Modern classics of fanta.., p.37
Modern Classics of Fantasy, page 37
He clung to my neck, no longer a boy; a small child I could almost feed at my breast.
“I like your hair when it’s loose,” he said. “It’s like a halo that comes all the way to your shoulders.”
He fell asleep in my arms.
I woke to the strident twittering of sparrows. Their little shapes flickered against the window panes, and for once I regretted the glass. I would have liked them to flood the room with their unmelodious chirpings and share in my four-walled, raftered safety. Minikin beings, they reveled in the sun, noisily, valiantly, yet prey to eagle and hawk from the wilderness of sky, and the more they piped defiance, the more they invited death.
But other sparrows were not beyond my help.
I rose and dressed without assistance. I did not call Sarah’s daughters to comb my hair and exclaim, “But it’s like black samite!” and fasten the sleeves above my wrists and burden my fingers with jade and tourmaline. I did not wish to awaken Ruth. I dreaded the confrontation.
Encased from the tip of my toes to the crest of my hair, amber and green in wimple, robe, gloves, stockings, and slippers, I walked into the courtyard and sat on a bench among my herbs, lulled by the soft scent of lavender, but not from my hesitations; piqued by the sharp pungency of tarragon, but not to pride in what I must ask of Ruth.
The sun was as high as a bell-tower before the sounds from the solar told me that the children had waked and met. Ruth and Stephen were belaboring John when I entered the room. Stephen looked liberated in his breechclout, and Ruth disported herself in his blue tunic, the one he had worn reluctantly to my feast, but without the chausses or the cape. They were telling John that he ought to follow their example and dress for the woods.
“You’re white as a sheep this morning,” chided Stephen. “Your shoulders need the sun.”
John, engulfed by his cape and tunic, might have been ten instead of twelve. I pitied the child. He would have to side with me against his friends. He returned my smile with a slight nod of his head, as if to say, “It must be now.”
Stephen’s voice was husky with gratitude: “Lady Mary, we must leave you and make our way to London. You’ve fed us and given us a roof, and we won’t forget you. In a dark forest, you have been our candle. Your gifts—the drums and rebec—will help us to earn our passage to the Holy Land.”
“Knights and abbots will throw you pennies,” I said. “Robbers will steal them. It will take you a long time to earn your passage.”
“But that’s why we have to go! To start earning. And when we come back this way, we’ll bring you a Saracen shield to hang above your hearth.” He kissed my hand with a rough, impulsive tenderness. An aura of camphor wreathed him from yesterday’s bath. He had combed his hair in a fringe across his forehead, like jonquils above his bluer-than-larkspur eyes. I thought how the work of the comb would soon be spoiled; the petals wilted by the great forest, tangled with cobwebs, matted perhaps with blood.
“I think you should know the nature of your company.”
His eyes widened into a question. The innocence of them almost shook my resolve. “John? But he’s my friend! If you mean he’s very young, you ought to have seen him fight the Mandrakes.”
“Ruth.”
“Ruth is an angel.” He made the statement as one might say, “I believe in God.”
“You want her to be an angel. But is she, Stephen? Ask her.”
He turned to Ruth for confirmation. “You said you came from the sky, didn’t you?”
“I said I didn’t remember.” She stared at the Persian carpet and seemed to be counting the polygons or reading the cryptic letters woven into the border.
“But you said you remembered falling a great distance.”
“There are other places to fall than out of the sky.”
John spoke at last. “But you remembered things.” His voice seemed disembodied. It might have come from the vault of a deep Mithraeum. “About the forest. Where to find wild strawberries. How to weave a cup out of rushes. How to escape from the Mandrakes.”
“Ruth,” I said. “Tell them who you are. Tell me. We want to know.”
She began to tremble. “I don’t know. I don’t know.” I was ready to pity her when she told the truth.
I walked to the Aumbry with slow, deliberate steps. In spite of my silken slippers, I placed each foot as if I were crushing a mite which threatened my roses. I opened the doors, knelt, and reached to the lowest shelf for a Saracen poniard, its ivory hilt emblazoned with sapphires in the shape of a running gazelle. The damascene blade was very sharp: steel inlaid with threads of silver.
There was steel in my voice as I said, “You are not to leave my house till I know who you are. I accepted you as a guest and friend. Now I have reason to believe that you are dangerous. To the boys, if not to me.”
“You would harm me, Lady Mary?” She shrank from the light of the window and joined the shadows near the hearth. I half expected her to dwindle into a spider and scuttle to safety among the dark rafters.
“I would ask you to undergo a test.”
She said: “You think I am a Mandrake.”
“I think you must show us that you are not a Mandrake.” I walked toward her with the poniard. “My husband killed the Saracen who owned this blade. Wrestled him for it. Drove it into his heart. You see, the point is familiar with blood. It will know what to do.”
“Lady Mary!” It was Stephen who stepped between us; charged, I should say, like an angry stag, and almost took the blade in his chest. “What are you saying, Lady Mary?”
“Ask her,” I cried. “Ask her! Why does she fear the knife? Because it will prove her guilt!”
He struck my hand and the poniard fell to the floor. He gripped my shoulders.
“Witch! You have blasphemed an angel!”
Anger had drained me; indignation; doubts. I dropped in his punishing hands. I wanted to sleep.
John awoke from his torpor and beat on his friend with desperate fists. “It’s true, it’s true! You must let her go!”
Stephen unleashed a kick like a javelin hurled from an arblast. I forgot the poniard; forgot to watch the girl. All I could see was John as he struck the doors of the Aumbry and sank, winded and groaning to the floor. Twisting from Stephen’s fingers, I knelt to the wounded boy and took him in my arms.
“I’m not hurt,” he gasped. “But Ruth … the poniard …”
I saw the flash of light on the blade in Ruth’s hand. Stephen swayed on his feet, a stag no longer: a bear chained in a pit, baited by some, fed by others—how can he tell his tormentors from his friends? Wildly he stared from the boy he had hurt to the girl he had championed. Ruth walked toward me with soundless feet and eyes as cold as hornstones under a stream. She might have been dead.
The poniard flashed between us. I threw up my hands for defense: of myself and John. She brought the blade down sharply against her own hand, the mount of the palm below her thumb. I heard—I actually heard—the splitting of flesh, the rasp of metal on bone. The blade must have cut through half of her hand before it lodged in the bone, and then she withdrew it without a cry, with a sharp, quick jerk, like a fisherman removing a hook, and stretched her fingers to display her wound. The flesh parted to reveal white bone, and crimson blood, not in the least resinous, swelled to fill the part. She smiled at me with triumph but without malice, a young girl who had vindicated herself before an accuser more than twice her years.
“Did you think I mean to hurt you?” she said almost playfully and then, seeing her blood as it reddened the carpet, winced and dropped the poniard.
Stephen steadied her into the chair by the hearth and pressed her palm to staunch the flow.
“You are an evil woman,” he glared at me. “Your beauty is a lie. It hides an old heart.”
“Both of your friends are in pain,” I said. “It isn’t a time for curses.”
He looked at John in my arms and stiffened as if he would drop Ruth’s hand and come to his friend.
“No. Stay with Ruth.” I helped John across the room to a seat in the window; the tinted panes ruddied his pale cheeks. “He will be all right. Ruth is in greater need. Let me tend her, Stephen.”
“You shan’t touch her.”
Ruth spoke for herself. “The pain is very sharp. Can you ease it, Lady Mary?”
I treated the wound with a tincture of opium and powdered rose petals and swaddled her hand with linen. John rose from the window and stood behind me, in silent attendance on Ruth—and in atonement. Stephen, an active boy denied a chance to act, stammered to his friends:
“Forgive me, both of you. It was my Crusade, wasn’t it? I brought you to this.”
Ruth’s face was as white as chalk-rubbed parchment awaiting the quill of a monk. Her smile was illumination. “But you see, Stephen, Lady Mary was right to a point. I am no more an angel than you are. Less, in fact. You’re a dreamer. I’m a liar. I’ve lied to you from the start, as Lady Mary guessed. That’s why I couldn’t trust her— because I saw that she couldn’t trust me. My name isn’t Ruth, it’s Madeleine. I didn’t come from heaven but the Castle of the Boar, three miles from your own kennels. My father was noble of birth, brother to the Boar. But he hated the life of a knight—the hunts, the feasts, the joustings—and most of all, the Crusades without God’s blessing. He left his brother’s castle to live as a scholar in Chichester, above a butcher’s shop. He earned his bread by copying manuscripts or reading the stars. It was he who taught me my languages—English and Norman French and Latin—and just as if I were a boy, the lore of the stars, the sea, and the forest. He also taught me to play the rebec and curtsey and use a spoon at the table. ‘Someday,’ he said, ‘you will marry a knight, a gentle one, I hope, if such still exist, and you have to be able to talk to him about a man’s interests, and also delight him with the ways of woman. Then he won’t ride off to fight in a foolish Crusade, as most men do because of ignorant wives.’ He taught me well and grew as poor as a Welshman. When he died of the plague last year, he left me pennies instead of pounds, and no relatives except my uncle, the Boar, who despised my father and took me into his castle only because I was brought to him by an abbot from Chichester.
“But the Boar was recently widowed, and he had a taste for women. Soon I began to please him. I think I must have grown—how shall I say it?—riper, more womanly. He took me hawking and praised my lore of the forest. I sat beside him at banquets, drank his beer, laughed at his bawdy tales, and almost forgot my Latin. But after a feast one night he followed me to the chapel and said unspeakable things. My own uncle! I hit him with a crucifix from the altar. No one stopped me when I left the castle. No one knew the master was not at his prayers! But where could I go? Where but Chichester. Perhaps the Abbot would give me shelter.
“But John, as I passed near your father’s castle I heard a rider behind me. I ducked in a thicket of gorse and tumbled down some stairs into a dark vault. You see, I did have a kind of fall, though not from heaven. I was stiff and tired and scared, and I fell asleep and woke up to hear Stephen proclaiming me an angel and talking about London and tile Holy Land. London! Wasn’t that better than Chichester? Further away from my uncle? Stephen, I let you think me an angel because I was tired of men and their lust. I had heard stories about you even at the castle—your way with a wench. After I knew you, though, I wanted your way. You weren’t at all the boy in the stories, but kind and trusting. But I couldn’t admit my lie and lose your respect.
“As for the crucifix you found in my hands, I had stolen it from my uncle. He owed me something, I felt. I had heard him say it was worth a knight’s ransom. I hoped to sell it and buy a seamstress’ shop and many a fine gentleman who brought me stockings to mend. When I traded it to the Mandrakes, it was just as I said. They kept their promise for the sake of their faith. You see, they were much more honest than I have been.”
Stephen was very quiet. I had seen him pressed for words but never for gestures, the outstretched hand, the nod, the smile. I wanted to ease the silence with reassurances and apologies. But Ruth was looking to Stephen; it was he who must speak.
“Now I’m just another wench to you,” she said with infinite wistfulness. “I should have told you the truth. Let you have your way. This way, I’ve nothing at all.”
He thought for a long time before he spoke, and the words he found were not an accusation. “I think a part of me never really took you for an angel. At least, not after the first. I’m not good enough to deserve a guardian from heaven. Besides, you stirred me like a girl of flesh and blood. But I wanted a reason for running away. An excuse and a hope. I lacked courage, you see. It’s a fearful thing for a villein to leave his master. John’s father could have me killed, or cut off my hands and feet. So I lied to myself: An angel had come to guide me! We were both dishonest, Ruth—Madeleine.”
“Ruth. That’s the name you gave me.”
“Ruth, we can still go to London. Without any lies between us.” Gestures returned to him; he clasped her shoulders with the deference of a brother (and looked to John: “My arms are not yet filled”). “But Lady Mary, it was cruel of you to find the truth in such a way.”
“She never meant to touch Ruth,” said John. “Only to test her. It was things I told Lady Mary that made her suspicious.”
“John, John,” said Ruth, walking to him and placing her swaddled hand on his arm. “I know you’ve never liked me. You saw through my tale from the first. You thought I wanted your friend. You were right, of course. I wouldn’t trade him for Robin Hood, if Robin were young again and Lord of the forest! But I never wished you ill. You were his chosen brother. How could I love him without loving you? I wanted to say: ‘Don’t be afraid of losing Stephen to me. It was you he loved first. If I take a part of his heart, it won’t be a part that belongs to you. Can’t you see, John, that the heart is like the catacombs of the old Christians? You can open a second chamber without closing the first. Trust your friend to have chambers for both of us.’ But I said nothing. It would have shown me to be a girl instead of an angel.”
“You’re coming with us, John?” asked Stephen doubtfully. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. It was like the time you stepped on my dog. But you forgave me then.”
“There’s no reason for us to stay.”
“You’ll go on a Crusade without a guardian angel?”
“We’ll walk to London and then—who knows? Venice, Baghdad. Cathay! Maybe it was just to run away I wanted, and not to save Jerusalem.” He pressed John between his big hands. “You are coming, aren’t you, brother?”
“No,” said John. “No, Stephen. Lady Mary needs me.”
“So does Stephen,” said Ruth.
“Stephen is strong. I was never any use to him. Just the one he protected.”
“Someday,” said Ruth, “you’ll realize that needing a person is the greatest gift you can give him.”
“I need all of you,” I said. “Stay here. Help me. Let me help you. London killed my son. It’s a city forsaken by God.”
Stephen shook his head. “We have to go, Ruth and I. The Boar might follow her here. She hurt his pride as well as his skill and stole his crucifix.”
John said: “I’m going to stay.”
I packed them provisions of bread, beer, and salted bacon; gave them the Saracen poniard to use against thieves or sell in London; and strapped the rebec and kettledrums on their backs.
“You must have a livelihood in London,” I said, when Stephen wanted to leave the instruments with John.
I walked with Stephen and Ruth to the wicket and gave them directions for finding the road: Walk a mile to the east … look for the chestnut tree with a hole like a door in the trunk.
But Stephen was looking over his shoulder for John.
“He stayed in the solar,” I said. “He loves you too much to say good-bye.”
“Or too little. Why else is he staying with you?”
“The world is a harsh place, Stephen. Harsher than the forest, and without any islands like the Manor of Roses.” How could I make him understand that God had given me John in return for the son I had lost to the devil?
“I would be his island,” said Stephen, his big frame shaken with sobs.
“Never mind,” said Ruth. “Never mind. We’ll come back for him, Stephen.” And then to me: “My lady, we thank you for your hospitality.” She curtsied and kissed my hand with surprising warmth.
I said: “May an angel truly watch over you.”
They marched toward the forest as proud and straight as Vikings, in spite of their wounds and their burdens. No more tears for Stephen. Not a backward look. London. Baghdad. Cathay!
It was then that I saw the face in the dense foliage, a bleached moon in a dusk of tangled ivy.
“Ruth, Stephen,” I started to call. “You are being watched!”
