Free In Pursuit of the Green Lion by Judith Merkle Riley

I don’t want to see it boiling with the dirty linen when I come downstairs.”
    “Oh, I know better now. I can get it just like new—and you’ll be wanting another poultice? That’s a wicked bruise you’ve got there.”
    “That’s only the one you can see,” I said morosely, pulling the warm robe de chambre tighter about my poor huddled, sore, undressed body as I sat on the edge of the bed.
    “My now, that’s too bad. You’ll be wearing this one for dinner, won’t you?” she queried, picking a garment off the perch. She stroked a sleeve with her cracked, work-reddened hands. “Now—what’s this kind of cloth called?”
    “Sarcenet. Hold it sideways to the light so you can see the weave. No, the threads, this way. And see the glimmer? That’s how you can tell it’s genuine.” After all, I hadn’t been married to a mercer for nothing.
    “My, wouldn’t it be fine, touching soft things like this all the time. Sarcenet. I won’t forget.” The mood of reverie vanished as quickly as it had come. “Goodness, I’m learning all the time,” she announced cheerfully as she knelt to rummage in the chest for the proper set of hose to replace the muddy mass so recently peeled from my legs. As she held them up for my approval, she said,
    “If you won’t think it bold, mistress, you’d be spending less time in the mud and more time on Blanchette if you’d lengthen your stirrups a bit and brace back against the cantle when you take the jump. Old John’s agreed with me, and so are Wat and Simkin.”
    A public amusement, that’s what I’d become. And that’s the difference between learning to write and learning to ride: You can’t fall off the page when you’ve got it wrong. I could still feel my face burning.
    “So what makes you know so much about it?” My bruises made me ask in a more sarcastic tone than was proper.
    “Me? Oh, I’ve ridden pretty near everything on the place. I never had a brother, so when I was little, my dad would sit me on the foals. The first weight they ever felt, you know, and they don’t always like it. He’d lead them around, then drive them, walking behind with the long reins, with me in the saddle. He was important here—head groom of my lord’s stables, and none better—but that was before your time. And before that big ugly black thing broke his neck for him.”
    I started, but before I could question her further, she took advantage of my shock to add, “And let me tell you, mistress, angels got their hands on them little girls of yours—and so says mam and Simkin too. Though he says he can’t imagine why.”
    Entertainment for saucy laundresses and kitchen boys, I said to myself, as I listened to her clogs clattering down the solar stairs. I’ve been brought low in this house.
    Sometimes I’d find my heart bursting with longing to be alone with Gregory. I knew he’d like me better if he were away from his prying, noisy relatives. As it was, he thought more of annoying them than pleasing me. Before his father, he still pretended he was totally indifferent to me, just to set the old man raging about holy idiots and a man’s right to progeny. I guess being the second son, Gregory had never enjoyed so much attention before. But we both knew he wasn’t really like that, and I wanted the real Gregory back again.
    I could just imagine us all by ourselves somewhere, in a bower of roses, perhaps, or on a mountainside by a waterfall, with the whole world spread before us. Instead, what did we have? A cold, dark solar floored with smelly old rushes and crowded with retainers, all of whom were charged to report the very minute anything went on between us. But whenever the family left on business, they’d take Gregory with them. And when he came back, he was always as sour as spoiled ale. So much for the bower of roses.
    I still remember the drizzling gray March afternoon when at last I was by myself for a moment, mending Alison’s hose on the window seat at the far