

“Let us take, for example, God’s plan to give the high places in the world to those of noble birth.”

“Oh, that again? I don’t believe that at all. After all, how are dynasties founded? By the man with the most ancient lineage, or the man with the mightiest sword arm? I think the latter.”

“And I say the gift of the sword is given to the one with mighty blood, showing that the plan is for great blood to rule.”

If Margaret had not been feeling so content with herself, just at that moment, she would have noticed the leading tone of Brother Gregory’s voice. She answered, “And I say, there’s no accounting for God’s gifts; He gives them as He wills.”

“God, an anarchist? Never!” Brother Gregory’s eyes glittered. Now he had her. “Let us take what you would think to be a good example. Didn’t your brother have gifts that led him to be noticed? Wouldn’t you say that proves your case, because he rose higher on his talents?”

Margaret looked puzzled.

“I suppose you might say so, but he worked hard too. That’s how he won favor. That, and being cleverer than the others.”

“And more attractive too?”

“Well, that, of course. But we both took after mother. She was unusual that way.”

“And so you’ve just proved my case.”

“I’ve not done anything of the sort. You’ve just agreed with me.”

“Oh, no, I haven’t. You’re just missing one piece of information, and it’s that that proves my case instead.”

Margaret looked sharply at Brother Gregory; suddenly she realized that she greatly disliked the sardonic look he fixed on her.

“If you’re going to say something nasty, then think twice and don’t say it at all,” she said firmly.

“Then I won’t say anything. Just ask a few questions, like Socrates, until you state the truth yourself.”

“And just who was this Socrates?”

“Why, a philosopher—who found out the truth by asking questions.”

Margaret mistrusted Brother Gregory when he mentioned philosophers. He usually brought them into an argument like military reinforcements, to shore up a particularly obnoxious line of attack. But she thought, I just won’t answer his questions, and then he’ll have to give up and live with being wrong, just this once.

“You wouldn’t disagree that rich men and lords keep mistresses, would you?”

“Well, no, of course.”

“And the lords of the Church too?”

“That, too, if they’re corrupt.”

“And there’s lots of corrupt ones lately, too, I recall you saying.”

Margaret didn’t answer.

“What do the rich men and lords do with their natural offspring?”

“Acknowledge them, if they feel like it, and then help them.”

“And what about the lords of the Church?”

“Well, they can’t acknowledge them, but sometimes they help them secretly. I’ve even delivered a bishop’s daughter—he gave her an immense dowry, just to see her married properly.”

“Have you ever given thought to the habits of Odo of St. Matthew’s?”

“And just what are you trying to say?” asked Margaret with alarm.

“Wait, wait. I’m asking the questions. Did you ever know he has nearly as many natural offspring as my father? And father’s a busy man. I’m always running into half-brothers I didn’t know. Of course, father’s very nasty about acknowledging them—it’s because he’s tight with money. Odo was always more generous with dowries or preferments for his natural children. And good about keeping it quiet too.”

“What on earth are you saying, you mean, mean creature?” cried Margaret. The frantic tone of her voice pleased Brother Gregory very much. He assumed an air of superiority.

“I mean, Mistress Merit-Is-Random, that you have a very odd grandfather—an abbot with yellow eyes. Your mother got them from him, along with her big dowry. Odo’s got an older brother, Sir Robert, who was abroad with father. He’s got those eyes too. That’s how I noticed them. Though I must say they look nicer on you. On the abbot, they’re quite dissipated looking, wouldn’t you say? And of course, the abbot’s patronage of your brother is a far from accidental event. Just think”—and here Brother Gregory looked at the ceiling—“he is directly descended from Charlemagne himself, the abbot. And of course, Charlemagne is descended from the Roman emperors, who, of course, traced their lineage to the pagan gods—”

“Wait just a minute—you’ve overstepped there. I’ve not heard that the pagan gods are descended from Adam. There is doubtless plenty of fiction in that family tree,” said Margaret hotly.

“Twist as you want, my point is made,” said Brother Gregory with a superior air, “and you are wrong. Besides, you could even say we’re a kind of cousin, if you go back far enough, and don’t mind the bend sinister.”

“Cousins? Through whom? Charlemagne, or Julius Caesar, or some inventive monk’s inkpot? You come into my house, you eat like a plague of locusts, and then you insult my mother and my brother—you’re no relation of mine, you nosy, troublesome thing!” Margaret cried passionately.

“Me? Nosy? You poured out your life’s secrets onto paper through my pen. I never nosed a bit. I had nosiness thrust upon me.” Brother Gregory leaned back and folded his hands behind his head. After months of irritation this was an indescribably pleasant moment. His bony, black-clad elbows stuck out like bat wings on either side of his ears. He grinned and settled down to enjoying Margaret’s fury. Really, she ought to be grateful to him. It’s much better to have good blood, even the second-rate kind, than to be nobody at all. But very clearly she didn’t see it that way at all. She really was a simpleton. Interesting she was so hot tempered underneath too. Maybe she’d throw the inkwell at him.

But Margaret surprised him. Instead of raging she suddenly began to wring her hands. A tear ran down her face and she said in a shaky voice, trying very hard to maintain her self-control, “My poor, poor mother. Men are simply awful.”

And women, thought Brother Gregory, are completely incomprehensible.

But Brother Gregory’s future was decided that evening, when Roger Kendall laughed. “Is that all?” he told his tearful wife. “Why, that’s nothing—it’s not even interesting unless it’s a cardinal. Now, now—he can’t help being a troublemaker; it’s constitutional with him. So just decide whether or not you want to finish the book.”