The Wise Woman Read online

  Catherine was blue. Her staring, blank face and all over her flaccid body was stained veinous-blue. Blue fingernails, blue feet, blue lips, white-blue face.

  Someone had heaved her up out of her bath-water and then let her slide in again so her head was tipped back against the edge of the bath, limp as a doll. She looked like a dreadful parody of the sensual Catherine who had shouted for wine and more water. A woman who had given herself up to selfish pleasures and was now given up to death.

  'How did this happen?' Alys asked. Her voice was still croaky from sleep. She coughed to clear it.

  'We left her alone,' Eliza said. Alys could hear the grief and guilt in her harsh tone. 'She wanted to be alone and we shut the door and left her. God knows what I was thinking of. I knew she was drunk. But she was maudlin and dull. She ordered us out of the room and we went. We left her.' 'Did she fall?' Alys asked.

  'I'd have heard if she had fallen,' Ruth said sharply. Her face was nearly as pale as Catherine's horrid whiteness. 'I was listening for her call. I was not gossiping about sin and lechery. If she had fallen I would have heard. I heard nothing. Nothing.' She broke off, and turned her face away, a handkerchief to her eyes and sobbed. 'Nothing,' she said.

  'She was drunk,' Mistress Allingham said. 'I think she just slid under the water and could not get herself out again.'

  'Can you do nothing?' Eliza demanded. 'Open a vein, bleed her! Something!'

  Alys shook her head. 'Nothing,' she said slowly. 'There's no blood pumping around Catherine any more. She's dead.'

  She drew back. 'Close the door. Get these people out of here,' she said. 'Send for someone to cover her nakedness and lift her out of the bath. The old lord will have to be told, and Hugo. They should not see her like this.'

  There was a movement among the crowd in the gallery as they went to obey Alys.

  ‘I’ll tell the old lord,' Alys said numbly.

  Ruth gave a loud, thin cry and ran to her room. Eliza turned to go after her. 'Odd,' she said. She paused and looked at Alys. 'That she should escape drowning in the winter river, bobbing with ice floes, treacherous with rocks, and then go under in her bath.'

  Alys shook her head, half closed her eyes. 'It is a nightmare,' she said honestly. 'A nightmare.'

  Thirty-two

  They dressed Catherine's cold, water-logged body and they laid her in the little chapel which stood by the gatehouse in the outer manse, a branch of candles at her head and at her feet. Father Stephen, rushed off his horse from hunting and into his black archdeacon's gown, ordered prayers to be said for her soul, but there were no nuns and no monks to keep a vigil for Lady Catherine. All that had gone and no one knew how to mourn for the lady of the castle any more.

  Father Stephen told four soldiers the prayers which should be said and they kept a vigil like a guard duty. But it was not done well. Everyone knew that it was not done well now there were neither monks nor nuns to pray for the soul of a woman drowned while deep in sin. Ruth stayed by the makeshift coffin, one hand on the side, her head bowed, fingering her rosary and saying the prayers she had learned as a child. She would not be moved away.

  The other women tried to pull her away to the gallery and Eliza stood before her, trying to hide her, when Father Stephen came into the chapel. He raised his eyebrows at the murmur of Latin prayers and the click of the rosary beads but one glance at Ruth's agonized white face prevented him from interrupting her.

  'What is this?' he demanded of Alys in his sharp, accusing voice. 'Is this woman a papist? I knew she was devout but I never knew she used the rosary and prayed with the old prayers. She has taken the Oath, has she not? She knows the King is head of the English Church?'

  Alys nodded. 'It's the shock. She loved Lady Catherine. When she is recovered from the shock she will behave as she should.'

  'And the other women?' he demanded. Alys could hear his excitement rising. 'Are the other women also steeped in Roman heresy? Do they not understand the nature of the true Church?'

  'No, no,' Alys said quickly. 'We are all good Christians now. Ruth is sick with shock.' 'Take the rosary from her,' Father Stephen said. 'Is it a sin?' Alys asked in confusion. 'I thought it was allowed.'

  'Some say it does no harm but I believe, and my bishop believes, that it is a graven image as bad as any other false god,' Stephen said passionately. 'It is a doorway to sin, if it is not a sin itself. Take it from her.'

  Alys hesitated. 'It is her own,' she said. 'She is using it only to keep count of her prayers.'

  'Take it,' Stephen said firmly. 'I cannot permit it -not even to mourn Lady Catherine. It is a doorway for sin and confusion.'

  Alys waited until he had left the chapel and then tapped Ruth on the shoulder. 'Give me them,' she said abruptly, pointing to the rosary beads. 'You will have us all questioned for our beliefs by Father Stephen. You are a fool to be so open. Give me them or hide them where they cannot be found.'

  Ruth's white face was twisted with grief. 'It is all I can do for her now!' she said wildly. 'All there is for me to do. She disgusted me with her talk and I left her to drown. She died in sin, I must pray for her soul. I must light candles for her and have masses sung for her. She died in deep sin, I must save her soul if I can.' 'No one believes that stuff any more,' Alys said lightly. There was something about Ruth's outstretched hand on the coffin with the rosary clasped so tightly which was inescapably moving. 'Father Stephen says none of it is true.' Alys remembered the darkness of the chapel and the long nights of vigil which followed a nun's death. The long, sweet cadences of a Requiem Mass and the spellbinding holiness of the incense. The candlelight and Mother Hildebrande's face smiling and serene in the certainty of eternal life.

  Alys snatched at the rosary and pulled it from Ruth's hand. 'No one believes that now,' she said brutally. 'Pray in silence or you will endanger us all!'

  Ruth tugged back. 'I will pray for my lady as it should be done! I will keep my loyalty to her. I will give her her dues,' she cried.

  Alys pulled, the string biting into the palm of her hand. Then with a sudden snap, the string of the rosary broke and the beads spilled on to the stone-flagged floor of the chapel, bouncing and dancing in every direction, scattering and rolling out of sight, under the pews, into the gratings, in a great explosion of destruction. There was a gasp from the other women and a loud cry from Ruth, who dropped to her hands and knees and scrabbled frantically, trying to gather them up as they rolled away from her. 'Oh God!' Alys said desperately. She marched from the chapel, clutching the string and the remaining beads and the dangling cross, before Ruth could protest. Her footsteps echoed on the little stones of the aisle and her gown swished from side to side as she strode away. Alys walked with her head up, her fingers gripping the broken rosary so tight that the mark of the string was as red as a weal around her fingers when she stopped in the porch of the chapel and looked at the little wooden cross. It seemed a lifetime since she had counted beads through her fingers and said her prayers and kissed the cross. Now she snatched them from a praying woman to hand to a man who was an enemy of the faith of her childhood and the inquisitor of her mother. Alys' face was bleak as she held out the rosary to one of the soldiers at the gate.

  'Take this to Father Stephen,' she said. 'Tell him there is no heresy here! I have taken the rosary away from the praying woman.' He nodded and turned away. 'He will be with the old lord,' Alys said. The man shook his head. 'He has gone to the prison tower,' he said. 'He told me I could find him there. There is an old woman coming for trial this afternoon and he has gone to question her and persuade her to repent of her error.'

  Alys went whiter still and swayed a little where she stood. 'Yes,' she said. 'In this shock of my lady's death I had forgotten. Is the old woman still to be tried? Will they not delay the trials to mourn Lady Catherine?'

  The man shook his head. 'There are too many people come into town for the trials to be delayed,' he said. 'The old lord said they would go ahead. Father Stephen thinks he can bring the old wom