CHAPTER NINE

BROTHER GREGORY LOOKED OUT OF HIS little window under the eaves, thinking about how he might plan the rest of his day. It was one of those perfect mornings that are so welcome in winter. The sun had broken through the clouds and was engaged in melting the ice on the barren branches of the tree before his window, and each twig glistened with dripping water. Great patches of blue, decorated with scudding clouds, showed high above the steep tiled roofs of the City. A gust of clean, cold air whipped through his room, ruffling the drying pages on the table. He’d been up since before dawn and already had a lot done; in consequence he was very pleased with himself. He’d been to Mass, meditated on the sin of Wrath and the virtue of Meekness, and stuffed himself on the rolls that had been pressed on him yesterday at the Kendalls’, which had been baking day. Then he’d done quite a bit of writing on the Psalter, which was almost ready to be bound. His ink was almost gone—it was time to renew it. That made the decision easy. He’d go to Nicholas’s today and arrange for the binding, and get more ink as well.

So, a little reluctantly, he pulled his nose in out of the fresh air, closed the shutter, and returned to the table. He stacked the dried pages up neatly, then picked up his inkhorn and writing case and hung them on his belt. With his pen tucked jauntily behind one ear, he sauntered down the rickety outside staircase, humming to himself. He was off for Little Britain, that grubby maze of alleys beyond the wall, where his friend Nicholas had his shop. It wasn’t the biggest or the best of its kind, but he’d never think of patronizing another: Nicholas was the only person who’d been willing to advance credit to him when he’d first come to town, and he owed him more than money. Besides, there was always good conversation there. You never knew who would come to look at the books, or buy paper and ink; the place was usually full of more arguments than sales. Sometimes things might come close to blows over a hotly disputed topic such as the precise nature of the Arian heresy or the relations between Reason and Necessity in the creation of the visible world, but Nicholas’s calming genius seemed to always prevent bloodshed.

How Nicholas supported a widowed sister and three growing nephews on the penniless customers who frequented his shop was anyone’s guess. But everyone respected him. He was writing a treatise on philosophy, which, when it was done, would explain the entire nature of the universe. But what with bookbinding, buying and selling books, and a spot of copying, the work was progressing more slowly than he had anticipated. That’s how it always goes, thought Brother Gregory: women and trade—they pull a man down from the life of the mind. Still, it was hard to imagine Nicholas being any other way than he was.

Stepping lightly around the puddles, Brother Gregory arrived at Aldersgate, whistling merrily. It was one of the rowdy old goliard songs they used to sing in Paris, he and his friends, when they crowded into some tavern after a particularly disputatious lecture, to argue and drink. It was too bad it had all ended as it had, but even after they’d burned the book, he’d never regretted throwing everything over for a scholar’s wandering life. Besides, the authorities had never got hold of his poems, nor had they ever discovered who had written the scurrilous essay enumerating twenty significant errors in the theological writings of the bishop of Paris.

And now, now there was Contemplation. What a magnificent vista of eternal sublimity it opened up! To think, he might never have realized that his true vocation was Contemplation if they hadn’t brought such an untimely end to what he now perceived as his entirely too worldly passion for scholarship. That just showed that God planned everything for the best, after all. Soon enough he’d be seeing God personally, and then he’d go back and devote all of his time to Contemplation, free of all the hindrances this messy stuff of life made for him. Wasn’t it amazing how life made chains for a man? No money, too much money, property, family—it was astonishing how they all tie down a free soul. When you get down to it, there are only two things worth having in life, thought Brother Gregory happily—freedom and thinking. Those are the best of all. And with that he saw that he had finished his walk, for there before him at the end of a crooked alley was the door of Nicholas the Bookseller’s little shop.

Nicholas greeted him with that quiet, vaguely humorous way that he had, and after they had made the arrangements for the binding, he sold him ink and a half-dozen reed pens.

“I see you’ve finally sold the Ovid,” remarked Brother Gregory, with a glance at the tall, slanted shelves where nearly a dozen books of varying sizes lay flat on display.

“At long last, and it fetched a fine price, considering that you’d read it through often enough to commit it to memory,” responded Nicholas. He was a slender man of medium height, not yet forty, with thinning reddish-brown curls, a closely trimmed beard, and intelligent, whimsical gray eyes.

“I don’t believe I’m the worst offender you have here,” replied Brother Gregory, looking over to where two threadbare clerks, one in an Oxford gown, were examining Nicholas’s wares.

“I’ve got a new one here that’s more your style these days,” said Nicholas, picking up a smallish, plainly bound volume.

“Ah, the Incendium Amoris—you tempt me, Nicholas, but I’m trying to avoid Property these days, since I intend to retreat from the world again once this last job is done,” Brother Gregory said complacently, taking the book in his hand and beginning to peruse its contents.

“Enjoying the use of an object is one of the definitions of property,” Nicholas reminded him.

At this the first of the readers looked up in annoyance at the interruption—then he recognized Brother Gregory.

“Gregory? I hardly knew you, you’re looking so prosperous. Your face is fatter.”

“Why, Robert—what a surprise—and my face is not fat,” remarked Brother Gregory placidly, looking up from the book.

“I didn’t say that, you old horse, just fatter. You used to look like death warmed over.”

“If you continue to insult my physiognomy, Robert, you’ll dine alone today,” replied Brother Gregory calmly, turning a page.

“I hope you don’t imagine I’m paying for your dinner again, you human tapeworm.”

“I was imagining, Robert, that when I invite Nicholas and his brood out, I might ask you as well. I said I was divesting myself of Property, these days, and I was paid yesterday.” Brother Gregory looked up from the book and raised one eyebrow at his old friend, and his brown eyes glittered with amusement.

“Good Lord, have you found a gold mine? Or have you taken up cutting purses?” Robert answered. The Oxford scholar closed the book without putting it down and moved closer to listen. He was painfully thin, and a bit white around the mouth.

“No, I’m giving reading lessons these days. And every time I go, they stuff me indecently. I’ve let my belt out two holes since I started there. But you, Robert, are you still copying for that merchant?”

“No, I’ve found a better patron—an earl’s son who likes odes written in his honor and is fond of literary drinking companions.”

“Robert, you must beware the snares of the Devil in a service like that; you have been tempted by high living,” said Brother Gregory, shaking his finger in mock admonition—but Robert, being a friend, knew that it was meant seriously as well.

“Don’t be such a monk, Gregory, or I’ll think you keep a discipline and flog yourself at night, instead of drinking, like a regular fellow should.”

“Well, it’s drinking I intend to do now, if Nicholas will call Beatrix and the boys and shut up shop.” There was a time Brother Gregory would never have noticed Beatrix, who was older than Nicholas, and moved like a silent shadow when she was in the room with men. But after a month or two of writing for Margaret, he had looked at her suddenly one day and seen the look in her eyes. She’s given up, he thought suddenly, and there had sprung for a few seconds into his mind an alien thought: it was a vision of laundry tubs and yoked water buckets and cooking and ash carrying and scrubbing unforgiving and eternal dirt, and never going out, except to market and church. And after that he was never again quite the same. It was the idea that a person could give up hope that way that filled him with sadness. He himself lived on hope; it was the one thing that had never failed him. He wanted to give it back to her, to everyone who had lost it, somehow, and so save himself. But he couldn’t really think of anything to do, except, when he invited Nicholas out, to take her along too—something that never would have occurred to him before.

“I still have a customer,” Nicholas reminded him gently. Brother Gregory looked at the scholar. You could almost see through his pale, thin hands, as he held the book, pretending to read.

“I would be honored if you would accept my invitation to join us,” said Brother Gregory with grave courtesy. The scholar looked up. You could see his jaw twitch. He was going to say no. Brother Gregory knew exactly what he was planning to do. He would put his cold hands inside his patched sleeves and walk back to St. Paul’s, where he’d hope that something might turn up. “I take it you’re writing,” said Brother Gregory, “I’d enjoy hearing about it.”

“Why yes, I am writing,” the scholar answered, “how did you know? I’m working on an analysis of Aristotle’s Metaphysics.”

“I did a bit of writing myself, before I got into the business of teaching reading,” said Brother Gregory, with a certain irony in his voice. “But then you must know Greek. I’ve always wanted to know Greek, there are several places in Plato that I find difficult to reconcile with Christian doctrine, lacking a full understanding of the text.” The scholar brightened. It seemed less than a moment before they were all installed at the second best table at the Boar’s Head Tavern, with an entire spit of birds before them, and several pots of the best ale in the house. It was a piece of luck, how the table had come free. It had been occupied by a group of rowdy matrons, who had spent the last hour in drink and gossip. Suddenly one of them stood up and laughed, “Mass is over,” and by this token everyone in the room had known that they had deceived their husbands by telling them that they had gone to church, and had met here secretly for some fun. Now in place of a loud discussion about the unsatisfactory nature of husbands, an equally loud argument about the precise composition of the soul was heard around the table, which went on until everyone was sated with food and conversation.

Walking home later that afternoon with his ink and pens, Brother Gregory was dividing his attention between something that he had seen in the book and reflections on the entirely satisfactory nature of dinner. The scholar was good company, quite a find, in fact, and he had learned several new and interesting things. Then there was the question of the correct way to address the Deity. Rolle, in the Incendium, seemed to think sitting a superior posture to prostration, or the attitude of adoration. Now, just exactly why should this be? Then there was the excellent way he had avoided the sin of Wrath, which had threatened to spoil everything, when a fat priest had come in with his doxy on his arm. When the man found out all the birds had been sold, he passed by the table and made a nasty comment about starveling scribes. Gregory had glowered, turned red, and slapped his hand onto the place where his sword hilt should be—and had come up with his writing case instead. Nicholas had laughed, and put his hand out to restrain him. It seemed that the best vengeance was the Lord’s—Nicholas knew the woman, and prophesied correctly that she would despoil the priest of money and clothes and vanish, when their original business in the back room was completed. Before the happy company had left, they had the satisfaction of hearing the shouting from the back room and had departed, delighted with the commotion.

But just as he was preparing to mount the rickety stairs to his room, his landlord came out with a letter that had been left for him in his absence. Brother Gregory opened it, looked at it, and his face became grim. It was from father. Somebody had obviously given him assistance in composing it, for besides the usual paternal threats of mayhem were darker hints of the great array of extraordinarily unpleasant things that awaited unfilial sons: anathema on the earth and hellfire beneath it, as a sampling.

“It’s not as if I wouldn’t come if he invited me courteously,” growled Brother Gregory, crumpling up the letter in annoyance. Now he’d have to go home for Christmas and make it absolutely crystal clear about his plans to give up the world. It was a pity he hadn’t seen God yet—it would be nice to confront his father all suffused with a vague luminosity, so that the old man would be forced to realize that he hadn’t a claim on his son anymore. But there was no use worrying about that now—in the state of perpetual agitation that existed around father, nobody ever saw God, so he’d have to put off his own plans until after he’d dealt with father. And it meant leaving town too soon. He’d have to tell Margaret it was his last visit to the tall house on Thames Street, and she’d make a fuss, because she wasn’t finished yet.

“The world is not arranged correctly,” growled Brother Gregory.

 

WHEN BROTHER GREGORY WAS shown in to write for Margaret that afternoon, she noticed he was preoccupied. He looked all about the room, as if he were trying to fix everything in it in his mind, and then he knitted his brows and looked as if he were going to say something painful to him. But it never came out. Instead he busied himself with sharpening his pen and elaborately brushing all the little shavings off the table, before he set out the paper.

 

WE CITY MIDWIVES KNOW that spring is on the way by different signs than one sees in the country. Business gets better, for one thing, for everything that is female bears young. Even before the buds were bursting, at our house alone, the cat had her kittens by the hearth, and old Moll had her foal. Hilde and I were kept running about town, to the point that Brother Malachi complained about the food, for, as he said, “Ready-cooked dishes do not strengthen the heart the way food made at home does.” The second sign is this: that people who have been inside all winter go mad with the idea of being out-of-doors.

The first episode of spring madness was seen in Brother Malachi. He announced that the Secret that had eluded him all winter could wait for a month or two while he made some money.

“It’s a disgrace to be supported by women,” he said, as he labored over parchment in the now quiet Smellery. Even Sim had spring fever; he did not blow the bellows but ran wild now, refusing all errands so that he could lounge about the streets.

“What on earth are you doing now?” I asked, as Brother Malachi heated hot wax.

“Getting ready to go on the road again, child. I think I’ll go north this time: Boston, King’s Lynn, York. They haven’t seen me for a while. I can’t run this business in London anymore, I’m too famous.”

“Will you be selling alchemical equipment there too?”

“No, silly goose, it doesn’t travel well, not well at all. These, however, are light.” His old pack was spread out on the floor, as if he were judging exactly how much would fit in it.

“What are they, with all that writing?” I thought I might know, but since I couldn’t read, I had to ask.

“My dear, are you discreet?”

“The very soul of discretion. It’s my business, you know.” I was feeling very smug about being a successful midwife. Now I knew lots of secrets, for being a midwife is not too different from hearing confessions. We see a lot too: what child does not look like the father, who has had an abortion, who has used sorcery to get a child—things like that.

“Well, little businesswoman, as one businessperson to another, I will tell you that this is my business stock. See this lovely thing?” He held up a metal seal, with a picture of a man in a tall hat like an egg on it, and some other things as well.

“Who is that, do you think?”

“A great king,” I responded.

“The greatest. It is the Pope himself. This is the papal seal.” He held it up to admire it in the light.

“Really and truly? May I touch it?” It was always well to humor Brother Malachi; he can get touchy about his trade, and he is very changeable.

“Almost really and truly. It is just as the Pope would have wished it, if he could have known about it. I had it made up in Paris. Paris is not so far from Avignon, so it is from the proper country, so to speak. Very nice workmanship too. It would be hard to get something so handsome made up here.” He turned it this way and that, smiling to himself. Then he set to sealing the papers he had written with the hot wax.

“These,” he said contentedly, “are my newest stock of indulgences, all properly done in Latin. The blank spot here is for the name of the man who buys it. I give excellent value. I charge less than my competitors and forgive much, much more.”

“Oh, Brother Malachi, another of your dreadful deceptions!”

“But, my dear little thing, I am licensed to provide these. There’s many a money-grubbing monastery sells this type of paper without any license at all. Think of how honorable I am, and be ashamed! See? Here is the papal bull!” He produced a weathered parchment from an inner fold of his robe.

“Look at how many seals there are! Look and tremble, and ask my forgiveness for so cruel an accusation!”

I looked closely. The biggest seal was the same as that on the indulgences. Oh, dear, we’ll certainly lose him, I fretted to myself. He’ll never come back if they ever catch him. But to please him I feigned idiotic delight and begged to kiss the document, like the silly peasants who formed the bulk of his purchasers.

“Ah, ah! Not without pay. Even for you, dear thing, I can’t give away the store!” And he returned to his work, whistling.

Hilde heard him and poked her head in at the door to the Smellery.

“Dear Malachi, for how long will you be leaving us?”

“A month or two, my dears, but don’t grieve. Hob can help out now.”

Hob was another sign of spring. He was a skinny, sad man of indeterminate age, who had run away from an estate in Kent. He had come to our house one day, begging for work, pretending that he was a free laborer. It took no magic to know that he was a runaway serf, for he had already been branded once. How he eluded his lord’s patrols, I do not know, for he never spoke. But now he had to stay in town only ten more months, and they would not be able to reclaim him. A lot of folks know that we are good for a free meal, and Hob must have heard about it somewhere, for he turned up exactly at dinnertime. Hilde and I had been prospering, and needed a man to help out, and getting someone to help these days isn’t easy. And Malachi was worse than useless, for the search for universal truth took all of his time. So Hob stayed. He didn’t eat much. That’s how everything in the house seemed to arrive: it just wandered in.

So we had Hob, and Malachi got ready to wander forth for a season. As he put it, “Light feet and light hands. Then the Lord loves you. In honor of this house I think I shall be called—hmm—Brother, um, Peter. Yes, this time, Peter.” And so he disappeared for a season, with Hilde’s passionate tears soaking the shoulder of his newly unpacked long dark pardoner’s cloak, and on his back a large bundle of his “stock in trade.” He packed his alchemical gear, so that “clumsy-fingered cretins” would not destroy it in his absence. This was fortunate, as it turned out later, for in his absence the house looked like an herbalist’s, and not a house of black arts, littered with the evidence of his nefarious schemes.

I aired out the smells and scrubbed out the back room, and it wasn’t too bad. With the black smoke cleared out we whitewashed the two downstairs rooms. We were looking prosperous now: we had a table, some stools, and a bench in the front room. Two big kettles and several little vessels decorated our freshly swept hearth. We had a plentiful woodpile, and more in the shed, and a nice chest and some baskets. Brother Malachi, in a benevolent mood, had built special shelves in both rooms, and here we kept the herbs, in airy baskets, and other preparations in little boxes and clay jars. Hilde still dried some big bunches of herbs from the ceiling in the corner, but they weren’t all over, as they had been before. There were no rushes on the floor, but since it was made of real tiles, and not of dirt, we had polished it until it gleamed. With the Stinkery closed down, you could smell the sharp, wild scent of the herbs. It was still dark inside, but it wasn’t disgusting, and that was a great improvement.

But Hilde did cry, for she missed Brother Malachi in the big bed and worried that he would never come back. I assured her he would return, because he would never leave his distillery, and she quit grieving, because it was so obviously true. He did come back some time later, with a pocketful of money and a number of other odd things, and more inflated than ever. But that’s another story.

Hilde grew lonely and fussed that the house “wasn’t right.” Her job didn’t keep her happy, although she was busy all the time. Outside, spring madness was at work. When the weather wasn’t so raw, there passed by in the street a band of people stripped to the waist, men and women together, beating themselves with barbed, many-thonged whips until their backs bled. They shouted as they went off in the direction of the church that everyone should repent, for the end of the world was at hand. Most people who did not hide repented, all right. They repented of seeing them, for they would grab up anyone they could find and force them to march and be scourged with them. It is always better to latch the shutters tight when folk like that are about.

The end of the world was the general theme that spring. I saw a man in the stocks at Cornhill; he had claimed that the sinfulness of the mayor and aldermen was bringing on the end of the world. Perhaps it might have gone better for him if he hadn’t been so specific about the precise type of sins involved. Naming people and places is always unwise.

When I left the house, I always went directly on my business and didn’t dawdle, the Burning Cross tucked beneath my surcoat, where it would not show. I did not need to attract madmen and thieves. But careful as I was, I could not entirely avoid trouble. One day, rounding the corner by the entrance of a grubby little alley not so far from Fenchurch Street, I was nearly knocked over by a big man without teeth, who was hurrying somewhere with a desperate air.

“Out of my way! I must touch it!” he cried. Three women holding hands barred my way out of the alley as they pushed their way around the corner.

“Just see it, and you are saved!” I could hear other voices, and looking down the alley, I saw it swarming with people. There was a great hubbub.

“It’s a miracle!”

“Let me see it! Hold it up here!”

“Oh, my God, hold me, I’m fainting!”

“It’s a Sign!”

“Yes, the End of the World is at hand!” Again, the End of the World! I stood in a doorway to avoid being trampled, for the trickle of people hurrying down the narrow, dark alley had turned into a river. Cripples on crutches, children leading blind beggars, ragged laborers in torn leggings, old women in shapeless gray dresses and poor clogs—all were pressing and shouting.

“Good woman! What is the matter there?” I cried, tugging at the sleeve of a passerby with an honest-looking face.

“Why, haven’t you heard? It’s a Miraculous Manifestation! A goodwife there was cooking oatcakes on her griddle and burned one. When she lifted it up to throw it away, the marks on the cake formed the face of Our Savior! This shows that God loves the humble. They say that anyone who sees it is saved. Oh, I must hurry away before it is gone!” She dashed away with the crowd down the dark alley.

This was surely a sign of a bad spring. Miraculous griddle cakes so soon? It wasn’t even Easter yet. I was looking for a way to worm myself out of the doorway safely, when I heard a familiar voice.

“Why, it’s Margaret, the little midwife! Do you come to the miraculous manifestation too?”

“Oh, Father Edmund, I’m just trying to get home without being stepped upon. But why are you here?”

“It’s my business to be here, so I must leave you.” He plunged into the crowd, and I could hear his voice, crying, “Let me through, good people!”

“Why, look, it’s a priest!”

“Let him through, he’s come to worship!”

“No, he’ll take it away for himself.”

“Don’t take it!”

“Let me through!” The voice of Father Edmund sounded more urgent.

“Don’t let him in or he’ll steal it.”

“I’ve not come to steal it, not at all!”

“Then wait your turn. Why should you be saved before us? We’ve waited longer.”

“The miracle must be verified, don’t you understand? Then it will be arranged so that everyone can see it.”

“I told you he’d take it.”

“You’ll steal it to charge money to visit it, that’s what you’ll do. You hate the poor, you bloodsucking priest.”

“I tell you, I have no intention of taking it.”

“They all say that.”

“You don’t want the poor to be saved, you. You’d rather destroy the Manifestation.”

“They’re all like that, I say. Priests are evil bastards!”

“He’ll destroy it! Stop him!”

There was a dreadful clamor, and the sound of conflict and screaming. Now the crowd was moving the other way. They were chasing Father Edmund out of the alley.

They had divided into pro- and antipriest factions, and fists, distaffs, and ladles had come into play. As a nasty object picked up from the gutter went sailing past my doorway, I saw Father Edmund emerge from the crowd. His gown was torn and filthy, and he was limping. There was a bruise forming across one eye, and blood trickled from a corner of his mouth. As he sought to make good his escape, someone tripped him, and he fell flat.

“You leave him alone!” My voice was shrill as I stepped out of my sheltering doorway. “He’s not taking anything. He can’t, for you’ve knocked him flat.” I stood as tall as I could and looked fiercely at the crowd. They drew back a little. “Aren’t you ashamed?” I went on, “God will love you better if you take this chance for grace without stepping on His priest! Besides, with all this running around, you’ve lost your places. Someone else has taken them. See?” A big man in front turned around with alarm.

“I’ve waited a long time! Those are newcomers who just sneaked in! Move away!” He started shoving back down the alley.

“No, you move, you clodhopper!”

“I was there before!”

“Let me through!”

The crowd had reversed and shoved back in the direction of the miraculous pancake. Father Edmund got up and dusted himself off.

“This is not what I planned on when I dedicated my life to God,” he said. Then he looked at me. “Thank you, Margaret. You seem to have a way with people like this.”

“Not really. But you look unwell. We live not far from here. Come and restore yourself a bit before you return home. Where must you go?”

“St. Paul’s.”

“That’s a long way. You must come to our house first. We have good ale brewed, and maybe something to eat.”

“I’ll come, but I can’t eat,” he said wearily. “I think my teeth have been knocked loose.”

“Let me see,” I said.

“Not here; it’s not decent.”

“Very well, let’s go. Perhaps you should lean on my shoulder.” He pulled away.

“That’s not decent either,” he said. A few steps more, and he began to look pale.

“Perhaps I need your help after all.”

“We all need help sometimes; it’s not so bad to accept it, though it’s much more dignified to give it.”

“You talk like an old lady,” he said, leaning on my shoulder.

“An old lady; a man; nobody thinks I’m like myself—just Margaret. This is an odd city that way.” We were walking up Bishopsgate to Cornhill now. It was not much farther, which was good. He didn’t look as if he could walk very much longer.

“You’re not from London?” he asked.

“No, I’m from the country.”

“I should have guessed as much. You’re too simple to be a city girl.”

“Oh, please, not that simple.”

“No, I take it back. Not that simple. Are we turning here?” We had entered our narrow alley, and had to step carefully to avoid the unspeakable things in the gutter. As we stood before the front door, Peter opened it. Father Edmund looked alarmed as Peter bobbed up and down with pleasure, grunting and grinning.

“Don’t be alarmed, Father, he’s saying hello. He’s glad to see you.”

“Who, or what, is that?”

“Don’t hurt his feelings. It’s Peter, Mother Hilde’s last remaining child. He’s never been right, but she’s good to him. He does no harm.”

“Is he Christian?” Father Edmund still looked taken aback.

“Oh, Father Edmund, he’s too simple to understand. But he loves Christ—he kisses the cross. See?” I held out my cross to him, and he bobbed clumsily over it. Father Edmund smiled wearily, as best he could with his sore mouth.

“So this is the fate of the famous Burning Cross. Worn about London by a poor country midwife and kissed by drooling idiots.”

I was annoyed but wouldn’t let him see it. I sat him by the fire, for it was chilly out of the sun, and poured him some ale. He sipped it and winced. I noticed his eyes never ceased roaming around the room, even though he was sitting still, to favor his leg. I was glad we had got everything all polished up just the day before. The cat walked in front of him, carrying a kitten in her mouth, and disappeared behind the woodpile. Then she emerged, without the kitten, walked in front of him, and paraded back with another kitten.

“What is she doing there?”

“Moving her kittens. She does it every so often. She decides she doesn’t like the place she has them, so she moves them.”

“And what’s that creature that greeted you at the door? And which end is the head?”

“That’s Lion; he’s a dog, and I’ll show you his head. Here, Lion.” Lion got up from where he was lying by my feet.

“Beg, Lion.” The dog sat up and begged. “You see?” I said. “That’s his head.” Lion’s little pink tongue hung out between his teeth, and his brown eyes glittered deep beneath his fur. He looked as if he were laughing. I put Lion on my lap, where he promptly fell asleep.

“That’s an odd dog. It looks as if everything in this house is odd.”

“I’m not odd.”

“I’m not so sure, Margaret. Can you still do that thing? The thing you did that night that I saw? I’m having a selfish thought. A thought about my pain, which I should bear in remembrance of Christ’s passion.”

“If you wish to bear it, I won’t stop you. If you wish not to, I’ll help.” Father Edmund had an honest-looking face, I’d always thought. As if he knew how to take things the right way, if you see what I mean. “I do it a lot, these days, anyway.”

“A lot? What do you mean?” He looked shocked.

“Well, it started with birthings. I’d see things here and there that I could help, so I did. Then the people came back, just for medicine or healings, and they sent their friends. Now I see a lot of people in the district—women, mostly, and just for smaller things. It’s easier with them, you see. I’m terrified of death. I could be sucked away into death. Some things can’t be fixed: they’re too big or too dreadful, and I haven’t got the strength. I usually know when I see them, and tell the person so. Things gone, fingers and ears and such, cannot be restored. But it works best on warts.”

“Warts?”

“Yes—warts, wens, cuts, little things. Sometimes I do fractures, after the surgeon sets them.”

“Am I to understand that you have been given a Divine Gift for the removal of warts?” He sat there on the bench, with the bad leg up, holding his knee. His face looked appalled.

“I didn’t say I had a Gift, but since you think that, I’ll not deny it. I don’t know how big it is, but I think it’s not so big, because I’m not so big. Warts—small diseases—some fevers, they’re about right.”

“Well, I have decided not to live with pain. My teeth might come out, and I can’t kneel on this knee, which is a very bad thing for a priest.”

“Then I’ll help, but you’ll have to lie down. You’ve got a lot of places I have to put my hands.” I put Lion down by the hearth.

He groaned as he got up and lay down on the long bench at the table, and I knelt until the room shone a soft orange, and my hands felt warm. I could feel his keen eyes staring at me suspiciously, but I didn’t look, for it would break my concentration. I put my hands on each bruise in turn, ending with the swollen knee.

“Don’t move for a while. They need to be let alone for a bit so they can finish healing. The knee may take a couple of tries. Things are moved around in there—sort of torn up and broken, you know.”

“I know.”

“Are there other places I don’t see that are hurt?”

“My side, here.” I felt cautiously through the folds of his robe.

“The rib is cracked,” I told him.

“How do you know that, when I don’t know it myself?”

“I can feel something like a shadow, all around the body. When it feels broken, then something is broken inside. I didn’t used to know that, but I’m learning all the time.”

“Goodness, I feel much better.” He sat up and swung his feet to the floor, rubbing his jaw.

“I saw your face shining, Margaret. How did this thing come upon you? Did you acquire it through a prayer, or contemplation, or divine intervention?” He spoke in a surprisingly mild voice.

“It came by itself at a time when I had lost all hope. This Gift is a sort of leftover from a Vision that I had. A Vision of light.”

“What were you doing when it came? Were you praying? Did it come all at once?” How odd that somebody was interested in the Vision. It was a kind of relief to speak of it, even though I didn’t really know how to. Sometimes it’s helpful to have to put things in words.

“No, Father Edmund, I wasn’t praying. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. I thought of Nothing. That’s what I did just now. I set my mind on Nothing. Not what you’d call ‘nothing in particular,’ but real Nothing, which is very large. Do you understand what I’m trying to say? I’m not sure I’m saying it right.”

“You’re saying it exactly right, and I understand it perfectly. Others have done it, but not in the strange, backward manner that you have.” He looked at me and shook his head. “And they don’t use it to run about town curing warts! Only a country girl like you would have thought of that. You’re supposed to talk to God, when it comes. Something noble, you understand, on a higher level. You’re really impossible, you know.”

“I’m sorry I’m impossible. I just do the best I know how. I think God wants people to be well—that’s why He lets me help them heal themselves. I wanted to have education, so I could do things the proper way, but I never got any. So I do my best by watching and thinking.” I spoke humbly, because it’s never wise to rile a priest—even one who looks as if he were nice.

He drank up a whole mug of ale, and then another, and then ate some bread and cheese. He looked entirely better.

“What do you charge for this—ah—healing assistance?”

“Nothing, really, but people give me things, depending on how much they think I’ve helped. Vegetables, mostly, or a chicken. Clothes, things like that. Sometimes, if they’re from another ward, they’ll give money. But they’re mostly poor here, you know.”

“I saw that. Aren’t you frightened of the neighborhood? It’s not a safe one, you know.”

“I used to be frightened, but now that I know everyone, it’s not so bad. People are the same everywhere. I’m more frightened of great lords. I met one once, and he was a very scary man. Wild and cruel, because he could do anything he liked.”

“Then you’re comfortable here?” He looked around, but I could tell he was concealing a certain distaste.

“Oh, we do well now. Hilde and I have got some good fees for attending births. Sometimes people come up to me in the street, or in church, and give me money to pray for them. I saved it all, and we mended the roof. Tiles are awfully expensive, you know. Last winter it leaked very badly, and we didn’t have firewood always, so we were very cold. Now it’s better, a lot better.”

“Hilde is your teacher? The one of whom you spoke?”

“Oh, you remember everything! But I’m curious, too, you know. I want to know why you poke about town after miraculous pancakes instead of saying Mass.”

“I’m a theologian. Do you know what that is?”

“A man who studies religion—all about God. Are you a master or a doctor?”

“Oho! You know more than you pretend, Margaret. How does a girl from the country know that?”

“I have a brother who studies theology. He was so very clever that he was sent to Oxford under the patronage of Abbot Odo of St. Matthew’s. My brother told me about it.”

“Well, here is something different! Do you see your brother often?”

I felt suddenly so sad. “Never,” I said. “I have lost him, and don’t know where he is. I’ve lost everyone that was mine, except for the people in this house.”

“That makes sense. Did you lose them before the vision?” He sounded brusque and professional now.

“Yes, of course,” I answered him.

“Hmmm. I think there is a name for your gift. It’s Latin, so you wouldn’t understand it. Did you feel, after the vision, that you had a joining with the universe?”

“I think that’s how it felt. Is it bad?”

“Generally speaking, it’s good. But it’s rare and much sought after through the arts of contemplation. I myself am somewhat envious. I wanted it myself. But God withheld it. And I certainly wouldn’t want to be a woman, and ignorant, to acquire it! Be careful, Margaret, for if you do more than cure poor people, you’ll arouse envy. Great envy in high places, and that’s unhealthful. Well, I must go now.”

He got up to leave but still limped slightly.

“I’ll do the knee for you again in another week, if you’d like.”

“I’d like, I think. I’ll be back. Besides, you brew good ale in this house.”

“I should. My mother was a brewer.”

“A brewer? Ha! A brewer. Of course. Why not?” And he walked out the door and down the alley, humming something odd.

A few days later a little page in rich livery came to the door. His mistress needed treatment for a skin condition, and she had thought she’d try me, for physicians had failed her. I thought she must have heard of me through Father Edmund, for I do not travel in such grand circles. The lady was a foreigner, and I did not understand her speech, but one of her attendants, who was a beautiful, exquisitely dressed dark girl, told me what was wrong. Madame had withdrawn from the world and covered her face with a veil, rather than be seen. Her face was a mass of running sores and pustules. She had been bled, cupped, and taken rare medicines made with beaten gold and mercury. Nothing had made it better. Her exasperated physician had finally told her that only prayer would help, so she had called for a priest from St. Paul’s Cathedral.

I was shown into a room of greater luxury than I had thought possible, this side of heaven. It was beautifully warm, but no smoke from the fire marred the place. The fire was in the wall, and its smoke drawn off by a cleverly designed chimney that rose above a richly carved mantel. The walls, above the carved paneling, were a sheet of tapestries, woven with silk and golden threads. The windows let in great columns of light, without admitting freezing air, for they were made of little clear circles of glass, nearly as beautiful as you see in church, set together with lead, in the window frame. She rested on the bed, a great gilded thing draped in brocade, with the veil drawn over her face. Beside the bed, near a round table covered with a richly woven damask cloth, another foreign waiting woman, dressed more beautifully than a queen, sat and read to her from a Book of Hours. Oh, what a wonderful book! It was bound with jewels and filled with curious colored pictures and gilding. Women who could read! With all my heart I wanted to touch the book and examine its lovely pages.

On the table was a brass bowl of early spring blossoms, and beside it a censer that burned something that smelled even better than the incense in church. But I have not told you the best thing about the room. To soften and warm the hard stone floor, there was no matted covering of dirty rushes. Instead, on a floor swept meticulously clean, there lay a huge, thick carpet, woven with designs of fabulous monsters and plants. If I were rich, I thought to myself, I’d never have rushes—just carpets like that one.

But I must tell you of the lady. Her physician stood by her, a foreign man in a long, dark gown, and odd black cap, with black hair and a bristling black mustache and beard. Wordlessly she peeled back the veil. The lady’s dark eyes were pretty, but nothing else was. The face could have belonged to a street beggar with leprosy. I started back slightly.

“Is it leprosy?” I asked her physician.

“No, it is not leprosy, but something else.” He answered with a heavy accent. Then he spoke Latin. They all do. I called for hot water and made a fomentation with sweet-scented herbs, and applied it to her face with a cloth. Then I silently set my mind and placed my hands on the cloth. Maybe it would work more quickly without the cloth, but I have told you I am a coward and don’t like touching nasty things when I can avoid it. We pulled back the cloth. The pustules were draining, and the skin not so angry looking. The lady said it was not so painful. Her attendant held a polished bronze mirror up to her face. She looked wan but pleased. The attendant said, “She says it looks improved. Can you try it again?”

“Tell her once more today, and then again next week. It needs time to rest and heal. She must leave the veil off, so the air can touch it, and she must wash it once a day—once only!—with rose water on a clean linen cloth.” The lady nodded. The physician cocked his head on one side.

“You use only herbs? No metals?”

“I am a simple woman, sir, and use simple things. I believe that if God wanted us to eat metals, He’d have given us a smelter instead of a stomach.”

“Spoken like a man! Are you a peasant woman?”

“No, I’m a freeborn woman, and I think for myself.”

“That is evident, I think.” He fell silent, his dark eyes watching me like a cat’s, as I repeated the process. The face was much improved. The pores were shrinking, and here and there a patch of white skin glistened.

The physician inspected her skin, and looked at me with a sort of grudging admiration.

“I see you, too, are a true physician,” he said with his heavy accent. “Permit me to introduce myself. I am Dottore Matteo di Bologna. And you are—?” His sharp, foreign manners agitated me in some secret way, and made me wonder if he were dangerous. Hadn’t Father Edmund warned me about arousing envy? But it was too late. I couldn’t be rude: it would only look suspicious.

“I am Margaret of Ashbury,” I answered simply, and went on working.

Suddenly the woman stared at me, and her eyes opened wide. She spoke all at once, and I saw she was staring at the cross which shone on my breast.

“Madame says no wonder you have the power to heal her. You wear the Burning Cross.” That again! Well, who am I to turn away belief?

“She says, she’d wondered where it had gone. Her uncle had had it, and it had burned him to the bone. After that, he’d got rid of it. He’d palmed it off on some little tradesman, who was pestering him over a debt.”

What a world this is! Sometimes too many things happen at once.

“Madame says here is your payment. She gives you gold instead of silver, for she wants you to pray for her. Come again next week.”

As I was shown to the door, the foreign doctor followed me.

“What you say, and what you do, do not lack sense. I had a master at Bologna, once, who had studied the medicine of the Saracens. He said things like that too. Have you much success with these methods?”

“When I try them, yes. But I usually do not treat illness. I am a midwife.”

“A midwife! Ah, yes! Some of them are not so stupid.” He looked relieved and left me to walk out onto the street alone.

As I entered our front door, I called, “Hilde, Hilde! Are you home? We’re rich!”

“Well, I’m glad we’re rich, for I haven’t earned a thing today. A man came to the house asking for something to make his mistress lose her baby. ‘We don’t sell remedies like that,’ I said, ‘for it is contrary to the law of Holy Church.’ ‘But you know of such things?’ he asked, and showed me the gold in his purse. ‘No,’ I said, ‘I’ve never heard of such things.’ ‘Then you’re a bad midwife,’ he said. ‘No,’ said I, ‘I’m a good midwife, I deliver live babies.’ Then he left. What do you make of that?”

“I don’t know, but let’s think of supper. Is Sim about? He can go for something.” Sim was playing, but not too far away to call, and he willingly dashed off to the bakeshop.

Just then we heard someone at the door and opened it to find an old woman in tears standing there. She had on a rusty gown, and a countrywoman’s plain gray surcoat, cut like a big apron, and coarse white kerchief. She looked like a harmless old thing, but there was something about her I didn’t like.

“Mercy, what’s wrong?” said Mother Hilde. “Do come in and sit down.”

“Oh, oh, oh,” wept the old woman, “my sweet daughter is pregnant and her lover won’t marry her.”

“That’s very sad. Will she be needing a midwife?” Mother Hilde asked gently.

“Not so soon. What she needs is a wedding. You sell medicines. Can’t you make her a love potion, so that her heartless lover will propose marriage?”

“Oh, dear lady,” I explained patiently, “that’s a black art, for dabblers in magic. We don’t know how to do that. We make teas for sore throats.”

“Oh, you must be able to, I need it so desperately. See? I’ve brought my life savings.” She opened a purse that glistened with gold. How very odd for a poor old woman, I thought.

“Well, my dears,” she said, wiping her eyes, “if you’re quite sure—oh, my, where is your necessary place? I’m so old, my bladder’s failing.”

“Gladly I’ll show you,” I said, and I took her through the back room to the little room at the back of the house, which drained into a pit in the garden. As we passed through Brother Malachi’s room of smells, she eyed everything carefully. It looked like an ordinary room.

“Oh, what’s in that jar there?” she asked with an innocent-sounding voice.

“Honey drops for children’s coughs. They hate bad-tasting things, you know.”

“May I have one?” While I got her the drop, she looked in the other jars and smelled them. Then she popped the drop in her mouth and did her errand. I waited in Brother Malachi’s room for her and escorted her to the door.

“Another one!” exclaimed Hilde. “First they want abortion powder, and then love potions! Next they’ll be asking for candles made of human fat and unbaptized babies’ hands! What does it all mean? I hope we’re not getting a bad reputation! Imagine, someone must think we do black magic here.”

I thought very, very hard. It all seemed to make a pattern.

“Hilde, I think it’s very bad. Someone is trying to gather evidence against us. Evidence of witchcraft.”

But the days passed and nothing happened, so I ceased to worry. Business was better and better. Besides babies, since I’d treated the rich lady, I’d acquired a reputation among the fashionable. Now I had several wealthy clients who needed healing sessions. But of course, one is never satisfied with good fortune. I grumbled to Hilde, “Oh, Hilde, it’s all very well to get these high fees from old, ugly people, but I’d rather have it for delivering beautiful babies that look just like roses.”

“Never speak ill of good fortune, Margaret, dear,” said the old woman, never looking up from her mending. “You might make it go away.”

Good fortune showed no signs of leaving. Instead it increased even more when a well-dressed little apprentice boy came to request that I treat his master in his great house by the river. That brought me, as a regular client, an old merchant so rich that his payments alone could support the entire household. He was one of those complainers whom the doctors love, for they never get well and never die—just swallow up treatments. This one had gout. The attacks nearly crippled him, but he would not do the most commonsense things to make them cease. Instead he’d call for me to stop the pain and then go back to his bad habits. There he would lie like a frog, propped up on pillows on his big, curtained bed, with his wretched, swollen foot elevated on an embroidered cushion.

“Don’t you see, if you quit stuffing yourself with all this rich food and wine, the attacks would go away?” I would say.

“Quit? I worked hard to get rich, so I could buy all of these nice things. Why, I went to bed hungry many times when I was young, and I’ll never do it again.”

“But at the very least, Master Kendall,” I complained, “you should not be eating and drinking while I lay my hands on your foot.”

“What? Not eat and drink? Just put your pretty little hand right there, my dear”—and he gestured with a mutton chop—“right there, where the pain is worst.”

Delivering babies is much easier than delivering stubborn old men of their vices!

So we went along in this way for some time, Master Kendall being my worst failure as a healer, until Fortune, who had been biding her time, sent me a shattering blow.

It was the most beautiful of mornings, not so long after Pentecost, when I walked home after sitting up all night with a woman in Watling Street. The sky was all pink and fragrant, and I was as happy as a bird as I stepped up to the front door, for my work was well done and there was a fee in the purse at my waist. How surprising to see Father Edmund, at this strange hour, standing there like a black shadow, knocking at the door!

“Father Edmund, what are you doing here?” He turned startled and guilty looking.

“Oh, Margaret, there you are! I can’t rouse up anyone in the house.”

“That’s because no one’s there to rouse, Father Edmund, but here I am.”

“It’s you I must see, Margaret. I’ve come to warn you.” Again he looked furtively out the alley into the street.

“Warn me? Of what?” I asked in alarm.

“Come inside,” he said, inviting me into my own house. As we sat by the banked fire, he said something very odd.

“Margaret, what do you know of your catechism?”

“Why, what others know, that God made heaven and earth—”

“No, no, I mean about the sacraments.”

“Why, through the words of the priest, the host is changed into the True Body of Christ—”

“That’s good enough—but what about the worthiness of the priest?”

“No matter whether the priest is worthy or unworthy, if the words be said right—”

“That’s good too.” And he went on and on, correcting and questioning, with a desperate look in his eyes.

“What on earth is wrong, Father Edmund? I am a good Christian,” I said anxiously.

“Of that I have no doubt, Margaret, but others do. You have aroused the envy of which I spoke, and someone, I do not know who, has denounced you to the bishop. In only one thing are you fortunate. The king has not allowed the Inquisition to function freely in England.”

“Inquisition? What is this?”

“I can’t explain more. I have said too much already. I have risked everything. When next you see me, pretend you don’t know me, for the love of God.” He grabbed my hands and looked at me intently. “I’ll see you saved, if it is God’s will. I know you are a Christian woman, and maybe more than that.” He slipped furtively out the door and hurried away by another route, that he might not be seen.

I was very puzzled and troubled. I’d harmed no one. I was only doing good, and speaking truth. Why should that set Father Edmund all frantic like this? I had not long to worry, for scarcely had I built up the fire and put the kettle upon it, when there was a knock on the door. It’s odd about knocks. Some are joyful. Some are frightened. This one was sinister. I wished that someone else—very strong, maybe a giant with a huge club—were standing behind me to help me when I opened the door. My stomach turned over with fear when I undid the latch. There, in the morning light before the door, stood a summoner and two catchpolls. They did not look friendly.

“Are you the woman who calls herself Margaret of Ashbury, or Margaret the Midwife?” I knew what they must be there for. My knees started to shake. If I could, I would have vomited. My mouth was all dry when I tried to speak.

“I am she.”

“Then you’re wanted. Come along.” They grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me roughly from the door. I was trembling violently as they put manacles on my wrists.

“I—I’m not going to run away. Y-you don’t have to do that,” I stammered.

“You’re a dangerous woman. They might try to take you. We’ve been warned, and you can’t deceive us.” One of the catchpolls tapped the hilt of the short sword he wore.

I could hardly look up for shame as they led me away. The door was left ajar. We had not gone two feet when Sim came bouncing along with Lion and cried, “Hey, they’re taking away our Margaret!”

“Taking Margaret?” A head popped out of the window. We’re early risers on Thieves’ Alley. Several men came running after us.

“Hey, where are you taking Margaret? We need her here.”

“Stand back or you’re dead men,” said the summoner. “She’s the bishop’s now.” The catchpolls drew their weapons menacingly as the summoner grabbed my arm. My neighbors stood back. I couldn’t turn around, but I could sense that behind me more of them had come, a great crowd of men and women, to stand silently and stare.

“God be with you, little midwife!” I heard a woman cry. I could not see for tears as they led me away like a blind thing.

It was a long walk, the longest in my life, perhaps, before we reached our destination: the chapter house of the cathedral. This is a building not usually seen by people like me, unless they are very unlucky. It is where the dean and canons meet for business, and it is convenient for other things as well. Situated in the corner between the nave and the south transept of the cathedral, it is an eight-sided building that stands in the center of a two-storied cloister. Thinking back on it, if I had been a little criminal, an old woman who sang a few silly jingles or bought a love potion, I’d probably just have been fined or jailed for a few days. If I had been a powerful, heretic theologian, who had written works that defied God, I might have been tried with great pomp in the cathedral itself, so that the mighty would tremble at the ceremony of condemnation and the stake. Instead they didn’t know quite what I was. That made sense: since I didn’t know myself, why should they? And such was the temper of the times that they feared some upheaval from the mob if they did not keep the proceedings closed, for I was well known by now in all the poorer sections.

The summoner took me into a dark little anteroom, furnished only with a few hard benches and an iron bracket for pitch-torches in the wall. There he showed me to what I supposed to be the steward of the place, and the steward sent for the jailer, for the cathedral has within its grounds its own prison for violators of church law, just as the City jails are for violators of secular law.

“Is this the woman?” said the steward. “She’s younger than I thought. I supposed she’d be an old crone.” His voice was hard. “Lock her up, jailer.” I didn’t like the ugly leer on his face as he said it.

“Excuse me, sir,” the jailer broke in. “I have none but men in the jail just now. I can’t guarantee her safety there.”

“A woman like this doesn’t need pampering.” He came closer, trying to lean his body against mine. I shrank back.

“Oh, come on now, who misses a piece off a sliced loaf?” He tried to put his hand down my dress, but I pulled away too quickly.

The jailer spoke again, for he was an honest man.

“I am responsible for giving her up in the same condition I got her, sir. She shouldn’t be put in the jail. I’ll take her home. I don’t think she’ll run off.”

“It’s worth your life if you lose her,” he growled.

“I swear I won’t, and I’ll bring her back, just as she is now. The bishop would want it that way.”

“The bishop, the bishop. I suppose you’re right, it might make the hearing fare ill.” He gritted his teeth with annoyance.

“I have a strong room. I’ll lock her up. Nobody will go near her, I swear. It’s better that way, since the jail’s not safe, and there may be trouble if we lose her there.”

The steward looked enraged to be deprived of his prey. As the jailer led me off, I tried to thank him.

“Don’t repay me with ill,” he said gruffly. “Do you remember my wife’s cousin? The fishmonger’s wife? My wife says you saved her life with some sort of funny tool you carry. She said she’d never let me rest if you were attacked in the jail. No woman comes out of there whole, I can assure you.” When we had reached his house, which was not far, for it was part of the jail premises, he took me in to introduce me to his wife, who had put a straw bed in their locked storeroom.

“Now, I don’t want you talking with her,” he said to his wife. “I hope you’re satisfied. And I will keep the key.” He took the key from her household ring and put it on his own belt. Then he locked me into the room, which was small and dark, beneath ground level. Only a heavily barred little window near the ceiling let in light, and that not much. There I sat among the barrels and grain sacks, feeling very dejected. Then I realized I was very tired and hungry. I looked about. There was nothing to eat or drink. I stood on my toes and peeked out the window. It opened onto a cobblestoned inner courtyard. I could see a foot. It went away. Nothing looked very hopeful.

I was sitting wishing I could sleep, when I heard a “Hsst!” from the window. “Are you there?” a woman’s voice called softly. I looked up. Two feet were visible this time. A woman’s feet: it was the jailer’s wife.

“What can I do for you?” she whispered.

“I am so hungry and thirsty, and I have not slept all last night.”

“Were you attending a birth?”

“I was.”

“Did it come out well?”

“It did.”

“It usually does with you. We’ve all heard about you.”

“It hasn’t done me much good, has it?”

“I heard of you much earlier than the others. On account of my cousin. She said you have a way of taking away pain. Now, I have a very bad back, right here—”

“I can’t see it, I just see feet.”

“Well, it’s right down near the bottom, not up near the top.”

“Is it worse when you lift things?”

“Much worse.”

“Then don’t bend at all when you sit or stand. Don’t lift any more heavy things for a while. Get a servant to lift the laundry basket and the kettle. And if you lift light things, don’t bend your back to do it. It needs time to get well.”

“If you’d touch it, it would be well.”

“I can’t reach it,” I said to the feet.

“Oh, that cursed husband of mine! Just when I get the chance to get my back fixed—”

“Goodwife,” I pleaded, “I’m very thirsty, can’t you just get me a drink?”

“My husband will kill me,” she whispered.

“Just water, anything will do,” I begged.

“All right, I’ll get something. Just hide the cup. If he finds it, I’m a dead woman. I’m not supposed to talk to you.”

I promised to hide the cup, and the feet went away. Then a hand poked a mug of ale and a half a loaf of bread through the window. When I was done, I hid the cup and fell asleep.

It was well we had spoken, for she never got another chance, and the room was not unlocked until the morning of the third day. When the jailer brought me up, I realized I must look very shabby and rumpled. I was perishing with thirst, and drank nearly a bucketful of water before he stopped me, for fear I’d burst. When they led me into the great central room of the chapter house where they were to hold the inquiry, I wished heartily that I had had at least the chance to wash my face. It is hard to face well-fed, well-dressed grandees without being properly combed and washed. I felt so weak and hungry and shabby. But I guess they do these things on purpose, to keep one upset when they start the questioning.

The meeting hall of the chapter house was very tall and shaped like the outer walls, that is, with eight equal sides. In each of its eight walls a tall window, with a partial panel of stained glass, let in a long shaft of light that played across the stone floor and the faces of the assembled dignitaries. The ceiling was high and shadowy, with partially revealed stone faces and carved designs hiding in the darkened corners where it met the walls, and at the peak of the roof. I was brought in by two guards and left to stand alone in the center of the room, quaking with fear. There, in front of me, stood the dais that supported the great carved and draped table at which sat my inquisitors. At the center of the table, in the highest and most elaborately decorated chair, sat the bishop himself, an old, unhealthy-looking man in layers of embroidered crimson-and-white silk, heavily lined with the finest miniver. He had a long Norman nose and distant, arrogant eyes, set in a sagging face spotted with broken veins. He wore a great golden crucifix, much greater and more elaborately carved than any other worn in the room. When I saw it, I felt a brief sense of relief that the Burning Cross was tucked safely under my surcoat. You know these great churchmen—they become irate if an ordinary soul has a cross on that rivals their own.

My eyes shifted around the table. There was at one end a terrifying Dominican, in his black habit and cowl, with sunken, fanatical eyes. At the other end was the clerk, who would read documents and take down the proceedings, a simple priest dressed in a black cassock and white surplice. Between them sat the doctors of divinity; their hands glittered with gold as they put them on the table, but were surpassed in brilliance by the heavy gold chains they wore around their necks, some with crucifixes, and some fabulously carved to contain a holy relic. Their heavy robes of silk and velvet fell in deep, glistening folds about them; their grandeur made me feel weaker and smaller than I had ever felt before. If only my face weren’t dirty!

As I looked up at their smug, well-fed faces, there seemed something hard-hearted and corrupt lurking within them, something that made my heart shrink. It was then that I realized that there was, among those hard faces, one that I recognized. There, in the splendid robes of a Doctor of Divinity, so different than I had ever seen him, sat Father Edmund. His jaw was set, and his eyes as cruel as the Dominican’s. I looked away from him, for now I feared the worst. I could hear my heart pounding as I stood as straight as I could to answer the first question.

“Are you the woman who calls herself Margaret of Ashbury, and also Margaret Small, or Margaret the Midwife?” asked the clerk.

“I am that woman,” I answered in a shaky voice. The men around the table nodded almost imperceptibly to each other; the Dominican had a knowing smirk on his face, and the others seemed to set their jaws tighter. What on earth could be wrong with an answer to this question? Or were they doing this just to unnerve me?

“Do you know that you have been accused of heresy?”

“I have been falsely accused. I am a true Christian. Where are my accusers, that I may answer them?”

“Just answer our questions, woman who calls herself Margaret of Ashbury, and do not presume, in your arrogance, to ask any of us,” one of the learned doctors said. Then they began to question me on the nature of my Christian belief. They started with simple questions, which I tried to answer as plainly as possible, for fear they would lead me into a wrong answer. Soon I grew bolder, for I saw that they were nodding as I answered.

“And how do you understand the sacrament of Communion?” my questioner asked. I answered bravely. These questions were just like Father Edmund’s! Perhaps I would be saved after all, if they found no fault in me. But then the questions grew more complicated, and had Latin words in them, and I had to tell them that I did not understand. Again they passed the knowing looks to each other, and withdrew from this line of questioning. Then the inquiry took a very nasty turn, when the man next to the Dominican started to speak. He was a frightening person; his bravely colored gown only increased the grayish pallor of his hollow-cheeked face—he had the smell of the grave on him.

“Without a doubt this is the boldest, most shameless servant of the Devil that I have ever seen trying to twist out of God’s justice. It is well said that woman is the gate of hell. And this one hides behind holy words and pretended simplicity, the better to win souls for her Black Master.” Then he leaned forward on the table and stared directly at me, saying, “Do you deny you used an implement called the ‘Devil’s horns’ to suffocate and draw out infants from the womb, and that you sold your soul to the Evil One to get this implement?”

Now I realized something very dreadful. My fall was not my own business. If I did not answer well, I would pull other honest folk down with me. I must never reveal who had made the steel fingers, or who had been saved by them. God strengthen me, I prayed silently.

“I do deny it. I never sold my soul to the Devil. The instrument is made like the tongs used to take hot things from the pot. It pulls the baby when it is stuck. It does not take life but gives it. I love babies, and I would not harm them.”

“Does the instrument look like this?” He suddenly brandished something shining in the air. A shaft of sunlight reflected for a moment from the bright blades of the weapon, and made a moving spot of light on the opposite wall. Holy Jesus! They’d somehow got hold of it! I started, and my eyes grew wide. My questioner leaned closer and leered at me.

“Then this is yours. You can’t deny that.”

“It’s mine. I came by it honestly. It is a weapon against death.”

“A weapon against death?” He smiled derisively. “Will it prevent your death when it is placed at your feet among the burning faggots at the stake?”

“No, it will not,” I answered boldly. “It has no magic or diabolical qualities in it. It is just a plain tool, made through observation. It only saves lives, pain, and grief in childbirth. It will not stop my burning.”

“Saves pain and grief? Woman, do you know what you are saying?” said my questioner, his eyes glistening with secret pleasure. I saw Father Edmund shrink back. His face sagged and turned white.

“Would you deny that Eve brought original sin into the world.”

“N-no,” I stammered.

“And how did she do that?”

“She took the apple from the serpent.”

“And then what happened?”

“Adam ate it, and God drove them from Paradise.”

“And what was Adam’s punishment for sin?”

“That he must work.” Suddenly I saw, with a sickening lurch, where the questioning was going. I had evaded one trap only to fall into another. It was all over for me; I was doomed. His voice hit me like a blow:

“And how did God decree that Eve should be punished?” I hesitated. He repeated the question with a mocking sneer and asked if I had suddenly become too stupid to remember. Reluctantly I answered with my head hung low. My voice could hardly be heard.

“God decreed that Eve and her daughters should suffer pain in childbearing.”

“Pain and grief, would you say?” he said, throwing my words back at me.

“Yes.” I thought I would choke as I said the word.

“Woman, you stand condemned from your own mouth,” he said, with the shadow of a wolfish smile on his bloodless lips. My knees gave way, but no one came to assist me. I picked myself up as best I could and knelt on the hard stone floor, my manacled hands before me as if in prayer.

“Please pardon my offense. I only thought I was doing good.” My voice sounded very tiny to me. The room was deathly still, except for the scratching sound of the clerk’s quill, as he transcribed every word. The bishop’s face tightened, as if something had been confirmed in his mind. He looked at me as if I were an insect—an insect that had annoyed him and needed to be squashed.

The man on his right, a fellow with huge jowls and piggy eyes, said in a hard voice, “You set yourself high, woman, to think yourself the judge of good in the face of God’s will.”

Another voice broke in, “And in your arrogance, you go from childbed to childbed, hissing like a viper in women’s ears, enticing them to defy the church and make revolution against their husbands.”

“I have never done such a thing, truly I haven’t,” I answered.

“And I suppose you deny that you have been crawling about in the poorer sections, daring to preach and speak of God’s will.”

“I don’t do that, no, I swear I don’t. If I have said something wrong, tell me what it is. Is it wrong to speak God’s name? I swear I’ve done no more than that. I never did anything except to try to do what I thought was good, please, I swear it.” I was desperate. How could I best plead for my life, when I did not understand what I had done?

“How dare you swear that you speak truly, when you are a proven liar in all things before us, except for your confession of guilt?” another broke in.

What on earth did they mean?

As if in answer, another broke in, “Woman, are you aware of the penalty for perjury before this body? You will wish you had never been born.”

“Perjury, what does that mean?” I asked desperately.

The man who had spoken nodded faintly to the Dominican, whose eyes shone like wet stones in the light, and a knowing smile twisted his lips.

“It means lying, you pretended simpleton,” answered my questioner, “lying such as you are doing now.”

“But I’m not lying. For God’s sake, tell me what I’ve done.”

“By God, the woman is guileful. Her contumacy surpasses all imagining,” he said to Father Edmund.

As I waited for the next blow, the voice of Father Edmund joined the attack, as hard and as cruel as a whiplash.

“Of what would you say that this good consists, you wretched woman? How did you come to your understanding of what is good, that you should flaunt it so shamelessly in the face of God’s righteous plan?”

This one was a trap more subtle than any of the others. There was no way to answer correctly, only to entangle myself deeper. How could he be this way? I thought that he would help me. My eyes were foggy as I answered, “I—I thought that good was to follow the commandments of God and the example and teachings of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.”

“How do you know these teachings?” he persisted.

“B-by listening in church.”

“Do you listen faithfully?”

“Yes, I go often to Mass.” The others were shifting in their seats.

“Then from whom do you learn what is good?”

“F-from the priest.”

“And how does he know what is the Good?”

“From reading holy books, and from being—being made a priest,” I answered.

“Just what prayers do you know?”

“I know the Paternoster and the Ave.”

“Do you know the Credo?”

“Not all.” Where was he going?

“Can you read holy books?”

“I can’t read at all.”

“Then how, if you cannot read holy works, and know so very little after many years of listening, did you ever expect that you might by yourself be able to know the Good? Are you not far too stupid, woman, to ever discern such a thing for yourself? What conceit and vanity led you to think that a lowly, ignorant creature like yourself might, unaided, presume to understand God’s word?”

Now I saw what he wanted. He would save himself from having known me by forcing me to add to my own confession—now I must confess to my worthlessness in addition to my guilt. They say that if you crawl enough, and repent everything, then they will strangle you before they light the fire. But I was beyond calculating such niceties. I saw instead that I was betrayed by a man I had trusted because I thought he had had a nice face. My heart cracked, and I started to weep.

“Answer!” His voice was brutal.

Tears poured down my face, and my voice broke as I answered, “It—it is true—I am ignorant—I can’t read—I’m only a woman—”

“A stupid woman?” his hard voice prompted.

“A—a—stupid woman,” I sobbed.

“And yet you dared to set yourself above priests?” Another of them had joined Father Edmund’s attack.

“I—didn’t—I couldn’t.” I wiped my face on my sleeve. Their voices seemed to melt together as they shouted insults.

“There is only one remaining part of the confession,” broke in the bishop. “Clerk, read the document that condemns this false woman.”

The clerk read from a paper, in a clear voice, “In the year of Our Lord one thousand, three hundred and forty-nine, Lewis Small, merchant of the city of Northampton, did declare that his wife Margaret of Ashbury perished of the plague, and recorded her death in the parish, offering funds for three Masses to be said for her soul.”

“And now,” said the Dominican, his eyes glittering from beneath his black hood, “tell us who you really are.”

My God! The filthy hand of Lewis Small from the grave condemns me! This was beyond all imagining. The hypocrisy of those three little Masses enraged me beyond all description. I could just see him, simpering, with his eyes rolled heavenward, and dabbing away a tear as he made sure the way was clear to marry again. I would not let Lewis Small have the last word, not ever. I threw back my head defiantly and said, “I am Margaret of Ashbury and I am no liar. Lewis Small is the liar. He had my death recorded falsely, so as to be free to marry again.”

“Do you deny you are wedded to him?” said the Dominican, in an insinuating tone.

“I was wedded to him.”

“Where is he now?”

“He is dead.”

“How convenient,” he sneered.

“Who are you, then?” Father Edmund’s voice broke in.

“I am Margaret—”

“Who, I said?”

“I was baptized Margaret, in the village of Ashbury, by our parish priest, Father Ambrose of St. Pancras, in the year one thousand, three hundred and thirty-two.”

“That is better,” said Father Edmund.

“Well, that part is not false,” said the clerk, consulting the record.

“Is there anyone here who can identify you?” asked Father Edmund.

“I know of no one here.”

“Could your brother, David of Ashbury, also called David le Clerk, identify you?”

“Yes, he could, if he lives still.”

“Do you not know if he still lives?”

“We were separated in the year of my marriage, and I never saw him again.” I felt tears coming again, tears of shame because I was a disgrace to my good brother, David, and now I would never see him again. My nose ran, and I had to wipe it. My sleeve had become by this time very wet and grimy. I suppose I shouldn’t have cared about a small thing like a grubby sleeve at a terrible time like this, but that is how people think, I guess.

“My Lord Bishop, I submit you should call your own secretary, David of Ashbury, as a witness,” said Father Edmund suavely.

David! David was here! Then in the midst of my sudden hope, I had a dreadful thought. Suppose, instead of saving me, David was dragged down by me? I understood at last the dangerous game Father Edmund was playing. He had found David and, through maneuvering the questioning into a dead end, directed the hearing away from its most dangerous phase, the phase where, in my ignorance, I might let slip some word that would drag me to my doom. If he failed, it might not be one, but three persons who would be waiting that night in jail for public disgrace and the stake. I heard a terrible buzzing in my ears, and I thought my heart would shatter into a hundred pieces. There was a stir and a bustle as the bishop called the youngest of his secretaries. David looked so good to me as he entered the room. So unchanged, so young and slender and earnest in his simple priest’s gown. As he faced the clerk, I heard his honest voice answer simply as he took the oath to tell only the truth.

“David, David of Ashbury, do you know anything of this case?”

“Nothing, my lord. I did not prepare the documents for this case.”

“Who is that woman who kneels there?” asked the bishop.

“I don’t know—wait—” He looked closer and turned his head a little, so he could see my bowed face. “It’s my sister Margaret, my lord,” he said as he turned again to face the bishop. “Margaret,” he turned back to me and observed, “you look awful. I almost didn’t know you.”

“That’s enough,” said the bishop. “How many sisters do you have?”

“Just one,” he answered. “A year older. Margaret. That’s her. I haven’t seen her since her wedding day. She’s changed since then.”

“You would recognize her anywhere?”

“Yes, my lord, I would. That’s her without a doubt.”

“You’ve made a bad choice in sisters, I think. You may go now.” David bowed deeply and was gone. Then the bishop sighed and shifted in his chair. “That’s one charge gone—she’s not an imposter. Now, what about these others?”

“My Lord Bishop,” Father Edmund said evenly, “I would submit that in all this questioning, the woman there before you has neither perjured herself nor demonstrated that she holds heretical beliefs or clings obstinately to error—”

“Still, she has confessed to willfully defying the word of God,” interrupted the Dominican.

The bishop put his hand up to still the Dominican, so that he might hear Father Edmund out.

“Yes, it is true that she confessed, but I believe the element of willfulness to be insufficiently shown, and that this belief therefore is closer to the side of error than of heresy. Look at how ignorant and simpleminded she is! She was, in my mind, led naturally into error by the false pride engendered by the wrong and sordid way of life that she fell into in this city.”

“No one, as you well know, Sir Edmund, falls into a bad life; they are led there by the Devil, who favors midwifery especially as the profession of his adepts.”

“There has been no evidence of black arts, in all these months, that could be found. The supposition that she was an imposter and thus a perjurer is disproved. And of error approaching heresy, there is only one confessed charge. Tell me, does that lowly, sniveling creature there seem defiant? There is no Will there, only stupidity. I believe she is capable of repentance and reform.” Oh, God, Father Edmund, how could you hurt me so? I couldn’t believe one heart could feel as much pain as mine did while he spoke. The bishop looked long at me where I knelt, all disheveled, my face swollen with weeping. I looked up at him, staring at his face for a sign of his thoughts. His mouth twitched in disgust.

“Reform? She is a serpent and a hypocrite.” Another of the learned doctors of divinity had spoken.

“Woman, do you repent?” Father Edmund asked.

“I do, I repent most humbly, and beg pardon.” I must do my part now, for David’s sake. My will was broken, and I could feel only the deep disgrace of being there.

“Will you do penance?”

“I will do penance.”

“Will you abandon your willful ways?”

“I will.”

“Before you try to do things that you think are good, you will not puff yourself up, but humbly recall your unworthiness and submit to the judgment of your confessor, or some other worthy priest?”

“I will.”

“I think her not incapable of reform,” he said.

“I’d rather see hard proof,” said one of the others.

“Yes, evidence!”

“Why are you not content to card and spin wool, like other women?”

“I must get my living,” I protested weakly, but my voice was drowned in the gabbling insults of the learned doctors.

Then the bishop broke through the noise and spoke.

“I have decided. Margaret of Ashbury, also known as Margaret Small, and Margaret the Midwife, you must cease your present sinful way of life. The things you have done have led you into temptation and wickedness. But it pleases our Savior not to demand the death of a sinner, but rather his repentance. You will forswear and abjure your rebellious thoughts and actions against Holy Scripture, and most especially your false belief concerning God’s just punishment of the daughters of Eve. You will cease all activities that have led you to this belief. You must therefore no longer pursue these activities: to wit, midwifing and the vending of false cures by the laying on of hands. Nor may you speak in public on any issues pertaining to the faith or in other ways making similar unseemly public commotion. You must live as decent women do, in ways that befit them. You should marry, and submit to a husband, if one can be found. You must visit your confessor regularly, and we will receive reports from him concerning your conduct. You will humbly submit to chastisement with the rod at your parish church, appearing there barefoot and bareheaded, clad in a white shirt, and carrying a lighted candle. You are absolved from excommunication. Remember, if you appear here again, there is no second chance; you will be handed over to the secular arm to be burned. Even Our Lord grew impatient with sinners. Clerk, prepare the document of confession and abjuration.”

As I waited in the silence, I could hear the brief scratching of the clerk’s quill. It didn’t seem so much, what he wrote, compared to the great amount he read out, and I wondered whether they had made it all out ahead of time in expectation of the finding of my guilt, leaving only a few specific details to be added now that the thing was done. Then the clerk stood and announced, “Margaret of Ashbury, hear your confession and abjuration read,” and held up the paper. How can I ever forget what he said? I did not believe so much disgrace and shame could be written on paper. He read in a clear, loud voice, “In the name of God before you, the worshipful father in Christ, Stephen, grace of God, Bishop of London, I, Margaret of Ashbury, midwife of the City of London, in your diocese, your subject, feeling and understanding that I have held, believed, and affirmed the error and heresy which is contained in this indenture:

“I denied the validity of Holy Scripture concerning the justice of God’s rightful punishment of Eve for the bringing of original sin to man, and willfully and defiantly used artificial means to cause the daughters of Eve to escape the burden placed on them by God’s judgment.

“I did preach in public, especially to women, of the rightness of my error, tempting them into sin by false swearing and secret words of temptation.” Here I started. When had I confessed to this? I wanted to speak out, and started to open my mouth, but the time for speaking was past. From the corner of my eye I could see Father Edmund give me a hard stare that counseled absolute silence. The clerk read on.

“In all this I was guided by sinful pride and willful rebellion against God and His Church. Here before you I forswear and abjure my error and heresy and shall never hold error nor heresy nor false doctrine against the faith of Holy Church and the determination of the Church of Rome.”

Then the clerk read the sentence over, and the warning that if I were to relapse, then I should be handed over to the secular arm for burning.

“This is where you sign,” he said, pointing to the blank place at the end of the document.

“What does it say there, that writing about the space?” I asked, looking at the rows of black marks on the parchment. He gave me a look of pure disgust.

“It says that in witness to these things you subscribe here a cross in your own hand. Do you know how to hold a pen?” I stared at him uncomprehendingly. It was all so very dreadful. It must be all a mistake. I did not belong here. I should be sitting up in the dark by a guttering oil lamp, holding the hand of a woman in labor. This was what my hands were made for. I looked at my right hand. The iron had begun to wear away the skin at the wrist. Oh, hand, I thought, you are a coward, and I am a coward with you. You should not be signing away the weapon forever. I looked at my fingers. Try as I could to still them, they trembled. They wouldn’t even close properly. The clerk saw how clumsily they moved, and held them about the quill, helping them to make the mark. The ink splattered, staining my hand, and leaving drops on the paper and his sleeve. He inspected the damage with a look of distaste. It was all over.

I was free. But what a sad freedom. I dared not speak to David again, for fear of harming him. I could not even look at Father Edmund as I was escorted from the room, so I looked at my feet instead. At the door the guard took off the manacles. I could hardly see for the tears. I had saved David with my promises, but how could I live? The weapon against death was gone. I would never dare have another. It was nearly as hard as being dead, for I could no longer be myself. But then again, I said to myself, I wasn’t waiting for the stake in the morning. That has to mean something good. My heart took a bound, and I stepped out into the bright light of day.

 

MARGARET WAS WATCHING OVER Brother Gregory’s shoulder as he wrote. Now that she could read, it made him nervous. Before, he had enjoyed basking in her admiration as she watched him make the words appear, like magic charms on the paper, and then read them back to her exactly as she had spoken them. He sighed deeply.

“Margaret, you’ve drawn me into this. I suppose they have my name.”

“Just for the reading lessons. You take no blame for that.”

“Just for—how on earth do you know?”

“I know a lot. I told you I get around. Even now.”

“Well, at least you’ve resolved one puzzle for me. I always wondered why you wanted to write this. It seemed strange to me. But now that I know you well, it’s all clear that you wanted—”

“To tell my side of the story,” Margaret remarked complacently.

“Your side? You interrupt, as usual. No, you just wanted to have the last word. Women!” Brother Gregory snorted, but it lacked the old fire. “But be advised by me.” Brother Gregory shook his finger fiercely at her. “This must never see the light of day. Why you wish to waste your effort is your own business, but disgracing yourself in public is your friends’ business too.”

“I know that. I’m saving it.”

“Saving it? For whom?” Brother Gregory shook his head. There was no accounting for women’s quirks.

“I’m going to leave it to my daughters in that chest, there.”

“That seems pretty fruitless.” Brother Gregory strode about the room. He was confused and unhappy.

Margaret sat calmly and looked at him. “If they don’t want it, maybe they’ll leave it to their daughters. Someday someone will want to hear my side.” She paused, and then added, consolingly, “Don’t feel so bad. I’m much improved, and altogether reformed, according to them. Father Edmund takes the credit. I see him sometimes, you know.”

“Did you do the penance?”

“You mean, did I beg for forgiveness in my undershirt, carrying a huge candle and leaving bloody footprints on the pavement? No, of course not. My husband got me off, naturally. I’m his responsibility now.”

“You got off? That’s not so easy to do.”

“Sometimes, Brother Gregory, I think you are simpler than I am. After we were betrothed, my husband paid them off. He said it was more suited to his position that I repent privately in my clothes. The priest touched my back the required number of times and certified that they were blows. The candle was very large and expensive, and he paid for a small shrine they’d been wanting badly at the parish church. Money fixes everything, you know.”

“Maybe in London it does, but not in Paris,” Brother Gregory said bitterly. He didn’t want her even to suspect what he was thinking. It really wasn’t fair, he fumed. Not only had he had to beg pardon for his error in his undershirt, but he had had to throw all the copies of his book into the fire with his own hand. What’s more, it was in public, with absolutely hundreds of people shouting rude remarks as the church officials read the confession and recantation aloud. That had hurt even more than the lash marks that had glued the shirt to his back. They’d had to soak it off, and he’d been sick for weeks afterward. All a woman has to do is cry, and it’s fixed with money.

“That’s probably true about most foreign places,” said Margaret placidly, and her voice brought him out of his morbid reverie. “My husband says everything can be bought and sold in London. That’s what makes it such a good place to be a merchant.”

“Humpf, yes. Even a merchant of forged indulgences,” said Brother Gregory, sounding sour.

“Oh, goodness,” Margaret responded, “Brother Malachi never sells pardons in the City. People are much too sophisticated here.”

Gregory looked gloomier than ever. “I suppose you see him too.”

“Never. I can’t go back to the old house, you see. If I led them to him, he’d be as good as dead. Hilde delivered my little girls, and I see her still. But not there—no. I’m very careful. I kept Lion, and when I want to send for her, I let him out and he fetches her.”

“He’s not much of a dog, but he’s very clever.”

“That’s what I think. Animals are almost like people, sometimes.”

“Watch it, Margaret, you’re getting close to the line again—animals don’t have souls.”

“Suppose I said that was all right, because some people don’t either?”

“Worse than ever!” Gregory smiled ruefully. “So I’m glad you didn’t say it.”

Brother Gregory put away the quills and the inkhorn and handed the manuscript to Margaret, who knelt to put it away in the hidden compartment of the chest. He looked uneasy again, as if he were thinking of the best way to break bad news.

“Margaret, I’m giving you a new writing assignment. You’ll have to write the last part of your book by yourself.”

“You’re going?” She looked alarmed and agitated. “Not because of me, is it?”

“No,” Brother Gregory said sadly, “it’s family business. My world’s about to come apart, just as yours has finally come together. I’d like to stay and see how the story comes out, you know. Curiosity is one of my very worst faults, and it’s led me into some bad places. Some good ones, too, if I count this house. But now it’s over.”

“Can you tell me about it, or is it a secret?” Margaret suddenly felt very sympathetic. It was very sad to see Brother Gregory lose his old fire like this. He looked careworn all at once, and totally incapable of an argument with Kendall, even on the nature of pagan belief in Aristotle’s time. She’d even miss his grouchiness.

“My family is very old, Margaret; we have an ancient name and take it very seriously.”

“So you’ve informed me,” said Margaret dryly.

“Oh, don’t hold it against me, all my prying. I’m sorry I offended you.”

“Sorry? Oh, don’t apologize, Brother Gregory. Please don’t. You’ve gone all limp, and aren’t your true self. It must be very bad, this news.”

“I suppose it is—at least to me,” he said. “You see, we’re not rich, Margaret—not like this, all these things here.” He gestured around him. “And I’m a younger son.” Brother Gregory looked out the window and sighed. The garden was all wintry and suited his mood perfectly. All that could be seen were bare branches, rattling in the wind.

“Father’s in debt again, Margaret, and whenever he’s in debt, he bothers me. When we went to France on campaign, he went into debt to equip us—he bothered me then, but after we got some big ransoms, he stopped. Then he paid for Hugo’s knighthood—fees, fees, fees. And new armor from John of Leicestershire—one has to get the best, right? Then he found me and bothered me some more. ‘Go on campaign like a man,’ he shouted, ‘and quit hiding among a bunch of long skirts!’ I tell you, it made a scandal. You could hear him all the way from the visiting parlor to the abbot’s study. He didn’t make any friends for me that day!

“You’d think he’d be grateful for my decision. After all, I’ve spared him a great deal of trouble. But no, he’s been shouting about it as long as I can remember. It’s no easy thing to know you have a Vocation and still honor your father—that is, if you have a father like mine. How he’d carry on! ‘Get out of that book, you infernal whelp, and go act like your older brother Hugo, who is a model of chivalry!’ ‘I’ve been to the tiltyard already, father,’ I’d tell him. ‘Then go back again!’ he’d shout, and knock me flat. Then he packed me off to the duke’s household and said I ought to be thankful. Thankful! Why, the man was just like father! I swear, Margaret, they had made an arrangement to knock my Vocation out of me. I’ve been nothing but bruises since I decided to devote my life to God! You have no idea how much father can shout, even now that he’s old!” Brother Gregory was prowling around the room like a caged wolf, looking very, very annoyed.

“It’s not fair that he doesn’t respect my decision. I say, he should be grateful! I’ve done everything he wanted. I’ve proved I’m no coward. But I want to do things my own way. Why do I have to be like Hugo? There’s no reason, I say, and it’s entirely unfair. Don’t you think it’s unfair?”

Margaret couldn’t quite make out what he meant, but he looked so agitated, she thought it best to agree.

“And why does he choose to bother me now, now, when my spiritual life is at the very point of the fulfillment of a lifetime of Seeking? Do you know why? Because he says the roof needs fixing! Can you imagine? I’m to go into service and make money for his roof, right when I’m almost at the point of seeing God? What sin did I commit for God to give me a father like that? I tell you, he won’t stop me! He won’t! I’m going to see God anyway! And when I do, I’m going to tell Him—” Brother Gregory shook his fist in the air. The veins stood out on his neck.

“Brother Gregory!” Margaret was shocked. She put a hand on his wrist to restrain the violent gesture. Brother Gregory looked at his fist with surprise, as if he somehow hadn’t noticed that it was raised toward heaven, and snatched it away.

“He doesn’t want a son, he wants a lap dog,” growled Brother Gregory. “Now he tugs on the leash, and off I go.”

“Maybe—maybe it would work out better if you let God see you,” Margaret ventured.

“Hmmph!” snorted Brother Gregory. “That sounds just like the abbot. He’s as bad as father. Sometimes I used to think they were in league with each other. He said I had to respect my father and hear him out. An altogether depressing attitude for a person who’s supposed to be otherworldly. He never understood me either. He said I hadn’t conquered Pride enough to learn contemplation, and I should serve in the world until I learned what he meant. Pride!” Gregory sounded bitter. “I’m not proud at all! Do you think I’m proud, Margaret?”

“Oh, very little, Brother Gregory.”

“Have I been proud with you? No! I’ve been very Humble, here and everywhere else. You saw that, didn’t you?”

“Of course, of course.”

“Look, here’s pride for you!” Brother Gregory tore open the top of his habit. Something dark, malodorous, and hairy had replaced his long linen undershirt.

“Brother Gregory, surely not the hair shirt again? It looks very nasty. It will make your skin bleed.”

“My skin’s very strong. Not like yours. I don’t bleed easily.” A smug look passed across Brother Gregory’s face, before one of self-pity replaced it.

“I’m mortifying myself. Mortifying my pride, what poor shriveled remnants are left of it! And in this state I must go to my father and be mortified yet again!”

“Surely it’s not as bad as all that, Brother Gregory,” said Margaret.

“I am being attacked by the vanities of the world,” he growled.

“But at least you’ll come back to check my spelling?”

“That I promise, Margaret. I’ll swear an oath, if you like.”

“You don’t have to. Just promise, and send me word when you’ve returned.”