The Burning Time

by Robin Morgan

  “Yes. Of course!” Excited now, Alyce began speaking rapidly as she thought aloud. “That must be the answer. The Bishop saw last year’s discarded kirn dollies lying in the embers … and when he and his priests came upon us—just think about it—we were beginning to carve up Petronilla’s marzipan Green Man … and de Ledrede—de Ledrede’s perverse mind turned that into a human sacrifice. The kirn poppets: burned babies. The Spectacle Food: a dismembered child. But surely he knows that we would never—wait … wait. He eats the body and blood of his god, so he actually might assume that we … Great Morrigan, the man might believe what he is saying.…”

  The four of them fell silent again as the full impact of the Bishop’s accusations sank in.

  Then Alyce broke their reverie. But she spoke with new resolve.

  “It is time to move against this man, I think,” she declared. “We must adapt with the seasons—be a wren or a mouse, a hare or a trout—when we find ourselves pursued. It is time to unpack the gowns and the jewels, and masquerade as a Lady. It is time for me to travel to Kilkenny Town.”

  Early the next morning, an increasingly peevish Alyce Kyteler sat and stood, and sat again, and stood again, in her chamber. She was being attended on and attired as befitted the Dame of Kyteler Castle—“being arrayed in my armor,” as she put it. The procedure required five hours, three of her women—Petronilla, Helena, and Annota Lange—and layers of preparation, decoration, and clothing, all of it accompanied by a running commentary of intensifying irritability from the subject of these ministrations.

  First came a white silk chemise. Then there was the “ordeal,” as Alyce groaned, of sitting still to have her hair dressed: the long thick carroty mane brushed, combed, pulled, twisted, and gathered up into a silk net studded with pearls; the sides tightly braided in ten tiny plaits from each temple and then wound in whorls and pinned with silver clasps; and the front held back by two high amber combs that, she snarled, “feel like tiny pikes jousting at my scalp.”

  Little did it help that Annota kept trying to distract her mistress with chatter about how much worse it could be: wearing the old cone-shaped hennin headdress with the floor-length hanging veils, for instance, or that new-fashioned turban all the ladies were beginning to copy that took half a day to coil properly, or the latest style from Burgundy, the houppelande—a heavy, pleated skirt so voluminous its wearers could barely stand up straight. As a seamstress, Annota tried to up with such things. But Alyce’s mood grew still more sullen when the wimple—of pure white linen, as befitted wives and widows—was wound around her head and tightly under her chin. A small, opaque, white silk gorget was draped over it—“I may as well be back at the convent,” she muttered crossly—and a third white veil, this one long and of translucent silk, over that. Atop the whole, a diadem of beaten gold was firmly pressed, “to keep me from sailing away in all my cloth flappings.”

  Grumbling with disbelief that she could ever have worn such “adult swaddling clothes” daily, Alyce was then laced into a bodice embroidered in gold thread with the Kyteler crest, but Helena’s energetic lacing made her lady swear in a most un-ladylike manner. The bodice was followed by a wide skirt of heavy dark blue silk that hung to the floor and pooled there, ending in a three-foot-long weighted train, its border patterned with Irish thistles worked in silver thread. Separate lemon-coloured sleeves of stiff brocade reaching to the middle of her hands were then fastened to the bodice, buttoned with pearls at the shoulders and buttoned again, tightly, all the way down to the wrists. They made her feel, Alyce growled, as if her arms were carved from willowwood, incapable of all but the smallest gesture.

  The cyclas—a knee-length, sleeveless, open-front tunic of dove-grey silk banded in tissue of silver—came next, topped by an additional long sur-coat of pale blue brocade with crystal beads sewn along its edges. There would also be, before departure, a full-length wine-coloured cowled mantle of thin wool—although Alyce had flatly refused to wear the fur-rimmed cloak proper to her rank even in summer. For now, however, all that remained to be done was gird her waist with the belt of indigo-blue-dyed leather, from which hung the aumoniere—the leather purse “containing the bribes,” as Alyce sourly noted. The transformation was completed by decking her with a heavy gold necklace chain, two waist-length strings of pearls, two bracelets of gold and one of silver inlaid with garnets, and a large ring on each hand: emeralds embedded in gold on one, a walnut-sized ruby clasped in silver on the other. Petronilla knelt, holding out the gold-embroidered black velvet slippers with curled toes for Alyce to step into, since, so attired, her mistress could not bend.

  “No!” that lady shouted. She tried to turn her head to face her women, but could only rotate stiffly, from the waist, and her face was bright pink with frustration. “Not those evil shoes! I have been pinched, laced, and combed. I have a headache from so much weight on my skull. I can barely move, and I am suffocating under so many layers in this heat. But some things I will not do. I will not wear furs in Lúnasa—t’is late summer! And I will not wear shoes shaped like no human foot and designed for a woman who will be carried everywhere in a litter. And no, no, no—I can see it coming in your expressions—I will not ride to Kilkenny in a covered horse litter, no matter what gossip is fed by my traveling in an open cart! I would ride Tissy, as usual, if I could—but the poor horse would perish under all this weight! But no litter!” She paused, braced for argument. Her women said nothing. They bobbed curtseys, exchanged glances, and stared intently at the floor, trying to stifle laughter behind pursed lips.

  “That settles that, then,” Alyce announced. “I shall wear my hemp sandals. At least my feet will be comfortable, even if the rest of me feels so cramped. No one can see my shoes anyway, hobbled as I am in fabric stretching for counties round my ankles.” She huffed and drew herself up to sweep haughtily across the room. But the train threw her off balance, destroying any attempt at dignity. Wobbling, her arms stuck out to steady herself, she was reduced to pleading, near tears, like a petulant child.

  “Will someone please find my sandals? And help me maneuver myself downstairs?”

  And so they did, enduring at every step her rancorous denunciations of the Bishop for being the cause of her having to suffer such a wretchedly fashionable state.

  But it was no petulant child who arrived that evening in Kilkenny, accompanied by a small party of retainers and—shockingly enough to the townsfolk—riding in an open cart, drawn clattering through the narrow streets that rapidly filled with onlookers. It was Her Grace, the Most Noble Dame Alyce Kyteler, in full splendour.

  Annota Lange and Petronilla de Meath attended on her (“to help resurrect me tonight and then re-inter me in a different set of shrouds tomorrow morning”), and young William rode his prized stallion, looking very adult as her formal escort. She brought four men-at-arms with her, and succumbed to Sysok’s plea to go along as a member of the retinue; once in town, he was joined by burly Henry Faber, who insisted on leaving the smithy and accompanying them for further protection. Touched by their concern, Alyce refrained from telling them that she was quite certain her purse, clanking its beckoning melodies, was the most reliable protection of all.

  Indeed, when they disembarked at the inn, taking all of its rooms, the reception was royal. It was as if the legendary Queen Diedre had alighted—in full panoply, with baggage, ceremony, and personal court—in Kilkenny Town.

  IX

  STRATEGIC MOVES

  DAME ALYCE wasted no time.

  The first afternoon, in full grandeur, she swept through the Seneschal’s palace, calling on Sir Arnald by surprise, thanking him for his support, and genially expressing hope that, “Since your cousin, my husband, our difficult Sir John” was no longer in residence at Kyteler Castle, their families might again be “close and loving,” as if they ever had been. She also brought “a humble symbol of sisterly affection” for his wife—twelve generous lengths of clover-green crushed velvet imported from France. Lady Megan, flattered by the t
hought and delighted at the lavishness of the gift, became an instant ally bent on ensuring that her husband would help their kinswoman-by-marriage in all ways possible, and who would remind to do so him until he did. His aid was further secured when Alyce confided to him that she had found several documents her husband had left behind, writs apparently in Arnald’s favor regarding his and John’s old quarrel about contested le Poer property.

  By the end of the following day, due to several judicious disbursements to district administrators, Alyce’s purse was lighter. By the next day, those officials and their clerks had become eagerly cooperative—providing her with access to county documents covering the previous two years, including records of all civil and criminal proceedings at law—with their silence about such cooperation as part of the purchase. A further lightening of her aumoniere resulted in the heavy registers and ledgers being (somewhat illegally) carried to her at her lodgings, since she felt it would be both impolitic and uncomfortable to sit poring over papers in public at the Registry—not to mention the fact that she would have to be attired in full state if she left the inn but could wear a cool linen gown if she did not.

  Thus ensconced in her rooms, Alyce spent the hours from early morning to late at night scanning entry after entry. She slept little and ate little, despite special meals that Petronilla insisted on cooking in the kitchen of the inn, bringing trays to her mistress of, she sniffed, “better fare than any public lodging can present,” thereby offering the innkeeper’s wife a mortal insult.

  Petronilla went early each morning to the Kilkenny marketplace, to buy the freshest goods she could find. There, strolling with her basket among the stalls of vendors—privately scoffing at the idea of purchasing what she was now accustomed to plucking fresh—she also tried to pick up whatever gossip she might overhear. But there was a new tension in the air, and women hawking their wares or bargaining to buy them seemed unwilling to chat. Indeed, some of the marketwomen, recognizing her as a member of Dame Alyce’s retinue, clucked at her, making the sign of the Evil Eye, a pair of horns, with their fingers. At that, a group of small boys began trailing her steps, whispering, laughing, and tossing pebbles at her until she hurriedly finished her purchases and left the market. She told no one back at the inn about these encounters, and refused to let her own timidity deter her from returning to the market each day, sweating with nervousness, to do the shopping she insisted was important for her mistress’s diet and health. But she recognized that amidst the pungent, friendly market smells—freshly caught fish, ripe melons, imported cinnamon spice, live caged ducks, crisp-baked meat pastries—was the distinct odor of fear.

  Meanwhile, hour after hour, head aching, eyes stinging, Alyce read on, despite pleas from Annota to rest and bathe her eyelids with cucumber juice. She had no fixed notion of what she was looking for, but she felt confident that something would emerge, and certain that she would recognize it when she saw it. So she made her way through the lawbooks, growing angrier with each page as she encountered cases where imposed English law or imposed Church law had been used to manipulate or flatly overrule Celtic Brehon or indigenous common law. She had known that this sort of thing happened, but abstractly. Now, reading through the records, she saw faces in the lawsuits: the man whose hand had been cut off for poaching a goose later found to be his own—as he had claimed all along—yet to whom no reparations had been paid by the accuser; the woman who had been denied a Church marriage annulment and then was sentenced to be publicly whipped for fleeing the husband who had beaten her almost to death.…

  Then, one midnight, when all her people were asleep and she was alone, hunched over a table peering through air smoky from constantly burning tapers, there—the third-to-last page of one of the few ledgers left—she found it.

  It was an old deed of accusation, still unsettled, in the criminal records of Kilkenny. It charged Richard de Ledrede with having defrauded a widow of her inheritance shortly after he had first arrived in Ireland.

  “Checkmate!” she whispered fiercely. “Now I have you, little Bishop! Scuttle in any devious diagonal you choose. But never forget that a queen can move as far as she likes in any direction.”

  Richard de Ledrede knew that his adversary had been in Kilkenny Town for days. He even expressed anxiety about her “dark purposes,” as he put it, to Father Brendan—who had now taken to staring at the wall and saying as little as possible, in hopes of being judged stupid and sent back to Kells. But the Bishop, too canny to believe the young scholar a dolt, kept him at his side, waiting for the opportunity when he might actually prove useful. One midnight, pacing the floor in his apartments, trying to calculate what Alyce Kyteler might be up to, the Bishop thought of just such an opportunity.

  Early the next day, he dispatched a desperately reluctant Father Brendan to attend on Her Ladyship at the inn, to find out her plans.

  “Sean Fergus! Merry Meet!” Alyce exclaimed, when the priest was announced and then ushered into her rooms by a disgruntled Annota Lange. Rising from her worktable, Alyce moved to embrace him. But he knelt before her, his usually genial face a portrait of distress.

  “Lady Alyce,” he pleaded, “I beg you to believe me when I tell you that I have had no part in leveling these hideous accusations against you! I hope and pray you do not blame me for—”

  “Sean, Sean! Of course no one blames you!”

  Annota, standing warily by the door, registered disagreement with a harrumph.

  “That is sufficient, Annota,” Alyce said, “Thank you, you may go.” Once the widow had stalked out, Alyce turned back to her guest. “Do get up, Sean, and have a seat.” He rose to his feet but remained standing. “Have you breakfasted yet? You look thin. Your mother would have said you want feeding.”

  “Thank you, my Lady. I have no appetite.”

  “Oh dear! Are you unwell? I can—”

  “No, no, I am well enough. Merely miserable. He sent me—though I admit, t’is truly glad I am to see you.”

  “And I you, my dear,” Alyce replied, not needing to be told who “he” was. “Poor Sean Fergus, how painful it must for you, caught betwixt as you are. I saw you at the Sabbat and I knew you would rather be feasting with us than spying and decrying with him. Can you not get away, back to Kells?”

  “T’is not for want of trying, I can tell you that.”

  “Well, I suspect it will all be over soon enough. Will you have some mint tea, at least?”

  “No, my Lady, thank you. I cannot stay long.”

  “But do sit down,” she commanded, “I must apologize for such clutter—” deftly sweeping the books off her worktable, and throwing a quilt over another pile of ledgers on the floor “—but you know how absurd I am about books! It seems I cannot even come to town to visit relatives unless I bring along a small library!” She located a bench from under another pile of books, slid the volumes behind a tapestry, and pointed him to the seat.

  For the first time, a smile warmed his face, and he sat down.

  “Oh, I remember well enough. I am the same now. I caught the disease from you, and a fine contagion it is. Lady Alyce, I want you to know that I shall never forget—and I shall be eternally grateful to you for them—those long soft-blue summer evenings when you sat with me so patiently and first opened my eyes to the wonder of books, the miracle of reading and writing.”

  “Well, the lessons were mutual. You were my first student. From you I learned how to teach. From you I learned how much I loved to teach.”

  The priest blushed.

  “I—I was a tad touched, y’know.… With you.”

  “Ah, Sean—or should I say Father Brendan? No? Sean it is then, and always shall be, to me.” She also coloured slightly. “Adam was dead but a year then. And me in my mid-twenties. And you but three summers younger.…”

  “Aye.”

  “Well.… Well, t’is all long, long ago.”

  “Oh, aye. That it is. Aye.”

  “T’is indeed. Aye.”

  “Aye.�
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  Neither knew what to say next. Finally, Alyce rescued the conversation.

  “A fast learner you were, too! I mean,” she added hastily, “about your letters. I know not which of us was prouder of you, Róisín or me.”

  “You changed my life. My mother knew that, and it pleased her so. Though t’is glad I am that she never lived to see me in this predicament.”

  “How can I help you, Sean?”

  “T’is the reverse, my Lady. How can I help you? I have tried everything I can think of. I have pled with His Eminence so often and so long that now he largely refuses to hear me. I have counseled him that The Craft poses no threat to Christ’s teaching. I have told him that what we saw at the Sabbat were not murdered bodies but cut up cheeses and burnt kirn poppets, that Wiccans do not keep animals as lovers, that your healing has brought health to many and harm to none. He must know in his heart that you sent him flying through the air at the Sabbat not by pointing at him but with a hearty blow from your staff; he must know that—he probably still wears a bruise from it! I have spent nights through trying to work out what drives the man. Does he actually believe the charges he lodged against you? I still do not know. Is he mad? I think not. Is he a religious zealot? Possibly, although I doubt it. Can anyone be so cynical as to wreak such damage simply because he has been told to, in direct opposition to Christ’s own teachings? Why, I ask myself why?”

  “Sean, the answer is simple. The answer is that it does not matter. I too have spent nights trying to scry his motives—which are probably a mixture of many things, since he is human, like you and like me. What I have come to is that ultimately his motives matter not. His actions do.”

  “But surely intention is a great part of—”

  “—yes, but if I remember accurately what the nuns once taught me, the Church places as much or more emphasis on intention as on commission. The Craft, on the other hand, regards the two as one—the same, a seamless cloth.”