Margaret of Ashbury 03 - The Water Devil Read online

  The village people seemed to move back in horror; the horses twitched and threw their heads. “It all goes!” he cried. “Every bit of it!” Stripping the lowest strings from the rock, he threw the rags into the pond, where they seemed to be sucked away without a trace. Above his head, the breeze made the pallid rags flutter impudently, just beyond his reach. The highest string seemed anchored at the top of the rock, on the water side. Without hesitation, Sir Roger the priest began to climb the rock. Unerringly, his booted toes and grasping fingers found the narrow handholds that let him climb to the top. The highest string seemed to be fastened down tight by something—a bolt, a nail. He pulled hard to snap the weathered white cord. He pulled again, bracing himself against the rock. Suddenly, without warning, the cord and fastening came loose so fast that he lost his balance and fell backward.

  With a cry, still clutching the string of rags, the priest flailed in the air. Women screamed. Then there was a terrible splash, and the crowd saw him scrambling there in the shallows for a foothold, slipping on the mud and mossy rocks at the bottom of the pond. His hand was still tight on the cord, and the wet rags flapped about him as he struggled. Something, an invisible current, seemed to be pulling him.

  “You men, get poles, do something!” cried the Lord of Brokes- ford, but the people were still, huddled together, their eyes wide. Without hesitation, Sir Hubert spurred his big sorrel mare into the shallow water and leaned down to grab the floundering priest's arm. At the very moment that he was unbalanced, arm outstretched, the old mare, normally so placid, shied sideways, sending Sir Hubert into the water. He crawled up sputtering, greenish with algae, his white hair all wet in his eyes. He could feel the thing drawing, sucking him into the depths. Blindly, he reached for the mare's stirrup, and clung tight. Spluttering, filthy, he was pulled from the pond by the terrified mare, and lay gasping at the water's edge. As hands took him up, and tried to brush his clothes and wring out his hat, he turned to look at the pond. There was nothing at the center but a few floating white rags linked by a bit of whitened string. Then there was a bubbling, like a cauldron on the boil, and the last of the rags disappeared. The priest had vanished utterly.

  “Get hooks,” said the old lord, who was always at his best in a crisis. “Get the long pikes from the manor. Get poles. We'll drag this pond for him if it takes all night.” Strong men went scurrying while women and children clung to one another. All afternoon, beneath the sorrowful eyes of the painted Virgin, who stood abandoned on her pallet beside the shrine, they prodded and dragged. At last someone thought to fetch a rope to sound the depths of the spring. It was a very long rope, which they weighted with a rock at the end. They found no bottom to the spring, and the rope itself was pulled so hard that it had to be abandoned, where it vanished with an odd slurping sound. At this, the entire company knew that Sir Roger could never be retrieved. Cart and horses, statue and banners, silver cross and Sunday clothes, they walked mournfully back to the village in the purple dusk.

  Late that night, when stars had come out in the midnight sky, and a silvery sliver of a moon had risen to light the way, Sir Hubert wandered sleepless from his tower bedroom to the wide chamber beneath his in the tower, where Sir Hugo and his wife slept in a big, straw filled bed separated only by curtains from the squires, servants, and hounds of his retinue.

  “Hugo, get up,” whispered the old lord, pulling aside the moth- eaten wool bed curtains. Hugo was feeling content with himself, sure he had sired a son that very evening. Lady Petronilla was turned on her side, spine to him, snoring.

  “What is it, father?” said Hugo, irritated by this intrusion on his thoughts.

  “I have something I need to do. Get up and ride with me.” Sir Hubert had two unlit horn lanterns in his hand. Hugo reached his shirt and doublet off the bar over his bed, where they hung beside his favorite falcon, who perched, asleep, on the same bar. As he slipped them on, he heard his father go through the solar, filled with more hounds and sleeping retainers, down the circular stone staircase to the hall. There, the old man tiptoed past the slumbering bodies on the floor and lit the lanterns from the sheltered embers of the great fire at the center. Above him, hams hung smoking in the dark beneath the roof. Even the chickens were asleep, roosting in various likely spots above the reach of the cats and dogs.

  Puzzled, Hugo followed his father to the stable, where they nimbly stepped over the sleeping bodies of the stableboys in the straw and saddled two horses. Quietly, quietly, they led the horses out of the manor gate.

  “Where are you going, father?” asked the younger man.

  “Hugo, if you ever had a brain in your head, you'd know,” he answered.

  Across the meadow in the dark, the two little sparks of lanterns bobbed unevenly, but there was no one there to hear the dull sound of hooves in grass. The sparks progressed under the thin, white moon until they vanished into the forest. Beneath the leafy cover, they rode slowly, softly, on the alert. Beasts were out at night, and not the willing beasts that gave up blood and dinner. At last, they reached the darkest place, and then the clearing. The pond was black at night, but the bubbling sounded louder than ever in the night quiet.

  “Hugo, hold my horse,” said the old lord. Dismounted, hat in one hand, flickering lantern in the other, he stood at the edge of the pond. Signs of the attempted rescue were all around, layer after layer of muddy foot and hoofprints, leafy poles newly cut and abandoned. A spot of moonlight managed to penetrate the forest cover, and shone, moving and white, like a living thing, in the center of the black, bubbling spring.

  “Listen, you, whoever you are,” said the old lord. “You've just swallowed up the only priest I could ever find who approved of hunting on a Sunday. Do you know how much trouble I'm in? The Brokesford Stud is dead—the only stallion I brought home is Urgan, and even he's looking sick from that godawful French fodder. Everybody owes me money, and nobody pays. The wheat hasn't come up, the rye's got a blight, and the fruit's all small and has worms. There's a murrain at the other end of the shire and that may just finish me off. On top of that, the plague's come back into Bristol, they say, and if we're not here, you're finished, do you know that? This family is all that stands between you and the merchants. That pushy lawyer has his eyes on your oak trees and I haven't a farthing to pay court fees, let alone bribes. You things that live in the woods, what do you know about lawyers? But they'll have you. These oaks will go, and the yews, too, just to buy peacock feathers for some dandy's hat. It was wrong of you to go swallowing up that priest, but since done is done, the least you can do is give me something back. I need prosperity, I need crops, I need good horses to sell for ready cash to hire some lawyers of my own. Hear that, priest swallower? Pull me out, and I pledge that my heirs 'til I don't have any more will keep your trees. I may need you, but let me tell you, the way things are these days, you need me, too. Nobody else gives a rat's fart, that I can tell you.”

  “Father, you can't make deals with a thing.” Hugo had dismounted to come closer and hear, and he had led the horses up behind his father.

  “You heard me, Hugo. If it comes through, you're sworn to keep the trees.” Hugo thought a bit. Cash was so handy, and trees—well, so tree-like. They just sat there doing nothing. “Promise, Hugo. Swear by Our Lord.” Hugo looked upset. He'd had to make a very long and unpleasant pilgrimage just to get off the last bad oath he'd sworn. “HUGO, you UNGRATEFUL WORM, if you don't swear this INSTANT, I'll DISOWN you!” The old lord's voice rang through the dark forest. Sleeping birds fluttered awake in their nests. Hugo felt his father's big hand pushing him down to his knees. He swore. “AND your heirs,” prompted his father.

  “—and my heirs, for ever, as long as there are any,” added Hugo. “Good,” said his father. “It's entirely fair. The thing in the water and I have come to an understanding. In my experience with the French, you can usually make truce, as long as you offer up something.”

  “But father, you've offered me up.”

  “Well, after
all, you're my firstborn, and the heir. That ought to be worth something to a pond, for God's sake. Besides, Hugo, it's time you learned to keep your promises. It's good for the soul. Aerates it, and makes it easier to remember what you planned to do.”

  NOW THIS I CAN TELL YOU, it is as sure as God created the itch that everything always happens on whitewashing day. The disorder attracts other disorder the way a dog attracts fleas, and pretty soon you're vowing never to whitewash again, and let chaos reign by degrees instead of all at once.

  My lord husband saw the servants scooping out the old rushes from the hall and said, “Whitewashing day? How did it come so soon?”

  “You yourself had them take down the tapestries and all those old battleaxes and deers' antlers yesterday.”

  “But I didn't think it would be today. I just remembered I have to go to the illuminator's to see how they're doing with the Duke's book.” Thumbs tucked in his belt, he vanished out the door.

  Then Adam le Plasterer arrived at the back gate with two burly journeymen and his push-cart full of whitewash at the same time that the men with the new rushes came, and the entire neighborhood could hear them quarreling over who would enter the gate first.

  “Everything all gone. The hall is naked,” announced Peregrine, who had come trailing in with Mother Sarah and my old dog, Lion, who spends most of his time sleeping under the bed. The dog snuffled around on the bare tile floor, looking for a bone he had hidden in the rushes and then looked up at me with a damaged expression. “Mama, men fighting. Take Peregrine to watch.”

  “No I won't,” I said as I hurried past the kitchen screen to the back door. There in the kitchen courtyard stood a half-dozen donkeys so laden with bundles of rushes you could only see their feet, an abandoned pushcart, and a half-dozen tradesmen shouting insults and close to blows.

  “You fool, you've come a day too soon. You can't put new rushes down until the walls are whitewashed.”

  “All over this city, you are known for your sloth, Master Adam. It's you who've come late, and now I can't make my next delivery.”

  Ah, me, Margaret, I thought. You've made deals with the devil incarnate, you ought to be able to settle this quarrel. But as it usually is with peacemakers, by interrupting them, I took the blame. They decided that womanlike, I had told them each the wrong time, and it was with greatest difficulty that I convinced the rush man to pile the bound rushes in the center of the room where they would not interfere with the whitewashing, and the whitewashers to let them enter first on the grounds that they would be soon leaving.

  “This wall,” said Adam le Plasterer from the top of his ladder, “whoever did this plastering job? It's coming out in big chips. Why, you can almost see the stone here! He mixed it wrong. You should never have hired him.”

  “It was done long before my time,” I said, standing down by the wood wainscoting that circled the base of the hall, and turning my head up to the rafters.

  “Well, that accounts for it. You've let it go far too long. I'm afraid I'll have a big job here, much bigger than just whitewashing.” I stood on tiptoe, and scratched at the plastered stone as far I as I could reach. Sure enough, it came away in a big, damp flake.

  “Maybe it's the damp,” shouted down Master Adam from his lad- der. “You could have a hidden leak in your roof. You'll need to send for the roofer if you don't want to loose the next plastering job. I don't think you can go ahead with the whitewash until I've redone the wall.” Not a day of disorder, but weeks of disorder now stretched before me, all, of course, accompanied by greater expense.

  Madame came down, accompanied by the girls. Prompted by her, they both curtseyed deeply and greeted me as “Madame, our honored mother.” Ah, manners. The problem is, if other people have them, then you have to have them, too. I gave them both my blessing and inquired after their progress.

  “Madame de Vilers,” she said, looking about the chaotic room, and stepping delicately about the bundled rushes, “today we shall take our lesson out-of-doors.” She was carrying a large basket. “We shall be learning tapestry stitches and reviewing the desireable ways of behaving at table. And what have we already learned today, Mademoiselle Alison?”

  “A person of gentle breeding never wipes his hands on the table- cloth, nor does he blow his nose in the same hand with which he takes meat.”

  “Excellent,” I said. “In these few weeks, you have worked won- ders, Madame.” She inclined her head graciously.

  “Now you, mesdemoiselles. You must thank your mother gra- ciously for her interest in your progress.” The girls looked at each other, that knowing look they have, then each inclined her head at exactly the same angle as Madame.

  “Thank you, Madame our Mother,” they chorused with sarcas- tic politeness. Madame turned to leave, or, rather, rotated, back straight, as if she were oiled. They did the same. Madame never walked, she glided as if on wheels. As she glided off, the girls glided behind her, heads up, backs rigid, in perfect imitation. Only when she had vanished beyond the kitchen screen did they turn their heads back to see what impression they had made, their eyes brim- ming with deviltry.

  “You don't see girls like that very often,” I heard one of the plas- terers remark. “So ladylike, and so young.”

  If you only knew, I thought. Thank goodness the Burgundians are paying for all this. Through the open window from the street came bright sunlight, dancing with shining dust motes, and the sound of the St. Paul's jacks beating nine o'clock in the morning. Another hour, and it would be dinner-time.

  “Dame Margaret, where will you have dinner set?” I had been too distracted to notice Perkyn at my shoulder. There was already a crashing and banging sound in the kitchen, as they set up trestle tables for the household.

  “For the family? In the solar—”

  “A lot of dust here,” observed the old man. “Whitewashing should always be done first thing in the spring. Then there's no dust.”As if we had a penny in the spring, let alone what all this plas- tering's going to cost, I thought, but on account of his long service, I bit my tongue.

  “They're likely to be here a while, aren't they?” he said, wandering between the piles of rushes and looking at the men on ladders. “Where will you be setting a place for that Madame personage, in the kitchen or the solar?”

  “Upstairs—oh, merciful heaven!” There was a terrible crash as the front door was thrown open. With a clatter of metal, a terrifying figure filled the door, booted, spurred and armed, gray hair flying, wild gray beard and massive gray eyebrows like clumps of weeds, clothes dusty with travel.

  “Where's the steward! Tell my son we've ARRIVED! Boy, take the horses round to the stable. What IS this wreckage in here? Mar- garet, this is your doing!” All plastering stopped. All eyes were on the ferocious figure in the door. My heart sank. The perfect addition to the day. My father-in-law, on one of his surprise visits to the City.

  “Margaret, WHERE'S my SON?” he shouted, as if I'd hidden him somewhere. Gilbert claims he shouts because he took too many hits on the helmet, and it deafened him, but I think he shouts to create more space around him. Space and terror.

  “My lord husband is at the illuminator's,” I answered, and stared him calmly in the eye. He'd brought a half-dozen of his favorite hounds with him, huge brindled creatures with heavy heads and slavering jowls, and they bounded in, sniffing and smelling in the corners. The plasterers stayed prudently perched above.

  “At the WHAT? What's he fiddle-faddling about with that sort of thing for? Twenty-eight and nearly middle aged and he still hasn't MADE anything of himself! THREE TIMES to France in BATTLE, not even COUNTING the time he ran off to WHIFFLE AWAY his time studying to be some sort of GODFORSAKEN CLERK, and he's NEVER BEEN WOUNDED IN THE FRONT! And what hap- pened this time? He was hit by lightning and his horse FELL on him! He should be well by now! He should be in France with the Duke, not messing around with illuminators and jugglers and who knows what other sort of TRASH!” I noticed Hugo, Gilbert's older brother,
was leaning in the doorjamb, arms folded, absorbing the denunciation with great enjoyment. He looked more French than ever. He had on a ridiculous blue-dyed beaver hat with a tiny brim and an immense sheaf of peacock feathers held on with a little gold brooch. The toes of his shoes had grown long and pointed, and the fashionably dagged hem of his tunic had shrunk until it showed his backside. He had on parti-colored hose. I knew for a fact the old man hated parti-colored hose. He said they were for mountebanks.

  “He is preparing a manuscript for the Duke's return. The Duke has written a book of theology,” I answered. I couldn't help it. The day was already hard, and I was tempted to stir things up a bit.

  “Theo-what?” the old man choked. “Even the duke himself is writing about God? I tell you, it's Gilbert's doing. He's a corrupting force.”

  “Confessions or prayers?” asked Hugo, suddenly interested, as his nose smelled a change in fashion.

  “Confessions. And a bewailment of sins classified according to the parts of the body.”

  “Ha. It SMELLS of Gilbert's influence. I swear, the boy's perni- cious,” said Sir Hubert, shaking his head in bewilderment.

  “Father, theology is very fashionable in the highest circles these days. I was thinking of doing a book of confessions myself one of these days. After I have my poetry written up.”Trust Hugo to know the exact way to get under the old man's skin. Too much time to- gether. Poor Hugo; thirty years old and still living at home. The cursed lot of the oldest son, living in dependence and waiting end- lessly to inherit.