CHAPTER ELEVEN

I TELL YOU, BROTHER, I SAW HIM, JUST AS PLAIN as day, riding out the gate, but the body was lying in state all along.” Hugo shuddered and crossed himself.

Gregory was lying on a narrow bed in the pilgrim’s hall, pulled as close as possible to the blazing fire. He was half propped up, heaped with blankets topped off by a vast wolf fur robe big enough to be a carpet, and Margaret was spooning soup into his mouth. Even though his eyes were open, he was having an unpleasant dream. He was dreaming that his brother Hugo had somehow appeared and was telling him ghost stories while Margaret tried to choke him with soup.

“Stop,” he said to no one in particular, and the soup spoon went away, while he doubled over to cough blood into the towel Margaret held before his face. He could feel her arms around him, holding him while he gasped for breath.

“It’s a sign, don’t you think? Brother, I may be spared after all. The curse may be lifted. The proper prayers. A pilgrimage perhaps. Brother, you must help me. I’ve sinned.”

“Oh, really? Who would have expected it.” Gregory rolled back and closed his eyes. His brother shook him by the shoulder.

“Open your eyes, Gilbert. You have to listen to me.”

“So what is it this time?” Gregory’s voice was barely audible. “Murder? Fornication? The razing of cottages containing widows and orphans? The torture of old men for hidden gold? How is that different from what any other soldier does? Get Father Three Aves to fix it for you. I’m not a specialist in these matters.”

“You don’t understand.” Hugo’s voice was desperate as he shouted into Gregory’s ear. “This is real sin. I’ve sworn falsely on the True Cross and signed a paper. I’m doomed. A terrible curse is on me.”

“False swearing? For you, nothing. Buy an indulgence. But the paper—that’s serious.” Sweat was rolling off Gregory’s grayish, pallid skin. His eyes were half closed, and he spoke in between labored breaths. Hugo’s face was twisted with anxiety. Margaret wanted nothing better than to strangle him for harassing Gregory, but there wasn’t a thing she could do.

The dream had gotten worse. His brother was shaking him, and Margaret had taken away the soup.

“What’s the paper about? Money? Land?”

“A promise of betrothal.”

Gregory turned his head to one side, and clutched his chest as his breath came in short gusts. Margaret picked up another towel. But no, he wasn’t coughing this time. He was laughing.

“I never thought you’d be caught in that trap, brother,” he whispered. “Only the Pope can get you off that one.”

Hugo clutched Gregory’s shoulder desperately.

“The Pope? You say the Pope can do it?”

“Of course,” said Gregory as he lost consciousness. Hugo stood up abruptly, and began to walk around the room wringing his hands. “The Pope,” he muttered. “The Pope. Connections—money—how on earth—? Somehow. Yes. That’s how—”

Brother Malachi was sitting on the large bed in the corner by the screen, while Hilde packed his things.

“Hilde, my love, do you think I’d look more dignified with a long beard?”

“Very distinguished, Malachi, especially with the gray that’s in it now. Otherwise it would be entirely too gingery for distinction.”

“Good. I’m glad you think it’s attractive. For you, attractive, for others, distractive.”

“What do you mean, Malachi? You’ve a plan?”

“Yes, of course. I fear that to accomplish my task, I must visit old haunts. Haunts where my—um—clerical attire may still be remembered. I cannot decide whether I would look better as a merchant of hides or perhaps of—say, something nicer. Flemish cloth, perhaps? English wool?” He took several seashells, wrapped up in a napkin, from his capacious purse. “Would you be so kind, my precious love, as to sew these on our cloaks? We will be returning from Compostela the easy way—without having been there.” He rummaged some more, and took out another, tightly bundled napkin that he spread before him. “Good—the green’s not faded yet. Best batch I ever made. Hmm. The rings are as good as new. Yes, our finances are in order.”

“Surely,” broke in Margaret, “we’re not leaving soon. Gregory is in no condition to be moved, especially through these mountains.”

“We may be moving sooner than you think. Have you noticed that the talkative Brother Anselm is missing? I fear he went to the Bishop to unburden himself of all that he saw last night. Sorcery, murder, suicide, alchemy—yes, without a doubt the Bishop will be here. If he’s honest, to clean up. If he’s sticky-fingered—well, the goods of a heretic, even one condemned postmortem, are forfeit. This place is rather a large and tempting prize. To tell the truth, I’d not be surprised at all if we had quite a few visitors soon. Nosy visitors, who will do a lot of questioning—with the aid of—oh, well, why burden you.”

“But look there, Malachi,” pointed out Mother Hilde reasonably enough, “he really can’t be moved. Even you can see that.” She pointed to Gregory where he lay, a living skeleton, with another of Margaret’s towels, this one wrung out in cold water, across his feverish forehead. “He’ll die, Malachi.”

“Oh, Hilde,” said Brother Malachi, and the sadness washed across his face again. “It’s far easier to die by God’s hand than in the hands of the Inquisition.”

That night the fever soared, and Margaret sat sleepless by the banked fire, watching and waiting. When the racking chills began shortly after midnight, she climbed in underneath the covers beside him to warm him with her own body. She was so exhausted, she fell asleep almost immediately, one arm thrown protectively over his skeletal ribs.

When she next awoke, the cold gray light of the mountains had already illuminated the room for many hours. The fire had been rekindled. Lazily she opened her eyes, and as she did, she felt that the grayish penumbra of death had faded around Gregory. She herself could hardly move; her bones felt bruised, as if she had wrestled with grim Death himself, all that past night. She turned her head. Hilde was by the fire, where she had warmed a posset for them.

“Is he still living?” Hilde asked gently.

“Yes, Mother Hilde. Hear him breathing?” Margaret whispered. She felt as weak as a kitten. Sure enough, Mother Hilde could make out the harsh rattle of his breath, coming evenly now.

“Where’s Malachi?” Margaret asked.

“Gone to explain to the Countess the predicament she’s in. He’s arranged with her physician to swear that the Count had an epileptic fit—that he had them all the time—and he fell out of the window by accident. That way she can bury him in the family tomb, instead of on unconsecrated ground. He’s proposing that she provide us with money and horses and a guide to take us out through the mountains in a way that avoids the main road. That way we can’t be questioned. Her own people she can rely on for silence. It must be working—I’ve already seen a team of workmen on their way to the secret chambers to demolish the evidence. Surely he’ll be back soon. Would you like this posset? You look completely drained.”

“That’s how I feel, Mother Hilde. I feel as if I wrestled all night with Death.” Margaret sat up and wrapped her hands around the warm goblet, as if she were too weak to lift it to her mouth, and could somehow take the warmth into her body through her hands to restore herself. Mother Hilde saw her hesitate, and came and tilted the goblet to Margaret’s mouth with her own hands.

“Knowing you, Margaret, that’s probably exactly what you were doing.”

I HAVE NEVER FELT less like getting out of bed than the morning when Brother Malachi came to announce that we were leaving the chateau immediately. Now if he’d been lugubrious, I might have borne it, but it was his infernal cheerfulness that made the thing so hateful.

“Why don’t you just go away and leave us here?” I grumbled at him, burying my head under the big wolf fur robe. We could just lie here, Gregory and I, until spring, when it was fit to travel. Excellent idea.

“Nonsense, nonsense. It’s all arranged, my dears.” I could hear his optimistic flutter even under the robe, so I poked just my eyes out to see what he was doing. He’d evidently made a detour via the kitchen, for he had a jug of applejack in one hand, and in the other, a large piece of boiled salt beef, wrapped up in a soggy napkin. Under one elbow he clutched an immense long loaf of bread. His new beard was growing out helter-skelter in every direction, and he looked so comic, I couldn’t help smiling.

“And now, to tempt Margaret the lazybones out of bed,” he announced. And putting down his load, he bowed before the bed and with an extravagant flourish produced an immense boiled goose egg from the bosom of his gown. “See that? Not an eye on it, and still warm. Consider the advantages of breakfast before travel, and favor us with the sunshine of your regard.” I poked my nose out from under the robe. “Better, better,” he said. “But I suggest you cannot eat breakfast with your nose. Besides, you need to sit up to properly appreciate my tale.” I put my whole head out. Certain now of his success, he turned and put the egg with the other things he’d brought, and uncorked the jug.

I could feel Gregory shift in his sleep; his breathing sounded much better. So, Margaret, it can’t be all bad, I thought to myself. Maybe it will all work out after all. I suppose you ought to get out of bed. When I sat up I couldn’t help looking down at my crumpled clothes, now not only torn and devastated, but slept in. Margaret, you’re a mess, I thought. It’s a good thing Gregory can’t see you now, or he wouldn’t have you. But, of course, when Malachi is set on telling a story about himself, everyone must listen, or he becomes morose and says he feels unappreciated. Besides, the breakfast he’d brought looked good.

“Oh, it’s a wonderful thing, to discuss matters of importance with a woman who can deal with logic,” he was rattling on, as he laid out the beef and took out his knife. “She hesitated. She looked at her ladies and the captain of her guard. ‘Why needlessly deprive your son of his inheritance just because your husband was a tiny bit more sinful than most?’ I asked. ‘Besides, it isn’t as if you knew about it all. You yourself are as innocent as a newborn lamb. And surely, you may now be one of the greatest ladies in France. You could travel—go to Orléans, Paris, mingle with the most elegant elements of society. Consider: There is nothing sadder than a widow without property, and no one happier than a widow with a fortune. It all hinges on your quick, decisive action.’ So she gave orders—and whoosh!—it was all done.” Brother Malachi finished cutting up the bread and beef while the jug made the rounds.

“Now, I’ll tell you, it was no such easy matter convincing that thickheaded brother of Gilbert,” Brother Malachi went on, after licking his fingers. “What a mutton brain! ‘I see no reason to leave now,’ he says. ‘I’ll just tell them the truth.’ ‘What truth is that?’ I ask. ‘Oh, that he was so frightened of meeting me on the field of honor in single combat in the morning that he jumped out of the window.’ I racked my brains. How to get through? Then I hit on it. ‘Surely, you wouldn’t deprive a widow of her last solace. If he can’t be buried in the family tomb, she will waste away with grief, and then you’ll have another sin on your conscience. Honor requires that you remain forever silent about his death.’ ‘Sin,’ he says, and gets all panicky-looking ‘Sin. I’ve got to see the Pope.’ ‘What better time than now?’ I say. Goodness, he does hold on to an idea, once it’s finally penetrated whatever mind resides in that thick skull. So now he’s off at the stables, getting things ready. Though how he expects to see the Pope, short of months spent waiting and bribing people, I do not know. He seems to think all he has to do is arrive, and he’ll be shown right in. Humph! Well, we must allow for the possibility of enlightenment before he gets there.”

It was not long before the Countess’s men had come with a stretcher to take Gregory to the waiting horse litter in the inner bailey. He stirred and groaned, but did not waken as he was wrapped in fur robes and loaded onto the litter with a stone that had been heated in the fire at his feet. I was beginning to feel restored not only by Malachi’s breakfast but by the new kirtle and surcoat provided by the Countess. They were quite foreign in cut, and large, to allow for my expanding condition. The kirtle was heavy dark green wool, suitable for the winter, with wide sleeves. The surcoat was embroidered brown velvet, grown as bald as a baby’s bottom with age and wear, but still redolent of a certain faded elegance. I’d unwrapped the Burning Cross when the buzzing had stopped, and it shone resplendently against its handsome background. She’d pronounced the effect attractive, but seemed shocked when I declined the offer of a proper tall French headdress. ‘What? No hennin?’ she cried. ‘You might as well be seen naked.’ But I convinced her that as a foreigner, I wasn’t used to such tall headgear, and might be at risk of my neck if I caught it in an overhanging branch while riding. It was all very friendly, if a bit hasty, and we all swore silence on a book of the Gospels that she had.

So very soon we were beyond the postern gate, headed to the main road by a roundabout way through the mountains. I was mounted on a little rough-gaited dun mare, and Brother Malachi on a rangy roan with Mother Hilde on the crupper behind him. The horse litter was slung between the mounts of two of Sir Hugo’s men, with Sim perched up behind the latter of the two. Sir Hugo, of course, was glorious in newly shined armor, with his pennant flying from his lance tip. Robert, his squire, rode beside him, carrying his shield, helm, and great sword. Hugo always liked to see things done right, and did not believe in slinking out by back ways in disguise. At the end of the party were Hugo’s sumpter mules. We were certainly leaving in better style than we came. There was, however, one of the Brokesford party missing. Cis, the false lady Margaret, had refused to be roused from the ambassador’s quarters, and the doors remained firmly barred while Hugo thumped and shouted insults in English outside.

“You shush,” I’d told him when he came back to see to Gregory’s removal, swearing and threatening to get her back at any cost.

“Dammit, she’s from my estate; she’s my laundress, the little slut. And she’s palming herself off as gentry.”

“It’s nothing you didn’t start. And look here, Hugo, she’s beyond you now. She could be a king’s mistress someday, the way she’s going. There may come a time you’ll be grateful that you know her and can ask her intervention. So leave her alone; she’s chosen her way. And let us choose ours, and quickly too.”

“At the very least, you should be ashamed she’s using your name, you foolish little nit.”

I bit my tongue to keep from telling him what I thought of him, and said: “It doesn’t bother me in the least. I wish her good fortune with it.”

So Hugo, grumbling and storming, had gone about his business, and we had departed, leaving Cis to the life she had chosen. But I did worry about her, all alone with strangers, and not speaking a word of the language.

High on the mountain, the track our guide showed us doubled back over a promontory that gave a view of the entire valley below. At his frantic signing we dismounted and held the horses out of sight.

“Look,” whispered Brother Malachi, pointing to the road below, which led to the castle gate. “Not a moment too soon.” There on the road was an armed party, banners flying. At the head rode a broad-looking man in full armor, his bascinet glistening in the sun and a mace at his saddlebow. Beside him rode his squire with his shield and great helm. Only his episcopal arms distinguished him from some great secular lord. Behind him clattered a party of armed knights of the bishopric, escorting a company of well-mounted priests and heavily laden pack mules. We could see the inquisitioners draw up at the far side of the raised drawbridge.

“Hmm. Tough-looking fellow,” said Brother Malachi. “I hear he says Mass with his helm on the altar. I’m glad I didn’t have any explaining to do to him. Something tells me he is not amenable to logic.”

The bridge was lowered, and we could hear the faint echo of the sounding horn among the rocks as the party entered the open gates.

“What are you mumbling about, Margaret?” asked Brother Malachi.

“I’m praying for the Countess’s good fortune,” I answered.

With the Bishop’s party safely inside, we resumed our trek, rejoining the main road to Bayonne as it wandered below St. Médard-en-bas. When the Countess’s guide had safely left us, Malachi entered into negotiations with an old man to show us through the mountains in the opposite direction. So we proceeded by winding tracks through the mountains on the way to rejoin the high road to Pau. But once among the high rocks and windy peaks, the jostling wakened Gregory, who had lain unconscious this while, and he stared up glassy-eyed, as if unsure where he was. A hawk wheeled high above, and I could see his eye following it. His lips moved, and I could see what he was saying, though I couldn’t hear him, even riding as close behind him as I was.

“The sky. I thought I’d never see it again. Where am I?”

“Where are you?” I called out, echoing his question. “You’re on your way home.” My heart gave a leap and I was so happy I could hardly hear the baby singing, “Joy! Joy!” as it turned.

ROLLING DARK CLOUDS MASSED across the broad sky, the grayish brown remnants of the summer’s grass on either side of the road flattened beneath a sudden gust of cold wind. For days now they had wound their way through perilous mountain roads and villages without names, filled with savages who provided food and shelter only at the menacing rattle of Sir Hugo’s sword in its sheath. And even now that they had rejoined the high road, Margaret had never felt herself farther from home. Even the baby’s cheerful turning and Malachi’s chatter couldn’t convince her that things would turn out well anymore. But the longer on the road, the more cheerful grew Hugo. He stood up in the saddle, his cloak whipping around him, and lifted a hand up to feel for the first icy drops from the ominous sky. Ahead of them the descending curves of the foothills of the Pyrenees stretched like the waves of a vast rocky ocean toward the horizon.

“Hmm. Looks like a storm. But we may be able to beat it to Pau with any luck.” And he signaled to those behind him to speed to the fastest walk that could be managed. “Well, well. Wish it were summer. Of course, not too hot a summer. Now, how did that nice summery poem go? Humty, tumty, tumptity something, youths in hats sing virelays, birds in trees cry ‘tirilay!’ Something like that. Clever rhymes that fella had.”

The pace had shaken Gregory awake. There was a groan from the litter. Hugo dropped back in the line of march to lean down from his horse with newfound concern and catch the words he could barely make out.

“If I ever hear you speak one word from that wretched ‘Ode to Summer’ again, I’ll strangle you, Hugo, I swear. Live or dead. I’ll rise from the grave, if necessary.”

“What’s wrong with it? I thought you liked poetry, Gilbert.”

“That poem’s a sore spot with me, Hugo. Don’t mention it again. Remember, from the grave.” There was a movement under the furs as Gilbert clutched his ribs to stay the pain of coughing. Hugo wasn’t bothered in the least. Sick people are all like that. After all, Father had whispered imprecations all the way from Calais to Brokesford Manor, and it hadn’t meant a thing.

“Why, look, I do believe that’s Pau I see ahead,” cried out Hugo, and trotted up ahead to see if it really was the spires of the town that he’d spied in the gray distance.

WE STAYED ONLY ONE night at a shabby little inn called La Couronne, where the beds were full of bugs. There at the long table before the fire, Malachi and Robert, between bites of a dreadful-smelling ragout, loudly discussed our plans to go west to Orthez and the coast. But before dawn we rose and headed east toward Tarbes by starlight, to avoid any chance of pursuit by the unsavory folk we’d seen at the inn.

But bad weather held us at Tarbes three days, with Hugo pacing and fuming, while Robert cleaned his armor and joined his men in dicing and chasing the women at the inn. One night, as the icy rain rattled at the shutters, Hugo came from sheer boredom to pick a quarrel with Malachi. Gregory lay propped up in bed, too weak to eat, but drinking hot wine in little sips from the cup I held. Hilde and Malachi sat by the brazier, inspecting his new books by the light of the glowing coals. Hilde couldn’t read a word, and the books were in Latin anyway, but Malachi was explaining the pictures. Hilde’s shrewd comments showed how wide was her understanding of natural things. Sim peeped over her shoulder while he finished off an immense sausage he’d purloined from somewhere.

“Now this one, Hilde, is the mystic marriage of Sol and Luna. You can tell by the crowns; it means to mingle melted gold and silver together to extract the quintessence—how many times must I remind you, Sim, not to risk dropping grease on the pages?—while this depicts—”

The door slammed open.

“How can any man with a particle of wit waste his time reading books? What use are they? All that stuff rots the mind of an active man and turns him into an idle daydreamer.” Hugo stood fuming on the threshold, eager to offend someone.

On the bed, Gregory spluttered. Ordinarily, he’d have heaved a bench at Hugo, thus splintering the rainy day dullness into a thousand pieces. But as he was too weak to lift his head, he merely growled menacingly.

“This one you’d find interesting,” remarked Malachi, completely unperturbed. “It’s Graecus’s De igniis.”

“What’s that? Some priestly nonsense?”

“No, a book on fires, and the various ways to start them. Here, for example, is the recipe for Greek Fire—quite useful for you active sorts in defending against a siege.”

Hugo edged closer. “Now, what’s that picture of the naked man and woman there?” he interrupted, his arrogance unabated. “Is it a book of filthy stories? Now, that’s a reason for books—”

“It’s a book of alchemy.”

“Alchemy with dirty pictures, eh? Now I know what keeps those fellas warm at night. Pity there isn’t anything to the gold-making part. Now, if I owned a book, it would be all dirty pictures and no gibberish—say, what’s that dragon doing? And that lion with the spangles, in green?” I looked from where I was sitting on the bed, and even at that distance, I could see another Green Lion on the page of Malachi’s new book. This one was thinner, and had a row of stars down his sides. But he was the same creature, and had in his jaws a sun with a smiling face and rays like waving arms.

“The Green Dragon and the Green Lion have the power of transforming the most perfect and unchangeable metals. They are the subject of the quest. Only through them can one obtain the Red Powder that is, of course, what every alchemist wants.”

“So where’s the gold?”

“There, in the book”—and Malachi pointed to the golden sun in the lion’s mouth—“and here.” He tapped his head.

“Then you’ve got it? The Secret?”

“Not quite, but very soon.” Hugo made the same face he does when a Gascon in his cups tells him he’s undefeated in battle. Malachi saw it, and gave an aggrieved sniff. “I was quite close before I left London, I’ll have you know. I had approached the Phoenix, but in so doing I broke several rather costly vessels, and was unable to repeat the experiment. But I expect that what I learn when I get my book translated will enable me to complete my lifetime’s quest.” He closed the book and put it back in its wrapping without even a glance at Hugo’s stolid, doltish face. Sometimes that man had all the illumination of the back side of a brick wall. “Interesting, isn’t it?” Malachi went on in his cheerful voice. “You seek pardon in Avignon, and I seek enlightenment there. That is, should we evade the hairy fellow in the stable I overheard discussing plans to have us ambushed and robbed on the way to Toulouse.”

“Toulouse? But we’re not going to Toulouse,” said Hugo.

“Exactly,” replied Malachi. “But they somehow got the impression that we are, thanks to the loose tongue of a certain Flemish wool merchant. I suggest that when the weather breaks we leave early.”

Hugo looked at Brother Malachi suddenly; then he grinned. “So be it, Old Fox,” he answered, and bidding farewell to us all, left for bed in a changed humor.

And so we set out in more cheerful fashion through the wintry hills for Foix, where we were certain of a good welcome, for we had a letter of introduction from Count Gaston’s ambassador.

AS IT TURNED OUT, we had little need for the letter, for the Count’s ambassador, the Sieur de Soule, had stayed at St. Médard barely long enough to kiss the Bishop’s ring before he was off like the wind with his entourage. Not only was he among those who believe it more comfortable to be far from the Inquisition, but he now had urgent news to send to his master. For not only was his old rival and enemy unexpectedly dead, but on his flank, in place of a mighty warlord, was an heir in his minority and a marriageable widow—things that make for very interesting politics indeed. Indeed, as we approached the city, we had seen the figures of fast horsemen disappearing to the east—as it turned out, messengers sent to the Slavic lands to inform the Count of Foix and the Captal de Buch of the happenings at St. Médard-les-Rochers.

So even though Gaston Phoebus, the young count celebrated for his beauty, munificence, and ferocity, was not there, we had a most lordly reception from his constable and the hospitality of his house. But not only had the ambassador preceded us, so had the scandal of the dice game, and even a fragment of the tale had made us curiosities of the first order. So nothing would do but that I should sit on the right hand of the constable himself during supper, all crimson with embarrassment, as he quizzed me about the entire affair, and I answered as little as possible about the whole disgraceful business. But through flattery and wine he managed to worm out more than I’d intended to tell, and soon all the tables were abuzz with the rumor that the Count of Foix’s old enemy had killed himself by an accidental overindulgence in dogs’ aphrodisiacs. Then the constable smiled most strangely indeed and announced that God was on the side of the virtuous, and Hugo, his face all red with too much wine, shouted affirmation. I wished that I could hide under the table. I tell you, Gregory had the easy part of that visit, all tucked up in a big featherbed upstairs, being made much of and waited on hand and foot. They even sent a harper to make music for him, and his color began to get better, though he was still too weak to sit up.

As my fears for Gregory faded, other fears took their place. For one thing, the Weeping Lady was making herself felt as she snooped through the house, setting the dogs howling and making the back of people’s necks prickle. And since she enjoyed offering her comments on the domestic arrangements, I feared being overheard in my nighttime conversations with her. Still, it would have been rude to remain silent, considering what she’d done. And having expended the greater part of her chronic wrath in the affair with the Count, she had fallen to being a cheerfully malicious gossip instead.

“Madame Belle-mère, if you’ll graciously pardon me for saying so, I fear that if you frighten the horses again that way, they’ll call in an exorcist.”

“Exorcist?” she’d sniff. “Phoo! I don’t give a fig for exorcists. After all, I’ve crossed the water—” But, of course, she’d never tell me how. “If you can’t understand it, and you a mother, then you never will,” she’d say, drifting off to inspect the Countess’s jewels and frighten the waiting-ladies.

Another great fear, that Hugo would make some ungodly row over Cis, had been forestalled by the Sieur de Soule’s sudden departure in a grand cavalcade but a day after we arrived. Some said he had new business for his master with the Pope, having something to do with the Church and the campaign against the pagan Slavs, and others that he had to attend to his neglected lands in the south. I have no idea whether any of it was so or not.

But Hugo contrived to make a scene anyway, since he was never happy if he wasn’t the object of everyone’s interest. This time, it was all over his Unspeakable Sin, as he called it, which of course made everyone terribly fascinated by it—much more so than they would have been over the speakable sort. Knights interested in some new sort of scandal would take him aside, and I’d hear him say, “Never—it’s too horrible. It’s unspeakable. I couldn’t burden you with it.” And they’d depart, shaking their heads, each secretly rejoicing he’d never done anything that unspeakable himself.

Each day he announced some new plan—to walk to Avignon barefoot, for example—and then he would beat his breast and shed tears and let himself be seen all prostrated before the chapel altar until absolutely everyone agreed he was the very model of holy repentance.

“Tell me,” he’d say, cozying up to some priest or other, “should I arrange to be scourged all the way to Avignon? Or would a procession of monks, chanting, be better? Should I enter the town gate in my shirt?—Oh, I see. Yes. Gray friars might well be best.—Oh, the sin of it, how it stains me! The Curse, the terrible Curse!” And, of course, the fact that some romantic-minded demoiselle was usually nearby to overhear didn’t hurt matters any. They loved consoling him, and drying his tears and offering him holy medallions and other tokens for his trip. In fact, his repentance soon caused dark circles to appear under his eyes, for in going from bed to bed all night long he never had a moment’s sleep.

But at last the trip could be put off no longer. A little page, one of Hugo’s paid informants, let him know that he was soon to be sent on pilgrimage to the next world by several aggrieved gentlemen of the court if he did not continue on his way to Avignon. Gregory was well enough to eat now, and to be propped half sitting in the litter, though the fever still came and went. And most convenient of all, we got news that the Bishop of Pamiers was dispatching a heavily guarded party to Avignon, and was well disposed to allowing pilgrims to travel in their company. We might perhaps have hesitated had we known that it was a gold shipment, and they might have hesitated had they known we were English. But once there, Malachi pleaded our case in Latin, rolling his eyes heavenward and crossing himself frequently while he explained our need to visit the holy places of Avignon for restoration of soul and body. Then it was all settled by the captain of the guard, who said, looking over our straggling party, that it might be just as well in case we met up with any English mercenary captains to have someone who could speak their language, though he himself found that tongue difficult to distinguish from the barking of dogs.

In this way we found ourselves crossing the devastated lands to the east, then following the banks of the Aude north to Carcassonne. There, our welcome was not entirely hospitable, for only recently had the lower city beneath the walls been burned by the English prince, on one of his forays from Bordeaux. But in general it is well to travel with an ecclesiastical party, for they get good accommodations at the monasteries, and in those times of trouble, often only the church had anything to spare for visitors. Then there were the disadvantages, too, for convents, churches, and the comfortable sort of traveling clerics were special targets for the raiders and marauders.

And then, naturally, there was the endless number of beggars and wanderers maimed and made homeless by the continual warfare. These our guard drove off without much trouble, shouting that their lords should take care of them. But of course their lords were off raiding, too, since it was good ready money. Anyway, those beggars couldn’t go home even if they had one left, since they hadn’t been forgiven their taxes, which you’d think any sensible lord would do, given the state of the fields. When we heard later that these same peasants had risen, and roasted and eaten their lords into the bargain, it certainly came as no surprise to me, for I have seen the tithe barns burned in England for far less. Why wouldn’t these hardened people meet such ferocity with equal ferocity?

At every place we stopped, the captains of our party made inquiries about the whereabouts of the local raiders, écorcheurs, mercenaries, and Free Companies. Then we’d halt, or change routes, according to the news. Most of all, our captains sought news of the “Archpriest,” the monstrous renegade priest turned mercenary commander whose immense traveling army, called the “Society of Acquisition,” was said to be somewhere between us and the papal city of Avignon. Cities and fortresses had fallen to him, and should we have the misfortune to cross his path, we had heard he’d more than likely drink our blood from the chalices of the churches he’d burned.

But God was with us; we avoided the écorcheurs and arrived eventually at Avignon having lost only one man, and that one a frail old clerk, to a fever in Narbonne. And we saw many curious sights along the way: some nasty, such as skinned or dismembered corpses, and some beautiful, such as ancient shrines and the ruins of shining buildings left by the pagan Romans. But the white gravelly roads across the dry hills, and the bleak rolling dunes and stunted pines by the alien ocean, made me weep for the comfortable green of England.

At Montpellier, where there is a university, we were greeted outside the walls by a ferocious crowd, shouting and pelting a man in a scholar’s robe, tied backward on a donkey. Malachi, who had been there long ago, told us that is how they drive out those who practice medicine without a degree in that city.

“After all,” he said, “there’s a celebrated medical faculty here, and they have to keep control of trade.”

“Well, it’s just as well they don’t have that idea in England, or there wouldn’t be a donkey left in London,” I replied. “It would be much more sensible to drive off the doctors who kill people, and just keep the ones that make folks better.”

“Ha,” he said. “Then there wouldn’t be a donkey left in all of Christendom.”

“But Malachi, surely it is a terrible thing to drive a man out of the city walls in times like these,” Mother Hilde worried as we sat on our horses outside the city gate, waiting for the crowd to thin out so we could enter. The donkey was driven some distance beyond us down the road before its passenger was forcibly dismounted and abandoned there in the deep mud, the donkey being led back by the thrifty citizens of the town.

“Not entirely, my dear. Consider the good that is hidden within the situation. In times of peace, no city would have him, and he would wander homeless and without a trade. But in these times of trouble, he will soon have employment with the écorcheurs, if he has the slightest sense,” responded Malachi, as we dismounted to enter the city gate.

“But what will this poor country do if everyone becomes an écorcheur?” I asked.

“Margaret,” responded Malachi firmly, “thinking about big problems that you cannot solve will bring you nothing but grief. Do as I do and think about the small problems that are easily resolved. That is how God sends us nothing but joy. For example, I am currently pondering the wonderful fact that in the bosom of this extraordinary university may well reside the translator whom I seek. While you do nothing but fret, my next few hours will be full of happiness, the eagerness of the hunt, and the exquisite pleasure of anticipation. Think of that, and mend your ways.”

But after making inquiries, Malachi came back very discouraged, for the pestilence and the wars had shriveled the university to only a poor shadow of its former self—just a few hundred students and a handful of masters. He’d found three converts, several people who had claimed they had once known a Jew, a lunatic master who had told him that God had given him the power to read Hebrew scriptures in a dream, and an elderly doctor of theology who told him to go to Avignon. And no one, no one at all, was interested in his book full of strange pothooks.

Only Hugo found profit in our brief stay there. In the cold of the evening, when the winter rain had broken and the wind had pushed the dark clouds away from the moon, we heard the voices of students in the alley behind our lodgings. Their song echoed plaintively against the rain-slick stone walls, and we could hear the splash and clatter of their footsteps on the wet, uneven cobblestones. I opened the shutters to let the music in. There in the damp and moonlight, three young men, the one in the center with a beribboned lute, were strolling and singing together, as students have always done and always will do, in spite of war or plague, until the end of time. They paused at the end of the alley and began another song—one of the strange, lovely winding melodies of the south. Another pair of shutters opened, and a girl’s head peeped out in the shadows. Her heavy dark braids brushed the sill, and I could hear her laugh.

“Let me see,” said Hugo, pushing in behind me—for all of us were staying in the same room, even the squires and the grooms, who slept on the floor on straw mattresses at the foot of Hugo’s bed. And I could hear him mutter as I pulled my head in, “—A lute, yes. Just the thing. More romantic—”

It was at just that moment that I heard an older woman’s voice scolding and the shutters down the alley slam shut with a crash that ended the music. But the seed had been planted, and Sir Hugo’s baggage, when we left a day later, included a lute made in the Saracen style in strips of light and dark wood and with a sound-hole covered with a filigree of carved ivory.

“Quite a lute,” said Gregory, and a shadow of his old, ironic smile crossed his ravaged face. “It will be interesting to watch him learn to play it. Hugo as troubador. To think I had always underestimated his artistic side—” But then his head fell back against the pillow from the effort of speech, and he was silent all the way to the tomb of the blessed Saint Gilles, which gives great virtue to all those who visit it, for it contains the entire body of the holy confessor, except for one armbone, which was stolen to make a shrine elsewhere.

MENACING BLACK CLOUDS WERE rolling overhead, and the first big drops of rain had begun to fall as we reached the great bridge that leads to the papal city of Avignon. The yellow-white stone of the span and of the domes and turrets that rise on the hill within the city’s massive walls, all shining with the damp, glistened like gold against the seething black of the sky. The river here runs swift and green, too wide and dangerous to bridge except by a miracle. But indeed there was one, for God Himself gave orders that the bridge be built, and told a little shepherd boy named Bénézet how to do it. Of course, the bishop threatened to cut off Bénézet’s hands and feet for proposing it to him. But once this difficulty was past, Bénézet became a saint, which is what happens if you can survive the instruction of heavenly voices. The bridge is very fine and fair, with a chapel in the middle, just like we have on London Bridge at home, which I must say I consider to be far finer, even though it wasn’t designed by heavenly instruction. But God did not warn Bénézet about how slippery it would be for horses to make the roadway of such fine white close-set stone. So everyone must dismount and lead their animals across by the bridle, if they do not wish to risk injury. Of course, this may have been God’s way of humbling everybody equally and reminding them that Our Savior did a lot of walking.

But Malachi said that was the sort of thing I would say, and went on counting. “One, two—yes, there’s one,” as if he’d finally lost his mind. And then he explained to me that there’s an old saying that you can’t cross the bridge at Avignon without meeting two monks, two donkeys, and two whores, and he thought if it came true, he’d have good fortune in Avignon. It turned out the donkeys were the most difficult to come by, for in a city populated by churchmen and students it turns out that there are an extraordinary number of the other sort of person.

The rain began to fall in earnest as we clustered with the other pilgrims and marketwomen, waiting for the bishop’s armed party to be admitted and pass through the town gate. I paused to pull the furs over Gregory’s face before Robert helped me to remount. Gregory’s breath was wheezing, and his eyes looked all glassy, as if his mind were wandering again. I wished we were all inside; watching the strangers hurry by us in the street as they dashed for cover, all with someplace of their own to go, made me feel desperately homeless.

By the time we’d ridden into the courtyard of the first inn we found inside the wall, the downpour had turned the dust to heavy mud that caked our horses’ feet. The rolling thunderclouds had darkened the sky even before the sun had set, and we were soaked through. As we tried to huddle in the shelter of the overhanging second story, Hugo reached up from horseback and rapped on the closed shutters of the room above the arched entrance to the inn’s courtyard.

A woman’s head popped out, addressed us briefly in an incomprehensible language, disappeared, and reappeared with another woman—the firm, matronly sort. The new woman, obviously the mistress, shouted in French with a rolling southern accent: “You want places? Who are you?”

“Foreigners of high degree in need of shelter, good woman,” shouted Sir Hugo over the thunder.

“What’s that you’ve got there? A corpse? I run a good house. No corpses,” shouted the woman.

“It’s a wounded knight,” shouted Hugo, taking some license.

“Wounded? Ha. Probably sick. And catching. You think I need sick foreigners? Go away!” and she started to close the shutters.

“Close those shutters and I’ll burn your house down!” shouted Hugo, and Robert shouted a fierce second.

“Talk, talk, talk,” said the woman. “Go to the quartier des soldats and ask at the Moor’s Head. She’ll take anyone. A proper case of plague would do her good.” So we waited, drenched and freezing, for a break in the pounding rain, Hugo’s men growling as their horses shifted and whinnied under the overhang.

By the time we reached the Tête du Maure, it was dark and I was shivering, and praying that we would not lose Gregory to the soaking rain. But with the litter laid out by the great fire in the room downstairs, and with everyone drying and regaining warmth, it soon became apparent why we’d been sent there. Women were playing dice with drunken soldiers, women were drinking with elderly priests, women were fondling tipsy students in corners. There were old women and young women, fat women and thin women, light women and dark women. They looked at us curiously for a moment, and then resumed their business. A very large woman, with a vast tissue-thin headdress that revealed mountainous braids of false black hair and immense tinkling silver combs and earrings, approached us. Her face was unusually red and white, with rolls of rice powder settled in all the creases. Just now, the creases were smiling. She spoke to Hugo, who was shaking the water out of his hair like a dog, making little splut-splut noises as the drops hit the fire.

“What’s your pleasure?” she asked. “I’m Jeannot the Fat, and I’m known as the ‘Abbess’ here in Avignon. You won’t find a better place in town.”

“By the bowels of God!” Hugo exclaimed, grinning and looking about eagerly. “I’ve died and gone to Mussulman heaven!”

The Tête du Maure was a house of ill repute.

By the time the sun had come out the next day, it had become clear how the Moor’s Head was run. The first floor was the public floor, a tavern with two great wide fireplaces, narrow little barred windows, and a large number of alcoves, many curtained. The second floor was where the women lived, with rooms that were, shall we say, let by the night. On the uppermost floor, served by a rickety outside staircase, were a few rooms under the leaky eaves, let at long term to the most dubious of travelers.

In the center of the house was a wide courtyard, which you could see from our little window. Open staircases led from the courtyard to the rooms on each floor. And when the weather was good, the court was filled with travelers in strange costumes, Jews with their yellow badges opening their packs to display colorful wares, groups of students jesting in Latin, and women all finely dressed, with tinkling jewelry, tall headdresses, and high pattens, coming and going on mysterious business. All of it was a hint of the vibrant life of the streets and buildings beyond, a life I craved to go and see for myself. But most of the time I couldn’t even leave the little room, for someone had to be with Gregory, who was still too weak to be out of bed. And besides, I couldn’t go through town without a man to escort me, and Hugo and Malachi and the others all had business of their own. How I wished with all my heart that a miracle would happen and Gregory would sit up one day with his old energy renewed, all curious to see the new places! Then he would take me everywhere on his strong arm, and we could see everything together, and talk all about it, just as in the old days: the Turkish ambassadors in their strange turbans, the swarthy foreigners with the talking birds on their shoulders, the shops, the peddlers, the shrines, and the wonderful churches full of incense and chanting.

Instead, I had to content myself with hearing all about it at second hand. Malachi told me all about the streets in which he wandered daily, and Hugo told me about the palaces of the great, where he loitered for hours, hoping for audiences with someone who might help him get the Pope’s intercession. Even Hilde had got one of Hugo’s attendants to take her about to various shrines, and though she did try to stay with me, I could see the holy places tugging at her heart, and told her to go and pray for Gregory there, if she wished to help me.

One day Hugo came in all cross, followed by Robert carrying his lute.

“Throw the damned thing in the fire, Robert. The man who sold it to me cheated me: the neck’s too narrow for a man’s fingers.”

“My lord, I beg you—it’s too valuable for firewood. Give it to me, instead.”

“You? You heard the man. You strive to outdo me?”

“Me? Oh, no, not at all. After all, it’s the verse that’s the higher thing. The music is only accompaniment. The work of the mind is proper to the lord, the job of noisemaker should be left to his squire.”

Hugo turned to inspect Robert’s face. His mind appeared to be working, although with Hugo you can never be sure.

“The damned little bitch laughed at me. You heard her. And that preposterous little fellow who calls himself a master of music says I need to perfect myself. Perfect myself! I’m perfect already!”

“Yes, my lord,” responded Robert without the slightest hint of sarcasm in his voice. He really wants that lute, I thought. He must have found an entirely different woman to court, and doesn’t want Hugo to know about it.

“Very well, Robert. You play it. I think I’ll go enhance my talents with that little dark fellow we met in the cardinal’s antechamber. He seemed to know quite a lot about that sort of thing. Yes, in this town poetry’s the lure that catches the most dear little fishes. Who’d have thought it? Usually they’re content with a handsome face and well-turned figure. Well, everyplace is different. Did you see that sweet little thing that lives upstairs in the Street of the Painters, Robert?”

“The one with the mole?”

“Quite right. And she’s got another on her—”

“Sir Hugo,” I interrupted. “How can you go to see the Pope when you live worse and worse every day?” He looked puzzled.

“Worse? I’ve never been so holy. I’m practically halfway into heaven these days. Haven’t killed any begging burghers for months, haven’t had a woman I haven’t paid for. Why, at home I was only shriven once a year at Easter, and, of course, before going into battle. Now, I’m shriven every week. Bleached almost as white as snow. Found a priest at St. Agricol who doesn’t speak a word of English. I tell him everything. He nods. I beat my breast and weep. He absolves me. I make an offering. I tell you, I’m living a new life. Ah, God, it’s the sacredness of this place. It rubs off, even on a sinner like me.” He rolled his eyes heavenward, and clasped his hands, and it was clear that being the knothead that he was, he was perfectly sincere. “At times—at times I feel myself—surrounded by saints here. Elevated. The golden halls! The incense! The magnificence! God must live this way! It’s just like heaven!”And he hurried off to the second floor.

Brother Malachi, of course, was equally busy. He spent his days searching for his translator, and his evenings complaining. Weary and footsore, he’d return from scouring the shabby streets of the Jewish quarter, and grumble as he sat on the bed: “That ghastly sailor, Jannetus, that wretch at Montpellier, they’ve deceived me! Do you know how many men in the Jewish quarter are named Abraham? Only those who aren’t named David or Isaac. And surnames! I swear, I’ve been misled on purpose! Of course, in any Christian city, anyone who’s Jewish is given ‘the Jew’ as his surname. So, from all over Christendom, Abraham the Jews have poured into Avignon. It’s like looking for John the Smith or William the Cook in London.”

“But what about the university? I thought there were people there who could read Hebrew. Didn’t you say so yourself?”

“They refuse to translate anything but Scripture. It seems tolerance doesn’t stretch too far, even in Avignon. I inquired after that fellow Josceus Magister. Well, at least he was real. But he was dead too—several years ago from plague. So I found his successor, a Jewish professor, a very learned man. ‘Is it sacred?’ he said. ‘Surely, you understand I’d lose my post if I got involved in anything shady. Go find someone who won’t be dismissed for doing your translation.’ So I told him about Abraham the Jew. ‘Oh, yes, him. Perfect. Go get him to do it. Good-bye.’”

“Well, surely among all those Abrahams, you’ll find the wise one you heard about very soon.”

“The wise one? They’re all wise—wise to me, that’s what. I go to Abraham the money changer. ‘What’s this?’ he says, ‘A book? My, how I’d love to help you, but I don’t read a word of Hebrew. Try Abraham the goldsmith.’ So I go to the goldsmith’s. ‘A book?’ he says, ‘Oh, it’s the tragedy of my life I don’t read Hebrew,’ and he even manages to look as if he’s wiping away a tear. A tear as dubious as some of the saints’ tears I’ve sold. Ha! They just don’t want to read my book, that’s what, and I’ve come to the conclusion they’re playing a game with me.”

“But Malachi, you yourself have often said that alchemy can be a dangerous business. Look at what happened with the Count of St. Médard. They may fear the risk you put them at—and it seems entirely fair to me,” Mother Hilde broke in. She had put down her mending and had gone to get the flask to renew Malachi’s glass.

“But Hilde, my love, Avignon is a hotbed of alchemy. It’s unlike any other place in Christendom that way. People who already have a lot of gold can always use more. I thought I’d told you that even a pope was one of us. That’s what made me so sure I’d find my translator here. There’s probably dozens of them somewhere, laboring away in cellars, translating arcana. Why not mine? Oh, the injustice of it all. Think, think—I must think.”

On the litter, propped across benches in the corner, Gregory groaned and stirred.

“Not now, Gilbert, not now. Can you never understand when it is inappropriate to interrupt my delicate thought processes? It’s like breathing into my vessels, just when the process must not be disturbed—a sin to which your curiosity led you often in the old days. Consideration! Consideration! Think of my delicate brain, and be silent!”

“Noisy yourself” was the sound that seemed to come from the litter as Gregory pulled the covers over his head.

“A pope an alchemist, Malachi? Which one?” I was very curious.

“They say, the last Pope John. The twenty-second of that name, I believe. He certainly left enough gold in the treasury. But I don’t think he found the Secret, even though it’s rumored. It was probably through the sale of indulgences, it seems to me. But then, that’s a kind of alchemy, turning paper into gold. I’ve practiced a little of that sort myself, and ought to know.”

“Speaking of alchemy, Malachi,” began Hilde, pouring wine into his cup to make him mellow, “I’m still waiting to hear how you made the gold for that count, when you’ve never made any for me, even when the roof needed fixing.”

“Me?” Malachi looked around him in feigned surprise. Then he looked at Hilde, and sighed. “I suppose it’s only fair. You’d think the less of me if I didn’t tell. Hilde, queen of my heart, haven’t I sworn that the first gold I make after I get the Secret will be used to crown you for your years of patience?” Hilde smiled indulgently. But she didn’t quit looking as if she were waiting for an answer. “I’d planned a ruse, my treasure, as you must have suspected all along. The secret’s in my rod. The gold was Margaret’s florins, melted down.”

“Malachi, you mean you offered the Count a false Secret as ransom? I swear, I’d have died of fear if I’d known you were just planning another of your tricks,” I broke in.

“And so I thought myself, Margaret. So of course you didn’t know. I thought the man would be gullible. What I didn’t suspect was that he was evil, as well.”

“Malachi, stick to the point. I’m waiting to hear how you did it,” said Hilde.

“Very simple. The oldest trick there is. The rod was hollow, stopped up with black wax. The gold was inside. The heat melts the wax, and there it is! The gold tumbles out. The rest consists of mystic hand-waving, strange chants, and other acts of my constantly creative imagination. They swallowed it all. Desire made them blind. It often does.”

Hilde sat down and shook her head wonderingly. “Oh, Malachi, dear Malachi,” she said. He looked at her as if he suddenly feared she might say something sharp for taking such a risk. But she saw the look, and smiled, and said, “Oh, Malachi. You’re such a philosopher.” And he beamed in response.

I waited for the precious moment to pass, and then broke in with something that had been bothering me.

“Malachi,” I asked, “have you told them it’s an alchemical text? Maybe you should make the agreement before you show them.”

“I haven’t shown it yet, but they always seem to know. And then it’s ‘try down the street.’”

“Well, suppose they know you have the Secret. Then they’ll think that if they translate it, you might not want them to know it too—”

“Yes, sensible, sensible. If I were a man like the Count, I might just send an assassin after them. An accident in the street, a fire—No, suppose I were fearful they’d told? I might just get rid of the lot. Yes. It’s clear. No wonder nobody reads Hebrew. I’ll have to give guarantees—prove my sincerity—” and he was off again, thinking of fanciful schemes.

“Malachi, you must press on,” said Hilde. “We can’t stay much longer. Did you know that Hugo was here trying to borrow money? We think he must have spent the passage money back. Margaret questioned him, and he got very annoyed. ‘I’m the heir of Brokesford, and need to live like a knight. You don’t want me to live like a peasant, do you?’ He hasn’t paid his men, and two of them have vanished. They say they’ve run off to join the Archpriest. The rest are loyal, at least for now. But the sooner we leave, the better.”

“That wretched cabbage brain! I can’t believe he’s any relative of Gilbert’s. I imagine he put the passage money on the gaming table. He hasn’t got the sense of a cooked carrot! He’s probably counting on getting home by hiring out to a party traveling in the right direction. Armed men are at a shortage now, and he can name his price. But us—we’ve got no such recourse. I wouldn’t put it past him to leave without us.”

Now Malachi had a second preoccupation. In the night, when I’d get up to attend to Gregory, whose fever waxed and waned without reason, I’d hear him muttering.

“Money, money. I need money. Think, brain, think. For God’s sake, Gilbert, stop that moaning and gibberish. You’re interfering with my mental processes.” Then I’d hear the bed creak and know that he’d sat up, to stare into the dark for hours.

ABRAHAM THE TAILOR WAS nobody’s fool. He knew how to smell things coming in the air. That is why he was already packed and on the road when they’d fired the Jewish quarter in Marseilles. He himself had led the mule laden with his wife, his goods, and two little babies in the panniers all night beneath the unseeing stars. He’d never turned his face back once on the road to Avignon, even on the rise of ground just beyond the city, when he heard the faint echo of distant cries behind him. His oldest son, a little boy just ten, who walked beside him with a tall stick and a pack exactly like his own, had turned and cried, “Oh, look, Father,” pausing to stare at the column of flames climbing into the night sky. But even then, the old man had only hunched his back and turned his face like iron to the road ahead.

Now he was confronted with a stranger who wanted a book translated. Looking the man over carefully, he went through his mental checklist. Not armed; not evil; not crazy; and not a Flemish wool merchant. No matter what he claimed, the man lacked the countinghouse eyes and ponderous mind of the merchant of the north. He checked the hands as the man held out the book for him to inspect. Acid-stained. And the sleeves—marred by tiny little burn holes, as if from flying sparks. Oh, God, not another alchemist, thought Abraham. What have I done to deserve this? Still, it was tempting. His wife was wanting a new pair of shoes, and his oldest boy had just outgrown his gown, which was ready, even in its patched condition, to be passed to the next child.

“These are indeed Hebrew letters,” said Abraham. “But I will need to be paid in advance.”

“I can’t let the book go. Will you translate it in my presence?” Brother Malachi’s voice was unusually controlled, considering the state of high excitement he was in.

Abraham the tailor took the book and they sat together at the broad table on which he did his cutting.

“Let me see—hmm.” He turned the pages carefully. He sighed. He looked again. He sighed another time, a long, resigned sigh.

“In my opinion, this book is a fraud,” he said.

“What do you mean, a fraud?” Brother Malachi was agitated.

“Whoever wrote it didn’t know any Hebrew. They just put down letters any way it suited them.” He looked at Brother Malachi’s face. The man looked as if he’d been struck by lightning. “Still, the illuminations are very nicely done,” he added consolingly.

“But—but couldn’t it be a corrupted text—or perhaps a code—a cypher?” Brother Malachi’s world was dissolving around him.

“A corrupted text would have meaningless words that had been miscopied mixed in among words with meaning. Here, there is not a syllable of meaning anywhere.” Abraham pointed with a callused finger to the rows of letters on the page. His eyes missed nothing as he watched grief and shock alternate on Brother Malachi’s face.

“But a cypher?” Malachi scrabbled for a last word of hope.

“Well, who knows? Perhaps it is. But large numbers of letters aren’t even correctly written. See this one here? It’s as if you wrote an m with five humps—and over there, three, and then again four. This leads me to think that the person who wrote it didn’t know what he was doing.”

“But the diagrams—the squares, the pentacles?” Brother Malachi sounded desperate now. They all do, thought Abraham. It’s so sad, letting them down gently. No wonder no one but me is willing to do it. I’m becoming a specialist in the art.

“I will transliterate the letters. Perhaps then you will find a clue to another language—one which I do not know.”

Brother Malachi put his elbows on the table; he buried his face in his hands.

“A fake—a fraud. Who would have thought it? Me, of all people, taken in by a fraudulent bunch of paper. Still, it has a kind of justice in it. God must have willed it.”

“Why do you say that?” asked Abraham, who had rarely seen any of them take the news this calmly. So many of them became dangerous at this point.

“Because of my business—hm—my former business, I mean, before I became a wool merchant, that is.”

“And what was that?”

“I sold indulgences,” said Brother Malachi, and then he looked at the beautiful book and began to laugh. Abraham’s eyes glittered with the irony of it, and he began to laugh too.

Malachi laughed even harder, until the tears stood in his eyes and his breath came in sobs. It felt almost like crying, but of course it was much better than weeping. And as Malachi laughed, Abraham laughed harder too. Life had not been all that easy for him in Avignon either.

“Thank you,” said Brother Malachi as he wiped his eyes.

“Thank you,” said Abraham the tailor, doing the same. “Do you want the transliteration now?”

“Can I come back tomorrow? I need to walk about and think a bit,” said Brother Malachi.

“Of course,” said Abraham. But the false wool merchant had already tucked the volume into his bosom and left with his head bowed down.

“Too bad,” said Abraham the Jew. “There must be hundreds of those things floating about the world, and somehow they all end up here.”

THE PSEUDO WOOL MERCHANT, hands behind his back and head sunk low, wandered for a considerable time until he emerged from the maze of narrow alleys into the tiny, cobblestoned square before the massive Gothic portals of the church of St. Pierre. There in the jostling crowd emerging from the dark interior of the church, he saw a comfortable looking older woman in pilgrim’s garb, escorted by a bored looking little boy. Even from the back, the figure was familiar.

“Hilde, Hilde, wait!” called the wool merchant, and she turned. She had spent the morning walking all over town; she had visited six churches as well as the cave where the most blessed Saint Martha, hostess of Our Lord, had dwelt with her servant Marcella when she preached the Gospel and conquered the dragon with holy water. She was still in a dazzle with the grandeur, the gold and incense, the high shadowy vaults where God so obviously dwelt, and the multitude of enshrined relics. Kneebones, fingerbones, skulls, fragments of cloth and vials of blood—even the very girdle with which Saint Martha had bound the dragon—they’d all moved her to tears. She’d had such a lovely time envisioning the martyrs they’d belonged to and dabbing at her eyes, her heart was all full of it. It had been an absolutely ecstatic morning, one of the few she’d treated herself to in many days of being shut inside helping Margaret.

At the cry, she looked up and waved. Then she said something to the restive little boy, and he sped off in the opposite direction more swiftly than a bolt sent from a crossbow.

“Hilde, I’ve been gulled.” Brother Malachi was puffing as he caught up with her. “Can you believe it? Me? Of all people.”

“Surely not, Malachi, you’re very clever.”

“Not this time. I tell you, that Thomas always had it in for me. Jealous, he was, because I was farther along than he was. He’d never even got as far as the dragon. I told him he was going in the wrong direction, and he said I was trying to trick him into failure, so I could keep the gold for myself. I imagine he died laughing, after he’d signed the will leaving me this thing. ‘If I can’t have it, neither can he—I’ll send him off on a hunt he won’t come back from.’ I’m just lucky he didn’t make it up in Egyptian, I suppose.”

“He may have been a friend, Malachi, and been fooled himself.”

“Him? Not likely. Did I tell you about the time he visited my lab-oratorium and dropped some powder out of his sleeve into all my experimental vessels? Turned everything green—ruined six months of work. And to top it off, he confided he’d seen the Peacock’s Tail, which was entirely untrue. Made me morose for weeks.”

“Morose? Oh, Malachi, you’re not morose. It’s not in your character.”

“Not since I found you, O Jewel of My Existence. It is impossible to be morose in the presence of your lovely self and that marvelous onion pie that only you can make so well.”

“Oh, Malachi, you are so brilliant and genial.” Mother Hilde took the wool merchant’s arm as they strolled beneath the new-leafed trees. “I’m very lucky that some other woman didn’t make you onion pie first.”

“It would have been imperfect, Hilde. No, I was looking for the perfect onion pie and the perfect woman. With whom else could I share my life? Still, I am very sorry to have brought you on this wild-goose chase.”

“Sorry? Malachi, I’ve always wanted to travel. Without you, where would I have ever been, except the village where I was born? And now—why, we live in London! I’ve met princes, dukes, counts—even though that last one wasn’t much, I must say. And look in here—” She opened her pilgrim’s wallet. It was full of pressed tin pilgrim’s badges from the shrines she’d visited. There were pebbles and little pottery vials of this and that, all stoppered with wax. “See those? When I was a girl, Malachi, I’d see the pilgrims ride by, with their badges on their hats, and I’d be envious. They’ve been somewhere, I’d say to myself. Now I’ve been somewhere too. How amazing. After enough life for two women, I have another. A life of travel and adventure with the cleverest man in the whole world. I don’t understand why you’re sorry about that.”

As she spoke Brother Malachi’s face began to relax. It regained its normal pinkness, and the deep lines started to fade away.

“Hilde, I’ll make it all up to you. We’ll go back. I’ve learned a lot on this trip, though not from that wretched book. I’ve a new idea I’ll set to work on. You’ll see. Someday, I’ll make you rich beyond your dreams.”

“Malachi,” she said, smiling at the everlasting optimism that always made him seem so eternally youthful, “I already am that way.”