CHAPTER TWELVE

HE’S FEELING LOW, MALACHI, I CAN TELL.” I’d been hanging out the window, trying to catch the spring sun on my face. The heat had come early, making the room under the eaves stifling. I was crazy with being inside too long, doing little but listening to Gregory’s gasping breath, or the strange words he said when his mind was wandering. So when I saw Malachi puffing up the outside stair to the garret room, I was ready to burst for wanting to tell him my idea.

“Low?” Even Malachi had to duck when he crossed the threshold to the little room. “You’re worried about him feeling low? He’s alive! If that isn’t sufficient cause for rejoicing, I don’t know what is!” He glanced briefly at the sleeping figure on the bed. “In the meanwhile, I worry about serious things, such as the fact we haven’t money or means to get home again. But am I low? No! My brain is churning with plans. I occupy myself with useful thoughts. And it’s me that ought to be low! I deserve to be low, and lie in bed all day with people worrying about me and offering me wine and fruit. My book, my wonderful treasure that sent me off on this foolish chase, is a worthless forgery. Just tell me what else could make a sensitive soul like mine lower?”

There’s no dealing with Brother Malachi in a mood like this, you just have to distract him.

“Brother Malachi, I need your help. Hilde and I had an idea, and we’re going shopping. But we need an expert like you to assist us.”

“Don’t think to distract me with that sly, flattering tone, Margaret. Where did you get any money, besides what you gave over to me?”

“I sold a few things I didn’t want.”

“What—?” He scrutinized me closely, to see what was missing.

“I want to buy him a present. He needs a book.”

“Margaret, I see your hood’s missing, but that won’t buy a book.”

“It’s summer. We’ll be leaving soon, and I don’t need it.”

“What else, you foolish woman?”

“Those nasty mourning clothes. I mended them and sold them. Everyone needs mourning clothes, it’s the plague season. Everybody except me. I’m not sad anymore. They fetched a good price—that horrible lilac water smell made them seem more genteel. Ugh. Lilac water.” I couldn’t help shuddering.

“Tsk, tsk. You’re shuddering, Margaret,” Malachi remarked. “You’ve been rather hasty in divesting yourself of clothing, I fear. But I can tell from your face you’ve gone behind my back. What else did you sell?”

“Just the horse litter.”

“Just the—what? And, pray, how do you think to get him home again without it?”

“He’ll ride when we leave, Malachi, because he’ll be well. Once he gets his spirits back, he won’t do anything but ride.”

Brother Malachi shook his head. “Margaret, you are a hopeless dreamer and a madwoman. The fever comes and goes; he still hallucinates, and when he’s himself, he’s become so morose, he doesn’t speak. So with the harebrained notion you’ll cure him with a book, you have stripped yourself of your last worldly goods. Consider this: You have grown as large as a small mountain. Shouldn’t you have better bought a cradle and swaddling clothes?”

“That’s why I need you to help me find the book. It has to be just right. See? Here’s Hilde back again, so we can go.” Indeed, Mother Hilde had returned with a bucket of water. Setting it beside the bed, she felt Gregory’s forehead where he slept, his eyes all sunken in, and wrung out a towel in the cold water. Laying it across his forehead, she motioned Sim to sit with him and renew the towel when it was needed. Sim nodded, but I could see he took it ill that we were going out when he had to stay.

The wonderful early April sunshine brightened the whole world. Spring comes so soon in the south. It’s really more like summer with us. High white clouds floated in the blue sky. The towers of the papal palace shone like the blessed Jerusalem itself. Below it, the narrow streets were crowded with fruit and flower vendors, strollers, and the grandees with which this town abounds.

“Oh, Malachi, look,” cried Mother Hilde. “Who is that? The Pope?” A score of outriders were pushing aside the crowds to make room for an elaborate gilded horse litter to pass. In it sat an elderly gentleman, all dressed in silk like the King of Heaven, sniffing at a pomander to keep the street smell from him. From the hounds and horses and members of his household in livery that accompanied him, he looked like a very great lord indeed. Behind his mounted escort came a half-dozen heavily draped mule litters, and a train of sumpter mules and attendants of all description, on foot and mounted. It was a most sumptuous procession; everyone had stopped to gawk.

“No, it’s a cardinal,” said Brother Malachi. “You can tell by the coat of arms. He must be removing his household to his summer palace in the Venaissin, now that heat has brought the season of illness to the town.”

“Malachi, look at the woman.”

“Margaret, I thought you knew enough not to be shocked by a little thing like—oh, my goodness—” Brother Malachi had seen what I had seen. Riding in the gay cavalcade in a covered mule litter with the cardinal’s coat of arms displayed in the gilt carving was a woman. The curtains of the litter had been tied back to give her air. She was all blond and white, glittering with jewels and clutching two tiny white lapdogs. Behind her ran two little black boys in turbans and a half-dozen liveried footmen. I stared like a fool, then smiled and waved, because I just couldn’t help it. She turned her head—she’d seen me, but she didn’t nod in acknowledgment. She’d fixed her gaze straight ahead, so that everyone could admire her profile and jeweled headdress. It was Cis.

“Well, well,” said Brother Malachi. “Isn’t the world full of strange things? Here, Margaret. Take my arm over these cobblestones—you must admit you’ve become totally unwieldy lately. Who’d have ever thought that a slender young thing such as you used to be would become unable to see her own toes?”

“That is the usual occurrence in this state, Malachi dear,” observed Mother Hilde. “Your mind has been just too occupied to notice before.”

“Indeed, Hilde, I defer to your greater wisdom in this area of expertise. Do they all get as large as Margaret here?”

“Larger,” she answered.

A woman pressed by us with a large basket of strawberries on her head.

“Oh, strawberries!” I cried. “Where on earth did she get them in this season? I could eat the whole basket. I must have some.”

“First garlic, then dandelion greens, and now there’s no end to it. Oh, the ceaseless demands of women! Margaret, you must restrain these mad appetites, or you’ll give the baby a birthmark.”

“Malachi—” Mother Hilde pulled at his sleeve. “I’d like some too. It’s been so long—” So while we waited in the shade of the cool stone arch of a long arcade, Brother Malachi pursued the woman, returning, all out of breath, with the entire basket.

“I hope this satisfies you greedy ladies; now we’ll all be covered with blotches.”

But soon enough, strawberries and all, he had brought us to the Street of Studies, where stood the shop of one of the numerous literary entrepreneurs of Avignon. This one was the best and the largest, he’d explained. The proprietor had his own scriptorum, and rented books to the masters of the university, as well as providing for sale fair copies of all the most fashionable and scholarly works, both newly made and previously owned. The presence of the papacy had made Avignon the most cultured city in Christendom, full of illuminators, painters, and masters of fair writing of every sort. We passed the rows of desks for the full-time copyists of the scriptorum, the displays of pens and paper, and stood before the wide, slanted shelves on which the finished books were laid flat for display. The man took no chances; the precious things were chained to the shelves. Many were too wide and heavy for me to lift anyway; some were fabulously bound and decorated. Too expensive, I thought, and looked for the plainer ones. The proprietor, sensing our lack of respectability from the basket of strawberries, hovered immediately behind us.

“You wished?” he said in Latin to Brother Malachi. He had dark, close-trimmed hair with a scholar’s tonsure, and a long, expressive olive-skinned face.

“I want to buy a book.” I spoke to him directly in the French of the north. Switching to that language, he addressed Brother Malachi in response.

“You want to buy a book?”

“She wants to buy a book,” responded Brother Malachi. “I am merely here to help.”

“I want to buy a book for a present,” I said to the man.

“She wishes to buy a book for a present?” the man asked Brother Malachi, as if he were a translator, and women’s words needed to be decoded by him before they could be understood by another man. I was surveying the books. The fatter ones, even plainly bound, looked too expensive. I’d try the thin ones that looked well thumbed. The first was in Latin.

“That’s a theological tract about damnation, Margaret,” said Brother Malachi in English. “I don’t think he’d like it.” I looked at another. The undecorated calfskin binding looked well worn. The lines inside were short, as if they were poetry. It wasn’t Latin.

“This one’s poetry?” I asked. It was the thinnest of all. Sold from an estate, perhaps, or by a student who needed passage money home. I might get a bargain. Besides, Gregory liked poetry, or at least he had liked poetry.

The man burst into a flood of Latin at Brother Malachi. He waved his arms. He rolled his eyes.

“The man says, Margaret, that this is the work of the divine Petrarch, whom he knows personally. He himself is a passionate devotee of the muses, and has captured the most subtle sensations of passion in his own poetry, which was nurtured and encouraged by the great Petrarch himself, at whose feet he sat. He says if you like Petrarch’s sonnets, you’ll adore his, which he’ll sell us even cheaper.” Brother Malachi spoke the French of the north, so that all parties in the negotiation would be aware of what he said.

“Ask him,” I answered in that same language, “just how long he sat at the feet of this Petrarch.” Though the man heard everything, Brother Malachi again had to translate from the female. At length the man responded to Brother Malachi, waving his arms and gesticulating passionately.

“I pursued him. Like the shy roe deer, he vanished. At his inn, surrounded by worshipers, he disappeared out the back door. ‘My poems!’ I cried as he lowered himself secretly from the back window at midnight, ‘you must read them! Tell me, great master, should I pursue my course?’ ‘Pursue!’ he cried as he fled on horseback. So I pursued. Soon I had several slim volumes. My love poetry. My odes. My epic, on the taking of Constantinople. And I knew where to find him. He’d hidden in Vaucluse. I made a pilgrimage to his shrine. What divine simplicity! Like the ancient Romans! He lived alone with a dog. I knocked at the door. ‘My God, not you again!’ he cried. That is how I knew the light of my rising sun had dazzled him beyond measure. ‘My poetry,’ I cried. ‘Read my poetry. You must tell me what you think of it.’ He had to read, though I could see how it pained him to see how he’d been surpassed. ‘These love poems,’ he admitted grudgingly, ‘they’re—unique.’ ‘My odes?’ I queried. ‘Even more unique.’ Ah! Even the greatest minds must wrestle with the serpent of jealousy. But he, the great man, the genius, overcame it! ‘And my epic?’ I asked. ‘The most unique of all.’ ‘Bless you, bless you, maestro!’ I kissed his hands and feet. I fled in rapture, taking my poems with me, so that he could not steal the ideas.”

“How can you sit at feet that are running, Malachi?” I asked in English.

“Now, Margaret. Don’t be saucy,” answered Brother Malachi in that same language.

“Ask him, Brother Malachi,” I resumed in French, “whether, since Petrarch has been surpassed by himself, wouldn’t he give me a bargain on this outmoded old fellow—say, less than his own book, which is so much better?”

“Margaret—” Brother Malachi cautioned. “You go too far.”

The man rolled his eyes up to heaven. Tears appeared in them. “Tell her,” he said, “it is the greatest tragedy of my life that my poetry is not more widely recognized. If I were not trying to build my world renown, I would not be offering it to foreigners at a discount.”

“Tell him,” I said as I dabbed artistically at my eyes with my sleeve, “that my poor husband lies so ill that only poetry can console him, but that he is so weak that if he reads the most powerful poetry first, he might be carried off by emotions. However, if he begins with the feebler verse, he can build his strength to the point that he can absorb the greater work without danger. So he should sell me the Petrarch for less, so I can return for his own work later.”

“Tell her I’ll give it at the same price, no less.” Brother Malachi, of course, had no time to tell anybody anything.

“Done,” I said. And the man said to Brother Malachi, “Tell her I’m a fool, and my tiny babies will starve.”

“Tell him the tiny babies of a great soul never starve.”

“Hilde, Margaret.” Brother Malachi turned to us, and his face was shining. “I’ve just thought of how we can get home.”

SIM HAD EVERY INTENTION of staying at first. Even though it was disgusting how Margaret made over this worthless fellow, he had gone and given his promise to her. The man had done nothing but lie around for weeks, unutterably dull, doing little more than breathing. Some nights he would rouse with a start, open his eyes, and scream as if he saw horrible things; then he was at least interesting, if somewhat dangerous, since he might start trying to fight off the things or claw them off himself, leaving his own skin bleeding.

But awake, that was the worst of all. The fellow was a veritable cloud of gloom. He didn’t even take pleasure in Sim’s lovely new acquisitions, which lay, with shining crowns and hollow eye-sockets, all well polished upon the long bench with which the room was furnished.

“I’ve seen enough of you old fellows,” Gregory would mutter when he opened his eyes and spied the skulls there. “It’s poor conversationalists you’ve been all these weeks. Must you follow me about, staring so? I’ll be in your company soon enough.” Trapped all afternoon with this bore, Sim thought, as he went to look out the window.

Three floors below, in the courtyard of the Tête du Maure, he spied something wonderful. There, right at the stable door, was a man putting away his horse. Behind him were two greyhounds. And at his side, on a leash connected to a collar with little bells, was an ape. A real Barbary ape with a hairy body and long leathery hands and feet.

“Where’s he from?” Sim’s voice was full of admiration as he prepared to rush down to the courtyard. Then he remembered his promise. “Look after” doesn’t mean “look at,” now, does it? he reasoned to himself. They’ll be mad if he charges around and breaks things, thought Sim. So he changed the towel as insurance against that unlikely event, and then tied the sleeping figure’s hands stoutly together with the rope from the packsaddles, knotting the loose ends to the bed frame.

“With any luck, you won’t wake up,” he addressed the sleeping body. “And if you do, you won’t be running around and getting hurt. And I’ll be back long before then, anyway. They’ll never know. So we’re square, aren’t we? I’ve looked after you fine, Sir Gloomy.” And he sped downstairs in great bounds like a hare.

Gregory might not have awakened if a devil had not chosen to sit on his chest. It was big and gray and shapeless, and so heavy, he couldn’t breathe very well. Get off, he said in his mind, but the thing wouldn’t budge, even when he tried desperately to suck in air. It smelled bad, too, like rotten grave clothes. He tried to push it off, but found his hands were paralyzed. He began to scream and writhe, but he couldn’t move. He opened his eyes wide and looked all about the room for help. Not a soul there. Margaret had left him. He always knew that she would. And the devil; it was so heavy, crushing his life out.

“So be it,”he whispered, and turned his face to the wall. But even as he did it he could hear the click of the latch and the sound of the door swinging open. Curiosity had always been the most powerful impulse within him. “I’ll die later,” he murmured to himself. “First I’ll see who it is.” The devil seemed rather translucent; he could see right through it now, and as he watched the figure come through the door, the gray thing seemed to fade and go, as if it had never been there at all. The air felt good. He took big breaths as he stared at the stranger who’d entered.

The man seemed a pleasant enough sort of fellow, not that much older than Gregory, with a beard trimmed short and hair he’d let go a bit too long—probably to save money, judging by his clothes. He had on a physician’s gown and hat, but both were rather too well worn. Gregory could detect several very neatly made patches, almost invisible, on the most threadbare stretches of the gown. He smiled. Without a doubt, someone Margaret had found. She hadn’t left him after all. She’d gone to get a doctor. She did have a gift for making friends of the shabbier sort. She’d probably traded something, or begged him to come. She didn’t have the money for a successful doctor. He could sense the stranger inspecting him with his dark, whimsical eyes.

“Margaret sent you, didn’t she?” Gregory asked.

“Well, she asked me to come, yes—but I really came because you called. You needed me to come.” He sat down on the bed, as if he were already an old acquaintance.

“I’m sorry I can’t rise to greet you. Look what they’ve done to me.”

“They were just afraid you’d hurt yourself,” said the stranger, “but I know you won’t.” His fingers were busy with Sim’s crude knots.

“I’ve been crazy,” said Gregory. “But I haven’t hurt anyone, have I?” The stranger finished up and took up Gregory’s wrist to feel his pulse.

“Not really,” he said. “Not yet.”

“That’s a nasty mark you’ve got on your hand. I didn’t do that, did I?”

“Well, in a manner of speaking, you did. But it’s not important just now.”

“I’m very sorry. You’ve been here before?”

“All along.”

“Then I really have been off my head, haven’t I—I don’t remember you at all.”

The physician sighed. “You’re not alone in that. Most people don’t.”

“I’m very sorry about that. I take it business hasn’t been good for you here? You should take heart. I had a time in my life like that. Popular to have around when everyone was having a good time, but no real employment. Even my father didn’t like me.”

“Oh, I know all about that. But you see I’ve done especially poorly in this city, even though I inherited my father’s business.”

Gregory felt much better. He sat up.

“It’s all the quacks, you know. People like a big show. Doctors should make pronouncements in Latin over your urine in a glass vessel, and give vile, expensive medicines that poison your body, and do painful things like bleeding and cupping.”

“Are you telling me my business?” The physician looked straight-faced, but his eyes were dancing with the joke of it.

“Oh, no, I didn’t mean it that way at all. But an honest doctor like you, who hasn’t got any tricks—for example, look how much better I feel already and you haven’t even bled me—well, you’re not going to get as many paying clients when you’re in competition with—ah—showmen. You’ll be reduced to treating the riffraff for free.”

“Oh really, the riffraff—like you?”

“Exactly, like me.” Gregory looked very sad for a minute. Then he leaned forward. “Tell me, how did she convince you to come? You know we can’t pay you.”

“Oh, you can repay me. Just tell Margaret that you love her. I want to see her face when you do.”

“I can’t do that. Besides, she knows how I feel. I don’t have to tell her.”

“Why can’t you tell her?”

“It’s wrong, all wrong, you know. I shouldn’t really have married her at all. I—I had a vocation, you know.” Gregory sounded embarrassed.

“Oh, really, a vocation? What sort?”

“You know, the real kind. Serving God.”

“Oh, I see. Other vocations don’t serve God. And if you serve God, you can’t love anything He made. So to prove you still love God, you won’t tell Margaret that you love her, even though you do.”

“Well, put that way, it does sound rather confused and narrow-minded, I suppose.”

“You said it, not I.”

As Gregory thought this over, his face became worried. “But she might leave me—go away, or—or die. That’s why men should put no store by earthly things, and only love something more—well, substantial, like God,” said Gregory.

“Tell me,” said the physician, “have you ever observed how Margaret loves?”

“How she—what do you mean?”

“How she throws her heart into the balance, without ever counting the cost? Do you think she is so foolish that she doesn’t know that a baby’s smile, or a man’s life, is the most transitory thing on earth? Who do you think taught her to love like that?”

Gregory was silent a long time. The physician watched him as he thought.

“Doesn’t God Himself love unreservedly? Even those who might be lost to Him?” The physician looked at Gregory’s troubled face. Gregory turned his dark eyes on him and looked long and hard. “Isn’t it rather presumptuous of you to think you can love perfectly, without risks?” The questioner’s voice was not unkind.

“But my heart might hurt,” said Gregory, in a burst of honesty.

“It’s hurting now,” the physician answered.

Gregory bowed his head.

After a long silence, during which Gregory seemed to be thinking very hard, he began to cough again. As he doubled over, the physician steadied him. Then the stranger got up and rummaged about the room just as if it were his own, until he found the half-empty jug of wine. A moment later, Gregory found he was holding a cup between his hands and being assisted to drink.

“Drink something, and the cough will pass.” The physician was being as pushy as Margaret. Gregory finished drinking.

“I should have died there in Normandy, you know. It would have been better. You know what the poet says: ‘A man is worth more dead than alive and beaten.’”

“Which poet is that?” asked the physician.

“Bertran de Born—one of the few my father ever liked. Say, the cough is better. Whatever did you do with that devil? It was too big to be hiding in the room.” Gregory looked around, but every corner of the room was full of sunshine.

“Oh, I got rid of it. As devils go, it wasn’t all that big. What makes you think nobody wants you back? Look at the trouble Margaret went to: pregnant women should be able to sit at home, making little clothes and eating fruit. Here she walked through the mountains, mended a hole in My creation, and fetched you out, at no end of trouble.”

“She’s been doing your mending? So that’s how she got you here. What a disgrace. Taking in mending in a strange city. Did I tell you how rich she was when I met her? Her last husband gave her an easy life, and I’ve given her nothing but trouble. But even so, she didn’t stick at disgrace to pay a doctor’s fee and fetch you here. It’s a shame. A knight’s wife, to take in mending. Even if it was only a purchased knighthood.” Gregory shook his head. The physician took the cup back and put it away. “I can’t believe I’ve been so hardhearted, not telling her what she wanted to hear. After all, I did marry her, so the sin’s mine.”

The physician sat down once more, and then took his pulse again. “Much better,” he said.

“I’ve been ungracious. Yes, that’s it,” Gregory went on earnestly, as if arguing with an invisible scholastic. “After all, consider what she’s done. That’s really unusual, even if she weren’t a woman. Now Blondel had a ballad written about him, when he rescued King Richard. Nobody said King Richard was better off dead; they were glad to have him back.”

The physician looked at Gregory with a long, shrewd look. “You haven’t got it all straight, but you seem to be working in the right direction now. Feeling better? Any more questions?”

“Just one, I suppose. I’ve been having nightmares—hallucinations about my brother Hugo. They’re so real, he almost seems to be here. I hear dreadful music, and then his face appears, quoting horrible poetry. Is there any significance to that? Is it an augury?”

“Actually, he is here. Your father sent him after you, and he caught up with Margaret after she found you. Being what he is, he is under the delusion that it is he who rescued you, though he is as yet unsure about the means. As for the poetry, I can do nothing about it. People have free will, even to embrace bad poetry. And now, good-bye.”

“Hugo? And Father sent him?” Gregory’s voice was full of wonder. “Don’t go—please stay longer.”

“I have others I have to see.” The physician smiled, and stood up, leaving a rumpled place on the bedclothes.

“But you’ll be back?”

“Whenever you ask.”

“But is there anything else? Something I should take? Nasty medicine? Clysters? Steam baths? An unpleasant diet?”

“Anything else?” The physician turned back, his hand still resting on the door latch. “Yes, there is. I know two lonely little girls who need a flesh-and-blood father. Give your mind to it when you return. There will be days you’ll yearn for bitter medicine instead. On those days, think of it as a penance, and remember I asked it of you.”

As the physician stooped to step over the threshold of the low doorway, Gregory smiled and shook his head. Where on earth had Margaret managed to find a physician who was such a business failure? He hadn’t even thought of a single way to inflate the charge, though he’d had plenty of opportunity. And as he opened the door, it was possible for Gregory to see that below the frayed hem of his gown, he was barefoot as a peasant on a weekday.

IN THE COURTYARD OF the inn I thought I caught a glimpse of someone very like Sim, slipping away in another direction. Of course, if I’d seen the ape, I would have known for sure it was Sim, since he was never a boy to miss out on any rare sight.

“Oh, that boy,” said Mother Hilde, shifting the basket from one hip to another. Malachi, his purchases tucked safely in his bosom, had been following her, picking strawberries out of the basket. Now he took a last one, plucked it bare of leaves, and popped it into his mouth.

“Malachi,” laughed Mother Hilde, looking at the way we had come, “if an enemy were pursuing us, he would have only to follow the trail you’ve laid down.” We looked back and saw the telltale green leaves lying at intervals all the way down the dusty street.

“And you said we’d get blotches!” I exclaimed.

“Only a few,” he answered guiltily, his mouth still full. “To see if they were sweet enough for you. Unripe strawberries are unhealthful. We couldn’t have you ill, you know.”

“Oh, Brother Malachi,” I said, in a tone of exaggerated earnestness. “It’s so good of you to take the risk.”

“Thank you,” he answered, swallowing as we mounted the outside stair. “I knew you’d appreciate my efforts.”

I was first to open the door. I was afraid and hopeful all at once of what I’d see. But I wanted to be the first. Maybe he’d be sleeping easily. Maybe he’d be seeing things again, his eyes darting back and forth like a madman’s. But instead, it was something wonderful. Gregory was sitting up in bed. The grayish color had left his face and the circles around his eyes were gone. He was still as thin as a ghost, but at last he looked as if he were mending. His eyes lit up when he saw me. He was speaking, too, as if his mind were working again.

“Margaret?” he said, almost tentatively. “You did come back, didn’t you?”

“Gregory, what’s happened? You look so much better! See here, I’ve brought you a present. You must have known ahead of time. I told them you’d be better soon!”

“I suppose you’ll be wanting blotches too,” complained Brother Malachi, but his voice sounded relieved. “It’s just as well I bought the whole basket.”

“What’s that, strawberries? It’s strawberry season already?”

“It comes sooner here, Gregory. It isn’t even June yet. Here, let me take the leaves off for you.”

“You think I can’t even take my own leaves off? Margaret, I’ve been eating strawberries much longer than you.”

“Why, this is worth a celebration!” exclaimed Hilde. Malachi drew the bench closer so we could all sit near Gregory and around the basket.

“If you’re celebrating, then you aren’t mad at me?” Sim’s voice sounded very small in the doorway behind us.

“Not if you go downstairs and fetch up supper from the kitchen for us,” said Brother Malachi without even looking up.

“You know that woman shouts. Even though I don’t know the words, it’s bad. She wants the bill paid.”

“Well, then, I’ll go with you and swear to her she’ll be paid before the week is up. I’ve had a brilliant idea.” And with that, he took a farewell handful of strawberries and departed downstairs, sharing them with Sim.

“Hey, don’t eat them all before I’m back,” Sim shouted back up the stairs.

“Now let me show you what I’ve brought,” I said, wiping my hands. “It will make you all well. It’s a book.”

“A book?” he said, curiosity and pleasure lighting his eyes. “What kind of book?”

“Why, it’s poetry.”

“Poetry?” He looked horrified. “Is it good poetry?”

“Why, the best. It’s by some man called Francesco Petrarca, who used to live here. Everybody’s still talking about him.” Gregory looked at me intently.

“Petrarch? The greatest living poet in the world? Tell me, Margaret, did you get the book because you knew it was good, or because it was very thin and you thought you’d get it at a bargain?”

Mother Hilde covered her face with her hands, but I could hear her splutter anyway.

“How did you know I’d got a bargain?”

“Margaret, you forget how well I know you. You’ve never been able to resist a bargain. Even me. Remember when we met? I was one of your bargains too.”

“I bargain very well, Gregory. I get only the best. Admit it,” I said, handing him the book. He wiped his hands in turn, and took the little book, turning it over and over tenderly, looking at the cover.

“Oh, Margaret, do you know what you’ve bought?” he asked.

“Well—not quite. I can’t read a word. But Brother Malachi says you can read it. And I know books make you happier than just about anything.”

“Margaret, it’s love poetry. Petrarch’s sonnets to his Laura.” He looked down at his hands and blushed. The pink color made him look ever so much better.

“And Margaret, there’s something I’ve been needing to tell you for a long time. I love you, Margaret. I’ve always loved you, but I didn’t know it myself at first. Then I did, but I didn’t know how to say it. I thought if I did great things, then you’d know it without me saying it. I guess I was afraid I’d seem silly if I just told you. Or that maybe you wouldn’t love me back.”

I couldn’t help it; I burst into tears.

“Margaret, have I said it wrong? I haven’t made you angry, have I?”

“Oh, no, Gregory, you just don’t understand. I always knew everything would come out right if you’d say it. And now you have, and I know everything will all work out.” As he put the book on his lap and leaned forward to embrace me, I couldn’t help noticing that Mother Hilde had tactfully removed herself from the bench and was across the room, staring out the window. I think I cried for a long time, clutching him very tight, as he consoled me. Still, he seemed so puzzled and taken aback.

At last he said, very mildly, “He certainly never said this is what would happen. I guess I’ll never understand women.”

“He? Who’s he?” I asked, looking up at his face.

“The physician you sent, Margaret.”

“I never sent a physician, Gregory. They’re much too expensive. Also, they usually kill people. Why pay money to be killed?”

“He said you did some mending for him.”

“Mending? I didn’t do that. You must have had another of your hallucinations.”

“That’s odd. He seemed real enough. He was very pleasant. Not snobbish at all. But then, how could he be? He was the poorest-looking physician I’ve ever seen. That’s why I thought you’d sent him. You know, another bargain. Why, he was even going barefoot like a peasant, to save his shoes. Who would have ever thought of such a thing? But when he made things clear to me, then I started feeling well. He couldn’t stay, though. He had a lot of visits to make. He went out the door just before you came back.”

“Well, we certainly didn’t see anyone coming down the stairs,” I said, looking at the door as if it could tell me something.

“No, not at all,” said Mother Hilde at the window.

“Gregory, read us from the book, Hilde and me,” I said. “We want to hear what everyone’s carrying on about so much in town.”

“How do you want it? Shall I turn it into English for you?”

“First in Italian, so we can hear the music of it, and then in English, so we understand. Hilde and I, we know a lot about love, and we want to hear what the poet says.” Gregory read in his lovely strong voice first the rolling sounds of the Italian. Then he paused, and slowly pieced the thing into English, pausing between the harder words and phrases.

His voice caught, and it seemed very beautiful, the way it sounded, even before he said what it meant. “Love found me—altogether disarmed,” he translated, and his face looked so grave and luminous with love that I felt my own heart totally disarmed too. “And the way open through my eyes to my heart,—um—which are now the portal and passageway of tears.” Oh, yes. This was very different. This poet knew all about love.

“This Laura—did she love him back?”

“Well, only in a spiritual sense. She visited him in a dream.”

“But she did give him a token, didn’t she?”

“There was her glove—she dropped it and he picked it up. But then she grabbed it back.”

“So—she took back her glove, got mad when he surprised her bathing, and never did more than smile at him—at least, he thinks she did, for twenty-one years? I think he should have found another lady—one who loved him back.”

“Margaret, you just don’t understand higher, spiritual love.”

“Higher love? If a man followed me for twenty-one years, always trying to run into me on the street, snooping to see if he could see me bathing, trying to steal my gloves or anything else I put down just for the moment, when I hadn’t given him the slightest encouragement, do you know what I’d call it? Puppy love, that’s what! He’s behaving like a silly boy, playing the lute all night at the window of a married woman with six children who’s already gone to sleep.”

“That’s ideal love, unmarked by low carnality—and you call it puppy love?” Gregory sounded indignant.

“Well, if it’s so ideal, I suppose he never loved anyone else?”

“Ah—um—he did have a mistress and children.”

“And he didn’t love them, and went trailing after this woman who didn’t love him? That’s crazy!”

“You’re calling the greatest poet alive in the world today crazy? You have a hopelessly bourgeois mind!”

“Well, I say he’s crazy, if he spends his life running after someone who doesn’t love him back. It’s not grown-up at all. What do you think, Mother Hilde?”

“I think you are both feeling ever so much better, because you are quarreling.”

“Quarreling? I’m not quarreling at all. I’m right. Italians are crazy.” I was very indignant. Mother Hilde should have taken my side.

“You’re trying to shift ground, Margaret. That’s what you always do when you’re wrong.” Gregory sounded pompous. “You just don’t want to admit that I’m right.” I looked at his face. Hilde was right. The argument had made his eyes bright. His color was up. His dear, familiar old arrogance was back. He was as wrong as could be. Most men are, about important things like love. I laughed at him.

“And now you laugh. Never was a woman so arrogant as to set herself up against the greatest love poet in the world. One, I might add, whose work she can’t even read!”

“This Laura—I imagine she was a blonde, wasn’t she?”

“Of course. That’s what it says here: ‘i cape’ d’oro fin’—’ That means hair of fine gold.”

“Well then, that explains everything.”

“And, pray tell, how is that? There’s no logic in that statement at all! Women!”

It was a lucky thing that at that very moment we heard steps on the stairs and a pounding at the door.

“Open, open! Supper’s here, and it’s hot!”

“Why, Malachi,” exclaimed Hilde, throwing open the door. “How did you get so much?”

There at the door stood Brother Malachi, holding with two hands a big iron stewpot by its towel-wrapped handle. A bottle of wine could be seen peeping from the bosom of his gown. Sim clutched a vast loaf of bread, a wedge of cheese, and the long green ends of two big onions that hung almost to his knees. On his head, carefully balanced, was a stack of wooden bowls.

“My silver tongue, love. And when she looked skeptical, I revealed to her the rare alchemical work I shall soon be selling at a fabulous sum.”

“Malachi, you’re selling your book?” asked Mother Hilde, tears running down her face as she sliced the onions.

“Oh, not at all. This one’s the model. I intend to make several. With Gilbert’s help, I can make even more. Everywhere, there are adepts in search of the Secret. Each would be willing to part with no small sum for this precious work. And because it contains the Secret of the Universe, none will reveal to a mortal soul that they have it. Except, of course, to Abraham or his equivalent. And when he tells them it’s worthless, they’ll simply believe it’s in a deeper code, beyond his powers of translation. The most brilliant idea of my life—no one pursuing the honest craftsman with pitchforks and torches, demanding his skin. No. They will all hide their shame, as I have hidden mine. And we shall go home in style, selling a book in each city at which we stop. And now, supper. We must build Gilbert’s strength so we can begin our great work.”

As supper vanished, Gregory looked up from eating, and said, “Theophilus, you old rascal, which part of you is honest?”

“All parts, all parts, Gilbert, you sour and doubting young man. I sell happiness and hope—and at much lower prices than certain large religious institutions I could name. It’s because I have less overhead. Always travel light, I say—‘Light feet and light hands,’ that’s my motto.”

“Oh, Malachi, you have such a generous spirit!” exclaimed Mother Hilde.

“If there were more generous spirits here, they’d have left me better than half a dozen strawberries, and those the greenest of the lot,”grumped Sim.

“Now, Sim,” Brother Malachi intoned, “there is the affair of the Barbary ape, for which we have not yet taken you to task. Best to leave well enough alone.”

“I’m not sharing my skulls, then. And don’t you think you’re selling them for relics, either.”

“Relics? My dear child. A dangerous and unsavory business. I have found a higher calling.—Gilbert, as I recall, you always were good at drawing. I will need allegorical pictures for this effort. Nicely colored ones. I still remember the excellent rendering you did of the rector long ago—the one depicting him with an ass’s head, as I recall.”

“You have colors?” Gregory said cheerfully.

“Just three, plus black and white. It’s all I could afford. No gold leaf. You can mix them, can’t you? I need quality work.”

“Do I get to make up the allegories myself?”

“Now, now—don’t get fancy on me. Just follow the models in the book here.”

“Show me.”

Until the light failed, Gregory and Brother Malachi conferred happily on the new merchandise.

“That’s a lot of copying.”

“Well, you don’t have to be precise.”

“It would be easier if you put some Latin in somewhere. How about a curse?”

“A curse? A master stroke, Gilbert. ‘Curses on anyone who reveals the secret of this work.’ Marvelous. Adds tone.”

“You could split up the pages, too—cryptic groups. Seven times three, things like that. And put in more diagrams between. That takes up space.”

“Oh, excellent. I’ll do the diagrams. I’m well acquainted with the sort needed.”

“This one’s nice. The Green Lion. If I get home in one piece, I’ll add it to my coat of arms.”

“Gilbert, restrain yourself. Someone might prosecute you. Stick to red lions and assorted implements of death. Alchemy goes in and out of fashion with the noblesse.”

“Again, Malachi, you’re cautioning me. Must you always be such a fussy old nursemaid?”

“Only when you’re a troublesome young jackanapes.”

“What are you doing, Mother Hilde?” I asked as Mother Hilde knelt at the threshold with a bit of rag.

“Malachi’s slopped something, coming in, and I’m going to wipe it up before it hardens. I don’t want foreigners to say that we are dirty—oh!”

She sat back on her heels for a moment, looking at the spot. My eyes followed her gaze. No one else but us noticed. It wasn’t spilled gravy that stained the threshold. It was a bloody mark left by a bare foot. As I watched, Mother Hilde wiped it up carefully, folded the still damp rag, and put it in her pilgrim’s wallet.