The Water Devil (16 page)

“Look at me, Mother Hilde, now I'm fine and grand.” I turned my nose up in a mockery of some court dandy.

“You're fine to me always, Margaret. But my, they are a pretty color. Wouldn't it be elegant if the dyers could color cloth like that?

I'd wear it every day.” She took to filling her own basket with the things that had come ripe that day, onions, crabapples, a half-row of turnips.

“I see you're expecting again,” she said.

“How did you know so soon, when I wasn't even sure myself until just this week?”

“Well, for one thing, your face is shining and your eyes look happy, and for another thing, Malachi told me,” she answered.

“Oh, Mother Hilde, and here I thought your powers were greater than ever.”

“Not always great enough. Do you know, Margaret, I was deceived? A wind pregnancy. I'd heard of them, never seen one.”

“A wind pregnancy?”

“Yes, and nary a baby growing at all. The goodwife just puffed up on wind. It went on and on. In the tenth month, she started to have labor pains, and they called me. She cried out, she sweated, oh, it all looked so real! But when I'd seated her on the birthing stool, and felt beneath her skirts for the head, there was nothing there. The birth passage was as closed as in a woman who never bore child. ‘There's no child here,' I said, and she screamed at me. ‘You've stolen it!' she cried. Luckily, there were a dozen witnesses in the room.‘There's no child, there's nothing,' I said to her mother.‘See for yourself.' ‘But I felt it moving last week.' ‘That is wind,' I said. ‘This is a wind pregnancy. Put your head to her belly and listen for a heartbeat. There is none.’ She listened, they all listened, and the woman squalled and accused them all. She became a madwoman, Margaret, with eyes like the Devil himself. The labor stopped then and there, and I left to the sound of her howling. I hear now that she is completely mad; she claims she is still pregnant, the wind is still inside, as big as a full-term baby, and she's going on twelve months now. Twelve months! Impossible! But she claims it will be a prodigy, since it is taking longer to grow. God spare me any more wind-children, Margaret. I could have been taken for a witch.”

“That is the strangest story I've ever heard. What would make a wind-child, do you think?”

“God. Or the Devil. Or perhaps desire. The woman was barren, and her husband malcontent. Maybe she puffed herself up with some charm or spell.” A sing-song humming was coming from the shed, mingling with the buzz of the bees and the chirp of songbirds.

“Peter's in the shed again?” I asked. Mother Hilde was once married, but pestilence carried away her husband and all of her children but Peter, who is not right. He is shaped sacklike and short, rather like a troll, and has odd eyes. He's a kindly fellow who sings and talks a bit, and carries heavy things, but he has no mind. Hilde's other children were tall and handsome and clever, but what God takes, He takes.

“We have new kittens out there, and he sings to them all day. I'm glad to see him so happy,” she said, casting an eye at the shed where the roses bloomed in profusion. “When the mother of that windchild woman asked me what to do, I told her the girl should learn to fill her grief with good works. God sends consolation.”Arm in arm, we carried the baskets of sun-warmed garden fruits through the front gate and into the house.

NOW THE ONLY THING
more difficult that entertaining relatives unexpected is getting up a family expedition into the country. In the first place, nobody really wants to go, or if they want to go they would rather it be another time, or they don't feel like packing or they feel like packing too much. Then there's hiring the sumpter mules and the drovers which is a great bother. At least we didn't have to ride hired horses which are nothing but trouble, because thanks to the Burgundians who had refilled our empty money chest we had been able to have our horses brought back from the country and could afford to keep them again. Besides, Gilbert's father says there's nothing lower than riding hired horses, and we never would have heard the end of it, all the way to Brokesford.

First of all, we were delayed by Hugo, who complained that he hadn't finished his exploration into the more obscure forms of his worship of God's creations, and that he had heard there was a new woman come into the stews who was a giantess, and he wanted to
find out whether she was a giant everywhere and whether she would smother him in passion.

“That's disgusting,” I said. “Your appetite gets more abnormal all the time.”

“Really, you don't expect me to go back to that dull, demanding woman when I haven't half finished up here.” Luckily, Sir Hubert cut short this argument by flinging Hugo across the hall, which gratified Gilbert immensely.

Then there were the girls, who whined, “We don't like stepgrandfather's house, Mama. It's all ugly and dirty and broken down, and the rain comes through, and besides, we didn't like it last time.”

“It will be nicer this time, and we'll be home before you know it.”

“Then why go at all?” said Cecily.

“Yes, we don't like Lady Petronilla. She's a mean, bad lady and she hates us.”

“It's much different now. Uncle Hugo likes you now, and stepgrandfather will make her be good. Besides, Damien and Robert are there.”

“Damien! We love Damien! When will he marry us? We're growing all the time.”As only little girls can be, they have been passionately in love with Damien, old Sir Hubert's squire, since they first laid eyes on him. It was his sunshiny smile that won them, and the fact that he was “very, very big, but not old.” It was probably also because he had so many sisters and brothers at home that he knew how to deal with them. Unfortunately, their love took the form of throwing things down on him from the windows of the solar, and punching his arm, and hanging onto his leg. It was seeing this that made me first realize that they needed serious instruction in being ladies. “No man loves you back if you hit him,” I told them, so they went off and poured water in his boots, all out of sheer adoration. Once again, the magic name did its trick, and they went off to pack—oceans of dresses and hair ribbons and other things designed to win over Damien's affections.

“I take it, I will not be needed on this excursion?” asked Madame,
and for the life of me, I couldn't decide whether she meant she wanted to go or she didn't want to go. The only way to tell is by her complexion. It looked very pale. I think she thought it might all be a ruse to get rid of her.

“Now, more than ever, Madame,” I answered. “The girls have even more need of instruction in the country than here in the home they're used to.”

“The ways of great houses require a deep understanding of chivalry. It is not to be expected that they could have mastered the fine points at their ages.” She glided away to pack. That's Madame, I thought. Why don't I always know what to say like that?

Then Mother Sarah complained her bones were too old for travel, and Perkyn said the house would fall apart if I left at such a critical season, and him getting on, to expect him to handle everything.

Gilbert moved in and out of the house, vanishing for long periods, and then conferring with me over the arrangements. Sometimes he whistled to himself, “The Knight Stained from Battle” and other tunes, some religious, some I suspect very bawdy, from his bad old days as a student in Paris, singing drinking songs from tavern to tavern on the left bank.

“What's the arrow chest for?” I asked.

“Malachi's thought of everything. It's for the shovels. If any are missing from the estate or the village, someone's sure to notice. You know what gossips country folk are. So we bring our own, locked up.”

“I haven't seen you so content since we were sitting in that awful place in Avignon.”

“And Malachi and I were forging alchemical secrets to fund our return home? Margaret, you are sentimental about the most amazing things. But I must admit, there's something refreshing and contenting about putting one over on people who deserve it.” He sighed. “I haven't been in trouble for so long, Margaret, it was just getting boring.”

“You mean you
miss
writing nasty poems and anonymous denunciations to post on church doors, and getting pursued by inquisitioners and vengeance-seekers?”

“It's the chase, Margaret, the game. Some people like to pursue animals. I like to skewer pompous men of authority.”

“Not all the animals are harmless, Gregory.”

“Oh, Margaret, will that stay your pet name for me forever? Really, it's embarrassing now that I've risen to the grandeur of a purchased knighthood finagled by father.” His eyes glittered with cynical amusement as he spoke. “See it my way. Noble creatures make noble sport. I feel the blood pulsing through my veins for the first time in ages. A lawyer, a corrupt judge, and an entire abbey full of scheming monks! There's a game for you! If we win, father has to acknowledge the superiority of learning forever. Ha!
That
will sting! If we lose, we don't lose much—that gloomy little spot by the water and a lot of oak trees that he might very well take into his head to sell anyway. Either way, the title to the house here stays unencumbered.”And he went whistling off to Malachi's place to fetch the brass-bound Saxon chest, made ancient by hanging above the vapors of one of Malachi's glass kettles for the past week.

Of all the people of the household, only Peregrine was truly happy about the trip. “D'ere's
frogs
in the moat,” he sang, “frogs, frogs, and teeny tiny baby tadpoles, and Grandfather will give me a horse, a horse, a really truly big one.” And he trundled around on his little stick horse shouting orders in imitation of his grandfather. And his grandfather did shout orders: “Take those mules around by the gate! Do you call THAT a packsaddle? Look at that one limp; it's unsound, I say, take it BACK! Gilbert, what in
HELL
are you taking that arrow-chest for? Oh. I see. That's Madame's luggage?
ABSOLUTELY NOT! THAT WOMAN DOES NOT GO! I CAN'T STAND HER
!”

“My lord father-in-law, if she does not go, the girls will not be able to go, and if they don't go, I won't go,” I said.

“Well,” he grumbled, “she does seem to keep them in good order. Not that they aren't a pair of she-devils, mind you.”

“You don't want them turned loose in your house without supervision, do you?” I reminded him.

“Right, absolutely right. But keep that woman out of my sight. She makes me furious, the way she thinks she knows everything in the world. I can't be responsible for myself if I see too much of her.”

Not that Madame wasn't a good bit of trouble. She delayed everything by checking all the girths herself, and instructing Cecily and Alison on the way a lady should be handed up into the saddle and having them repeat it several times, while everybody fumed. But at last we were mounted and ready, and we made a grand procession. A noisy one, too, for Hugo not only had the latest fashion in dress, he had the latest fashion in harness, and there were little silver bells mounted absolutely everywhere, on the bridle, the saddle, even the crupper on his dandified dapple-gray pacer. With every cheerful little “ring-a-ling” I could sense steam coming out of old Sir Hubert's ears, but he rode, firm and dignified, as the head of a family should, at the head of our caravan, his hounds beside him, and his son and heir behind him.

Gilbert rode just behind the two of them, tall and graceful on the big bay gelding he'd brought back when we came from France, with little Peregrine in his pointed red hat mounted in front of him, clutching the gelding's black mane and exclaiming at every new sight. I just beside them, the picture of female frivolity on my little cream colored mare, with my lap dog tucked up behind the saddle in a big pannier. Hidden in the straw beneath Lion's cushion was the long, flat Saxon chest of unknowable antiquity, filled with the dust of ages, kindly supplied by the mix of fireplace ash and the dust of a big puffball broken up by Brother Malachi as a final “artistic touch.” Old as he was, Lion loved his cushion, and no one would dare approach the pannier without his barking a warning. Behind us came the girls, double mounted on a big sorrel gelding, and Madame, straight and dignified on a little black mare. Then came a train of baggage and drovers. Around us, before and behind, were the armed grooms from the manor, without whom no one respectable can hope to go safely, in this world of wickedness.

As we passed by the tall, bright-painted houses and high-steepled churches of the city that I loved, and through Bishopsgate into the rolling, summer-scented countryside beyond the walls, all I could think was, the sooner we're done and away from Brokesford, the better. I'd reason enough not to be fond of the place, even then.

B
ROKESFORD MANOR LOOKED EXACTLY the same, if not worse. Memory had never bathed it in golden light, and time had not mellowed it. There it stood, looming above the village, a miserable tumbledown heap, behind walls left to decay and a moat rotten with sewage. It was horses that had stolen the roof slates and caused the stones to fall from the wall. It was horses that had stripped the walls of all but weaponry and souvenirs of dead animals, set the moths in the chests, and impoverished the village. War and horses, to be exact. Sir Hubert's attempt to breed the perfect English destrier and the fact that every so often those destriers, expensive and delicate as they were, demanding of grooms, feed, training, and arming, had to be taken abroad and slaughtered. True, there was compensation in theory, but it was often slow in coming. So for the sake of glory and his chief passion, the meadows of Brokesford supported nothing that could give him milk, hides, or wool. The fruits and grain of Brokesford went to market for the work of armorers and smiths, and his stables were better kept than his house.

As we rode through the village, it looked as unprosperous and neglected as before. A few women with babies on their hips came to the door of their wattle and thatch cottages, and bobbed their heads in greeting. All the men and women who were able were at the haying, as we could see in the distance. The heat of August lay heavily on the land, and I could feel sweat running from beneath my headdress. Dogs and little boys ran beside us as we passed the church, where a handful of old men sunning themselves in the churchyard came out to
bow humbly and ask the Lord of Brokesford if he had brought them a new priest.