The Burning Time

by Robin Morgan

  From Alyce’s perspective, however, the heath-folk were handling their leave-taking with an aplomb that again surprised her; she had assumed that being wrenched from the land would devastate her peasants utterly. But she had little time to mull this or anything else. Scheduled to depart first, she was a blur of movement—ensuring that everyone had gold coin, food, warm clothing, and means of transport.

  By late afternoon, the youngest children began arriving in the castle courtyard, brought by parents doing their best not to weep and alarm the little ones. Fortunately, all the youngsters felt at home with Petronilla and even with Lady Alyce, since both women had tended or sat with them when they were sick. Still, the tangle of seven children under the age of six, gathered for a trip, was impressive.

  Alyce had already bidden private farewells to the adults one by one, double-checking as she did so that each was properly equipped for the journey. She had pressed on each traveler a pottle of grapeseed paste for skin wounds, and a pouch of cloves, ginger, peppermint leaves, and pennyroyal, for seasickness. She had reminded Helena to bring a distillation of sage to dry up her breastmilk temporarily, since Dana would be traveling separately and having to make do with watered goat’s milk sipped from a flask until they reached the Welsh coast and she could rejoin her mother. Having to abandon larders abrim with the harvest enraged Alyce, who continued to think of more items everyone should pack. Having to abandon the animals pained her even more, and she kept trying to think of ways to ensure the creatures would not be maltreated by those who might try to seize her holdings. The cattle and sheep were impassive creatures of habit. But she let the goats loose to wreak their natural mischief throughout the countryside—first saying a personal farewell to Greedigut, who gazed at her through white-lashed amber eyes, tolerated her embrace, and accepted a basket of dried rosebuds as a farewell dinner.

  Prickeare’s fate bore its own small tragedy. An elderly cat could hardly travel with seven children and two adults in a covered cart and then aboardship. Nor could he be left behind, since he was sure to be tortured to death by those who knew him to be Alyce Kyteler’s cherished Familiar. There was only one thing to be done. The night before departure he had slept against her heart, purring on the beat of it and in rhythm with her breathing. Then, the following afternoon, unable to stop the tears running down her face, she had fed him the nightshade distillation that would cause no pain. She knew that he sensed what was happening. He walked about a little, but soon began to drag his hind legs. Then he could lift his head and front body only with difficulty, yet his jade eyes followed her everywhere. She picked him up and cradled him against her breast. He curled in her arms, gazing into her eyes, purring, understanding and forgiving everything. Then he drifted into a doze, and while she clasped his deepening sleep against her—the featherlight triangle of his head resting cupped in her palm—she could feel his ancient, loving heart slow, and then stop. She sat holding him this way as long as she dared. Then she carried his little body outside and planted him in the kitchen garden—in a particular spot where he had loved to lie sunning himself, nibbling the herbs and savoring the additional thrill of being able to flatten the lettuces at the same time.

  It was there that Will found his mother, kneeling, slumped back on her heels, hands lying helplessly in her lap, weeping. The sight of her so defenseless thawed his last residue of resentment, and he knelt, too, flinging his arms around her.

  “Oh Mum,” he cried.

  She reached for him and held him tight.

  “Will. My dearest Will,” she murmured. Then she leaned back, the better to perceive the soft young manhood in his face. Slowly, she examined the familiar features as if to imprint them indelibly on her sight, not knowing when her gaze would next trace the smooth slope of that cheek, the curve of that delicate nostril, the fine browngold hair of that eyebrow.

  “Do you remember,” she said, sniffling and trying to clear her throat, “when you were little?”

  “Yes,” he answered, clasping her more tightly.

  “You were always there for me, through all the husbands—you, my joy, the one constant object of my love. You never really knew your father, of course … well, that was both loss and blessing. Then Adam complained that you were such a beautiful child—your green eyes, and your locks were red-gold then—too beautiful to be a boy, he claimed. He envied you, in truth—though beautiful you were. But for me, it was your glad spirit that was such a gift. You were my young knight, remember?” Will nodded, working to hold back tears.

  “One day, when you were only about six or seven, out riding with a tutor, you came across a fawn Richard had killed in his latest hunt—remember?—and you stormed home and bravely gave him such a tongue-lashing! ‘Mum,’ you proclaimed, ‘I shall now protect you from Richard. From everyone. I shall be your knight.’ And so you were. You protected me from John, too, in your way. And somehow you managed to endure all those stepbrothers and stepsisters passing through, leaving a spoor of quarrels and sour memories.”

  He shook his head and swallowed hard.

  “Mum, I am so sorry for … for everything lately that—”

  She placed a finger against his lips.

  “Hush, my love. No need. I too have my regrets. I kept you young—younger than your years, I think. So that I might have one person to love steadily.… Perhaps I wronged you by not granting you more authority.”

  “No, t’is also true that I was not—”

  “Never mind, none of that matters now. What matters is that we know we love one another.”

  “Mum … why do they—hate us so? What have we done to—”

  “We have done nothing, my dearest, to them. Nothing to warrant such hatred. Except, perhaps, being different from them. Not seeing life as they do. But many people—perhaps most—fear what they do not know.”

  “Yet there will always be things unknown, things to learn, surely? And, too, why don’t they simply get to know us? Why don’t—”

  “Because the fear is comfortable, familiar. It takes courage—and time—to learn … well, anything. Letters, numbers, people, ideas. Nor does it seem the Bishop will permit us that time. Perhaps he and his pope fear that knowing who we truly are might change them.” Alyce sighed. “But that too matters not, not now. What matters is that we do whatever must be done to survive this—catastrophe; do you understand? What matters is that we flee to safety; that we return someday soon so that you become steward of your own ancestral lands. The land alone lasts, my dear; from it, everything else comes. We must do whatever must be done to survive—and to protect the land. And I believe you can do this, and that you will manage the estates someday, with skill and wisdom and compassion. I do trust you, you see.”

  They clung to each other. Then Alyce wiped the tears from her face and tried to smile.

  “Now. Will, I want you not to be there when I depart in a few hours. I know you ride out an hour after me, and I know you have packing to do and … and your own farewells to say. Hard as it will be for me to tear myself from Kyteler Castle, it will be harder if you stand in the courtyard watching me depart. Can you understand?”

  “Yes, Mum. I can understand.”

  “Good. Then go now, quickly. Wait, no, not yet—not before I bless you with a Three-fold Kiss.” Taking his sweet young face between her hands, she softly kissed each eyelid and above, in the middle of his forehead. Then, holding back more tears, she tried to tease him lightly. “Remember, follow Robert de Bristol’s sense of direction, not your own!”

  He offered a faint smile, his own eyes wet.

  “Go now, my son, my tender knight. Blessed Be. May you always walk in Her sight. Quickly. Go.”

  The young heir got to his feet, squared his shoulders, then strode off. At the edge of the garden he turned for one look back. His mother saw the last late afternoon sunlight slanting across his face, veining his hair reddish gold. Then he smiled, waved once, turned, and disappeared out of sight.

  When it began blueing toward twil
ight, Alyce was finally forced to abandon the remainder of her last-minute tasks. She did so reluctantly, with a sense of failure. But she permitted her women to bustle her out of her tower chamber with no backward look, and to hurry her to the castle courtyard.

  There it stood: the large wagon boarded on three sides, roofed with planks covered by sheepskins and stained muslin so as to look like a peasant cart. The two fastest horses, Tissy and Makeshift, were being hitched up to draw it. The children had already been taken leave of by their parents and tucked inside with Petronilla, who was fussing over them lovingly, despite Sara’s obvious displeasure at having to share her mother’s attention with six other small beings.

  There were curtsies, bows, embraces. Helena and Sysok kept peeking into the cart at Dana. Old John tried to kneel and kiss his Lady’s hand. But she stopped him, bending to kiss his gnarled claw instead. Annota Lange was stoic as ever. Alyce and Henry were rechecking the horses’ hooves to make doubly sure they were well shod. Eva de Brounstoun could not stop crying, but she strove to be cheerful through her soundless, soft, steady tears. Will Payne was there with his daughter Maeve, who was craning her neck in hopes of a glimpse of young William, while she herself was being hovered over by Robert de Bristol. They and all the others had assembled for this formal farewell to their mistress.

  Then it was time.

  By previous agreement, the Wiccans drifted off, alone, or in twos and threes, scattering to finish preparations for their own imminent departures. Their Lady had wanted this moment to herself.

  Standing alone in the courtyard, Alyce looked up at the towers of Kyteler Castle, her family seat for more generations than she could number. Kytelers had come and gone, but these walls had endured—and the land even longer. Now, for the first time, she sensed in her soul that she might well be leaving forever. If so, what would become of the land? She knew the husbands’ children would try to claim it—fight over it, carve up their former stepmother’s lands, retainers, livestock, and possessions amongst themselves, not forgetting to share their confiscated spoil with the Bishop who had made such largesse possible. She bent and scooped up a handful of earth, pouring it into a tiny pouch and tucking that into the pocket of her jerkin.

  Then she gazed out through the courtyard arch across the moat to the heath—heart-wrenchingly beautiful as it glimmered violet in the dusk—peering for one last look at the Covenstead. It was deserted. No Samhain Sabbat there this night. But tears blurred her eyes and made prisms in the failing light, and for a moment she saw a rainbow of Wiccans assembling there, Wiccans from out of time, from the Otherworlds, ancestral wraiths approaching from all directions, gathering at the Cromlech, chanting soundlessly, swaying, raising a Cone of Power.…

  Then she blinked. And there was only the dolmen towering agelessly up out of the earth, the circle like the outline of a grass-fringed stone eye staring sentinel at the moon. Her chest constricted as if her heart were fracturing, while grief flaked through her in a thousand tiny crackled lines.

  Crazing, the potters call that, she thought absently, calm, as if watching herself from outside herself. I was so certain this rupture from the land would be unbearable for the people, she thought, but I am the one who finds it unbearable. She bit her lip. Because the land is mine. Not theirs. Because I own them—but the land owns me. She thought of Eva’s voice at the cellar meeting: Was it a dream of faerie lore, then, after all, our community?

  “M’Lady?” called Petronilla from inside the cart.

  No time for hesitation; no time for anything, anymore. Except flight.

  “Yes. One moment, Petronilla.”

  She stood between the yoked horses, who were pawing the ground in a contagion of excitement from the anxiety they smelled on the humans. She stroked their forelocks, whispering into their pricked-up ears.

  “Now love, now Tissy! Whoa there, Makeshift! Concentrate that spirit, concentrate it, dear ones. Together we must fly. To Wexford! To the seacoast!”

  Then she sprang to the outside bench of the coach, seized the reins, and cried out:

  “In the name of Magog, Mother of Sacred Horses! Now!”

  The clatter of hoofbeats and thunder of cart wheels pounded over the drawbridge.

  Echoes rippled across the heath, then died away.

  There remained only silence, and what would outlast this assault as it had all others: a circle of stones.

  XV

  VISIONS

  ALONE IN HIS CATHEDRAL study, Richard de Ledrede paced the floor in excitement. All day he had yearned for darkness with an anticipation he hadn’t felt for years—not since that long ago evening when, as a young priest, he had waited so eagerly to celebrate his first Christmas Midnight Mass. Tonight, though, would celebrate not a birth but an ending—of heretical defiance. Tonight would witness his personal triumph over Dame Alyce Kyteler. But the waiting was agony. Darkness had long since fallen. It was past nine on the candle mark, but still no word. Why couldn’t these heretics at least have the common sense not to gather in the dead of night?

  When the servant knocked, the Bishop flung open the door.

  “Yes? Are the pagans assembling on the heath yet? Have the look-outs seen anything?”

  “No, my lord, no word yet. Perhaps t’is still too early. But this—” the servant proffered a sealed scroll “—just arrived by courier from Dublin.”

  He grabbed the scroll, hurriedly broke the seal, and unrolled the parchment. Growling “Go, go, go,” in dismissal to his servant, he began to read. Then he broke into a rare smile of relief.

  The letter was from the Lord Justice of Ireland. It was terse. It informed His Eminence the Bishop of Ossary that His Excellency the Lord Justice had received direct orders from His Holiness the Pope demanding heresy trials in Ireland, and that therefore secular permission could no longer be denied. Consequently, the Lord Justice was hereby formally granting to the Bishop, acting as Papal Emissary, permission to mount such trials.

  De Ledrede laughed aloud with delight at both the contents and the brevity of the letter. How it must have galled the Lord Justice to be forced to write it! This was going to be a very good night indeed. He refilled his wine goblet and raised it in a toast to his vanquished adversary.

  “To you, Lady Alyce. You led me a merry chase, and for that I thank you. Once I had engaged your enmity, Ireland no longer bored me. But tonight you lose. Not all your wealth, your ingenious plotting, your powerful family connections—”

  He froze, goblet in mid-air, his own last words resonating through his mind, leaving a chill in their wake.

  The Lord Justice was her relative. He had stood by her once before. He might have written to her now, warning her. The Bishop had been certain all along that Alyce Kyteler would never relinquish her lands, the richest in Ireland. But if specifically warned … might she flee? She might. She might be preparing to flee at this very hour.

  The Bishop slammed down his goblet and rushed through the door, bellowing, “Up! Saddle the horses now! We will not wait for midnight! To the courtyard! We ride to Kyteler Castle now!”

  Through the darkness the cartful of children jostled on, stopping only for the two women to change places, taking turns at the reins or riding with the children inside. By midnight, the wagon and its occupants had reached the east coast. The children, at first mouse-still with confusion, had become noisy with adventure, then cranky with confinement, and were now all but yowling with dissatisfaction. They had eaten well enough; indeed, the cart floor was carpeted with crumbs. But their space was very cramped, and none except the youngest ones, including Dana the baby, had been able to sleep much in the jolting wagon. It would be a relief to rest before what was sure to be a choppy channel crossing.

  Alyce reined in the horses at the edge of a pine forest high on a hill above Wexford harbor. Here they could remain safe until dawn and keep watch for any pursuers. Good enough, since by early light the first boat for which she had paid should be ready to sail.

  Petronilla parted
the muslin flaps and stuck out her head.

  “Why be we stopping?” she called, “D’ye want me to take another turn at the reins?” Then she glanced out down the hill. “Oh! T’is Wexford!” she gasped, recognizing the place so familiar from years of unhappiness. “Then canna we—canna we go down and get on the boat? Canna we sail right away?”

  Alyce shook her head.

  “No, Pet. We are pausing here to rest a few hours until dawn. The captain sent word to me before we left home that t’is best for the first boat to sail with the morning tide, and he wishes us to board just before weighing anchor—so as not to arouse suspicion, I imagine. But we are here too early. I warned you that you were driving Tissy and Makeshift too severely when you had the reins.”

  “Oh but we canna stop, we must press on, we—”

  “No. We must not,” Alyce replied, her weariness taking on an edge of anger. “We have come a long way, and more swiftly than I had planned. The other thing I did not plan is that,” she said, pointing to the north. “It looks to be a storm lowering an hour or so away. I do not relish the babes being in the open during a storm—but we dare not put up at the inn in town. And I know of no trustworthy Wiccan house hereabout to shelter us. Wexford has become such a Christian stronghold.” She leapt down from the cart. “Well, never mind. We will build a shelter of pine boughs and blankets, and hope the storm blows to the west or holds off till morning. The children are desperate for a bit of stretch. And you and I could each use a few moments of sleep. One can rest while the other stands guard.”

  Petronilla clambered hastily out of the cart, gesticulating wildly.

  “No! Oh no, no, no, we dinna dare—”

  “Petronilla! Stop it! What has happened to you? For months you were growing more confident, and night before last, at the meeting in the cellar, you were so—eloquent. But now you are again a timid, panicked waif. We need to be even-tempered, not—convulsive. So stop acting like one of the children! I have seven of them to deal with as it is.” Alyce paused for breath. “Now. We will remain here for a few hours to rest and wait for dawn. No more hand-wringing. I know what I am about.”