The Wise Woman (38 page)

“Faugh!” she said under her breath. She carried it over to the stone hearth and pulled at the neck of the purse. The stiff string was stubborn but snapped at last and the candle dolls spilled out on to the hearth.

Alys had forgotten how ugly they were. The little doll of Catherine with her legs spread wide and her grotesque fat belly, the old lord with his beaky, hungry face, and Hugo—beloved Hugo—with his eyelids wiped blind, his ears rubbed away, his mouth a smear and his fingers clumsy stumps. Alys shivered and tossed the purse on the fire; it sizzled and a rank smell of midden filled the room. Alys pulled a stool closer, put the three dolls on her lap and gazed at them.

Very quietly the door behind her opened and Morach came in, soft-footed.

“Oh,” she said gently. “I felt your magic even while I was gossiping about London news out there. But I did not think you would have turned to the dolls again.”

Alys looked at her, blank-faced. She did not even try to hide the horrors she had made of Morach’s little statues.

“Taking your power again, are you?” Morach questioned.

Alys nodded, saying nothing.

“You heard what they said of your looks at dinner,” Morach said, half to herself. She hunkered down on the hearth-rug beside Alys. “You heard what they said about you, that Hugo loves Catherine, that Catherine fears you no more because you have lost your looks.”

Alys remained silent, the little dolls side by side on her lap. Morach took the poker and stirred the fire so the log fell backward and she could see a deep red cave of embers. “Bitter that was for you,” she said, looking deep into the fire. “Sour and bitter to know that your looks are going and you have had so little joy from them.”

Alys said nothing. The dolls in her lap gleamed wetly in the glow from the fire as if they were warming back to life after their long cold vigil hung outside the castle wall.

“And you’ve taken Hugo’s desertion badly,” Morach said softly. She did not look at Alys, she looked into the heart of the fire as if she could see more there. “You saw him dive into the river and pull Catherine out. You saw him wrap her warm and bring her back as fast as his horse would go. You saw him hold her and kiss her, and now you see him, unbidden, at her side every day and in her bed every night. And how she grows and beams and thrives on his love! While you—poor sour little Alys—you are like a snow-drop in some shady corner of the wood. You grow and flower in coldness and silence, and then you die.”

The smell from the burning purse eddied around the two of them like smoke from the depths of hell.

“So you want your power,” Morach said. “You want to make the dolls yours again, you want to make them dance to your bidding.”

“Fashion him again,” Alys said suddenly, holding out the mutilated doll of Hugo to Morach. “Make him whole again. I commanded him not to see me, not to hear me, not to touch me. I commanded him to lie with Catherine and get her with child. Lift my command off him. Make him whole again and passionate for me. Make him back to what he was at Christmas when he carried me from the feast, to lie with me whether I would or no. Make him how he was when he faced her down and swore false oaths to keep me safe. Make him what he was when he sat by the fire—in that very room where she sits now—and told me that she disgusted him, that he lay with her only to keep me safe, and that his body and soul craved to be with me. Make him that again, Morach! Make him new again!”

Morach sat very still, then she slowly, almost sadly, shook her head. “It cannot be done,” she said gently. “There is no magic that can do it. You would have to turn back time itself, turn back the seasons to Christmas. All that has happened here since then
has
happened, Alys. It cannot be undone.”

“Some of it can be undone,” Alys insisted, her face small and pinched, her voice venomous. “The child can be undone, Morach. The child can be undone in its mother’s belly. The child can be stillborn. Catherine can die. Then even if he does not love me—at least he does not love her. And when she is gone, and the child is gone, he will turn back to me.”

Morach shook her head. “I won’t do it,” she said softly. “Not even for you, Alys, my child, my poor child.” She shook her head again. “I’ve aborted babes and I’ve given women miscarriages,” she said. “I’ve blighted cattle, oh yes, and men’s lives. But they were always people who were strangers to me, or those I had reason to hate. Or the babies were unwanted and the women desperate to be rid of them. I couldn’t blight the child of a woman I live with, whose bread I eat. I couldn’t do it, Alys.”

There was silence. The last remnant of the burning purse flickered and fell into ashes.

“Then tell me how to do it,” Alys hissed. “
I
can do it to her. I would have drowned her that day if you had not meddled, Morach. I will make an end of her now. And I warn you not to meddle.”

Morach shook her head. “Don’t, Alys,” she said warningly. “I cannot see the end to it, and there is so little time…”

Alys looked sharply at her. “What have you seen?” she demanded. “What time? What little time?”

Morach shrugged. “I can’t see,” she said. “I see a hare, and a cave, and coldness and drowning. And little time.”

“A hare?” Alys asked. “A March hare? A magic hare? A hare that is a witch in flight? What does it mean, Morach? And a cave? And a drowning? Was that what should have happened to Catherine? Drowning in a cave, swept underwater and buried underground by the river?”

Morach shook her head again. “A hare, a cave, a coldness, a drowning, and very little time,” she repeated. “Don’t question me, Alys, for I won’t act unless I can see my way. I know danger when I am thrust toward it. I know fear of fire and fear of water. Don’t force me forward when I can sense danger ahead, Alys.”

There was a silence filled with fear in the room. The women sat, as still as sighted deer, waiting for their sense of terror to pass by. It was moments before either of them spoke. Then it was Alys, and her voice was not like her voice at all.

“You have to do something,” she said slowly. She was looking down at the dolls on her lap. And her face was alight with a mixture of fear and exultation.

“Why?”

“Because the dolls have come alive,” Alys said. As she spoke she leaned closer and could see their little chests rise and fall in a slow languid rhythm of breathing. “They are alive,” she said. “We will have to do something with them, Morach, or they will start acting on their own.”

Alys had never before seen Morach afraid. The woman seemed to hunch into herself as if she were cold, as if she were hungry. The long, hard years on the moor, living off the vegetable patch and the few begrudging gifts, seemed to have laid their mark on her after all, and the gloss and the comfort of the weeks in the castle fell away as if they had never been.

They had the dolls hidden beneath their pillow. At night Alys could feel them squirm beneath her head. During the day she felt their eyes follow her, through the pillow, through the rug, as she went around the room. They lived beside the two women, three monstrous little ghosts summoned into life and now impossible to kill.

The two women were afraid. Both Morach and Alys were afraid that someone would see the cover on the bed stir and lift. They feared a scrupulous maidservant coming unbidden to shake the covers. They feared the prying eyes of Eliza Herring or a surprise visit from Father Stephen. The little dolls were so vivid in their minds they could hardly believe that no one else saw them, that no one else felt their presence, that no one else heard the occasional little cry muffled by the pillow, from behind the closed door.

“What are we to do with them?” Alys asked Morach at dawn on the third day.

Neither woman had slept; the little dolls had stirred beneath the pillow all night. In the end they had wrapped themselves against the cold dawn air, thrown more wood on the fire, and sat at the hearth, huddled together, as the flames flared up.

“Can we burn them?” Alys asked.

Morach shook her head. “I dare not,” she said. “Not now they’re so lively. I don’t know what they would do.” Her face was drawn and gray with fear and fatigue. “What if they leapt out of the fire and came running, all melting and hot after us?” she asked. “If the dolls themselves did not burn us, then Lord Hugh would have us for witchcraft. I wish to all the gods that I’d never given them to you.”

Alys shrugged. “You taught me the spell to give them power,” she argued. “You must have known we would be stuck with them, lively, forever.”

Morach shook her head. “I never heard of it like this before,” she said. “I never heard of it so powerful. It’s your doing, Alys. It’s your power. Your power and the great hatred you poured into them.”

Alys clenched her hands on her blanket. “If I have all this power why can I get nothing I want?” she demanded. “I can make mistakes so powerful that my life is at risk. I can betray my mother and all my sisters. But the little skill to win a man from a woman I can’t do. I get little joy from my power, Morach.”

Morach shook her head. “You’re all contradictions,” she said. “That’s why your power comes and goes. One after another you have loved and betrayed. And now you want Hugo. What would you do if you had him?”

Alys closed her eyes for a moment. Behind them, under the pillow in the shadowy bed draped with thick curtains, the little dolls lay still as if they too were listening.

“I would love him,” she said, her voice languid with desire. “I would make him my love, my lover. I would make him so drunk with me, so drugged with me that he would never look at another woman. I would make him my servant and my slave. I would make him mad for me.”

Morach nodded and hitched the blanket a little closer. “You’d destroy him too then,” she said.

Alys flinched and opened her mouth to argue.

“No,” Morach said. “It’s true. If you take a young lord and make him your slave then you destroy him as much as an old lady left to burn to death. You’re a darker power than any I’ve ever known or heard on, Alys. I wonder where you came from that dark night when I found you, abandoned at my door.”

Alys shook her head. “All I want is the things that other women have,” she said. “The man I love, a place to live, comfort. Catherine is laden with goods. I want nothing more than she has. What right has she that I have not?”

Morach shrugged. “Maybe you’ll get it,” she said. “In your little time.”

“How little?” Alys asked urgently. “How long do I have, Morach?”

The old woman shrugged, her face a little grayer. “I can’t see,” she said. “It’s all gone dark for me. The bones, the fire, the crystal, even the dreams. All I can see is a hare and a cave and coldness.” She shivered. “As cold as death,” she said. “I am learning fear in my old age.”

Alys shook her head impatiently. “I am afraid too,” she said. “Every day we are in greater danger with the moppets here. Let’s decide and be done with them. We dare not keep delaying.”

Morach nodded. “There’s some holy ground, a little preaching cross, on the moor outside Bowes,” she said slowly. “The other side of the river from my cottage.”

Alys nodded. “Tinker’s Cross,” she said.

“Aye,” Morach said. “Sanctified ground. That’s the place for them. And the cross is near a lonely road. No one ever goes there. We could leave here in daylight, be there at midday, bury them in the holy ground, sprinkle them with some holy water, and be back here by supper.”

“We could say we were fetching plantings,” Alys said. “From the moorland, heather and flowers. I could take the pony.”

Morach nodded. “Once they’re buried in holy ground they’re safe,” she said. “Let your sainted Mother of God take care of them instead of us.”

Alys lowered her voice to a whisper. “They won’t bury us, will they?” she asked. “Remember what I told you about the doll of Catherine? She pulled me into the moat, Morach. She meant to drown me when I tried to sink her. The little dolls won’t find a way to bury us in revenge?”

“Not in holy ground,” Morach said. “Surely, they’d have no power on holy ground? And I made them and you spelled them. Working together, we must be their masters. If we take them soon and put them in holy ground, before they gather their power…”

Something in Alys’s stillness alerted Morach. Her voice trailed off and she looked at Alys, and then followed Alys’s fixed gaze. On the cover of the bed, out of hiding, the three candle-wax dolls stood in a row, leaning forward as if to listen. As the two women watched, silent in horror, the three took one hobbling little step closer.

T
hey had the ponies saddled and harnessed as soon as the grooms were awake. They left a message for Lady Catherine and trusted to Morach’s reputation for stubborn independence as their excuse for leaving without notice and without permission. They were both pale and silent as they trotted the ponies out of the castle gate. On one side of Alys’s saddle she had slung a spade, and tied to the pannier was a sack which bulged and heaved.

The ponies fretted all the way through the little town, shied at shadows and threw their heads about. Morach clung on with little skill.

“They know what they’re carrying,” she said quietly.

As they left the cobbled main street of Castleton and started westward down the country lanes, the bag went still and quiet and the ponies went more steadily.

“It’s as if they wanted to betray us,” Morach said, bringing her pony alongside Alys and speaking very low. “There is powerful hatred in them.”

Alys was white-faced, strained, her blue eyes black with fear. “Hush,” she said. “Did you get some holy water?”

“Stole it,” Morach said with quiet satisfaction. “That Father Stephen is careless with his box of tricks; he left it behind in his room, he thinks himself safe in the castle. I could have had some bread from the Mass too, but I thought I better not.”

“No,” Alys said. She remembered the last time she had tasted communion bread, and the undigested wafer coming up whole in her throat. “Better left alone.”

The two women rode on in silence. It was a day of swirling fog which suddenly cleared in bright patches like little islands of sunshine along the road, until the fog came down like a gray wet night again.