CHAPTER ELEVEN

BROTHER GREGORY PAUSED FOR A MOMENT and looked up at the dark, heaving mass of clouds that covered the sky. Behind him, to the south, stretched miles of the ancient, rutted Roman road to London. There weren’t many travelers in this season, especially not on foot, for it was bitter cold. The bare trees by the road rattled in the wind, and the bleak, windswept fields ahead of him looked uninviting.

Brother Gregory held up a mittened hand. Was that indeed a snowflake he’d caught? Oh, bother. Snow would slow him down even more, and it was many lonely miles to the next village. Best to hurry, he thought, and he redoubled his long strides with the aid of his tall staff.

Soon his hood and the bundle on his back were dotted with white, and Brother Gregory was wondering whether he’d have chilblains before the trip home was done. That was the sort of thing that always happened whenever he went home. Perhaps one should look on the bright side, however. Chilblains would certainly add to his Humility, which was growing nicely with the assistance of certain daily prayers. This thought led Brother Gregory, still striding at full pace, to do an inventory of his soul—something he tried to do at least weekly, if not more often. Several of the Deadly Sins seemed to be held well at bay at last—Pride he was working on, so that was coming along. Gluttony would be no problem at his father’s house—the food was terrible there. Father seemed to have no sense of smell, so of course his cook got away with anything.

Briefly, Brother Gregory wondered if smell and hearing were related, because they were both in the head. From too much battering on the helmet father’s hearing seemed to be impaired as well—at least, music never moved him. Maybe that’s where his sense of smell had gone too. Only one sort of sensual pleasure inspired father, and that was one not located under the helmet. Hmmmm. An interesting idea. Did Sin originate in the head, and from there move outward to the limbs, or did it originate in the parts of the body themselves, and move inward to corrupt the mind? But, like all thoughts that involved father, Brother Gregory realized that this one was also leading him away from God. It was important not to let that happen once he was home. The pressure there would be intense.

Even Sir William had been recruited to assist in father’s efforts. Brother Gregory had, tucked in the bosom of his gown, a letter from Sir William Beaufoy. Clearly he had been visiting father’s house when the letter was composed, for it was written in the hand of father’s chaplain. It wasn’t subtle: it sang the praises of the duke as the most beneficent and worthy lord any man could have, et cetera, et cetera, and reminded Brother Gregory that one could serve God’s will many ways outside the cloister.

But then, it wasn’t entirely unfair. The duke had worked miracles for Sir William. With a single master stroke he’d cut through all of Sir William’s problems. He’d set his lawyers on the Lombards’ contracts, which they had discovered to be as full of loopholes as a dog has fleas. The ensuing lawsuit, given the duke’s great influence, as well as some rather handsome presents that had been received by the judges in the case, was bound to come out in Sir William’s favor. And in the meanwhile Sir William was in full enjoyment of his lands, his daughters redowered, and his son home again.

“Ha! So much for the power of money, the sword, and the law,” said Brother Gregory to himself, remembering his argument with Kendall. The sword wins again. After all, the king’s absolute favor would never go with any but the greatest warlord of England. He’d like to go and tell Kendall about this case sometime, just to show Kendall he was wrong. After all, it’s very clear that money, if it’s not allied to the sword, can’t hold land. And since land is money, why, then, money can’t hold itself—even if everybody in London thinks money is all that counts anymore. The world hasn’t become that corrupt yet, thought Brother Gregory.

That was one of the things he’d miss, once he went back to the monastery, overwhelmed the abbot with his Humility, and spent all the rest of his days contemplating the Godhead—arguing with Kendall. And, of course, the food—though one ceases to think about food in the presence of the Deity, so that wasn’t as important. And it had made him feel good to teach again, even if it wasn’t Philosophy, and he only had a woman for a pupil. To watch Margaret make baby-letters in wax, and know he was changing her forever, that gave an odd satisfaction.

In fact, now that he thought of it, London was full of things that had made him happy. To live there was like owning a great house: he could always find a good learned argument, an excellent book, or an entertaining dinner. And there was something else, though Brother Gregory hadn’t even thought of it—and if he did, he wouldn’t have admitted it to himself anyway. In the City, the little serpent of his Curiosity had grown immense with the feeding of it. It had fed on letters written for all sorts of simple folk, on Margaret’s book, on observation, on arguments, and on just plain snooping, until it was massive and dragon-sized. Now, whenever the massive thing stirred in the cave of Brother Gregory’s mind, Brother Gregory couldn’t stop himself from wondering where glass comes from, or how clocks are made, or how the stars are attached to the sky, or, most of all, what makes people do the things they do. Brother Gregory had grown to love watching people, as well as prodding at them to see if they’d be annoyed, and improving them whether they liked it or not.

“There’s not that much to see where you’re going,” whispered the immense dragon.

“There’s God, and that’s all I want to see,” sniffed Brother Gregory’s soul.

“Don’t get sniffy with me,” replied the dragon.

Suddenly, Brother Gregory had a new idea. If God is everywhere, wouldn’t it be just as reasonable to look for Him in the City?

“That’s a very self-serving notion,” said his soul. But the dragon had stirred once more and raised its great head. It wasn’t a creature easily denied.

That evening Brother Gregory lay thinking in a bed at the back of the village alehouse with five other sleeping men curled all around him. All were fully dressed, including Brother Gregory, so that nobody could steal their clothes. Head resting on the little bundle that held his breviary, hair shirt, and many-thonged discipline, he stared at the shadows in the thatched roof all night long, and he didn’t sleep a wink, even though he needed rest badly. There was two more days’ trek ahead of him before he reached his father’s house for Christmas.

 

THE ONE THOUSAND, THREE hundred and fifty-fifth year of Our Lord had almost come to a close. It was Christmas time at Roger Kendall’s tall house on Thames Street. The sky was leaden, and a cold wind from the river promised snow. Great blocks of broken ice clogged the port, although the river still rushed free in icy rapids between the stone piers of the bridge. But in the City the streets were crowded, the butcher stalls doing mighty business, and street vendors of every description crowded Cornhill and the Cheap. Behind the closed shutters of the poor and the glazed windows of the rich, candle, rush-light, and torch flamed, and the smell of cooking found its way out into every street. For Christmas was a mighty season: not a poor single feast day, but a river of celebration that flowed from the last days of Advent until after Epiphany.

The Kendall house glistened with the light from candles and the blazing fires in every chimney. Even the painted sea serpent in the coat of arms over the mantel smiled down through a light coating of soot at the figures scurrying through the great hall on the errands of Christmas preparation. There were countless tasks to occupy every member of the house. The pies for Christmas Day alone took two days to prepare. There were geese, swans, capons, a peacock, beef, lamb, and pork to prepare in dozens of different ways, some in dishes pounded with spices in a mortar, and some arranged as displays in their feathers, on elaborately shaped beds of paste. There were also cakes, jellies, puddings, and no fewer than two elaborate subtleties, one to follow each of the main courses. One of these elaborate food-creations of paste and color was shaped like a ship, the other was a representation of angels appearing to three shepherds, complete with sheep. There were several kinds of wine, ale, and mead; this was a season when the usual river of drink rose to flood level.

Everyone in the house assisted with its decoration, some standing on ladders to tie ropes of ivy and sheaves of evergreen boughs to the rafters of the great hall itself. Now every room was fresh and fragrant with boughs of evergreen, with mistletoe and with holly. The proper celebration of this Christmas was not a task for weaklings; the marathon of eating, caroling, dancing, and churchgoing required a profound supply of stamina and pent-up passion, such as accumulate over a hard and unforgiving fall and winter. Margaret could be seen darting everywhere, seeing to the decorations, food, and Kendall’s Christmas gifts for the poor and his own household. In addition to all of this she went with him as a guest at masques and suppers held at the houses of friends and business acquaintances all over London. In their own house all was in chaos, presided over by the most prankish of the journeymen, who had been chosen as Lord of Misrule to plan the games.

On Christmas Eve the apprentices and journeymen dragged in an immense Yule log, with little Alison, the baby of the family, mounted on it as if it were a pony, shouting and waving her arms, while her big sister, Cecily, followed behind, leaping and shrieking with joy. Those who were young went out to carol and to dance, first before their master’s doors, and then through the streets and into the churchyard, where the concatenation of celebrating crowds, musicians, and rowdies was sure to offend the priests preparing the midnight Mass.

Those who stayed home sat about the fire drinking, telling outrageous stories, and foretelling the future, for it is on this night that girls try to foresee who their husbands will be. Margaret had once enjoyed these games as a girl, but gave them little credence, for they had not once been right about anything that had happened in her life. Now she found herself consoling one of her maids, who was distressed that her fortune showed that she would be married six times, and always to sailors.

“I don’t want to marry a man who will never be home!” the girl said, as she burst into tears.

“Bess, don’t take it to heart. Next year it will say something entirely different, and you can choose whichever fortune you want,” Margaret said, and added, “besides, I once had a fortune that foretold my marriage by abduction on horseback, and as you can see, it was entirely false.”

But Margaret did not sit idly admiring the games, for she had a fund of stories, the reminder of her old days on the road, which astonished even her well-traveled husband. Tonight she told the story of how the Devil disguised himself as a cleric, becoming the favorite secretary of the archbishop, until he lost all his powers in a most embarrassing and amusing fashion on Christmas Eve. And so with storytelling and carol singing the evening passed merrily.

On Christmas Day after Mass the household turned to the serious business of feasting. Barrels of wine and ale were brought in to help wash down the many courses of Christmas dinner. Besides their own “family,” which was large enough, the Kendalls had remembered their Christian duty and invited certain widows and unfortunate ones of the neighborhood. But it was the special guests whom Margaret had invited that brought her the greatest pleasure this Christmas Day.

Of all her old friends only Hilde had been able to come and see her in all this time, and she’d had to come on the sly, through the back door. Now Hilde, Malachi, Sim, Peter, and Hob were all there, resplendent in the new clothing that was Margaret’s gift to them. As memories had faded about her scandal, she had gradually lost her fear that she might inadvertently lead official attention to Brother Malachi’s nefarious activities, and at long last she now felt established and safe enough to lavish the attention on her friends that she had craved so often to give them before. This Christmas was her first public reunion with them, and everyone could see, as she sat at the head of the table with her husband, that her face was shining with happiness.

Sim and Peter sat at the lower table, among the apprentices, where Sim, who had always to be on guard that Peter did not choke while eating, regaled the credulous boys with a story that had suddenly occurred to him during the first course. Peter, he claimed, gesturing dramatically, had once been formed exactly as they had, until he had been “magicked” by the fairy queen, whom he had surprised accidentally while she bathed in a secret place in the woods. At the head table Malachi, in the dark garb of a scholar, and entirely devoid of singe marks and burn holes, was explaining the extreme decadence of the new French fashions to Lionel’s “betrothed,” who absorbed every word with eager fascination. She was so interested that she had even forgotten to let her eyes rove enviously around the room, trying to determine which of the furnishings she’d want when Lionel’s father died.

Even Kendall’s two sons seemed to have been reformed by the season, and Margaret thought she had finally managed the reconciliation that she had prayed for so long. Both Lionel and Thomas had received her invitation graciously, and now treated their father with a great show of deference and respect that warmed his heart. They even suggested that they were thinking of becoming partners in establishing their own trading firm, and reforming their lives, if he could only see his way clear to assist them.

Merriest of all was the head of the house, who washed down roasted swan with great swigs of mead as he told a tale of his adventures in Italy, which had put him in Rome itself one Christmas long past. Margaret put her hand on his arm to remind him to take care, for his gout’s sake, but what good is Christmas if one must always be taking care? He smiled indulgently at her as he filled the drinking cup for another toast.

By the time the guests were gone, Roger Kendall was in agony. When the servants had carried him upstairs and put him on his bed, Margaret bared his bad foot.

“It’s just like the old days, isn’t it?” He grinned his funny, lopsided grin, but with his teeth clenched.

“Exactly so,” smiled Margaret, “for you are as self-indulgent and willful as a child, I think.”

“Put your hand—right—there; yes, that’s the place. You see? You married me and cured my gout, so I could have plenty of merry Christmases. It was all planned by God.”

“Still, you ought to be careful of yourself.”

“What have I to fear with you beside me, Margaret?” Kendall relaxed as the pain left his abused limb.

“Why, nothing at all. I love you so much, I would go to hell itself to snatch you back, like Orpheus in the story.” Margaret had finished the treatment of his foot, and they sat together on the bed, holding hands.

“The only snatching that shall be done in this family, my dear, will be when I keep you from the grasp of that lecherous Duke of Lancaster when we attend his masque at the Savoy next week. Did you know that there is a new rumor about town? Since you’ve learned French, it is said that I wed you after kidnapping you from a convent.”

He chuckled as Margaret exclaimed, “Honestly, I consider that human beings will not only believe anything they hear, but they can hold no idea in their heads longer than four and twenty hours!”

The rumor followed them about that holiday season to a number of entertainments, to the amusement of both husband and wife, who collected several variants of the story by careful listening. At last Margaret could no longer resist the temptation to add fuel to the fire. So when next approached by a rouged degenerate, she murmured into his ear as he demanded unseemly favors from her, “Oh, if only my wicked uncle had not shut me up in the convent—but now, alas, it’s altogether too late, my fate is sealed—” She then vanished into the crowd to tell her husband all about it, leaving the painted fellow bereft.

“My dear baron, it’s altogether wrong for a nobody to capture a refined girl of gentle breeding like that,” complained the degenerate.

“Who knows? You may yet get your chance at her. She turned down my go-between just after Martinmas, the pious little fraud. But I predict she’ll soon tire of her dull life with that old merchant,” replied his companion. But of course, Margaret didn’t hear any of this.

On New Year’s Day the Kendalls presented gifts of new clothing and money to the members of their household, which was none too soon for most of the apprentices, who had the bad habit of growing out of things almost as soon as they were bought. The little girls had each a toy, and from their mother, two little sewing baskets, for she thought it was never too early to start learning useful things. Their father had got them each a string of amber beads and a little bracelet of gold, with their initials engraved on them. Then Margaret gave her husband a gift that she had kept secret a good long time, a chess set of carved Oriental pieces and an inlaid board that were as fascinating to look at as to use.

But it was his present to her, so cleverly planned for so long, that transformed the day for her completely. The Psalter was handsomely bound in plain calfskin, with Margaret’s initials worked into a circular design on the front cover. Inside, the orderly lines of Latin flowed down the pages, with the English translation lying just above, almost word above corresponding word. There was no illumination, but the English capitals were prettily traced in red, while the Latin ones were blue, to set them apart. There was nothing like it in all of England, for it was at the same time a book of instruction as well as one of devotion. Margaret was enchanted. What a fabulous thing it seemed to her! A real book, all her own, a symbol of her husband’s pride in the hard struggle she had made to learn to read. And who could tell? Maybe someday the mystery of Latin would be unlocked for her as well.

Roger Kendall was very pleased with himself when he saw the look on Margaret’s face. It was fun to make her happy. And to do it in this particular fashion gave him a very complex sort of pleasure, the sort he liked best, for simple pleasures had long ago come to bore him. He had been set up for days when he’d first had the idea of the Psalter. The psalms—how exhausted they were with overuse: number fifty-one the “neck verse”; if you could read the first lines, the civil hangman would undo the noose and release you to the easier justice of the Church on the grounds you were a cleric. Illiterate rascals memorized the lines to evade punishment. The seven penitential psalms: their daily recital imposed as one of the numerous penalties for recanted heretics—the lips moved as the heart rebelled. Sometimes the entire Psalter was required of a penitent. And there were the learned doctors, who broke apart each line, looking for evidence of how the natural world was made, when nature’s book lay fresh and unread before them. Oh, yes, the Psalter was a worn-out pile of letters, jumbled over by clerks. But not this Psalter. Here was Margaret, holding the book with the same expression on her face that she did the day one of his captains had brought her a casket of Turkish rosewater candies. It made Kendall remember when he was young and had loved those verses too.

And, of course, she wasn’t allowed to have it. She didn’t even suspect that Church law forbade her to have a vernacular translation of Scripture in her hand. It would have been a rare thing even for a cloistered nun to get such permission, and Margaret was about the farthest thing from a cloistered nun that Kendall could imagine. A secret smile of enjoyment played briefly across his features. How he loved to tweak the tail of the religious establishment! He had taken their measure years ago, found them wanting, and made his accommodation. Now, take Margaret—she tweaked their tails just by drawing breath but didn’t seem to appreciate it. Maybe she needed to be older, like him, to see the humor in it. Kendall found her antics constantly amusing, and as he watched her turn the pages, a kind of sardonic pleasure bubbled up inside him that felt entirely delicious. And Brother Gregory, that rebellious scamp, had been drawn into the plan so quickly, and entirely without protest. It was a pleasure to know he could still take the measure of a man on such short acquaintance.

Margaret opened the book and smoothed the page with a hand that trembled with anticipation. She began to read aloud:

“The heavens declare the glory of God;

and the firmament showeth the work of his hands….”

She was filled with unspeakable joy. But as she read, she noticed that the copyist’s writing was very familiar. As Margaret finished reading, she suddenly knew why. It was Brother Gregory’s. She smiled as she thought to herself, All those Brothers, they’re all alike. I imagine he charged extra for a copyist, and then kept the money himself. I’m glad to know he was human, after all.

Master Kendall looked over her shoulder. He, too, recognized Brother Gregory’s handwriting, and smiled. He had suspected that Brother Gregory might have done the whole thing himself, in order to pocket both the copyist’s fee and the translator’s fee in addition to the commission for getting the work together. That was exactly what he had hoped would happen, and he was pleased, because he had been wanting to make a Christmas gift to him, and knew that he was too proud to accept anything directly.

“Do you like it, Margaret?” he asked, knowing the answer perfectly well.

“I’ll keep it with me always,” said Margaret, laying her hand on top of his.

“I hope, Margaret, when you’re very, very old, you’ll hold it in your hands and remember how I loved you.”

“You mean, how I love you,” Margaret corrected him as she kissed him.

But there was still much of the day remaining, and it looked to be a day of unexpected good fortune. Word came from the docks that the Godspeed had limped into port and now lay at anchor in the ice. She was more than two months late, blown off course by winter storms, and she carried cargo belonging to several prominent merchants, among them Roger Kendall. It had been hard to absorb a bad loss like that, especially just before the Christmas season, but he had smiled as if nothing were wrong and met his obligations without complaining. Kendall’s theory was that one should never reveal that one is bleeding, for it would attract sharks. Now everything really was all right, and he was very relieved.

“Margaret, dear,” he called out with enthusiasm, “I’m going down to speak to the captain myself and invite him to our table.”

“Can’t you send someone? We’ll miss you here, and the captain will get a chance to tell his story soon enough,” she answered.

“Nonsense, nonsense, what kind of welcome is that? It’s hardly any time at all I’ll be gone.”

Something very, very tiny, like a speck in Margaret’s heart—something she hardly knew about herself—made her say, “Then take me with you. I’d like that very much.”

“It’s men’s business, and very dull, dear. You’ll hear the best part over supper.” And he was gone, bundled in his heavy cloak and accompanied by two of his journeymen.

It was not far to walk to the wharf, but a surfeit of celebration made Kendall feel somewhat heavier than usual. Word of the ship’s arrival had spread, and a number of people were converging on her, including Lionel, Kendall’s oldest son, who believed that now his father’s fortunes were repaired, it was a good time to ask for money. He met up with the little party on the dock, and those who stood at a distance heard loud words, and saw Lionel’s fist raised in a rage. But his father did not answer. A cold sweat had broken out on the old man’s face. He turned deathly pale; a heavy weight was crushing his chest, and he was unable to speak. With a sudden look of concern his men turned to hold up his swaying figure. The ship’s captain, who had come to meet him, stood back and crossed himself. Roger Kendall would never invite him or anyone else to supper again.

Margaret answered the door to the servant’s horrified summons. Looking out she saw the sober faces of her husband’s journeymen and two strangers standing in the street before the door. A light snow was swirling about them, sticking on their hoods and beards and the cloak-wrapped bundle they carried. She searched their faces wordlessly, suspecting what they were going to say. Stepping over the threshold, she uncovered the head of their grievous burden. It was the body of her husband.

Margaret’s eyes opened wide, and she gave a little gasp. Her face shone ghastly white, and she slowly collapsed unconscious in the muddy snow before the door. There was a scurry of activity as two of the servants gathered her up and brought her inside, so that the door would be clear for the body to be brought in.

By the time Roger Kendall was set down for the last time in his own hall, Margaret had been revived. The people of the household would have felt much better if she had wept, for then they might have comforted her and eased their own sorrow. Instead, in a strange and distant voice, she gave orders for the necessary preparations. The state of shock did not break until the body was being readied to be laid in the coffin. Two monks had been called to prepare the body and sew it into its shroud, but Margaret had pushed them aside. With her own hands she washed the corpse and laid it out; she would not let them touch him. As she raised his hands to cross them on his breast, her eye fell on the great scar that coursed up the back of the right hand. An unbearable lump of pain was pushed up from somewhere inside, and tears began to flow down her face as she kissed first the scar, then the palm, and placed the hand down for the last time. She put the palms of her own hands on the icy cheeks and looked at the sunken face. She whispered, “If only you had let me come with you,” as she slowly bent down to kiss him one last time. Then she sat, all huddled up in a corner by the fire, blinded with tears, as the monks finished the work. All that night she sat up by the light of the candles around the coffin. Her mind worked over and over the terrible grief that he had died unshriven, and when she could keep her mind off her own horrifying loss, she buried her face in her hands and cried out secretly to God that he be saved anyway. She wouldn’t stop, no, never stop bothering God until He told her Roger Kendall was saved. She would hang on to the hem of His garment, weeping and screaming until He would save him, whether He had intended to or not, if only to get quit of the annoyance she caused Him. She would pray to Jesus and the saints, until they all rose up in a body and begged God to get rid of her by giving in. In the morning they found her there by the coffin, still awake, her eyes glassy and a strange look of determination on her face.

Roger Kendall had been old and well beloved. At the black-draped door with the priest stood every member of the Mercer’s Guild, in full mourning livery, to escort the body. As the coffin left the house, the greatest of the bells in St. Botolphe’s Billingsgate began to toll. Its mournful sound followed the procession that escorted him through the crooked streets. First marched his guild brethren, then the crucifer; behind the cross the clergy walked, two by two, carrying lighted candles. Before the coffin was the solitary figure of the parish priest; men stood on either side of the pallbearers, carrying lighted candles. Behind the coffin walked Margaret, bereft of all sense, supported by Hilde. Her two daughters, their eyes all red and swollen, walked beside her, clinging to her skirts. Then came the dead man’s sons, dressed in deepest black and making a great show of grief. Then followed his household, and the many who had loved him, shrieking, groaning, and wailing, as was the custom.

Margaret somehow maintained composure during the service, while Kendall’s corpse lay before the altar for the requiem and absolution. But when the pallbearers took up their burden once again, and the cantor began the ancient chant “May the angels lead you into Paradise,” those who watched Margaret follow the coffin to the grave saw her mouth open in a soundless scream of anguish that was more terrible than any tears.

Funerals are followed by eating and drinking, but Margaret saw and remembered none of this. She was, for a short while, completely mad. Hilde called Brother Malachi and a large number of her friends, both old and new, for she was more widely loved than she would have ever suspected. They sat with her in groups, never leaving her alone day or night, and trying to coax her to speak or eat. They sat her children on her lap, but she did not see them. The household feared that it would not be long before they lost mistress as well as master, and the sadness of the thing was almost beyond bearing.

Then, one day, as Brother Malachi wandered through the muddy ice of Cheapside, with his head sunk down and his hands behind his back, wondering what to do, he heard a familiar sound. To the beating of a drum two well-known voices were doing the debate between Winter and Summer. Summer was getting the worst of it this time, which was only natural at this season. No one but Maistre Robert le Taborer could do it so well. Waiting discreetly until the money had been safely collected, Brother Malachi stepped up to Master Robert.

“Well met, Maistre Robert!” he greeted his old friend of the road. “Today I badly need your assistance—only you, a master indeed, can help me. Your old friend Margaret is newly made a widow and has gone mad with grief. Can’t you come and cure her for us?”

“Why, old friend! What a surprise to see you here!” cried Master Robert in a jovial voice. “But I am sorry to hear the news. Of course, you are right; the only possible cure is music.” Then he made his excuses to the little crowd around him with a grand obeisance: “My dear friends, I must beg your leave for now—we have an unexpected private performance.” Together the little group—Malachi, Little William the juggler, Long Tom the Piper, and Maistre Robert—trudged the narrow streets down to the river and Margaret’s house. When Master Robert looked up at its bravely painted front, he drew in his breath between his teeth. It was very grand that Margaret had become—not that she didn’t deserve it, of course, but Master Robert couldn’t help but remember when they were all sleeping in coarse blankets by the side of the road, and lucky enough to get together a few pence for stale bread and thin ale.

“You needn’t worry,” said Brother Malachi, “she’s still just the same nice girl—but sadly changed with this calamity. It worries us all, you see.”

Together they were shown upstairs, although their gaudy, particolored cloaks and ribbon-bedecked instruments created a certain shock among the more respectable-minded members of the household. Margaret was sitting on the bed, looking nowhere at all, and didn’t see them. Master Robert was very grieved to see this. Plain or fancy, his surroundings didn’t matter too much to him. With a glance he took in the tapestries and the lush carpets, the great curtained bed and ironbound chests, and saw that money, which consoles many a widow, meant nothing to Margaret. Whoever the man was, she must have loved him with all her heart.

So Maistre Robert le Taborer took out his little harp and began the long and sad ballad of the love of Tristan and Yseult. By the time he got to the death of Tristan, it was so very sad that everyone in the room was weeping. Then, as he sang of Yseult’s grief, Margaret’s blank eyes looked him in the face and filled with tears. Once started, she began to sob as if her heart would break, as Hilde embraced her.

Now, Master Robert understood a great deal about grief, for he had experienced most shades of it himself and had been called in to console many with music. And so he followed the ballad with something else, a delicate, lyrical instrumental duet with Long Tom. Then Little William, who was crying considerably himself, wiped his face and began another sad song. Then Master Robert quickened the pace with a livelier song. After that they began a favorite of Margaret’s and begged her to join them. At first she couldn’t, but as they reached the second chorus, she did in a shaky voice, and they applauded. Then they all sang together, beating time, while the others in the room joined in on the chorus so boldly that the house rocked with the noise. Then Master Robert did a comic dance, and everyone laughed, even Margaret.

They stayed there all night, singing and reciting crazy dialogues until the candles were gone, the servants had collapsed with exhaustion, and Margaret had fallen into the first genuine sleep she had had since the dreadful day. In the morning when she woke up, Master Robert himself came dancing up with some breakfast, and Long Tom and Little William stood around and told food jokes while she ate. When they sensed that her mind was knitting together, they embraced her and bade her farewell.

“Margaret, my dear, we have been very dull on the road without you, and we are forced to be excessively careful of our satire since you left us. Remember, you always have a place with the troupe of Robert le Taborer! And now, sweetheart, we must leave you, for we have an engagement at the Goldsmiths’ Hall.” Then they all three bowed with a great flourish and were gone.

Margaret said, “Oh, Hilde, I do love them! Maybe everything will come out all right after all.”

 

BUT WHAT MARGARET AND her friends did not realize was that the wolves were already circling around Margaret as if she were an orphan lamb alone in a forest clearing. For while a poor widow is nobody’s friend, a rich one is a great prize. And if that one is rich and attractive, then there is little question that she will not be left alone very long. In several places about the City powerful men were making calculations, if not for themselves, then for their sons, as to how many days more it was decent to wait before proposing marriage, and just what forms of delicate pressure might be most successful in forcing the widow’s consent.

Even more unpleasant, Lionel’s and Thomas’s supposedly reformed characters seemed to have shattered shortly after the funeral, in fact, at about the time that they learned of the contents of their father’s will. They had plans for something even more upsetting than marriage. One afternoon, when things had calmed down, Kendall’s apprentices and assistants had moved out, and there were no more visitors going to and fro, Lionel pounded on the front door for admission, at the same time that Thomas did so at the back. To the surprise of the members of the household who answered at both doors, they were immediately overwhelmed by half a dozen armed brigands, who forced their way in and gathered the terrorized servants in the great hall.

“If you wish to live, don’t try to leave,” Lionel told them, smiling wolfishly and brandishing his short sword. “We’re planning a surprise for your mistress and don’t want to be disturbed.” When the toughs had rounded up the stragglers in the stable, they locked them all in a downstairs storeroom. Then they stormed up the stairs to find Margaret, her children, and the nursemaid.

“Ha, Agatha, now at last you’ve got the chance to give them the beating they deserve,” laughed Thomas, as he threw a purse full of money to the nurse. “Hold them for us here, but don’t kill them—if all goes as it ought to, we’ll clear a pretty penny on the sale of their dowries.”

“It’s all my pleasure to serve your least desire, sir,” she answered with a bob and a malicious smirk.

The hired toughs had found Margaret and held her by the arms in her own bedroom, while Lionel prowled in front of her.

“And now, you whore, tell us where it is,” he hissed.

“Where what is?” gasped Margaret.

“Don’t pretend with me, you know perfectly well what we’re after.”

“I swear, I swear, I don’t know at all,” said Margaret, but her answer infuriated Lionel, who grabbed her by the throat to try to strangle the answer out of her, just as his brother entered the room.

“Don’t strangle her yet; remember, we won’t get a thing until we find it, and we lose everything if you kill her first,” he called to Lionel, who at that very moment let out a shrill cry.

“The bitch has burned me!” He pulled back his hand and looked at it; there was a stink of seared flesh in the air. Across his palm was a black mark, imprinted like a brand, of chain links that matched the chain around Margaret’s neck. She shrank back from him and tried to put her hand on her neck, but her arms were held fast at the elbow by Lionel’s men, and so she could not reach the painful spot. There, at the base of her neck, a great livid bruise was forming, shaped like two thumbs. She was paralyzed with horror, as Lionel pulled out his knife. The two men who held her by the arms had not loosened their grip through this entire episode.

“Brother, brother. Wait until later. Make her talk first, before you do something you can’t undo,” said Thomas. He took out his knife, too, and pressed its blade to her throat. “Now,” he said, “tell us where it is, or you’ll regret it very, very slowly.”

“I swear by the saints, I don’t know what you mean!” Margaret gasped, afraid to move the slightest muscle.

“The will, the will, you sly, vicious little trollop. The right one. The one that you stole.”

“There’s no other will, except the one that’s just been read. What on earth do you mean?”

“The woman has the most amazing effrontery, brother. Do you hear her deny it?”

Lionel got up from the chest, where he had been sitting and nursing his burnt hand. He was a sinister figure, all clad in his black mourning clothes. He strode across the room and lifted his brother’s knife away from her throat with an almost delicate gesture, and then, with a sudden brutal movement, slapped Margaret hard in the face. She blinked the tears out of her eyes and stared at him, a look of incomprehension on her face.

“Don’t waste time with denials. We know you’ve conspired to hide the true will and substitute a forgery. You were seen doing it with your lover.”

“My lover?” cried Margaret frantically. “I have no lover.”

Both brothers laughed raucously. Lionel sneered, “You can’t lie to us, you pious little hypocrite, the way you deceived father. You’ve been after his money all along; we knew it and had you watched. You were seen with papers, written by that filthy friar you’ve been sleeping with.”

“I never, never did that. You’re wicked to accuse me so falsely, with your father only just buried.”

“You deny you were seen with papers? You can’t fool us. We intend to have them before the night is out. Where are the papers?” Lionel had taken out his knife, which glittered wickedly, as he ran its point very, very delicately across Margaret’s throat, where it left a narrow red welt, like a fine scratch. Margaret, in the midst of her terror, suddenly realized what they meant. Someone had told them about her book. It was useless to explain it to them—they would never believe her. And if they did, they would only destroy the book in their fruitless rage. She could imagine them now, laughing and reading its pages aloud, one by one, as they fed them to the flames in front of her eyes. She would never, never, reveal its hiding place. Her eyes searched wildly for some help, but there was none. Lionel saw the look on her face change for an instant, and a vicious, one-sided grin, a sinister caricature of his father’s endearing one, twisted his face.

“Aha! You know perfectly well where it is. Our father left us everything, and you know it. He found out what you were at last.”

“Yes,” broke in Thomas. “We warned him. Then we tried to save him from himself, the senile old fool, but someone found the poison and you came right back, like the persistent little rat you are.”

“But it’s too late for you now. Talk, or I’ll cut your throat right here,” smiled Lionel, and he turned his blade across her neck.

“I’m not afraid of death,” said Margaret. “Go ahead. I have prayed for death. Strike now.” She turned her neck so that the artery below the ear throbbed beneath the knife’s edge.

Thomas had been watching, and now a thought struck him.

“Maybe you’re not afraid to die, but I imagine you’d hate to see a charming little finger or two lopped off before you go. Where are the spankless brats?”

“Oh, in the name of God, don’t touch them!” shrieked Margaret in despair. “I’ll tell you everything!” She was writhing frantically in the grip of the armed men.

“So,” said Lionel, with a triumphant smirk, “where is the will?”

“I haven’t got it here.”

“Did you give it to your lover?”

“Yes, yes, I gave all the papers to Brother Gregory.”

“So where is he now?”

“I don’t know—he went away and said he’d be back.”

“You don’t know? Brother, I think she’s lying,” said Thomas.

Just then there was a tap at the downstairs door.

“Answer that!” roared Lionel to the men downstairs. One of them got up from where he had been sprawled by the fire, drinking up Kendall’s ale. As he staggered up, he stumbled over Lion, who had been lying by the fire too.

“Goddam dog,” he said, giving him a kick that sent him against the wall. As he opened the front door to see who was there, Lion ran yelping outside. There was a boy standing at the door, a brazen little boy with freckles, who announced he had a message for Mistress Margaret Kendall and stuck out his hand for a tip.

“I’ll take it,” said the tough.

“My tip, mister,” demanded the boy.

“Get out!” roared the tough, and slammed the door in his face. Then he yelled upstairs in a mocking falsetto,

“Message for Mistress Margaret!”

Lionel read the message with a wolfish smile.

“She wasn’t lying, brother,” he announced. “This is from her lover—he says he’ll be coming in three days to ‘check her spelling.’ Ha! I can guess how he checks it, all right. Dots all the i’s with his prick, I’ll bet.” Everyone in the room guffawed, and Margaret blushed crimson with shame.

“Well, it’s a three-day wait, then, brother,” said Thomas.

“I say, lock her in the cellar until then, and prepare a little surprise reception for the lecherous friar,” Lionel replied. “He won’t want to talk, either, you know. He’s doubtless planning on sharing the spoils with her in some little love nest somewhere. And he’s a lot tougher and more cunning than she is.”

“I have to give him credit. It’s a bold scheme. No woman could have thought of it by herself.” Thomas appreciated people more cunning than he was, even though it wasn’t a useful sort of appreciation. Now, having appreciated the wickedness of Brother Gregory, he turned to appreciate the wickedness of his older brother, who had clearly thought of something deliciously ugly. Lionel, having turned matters over in his mind, said to his brother and the receptive audience of hired men, “I say we have fun and vengeance all at the same time. Someone has to give these filthy clerks a lesson. It might scare off a few others, sometime, if we set a good example with this one. We’ll hold a grand reception for this cunning friar! String him up, just like Abelard, and geld him right in front of Margaret here. Then we’ll beat the hell out of him until he talks.” The toughs nodded and growled their appreciation. “And now, stepmother, dear, we will escort you to the cellar.”

Margaret was sick with apprehension as they locked her alone in one of her own storage rooms in the cellar. All night she grieved, sleeping fitfully as she sat propped up against a barrel. She worried and wept over her children, she thought about how badly she missed her husband. But what made her feel particularly wretched was that in her anxiety to save her children and her book, she had betrayed an innocent man to the butchers. She was so frantic with grief that she didn’t remember even once to congratulate herself on the absence of rats from her storeroom.

Margaret might have felt somewhat better if she had known that Lion had been kicked out the door. He did exactly what he always did when he was let out. He went straight to Mother Hilde’s.

When, in the early hours of the morning, Mother Hilde came home from a long delivery, she was very surprised to find Lion, looking like a bundle of rags, lying forlornly on her doorstep.

“Why, what’s this, Lion? You’re bleeding! What could be wrong?”

Lion whined and snuffled, and tried to lead her to Margaret’s house. Hilde followed him as he trotted through the streets. Being an astute woman, she did not knock on the front door, but listened by a window. She saw lights, long after the household was usually in bed, shining through the shutters of the kitchen. She heard unfamiliar voices and the raucous sound of drinking. Lion pulled on her dress and whined, leading her around the house to one of the heavily barred slits that opened into the basement. He dug at the slit and whined. The whining woke Margaret, who wasn’t really sleeping very well anyway, and she called out softly, “Who’s there? Is that you, Lion?” She was overjoyed to hear Mother Hilde’s whisper answer back.

“Margaret? What on earth are you doing in the cellar at this hour?” Under the cold stars that shine brightest just before dawn, Mother Hilde crouched in the snow at the window to hear Margaret tell the story of the awful ambush that was being laid for Brother Gregory.

“You must hurry, hurry to warn him, Hilde. I’ve done a dreadful thing to him, and you must save him.”

“But what about you, Margaret?”

“I’m sure Brother Gregory can think of something. He’s clever. Ask him what to do; just hurry, Hilde, and warn him!”

It was soon the pink hour of dawn, when the gates are opened and the City rises. Mother Hilde, with some trouble, had found the house where Brother Gregory lived, and with Lion dancing at her heels, she puffed up the rickety outside staircase to the tiny room under the eaves that he had been renting, and planned soon to leave forever. Her frantic knocking disturbed Brother Gregory at a delicate moment. Having said his morning prayers, he was meditating. He had decided that the best thing to begin with was the Wounds of Christ, but he was not getting on very well. For one thing, he was hungry. He always was after rising, and it distracted him. For another thing, Christmas with his father in the north had not worked out very well, and he was still nursing a bruise across the side of his head, where his father had clouted him during the raging argument they had had over his decision to devote his life to solitude and prayer. In fact, the moment Brother Gregory had stepped over the threshold, the old man had become so wrathy that he had immediately restored Brother Gregory’s weakened will on this matter. The sooner, the better, had been his conclusion after the first angry exchange of words with his father.

The ear on the side his father had clouted still buzzed inside, and that interrupted his thoughts considerably. He was annoyed: why on earth had he let his father hit him like that, when he was a grown man? Well, he mused distractedly, it was either that or hit the violent old man himself, which really wasn’t proper. Looked at in another way, one might even see it as admirable that he’d taken a blow for his decision. Why, it showed the abbot had been entirely wrong! He had not a speck, not the tiniest speck of Pride at all! Brother Gregory began to feel pleased with himself. He’d been very Humble and had only shouted back a little bit (and that bit entirely justified under the circumstances) before his father had laid him out with the powerful blow. He was feeling better and better. The abbot would certainly be impressed with this degree of Humility and admit that he was wrong.

With this rosy light cast on the affair, he began to feel quite mellow. He wondered how Margaret had liked the Psalter. She’d recognize the writing, of course, and probably admire the attractive capitals, but she’d never guess he’d done the translation too. That was his secret. She wasn’t so bad, for a woman, and it was a pretty farewell gift. He’d kept the commission, of course—that was fair, he thought—but he’d put the rest of the fee into the poor box at St. Bartholemew’s. When you got right down to it, Brother Gregory really didn’t care about money very much—he felt that God was always ready to support an admirable fellow like himself, and something would always turn up. Besides, it’s common to worry about money, and Brother Gregory prided himself on never being common.

The meditation seemed to have strayed a bit, so Brother Gregory tried to think about Humility awhile, before he got back to the Wounds of Christ. It was at this point, prostrate on the floor before his crucifix, that Mother Hilde knocked.

“Who is it?” he said in an irritated voice, getting up off the floor.

“It’s Mother Hilde, and I must tell you something very important.”

Mother Hilde? The famous Mother Hilde. He’d never seen her. In fact, Brother Gregory was almost the last person in town who had not yet heard of Roger Kendall’s death, for he had been away until the last day or so, and though he’d planned to clear up his business here before leaving, he still hadn’t been to see anybody yet.

He opened the door, and Mother Hilde’s sharp eyes took in his narrow little room at a glance. It was hardly big enough to turn around in, and at its highest point, the ceiling, canted at the angle of the roof, hovered only a few dangerous inches above Brother Gregory’s head. Plain, whitewashed walls adorned only with a crucifix, a plaited straw mattress on the floor, a little writing table, a cold brazier in the corner, and a tiny window with a leaky shutter—there are worse rooms in London, she thought, and some of them have whole families inside of them. Nevertheless it was clear he didn’t live in the legendary luxury of the self-indulgent clerics she had seen.

Mother Hilde’s breath made little misty puffs of fog in the cold air of the room as she spoke.

“Brother Gregory,” she panted (for the stairs were steep), “Margaret has sent me to warn you of a dreadful plot against you.”

Brother Gregory’s austere nod of greeting changed to a look of faint surprise. “A plot?” he said, eyebrows raised. “By whom?”

“By the sons of Roger Kendall, who hold a grudge against you. They have intercepted your note and plan to attack you when you come at the appointed hour. She says they have planned to ‘treat you like Abelard,’ whatever that means.”

“How on earth can Master Kendall allow such a thing? Or is he in on it?” asked a somewhat more alarmed Brother Gregory.

“You didn’t know? Master Kendall is dead this fortnight.”

Gregory was taken aback. That’s quite dreadful, he thought. Even if he was too much of a freethinker, he was a good old fellow—better than some old men I could name—I will have to pray for him.

Mother Hilde went on, and explained how they had taken over the house, and held Margaret and her daughters as bait to entice him back.

“What in heaven’s name for?” Brother Gregory asked.

“They think you have a copy of a will more favorable to their interests. Someone told them that Margaret gave you papers, and they think that it’s a hidden will, and that you forged the present one.”

Brother Gregory was deeply annoyed. First, his meditation had been broken, and it was clear he wouldn’t be able to get back to it for some time. Second, he didn’t like to think of Margaret manhandled by such repulsive characters. Third, it is very insulting when baseborn people threaten the son of an old family—even a second son—with such a disgusting form of attack. And, finally, there was the worst thing of all. There was only one possible thing to do about it, the last thing on earth he wanted ever to do. Brother Gregory’s face grew grim, and the muscles in his jaw twitched. Then he paced fiercely about the room, thinking to himself and hitting his right fist into his open left palm. At last he stopped abruptly and said, with the deepest of sighs, “We’ll have to see father.”

“Father who?” asked Hilde.

“Father. My father,” said Brother Gregory, “and it won’t be easy. He’s already clouted me on the head once. I may go deaf if he does it again.”

“Oh, my goodness, yes, that’s quite a bruise,” agreed Hilde.

“We have three days,” said Brother Gregory. “That’s enough time to go and come back if I don’t walk. Has Brother Malachi still got the mule?”

“How do you know about Brother Malachi?” Mother Hilde bristled defensively.

“I know a lot—more than is good for me,” responded Brother Gregory morosely.

“Then you should know the mule is old and slow,” said Mother Hilde, with a sharp look at him. Brother Gregory thought it over. He looked dejectedly at his hands.

“Then I’ll have to hire a decent horse. You wouldn’t happen to have any money about you, would you?”

“Not here,” said Mother Hilde, “but if you come back with me, I have some.”

Brother Gregory took his little bundle and added his crucifix to it, following Hilde out the door. Lion jumped at his feet joyfully.

“I still don’t think it’s proper for a dog to look the same at both ends,” grumbled Gregory as they descended the stairs together.

They walked along icy streets, making their way about the mounds of muddy snow that in places nearly barred their way, to an alley that Gregory had written much about but had never seen. Ducking to enter the low door of the house, Brother Gregory smelled a familiar smell—the smell of an alchemical laboratory.

“Home already?” a voice called from the back, and the short, somewhat stout figure of Brother Malachi emerged from the low door at the back of the main room. “I’ve been thinking a bit of something to break our fast might be very welcome—oh! Good Lord, what are you doing here, Gilbert?”

“I might ask the same of you, Theophilus of Rotterdam,” answered Brother Gregory quietly.

“Just getting along, just getting along. What are you here for?”

“Actually, I’m borrowing money to hire a horse,” responded Brother Gregory.

“Borrowing from women? You’ve sunk low, Gilbert. By the way, do you still write? Or are you teaching again?”

“I am engaged in Contemplation these days,” sniffed Brother Gregory.

“Always the snob, aren’t you?” observed Brother Malachi cheerfully. “Well, I don’t mind—we’ve had good times together—at least, until I had to leave town under a cloud. I heard they made quite a show when they burned your book—blood all over the pavement and thousands cheering, and all that sort of thing. Now, I myself prefer a healthful vacation when I’m still in a condition to enjoy it. It was your own fault, Gilbert, for trying to stick around to defend yourself. You never could take good advice.”

Brother Gregory’s brows knitted together and his face looked like a storm cloud.

“Brother Gregory has urgent business elsewhere, Malachi, dear, and we must not delay him.” Mother Hilde was always cool in emergencies and kept to the point of things.

“Skipping town? Is somebody after you? It’s just like the old days in Paris. Light feet and light hands, as I always say—never hold on to anything too long or stay in one place.”

Brother Gregory smiled. Theophilus had always been a funny fellow. There was that time when he’d written that jingle about the rector, for example. You just couldn’t stay angry at him long.

“Have you found the Philosopher’s Stone yet?” he asked.

“I’m very, very close this time,” Brother Malachi confided, “but I’ve been delayed by other business.”

“Such as fraudulent indulgences, plague cures, and the like? I should have known all along it was you. There’s no other rogue so learned or learned man so roguish.”

“That balances nicely, Gilbert. You still have talent. But I gather you’re Brother Gregory now. It must go along with the Contemplation and the funny outfit. Have you been at it long?”

“Long enough.” Brother Gregory clamped his mouth into a line.

“Had a revelation yet?”

“I am currently in a state of sublime thought that cannot be described,” answered Brother Gregory with annoyance.

“Hmph. That’s not what I’ve heard. You’ve been hanging around Margaret’s place. Sleeping with her, I suppose. She is a pretty girl, and her husband was old—marriage of convenience, you know. Got her out of a barrel of trouble.”

“I was not sleeping with Margaret,” said Brother Gregory indignantly.

“Well, what were you doing over there all the time?”

“If you must know, I was taking down her memoirs from dictation,” said Brother Gregory, with a look of prim disapproval. He disliked vulgarity, and he was beginning to remember how much Theophilus had irritated him before.

“You what?” Brother Malachi howled and slapped his leg. He rolled back and forth, red in the face from laughing. “Gilbert, I always did think you were impossible, but this excuse simply doesn’t make it! Women don’t write memoirs—oh, all right, have it your way.” He had caught sight of Brother Gregory’s glowering face.

“Memoirs, ha! No wonder you have to leave town in a hurry. Let me know how it comes out.”

“You say his name is Theophilus?” asked Mother Hilde curiously.

“Well, it was when I knew him in Paris—but who’s to say? Maybe he’s got another too.”

As Mother Hilde counted out the money, Gregory caught sight of the troubled look on her face. He wanted to take her hand to reassure her, but he never took women’s hands. So he looked at her and said, “Don’t worry. It will all work out, and we’ll get Margaret away from them”—and he turned and hurried out the door and down the alley as swiftly as possible, so she would not see the look on his face.

The horse he had hired was an ambling pad that had seen better days, but it was fresh and had a good long stride that covered distance. It was not long before Brother Gregory had left Aldersgate, traversed the noisy alleys of Smithfield, and was in the open countryside, on the great Roman road that ran to the north. Without stopping for rest Gregory made it home in a little over a day. Dead tired, he approached his father’s tumbledown old manor house only to be met on the road by the old man himself. He was trying out a new horse, a groom riding just behind him. He pulled the horse into a short trot, the dancing piaffe that looks especially good when one is riding through town in full armor, and then he rode all the way around Brother Gregory, looking him up and down where he sat silent on the ambler waiting to address his father. Brother Gregory’s father’s tawny, fur-lined cloak rippled about him; his gloved hands were the size of hams. The destrier’s heavily muscled black neck glistened in a shining arch; his pie-plate-sized feet thudded on the frosty ground; his harness jingled in the silence. The horse was a monster—eighteen hands at least—and Brother Gregory’s father sat on him as straight as a sword blade, his white hair and beard blowing about his head, while he looked down on Brother Gregory from a good foot’s difference in height.

“What in the HELL is that you’re sitting on?” the old man roared.

“It’s a hired horse, father,” said Brother Gregory wearily.

“A HIRED HORSE? Where did you hire it from? A junk shop?”

“Father, I have to see you about something.”

“Crawling back, I suppose,” barked the old man. “I always knew you had no spine.”

Brother Gregory’s father had no problems with God. He knew that God was exactly like himself, only a bit bigger and, of course, seigneur of a somewhat larger piece of real estate. He liked church services, naturally. They were exactly the sort of thing that he would order up for himself, if he were God, and things got dull. And they were dull now. He was between campaigns and talking to the imbecile God had given him for a second son—one of God’s few mistakes.

“Father, I’m not crawling.” Brother Gregory felt impatient.

“No, you’re riding—riding a hired horse that looks as if it were made out of pieces of something else. I suppose it’s an improvement to worming your way along in the dust on your belly, which is doubtless the way you made it out here last time.”

They were headed back to the house, now, through the little village of thatched-roof huts and up the long dirt avenue to the decayed front gate. The groom rode discreetly behind them, but he found it hard not to look amused. They made as unlikely a pair as might be imagined: Brother Gregory in his old, matted sheepskin, his knobby legs far too long for the little, seedy swayback he sat on, and old Sir Hubert de Vilers, grandly booted, spurred, and cloaked, and mounted on the tallest, best-looking stud horse to be seen for twenty miles around. Only in posture were they alike: father and son each sat a horse with the straight-backed, arrogant grace of an emperor.

“And both equally stiff-necked too,” chuckled the groom to himself, bracing for the fireworks that inevitably occurred whenever the two met.

As they rode, Brother Gregory was filling his father in on the details, not without certain acid interruptions from the old man.

“Haw, haw, HAW, haw! You say they’re lying in wait for you?”

At least he’s laughing, thought Brother Gregory.

“It’s been dull here, Gilbert; at last you’ve brought me some fun! Maybe you’ve got something under that long dress besides a belly button after all. Did you know your brother Hugo’s still home? I think I’ll take him, the squires, and a half-dozen grooms. It will be a great joke.” Then he laughed his outrageous, braying laugh again.

Brother Gregory hung his head. Father was always impossible. Even when he was mellow, he was perfectly awful. Maybe he should have just left town for the monastery, and not come back to get laughed at again. Why, oh, why, had he done this to himself? Oh, well, it was done, and there was no getting out of it now. Anyway, he had to save Margaret.

Brother Gregory dozed fitfully on a bench in the great hall, while his father gave orders. Dogs were quarreling over a bone hidden in the stinking rushes. Gregory’s father believed you didn’t need to change them—just put new ones on top of the old, until they got too deep to walk in. He had simple ideas of what made a proper hall: plenty of deer antlers on the wall, and maybe some out-of-date battle-axes, a few ancestral pennons, a large fire at the center, and an endless supply of ale. That made a house a home, in his eyes. Anyway, he didn’t bother himself with household things. That would have been for women, if there were any women around, but there weren’t. The old man had been a widower ever since Brother Gregory’s mother had died of what he considered to be an excess of religion. He still had unpleasant memories of her great brown tear-filled eyes rolled upward at him as she embraced his feet and begged him to return to God. She had doubtless got that fever from her habit of praying at all hours in the unheated chapel, weeping and prostrating herself on the icy stone floor. At least she had left him one proper son as an heir, as well as the idiot and a number of dead creatures, before she at last departed for that heaven she so ardently had sought. Hugo didn’t have a wife either yet. He had been too busy to bother, although it was high time. Then there was Brother Gregory, but he was hopeless. Whenever the old man thought about it, he would growl to himself, “Only two arrows in my quiver,” and think about clouting his wretched second son again.

“Wake up, WAKE UP, you son of sloth!” Brother Gregory’s father had shoved him off the bench and onto the floor, or rather, into it. Brother Gregory got up and brushed himself off, blinking. What an awful nightmare; for a moment he thought he saw his father’s big white beard and bushy eyebrows above him, the blue eyes glaring evilly. Then he realized with a start that it wasn’t a dream after all. What on earth had he come home again for? Oh, yes, to get help for Margaret. He set his jaw and looked at his father.

“It’s all set, you can’t just sleep all day—we’re going,” his father growled at him. Hugo and the others stood around him and watched while he got ready. His part wasn’t going to be that large. After all, one can’t trust simpleton sons to get anything right. Brother Gregory was going to be the bait.

The groom held fresh horses at the foot of the stair. The hired horse was resting up and would be sent back another day. The company took the trip back at a good pace, trot and walk, and when they walked, Brother Gregory dozed across the saddle bar like a sack of wheat, for this was his second day without sleep. For once his father didn’t even make fun of him. He was too busy discussing his plans with the others.

 

AT THE HOUR APPOINTED for Brother Gregory’s last meeting with Margaret, the house on Thames Street looked quite the same as ever. A mist that had risen from the river was blowing in little wisps down the street. A man delivering fuel bundled onto a donkey’s back could be seen several doors down, as the heavily armed party rode down the street, muffled against the cold. Next door at Master Wengrave’s a little apprentice boy dashed out to deliver a message, saw them, and scurried off the opposite way. It was hard to imagine that anything at all was going on within Kendall’s once gay house that now stood quiet, with that strange, somewhat forlorn look that a place has when the master has died.

But inside, the house was abuzz with malicious activity. The two brothers, still clad in full mourning, lounged in the downstairs room by the garden, cheerfully discussing with their hired thugs the precise methods they would use to make Brother Gregory reveal the hiding place of the true will. Margaret was sitting on the great ironbound chest that concealed her memoirs, bound and gagged, so that she might be witness to the ambush and punishment of her supposed lover.

“I say, geld him first, then while he’s squealing, beat him until he talks,” said Lionel, as he lolled on the window seat, paring his fingernails with the big knife he was carrying.

“He might be too distracted to talk if you do it that way: I say, first bind him and beat him, then do the rest after he’s talked,” said Thomas, in a reasonable tone.

“Hang him upside down from the door frame,” suggested one of the thugs. “That way we can all see it better.”

“Aha! I hear a knocking at the door,” exclaimed Lionel delightedly. His smile was wide when Brother Gregory was announced. He hid beside the door, waiting to strike the disabling blow from behind as Brother Gregory entered the room.

Brother Gregory paused in the door frame a moment. His cowl was drawn up over his head and shaded his face—a face drawn and pale with lack of sleep, and deeply shadowed with purple beneath the eyes. He stepped over the threshold, and as the blow from Lionel’s cudgel came crashing across his back, he staggered, fell to one knee, and whirled to meet his attacker, drawing his knife. Thomas’s dagger slashed into his back at the same time that Lionel’s sideswiping blow to Gregory’s head glanced off with a clang! The dagger hit but did not enter. The deep slash it made across Brother Gregory’s back revealed why: beneath his clothes a shirt of chain mail glittered through the cut. In the struggle his cowl fell back, showing the light helmet that it had concealed. Now two of the toughs were on him, pinning him to the floor, and Lionel, who could never control his impatience, had moved in to strike the death blow.

That was as far as it got, for in an instant there was a hideous swishing sound, as Gregory’s father stepped over the threshold and beheaded Lionel with a single stroke of his great two-handed sword. The head bounced onto the floor and rolled away into a corner, while the neck arteries spurted gore all over the room and onto the carpet. Before the torso had ceased writhing, the room was filled with armed men, wreaking havoc. The toughs were cut down as they tried to flee.

“I say, father, do you want to keep this one?” Hugo’s cheerful voice sounded in the charnel house. His foot was on Thomas’s throat. Thomas was making gagging noises that sounded like a plea for mercy. “We could geld him and throw him out, just like he was planning to do to Gilbert.”

“Waste of time,” growled the old man. “Just run him through with the rest.” When that was done, the old man calmly wiped his own blade on the black surcoat of Lionel’s headless torso and sheathed it. Then he turned his attention to Margaret. Brother Gregory was cutting through the ropes on her wrists; he had already taken out the gag, but for once Margaret was speechless.

“Not bad, not bad,” said the old man, prowling around her and looking her over, just as he would a horse for sale. Margaret was aghast. The old man looked truly appalling. His breastplate and hose were splashed with blood. His beard—the old-fashioned kind that gets spotted with gravy if you don’t eat carefully—tumbled around his face in a ragged disorder surpassed only by the shaggy white hair that emerged when he removed his helmet. His ferocious, bristling gray eyebrows glowered over eyes that were, basically, disappointed. Disappointed that there was no one left to kill.

“So this is the woman whose skirts you’ve been crawling under, eh, Gilbert? She’s not a bad piece.”

Margaret stood there, trim and tragic in black, the Burning Cross glittering against its dark background. She was furious. She whispered through clenched teeth.

“Brother Gregory, who is that awful old man?”

“It’s father, Margaret. Father, this is Margaret—and this is my brother Hugo and these are Damien and Robert, their esquires.” The old man acknowledged this awkward introduction with a curt nod. Hugo, who had also removed his helmet and arming-coif to reveal dark blond hair cut short and shaved up the back, Norman fashion, and the cold, pale blue eyes of a professional killer, greeted her with a grin.

“So, Gilbert,” the old man went on cheerfully, “I’ve long doubted that you had anything under that gown to cut off, and I’m glad to see evidence to the contrary. Now that I think of it, that’s not a bad ploy, crawling around town in a habit and getting into bored women’s houses by the back door.”

“Father!” Gregory was indignant. His face was growing red with rage. Little veins stood out on his temples. Seething with pure fury he shouted at his father: “I told you I am saving my pure body for Christ!” The arteries stood out and throbbed in his neck.

“You’re saving your what for WHAT?” the old man roared. “By the living God, what have I spawned? Your brother Hugo has bastards on two continents and you’re telling me you’re completely USELESS? I ought to bash you in the head again!” The squires had drawn back. They looked amused.

“Father, we’ve discussed this before. You can’t bully me anymore. My mind’s made up.” Brother Gregory ground his teeth. His father always made him so angry that he always said whatever would enrage him most.

“What’s to bully? There’s no bullying a Spineless Wonder like you,” the old man growled. Then he looked about the room, and a shrewd look passed across his face. Brother Gregory knew that look well; he’d seen it often enough, years before. It meant that the old man was calculating the value of the wall hangings. Sir Hubert had taken quite a number of wall hangings and other such furnishings from French châteaux, before he’d razed them, and he had a sharp eye for value. It offended Brother Gregory deeply to see his father looking about Kendall’s parlor that way.

Then the old man turned his attention to Margaret once again.

“Not so bad. A widow. Rich,” he speculated to himself. “And still young.” He resumed his up-and-down glance. Brother Gregory recognized this look too. It made him even more infuriated with his father. Margaret stood there, rigid with rage. “Looks like a good breeder. You can always tell by the hips and tits on a woman—”

“How dare you!” hissed Margaret.

“And spirit. That’s a good breeding quality too. A good stud on a bad mare gets bad foals, I always say. We don’t want any more spineless ones—”

Then he turned abruptly to Hugo.

“Hugo, I’ve been thinking. You’ve been needing a wife, and this one ought to do nicely. We can carry her off, marry you two at home in the chapel right away, without banns, and hold her there until we’ve got proof of consummation, just to make sure no smart lawyer tries to undo it. It’s a bit hasty, but there’s no use missing a chance like this. In another week or two someone else might get her. Besides, the roof wants mending. What do you say?”

“I thought you’d arranged for the roof already, father,” said Hugo in a reasonable tone.

“Spent the money already—on a new stud horse—that big black one. So, is it settled?”

“I’m obedient, father,” said Hugo with equanimity. He did prefer them a bit larger in the bosom, and blond, but aside from that, one woman was just like any other to him.

Margaret stamped her foot with fury. Her face was red to the roots of her hair. Her eyes flashed, and she curled her hands into fists.

“I will not marry anyone. I especially will not marry anyone here. And I will never marry to get some disgusting roof fixed. You can’t make me.”

“Of course we can; it’s done all the time,” remarked the old man calmly. “By the way, Hugo, have you noticed? The idiot was right. She’s got the Fauconberg eyes. Very funny looking on a woman too. So, now, let’s go.”

“No!” shouted Gregory. “You will not carry off Margaret!” He stepped in front of her and pulled his knife.

“Haw, an idiot as usual! Pull a knife on me? You woman!” Old Sir Hubert sent the knife flying with a single crashing blow. “I said you need a bash on the head to get some sense into you—” He raised his fist; Gregory parried the heavy blow with his arm and punched his father square on the chin, right in the middle of the beard. The old man was knocked to a sitting position on the floor. Horrified at what he had done, Brother Gregory unclenched his fist and stared at his hand as if it had done it all by itself. His face turned sheet white. Honor thy father! He’d violated God’s commandment, and he could feel the sin of it staining him indelibly.

“Haw, haw, HAW, haw!” The old man was rubbing his jaw and laughing. Gregory looked astonished. “You may yet grow bowels, idiot son.” Gregory stared at him.

“I take it you want the woman for yourself?” his father asked, getting up.

“You heard Margaret. She does not wish to be married,” said Brother Gregory primly. His father got up and glared at him. Perhaps something had been knocked loose in his brain as a baby—a fall from a horse—something like that. It was the only possible explanation. The boy’s mind was not functioning with all the necessary elements.

“Not wish? What has that got to do with anything?” The old man looked at Margaret, where she stood behind Brother Gregory, and addressed her. “I tell you, woman, you had best marry a man with a sword, and soon, or you’ll end up dead or begging on the streets. These fellows on the floor ought to have given you ample warning of what’s in store for a manless woman with too much money. City women—bah—no sense at all. Any knight’s widow has more sense in a single one of her hairs.”

Margaret looked horrified. She hadn’t seen it that way at all. The disgusting old man had a point, but she didn’t like it a bit.

Brother Gregory was appalled. All along he’d had the vague idea in his mind that if he saved Margaret, he’d be putting things back just the way they were. It was just right the way things had been before, quite comfortable, in fact. He could make his round of alehouses, arguing with his friends, and then drop by Margaret’s, where the dinners were always good and the conversation amusing. And somebody else had the trouble of looking after the roof, the gutters, the wood, the brats, and Margaret herself. Somehow he had always envisioned that in his absence, she was perpetually in the kitchen, baking that good bread—and he had managed to acquire the notion that saving her would restore everything to its proper place, including Margaret.

Now, he realized something dreadful. You can never put things back. He’d committed himself to try to return to sit in a cold, whitewashed cell alone with God and Lady Memory, while Hugo, that unspeakable savage, would be stuffing himself on those excellent rolls, breeding babies, beating Margaret about, and running around whoring with the old man. In the evenings they’d probably drink together and congratulate each other for such a good piece of fortune, and maybe even toast him in absentia, for having set it all up for them. And Margaret would waste away her life weeping upstairs in the solar, the way mother had, and the girls’ marriages would be sold to the highest bidder on their eleventh birthdays….

“Father, this is wrong, you’re wrong. She wouldn’t like Hugo anyway—”

“Like? Who needs like? Your mother didn’t like me! We got on splendidly. She did the women’s things, I went to war, and her dowry rebuilt the tower. Liking’s the least important thing in marriage. Money and family are what count. You did say she’s a cousin, didn’t you? Not too close, I trust.”

“Not close at all,” Brother Gregory sighed deeply. It was a pity, because that would have solved the problem. Even father couldn’t manage the fees and connections necessary to get the church to overlook a marriage within the seven degrees of kinship.

“Then, Gilbert, get out of my way before I set these men on you and break every bone in your body. I intend to take this woman off and you’re wallowing in the manger like that godforsaken dog in the story. Not that it’s any different than you’ve ever been, you flea-brained ingrate.”

Brother Gregory looked at Margaret. He knew when he was outnumbered. Margaret looked at him, and then at all the faces in the room. There was no way out.

“Good, I’m glad you see the sense of it.” Sir Hubert was all business. “Damien, you go upstairs and get her cloak—it’s cold out. Robert, I want you to—”

“Father,” Gregory interrupted. His father turned to look at him. Gilbert looked all agitated. Maybe there was some life in the worthless whelp after all. “Father, I need to talk to Margaret—” But he was interrupted by a clattering and howling as Damien and Robert appeared with an armload of winter clothing, two tearstained little girls, and a bristling, rageful nursemaid.

“My lord, what shall we do with these? She had them upstairs, locked in the wardrobe.”

“Curious child-raising habits they have in this City,” observed Sir Hubert. The girls had fled to their mother’s skirts and had redoubled their howling. “Pry them loose and sit them over there,” said Sir Hubert. “I want to look at them.” For several long and silent moments Sir Hubert, stroking his beard and thinking, stared at the girls. The girls stared back at Sir Hubert. Almost alike, they were, and looked exactly like the mother, except for the red hair. “A girl-breeder,” said the old man to himself. “A damned, strong-blooded girl-breeder.” He paced up and down and muttered to himself, “Much better for a second son.”

“Madame, is this nursemaid one of your people, or one of theirs?” he asked Margaret, who was looking very, very upset.

“They paid her off—she’s one of theirs. My people are all locked in the cellar; he took the keys.” Margaret pointed to her key ring on the belt of Lionel’s headless torso.

“It strikes me they should trade places, then. Robert, take this woman down and let the others out. The place needs cleaning up. Give them a talking to—we’ll be needing their testimony in case there’s an inquiry. And, Gilbert, you were saying—?”

“I need to speak to Margaret.”

“Then speak—what’s stopping you?”

“I mean alone. She says she won’t discuss anything in a room with dead bodies in it.”

“Well, you’ll find bodies in the hall as well. They’re all over the place, except possibly the kitchen. John, Will”—and he motioned to two grooms—“escort them there, stay in the door, and don’t let them out of your sight.”

Brother Gregory led the little party through the hall and into the kitchen. It showed signs of its recent habitation by Lionel and Thomas’s carousing crew. The fires were dead, the locked spice boxes rifled, and the floor, slippery with puddles of ale, was littered with the shards of broken kitchen vessels. In the middle of the floor, cut loose from its mooring in the rafters, a wicker birdcage lay, split wide open.

“Oh! Cook’s bird! She’ll be heartbroken. I do hope they didn’t eat it!”

Brother Gregory surveyed the damage morosely. How like a woman to worry about a bird at a time like this. But he climbed up and peered out the high kitchen window, as the grooms advanced to make sure he wasn’t planning anything. High in the winter-bare tree outside the window, he could make out a flutter of black and white feathers. The bird paused, perched on a swinging branch, and tilted its head to regard Brother Gregory with one shining eye.

“The bird’s all right, Margaret. It’s just out in the tree,” he announced, pulling his nose in. The men retreated again. Women—they weren’t much different from birds themselves. Their brains just flit about and can’t stay in one place long enough to think properly. Who knows what silly thing she’ll come up with next?

“Margaret—” Brother Gregory began.

“Your father’s a monster,” said Margaret.

Brother Gregory bowed his head in agreement. “I never said he wasn’t.” He felt desperately sad. He could feel God slipping away from him and all his plans and dreams dissolving into mist. How was it that father always managed to do that sort of thing to him? He could hardly speak. But Margaret was still in trouble up to her neck, even if she hadn’t the sense to realize it. He’d got her into this mess, and he owed it to her to get her out.

“I—I don’t think you’d like Hugo very much,” Gregory began.

“Hugo’s a nasty piece of work, if I ever saw one.”

Exactly what Brother Gregory had thought of him for years. He felt better. Margaret was very perceptive for a woman.

“I—we—” he started to say. Margaret looked up at him expectantly. He looked dreadful. His battered old gown was slashed and splattered with blood. He had tucked his light helmet under his elbow, and his cowl was thrown back. She could see the dark circles under his eyes and a nasty-looking old bruise across one side of his face, where she supposed that horrid old man had probably clouted him. Over months Margaret had gotten to know him better than he thought she did, and she knew without speaking what he was trying to say. She also knew how much it cost him. So she waited. The grooms in the door shifted with boredom.

“Margaret—I haven’t done very well. The things I’ve tried, they haven’t worked out. Writing, teaching, and now contemplation too. Then, you see, I tried to help you, and that didn’t work out either. Now look at all the mess I’ve made of things. That’s how everything turns out for me—”

“The mess was there before. Kendall’s sons were part of his mess, not part of yours. You did help, you know. You couldn’t know your father was going to do this.”

“I’ve watched him for years. I should have guessed. He always takes what he wants, and doesn’t care who gets hurt. And now he’ll hurt you, Margaret, and it’s my fault.”

“He’ll hurt you, too, I’m afraid,” she answered.

“Yes, but that’s no different than it ever was. It’s always been that way for me. It’s something I intended to take up with God, but I guess I can’t now.” Margaret looked at his troubled face, and put her hand on his sleeve.

“You think God can’t see? God is everywhere.”

Gregory brightened.

“You know, I had a thought like that, too, not so long ago. Do you think God would mind if we got married?”

Margaret started to laugh.

“Gregory, you madman! Is that a proposal?”

Gregory looked surprised, then he looked all about the room, as if he didn’t know where the idea had come from, and perhaps he might see some invisible hole in the air above his head out of which it might have dropped.

“Why, yes, I suppose it is—I didn’t think I could say it.”

“I didn’t think so either.”

“But you know, Margaret, I’m really not Gregory anymore—just plain Gilbert. I was saving the name, for when—when I went back.”

“Gilbert? That doesn’t suit you very well—can’t you just keep the other name a bit longer?”

“I’m afraid I already kept it longer than was proper.”

“Honestly, Gregory, you’re worse than Brother Malachi.”

“But, Margaret, we’re still in a fix, you know. You heard father. We’ll have to live with him awhile, and he’ll be bothering us day and night. It will drive me crazy. Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to boost you out the window so you can run to the neighbors?”

“I think that’s why your father sent those two men along,” said Margaret, pointing to them. “Besides, horrid as he is, he’s right. It would only put off the problem, and who knows what would happen next time?”

“Then you wouldn’t mind—?”

“No, you’re very kind to ask. At least you’re asking, and not telling. Besides, I think—I think I’d like it, Gregory.”

“All settled in there?” boomed Sir Hubert’s voice. “Or do I have to make my own arrangements?”

“It’s settled,” said Brother Gregory, emerging with Margaret and followed by the armed grooms.

“Partly settled,” said his father, eyeing him grimly up and down. “Now, I want to know if you’ve taken any vows with that wretched order of holy imbeciles you were hanging about with.”

“Nothing final, father.” Brother Gregory was curt. Father was already making him angry again.

“Good—saves me a peck of money buying you off, right there. Who would have thought you had the sense?” He paced up and down, inspecting his addle-brained second son while he thought further. “What about before? When you ran off abroad?”

“Minor orders, father, are a part of taking a university degree,” said Brother Gregory in the tone he would use to instruct a simpleton of the obvious. He could feel his rage rising, despite every effort at self-control.

“Just—what?” spluttered the old man, his face staining with crimson. “Why, you prize idiot! Marry a widow? You know damned well a man in minor orders isn’t allowed to marry a widow! I’ll have to buy you off charges! It would be a damned sight cheaper to marry a widow to Hugo, I’ll tell you. You wouldn’t see Hugo playing the fool like that!”

Brother Gregory’s face turned red in its turn, and his temples throbbed. He shouted, “Well, in that case, you can just—”

At this very point something like a voice in the old man’s mind suddenly said, Careful, careful! When have you ever got so close to your heart’s desire? Have you ever yet caught a horse in pasture by letting him see the bridle? Don’t let him bolt now—show him the oat bucket, not the whip. And suddenly Sir Hubert interrupted his son in midsentence with an unusually cheerful and conciliatory voice.

“Now, now, Gilbert, a thought has struck me. Cool down—there’s not a problem in the world. I’ll borrow against her inheritance and settle with you later. Our bishop’s an accommodating fellow—did you know he’s a cousin too? Third degree on your mother’s side. I’ll throw in a shrine if you like—something in your mother’s name might be appropriate, don’t you think?”

Caught off guard that way Brother Gregory was briefly speechless, and the blood settled back down his neck again.

“So? It’s all agreeable to you now? Good! We’ll head for home and the chapel,” said his father.

They walked to the front door together, with Margaret between them, where the little girls, cloaked and mittened, found their mother and hid behind her skirts.

“We’re taking the infants,” said Sir Hubert, waving a gloved hand in their direction. “Women mope about without them. Though doubtless she’ll mope about even with them; it’s the way women are,” he added.

There was a flurry of last-minute arrangements, as Sir Hubert gave orders to his men and to Margaret’s steward, who waited for Margaret’s silent nod to leave. The street was empty as they mounted, but Margaret could see faces looking out from behind the half-closed shutters of the neighbors’ houses. A single cry would bring them, armed, out into the street. Brother Gregory put her up behind the saddle of his brown mare, and Margaret turned for a last look at her own front door. She could feel the tears starting in her eyes, when a raucous shout interrupted her grief.

“Thieves! Thieves!” echoed from the rooftop. She looked up and smiled, in spite of herself. Sometimes birds see things more clearly than people do.

“What’s that?” cried Sir Hubert, and turned in the saddle to put his hand on his sword hilt.

High up on the eaves Cook’s magpie had ceased preening itself and was bobbing about, looking at the riders below.

“Only Cook’s bird,” said Brother Gregory.

A woman’s wheedling voice could be heard from the back of the house.

“Come back, little darling. Mama’s sweetie. Look, look what I’ve put out on the windowsill for you….” Sir Hubert relaxed his guard.

“Preposterous,” the old knight said, and gave the signal to ride off. And as they rode from the door, still listening to Cook’s pleading, he announced, “There’s absolutely no end to the silliness of women.”

“That’s for certain,” laughed Hugo.

“True, true.” The grooms nodded in agreement.

But Gregory was silent.