The Wise Woman (52 page)

Hugo went out riding at first light, Catherine slept late. The women in the gallery eyed Alys sideways when she came out of her room, her face serene, her red cloak around her shoulders.

“I’m going up to the moors,” she said to Eliza. “I need some more herbs for Catherine. Is she sleeping still?”

“Yes,” Eliza said. “When will you be back?”

Alys looked at her coldly. “I shall be home in time for supper,” she said. “I will take my dinner with me and picnic out on the moors.”

“I’ll come with you to the stables,” Eliza said.

She and Alys went down the stairs, across the hall and out of the great door to the gardens. Eliza trotted to keep pace with Alys as they walked through the gateway, over the bridge and across the grass to the stables.

“It’s a pretty mare,” Eliza said enviously as the stable-boy brought Alys’s new pony out.

“Yes,” Alys said with grim satisfaction. “Yes, she is. She was expensive.” She snapped her fingers to the stable-lad. “Fetch me some food from the kitchen. I’ll dine on my own on the moors.” The lad dipped a bow and ran off.

“Hugo slept with Catherine all night,” Eliza said in a confidential undertone, watching the lad run to the kitchen door.

“I know,” Alys said coldly.

“Has he turned away from you now?” Eliza asked.

Alys shook her head. “I am carrying his son,” she said coldly. “My place is safe.”

Eliza looked at her with something very close to pity. Alys caught the look and felt herself flush.

“What is it?” she demanded. “What are you staring at?”

“You’d have been safer married to that soldier Lady Catherine picked out for you,” Eliza said shrewdly. “If you wanted to know where you were with a man, he would have been the one for you. Hugo is as changeable as weather. Now he’s back with Catherine again, next it’ll be another woman. You can’t ever call yourself safe if you trust in Hugo.”

The stable-lad was running back with a small leather bag in his hand. He tied it to the saddle and brought the mare forward. “He bought this for me, didn’t he?” Alys said to Eliza, pointing to the pony. “And I have a chest full of gowns. And I am carrying his son in my belly. I am safe enough here, aren’t I?”

Eliza shrugged, holding Alys’s herb sack while the lad helped her up. “He’s fickle,” she said again. “A woman who lives as a whore should keep a big bag of savings. It’s a chance-made business. You’ve ridden very high, Alys, but I think you’re coming down now.”

“Mistress Alys to you!” Alys flared. She shook out the skirts of her red gown, smoothed the rich embroidered overskirt, and gathered her reins in her hand. She looked down at Eliza as if she were a beggar at the gates and Alys a fine lady. “I am Mistress Alys to you,” she said again.

Eliza shrugged her shoulders. “Not anymore, I reckon,” she said. “I reckon you’re falling, Alys. I reckon you are on your way down.”

Alys wheeled the mare around, her face set, and kicked her toward the castle gateyard. As she trotted past the soldiers they shouldered their pikes in a salute but Alys looked neither left nor right. Down the little hill of Castleton she spurred the pony and then around the base of the cliffs at the foot of the castle to cross the bridge over the river and up to the moors. She did not pull up the pony until they were on the far side of the riverbank and it was blowing hard and out of breath. Then she drew rein and looked back at the castle, gray and lovely in the summer sunlight. Alys stared at it, as if she would swallow it up, gobble the whole place to sate her hunger, lords, ladies, servants, and all.

Then she turned the pony around and headed up for the moorland.

She had not planned to ride to Morach’s cottage, she had headed west from the castle, heading for the moors without any sense of purpose. The herb bag had been an excuse but as the hedges fell away from the side of the road and the land became more wild Alys saw a little clump of wildflowers on the side of the road and pulled up the horse. She slid from the saddle and picked them, wrapped them in dock leaves, and then, leading the horse by the reins, she walked down through the field toward the river, watching the thick meadow grass under her feet for any other herbs or flowers she could use.

The river was at its summertime ebb, sluggishly winding along the stone slabs, standing still in deep brown peaty pools, disappearing down the cracks of the river bed and then welling up in a narrow drying stream a few yards on. A redshank flew up from a pool calling and calling a clear sweet sound. Further downriver the water would have drained from Morach’s grave, her body would be rotting, busy with flies. Alys shrugged and turned her thoughts away from it.

Alys walked along the riverbank, leading her horse, watching the banks for herbs and for the innocent faces of the small meadow flowers. The smell of wild thyme was sweet and heady, the harebells stirred as the steady ceaseless moorland breeze breathed through them. The little dark-faced Pennine violets bobbed as the red skirts of Alys’s long gown brushed them. Away on the higher ground, white, mauve, and blue clouds of lady’s-smock swayed together on their long stems. Alys walked as if she could walk away from loneliness, walk away from need, walk away from the love of her life which had turned sour as soon as she had twisted it to serve her purpose.

With her little mare dawdling behind her, Alys walked, wishing she were far away from the castle, far away from Hugo, far away from her own ceaseless ambition. Alys walked, her eyes watchful for healing herbs, her mind at a loss as to her next step. God had failed her, love had failed her, magic had entrapped her. Alys, sure-footed on the familiar paths, was lost. All she could still feel was her hunger to survive—as keen and as vivid as ever; and behind that her old grief for her mother—Mother Hildebrande—that stayed with her, sharp and alive even when the runes read blank and Alys was as unsighted as any ordinary woman. On the clear sun-filled day, with larks climbing as high as heaven and lapwings calling and curlews crying, Alys walked alone in her own world of darkness, coldness, and need.

She stopped abruptly. She had walked nearly as far as the deep pool before Morach’s old cottage. She shaded her eyes against the bright morning sunlight and looked up the hill toward it. It was in the same state that it had always been. The stone-slated roof looked ready to slide off into a heap, the one tiny horn window was dark and abandoned. No smoke eddied from the window or the door. Alys walked toward it and tied her horse to the hawthorn bush laden with creamy-white sickly flowers at the garden wall. She hitched up her skirt and climbed through the little sheep gap. Morach’s vegetables were sprouting, burdened with weeds, in their bed. Alys stared at them for a moment, remembering that she had planted them, all those months ago in the autumn. It seemed odd that Morach should be dead, long dead, and yet her turnips were growing in their bed. The front door was unfastened; the little hook had never held it firm, it was banging in the light breeze. Alys guessed that the bravest of children from Bowes village might have pushed open the door to look inside and then scattered, breathless with terror. None of them would have dared go nearer.

“I dare,” Alys said aloud. But she stayed, waiting on the outside.

The door squeaked and banged. Inside the cottage something softly rustled. Alys thought that there would be rats in the cottage, grown fat on Morach’s seed store, nesting in the rags of her bed. Alys waited on the doorstep, almost as if she expected to hear Morach’s irritable voice calling her to stop dawdling and come in.

The rustling noise in the cottage had stopped. Still Alys paused, delayed pushing open the door, stepping over the threshold. Then, as she hesitated, she clearly heard the noise of someone moving. Someone moving, inside the cottage. Not a rat, not the rustle of a small animal. Alys heard footsteps, someone walking heavily and slowly across the floor.

Involuntarily Alys stepped back, her hand reaching behind her for the reins of her horse. The footsteps inside the cottage paused. Alys opened her mouth to call out, but no sound came. The horse dipped its head, its ears pressed back as if it smelled Alys’s fear and the uncanny eerie smell of death from the cottage.

There was another noise, a dragging noise, like someone pulling a stool up to the fireside. Bright in Alys’s mind was the image of Morach, dripping with river water, blue with cold, her skin puffy and soggy from months underwater, climbing out of her cave as the river level sank, walking wetly upstream to her cottage, and pulling her stool up to her cold fireside to hold her white waterlogged hands toward the empty gate. A damp smell of death seemed to swirl outward from the cottage. Alys imagined Morach’s half-rotten body decaying as she walked, falling off her bones as she waited for Alys to come to her. As she waited in the darkness of the cottage for Alys to open the door.

Alys gave a little moan of terror. Morach was indoors waiting for her and the moment of reckoning between the two of them was to be now. If Alys turned and fled she knew she would hear the swift squelch of rotting feet running behind her and then feel the icy cold touch of fingers on her shoulder.

With a cry of terror Alys stepped forward, wrenched open the door, and flung it wide. At once her worst nightmares became real.

She had not imagined the noise.

She had not imagined the footsteps.

In the shadowy cottage she could see the figure of a woman seated before the fireplace, a stooped figure of a woman shrouded in her cloak. As the door banged open she slowly straightened up and turned around.

Alys screamed, a breathless, choked-off scream. In the darkness of the cottage she could see no face. All she could see was the hooded woman rising to her feet and coming nearer and nearer; coming toward her and stepping over the threshold so the sun shone full on her face. Alys half closed her eyes, waiting for the glimpse of ghastly blue puffy flesh, waiting for the stink of a drowned corpse.

It was not Morach. The woman was taller than Morach had been. The face she turned to Alys was white, aged and lined with pain. Half-hidden by the hood of her cloak was a thick mane of white hair. Her eyes were gray. Her hands, stretched out to Alys, were thin and freckled with age spots. They shook as if she were sick with the palsy.

“Please…” was all she said. “Please…”

“Who are you?” Alys said wildly, her voice high with terror. “I thought you were Morach! Who are you? What are you doing here?”

The woman trembled all over. “I am sorry,” she said humbly. Her voice was cracked with age or grief but her speech was slow and sweet. “Forgive me. I thought this place was empty. I was seeking…”

Alys stepped closer, her anger flowing into her like hot wine reviving her. “You’ve no right to be here!” she shouted. “This place is not empty. It is no shelter for beggars and paupers. You will have to leave.”

The woman raised her face imploringly. “Please, my lady,” she started, and then a clear light of joy suddenly flooded over her face, and she cried out, “Sister Ann! My darling! My little Sister Ann! Oh, my darling! You are safe!”

“Mother!” Alys said in a sudden blinding moment of recognition and then fell forward as the arms of Mother Hildebrande came around her again and held her as if she had never been away.

The two women clung to each other. “Mother, my mother,” was all Alys said. The abbess felt Alys’s body shake with sobs. “My mother.”

Gently Hildebrande released her. “I have to sit,” she said apologetically. “I am very weak.” She sank down to a stool. Alys dropped to her knees beside the abbess.

“How did you come here?” she asked.

The woman smiled. “I think Our Lady must have brought me to you,” she said. “I have been ill all this long while, in hiding with some faithful people in a farm a little way from Startforth. They told me of this little hovel. There was an old woman living here once, but she has gone missing. They thought that if I lived here and sold medicines to those that asked it of me, that it was my best chance for safety. In a little while, we thought, no one would distinguish one old woman from another.”

“She was a witch,” Alys said with revulsion. “She was a dirty old witch. Anyone could tell you apart.”

Mother Hildebrande smiled. “She was an old woman with more learning than was safe for her,” she said. “And so am I. She was a woman wise beyond her station, and so am I. She must have been a woman who by chance or choice was an outlaw, and so am I. I shall live here, in hiding, at peace with my soul, until the times change and I can again worship God in the church of His choosing.”

She smiled at Alys as if it were a life that anyone would prefer, that a wise woman would envy. “And what of you?” she asked gently. “I have mourned you and prayed for your immortal soul every night of my life since I last saw you. And now I have you back again! Surely God is good. What of you, Sister Ann? How did you escape the fire?”

“I woke when the fire started,” Alys lied rapidly. “And I was running to the chapel to ring the bell when they caught me. They took me into the woods to rape me, but I managed to get away. I went far away, all the way to Newcastle searching for another nunnery, so that I could keep my vows; but it was unsafe everywhere. When I came back to look for you or any of the sisters, Lord Hugh at the castle heard of me and employed me as his clerk.”

Mother Hildebrande’s face was stern. “Has he ordered you to take the oath to deny your church and your faith?” she asked. Her hands were still palsied and her face was that of a frail old woman. But her voice was strong and certain.

“Oh no!” Alys exclaimed. “No! Lord Hugh believes in the old ways. He has sheltered me from that.”

“And have you kept your vows?” the old woman asked. She glanced at Alys’s rich gown, the red gown of Meg the whore who died of the pox.

“Oh yes,” Alys said quickly. She turned her pale heart-shaped face upward to Mother Hildebrande. “I keep the hours of prayer in silence, in my own mind. I may not pray aloud of course, nor can I choose what I wear. But I fast when I should and I own nothing of my own. I have been touched by no man. I am ready to show you my obedience. All my major vows are unbroken.”