“God,” he whispered. “I scream like a woman. It’s the pain. It’s worn me down, and I die like this, instead of on the battlefield. Like a dog. In bed.”
“Lie still, and drink this,” I’d say, and he’d answer, “Horrible stuff. Tastes like the devils in hell brewed it,” in gasps, between sips.
Then, one time he looked at me with his eyes, his once terrible blue eyes, now all sunken in and rimmed with black, as if he were staring out of a cave.
“Save me,”he whispered.
“I’m doing my best. I’ve come with another poultice,” I said.
“No,” he answered. “Save me. Save me with the light in your hands, as you did Urgan.” Sweet Jesu, he’d seen. He’d known all along, and said nothing.
“The bone. You mended the bone and lifted the destrier. Mend me, mend me like that,” he whispered desperately, so that no one else in the hall could hear.
“The power’s not with me now,” I answered.
“You mean that you hate me,” he said with resignation. “It is fair. I did too much. I ask too much,” and he turned his face to the wall.
“No, no,” I said, pitying him so much that I could no longer hold back my secret. “The power can’t be used. I can’t call it up. It’s gone within, as it always does with me, to aid the child.”
He turned his face back and looked at me a long time.
“It’s true then. He did sleep with you after all. I thought he had, but he’d never say.”
“I love him, and I have his child.”
“Loved him, you mean.”
“No. Love. He’s not dead. I know it. He will come home to his child, and to me.”
“You are a fool; I misjudged you. Misjudged badly. I never took you for a lady, when I first saw you there in that rich man’s house. But now I see that you love nobly. Hopelessly, and without recourse. It proves your blood.”
I tell you, there are times even a pitiful half-dead man can make a woman furious. But it’s not nice to shout at sick people. So I said, “I swear it to you; he lives.”
“You’ve gone mad,” he answered, “but I wish to heaven it were true. Madness is more merciful than what I must suffer. If only God would take my life, instead of letting me know what I know.” And he moaned as I changed the poultice. “He’s gone; he’s dead. Are you too crazy to believe the truth?”
“You didn’t look hard enough. He’s alive.”
“Look? I didn’t look? You fool woman! What do you know? I tell you, I searched for days and nights. I went out with the heralds by torchlight, and turned over every corpse as they took down the coats of arms for the death-roll. Every face, every dark head, looking for his. I went through the smoking ruins of that city searching—searching and calling.”
“He’s captured then.”
“We’ve never had a ransom message. No man of rank can disappear without a corpse or a ransom notice.”
“He’s wounded then, and hiding.”
“Hiding? With the French? They’d as soon cut his throat, after what we did there. Make up your mind to it, woman. He’s dead and that child you carry is an orphan, God help it.”
“Never, I say.”
“Mad, completely mad. As I wish I were. My God, my God, he was the good son, and I never knew it until it was too late.” He clutched at my sleeve with his feeble hand. “Whatever you do,”he whispered, “don’t tell Hugo you’re pregnant. If I die, get away—get away from here before the child is born. Hide it. Hugo has become a wolf. The thought of money has turned his head. I know. I see everything clearly now. Too clearly, now that it is too late for anything but bitter repentance.”
“Bitter repentance, eh?” said Master Kendall’s ghost at midnight. “That’s cheap stuff. Pretty plentiful where I am now.” His airy voice drifted above the bed in the dark room. He chuckled softly. “In a way, I’m grateful God let me live long enough to mend my life. I met you, Margaret, and I’ve never repented of anything that came since—except that I had so little time at your side. Ah, me, so I do repent, after all. I repent for my greed at wanting you forever. But you need a live man, Margaret. You can’t make a life with only a cold ghost. Let us lay plans for your search.”
“Oh, Master Kendall, I’ve always been so grateful for your intelligence.” The filmy thing acted pleased—even in the darkness I could sense the movement.
“I may be dead,”he answered happily, “but I’m not stupid.”
But in the days that followed, while we awaited the bridal pair, old Sir Hubert did not die of his bitter regrets, but got better in spite of himself. His color turned from gray to a kind of pale ivory, and sometimes when the fever was up, you could see two hectic spots of red on his cheeks. When the horn sounded from the gate, he demanded to be propped up on pillows to greet the new bride, to the great joy of his steward and Broad Wat, as well as all the other folk of the manor. There was never a more beautiful pair, as they knelt before him for his blessing: Sir Hugo, radiant in strength and youth, beside his graceful, honey-haired young bride, the lady Petronilla.
I looked her over closely when we were introduced. Not a day of sorrow had ever marred her face. Her hair was bound up in thick coils under an exquisite translucent silk veil, held in place by a circlet of gold. She had blue-gray eyes with pale lashes; her nose was straight, with a bit of a turned up tip. Her features were even, and she had a hint of brown in her silky complexion, for she loved the hunt and all out-of-door sports. Her riding was legendary, as was her prowess with the short bow and arrow. Gossip had it that she could sing and play the psaltery. I do admire the sound of the psaltery. Perhaps we’d get along. After all, it was a lonely business, being the sole lady. Two can do a lot more than one.
Her hands were covered with rings, sometimes two on a finger, and she fluttered them when she talked, so that the stones would catch the light. Her kirtle was of deep blue silk, bound at the edge with gold, and her surcoat a rich crimson, embroidered with flowers and curious beasts in gold and silver thread. She knew how to walk with mincing steps in that special way that showed off her trailing train and the tiny slippers that peeped from beneath her hem.
I had seen her lean to Hugo and heard her whisper, “Who is that?” as she looked across the room at me, where I stood with Cecily and Alison in the crowd of well-wishers and retainers. Somehow her glance told me that I was too old, too plain, and too thin with grief.
“May I introduce you, dear one, to Dame Margaret, my brother’s widow,” said Hugo, leading her forward by a single finger held high. The silk in her gown rustled as she moved gracefully toward me. She wore a lot of jewels. She had a great gold cross, set with rubies, and a gold chain, and yet another chain of worked gold set with pearls. I don’t care to wear jewels, myself. They’re cold and hard and get in the way—even if they do look elegant. I wear just two rings. The narrow, plain band of gold engraved with the de Vilers arms that was my wedding ring from Gregory, and Master Kendall’s wide one, which is worked in flowers and leaves, and has Omnia vincit amor engraved on the inside. They’re both from somewhere else. Gregory’s was from his mother, and when his father produced it at the wedding, Gregory shouted at him for robbing his mother’s corpse, and it delayed the proceedings considerably. Master Kendall’s was made up for some mistress, I suspect, but either he thought better of it or she threw him over—because there it was, all fancy and ready made when he proposed to me unexpectedly. I’ve shifted it to the other hand, but I’d never take it off. And then there’s my cross, of course. It’s very old and comes from beyond the sea, and has very strange properties.
She looked me up and down.
“Dear sister,” she said. “What a lovely cross. May I touch it?” I was going to say no, for the Burning Cross has a peculiar property. Master John of Leicestershire, who gave it to me years ago, said if I could wear it I could have it, because it burned all those who did not walk closely with God. Of course, I didn’t believe him; I thought it was a graceful way of offering me payment for
saving his daughter’s life, when I told him I’d take no money for it. But it’s done some odd things since then that make me suspect that maybe John might have been right. But as the word formed on my lips I saw the look in my new sister-in law’s lovely eyes. It was greed. She expected me to say, “Beloved sister, it’s yours.”
“Of course you may touch it,” I said. “It’s an old relic, from the time of the Crusades.” She reached out her beautiful hand to fondle it and her eyes said, “Don’t wait so long, dear sister, to offer it to me as a wedding present. It’s not gracious.”
“Lovely—ah!” she cried. “My finger’s burnt.” She put her finger in her pouting, exquisite little mouth and sucked on it. “There’s something wrong with it.”
“I am so terribly sorry, dear sister. It must have been an insect. See? Little Alison touches it without harm.” And I leaned over to demonstrate. As she looked down at Alison, a cold look flashed across her face.
“My dear lord, do introduce me to the rest of your guests and family.” She smiled, and he led her away to meet the neighbors and their wives, their two hands held high, joined only by his index finger crossing hers, in that elegant gesture of the French court.
“A lady, a real lady,” I heard the servants murmur behind me.
“How elegant, how courteous, how beautiful!” I could hear the guests whisper as the beautiful couple circled the room. As soon as I was unnoticed, I ran upstairs to weep. The solar was full of guest beds, as was every room in the house. The chapel, all shining in its new paint, was hung with flowers, and Father Simeon was already arguing in there with the little Franciscan that Lady Petronilla had brought with her as her confessor. So I was reduced to hiding under the tower stairs with the rats, and weeping there until there wasn’t a tear left in my body.
That night, lying in bed alone in the dark, I was waked up by a terrible pain in my belly. Was it a dream or not a dream? I opened my eyes to find a dreadful serpent peering at me with horrible red eyes.
“Get off!” I said.
“Off?” it said, with that dreadful smile serpents have, and its forked tongue flicked in and out. “You mean out, don’t you?” I looked down the length of its shining green and red scales, to where its coils lay. No wonder it hurt so—it had gnawed a great hole in my belly, and coil after coil of it oozed endlessly out of the deep wound.
“God save me!” I cried—or didn’t cry, for no one in the room waked up.
“God? You want God? He’s very far from wherever I am,” hissed the odious monster, and writhed so that the pain nearly tore me apart.
“Who, or what, are you?”
“I am Envy, dear sister, and I have eaten out your guts. When I am finished with them, I will eat out your heart, and you’ll die.” I screamed, screamed soundlessly again and again. How had I given myself over to this evil monster? I knew. It was when the chests upon chests were carried in, until the servants marveled. It was when the beautiful greyhounds she’d brought were admired by everyone, even the old lord. And when her chaplain had sprinkled holy water on the great new marriage bed her father had sent, and her old nursemaid had exclaimed, “My little rose! My precious beauty! So soon we are a woman, a great lady, a mistress in our own house!”
Yes, that’s when I’d let the thing in. And dream or no dream, it was eating me alive. How could I get rid of the awful thing? I leaned over the side of the bed and vomited into the chamber pot, and the bitter taste of it reminded me I was awake. I stood up in the dark, and felt on the perch for the great, soft robe de chambre that the old lord had given me, and wrapped it around my naked body. A bit of moonlight came from behind a cloud. My girls—who would protect them from Hugo’s greed if Envy ate up my heart? Who would save the baby? Who would find Gregory? I tiptoed to my sleeping girls, to hear their breath in the dark—half drowned as the faint sound was by the snores of Mother Sarah, who slept in the straw bed on the floor beside them. Silently, I crossed to the tower door, and pushed it open ever so slowly, so it wouldn’t squeak. I’d go to the chapel, and beg God to take away the terrible serpent—I must before I died here in this dreadful house. The cold air in the tower passage took away all the sleep that remained in me as I felt along the wall.
The chapel, too, was dark, but moonlight came faintly through the windows and made the new whitewash glisten darkly. The Last Judgment, with “all those figures,” was a dark shadow above the altar. Through the narrow, arched windows, you could glimpse the cold stars trembling high on the dome of the sky. The world seemed so empty and cold.
I stood on tiptoe at the high stone windowsill and looked out at the dark, silent world. “God, God,” I whispered out into the silence. “Where are You now? You’ve abandoned me here alone, and I’m lost.” I suppose I expected God to answer. Sometimes He does, you know. But you never know when. It has to do with logic—His logic, which is too deep for me to follow. Half the time when He speaks, I don’t understand a word of it anyway. But this night, nobody answered. The shadows of the trees below rustled in the night breeze, and I remained utterly alone.
“You want to run away, don’t you?” Oh, just what I needed. To be bothered by the Weeping Lady in the midst of a spiritual crisis. I tell you, there’s no privacy anywhere.
“I know you want to run away. I can tell by the way you stare out of windows and count over the things in your chests. I used to do that too. ‘I’m going home to my mother,’ I’d say, and he’d say, ‘I’ll beat you so badly you’ll never step over that threshold again.’ You have no idea how I’ve enjoyed watching him scream and suffer down there in the hall. If you run away, he’ll die and go to hell, which would please me greatly—except that his little image, Hugo the knightly, will take his place, and I don’t want him to have the pleasure.”
It’s very tiresome to hear someone so narrow-minded when one is pondering great issues, like why God is silent, and also trying to get rid of a large personal problem.
“You’re planning to leave with that smoky old merchant. I’ve been listening. Well, I want to go too. It won’t be interesting when he’s in hell and Hugo is lording it over everyone, so I’d like to be gone, as well. London might suit me. It’s interesting there. I’m going to look into cradles, as all the other Weeping Ladies do.”
This was the last thing I needed.
“You don’t want me, do you? Pretty snippy, for a daughter-in-law. Oh, don’t be shocked. You thought I was stupid like all those other Weeping Ladies. You ought to know he gets his brains from me—not from that shriveled old mummy on the bed downstairs. I knew perfectly well that he grew up. Of course, boys are like kittens. Very cute when little, ugly when they grow up. It took me a while to recognize him—not much of the kitten left. But you couldn’t mistake the nose. Very elegant. A long, Norman nose just like mine and Father’s. And all mixed up in his mind, and ungrateful for good things—just like a man—you’re welcome to him. I had him when he was pretty. Besides, he needs someone with sense to look after him. He hasn’t got much, not that I didn’t try. No, you need me to go with you. Especially if you decide to go hunting for him.”
“This is not what I need—not tonight. Can’t you see I’m suffering? Bother me tomorrow, won’t you?”
“Tomorrow? Tomorrow’s too late. No. Tomorrow morning I want you to take the little badger skin shoes, the ones with the holes in them, and put them in a sack about your neck. They’re his, you know. I made them myself. A child shod in badger skin shoes will always grow up to be a great horseman. Now, once you’ve got them, I can follow you anywhere, just as that pushy merchant followed your Psalter right here to my lovely chapel.”
“But—but—”
“Don’t you ‘but’ me. Don’t you know you shouldn’t annoy ghosts? I might do something nasty. But instead, I’ll do something nice, to convince you I mean business. You know that big snake you’ve got? Oh, don’t look surprised. I saw it. I had one, too, when my sister married a great lord of Brabant. Oh, he was learned, pious, and good. His wealth c
ame in stacks, and my sister dressed in silk and never had to lift her hand. Then I found out he was hunchbacked, and made friends with her again. After all, family is family—you can’t do without. I heard none of her children had normal bones. ‘Too bad,’ I wrote her, ‘but at least they’ve normal brains, which is more than I can say for mine.’ So—suppose I take away the snake. Then will you take me?”
“If you can, I will.” The thing had begun to stir again, and the pain alone would kill me if I didn’t rid myself of it soon.
“You follow me and listen,” said the Weeping Lady. I felt my way in the dark after the soft swishing noise she made, to the door of the room next to the chapel. The great room of the Sieur de Vilers, now inhabited by Sir Hugo and his bride. Through the door I could hear muffled sounds.
“Put your ear to it—after all, you can’t go through it, as I can. Don’t worry, I’ll keep watch—you won’t be caught,” said the Weeping Lady.
This is what I heard.
“Wake up, wake up—I want it again.”
“Mmm. No. You’ve hurt me,” a pouting voice responded. “I won’t be able to go hunting for a month.”
“You should be proud: when they display the sheets tomorrow everyone will praise you.”
“Proud of what? Giving up everything for this shabby little house? You swore we’d live in London.”
“And so we shall—”
“Ow! Ow! You get off! I tell you, I’m not one of your peasant wenches.” There was the sound of flesh hitting flesh.
“You little bitch—that’s what you get for clawing me. Try that again and I’ll break your nose. Then you won’t be so popular in town.”
“You touch me again and I’ll go home to Father. You deceived him. Your manor’s a hovel, and your father is nowhere as near death as you let on.”
In Pursuit of the Green Lion Page 15
