In Pursuit of the Green Lion

by Judith Merkle Riley

  BUT OUR TIME TOGETHER was too short, and as the hour of departure arrived, we grew more feverish, as if we might never again see one another in this life. And more and more we realized what it was that we might be losing; yet something kept us from saying it out loud, perhaps it was the fear of loss itself. In this frantic time, even the beginning of the world had been abandoned. Only iron constitutions had kept Sir Hubert and his neighbors from collapse during the frantic round of drunken dinner parties that accompanied their parting. It was busy under the stairs and in the tower bedrooms, too, for this was a time when women could deny nothing to heroes who might never return.

  “So, Margaret, we ride for Dover, encamp until the men and horses are enrolled, and then it’s overseas to Normandy and glory.” I was sitting on the window seat in the solar, doing mending, while Gregory was explaining things to me to allay my fears; it was all easy, he said. He had spread several packets on the seat opposite, and was checking over their contents. The girls were listening quietly for once.

  “You enroll horses? They’re paid too?”

  “No, not that. Just men are paid—and I might add my military pay’s gone up considerably now that I’m no longer just an esquire. But note is made of the value of each horse we bring with us, to compensate us if one of them’s lost.”

  “But who will compensate me if you’re lost?”

  “Don’t be silly, Margaret. I’m not a horse. Besides, I get a third of my pay for the entire campaign in a lump sum in advance. I’ll send it to you from Dover, to pay the Lombards. All right? Don’t look so pale. I’ll be back. It’s only a few months, after all. It would be different if I were riding with Father. He sticks at nothing, and damn the consequences. There’s a reason I don’t tell you stories about when I was in France with him the last time. But a commander’s staff is different. You get only as much glory as you wish for.—Piers, could you go see if they’ve finished packing my sumpter horses yet?”

  Gregory looked over his last packet, and checked it once again, before he wrapped it himself and sealed it against the damp in a rawhide cover. It was the box of pens, paper, and a well-sealed inkhorn that would not part company with him until he returned home again. Damien was finishing the last of his packing, too, on the floor of the solar. We all turned to look as Robert the squire sauntered by him, a flower from some lady tucked in his hat, whistling casually.

  “Sir Hugo says you’re to hurry,” he said, inspecting Damien’s work. Then he smoothed down one of his eyebrows with a forefinger, and teased, “So, Damien, you’re wearing no favor? You haven’t any lady?”

  “I certainly do,” said Damien cheerfully, strapping up his pack. “My lady mother.”

  “Your lady mother?” Robert repeated with some sarcasm. “Then she’s given you her favor?”

  “Why, yes indeed. Her kiss when I went away into service, and I’ve never had a better favor.”

  “Damien, you will always be a bumpkin. You need a proper lady, not your mother. I myself”—and he smiled a wicked smile—“have Sir John’s wife, the lady Genevieve.” Robert, you sly-boots, I thought, that’s the only reason you bothered to come up here. Kiss and tell; they’re all alike, men are, old or young. With a very few exceptions—so few as to hardly count at all.

  “And so have half the world,” said Damien cheerfully. “When I choose a lady, she will be chaste, and not pass out favors the way a priest sprinkles benedictions. Then I’ll worship her from afar and gain a noble reputation, long after everyone’s forgotten who you wallowed in the mud with.”

  “Tall words, tall words for a man who’s as slow as you are,” answered Robert, who was not much annoyed, since he’d made his point.

  “Damien, Damien.” Cecily had left my side, and gone to stand by him where he sat on the floor. Her sister trailed after her. Cecily had untied the ribbon that held her tousled red curls, and held it out to him.

  “What’s this?” he said, looking up.

  “My favor,” she said, extending the limp, soiled object. Robert laughed sarcastically. Alison’s face turned red and swelled up, and she burst into tears.

  “No fair, Cecily, you’re always first!” she howled.

  “You haven’t a lady,” Cecily insisted.

  “Alison, Cecily! You behave!” I was shocked at how forward they’d become. Cecily set her chin in that stubborn way she has. It was going to be a scene.

  “Don’t worry, Dame Margaret. I won’t hold her to it.” Damien was always sweet-tempered.

  “You said you haven’t got a lady,” Cecily repeated.

  “Mine too, mine too! Cecily can’t be anybody’s lady. She’s too mean!”Alison’s fat little fingers undid her own hair ribbon.

  “Well, it seems that I do now,” said Damien, looking bemused. “Two little ladies, in fact. When you grow up, you’ll choose finer knights than me by far, but for now, I’m honored.” That was one of the things that made Damien so winning. He always took children seriously, at their word. Taking the two hair ribbons, he twined them into an elaborate lover’s knot, and tied the ends about his sleeve.

  “There,” he said. “Now I can do battle with dragons—with ogres—and even with the French.” He smiled his wide smile, which was just like sunshine. Robert looked disgusted. Gregory, who had watched the entire proceedings with a look of austere disapproval, just shook his head as if to say, Women, shameless as soon as they’re out of the cradle.

  “My lord husband,” I said, “you’ve asked for nothing from me.”

  “From a wife? France is no tourney; besides, this time I’m packing pens.”

  “And a sword. But you will take my blessing, won’t you?” He looked amused at my presumption. After all, who’d studied theology?

  “Of course,”he answered. “Always.”

  I couldn’t help it. As he knelt before me where I sat on the window seat, I could feel the light surging up inside. As I put my hands on him, I could feel it springing and seeking. It shone through the bones of my hands, and flowed between us like a thin sheet of flame. It trickled through all the places in both our bodies, healing as it went—an old bruise, a muscle strain, a little kitchen cut. It was like being in the presence of a living thing. And when it was done, it spread to illuminate the room—pale orangish pink, before it glimmered and vanished.

  “Goodness, Margaret, you have such cool hands,” said Gregory. He wriggled his shoulder. “Hmm. Odd. That bruise I took at the quintain feels much better. Did you see how the sun came from behind a cloud just now? Quite lit up the room.”

  Damien and Robert were totally silent. They had stopped what they were doing and stood stock-still.

  “Why are you staring?” asked Alison. “It’s just what Mama does for bumped knees.”

  “My lady Margaret,” said Damien, and his voice was shaky, “may I have your blessing too?” Robert followed silently behind him, and each knelt in turn. How could I refuse them what they needed, even if it revealed me?

  But as they stood, awestruck, Gregory whispered in my ear: “Margaret, it’s not kind to trick the gullible.” I didn’t answer. I suppose sometimes husbands are the last of all people to recognize a wife’s qualities. But you’d think, since he knew the whole story of my adventures with the light, he’d have recognized it when he saw it.

  “What’s going on here? You’re slow! Too slow! The men are in the courtyard and the horses waiting! Enough of touching farewells!” Hugo had come up the stair unnoticed, and his shout broke into the strange silence of the room.

  “Damien, that pack should have been loaded long ago!” he barked. Damien swung it onto his back. With Cecily and Alison holding my hands, we followed the men down the stair through the hall and into the courtyard.

  The pink of dawn had faded, and the morning was fresh and fine. Birds sang in the orchard, where the blossoms had already given way to the new green fruit. Grooms held the great destriers, which the squires, mounted on their palfreys, would lead on the long trip to the coast. The armor was alr
eady loaded on the sumpter horses, and the last of the baggage was being strapped up. The men from the villages, with no armor but leather breastplates and helmets, stood, some holding pikes and others with longbows on their backs, while their women embraced them and wept.

  Gregory had already informed me that as the only lady present, I must set an example. I stood, sick and forlorn in the arch of the door, clutching his big sword. He was the last of the family to mount. As his horse was led to him at the foot of the stair, he mounted solemnly, and I handed up the sword to him with an impassive face, as the villagers turned to watch the little drama. With the gentry, staging is everything. I’ve seen players at work, and I know. Then the gates were thrown open, and Sir Hubert, dressed in his finest, gave the signal to go. They were a brave looking lot, even for a little manor, with pennons flying and gold-embroidered surcoats glistening with the de Vilers coat of arms. And no family was better mounted. Sir Hubert had stripped his stables for the venture—and his stables, even then, were notable.

  As the last of the party passed through the gate, I could feel a terrible lumpy thing moving inside me. It got bigger, and pushed into my heart, which pounded violently, and then to my throat, where it nearly choked me. They were well down the long avenue of trees when the thing seized my whole body. It was panic. Raw panic.

  “Wait, wait!” I screamed after them. The women in the courtyard stared at me.

  “Don’t go!” I cried, and I began to run like a madwoman after them. People drew aside to let me run through the courtyard and frantically past the still-open gates. The departing men proceeded as they had begun, at a dignified walk, the unmounted soldiers marching behind the mounted party. My breath was tearing through me, my chest was bursting as I ran—ran past the marchers, who turned to stare, the grooms, the packhorses, the squires with the destriers dancing beside them on their halters, to where the family rode, staring impassively ahead. Gregory rode just behind his father and brother. As I drew even with him and grabbed his stirrup, I was panting so desperately that I couldn’t speak. He pulled out of the line of march as I dragged at his stirrup, looking down at me reprovingly the while.

  “Margaret, what is it? You’re making a fool of me,” he hissed, reining in his tall black palfrey by the side of the road.

  I still clutched at his stirrup, which was all that kept me from falling, as I managed to say in between gasps, “Wait—oh, wait.”

  “For God’s sake, for what?” he said, looking down into my panicked, tear-stained face.

  “Say it, in God’s name—say it. Don’t go without saying it.”

  “Say what?” He looked utterly puzzled now.

  “Say ‘I love you.’You have to say ‘I love you’ before you go.”

  “Oh, Margaret, you idiot,” he said, and his face looked all tender. “You know that’s true already.” He leaned down and gently detached my hands from his stirrup, and kissed my upturned face as you would a baby’s.

  “Now don’t you make any more fuss, and do act like a lady,” he admonished, turning his horse, which was dancing with impatience. “God bless you, Margaret,” I could hear him say as he spurred his palfrey to canter back to the vanishing column.

  “Oh, Jesu,” I whispered to myself. “We didn’t—” My knees grew so weak, I had to sit down, right there in the dust by the side of the road. “I’m lost.”

  NOW LET ME WRITE down this true thing: there is something that changes about a manor when none but old men and boys are left. It is the women. Women who sit silent speak out, women who are weak plant and sow and reap; women who are simpletons make hard judgments, and women who faint at the sight of blood defend great houses with arrows and boiling oil. It is as if a spell is lifted: when the men return, the spell does, too, and we all become stupid and weak again. It is a mystery, how it happens. And, of course, the men don’t think it does, for they were gone during the transformation. Though how did they suppose their world was there for their return if we were as incapable as they believe?

  So it was at Brokesford, where the first sign of change was in the village brewster’s house. Without husbands to forbid women’s gathering, drinking, and gossiping, the benches were full of chattering women who ended a hard day’s labor as any man would. And then, with the lords gone, poaching increased, for the women were as fierce hunters as any men. The steward turned a blind eye to peasant vermin hunting in this season, for it protected the harvest and the chicken coops in the absence of more genteel sport.

  Often as not, I’d find the bakehouse, the malthouse, or the dairy abandoned and have to go myself to retrieve their wayward occupants. There they’d be, surrounded by a crowd of other screaming peasant women, clubbing coneys as the little creatures fled the muzzled ferret let loose within their burrow. As they came to the surface, they’d be entangled in the nets spread over the entrances, and thence it was but a brief time before they were converted into stew and mittens. But I can’t bear coney hunting. The only time a coney utters a sound is in mortal terror, as it sees the club descend. It’s a thin, high scream that tears through the mind. It would take me all my strength to penetrate the eerie wailing to order the manor folk back to their duties.

  And, of course, since I was the lady of the place, at least for the time being, I found myself constantly accosted by petitioners, mostly appeals for reversals of judgments of the steward’s court, or, increasingly, women with familiar-looking little blond children in their arms, asking for alms. I suppose they thought I’d be more compassionate than the old lord, who always said, “If I support one, they’ll all be at my door; and who’s to say they’re mine, anyway? These women who can’t keep their skirts down—pah! They’ll all claim anything for a handout.”

  But I’ve never yet been able to turn away a child in need, and even though the old lord had left me without a penny of ready money, I found meals and gleanings and old garments and lengths of coarse wool from somewhere so that they did not leave as naked and hungry as they came. But the steward complained that I gave away too much, and each time we clashed it was fiercer, so that I dreaded each confrontation more than the last. And, of course, it was embarrassing explaining to the girls, who were curious. But I suppose it’s my fault for telling them that the way you get babies is by being married. I thought at the time it was a better story than saying that God sent them from heaven in a basket on a rope, but I hadn’t anticipated the difficulties.

  “Mama, why do those women with babies come here to ask for bread?” asked Cecily, who was always observant. “Why don’t they just bake it in their own houses, or buy some from the bakers?”

  “Umm. Well, they don’t have houses or money, Cecily.”

  “Did their houses burn down?”

  “Not quite. You see, they—ah—aren’t married.”

  “Oh. But where did the babies come from? Did God make a mistake when He lowered the basket?”

  “Where did you hear about the basket, Cecily?”

  “Oh, from Mother Sarah. She told me all about it. The basket is gold, and God takes it back afterward—otherwise the world would be much too full of gold baskets. I think those women should shout up at God when they see the basket coming, ‘You made a mistake, God. I haven’t stood at the church door. Send the basket back after I’m married.’”

  “Well, that’s a good idea, Cecily.” I sighed.

  “Cecily’s a dummy,” said Alison. “God never makes mistakes. Those women are all married, and the papas died. Now they haven’t got any house anymore, or any money, just like us.”

  “You shut up, Alison,” said Cecily, and gave her sister a ferocious cuff. “I told you not to tell Mama that.” As Alison howled I could see Cecily’s anxious face seeking out the worry in my own. “That won’t ever happen to us, will it, Mama?” she asked.

  “No, sweetheart, never. You’ll always be looked after. Your papa left you a dowry for marrying.” If I can keep hold of it, I thought silently. Cecily was silent, working it over in her mind.

 
“Mama,” she said suddenly, “aren’t knights supposed to protect widows and orphans?” I hesitated a moment, thinking of the widows and orphans being made abroad.

  “Why, yes, they are, Cecily,” I answered.

  “Stepgrandfather is a knight. Why doesn’t he give them anything?” Oh, deeper and deeper. I sighed again.

  “People forget, sometimes, what they’ve intended.”

  A woman’s voice broke in from behind us: “You do put things in the kindest way, don’t you?” It was Cis, the brazen, with a basket of wet laundry on her head, on her way to hang it out.

  “Cis, you forget yourself before children,” I remonstrated.

  “Sorry, mistress. But I’m an orphan, and look how they took care of me,” she said, smoothing her old gown over her stomach with the hand that wasn’t balancing the laundry basket.

  “Cis, not you too?”

  “And what do you think comes from all that tumbling? If they were here instead of you, I’d be out in a ditch like a dog—and they’d have another laundress.” She didn’t sound bitter, just matter-of-fact.

  “Cis, I’ll help.”

  “With what? A loaf of bread? An old raggedy blanket? I tell you, lady, that good as you are, no one can live on that. But I got faith. God means better for me, and I’m going to take that better when it comes.”

  But I hadn’t even time to shush her when the welcome distraction of a gaggle of shrieking women and children was upon us. Mother Sarah, old Malkyn, Peg the dairymaid, and a half-dozen others.

  “Mistress, come quick! The steward’s got a thief in the dairy!”

  “And where were you when he got in? At the brewster’s?” I hurried off to investigate with the whole crowd of them, even Cis and her basket, on my heels. I gritted my teeth for battle when I saw the scrawny-looking fellow the steward had by the ear. Both hands were bound behind his back, and he was pleading for mercy. A scrubby mongrel, completely overlooked, was finishing the remains of a new green cheese, lying on the ground entangled in the cheesecloth in which it had so recently been hanging.