Novels 03 The Wise Woman Read online

  “You call her Lady Catherine,” Alys warned. “We can go and see her now, I suppose. She’s sewing in the gallery. But watch what you say, Morach. Not one word of magic or she will have us both. She no longer fears me as a rival, but she would not resist the temptation to get rid of me, if you gave her the evidence to put me through another ordeal.”

  Morach nodded, the old slyness back in her eyes above the green shawl. “I don’t forget,” she said. “I’m not bought with a whore’s gown. I’ll keep my silence until I’m ready to speak.”

  Alys nodded and opened the door. The women were sitting at the far end of the gallery with the yellow wintry sun shining through the arrow-slits on their work. They all turned and stared as Alys led Morach into the room.

  “Anyway,” Morach said behind her hand, “it wasn’t me that used the magic dolls, was it, Alys?”

  Alys shot Morach one furious glance and walked forward. “Lady Catherine,” she said. “May I present to you my kinswoman, Morach.”

  Lady Catherine looked up from her sewing. “Ah, the cunning woman,” she said. “Morach of Bowes Moor. I thank you for coming.”

  Morach nodded. “No thanks are due to me,” she said.

  Lady Catherine smiled at the compliment.

  “Because I didn’t choose to come,” Morach said baldly. “They rode up to my cottage and snatched me out of my garden. They said it was done on your orders. So am I free to go if I wish?”

  Catherine was taken aback. “I don’t…” she started. “Well…But Morach, most women would be glad to come to the castle and live with my ladies and eat well, and sleep in a bed.”

  Morach gleamed under the thatch of gray hair. “I’m not ‘most women,’ my lady,” she said with satisfaction. “I am not like most women at all. So I thank you to tell me: am I free to come and go as I please?”

  Alys drew breath to interrupt, but then hesitated. Morach could take what chances she wished, she had clearly decided to haggle with Lady Catherine. Alys chose to avoid the conflict. She left Morach standing alone in the center of the room and went to sit beside Eliza and looked at her embroidery.

  “Of course you are free,” Lady Catherine said. “But I require your help. I have no mother or family near to advise me. Everyone tells me you are the best cunning woman in all the country for childbirth and cursing. Is that true?”

  “Not the cursing,” Morach said briskly. “That’s just slander and poison-talk. I do no curses or spells. But I am a healer and I can deliver a baby quicker than most.”

  “Will you deliver mine?” Lady Catherine asked. “When he is born in October? Will you promise to deliver me a healthy son in October?”

  Morach grinned. “If you conceived a healthy son in January, I can deliver him in October,” she said. “Otherwise…probably not.”

  Lady Catherine leaned forward. “I’m certain I have conceived a son,” she said. “Can you tell? Can you assure me? Alys said it was a boy, can you see for sure? Can you tell if he’s healthy?”

  Morach nodded but stayed where she was. “I can tell if it is a boy or girl,” she said. “And later on I can tell if it is lying right.”

  Lady Catherine beckoned her closer.

  “If I want to,” Morach said unhelpfully. “I can tell the sex of a child—if I want to.”

  There was a ripple of subdued shock among the women. Ruth glanced over at Alys to see how fearful she was of her kinswoman’s temerity. Alys’s face was serene. She knew Morach always drove a hard bargain with a customer and Lady Catherine’s private score with Alys could not be worsened.

  “Alys, tell your kinswoman to watch her tongue or I will have her thrown to the castle dogs,” Lady Catherine said, her voice sharp with warning.

  Alys raised her head from Eliza’s embroidery and smiled at Lady Catherine without fear. “I cannot command her, my lady,” she said. “She will say and do as she pleases. If you dislike her you should send her home. There are many wise women in the country. Morach is nothing special.”

  Morach cocked an eyebrow at the barb but said nothing.

  Lady Catherine hunched her shoulders in irritation. “What do you want then?” she asked Morach. “What d’you want, to tell the sex of the child, to minister to me in the months of waiting, and deliver me a boy?”

  “A shilling a month,” Morach said, ticking off her requirements on her fingers. “All the ale and food I want. And the right to go in and out of the castle without any hindrance or question, day and night.”

  Lady Catherine chuckled reluctantly. “You’re an old huckster,” she said. “I hope you deliver babies as well as you bargain.”

  Morach gave her a slow dark smile. “And a donkey, so I can get to my cottage and back when I need,” she added.

  Lady Catherine nodded.

  “Do we have an agreement?” Morach asked.

  “Yes,” Lady Catherine said.

  Morach stepped forward, spat in her hand and held it out to shake. Ruth, who was sitting at Catherine’s feet, shrank back as if from an infection, but to Alys’s surprise Lady Catherine leaned forward and took Morach’s hand in a firm grip.

  “Funny old lady, your kinswoman,” Eliza said under her breath.

  “She’s an old hag,” Alys said, stirred with a sudden unreasonable irritation. “I wish she had never come.”

  “My lord was asking for you, Alys,” Lady Catherine said, scarcely troubling herself to glance over. “Lord Hugh is in his chamber. He has some clerk’s work for you.”

  Alys rose to her feet and curtsied. She glanced over toward Morach. The old woman was the only idle one in the room. All of them, even Lady Catherine, had needlework or a distaff in their hands. She winked at Alys and hitched a footstool a little nearer the blazing fire.

  “Your kinswoman will do well with us,” Lady Catherine said. “I have some plain sewing which you can do, Morach.”

  Morach smiled at her. “I don’t sew, my lady,” she said pleasantly.

  There was another ripple of subdued shock among the women but Lady Catherine looked amused. “Will you sit idle, with empty hands then? While all of us work?” she asked.

  Morach nodded. “I am here to watch over you and the child,” she said grandly. “I need to be able to see—with my healer’s vision. If you want some fool”—she smiled impartially at the busy women—“some fool to net you a cap, there are many of them. There is only one of me.”

  Catherine laughed. Alys did not even smile. She curtsied to Catherine and went from the room. Only when she was in the round tower climbing the little turret staircase to Lord Hugh’s bedchamber did she realize that her jaw had been set with irritation and it ached.

  Lord Hugh was seated at a table, a thin, densely written piece of paper unfurled before him.

  “Alys!” he said as she came in. “I need you to read this. It’s written small. I cannot see it.”

  “From London?” Alys asked.

  The old lord nodded. “The bird brought it to me,” he said. “My homing pigeons. Clever little birds, through all this bad weather. It must be urgent for my man to send them out into snow. What does it say?”

  The letter was from one of Lord Hugh’s informants at court. It was unsigned, with a code of numbers to represent the king, the queen, Cromwell, and the other lords. Lord Hugh had his own methods for making sure that his sovereign sprang no surprises on his loyal vassals.

  Alys read it through and then glanced up at Lord Hugh. “Grave news,” she said.

  Hugh nodded. “Tell me.”

  “He says the queen was taken to her bed. She was with child, a boy child, and he is lost.”

  “Oho,” Lord Hugh said softly. “That’s bad for her.”

  Alys scanned the paper. “Sir Edward Seymour is to become a member of the privy chamber.” She glanced at Lord Hugh. He was nodding, looking at the fire.

  “The queen blames the miscarriage on a shock from His Majesty’s fall,” Alys read. “But there is one who says that he heard the king say that God will not