The Wise Woman Read online

  When Morach lost her fields and did not get them back, Tom's parents looked higher for him than a girl who would bring nothing but a tumbledown shack and a patch of ground all around it. Alys might know more about flowers and herbs than anyone in the village, but Tom's parents did not need a daughter-in-law who knew twenty different poisons, forty different cures. They wanted a jolly, round-faced girl who would bring a fat dowry of fields and perhaps a grazing cow with a weaned calf. They wanted a girl with broad hips and strong shoulders who could work all day in their fields and have a good supper ready for them at night. One who would give birth without fuss so that there would be another Tom in the farmhouse to inherit when they had gone.

  Alys, with her ripple of golden-brown unbraided hair, her basket of leaves and her pale reserved face, was not their choice. They told Tom frankly to put her out of his mind; and he told them that he would marry where he willed, and that if they forced him to it he would take Alys away – even as far as Darneton itself – he would do it and go into service if needs be.

  It could not be done. Lord Hugh would not let two young people up and off his land without his say-so. But Lord Hugh was an ill man to invoke in a domestic dispute. He would come and give fair enough judgement, but he would take a fancy to a pewter pint-pot on his way out, or he saw a horse he must have, cost what it may. And however generous he claimed to be, he would pay less than the Castleton butter-market price. Lord Hugh was a sharp man with a hard eye. It was best to solve any problems well away from him.

  They ignored Tom. They went in secret to the abbess at the abbey and they offered her Alys. They claimed that the child had the holy gift of healing, that she was a herbalist in her own right, but dreadfully endangered by living with her guardian – old Morach. They offered the abbey a plump dowry to take her and keep her behind the walls, as a gift from themselves.

  Mother Hildebrande, who could hear a lie even from a stranger – and forgive it – asked them why they were so anxious to get the little girl out of the way. Then Tom's mother cried and told her that Tom was mad for the girl and that she would not do for them. She was too strange and unlike them. She had turned Tom's head, perhaps with a potion – for whoever heard of a lad wanting to marry for love? He would recover but while the madness was on him they should be parted. 'I'll see her,' Mother Hildebrande had said. They sent Alys up to the abbey with a false message and she was shown through the kitchen, through the adjoining refectory and out of the little door to where Mother Hildebrande was sitting in the physic garden at the smiling western side of the abbey, looking down the hill to the river, deeper here and better stocked with fish. Alys had approached her through the garden in a daze of evening sunshine and her golden-brown hair had shone: like the halo of a saint, Mother Hildebrande had thought. She listened to Alys' message and smiled at the little girl and then walked with her around the raised flower and herb-beds. She asked her if she recognized any of the flowers and how she would use them Alys looked around the walled warm garden as if she had come home after a long journey, and touched everything she saw, her little brown hands darting like harvest mice from one leaf to another. Mother Hildebrande listened to the childish high voice and the unchildish authority. This one is meadowsweet,' Alys said certainly. 'Good for sickness in the belly when there is much soiling. This one looks like rue: herb-grace.' She nodded solemnly. 'A very powerful herb against sweating sickness when it is seethed with marygold, feverfew, burnet sorrel and dragons." She looked up at Mother Hildebrande. 'As a vinegar it can prevent the sickness, did you know? And this one I don't know.' She touched it, bent her little head and sniffed at it. 'It smells like a good herb for strewing,' she said. 'It has a clear, clean smell. But I don't know what powers it has. I have never seen it before.'

  Mother Hildebrande nodded, never taking her eyes from the small face, and showed Alys flowers she had never seen, herbs from faraway countries whose names she had never even heard.

  'You shall come to my study and see them on a map,' Mother Hildebrande promised. Alys' heart-shaped face looked up at her. 'And perhaps you could stay here. I could teach you to read and write,' the old abbess said. 'I need a little clerk, a clever little clerk.'

  Alys smiled the puzzled smile of a child who has rarely heard kind words. 'I'd work for you,' she said hesitantly. 'I can dig, and draw water, and find and pick the herbs you want. If I worked for you, could I stay here?'

  Mother Hildebrande put a hand out to Alys' pale curved cheek. 'Would you want to do that?' she asked. 'Would you take holy orders and leave the world you know far behind you? It's a big step, especially for a little girl. And you surely have kin who love you? You surely have friends and family that you love?'

  'I've no kin,' Alys said, with the easy betrayal of childhood. 'I live with old Morach, she took me in twelve years ago, when I was a baby. She does not need me, she is no kin of mine. I am alone in the world.'

  The old woman raised her eyebrows. 'And no one you love?' she asked. 'No one whose happiness depends on you?'

  Alys' deep blue eyes opened wide. 'No one,' she said firmly.

  The abbess nodded. 'You want to stay.' 'Yes,' Alys said. As soon as she had seen the large quiet rooms with the dark wood floors she had set her heart on staying. She had a great longing for the cleanness of the bare white cells, for the silence and order of the library, for the cool light of the refectory where the nuns ate in silence and listened to a clear voice reading holy words. She wanted to become a woman like Mother Hildebrande, old and respected. She wanted a chair to sit on and a silver plate for her dinner. She wanted a cup made of glass, not of tin or bone. And she longed, as only the hungry and the dirty passionately long, for clean linen and good food. 'I want to stay,' she said.

  Mother Hildebrande rested her hand on the child's warm dirty head. 'And what of your little sweetheart?' she asked. 'You will have to renounce him. You may never, ever see him again, Alys. That's a hard price to pay.'

  'I didn't know of places like this,' Alys said simply. 'I didn't know you could be clean like this, I didn't know that you could live like this unless you were Lord Hugh. I didn't know. Tom's farmhouse was the best I had ever seen, so that was what I wanted. I did not know any better.'

  'And you want the best,' Mother Hildebrande prompted gently. The child's yearning for quality was endearing in one so young. She could not call it vanity and condemn it. The little girl loved the herb garden as well as the refectory silver.

  Alys hesitated and looked up at the old lady. 'Yes, I do. I don't want to go back to Morach's. I don't want to go back to Tom. I want to live here. I want to live here for ever and ever and ever.'

  Mother Hildebrande smiled. 'Very well,' she said gently. 'For ever and ever and ever. I will teach you to read and write and to draw and to work in the still-room before you need think of taking your vows. A little maid like you should not come into the order too young. I want you to be sure.'

  'I am sure,' Alys said softly. 'I am sure now. I want to live here for always.'

  Then Mother Hildebrande had taken Alys into the abbey and put her in charge of one of the young novitiates who had laughed at her broad speech and cut down a little habit for her. They had gone to supper together and to prayers.

  It was characteristic of both Alys and Tom that while he waited for her as the sun set and a mocking lovers' moon came out to watch with him, Alys supped on hot milk and bread from fine pottery, and slept peacefully in the first clean pallet she had ever known.

  All through the night the abbess waked for the little girl. All through the night she kneeled in the lowliest stall in the chapel and prayed for her. 'Keep her safe, Holy Mother,' she finished as the nuns filed in to their pews in sleepy silence for the first of the eight services of the day. 'Keep her safe, for in little Alys I think we have found a special child.'

  Mother Hildebrande set Alys to work in the herb garden and still-room, and prepared her to take her vows. Alys was quick to learn and they taught her to read and write. She memorized t