A Vision of Light (2 page)

As Margaret turned to go, she looked back intently at him, and a shrewd look of calculation passed over her face. It was the arrogance that had caught her attention. All the ones who can really read and write are like that, she thought. She watched intently as Brother Gregory stood at his full height and looked down his nose at her, as if he had a hundred dinners waiting for him, and her work didn’t interest him in the least. Her eyes followed him as he turned to see if he could find other business.

By late that afternoon Brother Gregory’s luck hadn’t turned, and he wandered disconsolately into the muddy churchyard. He was feeling rather hollow inside, and the bare branches and the section of the church wall above his head seemed to heave and whirl in the gray sky in a most unusual fashion. He had just stopped for a moment to lean against the churchyard wall when that woman again, who had seemed to come out of nowhere, was tugging on his worn sleeve, her maid standing behind her. He looked down at her while her face went on talking and talking, and followed her through a maze of alleys to a little bakeshop in Cheapside, where she seemed to think they could discuss her project in greater privacy. Here she sat Brother Gregory down in a corner and ordered quite a bit more food than she needed, which she placed in front of him. Brother Gregory ate very slowly, until the smoky bakeshop ceiling quit moving about, and all the while she pleaded with him in the most humble and self-effacing way. It didn’t seem so wrong, what she wanted, especially if one took into consideration the fact that she’d been told to do it by a Voice. It just had to be seen in the right light and it wasn’t so bad, not so bad at all. And so Brother Gregory agreed to come the next day to her husband’s house by the river to begin the work.

The very next morning Brother Gregory threaded his way among the laden donkeys, horsemen, and merchants on Thames Street, following it as it wound along the bank of the river, searching for the house of Roger Kendall. The street was a favorite place for merchants who dealt in imported goods to locate their houses: Brother Gregory recognized the house of a noted vintner a few doors down from his destination. Then he stopped for a moment before an imposing, three-storied house that looked like the right place, inspecting it up and down. The front was crisscrossed with elaborately carved and brightly painted timber supports, and from the corners where the timbers joined, there stared out the curiously carved and gilded faces of angels and beasts, while under the high, pointed eaves, painted owls’ faces were hidden at the roofline. The lead gutters at the end of the eaves were finished off with a pair of fancifully cast leaden gargoyles, whose open mouths formed the drain spouts.

Even from the street Roger Kendall’s love of comfort was evident, and Brother Gregory could easily understand how his wife was so spoiled. The windows were unusual for a private residence: between brightly painted green and red carved shutters, there were panes of real glass, set in thick little circles joined together with lead. On the great timber above the front door, between two deeply cut crosses, the motto of the house had been carved beneath a representation of Kendall’s coat of arms:
DEXTRA DOMINI EXULTAVIT ME.

Brother Gregory inspected the seal above the motto: yes, this was surely the place. It certainly looked like a merchant’s seal: there was not a lion on it, and probably it wasn’t even registered with the College of Heralds. Three sheep, a balance, and a sea serpent. The man certainly made it plain how he had made his money. Brother Gregory lifted the heavy brass door-knocker. In a few moments he had been shown to a place where he might wait in the great hall. As he sat on a bench, inspecting the painted seal on the chimney over the great hearth, his matted sheepskin cloak beside him, he wondered how long it would be before she tired of the project. After all, how much could a woman have to say? In a few days, perhaps a week, she’d find some new form of self-indulgence, and he could return to his meditations in peace. The firedogs glistened in the flames; the great hall was pleasant and warm. He could smell dinner being made in the kitchen beyond the wide screen at the end of the hall. Yes, with any luck, he could count on just a few days before he could set out again, newly fortified, on his search for God.

“W
HERE DO YOU WISH
to begin?” asked Brother Gregory.

“At the beginning, when I was little,” answered Margaret.

“So you’ve been hearing voices since you were little?” Brother Gregory’s own voice was bemused.

“Oh, no, when I was little I was just like everyone else. The only voices I heard were mother’s and father’s. They didn’t like the way I was turning out. But that is the way it is with parents. Some children just work out better than others. So I thought I’d start there—with my family, and how things began differently than they ended.”

“Very well, it is always best to start at the beginning,” said Brother Gregory, with a certain irony, sharpening a quill with his knife. Margaret didn’t notice anything odd about that statement at all. It seemed just right.

I
SUPPOSE IT WAS
about two summers after our mother died that our lives took a new turning that set us on the very different paths we now tread. By “us” I mean my brother David and me, of course. I was a little girl, seven, or maybe six, if I recall it right. David and I were as close as two twins, even though he was a year younger. We did everything together. Our favorite things to do were sitting in our apple tree, eating apples and spitting the seeds down on the ground, and, at planting time, running about and screaming and waving our arms to frighten away the birds from the seed corn. Everyone said we were very good at that. With mother dead, father didn’t care for us much, so we roved about together like a pair of wild things, speaking an odd language we had made up that nobody but us could understand. Even though he was a boy and I was a girl, we thought we could go on forever that way.

But nothing goes on forever, even if it seems like it at the time. Take our village, for example. It was as old as God’s footprints in Eden, but it’s gone now. The plague turned it into a sheep pasture. The only place it’s the same is in my mind. I can still see the naked northern hills rising in jagged wedges behind the flat, tilled land on the valley floor, and the brook running like a narrow gash, separating the church, square, and the larger houses from the cottars’ huts on the other side of the stone bridge.

Ashbury was at that time the least of the villages of the great Abbey of St. Matthew, but it was on the high road, and that should be counted a distinction. From our front door you could see the square Norman tower of the church beyond the trees, and the curve of the road before our house led directly to the churchyard. It gave our house a sort of prominence, even if it was not large. Father made us different too. He was freeborn and held his own land. And besides being the best bowman in the demesne, he was also the best piper and the best drinker in Ashbury, which always counts for a great deal in the country.

The day I’m thinking about was really the day all the changes started. After that nothing could be put back together again, even David and me—though it didn’t all become clear to me until later. It was warm and summery, and David and I were sitting in the dusty road in front of our door. Two doors down Goodwife Sarah and her gossips were also sitting in the sun, chattering as they took turns using a fine-tooth comb on each other’s hair. David and I were playing: we were seeing who could pick off the most fleas the quickest. I had pulled my skirt up to expose my shins above my bare feet, where I found three good-sized ones crawling leisurely up my leg. Quick as a flash I caught one, but the other two leapt away into the dust.

“You are much too slow, Margaret; you’ve let two of them get away,” said David, in the superior tone that he sometimes used, and he cracked the two that he held between his fingers. Neither of us looked up to see the figure of our parish priest, Sir Ambrose, toiling down the dusty road to our house.

“That’s because my blood’s strong. It makes my fleas faster than your fleas,” I answered in a lofty tone.

“Why, the only way to see if that’s true is to prove it,” replied David, and he set to drawing a circle in the dust with his toe.

“There,” he said. “Now, you put two of your fleas in the center, and I’ll put two of mine, and we’ll see which hops away the fastest.”

The thing was quickly done, and his fleas hopped out of the circle in a single great leap, while mine crawled miserably away into the dust.

“So there!” he exulted. “You see?” Sometimes even a brother can be irritating. Especially one who’s younger and always has to prove he’s better. I was so annoyed, I didn’t even notice the sound of greetings from the gossips as Father Ambrose approached.

“Well, I won’t have any fleas at all, if they can’t be fast ones,” I said. David dug his toes in the dust. He had no hose or shoes, just a tunic and a belt. We didn’t own an undershirt between us. Maybe someone in the village did, but we had never seen it.

“Ha! You can’t do that. Everyone has fleas!” he gloated.

“I can so, I’ll wash them off!”

“Well, they’ll just hop right back on again,” he pointed out, reasonably enough.

“I’ll just wash them off again, and again!”

“You are a silly, for you’ll be bathing all the time. Just how often do you think to do this?”

“Why, I’ll—I’ll do it every week! Every day!” I cried, without even thinking.

“Then your skin will come off, and you’ll die,” he said. “Everyone knows that.”

The shadow of the parish priest, who had come upon us, extended across our dusty circle. I looked up to see his sharp blue eyes staring down at us. His wrinkled, stubbly face looked disapproving and suspicious.

“Have a care, little maiden, how boldly you speak of such vanities,” his deep voice intoned.

“Why, good day, Sir Ambrose!” David turned his glorious, great blue eyes on the priest. “Have you many visits to make today?”

“Why, yes, David.” His face lit up as he looked at David’s intelligent, pretty one. David had our mother’s narrow, oval face, her white, white skin, and a mop of great, dark curls that could only have come from father.

“I have only begun my day’s visits,” the priest said, squatting down to address David face-to-face. “First, I visited old Granny Agnes, who has a sickness in her joints, and I carried her the Host, because she can’t leave her bed. Next I must go to see Goodwife Alice, for she wants her cooking-pot blessed. She says there is a demon in it which causes all her food to be burnt, and her husband threatens to leave her if the demon spoils any more dinners. But right now, little man, I have business with your father.”

“With father?” I asked.

He stood and regarded me very carefully, as if counting every feature. People often did that, usually ending by shaking their heads and saying, “You look just like your mother,” as if they somehow disapproved. “Too pale,” they’d say, “and those eyes—hazel’s not a fortunate color. They look yellow, like a cat’s, in this light. Too bad they’re not blue.” I felt more and more embarrassed as the priest stared, and wished that I had a better dress. Maybe if it were not cut down from mother’s, and turned three times at the hem for growth—or perhaps if it were blue, instead of common russet, he’d like me better, as he did David. Instead he never ceased his sharp, hard look as he spoke to me.

“Yes, my business is with your father, who has great need to be reconciled to Mother Church. And you, little maid, must take care that you do not follow in his footsteps through vanity. A true Christian neglects the body in favor of the spiritual life: too many washings and self-adornings are the sign of un-Christian thoughts at work, and will lead to damnation.”

Warming to his subject he continued on:

“Why, it was just through such excessive bathing that our late martyred king, Edward the Second (God rest him!)” —and here Father Ambrose crossed himself—“became so weakened that he failed in battle, and was overthrown by his own wife. Thus was his death accomplished by washing, and you must take heed of this example provided by God.” Sir Ambrose looked pleased with himself, the way he usually did when he delivered a homily he considered to be especially cleverly done. I looked at him intently: sweat had glued his gray hair to his temples; I could see something small and dark crawling up his neck from under his collar. But it was by his fingernails that I could see that he was a very holy man. Here was a problem: did this mean that old William the Ploughman was even holier after a day loading the dung cart? Luckily, this time I was silent. Questions like that have made a lot of trouble for me all my life.

“Children, is your father inside? I have not seen him at work today, and am told he is home sick.”

“Yes, he is inside sick,” I told the priest.

“Sick with ale, Father,” chirped David, who was sometimes as righteous as a little old man.

“Ah, poor children! I guessed as much. These infernal funeral-ales cannot be stopped. Any man who sang so long, played pipes so late, and drank as much as he did would doubtless be—ah—‘sick.’”

The priest entered without knocking and we heard voices, or, rather, a voice answered by groans, inside the darkened house. As the voices rose, we could hear what was being said.

“A man doesn’t shit in his hat and then put it on his head.”

“You have been knowing her carnally for some time and must wed or appear before court.”