Margaret of Ashbury 03 - The Water Devil

by Judith Merkle Riley

  “You bit that bread, Alison. That's disgusting, and now it can't be given away. Into the dog basket with it.” I watched as Cecily flung away the bread, and Alison picked it out of the basket to inspect it.

  “I didn't do that,” she said, turning it over several times.

  “You did so. Those are your teeth marks. I know them. Besides, they're too small for anybody else's.”

  “They're yours,” announced Alison, “and you're blaming me.”

  “They're not. My life is far too tragic now to go around biting off bread. Nuns never forget to break their bread off. I'm thinking of taking the religious name, ‘Mary,’ after Our Lady of Sorrows. My lot is grief, grief forever.” Madame's eyes were amused, but I found it hard not to snort.

  “Mademoiselle Cécile,” said Madame, “your stitches have grown fine enough that you might work with me on embroidering an altarcloth.”

  “My stitches are just as fine as Cecily's. I want to, too.”

  “They are not, besides, your fingers are always dirty—” “Mademoiselle Alison, you may be allowed to do the plain stitching, but only if you are very, very good,” announced the wily Madame.

  It was bright midday sun, just after the dinner hour, and Madame was overseeing the packing up of the scraps and trenchers into baskets, one for the dog kennels, one for the poor. It had been the storm of storms, when Madame fixed her eye on Sir Hubert and asked permission to make herself useful in her own humble way by assisting his chaplain in taking the leftovers to the poor.

  “Are you questioning my largesse?” shouted my grim-faced father-in-law.

  “What?” she said, innocently, “you mean you don't have the trenchers taken away? Well, I suppose in this shire, customs are different. I am so sorry, I am a stranger here. I deeply and humbly apologize, and beg your forgiveness for my crude presumption.” He might have calmed down with the apology, but she had overdone with the “crude presumption” part. It smelled of irony, and of the sort of malicious defiance he traditionally associated with my own lord husband, his troublemaking son Gilbert. Since he had to stay on good terms with Gilbert until they found an opportune moment to bury the chest, he shouted at Madame instead.

  “I distribute ALMS on FEAST DAYS! I give ROBES to CONVERTS on Whitsunday! The LORD GOD does not command that we STRIP OURSELVES!”

  “Ah, I see. You must have many adult converts on Whitsundays.” Actually, I believe there was one once. A poor simpleton whose parents had thought he would die, and never bothered to baptize him as a child. It was quite an event. But Sir Hubert was always of making one case into many, when the occasion required it.

  “Why would you REWARD the SLOTHFUL?” he shouted.

  “What of the poor widows and orphans?” she asked.

  “I haven't GOT any! They're looked AFTER!” He knew he was on shaky ground now, so he shouted louder.

  “By whom?” she asked.

  “By their FAMILIES, as is PROPER!”

  “But you do believe in assisting widows and orphans, don't you?”

  “Do you QUESTION my devotion to CHIVALRY?”

  Having backed him into a corner, she then asked if she could by any chance locate a worthy poor widow or orphan or crippled beggar, could she distribute the trenchers.

  “Not the crippled beggars, by God. We'd be having them a-swarming from every village in the shire.”

  That was as good as permission, and so here she was, instructing the future nuns on their charitable duties. It was a wise course, for it kept them away from Lady Petronilla as much as possible.

  NOW THERE WAS a virtue to all those charitable activities that we hadn't planned on, but was very useful. What with all that hurrying in and out of the village church with baskets, and measuring for the altar cloth and checking through the other altar linens and finding them lacking or altogether shabby, our presence became unremarkable. That solved the one problem that my lord husband foresaw with the plan, which was planting the letter that explained all about how the deed had been buried for safekeeping. If it was found in the manor, it might look a bit dubious, but if Gilbert went down to the church and fussed among the records, everyone would know, and that would be dubious, too. But as Malachi said, “You've a brain, Gilbert. Just think of something once you get there.”

  So one bright morning when we were off to take a posset to a poor, sick, but worthy orphan, Gilbert just slipped the letter into my hand and said,“You know, today is a good day, while you're measuring linens and all, to count the candlesticks in the big chest where they keep the church records. I'm thinking I might want to donate a silver candlestick in gratitude for my safe return. But if they have too many, I might just donate a paten instead.” I knew exactly what he meant and slipped that letter down the front of my surcoat. So even though the nave was aswarm with folk, and Father Cedric was hearing confessions in one corner and the girls were doling out leftover white bread to the toothless old men that usually snoozed in the churchyard sun, nobody even noticed when I slipped down the stairs and into the narrow vault below the altar to count the candlesticks. I opened the big chest where the old parish record books were mildewing gently in the damp, and took out that nice, aged, pre-mildewed letter and slipped it in among the pages of the oldest looking register. At the sound of footsteps on the stair, I shut the chest lid and exclaimed, “Three candlesticks! He'd be better off giving the paten!—Oh, Madame, there you are. How can I help?”

  “The girls have distributed the bread. Where did you set the posset?”

  “Upstairs with the children's smocks the girls sewed.” So there you had it. As swift as Reynard the fox takes the best hen, and is never seen again.

  “Dame Margaret,” said Madame, as we walked down the only street in the village,“there is something I must apologize to you for. It has weighed heavy on my conscience these last few days.” Beyond the village, the brook rushed and sparkled in the summer sun.

  “Dame Agathe, you owe no apology that I can think of.”

  “Madame, there was an unpardonable rudeness when I last left your house. I had thought that your lust drove you to your husband's clerk. But I know now from the chaplain that your marriage was forced.”

  “The old man wanted to get his hands on Master Kendall's money,” I said.

  “Your husband has an honorable heart. I misjudged him. I misjudged you. And yet you in your charity offered me a place at the high table. You are a true Christian, Madame, and I apologize from the depths of my heart.”

  “But, Madame, you have greatly uplifted the morals of my daughters. For that I am very thankful. If forgiveness is needed, I freely offer it.” Madame looked very relieved. Then she inspected the girls capering in front of her, and watched as they quickly glanced back before they took off their shoes and began dancing in the water of the brook, steppingstones forgotten.

  “As for the uplift, that is temporary,” she said, “but one must make hay while the sun shines.”

  “Madame, did you have children?”

  “Why, yes,”she said, watching as the girls were joined by the poor cottar's children, half naked, that they had come to clothe. Shrieking and splashing, they galloped about in the water. “I had four girls and three boys. Two died as infants. Only one lives now. She is a nun; her father did not wish to provide for her.” Madame looked away from me as she spoke. What could I say? How does one go on?

  Madame's petty tyrannies, her threadbare decencies, all made more sense than ever to me now.

  “When I see you with your lord husband, and what has grown between you, I understand that you created love out of duty, and that such things are possible, and I respect you for it.”

  “One must do what one can on this earth,” I answered, not knowing what to say. We were stepping across the rushing green brook on the stones. For a while we were silent, until we stood on the other bank.

  “Dame Margaret, is it really true that you ransomed your husband by wagering your virtue for his freedom in a game of dice, and then use
d loaded dice?” Her face turned surprisingly pink for her, and it was clear from the expression on it that she had been dying to ask me that question for a long time.

  “It is,” I answered.

  “Oh, Dame Margaret,” she exclaimed, “where on earth did you get the dice?” We were laughing very hard, when we reached the little hut where the sick woman lay.

  The woman was the daughter of Goody Ann, the midwife, who was without land, and without a living now that her mother had died. She earned a bit of bread sitting with the sick and washing the dead, and sold bad remedies made of herbs, for she had not absorbed enough of her mother's wisdom while she lived. I knew the illness well, not fatal, nor of a danger to any but herself, but her legs were swollen up and she was weak and thought herself ready to die.

  “Bless you, bless you, great ladies, so different than the she-wolf that reigns in the manor house.”We shook up the straw in her bed and made her comfortable. As we poured out the posset she began to pour out talk, and at last, thinking she was on her deathbed, asked us to send for the priest and told us the secret that had been languishing inside of her. Her mother, she believed, had not slipped in the dark, but was pushed off the high outer staircase of the manor tower. “Sure footed she was, and I was walking right before her, holding her things at the bottom. And I swear I heard footsteps leaving, even as she cried out,‘Jesus save me!'”

  “Why, that's a terrible thing,” I said. “Who would push her off like that?”

  “That is the secret they wanted no one to tell. When they called her to attend the lady of the manor, they made me wait outside the door, but I heard it. I heard my mother say, ‘This is no child.’ I tell you, it was a monster born that evening. A devil with horns and cloven hooves that they strangled in secret. Then she took to wearing black and pretending grief, all the while trying to bring another devil to this earth.” Promising to call the priest, we backed out of the low door of the hovel to join the children in the sunshine. There were Cecily and Alison, still wading in the brook, trying to catch dragonflies in their hands.

  “If it were a devil, everyone would know. They'd have to get rid of the body, wouldn't they?” Madame asked, her mind full of good sense.

  “What she heard the midwife say was,‘This is no child.'The rest might well be what she imagined from hearing that. Dame Agathe, I think it was a wind-baby.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  JUST BEYOND THE MANOR MALT-HOUSE there is a little garden of herbs and roses, which I found sadly neglected at my first visit, and set to going again. Now on a fine summer morning I was down there repairing the remains of my handiwork, having taken the children with me to show them some of the wisdom Mother Hilde taught me about plants. Tall white clouds were blowing across the sky, and when one of them passed, a shadow would cross over the little garden, and then vanish, leaving it in sun again.

  “Oh, look here how big the sage has grown. That's good for melancholy and sweating sickness.” Peregrine, in a baby dress and old leggings cut off at the ankle, was intently digging the dirt by the comfrey plants, which had managed to reseed themselves in a big clump. His gaze was intent as he turned up a little rock, a worm, a bug with many legs that hurried away.

  “This one's fennel, mama,” said Alison, breaking off a little branch of it to chew on. She was barefoot, wearing nothing but a summer smock, her red-gold hair shining down her back. Someday she will be a beauty, I thought.

  “Me, too,” said Peregrine, looking up, and Alison broke him off one.

  “It can grow there because the sun on the wall makes the spot warm,” I said.

  “Mother Hilde talks to plants,” said Cecily. “Is that why hers grow better than anybody's?”

  “I don't know. I suppose anybody can talk to plants, but that doesn't mean the plants listen. That's where Mother Hilde is different. She can talk to just about anything and it seems to understand her.” While I spoke, I started tying up an espaliered vine that had slid from its moorings and was growing all along the ground in a tumble.

  “Look in the clouds,” said Alison, pointing up. “They look like things. See? There's a roast duck, and there's a pile of oatcakes and a bee-hive.”

  “I see a horse and a lion right up there in the big one,” said Cecily.

  “No, that's the oatcakes.”

  “I see a green lady,” said Peregrine.

  “Clouds aren't green,” said Alison.

  “The lady is green,” said Peregrine. “She has a dress all weedywet. Her nurse needs to get her a dry one.”

  “And does she ride a pink horse with wings?”

  “No horse, just muddy shoes, and fishes that swim in her toes.”

  “If she's wearing shoes, then her toes don't show,” said Cecily.

  “Yes they do,” said Peregrine, and went back to digging in the dirt with the garden trowel. A shadow seemed to cross us, and I looked up. It wasn't a cloud, it was the old lord, looking at us intently, silently. He had come upon us as quiet as a cat, and just stood there for I don't know how long.

  “Dame Margaret, take the trowel from him.” But when I went to take it, he set up a howl.

  “Peregrine,” said the old lord, his voice not yet fierce, but a storm clearly on the horizon, “lords do not garden. Lords ride. Peasants garden.”

  “Peregrine digs and finds things. Where's my bug? Mama, get me my bug, I want to show gran'papa.”

  “Your bug's run away, Peregrine, now put down the trowel for your grandfather.”

  “When you're bigger, I'll take you badger-hunting. We'll dig and find better than a bug,” said the old man. I don't remember when I'd ever seen him so mellow. The shouting storm I'd anticipated seemed to have blown away.

  “Come to the stable-yard with me. I've got something for little Peregrine,” he said, and astonished, I watched as he hoisted the baby up on his shoulders. I could feel the irritation of the little girls behind me, as they watched him stride past the paddock. Hugo and Gilbert were leaning on the top rail, inspecting a yearling being cantered on a lunge line.

  “I don't like his action,” Gilbert was saying. “See where the hind foot strikes?”

  “He's the best father's got this year—”

  “Maybe when he's shod—”

  Their head turned in astonishment at the sight of their ferocious sire, with the curly-headed boy mounted on his shoulders.

  “Did he ever do that with you?” asked Gilbert in amazement.

  “Not that I recall,” said Hugo, “but he did throw me downstairs once.”

  “That's not the same,” said Gilbert, as they abandoned their post by the rail to follow us.

  “John, bring out the SURPRISE,” the old man roared from the center of the stableyard.

  “Gran'papa, my horsie,” said Peregrine when he saw the groom lead the little mountain pony from the stable door. Black as pitch and round as a barrel, its short legs close to the ground, the creature had a wily little face with a blaze down the front, and a single white foot. But it was not the pony that astounded, even though the old man had always made it clear he would never have anything less than fifteen hands on his place, it was the saddle and bridle, a tiny duplicate of the old man's own war harness. There it was, high cantle and saddle bar, brass embossed leather breastplate and crupper, the most indulgent gift I had ever seen given to any mortal child. I could feel my jaw drop. I turned and looked at Hugo and Gilbert. Their jaws had dropped too. The old man mounted his crowing grandchild on the pony while two grooms held the bridle. Then he stepped back and folded his arms to admire his handiwork.

  “No more scholarship, no more damned bells. My grandson will be a knight,” he growled, looking sideways at his sons and smiling with a certain grim triumph.“John, take the boy out to the paddock and lead him around. I want to see how he takes to it. Sit up STRAIGHT, Peregrine, yes, that's IT! See that? Not even three years old, and he sits like a KING!”

  As we all followed the pony to the paddock, I could hear Cecily sigh. So did Gilb
ert. He looked down from his great height at the unruly red head with its fuzzy braid. His dark eyes were knowing.

  “It's not fair,” she said, her face turned down, her bare feet treading in the dust. I remembered her request to Brother Malachi.

  “Cecily,” he said, sighing equally deeply, “there's not much that's fair on this earth.”

  “I like to ride, too,” she said.

  “I'll ask father if you two can take Old Brownie,” he said. “The good thing is that he won't be fussy about him, and you can go where you like.”

  “I s'pose that's good enough,” said Alison, interrupting.

  “Father,” said Cecily, “I embroidered that altar cloth for hours, I've said prayers every morning and every night, and carried all those baskets down to the church and been polite to everybody. I've been good, father, and I haven't climbed trees or anything.”

  “I know exactly what you mean,” he answered, his voice grave and understanding, “I've been good, too.” Two grooms were leading the pony around in a circle, while his grandfather shouted orders.

  “Heels DOWN, boy, don't hold on!” Peregrine beamed, and the loafing peasants who always seemed to turn up when anything interesting was going on applauded and cheered.

  “Hurrah for the little lord!” they cried. Above the paddock loomed Brokesford's single tower, flat topped and round. At the narrow window, a flash of something caught my eye. It darted away, and then was there again. It was a woman's face, white with hatred.

  LAUNDRESSES WERE BOILING the linens over the courtyard fire when Lady Petronilla stormed past. One was stoking the fire while another stirred the heavy, wet stuff with a stick. Margaret had just sent the girl up with the empty basket for the tablecloths. Her old dog, a little creature that looked like a mound of animated, unravelled rope, had followed her out, wheezing, and now trailed at her hems.

  “Not them, too,” said the woman with the stick.

  “Everything,” said Margaret. “I swear, you haven't done them since the last time I visited—oh, where's she going like that?”