The Wise Woman (6 page)

“Write a prayer,” she said. “Any one of the good prayers in Latin.”

Alys’s fingers welcomed the touch of a quill. She held it awkwardly in her swollen, callused hands, like the key to a kingdom she had lost.

“Write it! Write it!” Morach said impatiently. “A good prayer against sickness.”

Very carefully Alys dipped her pen and wrote the simple words of the Lord’s Prayer, her lips moving in time to the cadence of the Latin. It was the first prayer Mother Hildebrande had ever taught her.

Morach watched inquisitively. “Is it done?” she asked, and when Alys nodded, silenced by the tightness of her throat, Morach took the paper and tore it into half a dozen little squares, tipped the dusty powder into it, and twisted the paper to keep the powder safe.

“What are you doing?” Alys demanded.

“Magic,” Morach replied ironically. “This is going to keep us fat through the winter.”

She was right. The people in Bowes and the farmers all around bought the black powder wrapped in the special paper for a penny a twist. Morach bought more paper and set Alys to writing again. Alys knew there could be no sin in writing the Lord’s Prayer but felt uneasy when Morach tore the smooth vellum into pieces.

“Why do you do it?” Alys asked curiously one day, watching Morach grind the root in a mortar nursed on her lap as she sat by the fire on her stool.

Morach smiled at her. “The powder is strong against stomach sickness,” she said. “But it is the spell that you write that gives it the power.”

“It’s a prayer,” Alys said contemptuously. “I don’t make spells and I would not sell burned fennel and a line of prayer for a penny a twist.”

“It makes people well,” Morach said. “They take it and they say the spell when the vomiting hits them. Then the attack passes off.”

“How can it?” Alys asked impatiently. “Why should a torn piece of prayer cure them?”

Morach laughed. “Listen to the running nun!” she exclaimed to the fire. “Listen to the girl who worked in the herb garden and the still-room and the nuns’ infirmary and yet denies the power of plants! Denies the power of prayer! It cures them, my wench, because there is potency in it. And in order to say the prayer they have to draw breath. It steadies them. I order that the prayer has to be said to the sky so they have to open a window and breathe clean air. All of those that have died from the vomiting are those that were weak and sickly and in a panic of fear in dirty rooms. The spell works because it’s powerful. And it helps if they believe it.”

Alys crossed herself in a small gesture between her breasts. Morach would have mocked if she had seen.

“And if they can pay for a spell then they can pay for good food and clean water,” Morach said fairly. “The chances are that they are stronger before the sickness takes them. The rich are always blessed.”

“What if it fails?” Alys asked.

Morach’s face hardened. “You had better pray to your Lady that it never fails,” she said. “If it fails then I can say that they have been bewitched by another power, or the spell has failed them because they did not do it right. If it fails I go at once to the heirs and try to buy their friendship. But if they are vengeful and if their cattle die too, then you and I stay away from Bowes, keep our heads down, and keep out of sight until the body is buried and people have forgot.”

“It’s wrong,” Alys said positively. “At the abbey we followed old books, we knew the herbs we grew, we made them into tinctures and we drank them from measured glasses. This is not herbalism but nonsense. Lies dressed up in dog Latin to frighten children!”

“Nonsense, is it?” Morach demanded, her quick anger aroused. “There are people in this village who will swear I can make a woman miscarry by winking at her! There are people in this village who think I can kill a healthy beast by snapping my fingers over its water pail. There are people in this village who think the devil speaks to me in my dreams and I have all his powers at my command!”

“Aren’t you afraid?” Alys asked.

Morach laughed, her voice harsh and wild. “Afraid?” she said. “Who is not afraid? But I am more afraid of starving this winter, or dying of cold because we have no firewood. Ever since my land was stolen from me I have had no choice. Ever since my land was taken from me I have been afraid. I am a wise woman—of course I am afraid!”

She put the pestle and mortar to one side and then spooned the dust into one scrap of paper and then another, her hands steady.

“Besides,” she said slyly, “I am less afraid than I was. Much much less afraid than I was.”

“Are you?” Alys asked, recognizing the note of torment in Morach’s voice.

“Oh, yes,” Morach said gleefully. “If they seek for a witch in Bowes now, who do you think they will take first? A little old woman with a few herbs in her purse who has been there for years and never done great harm—or a girl as lovely as sin who will speak with no one, nor court with any man. A girl who is neither maid nor woman, saint nor sinner. A girl who is seen in Bowes very seldom, but always with her cloak around her shoulders and a shawl over her head. A girl who talks to no one, and has no young women friends. A girl who avoids men, who keeps her eyes down when one crosses her path. It is
you
who should be afraid, Alys. It is
you
who they see as a strange woman, as someone out of the ordinary. So it is
you
that they think has the skill to cure the vomiting. It will be
you
they praise or blame. It should be
you
who is afraid!”

“They cannot think these are spells!” Alys exclaimed. “I told you from the start they were prayers! You asked me to write a prayer and I did! They cannot think that I do magic!”

“Go on!” Morach gestured to her impatiently. “Write some more! Write some more! I need it to wrap these doses. It is your writing, Alys, that makes the powder work. Ever since you came back, the fennel has cured the vomiting. They say
you
are the cunning woman and I am your servant. They say you have come from the devil. They say that the singed corner of your robe was from the fires of hell—and that you are the bride of the devil.”

“Who says?” Alys demanded stoutly, though her voice shook a little. “I don’t believe anyone says anything.”

“Liza—Tom’s wife,” Morach said triumphantly. “She says you’ve tampered with Tom’s sleep. He names you in his sleep—a sure sign of hexing.”

Alys laughed bitterly. “Oh aye,” she said tartly. “He is calling me to rescue him from her sharp tongue.”

“Curse her then!” Morach’s face was bright in the shadowy cottage. “Try it! Curse her to death and make Tom a widower, rich with her dowry, so that he can return to you and you can use your roughened hands on his land where you will see the benefit. She’s a useless, spiteful woman, no one’s friend. No one would miss her.”

“Don’t,” Alys said quickly. “Don’t speak of such things. You know I would not do it and I don’t have the power.”

“You
do
have the power,” Morach insisted. “You know it and I know it! You ran from your power and you hoped your God would keep you safe if you forgot your skills. But here you are, back with me, and it is as if you were never away. There are no safe nunneries left, Alys! There is nowhere for you to go! You will stay with me forever unless you go to a man. Why not Tom? You liked him well enough when you were young, and he has never loved another woman. You could kill Liza. You
should
kill Liza. I can tell you the ways to do it. Hundreds of ways. And then you can live soft in Tom’s farmhouse, and wash every day as you long to do, and even say your prayers, and think of how we would eat! A little spell and a great difference. Do it, Alys!”

“I cannot!” Alys said desperately. “I cannot. And even if I could, I would not do it. I have no power but my learning from the abbey. I will not dabble in your spells. They mean nothing, you know nothing. I shall never use your skills.”

Morach shrugged her shoulders and tied the twists of powder with a thread. “I think you will,” she said in an undertone. “And I think you feel your power in your fingertips, and taste it on your tongue. Don’t you, my Alys? When you are alone on the moor and the wind is blowing softly, don’t you
know
you can call it? Bid it go where you will? Blow health or sickness? Wealth or poverty? When you were on your knees in the abbey, couldn’t you
feel
the power around you and in you? I can feel the power in me—aye, and I can feel it in you too. The old abbess saw it clearly enough. She wanted it for her God! Well, now your power is freed again and you can use it where you will.”

Alys shook her head. “No,” she said determinedly. “I feel nothing. I know nothing. I have no power.”

“Look at the fire,” Morach said instantly. “Look at the fire.”

Alys looked toward it, the banks of badly cut peat glowing orange, and the burning log lying on the embers.

“Turn it blue,” Morach whispered.

Alys felt the thought of blue flames in her mind, paused for a moment with the picture of blue flames before her inner eye. The flames bobbed, flickered, and then they burned a steady bright periwinkle blue. The embers glowed like a summer sky, the ashes were a deep dark violet.

Morach laughed delightedly. Alys snapped her gaze away from the fire and the flame spurted and flared orange again.

Alys crossed herself hastily. “Stop it, Morach,” she said irritably. “Stupid tricks for frightening children. As if I would be fooled by them after a childhood with you and your cheating arts.”

Morach shook her head. “I touched nothing,” she said easily. “It was your gaze, and your mind, and your power. And you can run and run from it as fast as you ran from your holy life. But the two of them will keep pace with you forever, Alys. In the end you will have to choose.”

“I am a nun,” Alys said through her teeth. “There will be no magic and dark skills for me. I do not want them. I do not want you. And I do not want Tom. Hear me now, Morach, as soon as I can leave here, I will go. I swear to you that if I could leave this very night, I would be gone. I want none of it. None of it. If I could, I swear that I would ride away from this place now and never come back.”

“Hush!” Morach said suddenly. Alys froze into silence and the two women strained their ears to listen.

“Someone outside the door,” Morach hissed. “What can you hear?”

“A horse,” Alys whispered. “No, two horses.”

In a quick gesture Morach tipped the pot of water on to the embers of the turf fire. The glow died at once, the room filled with thick smoke. Alys clapped her hand over her mouth so as not to choke.

The banging on the little wooden door was like thunder. The two women shrank together, their eyes fixed on the entrance as if the door would splinter and fall apart. Someone was hammering on it with a sword hilt.

“I’ll open it,” Morach said. In the darkness her face was as white as a drowned woman. “You get yourself upstairs and hide under my pallet. If it’s the witch-taker it’ll likely be for me, you might escape. No one will listen to Tom’s wife without others to speak against you; and no one has died this week. Go on, wench, it’s the only chance I can give you.”

Alys did not hesitate, she fled toward the ladder and upward like a shadow.

“I’m coming,” Morach said in a harsh grumbling voice. “Leave an old woman’s door on the hinge, can’t you?”

She checked that Alys was hidden above, and then swung the wooden latch to open the door.

The two tall men on horseback filled the skyline like giants. Around their shoulders the stars shone and the dark streams of cloud raced past their looming heads.

“We want the young wise woman,” the man said. His face was muffled against the cold, he was armed only with a cudgel and a short stabbing dagger. “The new young wise woman. Get her.”

“I’m not rightly sure…” Morach started, her voice a plaintive whine. “She is not…”

The man reached down and grabbed the shawl at Morach’s throat and lifted her up till her face was near his. The horse shifted uneasily and Morach gurgled and choked, her feet kicking.

“Lord Hugh at the castle orders it,” he said. “He is ill. He wants the young wise woman and the spell against the vomiting. Get her, and no harm will come of it. He will pay you. If you hide her I shall burn this stinking shack around your ears with the door nailed up, and you inside.”

He dropped Morach back on her feet. She stumbled back against the door frame and turned back toward the cottage, half closing the door.

Alys was looking down from the sleeping platform, her eyes huge in her white face. “I cannot…” she said.

Morach snatched the shawl from her own shoulders, spread it on the hearth, and heaped into it handfuls of herbs, a black-backed prayer-book, four of the twists of powder, a shiny lump of quartz tied up with a long scrap of ribbon, and the pestle and mortar.

“You’ll have to try or they’ll kill us both,” she said bleakly. “It’s a chance, and a good chance. Others have been cured of the sickness. You’ll have to take the gamble.”

“I could run,” Alys said. “I could hide on the moor for the night.”

“And leave me? I’d be dead by dawn,” Morach said. “You heard him. He’ll burn me alive.”

“They don’t want you,” Alys said urgently. “They would not do that. You could tell them I’m spending the night in Bowes. I could hide by the river, in one of the caves, while they’re gone to look for me.”

Morach looked at her hard. “You’ve a bitter taste,” she said scowling. “For all your lovely face you’ve a bitter taste, Alys. You’d run, wouldn’t you? And leave me to face them. You’d rather I died than you took a chance.”

Alys opened her mouth to deny it, but Morach thrust the shawl into her hands before she could speak.

“You would gamble with my death, but I will not,” Morach said harshly, pushing her toward the door. “Out you go, my girl, I’ll come to the castle when I can, to get news of you. See what you can do. They grow herbs there, and flowers. You may be able to use your nun’s arts as well as mine.”

Alys hefted the bundle. Her whole face was trembling. “I cannot!” she said. “I have no skills, I know nothing! I grew a few herbs, I did as I was ordered at the abbey. And your arts are lies and nonsense.”