The Wise Woman

Three

Alys had never been on a galloping horse and she clung to the pommel of the saddle before her, thrown and jolted by the horse's great rolling strides. The wind rushed into her face and the hard grip of the man behind her was that of a jailer. When she looked down she could see the heaving shoulders of the great horse, when she looked forward she saw its tossing mane. They went over the little stone bridge from the moorland road to Castleton with sparks flying upwards from the horses' hooves, and clattered up the cobbled street between the dozen stone-built houses at the same breakneck speed. Not a light showed at any of the shuttered windows, even the smaller houses, set back from the main street on earth roads, and the little shanties behind them on waste ground were dark and silent.

Alys was so shaken that she had no breath to cry out, even when the horse wheeled around to the left and thundered up the drawbridge into the great black maw of the castle gateway. There was a brief challenge from two soldiers, invisible in the darkness of the doorway, and a gruff response from the rider and then they were out into the moonlit castle grounds. Alys had a confused impression of a jumble of stables and farm buildings on her right, the round tower of the guardroom on her left, the smell of pigs, and then they crossed a second drawbridge over a deep stagnant moat, with the noise of the hooves rumbling like thunder on the wooden bridge, and plunged into the darkness of another gateway. The horses halted as two more soldiers stepped forward with a quick word of challenge and stared at the riders and Alys, before waving them through into a garden. Alys could see vegetable-beds and herb-beds and the bare-branched outline of apple trees; but before them, squat and powerful against the night sky, was a long two-storey building with a pair of great double doors set plumb in the centre. Alys could hear the noise of many people shouting and laughing inside. The door opened and a man stepped out to urinate carelessly against the wall; bright torchlight spilled out into the yard and she could smell hot roasted meats. They rode the length of the building, Alys saw the glow of a bakehouse fire in a little round hive of a building set apart from the rest on their right, and then before them were two brooding towers, built with grey stones as thick as boulders, showing no lights.

'Where are we?' Alys gasped, clinging to the man's hands as he thrust her down from the saddle.

He nodded to the tower which adjoined the long building. 'Lord Hugh's tower,' he said briefly. He looked over her head and shouted. An answering cry came from inside the tower and Alys heard a bolt sliding easily back.

'And what's that tower?' she asked urgently. She pointed behind them to the opposing tower, smaller and more squat, set into the high exterior castle wall, with no windows at all at the base and a flight of stone steps running up the outside to the first storey.

'Pray you never know!' the man said grimly. 'That's the prison tower. The first floor is the guardroom, and down below are the cells. They have the rack there, and thumbscrews, a press and bridle. Pray you never see them, wench! You come out more talkative – but taller! Much taller! Thinner! And sometimes toothless!

Cheaper than the toothdrawer at any price!' He laughed harshly. 'Here!' He called a soldier who stepped out of the shadows. 'Here is the wise woman from Bowes. Take her and her bundle to Lord Hugh at once. Let no one tamper with her. My lord's orders!'

He thrust Alys towards the soldier and he grabbed her and marched her up the flight of stone steps to the arched doorway. The door, as thick as a tree trunk, stood open. Inside, a torch flickered, staining the wall behind it with a stripe of black soot. The castle breathed coldness, sweated damp. Alys drew her shawl over her rough cropped head with a shudder. It was colder even than Morach's draughty cottage. Here the castle walls held the wind out, but no sun ever shone. Alys crossed herself beneath her shawl. She had a premonition that she was walking towards mortal danger. The dark corridor before her – lit at the corners with smoking torches – was like her worst nightmares of the nunnery: a smell of smoke, a crackle of flames, and a long, long corridor with no way out.

'Come,' the man said grimly and took Alys' arm in a hard grip. She trailed behind him, up a staircase which circled round and around inside the body of the tower, until he said, 'Here now,' and knocked, three short knocks and two long, on a massive wooden door. It swung open. Alys blinked. It was bright inside, half a dozen men were lounging on benches at a long table, the remains of their supper spread before them, two big hunting dogs growling over bones in the corner. The air was hot with rancid smoke and the smell of sweat. 'A wench!' said one. 'That's kindly of you!' Alys shrank back behind the soldier who still held her. He shook his head. 'Nay,' he said. 'It's the wise woman from Bowes, come to see my lord. Is he well?'

A young man at the far end of the room beckoned them through. 'No better,' he said in an undertone. 'He wants to see her at once.'

He pulled back a tapestry on the wall behind him and swung open a narrow arched door. The soldier released Alys and thrust her bundle into her hands. She hesitated.

'Go on,' the young man said.

She paused again. The soldier behind her put his hand in the small of her back and pushed her forward. Alys, caught off balance, stumbled into the room and past the watching men. Before her, through the door, was a flight of shallow stone steps lit by a single guttering torch. There was a small wooden door at the head of the flight of stairs. As she climbed up, it slowly opened.

The room was dark, lit only by firelight and one pale wax candle standing on a chest by a small high bed. At the head of the bed stood a tiny man, no taller than a child. His dark eyes were on Alys, and his hand smoothed the pillow.

On the pillow was a lean face engraved by sickness and suffering, the skin as yellow as birch leaves in autumn. But the eyes, when the heavy lids flew open and stared at Alys, were as bright and black as an old peregrine falcon.

'You the wise woman?' he asked. 'I have a very little skill,' Alys said. 'And very little learning. You should send for someone learned, an apothecary or even a barber. You should have a physician.'

'They would cup me till I died,' the sick man said slowly. 'They have cupped me till I am near dead already. Before I threw them out they said they could do no more. They left me for dead, girl! But I won't die. I can't die yet. My plans are not yet done. You can save me, can't you?'

'I'll try,' Alys said, pressing her lips on a denial. She turned to the fireplace and laid down Morach's shawl. By the light of the fire she untied the knot and spread out the cloth and arranged the things. The little man came over and squatted down beside her. His head came no higher than her shoulder.

'Do you use the black arts, mistress?' he asked in a soft undertone.

'No!' Alys said instantly, 'I have a very little skill with herbs – just what my mistress has taught me. You should have sent for her.'

The dwarf shook his head. 'In all Bowes they speak of the new young wise woman who came from nowhere and lives with the old widow Morach by the river. He'll have no truck with the black arts,' he said, nodding to the still figure in the bed.

Alys nodded. She straightened the black-bound prayer-book, put the herbs and the pestle and mortar to her right. 'What's that?' the dwarf said, pointing to the stone and ribbon.

'It's a crystal,' Alys said.

At once the little man crossed himself and bit the tip of his thumb. 'To see into the future?' he demanded. 'That's black arts!'

'No,' Alys said. 'To find the source of the illness. Like dowsing for water. Divining for water is not black arts, any child can do it.'

'Aye.' The man nodded, conceding the point. 'Aye, that's true.'

'Have done chattering!' came the sudden command from the bed. 'Come and cure me, wise woman.'

Alys got to her feet, holding the frayed ribbon of the crystal between her finger and thumb so that it hung down like a pendulum. As she moved, the shawl covering her head slid back. The dwarf exclaimed at the stubble of her regrowing hair.

'What have you done to your head?' he demanded. Then his face grew suddenly sly. 'Was it shaved, my pretty wench? Are you a runaway nun, fled from a fat abbey where the old women grow rich and talk treason?'

'No,' Alys said quickly. From the courtyard below the window a cock crowed briefly into the darkness and then settled to sleep again. 'I was sick with a fever in Penrith and they shaved my head,' she said. 'I am not a nun, I don't know what you mean about treason. I am just a simple girl.'

The dwarf nodded with a disbelieving smile, then he skipped to his place at the head of the bed and stroked the pillow again.

Alys drew closer. 'In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti,' she muttered under her breath. The stone on the ribbon swung of its own accord in a lazy clockwise arc. 'This is God's work,' Alys said. The stone swung a little wider, a little faster. Alys breathed a little easier. She had never used a pendulum at the abbey, the nuns frowned on it as a supernatural force. The stone was Morach's. By blessing it Alys hoped to stay inside the misty border which separated God's work from that of the devil. But with the old lord glaring at her, and the dwarf's slight malicious smile, she felt in equal danger of burning for heresy as being taken as a witch and strangled.

She put her hand, which shook only slightly, on the old lord's forehead.

'His sickness is here,' she said, as she had seen Morach do.

The dwarf hissed as the crystal broke its pattern of circular swing and moved instead back and forth. 'What does it mean?' he asked. 'The sickness is not in his head,' she replied softly. 'I didn't see your fingers move the crystal?' 'Have done with your chatter,' the old lord flared at the dwarf. 'Let the wench do her work.'

Alys drew back the rich rugs covering the old man. She saw at once how his skin shivered at the touch of the air, yet the room was warm. Tentatively she put the back of her hand against his withered cheek. He was burning up.

She moved her hand cautiously to rest on his flat belly. She whispered: 'His sickness is here?' and at once she felt a change in the movement of the stone. It circled strongly, round and round, and Alys nodded at the lord with renewed confidence.

'You have taken a fever in your belly,' she said. 'Have you eaten or fasted?'

'Eaten,' the old man said. 'They force food on me and then they cup me of the goodness.'

Alys nodded. 'You are to eat what you please,' she said. 'Little things that tempt you. But you must drink spring water. As much as you can bear. Half a pint every half hour today and tomorrow. And it must be spring water, not from the well in the courtyard. And not from the well in town. Send someone to fetch you spring water from the moor.'

The old man nodded. 'When you are cold, cover yourself up and order more rugs,' Alys said. 'And when you are hot have them taken off you. You need to be as you please, and then your fever will break.'

She turned away from the bedside to her shawl spread before the fire. She hesitated a moment at the twists of burned fennel and then she shrugged. She did not think they would do any good, but equally they did no harm.

'Take one of these, before you sleep every night,' she said. 'Have you vomited much?' He nodded.

'When you feel about to vomit then you must order your window opened.' There was a muted gasp of horror from the little man at the head of the bed. 'And read the writing aloud.'

'The night air is dangerous,' the dwarf said firmly. 'And what is the writing? Is it a spell?'

'The air will stop him being sick,' Alys said calmly, as if she were certain of what she was doing. 'And it is not a spell, it is a prayer.'

The man in the bed chuckled weakly. 'You are a philosopher, wench!' he said. 'Not a spell but a prayer! You can be hanged for one thing as well as the other in these days.'

'It's the Lord's Prayer,' Alys said quickly, the joke was too dangerous in this dark room where they watched for witchcraft and yet wanted a miracle to cure an old man.

'And for your fever I shall grind you some powder to take in your drink,' she said. She reached for the little dried berries of deadly nightshade that Morach had put in the bundle. She took just one and ground it in the mortar.

'Here,' she said, taking a pinch of the powder. 'Take this now. And you will need more later. I will leave some for you this night, and I will come again in the morning.'

'You stay,' the old man said softly.

Alys hesitated.

'You stay. David, get a pallet for her. She's to sleep here, eat here. She's to see no one. I won't have gossip.'

The dwarf nodded and slid from the room; the curtain over the door barely swayed at his passing.

'I have to go home, my lord,' Alys said breathlessly. 'My kinswoman will be looking for me. I could come back again, as early as you like, tomorrow.'

'You stay,' he said again. His black eyes scanned her from head to foot. 'I'll tell you, lass, there are those who would buy you to poison me within these walls this night. There are those who would take you up for a cheat if you fail to cure me. There are men out there who would use you and fling you in the moat when they had their fill of you for the sake of your young body. You are safest, if I live, with me. You stay.'

Alys bowed her head and retied Morach's shawl around the goods.

For the next five days Alys lived in a little chamber off the old lord's room. She saw no one but Lord Hugh and the dwarf. Her food was brought to her by the dwarf; one day she caught him tasting it, and then he tasted the food for Lord Hugh. She looked at him with a question in her face and he sneered and said: 'Do you think you are the only herbalist in the country, wench? There are many poisons to be had. And there are many who would profit from my lord's death.'

'He won't die this time,' Alys said. She spoke with real confidence. 'He's on the mend.'

Every day he was eating more, he was sitting up in bed, he was speaking to the dwarf and to Alys in a voice loud and clear like a tolling bell. On the sixth day he said he would take his midday dinner in the hall with his people.

'Then I shall take my leave of you,' Alys said when he was dressed with a black hat on his long white hair, a fur-lined robe over his thick padded doublet, and with embroidered slippers on his feet. 'Farewell, my lord, I am glad to have been of service to you.'

He gleamed at her. 'You have not finished your service,' he said. 'I have not done with you yet, wench. You will go back to your home when I say, and not before.'

Alys bowed her head and said nothing. When she looked up her eyes were wet.

'What is it?' he demanded. 'What's the matter with you?'

'It's my kinswoman,' Alys said softly. 'Morach of Bowes Moor. I had a message that she is ill with a fever in the belly. She is all the family I have in the world…' She snatched a glance at him and saw he was nodding sympathetically. 'If I could go home…' she half whispered. Lord Hugh snapped his thin white fingers. The dwarf came to his side and bent low. There was a low rapid exchange in a language Alys did not know. Then Lord Hugh looked at her with a wide grin. 'When did your kinswoman fall ill?' he asked. 'Yesterday…' Alys said.

'You lie,' Lord Hugh said benignly. 'She came here this morning and asked for you at the gatehouse and left a message with David, that she was well, and that she would come next week with more herbs for you.'

Alys flushed scarlet and said nothing.

'Come on,' Lord Hugh said. 'We are going to dinner.'

Halfway to the door he paused again. 'She looks a drab!' he exclaimed to David. Alys' old habit, singed by the fire and trailed in the mud, was tied around her waist with a shawl. She had another grey shawl over her head tied under her chin.

'Get her a gown, one of Meg's old gowns,' Lord Hugh tossed over his shoulder. 'She can have it as a gift. And take that damned shawl off her head!'

The dwarf waved Alys to wait and flung open a chest in the corner of the room. 'Meg was his last whore,' he said. 'She had a pretty gown of red. She died of the pox two years ago. We put her clothes in here.'

'I can't wear her clothes!' Alys exclaimed in revulsion. 'I can't wear a red gown!'

The dwarf pulled a cherry-red gown from the chest, found the shoulders and shook it out before Alys.

Alys gazed at the colour as if she were drinking it in. 'Oh!' she said longingly and stepped forward. The cloth was woven of soft fine wool, warm and silky to the touch. It was trimmed at the neck, the puffed sleeves and the hem with dark red ribbon of silk. Meg had been a proud woman, ready to defy the laws against commoners wearing colour. There was even a silver cord to tie around the waist.

'I've never seen cloth so fine!' Alys said, awed. 'The colour of it! And the feel of it!'

'It comes with an embroidered stomacher,' the dwarf said, tossing Alys the gown and turning back to the chest. 'And an overskirt to match.' He rummaged in the chest and dragged out the stomacher with long flowing sleeves and fine silver laces up the back, and a rich red skirt embroidered with silver.

'Get it on,' he said impatiently. 'We must be in the hall before my lord comes in.'

Alys checked her movement to take the stomacher and skirt from him. 'I cannot wear a whore's gown,' she said. 'Besides, I might take the pox.'

The dwarf gasped and then choked with malicious laughter. 'Not such a wise woman after all!' he said, tears oozing from his eyes. 'Take the pox from a gown! That's the finest excuse I ever heard.' Abruptly he flung the stomacher and skirt at her and Alys caught them. 'Put it on,' he said, suddenly surly.

Alys hesitated still. In her head she could hear a cry in a voice, her own voice, calling for Mother Hildebrande to come and take her away. To save her from this shame just as she had rescued Alys, all those years ago, from Morach. She shook her head. The loss of the abbey and the loss of her mother were like a nightmare which cast its shadow over every moment of her day. A long shadow of loneliness and danger. There was no mother loving her and protecting her, not any more.

'I cannot wear a whore's gown,' she said in a little whisper.

'Wear it!' the dwarf growled. 'It's that or a shroud, Missy. I don't jest with you. The old lord has his way without question. I'll stab you as I stand here and go to dinner alone if you wish. It's your choice.'

Alys untied her belt and slid her robe to the floor. The dwarf stared at her as if appraising a mare for breeding. His eyes slid over the swell of her breasts under her coarse woven shift, assessed her narrow waist and her smooth young muscled flanks. His lips formed into a soundless whistle.

'The old lord always had an eye for a wench,' he said softly to himself. 'Looks like he saved the pick of the crop for his deathbed!'

Alys flung the gown over her head and pulled it down, thrust her arms through the soft woven sleeves. They were padded on the inside with white silk and slashed so the fine white fabric showed through, caught at each wrist with a little cuff and button made of horn.

She turned her back to David and he laced the scarlet laces at the back of the gown and tied them in silence. She turned back and eyed the stomacher and overskirt.

'I don't know how this goes,' she confessed.

David looked at her curiously. 'I thought maids dreamed of nothing else,' he said. 'The overskirt goes on next and ties behind.'

He held it out for her and Alys stepped into it, turned under his hands and let him tie the skirt at her waist. It swept from her waist to the floor with a rustle, leaving an open slit at the front for the plain red to show. Alys smoothed her hands down the skirt; the silver embroidery was cold and scratchy under her palms. The skirt was too long – Meg, the old lord's whore, had been a tall woman.

'Now this,' David said. 'Make haste, girl!' He held out the stomacher and sleeves towards her and Alys thrust her arms through the wide-cut hanging sleeves and turned her back again for David to lace her from behind.

'Damned lady's-maiding,' he grumbled, as he pulled the silver laces tight and threaded them through the holes. He tied a firm bow at the base of the stomacher and stuffed the bow out of sight under the boned waist. Alys turned to face him.

'Pull it down at the front,' he ordered. 'And pull the sleeves down.'

Alys pulled the stomacher down at her waist. It was too long for her as well, stopping at the swell of her hips and with the sharply pointed V at the front extending too low. It held her stiffly so that her breasts were flattened into one smooth line from the rich swirl of the skirt to the square neck of the gown which showed at the top of the stomacher. She tugged the oversleeves on both sides. They were long and sweeping, folded back to show the undersleeves like rich slashed pouches beneath them. David nodded.

'And the girdle goes loosely over the top,' he said. Alys fastened the silver girdle and straightened it so the long end fell down in front, enhancing the narrowness of her waist and the pointed line of the bodice, subtly suggesting the desirable triangle at the top of her thighs. She ran her hand over her cropped head where her growing hair was golden and stubbly.

David nodded. 'A sweeter honey even than Meg,' he said to himself. 'Who will stick his tongue in this pot?' Alys ignored him. 'Is there nothing to hide my head?' The dwarf rummaged in the chest for a few moments. 'Nothing you could wear without hair to pin it on,' he said. 'You'd best go bareheaded.'

Alys grimaced. 'I suppose no one will look at me,' she said.

'They'll look at nothing else!' he said with malicious satisfaction. 'Half of them think you're a holy healer, and the other half think you're his whore. And the young lord…' his voice trailed off. 'What?' asked Alys. 'What of the young lord?' 'He's got a keen eye for a pretty wench,' the dwarf said simply. 'And besides, he's got a score to settle with you. If the old lord had died he could have taken himself to the King's court, put aside that shrew he wed, and made his way in the great world. He'll not thank you for that.'

'The shrew? His wife?' Alys asked.

The dwarf motioned her to follow him through the door and then led her down the twisting stone staircase. As she passed an arrow-slit window Alys breathed in the cold wind which blew from the wintry moorland to the west of them, over the River Tees. It smelled of her home, of her childhood. For a moment she even longed for the little hovel by the river with the moor quiet all around it.

The dwarf grinned. 'She complains of him to the old lord,' he said. 'I've been there, I've heard her. Lord Hugo won't come to her bed, or he won't use her kindly. One time she angered him so that he beat her favourite waiting-woman before her. Too proud to touch his lady, but a temper on him that would scare the devil! The old lord used to keep Hugo on a short leash but they're both weary of the shrew. He used to watch that the young lord didn't abuse her over-much, and kept her supplied with trinkets and perfumes, little sweeteners for her vinegar. But she has called down a storm on them both too often, they both long to be rid of her.'

'They can't do that, can they?' Alys asked, frowning. David shrugged. 'Who knows what can be done now?' he asked. 'The Church is ruled by the King now, not the vicar of Rome. The King does as he pleases with his women. Why not the young lord? The rightful wife stays barren, but if they dismiss her they lose her entailed lands and her dowry. And in all of Hugo's roistering he's never got a wench with child. So the shrew stays here until they can think of a way to be rid of her and yet keep her wealth.' 'How?' Alys asked.

'If she were taken in adultery,' David said in a whisper. 'Or died.'

There was a cold silence around them as they went through the empty guardroom, and down the flight of steps to the entrance of the great hall. 'And she?' Alys asked David hawked and spat disdainfully. 'She'd do anything to take the young lord's fancy,' he said. 'She'd do anything to creep into his bed. She's a passionate woman gone sour, a lustful woman on short commons. There's nothing she would not do for the young lord. I've heard her women talk.

'She's praying every day for an heir to make her place secure. She prays every day for the young lord to turn to her and give her a son. She prays every day for the old lord to cleave to her cause, not to take up the new ways of setting aside wives as lightly as changing hunters. And she's hot for Hugo.' He paused. 'All the women are,' he said.

'And he,' Alys began. 'Does he…'

'Sshh,' the dwarf said abruptly. He glanced over his shoulder to see that Alys was ready and at her nod he pushed open one of the thick wooden doors at the side of the great hall.