The Wise Woman (13 page)

Morach shrugged and smiled. “A right to starve to death,” she said indifferently. “This wicked old world of ours does not recognize these rights, my Alys. You’d best come to terms with it.”

Alys shook her head. “I’ll never come to terms with humiliation,” she said. “They won’t make me a servant nor a whore. They won’t make me the wife of some clod to live in his hovel and bear his children year after year until I die of overwork and exhaustion. I’ll get back to a nunnery, to where I belong, one way or another. The old lord won’t break his promise to me—he’ll send me to France. If I can escape the notice of the young lord Hugo and the malice of his wife, and if I can keep myself a virgin in that place where they think of nothing but lust—I can get back.”

Morach nodded. “You need a deal of luck and a deal of power to accomplish that,” she said thoughtfully. “Only one way I can think of.” She paused.

Alys leaned forward. “Tell me,” she said.

“A pact,” Morach said simply. “A pact with the devil himself. Have him guard you against the young lord, make him turn his eyes another way. I know enough of the black arts to guide you. We could call up the dark master, he would come for you, for sure—a sacred little soul like yours. You could trade your way into comfort forever. There’s your way to peace and order and safety. You become the devil’s own and you are never an ordinary woman again.”

For a moment Alys hesitated as if she were tempted by the sudden rush into hell, but then she dropped her face into her hands and moaned in torment. “I don’t
want
to,” she cried as if she were a little girl again. “I don’t want to, Morach! I want a middle way. I want a little wealth and a little freedom! I want to be back in the nunnery with Mother Hildebrande. I am afraid of the devil! I am afraid of the witch-taker! I am afraid of the young lord and of his icy wife! I want to be somewhere safe! I am too young for these dark choices! I am not old enough to keep myself safe! I want Mother Hildebrande! I want my mother!”

She broke into a storm of crying, her face buried in her arms, leaning slightly toward Morach as if begging wordlessly for an embrace. Morach folded her arms and rested her chin on them, gazing into the fire, waiting for Alys to be still. She was quite untouched by her grief.

“There’s no safety for you, or for me,” she said equably when Alys was quieter. “We’re women who do not accord with the way men want. There’s no safety for our sort. Not now, not ever.”

Alys’s sobs weakened against the rock of Morach’s grim indifference. She fell silent, rubbing her face on her fine woolen undersleeve. A piece of wood in the fireplace snapped and burned with a yellow flame.

“Then I go back to the castle and take my chance,” Alys said, resigned.

Morach nodded.

“Our Lady once chose me,” Alys said, her voice very low, speaking of a holy secret. “She sent me a sign. Even though I have sinned most deeply, I hope and I trust that She will guide me back to Her. She will make my penance and give me my absolution. She cannot have chosen me to watch me fail.”

Morach cocked her eyebrow, interested. “Depends on what sort of a goddess she is,” she said judicially. “There are some that would choose you to see nothing but failure. That’s the joy in it for them.”

“Oh!” Alys shrugged impatiently. “You’re a heathen and a heretic, Morach! I waste my time speaking with you.”

Morach grinned, unrepentant. “Don’t speak with me then,” she said placidly. “Your Lady chose you. So She will keep you safe to play Her game, whatever it is. Depend upon Her then, my little holy lamb! What are you doing here, drawing the runes and praying for the future?”

Alys hunched her shoulders, clasped her hands. “The young lord is my danger,” she said. “He could take me from Our Lady. And then I would be lost.”

“She won’t strike him blind to save you?” Morach asked sarcastically. “She won’t put out Her sacred hand to stop him feeling up your gown?”

Alys scowled at Morach. “I have to find a way to defend myself. He would have me for his sport,” she said. “He ordered me to his room tonight. If he rapes me I’ll never get back to the nuns. He’d have me and throw me aside, and his wife would turn me out. I’d be lucky to get through the guardroom once they knew the young lord had done with me.”

Morach laughed. “Best keep your legs crossed and your Latin sharp then,” she said. “Pray to your Lady, and trust the old lord.” She paused. “If you would stoop to take them, my saint, there are some herbs I know which would make you less sweet to him.”

Alys looked up. “I may not kill his lust,” she warned. “The old lord forbade it and he will be watching me. I cannot give Hugo anything to weary him of venery.”

Morach rose from the floor and went to the bunches of herbs dangling on strings from the beams of the sleeping platform. “It is you who takes this,” she said. “Make it into a tisane, every morning, and drink it while it cools. It kills a man’s desire for the woman that drinks it.”

Alys nodded. “And what would you use to kill a woman’s desire?” she asked casually.

Morach turned, her dark face under the shock of gray hair alight with mischief. “A woman’s desire?” she said. “But my little nun, my precious virgin, who is this lustful woman? We were talking of the young lord and his persecution of your sainted virginity!”

“Have done,” Alys said sulkily. “I was asking for one of the women in the gallery.”

Morach chuckled. “I would have to meet her,” she said slyly. “This woman, is she young or old? Has she known a man or is she a virgin? Does she long for his love, his devotion—or is she just hot for his body to crush her and his wetness inside her and his hands all over her?”

Alys flushed rosy. “I don’t know,” she said grimly. “If she asks me again I will bring her to you.”

Morach nodded, her eyes sparkling with amusement. “You do, pretty Alys,” she said. “Do bring her to me.”

Alys tucked the bunch of herbs into her pocket. “Anything else?” she asked. “To kill Hugo’s ardor? Anything else I should do?”

Morach shook her head. “I have no other herbs, but you could bring me some candle wax when you next come and I’ll make images of them all,” she offered. “We’ll make them all into moppets to dance to your bidding, you and me.”

Alys’s eyes widened. “It cannot be done!” she exclaimed.

Morach smiled darkly and nodded. “I’ve never done it before,” she said. “It’s deep magic, very deep. But the old woman who was here before me taught me the words. It never fails except…”

“Except what?” Alys asked. She shivered as if she were suddenly cold. “Except what?” she asked.

“Sometimes they misunderstand.”

Alys drew a little closer. “What?” she asked. “Who misunderstands?”

Morach smiled. “You take the little figures and you bind them with deep magic. Understand that?”

Alys nodded, her face pale.

“You order them to do your bidding. You command them to do as you wish.”

Alys nodded again.

“Sometimes
they
misunderstand,” Morach said, her voice very low. “I heard of one woman who ordered her lover to come alive again. He was dead of the plague and she could not bear to lose him. She made the candle-wax moppet while he was lying cold and poxed in the room next door, the sores all over him. When she made the moppet walk, he walked too, just as she had commanded.”

Alys swallowed against a tight throat. “He was better?”

Morach chuckled, a low chilling laugh. “No,” she said. “He was dead and cold, covered with sores, his eyes blank, his lips blue. But he walked behind her, as she had commanded; everywhere she went he walked behind her.”

“A ghost?” Alys asked.

Morach shrugged. “Who knows?”

Alys shook her head. “That’s foul,” she exclaimed. “That’s black arts, Morach! As foul as your pact with the devil. I’ll not touch magic, I’ve told you before. You tempt me and you bring me no good!”

“Wait till you are in need,” Morach said scathingly. “Wait till you are hungry. Wait till you are desperate. And then bring me the candle wax. When you are desperate—and you will be desperate, my little angel—you will be glad enough of my power then.”

Alys said nothing.

“I’m hungry,” Morach said abruptly. “Fetch the food and let’s eat. I’ve only enough wood for another hour, you can gather some more in the morning.”

Alys looked at her resentfully. “My hands are softening,” she said. “And my nails are clean and growing again. You can get your own wood, Morach. I’ve brought you food and money, that should be enough.”

Morach laughed, a harsh, sharp sound. “So the little virgin has claws, too, does she?” she crowed. “Then I’ll tell you—I have a good woodpile out the back. Now fetch the food.”

A
s the days grew darker and colder at the end of October Alys’s work as the old lord’s clerk increased. He grew more frail and tired quickly. When a messenger arrived with letters in English or Latin he would summon Alys to read them to him, he was too weary to puzzle them out himself. When young Lord Hugo came to tell him about judgments in the ward, or disputes over borders, or news from the wider world, from the Council of the North or from London itself, he would have Alys by him, sometimes taking notes of what the young lord was saying, sometimes standing behind his chair listening. Then when Hugo was gone, with a swirl of his dark red cape and a mischievous wink at Alys, the old lord would ask her to tell him, over again, what Hugo had said.

“He mumbles so!” he said.

The tension between the old lord and the young one was clear now to Alys. The young lord was the coming man: the soldiers were his, and the castle servants. He wanted to make the family greater in the outside world. He wanted to go to London and try for a place in the king’s court. The king was a braggart and a fool—wide open to anyone who could advise him and amuse him. The young lord wanted a place at the table of the great. He had embraced the new religion. Father Stephen, another ambitious young man, was his friend. He spoke of building a new house, leaving the castle which had been his family’s home since the first Hugo had come over with the conquering Normans and taken the lordship as his fee and built the castle to hold the land. Hugo wanted to trade, he wanted to lend money on interest. He wanted to pay wages in cash and throw peasants off their grubbing smallholdings and make the flocks of sheep bigger still on long, uninterrupted sheep-runs. He wanted to mine coal, he wanted to forge iron. He wanted the sun shining full upon him. He wanted risks.

Old Lord Hugh stood against him. The family had held the castle for generation after generation. They had built the single round tower with a wall and a moat around it. Little by little they had won or bought more land. Little by little they had made the castle bigger, adding the second round tower for soldiers, and then the hall with the gallery above, adding the outer wall and the outer moat to enclose the farm, a second well, stables and the great gatehouse for the soldiers. Quietly, almost stealthily, they had wed and plotted, inherited and even invaded to add to the lordship until the boundaries of their lands stretched across the Pennines to the east, and westward nearly to the sea. They kept their power and their wealth by keeping quiet—keeping their distance from the envy and the struggles around the throne.

Lord Hugh had been to London only half a dozen times in his life, he was the master of the loyal excuse. He had gone to Queen Anne’s coronation, where a man was safer to be seen in support than absent, wearing sober clothes and standing at the back, the very picture of a provincial, loyal lord. He voted by proxy, he bribed and negotiated by letter. When summoned to court he pleaded ill health, dangerous unrest in his lands or, lately, old age; and at once sent the king a handsome present to please the errant royal favor. He knew from his kin at court who were the coming men and who were likely to fall. He had spies in the royal offices who reported to him the news he needed. He had debtors scattered across the country who owed him money and favors. A thousand men called him cousin and looked to him for favor and protection and paid him with information. He sat like a wily spider in a network of caution and fear. He represented the power of the king in the wild lands of the north, and took his place on the great Council of the North, but never more than once a year. He never showed the family wealth or their power too brightly, for fear of envious southerners’ eyes. He followed the traditions of his father and his grandfather. They lived on their lands, riding all day and never leaving their own borders. They sat in their own courts. They handed down justice in their own favor. They announced the king’s laws and they enforced those they preferred. They did very well as obscure tyrants.

Their greatest rivals were the prince bishops and the monasteries, and now the bishops were fighting for their wealth and could be fighting for their lives. The old lord saw the good times opening slowly for his son, and for his son’s unborn, not-yet-conceived heir, and his son after him. Hugo’s grandson would be as rich in land as any lord in England, would command more men than most. He could throw his influence with Scotland, with England. He would own a little kingdom of his own. Who could guess how far the family might rise, if they waited and used their caution and their wisdom as they always had done?

But the young Lord Hugo did not want to wait for the great lands of monasteries to come his way in maybe five, ten years from now. He did not want to wait for the sheep to be shorn, the copyholders’ fines to be slowly increased, the annual rents brought in. He wanted wealth and power at once. He had friends who owned wagons, one who had a fleet of barges, one who was mining coal and iron ore, another who spoke of ocean-going ships and prizes to be had from countries beyond Europe, beyond the known world. He spoke of trade, of business, of lending and borrowing money at new profitable rates. He never showed his impatience with his father, and Alys feared him more because of this single, uncharacteristic discretion.

“He wants to go to London,” she warned the old lord.

“I know,” he said. “I am holding him back and he will not tolerate it forever.”