The Wise Woman Read online

  Alys felt the room heave and yaw like a sailing ship out of control. She clung to the fine linen sheets as if they were safety lines in a storm-rolling sea.

  'I can't hear,' she said pitifully. 'I did not hear you, Mary. Say it again.'

  ‘I said she is to be tried tomorrow for heresy,' Mary said loudly in her rounded country accent, like one talking to an old deaf woman. 'They say she is no witch, but a heretic. A papist. They will try her tomorrow after dinner.'

  Alys lay back against the pillows, her eyes shut. The child in her belly stirred and kicked against the pounding of Alys' rapid pulse. Alys felt her sins massing against her. Her stomach churned in terror, her heart fluttered.

  'Get a bowl,' she said thickly to Mary. ‘I am going to be sick.'

  Mary held the bowl while Alys vomited a stream of undigested pottage from dinner and then her breakfast of bread and meat and ale, and then yellow bile, until she was retching and retching on an empty belly and bringing up nothing but clear saliva.

  Mary whipped the bowl out of the room and came back with a ewer and a napkin moistened with cold water. She sponged Alys' face and her neck – hot and sweaty under the heavy weight of her hair. She held a glass of water to her lips.

  'Is it the sweating sickness?' she asked Alys anxiously. 'Or is the child pressing against your belly too hard? The old lord should not make you work so! Can I fetch you something to eat?' Alys leaned forward. 'Help me up,' she said. Mary protested but Alys threw back the covers and held out her hands. 'Help me,' she ordered.

  They had laid her on her bed in her blue gown and put covers over her. The gown was hot and creased. Take this off,' Alys said.

  Mary unfastened the gown and shook it out, laying it in the chest.

  'I will wear my green gown,' Alys said. Mary slipped it on over Alys' head. Alys stood still and let her dress her, like an old pagan stone on the moors, dressed with scarves.

  Her legs were trembling and Mary helped her across the gallery and down the stairs to the great hall. The servants were pulling the tables and benches back into their usual places after the disruption of the trial. She let Mary help her to the door to the garden and then she waved her away. She stepped out of the shade of the hall on to the cobblestones of the yard and out into the garden to find the old lord. He was sitting in the arbour, enjoying the evening sunshine. Eliza Herring and Margery were sitting beside him. Eliza was playing her lute.

  Alys paused for a moment, watching them. The old lord's white hair shone in the sunshine, Eliza and Margery's dresses were bright – yellow and blue, summertime colours. Behind Lord Hugh's head an espaliered peach tree was showing fat fruits. Before them were half a dozen formal flower-beds with twisting gravel paths around them edged with box. And on the left, in the far corner of the castle wall, was the tower with the staircase to the second storey and a doorway only on the second storey. The lower storey had neither windows nor door. It was a blind tower of solid stone. It was the prison tower and the only way into it was through a trapdoor in the guardroom floor down rough steps. And the only way out (they said as a joke) was in a coffin.

  Alys walked across the grass, her green gown hushing around her legs, through the maze of paths, a couple of hens and a cock scattering before her, until she came before Lord Hugh.

  'Alys,' he said with pleasure. 'Are you better already? You gave us a fright. I've never seen so deep a swoon. Sit down! Sit down!'

  He brushed Eliza and Margery off the seat and waved them away. They curtsied and wandered off, their heads together. Alys sat on the sun-warmed bench beside Lord Hugh.

  'How sweet the air smells,' she said idly. 'And how well the garden is doing.'

  'It's not big enough,' Lord Hugh said. 'My wife always wanted me to lay a formal pleasure garden. But I never had the time, nor the desire to throw money away for a posy of flowers.' He flapped his hand irritably at the hens which were picking at the flower-beds. 'They'd eat them all,' he said. 'Where's the kitchen-lad? They should not be out here!'

  Alys smiled. 'What was she like, your wife?' she asked.

  Lord Hugh thought. 'Oh, good,' he said vaguely. 'Wellborn, religious. Dull.' He racked his brains. 'She read a good deal,' he said. 'Lives of the saints, church books, that sort of thing. She had very black hair – that was her best feature. Long, thick, black hair. Hugo has her hair.'

  'Did she die young?' Alys asked. The old lord shook his head. 'Middling,' he said. 'She was forty or thereabouts – a good life for a woman. She was ill with all her childbirths. And miscarriages. Lord! She must have had a dozen. And at the end all we had to show for it was two worthless daughters and Hugo.'

  A companionable silence fell between them, Lord Hugh smiling at some old memory, Alys sitting beside him, composed.

  'That old woman,' she said casually. 'What became of her?'

  'The suspected witch?' Hugh roused himself. 'Oh, she was no witch. They put her to question under torture and she said nothing that could be called witchcraft. Even Stephen accepted that, and he sees a warlock in every doorway.'

  Alys chuckled, a strained, unconvincing sound. 'He's very enthusiastic,' she said.

  Lord Hugh cocked an eyebrow at her. 'Everything to gain,' he said. 'It's the King's Church now. Progress upward and there is the King's court at the top and God's heaven beyond that. A tempting enough prospect, I should think.' Alys smiled and nodded.

  'I don't know where it will all end,' he said. 'I shan't see the end of it, that's for sure. I used to think they would go back to the old ways but I can't see how any more. The abbeys are half destroyed, the priests have all taken the oath to honour the King. Still, it is Hugo's inheritance. And he's all for the new ways. He will have to find his path through them. I don't doubt he has the skill. As Stephen ascends, Hugo rises too. They have hitched their stars together.' Alys nodded again. 'The old woman…' she started.

  'A papist,' the old lord said. 'Accused of heresy and treason. When they got her off the rack and drenched her with cold water until she could speak again, she denounced them all, and said she was ready to die for her faith. We'll try her tomorrow. I doubt she'll recant. She's a powerful woman.'

  'Can't she be released?' Alys asked. 'Shipped off somewhere? She's such an old lady and she will die soon anyway. She's no danger to anyone.'

  Lord Hugh shook his head. 'Not now she's arrested,' he said pedantically. 'She's in the court records, Stephen knows of her. His report goes to his bishop, mine goes to the council. She can't just disappear. She has to be tried and found innocent or guilty.'

  'But on what you say, she's bound to be guilty!' Alys exclaimed. 'Unless she recants, she's bound to be found guilty.'

  The old lord shrugged. 'Yes,' he said simply. He leaned his head back against the sun-warmed stones. 'You could bake bread on this wall,' he said. 'It holds the heat like an oven.'

  'It serves no good purpose to execute her,' Alys insisted. 'She's so old and frail that people will hate you and Hugo for hurting an old woman. They could turn against you. It's hardly worth the risk.'

  The old lord turned his head to Alys. 'It's out of my hands,' he said gently. 'She is accused before the court and I will try her tomorrow. Stephen will be reasoning with her and questioning her. She wanted no one to represent her. If she does not repent, take the Oath of Supremacy and acknowledge the King as head of the Church, then she has to die. It's not whim, Alys. It's the law.'

  'Couldn't you…' Alys started.

  Lord Hugh turned his head towards Alys and his look was acute. 'Do you know her?' he asked sharply. 'Was she from your old Order? Are you pleading for her?'

  Alys met his eyes squarely. 'No,' she said. 'I have never seen her before in my life. She means nothing to me, nothing. I am just sorry for her. Such a foolish old woman to die for her delusions. I feel distressed that my complaint has brought her here, nothing more.'

  Hugh leaned forward and clapped his hands at the hens. They scuttered out of reach. The cock flapped his wings and jumped awkwardly to the flat