In Pursuit of the Green Lion (13 page)

“Good Lord God, how are we to deliver men from their folly?” I wept. But God, who is often so talkative about some things, was entirely silent about this point. I waited a long time, until the tears were worn out. “A lot of use
You
are,” I said, picking myself up and dusting off my skirts. “I’d think if You were considerate, You’d be offering Divine Guidance when I’m needing it so much.” I smoothed my surcoat down and found a clean bit of sleeve to wipe the smudges off my face. “So,” I said to myself, “that’s how it is. Well, women have been married to fools since the world began, and they’ve never yet managed to change the situation. I’ll just have to do my best, there’s no more I can do.”

A
ND SO WE WENT
to Leicester to see Gregory knighted in a mass ceremony on Whitsunday. There were a few spindly young sons of great families—too great to speak to anyone, of course. But for the most part, I felt right at home in the crowd of rich woolpackers and vintners and soap-sellers who’d put down good hard money for themselves or their sons for the honor and celebration of it. I even knew a couple of them who were from the City, and one had the gall to jostle me before the entrance to the church service and say, “So, Mistress Margaret, we do bring ourselves up in the world, don’t we?”

All freshly bathed and looking somewhat hollow-eyed from their all-night vigil before the altar, the candidates went up one by one in church, then knelt to take the blow from the Duke before receiving the belt and sword. Gregory’s father and brother buckled on his spurs themselves, and he was so set up that he unhorsed three men in the tourney afterward and was never unseated himself, though he took a hit very nearly at the center of his shield.

But at night, after all the feasting was done and the great dancing chamber at Leicester castle emptied, instead of rejoicing, he looked haunted. We sat up together in the big guest bed and I put my hand on his lean, scarred arm.

“What’s wrong, Gregory?”

He started. “Don’t call me that anymore, I’ve already told you.”

“My lord husband, I never do in public. Can’t I save some little bit of our first feeling for private?”

“It reminds me of—of what I’ve done. And of what I am, instead of what I should be.” I took his big, rawboned hand into my two small ones and held it tight. Even in the shadows beneath the curtains I could sense the trouble and the worry in his dark eyes.

“And what have you done, but save my life and give me hope again?”

“All this honor, on a dead man’s grave,” he muttered to himself. “I wanted to dedicate myself to God, and then I sinned, and instead of being flung into the fiery pit, I was rewarded with the honor I’d never dared dream of.”

“Oh, husband, put it from your mind. How else do heirs get titles but on another’s grave? So how is it different, that Master Kendall should die, and that you should be lifted by his inheritance to a life of ease?”

“But Margaret, I didn’t inherit you, I stole you.”

“But not while he lived. You always acted with honor. You had his trust and friendship. That was more than his sons ever had.”

“Trust—my God, that’s worse. My mind is eaten up by what we’ve done together—he trusted me; I took his wife. I’ve violated God’s commandments for this sweet, sweet sin. I can’t pray with a clean heart …” I could feel him shudder. “If it weren’t a sin to marry a widow, then why would the Church forbid it to me?”

“Calm your conscience, Gregory. It’s in the wrong place, entirely. There’s a hundred men quick enough to snatch up a widow for her money without the tiniest fragment of your guilt. They’d do nothing but rejoice, as you should be doing.”

He sounded horrified. “Even you—you think I did it for the money—for this”—he swept his arm around to gesture to his new world—“and for—oh, God, for—”

“Gregory, I know you didn’t. Doesn’t that count for anything?”

“I suppose it does. It must,” he muttered feverishly.

W
E RETURNED TO
B
ROKESFORD
for the last days of preparation before the ride to the coast to sail for France. Everything was in a turmoil: Sir Hubert rode through the village, making his final selection of those who were to go with him, and there was much weeping and wailing in the little cottages by the muddy lane. Gregory had acquired two boys to mind his horses and a stolid, spotty-faced squire named Piers, who complicated my life by claiming he was in love with me as with the untouchable stars. When I told him to stop, he said it was a holy passion that burned with unquenchable zeal and beat on his breast, before he went off in pursuit of Cis, who pushed him into a watering trough. The girls sat awestruck while Damien tried on his armor and polished the horse gear. They asked to feel how sharp the edge of his sword was, and he told them they didn’t dare—and besides, the grease on their hands would spoil the blade. So of course Cecily managed to cut her finger.

In short, everyone rushed about, posing and putting on airs in the way that is common before a military campaign. All except Gregory. After the morning’s exercise, he would sit silently at Father Simeon’s little octagonal writing table in the corner of the chapel, writing without cease from late afternoon into the night. Finally I couldn’t stand it any longer. Why wasn’t he out bustling and boasting, and getting drunk with the rest of them?

The sun was already setting, and most of the household in bed already, when I sought him out in the chapel. By the light of a single flickering candle, a feeble replacement for the vanishing daylight, he was deeply engrossed in his writing. The pen traversed the page in his right hand, followed a few inches behind by the little knife for scraping out mistakes in his left. I called quietly to him, so that I wouldn’t startle him. If he were startled, he might make a blot, and Gregory is a great perfectionist about his writing. If he makes a blot, there’s no speaking to him for hours sometimes.

“Margaret?” He looked up from his writing. “What are you doing here?”

“Come to ask the same of you,” I answered. And when the ink was safely put away, I stood behind him and embraced him, kissing him on the neck.

“Oh, Margaret,” he said in mock reproach. “Truly it is written that women’s appetites are unquenchable. Doesn’t any other thought ever cross your mind?”

“Yes, it does—I want to know why you’re writing all the time. After all, the Duke hasn’t done the great deeds you’re supposed to write about yet.”

“Oh, yes, he has, Margaret, and I’ve got to put down the already has been before I write the will be.”

I looked over his shoulder at the writing. It was in Latin, but I could make out some words. “But I just see writing with
angeli
and
Deus
and—that looks like
Adam
and
Eve
down there, and—that thing, there, that looks like the Tower of Babel.”

“You know, Margaret, it may be a mistake to teach women how to read, if they’re not going to have an education.”

“That’s mean, I must say. So why don’t you remedy the defect by explaining it all to me?”

He sighed, and explained very slowly and clearly, as if to a simpleton or a deaf person.

“All proper chronicles start at the beginning of the world, Margaret—and I have a long way to go to catch up to now. I’d hoped to do it all before we leave, but things have been so disorderly around here lately.”

“Why don’t you just write about the Duke, and leave out the Tower of Babel?”

“Margaret, if you were educated, you’d understand that a chronicle that just starts now is nothing but gossip. It lacks substance.” The room had grown dark as we spoke, and the flickering candle threw his handsome features into relief, as he raised one dark eyebrow and smiled that faintly mocking smile of his.

“I’m sorry I don’t know all about the Classics and the Authorities the way you do—I just thought it would save time.” I still think it’s a good idea, no matter what men think.

“I suppose I shouldn’t fault you, Margaret. But writing is not a matter of common sense, like buying fish in the market. It’s a matter of adherence to a proper discipline and form. It’s like that notion you once had that everything should be written in English, because more people speak English than Latin. Sensible, except that people who speak only English can’t read, and nobody who can read respects a work that isn’t in Latin. By adherence to correct form, one avoids foolish mistakes and embarrassment. That’s why the standards of civilization are absolute and universal. It’s like truth: you can’t have two kinds.”

I still think that idea of mine was a good one, too, even if it does have a few little rough spots to work out of it. But I’ve never told him that either. Besides, he’s so charming when he gets didactic. His face grows all serious, and his eyes shine, and then he’ll tell you all about Saint Augustine or Aristotle or somebody else who’s been dead a long time.

“So you see,” he went on, “just as Latin adds substance to a work, so does starting at the beginning of the world.”

“Did Aristotle start at the beginning of the world?” I asked.

He smiled. “Oh, Margaret. You’re a ninny, but a dear one. Aristotle didn’t write chronicles. But I assure you, he always began at the beginning.”

So that was the end of it. But there were certain advantages. I’d lie in bed with my eyes open and staring, waiting for him because I couldn’t sleep without him. And when I saw the candle nodding and bobbing through the dark, as he picked his way around the dogs on his way to bed, I’d rejoice that everyone else was sound asleep. Because then, oh then, we set the sweet darkness on fire.

B
UT 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.”