The Wise Woman Read online

  Alys raised her head, she could hear the guards shouting outside the double doors of the great hall. Father Stephen came in, walking slowly, his face grave, a ledger tucked under his arm.

  Alys felt her heart speed. She scanned Stephen's face. Surely he was slow and thoughtful because he had to report that there was no case to answer. He had failed to incriminate Mother Hildebrande. Her learning and her old skilful wit had been too much for him. Perhaps she had even shaken his reforming zeal. Alys hid a little smile.

  'Please call the old woman to account for herself,' Stephen said. He slid the ledger across the table towards Alys and motioned her to open it. 'There is the charge.'

  Dumbly Alys opened the book where a dark ribbon marked the place. The old lord leaned forward to see. Father Stephen went around to the back of the dais, mounted the steps, and took a stool beside Alys at the foot of the table.

  Alys looked at the Bishop's Court records in the heavy black ledger. There was a column for the date, and for the name, and for the occupation. There was a space for the charge. There was a space for the verdict. There was a space for the punishment. Alys looked along the page. There were rows after rows of names arraigned for all sorts of crimes, from adultery to heresy. Wherever it said 'Heresy', along the line it said 'Guilty', and then further on it said 'Burned'. 'Burned,' Alys whispered incredulously. 'Do you see how to write it?' Stephen whispered encouragingly. 'And this other paper, the roll, is a record of what is said here this afternoon. I will nod to you when you need to make a note of something. You can write in English, we can copy it fair into Latin later.' 'Make way for the old woman of Bowes Moor,' Lord Hugh said impatiently. He waved at the people in the centre of the hall. 'Let her through, for God's sake,' he said irritably. 'We don't have all day to spend on this.'

  Alys leaned towards Lord Hugh. ‘I don't want to do this,' she said urgently. 'I must ask to be excused.'

  He glanced down at her white face. 'Not now, not now,' he said. 'Let's get this over and done with. It's a messy business. I like it not.' ''Please,'' Alys hissed.

  Lord Hugh shook his head, he was not listening. 'Do your work, Alys,' he said roughly. This is the last case. I am weary myself.'

  Alys bowed her head over the ledger, writing the date with exquisite care. She was aware of the commotion in the hall, of the sound of the soldiers coming in slowly, out of step, not marching as they usually did, but delayed by a limping pace.

  'Give her a stool,' Lord Hugh said impatiently. 'Give her a seat, the old woman can't stand. And give her some wine.'

  Alys kept her head down. She had an insane thought that if she never looked up, if she never raised her eyes, then she would never see Mother Hildebrande sitting on a stool in the centre of the great hall surrounded by staring people. If she kept her head down and never looked, then it would not be Mother Hildebrande. It would be someone else entirely. On a different charge. A different charge entirely. Another person.

  'Your name?' Stephen rose to his feet. Alys did not look up.

  'Hildebrande of the Priory of Egglestone.' The voice was different, it rasped as if the speaker's throat was scraped. It was deeper, hoarser. And the speech was different too. This old woman could not speak clearly, could not form her words, lisped on her 's' and gargled the other words in her throat. Alys copied 'Hildebrande' in the space in the book for the name of the accused; and told herself that since it was not Mother Hildebrande's clear voice, not Mother Hildebrande's pure speech – it could not be her.

  'Not your popish pretence of a name, but your real name,' Stephen said. He sounded angry, Alys thought, keeping her head bowed over the book. He should not be angry with this old lady with the sore throat, whatever she had done.

  'My real name is Hildebrande,' the rasping voice said and stopped for breath. 'Of the Abbey of Egglestone.'

  'Write: "Refuses to give true name,"' Stephen said in an aside to Alys. Laboriously she opened a bracket beneath the name she had already written, then she copied – 'Refuses to give true name'. She nodded with satisfaction. It was not her mother's voice, Hildebrande was not her name. It was someone else altogether. Above her head the questions went on.

  'You were a nun at the abbey?' Stephen asked. 'I was.'

  'You were there on the night that the abbey was inspected for heresy, popish practices, gross impropriety and blasphemy, and closed?'

  There was a murmur from the audience. Alys could not tell whether it was moral outrage at the nuns, or resentment towards Stephen. She did not look up to see. There was no answer for long minutes. ‘I was there when the abbey was burned,' the voice said wearily. 'There was no inspection, there was no impropriety. It was an attack of arson. It was a criminal attack.'

  There was a surge of speech from the crowd. The old lord banged the handle of his ebony stick on his board and shouted, 'Quiet!’

  'That is a lie,' Stephen said. 'It was a legal inspection of a corrupt and dangerous nest of abuse. You were smoked out like the vipers you were.' There was a silence.

  'And where did you go, when you fled from justice and mercy?' Stephen demanded. 'Where have you been these eleven months?'

  'I will not answer that question,' the hoarse voice said steadily.

  'You have been asked it before with torture,' Stephen said warningly. You can be put to question again.' Alys did not look up. The hall was very quiet. 'I know,' the voice said in a ghost of a sigh. 'I am prepared to die down there.'

  There was a low angry mutter from the crowd. Alys, hidden behind her arm as she bent over the book, peeped up. She could see the first couple of rows of men. They were Hugo's own soldiers, but they were shifting uneasily on their seats.

  'Write down: "Is shielding fellow-conspirators,"' Stephen said to Alys. Alys copied the words into the roll of paper.

  Stephen changed tack. 'Were there any others who also fled from justice on that night?' Stephen asked. 'Others who have been hiding, as you have been hiding? Who have perhaps plotted to meet with you? Who planned to be with you?' There was a silence. 'Who is "Ann"?' Stephen asked softly. Shocked, Alys' head jerked up before she could stop herself- and then she saw her.

  Hildebrande sat slumped on her stool. Her fingers were spread out over her knees, as if she were holding sinew and bone together. The old blue gown Alys had given her was bloodstained and spattered. There was a large dark stain at the hem – she had soiled herself in her agony. Her shoulders were hunched awkwardly, one side irregular where the shoulder had been dislocated and not thrust back into the socket. Her feet were bare. On the pale old skin of her feet were deep purple and red blood-bruises, perfect copies of the knots which had tied her to the rack. Her wrists were black with bruising, where the rope had tied her arms above her head. Her thin toes were stained with blood. They had ripped out the toenails. The fingernails, too, were gone. The hands spread like old bloody talons, clinging to her own body, as if to hold it together, clinging to her faith.

  At Alys' sudden movement Hildebrande looked in her direction. Their eyes met. She recognized Alys at once. Her bloodstained mouth opened in a dreadful smile. Alys saw the deep, dark bruises on her cheeks from the metal gag and then, as her ghastly smile widened, saw that her teeth had been pulled out from the gums, some broken and left as stumps, others leaving dark, blood-filled holes. Alys saw the smile and knew Hildebrande's revenge had come easily to her hand. Hildebrande would not suffer alone. She would not burn alone.

  Mutely, Alys watched her. She said nothing. She did not plead with her eyes, she did not put her soft hands together in a secret sign for forgiveness. She waited for the horror of Hildebrande naming her as her accomplice and a runaway nun. The evidence was there. She was wearing Alys' gown, there was food from the castle at the cottage. Alys waited to be named and Hildebrande to be revenged on her for her pain of disappointment, and for the pain of the rack and the tortures.

  Hildebrande's pale blue eyes in the blackened strained sockets never wavered. 'There was no one conspiring with me,' she said, her voice