The Wise Woman Read online

  There was a silence filled with fear in the room. The women sat, as still as sighted deer, waiting for their sense of terror to pass by. It was moments before either of them spoke. Then it was Alys, and her voice was not like her voice at all.

  'You have to do something,' she said slowly. She was looking down at the dolls on her lap. And her face was alight with a mixture of fear and exultation.

  'Why?'

  'Because the dolls have come alive,' Alys said. As she spoke she leaned closer and could see their little chests rise and fall in a slow languid rhythm of breathing. 'They are alive,' she said. 'We will have to do something with them, Morach, or they will start acting on their own.'

  Alys had never before seen Morach afraid. The woman seemed to hunch into herself as if she were cold, as if she were hungry. The long, hard years on the moor, living off the vegetable patch and the few begrudging gifts seemed to have laid their mark on her after all, and the gloss and the comfort of the weeks in the castle fell away as if they had never been.

  They had the dolls hidden beneath their pillow. At night Alys could feel them squirm beneath her head. During the day she felt their eyes follow her, through the pillow, through the rug, as she went around the room. They lived beside the two women, three monstrous little ghosts summoned into life and now impossible to kill.

  The two women were afraid. Both Morach and Alys were afraid that someone would see the cover on the bed stir and lift. They feared a scrupulous maidservant coming unbidden to shake the covers. They feared the prying eyes of Eliza Herring or a surprise visit from Father Stephen. The little dolls were so vivid in their minds they could hardly believe that no one else saw them, that no one else felt their presence, that no one else heard the occasional little cry muffled by the pillow, from behind the closed door.

  'What are we to do with them?' Alys asked Morach, at dawn on the third day.

  Neither woman had slept; the little dolls had stirred beneath the pillow all night. In the end they had wrapped themselves against the cold dawn air, thrown more wood on the fire, and sat at the hearth, huddled together, as the flames flared up. 'Can we burn them?' Alys asked. Morach shook her head. 'I dare not,' she said. 'Not now they're so lively. I don't know what they would do.' Her face was drawn and grey with fear and fatigue. 'What if they leaped out of the fire and came running, all melting and hot after us?' she asked. 'If the dolls themselves did not burn us, then Lord Hugh would have us for witchcraft. I wish to all the gods that I'd never given them to you.'

  Alys shrugged. 'You taught me the spell to give them power,' she argued. 'You must have known we would be stuck with them, lively, forever.'

  Morach shook her head. 'I never heard of it like this before,' she said. 'I never heard of it so powerful. It's your doing, Alys. It's your power. Your power and the great hatred you poured into them.'

  Alys clenched her hands on her blanket. 'If I have all this power why can I get nothing I want?' she demanded. 'I can make mistakes so powerful that my life is at risk. I can betray my mother and all my sisters. But the little skill to win a man from a woman I can't do. I get little joy from my power, Morach.'

  Morach shook her head. 'You're all contradictions,' she said. 'That's why your power comes and goes. One after another you have loved and betrayed. And now you want Hugo. What would you do if you had him?'

  Alys closed her eyes for a moment. Behind them, under the pillow in the shadowy bed draped with thick curtains, the little dolls lay still as if they too were listening.

  'I would love him,' she said, her voice languid with desire. 'I would make him my love, my lover. I would make him so drunk with me, so drugged with me that he would never look at another woman. I would make him my servant and my slave. I would make him mad for me.'

  Morach nodded and hitched the blanket a little closer. 'You'd destroy him too then,' she said. Alys flinched and opened her mouth to argue. 'No,' Morach said. 'It's true. If you take a young lord and make him your slave then you destroy him as much as an old lady left to burn to death. You're a darker power than any I've ever known or heard on, Alys. I wonder where you came from that dark night when I found you, abandoned at my door.'

  Alys shook her head. 'All I want is the things that other women have,' she said. 'The man I love, a place to live, comfort. Catherine is laden with goods. I want nothing more than she has. What right has she that I have not?'

  Morach shrugged. 'Maybe you'll get it,' she said. 'In your little time.'

  'How little?' Alys asked urgently. 'How long do I have, Morach?'

  The old woman shrugged, her face a little greyer. 'I can't see,' she said. 'It's all gone dark for me. The bones, the fire, the crystal, even the dreams. All I can see is a hare and a cave and coldness.' She shivered. 'As cold as death,' she said. 'I am learning fear in my old age.'

  Alys shook her head impatiently. 'I am afraid too,' she said. 'Every day we are in greater danger with the moppets here. Let's decide and be done with them. We dare not keep delaying.'

  Morach nodded. 'There's that holy ground, a little preaching cross, on the moor outside Bowes,' she said slowly. 'The other side of the river from my cottage.' Alys nodded. 'Tinker's Cross,' she said. 'Aye,' Morach said. 'Sanctified ground. That's the place for them. And the cross is near a lonely road. No one ever goes there. We could leave here in daylight, be there at midday, bury them in the holy ground, sprinkle them with some holy water, and be back here by supper.'

  'We could say we were fetching plantings,' Alys said. 'From the moorland, heather and flowers. I could take the pony.'

  Morach nodded. 'Once they're buried in holy ground they're safe,' she said. 'Let your sainted Mother of God take care of them instead of us.'

  Alys lowered her voice to a whisper. 'They won't bury us will they?' she asked, 'remember what I told you about the doll of Catherine? She pulled me into the moat, Morach. She meant to drown me when I tried to sink her. The little dolls won't find a way to bury us in revenge?'

  'Not in holy ground,' Morach said. 'Surely, they'd have no power on holy ground? And I made them and you spelled them. Working together, we must be their masters. If we take them soon and put them in holy ground, before they gather their power…'

  Something in Alys' stillness alerted her. Her voice tailed off and she looked at Alys, and then followed Alys' fixed gaze. On the cover of the bed, out of hiding, the three candlewax dolls stood in a row, leaning forward as if to listen. As the two women watched, silent in horror, the three took one hobbling little step closer.

  Eighteen

  They had the ponies saddled and harnessed as soon as the grooms were awake. They left a message for Lady Catherine and trusted to Morach's reputation for stubborn independence as their excuse for leaving without notice and without permission. They were both pale and silent as they trotted the ponies out of the castle gate. On one side of Alys' saddle she had slung a spade, and tied to the pannier was a sack which bulged and heaved.

  The ponies fretted all the way through the little town, shied at shadows and threw their heads about. Morach clung on with little skill.

  "They know what they're carrying,' she said quietly. As they left the cobbled main street of Castleton and started westwards down the country lanes, the bag went still and quiet and the ponies went more steadily.

  'It's as if they wanted to betray us,' Morach said, bringing her pony alongside Alys and speaking very low. 'There is powerful hatred in them.'

  Alys was white-faced, strained, her blue eyes black with fear. 'Hush,' she said. 'Did you get some holy water?'

  'Stole it,' Morach said with quiet satisfaction. "That Father Stephen is careless with his box of tricks; he left it behind in his room, he thinks himself safe in the castle. I could have had some bread from the Mass too, but I thought better not.'

  'No,' Alys said. She remembered the last time she had tasted communion bread, and the undigested wafer coming up whole in her throat. 'Better left alone.'

  The two women rode on in silence. It was a day