The Wise Woman

Eighteen

They had the ponies saddled and harnessed as soon as the grooms were awake. They left a message for Lady Catherine and trusted to Morach's reputation for stubborn independence as their excuse for leaving without notice and without permission. They were both pale and silent as they trotted the ponies out of the castle gate. On one side of Alys' saddle she had slung a spade, and tied to the pannier was a sack which bulged and heaved.

The ponies fretted all the way through the little town, shied at shadows and threw their heads about. Morach clung on with little skill.

"They know what they're carrying,' she said quietly. As they left the cobbled main street of Castleton and started westwards down the country lanes, the bag went still and quiet and the ponies went more steadily.

'It's as if they wanted to betray us,' Morach said, bringing her pony alongside Alys and speaking very low. 'There is powerful hatred in them.'

Alys was white-faced, strained, her blue eyes black with fear. 'Hush,' she said. 'Did you get some holy water?'

'Stole it,' Morach said with quiet satisfaction. "That Father Stephen is careless with his box of tricks; he left it behind in his room, he thinks himself safe in the castle. I could have had some bread from the Mass too, but I thought better not.'

'No,' Alys said. She remembered the last time she had tasted communion bread, and the undigested wafer coming up whole in her throat. 'Better left alone.'

The two women rode on in silence. It was a day of swirling fog which suddenly cleared in bright patches like little islands of sunshine along the road, until the fog came down like a grey wet night again.

'If this fog thickens we can do our business without fear of being seen,' Morach said, pulling her shawl up over her mouth. 'All finished and done and back to the castle in time for supper.'

Alys nodded. 'It will thicken,' she said with certainty. 'I am going to get through this day without danger. I am going to escape the malice of these dolls. I am coming out of this with a whole skin.'

Morach shot her a look, half rueful, half amused. 'You have the power,' she conceded. 'Call up the fog then, and safety at any price.'

Alys nodded, half in jest. 'A thick fog,' she repeated. 'And my safety at any price, and…' She paused. 'Hugo in my arms before the day ends!'

Morach chuckled and shook her head. 'Impatient whore,' she said smiling. 'You want everything, and always at once!'

The fog lifted for a moment and the ponies trotted out more quickly along the road. Their unshod hooves made little sound on the soft mud. On either side of the track great bushes of gorse flowered, bright yellow, empty of perfume in the cold air.

A flock of lapwings lifted from a meadow by the track and wheeled across the sky, calling into the wind. All around them the fog lay grey and thick but above the two women was an eye of brilliant blue sky and a bright sun. 'Feel the warmth of that sun!' Morach said in delight. 'I love the sun after a cold winter. I've been chilled to my bones these last few days. Chilled and shaking. It's good to be out in the sunshine again.' Alys nodded, pushing the hood of her cape back. Her hair, free of a hood or cap, tangled into golden-brown curls. The colour was back in her cheeks. 'The castle is like a prison,' she said resentfully. 'Whether Catherine is sweet or sour it is wearying to wait on her.'

Morach nodded. 'As soon as the babe is born, I'm away,' she said. 'Back to my cottage.'

Alys nodded. 'You'll just be in time for winter then,' she observed. The child's due in October.'

Morach grinned. In a bush ahead of them a blackbird thrust out his chest and warbled a long rippling call. Morach whistled back, exactly the same notes, and the blackbird, half angry, half puzzled, repeated his song even louder.

'I know,' she said carelessly. 'But I'd rather die of cold on the moor than spend another winter in that castle.'

'Would you?' Alys asked. 'Would you really?' Morach looked around at her and the smile died from her face. 'No,' she said. 'I cannot abide the cold at the moment. I'd do anything rather than be cold and in the dark.'

Alys shrugged her shoulders. 'You've a whole summer ahead of you,' she said carelessly. 'Don't fret.'

Morach shrugged off the shadow which had touched her, lifted her face to the sunlight and half closed her eyes. 'And you?' she asked. 'Will you wait for Hugo? When this task of ours is done? Will you fatten up and learn to smile, wait for him to weary of his tired wife and puking babe? I thought you had grown impatient with waiting, I thought you were turning to magic again?'

Alys looked straight ahead at the swirl of mist before them which hid their road. 'You saw me with Hugo in the runes, and I dreamed of him and me together, and a son we would have. I want him, Morach, and both you and I have seen it. It must be there, waiting to happen. Tell me how I can get him.'

Morach pursed her lips and shook her head. 'You have your power,' she said. 'And you're young, and when you're not lovesick you are as beautiful as any girl in the country. Why wait and pine for Hugo? There are other men.'

Alys looked out along the straight lane ahead of them, stretching along the shoulder of the hill. 'I want him,' she said steadfastly. 'The moment I saw him I knew desire. I was straight out of the nunnery, Morach, and he was the first man I had ever seen in my life who was a match for me. I wanted him then as a bird seeks a mate. Nothing could stop me. Nothing could stop him.'

Morach gave a cracked laugh, hawked and spat. ' You stopped him!' she exclaimed. 'Stopped him in his tracks. Turned him cruel and twisted, a monster to his own wife. Set them dancing a wicked little dance. And now he loves her.'

Alys' eyes narrowed, her whole face looked pinched and mean. 'I know,' she said through her teeth. 'I should have taken the risk of him loving me and not meddled with magic. I should have trusted him to care for me. But I was anxious for my own safety…' she broke off. 'I wouldn't take the risk,' she said.

Morach grinned. 'Still the same story then,' she said cheerfully. 'You run to save your own skin and then find you have lost the one thing you needed.'

Alys' pony checked and side-stepped at her sudden grasp on the reins. 'Yes,' she said sharply, as if Morach's wit had struck as hard as a stone. 'Yes. My God, yes.'

There was silence for a moment. 'Best give him up,' Morach said. 'That's the other lesson your life is teaching you. When something is gone – it's gone. Even if you lost it by your own folly or cowardice. You've lost your Mother Abbess and you've lost Hugo. Give them both up. Let them go. The past belongs to the past. Find another love, Alys, and hold on to it this time. Take a risk for it.'

Alys shook her head. 'I have to have Hugo,' she said. 'There are too many promises between us. I had a Seeing. I can give him a son and I still think that Catherine will not. I have to be the lady at that castle, Morach. It is what I want and it is where I belong. I have dreamed of it over and over. Even if the love is gone, even if I have twisted and changed him – even twisted and changed myself. I want the castle. I want to be first with Hugo and the old lord. I want the dream that I dreamed, even if I am no longer fit for it.' Morach shrugged, watching Alys enmesh herself. 'How can I get it?' Alys pressed her. 'Good God, Morach, lovelorn wenches are your speciality. How can I get him, him and the castle? There are spells, surely?'

Morach laughed shortly. 'There are none to make a man love you,' she said. 'You know that as well as I. There are no tricks to make love come and stay. All magic can do, all herbs can do, is to summon lust.'

'Lust is no good,' Alys said impatiently. 'He's lusty enough. And with everyone else. I want him to want only me. Only me.'

Morach smiled. 'Then you have to give him some pleasure that no other can give,' she said. 'You have to take him out of his mind with desire. You have to let him ride the goddess.' 'What?' Alys demanded.

Ahead of them the mist was like a grey, wet wall. 'So much for sunshine,' Morach said, and hunched her shawl around her shoulders so they trotted into the darkness and it enveloped them.

The ponies' feet were even quieter on the soft wet mud. Around them the leaves of the hedgerows dripped wetly. The dark green of the hawthorn was flecked with white buds. Then the hedgerows gave way to open moorland and they could hear the distant sighing sound of the river.

'What d'you mean, ride the goddess?' Alys asked, her voice muffled and low.

'Poison,' Morach said matter-of-factly. 'There's a toadstool, the little grey one – earthroot, it's called.'

'I know that,' Alys interrupted. 'You give it dried and pounded in food to cure feverish dreams and lustful visions.'

Morach nodded. 'Take it fresh, or baked so it is sweet, and it will cause a fever, aye, and dreams like madness,' she said. 'If you want a man so badly that you do not care what it costs, you trick him to eat the earthroot, and then you whisper wild dreams and visions. You dance for him naked, you lay him on his back, you lick him all over like a bitch with a puppy. You do whatever enters your head to give him pleasure, any way.'

Alys was breathing fast. 'And what does he do?' she asked.

Morach laughed shortly. 'He sees visions, he dreams dreams,' she said. 'He may think you are the goddess herself, he may think he is flying high in the skies and having his lust on the stars. Any dream you whisper to him he will take for his own – delight or nightmare, the choice is yours.'

'And after?' Alys asked. 'When he has taken his pleasure and awakens?'

Morach chuckled her slow malicious chuckle. 'Then you use your power as a woman,' she said. 'No witchcraft is needed then. You swear that all he dreamed was true – that you are a witch and you have led him into the wild places that only we know. If he is fool enough – and you are barefaced enough – he will never go with another woman. Other women are the earth to him after that, plain and ordinary. You are fire and water. and air.'

Alys' face was alight. 'I'll have him,' she said. 'I'll trap him with that. It's what he wanted from me from the first.' She paused for a moment. 'But the cost,' she said, suddenly cautious. 'What's the price for all this, Morach?'

Morach laughed wildly. 'You should have been a usurer, not a witch, Alys. A usurer. You never touch a thing but you have to know the price. You never take a risk. You never gamble all! Always careful, always counting. Always self-preserving.' 'The cost,' Alys insisted.

'Death,' the woman replied easily. 'Death for the man.'

At Alys' sharp look she nodded. 'Not at once, but after a while,' she said. 'A few doses may make little difference but if you drug him again every week, say, for six months, then his body cannot live without it. He needs it like other men need food and water. He needs it more than he needs food and water. He is your slave then, your dog. You do not have to bed with him unless you please, he needs the world of dreams with or without you. He is a dog begging for its bowl of food. And he lives as long as a dog will live – five, six years.'

'Have you used it?' Alys asked curiously.

Morach's smile was hard. 'I have used everything,' she said coldly.

Alys nodded, and they rode on in silence for a little while, the noise of the river growing louder as they came nearer.

'Is the river in flood?' Alys asked, her voice muffled by the cloth she had wound around her face.

'Not yet,' Morach said. 'But it's rising. If it rains in the hills then it will spout out of the caves and flood the valley. It's been a wet winter this year.'

'Will the bridge be clear?' Alys asked, peering ahead.

'We have a few hours yet,' Morach said. 'But if there is a storm on the hills we won't have long to do our business and get home dry-shod.'

'Not much business to do,' Alys said. The bundle of dolls stirred as if to contradict her.

'Here then,' Morach said and went to turn off the mud lane. The ponies hesitated at the muddy track down the hillside. Morach peered at the churned mud beneath their hooves. 'This track was used recently,' she said. Her eyes went to Alys' face. 'Several horsemen,' she said. 'And dogs.'

'Hugo,' Alys said. 'He must have come hunting this way yesterday. It doesn't matter, Morach. We are well ahead of him this day. He usually sits with her until after dinner.'

Morach scowled. 'I wish he'd stay home all day,' she said. She kicked her pony irritably and the animal jolted forward, slipping and sliding down the track. Alys followed.

'We'll be finished and headed for home before he sets out,' she said. 'And there's nowhere else for us to go. Tinker's Cross is the only sacred ground nearby. We can hardly dig up the chapel graveyard.'

Morach's pony flinched at another kick. 'I don't like it,' she said irritably. 'If he sees us with a muddy spade, even after we've finished, he'll ask why.'

'We'll hide the spade,' Alys said reassuringly. 'It'd be as hard to get it back as it was to steal anyway. We'll hide the spade and the sacking and the pannier bag and ride home with a bunch of heather and herbs. No one will challenge us, they all know we need grasses from the moor to keep Catherine well. No one doubts us,. Morach.' 'Hide it where?' Morach asked stubbornly. Alys shrugged. 'I don't know! Why are you so sour? Aren't there caves enough along the river-bank where you could hide half an army? We'll shove it down one of the caves and wedge it tight so the river cannot wash it out again. The waters are rising, it'll be high summer and drought before anyone can go down the caves again. The waters will hide it for us.'

Morach shivered and spat over her left shoulder. 'You can hide it,' she said. 'I'll not go near a cave, nor deep water. Look around you for a likely place as we cross the river.'

Alys nodded. 'I'll go first,' she said. 'The ponies may be afraid of the bridge.'

It was the natural stone bridge upstream of Morach's old cottage, formed out of great slabs of limestone, with the river bubbling, like brown soup, below. When the river was in spate great gouts of water would fountain up from the cracks in the river bed as the underground torrents burst out, and every cave and pothole along the bank would be a boiling spring of melt-water and storm-water, forced up from the underground lake to wash into the surface river. On either side of the river-bank, as much as six feet away from the water, was the high-water line of sticks and straw and rubbish from the last flood. The ponies put their heads down and sniffed suspiciously at the stone slabs beneath their hooves, then delicately stepped across, as light as goats, ears forward, listening to the rush of the water beneath them.

'There's a good place,' Alys said. The mouth of the cave was a little way along the river-bank. She slipped from the saddle and threw the bridle at Morach. Both ponies dropped their heads to the short moorland grass and cropped. Alys scrambled up the little slope and peered inside the cave.

'It goes back miles,' she said, her voice echoing. 'I can't see the end of it. It could go for miles into the hillside.' She came out again and took the reins from Morach. Morach's face was strained. 'Did you hear the water rising?' she asked. 'I'm afraid of it coming up early. We don't want to be cut off this side of the river if the water is rising.'

'I heard it, but it was far away down at the bottom of the cave,' Alys said. 'We'll have enough time. Come on.'

The two ponies straggled up the hill on the far side, stepping out on the dry ground, floundering in the bogs. Ahead of them, on the track, they could see the mark of horses' hooves.

There was a cairn on the top of the hill and the wide, dry moorland stretching all around them. Morach pushed her shawl off her face and looked around her. 'That's better,' she said. 'Tinker's Cross is this way.' She led the way, kicking her pony into a trot. Alys' pony trotted behind, the pannier bumping at every step. The mist had cleared now they were on the top of the moor, though it clung to the valley sides. Ahead of them, Alys could see the thin finger of the old Celtic cross pointing upwards. Around it was a little circle of stones, the edge of the sanctified ground. When Alys came up to the cross Morach had already dismounted and was tying her pony to a holly bush.

'Give me the dolls,' she said to Alys. 'And dig them their grave.'

Alys untied the pannier bag from the saddle and handed it, unopened, to Morach. Morach hunkered down on the wet turf and held the bag in her arms. Quietly she crooned a little tune at the dolls, while Alys untied the shovel from the other side of the saddle.

'If you remember any of your prayers you should say them,' she remarked, without raising her eyes. 'The holier the act of burying them the better.'

Alys shrugged. 'I remember them,' she said. 'But coming from me they might as well be said backwards. I am far from the grace of God, Morach. You'd be closer to heaven than me.'

Morach shrugged almost regretfully. 'Not I,' she said. 'I've not set foot in a church in twenty years, and I never understood what they were saying even then. I made my choice. I don't regret it. But I'll never work with deep shadows again as you have done here. It's too powerful for me.'

Alys thrust the spade hard into the holy ground and twisted it out tearing at the tough roots of the grasses. 'I went as deep as I was driven,' Alys said. 'You counselled me to it. You said if I lost one god I should seek another.'

'Hush,' Morach said, looking around. The bag on her lap stirred and she held them tighter. 'Keep your voice down,' she said. 'There is older magic here than the cross. That holly tree was planted to mark this place before the cross was raised. The old magic runs very strong here. Don't wake it now.'

'It was your bidding,' Alys insisted in a whisper, thrusting the spade in deeper. 'It was my choice to use it, but it was your spell.'

Morach looked up at her, her dark eyes gleaming. 'We had an agreement,' she said.

Alys was silent, digging hard. She was through to the stone soil now, the grave for the dolls was a spade's width across.

'You ordered them, you took responsibility for them,' Morach insisted. 'They are your dolls. I made you swear that you would not blame me for them, whatever they did.'

Alys said nothing, turning out shovelfuls of damp soil into a little heap.

'By rights I need not be here,' Morach said resentfully. 'Your dolls, your magic, and your bitter power that has made them so lively.'

Alys rested on the handle of the shovel and pushed back a lock of hair with one grimy hand. 'Have done,' she said. 'Is this deep enough?'

Morach leaned forward. 'A little more,' she said. 'We want them to sleep well, the bonny little things.'

Alys thrust the spade deep again and then jerked her head up. 'What's that?' she demanded. 'Did you hear?' 'What?' Morach asked quickly. 'What?' The mist was closing down again, swirling around them. Alys shrank back. 'I thought I heard something,' she said.

'Heard what?' Morach said. 'What d'you hear, Alys?' 'Horses,' Alys said, so softly that Morach could scarcely hear the words. 'What'll we do, Morach? What'll we do if someone comes?'

'I hear them!' Morach said urgently. 'I heard a horn!' There was a sudden blast of a hunting horn, very near them, and then out of the mist two great deer-hounds leaped, dashed past Morach, nearly knocking her over, and bayed, savagely, terrifyingly, at Alys.

Alys flung herself back till the cold stone of the cross at her back stopped her. She pressed back against it and the dogs, their hackles high and prickly on their great backs, opened their mouths and roared at her like lions. 'Hugo!' Alys screamed over the noise. 'Hugo! Save me! Call your dogs off me! Save me!'

The horn blasted loud again and then a great roan stallion leaped out of the mist towards them and reared to a standstill. Hugo jumped down with his riding whip in his hands and beat his dogs back.

Alys flung herself towards him and he caught her up in his arms.

'Alys?' he said in amazement.

The other huntsmen rose out of the fog, one of them slipped a leash on each of the dogs. 'Alys, what are you doing here?' Hugo looked around and saw Morach, rising to her feet, her face a sickly grey and a bag which kicked and squirmed in her hand.

'What d'you have there?' he rapped out. Morach held the bag fast and shook her head. She seemed to have lost her tongue in her terror. She shook her head harder and harder like an idiot child incapable of speech.

'What d'you have there?' Hugo demanded again, his voice hard with his own fear. 'Answer me! Answer me! Tell me what you have in that sack!' Morach said nothing but the bag went suddenly still. Then Alys screamed, a sharp, piercing scream of pure terror, and pointed. The bag was splitting open, from bottom to top, like the rancid skin of a rotten peach. Splitting and bursting open. And out of it, marching like a row of crippled soldiers, came the three dolls. The scrawny, beaky, old lord, the grossly pregnant woman doll, and the sightless, fingerless, mouthless, earless Hugo.

'She did it!' Alys screamed, the words pouring out of her mouth like a river in flood. 'She did it! She made them! She hexed them! Morach did it! Morach!'

Morach stared Alys in the face for one full, incredulous second, then she whirled around and plunged into the fog, skirts snatched up, running as fast as she could like a hunted animal, into the deepest fog in the valley.

'Holloa!' Hugo yelled. 'A witch! A witch!' He jumped up into the saddle, seized Alys' arm, and hauled her up behind him. The horse was dancing to be off and Alys grabbed at Hugo's shoulders. The huntsman unleashed the dogs and they bayed and circled the hunters, as if they could not catch the scent. One of them pawed up at Alys, reaching for her, its wide mouth open, its breath hot. Hugo kicked it down with an oath. 'Holloa! Holloa!' he yelled again. 'A witch! Find the witch! Seek the witch! Seek her!'

The big dog bayed again and flung himself at Alys but then the huntsman blew his horn in a great discordant shriek and the dogs broke away into the mist. Hugo's huge stallion wheeled and dashed after them. Alys pressed her face to Hugo's back and clung around his waist, weeping in her terror.

Morach was ahead of them, scrambling downhill, slipping in the mud, crawling over the stones, and then up again, running for her life. The dogs sighted her and bayed a deeper note. She whirled around when she heard it and they saw a glimpse of her white face, then she fell to her hands and knees and dropped out of sight for one moment.

'A hare!' a young huntsman called. 'A hare! She'll change herself into a hare!'

As he spoke a hare broke from the ground beneath their feet, black-tipped ears laid smooth, head flung back, and tore away down the hill towards the river.

The dogs shot off on the new scent, yelping like mad puppies as the hare gained on them.

'She'll make a circle!' Hugo yelled. 'Cut her off! Turn her back!'

Alys, gripping while the horse leaped and bounded beneath her, was screaming into the wind, 'No! No! No!' but Hugo could not hear her. The huntsman was blowing his horn, the hounds were yelping and the brown hare, her long legs pounding, was sailing across the ground in great bounds, her eyes white-ringed with terror.

'She's heading for the river, Sir!' a huntsman yelled. They were closing on the prey but not fast enough. 'She'll get down one of those holes and we'll never get her out.'

'Faster!' Hugo shouted. 'Cut her off! Don't let her get to the river-bank! Drive her into the river!'

The hounds surged forward but the hare jinked and turned and snatched herself away. The horses stumbled and slithered down the steep hillside, the riders urging them on. The hare was headed for the stone bridge; they could see her clearly, racing across the grey stone slabs, and the hounds, a few lengths behind her and going faster on the stones. Then she leaped down from the bridge and flew off to the left, leaving the dogs snapping at the empty air, and dived into the deep cave Alys had found earlier. Baying with anger the hounds flung themselves at the opening.

'Whip them off! Whip them off!' Hugo yelled. They'll get stuck. She'll lure them down there and trap them.'

He flung himself from his horse and strode towards them, his whip hissing. The hounds fell back, snarling and dripping from their red mouths, and went to the huntsman. Hugo, shaking with excitement, went slowly to the mouth of the cave and cautiously peered in.

'Mortal deep,' he said. 'I'd go down there for a beast but not for a witch-turned-hare.' The men nodded. 'She could turn back,' one warned. 'Or change into a snake in the darkness,' another nodded.

'What'll we do?' the young one asked. Instinctively they looked towards Alys. She was clinging to the pommel as the horse shifted restively, and when she looked up her face was tear-stained, wild.

'Wait,' she said, her voice shaky and shrill. There was a rumble of thunder and a crack of lightning over the high dark hills to the west, the source of the river.

Hugo came back to the horse's side and looked up at Alys. 'Wait?' he asked. 'What d'you mean? Wait?' Alys laughed hysterically. 'The storm is come,' she cried. She looked westward. A few fat drops of rain fell sluggishly from the sky, then more, then more. 'So?' Hugo asked.

'The water is rising,' Alys said. Her voice shook and then she was laughing, laughing too much to speak, while the tears poured down her face. 'The water is rising. While you wait out here, dry-shod, she waits in there. Listening.'

Hugo gaped at her. 'Listening?' he repeated.

'She will hear the roar of the underground lake rising up, she will hear the gurgle of all the little streams flowing towards her, and then she will feel the rush and suck of the torrent around her ankles, and then, rising quickly, around her knees.

'She may try to come out, she may struggle to climb up, but her head will touch the stone roof of the cave and the water will come up, and up, and up, until it bursts over her face and there is nowhere for her to hide and nothing but flood water for her to breathe.'

Hugo was pale. 'We swim her underground?' he said.

Alys' face was gaunt with horror. Her voice was the high cackle of madness. 'Look,' she said, pointing to the high-water line of the debris of branches and straw. It lay like a ribbon along the river-bank, a clear yard above the entrance of the cave. 'Nothing will swim out of there,' Alys said, laughing and laughing. 'Nothing! You guard the entrance and the storm will do your work for you. The rain will be your torturer. The deep flooding river will be your executioner. Morach is dead! Dead as she feared to die!'