CHAPTER SEVEN

WHEN I NEXT OPENED MY EYES I SAW a smoky ceiling swaying and shifting overhead, and heard a dog whining, and felt a long, rough wet tongue licking my face. I could hear a voice somewhere in the room saying, “There’s no doubt who it is. The book we found beside her proves it: see the initials? M. K.—that’s her; even without the redheaded girls and the odd dog, it would be certain.”

“Always the searcher of evidence, Robert. Whatever made you leave the law? You’ve got talent.”

“The same old sad story, Nicholas. Lack of money. Talent doesn’t take you far without a degree. Besides, God meant me for higher things than growing old over musty lawbooks.”

“Growing old in taverns is an improvement, I suppose?”

“It is if someone else is doing the paying. Drink to Sir Edward again, the dear little cockerel, and to his indulgent father’s fortune.”

“I’ll go you better. To the Earl himself!”

“Hip, hip, hurrah!” sounded from many throats, and then there was the clank and gurgle of ale mugs being emptied. I could hear the faint sound of a woman’s raucous laughter from another room. A tavern? If so, not a very nice one.

“Well, I must go, Robert. Unlike you, I have a shop to keep. Let me know if you need help again.”

“When have I not needed help, Nicholas? But you’ll be repaid a hundredfold by God for casting your bread into an empty wine-tun like me.” More clanking and gurgling. Then a lengthy belch.

“Aha, your eyes are open, Mistress Margaret Kendall. See? I know you. It’s my powers of observation. I even know there’s a reward out for you, thanks to your gabby little girls, who are now snoring, dead drunk, underneath the table. Whatever put a rich, silly woman like yourself into a dangerous neighborhood like this?”

“Gregory. I saw Gregory here. For God’s sake, tell me where he’s hiding.” I was still too weak to rise and look for the source of the voice.

“Brother Gregory? He hasn’t been here since he ran off with that rich man’s widow he’d been tutoring. You, to be precise. Imagine. Practically a grave robber. What a stroke! Swift! Surgical! He beat out half of London—even my little cockerel—who wanted to get their hands on old Master Kendall’s fortune. But did he come back and share with his friends? Buy them a drink or two, by way of celebration of his new fortune? Oh, no, the money made him snobbish so fast that he never came back. I saw him once from a distance, riding on a fine horse near the Inns of Court. All dressed up like a gentleman, he was, riding beside two knights in full regalia—an old one and a young one. Didn’t look to left or right, like a man going to an execution. I hailed him, but he didn’t hear me. And here we’d been the best of friends, except for his rather addle-brained support of nominalism. How many dinners had I bought him when he was broke, the faithless dog? So I revenged myself. I wrote him up as a scurrilous ballad. It’s doubtless dogging his heels at this very moment, embarrassing him. He always had enough dignity for three—I’m sure it’s driving him crazy at this very moment.”

Suddenly I was so angry, I became strong. I sat up on the bench, and the smoky, low-ceilinged tavern swirled around me. I saw a man with several weaving faces in a well-worn scholar’s gown. He was seated at a bench on the other side of a long trestle table that stood beside the bench on which I’d been laid out. A number of other interested faces surrounded his, but I didn’t care.

“It’s you who did it. You made up all those nasty lies—and about a dead man. You should be ashamed. Ashamed, I say! The only person you’ve hurt is me—and he never lived to hear your horrid song, you jealous vulture.”

“Hey, now, those are strong words for a man who’s just picked you out of an alley—gratis—and not even stolen all the little gewgaws you had stuffed in your bosom.”

“It’s just as well you didn’t—one of them’s poisoned,” I muttered as my head slumped onto the table.

“Now, none of this. Rise and have a drink, and tell me how you got here.”

“I saw him—Gregory—walking through the City, and followed him here. Then I heard his death cry. It was from far away. It—it was terrible. Now I know it was his ghost I followed, and he’s gone forever, and I can’t even be buried beside him when my own time comes. And I was so sure he’d come home in time to see his baby. I told them all he wasn’t dead and I’d find him. They tried to lock me up, but I ran away. I’ve looked, I’ve looked. I’ve talked to all the shipmasters and the soldiers coming home. Oh, God, how could it all happen this way!” And I put my head down on my arms on the table again, this time to sob until my breath was gone.

“Now, now, you can’t cry like that. Not with a baby coming, it’s not healthy.” They’d formed up in a circle around me, and I could feel someone patting my back clumsily. “Tell us what happened.”

“He—he had a chance to write for the Duke of Lancaster. A—a chronicle. A knighthood. To be in the Duke’s own personal retinue—”

I could hear their breaths being sucked in, and someone whistled softly and said, “What patronage! The chance of a lifetime!”

“And chronicles go on forever—not like odes,” I could hear the first voice, the balladeer, saying regretfully.

“But he had to go to France to do it—it was the Duke’s idea. A new kind of chronicle, written at first hand.” I lifted my head up from my arms. “I told him just to collect everybody’s boasting afterward, when it was safe, but he wouldn’t.”

“Hmm. Unwise. Yes. Unhealthful, the climate in France right now—” the men around me muttered.

“You see, he said he had to. The Duke had secured my inheritance for him, and he was obliged. Then there was the law, too—once the income was assured, he had to serve in the military—”

“Well, well. Caught. Netted like a pigeon. That’s how they catch scholars these days.”

“—Yes, money and obligation—the bait and the lime.”

“Who’d have thought it? He was the freest of us all. Money and women trap a man, he always said—and he was right. Oh, pardon, mistress—”

“He disappeared in the siege of Verneuil—” They nodded their heads gravely. “But I had hope. The heralds never found his body. So even though there was no ransom demand, I knew, just knew he was alive—but now—” I wiped my eyes on my sleeve.

“You shouldn’t waste your time at the dockside, mistress, with all those other women in black. Do you know where you are?” asked a scholar in a frayed Oxford gown.

“Why, yes, this is the second-best place in all of Europe to make inquiries for a lost man—the first, being in Paris, would be difficult for you to visit just now.”

“This is the Boar’s Head, Mistress—um—ah, what was Brother Gregory’s family name, anyway? Did he have one?”

“I never knew it. Just Brother Gregory, that’s what he went under.”

“I think maybe it was Scrivener.”

“Was there a de in it? He did put on airs.”

“It was de Vilers,” I said.

“Oh, my, an old name. From the Lincolnshire de Vilerses?”

“No, from the cadet branch, in Hertfordshire.”

“Well, Mistress—or is it Madame—de Vilers, this is the Boar’s Head, center of all that is worthy of gossip in Christendom. See this room? Flemish, Germans, Lombards, Gascons—a regular cacophony of nations—all masters of the shaved pate. You’ll hear more Latin than English in this hall, for we are all, before anything else, disciples of Minerva.”

“Minerva? She owns this place then?”

“And all of us, all of us too, Mistress Margaret-Who-Foolishly-Wed-a-Scholar. It’s not an elegant place, as you see, but the ambience—it cannot be equaled. The price of ale here is modest, and the women are not. Who comes? See that fellow over there? A monk, sent to buy wine for his priory at Dunstable. He stops here, learns a new ribald ballad, and leaves us with the information that a two-headed calf has been born at King’s Langley. Those fellows over there are jongleurs, fresh from the Continent. Did you know that unfrocked clerics make the best jongleurs? It’s the vocal study, you see. Who else sings as sweetly? They have brought us a story of an English mercenary captain, who has taken a castle in Languedoc, married the widow, and Frenchified his name. Those fellows over there, dicing? Scholars from Padua and Montpellier. They’re on their way to Oxford, but they stop here first, to catch up on anything they ought to know. Those fellows there, with the long faces and the dark cloud of ut infras and lis jub judices over them? Lawyers—real ones, not like me. But filthy-minded, or they wouldn’t be here. They can’t help trading the fine coin of their cases on the exchange here. We heard all about how your father-in-law bribed himself off murder charges for the bodies he left behind when he carried you off. ‘Self-defense,’ ha! It cost a pretty penny, too—all borrowed from your inheritance. The clerk who drew up the document sups here too.”

It was true. The snatch of song, the gabble in the corner—all Latin. And despite the motley of foreign robes, monks’ habits, and clerical gowns, every man in the room had one thing in common: a clerical tonsure of one sort or another. A group in one corner had struck up a song in French just brought back from abroad. I could hear bits of it through the clatter and voices:

But it was drowned out by rising shouts from the table of dicers in the other corner.

“Pardon me a moment, madame,” said my informant, making a flourishing gesture of farewell. “Violence threatens, and that is a friend of mine.” And he and several of the fellows with him moved into the whirling circle of controversy. I leaned over to check on my girls. They really were sound asleep on the matted rushes under the table. Lion sat by them, like an anxious nursemaid.

“Loaded dice, by God! You think you can get away with that, you Lombard bastard?” could be distinguished from the rumble of angry voices.

A woman carrying a load of empty mugs sat them down on the table and addressed me.

“They’re all right, those little girls. Just drunk. I heard the dog, then saw them howling in the alley. I’d gone out to dump the slops. That’s how I found you. I had Robert take some of the boys out and bring you back. The girls were thirsty, and there’s only one drink in this place—so there you are: three sips and they’re out like snuffed candles.”

“Are you Minerva?”

“No, I’m Berthe. I own the place. My husband left it to me.”

“They said Minerva owned it.”

“Oh, them—they’re jokers, the lot of them. But harmless, generally. That’s more than you can say of most. Say, you’re not hungry, are you? I thought maybe you’d fainted from hunger.”

“No, I saw a ghost. But I am thirsty.”

“A ghost, eh? Lots of them about these days, though I, thank goodness, don’t see them. Well, then, on the house, for another widow, I’ll send some ale over—wait a moment—” and she hurried off in the direction of the controversy.

“I run a quiet house, I tell you!”

“Loaded dice, the son of a bitch—he cleaned me out.”

More shouting in foreign tongues.

“Look at ’em—come up the same side every time.”

“Weighted, by the bowels of Christ, and so slyly that you can’t even see it.”

“Mph, mph, mph!”

“Quit strangling him, I say! I’ll not have murder done in my house!”

“I’ll put as many holes in him as a dovecote.” A knife flashed in someone’s hand.

“No, Jankyn, put that knife back, didn’t you hear her? No murder.” Robert’s voice sounded above the hubbub.

“Strip him and pitch him out then!”

“Yes, that’s it!”

There was a struggle, with terrible howling, as the Lombard was plucked as clean as a chicken and thrown out the door. Robert came back to where I sat sipping the ale, looking satisfied with himself.

“Not bad,” he said, “though it took four men. Now, it’s times like these that we miss Brother Gregory. He could have flung the man out single-handed.”

“He flung dice-cheaters out of taverns?”

“Oh, yes, that and lots more. Never a dull moment with Brother Gregory. And then he’d quote Aquinas, just to rub salt in the wound. God, I loved that man. Picky, snobbish, righteous bastard.” I stared at him. He laid the dice on the table.

“There,” he said. “My share of the spoils. Sorry it wasn’t money. It’s an offering. A token of my apology. I’m sorry about the ballad. I was wrong, and I’ll make it up to you. You go home and quit wandering about the docks. I’ll make the inquiries. If he’s alive or dead, in any Christian country, I’ll hear about it. Some men could disappear without a trace, but not a man who turns a verse like Brother Gregory. Be assured; somewhere there’s a clerk who’ll hear of him, and the news will travel to the Boar’s Head. Are we quits, now?”

“We’re quits. I accept your apology.” I took the dice. There were three of them, identical, all made of bone, for playing Hazard. They looked absolutely honest. You couldn’t see a seam or a bulge anywhere. I put them in my purse, which hadn’t a penny of money in it.

“Where are you staying? I’ll escort you, and get someone to help lug those offspring of yours.”

“I was going to Master Wengrave’s, my daughters’ godfather, before I—I followed the—ghost.”

“The Alderman’s? That’s very far from here. But you shouldn’t assume it was Brother Gregory’s ghost.”

“But, who else would it have been? And why would it come here—where he used to be? At least before, I had hope,” and I shuddered with the memory of it, so tall and straight, fading into the wall.

“Now, now, you shouldn’t take it that way at all. After all, you’ve no proof. It could have been an apparition of any kind. Or maybe somebody real that you mistook, because his hood was up. And as for the voice, it could have been a hallucination. Grief makes us all crazy, you know—so you must take it as a good sign, that in some way you were led to us.”

It was odd. As I watched his mouth opening and closing, his voice seemed to go far away, and his face seemed to take on a gilded, shadowy look, as if painted with a deep gold light. Rather than being an ordinary sort of thirtyish, clean-shaven face topped with thinning, brownish hair, it took on an interesting, deeply folded appearance, as if a very rich and profound character could be read there. The rest of the room, too, seemed unnaturally still, as if the laughter and clanking sounds were muffled in wool. Even though people were moving and speaking at a regular pace, I seemed to be able to see every fine detail of their movement, as if I were so swift in comprehension that they were immeasurably slow. The other faces, too, were illuminated with the somber gold light. Faces that might pass by on the street unnoticed were made deeply beautiful, unique and fascinating. The stillness in the midst of noise caught me and held me, and I stared at their new-created faces without answering, as they scooped up the girls and we passed into the street. The narrow streets were still, too, as people with strangely illuminated faces passed by: carters and ostlers and marketwomen, apprentices and bakers’ boys with loaves on their heads. The tree leaves above the garden walls seemed to shimmer with a quiet ecstasy, and Aldersgate itself, tall and shadowy, shone dully, as if it were still touched by the minds that had built it.

“Crazy,” I heard them say softly through wool behind me as I led the way to Thames Street beside Master Robert. “She just stares and doesn’t speak.”

“Well, it’s understandable, considering what’s happened.”

“You wouldn’t find me walking off like that fool Gregory if I had a woman like that. Oh, no, if I married a rich widow, I’d stay at home and drink myself to death on the best French wine.”

“Not likely—you’d be back at the Boar’s Head, telling lies, in no time at all.”

Why were they talking about such unimportant things? Couldn’t they see what had happened to the City? It was all painted and modeled with living light, shaking with a dim vibration of joy.

At Master Wengrave’s, the alderman’s pennants before the house shook and trembled in a wind that wasn’t there. Master Kendall’s tall house, mine now, which stood only a back alley and a garden away from it down the street, seemed to pulsate with a strange inner life. The glass at the windows had been stored for safekeeping, but the shutters stood open, and air moved in and out from them as if they were living throats. The leaden gargoyles that were the downspouts from the roof gutters seemed frozen alive, impatient to be freed. As I stared at it Mistress Wengrave came to her door to welcome us in, and I turned to see that her face, too, had the rich golden glow. I watched it, silent and fascinated, as she thanked Master Robert, made over her goddaughters, saw them carried up to bed by two grooms, and gave orders to a kitchen maid who’d come to ask about supper. The kitchen maid’s face had that look too—and I’d always thought her a simple girl.

“Margaret, do you need something to eat or drink? You’re looking rather strange. Are you ill?” Her voice seemed to be coming from a long way away.

I heard myself saying, “I’ve come a long way … Gilbert de Vilers is dead … I need … alone …”

Mistress Wengrave, who has been my neighbor and my friend for a long time, looked grave, and her florid face paled somewhat beneath the golden sheen.

“Alone?” she said. “You shouldn’t be alone. Not at a time like this. Come, we’ll pray for him and you’ll be at ease,” and she put an arm around me to steer me to the household chapel. But she had scarcely shown me in when the smell of burning and a heavy clattering sound signaled a crisis in the kitchen. Mistress Wengrave has a mortal fear of fire. When Master Wengrave rebuilt the upper story of his house and added an oriel, she begged him to build a kitchen separated from the house. But he said that the kitchen she had was good enough, for it was built all in stone, and it was more convenient attached to the house anyway, for his food would get cold being brought from an outside kitchen. So she went on waking up in the night, thinking she smelled smoke, and walking about in the dark to check on her children.

“By our dear Lady! Margaret, forgive!” she cried as she fled. But I hardly noticed. The Wengraves’ chapel is a tiny room on the ground floor, barely big enough for the family, and has the only glass window in the house. The rest are waxed linen, set in frames that can be taken down when the weather is good. But the chapel window, set on the eastern side of the house to catch the morning sun, is small, and wasn’t as costly to glaze. But now, although it was nearly sunset and the window should have been dark, it glistened as though the new dawn were trapped in it. A pinkish golden light, rolling like steam, was pouring through it. The tiny room was incredibly still; the sound in the surrounding house was separated by a veil—there but not there. The faint sound of a woman screaming, cries for more water buckets, and scurrying footsteps seemed eerily muffled. As I watched the rolling clouds of light, I heard a tiny, quiet voice in my ear. It said, “Margaret,” as if it expected me to listen.

I didn’t move a muscle, for fear it might vanish.

“Margaret!” the voice said again, a little louder.

“It is You. I thought You’d left me.”

“Left? I don’t leave. After all, I am the Eternal Word. You just weren’t listening, that’s all. Talking, yes; listening, no.”

“I thought You’d left because—because—”

“I know. That’s why I’m here.”

“Is it a sin to love so much? I mean, just a person, a man, and not something divine? I try to think of heavenly things, but all I can see is his face.”

“Margaret, who made love?”

“Why, ah—um—”

“I did, Margaret. All kinds and sorts. Little and big. It’s one of My better mysteries.”

“Mysteries?”

“Why, yes. The more you give away, the more you have. Unlike water, which I made the ordinary way, so when you pour it out, it’s gone. How dull My universe would be, without My mysteries.”

“But it hurts so. Did You make it just to amuse Yourself?”

“Margaret, you’re questioning Me again. Aren’t you ever ashamed of being presumptuous? Most people would be singing praises and thanks for this much enlightenment. But not My stubborn, troublesome Margaret.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I wanted to show you something. But no one seems to be listening these days—even you.”

“I’m truly sorry; I’m listening now.”

“As well you ought to be! Look what it took to get your attention! Lights! Clouds! Voices! Next you’ll be wanting smells and heavenly choirs! If I didn’t love you so much—”

“You do, You really do?”

“You’re not supposed to interrupt, Margaret. That’s another of your failings.”

By this time the fire scare had passed by, and Mistress Wengrave had returned to stand by the door. I could hear, with some outer ear, as she said, “Hsst! There’s someone else in there. And lights! Has Margaret let in a burglar? She’s much too unsuspecting.” And someone answered her—I don’t know who.

“Have you ever seen the ocean, Margaret?” the Voice asked.

“No.”

“But you can imagine it, can’t you?”

“Why, yes; it’s lots and lots of water.”

“But if you’d never seen a drop of water, could you begin to imagine the ocean?”

“No.”

“How, then, if you’d never had a drop of love, could you begin to understand My love for creation?”

“It’s all right then? Loving him too much?”

“Love is part of My design, Margaret. Look.”

What happened next is very hard to describe. The aching thing you feel when you’re in love got bigger and bigger as the room grew larger and more beautiful. Then it fell away entirely into something like an ocean of silvery light, vibrating and trembling, spread all around me as far as I could see. It was the entire universe, the stars and moon and the dust spots and the world and the bits and pieces that make everything, the up and the down and the sideways, all dancing for pure joy. I thought my mind and body would burst with the rapture of seeing it. Then with a crack I split into a thousand pieces, crying out as I spread into the dancing universe, until “Margaret” was completely lost in a thousand splinters vibrating with passionate love, and dancing, dancing—eternally dancing.

“What happened, Margaret? There was a dreadful flash, like lightning, and we thought you’d been killed.” Mistress Wengrave’s anxious voice pulled me back into a single piece again. But I could still feel the light, although I didn’t see it anymore, though that sounds odd to say.

“Gregory,” I said. “I’ll find him.”

“Of course you will, dear, of course you will,” said Mistress Wen-grave in that special, indulgent tone that we reserve for infants and crazy people.

That night, lying awake in bed, I discovered that I could hear everything. I don’t mean everything in the room, I mean everything. I could hear my girls breathing, and the uneven gasps of little Walter Wengrave as he had a nightmare in the next room. He was Mistress Wengrave’s favorite, as frail children often are, and the many nights she’d sat up with him while he struggled for breath had tied him all the closer to her. Twice I’d saved him, and she’d never forgotten, though we’d hidden it from her chaplain, who was very orthodox, and her husband, who was a model of piety.

But now I could hear the sounds in distant rooms as easily as if they were only a few inches from my ear. I heard insects burrowing in the walls and, at the top of the house, two little apprentice boys whispering in the long room under the eaves where the apprentices and journeymen slept in several big beds. Then I listened more: I could hear next door, in my own house, Cook’s powerful snore, which had always been something of a joke. I heard cats treading softly in the street, and rats running along the eaves several streets away. A dog barked; men roistered in taverns in defiance of the curfew; a nightwalker was collared by the watch, and voiced his grievances while being hustled off to jail. I could hear couples making love in the dark and horses shifting their feet in their stalls. Even the fish swimming in the river made a soft, sliding sound.

All around me, the night voices of the City whispered in the dark. Could I hear beyond the walls? I listened closer and could hear a fox slipping through the grass, and the wings of night hunting owls. Closer and closer I listened, until I heard it: the deep, almost imperceptible humming sound that the earth itself makes. Something in Twelve it caught my mind, and as I listened intently to the humming, I heard the narrow high little note made by my own working soul. It was joined by another, and another, as the sounds of other people and finally the tiny notes of the beasts and fowl, each humming like the ringing aftersound that a bell makes long after it has been struck. So many tones—such a soft ringing in the dark, with the mother-hum beneath it, like the bass note on a great organ. It was music; a great chord that filled the universe. It intensified and diminished, all in unison, like a pulsing song with only one note. But there were little spots that seemed empty of song, places that felt wrong. And it was then, listening, that I heard it far away: a discord in the note, a faint shrieking sound where the song had broken, as if the singers had stopped in horror. And there, in the faraway dark space, I heard what was unmistakably Gregory’s voice, like a faint echo from the depths, calling,

“Margaret!”

AN ICY BREEZE FROM the towering granite mountains beyond the castle stirred the tapestries on the walls of the Great Hall. A ring of garlanded maidens rippled silently behind the Sieur Renaud d’Aigremont, Comte de St. Médard, as he took a sheet of begrimed, many times refolded paper from the hand of a kneeling groom.

“So, Pedro, this is what you took from him?”

“Yes, my lord, this was all.” The Count looked to the black-hooded Dominican beside the courtier for confirmation. The gray-faced, cold-eyed visage nodded silently.

“No holy relic, you’re sure of that?”

“Nothing, my lord count, not a splinter, bone, crucifix, or rosary. We overlooked nothing. Just this paper, worn underneath his shirt.”

“It’s not a prayer, is it? You know how those things make me uneasy.”

“No. Just an ordinary letter. You can read it yourself.” The Sieur d’Aigremont crossed to a spot beneath a tall, arched window, where the light was clear, and unfolded the letter. There was a spot of blood on it. He wrinkled his nose in distaste.

“I do hope you haven’t damaged him. You know I don’t like them damaged first. They don’t last as long then; remember that I don’t like to be deprived of sport—especially in this case.” The Count, looking slightly preoccupied, turned to another kneeling groom and raised his eyebrows slightly, as if he wished to be reminded of the fellow’s business.

“The entremets, mon seigneur, for the ambassador’s feast of welcome—you wished to be consulted—” The groom sounded anxious.

“Twelve gilded youths dancing, and a pastry ship on wheels—didn’t I make it clear enough last time? I wish to put Count Gaston’s fire-breathing dragon to shame. Dragons, bah—tasteless. How typical of him. Now, get out. You are interrupting me.” The kitchen groom left backward, bowing extravagantly and muttering, “Twelve gilded youths. My God, where are twelve youths left? I suppose I should rejoice it wasn’t maidens he wanted. Perhaps the chapel choir—”

“My lord, your wishes were obeyed precisely,” broke in the first groom. “The stain is just from a bloody nose. It took a half-dozen men to do the job, and one of them ended up with a broken collarbone.” The count’s face relaxed in anticipation of pleasure.

“He put up quite a struggle, then?”

“Like a tiger.”

“Wonderful. The most powerful beasts give the most noble sport—and the most satisfying end.” The Count unfolded the stained letter with unusual delicacy for one with such wide hands. But then, he was a connoisseur, and prided himself on the exquisiteness of his sense of touch. Rings, two or three to a finger, made deep grooves in the pallid fat that hid the joints. A sprinkling of coarse hair, like a boar’s, across the back of his hands detracted somewhat from the perfection of the glittering jewels. For a moment he admired his hands holding the letter. I’ll have them shaved, the thought flitted across his mind. It will set off the stones better. Touch, taste, and sensuality were all linked in him. As he read the letter aloud in French he stroked the ink, and a delicious orgasmic sensation, united with a spasm of the salivary glands, traveled briefly through him.

“Charming,”he said.

“I thought you’d like it,” said Fray Joaquin.

“And how does he enjoy our oubliette? Has it changed his opinions any?”

“He shouts up through the grille that truth can’t be altered, and you can’t make it go away by hiding from it.”

“Arrogant, arrogant as ever. An arrogance beyond his station.

It offends me, Fray Joaquin, have I told you how long it has offended me?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“‘Homage to My Lady’s Tiny Foot’ was one of my best, don’t you think?”

“Beautiful. Perfection. Who else could possibly have conceived of something of such refinement?”

“It was when I heard that every student in Paris was singing ‘Homage to My Lady’s Large Shoe,’ that I knew I had an enemy.”

“One with no taste.”

“An enemy to be bent to my will, and then destroyed.” He gazed across the hall, where Europa in silk thread gently swayed atop the great bull. “The Master denies me nothing. I had only to make the request and he fell into my hands—even more easily than the little ones. Lovely. And without a prayer or a relic or even a saint’s name in protection. How could I ever doubt that it was the Master’s work? What shall I do with him, Fray Joaquin?”

“I have not your brilliance, my lord. Cut out his tongue and feed it to the dogs?”

“Nice, but not nice enough. I want to break his mind first, the mind that mocked me—before I break the rest. And he will need his tongue to confess his abjectness. I want him to tell me my work is brilliant, witty. I want him to search desperately for new adjectives of praise before I begin to finish him off, inch by inch. I am not a crude man—never mistake me for that, Fray Joaquin. No, my vengeance is refined, delicate, sensual—just like this flower.” Still holding the letter, he plucked a rose from the brass bowl on the table beneath the window and inhaled the scent.

“A rose—rich and refined. Daisies are scentless and vulgar, don’t you think?”

“Of course, my lord.”

“Not good for much, except to pull the petals off one by one to discover who loves you.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You will. I want a drawing spell. Like the one I cast for him. Have Messer Guglielmo call it up tonight, without excuses, this time.”

“Messer Guglielmo? But he says he is still bruised from the last encounter, and the next may be his last. He says Asmodeus may break loose into this world, uncontrolled.”

“It is his own fault. He must choose better assistants. If Arnaut hadn’t grown cowardly and recited a Paternoster, he could have kept control of him. As it was, we had to sacrifice a perfectly good groom by pushing him out of the circle. Tonight. You will call Asmodeus and cast a drawing spell for a marguerite.”

“For a what?”

“For this humble little flower, here, that hides between the grasses and cannot spell. ‘I live for the day of your return … I kiss this dear paper, since it will take you my words,’” he recited in a mocking falsetto. “I want this little one, this Margaret. I intend to pluck off her petals one by one before him—‘she loves me, she loves me not’—ah, fitting. Yes, fitting indeed. The sort of idea only a poetic mind might have.” The Sieur d’Aigremont began to pull the petals from the rose one by one, sniffing each petal before he discarded it onto the patterned carpet. He composed his features in the expression of bland arrogance he favored for assessing newly purchased works of art.

“It’s not easy to draw a person from beyond the sea. Not like getting a choirboy from the next seigneury.”

“I want her.” The Count’s arched black eyebrows drew together in a threatening scowl, and a dangerous crimson began to stain his jowly, coarse face.

“Why, yes, yes, of course. It will be done tonight, exactly as you wish.”

“Good. I want it soon. I dislike waiting.”All at once he tore the remainder of the petals off the flower, and flung the stem to the floor.

“Soon, Margaret.” His heavy, sensual red lips parted in a smile as he carefully crushed the head and stem of the rose beneath his gilded Spanish slipper.

“MISTRESS, THERE’S TWO disreputable-looking men asking at the door for Mistress Margaret. Shall I send them away? Suppose they’re informers?”

“Just a moment, Kat, did they leave their names?” I leaned forward eagerly from my embroidery frame. I was in the solar with Mistress Wengrave, who was spinning, and her two oldest girls, who were hemming sheets. The day was overcast, but the cool air was crisp and clean, for the strong wind that had brought the clouds had blown away the dank chimney smoke of the City. Through the open shutters, we could hear in the back garden the shrieks of smaller children at play, and, loudest of all, Cecily’s voice.

“It’s mine! You give it back or I won’t play!”

“Aw, who made you the queen of everything?” a little boy’s voice answered. It was Peterkin, Mistress Wengrave’s fat little seven-year-old.

“I’m the smartest, and I know all the rules. You can’t play without rules.”

“Can so! Ow! You tell your sister to quit kicking!”

“So, give us back our ball!”

“Catch me!” The shrieking and whooping resumed.

“I got it for you, Cecily!” Walter’s voice. And the rattle of play began again. Mistress Wengrave smiled.

“He’s much stronger now, Margaret. It’s a pleasure to hear him outdoors, instead of seeing him huddled all day by the fireside.”

Kat, waiting by the door, shifted impatiently from foot to foot. “One of the men says he’s Robert le Clerc, and he’s brought the other to you with news.”

“News!” I cried, and the embroidery frame clattered to the floor as I stood up too quickly.

“Now Margaret, remember what Master Wengrave said. Don’t you go running to the door unescorted. Kat, I want two armed grooms in the hall beside her when they’re shown in.” Kat curtseyed and ran off.

When Robert and his friend were brought in, I could see why Kat had hesitated. Robert himself was not so bad, though his gray gown was threadbare and he had a hole in his hose. But the man who was with him was utterly astonishing. His chief garment was a strange, patched and repatched cloak, lined with catskins of every variety, parted to reveal a dark wool gown that looked as if it had once belonged to someone much shorter and fatter. And richer too. Beneath the patches on the filthy gown, you could see, like old crusts, the remnants of embroidery in some fancy foreign pattern. I decided the gown must have been either blue or green originally, though it certainly wasn’t even close to either color now. The man’s hose were a devastation, ending in feet that were shod in several layers of rags, wrapped about like bandages. In short, he looked as if the moths had been at him.

His face did nothing to improve the impression. A gray beard of varying lengths met the few wisps of white hair that remained growing about the edges of his head. His eyes, light blue, had an odd sparkle, as if he were a little mad. His skin was pink like a baby’s. An old, mad baby. Had he really heard news of Gregory?

“You are Dame Margaret de Vilers, wife of Sir Gilbert de Vilers? My message is for no one else.” He spoke in French.

“Yes, I am she,” I answered in that language. My heart started to pound.

“I saw your husband in a cart with six other English prisoners, being transported through the streets of Orléans. People were throwing things at them, and the guards were striking right and left, shouting, ‘Don’t spoil their value,’ though their hearts weren’t in it.”

“Go on.”

“I was promised a rich reward.” He stopped.

“You’ll have it when the story’s done.”

“She’s honest,” interjected Robert.

“I’d just spotted a good opening, and was about to throw my rock, when I heard one of them—a big villainous looking dark fellow—reciting in Latin. I knew the passage: Seneca. Well, that’s certainly unexpected—especially from an English goddam. ‘Hey, brother,’ I shouted in Latin, ‘what are you doing in a cart, instead of parsing Latin in a cozy schoolroom?’

“‘The same thing you’re doing dressed up in rags and catskins. Scholarship has brought me low, brother.’ Then, before the guards drove me off, he said to go to London and leave a message at the Kendall House for Margaret de Vilers, saying his ransom had been bought by the Comte de St. Médard, who serves King Charles of Navarre. They were bound for the Comte’s chateau in the Pyrenees. Since King Charles is currently allied with the English, he said he expected to be back home on parole eventually, but that I should bring you this message and receive a rich reward. Those were his exact words—‘a rich reward.’” He looked expectantly at me.

“Go on.”

“Rich, I said to myself. I haven’t heard that word in a good long time. So I got passage as a pilgrim and begged my way all the way here from Dover.”

Alive! He was alive and coming home!

“How long ago was it that you saw him?”

“Oh, more than a month, just before the Feast of the Assumption. Begging’s the slow way to travel. Now, about that reward—”

“More than a month? Then why isn’t he home already? Has something happened to him on the way?” I didn’t like the look on Robert’s face.

“Dame Margaret, I don’t think he’s on the way.”

“What on earth do you mean?” I could feel myself becoming alarmed. So much hope, and now so much fear.

“It’s true the Count is a feudatory of King Charles. Have you heard of him? No? I thought so. He’s not called Charles the Bad for nothing. He’s not a man to put your faith in. But the Count’s worse. He’s got a reputation among the scholars. A necromancer. An alchemist. People who visit him don’t always come away; he’s not a man whose hospitality I’d ever seek out, though he has a lordly reputation among the gentry.”

“But Gregory can pay ransom. Men of good birth are always ransomed.”

“Not by the Count.” I put my hand over my heart. Suddenly I was freezing.

“I was promised a rich reward,” prompted the man in catskins.

“Of course, you’ll have supper,” said Mistress Wengrave.

“Don’t imagine I’ve traveled all this way for supper. I’m going to stick like a burr until I get my reward.” Robert pulled on his cloak and tried to shush him as he grew more and more agitated.

“Your reward will be a good drubbing unless you mend your manners, you beggar.” Mistress Wengrave grew haughty.

“No, no—that’s not fair. He’s brought good news—wonderful news. If you’ll come with me, you’ll get your reward. But you’ll have to wait. It’s in my house, and I have to get it out.”

“What do you mean, Margaret? Those de Vilerses haven’t left you so much as a pin, and they could be back any time and surprise you there. You know what Master Wengrave said. It’s their house now, and the law won’t be on our side if they get hold of you. It’s not like the girls. He has rights, there. But you’re a widow.”

“Widow no more; it’s Gregory’s, and I have rights too.”

“None that will withstand a shortsword, Mistress Margaret,” pointed out Robert. “But I must say, these relatives of Brother Gregory’s sound mercenary. No wonder he avoided them.”

“It’s them that got him in this fix.”

“Nice family.”

“That’s been my thought too—and I’ve had more time than you to think it over.”

“Enough, enough. I didn’t come all this way to hear about families. The reward, you’ve promised.”

“Very well, then. Since you won’t wait—” I’d already felt the cold shadow of Master Kendall floating in the room. He always turned up for any conversation that looked interesting. When things got dull around me, that’s when he went about town, snooping on his old friends, spying on former business rivals, poking into brothels and stews, inspecting his chantry to see if the priest was being neglectful, and generally being far more meddlesome than he’d ever been in life. Lack of occupation always had sat heavy on him.

“Master Kendall?”

“Over here, Margaret, on the bench by the fire.” And I watched as the beloved form, so reassuring, swirled like mist.

“You were right.” I could feel the others staring. Kat shuddered and crossed herself, and Mistress Wengrave clasped her hands together in agitation.

“Of course, Margaret. I’d never lie to you. Now, I suppose, you want the money.”

“Yes, I need it. Travel money, ransom money. And back wages for the household. And now this fellow.”

“Why is she talking into the air?” The scholar drew his catskin cloak tighter against the chill.

“Hsst. You shush. Margaret’s not like other people. You should have left well enough alone and gone away.”

“No, no,” I interrupted. “Master Kendall never liked to be stingy. This fellow needs his reward.”

But, of course, everyone was astonished. We took two grooms with us to keep watch, as we went out the kitchen door at Mistress Wengrave’s. Even though it was midafternoon, the heavy clouds of a gathering storm had suddenly made it dark and dank. Crossing the garden and back alley between the houses, we found that Mistress Wengrave’s gardener had put down his hoe and followed the odd procession. Oh, bother, I thought, all this and rain too. I clutched my billowing cloak to me and looked up at the glowering sky, where the black clouds were rolling as if in a boiling cauldron. As they saw the gate of our stableyard opened, our own outside grooms, who had been hurrying under cover, paused to stare and joined us. The low rumble of thunder and first heavy drops sent us all scurrying into our back kitchen door. Cook looked up first in pleasure, then alarm, as she saw the faces of the grooms. Then she silently left her pottage while the kitchen boy abandoned the knives he’d been sharpening to join the eerie, almost ceremonious party.

I paused at the screen that separated the kitchen door from the hall. “Where do we go now, Master Kendall?”

“The hearth first; there’s a loose stone.”

“The hearth?” The hall looked dark and forlorn. The kitchen boy had run to close the shutters as the wind began to blow gusts of pelting rain through the windows. The smell of damp dust and the rattle of rain on the roof made it seem even more gloomy. How different it had been in the days of Master Kendall’s life, all garlanded and filled with feasting and mirth! “We’ll need a candle,” I said, staring into the sad shadows.

“Mistress, is that the ghost you’re talking to?” Cook’s voice sounded troubled as she brought the flickering candle, newly lit in the kitchen fire.

“Why, yes, of course. How did you know about him?”

“We thought he was back. We’ve missed him for some time. It was so reassuring, like, feeling him in the corners, and seeing him pass through the door. He was a good master, and we’d have him back anytime. But we thought you didn’t see him. You never gave a sign of it before you left.”

“It’s different now, look. He says he hid your back wages under a stone in the hearth.”

“Oh, then he has been gone.” Cook shook her head ruefully. “Why, otherwise he’d know those fearsome fellows who carried you off came back and pried up all the hearthstones. ‘These rich merchants always have money hidden,’ said that fierce old knight. ‘Believe me, I haven’t burned cities for nothing. They’re all alike, French, German, or English: pry up the hearthstones.’”

I’d never seen Master Kendall’s ghost angry before, but at this speech he swirled and crackled almost as fiercely as the Weeping Lady in one of her fits. The stirring wind he made extinguished the candle. Several people who could sense him hid their heads in their arms; Mistress Wengrave recited several Paternosters and the stableman crossed himself. The boy hurried back with the relit candle, and I held it high, peering into the darkened hall. The circle of light glittered on the clustered faces of the watchers.

“He asks you, did they look behind the paneling?”

“No, they never thought of that. When they found the gold, they left, gloating.” A rolling peal of thunder and the crash of nearby lightning made me start.

“But—Gregory, did he gloat too?” I could feel my heart hurting. Is this what we must all come to, this dusty darkness?

“Oh, no, mistress. He’s not like them at all; he looked as if he were going to a funeral.” Cook looked sad at the memory, but then brightened. “But he asked me about my bird; he inquired after my sister’s health; he remembered my leche lombard. He said no one could make anything to touch it, not even the Duke’s own cook! Why, he remembered everything! So gracious! Who’d take the time to remember someone like me when they’ve got troubles of their own? Oh, he’s a gentleman from top to toe, and inside as well, where it counts! I’ll wait forever until you come back with him, good mistress, and so will everyone that’s here.” Will the steward had joined her, and Bess and Tom and all the others. They all nodded silently in agreement with her. My eyes felt damp. There are plenty of places these days for good people like that. Not many are as fortunate as I am in my household.

“Master Kendall says you can’t wait without wages, so we must try the panel.” Silently, Robert le Clerc took the candle and held it by the seamless paneled wall as I felt with my hands, listening for the soft sound in the air that was Master Kendall’s voice. As he instructed me, I felt along the grooves and carving, while they all watched, awestruck. I tapped and put my ear to hear the hollow space, asking his directions as I maneuvered the intricately carpentered little hidden door open.

“Ah!” A breath passed through the watchers all at once, as the segment of panel came off in my hand, revealing a dark little hole behind it.

“Now, Margaret,” Master Kendall’s voice sounded calm, though the renewed rattle of rain on the roof made it difficult to hear. “Take the little bag right away without opening it and put it in your bosom. As I recall, there are ten or twelve good gold florins in it, if I’m not mistaken. You’ll be needing that yourself, though I fear it’s not enough. The larger bag is silver. Open it before the company, and use it to pay my obligations. Even in death, it would shame me to be thought stingy.”

So I plunged my hand deep into the hole, oblivious of spiders, and took out the bigger bag. While they were exclaiming, I stowed the little bag unnoticed. But when I’d paid everything, there was nothing but a single silver penny left. It certainly did look small, sitting there in the palm of my hand. Not enough. Not enough with twelve florins, either, even if they are good gold. Why, even if I could ransom him, it wouldn’t be for this sum; it was all his own fault for going and getting knighted. It raised his price. I felt annoyed all over again, just thinking about it. And let me tell you how proud knights are of their ransoms. The more you cost, the more honor. And there are knights that set their ransom so high, they can’t go home for ages, just so they won’t be shamed when they return before their fellows. “I’m a big man, set me high,” they say. And then they hunt and wench on parole with their captors, who are really more like hosts, while the folks at home scrimp and borrow. And, of course, folks who are judged not capable of raising ransom are chopped to pieces. So the arrangement, like most such arrangements, benefits the rich and not the poor.

“This won’t do; I need an expert in money,” I said to myself as I tucked the coin into the purse at my waist.

“Who’s that? A banker? Master Wengrave knows of several very reliable ones.” When Mistress Wengrave spoke, I realized with a start I’d been talking out loud.

“No,” I said. “Bankers make loans, and there’s not a one on the face of the earth who’d help me. I need someone who can pull money out of nowhere. I need Brother Malachi.”

“This sounds altogether interesting,” said Master Kendall’s ghost, cheering up. “Margaret, you always were a young woman of infinite resourcefulness.”

And so, that very afternoon in the pouring rain, Mistress Wengrave dispatched a boy to Mother Hilde’s house to find out if Brother Malachi was home yet. And as the little creature dried himself out before the fire, we all exulted to hear that Brother Malachi, with his usual cat’s instinct for finding comfortable spots, had returned home with Sim just before the bad weather had set in, and was all abubble with good news.

“SO YOU SEE, Brother Malachi, I have a very large-sized problem.” I was seated on a bench by the fire, extending my damp shoes and mud-splashed hem toward the warmth. My muddy pattens stood on the hearthstones; the two grooms from Master Wengrave’s were drying themselves off, too, and trying to pretend that they weren’t listening. Brother Malachi was comfortably ensconced on a big cushion in the household’s only chair; Mother Hilde and little Bet were on the bench beside me, stringing dried apples while Clarice, seated on a stool with a big basket on the floor beside her, finished her mending. In the corner behind the woodpile the cat was nursing a new litter of kittens. Peter and Sim, who were supposedly minding the fire under another one of Brother Malachi’s experiments in the back room, had taken advantage of the diversion to stand in the door to listen. In short, the little room Hilde and Malachi called their “hall” was full of people and the smell of damp wool and cooking cabbage, the way it usually is in bad weather.

Brother Malachi was so full of his own good news that he found it difficult to listen. His face was all pink and round with contentment, but he managed to make it look long and sad as I spoke.

“Margaret, how many times have I told you that everything has two sides? I remember when you sat in this very place, weeping because the Bishop had put you out of business. And then what happened? Why, the richest old man in town proposed marriage so you could fix his gout on a permanent basis! You see? Two sides! In every bad thing, a good thing is hidden, if you know how to look.”

“But, Brother Malachi, what if in every good thing, a bad thing is hidden? That’s two-sided too.” Brother Malachi’s face clouded over for a moment, but then brightened again.

“It can’t possibly be—for then inside the bad thing is hidden another good thing. So you see, the bad things must be taken as opportunities. And where would we all be without opportunities? That is why the world becomes constantly better.”

Mother Hilde sighed with pleasure. “Oh, Malachi, I never tire of hearing your philosophy. How fortunate I am to live with the wisest man in the world!” She rose from her work to put another log on the fire under the kettle, while Malachi waved his hands airily to explain his theory further. And as he explained his positives and negatives, rising always to a better state, his arms rose higher and his face grew happier. He hesitated briefly when he reached the point where he would have to choose between the comfort of remaining seated and the pleasure of standing to allow his hands to rise in elaboration of his theory concerning the improvement of the world. He rose but an inch briefly before he decided for comfort, wiggling his fingers toward the shining constellations between the bright, red-painted beams in the low ceiling to depict infinite height, and adding “and so forth and so on” to conclude his discourse as he sank with a satisfied plop back into his chair, which was located exactly beneath Ursa Major. The gaudy red and azure and the incongruous painted stars, more suited to a chapel or some nobleman’s bedchamber, made the room somehow seem all cheerful and odd-looking, not unlike Brother Malachi himself.

“I’m afraid I’m too dense for your theory, Brother Malachi. It’s all ideas, with no illustrations. Bad things turning into good, improving the world—that’s too hard for me,” I said.

“Let’s take me for an example, then. Here I was, sweating and suffering on the road for an honest penny. The mule had got a stone in his shoe, my feet were sore, and Sim was getting a fever. That’s the negative. The positive: We were near Southampton, where my old friend Thomas the Apothocary, who is one of the small circle of true philosophers and seekers, owed me money—so we’d stay with him. Perfect! We got to his house—it was in mourning. He’d died. A tragedy. And what’s worse, all his equipment had been sold to pay his debts. Not a trace of his work left. And here he’d let me know he’d got as far as the peacock’s tail. Can you imagine how much I wanted to see the work he had left? A tragedy—a tragedy of the first order. That’s the negative. But remember the positive. Not only did his widow and daughter entertain us well for old times’ sake, but it turned out he’d left me a book in his will. The positive! And wait until you see the book, Margaret. It contains the dream of my life.”

“The Secret? He was after it too?” I was astonished. Brother Malachi put his finger across his lips and smiled.

“A wonderful book. He left me a letter. It seems he’d labored in vain over it. He couldn’t read a word of it. And so he’d left it to me, the greatest living master of our art, to pay off his debt and to assist me in my search for the Ultimate. Who would have thought it from a sour, envious old tightwad like Thomas? But no, his last illness led him to a higher frame of mind. His wife, whom I last saw laboring in rags, was clad in a new dress, his daughter decently dowered, and even I—once the main object of his envy—had been remembered generously. Ah, thus do we reform when faced with the Infinite.” Brother Malachi paused briefly for a pious prayer for Thomas’s soul, and then continued. “But—in the positive, another negative. The entire text is unreadable. What, do you say, could be the positive? I plan a splendid and mentally enriching trip abroad in search of a translator.”

“But, but—what about Hilde? And your household?”

“Why, that’s the most positive of all—if Clarice hadn’t come to us in a moment of need, then she would not be here to handle Hilde’s business and look after Peter and the household.” I looked at Hilde, who seemed very pleased, and Clarice, who nodded as if it had been all arranged. Outside, the rain had stopped, and we could hear the shutters on the second stories bang open, as women leaned out to get a bit of air and shout the most confidential gossip to each other across the muddy alley.

“Now, first, according to my theory, you must inspect your difficulty from all sides,” said Brother Malachi, fixing his eyes on me. He looked completely pleased with himself at the opportunity of demonstrating how his theory worked. Shrill voices rattled among the damp rooftops. Someone’s goose was honking in the alley.

I looked at my hands. Gregory’s narrow gold ring was on my left hand, and old Master Kendall’s elaborate one on my right. “It seems pretty hard to me: my husband’s given up for dead, and he may well be if I can’t retrieve him. His lord wants to marry me off to someone else, his brother wants to kill me for the money Master Kendall left me, and I haven’t the funds to get him back. So where do I begin?”

“It seems to me that there are two ways,” said Brother Malachi. “One is easy and the other one difficult. So, let’s deal with the easy one first. How do you feel about him, Margaret?”

“What do you mean?” There was a long, uncomfortable silence.

“I mean,” Brother Malachi went on, “do you love him? The easiest way, you see, is simply to send a message to the Duke’s court, telling them where you can be found.” His eyes looked very shrewd, as if he were calculating something.

“Malachi!” Mother Hilde was indignant.

“I don’t want another man, if that’s what you’re thinking about. Everybody seems to think that’s all a woman needs. But it’s him I love, and I don’t want to give him up. Oh, I want him back so badly! I’d give anything to hear him grumping about Aquinas or see him prowling about the kitchen, sniffing in all the pots like a hungry wolf. He went and changed, Malachi—all he did was spout about honor and who sat where and whether he should have his personal coat of arms redone and, and, whether or not he should buy a stupid—pavilion. Can you believe it? And it was all bad for him. Just look how it came out.”

“Oh, my. That sounds exactly like him, all right. He always did fling himself into whatever he was doing. Were they versifying in pothouses? Why, then he had to be the best—ha, I remember one time in Paris when he was carried through the streets after some triumph in a tavern poetry contest. Was metaphysics in fashion? Then he was the most fluent elaborator of the quattuor causae. Then he heard about God-seeking. Ha! The most mystical mystic I ever met—until even the Carthusians wouldn’t have him. Though why, I don’t know. Nobody could outdo him for extravagantly ragged clothing and all-night vigils. Now, I take it, he’s doing chivalry.” Brother Malachi chuckled. “I imagine he’s quite unendurable. He often is, at the height of these fancies. Though I must say, in all our long acquaintance, he never gave the impression that he had a family.”

“Long acquaintance? You’ve known him a long time? I never knew that—he never let on, in all the time I talked about you.”

“Talked about me? Oh, yes, the fable of the memoirs. Of all the surprises I’ve had today, by far the greatest is the possibility that he might have been telling me the truth when he said he met you by copying your memoirs. Really, Margaret, what ever put such a notion in your head? You haven’t lived long enough to have anything to say. Imagine. And here I thought he was over there seducing you all this time.” Brother Malachi shook his head as if there were no end to the wonders of the world. It annoyed me greatly, and I bit my lip so I wouldn’t tell him I thought he was very unfair, and vulgar-minded too. He saw the look and laughed.

“Be fair, Margaret—who else but you would take such a fancy into her head? You have to expect people would believe the worst. Besides, when you told him about me, you probably didn’t know I’d changed my name since I’d last seen him. That was quite a while ago, when I had to move on very suddenly—” Sadness crossed Brother Malachi’s normally sunshiny face like a cloud, but was soon gone. “But I must say, I was mightily surprised when he turned up to borrow the money to abduct you. Something about hiring a horse. Goodness, I hadn’t seen him since Paris, where he went about under the nom de guerre of Gilbert l’Escolier, writing scurrilous theological tracts and satirical verse. A man of singular talents, Margaret, the chief of them being that he is always right and everyone else is wrong. Snobbish, obnoxious, and witty as the Devil—though I never thought he was interested enough in women to make off with you in that way. And half of London in pursuit! That Gilbert’s never managed to leave any city without a scandal yet. Did I ever tell you how they burned his book in Paris? The idiot! He told me he had twelve irrefutable theological proofs that they were wrong—so of course he stayed and they caught him. Impractical—yes, eternally impractical and stubborn, is Gilbert the Righteous.”

“It seems that we see him about the same way.” I sighed. “Now, how do I get him back?” Brother Malachi looked speculatively into the air.

“Well, Margaret—that’s the difficult way. It seems to me that we might combine all of our problems into one supreme solution: yes—yes, it makes sense. Of course, there’s the expense—but—hmm. How many florins did you say? Ten? Yes. Multiplication is in order, especially if you’re to go with us.”

“Oh, you can multiply it—I just knew you could. Can you make enough to buy him back?”

“Not from the Comte de St. Médard, Margaret. He’s eccentric, and already rich. He probably has some completely superfluous reason for not setting the ransom already. But—and here’s the useful part—admit, Margaret, you couldn’t do without me—he’s well known to us hunters of the Green Lion. So I imagine I might very well be able to work a trade. I’ll offer him the one thing he simply can’t refuse, and back it up with what’s left of my reputation. Did you know I was once celebrated, Margaret? And then, having retrieved Gilbert, it’s heigh-ho for the great centers of learning and my translator.”

“I don’t understand, Brother Malachi. Hunters of the Green Lion? Trading? And why can’t you get a translator in England, anyway?”

“Ah, thrifty, thrifty little Margaret. Your head’s transparent, as usual, and I can see all the thoughts in it. You’re thinking about the last of your florins, aren’t you? Do you think I’d hoodwink you like some foolish bumpkin from the country? Aren’t we old enough friends, Margaret, for you to know I don’t practice my skills on my own family? Yes—you’re a sort of family, just like Clarice and little Bet here. Things haven’t changed just because you left for a grander life.”

“I’m sorry, Malachi. I guess it was small of me. I’ve just been around Gregory’s relatives too much.”

“Very well, apology accepted. Come into my laboratorium; I’ll show you my book, and that will convince you of everything.” He looked toward the low door to the back room and for the first time noticed Sim. It was odd about Sim; even though it had been several years since I first saw him, he’d never really grown. He was still as short as an eight-year-old, though I’d figure him to be anywhere from twelve to fourteen or so. His head was large and a little misshapen, his teeth had gaps between them when he smiled, and he had the shrewd, dark little eyes of a boy who’d grown up fending for himself on the street. But he’d taken to us like a stray cat when we’d fed him, long ago, and from that day to this, he’d stuck to Brother Malachi like a burr. Sim had been listening, taking in everything on the quiet, the way he always does.

“Sim, you devil! Why aren’t you minding the fire? I tell you, if it’s gone cold, you’ve ruined it! Heaven save me from the lazy tricks of apprentices!” Sim scampered into the laboratorium ahead of us and poked up the fire with a great show of energy, while I ducked to follow Brother Malachi through the open door to the back room. Mother Hilde followed us and shut the door, so the grooms wouldn’t hear.

“It’s not as if I haven’t hunted far and wide for a translator here,” he said, puffing, as he removed a stack of books from the top of a little chest hidden in the corner of his oratorium. “Pothooks, I said to myself, looks as if it might be Hebrew. I’ll take it to the university at Oxford. Seems there was a fellow named Benjamin Magister, a Jew with a license to remain in the kingdom to translate the Old Testament. He was dead. Found some dismal doctor of theology who looked down his nose at me and said since the Old Testament was already translated, there was no need for any more Jews at the university. Phoo! What kind of scholar is that? Made inquiries. Went off on a hunt for one Isaac le Convers, said to be in Sussex somewhere, finally found his elderly daughter—she couldn’t read a word.”

Malachi lifted the little chest and put it carefully in the middle of his worktable. Then, as he rummaged about for the key, he continued.

“I chased all over the realm, leaving no stone unturned. Finally I was so desperate I came back to London and betook me to the Domus Conversorum, even though everyone knows there hasn’t been a convert there for a generation. Once the king had the Jews driven out, there was no need to maintain a house for converts. Except that by then it made a nice income for the Warden of the Domus, renting out the rooms. ‘Oh, no,’ says the Warden, ‘I’ve done my duty as a Christian—I’ve got a Spanish sailor here on full allowance who says he’s planning to convert.’ Ha! What people won’t do to keep a position—especially a cushy one like his! So I spent nearly a day with this fellow, who calls himself Janettus of Spain. He really was Jewish. ‘Oh, my, this is too difficult for me,’ he said. ‘I’m a simple man, and only know a few prayers—this is full of arcana. I can’t make out a word. You need a great translator and scholar, the greatest in the world. You need Abraham the Jew.’ I was all ablaze. ‘Where can I find him?’ ‘Oh, he moves about. When I heard of him he was living in Salamanca—but some say he was invited to Paris by the King of France, others that he went to Montpellier, or perhaps he is at Avignon, by invitation of the Pope.’ Hazy he was, entirely hazy. But it’s clear. Spain or France. He’s somewhere. I’ll find him. Take him into my confidence. The Secret—I feel it’s so close that I wake up at nights, trembling all over.”

Brother Malachi had at last located the key, and opened the little chest, lovingly taking out a packet wrapped in oiled silk. He cleared a space among the jars and odd-looking vessels of smoky, swirly colored glass on his table, and wiped it clean with his sleeve. Then he laid the packet reverently in the space. Hilde and I leaned close to him on the high table, to watch him unfold the silk.

“Now, take a look at this, Margaret, and you’ll understand every-thing—and cease worrying about the fate of your florins. Of course, you’ll both have to keep it secret that I’m carrying it—especially when we reach the Count’s. He’s perfectly capable of making sure I have no more earthly need for it. There are many of us who would do in a brother—to get their hands on this.”

“Of us? Surely you wouldn’t do such a thing!”

“Oh, not me. But by ‘us’ I mean the whole alchemical fraternity. You have no idea how frantic some of my brother philosophers can get. They’d sell anything, even their children, drive any bargain—even with the Devil, in some cases—or try any method, no matter how unsavory. You’d be surprised—fetuses, babies’ blood, virgin’s sweat—you name it, they’ll try it! Hmph! Not scientists at all! How do they expect to get results working at random like that? Now, I use the theory of Signs when I search, that, and the guidance of the Ancients, who were so much wiser than us. No, like so many others, the fools among us, too, are driven mad with the pursuit of gold. But even so, we’re a tightly knit group. We have to be—when outsiders hear what we’re doing, they very often arrange a kidnapping, or a bit of a torture session for information.”

“Oh, I never had any idea. I thought it was dangerous because of the heresy in it.”

“Oh—that.” Brother Malachi waved a hand to dismiss the notion. “Some say it is, some say it isn’t. It’s quite illegal in some places. In others, like this realm, the king says, ‘The more gold, the better; let them work.’There’s even a pope was one of us, they say. But there are ruthless, money-hungry people who would do anything at all to get their hands on the secret of Transmutation.”

“Well, I must say, I know something about that. Everything that’s happened to me lately is because of money, one way or another. Transmutation is obviously worse.”

“Exactly. But we aren’t stupid—we put everything in code. Those who aren’t adepts can’t figure out a word. We have passwords, secret signs of recognition, and a lot of other things I’ll never tell you about. And we adepts never refer to what we are doing directly—we use other terms. One of them is ‘hunters of the Green Lion.’ If you’ll open the book, I’ll show you why.”

Malachi had unwrapped the oiled cloth. Inside it lay an old-looking leather-bound book, with heavy metal clasps, set with semiprecious stones. He opened the book, and the acrid stink of old dust and long-gone workrooms rose from its yellowing parchment pages. Between rows of faded brown unreadable pothooks, the still bright colors of startling illuminations shone in glory.

“Oh!” I was quite taken aback. It was magnificent, glittering and mysterious. I could feel it holding and drawing me, as if it had a secret power of its own.

“Feel it?” Brother Malachi said. “I do too. It’s the Book of the Secret. It’s in there—I know it—and I can’t read a blessed word of it.” Brother Malachi’s eyes half closed, and he entered a state of reverie most unlike him. “It will bring us our dreams. It will shape our fate,” he murmured, passing his hands over the pages, as if the writing itself was so powerful that it gave off the perception of warmth. “Here—the end of my quest. And yours, too, Margaret.”

“But if you can’t read it, how do you know it’s got the Secret?”

“By the illuminations, Margaret. They’re code. Alchemists’ code. The text, obviously, explains the pictures and gives directions for achieving the various stages of the process. See here—” He opened a page at random near the beginning of the book.

“Brother Malachi! This isn’t a book about alchemy at all! It’s a book of dirty pictures! For shame!”

“No, no, Margaret. I told you it’s code. This is the mystical marriage of Sol and Luna—the Sun and the Moon. You can tell because they’re wearing crowns. The Sun is gold, the Moon is silver—just as Mars is iron, Mercury is quicksilver, and each of the seven metals is one of the seven planets. Sol must impregnate Luna in order to get the Stone.”

“The Philosopher’s Stone? This dirty picture gives you instructions?”

“Well, I need the text too. It’s not explicit enough in the picture.”

“I should think that’s plenty explicit. What about this one, where they’re lying naked in the bathtub, hugging each other?”

“That’s not a bathtub, that’s a tomb.”

“Well, it certainly fooled me. They look perfectly content, even if they are bathing with their crowns on.”

“You should observe more closely, Margaret. The code is in the details. For example, how many sets of feet do you see?”

“Oh, how nasty! Just one set between them. Ugh!”

“That’s because this is a picture of the alchemical death. Sol and Luna must lie together after being wed, and die together, to be reborn as one single person of mingled essences—that’s why they’re drawn as a hermaphrodite; they’re all mixed together, if you look closely. They must perish to be renewed—that bird there, that’s the spirit. Then they give birth to the spiritual body, which has mastery over all the elements.”

“But there’s lots more pictures here—what’s this one?”

“If I knew that, I’d be that much closer to the Secret. The Virgin being swallowed up by serpents. That’s the trouble with code. It’s hard to read. Now this one at the end, after the Peacock’s Tail, that’s the making of the Red Powder. That’s the stuff I’m after.”

“Powder? I thought it was a stone.”

“Only in a manner of speaking. It’s really a red powder, water without being wet. I have other works that are quite explicit about that.”

“Oh, look. This one’s a dragon.”

“That dragon, I have. And it does indeed eat metals. I’ve got it in that glass jar over there. It would eat its way through anything else.”

“It’s a liquid?”

“Of course. I told you this is code. The bathtub, as you call it, is my crucible.”

“So it’s all in here? The secret of making gold?”

“No, Margaret. The secret of Transmutation is a far bigger secret than simply making gold. Though, of course, you can use it to make base metals into gold if you want to—which is why most people want it. Transmutation isn’t just for metals.”

“You mean, it changes other things too?”

“Yes, all kinds of things into other things.”

“But all kinds of things are themselves, not something else. A pot’s a pot, and a spoon’s a spoon.”

“Oh, yes, for now they are. But the pot was clay, and will be powder some day. And the spoon used to be tin, and if you melt it, it’s tin again. So by applying heat, you transmute it. But if you keep on heating it and fooling with it, you can get it down to its basic elements, or essence. There are only four essences on earth, four things that never change: earth, air, fire, and water. Everything else is made of them, but mixed together in characteristically different proportions, you understand.”

“I think I see—like a cake. You stir the ingredients together differently, and you’ve got something else.”

“Yes, that’s it, Margaret.” Brother Malachi’s face, as he spoke, had changed. He was never a beautiful person. Cheery, but not beautiful. But as he grew serious, explaining the workings of nature, the light of intelligence shone in his face, and the love of the ideas he spoke of made him beautiful. It made me see why Hilde loved him.

“But cakes don’t transform. They just rot. You can’t make gold from a cake.”

“A cake’s not metal. The character of metal is not to rot—but it’s one of the characteristics of cakes to be transformed in this manner.”

“Or to be eaten.”

“Oh, yes, to be eaten”—he smiled and patted his stomach—“but that’s an entirely different transformation.”A singey smell had penetrated the laboratorium.

“Oh, my cakes, they’re burning!” Mother Hilde hurriedly took her elbows from the table, where she had been leaning beside us to see the book, and sped to the fireplace in the hall, where she found Clarice had already snatched off the griddle with the cakes. Malachi was entirely unperturbed, as he was in the face of most domestic difficulties.

“Burning is a process that transforms cakes, too—but have you ever wondered why things transform? That’s what I’m after. Not the what, but the why,”he went on.

“Do you know why?”

“We all know why in general, we alchemists, but it’s the specifics that have eluded us. You see, there’s a fifth essence—another element.”

“Another?”

“Yes, but it’s not on earth. Haven’t you ever wondered what the stars are made of? They never change. The heavens are made of special stuff—celestial stuff that is entirely different than anything on earth. I’m oversimplifying a bit for you, Margaret, so you’ll understand, but I know you can—Hilde does. The stuff of the heavens—there’s a little tiny bit of it present in every earthly thing. Not much, just like the salt in the cake, or the stew, or whatever. But it’s the little bit of the fifth essence—the quintessence, we call it—in a thing that allows it to transform. So, to make a long story short, if I can get the quintessence out of something, I can apply it to any substance, and that will make it transform itself into its higher form.”

“I see—so a base metal turns into gold, which is higher.”

“Exactly. But, of course, that would be just one very ordinary transformation.”

“Oh, yes, I see now. Would it work on people, Brother Malachi?”

“It ought to—haven’t you wondered why people decay and die? The Philosopher’s Stone I seek would heal the sick, since wellness is the higher state of mankind. It would rejuvenate the old—why, people might be able to live thousands of years!”

“Thousands of years? Wouldn’t that get dull?”

“Not if you could transform the mind—the highest state of the mind is wisdom, Margaret. People could become wise—in thousands of years you could find a lot of wisdom.”

“Could you make them good, too, Brother Malachi?”

“Why, yes, I suppose, that too.”

“So it’s not really gold you’re after, then. That’s just a small thing.”

“The smallest in the world, Margaret. Who needs gold? Well—I do, for my experiments, and to buy a pie or a winter cloak, which is why I’ll make gold first. But gold isn’t really the important thing. No, not in the least.”

I turned the pages again, looking at the enigmatic pictures. Very near the end of the book was the strangest picture of all. A lion, all in green, swallowing up the sun.

“Look, Malachi, here’s your Green Lion. What’s he doing there, swallowing up the sun?”

“The Green Lion. So very near the end. He’s the symbol of Transmutation, Margaret. He’s very hard to make. I have a bit of him in a flask too. There’s a method—the method in here, once I can read it, of getting him to swallow up Sol—now, you should know—who is Sol?”

“Gold, isn’t it. So you eat up gold to get gold?”

“The Green Lion is the most powerful of the beasts of transformation—much more powerful than the Dragon. Only he can swallow the sun, the noblest and the only incorruptible metal, to release its quintessence—the Stone, the Red Powder of Transformation. That is the page of the Secret, Margaret. It’s there—there with the Green Lion.”

I traced the outline of the Green Lion with my finger. There was something oddly compelling about him.

“I have to have him, Margaret, just as you have to have your Gilbert back again. So, if you’ll allow me to transform your florins, then we can take you with us. There’s a ship leaving for Bayonne as soon as the master finds enough cargo, which should be before the week’s out. That gives me just enough time for the multiplication. Oh, no—I don’t need all ten. Take these two, and get yourself a pilgrim’s cloak, hat, and staff, and anything else you think you’ll need. Oh, yes, you’ll be wanting your own pillow and blankets on shipboard, and get some biscuits or something that will keep, so you won’t go hungry if there’s nothing but salt meat. You do think Master Wengrave will look after your girls, don’t you?”

“As if they were his own.” I could feel my heart sinking. This was the worst idea I’d ever heard of. Leave my babies? Go someplace horrid and full of foreigners? Well, if I had to, who better with than Malachi and Hilde? Malachi spoke so many languages. Besides, he had a way of always landing on his feet in any strange place that made him the ideal traveling companion. Oh, why couldn’t Gregory just bring himself home, like proper people do? A reason—there must be a reason I couldn’t go.

“But, but—don’t I need travel permission from the Bishop?”

“Of course you do—and you’ll have it too. After all, I write indulgences from the Pope every day. A letter from the Bishop is nothing. Why, I’ve even got a plaster cast of his seal somewhere around here.” He rummaged around in a box, and came up with several casts he’d made of official seals, along with the papal seals that he’d had forged in metal abroad. “It will look quite official. Margaret—de Vilers, is it?—permission to go on pilgrimage. Oh, yes, I never travel without a sackful of good-looking documents.” Then he caught sight of my face.

“What’s wrong, Margaret? Are you frightened? You? I saw you walk on live coals once for far less. Now me—I have a right to be frightened. I’m getting on, you know. I love my ease, and my Hilde, and my cozy house. But if I’m not a fool who’s wasted my life, then I’ll pursue the Green Lion wherever he leads, even to the end. Now you, you say you love Gilbert and want him back. But if you’re too frightened to make the attempt, then say it now, and I’ll try myself, for your sake and for the sake of an old friendship. Though I haven’t the luck you’ve got in these matters. Say now—will you stay here?”

My mind was whirling. My head was pounding. Pounding like the hoofbeats of pursuing soldiers. I hesitated. “I—I think—they’re safer at Master Wengrave’s even without—without me. I could be killed. Or carried off and forced to marry. Then he’d die there. It’s me—it’s me that heard him calling, not anyone else. No—I need to go. I have to go. It’s the only way I see. God forgive me.”

DEEP WITHIN THE CASTLE on the crags, in a hidden laboratorium located just above the torture chambers, Messer Guglielmo Petrini, adept of the Great Work, philosopher, alchemist, and sometime conjuror of demons and spirits, was twitching all over with annoyance. “Call Asmodeus again?” his irritated voice shrilled above the steady creaking and puffing of an immense bellows apparatus, worked by a huge mute who heaved upon a rope-and-pulley system. “What does he take me for, a fool? I told him that’s positively the last time—the demon grows too strong.” The little man’s dark, tightly curled hair, bristling eyebrows, and stiff beard all quivered with irritation, as an eyelid twitched in sympathy with the left corner of his scornful upper lip. “I tell you, I deserve respect. If all he wants is back-country spells, he should hire the local wisewoman, not the world’s most celebrated alchemist. And if he wants gold in a hurry, he should loosen his purse strings a bit and get me some decent equipment and proper assistants. Six masked mutes! The idea!”

He gestured with disdain at the apparatus that stood about him in the hidden laboratorium. The aludel was aboil atop the athanor, dripping its distillate into a copper vessel. Two cauldrons stood on the open hearth, brewing unspeakable smells. Objects both repulsive and familiar were suspended from the walls and ceiling, and above an assortment of glass and pottery vessels, as if to catch their essence—bat wings, large beetles, and sheets of beaten copper growing green in the fumes of the acid beneath them. Atop the worktable stood an open book, greasy with fingerprints and candle droppings, propped to display a complex drawing of pentacles and overlapping circles. The room was an unusually wide one, hidden behind a tiny iron door in the depths of a great tower. Its floor of black tile glistened with the orange lights of the reflected fires, but the room’s low ceiling, supported by massive stone arches, seemed perpetually lost in shadow. Burned-out torches in brackets and the melted ends of candles stuck on top of each other in niches in the wall were testimony that this was a place of much night work.

At this speech, Fray Joaquin shrugged his black-cloaked shoulders. “If he had an endless supply of money, do you think he would have hired you to make gold? You had best hurry it up; his losses supporting King Charles in the north have been immense—to say nothing of his gambling losses, and what he spent on that pageant of the seasons that he wrote.”

“Did I tell him he had to be King of the Poets? Visiting foreign courts all smelling like a perfumery, chanting epics and having his rivals strangled! Now tell me, do you think that’s a respectable occupation for a warlord? And all the while, I have to do with the most inept glassblower this side of purgatory. And clothing! Look at this! He promised me two new gowns a year, and a fur lined cloak. Cheap stinking wool cut from dead sheepskins. And I imagine it was used before I got it.”

“It was used; he impaled the previous alchemist who wore it. And let me warn you, you’ve delayed too long. And now you balk at calling Asmodeus again. You won’t like it if you anger the Count.”

“Anger? Why anger him? Just tell him that we’ve done the job, but that the demon was slow and cranky. Then send a fast messenger to the man’s family with a ransom message, saying that the ransom will only be accepted from the hand of his wife, Margaret. The same thing will happen, and we run no risks. The man’s a fool. I’ve told him often enough, he’s thinned the ether here too much with his constant experiments—it’s dangerous, playing games with one of the most powerful spirits of the infernal. Next time, it won’t just be bruises we’ll be getting. Asmodeus may very well break free into the world. Tell me, do you remember where the letter was from?”

“Of course. I wrote it down, just to make no mistake.” Fray Joaquin drew a wax tablet from his sleeve.

“Then you thought of doing the same thing yourself?”

“Naturally. I’m not stupid. You think calling up devils gets results? If it did, we’d have gold already. Devils, they live to deceive. What makes him think Asmodeus wouldn’t deceive us too? So what have we got? Nothing but stink, mess, and bruises. Sending a messenger is much more likely to do the job.”

“It’s a long way, practically at the end of the earth,” said Messer Guglielmo, scrutinizing the tablet. “What civilized place would be called ‘Bruksfurd Manr’?”

“I thought we’d send Fray Raphael. After all, he took a vow of poverty, so it’s time he experienced a little hardship.”

“But the Sieur d’Aigremont needs him in the secret chamber—he has no excuse for leaving—though I’d love to be rid of him for a while. What a whiner. He comes up here to complain, usually when I’m in the middle of some very difficult experiment, and can’t be disturbed. The air’s bad down there, he whines. You’ve got it lucky. Lucky! Slaving all day and all night, sweating in the heat! No ventilation! Horrible smells! Clumsy bumpkins for assistants! No proper food, just a bite on the run! I’m worn to the bone! Just look at me!” He looked down at the offending gown, and saw a gray hair in his long, rough black beard. He plucked it out with an injured look. “Gray! I grow aged in the service of this ungrateful patron!”

“If you knew what went on in the secret chambers, you’d not complain.”

“What do I need to know? As long as he gets me the right fixative, it’s not my business how he does it. Unless, of course, he ignores my advice and manages to make a hole big enough for Asmodeus to come through. Apart from that, my only concern is my science. Who says wisdom ever comes without a price? And I’m paying it—suffering, suffering.”

“You’d do better if you suffered a little more silently, Messer Petrini. If he thinks you know anything at all, you won’t go free when the gold’s made.”

“They go in, they never come out. What do I care? They’re only peasant brats. There’s too many of them in the world already. They breed like rabbits, these lower orders.”

“Well then, I suppose the only likely one to go is me. That’s what I feared.” Fray Joaquin sighed. “I’ll tell him I heard of some pretty blond ones in the north, and I’ve gone to inquire after them. That’s the only kind he wants, anyway, and they’ve grown rather scarce around here.”

That evening, accompanied only by a tall deerhound, Fray Joaquin set off for England on the fastest horse in the stable.

“MAMA, THAT’S AN UGLY cloak. Why didn’t you buy a pretty one?” Alison was poking through my purchases as I spread them out on the bed in the upstairs room at the Wengrave house. It was hard to hear her, because she was wearing the hat. It was not only very nearly the width of her outstretched arms, but came down well over her chin. The strings hung to her waist.

“It’s a pilgrim’s cloak, silly.” Cecily was inspecting the money belt and heavy shoes. “It makes you look holy when you’re traveling. Then everybody helps you and nobody hurts you.”

“Nobody will hurt my mama. She’s pretty. Besides, Brother Malachi will touch all the bad people with his magic wand. Poof! Then he’ll turn them into frogs.”

“Who says?”

“Sim told me. Brother Malachi can do anything.”

“Mama, you’ll come back soon, won’t you?” Cecily’s voice was troubled.

“Of course she will,” Alison’s little voice piped from beneath the hat as she clambered up and plumped herself on the bed. “Mama never forgets us. She’ll bring presents and sweets. I want a new white pony and five colors of hair ribbons, Mama. Remember I like red and green best. No brown.”

“Yes, I’ll be back just as soon as ever I can. Remember I’ll be thinking of you and praying for you every night, and be good for Mistress Wengrave.”

“Not—easy,” announced Alison, kicking her plump little feet, shod in quilted wool slippers, on the side of the bed. “‘Stand up! Bow down! Quiet now! Softer voice, Alison!’ Mistress Wengrave is ve-ry bossy! She’s the bossiest!”

“Not as bossy as step-grandfather. Nobody’s as bossy as him,” Cecily corrected her sister.

Was it imagination, or was Alison distinctly pudgier than she’d been a month ago? Cecily was growing again. Her skinny shins were peeping beneath her hem. I need to let it down again, I thought. There’s one more turn in it before Alison gets it. Maybe I’ll trim it with ribbon when I put the hem up again for Alison. Then it will seem more like a new dress. Oh, God, France is so far away. Suppose I don’t live to turn up Alison’s hem? Who will remember that she doesn’t like hand-me-downs unless they’re made pretty for her? No, it can’t happen that way. It mustn’t happen. I couldn’t help the tears that came up in my eyes as I embraced them yet another time and said, “You must never be afraid. God has sent His angels to watch over you while I’m gone.”

“Angels? Can they make buns too?” And Alison, ever distractible, sat herself down to play with my beads and sing the baby song about all the things that go in a cake.

“Don’t worry, Mama. I’m big. I’ll look after Alison. I can do anything.”

“—and saf-fron, and sugar—”

“You’re Mama’s brave, big girl. Remember, I rely on you—”

“—I’m big too—and cinnamon—”Alison went on singing.

“I can do anything a grown-up can do. Even grown-up men were afraid of the big horse. But I wasn’t. And I rode him. I can do anything.” Cecily’s eyes were serious. She meant exactly what she said.

“You know that I don’t want to leave, don’t you?”

“I know you have to. I know why too. I hear them whispering in corners when they think I don’t understand. About the convent, and the lawsuit, and the bad people trying to steal away the dowry money our papa left us for marrying. You will come back, won’t you? And then it will be all fixed?”

“Of course it will. And Master Wengrave is your godfather and your papa’s dear friend. You know you are safe here, and he wants only your good?”

“I know.” Cecily rubbed her eyes hard. She had become old—too old for a little girl. But sometimes that’s what has to be.

“—and ten-ty, ’leven-ty pounds of rai-sins,” sang Alison. “Not bad. I made that extra part all myself. The cake in the song is not good enough the old way.”

“Is that all you think about—food?” said Cecily righteously.

“Oh, no. I think about Mama coming back. Because she will,” said Alison calmly, looking at her sister as if she didn’t understand anything at all.