The Wise Woman

Seventeen

Catherine was ill for many days, through the springtime weather of May when the sun rose clear and early, and the birds sang till dusk, till the end of that storm-filled, sunshine-filled month; but she did not complain. She lay quietly in her bed which was carried across to the little window so she could sit up on her pillows and see the courtyard and the garden and the life of the castle going on. She wearied easily and she liked to have Alys by her side to read to her. 'I cannot see the print,' she said. 'My head aches so. And Alys reads so sweetly.'

Lord Hugh passed her books and poems to read, and even some of his letters from London which told of Queen Anne's trial and her execution. '"By the hand of a French swordsman, especially trained and brought over from that country,"' Alys read to Catherine.

Catherine shook her head. 'I never liked her,' she said softly. 'I was named for Queen Catherine, you know, Alys. I always thought Anne Boleyn would fall. She was an adulteress, first with the King, and then with his courtiers. I won't mourn for her. Her rise was ungodly swift.'

'No swifter than Jane Seymour's,' Alys said logically. 'She was lady-in-waiting to them both. And she will be queen in her turn. If a man is king, or even master of his destiny, he will choose the woman he wants. And she can rise as he wishes.'

Catherine turned her head on the pillow and smiled at Alys. 'A marriage for love is best,' she said contentedly. 'A marriage for love between equals is best.'

Hugo came to her every morning and sat with her until dinner. He dined with her in her chamber at noon, and the table in the big hall seemed strangely empty without them. Alys often waited on them in Catherine's chamber as they ate. Hugo took her service without noticing her. He only watched Catherine, pressing her to eat the finest things, to drink little glasses of good red Mount Rose wine from Gascony to strengthen her blood. It was Catherine who thanked Alys.

In the afternoon while Hugo went out hunting, Alys would sing to Catherine and play the lute. She would read to her and copy passages from books which Catherine wanted to learn. 'I am so glad you are here, Alys,' Catherine said sweetly one day. 'I am so glad you are here to care for me. I feel so weak, Alys, I can tell you -but don't tell Hugo. I feel so weak I feel as if I will never be strong again. I am glad to have you care for me. I don't think I would have survived my drowning without your care.'

Morach, sitting idly at Catherine's bedroom fire, shot a quick amused glance at Alys' face. Alys looked blandly back.

'Who would have thought that you two girls would have become so close?' Morach wondered aloud. 'Such friends as you now are!'

Alys drew her lips back in a smile. 'It makes me very happy to be your friend, my lady,' she said stiltedly. 'Perhaps you should have your rest now.'

Every afternoon Catherine slept in her high bed until supper-time, when she dressed to go down to the hall with her ladies. The women and the men, gathered for their supper, gave a little mutter of approval to see her strength growing every day. 'It was a near thing,' Morach said with satisfaction, as she reached for another slice of manchet bread on the ladies' table. 'A near-run thing indeed. I thought for a little while that we might lose her.'

'It's a miracle,' Ruth said devoutly. 'A miracle that she should be snatched from drowning and then not die of the cold nor lose the baby. I have thanked God for it.'

'It's a miracle she should turn out so sweet,' Eliza whispered blasphemously. 'She was as sour and as full of acid as a lemon until her dunking. Now she's all honey. And kindly to you.' She nodded at Alys.

'Will the baby have a fear of water?' Mistress Allingham asked curiously. 'I remember a child in Richmond whose mother fell in the river and she could never touch water without shivering.'

'I remember her,' Morach nodded. 'Aye, sometimes it takes them that way, sometimes they swim like little fishes in the flood. D'you remember Jade the Idiot? His mother was drowned and I myself reached inside her dead body and pulled him out like a little lamb from a dead ewe. We wrapped him on the very bank of the river while the great flood was up high! And he could swim like he was more fish than man!'

Margery nodded eagerly and spoke of another fine swimmer. Alys leaned back a little and let the talk wash around her. The beeswax candles were very clear and bright tonight and the wine was sweet. Looking to her left she could see Hugo's back, the padded broad set of his shoulders, the swirl of his cape. On the nape of his neck his dark hair curled tight, his cap was set askew in the new fashion. She stared as hard as she could, willing him to be aware of her, to turn, to see her. She could not do it. He had lost his sense of her. 'You're pale, Alys,' Eliza said. 'Are you sick again?'

Alys shook her head. 'No, I'm well,' she said. 'A little weary, that's all.'

Margery blew on her trencher of bread, piled high with her portion of savoury meat mortrews, and bit into it with relish. 'You've been sick since the Christmas feast, I reckon,' she said. 'You were so bright and bonny when you first came to the castle and now your skin is pale as whey.'

'She'll bloom in the summer,' Morach said. 'Alys never liked being cooped indoors, and the reading and the writing she does would weary anyone.'

"Tisn't natural, for a woman to have such learning,' Mistress Allingham said roundly. 'No wonder she looks so thin and plain. She's working all the time with her mind and not growing plump and bonny like a girl should.' 'Plain?' Alys repeated, shocked. Eliza nodded, mischievously. 'Why did you think you were so high in my lady's favour? Because Hugo never looks your way no more! You're all thin and bony, Alys, and white as frost. He bundles up with Catherine and folds himself around her fat belly and thanks God for a bit of warm flesh in these cold nights.'

'She'll bloom in summer,' Morach said again. 'Leave the girl alone. The long cold dark days of this spring would weary anyone.'

The talk moved on at Morach's bidding but later that evening after supper, Alys slipped into Lady Catherine's room while the rest of them were drinking mead around the fire in the gallery. She carried a candle with her and set it down before the glass to see her face. It was a large handsome mirror made of silvered glass and the reflection it gave was always kindly, forgiving. Alys set down the candle and looked at herself. She was thinner. The gown of Meg the whore was wider than ever, the girdle spanned her waist and hung down low and the stomacher, laced as tight as it could go, flattened her slight breasts but was loose over her belly. She slipped her shawl back. Her shoulders were as scrawny as an old woman's, her collar bones like the bones of a little sparrow. She stepped a little closer to see her face. There were dark shadows beneath her eyes and lines of strain around her mouth. She had lost her childish roundness and her cheeks were thin and pale. Her blue eyes looked enormous, waif-like. She radiated coldness and loneliness and need.

Alys made a sour face at the mirror. 'I'll not get him back looking like this,' she said under her breath. She stepped a little closer. The shadows under her eyes were as dark as bruises. 'I'll not get him back at all,' she said softly. 'He could have loved me when I was straight off the moor, taught by my Mother Abbess, and skilful like Morach. He could have loved me then and been true to me then, and none of this misery would ever have happened. Now I've set my hand to magic and he's been witched, and she's been witched, and something is eating me away from the inside, like some great greedy worm, so all my strength drains from me and all I have left is my longing for him.'

The face in the mirror was haggard. Alys put her hand up and felt the tears on her cheek. 'And my magic,' she said softly. 'Longing and magic enough to hurt and wound. That's all I have left me. No magic to summon a man to love me.'

She sighed and the candleflame bobbed at her breath and spat a trail of smoke. Alys watched it wind towards the bright-painted timbered ceiling. 'I dipped very deep to be rid of him,' she said softly to herself. 'I used all the power I had to turn his eyes from me and his mind from me. I'll have to go that deep again to get him back.'

The candleflame quivered, as if in assent. Alys leaned forward. 'Shall I do it?' she asked the little yellow flame.

It dipped again. Alys smiled, and her face lit up with her youth and her joy again.

'Flame-talking!' she said softly. 'A flame as a counsellor!'

The room was very still; in the gallery she could hear someone take up a lute and strike a few chords, trying the sound. The chords hung on the air as if Alys was holding back time itself while she made her decision.

'It's more deep magic,' she said thoughtfully. 'Deeper than I know. Deeper than Morach knows.' The candleflame flickered attentively. 'I'll do it!' Alys said suddenly. 'Will it win me Hugo?' The flame leaped and a tiny spark shot out from a fault in the wick. Alys gave a start of surprise and then clapped her hands over her mouth to hold in a ripple of laughter. 'I win Hugo!' she said delightedly. 'I get what I want!' She snatched up the candlestick and turned to go from the room. As she walked the flame billowed out like a streamer, lighting the walls and Hugo and Catherine's big curtained bed so its shadow leaped up and jumped like a huge stalking animal. Alys opened the door to the gallery and stepped into the brightly lit room and the music. In its stick, unnoticed, the candleflame winked and went out.

The women were gathered around the fireside. Catherine, round and warm, was leaning back in her chair, her eyes closed, listening to Eliza plucking at the lute. Alys passed like a pale cold ghost through the room, carrying a darkened candlestick, and slipped into her bedroom.

She closed the door behind her but still Eliza's careless off-key warble came through. She leaned her back against the door as if she would blockade the room from them all. Then she shrugged, as a gambler does when he has nothing more to lose, crossed to the garderobe and rolled her sleeves up. Wrinkling her nose at the smell, she reached down the gap in the wall to feel for the string and the bag of the candle dolls. The bag was stuck to the castle wall, caked with muck. Alys' fingers scrabbled, trying to get a grip. She got hold of one corner and tore the purse away from the wall and up into the room.

'Faugh!' she said under her breath. She carried it over to the stone hearth and pulled at the neck of the purse. The stiff string was stubborn but snapped at last and the candle dolls spilled out on to the hearth.

Alys had forgotten how ugly they were. The little doll of Catherine with her legs spread wide and her grotesque fat belly, the old lord with his beaky, hungry face, and Hugo – beloved Hugo – with his eyelids wiped blind, his ears rubbed away, his mouth a smear and his fingers clumsy stumps. Alys shivered and tossed the purse on the fire; it sizzled and a rank smell of midden filled the room. Alys pulled a stool closer, put the three dolls on her lap and gazed at them.

Very quietly the door behind her opened and Morach came in, soft-footed.

'Oh,' she said gently. 'I felt your magic even while I was gossiping about London news out there. But I did not think you would have turned to the dolls again.'

Alys looked at her, blank-faced. She did not even try to hide the horrors she had made of Morach's little statues.

Taking your power again, are you?' Morach questioned. Alys nodded, saying nothing.

'You heard what they said of your looks at dinner,' Morach said, half to herself. She hunkered down on the hearth-rug beside Alys. 'You heard what they said about you, that Hugo loves Catherine, that Catherine fears you no more because you have lost your looks.'

Alys remained silent, the little dolls side-by-side on her lap. Morach took the poker and stirred the fire so the log fell backwards and she could see a deep red cave of embers. 'Bitter that was for you,' she said, looking deep into the fire. 'Sour and bitter to know that your looks are going and you have had so little joy from them.'

Alys said nothing. The dolls in her lap gleamed wetly in the glow from the fire as if they were warming back to life after their long cold vigil hung outside the castle wall.

'And you've taken Hugo's desertion badly,' Morach said softly. She did not look at Alys, she looked into the heart of the fire as if she could see more there. 'You saw him dive into the river and pull Catherine out. You saw him wrap her warm and bring her back as fast as his horse would go. You saw him hold her and kiss her, and now you see him, unbidden, at her side every day and in her bed every night. And how she grows and beams and thrives on his love! While you – poor sour little Alys – you are like a snowdrop in some shady corner of the wood. You grow and flower in coldness and silence, and then you die.'

The smell from the burning purse eddied around the two of them like smoke from the depths of hell. 'So you want your power,' Morach said. 'You want to make the dolls yours again, you want to make them dance to your bidding.'

'Fashion him again,' Alys said suddenly, holding out the mutilated doll of Hugo to Morach. 'Make him whole again. I commanded him not to see me, not to hear me, not to touch me. I commanded him to lie with Catherine and get her with child. Lift my command off him. Make him whole again and passionate for me. Make him back to what he was at Christmas when he carried me from the feast, to lie with me whether I would or no. Make him how he was when he faced her down and swore false oaths to keep me safe. Make him what he was when he sat by the fire – in that very room where she sits now – and told me that she disgusted him, that he lay with her only to keep me safe, and that his body and soul craved to be with me. Make him that again, Morach! Make him new again!'

Morach sat very still, then she slowly, almost sadly, shook her head. 'It cannot be done,' she said gently. 'There is no magic that can do it. You would have to turn back time itself, turn back the seasons to Christmas. All that has happened here since then has happened, Alys. It cannot be undone.'

'Some of it can be undone,' Alys insisted, her face small and pinched, her voice venomous. 'The child can be undone, Morach. The child can be undone in its mother's belly. The child can be stillborn. Catherine can die. Then even if he does not love me – at least he does not love her. And when she is gone, and the child is gone, he will turn back to me.'

Morach shook her head. 'I won't do it,' she said softly. 'Not even for you, Alys, my child, my poor child.' She shook her head again. 'I've aborted babes and I've given women miscarriages,' she said. 'I've blighted cattle, oh yes, and men's lives. But they were always people who were strangers to me, or those I had reason to hate. Or the babies were unwanted and the women desperate to be rid of them. I couldn't blight the child of a woman I live with, whose bread I eat. I couldn't do it, Alys.'

There was silence. The last remnant of the burning purse flickered and fell into ashes.

Then tell me how to do it,' Alys hissed. 'I can do it to her. I would have drowned her that day if you had not meddled, Morach. I will make an end of her now. And I warn you not to meddle.'

Morach shook her head. 'Don't, Alys,' she said warningly. 'I cannot see the end to it, and there is so little time…'

Alys looked sharply at her. 'What have you seen?' she demanded. 'What time? What little time?'

Morach shrugged. 'I can't see,' she said. 'I see a hare, and a cave, and coldness and drowning. And little time.'

'A hare?' Alys asked. 'A March hare? A magic hare? A hare that is a witch in flight? What does it mean, Morach? And a cave? And a drowning? Was that what should have happened to Catherine? Drowning in a cave, swept underwater and buried underground by the river?'

Morach shook her head again. 'A hare, a cave, a coldness, a drowning, and very little time,' she repeated. 'Don't question me, Alys, for I won't act unless I can see my way. I know danger when I am thrust towards it. I know fear of fire and fear of water. Don't force me forwards when I can sense danger ahead, Alys.'

There was a silence filled with fear in the room. The women sat, as still as sighted deer, waiting for their sense of terror to pass by. It was moments before either of them spoke. Then it was Alys, and her voice was not like her voice at all.

'You have to do something,' she said slowly. She was looking down at the dolls on her lap. And her face was alight with a mixture of fear and exultation.

'Why?'

'Because the dolls have come alive,' Alys said. As she spoke she leaned closer and could see their little chests rise and fall in a slow languid rhythm of breathing. 'They are alive,' she said. 'We will have to do something with them, Morach, or they will start acting on their own.'

Alys had never before seen Morach afraid. The woman seemed to hunch into herself as if she were cold, as if she were hungry. The long, hard years on the moor, living off the vegetable patch and the few begrudging gifts seemed to have laid their mark on her after all, and the gloss and the comfort of the weeks in the castle fell away as if they had never been.

They had the dolls hidden beneath their pillow. At night Alys could feel them squirm beneath her head. During the day she felt their eyes follow her, through the pillow, through the rug, as she went around the room. They lived beside the two women, three monstrous little ghosts summoned into life and now impossible to kill.

The two women were afraid. Both Morach and Alys were afraid that someone would see the cover on the bed stir and lift. They feared a scrupulous maidservant coming unbidden to shake the covers. They feared the prying eyes of Eliza Herring or a surprise visit from Father Stephen. The little dolls were so vivid in their minds they could hardly believe that no one else saw them, that no one else felt their presence, that no one else heard the occasional little cry muffled by the pillow, from behind the closed door.

'What are we to do with them?' Alys asked Morach, at dawn on the third day.

Neither woman had slept; the little dolls had stirred beneath the pillow all night. In the end they had wrapped themselves against the cold dawn air, thrown more wood on the fire, and sat at the hearth, huddled together, as the flames flared up. 'Can we burn them?' Alys asked. Morach shook her head. 'I dare not,' she said. 'Not now they're so lively. I don't know what they would do.' Her face was drawn and grey with fear and fatigue. 'What if they leaped out of the fire and came running, all melting and hot after us?' she asked. 'If the dolls themselves did not burn us, then Lord Hugh would have us for witchcraft. I wish to all the gods that I'd never given them to you.'

Alys shrugged. 'You taught me the spell to give them power,' she argued. 'You must have known we would be stuck with them, lively, forever.'

Morach shook her head. 'I never heard of it like this before,' she said. 'I never heard of it so powerful. It's your doing, Alys. It's your power. Your power and the great hatred you poured into them.'

Alys clenched her hands on her blanket. 'If I have all this power why can I get nothing I want?' she demanded. 'I can make mistakes so powerful that my life is at risk. I can betray my mother and all my sisters. But the little skill to win a man from a woman I can't do. I get little joy from my power, Morach.'

Morach shook her head. 'You're all contradictions,' she said. 'That's why your power comes and goes. One after another you have loved and betrayed. And now you want Hugo. What would you do if you had him?'

Alys closed her eyes for a moment. Behind them, under the pillow in the shadowy bed draped with thick curtains, the little dolls lay still as if they too were listening.

'I would love him,' she said, her voice languid with desire. 'I would make him my love, my lover. I would make him so drunk with me, so drugged with me that he would never look at another woman. I would make him my servant and my slave. I would make him mad for me.'

Morach nodded and hitched the blanket a little closer. 'You'd destroy him too then,' she said. Alys flinched and opened her mouth to argue. 'No,' Morach said. 'It's true. If you take a young lord and make him your slave then you destroy him as much as an old lady left to burn to death. You're a darker power than any I've ever known or heard on, Alys. I wonder where you came from that dark night when I found you, abandoned at my door.'

Alys shook her head. 'All I want is the things that other women have,' she said. 'The man I love, a place to live, comfort. Catherine is laden with goods. I want nothing more than she has. What right has she that I have not?'

Morach shrugged. 'Maybe you'll get it,' she said. 'In your little time.'

'How little?' Alys asked urgently. 'How long do I have, Morach?'

The old woman shrugged, her face a little greyer. 'I can't see,' she said. 'It's all gone dark for me. The bones, the fire, the crystal, even the dreams. All I can see is a hare and a cave and coldness.' She shivered. 'As cold as death,' she said. 'I am learning fear in my old age.'

Alys shook her head impatiently. 'I am afraid too,' she said. 'Every day we are in greater danger with the moppets here. Let's decide and be done with them. We dare not keep delaying.'

Morach nodded. 'There's that holy ground, a little preaching cross, on the moor outside Bowes,' she said slowly. 'The other side of the river from my cottage.' Alys nodded. 'Tinker's Cross,' she said. 'Aye,' Morach said. 'Sanctified ground. That's the place for them. And the cross is near a lonely road. No one ever goes there. We could leave here in daylight, be there at midday, bury them in the holy ground, sprinkle them with some holy water, and be back here by supper.'

'We could say we were fetching plantings,' Alys said. 'From the moorland, heather and flowers. I could take the pony.'

Morach nodded. 'Once they're buried in holy ground they're safe,' she said. 'Let your sainted Mother of God take care of them instead of us.'

Alys lowered her voice to a whisper. 'They won't bury us will they?' she asked, 'remember what I told you about the doll of Catherine? She pulled me into the moat, Morach. She meant to drown me when I tried to sink her. The little dolls won't find a way to bury us in revenge?'

'Not in holy ground,' Morach said. 'Surely, they'd have no power on holy ground? And I made them and you spelled them. Working together, we must be their masters. If we take them soon and put them in holy ground, before they gather their power…'

Something in Alys' stillness alerted her. Her voice tailed off and she looked at Alys, and then followed Alys' fixed gaze. On the cover of the bed, out of hiding, the three candlewax dolls stood in a row, leaning forward as if to listen. As the two women watched, silent in horror, the three took one hobbling little step closer.