The Wise Woman

‘The air will stop him being sick,’ Alys said calmly, as if she were certain of what she was doing. ‘And it is not a spell, it is a prayer.’

The man in the bed chuckled weakly. ‘You are a philosopher, wench!’ he said. ‘Not a spell but a prayer! You can be hanged for one thing as well as the other in these days.’

‘It’s the Lord’s Prayer,’ Alys said quickly, the joke was too dangerous in this dark room where they watched for witchcraft and yet wanted a miracle to cure an old man.

‘And for your fever I shall grind you some powder to take in your drink,’ she said. She reached for the little dried berries of deadly nightshade that Morach had put in the bundle. She took just one and ground it in the mortar.

‘Here,’ she said, taking a pinch of the powder. ‘Take this now. And you will need more later. I will leave some for you this night, and I will come again in the morning.’

‘You stay,’ the old man said softly.

Alys hesitated.

‘You stay. David, get a pallet for her. She’s to sleep here, eat here. She’s to see no one. I won’t have gossip.’

The dwarf nodded and slid from the room; the curtain over the door barely swayed at his passing.

‘I have to go home, my lord,’ Alys said breathlessly. ‘My kinswoman will be looking for me. I could come back again, as early as you like, tomorrow.’

‘You stay,’ he said again. His black eyes scanned her from head to foot. ‘I’ll tell you, lass, there are those who would buy you to poison me within these walls this night. There are those who would take you up for a cheat if you fail to cure me. There are men out there who would use you and fling you in the moat when they had their fill of you for the sake of your young body. You are safest, if I live, with me. You stay.’

Alys bowed her head and retied Morach’s shawl around the goods.

For the next five days Alys lived in a little chamber off the old lord’s room. She saw no one but Lord Hugh and the dwarf. Her food was brought to her by the dwarf; one day she caught him tasting it, and then he tasted the food for Lord Hugh. She looked at him with a question in her face and he sneered and said: ‘Do you think you are the only herbalist in the country, wench? There are many poisons to be had. And there are many who would profit from my lord’s death.’

‘He won’t die this time,’ Alys said. She spoke with real confidence. ‘He’s on the mend.’

Every day he was eating more, he was sitting up in bed, he was speaking to the dwarf and to Alys in a voice loud and clear like a tolling bell. On the sixth day he said he would take his midday dinner in the hall with his people.

‘Then I shall take my leave of you,’ Alys said when he was dressed with a black hat on his long white hair, a fur-lined robe over his thick padded doublet, and with embroidered slippers on his feet. ‘Farewell, my lord, I am glad to have been of service to you.’

He gleamed at her. ‘You have not finished your service,’ he said. ‘I have not done with you yet, wench. You will go back to your home when I say, and not before.’

Alys bowed her head and said nothing. When she looked up her eyes were wet.

‘What is it?’ he demanded. ‘What’s the matter with you?’

‘It’s my kinswoman,’ Alys said softly. ‘Morach of Bowes Moor. I had a message that she is ill with a fever in the belly. She is all the family I have in the world …’

She snatched a glance at him and saw he was nodding sympathetically.

‘If I could go home …’ she half whispered.

Lord Hugh snapped his thin white fingers. The dwarf came to his side and bent low. There was a low rapid exchange in a language Alys did not know. Then Lord Hugh looked at her with a wide grin.

‘When did your kinswoman fall ill?’ he asked.

‘Yesterday …’ Alys said.

‘You lie,’ Lord Hugh said benignly. ‘She came here this morning and asked for you at the gatehouse and left a message with David, that she was well, and that she would come next week with more herbs for you.’

Alys flushed scarlet and said nothing.

‘Come on,’ Lord Hugh said. ‘We are going to dinner.’

Halfway to the door he paused again. ‘She looks a drab!’ he exclaimed to David. Alys’ old habit, singed by the fire and trailed in the mud, was tied around her waist with a shawl. She had another grey shawl over her head tied under her chin.

‘Get her a gown, one of Meg’s old gowns,’ Lord Hugh tossed over his shoulder. ‘She can have it as a gift. And take that damned shawl off her head!’

The dwarf waved Alys to wait and flung open a chest in the corner of the room. ‘Meg was his last whore,’ he said. ‘She had a pretty gown of red. She died of the pox two years ago. We put her clothes in here.’

‘I can’t wear her clothes!’ Alys exclaimed in revulsion. ‘I can’t wear a red gown!’

The dwarf pulled a cherry-red gown from the chest, found the shoulders and shook it out before Alys.

Alys gazed at the colour as if she were drinking it in. ‘Oh!’ she said longingly and stepped forward. The cloth was woven of soft fine wool, warm and silky to the touch. It was trimmed at the neck, the puffed sleeves and the hem with dark red ribbon of silk. Meg had been a proud woman, ready to defy the laws against commoners wearing colour. There was even a silver cord to tie around the waist.

‘I’ve never seen cloth so fine!’ Alys said, awed. ‘The colour of it! And the feel of it!’

‘It comes with an embroidered stomacher,’ the dwarf said, tossing Alys the gown and turning back to the chest. ‘And an overskirt to match.’ He rummaged in the chest and dragged out the stomacher with long flowing sleeves and fine silver laces up the back, and a rich red skirt embroidered with silver.

‘Get it on,’ he said impatiently. ‘We must be in the hall before my lord comes in.’

Alys checked her movement to take the stomacher and skirt from him. ‘I cannot wear a whore’s gown,’ she said. ‘Besides, I might take the pox.’

The dwarf gasped and then choked with malicious laughter. ‘Not such a wise woman after all!’ he said, tears oozing from his eyes. ‘Take the pox from a gown! That’s the finest excuse I ever heard.’ Abruptly he flung the stomacher and skirt at her and Alys caught them. ‘Put it on,’ he said, suddenly surly.

Alys hesitated still. In her head she could hear a cry in a voice, her own voice, calling for Mother Hildebrande to come and take her away. To save her from this shame just as she had rescued Alys, all those years ago, from Morach. She shook her head. The loss of the abbey and the loss of her mother were like a nightmare which cast its shadow over every moment of her day. A long shadow of loneliness and danger. There was no mother loving her and protecting her, not any more.

‘I cannot wear a whore’s gown,’ she said in a little whisper.

‘Wear it!’ the dwarf growled. ‘It’s that or a shroud, Missy. I don’t jest with you. The old lord has his way without question. I’ll stab you as I stand here and go to dinner alone if you wish. It’s your choice.’

Alys untied her belt and slid her robe to the floor. The dwarf stared at her as if appraising a mare for breeding. His eyes slid over the swell of her breasts under her coarse woven shift, assessed her narrow waist and her smooth young muscled flanks. His lips formed into a soundless whistle.

‘The old lord always had an eye for a wench,’ he said softly to himself. ‘Looks like he saved the pick of the crop for his deathbed!’

Alys flung the gown over her head and pulled it down, thrust her arms through the soft woven sleeves. They were padded on the inside with white silk and slashed so the fine white fabric showed through, caught at each wrist with a little cuff and button made of horn. She turned her back to David and he laced the scarlet laces at the back of the gown and tied them in silence. She turned back and eyed the stomacher and overskirt.

‘I don’t know how this goes,’ she confessed.

David looked at her curiously. ‘I thought maids dreamed of nothing else,’ he said. ‘The overskirt goes on next and ties behind.’ He held it out for her and Alys stepped into it, turned under his hands and let him tie the skirt at her waist. It swept from her waist to the floor with a rustle, leaving an open slit at the front for the plain red to show. Alys smoothed her hands down the skirt; the silver embroidery was cold and scratchy under her palms. The skirt was too long – Meg, the old lord’s whore, had been a tall woman.

‘Now this,’ David said. ‘Make haste, girl!’ He held out the stomacher and sleeves towards her and Alys thrust her arms through the wide-cut hanging sleeves and turned her back again for David to lace her from behind.

‘Damned lady’s-maiding,’ he grumbled, as he pulled the silver laces tight and threaded them through the holes. He tied a firm bow at the base of the stomacher and stuffed the bow out of sight under the boned waist. Alys turned to face him.

‘Pull it down at the front,’ he ordered. ‘And pull the sleeves down.’

Alys pulled the stomacher down at her waist. It was too long for her as well, stopping at the swell of her hips and with the sharply pointed V at the front extending too low. It held her stiffly so that her breasts were flattened into one smooth line from the rich swirl of the skirt to the square neck of the gown which showed at the top of the stomacher. She tugged the oversleeves on both sides. They were long and sweeping, folded back to show the undersleeves like rich slashed pouches beneath them. David nodded.

‘And the girdle goes loosely over the top,’ he said. Alys fastened the silver girdle and straightened it so the long end fell down in front, enhancing the narrowness of her waist and the pointed line of the bodice, subtly suggesting the desirable triangle at the top of her thighs. She ran her hand over her cropped head where her growing hair was golden and stubbly.

David nodded. ‘A sweeter honey even than Meg,’ he said to himself. ‘Who will stick his tongue in this pot?’

Alys ignored him. ‘Is there nothing to hide my head?’

The dwarf rummaged in the chest for a few moments. ‘Nothing you could wear without hair to pin it on,’ he said. ‘You’d best go bareheaded.’

Alys grimaced. ‘I suppose no one will look at me,’ she said.

‘They’ll look at nothing else!’ he said with malicious satisfaction. ‘Half of them think you’re a holy healer, and the other half think you’re his whore. And the young lord …’ his voice trailed off.

‘What?’ asked Alys. ‘What of the young lord?’

‘He’s got a keen eye for a pretty wench,’ the dwarf said simply. ‘And besides, he’s got a score to settle with you. If the old lord had died he could have taken himself to the King’s court, put aside that shrew he wed, and made his way in the great world. He’ll not thank you for that.’

‘The shrew? His wife?’ Alys asked.

The dwarf motioned her to follow him through the door and then led her down the twisting stone staircase. As she passed an arrow-slit window Alys breathed in the cold wind which blew from the wintry moorland to the west of them, over the River Tees. It smelled of her home, of her childhood. For a moment she even longed for the little hovel by the river with the moor quiet all around it.

The dwarf grinned. ‘She complains of him to the old lord,’ he said. ‘I’ve been there, I’ve heard her. Lord Hugo won’t come to her bed, or he won’t use her kindly. One time she angered him so that he beat her favourite waiting-woman before her. Too proud to touch his lady, but a temper on him that would scare the devil! The old lord used to keep Hugo on a short leash but they’re both weary of the shrew. He used to watch that the young lord didn’t abuse her over-much, and kept her supplied with trinkets and perfumes, little sweeteners for her vinegar. But she has called down a storm on them both too often, they both long to be rid of her.’

‘They can’t do that, can they?’ Alys asked, frowning.

David shrugged. ‘Who knows what can be done now?’ he asked. ‘The Church is ruled by the King now, not the vicar of Rome. The King does as he pleases with his women. Why not the young lord? The rightful wife stays barren, but if they dismiss her they lose her entailed lands and her dowry. And in all of Hugo’s roistering he’s never got a wench with child. So the shrew stays here until they can think of a way to be rid of her and yet keep her wealth.’

‘How?’ Alys asked.

‘If she were taken in adultery,’ David said in a whisper. ‘Or died.’

There was a cold silence around them as they went through the empty guardroom, and down the flight of steps to the entrance of the great hall.

‘And she?’ Alys asked.

David hawked and spat disdainfully. ‘She’d do anything to take the young lord’s fancy,’ he said. ‘She’d do anything to creep into his bed. She’s a passionate woman gone sour, a lustful woman on short commons. There’s nothing she would not do for the young lord. I’ve heard her women talk.

‘She’s praying every day for an heir to make her place secure. She prays every day for the young lord to turn to her and give her a son. She prays every day for the old lord to cleave to her cause, not to take up the new ways of setting aside wives as lightly as changing hunters. And she’s hot for Hugo.’ He paused. ‘All the women are,’ he said.

‘And he,’ Alys began. ‘Does he …’

‘Sshh,’ the dwarf said abruptly. He glanced over his shoulder to see that Alys was ready and at her nod he pushed open one of the thick wooden doors at the side of the great hall.

Four

The great hall was a high arched chamber, dark with only arrow-slit windows high up in the thick stone walls. A massive fire was burning against the east wall, great trunks of trees flung pell-mell and blazing, the smoke filling the room, smuts and light white ash dancing in the air. Beside Alys, to her left on a raised dais, was a long table with three empty high-backed carved chairs behind it, facing the room. Down the length of the room ran four long tables and benches, soldiers and guards seated in the best places at the dais end of the hall; the servants, scullions and women struggled for places nearest the south door.

The place was in uproar: three or four dogs were fighting by the east wall, the soldiers were hammering on the table and yelling for bread and ale, the servants were shouting to be heard above the noise. In the brackets on the walls there were burning torches, and as Alys watched a well-dressed young man stepped up to the lord’s table and lowered a fine candelabra from a candlebeam and lit sconces of pale golden wax candles.

David the dwarf nudged Alys in the ribs. ‘You will sit in the body of the hall,’ he said. ‘Come on, I’ll find you a place.’ He led the way, with his rolling, half-lame stride, between the tables. But before he could seat Alys at an empty place there was a ripple of excitement in the hall. David turned around and tapped Alys’ arm, directing her attention to the high table. ‘Now you watch!’ he said triumphantly. ‘You see the welcome he gets, my Lord Hugh! You see!’

The tapestry behind the table on the dais was drawn back, the little arched door opened, and Lord Hugh stepped through and took his place in the great carved chair at the plumb centre of the table. There was a moment’s surprised silence and then suddenly there was a great roar of delight as the soldiers and servants cheered and hammered the table with their knives and drummed their boots against the benches.

Alys smiled at the welcome, and saw how the old lord nodded his bony head in one direction and then in another. ‘He looks well!’ she thought. After nearly a week of seeing him as an invalid, in the cramped room of the tower, she was surprised to see him now as the lord at his own table. He had flushed a little, with the heat and with pleasure at his howling, yelling welcome. I cured him! Alys thought, with sudden, surprised pleasure. I cured him! They left him for dead but I cured him. Hidden by her drooping sleeves she stretched out her hands, feeling her power flow through her, down to her fingertips.

Alys had cured people before, vagrants and sick paupers in the infirmary, farmers in their heavy beds, peasants on pallets. But the old lord was the first man she had made well and seen rise up and take his power, great power. And I did that! Alys said to herself. I had the skill to cure him. I made him well.

She looked at him, smiling at the thought, and then the curtain behind him moved again and the young Lord Hugo came into the hall.

He was as tall as his father, with his father’s sharp bony face. He had his father’s black piercing eyes too, and his beaky nose. There were deep lines either side of his mouth, and two lines at the roots of his eyebrows like a permanent scowl. But then someone shouted, ‘Holloa! Hugo!’ from the benches and his face suddenly lit up as if someone had put a brand to a haystack, in the merriest, most joyful smile. Alys said, ‘Mother of God!’

‘What is it?’ David said, shooting a look at her. ‘Have you the Sight? Have you seen something?’

‘No,’ Alys said, in an instant denial. ‘I see nothing. I see nothing. I just saw …’ she broke off. ‘I just saw him smile,’ she said helplessly. She tried to look towards David but she could not take her eyes from the young lord. He stood, his hand resting casually on the back of his chair, his face turned towards his father. A jewel on his long fingers winked in the torchlight, an emerald, as green as his bulky doublet, and his velvet cap sat askew on his black curly hair.

‘There’s the shrew,’ David said. ‘Coming to sit on my lord’s left.’

Alys hardly heard him. She was still staring at the young lord. It was he who had been there at the burning of the abbey. It was he who had laughed as the tiles on the roof cracked like fireworks in the heat and the lead had poured down like a blazing waterfall. It was his fault that the abbey was burned, that Mother Hildebrande was dead, and Alys alone and vulnerable in the world again. He was a criminal, in the deepest and darkest of sin. He was an arsonist – a hateful crime. He was a murderer. Alys looked at his severe face and knew she should hate him as her enemy. But Hugo had charm as potent as any magic. His father said something which amused him and he flung back his head to laugh and Alys felt herself smiling too – as people will laugh with a child or smile for another’s upsurging joy. Alys looked down the length of the hall at Hugo and knew that, unseen and unnoticed, her own face was alight with pleasure at seeing him.

‘See that woman’s pride!’ the dwarf said with disdain.

The young lord’s wife was tall and looked older than him. She carried her power around her like a cloak. Her face as she scanned the hall was impassive, her welcome to her father-in-law was coolly perfect. She hesitated for a courteous second before sitting so the lords were seated first. Then she looked directly down the hall and saw Alys.

‘Bow,’ the dwarf said. ‘Bow! Get your head down for God’s sake! She’s looking at you.’

Alys held the woman’s cold grey stare. ‘I will not,’ she said.

Lady Catherine turned to one of the women seated behind her and asked a question. The woman stared at Alys, and then beckoned a servant. Alys was aware of the chain of command, and of the lowliest servant coming towards her, but she did not take her eyes from Lady Catherine’s face.

‘Two cats on a barn roof,’ David said under his breath.

Alys found her palms were tingling from her fingernails driven into them. She was holding her hands in tight fists, hidden by the sweep of the long sleeves.

‘Lady Catherine says you’re to go forward!’ the servant said, skidding to a halt before her on the dirty rushes. ‘Go up to the high table. She wants you!’

Alys glanced at David. ‘Go your ways,’ he said. ‘I’m for my dinner. You go for the cat fight. Come straight to my lord’s room after dinner. No dawdling.’

Alys nodded, still not taking her eyes from Lady Catherine’s square, sallow face. Then she walked slowly up the length of the hall.

One by one the chattering men and women fell silent to watch her. A great wolfhound growled and then followed Alys up the centre of the hall, up the wide nave between the tables until she was standing with two hundred people staring at her back and Lady Catherine’s cold eyes staring at her face.

‘We have to thank you for your skill,’ Lady Catherine said. Her voice was flat with the ugly vowel sounds of the southerner. ‘You seem to have restored my lord to perfect health.’

The words were kind but the look that accompanied them was ice.

‘I did no more than my duty,’ Alys said. She did not take her eyes from Lady Catherine’s face.

‘You could tempt me to fall sick tomorrow!’ the young lord said easily with a laugh. The officers on the benches nearest the table laughed with him. Someone whistled a long, low whistle. Alys looked only at him. His black eyes were hooded, lazy, his smile was as warm as if they shared a secret. It was an invitation to bed as clear as a mattins bell to church. Alys felt the blood rising to her face in a slow deep blush.

‘Don’t wish it, my lord!’ Lady Catherine said evenly. Then she turned again to Alys. ‘Where do you come from?’ she asked sharply.

‘Bowes Moor,’ Alys replied.

Lady Catherine frowned. ‘Your speech is not from here,’ she said suspiciously.

Alys bit the inside of her lips. ‘I lived for some years in Penrith,’ she said. ‘I have kin there. They speak softer and they taught me to read aloud.’

‘You can read?’ the old lord asked.

Alys nodded. ‘Yes, my lord,’ she said.

‘Can you write?’ he asked, astonished. ‘English and Latin?’

‘Yes, my lord,’ Alys replied.

The young lord slapped his father on the shoulder. ‘There’s your clerk for you!’ he said. ‘A wench for a clerk! You can count on her not to rise up in the church and leave you!’

There was a laugh from the head of the long table nearest the dais and a man in the dark robe of a priest raised his hand to Hugo like a swordsman acknowledging a hit.

‘Better than none,’ the old lord said. He nodded at Alys. ‘You may not go home yet,’ he said gruffly. ‘I need some writing done. Get a seat for yourself.’

Alys nodded and turned to a place at the back of the hall.

‘No,’ the young lord said. He turned to his father. ‘If she’s to be your clerk she’d best sit up here,’ he said. ‘You permit, Catherine?’

Lady Catherine opened her lips on a thin smile. ‘Of course, my lord,’ she said quietly. ‘Whatever you wish.’

‘She can sit with your women,’ the young lord said. ‘Holloa! Margery, shift up and make a place for the young wise woman. She’ll dine with you.’

Alys kept her eyes down and went to the side of the dais and climbed the three shallow steps. There was a small table by the dais door where four women were sitting on stools. Alys drew up a fifth stool and sat with them. They eyed each other with mutual mistrust while the servers brought Alys a pewter plate, a knife and a thick pewter goblet stamped with the Castleton crest.

‘Are you old Morach’s apprentice?’ one of them said eventually. Alys recognized a woman who had been left a widow with a fine farm near Sleightholme, but driven out of the house by a powerful daughter-in-law.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I lived at Penrith, and then I came to work for Morach.’

The woman stared at her. ‘You’re her foundling!’ she said. ‘The little wench. You were living with her when I left to come here.’

‘Yes, Mistress Allingham,’ Alys said, her mind working rapidly. ‘I did not recognize you at first. I left for Penrith just after your son was wed. Then I came back again.’

‘I heard you had gone to the abbey,’ the woman said sharply.

There was a muffled scream from one of the other women. ‘Not a nun’s servant!’ she exclaimed. ‘I won’t sit at the table with a nun’s servant! This is a godly household, my lord cannot wish us to sit with a heretic!’

‘I only stayed there for three days, on my way to Penrith, waiting for the carter,’ Alys said steadily, her fingers clasped lightly in the lap of the cherry-red gown. ‘I did not live there.’