The Wise Woman Read online

  'Is it fear, Sister Ann? Are you afraid to travel this road with me?' Mother Hildebrande asked, and her voice was filled with pity. 'Tell me if it is so and we will find you another way, a safer way.'

  There was a long silence. Then Alys shook her head. 'No, Mother,' she said slowly. 'I have been your daughter from the moment I first saw you. Where you lead I have promised to follow. If it is God's will and your belief that we must risk this, then I cannot refuse.' Mother Hildebrande put her hand gently on Alys' head in a silent blessing. 'Then why is it I feel that you hesitate?' she said softly. 'Is it the young lord, Sister Ann? Has he become dear to you?'

  Alys shook her head in denial but Mother Hildebrande never shifted her gaze. 'Are you in sin, Ann?' she asked gently. 'Have you looked at a married man and forgotten his vows to his wife, and your vows to Our Lord? God forgive me, but when I saw you first in that red gown I feared you had become his whore.' 'I am not!' Alys said in a whisper. 'He is young and handsome and they say that he loves lust and young women. If he forced you, Ann, or even if he seduced you into consent, you can tell me, and we will find a penance for you. You can expiate your sin. Our Lady is merciful, she will intercede for you.'

  'I have done nothing,' Alys said defiantly. She looked up at Hildebrande and for one moment the old abbess saw the hungry child of the herb garden who swore she had no kin and no one to prevent her coming to the abbey.

  The old woman paused a moment longer, searching Alys' clear, open face. 'I pray that it is so,' she said at last. 'Go now, Alys, and tell them you are not returning to the castle with them. We have to start our new life here at once. God is not to be delayed with excuses. His call comes before that of a lady in a castle – whoever is her husband.'

  Alys rose reluctantly. 'Do you have enough food?' she asked.

  The abbess smiled. 'I feasted like a prince on your gift,' she said. 'There is plenty, and when that is gone Our Lady will send plenty once more. We will not hunger here, Sister Ann. We will not be cold and lonely.

  The Lord will guide us. I trust Him to set a table for me, and my cup will run over.' 'I'll light the fire,' Alys said.

  'You can do it when you come back,' the abbess said. ‘I’ll do it now. The cottage needs airing. The sooner the fire is lit the better.'

  The abbess let her go inside, closed her eyes to the sunlight and murmured a prayer of thanksgiving that Sister Ann was found, the finest child of the abbey, found and restored to God once more. Whatever her sins – and there must have been many sins during ten long hazardous months out in the world – the girl would confess them and expiate them. It was a joy as great as that of a holy conception to have the child, her beloved daughter, returned to her. 'Like the prodigal son,' the abbess whispered softly. Under her closed eyelids she could feel the prickle of tears. Sister Ann had been spared the fire and been spared rape, and had been led home.

  'It's alight,' said Alys tersely, coming out into the sunshine again with dirty hands. 'In a few moments you can put some of the wood on. Put only one piece at a time, it's damp.'

  The old woman nodded, smiling. 'I shall walk along the river to meet you as you come back from your escort,' she said. 'The river here flows underground, you can sometimes hear it as you walk along the banks, Ann, did you know? It made me think of our faith -sometimes underground and sometimes above, but always flowing.'

  Alys nodded. She could not look at the caves uncovered by the drought without thinking of Morach's drowned body trapped and rotting in the crooked darkness of one of the holes. She could not sense the deep, secret, wetness of the water under the rocks. All she could see was the glare from the limestone slabs. All she could feel was their merciless aridity. 'I won't be long,' she said.

  Twenty-eight

  Alys rode towards Castleton without looking back.

  Mary, mounted on the pony again, rode behind her.

  The soldiers, rested after their dinner in the wood, stepped out blithely. The leading soldier whistled softly through his teeth. The fine weather was breaking up, there was a mist lying in swirls along the river, clumping over the still pools. The air was colder in the west, behind them there were long thick strips of cloud gathering.

  'Best make haste,' the soldier in front said over his shoulder. 'It's going to rain and you have no cape.'

  Alys nodded and the man broke into a slow, steady run. The mule trotted behind him, the dust beneath its hooves as white as salt. Alys, watching its long, doltish ears, jogged uncomfortably along. Behind her she heard the rapid, light sounds of her pony cantering, held in on a tight rein by Mary. Alys could taste the dust of the road in her mouth, could feel its stony dryness on the skin of her face, in her hair. She felt its crystalline deadness all around her as she rode away from Hildebrande and left her alone on the high moor.

  The horses' hooves rang hollowly on the Castleton bridge. The soldier slackened his pace as they walked through the town. The market traders were gathering up their goods, a sharp flurry of wind whipped the cloth on a weaver's stall into a dozen flags. The pony shied but Mary, sitting easily in the saddle, moved with it; the mule waggled his long ears at the sight. 'Just got home in time,' the soldier said. The guards at the gates barred their way with pikes and then lifted them up in a salute to Alys. Behind them came the dull rumble of thunder.

  'Here comes the rain,' the soldier said. 'You were lucky to get home dry, Mistress Alys.'

  Alys nodded and let him lift her from the saddle under the shelter of the gateway.

  'Someone lend me a cape,' she said abruptly. A scud of rain raced across the courtyard before them. Mary put a soldier's cape around Alys' shoulders and Alys pulled it up over her stiff gable hood. Ducking her head against the driving rain she ran across the yard, through the second gate, across the inner manse and into the great hall.

  She paused inside the hall as a crack of lightning made the hall as bright as midday and then a loud peal of thunder exploded outside. A soldier at the fire jumped and crossed himself. 'Christ save us!' he said. 'That was right overhead.'

  'Where is the young lord?' Alys asked him. 'Where is Hugo?'

  'With his father, Mistress Alys,' he replied. 'A messenger came from the King and they are reading the letters.'

  Alys nodded and went through the hall, through the lobby, to the round tower. As she climbed the tower steps her way was suddenly bright as the lightning exploded again. Alys stumbled and clung to the wall as the thunder rocked the building. ‘I will do it,' she said through her teeth.

  Her gown had been soaked in the brief run across the courtyard and now it clung to her thighs, dragging her down. It was as cold and wet as the gown of a drowned woman. 'I will do it,' Alys said again.

  She went up a dozen more stairs into the circular guardroom below the old lord's room. There were two soldiers playing at dice. 'Is the young lord with his father?' Alys asked them.

  'Yes, Mistress Alys,' said the younger, standing to speak to her and pulling off his cap.

  Alys nodded. The thunder rolled dully as if it had sped away to rage around the other tower, the prison tower.

  'The storm has gone,' the lad said. 'What a clap that was just now!'

  'It's not gone yet,' Alys said. She turned from the room and went up the next flight of stairs, clinging to the stones at the side of the stairs as if her knees were weak.

  She had been right about the storm. As she raised her hand to the latch of the old lord's door a knife of white light sliced through the arrow-slit to Alys' feet and then a great angry roar of thunder shook the stone tower. Alys, flinching back, almost fell into the room.

  Hugo, his father and David were seated at the fireside.

  'What a storm!' the old lord said. 'Are you wet, Alys? Are you cold?'

  'No, no,' she said. She heard that her voice was too sharp, too alarmed. She took a breath and steadied herself. 'I had to run across the courtyard but we were home before the rain started,' she said.

  Hugo looked up at her. 'You should change from your wet c