Novels 03 The Wise Woman Read online

  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 anymore,” Alys said tightly. 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’s 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 woman to repentance, please God.”

  Alys nodded and turned away. “Please God,” she said under her breath. The words were meaningless. She had robbed them of meaning every day since the night when the flickering light of the burning abbey had woken her. “Please God,” Alys said, knowing that she no longer had a god to trust. Knowing that the gods she now served were fearfully swift and reliable in their responses—but that nothing could please them.

  In the ladies’ gallery they had to share their clothes to find dark gowns with dark sleeves, dark petticoats, and dark hoods. Alys’s navy blue gown had gone to Mother Hildebrande in the kitchen-lad’s bundle; it seemed like years ago. She went to Catherine’s chest of clothes and found a gown of deep pine green, so dark that it was almost a black. She wore it with a black underskirt, and a high old-fashioned gable hood. As she closed the chest she saw Catherine’s rose and cream gown which Catherine thought would regain Hugo’s weathercock desire; the gown Alys had dreamed she would wear in a garden, walking on the arm of the young lord. Alys dropped the lid of the chest with a bang.

  Father Stephen led a prayer for Catherine’s soul before he said grace at dinner. He spoke in English. Alys listened to the strange, informal chatter between Father Stephen and his God. It did not sound holy. It did not sound as if it would save Catherine’s soul from hell. Alys kept her head down and said “Amen” with the rest.

  She had chosen to sit at the women’s table, behind the lords, for dinner. She did not want to sit at the high table, between the old lord and Father Stephen, she did not want to take Catherine’s place at table while Catherine lay, blue and icy, in the little chapel, inadequately watched by four soldiers and Ruth in awkward silence. She did not want to look at the old lord and see his shielded, smiling face while he calculated how to make this new turn of events serve him. She did not want to see Hugo’s careless joy at his freedom.

  The women were silent at dinner. They were served with broth and half a dozen meat dishes and salads. None of them ate well. Alys, watching the back of Hugo’s head and shoulders from her old place, saw that he ate heartily after his morning’s ride. He had not seen Catherine, half in, half out of her bath, with her blue lips open underwater. He had not yet gone to the chapel to pray for her soul. He had not even changed his clothes, so that he was still wearing a red doublet, slashed, with white shirt showing at the slashes, a heavy red cape at his shoulders, and red breeches with black leather riding boots. When one of the serving-lads dropped a plate in the center of the hall Hugo laughed, unaffected by gloom.

  The old lord, sitting in his seat, smiled quietly. Hugo was a widower, the dowry lands were his without contest. The manor farm he would have given Catherine was his still. The marriage with the nine-year-old girl was well in hand but with Catherine’s wealth and Hugo’s improved status as a widower the terms could undoubtedly be improved.

  The pages set hippocras and fruit and wafers on the tables. Alys took a small glass of hippocras and felt the sweet wine warm her through.

  “It doesn’t seem right, eating and drinking with my lady dead this hour,” Eliza said.

  Alys shrugged. “You can join Ruth in her vigil if you wish,” she said. “But the castle will run as my lord commands. It seems right to him—I shall not argue.”

  Eliza nodded. “As you say,” she said, dropping her eyes away from Alys’s cold face.

  Lord Hugh looked behind him. “Alys!” he said peremptorily.

  Alys rose up from the table and stood behind his chair, leaning forward.

  “Father Stephen is engaged in the arrangements for Catherine’s funeral and questioning the old woman, so you shall be my clerk for the trials. Come to my room within an hour and we can prepare the papers. The trials start here at two.”

  “I shall not know what to write,” Alys said unhelpfully. “Could not David serve you better? Or even my Lord Hugo?”

  “I’ll tell you what to write,” Lord Hugh said firmly. “It is all done by rote. We have a book to enter the charge and the sentence. Any fool could do it. Come to my room before two and you shall see.”

  “Yes, my lord,” Alys said unenthusiastically.

  “You can leave now,” he said. He shot a quick glance at her pale face. “Not sick are you?” he asked. “The baby is well? Catherine’s death did not shock you, damage the child?”

  “No,” Alys said coldly. She thought of claiming illness and avoiding the trials but she knew she could not again wait