A Vision of Light Page 11

  “Then you’ve observed many?” said Margaret, looking up.

  “Only one or two. But I know of a very holy Father who is capable of vanquishing quite large ones. I learned some useful things from him.”

  “Then you see that the ghost was right, and the proof that he was a demon is what he did—killing all those people secretly.”

  “You’re gobbling down conclusions before you’ve looked at the premises, Mistress Margaret. That’s superstition at work on your part. You must know first of all whether the victims had any sins on their consciences. Pestilence can be an expression of God’s will, you know. He wishes to warn us to set no store by the things of the earth.”

  Brother Gregory leaned back and put his chin in his hand, and his brow wrinkled up with thought. His passion for theology could not be long suppressed, and it was especially likely to bubble to the surface when confronted with the everyday horrors of life. On viewing the displayed corpse of a dismembered traitor, Brother Gregory was likely to wonder all of a sudden in what part of the body the soul resided. A ghastly accident might call forth speculation on God’s will, and once, long ago, he had walked in blood-spattered armor through a battlefield of corpses pondering on the nature of the Trinity.

  Now he was reminded of the Pestilence. That was a hard one, finding God’s purpose there. He remembered men howling like dogs about the open pits where the bodies lay stacked like cordwood, and women, screaming hideously with the pain, running stark naked through the streets. God must mean us to think only of the Heavenly City, when He makes the earthly one like this. But just as he almost had it figured out, an anxious voice interrupted his reverie.

  “But surely, God, if He is good, would not use as an agent a man bent on revenge.” Margaret was very concerned.

  “A point, definitely a point to consider. But it wouldn’t prove the fellow was a demon. He could just as easily have been a human under contract to the Devil. It is something that merchants and moneylenders, especially, are tempted by. The buying and selling, you see—they think they’re better bargainers than ordinary folk. First they charge interest, then they cheat honest knights out of their inheritances, and soon they’ve passed to dropping poison in wine-cups. After that, it’s nothing to think they can outfox the Devil on a contract. These men of business are like that—no honor to begin with. It predisposes them, you see.” But the idea appeared too complex for Margaret, at least to judge by the lack of understanding on her face. She clenched her teeth, set down her sewing, and said in a very even tone, “It seems to me that Lewis Small was totally selfish, without any thought except for his own benefit. Complete selfishness is the personification of evil, is it not?”

  “Women’s talk, Mistress Margaret, women’s talk. The essential thing is to determine, first, if the hanged girl who said he was a demon was a dream or a simple ghost, in which case her word is dubious, or, secondly, a warning visitation sent by God, which would make her word more significant, or, thirdly, whether she was herself a demonic manifestation or devil, which would again change the interpretation of her word. Tell me, are you certain that you both saw and dreamed her, or that you only saw, or, alternately, only dreamed her?”

  “I think at first I dreamed, then saw her in the dark before my eyes. But I was much disordered. I was pregnant and alone in the house of a wicked man. So it could have been either.” Margaret sounded thoughtful.

  “You need to think more clearly than that, if you wish to analyze the meaning of your vision accurately.” Brother Gregory was very self-assured. He had, after all, the benefit of professional training in these matters.

  “This is too complicated for me to follow.” Margaret looked puzzled. “How can you tell what’s real and not a delusion? Or the delusion of a delusion?”

  “Ah, that’s a hard one. If you’d had holy water about you at the time—no, wait, I’ve thought of something. Did you ever note Lewis Small’s nostrils?”

  “His nostrils?”

  “Devils may take any human form they wish, as necromancers well know. But always they have only one nostril. In this they differ from humans. And if any mortal looks into that nostril, they will see right up the demon’s brain, which is nothing less than the fires of hell itself. No man can see this without going mad, and his soul is doomed utterly. Of course, these demons try to get people to look into their nostril, but those who know their tricks never do so.”

  “I don’t remember looking at his nostrils, but I think he had two.” Margaret put her fist under her chin as she pondered the question.

  “Are you sure? Perhaps God planted such a dislike of him in you to keep you from looking too closely at his nostril.”

  “That might be so, for I disliked looking at his face and almost always averted my eyes from it. That would have been very good of God to have done that, for at the time I was worried that my dislike dishonored the sacrament of marriage. But if God did it, then it was right. Maybe he did have one nostril, and I never looked closely. But I really can’t say, thinking back.”

  “In any case you were very fortunate, for even a human under contract to the Devil can steal many souls. Look at how he tempted his first wife into suicide. Surely her soul is damned, as all the Authorities tell us, and the Devil paid Small for it.”

  “But, Brother Gregory, I truly believe in the merciful intervention of Our Lady. Don’t you? The girl’s was the smaller wrong.”

  Brother Gregory looked at Margaret’s earnest face. He could think of several very interesting theological points. But as they would all be wasted on her, he was silent.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE FOLLOWING THURSDAY, BROTHER Gregory rose early, attended Mass, and set off on the long walk from beyond the Aldersgate bars to Master Kendall’s house in the City. The dampish spring morning put him in an interesting state of divided consciousness. His brain was working over the best way to further his search for God, while his stomach was agreeably occupied in the anticipation of the breakfast that was probably right now being set aside for him. His feet had already learned by themselves to steer the way from the back-alley tenements beyond the City wall through Aldersgate and down to the river, and so did not need to think about it at all anymore.

  It was possible, the brain thought, that now that there seemed to be a bit more money available, it might be wiser not to rent space in a bed by the night, but to rent a place of one’s own. Rolls, thought the stomach. Those high, light brown ones you can’t get anywhere else. Contemplation, thought his brain, is made especially difficult when one sleeps with three or more assorted strangers. Even if they’re clerks, they aren’t necessarily Seekers, and mockery can undermine a person’s spiritual practices almost as badly as other people’s snoring and stirring disturb a person’s sleep. Now, a nice little room, and one could meditate in peace. Inside the walls, of course, for convenience. The rolls will be fresher if you get there earlier, interrupted the stomach. And, of course, one might get more serious copying work with a better place to do it, added the brain. Writing letters for drunks in taverns does have its limitations.

  It was an interesting problem. Just as the appearance of the first signs of prosperity always attracts greater prosperity, so had Brother Gregory’s first successes as a copyist given him an air that had attracted new business. Of late he had acquired a growing reputation as he prowled on his round of alehouses, armed with his pen case, inkhorn, and a large folded sheet of paper, which he cut off at the end of the client’s letter, refolding the remainder carefully for the next customer. Best to get rid of that reputation before long, sighed Brother Gregory ruefully. For the reputation which Brother Gregory had somehow acquired was that of a champion writer of love poetry on demand.

  Even he wasn’t quite sure how it had happened, but the word had been passed among the carters and tradesmen’s apprentices, journeymen, rowdies, and cutthroats of London.

  “If you really want to impress a woman,” they’d say to each other, “look for that tall, standoffish fell
ow who comes to the Bear and Bull on Monday mornings. He’ll do you a letter up all fancy and flowery, with rhymes on the end, for less than it costs to get a bill of sale copied at the cathedral.” So, regularly, several times a week, Brother Gregory purloined various classical sources, reducing them to common English, for the delectation of the maidens and unfaithful wives of the City. Ovid and Vergil, the sweet-singing Provençal trouvères, and even the immortal Abelard were ransacked with equal relish by his piratical pen. It all goes to show that an education is worth something after all.

  It was, of course, all so simple. If you really aren’t involved with women, and plan never to be, it is just a mechanical problem, getting the phrases right. Then the work can go ever so fast. And what made Brother Gregory’s wares most valued was his guarantee that no two poems were alike. This eliminated the ever-present danger of comparison which can arise when a woman must seek out, on the sly, someone to read a lover’s missive. Things were bound to go badly if her informant were to say, “Why, I just read one exactly like this last week for Kat, the fishmonger’s wife.” And so great was the power of the written word that in many quarters of the City, these days, Brother Gregory’s works were being worn around women’s necks as love talismans, just as fearful folk wear written prayers against the plague.

  Brother Gregory turned a corner from Lombard Street and plunged into a narrow maze of alleys, to follow a shortcut that he had just discovered down to the Thames embankment above Billingsgate Quay. It was a somewhat questionable spot, but if you think about it, what part of the City wasn’t? But even when his head was totally in the clouds, Brother Gregory had the confident walk of a man who knew what to do with a knife, and that, coupled with his height and obvious slenderness of purse, warded off footpads as well as any armed escort.

  Even in the alley there was a diversity of humanity that served to occupy Brother Gregory’s mind admirably. A week before, he had attended the sermon of a celebrated preacher at Paul’s Cross in which the notion had been propounded that Christ resided in everybody. While this was not an unfamiliar concept to Brother Gregory, something about the forcefulness of the speaker, and his evident mastery of the relevant texts, had impressed Brother Gregory with the desire to consider the matter further. Now was as good a time as any to try out the notion, so Brother Gregory first concentrated on trying to see Christ in a heavily bundled old man on a crutch, then in a crowd of little boys playing ball, and, most difficult of all, in two old wives leaning through the open-shuttered windows of their second-story rooms to shout conversation across the alley.

  It was considerably easier to see Christ in the hurrying, cloaked figure of a respectable-looking middle-aged man. Walks like a horseman, Brother Gregory thought. Then he wondered briefly how well Christ might have sat a horse. Doubtless perfectly, being a King. Kings always ride well; it’s part of the job, like wearing a purple gown and a gold crown, both of which Christ was well known to possess now that he was in heaven. But his mind had been diverted from the higher plane he had been on previously, so he quickly put it back, only to find, in the next moment, that he was entirely unable to see Christ in the three figures that jumped from the shadows onto the respectable gentleman’s back.

  Three against one offended Brother Gregory. Without hesitation he ran forward and leapt on them as they pinned the man to the ground. There was a horrid cracking sound as he brought two of their heads together, and a nasty, slender little knife clattered to the ground. Brother Gregory put one large foot on it, stamping on the first footpad’s hand just as the man was in the act of reclaiming it. As the third robber fled, the cloaked gentleman rose, all mudbesmeared, turning like a tiger. He dealt the second thief a tremendous blow on the side of the head just as Brother Gregory, with a powerful gesture, threw the first robber into a doorway like a bundle of old rags, and said to the stranger, “Out of the alley, they may have friends.”

  “My thought exactly,” replied the muddy man, still somewhat breathless from having been jumped upon. It was not until they had fled the shadowy alley and reached the broad angle of East Cheap that they turned to look at each other.

  “Well, well,” said the middle-aged gentleman, as he looked Brother Gregory up and down from top to toe and smiled a slow smile of recognition. “Still defending my back, aren’t you, Gilbert?”

  “Sir William, it’s an honor,” Brother Gregory replied with grave courtesy.

  Sir William Beaufoy looked down at his own mud-caked clothing. Even clean, his padded doublet had become very threadbare, besides being marred by the permanent rust stains that marked where his chain mail had once lain. His wife being very skilled with the needle, you couldn’t see the mended spots on his cloak without looking carefully.

  “I look a sight, don’t I, Gilbert? Not like the old days at all. Remember when you and Philip rode behind me at Crécy? We were invincible—why, I lost count of the French lords we took that day. I’ve never had better esquires riding at my back than you and my son then. Now look at me, dressed like this, beset by thieves in an alley. The French have got their own back.”

  Brother Gregory had his own worries.

  “You won’t tell father I’m here, will you?”

  “Gilbert, you know I can’t promise that. But I will promise not to tell him what you look like.” He looked Brother Gregory over again and shook his head. “But in return,” he added, “I want an explanation for why you are skulking about the City in a peasant’s sheepskin, armed with a pen case, and looking like a defrocked monk.”

  “I have currently passed from the world of scholarship into the realm of Contemplation,” replied Brother Gregory, with great dignity.

  “Contemplation?” queried the knight. “You mean you want to see God? I find it hard to imagine, Gilbert. You have to be very humble to see God, and I have never envisioned you as particularly humble.”

  “I am extremely humble,” answered Brother Gregory loftily, gesturing to his clothing in turn. “In fact, if you measure humility by the greatness of the change from one’s previous attire, I am possibly the most humble man in London. With my spiritual exercises in addition, I grow in Humility by leaps and bounds. Actually I expect to see God quite soon.” Brother Gregory looked very self-satisfied.

  If Brother Gregory had expected to see any look of awe or reverence on his companion’s face, he was soon disabused. First Sir William twitched. Then he sputtered. Finally he began to laugh until he doubled over. When he rose again, his face was red and tears were streaming down it.

  “Oh, Gilbert,” he choked, “thank you. I haven’t been able to laugh since the French ruined me. You never do anything halfway, do you? Even humility.” Brother Gregory brought his stormy dark eyebrows together in a ferocious glower. It’s no repayment when you’ve just saved a man’s life, even if it does turn out to be a man whom you have respected for a lifetime, to be laughed at.

  “Now, don’t glower like that at me. I’m not your father, after all.” Sir William had started to hiccup. Brother Gregory courteously pounded him on the back until he stopped. And then, to check the man’s infernal laughter, Brother Gregory said, “Ruined by the French, Sir William? Surely your estates are too far inland to fear invasion.”

  “Oh, Gilbert,” replied Sir William, suddenly wan. “There’s no estate there anymore. I’ve lost everything. Philip has been taken in France, and to raise the ransom, I put my lands in the hands of the Lombards. Then those devil Frenchmen sent a message that they wouldn’t release him until I’d sent more. I’m in town now because I’ve just sold the last of my wife’s silver plate. I’ve even sold the horse I came on. Now I’m walking home to tell my wife and daughters they may not have a roof over their heads anymore. Don’t begrudge me a laugh, Gilbert; it may be my last.” All of a sudden Brother Gregory felt very small about his little meanness.

  “Surely,” he said consolingly, “when Philip comes, you can get it all back again.”

  “Get land? Get land? Who gets land anymore but the God-a
ccursed bankers? I tell you, Gilbert, those bloodsuckers will have the whole realm of England someday. And then they and their merchant cronies will convert the entire kingdom into one big warehouse and live by trade. I see it all, Gilbert, I see it all very clearly. A whole nation of petty shopkeepers, selling each other trash, and living on pounds and shillings instead of glory and honor.”

  “Pounds and shillings aren’t everything. There’s always God.”

  “God? Where’s God now? I’ve lost my boy, who was the pride and joy of my life, my eyes, my heart—and even though I’ve given everything to get him back, God alone knows if I will ever see him again!” Sir William’s cry seared Brother Gregory’s heart. He felt doubly dreadful because even while he was grieving for Sir William he could feel the poisonous worm of envy twisting in his stomach. Envy of Philip, that his father would praise him so, when he’d done nothing but get himself captured. If Brother Gregory had stormed Jerusalem single-handed, his father would just have asked him why he hadn’t thought of it sooner. What good is being humble when you’re envious? This conversation was setting his spiritual growth back weeks.

  “Sir William, let me escort you back to your inn. You need to be restored before you begin your trip back north.”

  “Don’t bother, Gilbert, I’ve not got the money. Not even to buy you a drink in thanks.”

  “A drink?” Brother Gregory grinned. “I wouldn’t worry about that. Not in the least, Sir William. Follow me.” He swept Sir William around the corner and up a shabby, narrow street into one of the numerous alehouses with which he was acquainted. A word with the goodwife in the kitchen, and he had been furnished with a bucket of water and an old towel. Gracefully he proffered the bucket as if it were a silver basin, the towel over his arm in approved fashion, in the same manner that he would have served a lord at table who was washing up. Brother Gregory had been a very good squire in his day.