The Wise Woman
‘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 towards 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’s. ‘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 towards the ladder and upwards 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 towards 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 towards 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.’
Morach laughed bitterly. The man outside hammered on the door again. ‘Come, wench!’ he said. ‘Or I will smoke you out!’
‘Take my lies and nonsense, and your own ignorance, and use it to save your skin,’ Morach said. She had to push Alys towards the door. ‘Hex him!’ she hissed, as she got the girl over the threshold. ‘You have the power, I can feel it in you. You turned the flame blue with your thought. Take your powers and use them now, for your own sake! Hex the old lord into health, Alys, or you and I are dead women.’
Alys gave a little moan of terror and then the man on the horse leaned down and gripped her under both arms and hauled her up before him.
‘Come!’ he said to his companion and they wheeled their horses around, the hooves tearing up the vegetable patch. Then they were gone into the darkness, and the wind whipped away the noise of the gallop.
Morach waited a while at the cottage doorway, ignoring the cold and the smoke from the doused fire swirling thickly behind her, listening to the silence now that Alys had gone.
‘She has power,’ she said to the night sky, watching the clouds unravelling past the half-moon. ‘She swore that she would go, and in that moment the horses came for her and she was gone. What will she wish for next? What will she wish for next?’
Three
Alys had never been on a galloping horse and she clung to the pommel of the saddle before her, thrown and jolted by the horse’s great rolling strides. The wind rushed into her face and the hard grip of the man behind her was that of a jailer. When she looked down she could see the heaving shoulders of the great horse, when she looked forward she saw its tossing mane. They went over the little stone bridge from the moorland road to Castleton with sparks flying upwards from the horses’ hooves, and clattered up the cobbled street between the dozen stone-built houses at the same breakneck speed. Not a light showed at any of the shuttered windows, even the smaller houses, set back from the main street on earth roads, and the little shanties behind them on waste ground were dark and silent.
Alys was so shaken that she had no breath to cry out, even when the horse wheeled around to the left and thundered up the drawbridge into the great black maw of the castle gateway. There was a brief challenge from two soldiers, invisible in the darkness of the doorway, and a gruff response from the rider and then they were out into the moonlit castle grounds. Alys had a confused impression of a jumble of stables and farm buildings on her right, the round tower of the guardroom on her left, the smell of pigs, and then they crossed a second drawbridge over a deep stagnant moat, with the noise of the hooves rumbling like thunder on the wooden bridge, and plunged into the darkness of another gateway.
The horses halted as two more soldiers stepped forward with a quick word of challenge and stared at the riders and Alys, before waving them through into a garden. Alys could see vegetable-beds and herb-beds and the bare-branched outline of apple trees; but before them, squat and powerful against the night sky, was a long two-storey building with a pair of great double doors set plumb in the centre. Alys could hear the noise of many people shouting and laughing inside. The door opened and a man stepped out to urinate carelessly against the wall; bright torchlight spilled out into the yard and she could smell hot roasted meats. They rode the length of the building, Alys saw the glow of a bakehouse fire in a little round hive of a building set apart from the rest on their right, and then before them were two brooding towers, built with grey stones as thick as boulders, showing no lights.
‘Where are we?’ Alys gasped, clinging to the man’s hands as he thrust her down from the saddle.
He nodded to the tower which adjoined the long building. ‘Lord Hugh’s tower,’ he said briefly. He looked over her head and shouted. An answering cry came from inside the tower and Alys heard a bolt sliding easily back.
‘And what’s that tower?’ she asked urgently. She pointed behind them to the opposing tower, smaller and more squat, set into the high exterior castle wall, with no windows at all at the base and a flight of stone steps running up the outside to the first storey.
‘Pray you never know!’ the man said grimly. ‘That’s the prison tower. The first floor is the guardroom, and down below are the cells. They have the rack there, and thumbscrews, a press and bridle. Pray you never see them, wench! You come out more talkative – but taller! Much taller! Thinner! And sometimes toothless!Cheaper than the toothdrawer at any price!’ He laughed harshly. ‘Here!’ He called a soldier who stepped out of the shadows. ‘Here is the wise woman from Bowes. Take her and her bundle to Lord Hugh at once. Let no one tamper with her. My lord’s orders!’
He thrust Alys towards the soldier and he grabbed her and marched her up the flight of stone steps to the arched doorway. The door, as thick as a tree trunk, stood open. Inside, a torch flickered, staining the wall behind it with a stripe of black soot. The castle breathed coldness, sweated damp. Alys drew her shawl over her rough cropped head with a shudder. It was colder even than Morach’s draughty cottage. Here the castle walls held the wind out, but no sun ever shone. Alys crossed herself beneath her shawl. She had a premonition that she was walking towards mortal danger. The dark corridor before her – lit at the corners with smoking torches – was like her worst nightmares of the nunnery: a smell of smoke, a crackle of flames, and a long, long corridor with no way out.
‘Come,’ the man said grimly and took Alys’ arm in a hard grip. She trailed behind him, up a staircase which circled round and around inside the body of the tower, until he said, ‘Here now,’ and knocked, three short knocks and two long, on a massive wooden door. It swung open. Alys blinked. It was bright inside, half a dozen men were lounging on benches at a long table, the remains of their supper spread before them, two big hunting dogs growling over bones in the corner. The air was hot with rancid smoke and the smell of sweat.
‘A wench!’ said one. ‘That’s kindly of you!’
Alys shrank back behind the soldier who still held her. He shook his head. ‘Nay,’ he said. ‘It’s the wise woman from Bowes, come to see my lord. Is he well?’
A young man at the far end of the room beckoned them through. ‘No better,’ he said in an undertone. ‘He wants to see her at once.’
He pulled back a tapestry on the wall behind him and swung open a narrow arched door. The soldier released Alys and thrust her bundle into her hands. She hesitated.
‘Go on,’ the young man said.
She paused again. The soldier behind her put his hand in the small of her back and pushed her forward. Alys, caught off balance, stumbled into the room and past the watching men. Before her, through the door, was a flight of shallow stone steps lit by a single guttering torch. There was a small wooden door at the head of the flight of stairs. As she climbed up, it slowly opened.
The room was dark, lit only by firelight and one pale wax candle standing on a chest by a small high bed. At the head of the bed stood a tiny man, no taller than a child. His dark eyes were on Alys, and his hand smoothed the pillow.
On the pillow was a lean face engraved by sickness and suffering, the skin as yellow as birch leaves in autumn. But the eyes, when the heavy lids flew open and stared at Alys, were as bright and black as an old peregrine falcon.
‘You the wise woman?’ he asked.
‘I have a very little skill,’ Alys said. ‘And very little learning. You should send for someone learned, an apothecary or even a barber. You should have a physician.’
‘They would cup me till I died,’ the sick man said slowly. ‘They have cupped me till I am near dead already. Before I threw them out they said they could do no more. They left me for dead, girl! But I won’t die. I can’t die yet. My plans are not yet done. You can save me, can’t you?’
‘I’ll try,’ Alys said, pressing her lips on a denial. She turned to the fireplace and laid down Morach’s shawl. By the light of the fire she untied the knot and spread out the cloth and arranged the things. The little man came over and squatted down beside her. His head came no higher than her shoulder.
‘Do you use the black arts, mistress?’ he asked in a soft undertone.
‘No!’ Alys said instantly. ‘I have a very little skill with herbs – just what my mistress has taught me. You should have sent for her.’
The dwarf shook his head. ‘In all Bowes they speak of the new young wise woman who came from nowhere and lives with the old widow Morach by the river. He’ll have no truck with the black arts,’ he said, nodding to the still figure in the bed.
Alys nodded. She straightened the black-bound prayer-book, put the herbs and the pestle and mortar to her right.
‘What’s that?’ the dwarf said, pointing to the stone and ribbon.
‘It’s a crystal,’ Alys said.
At once the little man crossed himself and bit the tip of his thumb. ‘To see into the future?’ he demanded. ‘That’s black arts!’
‘No,’ Alys said. ‘To find the source of the illness. Like dowsing for water. Divining for water is not black arts, any child can do it.’
‘Aye.’ The man nodded, conceding the point. ‘Aye, that’s true.’
‘Have done chattering!’ came the sudden command from the bed. ‘Come and cure me, wise woman.’
Alys got to her feet, holding the frayed ribbon of the crystal between her finger and thumb so that it hung down like a pendulum. As she moved, the shawl covering her head slid back. The dwarf exclaimed at the stubble of her regrowing hair.
‘What have you done to your head?’ he demanded. Then his face grew suddenly sly. ‘Was it shaved, my pretty wench? Are you a runaway nun, fled from a fat abbey where the old women grow rich and talk treason?’
‘No,’ Alys said quickly. From the courtyard below the window a cock crowed briefly into the darkness and then settled to sleep again. ‘I was sick with a fever in Penrith and they shaved my head,’ she said. ‘I am not a nun, I don’t know what you mean about treason. I am just a simple girl.’
The dwarf nodded with a disbelieving smile, then he skipped to his place at the head of the bed and stroked the pillow again.
Alys drew closer. ‘In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti,’ she muttered under her breath. The stone on the ribbon swung of its own accord in a lazy clockwise arc. ‘This is God’s work,’ Alys said. The stone swung a little wider, a little faster. Alys breathed a little easier. She had never used a pendulum at the abbey, the nuns frowned on it as a supernatural force. The stone was Morach’s. By blessing it Alys hoped to stay inside the misty border which separated God’s work from that of the devil. But with the old lord glaring at her, and the dwarf’s slight malicious smile, she felt in equal danger of burning for heresy as being taken as a witch and strangled.
She put her hand, which shook only slightly, on the old lord’s forehead.
‘His sickness is here,’ she said, as she had seen Morach do.
The dwarf hissed as the crystal broke its pattern of circular swing and moved instead back and forth.
‘What does it mean?’ he asked.
‘The sickness is not in his head,’ she replied softly.
‘I didn’t see your fingers move the crystal?’
‘Have done with your chatter,’ the old lord flared at the dwarf. ‘Let the wench do her work.’
Alys drew back the rich rugs covering the old man. She saw at once how his skin shivered at the touch of the air, yet the room was warm. Tentatively she put the back of her hand against his withered cheek. He was burning up.
She moved her hand cautiously to rest on his flat belly. She whispered: ‘His sickness is here?’ and at once she felt a change in the movement of the stone. It circled strongly, round and round, and Alys nodded at the lord with renewed confidence.
‘You have taken a fever in your belly,’ she said. ‘Have you eaten or fasted?’
‘Eaten,’ the old man said. ‘They force food on me and then they cup me of the goodness.’
Alys nodded. ‘You are to eat what you please,’ she said. ‘Little things that tempt you. But you must drink spring water. As much as you can bear. Half a pint every half hour today and tomorrow. And it must be spring water, not from the well in the courtyard. And not from the well in town. Send someone to fetch you spring water from the moor.’
The old man nodded. ‘When you are cold, cover yourself up and order more rugs,’ Alys said. ‘And when you are hot have them taken off you. You need to be as you please, and then your fever will break.’
She turned away from the bedside to her shawl spread before the fire. She hesitated a moment at the twists of burned fennel and then she shrugged. She did not think they would do any good, but equally they did no harm.
‘Take one of these, before you sleep every night,’ she said. ‘Have you vomited much?’
He nodded.
‘When you feel about to vomit then you must order your window opened.’ There was a muted gasp of horror from the little man at the head of the bed. ‘And read the writing aloud.’
‘The night air is dangerous,’ the dwarf said firmly. ‘And what is the writing? Is it a spell?’