The Gargoyle (48 page)

B
efore you said that you might someday ask me to marry you, I never seriously considered that it might happen. I admit I’d had some fleeting fantasies about it, but I’d already broken one set of lifetime vows and I wasn’t sure that I wanted another. Part of me was afraid that I’d betray you just as I’d betrayed Mother Christina, so when you didn’t mention marriage again I assumed that you had been talking idly, the way men do when they’re feeling romantic. In truth, it didn’t even bother me, because my life was already so much more than I had ever dreamed it could be. I was doing work for the Beguines, making improvements in every aspect of their bookmaking, and it was not long before the fact that I’d trained in the Engelthal scriptorium leaked out to certain prosperous citizens.

One thing never changes. The rich want to show off what they have and other people don’t. In those days, what could have been better than books? One could exhibit not only wealth, but also uncommon intelligence and taste. Still, I was caught completely unawares when a noblewoman approached me with an offer of a commission, if I would produce a manuscript of Rudolf’s
Der gute Gerhard
for her husband’s birthday. I turned her down, thinking it would insult you if I appeared to feel it necessary to contribute to the household income. But there is another thing that never changes about the rich: they think the poor always have a price. As it turns out, they’re right. The noblewoman named a figure that exceeded what you were making in a year. I started to refuse again, but…well, we needed that money, so I asked for some time to think about it.

I didn’t know how to broach the subject. We’d both agreed that your apprenticeship was for the best in the long term, but your salary was so small that you weren’t even bringing home enough to cover our basic expenses. The couple who rented to us were aware of our situation and, even though they weren’t rich themselves, kindly offered to defer a portion of the rent. This was the only thing that allowed us to keep going, but it made you feel that you were failing them as well as me.

For days I walked around our lodgings, starting to speak sentences that I never finished. You kept asking what was wrong, and I kept saying “Nothing.” Finally, when you couldn’t stand it anymore, you made me tell you what was on my mind. This was really just a trick on my part—buffering my own responsibility by making you force the confession out of me. I said that I wanted to start working with books again and told you about the noblewoman’s offer. I made it sound like you’d be doing me a favor if you allowed me to take the commission.

You took it better than I’d expected, agreeing that if it made me happy then I should do it. Your way of making peace with it, although this was never spoken aloud, was that I could take the job as long as we both pretended that it was mostly a hobby. But it was not lost on either of us the way your eyelids peeled open in amazement when I told you how much money I’d been offered.

The noblewoman immediately provided a small advance. Small for her, huge for us. It took a few days before I could work up the courage to spend any of it, knowing that as soon as I did, I’d be well and truly committed. When I passed that first coin to a parchment seller, it was almost a feeling of relief, and I set to work.

I completed that first book and the noblewoman seemed pleased with it. I’m not sure if she recommended me to her friends or if they sought me out through other channels, but it didn’t really matter. They found me, somehow.

There was a serious lack of qualified bookmakers in Mainz and because I came from Engelthal, I had a certain cachet. No one believes that his own town can produce true artists, but most people accept it as fact that in other places they fall off the trees like ripe fruit. More important, though, everyone acknowledged that the most desirable manuscripts came from religious scriptoria, so if a noblewoman couldn’t get her book produced in an actual monastery, I was the next best thing. She could take special pleasure in proclaiming that she owned a manuscript created by an Engelthal nun—never quite mentioning, of course, that the nun was no longer actually
in
the order.

It wasn’t long before I had more offers than time, and that’s when the bribery started. When I mentioned in passing how much I liked to cook, a noblewoman immediately said that she would give me a selection of choice meats if I pushed her commission to the top of my pile. I accepted and soon discovered how quickly gossip travels through the upper circles. Straightaway I was offered all manner of delicacies and, before I knew it, oats and barley had replaced millet in our diet. We were given whichever fruits were in season—cherries, plums, apples, pears, and sloes—and luxury items like cloves and ginger, mustard and fennel, sugar and almonds. You have no idea what these things meant. Whenever I was not translating or copying I was trying out new recipes; I felt I was making up for all the food we’d never eaten. The landlady helped me because it was a rare treat for her to use spices as well, and I had to laugh about the fact that I was becoming a culinary sinner. After all, had not Dante placed a Sienese nobleman into Hell for discovering the “costly uses of the clove”?

Before long we were living like God in France. I kept the door open with a pot of stew constantly bubbling and soon we were the most popular couple in the neighborhood. Even my Beguine friends dropped in, although they always feigned disdain for the elaborateness of the food. I would remind them that they’d pledged themselves to charity and it wasn’t very charitable to hurt my feelings. They’d pretend they were doing me a favor by eating, and I came to learn that even Beguines were gossips over a full plate.

The Jewish women also dropped in and I was amazed to learn how many of them were involved in business affairs, especially if the husband had died and the wife took over the family trade. To be quite honest, it inspired me. When I became too busy to accept new manuscript commissions, it was one of these women who first suggested that I should hire workers and go into business.

By this point, your bruised pride had been soothed by the money. You told me I could do as I pleased, so I decided to expand my activities. Why not? In the scriptorium, I had learned how several people worked together to produce a book, so I had experience in dealing with tradesmen and an understanding of every aspect of production. The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that I could do it.

First, I found a parchmenter I liked. I gained his respect when I showed him how he could improve the lime solution he used for soaking his animal skins. After he got over the shock that a woman could teach him anything, our relationship flourished. We entered into a contract: he’d produce paper for me each month, at discount if I ordered in bulk. Each delivery day we’d sit down to a bowl of stew and discuss how much parchment I’d need the next month. We became good friends, actually, and he grew to like my cooking almost as much as he did the business I gave him.

Next, I discovered an illustrator whose sensibilities matched my own. Negotiations with him were quite easy, because he was young and down on his luck. Each month I’d provide him with several folio pages to illuminate with miniatures. He also acted as rubricator, which meant there was one less person for me to manage. The arrangement worked out nicely for both of us; for the first time in his life, he could make a living from his artwork. He was so grateful that he kept his prices reasonable for me even when he had made his reputation and other bookmakers were clamoring to employ him.

There were other workers, mostly freelance scribes, but I won’t bore you with the details. The best thing about the business was something that I hadn’t really considered at all: suddenly, I could get my hands on books. When I was hired to produce editions of Virgil’s
Æneid
and Cicero’s
Dream of Scipio,
the patron provided borrowed texts from which I could work. Later, I had romances—Wolfram’s
Parzival,
Hartmann’s
Iwein,
and Gottfried’s
Tristan.
In the evenings, I’d bring them to our bed and read to you. These were some of the happiest hours of our lives, because there was nothing I loved more than to have a book in my lap and your head nestled into the crook of my shoulder. I tried to teach you to read but you never had the patience for it. Besides, you said that you liked it better when I read to you anyway.

As time passed I spent more time managing the other scribes and less time copying myself, until I found that I had enough energy left in the evenings to concentrate on my translation of Dante. I had been forced to abandon it when we first came to Mainz because I didn’t have writing materials, and when I first got writing materials I didn’t have time. Now I had both, and I finally understood how Gertrud had felt about her Bible. I would fret over every single word to ensure that the translation was my masterpiece, and why should I rush? You and I had our entire lives in front of us.

Eventually your apprenticeship came to an end and you received your journeyman’s papers. Normally this would have been followed by the
Wanderjahre,
during which you’d travel from city to city and study under different masters, but you had no intention of going anywhere. You’d find work in Mainz, where most of the stoneworkers already knew you and were fully aware why you would choose not to travel. No one would hold it against the man who had been the oldest apprentice the city had ever known.

We had so much good fortune in our lives that we barely spoke about the one thing that wasn’t working out. Maybe we felt we had no right to complain, or maybe we just didn’t want to jinx ourselves, but we had been trying to conceive and I had not yet become pregnant. In the back of my mind, I was always worried that you might decide I was an unsuitable partner after all, so you have no idea how relieved I was when, as soon as you had your papers in your hand, you announced that you wanted to marry me.

We decided the ceremony would be small but as soon as word leaked out, everyone we knew wanted an invitation. I’d like to think it was because of our popularity, but more likely it was because everyone anticipated an extravagant wedding feast. I supplied the food, the largesse of many bribes, and soon there was a legion of helpers in our kitchen. When our place proved too tiny, preparation spilled over into neighboring houses. Our landlady supervised everything and even the Beguines offered to help, though they were terrible cooks.

My only regret was that I couldn’t invite Mother Christina, Father Sunder, and Brother Heinrich. I considered sending word to Engelthal, but I knew that they’d be compelled to decline, and I didn’t want to put them in that position. I consoled myself with the thought that they’d have been there, if it were at all possible. And your only regret was that you were unable to invite Brandeis.

You didn’t even know whether your friend was still alive. Worst of all, you could never go looking for him without betraying the fact that you had survived your burns and thus escaped the condotta, whose only rule was that no one escaped. You’d never been able to forgive yourself for the fact that Brandeis had enabled your escape, while he had to go back to the condotta. There were still times when you awoke from nightmares about the old battles.

We got lucky on the day of the wedding and the weather was just right. Stoneworkers mingled with bookmakers, Jews with Christians, and everyone, even the Beguines, ate until their stomachs were full. Almost all the guests stumbled home on drunken legs, and then there was only you and me, to spend our first night as man and wife.

When we awoke the next morning, you presented me with a small stone angel that you’d carved. This was my
Morgengabe
—my morning gift, a sign of the legitimacy of our marriage. The legitimacy of us. I’d always thought that it would be unimportant to me, any ritual acknowledgment of the love that I already knew to be true, but I could not stop crying tears of happiness.

You soon found steady work and the physical aspect agreed with you. Your health was consistently good and you loved working with stone. I was producing books, managing my staff, and continuing my work on
Inferno.
We kept talking about moving into that larger house but somehow never quite got around to it. We liked where we were, we liked our friends, and maybe something about being in the Jewish area of town suited us because we were outsiders, too. Maybe a bigger house was just a dream that we created when we needed one to keep us going. There was only one thing that could have made us happier—and then, we got that as well.

After years without success, I finally became pregnant. The single happiest moment I have ever lived is when I first told you and saw the look on your face. There was not a second of fear or doubt, there was only wonderful anticipation. You rushed out to tell all your stoneworking friends and when you returned you held me tightly, talking about the various advantages of a girl over a boy, or a boy over a girl.

It was shortly afterwards that we were in the market one day, buying vegetables, when a pack of young men started arguing with a vendor over some perceived slight. They were clad in dirty clothes and had the cocksure swagger that only youth can possess. Off to one side, an older man was watching the proceedings with the look of someone who’d seen this a hundred times, had grown tired of it, but knew nothing could be done except let the stupid scene play itself out.

I thought that I’d seen him before, but I couldn’t put a name to the face. I took you by the arm and pointed him out, asking if you recognized him. You dropped the bag of vegetables, and the blood drained from your face. When you finally spoke, you could barely get his name out.

O
n the first of November, despite waking with a hangover from the Halloween party, Marianne Engel headed immediately for the basement. Over the next two days, her last remaining half-finished statue—the terrified lion/monkey—was given legs on which it could stand. When it was completed, she lay down upon a new slab and slept for a dozen hours before throwing herself headlong into a new grotesque. All the while, I was alone upstairs with my memories of the dancing ghosts that I couldn’t have seen.