The Burning Time

by Robin Morgan

  Something akin to a small green flame had begun to gleam in Alyce Kyteler’s eyes. It went unnoticed by the Bishop, now preoccupied with his own eloquence as he continued cataloging her wrongdoings.

  “The subject of your refusing to attend Mass is altogether a different matter. This is not a feminine good intention gone awry, as with the serfs. This is very grave.” He deepened his voice. “You trifle with sin, Madam! You provoke the boiling fires of Hell!”

  He waited. At this she should have dropped to her knees. Annoyed, he changed course. Not for nothing did he have a repertoire of styles.

  “However, Your Ladyship, even if you chose to be careless of your own damnation,” he went on smoothly, “what example do you set for your precious rabble, eh? What about their shabby little peasant souls?” He knew these last phrases had emerged with too sharp an edge, and made a conscious effort to regain his elevated tone. “Your husband told me that you did attend Mass with him once, early in your marriage, at his insistence. But according to him—and let me interrupt myself here to say that I can be fair, Your Grace, I shall listen to your side of the story, too—I know how husbands can exaggerate! Nevertheless, according to His Lordship, you refused to go to Confession, declined to take Communion, were overheard humming to yourself during the sermon, and at the end of the service actually muttered ‘Fie, fie, fie, amen.’ I pray you will tell me this simply is not true! Oh my child!”

  Richard de Ledrede had worked himself up to the pitch of sincerity he had been seeking. Now he felt the momentum begin to operate on its own, suffusing him with genuine sympathy for this sinful woman whose eternal life hung in jeopardy. He must save her. He must ride like a hero to her rescue. A desire for her soul seized him; he wanted that soul, he had a right to it. He could feel a holy lust rising in him, and he heard it inspire his speech with conviction.

  “My dear, my dear, oh will you not let me aid you? Such disrespect for the Church is perilous. These are times when the Horned One walks the earth conspiring with evil-doers and worshippers of false gods! You may think we are safe here on this remote little island. But my priests tell me that Lucifer—or Robin Artisson, as the Son of the Black Arts is called in these Isles—has been seen in these very parts, and not long ago! A black man, wearing female flesh but with horns glowing bright on his hideous head, riding bareback across the heath on stormy nights! You see, my dear, how you gamble with your soul, when you behave so appallingly in Church? These are real dangers of which I warn!”

  He paused to grope for his silk kerchief and wipe a film of sweat from his forehead, noting that his listener remained curiously unfazed by the hazards he had so vividly described. Well then, if she was unimpressed by spiritual admonishments, perhaps he should bolster them with a few practical threats.

  “You,” he said sternly, as befitted a future prince of the Church, “would have been publicly flogged for such an offense, Madam, were you not a noblewoman. Nevertheless, Christians must be merciful even when sorely wronged. So your husband and I are willing to permit your attendance at Confession and Mass with merely one week’s penance of bread and water on your part. And your contrite apology to me. In public.”

  Richard de Ledrede now felt secure. Laboriously, he heaved himself up from the chair where he had been wedged, and began to stride back and forth before Alyce, waggling a finger at her. Noting that her expression had hardened into something resembling a glare, he was undeterred. He knew that demons resisted most fiercely just before withdrawing from a contested soul.

  “These are all ungodly, unwomanly, scandalous acts in which you have been indulging,” he thundered. Then, lowering his voice, “Which is not even to speak of the more private … intimate problem. This—delicate matter of Sir John’s. His concern—that is, his unease—about his own safety in this house. I am informed that you hide forbidden potions in your cupboards! He said he had left you and moved to another dwelling because—absurd as it sounds—he fears for his life around you.” He paused, waiting for loud protestations of denial.

  There was now a green blaze in Alyce Kyteler’s eyes. But she clipped out only one word in answer.

  “Finish.”

  So she would force him to spell it out in sordid detail. The Bishop shouldered the cross of yet another degrading task.

  “Well, you have been married four times. Sir John admitted to me his suspicions about the … departures of his three predecessors. Nor is it only Sir John who accuses you, Lady Alyce. Your stepchildren from previous husbands claim that you bewitched their fathers by sorcery to enrich you with generous gifts of property, and that you then—well, hurried them along to Heaven. But Your Grace, let me say frankly that on this issue I defended you. ‘Ludicrous!’ said I. I said that you—especially you, a lettered woman—knows a husband is his wife’s lord, and for a vassal to harm a lord—even to disobey him—why, that is treason. Men are hanged for treason, and women burned. So I want you to know that I assured Sir John and your stepchildren that no woman would dare—I mean, three adult able men—it is simply too laughable. I also reminded Sir John of the indissoluble marriage Sacrament, and I reproached him for having left you. You see how fair I can be, Your Grace? But his apprehensions, combined with consternation about his own health—worsened, I gather, by ill humours borne by the night air—well, unfortunately he is now so alarmed as to—”

  “Now you have finished.” Alyce Kyteler’s voice cut through the Bishop’s prattle like a sword through custard.

  “I have listened to you quietly,” she said, “and without interruption, as my principles are based on courtesy. Now you will listen.”

  Like a wire suddenly uncoiling, she sprang up from where she had been sitting. Never taking her eyes off the Bishop, she tossed the pear core back over her shoulder in Greedigut’s direction, and the watchful goat caught it mid-air with a graceful snap. De Ledrede suddenly realized that this woman was his equal in height, and he drew himself up on the balls of his feet so as to loom over her. But that threw him slightly off balance. Taking advantage of his teeter, she shot out a strong hand and pushed him back down into his chair, where he landed with a thump.

  “Sit,” she commanded. “Now I will give a sermon.”

  IV

  TWO WARNINGS

  SHE FLUNG BACK her mane of hair the colour of rowan berries at sunset, planted her feet apart, stuck her hands on her hips, and began. Flanked by Prickeare and Greedigut, she looked as armored with disdain as a warrior queen about to do battle with a garden worm.

  “Last slander first. My husband did not leave me. Difficult as it may be for you to imagine, I sent him away. A pity if he is ill, but t’is not because of anything I—or an evening breeze—did to him. John’s hair is falling out from age, not poison. Yet he refuses to admit he is old. He also denies that he has grown stout, and orders his tunic to be laced so tightly that his breath comes short. I imagine he may be suffocating from his own pomposity, too; certainly I was. To put it flatly, the man is sick of himself. Small wonder.

  “As for my other husbands, I can easily give you a summary of the lot—how they lived and how they died. For one thing, wedlock to one person for all eternity is a Christian notion that has snaked itself into our law. Celtic Brehon law once recognized nine types of marriage—only one of which was permanent—and even then both parties had the right to divorce. For another thing, I did not particularly want to marry at all, certainly not four times. What, do you think the faerie folk had addled my brains? These were all arranged marriages. Why is it most men cannot tolerate a woman who wishes to remain unwed? The sole exception you permit is a nun. Even then, you ‘marry’ her off to your Church—then afterwards dismiss her as unwomanly.”

  Richard de Ledrede opened his mouth to reply, but a warning look from Alyce made him reconsider and shut it again.

  “My mother died bearing me. My father loved me, in his way. He meant well. But he contracted me into marriage with William Outlawe when I was thirteen, still in the convent—where what
you might denounce as heretical nuns had raised me and, bless them forever, educated the bright child they said I was. For almost three years, to protect me, those nuns conspired to delay my marriage to William Outlawe, devising various creative excuses. William, as you may have gathered from his family name, was descended from a man who had been in trouble with the sheriff in his youth. But since he had confined himself to the tradesman-like stealing of large sums rather than committing petty thieveries, the lords held him in grudging respect—especially since he could afford to buy their silence. He and his heirs became bankers and money-lenders, keeping the accounts—and the secrets—of highborn men who would excuse anything so long as sufficient gold lit the path to forgiveness. By the time I was betrothed to his great-grand-nephew, the family was regarded as respectable nobility. William himself was a widower, old enough to be my father. Furthermore, even before I was born he was already in love with his lifelong passion. Brandywine. And every other wine. The man stank with the odor of drink. I fought him off for a long time—more than two years—which was not all that difficult, since he was usually dazed from the grog. But one night when he was drunk he became angry and beat me—the last time any man dared lay violent hands on me—and he forced me in bed. Nine months later I bore my only child, Will. A year after the boy was born, his father came lurching home in a stupor from some tavern, slid off his horse while crossing the drawbridge, fell into the moat, and drowned. We found him the next morning, still reeking of three wineskins hung round his neck. People said that my fits of laughter at the funeral must have meant I was insane with grief. That sent me into further gales of despair, I assure you.”

  The Bishop shifted uneasily in his chair, congratulating himself that Alyce Kyteler was confiding in him, yet not quite believing what she said. For her part, his lecturer was gathering her own momentum. Everyone in or anywhere around Kilkenny knew her life story, so she rarely got to relate it. But she came of a people who lived for the telling of a good yarn, and was discovering that even in her current exasperated state she was enjoying spinning this one. She began to pace as she talked, her voice warming at certain memories.

  “I took to widowhood well, I admit it. I enjoyed raising my little boy and running my own estate, and that was when I started my herbal studies. I had become curious about the effectiveness of many peasant remedies in curing sick animals. But I need not have celebrated freedom so soon, because my father quickly arranged a second husband for me. I have neither brothers nor sisters, so Kyteler Castle and all its lands entail to me, and my father assumed, understandably though wrongly, that I needed a man to manage it. This second husband could not have managed a kitchen garden, much more a large estate. He was the sort of man you might have liked, my lord Bishop, to judge from your silks and gems. Adam le Blound was enamoured of his own looks. Well, I confess I was, too; I fancied him at first. He was handsome, and much younger than my first husband, and he knew how to flirt. There were some highly enjoyable moments … I shall always thank his memory for that, since before Adam I knew not one whit about the pleasures of love.”

  She glanced at the Bishop, relished his embarrassment, and picked up her story before he could interrupt.

  “I was still barely out of girlhood, after all, and he was quite attractive. Tall, well-shaped, with thick dark blond hair—always a few rakish curls falling over that broad forehead—and a sensuous mouth, drawn in a rascal’s smile. But once he opened that mouth to speak—such a dullard. Not merely unlearned, you understand, but impressively stupid. And absolutely unfazed by his own ignorance about everything except the quality of a good sapphire and the latest tailoring cut. Adam could not tell the difference between a doe and a ewe, but he could ramble on about which was the sleekest fur for lining a suckeny cloak, and whether tippets should hang down to the knee or all the way to the ankle. The man once raved through dinner for four full hours about sleeves—wing, laced, slashed, funneled, hanging, and dagged. As for me, I have never been interested in the latest fashion, and I could focus for just so long on his codpiece—so that infatuation soon ended. He barely missed my company; he spent his hours with tailors, cobblers, hairdressers—yes, that casual curl was planned. He would do anything to enhance his appearance. Unfortunately, he discovered that stealing sips of belladonna from my herbal cabinet would make his eyes shine more luminously. I warned him that belladonna is a form of nightshade and can kill when too much is ingested. I even hid that flask. But Adam ransacked my rooms and found it. He drank too much of the drug, of course—to be more comely at the Seneschal’s ball he was attending that night in town—and he collapsed while dancing. He certainly was the center of everyone’s attention, though not quite as he had planned. His eyes shone brilliantly before they closed forever. So I was told. I was not there. I was helping a mare foal.

  “I did mourn Adam—but in truth not for long. That is when gossip about my so-called eccentricities began. I came to know my peasants better during this time, which is when I first thought of teaching their children letters and numbers. But my father was not done marrying me off, no matter how I appealed to him for mercy from wedlock. Number three—another widower—was Richard de Valle. This ‘gentleman’ fancied himself a hero of the hunt. He thought that the greatest pleasure in life was to gallop about with other armed men, shooting arrows and spears into animals. These were not forays for food, I assure you, but blood-sport. Sometimes Richard and his friends wantonly butchered so much game that they left the carcasses to rot because the pack horses were already too laden with trophies and meat. Wild boar was their favorite target. They would mimic the animal’s squeals of pain as they closed round it and speared it to death, laughing as they did so. I imagine you do not know our Irish legends, Bishop—like the tale of the wild sow, sacred to The Cailleach, The Old One, She who in one of Her many guises is also Goddess of the Wood. She brings justice. Once, when Diarmid, the Sun God, offended Her, she sent Her great sow to kill him. Well, I believe that Richard de Valle offended Her so many times by slaughtering Her creatures that the only wonder was why She waited so long to set revenge on him. For that is how he died. The hunted turned hunter—and one day my third husband was borne home by his servants on a litter, blood streaming from two deep wounds where he had been severely gored. Not all my medical arts could save him. Justly, he had become a trophy—for a wild sow fiercely defending her piglets.”

  The Bishop of Ossory cleared his throat as if to speak.

  “Oh, I would advise against it,” said Alyce politely. “I will inform you when I am done. This is my sermon, remember? You have met Sir John, so I need not describe him. Suffice it to say that he became unbearable, with his multiple imaginary illnesses—which he would never let me properly examine, diagnose, or treat—and his prejudices and his whining about all the things serfs must do and all the things women must not do. Then one day I found myself thinking, ‘This is intolerable. I am not a girl any longer. My father is dead. I can read and write. I can heal. I am perfectly capable of managing my own lands and inheritance; indeed, I do so more effectively than any of my husbands ever did. I really need not put up with such foolishness one hour longer.’ So I asked John to leave my estate—and remember, it is my estate, Bishop, and always has been. He laughed. I repeated my request. He ignored me. When it became clear that he would not go with gallantry, I threw him out. Well, not him. I had his clothing packed up and placed, along with his armor and collection of weapons and favorite bench and other goods—out into the fields, well on the far side of the drawbridge. I sent his two personal menservants—the poor lads didn’t want to go—and his favorite luckless horse and another horse and cart out there, too. This time John noticed my request. He followed his possessions within the hour.

  “So much for my marital history. I am certain, my lord Bishop, that good men do exist. I have known a few such men, even among your despised serfs, and my son William bodes to become one—despite his having endured a childhood around unfortunate examples. But my experienc
e with husbands has cured me of marriage. A drunkard, a fop, a brute, and a bore. I never chose one of them, never truly loved one of them, and can honestly say I do not mourn one of them. But—” Back in the present, recalling that she was being forced to defend herself from slander, Alyce found her good-humour dissipating, “but to think I would murder any of them, or stoop to harm John! I am too busy with life, with feeding the bellies and brains of the children on Kyteler lands. I do not imagine you can be expected to understand that preoccupation.”

  Prickeare, alert to the mounting indignation in Alyce’s tone, decided to punctuate this last sentence with a hiss, an arching of his spine, and the full fluffout-tail treatment; Greedigut, following suit, pawed the ground, snorting. Their mistress nodded in acknowledgement of their support, and pressed on.

  “As for the accusations of my stepchildren? They are still the spoiled whelps their fathers insisted on raising—despite my efforts to teach them that tradition and knowledge carry more value than gold—but they are grown whelps now. Wealthy in their own right, they crave still more. I know that they know if they can make anyone take their absurd charge of murder seriously, then my estate—lands mine by right before I ever married at all—will be forfeit to them. I also know that if I am charged with sorcery, my estates will be forfeit to the Church—to you, in effect. I am not a fool, my lord Bishop. I know that the Church intends to change our Irish customs so that when a woman weds, she becomes a femme couverte—legally dead—no longer able to inherit or possess land in her own name.”