Novels 03 The Wise Woman Read online

  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 grayer. “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 some 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’s stillness alerted Morach. Her voice trailed off and she looked at Alys, and then followed Alys’s fixed gaze. On the cover of the bed, out of hiding, the three candle-wax 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.

  Chapter

  18

  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’s 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 westward 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 I 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 of swirling fog which suddenly cleared in bright patches like little islands of sunshine along the road, until the fog came down like a gray wet night again.

  “If this fog thickens we can do our business without fear of being seen,” Morach said, pulling her shawl up over her mouth. “All finished and done and back to the castle in time for supper.”

  Alys nodded. “It will thicken,” she said with certainty. “I am going to get through this day without danger. I am going to escape the malice of these dolls. I am coming out of this with a whole skin.”

  Morach shot her a look, half rueful, half amused. “You have the power,” she conceded. “Call up the fog then, and safety at any price.”

  Alys nodded, half in jest. “A thick fog,” she repeated. “And my safety at any price, and…” She paused. “Hugo in my arms before the day ends!”

  Morach chuckled and shook her head. “Impatient whore,” she said, smiling. “You want everything, and always at once!”

  The fog lifted for a moment and the ponies trotted out more quickly along the road. Their unshod hooves made little sound on the soft mud. On either side of the track great bushes of gorse flowered, bright yellow, empty of perfume in the cold air.

  A flock of lapwings lifted from a meadow by the track and wheeled across the sky, calling into the wind. All around them the fog lay gray and thick but above the two women was an eye of brilliant blue sky and a bright sun.

  “Feel the warmth of that sun!” Morach said in delight. “I love the sun after a cold winter. I’ve been chilled to my bones these last few days. Chilled and shaking. It’s good to be out in the sunshine again.”

  Alys nodded, pushing the hood of her cape back. Her hair, free of a hood or cap, tangled into golden-brown curls. The color was back in her cheeks. “The castle is like a prison,” she said resentfully. “Whether Catherine is sweet or sour it is wearying to wait on her.”

  Morach nodded. “As soon as the babe is born, I’m away,” she said. “Back to my cottage.”

  Alys nodded. “You’ll just be in time for winter then,” she observed. “The child’s due in October.”

  Morach grinned. In a bush ahead of them a blackbird thrust out his chest and warbled a long rippling call. Morach whistled back, exactly the same notes, and the blackbird, half angry, half puzzled, repeated his song even louder.

  “I know,” she said carelessly. “But I’d rather die of cold on the moor than spend another winter in that castle.”

  “Would you?” Alys asked. “Would you really?”

  Morach looked around at her and the smile died from her face. “No,” she said. “I cannot abide the cold at the moment. I’d do anything rather than be cold and in the dark.”

  Alys shrugged her shoulders. “You’ve a whole summer ahead of you,” she said carelessly. “Don’t fret.”

  Morach shrugged off the shadow which had touched her, lifted her face to the sunlight and half closed her eyes. “And you?” she asked. “Will you wait for Hugo? When this task of ours is done? Will you fatten up and learn to smile, wait for him to weary of his tired wife and puking babe? I thought you had grown impatient with waiting, I thought you were turning to magic again?”

  Alys looked straight ahead at the swirl of mist before them which hid their road. “You saw me with Hugo in the runes, and I dreamed of him and me together, and a son we would have. I want him, Morach, and both you and I have seen it. It must be there, waiting to happen. Tell me how I can get him.”

  Morach pursed her lips and shook her head. “You have your power,” she said. “And you’re young, and when yo