The Wise Woman (29 page)

Morach nodded. Alys led her into the ladies’ gallery and opened the door in the right-hand corner of the room. “Lady Catherine’s chamber is opposite,” she said, gesturing. “It overlooks the inner courtyard, it’s warmer. The other women sleep next door to us, looking out over the river. Our room matches theirs. We look out over the river, too.”

Morach stepped inside and looked around. “A bed,” she said with satisfaction. “I’ve never slept in a bed.”

“Half a bed,” Alys said warningly. “We’re to share.”

“And a good fire and a chest for our things,” Morach said, making a rapid inventory of the room. “A little mirror and a cupboard. Alys, this is greater comfort than the cottage for the winter.”

“And greater danger,” Alys said warningly. “The ordeal was no jest.”

Morach cocked a bright, unsympathetic eye at her. “You lied your way clear,” she stated.

Alys nodded. “I paid a price,” she said, her voice very low. In her mind she could still see the undamaged consecrated wafer which she had chewed, swallowed, and then vomited up into the hearth without marking it. “I am outside the grace of God,” she said. “That was when I commanded the dolls.”

“The only thing to do,” Morach said briskly. “If one seigneur will not protect you—you have to seek another. How else could you survive? If you are outside the grace of your God then you have to use magic. You might as well go out into a storm in your shift. You need some power around you.”

Alys nodded. “Hugo promised to protect me,” she said. “Only last night he swore that he loved me—he has said he would give up Catherine, even the castle itself to be with me. It is as you saw in the runes, Morach, and as I dreamed. He said he would set Catherine aside for me. And I said I would give up the magic, he and I are safer without it.”

Morach flapped a dirty, dismissive hand. “All these promises,” she said with mocking respect. “But now he knows that his wife is with child.”

Alys nodded. “Yes,” she said dully.

“Spoken to him since?” Morach asked brightly.

“No,” Alys said. “Anyway, we weren’t alone.”

“Gave you a sign, did he? Tipped you the wink? Caught you on the stairs and said ‘never fear, sweetheart!’”

“He’s out hunting,” Alys said defensively.

“Sent you a message to say that even though the rich Lady Catherine is carrying his son and heir, you are still his love and the promises stand? That he will send her away and put you in her place?”

Alys shook her head dumbly.

Morach gave a cracked laugh. “Better pray for a stillbirth then,” she said agreeably. “Or an idiot, or a weakling, or a sickly girl from a ruptured womb that can never bear child again. What’ll it be, Alys? Something a little stronger than prayer? A little spell to make Catherine miscarry? Herbs in her dinner? Poison on her sheets to make her skin swell and blister, to pox the babe as it comes out?”

“Hush,” Alys said, glancing toward the thick door. “Don’t even speak of it, Morach. And don’t think of it either. I’ve come too close to my power already. I’ve stood inside the pentangle. I’ve felt my power from the soles of my feet to my fingertips.”

Morach breathed a deep sigh of pleasure. “You came to it,” she said. “At last.”

“I don’t want it,” Alys said in a passionate whisper. “I felt the power of it and the delight of it and I loved it. I know what you mean now, Morach, it was like the strongest wine. But that will not be my way. I will trust Hugo. I will trust to what he promised. And I will keep my promise to him to rid myself of magic. I want rid of that power. I am finished with the magic and I am finished with my dream of an abbey. I don’t want to be more than an ordinary woman who can give and take love, I want to be an ordinary woman that can be bedded by an ordinary man and feel delight, as great as Catherine feels, when he has her. I want that life, and those pleasures. Not yours. Not even Mother Hildebrande’s. My way is different from you both. I have found a man who loves me and suddenly I want nothing in the world but to be his woman.”

Morach chuckled to herself as if it did not much matter.

“I
will
keep the faith with Hugo,” Alys said. “However hard it is over the next few months. Even if he wavers.
I
will keep faith. We have made promises. I have given him my love, I shall stay true to him.”

Morach shrugged dismissively. “Maybe,” she said, unimpressed. “But what of the dolls? Are they safe?”

“I want rid of them,” Alys said in a whisper. “I threw one in the moat last night, but it floated. I had to go in and get it out. It nearly drowned me, Morach. It was the doll of Lady Catherine and I felt that it dragged me in. I felt it wanted me drowned. I heard it laugh as I went down. I heard it laugh, Morach! I want rid of the dolls. You must take them back.”

Morach pulled a stool up to the fire and looked into the flames for a moment. When she looked up her old face was sallow. “They’re yours,” she said. “Your candles, your commands, your dolls. I’ll not have them around me. I’ll not claim them. I’m not surprised they tried to drown you. There’s a shadow around them that I can’t clearly see. But it looks like water.”

“Much water?” Alys asked. She looked in the fire, like Morach. All she could see were the dark squares of turf and the red embers.

“A lungful is enough,” Morach said dourly. “Too much if it is your lungs. Anyway, the dolls are yours.”

“Can I bury them?” Alys asked.

Morach shrugged. “You might do. The shadow I see is water, not earth.”

“Can I throw them on the fire and let them melt and burn?”

Morach put her head on one side and looked at the fire. “It’s a perilous gamble,” she said.

“What am I to do with them then?” Alys demanded in irritation.

Morach laughed unkindly. “You should have thought of that first,” she said.

Alys waited.

“Oh well,” Morach said. “When the weather lifts we’ll go up to the moor and drop them down one of the caves. If their shadow is water they will have their fill then. We’ll maybe be able to do some spell to take their power away. Where d’you keep them?”

“On me,” Alys answered. “In my purse on my girdle. I had no room of my own, I was afraid they would be found.”

Morach shook her head. “That’s not safe,” she said positively. “You don’t want them close to you, listening to your voice, hearing your worst thoughts. Is there nowhere you can hide them?”

Alys shook her head, thinking. “I am nowhere alone!” she said impatiently. “I am with someone all day and every day. Even when I am in the herb garden there is always someone nearby, a servant or a gardener or one of the scullions.”

Morach nodded. “Hide them somewhere foul,” she advised. “In the castle midden or under a close stool. Somewhere that not even a child would pry.”

“Out of the garderobe!” Alys exclaimed. She pointed to the corner of the room where a round hole had been cut into the wall and covered with a wooden lid. “You take your ease there,” she said. “And the shit falls down into the moat. No one would search there. I can hang them on a piece of cord from underneath the seat.”

Morach eyed the corner seat. “That’ll do,” she said. “In time they’ll get marked and foul. No one will see them. And whatever power your spell has laid on them I cannot see them hexing your Lord Hugo to hang outside the castle wall while you shit on his head.”

Alys gave a sudden giggle and her whole face lightened. For a moment she looked like the girl who had been the favorite of the whole abbey. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said. “Now I’ll call for hot water for you. You’ll have to have a bath.”

M
orach was unruly about bathing, ashamed of being naked before Alys, certain that water would make her ill.

“You smell,” Alys said frankly. “You smell disgusting, Morach. Lady Catherine will never have you near her smelling like this. You’re as bad as a dungheap in August.”

“Then she can send me back to my cottage,” Morach grumbled while the servants came up the stairs with the big bath and the cans of hot water. “I didn’t ask for some lout of a man to come riding all over my garden and snatch me off to come to help a woman in childbirth for a baby that’s only just conceived.”

“Oh, hush,” Alys said impatiently. “Wash yourself, Morach. All over. And your hair too.”

She left Morach with the steaming bath and when she returned, with a gown from the chest, Morach was wrapped in the counterpane from the bed, as near to the fire as she could get.

“Folks die of wetting,” she said dourly.

“They die of dirt as well,” Alys retorted. “Put this on.”

She had chosen a simple green gown for Morach, a working woman’s gown with no stomacher and no overskirt; and when she was dressed and the girdle tied, and a foot of material stitched up into a thick hem, she looked well.

“How old are you, Morach?” Alys asked curiously. She seemed to have stayed the same age for all of Alys’s life. Forever bent-backed, forever graying, forever lined, forever dirty.

“Old enough,” Morach said unhelpfully. “I’m not wearing that damned cap.”

“I’ll just comb your hair then,” Alys said.

Morach fended her off. “Stop it, Alys,” she said. “I may be far from my hearthside, but I don’t change. I don’t want you touching me, I don’t want to touch you. I am a hedgehog, not a coney. Keep your hands off me and you won’t get prickled.”

Alys recoiled. “You’ve never wanted me touching you,” she said, “Even when I was a little girl. Even when I was a baby I doubt you touched me more than you had to. I can’t remember sitting on your knee. I can’t remember you holding my hand. You’re a cold woman, Morach, and a hard one. And you brought me up longing and longing for a little tenderness.”

“Well, you found it, didn’t you?” Morach demanded, unrepentant. “You found the mother you wanted, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” Alys said, recognizing the truth of it. “Yes, I
did
find her. And I thank God I found her before I had tumbled into Tom’s arms for gratitude.”

Morach gleamed. “And how did you repay love?” she asked. “When you found your mother, when you found the woman to hold you and kiss you goodnight and tell you stories of the saints, and teach you to read and to write? What sort of daughter were you, Alys?”

Alys turned a white face to Morach. “Don’t,” she said.

“Don’t?” Morach asked, deliberately dense. “Don’t what? Don’t say that all this love counted for so much that at the first sniff of smoke you were away like a scalded cat? Don’t remind you that you left her to burn with all your sisters while you skipped home at an easy pace? Don’t remind you that you’re a Judas?

“I may be cold, but at least I’m honorable. I decided to feed you and house you and I kept my promise. And I did more than that—it suits you to forget it now. But I did dandle you and tell you stories. I kept you safe as I promised I would. I taught you all my skills, all my power. From your earliest days I let you watch everything, learn everything. There’s always been a wise woman on the moor, and you were to be the wise woman after me.

“But you were too clever to be wise. You had to find your own destiny, and so you promised to love your mother and her God forever; but at the first hint of danger you ran like a deer. You ran from her, back to me; and then you ran from her God, back to magic again. You’re a woman of no loyalty, Alys. It’s whatever will serve a purpose for you.”

Alys had turned away and was looking out the window where the sun was coming through the snowclouds, hard and bright. Morach noted her hands on the stone window-sill, clenched until the knuckles showed white. “I am not very old,” she said, her voice shaking. “I am not yet seventeen. I would not run again. I have learned some things since the fire. I would not run now. I have learned.”

“Learned what?” Morach demanded.

“I have learned that it would have been better for me to have died with her than to live with her death on my conscience,” Alys said. She turned back to the room and Morach saw that her face was drenched in tears. “I thought that as long as I survived, that was all that mattered,” she said. “Now I know that the price I paid for my escape is high, too high. It would have been better for me to have died beside her.”

Morach nodded. “Because you are now alone,” she said.

“Very, very alone,” Alys repeated.

“And still in danger,” Morach confirmed.

“Mortal danger, every day,” Alys said.

“And deeply enmeshed in sin,” Morach finished with satisfaction.

Alys nodded. “I am beyond forgiveness,” she said. “I can never confess. I can never do penance. I am beyond the pale of heaven.”

Morach chuckled. “My daughter after all,” she said, as if Alys’s despair was the stuff of rich comedy. “My daughter in every detail.”

Alys thought a moment and then nodded. The bowing of her head was an acceptance of defeat.

Morach nodded. “You may be a wise woman yet,” she said slowly. “You have to watch everything go. You have to see everything slip away from you, before you can be wise enough to do without.”

Alys shrugged sullenly. “I have Hugo,” she said stubbornly. “I have his promise. I am not a poor old witch on the moor just yet.”

Morach gleamed at her. “Oh yes,” she said. “I was forgetting that you have Hugo. What joy!”

Alys released the grip of her hands. “It
is
a joy,” she said defiantly.

Morach grinned. “Did I not say so?” she demanded. She laughed. “So then! When do I see her? Catherine. When do I see her?”

“You call her Lady Catherine,” Alys warned. “We can go and see her now, I suppose. She’s sewing in the gallery. But watch what you say, Morach. Not one word of magic or she will have us both. She no longer fears me as a rival, but she would not resist the temptation to get rid of me, if you gave her the evidence to put me through another ordeal.”

Morach nodded, the old slyness back in her eyes above the green shawl. “I don’t forget,” she said. “I’m not bought with a whore’s gown. I’ll keep my silence until I’m ready to speak.”

Alys nodded and opened the door. The women were sitting at the far end of the gallery with the yellow wintry sun shining through the arrow-slits on their work. They all turned and stared as Alys led Morach into the room.