The Wise Woman

Twenty-eight

Alys rode towards Castleton without looking back.

Mary, mounted on the pony again, rode behind her.

The soldiers, rested after their dinner in the wood, stepped out blithely. The leading soldier whistled softly through his teeth. The fine weather was breaking up, there was a mist lying in swirls along the river, clumping over the still pools. The air was colder in the west, behind them there were long thick strips of cloud gathering.

'Best make haste,' the soldier in front said over his shoulder. 'It's going to rain and you have no cape.'

Alys nodded and the man broke into a slow, steady run. The mule trotted behind him, the dust beneath its hooves as white as salt. Alys, watching its long, doltish ears, jogged uncomfortably along. Behind her she heard the rapid, light sounds of her pony cantering, held in on a tight rein by Mary. Alys could taste the dust of the road in her mouth, could feel its stony dryness on the skin of her face, in her hair. She felt its crystalline deadness all around her as she rode away from Hildebrande and left her alone on the high moor.

The horses' hooves rang hollowly on the Castleton bridge. The soldier slackened his pace as they walked through the town. The market traders were gathering up their goods, a sharp flurry of wind whipped the cloth on a weaver's stall into a dozen flags. The pony shied but Mary, sitting easily in the saddle, moved with it; the mule waggled his long ears at the sight. 'Just got home in time,' the soldier said. The guards at the gates barred their way with pikes and then lifted them up in a salute to Alys. Behind them came the dull rumble of thunder.

'Here comes the rain,' the soldier said. 'You were lucky to get home dry, Mistress Alys.'

Alys nodded and let him lift her from the saddle under the shelter of the gateway.

'Someone lend me a cape,' she said abruptly. A scud of rain raced across the courtyard before them. Mary put a soldier's cape around Alys' shoulders and Alys pulled it up over her stiff gable hood. Ducking her head against the driving rain she ran across the yard, through the second gate, across the inner manse and into the great hall.

She paused inside the hall as a crack of lightning made the hall as bright as midday and then a loud peal of thunder exploded outside. A soldier at the fire jumped and crossed himself. 'Christ save us!' he said. 'That was right overhead.'

'Where is the young lord?' Alys asked him. 'Where is Hugo?'

'With his father, Mistress Alys,' he replied. 'A messenger came from the King and they are reading the letters.'

Alys nodded and went through the hall, through the lobby, to the round tower. As she climbed the tower steps her way was suddenly bright as the lightning exploded again. Alys stumbled and clung to the wall as the thunder rocked the building. ‘I will do it,' she said through her teeth.

Her gown had been soaked in the brief run across the courtyard and now it clung to her thighs, dragging her down. It was as cold and wet as the gown of a drowned woman. 'I will do it,' Alys said again.

She went up a dozen more stairs into the circular guardroom below the old lord's room. There were two soldiers playing at dice. 'Is the young lord with his father?' Alys asked them.

'Yes, Mistress Alys,' said the younger, standing to speak to her and pulling off his cap.

Alys nodded. The thunder rolled dully as if it had sped away to rage around the other tower, the prison tower.

'The storm has gone,' the lad said. 'What a clap that was just now!'

'It's not gone yet,' Alys said. She turned from the room and went up the next flight of stairs, clinging to the stones at the side of the stairs as if her knees were weak.

She had been right about the storm. As she raised her hand to the latch of the old lord's door a knife of white light sliced through the arrow-slit to Alys' feet and then a great angry roar of thunder shook the stone tower. Alys, flinching back, almost fell into the room.

Hugo, his father and David were seated at the fireside.

'What a storm!' the old lord said. 'Are you wet, Alys? Are you cold?'

'No, no,' she said. She heard that her voice was too sharp, too alarmed. She took a breath and steadied herself. 'I had to run across the courtyard but we were home before the rain started,' she said.

Hugo looked up at her. 'You should change from your wet clothes,' he said. 'My father and I are busy with messages from the King's council.'

'I won't disturb you then,' Alys said. 'I shall be ready to come and clerk for you, if you wish, my lord.' Lord Hugh nodded.

'I just thought I should tell you,' Alys said. 'The new wise woman at Morach's cottage on Bowes Moor. She is very strange. I met her in the woods when I was fetching the elm bark. She talked very wild. She frightened me.'

Hugo looked up. 'Did she do you harm?' he asked.

Alys shook her head. 'No, but I would not have her near me when I am at my time,' she said. 'I had sent her some goods and thought she might be of service to me. But she talked so wild and looked so strange. I don't like her. I don't like her being in Morach's cottage.'

The old lord was watching Alys curiously. 'Not like you to be fearful, Alys,' he said. 'Is it your condition?'

Alys shrugged. 'It must be,' she said. 'But the woman mistook me for someone else. She called me Ann and conjured me to go and live with her. She ordered me to go to the cottage and she said I would be in danger if I did not join her. She made me fearful.'

'Was she hexing you?' the old lord asked.

'No,' Alys said firmly. 'Nothing like that. I suppose it was nothing more than my foolish fancy. I do not swear against her, I make no accusation. But I cannot like her living here so close to us. Nor living there – where I like to collect my plants. And it was old Morach's cottage and now it is mine. I don't want her living in my cottage.'

'Move her on?' the old lord said, cocking an eyebrow at Hugo.

Hugo laughed shortly. 'We'll dump her over the border into Westmorland,' he said. 'They have enough mad old women there for her to merge into the crowd.'

Alys put her hand on her belly. 'I would not do her harm,' she said. 'I would not cause her to be hurt. I want you to move her gently, Hugo. I am only nervous because of my time and I do not want ill-wishing around me.'

'Oh aye,' Hugo said. ‘I’ll send a half-dozen men out tomorrow. They can put her on a horse and send her over the border. You'll not see her again. She'll not trouble you.'

'Tell them not to hurt her,' Alys said. ‘I feel it would be bad luck for me if they hurt her.'

Hugo nodded. ‘I’ll tell them to be gentle with her. Don't fret, Alys.'

She nodded. ‘I’ll leave you to your business then, my lords.' There was another flash of lightning as she put her hand on the door, and a deep rumble of thunder overhead.

'This storm will do your work for you and blow the old hag across the border,' Lord Hugh said.

'Going the wrong way,' Hugo said briefly. 'It'd blow her to Yorkshire and I'd wish that on no one.'

The old lord chuckled and Alys closed the door behind her softly.

The storm did not cease circling the castle all night. Alys went down to supper with her way lit by flashes which made the candles into sticks of black with flames of shadows. Catherine stayed upstairs, whimpering with fear at the storm and cringing when the thunder rolled. Her window was barred tight shut, with the hangings drawn, but still the quicksilver brightness of the lightning drew a rapid silver line around the curtains for one sharp second before the thunder crushed the world into blackness.

Alys' colour was high, she sparkled as if she had been brushed with lightning herself. She was wearing a bright yellow gown and her hair combed loose over her shoulders. She laughed and leaned towards the old lord, smiled across him to Hugo, nodded at the soldiers at their table at the back of the hall who gave her a ragged cheer. She drank deep of the dark red wine the old lord urged on her. She ate well.

'The elm bark settled your belly then,' the old lord said approvingly. 'The baby will do well with you, Alys. No jade's tricks of miscarriages, eh?'

Alys gleamed at him. Outside the lightning smashed the darkness and the thunder roared in reply. A woman down in the body of the hall screamed.

'No, my lord,' she said brightly. 'Not if my skill can prevent it. You will have a fine babe on your knee when the spring comes in.' Hugo nodded. 'I'll drink a toast to that,' he said. There was a sharp flash of lightning and a loud clap of thunder. One of the serving-wenches screamed in fear and dropped a tray of meat, and the dogs, who had been cowering beneath the trestle-tables, dashed out into the hall, snatched up the bones, and cowered back into their shelters again. Alys laughed gaily.

'This rain will beat down the wheat,' Hugo said gloomily. 'We may lose some unless it blows over swiftly and the wheat can recover and stand tall again.'

The old lord nodded. 'Summer storms never last long,' he said encouragingly. 'This one will blow out overnight and in the morn you'll see a bright yellow sun to dry out the wheatfields.'

'We must go out when they cut the wheat,' Alys said. 'And celebrate harvest home.'

A page stepped up to the dais to speak to the old lord. He leaned back in his chair to give an order. Hugo spoke across him to Alys.

'Perhaps you had better stay home,' he said. 'You were not pleasantly greeted last time you went out to the fields.'

The lightning flashed like a sword into the hall. Alys met Hugo's narrowed judging gaze with a brilliant smile which did not waver even when the roll of thunder drowned out his words.

'I care for nothing!' she said, her voice very low. 'Not with the storm raging all around us! Come to my room tonight, Hugo, come to my room and I shall take you for a ride in the storm which you will never forget. My sisters go out to play on nights like this and I would be with them. You have forgotten my power, Hugo, but when I stretch my hand out there is nothing which can stop me. I do not fear these village people with their patches of land and their pig in the sty and their hive of bees. I do not fear anything they say nor anything they can do. I fear nothing, Hugo. Come to my room tonight and see how it is to play with a thunderstorm.'

Hugo lost his hard, critical look and was breathing swiftly. 'Alys,' he said longingly.

'After supper,' Alys commanded. She turned her head from him. David was at her side and the server of meat bent his knee and proffered the silver plate.

'Give me plenty,' Alys cried over the rumble of the storm. 'I am hungry. I shall eat all I need. Give me plenty!'

Supper was concluded swiftly, the noise of the storm made talk impossible, and even the least superstitious were edgy and fearful. For a little while the thunder slackened as it rolled off up the valley. But at the head of the valley by the great waterfall it turned and came raging down the river's course again, gathering speed and blowing the waters of the river out of course, flooding over their banks. The women did not choose to sit in the gallery where the windows rattled with the wind and the fire spat and hissed with falling rain. They went early to their beds, Ruth sleeping on a truckle bed in Catherine's room, holding her hand against her night-terrors. Alys laughed openly at the thought of it, flung open her door to Hugo, and then barred it behind them.

He had caught her mood, his eyes were shining. He waited for her to command him.

'Drink,' Alys said, handing him the wine with a small pinch of earthroot. She drained her own glass. 'And strip, Hugo, my sisters will only take you skyclad.'

Hugo dragged his clothes off slowly, the earthroot spreading through his body, making his limbs heavy and uncontrolled. Alys could see his dark eyes go blacker yet as the pupils dilated with the drug. 'Alys, my witch,' he slurred.

'Lie on the bed,' she said in a whisper. 'They are coming, my sisters. They will come at the next roll of thunder. Listen for them, Hugo! When the lightning splits the sky they will tumble down from the clouds, screaming and laughing, their hair streaming behind them. They are coming now! Now! Now!'

Alys stood naked before the arrow-slit window, her arms outstretched. ‘I can see them,' she said. 'Across the brightness of the sky they're coming, Hugo! Here, my sisters! Here I am! Take me out in the storm to play with you.'

The wind gusted through the arrow-slit. Alys, burning up with guilt, with desire, with feverish excitement, laughed madly as the rain lashed her body. 'Oh, that is good!' she said. The cold, hard rain stung her nipples, in a thousand prickling blows. 'Oh, so good!' she said. She turned to Hugo, driving herself beyond caution. 'Let's go outside,' she said recklessly. 'To the top of the round tower.'

'Outside,' Hugo said thickly.

Alys threw her dark blue cape around her nakedness, and put a blanket around Hugo's shoulders. He stumbled as she led him across the gallery, down the stairs and across the lobby to the round tower. The old lord was still in the hall, there was no one in the guardroom. Alys and Hugo slipped through, and up the narrow dark stairs, past the old lord's room, past Hugo's chamber above it, and up the stairs and out to the top of the tower.

In a sheltered corner the pigeon coops were battened down to keep the messenger pigeons safe. Alys wanted to release them – to fling the precious birds out into the random winds so that they would be tumbled and lost and never find their way home. Apart from the coops, the roof-top was empty, slate-floored and inhospitable, a tower pointing upwards into the very vortex of the storm. The air was howling around them, the wind buffeting them so strongly that their words were whipped from their mouths and they were deafened with the hurrying gale. Alys stepped across to the parapet and looked down.

The walls were high and straight as a plumb line. Alys could barely see the foot of the tower where it grew, like some strange crag, from the sheer rock of the cliff above the river. As the lightning flashed, Alys could see the cliffs, shiny and wet in the darkness as they fell away, in a sheer drop down to the river bed. Each crag was as pointed as a pike, and below them the river crashed and foamed over more sharp rocks, breaking in waves of black water and white spume. Alys let her cape fly out behind her and turned her face up to the drenching rain.

'They are here!' she yelled. 'My sisters are taking us to play with the storm! Can you feel them, Hugo?'

The wind had torn Hugo's blanket from his shoulders and whipped it away like a ribbon. The rain lashed his stocky white body. He flung his head back and laughed as the wind tore against him and the rain poured down on his nakedness.

Alys pressed against him, squeezed his thigh between her legs as they stood, drenched in the storm. The lightning dazzled them for a moment and then plunged them into blackness.

'Feel my sisters,' Alys said urgently. 'We are riding in the storm with them. See how the winds pull and throw us around. We are out in the storm, tossed by the air, bruised by the lightning. The storm is our lover. Be the storm, Hugo! Be at one with the storm and take us all.'

The earthroot was twisting and turning Hugo's brain. His body was icy from the rainwater and burning from his own heat and the earthroot fever. He savagely snatched up Alys and pressed her against the turret wall and forced himself into her. Alys, her body crushed against the stone wall, her shoulders and head above the parapet in the full force of the storm, laughed aloud.

'You are the storm, Hugo, you are the storm!' she cried. 'Love me into madness. I have thrown away everything for you. Everything is lost for you!'

Hugo buried himself into her, withdrew, thrust forward again. At every move Alys was pushed nearer and nearer the edge of the turret wall where it dropped down from full height to waist height. Below them the river was in a spate of deep dark water and wind-lashed foam. Alys saw the movement into fatal danger and laughed again. Deep inside her, desire and madness were building together. She clenched her legs around Hugo's waist and leaned back on the wall. Hugo, blind to everything but his fantasy of witches and storms and magical lust, forced himself into her again and again.

One final movement flung Alys from the support of the turret wall out into nothing, over the precipice. Hugo held her hips, her legs were around his waist, but her body was half falling from the top of the tower. And then Alys, mad for satisfaction and mad for release from her fear and her guilt, let go of Hugo's shoulders and stretched her arms out, over her head, reaching out into the abyss. The lightning flashed, lighting Alys' insane, laughing face and Hugo's tranced grimace of pleasure as Alys flung herself, head first into nothingness, with only her legs still gripping Hugo. She screamed at her pleasure and the sound was torn away from her mouth by the wind. She opened her eyes and looked downwards. She was dangling from the top of the tower, below her was a maelstrom of boiling winds, seething rain and the tumbling torrent of the river over boulders. Alys stretched her arms out into nothingness and laughed aloud, longing for the final terror of the tumbling fall and then blackness.

Then her belly clenched with lust and she groaned, instinctively she tightened her legs around his back, forcing him closer and closer, deeper and deeper inside her, wringing every second of pleasure from him. Hugo, not knowing what he did, caring neither for her safety nor her danger but only his own pleasure, snatched her back from the precipice and bore down on her on the stone flags of the turret roof. The rain poured down on the two glistening bodies as they rolled together, knotted with lust. Then the thunder rolled again and Hugo groaned, and fell away from her.

Alys lay, mouth open, drinking in the rain. Her hair was a puddled wet mass behind her neck, Hugo a spent weight on her body. She pushed him away and sat up slowly. Her head was swimming with the wine from supper and with the powerful drugs of lust and terror. She pushed herself to her feet and hobbled over to the edge of the tower. She was sober now, as a drunkard who suddenly sees the danger he was in will turn sober and cold in a second. She held on to one of the turrets and peered down the dizzying drop. She could not see the foot of the tower, it was too dark and too high. But she could hear the rush of the river water as it broke its back on the rocks. When the lightning cracked the sky again Alys could see the rocks far, far below her, where they formed a cliff of breakneck height down to the raging vortex of the river bed. Alys stepped back from the edge of the tower and pulled her cape around her. She shuddered.

'That was too close,' she said. 'Too close. Too near to the edge. Too close.' She shook her head like someone coming out of a deep trance. 'The blank rune, the blank rune,' she whispered. 'Oh God! The blank rune. Odin.'

For a moment she stared down and then she looked out towards the moor. The storm was raging out eastwards; when the lightning struck she could see the rain like a wall of water spreading over the moor up towards the high fells. The river would be filling fast, Morach in her cave would be drowned all over again. The river might spill out in the darkness, flood over its banks and hungrily eat the little hovel and the old arthritic woman, sweep them away before the soldiers came. 'Sleep well,' Alys said ironically to the darkness.

'Both my mothers. Sleep well. May the thunderstorm take both of you, may the rain wash you both out of my life, may the winds blow you far away from me.' She laughed in a high cracked voice at her own black humour and then turned slowly back to Hugo.

He was lying where she had left him, his skin cold and wet. Alys wrapped her cape tightly around her and lifted up the trapdoor in the flagstones. In the pigeon coops under the little rickety roof half a dozen tiny red eyes watched her anxiously, the birds stirring fretfully as she passed. Alys stepped down the narrow stone stairs and dropped the trapdoor back into place. She went past Hugo's room and past the old lord's chamber. Halfway down the stairs to the guardroom she met one of the soldiers.

'Fetch a comrade and go and get Lord Hugo,' she said briskly. 'He is drunk and would go out on the roof to see the storm. See that his servants warm him and dry him and put him to bed. He is dead drunk and cannot walk.'

The soldier grinned. 'Yes, Lady Alys,' he said. He ran down to the guardroom ahead of her and Alys heard the quick ripple of male laughter. She walked down the stairs, through the guardroom, where the soldiers stood back to let her pass, sneaking a look at her bare white feet, and across to the stairs up to the ladies' gallery.

Mary was waiting by Alys' bed when she came into the room. Without comment she took the soaking cape from her and wrapped Alys in a warm sheet. Alys, too tired and dazed to be bothered with her nightshift and nightcap, slipped between her sheets wrapped and warm like a swaddled baby.

'Goodnight, your ladyship,' Mary said carefully, and blew out the candle.

That night Alys had a dream. It came from the thunderstorm and the pouring rain outside the castle. It came from the boiling flood of the river around the rocks of the castle's foundation. It came from the blank rune. It came from Morach – dark and deep and hidden in her drowned cave. It came from Hildebrande – praying in the darkness with the tears pouring down her old face for the lamb which had lost its way, for the daughter who had turned traitor.

Alys dreamed she was on the road to Castleton from Morach's cottage. She dreamed she was riding her mare. It was a fine day, sunny and bright and the mare was stepping smartly along the white road. Alys dreamed she saw the bluish leaves of wild sage in the bank at the side of the road and pulled up the mare to pick the fresh florets.

The mare stopped, Alys slipped from the saddle and bent down over the plant. Then she recoiled. The bank was alive with worms. It was seething with white maggots, tiny and thin, writing together in a huge mass of corruption. As she fell back against the horse's shoulder she saw that the bank on the other side of the road was filled with worms as well. She was trapped between two feasts of writhing, silent maggots.

Alys went to leap up on the horse but, in the way of dreams, there was no saddle and no stirrup. She could not get up. She fumbled at the horse's back, then she went around to the other side, hoping there might be a saddle on the other side. There was nothing, and she could feel the banks coming closer. The whole monstrous hedgerow of maggots, crawling over every flower, thick in every hole, was coming closer, closer.

Alys screamed as loud as she could and her scream tore through the fabric of the dream, ripped her sleep open. She opened her eyes and she was sitting upright in her bed, sweating with terror.

'My God, my God!' she said into the darkness. The castle was in silence, the storm gone. Outside there was the soft patter of summer rain and the sky was pale with the rising, cloudwashed sun. 'My God,' Alys said again.

She turned her pillow over, it was damp with sweat. She pulled the covers a little closer. She felt as chilled and as trembly as if she had just come in from the storm.

'What a dream!' Alys said to herself in the silence of her room. 'What a nightmare. And all nonsense. All nonsense.'

She shook her head and lay down on the pillow again, clutching the covers around her for warmth. 'Nonsense,' she said to herself softly. 'All nonsense.' Within minutes she was asleep. Within minutes she was dreaming again. Once more she was riding down the road on her pretty mare. Once more she saw the herb, pulled up the horse, and leaned towards the flower-studded bank. There was something white moving under the leaves.

Alys recoiled, thinking it must be some worm, perhaps a snake. Then she saw more clearly. A little white hand.

Alys screamed aloud, but made no sound except a soft groan.

As she watched, the little hand parted the curtain of a dock leaf and the little wax doll walked out. It was the doll of Hugo – the worst of the three. Eyeless, earless, fingerless, mouthless. It waddled on little legs through the thick leaves and flowers of the bank and down to the road. Behind it, like tiny toy soldiers, came the other two. The doll of Lord Hugh, stooped and more tired, but marching determinedly behind Hugo, and behind him came Catherine. With helpless fascination Alys leaned down from her horse to see better. The doll of Catherine had changed. The great fat belly had gone, torn away. There was a ragged edge to the doll's body and a cavernous hole where the belly had been. At every step the doll took it left a little trail, like the slime of a snail, where molten candlewax dripped from the wound. 'Where are you going?' Alys moaned. The Catherine and the Lord Hugh dolls checked at her voice. But the little doll of Hugo could neither hear her, nor see her, feel her, nor speak to her. It trudged on like a little unstoppable toy.

'To Castleton,' the two little dolls said in their piping, innocent voices. 'To find our mother who made us.'

‘I buried you!' Alys shouted at them. 'I left you on holy ground. I left you there. Lie quiet! Lie quiet, I command you!'

'We want our mother!' they said in their high, bright voices. 'We want our mother, our mother, little Sister Ann!'

'No!' Alys' scream broke through her sleep. She heard her door bang open as Mary came into the room, asking if she were ill.

'No!' Alys said again, the dream fading as she felt Mary's hand on her arm..

But she heard their reply, from three miles out on the Castleton road. 'We want you, mother,' they cried joyfully. 'WE WANY YOU!'