The Wise Woman Read online

  The stone stairs beneath her feet were icy cold. She passed like a ghost out of the doorway and towards the gate which guarded the drawbridge. The soldiers were sleeping, there was no danger to watch for. Alys tiptoed across the bridge, her feet numb, and went to the moat-side.

  She thrust her hand deep into her purse and pulled out the first doll she found. It was the Lady Catherine doll, grotesquely ugly with its monstrous sexuality and bursting belly. Alys shuddered as she held it in her hand and then she tossed it into the moat.

  She had expected it to sink, to sink down into the green water and disappear. No one ever drained the moat, no one fished with nets. All sorts of rubbish and offal were thrown into it every day. Alys had thought the little dolls would sink to the bottom and no one would ever find them. Or if they did, the wax would be blurred and broken, and no one would ever think they were anything but candles, wastefully dropped by some negligent servant.

  The little wax doll sank beneath the freezing water, and then, as Alys watched, it bobbed up again. Lady Catherine's mocking, ugly smile stared at Alys. The little candlewax eyes looked at her. 'No!' Alys cried aloud. 'Get down.' An icy breeze rippled across the moat. The wax doll bobbed in the waves. The face of Lady Catherine seemed to smile as if she was enjoying Alys' fear.

  'Sink, damn you!' Alys dropped to her knees on the frozen bank, leaning out towards the bobbing doll. 'Sink down! Go down!'

  The fitful little wind blew the doll closer inshore. 'Go down!' Alys breathed. 'Drown!' At once she caught herself. 'Oh God! I didn't mean that!' she said. In a frenzy of sudden anxiety she reached out towards the little doll. 'I meant the doll to sink, that's all!' she said, as if she were explaining herself to the darkness all around her. 'I didn't mean drown. I just want to be rid of it.'

  The breeze was taking the doll away. At the same moment Alys heard someone hammering on the outer gate: servants coming to work, demanding admission.

  Alys bunched up her nightshift in one hand and stepped into the glassy cold water. She gasped at the icy touch and reached out towards the little doll. It bobbed out further, just beyond her reach. 'I've got to get it,' she said.

  She gritted her teeth and stepped out a little deeper. The water was swirling around her knees. Her feet were aching to the very bones with the cold. Something slimy and icy flickered across her calf. 'I've got to get it,' she said again.

  The doll bobbed out further. Her little waxen white head turned away from Alys as if she were obstinate, as if she were playful.

  'Come here,' Alys said. She clamped her teeth together to stop them from chattering, the cold seemed to be eating away at her feet, her legs, and now up to her thighs as she stepped further out.

  The little doll bobbed in the winter dawn breeze and the face turned back to Alys. The doll was smiling at her.

  Alys took one step further out and the little doll's smile widened as if it were about to burst into tinkling, malicious laughter. Her little arms came out above the water, she reached towards Alys. Alys stretched, her fingers just fractions of an inch away from the little wax hands. Alys took one more step forward and then stumbled on the greasy rubbish of the underwater bank of the moat. She heard the doll's tiny peal after peal of laughter as the steep side of the moat suddenly plunged downwards and fell away beneath her feet. Enticed into the depths of the moat Alys dropped like a stone into the slimy icy water, her scream cut short as water rushed into her mouth. Her hand closed over the little doll, her other hand was clenched on the purse. She thrashed helplessly in the water.

  Alys had never learned to swim, she sank and then bobbed up gasping for air in a frenzy of panic. When her face broke free of the water she snatched at a breath but then choked helplessly and felt herself going down again.

  The cold was her enemy. The icy green waters of the moat were eating her, her legs had gone numb and her thrashing thighs were powerless. Deep in her belly the cold moved in. Alys sank beneath the water and came up, coughing and retching. She opened her mouth to scream and a wave of icy green water swept into her face.

  'No!' Alys cried out. She snatched for a breath but it was water she gobbled and it rushed into her lungs and weighed her down, thrust her under the surface. Alys choked and retched and breathed in a lungful of water. Then suddenly there were a pair of hard hands on her arm, and then under her armpit.

  'Got you, wench,' a voice said from far away. Painfully, Alys was dragged from the water and beached, whooping and vomiting on the bridge. 'There, lass, there,' the man said. He flung his cape around her and rubbed her roughly, drying her and warming her at the same time.

  'Holloa!' he shouted towards the guardroom. 'Let us in!'

  He scooped Alys into his arms and carried her into the guardroom where a frowsy-faced lad threw open the door. 'Lass tried to drown herself,' he said tersely. 'Get some hot mead for her, quickly. And a sheet to wrap her in. And another cloak.'

  The lad went running. Alys, hidden in the man's cloak, retching and vomiting, fumbled with her shift and thrust the dangerous little doll into her purse with the others.

  The man held her. Water poured from Alys' mouth, she wept moat water, she pissed wetness into the wet shift, and her urine was as icy as the rest.

  The man thumped her hard on the back and Alys struggled for breath, caught a gulp of air and then vomited a basin of water. 'Head down,' he said.

  Water gushed from Alys' nose, her hair stuck like waterweed to her icy face. Remorselessly he held her, head down, until she had stopped choking, then he lifted her upright and thrust her into the chair and chafed her hands.

  The lad burst in with a steaming jug and a billowing sheet. 'Good,' the man said. 'Wait outside.' He ripped Alys' nightshift from hem to collar and rubbed her body hard with the warm sheet. Her skin was rough with gooseflesh and her feet and fingers were blue. From thigh to ankle she was bleeding sluggishly from a hundred little cuts and scratches from the rubbish in the moat. Then the man wrapped her tight in his thick cloak, sat her in the chair, and held a mug of hot mead to her mouth.

  Alys twisted away. The liquid was scalding. But he held her again and forced her to drink. It went down her sore throat like liquid fire. 'Here, don't I know you?' the man asked. Alys blinked up at him. Her teeth were chattering so badly and she was shivering so hard she could hardly make him out.

  'Father Stephen,' she said, when she recognized the priest. 'It's me, Alys. Lady Catherine's woman. Lord Hugh's clerk.'

  'More mead,' the priest commanded. He handed her the mug and Alys wrapped her hands around it. She was shuddering with deep chilled shivers.

  'Drink it,' he said. 'I insist. It'll drive out the cold. You're looking better already.' Alys nodded. 'I'm grateful you were there,' she said. He frowned. 'Why did you do it?' he asked gently. 'It's a painful death, a nasty way to go. And hell at the end of it, for sure.' Alys nearly denied it, then she caught herself. 'I was afraid,' she improvised quickly. 'After the ordeal… Lady Catherine is suspicious of me… I am afraid of another ordeal, or another. She can make what claims she wishes against me. I could not sleep in the night and then I woke full of dread. I did not know what to do.'

  Her teeth chattered as if denying the lie. Alys clenched them on the mug and sipped.

  He looked distraught. 'Child, I had no idea,' he said. 'I am to blame for this! I had no idea that the lady's personal vengeance against you went so deep. I would never have allowed an ordeal to satisfy mortal malice! It's a sin to use the ordeal to pay some grudge. I should have known! And to drive you to despair!' He broke off and took two swift strides down the room.

  Alys pushed her hand through her hair and squeezed out some of the icy water. She watched him, trying to measure his mood and the extent of her danger.

  'You must confess,' he said. 'Confess and pray for the sin of attempting to take your life. It is a mortal sin, God forbids it by name. You must wrestle with your despair and your fear. And I will also ask you to forgive me. I have been too rigorous. I have sought for wrongdoing to