LATER
We have been waiting ten days for wind. This morning Margery Kempe arrived, escorted by the bishop’s retainers, and with her came a stiff breeze. There is no satisfying some people! Now the pilgrims assert she is a witch who can summon storm, and they threaten to throw her overboard if there is not a calm passage. I do not know what power Margery has, but I am tired of this nonsense. Mama taught me how to handle such matters. We will have a calm passage no matter how much I must weary myself in assuring so.
LATER
We have had four days of sailing south in light weather. Grumpkin has much enjoyed the ship. There has been good mousing, and the sailors approve of him heartily. The pilgrims have been put ashore here at Coruna, where some will go overland and some will take smaller boats down the coast to the port slightly nearer Compostela. Once there, they will ascend into the city, into the great Romanesque church where they can kiss the statue of St. James and receive the title “Pilgrim to St. James.” I know all about it. Papa described it to all of us, over and over. It was Santiago Matamoros that most interested Papa, St. James the Moor Killer. Poor Papa. He did want to do something brave and dedicated against the infidel, but it never really worked out.
I told Giles there was no hurry in finding my grandchild and asked him if he wanted to go to Compostela, but he said no. He is no more interested than I in parts of people’s dead bodies, saints or not. Saints’ bodies are supposed to be incorruptible, but Giles says he has seen mice dried up in a grain sack who were also uncorrupted. We giggle, like naughty children. Old people find odd things funny. He told me about a time during those years we were apart, when he was in Italy to pick up a cargo which included a crate of relics. He was sent to the workshop where they were created, and there he saw them making miraculous shrouds.
“The workman smeared a naked man with flaxseed oil and wine lees,” he said, “then the man lay down on a linen strip and it was folded over him and patted gently to take the print of his face and body. Then they hauled him up, without messing the print on the cloth, and put the cloth in the sun. When it had been in the sun for a time, they brushed off the dry lees and it was like a painting.”
“Who was he supposed to be?” I asked.
“Oh,” said Giles, “he was all different saints. In the crate I took back to the ship there was one shroud of St. Stephen, with lots of arrow wounds painted on afterward, and at least half a dozen of Christ. It was enough to make a man sceptical.”
Well, since he does not wish to go to Campostela, we will stay on the ship for another few days as it runs along the south shore of the Bay of Biscay to Bayonne, where we will disembark to begin our search for Marvella. Bayonne, so everyone says, is as English as Bristol. We have had it ever since Eleanor married King Henry II, except for a brief time when the French took it back during the long war, while I was away. Despite our people being thoroughly familiar with the area, they do not seem to be familiar with Ponte Marvella. No one knows where it is. The captain of this ship has heard of it, but he has never been there. Certain other of the travelers aboard have heard of it. They have never been there. Surely in one of the larger ports near the mountains, someone will know how we can reach the kingdom where my granddaughter must be, by now, a plump and contented matron. Unless she was long ago married off to some petty kinglet. I hadn’t thought of that before! She may not be there at all! Well, if she is not, we will go where she is. I hope it may be by horseback or in a carriage. Otherwise, I must use the boots, and we are having such a sweet and gentle time without.
JULY
While we search for someone to guide us to Marvella (and our quest so far has met with no success), I am enjoying seeing what is available in the shops. I have bought a warm mantle woven from the fine wool of Spanish sheep, as well as an illuminated book by one Christine de Pisan, The Treasure of the City of Ladies, which the bookseller highly recommends. He claims that his copyist is unable to keep up with the demand for this volume, though it is difficult to say why, since it is directed at “princesses,” by which the author means the daughters of kings, princes, and dukes. Though she spares a word for women of lesser rank (including some of no rank at all!), her audience is to be found mainly among the nobility. Perhaps there are more of us than there seem to be. Or perhaps I have not been traveling in the proper circles.
At any rate, Christine reminds me very much of Miss Manners. I always read Miss Manners in the twentieth. Christine explains how to be polite and kindly and keep everyone happy and oneself in good odor with the world. It is a pity it was not written until a dozen years ago. If I had had this book in 1347, it would have told me at once what Weasel-Rabbit was up to.
SUMMER: ON THE ROAD FROM LOURDES
I have lost track of what day it is. Not that it matters. It is not so late in the season that I am concerned about the onset of bad weather. The land we are traversing is hospitable and not
