"My old Peg. I am as happy to see you as sweet ale in summer," he said as he pulled a lock of carrot-red hair from under her kerchief. "And Grizzl and Juliana. Are ye still here or here again?"
After much laughter he turned to Margery. "How goes the physicking business, Doctor Marg?"
"Breeding and bleeding. My business is all breeding and bleeding—they breed and I bleed them." And there was more laughter.
Finally he noticed Matilda. "Do I see a new face?"
"Indeed," said Peg. "This is my helper, Matilda, who seeks higher things."
"Ave, doctissime," said Matilda, greeting with a slight curtsy the most learned man.
"Can she not talk right, pretty Peg?" the man asked with a worried frown. "Perhaps I have something in my wagon to heal—"
Was he jesting with her? "It was Latin, sir. I heard you speaking it to your ox."
"Oh, Saint Brendan there. He used to belong to a priest, and those are the only words will make him go. I am not much for Latin."
No Latin. "But Mistress Peg says you are a man of learning."
"Well, I know where to find mistletoe, why spotted lizard cures stomach ills, and how to brew a wood betony tea for banishing monstrous nocturnal visions. Of course," he said with a wink, "too much wood betony can also cause monstrous nocturnal visions. Depends on who is paying."
Matilda was speechless. This was Peg's man of learning? No Latin, no medicine, just mistletoe and spotted lizard?
That night, as Matilda lay on her pallet in the buttery, she could hear Peg's and Tom's voices as they played a game of draughts, talking over the day and laughing. She felt a rush of loneliness.
The next morning Peg fixed up a place for Tom to work at one end of the table. How long will he be here? Matilda wondered. Will Mistress Peg still need me? If Peg had no use for her and turned her out, where would she go?
Matilda kept one eye and one ear on Tom as she pounded and pulled and boiled. "Tis but a rash," he said to Milo the Pepperer. "Rub some of this salve on your neck and spit three times in the moonlight."
To Roger Smith, "Here are pieces of dried dragon fat to sprinkle on your food to soothe and heal your stomach," and to Juliana Parchmenter, who had brought her unhappy daughter-in-law, "I recommend a tea of moonwort berries for wounds, poisons, and such as are become peevish."
Tom took a great deal of time with each, talking and listening, trading jokes and passing on gossip, asking about this one's mother and that one's baby daughter and even an occasional pig or ox. Weepy children always found raisins in a dirty leather bag at his belt. Tom was never without his raisin bag.
On Thursday came young William Baker with a dog bite on his leg. Tom spread a potion of mustard and club moss on it, but the boy cried with the sting and tried to wipe it off. Tom said nothing but took from his leather bag an apple, which he proceeded to peel, the peel falling from the apple in one long, snaky spiral. Longer and longer the strip of peel got. Matilda stared fascinated, everything else forgotten as she waited for the peel to grow longer still or to break. And she saw William Baker doing the same, mindless of his pain as he watched.
Amazingly, the peel never did break. Tom took the snake, wrapped it about his neck, and cut the apple into pieces for a less tearful William.
Next a young woman came from a neighboring village for a love potion, which Tom supplied with a wink. "Love potion?" asked Matilda after the woman left. "You will be sent to Hell with the witches and devils."
"There be no such thing as love potions," said Tom. "That were just elderberries and a rotten egg. But if she uses it, she will think he loves her, and so will act as if he loves her. They will walk hand in hand by the river, which runs silver in the moonlight, and by cock's crow he will think he loves her too."
Matilda merely sniffed.
One morning, with Peg gone to Grizzl's, Matilda burned the porridge. "Here," said Tom, after he showed Gilbert Carpenter out, "let me scrub that well for you, and you buy more porridge, and Peg will never know." He winked at her. "Tis not deception, but defense."
While he scoured the pot with pewterwort stems, Matilda said, "I hope porridge costs no more than a ha'penny, for then I might have enough left for more parchment. For writing," she said at his blank look.
"I never did see much purpose in this writing," he said.
"Why, all learned people can write. I write letters to Father Leufredus, who is far away. Scholars like Father Leufredus write of the lives of the saints or devotions. Or folk in business keep records and accounts."
"Like what?"
"Well, if I were to keep your accounts, you would know how many bottles of moonwort tea and pots of mistletoe salve you made and sold and for how much, how many stomachs were soothed and how many heads, which towns paid better prices for which remedies."
"And why would I want to know that?"
"Why, to know."
"But such an account book wouldn't tell the important things I know," Tom said. "Who is getting married to whom and where the bridal ale will be, where to find the best mules or lumber for the lowest price, who in Giggleswick is the best man to see for a new axle or oats or a quick pint, who prefers singing and joking when his tooth is pulled and who likes silence, where to pound a baby's back so she stops her fearful fretting and finally belches." He finished scrubbing the pot, dipped it into the bucket of water near the fire to rinse, and dried it by swinging it above his head. "All that writing you do and still you know only 'so many' and 'how much.'"
Such things might be important to Tom, but Father Leufredus would not think much of them. Matilda shook her head in disappointment.
Tom left again on a morning so cold that he had to wrap Saint Brendan's snout in rags to keep his hot breath from freezing. The sound of rumbling cart and mumbled Latin sounded on the air long after Tom and the ox turned the corner and were out of sight.
I am happy he has gone, Matilda thought. He is no man of learning but instead a fraud. To her horror, she found that she had not thought those words, but had spoken them aloud. And Peg had heard them. Matilda looked at Peg's raised eyebrows and hurriedly stammered, "Oh, forgive me, Mistress Peg. I did not mean to speak aloud.... I mean, I would not..."
Peg quieted her with a wave. "Speak up, Matilda. Why do you think Tom a fraud?"
Matilda whispered, "How can—"
"Louder," said Peg.
Matilda cleared her throat and began again. "How can he be a great man of learning if he has no Latin or reading or writing and knows only rotten eggs, apple peels, and spotted lizard?" She stopped and waited to be punished for finding fault with Tom or at least failing in meekness.
"There are different kinds of learning. Tom knows many things," Peg said, "even if it is true that more visit him to be delivered of elf shot or evil dreams than boils, spots, or other bodily ailments. He has a way with him, never too busy to talk or too tired to listen. Those who come go away satisfied, eagerly awaiting his next visit. Do you think that is worth nothing?"
Matilda breathed deeply in her relief that Peg was not angry with her. "No," she said. "In truth I myself have seen him give comfort and hope to people. But Father Leufredus—"
"Bah. Enough of what Father Leufredus thinks. Let us talk more about this when you know what Matilda thinks."
Matilda pondered this as she huddled close to the brazier that night, it being too cold for her pallet in a room without a fire. How, she thought as she took off her boots, could Peg not see Tom truly? Was his nature not apparent to all who looked? How could Matilda see a different Tom from the one Peg saw? And how could Peg see things one way and Father Leufredus another? Did this not mean Peg was wrong?
She stood up, quickly jerked her kirtle off, and wrapped herself in her thin quilt. Sitting down cross-legged before the fire again, she warmed her hands. Why did everyone not see things as she and Father Leufredus did? And why, despite her doubts in Tom, did she have the nagging feeling that Tom knew much that she did not know, things she did not even know she
did not know?
There were more questions in this world, Matilda thought, even than the number of fleas St. Finnian of Clonard drove out of the Isle of Flatholm. And for most of them there seemed to be no answers.
Chapter Nine: Meeting Walter and Nathaniel
Peg said, "Take these four pennies and go to Ralph Thwirp the tanner, the Devil take him for his high prices. We need more ox hides for splints."
The morning was cold but clear as Matilda set off for the tanner's yard by the river. The sun was melting the snow and thawing the piles of refuse in the street. For a while she walked behind Master Theobald and a woman Matilda took to be his wife. She walked serenely at her husband's side, nodding to those he nodded to, smiling at those he smiled at, head cocked to hear his every word.
That could be me with Father Leufredus, Matilda thought with envy. And she watched until they turned away and even their footsteps disappeared with the melting snow.
Still thinking about Father Leufredus, Matilda slipped on the icy slush, tripped over something, and fell hard onto her rump. The something proved itself a black-haired boy, sitting with eyes closed at the side of the street.
Slowly he opened his eyes, as round and brown as currant buns. His face radiated common sense, good humor, and a mockery that Matilda found irritating and most unholy.
The irritation, the sting in her bottom, and the hot red scrapes on her palms loosened Matilda's tongue. "Fungus.' Porcus! Stultus! No, stultissimus! You, stupidest of all boys, should be seized for assault," she said sharply as she picked herself up and brushed muck off her skirts.
"And you, my girl, for daytime dreaming and not watching where you are going," he said.
"Me? But you were sitting on the street with your face to the sky, not watching to see whose way you were in."
The boy shrugged. "My master told me I was looking too pale and sent me out for some sun. My master is the apothecary there," he said, gesturing toward the large shop behind him, "and I am his apprentice, Walter At-Water, though some call me Walter Mudd for the muddy salves and plasters smeared on my tunic."
"It is a fitting name for you, for never have I seen a boy so dirty."
"Nor I a girl so small, with eyes as green as grass, cheeks like peaches, and hair as gold as an ouzel's belly."
Matilda stared at him. Her cheeks grew warm. "Appearance counts for nothing, as the body is but a vessel for the soul, which should be meek and humble...."
"Then might I say, 'Never have I seen a girl with such comely humility'? Or perhaps 'I am overawed by your undistinguished, humble-spirited, humble-minded, humble-hearted, humble-looking humility, which humbly shines...'?"
As Matilda opened her mouth to reply, he stood up, bowed to her, and said, "We shall meet again. The glow from your triumphant humility will lead me to wherever you are. Also your green eyes."
The boy called Walter Mudd then winked at her and strode off whistling toward the shop.
Matilda frowned at his back. "Stultissimus!" she whispered. "He is as irritating as a pebble in the boot." She pulled a strand of hair across her shoulder and looked at it closely. Like an ouzel's belly, he had said. What, she thought, might an ouzel be? Piscis aut avis? Lepus aut leo? Fish or bird? Rabbit or lion? Whichever, it had a belly as gold as her hair, and she almost smiled as she continued on to Ralph Thwirp the tanner, the Devil take him.
Soon it was the Day of Ashes, the first day of Lent. Matilda awoke before dawn, disturbed by the sound of the church bells, which clunked rather than rang, it being that cold. Sticking a bare foot outside the quilt, she gasped at the chill and pulled her toes in again, snuggling down in the Matilda-shaped warm space in the hard straw mattress.
Finally she jumped up, naked as a needle, pulled on her shift and kirtle, and danced across the icy floor into the front room. "You look cold as a frog," called Peg from her bed.
An eel, a flea, and now a frog, thought Matilda. Did Peg even know she was a human being, made in God's image? Matilda stirred the ashes remaining in the iron brazier, blew on the embers, added kindling, and said a prayer to Saint Florian that the fire would start easily this time. It did; she was growing better at fires.
The church bells tolled for Mass. "Are you not going to Mass on this holy day?" Matilda asked Peg, who had not yet stuck foot out from under cover.
Peg shook her head. "Heaven is but a promise, while a warm bed is right now. I shall pray from here." Matilda thought it must be much easier not to be holy and obedient on a morning as cold as this.
She wrapped herself in her cloak—still damp from yesterday, for nothing dried in this cold—and hurried to the church. An icy rain was falling, and the sharp wind tugged at her cloak as if trying to pull it from her. Father Leufredus said the wind was the whistling of the Devil. Matilda shuddered, only partly from cold. She could hear the demon coming around corners and hiding in small spaces, and she crossed herself as she hurried to the safety of the church.
Although not crowded even on this holy morning, still the church was noisy with the sound of talking, scratching, and coughing. Feet shuffled on frozen rushes and stamped on the floor for warmth. But the gleam of the candles on silver and gold, the starchy smell of the linen and vestments, and the cloud of fragrant incense in the air promised what Heaven would be like. Mass made Matilda feel as if God were right there in church with her, even if she couldn't see Him. Most people looked about or gossiped or slept through Mass, but Matilda listened carefully, for sometimes amid the mumbling of the priest she could catch a word or two of Latin.
Matilda especially loved the Day of Ashes, for the priest dipped his thumb in holy ashes and marked the foreheads of the churchgoers: "Pulvis es," you are dust. Matilda knew the ashes were supposed to be a reminder of mortality, but to her the smudge felt like a mark of holiness, as if those who saw her would know that although but an attendant to a bonesetter, she was marked for God and Heaven. On her way back to Peg's she felt her forehead again and again to make sure the ashes were still there.
On the Saturday after, when Gregory Merchantson paid Peg with a fish pie only two days old for setting his broken arm, Peg invited Margery and Nathaniel Cross, the apothecary, to dine.
First she set aside a mighty slice of the pie for Nathaniel to take back to his wife, Sarah, who could not easily leave their shop. Then she set the other slices on the scrubbed table for herself and Margery on one side, and Matilda and Nathaniel on the other.
It was Matilda's first opportunity to meet Nathaniel Cross. She was curious to see the man whom Peg spoke of as the best soul God ever made. Was he saintly and wise? Or no more a great man than Tom was?
What he was was straight as a stick and small as an elf, with a bald, freckled head and eyes that surprised her with their blueness. Blue as the Virgin's veil, they were, blue as the summer sky.
Chewing on a slice of hard bread, for thank God his teeth were still good, Nathaniel talked softly to them of his troubles. He had long been shortsighted, he said, but now his eyesight had weakened so that he could no longer see clearly what was right before his face. "The guild master has heard about my failing sight," Nathaniel said. "He knows of my slowness and mistakes."
He stopped. Peg stood and patted his shoulder, and he continued, "I told him it were true and he ordered me, with affection and pity but ordered me nonetheless, to cease practicing by summer. 'An apothecary,' he said, 'who can't be trusted to tell angelica from almond oil is no apothecary at all.'" As he said this, Nathaniel's eyes filled with hopeless tears.
Matilda was moved at the sight of those blue eyes overflowing with sorrow. "Father Leufredus says God uses illness and disease to punish the wicked. Perhaps if you were to repent?" she asked softly.
Margery stood up so quickly the bench fell over. "You ungracious, thoughtless, ill-mannered girl! You think Nathaniel's eye troubles stem from wickedness? Why, Nathaniel is ... is ... is ..."
Matilda stood also. She had suffered enough from this goose girl, but before she could respond, Nathan
iel reached over and touched Margery's arm. "She was speaking to me, Margery. Let me answer her." Margery hauled the bench upright and sat back down with a thud, and Nathaniel turned toward Matilda, motioning her to sit as well. Matilda did so, grateful that Nathaniel had saved her from the temptation to speak her mind to Margery.
"It would be easier if I were wicked," Nathaniel said, "for repentance is well within my abilities. But unhappily I am no thief, no murderer, no traitor or seducer of women. I do not commune with devils or magicians. I am just an old man, young Matilda, and no better and no worse than any other man, not perfect but not wicked. I am an apothecary. I know and love herbs and healing. I can do nothing else, and I do not wish to." He snuffled, wiping his eyes on his sleeve.
Matilda could think of nothing to say to that. Glowering at Margery, for her anger was merely stifled and not forgotten, she took another bite of her pie.
"Would a wee bout of draughts comfort you, Nathaniel?" Peg asked, drawing her red eyebrows together in consternation.
Nathaniel shook his head. "No, thank ye, Peg. Not at the moment. I can think about little but my bad eyes. I saw Leech the bloodletter, but the bites of his leeches festered." Matilda was not at all surprised. "Walter had to anoint them with powdered larch bark and egg white. And my eyes are no better. Peter Threadneedle told me how the worm doctor had destroyed the worm that was paining his tooth. I thought perhaps he could help me, too." Nathaniel shook his head. "He could do nothing, and indeed, two days later, Peter himself betook his throbbing tooth to Barber Slodge to have it pulled. So desperate am I that I too stopped to see the barbers."