The Wise Woman Read online

  A look of disappointment crossed Catherine's face, swiftly hidden.

  'Did you hope to swim her, Catherine?' the young lord asked maliciously. 'Or set her in a burning haystack?'

  'None of that! None of that!' the old lord said impatiently. 'She may well be a good girl and an honest servant with naught against her but your desires, Hugo, and her own special gifts. We'll do what the priest says. She'll take sanctified bread on oath and if it chokes her then we'll know what to do.'

  Eliza's eyes were as round as saucers. 'Shall I go?' she asked.

  'Stay!' the old lord said irritably. 'Where is the wench?'

  Nine

  After Alys had flung herself out of the ladies' gallery she ran as far as the outside gate before she hesitated. The air was icy and dry, as if it might snow at any moment. The town was closed and silent. Morach's cottage was half a day's walk away. Mother Hildebrande was gone forever. She could feel the absence of the abbey and the loss of her mother in the arid air, in the low soughing of the winter wind around the castle walls. There was nowhere for her to go.

  She turned back at the castle gate and walked slowly across the outer manse. A few thin hens pecked at the cold earth. A fat sow. bulging with piglets, grunted in the sty. Alys shivered as the sun dipped down behind the high round tower. She walked across the second drawbridge, into the inner wall of the castle. Mother Hildebrande was dead, the abbey was in ruins. There was nowhere for her to go but back to the gallery to the spite and triumph of the women.

  Her head was still hammering from the wine and from the sudden flood of her anger. She walked slowly, past the herb-beds to the well at the centre of the little garden. She wound up the bucket and drank the icy brackish water, tasted the foulness of it slick in the back of her throat. Then she walked on, past the great hall to the bakehouse, a little building round like a beehive set down between the brooding blackness of the prison tower and the castle physic garden. Alys pushed open the little door and peered curiously inside. It was warm and quiet. The two great rounded ovens held their heat like a brickyard. The floor, the tables, the shelves, even the brass tins on their hooks, were covered with a thin white film of flour. The bakers had deserted it after their morning's work – baking the bread for breakfast, dinner and supper in one long sweating shift. They had gone into town to find an alehouse, or into the great hall of the castle to gamble or doze. Alys went quietly inside and shut the door behind her. The room smelled sweetly of new-baked bread. Alys sank to her knees in the white dust at the hearth and found that tears were running down her face. For a moment she was back in the abbey kitchens watching the lay sisters bake and brew. For a moment she remembered the sweet white bread, milled from their own flour, baked in their own ovens, the hot warming taste of fresh-baked rolls for breakfast after prime in the early morning.

  Alys shook her head, took up the bulky hem of her navy gown and rubbed her eyes. Then she sat back on her heels and stared into the warm heart of the bakehouse fire for long minutes.

  'Fire,' she said thoughtfully, looking to the hearth. She rose up and lifted down two small tins from the wall. One she scooped full of water from the barrel by the table. She placed it before the fire. 'Water,' she said softly.

  She took a handful of cold ash, fallen soot and brick dust from the back of the chimney. 'Earth,' she said, putting it before her. Then she pulled the empty tin forwards to complete the square. 'Air,' she said.

  She drew a triangle in the spilled flour and ash which covered the stone floor, binding the three points of fire, earth and air.

  'Come,' she said in a whisper. 'Come, my Lord. I need your power.'

  The bakehouse was silent. Across the courtyard in the castle kitchen a quarrel had broken out, there was the noise of a slamming door. Alys heard nothing.

  She drew another triangle, inverted, binding the points for the earth, air and water.

  'Come,' she said again. 'Come, my Lord, I need your powers.'

  Delicately she stood, lifting her gown as carefully as a woman stepping on stones across a torrent. She stepped across the line, she broke the boundary, she stepped into the pentangle. She turned her head upwards, her head-dress slipped back and she closed her eyes. She smiled as if some power had flowed into her, from the fire, water, earth, air – from the flagstones beneath her feet, from the air which crackled and glowed around her head, from the radiating warmth of the bakehouse which was suddenly hot, exciting. 'Yes,' she said. There was nothing more.

  Alys stood for a long still moment, feeling the power rise through the soles of her feet, inhaling it with every breath, feeling it tingle in her fingertips. Then she straightened her head, pulled up her hood, smiled inwardly, secretly, and stepped out of the shape drawn on the floor.

  She tipped the water back in the tub. She set the tins back on their hooks and swept, with one swift, careless movement, the shape of the pentangle from the dust of the floor. She untied the purse on her girdle. Morach's candlewax moppets were cool in her hand. Alys turned them over, smiling at the accurate detail of Hugo's face, her expression hardening when she saw the doll of Catherine with its obscene slit. She went to the pile of firewood stacked at the side of the oven and pulled out a log at the bottom of the pile. She pushed in the candlewax moppets as far as they would go, and then gently put the log back in place. She stepped back and looked critically at the pile. It looked undisturbed. She picked up a handful of dust from the floor and blew it over the log so that it was as pale and dusty as the others. 'Hide yourselves,' she said softly. 'Hide yourselves, my pretty little ones, until I come for you.' Then she sat before the fire and let it warm her. It was only then, as if she were only then ready to be found, that the servant came panting across the courtyard and glanced, without much hope, into the deserted bakehouse.

  'The lord wants you,' he said, flustered and out of breath. 'At once. I had trouble finding you.'

  Alys shrugged indifferently. 'Tell him you couldn't find me,' she said. 'I walked out of Lady Catherine's room without leave. I lost my temper. I don't want to serve her, or him, or anyone. She'll have run to him to complain of me. I won't go.'

  The servant shrugged unsympathetically. 'You have to,' he said. 'They're all there. The young lord and the shrew, the old lord and the priest. Even Eliza Herring. Now they want you. You'd best go, and quickly too.'

  Alys' blue eyes sharpened. 'What are they all doing?' she asked. 'What is Father Stephen doing there? And Lord Hugo? What do they want with me?'

  'It's a row,' he said. 'Lady Catherine is calling up a storm and the old lord is taking her side, I think. But you have to go.'

  Alys nodded. 'I'm coming,' she said. 'Run and tell them I am on my way.'

  She rubbed her face with the corner of her sleeve and pushed her fingers through her tangle of curls, pushing the longer ringlets behind her ears and pulling the hood forwards into place, so that not a scrap of her hair showed around her face. Then she pulled down the long stomacher of the blue gown, shook out the plain blue underskirt, and then crossed the yard to the door of the great hall. She walked through the hall, where a lad was heaving logs on the fire to keep the room warm and ready for supper, and through the lobby at the back of the dais, to the tower. Up the stairs, through the guardroom with a nod like a queen to the lounging soldiers and a servant, and up to Lord Hugh's door. It stood open. They were waiting for her. Alys, composed, her head high and her face defiant, stepped into the bright room and heard the door swing shut behind her.

  She faced the old lord in his chair by the fire. She was dimly aware of Lady Catherine standing behind him, her hand possessively on the carved back of his chair, glittering with triumph. The priest stood away from the fire by the table in the window; before him was a black bible and a silver salver covered with white linen. Next to him stood Eliza, her eyes wide with terror. Alys glanced at her and then saw Eliza's hands. Both of them were clenched into fists with the thumb between the second and third fingers, to make the sign of the cross, the old protection agai