Belle's Song (3 page)

“They’re pilgrims, all,” the widow warbled, watching me cut my fish carefully into three, “and on their way to Canterbury so I hear, each wanting a miracle at the tomb of St. Thomas.” At mention of St. Thomas she crossed herself. She was a firm believer in keeping the saints sweet. “Such a diverse company! There’s a knight amongst them and a cook! Fancy that! A knight and a cook traveling together. Times are changing, are they not, Master Bellfounder? Even the king’s going to have to accept that. The knight’s brought his son as squire”—her little eyes blinked at me. She couldn’t help herself. Matchmaking was in her blood. “A handsome boy by all accounts, full of accomplishments. He’s interested in books too, I’m certain.”

I cut my three pieces of fish into another three and threw half to the cat. “I think we may have met the squire already,” I said politely. I wanted to show my father, who had witnessed the morning’s row, that my fury had abated. “Would you like more bread, Father?”

“He only eats one piece,” said the widow.

I clenched my teeth and gave Father a slice anyway.

“The squire helped us out of the Tabard. He’s not particularly handsome. Thank you for unknotting the threads in my cushion. I’ll try to get it finished.”

“Don’t you worry about that,” the widow twittered more kindly than I deserved, “but you do get the colors mixed up. I wonder whether all your reading hasn’t weakened your vision? A wife needs sharp eyes, you know, not just for sewing but to make sure she’s not cheated by her servants.”

“We don’t have any servants,” I pointed out, all my good intentions dissolving.

“No, dear, not now, but who knows …” She chattered on. I pushed my plate away. “I think you’re right about my eyes,” I said, “and there’s no time like the present. I’ll find the oculist.”

“Don’t go out,” said my father at once. “It’s not safe. Even you must know that with the king and Parliament still at loggerheads, mobs form out of nothing.”

“The king’s squabbles don’t bother me,” I said, “and it’s months since there was any trouble around here. Why, we’ve even given up setting the window bars at night.”

“We’ll start setting them again right away,” said my father shortly. “Please see to it, widow.” He rapped his fork on the table, making her jump. “Anyway, it’s a silly time to go. The oculist will be at his dinner.”

My father was not really worried about a mob or the oculist’s dinner. He was really railing against his own inability to escape the domestic hearth. I just had to get out, though, so I got up, crossed myself three times while the widow intoned the grace, then collected Poppet, lest I should come home and find her lips and eyes reworked. When I stepped into the street, I saw a girl balancing three jugs of milk. She dropped one. I didn’t help her pick up the pieces because I needed to pretend it hadn’t happened.

2

Then people long to go on pilgrimages
And palmers long to seek the stranger strands
Of far-off saints …

I never went to the oculist’s house, but so as not to be entirely deceitful, I wandered to his shop and stood outside the window gazing at the frames and stoppered vials. “No better spectacles in all Southwark! Curative drops for all conditions!” declared curly writing set above a wooden puppet sporting two rondels joined with a rivet. I leaned my head against the open shutters. This evening I wasn’t Belle Anything Nice, I was Belle the Rude.

My father was right. The shop was closed, but somebody was knocking tentatively on the door around the other side. I moved. It was the stooping boy from the inn and he peered at me, lank hair flopping over his face. In the thinning light, he looked not so much interestingly pale as unhealthily pasty. If I had not seen him carry my father with my own eyes, I would have said such an effort was beyond him. Immediately, my compulsion kicked in. If he didn’t speak before I’d counted to three, I’d walk away.
One, two, thr
—

“Do … do … do you know when the shop will be open?”

His voice was deeper than I’d expected. “In the morning,” I said. “That’s when shops usually open.”

His face fell. “Of course. Stupid of me. And we’re off at dawn.”

“You’ll not be off at dawn,” I said. “Tabard breakfasts are famously long. You’ll be up early but the shop’ll be open by the time you pass.”

He looked relieved. “Th–thanks.” It struck me that he was very tongue-tied for a squire—not that I had met many squires, but in stories they were always full of easy words.

I thought he would shuffle off, but when I went back to the window his reflection was beside me. “My spectacles are broken and I’d better choose new frames now. I don’t want to be messing about tomorrow,” he said.

I looked at him and then at the eyeglasses on display. “Black rims,” I said, “so that people can see you. You look as though you might vanish.”

He smiled nervously. “Perhaps I shall.”

“Are you ill?”

“No.”

I faced him properly. “Why then?”

He twisted long fingers. “I may be a bit fermented.”

I laughed and this encouraged him. “My father’s an alchemist,” he explained, “and I’ve spent my whole life
breathing in vapors from his experiments.” Now he stood a little straighter and pushed his hair back.

“Oh,” I said. “Of course.”

“Of course?”

“The widow who helps with my father said there was a squire staying at the Tabard. I thought it might be you, but then no squire I’ve ever read about wears eyeglasses, and even without your glasses you don’t really look like a squire.” It was clear at once that I’d hurt his feelings and I felt bad so I rushed on. “Was that your father, the man sitting beside you at the inn?”

He shook his head. “No, no. That man is my master and my mentor.” He blushed. “My savior, really, I suppose.”

I was surprised. “You need a savior?”

“Don’t we all sometimes?”

I thought of my father and myself and the years stretching ahead. I hugged Poppet hard. “You never introduced yourself.”

“Oh! I’m so sorry! I-I—”

“I’m Belle,” I said, cutting through his stuttering and stretching out my hand.

“Luke,” he said, avoiding my hand. “Belle. It suits you.”

I dropped my hand. “You think I’m shaped like a bell?”

“Not at all! I meant it as a compliment.”

“It’s all right,” I said, “I was joking. It doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter. A man of letters should be able to pay an ordinary compliment.”

“You’re a writer?” Only now did I began to pay him properly serious attention.

“It’s what I’ve always wanted to be.”

“And that man—your master—is teaching you how?”

“Yes. I’m his scribe.”

“What’s he writing?”

“He’s got an idea but his wife’s ill, so he’s going on pilgrimage to Canterbury to ask St. Thomas to cure her. I heard that he was looking for somebody to help him write a report of the journey, and so I applied for the job.”

I was disappointed. “I thought you might be learning to write stories.”

He leaned his back against the wall. “My master writes tremendous stories,” he said with more confidence. “That’s why there was a line of people wanting my job.”

Jealousy stirred. “Why did he choose you?”

Luke bit his lip.

“I suppose you’re very, very clever,” I said, disliking myself for goading him but doing it all the same.

“No,” he answered at once. “I’m not very clever. I’ve got a very good memory.”

“Oh? For what kinds of things?”

“Pretty much anything.”

“All right,” I said, “what’s in the window behind you—and no cheating.”

He took off his spectacles and stared hard into the distance although his eyes seemed somehow turned inward. “Three shelves on the left, two on the right. The poppet in the middle with a sign above her.”

“I know the sign,” I said. “That’s easy.” I glanced across the road to make sure he was not staring at a reflection. He was not.

He went on. “On the top-left shelf there are six eyeglass frames, all round and of black leather, with ties. On the second shelf are four vials, two brown and two red, one with a pointed stopper, the rest pear-shaped. On the third shelf are fifteen—no, fourteen—sheets of horn. On the right-hand top shelf is a book entitled
Of the Eye and All Its Ailments
, and on the lower shelf are two boxes, with twenty pairs of spectacles in one and six crystal reading stones in the other.”

I pressed my nose to the window and began counting. “How many sheets of horn did you say?”

“Fourteen. The fifteenth is on the table farther back in the shop, with one pair of frames cut out of it. Next to it is a box of rivets but I can’t tell how many rivets there are because the box has a lid on.”

It was impossible not to be impressed. “It’s magic,” I said. Now I was nervous. Widow Chegwin was always
warning about magic. I tapped my fingers together three times.

“Not at all. My father pretends it’s some kind of super natural power but it’s really just a trick. Anybody can learn to do it. I can remember words as well, and numbers, and it’s very useful because it means that my master can dictate as he rides and I write everything down when we stop. He tells me puzzles too, though he says not to write those down. I think it amuses him to test me. So far I’ve not forgotten anything.” He was nervously proud.

“What a useful person you are,” I said, not very nicely.

He was immediately bashful. “There are lots of people like me, I expect.”

“I shouldn’t think so,” I said.

“You’re just saying that.”

“Well, you got the job, didn’t you?” I said more gently. I was always losing friends by saying the wrong thing and though this boy would hardly qualify as a friend, I didn’t want him to dislike me. “You must have had something that the others didn’t have.”

“I did. I had God’s blessing. You see, I made a bargain that if the Master chose me as his scribe, I’d place my alchemist’s tools on the altar of St. Thomas at Canterbury and become a monk at St. Denys in Paris. God kept his part of the bargain, so now I’m really
a monk. When I’ve delivered my tools, I’ll deliver myself.”

“Jesus Mary!” I was genuinely horrified. “A poor, chaste, and obedient monk, and in a foreign place! You must have wanted the job really badly.”

He gave an uncertain smile. “I did,” he said. “I wanted this job more than anything else. When you’re a monk you can write to your heart’s content. I’m looking forward to it, and if I’m out at sea, I’ll never have to go home again.”

“Is home that bad?”

“Have you ever met an alchemist?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Can you smell anything?”

I sniffed, recognizing the smell I’d noticed earlier. He removed his spectacles again and edged close enough for me to see that his eyes were goose gray and slanted at the corners. His skin was smooth as white lead. I sniffed again. “Sulfur,” I said, wrinkling my nose, “and brimstone.”

“That’s the alchemist’s smell. That and the smell of deceit. My father turns base metal into gold.”

“Really?”

A red fork flashed in the goose gray. “Of course not really. It can’t be done. My father’s a peddler of lies and false dreams. He’s tried to teach me how to do it, but that was one lesson I refused to learn. Nobody should
pretend they can make gold. It’s the worst deceit of all because it drives men to murder. He beat me, but I wouldn’t give in.” He didn’t look cowed by the memory of that beating; he looked livid.

“But isn’t anything possible through alchemy?” I asked. “Master Host says that alchemists cured lots of people of the plague.”

The red fork flashed again. “That’s what men like my father would have you believe, but it’s only through God that anything’s possible and, believe me, God’s as far from being an alchemist as I am from being St. Peter.”

I tossed my head. “You really believe in God’s power?”

“I believe in his power for good. He got me my job.”

“Your memory got you your job.”

“And who gave me my memory?”

“Your father.”

“And who gave me my father?”

“This is silly,” I said.

The red spark flickered and went out. Soon, dusk thickened into dark and the poppet and the eyeglasses smudged and disappeared. Somewhere across the river, a bell tolled for evening prayers. I held my breath. Six strikes. I let my breath out again. “If God really could do anything, he’d mend my father’s legs,” I whispered when I was sure my face was shadowed.

Luke caught the whisper. “What happened to him?”

“Has nobody at the Tabard told you?”