Novels 03 The Wise Woman Read online

  “It goes back miles,” she said, her voice echoing. “I can’t see the end of it. It could go for miles into the hillside.”

  She came out again and took the reins from Morach.

  Morach’s face was strained. “Did you hear the water rising?” she asked. “I’m afraid of it coming up early. We don’t want to be cut off this side of the river if the water is rising.”

  “I heard it, but it was far away down at the bottom of the cave,” Alys said. “We’ll have enough time. Come on.”

  The two ponies straggled up the hill on the far side, stepping out on the dry ground, floundering in the bogs. Ahead of them, on the track, they could see the mark of horses’ hooves.

  There was a cairn on the top of the hill and the wide, dry moorland stretching all around them. Morach pushed her shawl off her face and looked around her.

  “That’s better,” she said. “Tinker’s Cross is this way.”

  She led the way, kicking her pony into a trot. Alys’s pony trotted behind, the pannier bumping at every step. The mist had cleared now they were on the top of the moor, though it clung to the valley sides. Ahead of them, Alys could see the thin finger of the old Celtic cross pointing upward. Around it was a little circle of stones, the edge of the sanctified ground. When Alys came up to the cross Morach had already dismounted and was tying her pony to a holly bush.

  “Give me the dolls,” she said to Alys. “And dig them their grave.”

  Alys untied the pannier bag from the saddle and handed it, unopened, to Morach. Morach hunkered down on the wet turf and held the bag in her arms. Quietly she crooned a little tune at the dolls, while Alys untied the shovel from the other side of the saddle.

  “If you remember any of your prayers you should say them,” she remarked, without raising her eyes. “The holier the act of burying them the better.”

  Alys shrugged. “I remember them,” she said. “But coming from me they might as well be said backward. I am far from the grace of God, Morach. You’d be closer to heaven than me.”

  Morach shrugged almost regretfully. “Not I,” she said. “I’ve not set foot in a church in twenty years, and I never understood what they were saying even then. I made my choice. I don’t regret it. But I’ll never work with deep shadows again as you have done here. It’s too powerful for me.”

  Alys thrust the spade hard into the holy ground and twisted it out, tearing at the tough roots of the grasses. “I went as deep as I was driven,” Alys said. “You counseled me to it. You said if I lost one god I should seek another.”

  “Hush,” Morach said, looking around. The bag on her lap stirred and she held them tighter. “Keep your voice down,” she said. “There is older magic here than the cross. That holly tree was planted to mark this place before the cross was raised. The old magic runs very strong here. Don’t wake it now.”

  “It was your bidding,” Alys insisted in a whisper, thrusting the spade in deeper. “It was my choice to use it, but it was your spell.”

  Morach looked up at her, her dark eyes gleaming. “We had an agreement,” she said.

  Alys was silent, digging hard. She was through to the stone soil now, the grave for the dolls was a spade’s width across.

  “You ordered them, you took responsibility for them,” Morach insisted. “They are your dolls. I made you swear that you would not blame me for them, whatever they did.”

  Alys said nothing, turning out shovelfuls of damp soil into a little heap.

  “By rights I need not be here,” Morach said resentfully. “Your dolls, your magic, and your bitter power that has made them so lively.”

  Alys rested on the handle of the shovel and pushed back a lock of hair with one grimy hand. “Have done,” she said. “Is this deep enough?”

  Morach leaned forward. “A little more,” she said. “We want them to sleep well, the bonny little things.”

  Alys thrust the spade deep again and then jerked her head up.

  “What’s that?” she demanded. “Did you hear?”

  “What?” Morach asked quickly. “What?”

  The mist was closing down again, swirling around them. Alys shrank back. “I thought I heard something,” she said.

  “Heard what?” Morach said. “What d’you hear, Alys?”

  “Horses,” Alys said, so softly that Morach could scarcely hear the words. “What’ll we do, Morach? What’ll we do if someone comes?”

  “I hear them!” Morach said urgently. “I heard a horn!”

  There was a sudden blast of a hunting horn, very near them, and then out of the mist two great deerhounds leaped, dashed past Morach, nearly knocking her over, and bayed, savagely, terrifyingly, at Alys.

  Alys flung herself back till the cold stone of the cross at her back stopped her. She pressed back against it and the dogs, their hackles high and prickly on their great backs, opened their mouths and roared at her like lions.

  “Hugo!” Alys screamed over the noise. “Hugo! Save me! Call your dogs off me! Save me!”

  The horn blasted loud again and then a great roan stallion leaped out of the mist toward them and reared to a standstill. Hugo jumped down with his riding whip in his hands and beat his dogs back.

  Alys flung herself toward him and he caught her up in his arms.

  “Alys?” he said in amazement.

  The other huntsmen rose out of the fog, one of them slipped a leash on each of the dogs. “Alys, what are you doing here?” Hugo looked around and saw Morach, rising to her feet, her face a sickly gray and a bag which kicked and squirmed in her hand.

  “What d’you have there?” he rapped out.

  Morach held the bag fast and shook her head. She seemed to have lost her tongue in her terror. She shook her head harder and harder like an idiot child incapable of speech.

  “What d’you have there?” Hugo demanded again, his voice hard with his own fear. “Answer me! Answer me! Tell me what you have in that sack!”

  Morach said nothing but the bag went suddenly still.

  Then Alys screamed, a sharp, piercing scream of pure terror, and pointed. The bag was splitting open, from bottom to top, like the rancid skin of a rotten peach. Splitting and bursting open. And out of it, marching like a row of crippled soldiers, came the three dolls. The scrawny, beaky, old lord, the grossly pregnant woman doll, and the sightless, fingerless, mouthless, earless Hugo.

  “She did it!” Alys screamed, the words pouring out of her mouth like a river in flood. “She did it! She made them! She hexed them! Morach did it! Morach!”

  Morach stared Alys in the face for one full, incredulous second, then she whirled around and plunged into the fog, skirts snatched up, running as fast as she could like a hunted animal, into the deepest fog in the valley.

  “Holloa!” Hugo yelled. “A witch! A witch!” He jumped up into the saddle, seized Alys’s arm, and hauled her up behind him. The horse was dancing to be off and Alys grabbed at Hugo’s shoulders. The huntsman unleashed the dogs and they bayed and circled the hunters, as if they could not catch the scent. One of them pawed up at Alys, reaching for her, its wide mouth open, its breath hot. Hugo kicked it down with an oath. “Holloa! Holloa!” he yelled again. “A witch! Find the witch! Seek the witch! Seek her!”

  The big dog bayed again and flung himself at Alys but then the huntsman blew his horn in a great discordant shriek and the dogs broke away into the mist. Hugo’s huge stallion wheeled and dashed after them. Alys pressed her face to Hugo’s back and clung around his waist, weeping in her terror.

  Morach was ahead of them, scrambling downhill, slipping in the mud, crawling over the stones, and then up again, running for her life. The dogs sighted her and bayed a deeper note. She whirled around when she heard it and they saw a glimpse of her white face, then she fell to her hands and knees and dropped out of sight for one moment.

  “A hare!” a young huntsman called. “A hare! She’ll change herself into a hare!”

  As he spoke a hare broke from the ground beneath their feet, black-