A Vision of Light (10 page)

But then he couldn’t help thinking about how well his meditations were going, now that that recurring nightmare, the one about the fowl on the spit that kept floating just beyond his grasp, had gone away. Why, it was only yesterday evening that he had come very, very close to a truly ecstatic moment, while contemplating the Crown of Thorns. Perhaps he shouldn’t cut her off too abruptly. It might make her hysterical, and that would be unwise. For a moment he had a vision of hysterical women, hundreds of them, their faces all red and distorted, and their open mouths screaming. He shuddered. Then he inspected Margaret’s face. It didn’t look hysterical—yet. Perhaps it could all be managed. With a brusque motion he piled the pages together and bade Margaret farewell.

CHAPTER THREE

B
ROTHER GREGORY SAT FUMING BY HIMSELF
in a corner of Master Kendall’s great hall. A new shipment of goods from Asia had arrived that morning, and the household was in an uproar: journeymen and accountants hurried through on mysterious errands, there was hubbub in the kitchen and the stables, and even the voice of Master Kendall himself could be heard through the open door of his business office, requesting that a certain length of silk be held for the wife of the lord mayor to inspect. Margaret was nowhere to be seen.

“She’s probably forgotten—or given up—without bothering to let me know. That’s the way this sort of people are.” Brother Gregory felt very sour. He had come without breakfast, which doesn’t bother most people, since dinner is at eleven in the morning. But it made him grouchy all morning long. He felt even grouchier when he overheard voices floating out of the kitchen: “Mistress does find some funny ones, doesn’t she? Remember that fellow in the black gown who went around blessing everything?”

“How about those heathen foreigners with the little black boy who followed them about? Master found those.”

“They’re two of a kind. But this one is the grumpiest they’ve found yet—that’s what I think.”

“Then you don’t remember that fellow with the yellow face from Venice.”

“Italians don’t count—they’re all crazy.”

“Not as crazy as Germans, that’s what I say.”

“That does it,” said Brother Gregory to himself. “I’m leaving, and she’ll just have to come and find me and beg. My Curiosity is cured.” He got up and took several angry strides to the front door, only to come close to losing his nose when the door was flung open to admit Margaret, who was followed by a footman with an empty basket.

“Why, Brother Gregory! Not going already?” Margaret took in at a glance the annoyance that was rising from Brother Gregory in the kind of waves that you see over a grain field in the heat. She was in a feeding mood. These overwhelmed her at times. They were a product of all the cooking and feeding she had been raised to do on the farm. She had been out feeding the poor, having caught and fed her daughters and all the apprentices earlier. Now she fixed Brother Gregory with a sharp eye. He clearly needed feeding.

“You haven’t had breakfast, have you? You’re much too tall to go without breakfast. You’ll become weak and ill.” (She told short people they were growing, when this mood came upon her.) “Now, you just turn around and sit over here, while I see if Cook has a little something.”

It is impossible to deny a woman in a feeding mood. It is as if they look right through you, to that small, weak part that has been there since you were a baby and that doesn’t know how to defy authority. Brother Gregory was completely docile as she sat him down while bread, cheese, and a mug of ale were brought. She stood over him while he ate, and when it was clear that his mood was rapidly becoming mellower, she said, “There! Isn’t that what you needed? Now, if everybody in the world ate breakfast, there would be no more wars.”

Brother Gregory’s natural contentiousness had returned, and with his mouth still half full, he responded, “That is an entirely illogical statement. The Duke of Lancaster, who is a great warrior, eats breakfast every day. But I know of a holy abbot who goes without eating for days at a time, and he doesn’t even kill flies.”

“You can’t prove anything with just two examples.”

“You just tried to prove an outrageous
non sequitur
with only one example—me,” said Brother Gregory primly.

“Oh, Latin, that’s what you’ve run to hide behind.”

“I’m not hiding anywhere, I’m right here in the open, reminding you that your book isn’t being written,” said Brother Gregory, chewing up the last of the bread.

“Oh, gracious, there’s hardly any time left!” exclaimed Margaret, and so they set to work almost immediately.

M
Y SUITOR’S NAME AND
praises were on everyone’s lips. Lewis Small, how grand, how elegant! How lucky Margaret is, too lucky, really, it’s entirely unfair, they all said. It didn’t matter how many times I said, “I don’t want him! He frightens me!” It was just “Lucky Margaret, she’s a selfish girl who doesn’t appreciate what anyone does for her. She’s always been that way, now that we think about it.” They say that only fools struggle against fate. But I don’t think it’s foolish at all. After all, you don’t know how things will come out afterward until they have, so why settle for them ahead of time? But there was no one to turn to, no one at all. So I went to Father Ambrose and wept. After all, your confessor has to listen to you, even if he doesn’t want to. Surely, I said, wiping my eyes, God doesn’t think people have to get married even when they don’t want to? But to my surprise the priest’s face grew hard when I told him that Master Small’s face frightened me. I had to conquer fear, he lectured me, to do the will of my parents, which was the will of God.

“But—but couldn’t I be a nun, then, instead of marrying?” I ventured timidly.

Sir Ambrose stood up in a towering rage and shouted down where I knelt, “You? A bride of Christ? You have no vocation that I have ever seen—Mistress Light Foot, the Dancer, Mistress Gay Voice, the Singer, Mistress Stay-up-at-Night-to-Steal-Kisses! Do not blaspheme the Holy Sisters! Ask Christ to steady you and make you grateful for marriage to so fine a man as Lewis Small!”

“Fine a man?” I looked up at him.

“Why, fine indeed! Finer by far than your own family. And although not noble in birth, noble in thought, noble in deed, and noble in his love for Mother Church. He has already made an offering sufficient to repair the roof. And on the day the wedding vows are made, he pledges a window for the nave. Would you deny a holy place the beauty of a stained-glass window for your own selfish desires? Repent, repent now, and be forgiven, and marry in all modesty and humility, as becomes a maiden!”

How I hated that penance! Why does God do these things to us? It was then that it came to me that the reason must be that God is a man, or rather, that men and God think alike. Now, if God were a woman, things would be entirely different, it seemed to me. Certainly She wouldn’t make a girl get married when she didn’t want to. She’d let the women do the choosing, and the men would have to wait to be chosen, and obey in all modesty and humility. It would be very, very different in this world, if women could make their own choices. But that isn’t the way things are, so marry we did, before the church door, with Sir Ambrose all conceited at the thought of his new window.

Since mother was a brewster, the bride-ale was even greater than when the hayward’s only daughter at St. Matthew’s married. But the food and drink were not even half consumed when my new husband summoned his men and, leading me to a gaily bedecked mule, assisted me to mount with a showy gesture.

“Ah!” exclaimed the women, who thought Master Small looked exactly like the hero of a romantic ballad as he lifted me into the saddle. But Richard Dale, who had now lost all hope of the dowry he once coveted, watched without a word, his face pale as a ghost’s. I almost felt sorry for my former suitor. As the mule train began to make its way from the churchyard I turned back for a last look, and saw the men coaxing Richard Dale to take a drink, and then another. I felt sure that by the time the remnants of the party made their way to our house, he would be falling-down drunk.

A long trip gives a person a chance to think. I should have been all anticipation, dreaming about my new home and the grand estate to which I had risen, all because a wealthy stranger’s glance had chanced to light on me. Instead I kept wondering, Why me? It’s true I had a good dowry for a village girl, but wasn’t that nothing to a man who could buy a window? So it couldn’t be that he was in debt. They said that he was mad with love, captured by my beauty. But when he spoke of my burning glance, I really couldn’t recall any. He didn’t look very lovesick to me. Maybe men of the world conceal it better? And why travel so far to find a bride when the towns, they say, are full of beautiful women, all dressed in crimson and gold? Oh, it was all a mystery to me. Besides, there was something about him that made my skin crawl. I felt more and more depressed. Ahead of me, on the narrow, dusty track, rode my bridegroom and his friends, passing the time by singing songs about the fickleness of women. Behind me rode his armed retainers in silence. Now I know how a bale of goods feels when it’s being transported, I thought.

A flight of blackbirds rose suddenly from the barley field beside us. Why couldn’t Margaret fly away like that? I imagined, for a moment, running away. But it couldn’t be done. It’s impossible for a woman not to be married. You’ll end in a ditch—everyone knows that. So it all had to be. I tried to tell myself it wouldn’t be so bad. Everyone says you get used to it, and besides, there’s babies, and they make it all right. That’s what they say, at least. A pretty baby, that wouldn’t be so bad. Then I wouldn’t really have to think about him anymore.

It wasn’t long after the church spires, low town wall, and the castle towers of the town had come into view that the mules were being led into the stable of Master Small’s establishment. It was more or less like the other petty merchants’ houses that flanked it on either side. The front of the house was flush with the street, and the lower story was just one long room divided up, the great hall at the center, with the kitchen, servants’, and apprentices’ quarters behind, and a shop at the front. There was an attractive little walled garden at the back. Below the hall were basement storerooms that stank of pelts, and above a bedroom and solar. In the first room, which was our own chamber, there stood a great curtained bed, with a chest at its foot for valuables. There was also a table and another chest by the window, which looked out upon the street. At the table my husband did his accounts. In the second room, where women’s work such as sewing and weaving was done, slept his son by his first marriage and the boy’s nursemaid. The room also had an empty cradle and another empty bed. It was clear that Lewis Small was expecting more children at the earliest possible date.

Even if the servants had not been so grave and quiet, it was clear to me from the start that something was not right in the house. I thought I knew why when the nurse brought Master Small’s son to greet him. He was a pale little boy, not yet five years old, who stared unknowingly at his father with the wide, shining blue eyes of an idiot. He was incapable of speech. As I looked at his narrow, unhealthy face, I had a sudden mean little thought: I can make better children than that. I saw Small’s eyes narrow as he ordered the boy removed in a quiet, hard voice. A vain man, I thought, who cannot bear the public disgrace of a simpleton for an heir. But it was really I who was the simpleton. It didn’t take me long in Master Small’s house to find out how simple a girl with no experience of the world can be. If I had ever suspected how much less simple I was soon to become, I would have been more frightened than I was at the time.

Having sent the child away, my husband called for water to wash the dust of the journey from his hands and face, and had a boy run to the vicar’s with word that he was back. This worthy soon arrived, followed by a boy with a censer, to bless the marriage bed and pray for sons. A crowd of people—I wasn’t sure yet which were relatives—stood about the bed, as the priest prayed at endless length for sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons, sprinkling the bed with holy water and censing the room.

Outside, in the summery dusk, his friends howled and whistled in the street beneath the window. Small’s eyes flickered nervously at the sound, just as the candles flickered in the black iron sconces on the walls. The room was completely silent, except for his breathing, as he slowly looked me over, still dressed in my wedding clothes. His look frightened me, and I sat down on the edge of the bed, while he stood with his hands on his hips, still looking at me wordlessly. Then he suddenly strode across the room, bolted the door, and turned and addressed me, without any smile at all.

“Take them off. I want to see what I’ve got.” He blinked rapidly, like a reptile. I looked at him in bewilderment. I could not imagine a wedding night without kisses and sweet words.

“Didn’t they tell you your duty was to obey your husband in all things?” His voice was soft and sibilant, and a shadow of his cold smile had returned. “So kindly hurry, to show your desire to be obedient—and quit hiding under the covers; I didn’t buy a bride in a blanket.” I couldn’t bear looking at him; I hid my face in the coverlet.

“Obedience means in everything. Nothing that a man does in marriage is improper. Do you understand? Just how much do you know?”

In spite of myself I blushed. You’d have to be brought up in a box not to know quite a bit.