Novels 03 The Wise Woman Read online

  Mother Hildebrande was sitting in the doorway, her tired old face turned to the sun as if she were soaking in the warmth. She opened her eyes when she heard the noise of the pony and stood up, hauling herself up the frame of the door.

  Alys dismounted, tied the pony to the hawthorn bush, and stepped over the sheep stile.

  “Mother,” she said. She glanced around swiftly. The open moorland all around the cottage was bare and empty. Alys knelt on the threshold and Mother Hildebrande rested her trembly hand on Alys’s head and blessed her.

  “You are come at last, daughter,” Mother Hildebrande said.

  Alys stood up. There was determination in the old woman’s eyes.

  “I cannot stay,” Alys said gently. “Not yet. That is what I came to tell you.”

  The old woman eased herself down on the stool at the doorstep. Alys sat at her feet. Mother Hildebrande said nothing. She waited.

  “I am not unwilling,” Alys said persuasively. “But Lady Catherine is ill, near to death, and no one there can care for her. She has miscarried her child and is scouring with a dreadful white fluid which they say is a curse upon her and upon Lord Hugh’s house for the sacrilege of destroying our nunnery. A holy woman is needed there. She needs me to protect her from fear. No one knows what to do. She is mortally afraid and for no fault of her own. I cannot believe that our merciful Lord would want me to abandon her. And anyway, they would not let me go. Even now I am only released from the castle to fetch some herbs and some elm bark for her.”

  Mother Hildebrande said nothing. She sat very still, watching Alys’s clear profile as Alys sat at her feet, leaned back against her knees as she always used to sit—and lied.

  “The old lord is tender with my beliefs,” Alys said urgently. “He does not care which faith he follows. But his son is a Protestant, an unbeliever. It was he who wrecked our abbey, and now he is turning his attention to every religious house for miles around. His father is sheriff of the county but it is Hugo who rides out and does the king’s sacrilege. He believes in nothing, he trusts nothing. He hates the true faith and he captures and imprisons believers. If he knew you were here—the mother of an order he had wrecked—he would hunt you down and hurt you until you were driven to deny your faith.”

  Mother Hildebrande looked at her steadily. “I do not fear him,” she said gently. “I fear nothing.”

  “But what good does it do?” Alys demanded passionately. “What good does it do to risk danger, when with a little care and caution and delay you could get away to safety? Isn’t that the Lord’s work? To get to safety so that you can live according to His laws again?”

  Mother Hildebrande shook her head. “No, Sister Ann,” she said. “Saving your own skin is not the Lord’s work. You are speaking with the persuasive voice of the world. You are speaking of clever practice and winning by deceit. The way we are promised is not that way. The Lord’s work is to proclaim Him in words and to demonstrate Him in our lives. I have never been skilled with words, I have never been a clever woman; but I can be a wise woman. I can be a woman who can show by her life a lesson which a more learned woman would write in a book. I cannot argue truths—but I can demonstrate them. I can live my life, and die my death, as if there were some things which matter more than clinging to goods and staving off death.”

  “It is not wise to die!” Alys exclaimed.

  Mother Hildebrande laughed gently, the dry old skin of her face wrinkling easily with her smile. “Then all men are fools!” she said softly. “Of course it is wise to die, Alys. Everyone will die, all that we can choose is whether we die in faith. Whether your dangerous young lord comes for me today, or whether I die surrounded by my friends in a comfortable bed, does not matter to my immortal soul, just to my frightened body. Wherever and whenever I die, I want to die in my faith and my death will show that the most important thing in my life was keeping my faith.”

  “But I want to live!” Alys said stubbornly.

  The old woman smiled. “Oh, so do I!” she said, and even Alys could hear the longing in her voice. “But not at any price, my daughter. Both of us took that decision when we took our vows. Those vows are harder to keep now than it seemed when you were a little girl and the abbey was the finest home you could have hoped for. But the vows are still binding, and those who have the wisdom to hold to them will have the joy of knowing that they are one with God and with His Holy Mother.”

  They were both silent.

  “Go back to your comrades,” the old woman said gently. “Tell them that Catherine will have to get well without you. And then come back here. If your monstrous young lord comes after you then we will face him with what courage the Lord gives us. If he does not, then we will make a new life here in peace.”

  “I am under guard!” Alys exclaimed. “I cannot come away. They will not let me.”

  Mother Hildebrande looked at her. “Then stay here,” she said simply. “Let us wait for them to seek you here and we can face them together.”

  Alys shook her head. “They would come at once and take us both prisoner,” she said. “We would have no chance at all!”

  “No one can take a wise woman prisoner,” Hildebrande said. “Her heart and her mind belong to herself. If you obey your vows then all the obstacles on your path will fall away.”

  “You don’t know what they will do when they catch you!” Alys exclaimed.

  Mother Hildebrande smiled and shook her head. “Alys, I have been in hiding for ten months, ever since the sack of the abbey. I know exactly what they will do to me. They will question me as to my faith, they will beg me to recant. Then they will show me the instruments of torture. Do you have a torture dungeon at the castle?”

  “I don’t know,” Alys said unwillingly. “I suppose so…I don’t know. I’ve never been there.”

  Mother Hildebrande smiled. “And it is I who am called blind!” she said. “Then I will tell you, Alys. Lord Hugh does indeed have a torture room at Castleton castle. It is in the prison tower in the eastern corner of the inner manse. You can see the roof of the tower from the market-place in Castleton. It is opposite the round tower where Lord Hugh has his rooms. If you do not know of it, then you must be blind indeed.

  “They say that it is a room like a cellar, with no way in and no way out except narrow stairs with a trapdoor into the guardroom, guarded by the soldiers. They have pincers to tear the fingernails and toenails from the hands and feet, they have great shears to crop ears, to slit tongues. They have a little blacksmith’s forge to heat the brands to burn flesh, and they have a rack to stretch and stretch your body until all the bones are wrenched from their sockets and you are a cripple in every limb.”

  “Stop it,” Alys cried with her hands over her ears. “Stop it!”

  “They have a press made of carved wood to crush the breath out of your body and break your ribs. They have a gag which holds your mouth open with sharp metal plates. They have a collar with spikes facing inward which they tighten and tighten until the spikes are driven through your skin into your throat.”

  “I won’t hear this! I won’t listen!” Alys exclaimed.

  Mother Hildebrande waited for Alys to put her hands down from her ears. “I know the dangers I am facing,” she said gently. “It would be a poor act of faith if it were done by accident, would it not? I know what they can do to me if they take me. It is right that I should know the tortures I may face. Our Lord knew all His life what would come to Him. And my pains will be no worse than a crucifixion. No worse than the pains Our Lord suffered willingly for us. If He calls me to do it for Him, how can I say no?”

  Alys shook her head dumbly.

  “Is it fear, Sister Ann? Are you too 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.”

  Alys paused for a moment, thinking of the many safer ways she had chosen. Her flight from the burning abbey and Morach’s dreadful death. She clos