The Burning Time

by Robin Morgan

  Finally, the last of the Wiccan pursuers straggled back to the Covenstead. More wine was passed round. Alyce moved steadily through the crowd, stooping to inspect any scratch or bruise, though no one was seriously hurt. Slowly, people regained their breath. A few tried to resume the celebration.

  But the conversation was now mere chatter, and the feast felt soured by violation. Then Helena saw that Dana was fast asleep at her breast, blissful mouth still clamped on her nipple, so she signaled to Sysok to gather their things. That seemed a sign for others to start packing up and preparing to leave. One by one, family by family, they did so, murmuring their farewells.

  “Merry Part until we Merry Meet again.”

  Will Payn ambled among the departing guests, sweetening their spirits with the music of his small harp. At last he settled down amid the remaining few and leaned against a stone to softsing the words of The Song of Amorgin, older than memory:

  “I am the womb of every holt,” he sang, echoing the poet who had imagined the words of The Goddess, “I am the blaze on every hill, I am the queen of every hive.”

  Alyce Kyteler sat quietly beside the dying bonfire. She was deep in thought, her fingers turning the Talismanic Ring round and round on her finger, her eyes fixed on the glimmering garnet embers that occasionally erupted in a few last tongues of flame.

  “I am the shield for every head,” sang the harpist, the ancient words reassuring in their eternal indifference, “I am the tomb of every hope.”

  Watching her mistress so withheld in silence, the Ring turning and turning, Petronilla de Meath felt chilled by a night wind that sprang up from nowhere. Clutching a drowsy Sara in her arms, she shivered and drew closer to the fire.

  VIII

  FRIENDS AND ENEMIES

  BABY DANA ITCHED. Her howls left no doubt about that in the mind of anyone within earshot. Baby Dana definitely itched, and Alyce had been lightly rubbing her rash with a cooling salve—soured cream in which had been steeped leaves of savory, calamint, and tarragon, together with finely ground salt and pulverized cucumber—to prevent infection and ease the itching. Now she was murmuring nonsense words of comfort as she cuddled the babe in her lap, feeding Dana sips of weak burdock-and-chamomile tea. Alyce had spiked the tea with a drop of fermented apple cider, so that the infant—and her parents—might eventually get some sleep. The two were sitting on a stone bench in front of the Galrussyn cottage, waiting for the child’s parents and grandfather to return from Kilkenny Town where they’d gone to sell surplus vegetables at market.

  Dana was cranky and restless, so to make the waiting pass until the tea took effect, Alyce rocked her slowly, and sang the old Song of the Running Seasons:

  I shall go as a wren in spring

  with sorrow and sighing on silent wing

  and I shall go in the Mother’s name,

  Aye, till I come home again.

  They shall follow as falcons grey

  and hunt me cruelly as their prey

  and they shall go in their master’s name,

  Aye, to fetch me back again.

  Then I shall go as a mouse in May,

  in fields by night, cellars by day,

  and I shall go in the Goddess’s name

  Aye, till I come home again.

  And they shall flow as black tomcats

  and chase me through the kirn and vats,

  they shall go in their master’s name,

  Aye, to fetch me back again.

  Then I shall go as an autumn hare,

  with sorrow and sighing and mickle care,

  and I shall go in the Mother’s name,

  Aye, till I come home again.

  But they shall follow as swift grey hounds

  and dog my tracks by leaps and bounds,

  they shall go in their master’s name

  Aye, to fetch me back again.

  Then I shall go as a winter trout

  with sorrow and sighing and mickle doubt,

  and I shall go in the Goddess’s name,

  Aye, till I come home again.

  But they shall follow as otters swift

  and snare me fast ere I canst shift,

  they shall go in their master’s name,

  Aye, to fetch me back again!

  The song was usually sung as a round, with the opening verse recurring at the end—but Alyce was trying to ignore a sense of foreboding as the theme of pursuit continued, so she was relieved when Helena, Sysok, and Old John could be spotted approaching, down the path. Their cart was drawn leisurely by Maude, their old mare who stolidly refused to be rushed. But today Maude’s passengers seemed impatient to get home.

  Helena jumped down before the cart had completely stopped. Bobbing a curtsey to Alyce, she rushed to pick up her daughter, hugging Dana and inquiring about the rash.

  “Better, I think,” smiled her mistress, pushing a strand of hair out of her eyes. “The salve seems to be clearing it up and the tea helps numb the itch.” Dana’s eyelids had finally begun to droop, but as her mother laid her across one shoulder, patting her back, she offered a contented burp.

  “Actually,” Alyce confided, “I think she is tipsy from the drop of cider. Looks ready for a nap. I will leave the rest of the cidered tea with you for using tonight if she turns fretful. You all need some sleep. You look a bit overwrought.”

  At a glance from Helena, Old John took his granddaughter from her, worshipfully cradling the baby in his arms, and carried her inside for her nap. Meanwhile, Sysok unhitched the mare while Helena flung herself down on the grass near Alyce.

  “Produce sell well at market?” Alyce asked, stretching like a sun-warmed cat now that she was relieved of her bundle.

  “Aye, m’Lady,” replied Helena, fanning herself in the heat with her wide-brimmed straw hat, “though we’d so much summer squash I feared we’d never be rid of it. Yet it sold off right away—as did the pears, and every one of the lettuces. But never no mind to any of that. There be news we heard in town—grave news and much of it. I dinna know where to start.”

  “At the beginning is a customary place,” smiled Alyce.

  “T’is hard to know where that is, M’am. Our troublesome Bishop has not idled away this past week since the Sabbat. He took himself off to Dublin—to the Lord Justice. To demand that a writ be issued. For your arrest!”

  “My arrest, is it now?” Alyce laughed. “Well, this bodes to be interesting. The Lord Justice is Roger Outlawe—kinsman to my son Will.”

  “Aye, M’am, that he is,” replied Helena, “and he flat out refused to oblige the Bishop. Said such a writ could not be issued until—ach, how was it now?”

  “Until the accused parties have been proceeded against at law?” Alyce asked.

  “Aye, aye, that’s it!”

  “Indeed,” laughed Alyce, “thanks to what remains of our Celtic Brehon law.”

  “De Ledrede oh, he dinna like that one bit, Your Ladyship. There was raised voices. People say he stormed out from the meeting, shouting and all, saying that the Church was above, you know, regular law, nonreligious law—how do they call it—”

  “Secular law. Well, you have to admire the man,” Alyce said mildly, “He does not give up easily, does he? And him not even Irish!”

  But that, as Helena explained, was only part of it.

  Sysok, having released the mare to graze, now reappeared, eager to participate in telling the news. Granted permission by Alyce to sit, he joined his wife on the grass. Then John emerged from the cottage. He eased his aged body down onto the stone steps with a few grunts, then reached for some thin strips of soft wood from a pile beside him and swiftly started bending and binding the staves for a barrel. Everyone knew that Old John was unable to sit still without doing something, but his gnarled cooper’s hands knew his materials of wood, tin, and leather so intimately after a lifetime of cask-making that he worked by touch, not needing to look at what he was doing. Nor did he glance at it now, intent on watching the others and being included in the co
nversation.

  Apparently the Bishop, rejected by the Lord Justice, had left Dublin and taken his personal crusade to the Seneschal of Kilkenny, Sir Arnald le Poer. This gentleman, though a relative of Alyce’s most recent husband, nevertheless had also defied de Ledrede. He had refused to prosecute.

  Alyce blinked with amazement.

  “You cannot mean that John’s family is actually supporting me after all this time? Oh, that is simply not possible! The le Poers regard me as a shrew and a hag!… Though if what you heard has any truth to it, then I would wager it can only be because Arnald has always disliked my husband—his cousin—intensely. Some old family fight about inheritance. So Arnald might see this brawl as a chance for revenge at John, with me as the pawn in his game.”

  “Aye.… Or else t’is loyalty to his own,” Sysok ventured—adding, half under his breath, “Nobility hangs together in the end, whilst the rest of us plain hang.”

  “Oh Sysok,” Helena interjected, seeing a blush shadow Alyce’s face as she overheard him, “these people be not regarding Lady Alyce as family or nobility for years now.”

  “I dinna believe that,” he mumbled, with a cautious glance at his mistress, “I dinna believe ‘these people’—though I dinna mean you, Your Ladyship—ever be forgetting who shares their blood-lines.”

  “I believe,” Helena persisted with a frown at her husband, “t’is not blood relations nor marriage bonds nor any such connections mattering in this rebellion against the Bishop. I think t’is a certain well-known Irish willfulness at work. Bless us, when the troubles come, we turn more stubborn, and somehow stand together. The troubles bind us, heathen and townsfolk, even the nobles, say I. All we need is something to be against—and sure the finest thing of all to be against is a foreigner who dares to meddle in our ways.”

  “That threat on occasion has even tempted us to ally with the Scots—an extreme remedy,” Alyce grinned.

  “Aye,” Helena laughed.

  “Howsoever that may or mayn’t be,” Sysok interrupted, annoyed at the drift into international politics when local matters right under everyone’s noses were in need of attention, “I be trying to tell Her Ladyship some more news here, the Scots aside. See, m’Lady, not only did the Seneschal throw the Bishop out, but then he be declaring in public that de Ledrede—he calls him ‘this vile, rustic, interloping priest’—had … oh, some words like …”

  “ ‘Exhausted his patience and outraged his sense of honour,’ ” Helena prompted.

  “Aye, t’is close enough,” Sysok said, “I knew outrage and honour were there somewhere.” Then he mumbled, “Always are, with gentry and nobles.”

  Alyce chose to ignore the mumble and clapped her hands with pleasure.

  “Good old Arnald! Perhaps this pawn of his should send him a cask of wine! Considering that he has dared to—”

  “Please. Dinna be celebrating yet, Your Grace,” Old John put in quietly, “There is more, and t’is not good news. The Bishop was publicly shamed, M’am. That makes the man more dangerous. Now he has gone to rally support—from the filthy English knights who stole those lands ’round Kilkenny.”

  “But John, there are so few of them. And they are never here. They all live abroad—thanks be.”

  “That matters not,” Sysok all but snapped. “Pardon me, Your Ladyship. But what matters is he’s sought them out and written to them and got their pledges to aid him. And here’s the black heart of it: with their support of men and arms, he has—ach, how’d they say it—gathered—”

  “Convened,” interjected Helena.

  “Aye, that’s it. ‘Convened’ an—an … a church court—”

  “An ecclesiastical court?” this from Alyce.

  “Aye. And whilst himself was lording over that—”

  “Presiding over it,” Helena corrected.

  “—presiding over it,” Sysok shot a glare at his wife, “and whilst himself was presiding over it, he excommunicated you, Lady Alyce. Just like that.”

  “Summarily excommunicated! I am crushed,” the lady said dryly. “Now I cannot attend mass anymore. Oh lackaday.”

  “Will you be taking this seriously?” Sysok complained, “Oh—again, begging your pardon, m’Lady, for my being too … but t’is daft to be lighthearted when—”

  “Your Ladyship, on this point Sysok be right. T’is somber news. And t’is not the worst, by far. Hear us out, please,” Helena added, urgency rising in her voice. “Through that court, the Bishop … M’am, he has accused you of sorcery. Formally. Seven charges.”

  “Seven!” said Alyce, “Rather excessive. I should have thought one would suffice.”

  “Seven,” repeated Helena. “You stand accused of renouncing your Christian faith, of mocking the Church and the Sacraments, of making pacts with the Devil to swear obedience, of possessing magick powders and poisons, of practicing divination and medical sorceries—wait, how many is that?”

  “Five so far,” Sysok said tersely. Then he added, with embarrassment, staring down at his large, calloused hands, “Sixth is the charge of—pardon me, m’Lady—of, ah …” he cleared his throat, then forged ahead, “… consorting with the Devil in the shape of a black man who was Robin Artisson. The Bishop claims he has witnesses who saw you, together with the Devil, more’n two summers ago, in a lewd dance—”

  “What? But no Moors have visited me in—why, it must be almost a decade. That is pure imagination! There is not even an acorn of gossip from which to grow such an oak of a tale! No, wait … unless … that’s it! It has to be! My having danced at some sabbat with Sean Fergus—you know, Brendan Canice—a priest, to boot, in his foolish charcoal-covered disguise!”

  “Aye, well your precious Sean-Brendan not be sabbat dancing now. Too busy scuttling after his Bishop like a pet rat.”

  “Now Sysok, be fair,” Alyce chided, “Sean Fergus was ever a decent man. T’is not his doing, this madness. Though when I heard he had been sent for to wait upon the Bishop, I admit I hoped his presence might soften de Ledrede.”

  Sysok was not one to be charmed out his denunciation nor deflected from reporting his list of Church accusations.

  “May that turncoat rot in his Christian hell. Now where was I? Six?”

  “Seven, dear,” put in Helena, now trying to keep track of both the list and her husband’s temper.

  “Oh, aye, the seventh charge. Well, t’is … pardon me again, M’am … t’is about your having, ah … intimacy with the Devil in the shape of your Familiars, a black cat and a white goat—”

  “Holy hell!” exclaimed Alyce, immediately realizing that her oath was, in the circumstances, not the wisest. “Now Prickeare and Greedigut are my paramours? Poor beasts!”

  “And,” Sysok continued grimly, “of making charms and ointments with—ach, beastly stuff. Dead men’s fingernails, animal innards, flesh from dismembered babies. They say you boiled it all up in the skull of a beheaded robber.… Begging your pardon, Your Ladyship.”

  Silence descended, as the group sat, taking all this in.

  “Oh. And he also charges you with murdering your first three husbands,” Helena whispered, as an afterthought.

  “He demands you answer every charge, m’Lady.”

  Alyce roused herself as if from a daze.

  “Answer every charge? Answer even a single charge? I shall do nothing of the kind. His religious court is not empowered to judge me. About the charge of murder he will get a reply—of sorts. I shall sue that madman for slandering my character and the Kyteler name. Pacts with devils! As if it is likely I would swear obedience to another male, human or inhuman! Nothing personal, Sysok.” Alyce threw him a glum smile. “But truly, who does de Ledrede think will believe such lies? He himself cannot believe them!”

  Helena bit her lip, reluctant to add more details yet knowing she must.

  “Well, he be claiming he personally witnessed the devil-worship.”

  “Oh? And where was that? In his Cathedral, where he keeps his devils stored?”


  “At our Sabbat, M’am.”

  “Then we know that he is simply lying. Helena, I have talked with this man at some length. He is a servant of the Church, yes. He goes in his master’s name. And he is certainly full of himself. Keenly ambitious, I suspect. I am sure he is capable of doing harm. But I have glimpsed in him a sophisticated mind. He cannot genuinely believe that at our Sabbat he saw—”

  “He says everyone was garbed in Satan’s colour.”

  “Oh, and red is not the shade worn by archbishops?” Alyce sputtered.

  “And he be claiming he saw a small girl forced to caress the Devil, who went sniffing about in the form of a shaggy black dog—”

  “Who could he possib—you mean the way Sara rides around on Tyffin as if the little hound were a pony?”

  “More,” Helena went on. “He says the wine casks were abrim with a poison liquid. He says bats and frogs were swimming in it.”

  “Feh,” Alyce made a face, “The vintners will not appreciate his compliments. Or is he blaming it on your casks, John?”

  “And,” Helena added, “he claims you pointed a sorcerer’s wand at him, m’Lady, and then he was sent flying through the air without being touched. Aye, aye, t’would be funny if t’weren’t so demented. But most horrid of all, he be swearing he spied the burnt remains of newborn infants he says had been thrown into the fire—he swears he saw a dismembered child, bleeding from its chest, lying hacked to pieces by the stone altar. There. T’is the whole of it.” Finished with her list, Helena sat back, breathless.

  Alyce pondered the last items.

  “Now where could his fevered brain have conjured that from?” she muttered.

  Then she had it.

  “The kirn dollies,” she whispered, “And Petronilla’s Spectacle.” “What?” chorused her companions.