Margaret said to Mercy: “No; he has not Father's bravery. He would not have stood before Parliament and spoken against the King.”
“He has not Father's kindness,” answered Mercy. “He would mock where Father pitied.”
“But how could we expect him to be like Father!” cried Meg; and they laughed.
Erasmus spent his days writing what he called an airy trifle, a joke to please his host who loved a joke, he knew, better than anything. He was too tired, he told Margaret, to work on his Testament. He must perfect his Greek before he attempted such a great task. He must feel sure of his strength. In the meantime he would write In Praise of Folly.
He read aloud to Thomas when he came home; and sometimes Thomas would sit by his friends bed with Margaret on one side of him, Mercy on the other; he would put an arm about them both, and when he laughed and complimented Erasmus so that Erasmus's pale face was flushed with pleasure, then Margaret believed that there was all the happiness in the world in that room.
Erasmus poked fun at everybody… even at the scholar with his sickly face and lantern jaws; he laughed at the sportsman for his love of slaughter, and the pilgrims for going on pilgrimages when they ought to have been at home; he laughed at the superstitious who paid large sums for the sweat of saints; he laughed at schoolmasters who, he said, were kings in the little kingdoms of the young. No one was spared—not even lawyers and writers, although he was, Margaret noted, less severe with the latter than with the rest of the world.
And this was written with the utmost lightness, so that it delighted not only Thomas, but others of their friends, to picture Folly, in cap and bells, on a rostrum addressing mankind.
He stayed over a year in the house, and while he was there Thomas was made Under-Sheriff of the City of London, which was an honor he greatly appreciated. Alice Middleton, still a constant visitor, was delighted with this elevation.
“Ah,” Margaret heard Thomas say to her, “how pleasant it is to enjoy the reflected honors! We have neither to deserve them nor to uphold them. We bask in the soft light, whilst the other toils in the heat. The temperate rather than the torrid zone. So much more comfortable, eh, Mistress Middleton?”
“Tilly valley! I know not what you mean,” she told him sharply. “So you but waste your breath to say it.”
He explained to Margaret as he always explained everything: “The Mayor of London and the Sheriffs are not lawyers; therefore they need a barrister to advise them on various matters of law. That my Margaret, is the task of the Under-Sheriff who is now your father.”
And when he dealt with these cases he refrained, if the litigants were unable to pay them, from accepting the fees which had always previously been paid. This became known throughout the City. It was about this time that the people of London began to love him.
Margaret was very happy during those two years; she had learned the meaning of fear, and that lesson had made her happier, for with it had come the joy of being without fear. But there was another lesson to learn: It was that nothing in life was static.
First, Erasmus left for Paris, where he hoped to publish In Praise of Folly; and that was the end of the pleasant reading and discourse. Then Margaret's mother took to her bed with a return of that weakness which had rarely left her since the birth of little Jack.
What they would have done during this time but for Alice Middleton, no one could say. Alice swept through the house like a fresh east wind, admonishing lazy servants, administering possets and clysters to Jane, boxing the ears of maids and menservants and the children when it seemed to her that they needed such treatment.
Gone was their gentle mother, and in her place was bustling and efficient, though sharp-tongued and heavy-handed, Dame Alice.
The children looked at each other with solemn eyes.
“Will our Mother get well?” asked four-year-old Cecily.
Jack cried at night: “Where is our Mother? I want our Mother.”
“Hush,” said Margaret, trying to comfort him. “Mistress Middleton will hear your crying, and box your ears.”
When he fell and cut his knees, or whenever any of the children hurt themselves, it was Mercy who could bind up the wound or stop the bleeding. Mercy had the gentlest of hands, and the very caress of them could soothe a throbbing head.
“I should like to study medicine,” she confided to Margaret. “I believe it is the one thing I could learn more easily than you could. In everything else I believe you would do better than I. But not in that, Margaret.”
And Mercy began growing herbs at the back of the house; and she became very skilful in these matters. Thomas called her: “Our young doctor”!
But nothing Mercy grew in her border, and nothing she could do, made Jane well.
ONE DAY Jane called her eldest daughter to her.
Jane seemed to have grown smaller during the last few days; she looked tiny in the four-poster bed; and her skin was the same color as the yellow thread in the tapestry of the tester.
Margaret suddenly knew that her mother would not live long to occupy that bed.
“Margaret,” said Jane, “come close to me.”
Margaret came to the bed.
“Sit near me,” said Jane, “where I can see you.”
Margaret climbed on to die bed and sat looking at her mother.
“Margaret, you are only six years old, but you are a wise little girl. You seem all of eleven. I feel I can talk to you.”
“Yes, Mother.”
“I am going to die.”
“No … you must not. What can we do without you?”
Jane smiled. “Dear little Meg, those are sweet words. It is of when I am gone that I wish to speak to you. How I wish I could have waited awhile! Another seven years and I could have safely left my household in your hands.”
“Mother … Mother … do not say these things. They make me so sad.”
“You do not wish for change. None of us does. You will take care of your father, Margaret. Oh, he is a man and you are but a child … but you will know what I mean. Margaret, I can die happy because I have left you to your father.”
The tears began to fall down Margaret's cheeks. She wished that she had given her mother more affection. She had loved her father so much that she had thought little of the quiet woman who, she now saw, had taken such an important place in their happy household.
“Mother … please …,” she began.
Jane seemed to understand.
“Why, bless you, Meg, it has been my greatest delight to see that love between you and your father. When we married I was afraid I was quite unworthy of him. I was so … unlearned; and at first I was unhappy. I would sit at the table trying so hard to study the Latin he had set me… yet knowing I would never learn it to his satisfaction. And then when you were born all my unhappiness vanished, because I knew that, although I could not make him an ideal wife, I had given him someone whom he could love better than anyone in the world. That was worthwhile, Margaret. I was happy then. And when I saw you grow up and become everything that he had desired, I was even happier. Then there was Elizabeth … then Cecily … and now Jack. You see, he has, as he would say, his quiver full. And but for me he could not have had you all. That is what I have told myself, and because of it I can die in peace. So do not reproach yourself, my little one, that you love him more than you do me. Love is not weighed. It flows. And how can we stem the flow or increase it? Margaret, always remember, my child, that if you have given him great happiness, you have given me the same. Come, kiss me.”
Margaret kissed her mothers cheeks, and the clammy touch of her skin frightened her.
“Mother,” she said, “I will call Mercy. Mayhap she will know what would ease you.”