The Wise Woman Read online

  Morach shrugged dismissively. 'Maybe,' she said, unimpressed. 'But what of the dolls? Are they safe?'

  'I want rid of them,' Alys said in a whisper. 'I threw one in the moat last night, but it floated. I had to go in and get it out. It nearly drowned me, Morach. It was the doll of Lady Catherine and I felt that it dragged me in. I felt it wanted me drowned. I heard it laugh as I went down. I heard it laugh, Morach! I want rid of the dolls. You must take them back.'

  Morach pulled a stool up to the fire and looked into the flames for a moment. When she looked up her old face was sallow. 'They're yours,' she said. 'Your candles, your commands, your dolls. I'll not have them around me. I'll not claim them. I'm not surprised they tried to drown you. There's a shadow around them that I can't clearly see. But it looks like water.'

  'Much water?' Alys asked. She looked in the fire, like Morach. All she could see were the dark squares of turf and the red embers.

  'A lungful is enough,' Morach said dourly. 'Too much if it is your lungs. Anyway, the dolls are yours.' 'Can I bury them?' Alys asked. Morach shrugged. 'You might do. The shadow I see is Water not Earth.'

  'Can I throw them on the fire and let them melt and burn?'

  Morach put her head on one side and looked at the fire. 'It's a perilous gamble,' she said.

  'What am I to do with them then?' Alys demanded in irritation.

  Morach laughed unkindly. 'You should have thought of that first,' she said.

  Alys waited.

  'Oh well,' Morach said. 'When the weather lifts we'll go up to the moor and drop them down one of the caves. If their shadow is water they will have their fill then. We'll maybe be able to do some spell to take their power away. Where d'you keep them?'

  'On me,' Alys answered. 'In my purse on my girdle. I had no room of my own, I was afraid they would be found.'

  Morach shook her head. 'That's not safe,' she said positively. 'You don't want them close to you, listening to your voice, hearing your worst thoughts. Is there nowhere you can hide them?'

  Alys shook her head, thinking. 'I am nowhere alone!' she said impatiently. 'I am with someone all day and every day. Even when I am in the herb garden there is always someone near by, a servant or a gardener or one of the scullions.'

  Morach nodded. 'Hide them somewhere foul,' she advised. 'In the castle midden or under a close stool. Somewhere that not even a child would pry.'

  'Out of the garderobe!' Alys exclaimed. She pointed to the corner of the room where a round hole had been cut into the wall and covered with a wooden lid. 'You take your ease there,' she said. 'And the shit falls down into the moat. No one would search there. I can hang them on a piece of cord from underneath the seat.'

  Morach eyed the corner seat. 'That'll do,' she said. 'In time they'll get marked and foul. No one will see them. And whatever power your spell has laid on them I cannot see them hexing your Lord Hugo to hang outside the castle wall while you shit on his head.'

  Alys gave a sudden giggle and her whole face lightened. For a moment she looked like the girl who had been the favourite of the whole abbey. 'I'm glad you're here,' she said. 'Now I'll call for hot water for you. You'll have to have a bath.'

  Thirteen

  Morach was unruly about bathing, ashamed of being naked before Alys, certain that water would make her ill.

  'You smell,' Alys said frankly. 'You smell disgusting, Morach. Lady Catherine will never have you near her smelling like this. You're as bad as a dungheap in August.' 'Then she can send me back to my cottage,' Morach grumbled while the servants came up the stairs with the big bath and the cans of hot water. 'I didn't ask for some lout of a man to come riding all over my garden and snatch me off to come to help a woman in childbirth for a baby that's only just conceived.'

  'Oh, hush,' Alys said impatiently. 'Wash yourself, Morach. All over. And your hair too.'

  She left Morach with the steaming bath and when she returned, with a gown from the chest, Morach was wrapped in the counterpane from the bed, as near to the fire as she could get.

  'Folks die of wetting,' she said dourly. 'They die of dirt as well,' Alys retorted. 'Put this on.' She had chosen a simple green gown for Morach, a working woman's gown with no stomacher and no overskirt; and when she was dressed and the girdle tied, and a foot of material stitched up into a thick hem, she looked well.

  'How old are you, Morach?' Alys asked curiously. She seemed to have stayed the same age for all of Alys' life. Forever bent-backed, forever greying, forever lined, forever dirty.

  'Old enough,' Morach said unhelpfully. 'I'm not wearing that damned cap.'

  'I'll just comb your hair then,' Alys said. Morach fended her off. 'Stop it, Alys,' she said. 'I may be far from my hearthside, but I don't change. I don't want you touching me, I don't want to touch you. I am a hedgehog, not a coney. Keep your hands off me and you won't get prickled.'

  Alys recoiled. 'You've never wanted me touching you,' she said. 'Even when I was a little girl. Even when I was a baby I doubt you touched me more than you had to. I can't remember sitting on your knee. I can't remember you holding my hand. You're a cold woman, Morach, and a hard one. And you brought me up longing and longing for a little tenderness.'

  'Well, you found it, didn't you?' Morach demanded, unrepentant. 'You found the mother you wanted, didn't you?'

  'Yes,' Alys said, recognizing the truth of it. 'Yes, I did find her. And I thank God I found her before I had tumbled into Tom's arms for gratitude.'

  Morach gleamed. 'And how did you repay love?' she asked. 'When you found your mother, when you found the woman to hold you and kiss you goodnight and tell you stories of the saints, and teach you to read and to write? What sort of a daughter were you, Alys?'

  Alys turned a white face to Morach. 'Don't,' she said.

  'Don't?' Morach asked, deliberately dense. 'Don't what? Don't say that all this love counted for so much that at the first sniff of smoke you were away like a scalded cat? Don't remind you that you left her to burn with all your sisters while you skipped home at an easy pace? Don't remind you that you're a Judas?

  'I may be cold, but at least I'm honourable. I decided to feed you and house you and I kept my promise. And I did more than that – it suits you to forget it now. But I did dandle you and tell you stories. I kept you safe as I promised I would. I taught you all my skills, all my power. From your earliest days I let you watch everything, learn everything. There's always been a wise woman on the moor, and you were to be the wise woman after me.

  'But you were too clever to be wise. You had to find your own destiny, and so you promised to love your mother and her God forever; but at the first hint of danger you ran like a deer. You ran from her, back to me; and then you ran from her God, back to magic again. You're a woman of no loyalty, Alys. It's whatever will serve a purpose for you.'

  Alys had turned away and was looking out of the window where the sun was coming through the snow-clouds, hard and bright. Morach noted her hands on the stone window-sill, clenched until the knuckles showed white. 'I am not very old,' she said, her voice shaking. 'I am not yet seventeen. I would not run again. I have learned some things since the fire. I would not run now. I have learned.'

  'Learned what?' Morach demanded. 'I have learned that it would have been better for me to have died with her than to live with her death on my conscience,' Alys said. She turned back to the room and Morach saw that her face was drenched in tears. 'I thought that as long as I survived, that was all that mattered,' she said. 'Now I know that the price I paid for my escape is high, too high. It would have been better for me to have died beside her.'

  Morach nodded. 'Because you are now alone,' she said.

  'Very, very alone,' Alys repeated. 'And still in danger,' Morach confirmed. 'Mortal danger, every day,' Alys said. 'And deeply enmeshed in sin,' Morach finished with satisfaction.

  Alys nodded. 'I am beyond forgiveness,' she said. 'I can never confess. I can never do penance. I am beyond the pale of heaven.'

  Morach chuckled. 'M