The Wise Woman

by Philippa Gregory

  Alys avoided the road and set the pony towards the little sheep track which ran from Bowes alongside the River Greta, through thick woods of beech and elm and oak, where deer moved quietly in the shadows of the trees. The river was full and wide here, moving slowly over a broad rocky bed. Underneath the stone slabs a deeper, secret river ran, a great underground lake stocked with fishes that preferred the dark deeps. Even on horseback, Alys could sense the weight of water beneath the ground, its slow purposeful moving in the secret caves.

  The pony broke out of the trees, puffing slightly, and then started the climb westwards and upwards through swathes of poor pastureland where sheep could feed and perhaps a few scrawny cows, and then higher again to the moor. Before the plague had come to Bowes and there had been more working men, someone had walled off one pasture from another. The stones had fallen down now and the sheep could run where they wished. At shearing in spring, or butchering in winter, they would be sorted by the marks on their fleeces. Every village had its own brand – but they all belonged to Lord Hugh.

  The river was in spate here, a fast-moving swell of water overlapping the stone of the banks and flooding the meadows in great wet sweeps of waterlogged land. Alys rode beside it, listening to the gurgle and rush of the water, and laughed when the little pony shied sideways from a puddle. Bits of wood and weed were tumbled over and over in the peaty water, and at the river's edge the springs bubbled and gurgled like soup pots, spewing out more brown water to swirl away downstream. The branches of ivy nodding at the tumbled drystone walls carried thick heads of dull black berries, a rowan tree glowed with clusters of scarlet berries against the green and grey of the weak winter grass speckled by small brown toadstools on weak leggy stems. Alys kicked the old pony and surprised it into a loping canter. She sat easily in the saddle and felt the wind in her face as the hood of her cape blew back.

  The grey stone slabs of the bridge came into sight, the waters backed up behind it and spreading in a great sheet of flood water as shiny as polished pewter. Morach's cottage, like a little ark, stood on a hillock of higher ground away from the waters of the flood. Alys stood up in the stirrups and shouted: 'Holloa! Morach!' so that Morach was standing in the doorway, shading her eyes against the low, red winter sun when Alys came trotting up on her pony. 'What's this?' she asked, without a word of greeting. 'A loan only,' Alys said casually. 'I'm not home for ever, I am allowed to visit this evening. And I need to talk with you.'

  Morach's sharp dark eyes scanned Alys' face. 'The young Lord Hugo,' she stated.

  Alys nodded, not even asking how Morach had guessed. 'Aye,' she said. 'And the old lord has forbidden me to give him anything to kill his lust.'

  Morach raised her black eyebrows and nodded. 'They need an heir,' she said. 'You can tether that animal outside the gate, I won't have him near my herbs. Come in.'

  Alys tied the pony to a twisted hawthorn bush which grew at Morach's gateway, picked her fine red gown clear of the muck, and went in.

  She had forgotten the stink of the place. Morach's midden was downwind at the back of the cottage but the sweet sickly odour of muck and the tang of urine hovered around the cottage, seeped through the walls. The midden heap was as old as the cottage, it had always smelled foul. The little fire was flickering sullenly on damp wood and the cottage was filled with a mist of black smoke. A couple of hens scuttered out the way as Alys entered, their droppings green and shiny on the hearthstone. Under Alys' new leather shoes the floor felt slippery with damp. The body of flood water only yards from the threshold made the very air wet and cold. At dusk the mist would roll along the river valley and seep under the door and in the little window. Alys gathered her new cloak closer and sat by the fire, taking Morach's stool without asking.

  'I brought you some money,' she said abruptly. 'And a sackful of food.'

  Morach nodded. 'Stolen?' she inquired without interest.

  Alys shook her head. 'He gave it me,' she said. 'The old lord. Gave me these clothes too.'

  Morach nodded. 'They're very fine,' she said. 'Good enough for Lady Catherine herself. Good enough for Lord Hugh's whore.'

  'That's what they think me,' Alys said. 'But he is old, Morach, and has been very sick. He does not touch me. He is…' She broke off as the thought came to her for the first time. 'He is kind to me, Morach.'

  Morach's dark eyebrows snapped together. 'First time in his life then,' she said thoughtfully. 'Kind? Are you sure? Maybe he wants you for something and he's keeping it close.'

  Alys paused. 'He could be,' she said. 'I've never known a man to plan so far ahead. He has thought of everything, from his deathbed, to the death of the young lord's son who isn't even conceived. He has a place for me in his schemes – to work for him now, he needs a clerk who will keep secrets, and he'll see me safe to a nunnery when my work is finished.' She broke off, meeting Morach's sceptical black glare. 'It's my only chance,' she said simply. 'He says he will get me to France, to a nunnery there. He is my only chance.'

  Morach muttered something under her breath and turned to climb the ladder to her sleeping platform.

  'Put the water on,' she said. 'I've some chamomile to mash. I need it to clear my head.'

  Alys bent her head and blew at the fire and set the little pot of water on its three legs in the red embers. When the water started to bubble Alys threw in some chamomile leaves and set it to stand. When Morach came down with her bag of fortune-telling bones, she and Alys shared the one chipped horn cup.

  Morach drank deep, and then shook the bones in their little purse.

  'Choose,' she said, holding out the purse to Alys. Alys hesitated.

  'Choose,' Morach said again.

  'Is it witchcraft?' Alys asked. She was not afraid, her blue eyes were fixed challengingly on Morach. 'Is it black arts, Morach?'

  Morach shrugged. 'Who knows?' she said carelessly. 'To one man it's black arts, to another it's wise woman's trade, and to another it's a foolish old woman muttering madness. It's often true – that's all I know.'

  Alys shrugged and at Morach's impatient gesture took one of the carved flat bones, then another, then a third, from the little pouch.

  Morach stared at her choice. 'The Gateway,' she said first. 'That's your choice, that's where you are now. The three ways that lie before you – the castle life with its joys and dangers and its profits; the nun's life which you will have to fight like a saint to regain; or here -poverty, dirt, hunger. But…' She laughed softly. 'Invisibility. The most important thing for a woman, especially if she is poor, especially if she will grow old one day.'

  Morach studied the second bone with the rune scrawled on it in a rusty brown ink. 'Unity,' she said, surprised. 'When you make your choice you have the chance for unity – to travel with your heart and mind in the same direction. Set your heart on something and stay true to it. One goal, one thought, one love. Whatever it is you desire: magic, your God, love.'

  Alys' face was white, her eyes almost black with anger. 'I don't want him,' she said through her teeth. 'I don't want love, I don't want lust, I don't want desire, I don't want him. I want to get back where I belong, to the cloister where my life has order, some peace and some security and wealth. That's all.'

  Morach laughed. 'Not much then,' she said. 'Not much for a drab from Bowes Moor, a runaway wench, a runaway nun. Not much to wish for – peace, security and wealth. Not a great demand!'

  Alys shook her head irritably. 'You don't understand!' she exclaimed. 'It is not a great demand. It is my life, it is what I am used to. It is my proper place, my deserts. I need it now. Holiness – and a life where I can be at peace. Holiness and comfort.'

  Morach shook her head, smiling to herself. 'It's a rare combination,' she said softly. 'Holiness and comfort. Most holy roads tend to the stony, I thought.'

  Alys shrugged irritably. 'How would you know?' she demanded. 'What road have you ever followed but your own choice?'

  Morach nodded. 'But I follow one road,' she reminded Alys. 'And they call
me a wise woman rightly. This is what the Unity rune is telling you. Choose one road and follow it with loyalty.' Alys nodded. 'And the last one?'

  Morach turned it around, looked at both sides and studied the two blank faces for a moment. 'Odin. Death,' she said casually and tossed the three back into the bag.

  'Death!' Alys exclaimed. 'For who?'

  'For me,' Morach said evenly. 'For the old Lord Hugh, for the young Lord Hugo, for you. Did you think you would live forever?'

  'No…' Alys stumbled. 'But… d'you mean soon?' 'It's always too soon,' Morach replied with sudden irritation. 'You'll have your few days of passion and your choices to make before you come to it. But it's always too soon.'

  Alys waited impatiently for more but Morach drank deep of the tea and would not look at her. Alys took the little purse of copper coins from her pocket and laid it in Morach's lap. Morach knocked it to the floor. 'There's no more,' she said unhelpfully.

  'Then talk to me,' Alys said. For a moment her pale face trembled and she looked like a child again. 'Talk to me, Morach. I am like a prisoner in that place. Everyone except the old lord himself is my enemy.'

  Morach nodded her head. 'Will you run?' she asked with slight interest. 'Run again?'

  'I have the horse now,' Alys said, her voice quickening as the idea came to her. 'I have a horse and if I had money…' Morach's bare dirty foot stepped at once to cover the purse she had knocked to the floor. 'There must be an order of nuns where they would take me in,' Alys said. 'You must have heard of somewhere, Morach!'

  Morach shook her head. 'I have heard of nothing except the Visitors and fines and complaints against nunneries and monasteries taken as high as the King,' she said. 'Your old abbey is stripped bare – the benches from the church, the slates from the roof, even some of the stones themselves are pulled down, and carted away for walls, or mounting blocks. First by Lord Hugo's men from the castle and now on his order by the villagers. It's the same in the north from what I hear, and the south. They'll have escaped the King's investigations in Scotland, you could try for it. But you'd be dead before you reached the border.'

  Alys nodded. She held out her hand for the cup and Morach refilled it and handed it to her.

  'The mood of the times is against you,' she said. 'People were sick of the wealth of the abbeys, priests, monks and nuns. They were sick of their greed. They want new landlords, or no landlords at all. You chose the wrong time to become a nun.'

  'I chose the wrong time to be born,' Alys said bitterly. 'I am a woman who does not fit well with her time.'

  Morach grinned darkly. 'Me too,' she said. 'And a whole multitude of others. My fault was that I gained more than I could hold. My sin was winning. So they brought the man's law and the man's power against me. The man's court, the law of men; I have hidden myself in the old power, in the old skills, in woman's power.'

  She looked at Alys without sympathy. 'Your fault is that you would never bide still,' she said. 'You could have lived here with me with naught to fear except the witch-taker but you wanted Tom and his farmhouse and his fields. Then when you saw something better you fled for it.

  'They thought Tom would die of grief for you, he begged me to order you home. I laughed in his face. I knew you would never come. You'd seen something better. You wanted it. I knew you'd never come back of your own free will. You'd have stayed forever, wouldn't you?'

  Alys nodded. 'I loved Mother Hildebrande, the abbess,' she said. 'I was high in her favour. And she loved me as if I were her daughter. I know she did. She taught me to read and to write, she taught me Latin.

  She took special pains with me and she had great plans for me. I worked in the still-room with the herbs, and I worked in the infirmary and I studied in the library. I never had to do any heavy dirty work. I was the favourite of them all, and I washed every day and slept very soft.' She glanced at Morach. 'I had it all then,' she said. 'The love of my mother, the truest, purest love there is, comfort and holiness.'

  'You'll not find that again in England,' Morach said. 'Oh, the King cannot live forever, or he may cobble together some deal with the Pope. His heirs might restore the Church. But English nuns will never have you back.' They might not know I ran…' Alys started. Morach shook her head emphatically. 'They'll guess,' she said. 'You were the only one to get out of that building alive that night. The rest burned as they slept.'

  Alys closed her eyes for a moment and smelled the smoke and saw the flicker of flames, orange on the white wall of her cell. Again she heard that high single scream as she ducked through the gate and kilted up her habit and ran without care for the others, without a care for the abbess who had loved her like a daughter, and who slept quiet, while the smoke weaved its grey web about her and held her fast till the flames licked her feather mattress and her linen shift and then her tired old body.

  'The only one out of thirty of them,' Morach said with subterranean pride. 'The only one – the biggest coward, the fleetest of foot, the quickest turncoat.'

  Alys bowed her head. 'Don't, Morach,' she said softly.

  Morach smacked her lips on a sip of the chamomile tea. 'So what will you do?' she asked.

  Alys looked up defiantly. 'I won't be defeated,' she said. 'I won't be driven down into being another dirty old witch on the edge of the moor. I won't be a maid-in-waiting or a clerk. I want to eat well and sleep well, and wear good cloth and ride dry-shod, and I won't be driven down into life as an ordinary woman. I won't be married off to some clod to work my life away all day and risk my life every year bearing his children. I'll get back to a nunnery, where I belong, one way or another. The old lord won't break his promise to me – he'll send me to France. If I can escape the notice of the young Lord Hugo and the malice of his wife, and if I can keep myself a virgin in that place where they think of nothing but lust – I can get back.'

  Morach nodded. 'You need a deal of luck and a deal of power to accomplish that,' she said thoughtfully. 'Only one way I can think of.' She paused. Alys leaned forward. 'Tell me,' she said. 'A pact,' Morach said simply. 'A pact with the devil himself. Have him guard you against the young lord, make him turn his eyes another way. I know enough of the black arts to guide you. We could call up the dark master, he would come for you, for sure – a sacred little soul like yours. You could trade your way into comfort forever. There's your way to peace and order and safety. You become the devil's own and you are never an ordinary woman again.'

  For a moment Alys hesitated as if she were tempted by the sudden rush into hell, but then she dropped her face into her hands and moaned in torment. 'I don't want to,' she cried as if she were a little girl again. 'I don't want to, Morach! I want a middle way. I want a little wealth and a little freedom! I want to be back in the nunnery with Mother Hildebrande. I am afraid of the devil! I am afraid of the witch-taker! I am afraid of the young lord and of his icy wife! I want to be somewhere safe! I am too young for these dark choices! I am not old enough to keep myself safe! I want Mother Hildebrande! I want my mother!'

  She broke into a storm of crying, her face buried in her arms, leaning slightly towards Morach as if begging wordlessly for an embrace. Morach folded her arms and rested her chin on them, gazing into the fire, waiting for Alys to be still. She was quite untouched by her grief.

  'There's no safety for you, or for me,' she said equably when Alys was quieter. 'We're women who do not accord with the way men want. There's no safety for our sort. Not now, not ever.'

  Alys' sobs weakened against the rock of Morach's grim indifference. She fell silent, rubbing her face on her fine woollen undersleeve. A piece of wood in the fireplace snapped and burned with a yellow flame.

  'Then I go back to the castle and take my chance,' Alys said, resigned. Morach nodded.

  'Our Lady once chose me,' Alys said, her voice very low, speaking of a holy secret. 'She sent me a sign. Even though I have sinned most deeply, I hope and I trust that She will guide me back to Her. She will make my penance and give me my absolution. She cannot have cho
sen me to watch me fail.'

  Morach cocked her eyebrow, interested. 'Depends on what sort of a goddess she is,' she said judicially. 'There are some that would choose you to see nothing but failure. That's the joy in it for them.'

  'Oh!' Alys shrugged impatiently. 'You're a heathen and a heretic, Morach! I waste my time speaking with you.'

  Morach grinned, unrepentant. 'Don't speak with me then,' she said placidly. 'Your Lady chose you. So She will keep you safe to play Her game, whatever it is. Depend upon Her then, my little holy lamb! What are you doing here, drawing the runes and praying for the future?'

  Alys hunched her shoulders, clasped her hands. 'The young lord is my danger,' she said. 'He could take me from Our Lady. And then I would be lost.'

  'She won't strike him blind to save you?' Morach asked sarcastically. 'She won't put out Her sacred hand to stop him feeling up your gown?'

  Alys scowled at Morach. 'I have to find a way to defend myself. He would have me for his sport,' she said. 'He ordered me to his room tonight. If he rapes me I'll never get back to the nuns. He'd have me and throw me aside, and his wife would turn me out. I'd be lucky to get through the guardroom once they knew the young lord had done with me.'

  Morach laughed. 'Best keep your legs crossed and your Latin sharp then,' she said. 'Pray to your Lady, and trust the old lord.' She paused. 'If you would stoop to take them, my saint, there are some herbs I know which would make you less sweet to him.'

  Alys looked up. 'I may not kill his lust,' she warned. 'The old lord forbade it and he will be watching me. I cannot give Hugo anything to weary him of venery.'

  Morach rose from the floor and went to the bunches of herbs dangling on strings from the beams of the sleeping platform. 'It is you who takes this,' she said. 'Make it into a tisane, every morning, and drink it while it cools. It kills a man's desire for the woman that drinks it.'