Matilda Bone (6 page)

As she completed her tasks, she mourned once again for her old life. She saw in her mind Father Leufredus leading prayers in the manor chapel with light from the colored windows shining on his face, Father Leufredus reading from the Life of Saint James the Dismembered, Father Leufredus lecturing in Latin on evil, sin, devils, Hell, and eternal lakes of fire. Matilda sighed a very big sigh, remembering the days when she was uninvolved in all the matters of the world, of pain and illness, of unsuitable friends and useless skills. It was easier at the manor, where the most difficult thing she did was walk to the privy in winter.

One Friday when Matilda returned to Peg's from the market, there were Doctor Margery, Grizzl Wimplewasher, and Juliana Parchmenter. "See who has come for draughts and a bite of supper," Peg said. "Come and join us."

The shop looked cozy, with Grizzl at the table pouring ale, Doctor Margery complaining, Peg toasting oatcakes by the fire. Father Leufredus would spurn such company, but Matilda's heart longed for friends of her own.

"Here, Matilda," said Juliana, setting up the draughts board, "I will show you the secrets and mysteries of this most splendid game."

"She will not," said Peg, "for the girl seeks higher things."

"Such as ladders?" asked Juliana. "Or the moon?"

"Or roof thatch?" added Grizzl.

"No. Such as those early apples just out of reach on the treetops," said Peg, and they all laughed.

Matilda flushed red. They were taunting her, she thought—a bonesetter, a laundress, a merchant, and a goose girl. Matilda pulled herself closer to the fire and thought about all the ways in which she was worthier than they.

Grizzl's laughter turned into furious coughing. "Pardon our jesting," she said when she was able. "I am most pleased to see you again. How well you look. Even the fire is dimmed by your pink and pretty face."

"I so long to be frail and pale like the holy saints," Matilda told her, "but instead I
would
have these rosy cheeks."

"Frail and pale, my elbow!" shouted Doctor Margery. "This you say to Grizzl, who has seen six babies and a husband waste away, frail and pale, in that poor house by the river where the dampness never leaves your bones! You are fortunate to have Peg's good food and dry house, a strong constitution, and those rosy cheeks."

Matilda wiped bits of Margery's oatcake off her sleeve and gritted her teeth so she would not shout back. Almost she could hear Father Leufredus saying, "Meek and obedient, Matilda, meek and obedient. Do not succumb to the Devil's attempts to lead you into sin."

Peg took Margery by the arm and said, "Joints that have not been used grow frozen and stiff. The same might be said of a young girl's heart. I suppose we must be more patient, Marg."

Matilda was shocked at the hearing. Her heart frozen and stiff? Her heart that was warm with loneliness and soft with longing? How little they knew her here.

She moved to the door and threw it open, hoping to escape from these women, but she was stopped by a hubble-bubble outside. A small, hairy man, in mustard-colored tunic and green hose, was trying to persuade an ox to pull a very large wagon through the very narrow alley, "
Ite
," he shouted, "
Ite, bestia diabolus. Ad supplicium aeternum damno!
"

Latin! It was cursing, but it was Latin! Perhaps the man was a lawyer or a university master or a great physician from Paris or Salerno. Or a saintly priest. Matilda stared at him.

Peg pushed her out of the doorway. "Tom!" she cried, enfolding the man in her great embrace, lifting him right up so that Matilda could see nothing of him but his hairy hands about Peg's neck. There was much hugging and kissing and pounding of backs and shoulders. When Peg set him down and moved aside, Matilda could see he had the widest shoulders she had ever seen. And the shortest legs. And the biggest nose, which was so like a turnip, it put her in mind of supper. His little raisin eyes peered out under grizzled brows in a face as writhled and brown as a beef roast, and he smiled a great, merry smile. So this was Peg's Tom. He didn't look particularly wise and learned, but he was speaking Latin. Matilda waited eagerly to hear what he would say.

"My old Peg. I am as happy to see you as sweet ale in summer," he said as he pulled a lock of carrot-red hair from under her kerchief. "And Grizzl and Juliana. Are ye still here or here again?"

After much laughter he turned to Margery. "How goes the physicking business, Doctor Marg?"

"Breeding and bleeding. My business is all breeding and bleeding—they breed and I bleed them." And there was more laughter.

Finally he noticed Matilda. "Do I see a new face?"

"Indeed," said Peg. "This is my helper, Matilda, who seeks higher things."

"
Ave, doctissime,
" said Matilda, greeting with a slight curtsy the most learned man.

"Can she not talk right, pretty Peg?" the man asked with a worried frown. "Perhaps I have something in my wagon to heal—"

Was he jesting with her? "It was Latin, sir. I heard you speaking it to your ox."

"Oh, Saint Brendan there. He used to belong to a priest, and those are the only words will make him go. I am not much for Latin."

No Latin. "But Mistress Peg says you are a man of learning."

"Well, I know where to find mistletoe, why spotted lizard cures stomach ills, and how to brew a wood betony tea for banishing monstrous nocturnal visions. Of course," he said with a wink, "too much wood betony can also
cause
monstrous nocturnal visions. Depends on who is paying."

Matilda was speechless. This was Peg's man of learning? No Latin, no medicine, just mistletoe and spotted lizard?

That night, as Matilda lay on her pallet in the buttery, she could hear Peg's and Tom's voices as they played a game of draughts, talking over the day and laughing. She felt a rush of loneliness.

The next morning Peg fixed up a place for Tom to work at one end of the table.
How long will he be here?
Matilda wondered.
Will Mistress Peg still need me?
If Peg had no use for her and turned her out, where would she go?

Matilda kept one eye and one ear on Tom as she pounded and pulled and boiled. "Tis but a rash," he said to Milo the Pepperer. "Rub some of this salve on your neck and spit three times in the moonlight."

To Roger Smith, "Here are pieces of dried dragon fat to sprinkle on your food to soothe and heal your stomach," and to Juliana Parchmenter, who had brought her unhappy daughter-in-law, "I recommend a tea of moonwort berries for wounds, poisons, and such as are become peevish."

Tom took a great deal of time with each, talking and listening, trading jokes and passing on gossip, asking about this one's mother and that one's baby daughter and even an occasional pig or ox. Weepy children always found raisins in a dirty leather bag at his belt. Tom was never without his raisin bag.

On Thursday came young William Baker with a dog bite on his leg. Tom spread a potion of mustard and club moss on it, but the boy cried with the sting and tried to wipe it off. Tom said nothing but took from his leather bag an apple, which he proceeded to peel, the peel falling from the apple in one long, snaky spiral. Longer and longer the strip of peel got. Matilda stared fascinated, everything else forgotten as she waited for the peel to grow longer still or to break. And she saw William Baker doing the same, mindless of his pain as he watched.

Amazingly, the peel never did break. Tom took the snake, wrapped it about his neck, and cut the apple into pieces for a less tearful William.

Next a young woman came from a neighboring village for a love potion, which Tom supplied with a wink. "Love potion?" asked Matilda after the woman left. "You will be sent to Hell with the witches and devils."

"There be no such thing as love potions," said Tom. "That were just elderberries and a rotten egg. But if she uses it, she will think he loves her, and so will act as if he loves her. They will walk hand in hand by the river, which runs silver in the moonlight, and by cock's crow he will think he loves her too."

Matilda merely sniffed.

One morning, with Peg gone to Grizzl's, Matilda burned the porridge. "Here," said Tom, after he showed Gilbert Carpenter out, "let me scrub that well for you, and you buy more porridge, and Peg will never know." He winked at her. "Tis not deception, but defense."

While he scoured the pot with pewterwort stems, Matilda said, "I hope porridge costs no more than a ha'penny, for then I might have enough left for more parchment. For writing," she said at his blank look.

"I never did see much purpose in this writing," he said.

"Why, all learned people can write. I write letters to Father Leufredus, who is far away. Scholars like Father Leufredus write of the lives of the saints or devotions. Or folk in business keep records and accounts."

"Like what?"

"Well, if I were to keep your accounts, you would know how many bottles of moonwort tea and pots of mistletoe salve you made and sold and for how much, how many stomachs were soothed and how many heads, which towns paid better prices for which remedies."

"And why would I want to know that?"

"Why, to know."

"But such an account book wouldn't tell the important things I know," Tom said. "Who is getting married to whom and where the bridal ale will be, where to find the best mules or lumber for the lowest price, who in Giggleswick is the best man to see for a new axle or oats or a quick pint, who prefers singing and joking when his tooth is pulled and who likes silence, where to pound a baby's back so she stops her fearful fretting and finally belches." He finished scrubbing the pot, dipped it into the bucket of water near the fire to rinse, and dried it by swinging it above his head. "All that writing you do and still you know only 'so many' and 'how much.'"

Such things might be important to Tom, but Father Leufredus would not think much of them. Matilda shook her head in disappointment.

Tom left again on a morning so cold that he had to wrap Saint Brendan's snout in rags to keep his hot breath from freezing. The sound of rumbling cart and mumbled Latin sounded on the air long after Tom and the ox turned the corner and were out of sight.

I am happy he has gone,
Matilda thought.
He is no man of learning but instead a fraud.
To her horror, she found that she had not thought those words, but had spoken them aloud. And Peg had heard them. Matilda looked at Peg's raised eyebrows and hurriedly stammered, "Oh, forgive me, Mistress Peg. I did not mean to speak aloud.... I mean, I would not..."

Peg quieted her with a wave. "Speak up, Matilda. Why do you think Tom a fraud?"

Matilda whispered, "How can—"

"Louder," said Peg.

Matilda cleared her throat and began again. "How can he be a great man of learning if he has no Latin or reading or writing and knows only rotten eggs, apple peels, and spotted lizard?" She stopped and waited to be punished for finding fault with Tom or at least failing in meekness.

"There are different kinds of learning. Tom knows many things," Peg said, "even if it is true that more visit him to be delivered of elf shot or evil dreams than boils, spots, or other bodily ailments. He has a way with him, never too busy to talk or too tired to listen. Those who come go away satisfied, eagerly awaiting his next visit. Do you think that is worth nothing?"

Matilda breathed deeply in her relief that Peg was not angry with her. "No," she said. "In truth I myself have seen him give comfort and hope to people. But Father Leufredus—"

"Bah. Enough of what Father Leufredus thinks. Let us talk more about this when you know what Matilda thinks."

Matilda pondered this as she huddled close to the brazier that night, it being too cold for her pallet in a room without a fire. How, she thought as she took off her boots, could Peg not see Tom truly? Was his nature not apparent to all who looked? How could Matilda see a different Tom from the one Peg saw? And how could Peg see things one way and Father Leufredus another? Did this not mean Peg was wrong?

She stood up, quickly jerked her kirtle off, and wrapped herself in her thin quilt. Sitting down cross-legged before the fire again, she warmed her hands. Why did everyone not see things as she and Father Leufredus did? And why, despite her doubts in Tom, did she have the nagging feeling that Tom knew much that she did not know, things she did not even know she did not know?

There were more questions in this world, Matilda thought, even than the number of fleas St. Finnian of Clonard drove out of the Isle of Flatholm. And for most of them there seemed to be no answers.

Peg said, "Take these four pennies and go to Ralph Thwirp the tanner, the Devil take him for his high prices. We need more ox hides for splints."

The morning was cold but clear as Matilda set off for the tanner's yard by the river. The sun was melting the snow and thawing the piles of refuse in the street. For a while she walked behind Master Theobald and a woman Matilda took to be his wife. She walked serenely at her husband's side, nodding to those he nodded to, smiling at those he smiled at, head cocked to hear his every word.

That could be me with Father Leufredus,
Matilda thought with envy. And she watched until they turned away and even their footsteps disappeared with the melting snow.

Still thinking about Father Leufredus, Matilda slipped on the icy slush, tripped over something, and fell hard onto her rump. The something proved itself a black-haired boy, sitting with eyes closed at the side of the street.

Slowly he opened his eyes, as round and brown as currant buns. His face radiated common sense, good humor, and a mockery that Matilda found irritating and most unholy.

The irritation, the sting in her bottom, and the hot red scrapes on her palms loosened Matilda's tongue. "Fungus.'
Porcus! Stultus!
No,
stultissimus!
You, stupidest of all boys, should be seized for assault," she said sharply as she picked herself up and brushed muck off her skirts.