Margaret of Ashbury 03 - The Water Devil Page 11

  “Ah, Margaret, it's smelling good. Lay aside that work for now, Gilbert. My brain is wilting. I feel its powers suddenly diminishing. It needs nutrition.”

  As we fed Malachi's brain, and also our own, we began to feel much more cheerful.

  “So, Gilbert, on what does this lawyer base his claim?” “A deed recently discovered in a chest by the Austin friars at Wymondley.”

  “Wymondley? Where's that located, relative to Brokesford?” “Their lands touch the estate the lawyer claims, on the farther side.” Gilbert's voice was cynical. Malachi shook his head and made clucking sounds.

  “A forgery, as clear as day,” he replied. “I'd be willing to bet hard cash that he's made a deal with the monks at the abbey. They'll probably take a nice little part of the money he gets from selling the trees. Perpetual prayers, a chantry, whatever. That way everyone goes to heaven. And the apparently legitimate deed lets the judge appear, or even be, perfectly honest when he makes the decision. The twenty florins simply hastens the day of justice.”

  “I thought you might make something to use as collateral with the Lombards—like those emeralds, or those gold rings that you took to France,” I said.

  “Margaret, after many years of hard experience, which include having to flee some of the greatest cities in Europe, I have come to the conclusion that one must never foul one's own nest. I never use my powers within London itself. No, my mighty skills must be reserved for the unappreciative souls in the provinces, or abroad, depending upon the case. One cannot risk having the emeralds return to their native state while locked in the Lombards' chests.”

  “Oh,” I said, very disappointed.

  “Don't be cast down, Margaret, I'm seeing a better way out of this.” He reached for the last piece of the fried, spicy bread, and finished it off with a big swig of ale. Then he tapped his temple to loosen up his brains again and get them to working. “Margaret, thanks to your inventive cuisine, my brain is fully restored to its highest powers. Now, when you bring your father back here, Gilbert— and don't bring that simpleton brother of yours, we'll need him later—you really must bring along some of that superior brown ale that Margaret makes. The good stuff that you keep upstairs under the bed. I will need to be fueled to my highest powers, if I am to get your doltish father to comprehend my magnificently subtle plan. It will take perfect organization, perfect! And I don't want him ruining it.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE SIEUR DE VILERS, LORD OF BROKESford Manor, looked about him with deep distaste. No respectable business on earth would have ever brought him to this disreputable part of Cornhill, let alone visit the den of some lunatic alchemist. Worse, he was not mounted, and had walked there, which he considered an almost incomprehensible loss of dignity. He, who would not consider walking twenty feet on his own estate, and had always a horse and a groom waiting for him, had wrapped himself in an old cloak provided by his incomprehensible younger son for a visit to something called “St. Katherine's Alley,” where pigs wallowed and laundry fluttered overhead, and displaced peasants who ought to be at honest labor flaunted the liberties that their flight to the City had given them. It had irritated him, taking orders from Gilbert, even before they had left the house.

  “Don't wear the sword, father, it will give you away.”

  “No sword? Who do you think I AM?”

  “It's not who I think you are, but who the denizens of the street think you are. You can't go riding in, armed, and not be noticed. We need to be unobtrusive.”

  “It's not my NATURE to be unobtrusive. Just a couple of grooms, my favorite hounds, and Hugo—that's a very small party.”

  “Not small enough. No grooms, no hounds, and no Hugo. Brother Malachi has said it. It's part of the plan.”

  “Then why are you taking Margaret? I say no women.”

  “We need Margaret. That's part of the plan, too.” For a moment there, the old lord thought he might shout to get his way, but then he remembered his trees. Then he thought of Margaret, her pale intensity, her deceptively placid, even-featured profile, and the way her eyes flashed golden, like a falcon's, when she was determined to have her way. And there came into his mind a picture, something like an imagining or a waking dream. It was an image of Margaret betting her life against Gilbert's ransom with a foreign lord, and playing with loaded dice. The minstrels that traveled through Brokesford last year had brought it with them as a song. The whole tale was well on its way to becoming legend. A scandal, really, since a woman's place is in the home, and not trekking off to foreign dungeons.

  “Then Lady Margaret taken her chest of gold, and she taken tokens three; I will never rest in my own soft bed, 'Til my lord in France goes free….

  That Margaret is no lady, he thought, playing dice that way with foreigners, and getting songs written about her, too. It wasn't respectable at all. But then, she was no ordinary woman, either. Maybe he did need her after all.

  But the moment he almost burst with rage was when he stepped over the threshold of the tall house on Thames Street.

  “Your spurs, father. You forgot them. You can't wear them.”

  “Can't? CAN'T? WHAT DO YOU MEAN, CAN'T?” A horseman always wears his spurs, except to bed. It shows he has a horse, and is a person of consequence.

  “You can't disguise the rest of you and leave the spurs on,” said his son, with that damnable logic he always wielded like a knife. The trees, said the old lord to himself, thinking of the wind rustling the leaves of the ancient oaks. Think of the trees first, and see what this sinister alchemist has to say. He took off his spurs and put them in the wallet at his belt, just in case he needed to put them on again somewhere to show who he was.

  NOW HE WAS PLUNGING from the relative decency of a shabby street into an alley of the lowest character. Ahead of him strode his son, as guide. Beside him, silent and pale, his son's wife, dressed curiously plain, her hood up. A lone goose, standing on a pile of muck in the center of the gutter, eyed him. He eyed it back with his hard, blue eye. The goose, offended, blinked its hard little black eye and wandered off. The second storeys of the old, timbered houses extended over the alley. He looked up, and saw the houses were sagging against each other like drunkards. I couldn't have ridden anyway, he thought. The street is blocked from above. How on earth did Gilbert ever get to know the kind of people who lived here, in heaven's name?

  “What did you say this place was called?” said the Sieur de Vilers, treading carefully about a pile of excrement.

  “The common name for it is ‘Thieves'Alley',” said his son. “Did you see those caps and hoods out front for sale? All stolen.” His son was wearing a vile, shapless old gray robe of homespun, with the hood up.

  “I thought I told you to burn that thing,” he said.

  “You did. But admit this time that it has its uses,” answered the ungrateful boy. No matter how you work, they revert at the first chance. It's his mother's blood. Freakish, she was. How could he have brought himself to put the fate of his land in the hands of madmen, even if one of them was a family madman?

  “Here we are,” Gilbert said, and lifted the brass door knocker, made in the shape of a monkey's head. Slowly, with the precise eye of a hunter, the Sieur de Vilers took in the details of the little room that the newly opened door revealed in front of him, and the humble sort of old woman in the tidy gray gown and white veil that had opened the door. She bowed in greeting, but not low enough, and he saw his son's wife embrace her. The room made his skin crawl. It smelled of herbs and strange, sharp metallic stuff and smoke, and between its bright red rafters, someone had painted the signs of the zodiac, alien creatures and monsters and naked humans with stars at various points of their bodies. He felt the hair go up on the back of his neck. He, who did not fear to be the first to enter a sapper's tunnel or face twenty armed men alone, felt something cold and unfamiliar in his arms and legs. It was another sort of fear, the kind that could come through his unguarded back door when he had so thoroughly fortified the front g
ate. Fear of the unknown, the ocean of magic and alchemy and evil spirits that lay outside the realm of his sword.

  “Gilbert, what do you know about this fellow?” said Sir Hubert.

  “Only that I'd trust him with my life. I even have, on occasion. I told you, I've known him for years. You even met him once, though you may have forgotten.” Malachi looked unperturbed as he greeted his visitors, his hands folded across his stomach.

  “Ah, it's Margaret—and Gilbert, and, goodness, this must be the Lord of the Oak Trees here. Welcome, and come into my laboratorium and sit down. We've work to do.”

  At the mention of the oak trees, the old man's face sagged into deep lines. He felt suddenly weary as he sat down. This ridiculous fat fellow in the friar's robe was incapable of facing down a slick lawyer and a powerful judge. It was all over.

  “Now,” said Brother Malachi, “let's get down to work. This lawyer fellow has a deed describing possession of a tract of land which includes your forest.”

  “He does,” said the Sieur de Vilers wearily.

  “What have you got?”

  “The de Vilers lands are listed in the Domesday book. Unfortunately, the description is not very clear, and in the time since the conquest, almost all of the traditional identifying marks have been lost. Blasted oaks, large stones, the course of waters—all changed since then. I have a spring, he says he has a spring. It's my spring, according to every local tradition.”

  “Have you no deeds, wills?”

  “Only recent ones. His deed goes back to the time of Henry the Second. It describes the lands he has just acquired, one tract of which stands on the far side of mine, and touches the abbey lands. Then it adds on my wood and my spring, as a sort of ungodly bonus.

  He counted on me being away at war for my king, while he wormed away with his schemes here at home, stealing my land. This is an evil world, when knights are destroyed and lawyers get rich.” He shook his head, too sad even to rage.“Sir Roger, the village priest, was taking testimony from the oldest residents before he was, ah, swallowed up. He wrote them all up, handy-like, so I could bring them with me, but the sharp man of law here in the City that Gilbert recommended said they wouldn't stand against a deed.” He'd come to London full of hope, armed with a chest of testimonials and old letters from the manorial records, and fired with the expectation of a hefty loan to swing the deal. Now he'd return to the shire with no case and no bribe. He was beaten. So much for wishing wells.

  “Sir Hubert, I have given the matter much thought. The deed, I believe, is forged.”

  “Forged? FORGED? That dogsbody steals my land with a FORGED deed? I'll denounce him! Praise be to God! We've won!”

  “No, you haven't. You have to prove it. And if I know anything about those Austin friars, I know this: it will be an excellent forgery, and hard to prove, particularly if they all swear they found it in the monastic records. The second thing I know is that after the lawyer has done all their dirty work, they'll think of a scheme to snatch his prey from him. Monks are always a-building, and good timber land is not easy to come by, these days. They're a cunning crew, and know what they're about. They can outwait him, they can outwait you. No, justice will come to the lawyer, but it won't do you any good.”

  Sir Hubert had never lacked a certain native craft and shrewdness. The little man's words made good sense. He looked closer at him. The eyes, they were set wide apart. A good sign of brains in a horse or a hound. For humans, too. The friar's face, round and pink, with beads of sweat shining on the top of his tonsured head, shone with the light of understanding. For some reason it consoled Sir Hubert. Perhaps the owner of a face like that could come up with something after all. “What are my chances?” said Sir Hubert.

  “As good as his. Sir Hubert, there is only one way to beat a forged deed. That is with another forged deed, even older. Much, much older. How fortunate that you possess one.”

  “But I don't, and they know it.” “Ah, but it will be discovered. Searching in the church among the old letters and registers, you will find a letter from an ancestor written before the wars of Stephen. Sir Gaultier de Vilers.”

  “I have such an ancestor, but he left no letters.”

  “He has now. This letter will describe how he buried a few valuable papers to protect them in the event the manor house was lost. I take it you have ruins on your land?”

  “Nothing much, just some stone hermit's hut near the spring.”

  “Armed with the knowledge of this letter, you will go in front of many witnesses, including your ignorant and noisy son Hugo, and you will dig in the ruins, unearthing an ancient chest. When the chest is opened, surprise! There is an ancient deed. The most ancient possible. It is the deed of Ingulf the Saxon, ceding to your ancestor Guillaume de Vilers and his heirs forever the mystic sacred spring of what was it? Saint Edburga, known locally as Hretha's Pool, as a reward for saving his life, or some other such thing. Are you sure that Guillaume didn't marry some Saxon woman and settle down, after he came over with William the Conqueror?”

  “I do believe he did, according to legend.”

  “Do you have her name?”

  “No, women's names weren't important to keep record of in those days.”

  “Well, then, he cedes it to his daughter Aelfrida, who marries Guillaume. Luckily, his possession is confirmed by the mighty Conqueror himself, who awards the lands of his old enemy, Ingulf the Saxon, to his loyal servant Guillaume de Vilers—”

  “How can that be?” sputtered Sir Hubert.

  “In the chest, of course. It is your great good fortune that I have recently acquired an excellent seal of the Conqueror, and your brilliant, if unappreciated son Gilbert happens to be able to mimic any hand. Allow our artistic imagination to supply the chest with its contents, and the rest is easy. The family travels back with you to Brokesford. Such a large family, Margaret, and you pack so much. Hidden away in her excessive luggage is the chest, which you and Gilbert spirit away in the dead of night and bury in the appropriate location.”

  “And you?”

  “I remain in London, so as not to give the slightest taint to the operation. I am, after all, celebrated in some circles.” Brother Malachi looked modest.

  Sir Hubert's face regained its color. His white hair, which had been drooping forlornly about his face, stood on its ends once again, whirling about his head like a stormcloud. He stood, he punched one fist into the open palm of his other hand.

  “It could work! It COULD work, by God! Brother Malachi, you are a genius!” Brother Malachi bowed slightly from his seat in acknowledgment. But the old man's ferocious eyebrows had drawn together in a frown. “It's too easy,” he said. “What is it that you're getting out of it?”

  “Any number of things,” said Brother Malachi airily, waving a hand in the air as if shooing flies. “First of all, there's Margaret, and though we're not related, she's like a daughter to me. Yes, don't look shocked. She's family, and if I don't send you off satisfied, you'll steal the little security and peace of heart that old Master Kendall, in his indulgence, left her. Gilbert and I have been friends for years, and I know perfectly well he can live quite extravagantly on a bundle of old clothes, a pen, and his golden tongue. Not so with Margaret. She has little ones now. And don't pull that face on me, either. If you want my help, you have to see what you are. A pirate, who'd not stop short of robbing his own family for whatever folly entered his mind.”

  “You—how dare you!” sputtered Sir Hubert, and rose to go.

  “When you say good-bye to me, say good-bye to that property— and to your son and grandson as well, for Gilbert is with Margaret on this, and I'd be delighted to put my magnificent mind to work to see you properly caged up away from them. If you want to go, just do so now. Just put on the spurs I know perfectly well you've got stowed away in your wallet, and swagger off down our little alley that repels you so, and straight into the mouth of disaster. It would serve you right for snubbing men of learning, which you have doubtless do
ne your whole life.” Sir Hubert gathered himself up like a thundercloud. Had he worn his sword, he might have used it, but Gilbert had brought him here stripped like an infant. He growled, a long low growl, turned, and strode through the door of the laboratorium. So angry was he that he forgot to duck, and the low doorjamb struck him hard on the forehead. He staggered back, clapping his hand to his forehead and sitting down suddenly.

  “Dizzy—what a blow. Even your house conspires against me.”

  “Take it as a warning,” announced Brother Malachi. Sir Hubert thought of the mysterious house, the strange jars and baskets, the eerie smell that made his back crawl, and with his thumping head it seemed all too likely that this Malachi fellow had terrible, secret powers which he had unfortunately aroused. Even worse than that God-forsaken pond that swallowed up Sir Roger the priest before he could finish drawing up the papers for the lawsuit.

  “Margaret—” he heard Gilbert say. “Father's head—”

  “I can't anymore,” she answered softly. “You know what happens when you come home from a long trip.”

  “Do you mean—?”

  “What else? I was waiting to be sure before I told you.”The old lord saw his son move closer and put his arm protectively around Margaret. He knew of Margaret's eccentricities from the old days, and he knew what she meant. His head would continue aching, and Brokesford was now due to have a second heir. He also knew that Malachi was right. Who'd have thought Gilbert was such a sentimental fool about things like that? Women's breeding is women's business, until they produce a male heir, when it then becomes men's business. He knew too that he'd keep his headache and lose his son, right there and then, when he'd gone to all the trouble to recover him, polish him up, and make him respectable. He thought of all the things he held sacred: he thought of property, he thought of lineage, he thought of victory—