Strange Devices of the Sun and Moon (38 page)

But he looked different somehow, chastened, his usual wildness gone. “Good day, Mistress Wood,” he said.

She saw that he carried a sheaf of papers under his arm, and she wondered if it could be a manuscript. “Good day,” she said. “Have you been ill?”

“I've had—trouble sleeping. There's a woman—I can see her when I close my eyes. She has long brown hair and berry-blue eyes. Do you think I'll ever meet her again?”

“Nay, Tom,” Alice said as gently as she could. “The roads to her country are closed now.” She noticed then that the flower he wore pinned to his hat had wilted and turned brown. Poor man, she thought, remembering Brownie. What will he do now?

“I thought as much. Anyway,” he said, looking a little more cheerful, “I have a manuscript for you.”

“Good. I could do with something lighthearted.”

“It's not very lighthearted, I'm afraid. It's about London, about the follies of Londoners.”

She took it doubtfully. On almost the first page she saw something she had never expected to see: an apology to Gabriel Harvey. “Nothing is there now so much in my vows as to be at peace with all men, and make submissive amends where I have most displeased … Even of Master Doctor Harvey I heartily desire the like, whose fame and reputation I rashly assailed … Only with his mild gentle moderation hereunto hath he won me.”

She looked up. Tom grinned at her, the old Tom, and for a moment she thought he had written the entire manuscript as a jest. Then he said, “Are you surprised?”

She nodded. “Gabriel Harvey—after all he's said about you—”

“I've done with fighting.”

“Aye,” she said. “I understand that only too well.”

They spoke a little more, and then Tom said he must be going. “Take care, Tom,” she said. She watched him as he left the churchyard. How he had changed; she wouldn't have believed it unless she'd seen it. An apology to Gabriel Harvey! She shook her head.

She paged through his manuscript, keeping one eye out for customers. But no one came; folks still feared the plague, and people had started to whisper about the strange sights in Paul's churchyard. She left her stall and began to look through the other stationers' books, something all the booksellers did two or three times a month.

She was interested to see what had happened to all of George's books and copyrights. When he hadn't come back after the final battle his copyrights had been portioned out at the stationers' meeting. Alice had gotten some of them; most people thought she deserved them.

Now she paged through one of George's books on another stall and then turned her attention to a book near it, a thick volume bound in black leather. It looked familiar; she thought she might have seen something like it in Margery's house. She opened it at random and began to read:

“Not all the things the physician must know are taught in the academies. Now and then he must turn to old women, to Tartars who are called gypsies, to itinerant magicians, to elderly country folk and many others who are frequently held in contempt. From them he will gather his knowledge, since these people have more understanding of such things than all the high colleges.”

She closed the book and looked for the author. Paracelsus, the great physician and alchemist. Then she stood a moment, her eyes nearly closed, and thought. If Tom could make his peace with Gabriel Harvey then she could find it within herself to talk to Margery. She went back to her stall, closed it, and walked to Ludgate and Margery's cottage.

Agnes opened the door to her. “Good day, Alice,” she said calmly, as if Alice made regular visits to the cottage.

“Good day. I came to talk to—ah, there she is.”

Margery turned from where she had been hanging a bunch of herbs by the window. “Alice,” she said, sounding pleased.

Once again, unbidden, there came to Alice's mind the picture of Margery in the churchyard, the great light that had swept across the yard, her hair streaming backward from the force of it. Could this small dumpy woman have done all that? Now her hair was tangled in a hundred knots; she looked as if she had not combed it since that day.

“Sit down,” Margery said. She rummaged among the confusion on the floor and found her pipe, then came over to join her. “Would you like some wine?”

“I—Nay. Thank you.”

Margery moved a pile of books and manuscripts and sat comfortably on a three-legged stool. “Is something wrong?” she asked, drawing on her pipe.

Now that it came to it Alice was unsure how to begin. Surely it would be uncivil to ask the woman if she was a witch, if she practiced the black arts.

“You want to talk about the battle in the churchyard, and about my part in it,” Margery said.

Of course, Alice thought. She should have remembered the way Margery seemed to read her thoughts. “Aye,” she said, not trusting herself to say anything else.

“I used what I had learned in my studies, nothing more.”

“And what studies were those?”

“Do you still think I consort with the devil, in spite of everything you know about me?”

“I don't know. I don't know what to think. You can't tell me that those—that what you did came from God.”

“Nay. I told you before, Alice—don't you remember? I tried to explain. There are more than two kinds of magic.”

“Aye, I remember. And I disbelieved it as much then as I do now.”

“Was Oriana on the side of God or the devil? What about the red king?”

“On—on the devil's side. Both of them.”

“Nay, you don't believe that. You fought for Oriana yourself.”

“I did, aye. But I've come to believe that my soul may be damned for it. She's a godless creature, I think. It was wrong of her to take my son away.”

“Wrong? It seems so to you, but these creatures don't follow your laws. You of all people should know that—you've seen them at their revels. And I cannot think of anything for which you might be damned, unless it be a surfeit of kindness.”

“But then—were we right to fight for Oriana?”

Margery drew on her pipe; smoke drifted in the air before her for a moment. Then she looked at her friend shrewdly. “Your mind contains two boxes—right and wrong, good and evil, left and right. And everything you encounter goes into one box or the other.”

Alice could not think what to say. Why would Margery never answer her questions?

“Hogg thought the same thing,” Margery said. “The red king's people were the children of day, he thought, and Oriana's folk the children of night. But you've seen yourself that the differences are not so clear. The red king commanded creatures made of fire and of water, and so did Oriana. Both can withstand light of the sun and moon.

“But Hogg went beyond that. He persuaded himself that the red king's people were good, and Oriana's evil, so that he could continue to do his work. Yet he never found the last alchemical step, the one he sought for so long. Do you know why?”

Alice shook her head. She was not interested in Hogg's business, but she knew from experience that Margery would continue no matter what she said.

“Who was Arthur's father?” Margery asked.

“His—father?” Alice said, startled. “I—I don't know.”

“You do. You know enough about this matter that you can guess the answer.”

“I don't know. Was it—nay, it couldn't be—” Margery nodded.

“The red king?” Alice asked, astonished.

“Aye. He and Oriana were married once.”

“But why—”

“They quarreled shortly before Arthur was born. And for years afterward the red king did nothing but feed on his hatred, while Oriana grew cold. What do you know about alchemy?”

Alice shook her head. “Very little.”

“Many books will tell you that the final step consists of the marriage between the red man and the white lady. Folks have interpreted this in different ways—the red man is one substance or another, and the white lady some other substance. They are so used to secrets, to things which are hidden, that they don't recognize the bare truth when they see it. The red man is the red king, of course, and the white lady is Oriana.”

“And Arthur?”

“Arthur is the fruit of their union. The Philosopher's Stone.” She grinned at Alice's expression. “Oh, aye, he can change lead into gold, though he's only just learned how. You didn't know that, did you, when you and John raised him.”

Alice said nothing, too amazed to speak. “Hogg never understood that about Arthur,” Margery said. “To him one side was good and the other evil, and so the idea of marriage, of reconciliation, never entered his mind. For all his knowledge, for all his wisdom, he was too blind to see what was before him all the time.”

“What happens now? Now that the red king's dead?”

“Now the Fair Folk dwindle. The age passes, and their power fades from the world. And my power with it, I'm afraid.”

“Your—”

“Aye. As long as the king and queen were alive there was a balance in the world, and I could use that in my magic. And so could Hogg, though he didn't understand where his power came from.”

“But you worked for Oriana, against the red king.”

“Aye. But for years before that I worked for reconciliation between them. It was only when I saw my cause was lost that I began to work for Oriana. I feared what the red king might do in his hatred. But I entered her service unwillingly, and I would not have chosen the way things turned out. Too many died in her war, too many good people.”

Alice said nothing. What would it be like to lose all your power? To give up that power, however reluctantly, for something you believed in?

“Do you remember what I told you, that day we talked about black and white magic?” Margery said. “I said that magic was all around us, to be seen by everyone. But that's no longer true. I tried for reconciliation, and I failed. But you, I think, will succeed.”

“What—what do you mean?”

Margery drew on her pipe. “Have you talked to Walter yet?”

“What?” Alice asked, thrown off balance by the change of subject. “Nay, I—I don't—I haven't spoken to him since that day—”

“Why do you wait so long?”

“I'm not waiting. Walter would as soon talk to a demon as speak to me. To be honest, I think he's afraid of me. All the stationers are afraid of me.”

“I shouldn't wait much longer, Alice.”

“Don't you listen to anything I say? And why should I speak to him? What would I say?”

“Ah,” Margery said. “You'll have to talk to him and find out.”

Walter was putting his books away when she returned to the churchyard. Perhaps Margery was right; perhaps she should talk to him. She went up to his stall before she could change her mind.

“Good day, Alice,” he said when he saw her.

“Good day,” she said.

They stood awkwardly for several moments. Their old ritual, the plays they had seen together, would not serve them this time: most of the acting companies had still not returned to London for fear of the plague, and she and Walter had seen all the ones that had remained. What does he think of me? Alice thought for the hundredth time. And then, Does he wonder the same thing about me?

“I would—I would like to speak with you,” she said finally.

He nodded. “Just let me close up here.”

After he closed his stall they left the churchyard and began to walk aimlessly. Despite what she had said she could not think of anything to say to him. It seemed to her that they were each several people: the friends who had gone to plays together, the intimates who had spoken so closely to each other in the tower, the woman who had fought for Oriana and the man who had watched the battle with thoughts she could not imagine. Now she could not tell which of those people she would speak to if she attempted conversation, and so she remained silent.

Finally Walter began to talk, hesitantly. “Folks say,” he said, “that the man on that horned animal in the battle—the king, I suppose—that he was your son Arthur.”

“Aye, he was, in a way.”

“In a way? You have not lost your old habit of secrecy, I see.”

“Nay,” Alice said, protesting. “I'm not being secretive. I—It's a long story, and complex, and I would not want to burden you with it—”

Walter stopped and looked at her. “I care about you, Alice—have you forgotten that I said so? I would like to hear your story. And I think you would like to tell it, more, that you need to talk to someone.”

She did not want to tell him. If he knew the truth about her, how she had consorted with the Fair Folk, he would surely never speak to her again. But he seemed kind, willing to listen; he had never looked at her with disapproval the way George had. And she knew that in one thing he was right: she did need to talk to someone, if only to make sense of the story herself.

And so, haltingly at first and then more and more certainly, she began to tell him the whole strange, fantastic tale. Arthur's disappearance, and Brownie, the faerie revels and the birth Agnes had seen, Arthur's capture and the exchange they had, made for her true son Art. They stood in the street near Paul's, and the sun set over the rooftops of London as she spoke, and opposite it the moon began to rise.

She saw that he did not disbelieve her or attempt to judge her but heard her through with a look of amazement on his face. “Who would have thought it?” he said once. “There's more to you than one would think, Alice.”

They had begun to walk again. As they came to back to Paul's Alice stopped, her gaze caught by the tree near the gate. Was it the same one she had seen the night she came back from the faeries' court? The myriad fruits that had hung from its branches were no longer there, but perhaps the glamour had gone from it now that the roads had closed for good. She looked up into its weave of interlocking branches, and she thought that she understood something for the first time.