The Wise Woman

Five

Alys' knowledge of Latin was tested to its full extent by the letters the old lord sent all around England. He was seeking advice on how an annulment of Hugo's and Catherine's marriage would be greeted by his family, and by her distant kin. He suggested that she and Hugo – as second cousins – were in too close kinship, and that was why their marriage was barren, and should – 'perhaps, 'possibly', 'mayhap' – be annulled. His letters were a masterpiece of vague suggestion. Alys translated, and then translated again to hit upon the right tone of cautious inquiry. He was measuring the opposition he would face from his peers and rivals, and from the law.

He was also preparing his allies and his friends for his own death, smoothing the way for his son. He sent two very secret letters by special messenger to his 'beloved cousins' at Richmond Castle and York, commanding them to act if his death was sudden, if it looked like an accident, or if it had been caused by an illness which could be blamed on poisoning. He commanded them to seek evidence against his son's wife; and he implored them to have her tried and executed if any evidence could be found or fabricated which pointed to her. He cast the darkest suspicions on her plans and on her feelings towards him.

If (as a possibility only he mentioned it to them), if the crime pointed to his son – they should ignore it. The inheritance of Hugo was more important than revenge, and besides, he would be dead by then and they would have no thanks from him. Alys, her eyes never lifting from the pages before her, realized that Catherine executed for murder was disposed of as neatly, and indeed more cheaply than Catherine set aside for barrenness. The old lord would not have died in vain if his death could be blamed on his daughter-in-law, his son set free to marry again, and a new Hugh born into the family.

Alys bent her cropped head over her writing as he dictated, and tried to translate blind and deaf, working without taking in the sense of what he was saying, scenting the dangers which surrounded him – and her with him – as a hare senses the hounds and cowers low. She learned for the first time that the land was ruled by a network of conniving, conspiring landlords answerable only to each other and to the King himself. Each of them had one ambition only: to retain and improve the wealth and power of his family; and that could only be done by expanding the boundaries of their manors – and willing it intact to the next heir and the heir after him.

Alys, her quill pen scratching on the downstrokes on the good-quality vellum, realized that the conception of Hugo's son, the old lord's grandson, was not a personal matter between Hugo and his shrewish wife, not even a family matter between the old lord and his son. It was a financial matter, a political matter. If Hugo inherited and then died childless the Lordship of Castleton would be vacant, the manors would be broken up among buyers, the family history and crest revert to the King and be sold to the highest bidder, and the great northern family would fall, its history at an end, its name forgotten. Someone else would live in the castle and claim castle, crest and even family history for their own. For Lord Hugh that prospect was the deepest terror in the world; another family in his place would deny that he had ever been. Alys heard his fear in every line he dictated.

He wrote also to the court. He had a hoard of treasure from Alys' wrecked abbey to be sent south as a gift for the King. The inventory Alys translated was a masterpiece of sleight of hand, as gold candlesticks were renamed silver or even brass, and heavy gold plates disappeared from the list. 'We did the work, after all, Alys,' he said to her one day. 'It was my Hugo that wrecked the abbey, doing the King's work with patriotic zeal. We deserve our share.'

Alys, listing the silver and the gold which she had polished and handled, remembering the shape of the silver chalice against the white of the altar cloth and the sweet sacred taste of the communion wine, ducked her head and continued writing.

If I do not escape from here, I shall go mad, she thought.

'It went wrong at the nunnery,' Lord Hugh said. His voice held only faint regret. 'The King's Visitors told us that the nuns were corrupt and Father Stephen and Hugo went to see the old abbess and persuade her to pay fines and mend her ways. Everywhere else they had been, the nuns or the monks had handed over their treasures, confessed their faults, and Hugo used them kindly. But the old abbess was a staunch papist. I don't believe she ever recognized the King's right to set aside the Dowager Princess Catherine of Aragon.' Lord Hugh said the title carefully. He had called her Queen Catherine for eighteen years and he was careful not to make a slip even when Alys was his only listener. 'She took the oath to acknowledge Queen Anne but I am not sure how deep it went with her.' He paused. 'She would not discuss her faith with Father Stephen, not even when he charged her with laxity and abuses. She called him an ambitious young puppy.' Lord Hugh snorted in reluctant amusement. 'She insulted him and faced him down and threw them both out – my Hugo and Father Stephen. They came home like scolded boys. She was a rare woman, that abbess.' He chuckled. 'I'd have liked to meet her. It's a shame it all went wrong and she died.'

'How did it go all wrong at the nunnery?' Alys asked. She was careful to keep her voice light, casual.

'Hugo was drunk,' the old lord said. 'He was on his way home with the soldiers, they had been chasing a band of moss troopers for seven days up and down the dales. He was drunk and playful and the men had been fighting mad for too long, and drunk with stolen ale. They made a fire to keep them warm and give them light to pick over the treasures. They were taking up a fine, it was all legal – or near enough. Father Stephen would not meet them to reason with the nuns, he was still angry with the old woman. He sent a message to Hugo and told him to burn her out – and be damned to her. The soldiers wanted a frolic and some of them thought they were doing Father Stephen's wish. They made the fire too near the hay barn, and then the place caught afire and the women all died. A bad business.'

'Oh,' Alys said. She drew a quiet breath to steady her belly, which was quivering.

'None of them got out,' Lord Hugh said. 'A bad business. Hugo tells me he could hear them screaming, and then a dreadful smell of burned meat. Like a kitchen with a vexed cook, he said.'

'Are these letters to be sent today, my lord?' she asked. Her hand holding the candle beneath the sealing-wax shook badly, and she bodged the seal.

In the afternoon when the old lord rested she was supposed to sit in the ladies' gallery over the great hall and sew. It was a handsome room, the best in the castle. There was a wide oriel window looking out over the inner manse filled with clear and coloured panes of Normandy glass. The beams of the ceiling were brightly coloured: green, red, vermilion and the bright blue of bice. The walls were hung with bright tapestries, and where the wood showed it was panelled and carved with sheaves of wheat, fat lambs, bundles of fruit and goods, reminders of the wealth of the Lordship of Castleton. The doorway was carved with the heavy linenfold pattern which was repeated all around the room and on the window-seat before the oriel window, where Catherine could sit with a chosen confidante and avoid interruption from the others. There was a fireplace as good as the one in the nunnery and a square stone-carved chimney to take the smoke away so the air of the room was clear and the walls stayed clean. The floor had the dark shine of seasoned polished wood and was strewn with fresh herbs which gathered in heaps, swept around by the women's gowns. It was a long room, three-quarters the length of the great hall below it. Catherine's chamber was on the left at the far end, overlooking the courtyard through an arched window fitted with expensive glass. The women slept opposite her, looking out over the river through arrow-slits which admitted draughts and even snow when the wind was in the wrong direction. Next door to them was another small chamber, vacant except for lumber and a broken loom.

In winter, and for many days in the bad weather of autumn and spring, the women spent every hour from breakfast till darkness inside the four walls. Their only exercise was to go up and down the broad, shallow flight of steps from the great hall to the gallery for their breakfast, dinner and supper. Their only occupation in the winter months was to sit in the gallery and sew, read, write letters, weave, sing or quarrel.

Alys pretended she had extra work from Lord Hugh and stayed away whenever she could. She disliked the women's furtive, bawdy gossip, and she feared Lady Catherine, who never threatened Alys nor raised her voice, but watched all the women, all the time. The room was tense with an unstated, unceasing rivalry. In the long hours between midday dinner and supper served at dusk, while Hugo was out hunting, or sitting in judgement with his father, or riding out to collect his rents, or check the manor lands, the women might chatter among themselves, pleasantly enough. But as soon as Hugo's quick steps rang on the stone stairs the women straightened their hoods, smoothed their gowns, glanced at each other, compared looks.

Alys kept her eyes down. There was always sewing to be done in the ladies' gallery. An endless tapestry in twelve panels, which had been started by Lady Catherine's long-dead mother and willed to her daughter. Alys kept her eyes on her hands and stitched unceasingly when Hugo banged open the door and strode into the room. Since the first moment of seeing him Alys had never again looked directly at him. When he came into a room Alys went out, and when she had to pass him on the stairs she would press back against the cold stones, keeping her eyes down and praying that he did not notice her. When he was near her Alys could feel his presence on her skin, like a breath. When a door shut behind her, even out of her line of vision, she knew it was he who had gone out. She was tempted to look at him, she found her gaze drawn always towards him. She was fascinated to see whether his face was dark and silent, in his look of sullenness, or whether he was alight with his quick, easy joy. But she knew that when he was in the room Lady Catherine's gaze swept them all like a sentry on a watchtower. The least sign of interest by Hugo for any woman would be noted by Catherine and paid for, in full, later. Alys feared Lady Catherine's unremitting jealousy, she feared the politics of the castle and the secret, unstated rivalry of the ladies' gallery.

And she feared for her vows. More than anything else, she feared for her vows.

He paused once, while he was running lightly up the stairs as Alys came down, waited on the step beside her and put a careless finger under her chin, turning her face to the arrow-slit for light.

'You're beautiful,' he said. It was as if he were measuring her looks for fault. 'Your hair is coming through golden.'

Alys had a mop-head of golden-brown curls, still too short to fasten back so she wore her hair as a child, loose around her face.

'What age are you?' he asked.

She sensed the quickening of his interest, so tangible that she almost smelled it.

'Fourteen,' she said.

'Liar,' he replied evenly. 'What age?'

'Sixteen,' she said sullenly. She did not take her watchful eyes off his face.

He nodded. 'Old enough,' he said. 'Come to my room tonight,' he said abruptly. 'At midnight.'

Alys' pale face was impassive, her blue eyes blank.

'Did you hear me?' he asked, slightly surprised.

'Yes, my lord,' Alys said carefully. 'I heard you.'

'And you know where my room is?' he asked, as if that could be the only obstacle. 'In the round tower on the floor above my father. When you leave his room tonight, take the stairs upwards to me instead of down to the hall. And I shall have some wine for you, little Alys, and some sweetmeats, and some gentle play.'

Alys said nothing, keeping her eyes down. She could feel the heat of her cheeks and the thud of her heart beating.

'Do you know what you make me think of?' Hugo asked confidentially.

'What?' Alys asked, betrayed into curiosity.

'Fresh cream,' he said seriously.

Alys' eyes flew to his face. 'Why?' she asked.

'Every time I see you all I can think of is fresh cream. All I think of is pouring cream all over your body and licking it off,' he said.

Alys gasped and pulled away from him as if his touch had scorched her. He laughed aloud at her shocked face.

'That's settled then,' he said easily. He smiled at her, his heart-turning merry smile, and swung around and took the steps upwards two at a time. She heard him whistling a madrigal as he went, joyous as a winter robin.

Alys leaned back against the cold stones and did not feel their chill. She felt desire, hot and dangerous and exciting, in every inch of her body. She gripped her lower lip between her teeth but she could not stop herself smiling. 'No,' she said sternly. But her cheeks burned.

Alys knew she needed to see Morach and she had her chance that afternoon. Lord Hugh wanted a message taken to Bowes Castle and Alys offered to carry it. 'If I am delayed I shall stay the night with my kinswoman,' she said. 'I should like to see her for a little while, and I need some herbs.'

The old lord looked at her and smiled his slow smile. 'But you'll come back,' he said.

Alys nodded. 'You know I'll come back,' she said. 'There's no life for me on the moor now, that life is closed to me. And the one I had before. It's like a journey down a chamber with doors that shut behind me. Whenever I find some safety I have to move on, and the old life is taken from me.'

He nodded. 'Best find yourself a man and close all the doors for good; those before you, and those behind you,' he said.

Alys shook her head. 'I won't wed,' she said. 'Because of your vows?' he asked. 'Yes…' Alys started and then she bit the words back. 'I've taken no vows, my lord,' she said smoothly. 'It's just that I am one of those women who cannot abide bedding. It goes with the skill of herbs. My cousin Morach lives alone.'

Lord Hugh coughed and spat towards the fire which burned in the corner of his room, smoke trailing through the arrow-slit above it. 'I guessed some time ago you were a runaway nun,' he said conversationally. 'Your Latin is very weak in profane language, very strong for sacred texts. Your hair was shaved, and you have that appetite – like all nuns – for the finest things.' He laughed harshly. 'Did you think, little Sister Blue-eyes, that I have not seen how you stroke fine linen, how you love the light from wax candles, how you preen in your red gown and watch the light glint on the silver thread?' Alys said nothing. Her pulse was racing but she kept her face serene.

'You're safe with me,' Lord Hugh said. 'Father Stephen is mad for the new ways and the new Church -he's a fanatical reformer, a holy man. Hugo loves the new Church because he sees the gains he can make: the reduction of the Prince Bishops, fines from the monastery lands, the power that we can now claim – us peers working with the Crown – and the spiritual lords cast down.'

He paused and gave her a brief smile. 'But I am cautious,' he said slowly. 'These turnabouts can happen more than once in a lifetime. It matters not to me whether there is a picture or two in a church, whether I eat flesh or fish, whether I pray to God in Latin or English. What matters more is the Lordship of Castleton and how we weather these years of change.

'I won't betray you. I won't insist that I hear you take the vow of loyalty to the King, I won't have you stripped and flogged. I won't have you examined for heresy and when you fail given to the soldiers for their sport.'

Alys scarcely registered the reprieve.

'Or at any rate,' the old lord amended, 'not yet. Not while you remember that you are mine. My servant. My vassal. Mine in word and body and deed.'

Alys inclined her head to show that she was listening. She said nothing.

'And if you serve me well I shall keep you safe, maybe even smuggle you away, out of the country, safe to an abbey in France. How would that be?'

Alys laid her hand at the base of her throat. She could feel her pulse hammering against her palm. 'As you wish, my lord,' she said steadily. 'I am your servant.'

'Fancy an abbey in France?' the old lord asked pleasantly.

Alys nodded dumbly, choked with hope. 'I could send you to France, I could give you safe conduct on your journey, give you a letter of introduction to an abbess, explaining your danger and telling her that you are a true daughter of her Church,' the old lord said easily. 'I could give you a dowry to take to the convent with you. Is that what it takes to buy your loyalty?'

'I am your faithful servant,' Alys said breathlessly. 'But I would thank you if you would send me to a new home, abroad.'

The old lord nodded, measuring her. 'And serve me without fail until then, as a fee for your passage,' he said. Alys nodded. 'Whatever you command.' 'You'll need to stay a virgin I suppose. They won't accept you in the nunnery otherwise. Has Hugo been tugging at your skirts yet?' 'Yes,' Alys said precisely. 'What did you tell him?' 'I said nothing.'

The old lord let out a sharp bark of laughter. 'Aye, that's your way, my cunning little vixen, ain't it? So he no doubt thinks he'll have you, and I think you're sworn to my interest and all along you follow your heretical beliefs, or your mysterious arts, or your own sweet way which is none of these, don't you?'

Alys shook her head. 'No, my lord,' she said softly. 'I want to go to a nunnery. I want to renew my vows. I will do anything you ask of me if you will see me safe into my Order.'

'Do you need any guarding against my son?' Alys shook her head slowly. 'I wish to see my kinswoman. I could stay with her tonight,' she said. 'She will advise me.'

He nodded and rested his head against the back of his chair as if he were suddenly weary. Alys went silently to the door. As she turned the handle she glanced back: he was watching her from under his hooded eyelids.

'Don't poison him,' he said sharply. 'None of your damned brews to kill his ardour. He needs a son, he needs all the vigour he has. I'll tell him to stick it to his wife when he feels his lust rising. You're safe under my charge. And I mean to honour my promise to see you safe behind walls when your work here is done.'

Alys nodded. 'When would that be, my lord?' she asked in a small voice, careful not to betray her anxiety. Lord Hugh yawned. 'When this damned marriage business is settled, I should think,' he said carelessly. 'When I am rid of the shrew and I have a new fertile daughter-in-law in Hugo's bed. I will need you to work secretly for me until I can see my way clear, but I won't need you after that. If you serve me well in this one thing, I'll put you back behind convent walls again.'

Alys took a deep breath. 'I thank you,' she said calmly, and left the room. She paused outside his door and leaned against the wall, looking out of the arrow-slit. The air which blew in was sharp with the cold from the moor. For the first time in months Alys felt her heart lift with hope. She was on her way back to her home.

She borrowed a fat pony belonging to Eliza Herring to ride to Bowes, confident of her ability to manage the overfed old animal, riding astride with the red gown pulled down over her legs, one of the lads from the castle running beside her. As the pony picked its way around the filth of the wet street she saw a few doorways open a crack to eye her, and a thrown handful of stones spattered on the wall behind her. She nodded. She had no friends in the village. She had been feared as a cunning woman and now she would be reviled as the lord's new whore, a village girl vaulted to the highest place in their small world.

She left the letter with the steward of the castle knowing that even if he dared to break the seal and open it, he would not be able to read the Latin. She ordered the lad to go back to Lord Hugh's castle. She would be safe going on alone. The road from Castleton to Bowes to Penrith ran along dry ground at the crest of the moor. Alys, glancing up the hill from the valley of Bowes, could see the pale ribbon of it running straight as a Roman ruler bisecting the country from east to west. It was empty of traffic. These were wild lands. Travellers who had to make the journey would delay on either side of the moor, at Castleton in the east, or Penrith in the west, so that they could travel together and protect each other. There were wild animals – boar and wolves, some spoke of bears. There were sudden snowstorms in winter, and no shelter. Worst of all, there were brigands and moss troopers, marauding Scots, sturdy beggars and vagabonds.

Alys avoided the road and set the pony towards the little sheep track which ran from Bowes alongside the River Greta, through thick woods of beech and elm and oak, where deer moved quietly in the shadows of the trees. The river was full and wide here, moving slowly over a broad rocky bed. Underneath the stone slabs a deeper, secret river ran, a great underground lake stocked with fishes that preferred the dark deeps. Even on horseback, Alys could sense the weight of water beneath the ground, its slow purposeful moving in the secret caves.

The pony broke out of the trees, puffing slightly, and then started the climb westwards and upwards through swathes of poor pastureland where sheep could feed and perhaps a few scrawny cows, and then higher again to the moor. Before the plague had come to Bowes and there had been more working men, someone had walled off one pasture from another. The stones had fallen down now and the sheep could run where they wished. At shearing in spring, or butchering in winter, they would be sorted by the marks on their fleeces. Every village had its own brand – but they all belonged to Lord Hugh.

The river was in spate here, a fast-moving swell of water overlapping the stone of the banks and flooding the meadows in great wet sweeps of waterlogged land. Alys rode beside it, listening to the gurgle and rush of the water, and laughed when the little pony shied sideways from a puddle. Bits of wood and weed were tumbled over and over in the peaty water, and at the river's edge the springs bubbled and gurgled like soup pots, spewing out more brown water to swirl away downstream. The branches of ivy nodding at the tumbled drystone walls carried thick heads of dull black berries, a rowan tree glowed with clusters of scarlet berries against the green and grey of the weak winter grass speckled by small brown toadstools on weak leggy stems. Alys kicked the old pony and surprised it into a loping canter. She sat easily in the saddle and felt the wind in her face as the hood of her cape blew back.

The grey stone slabs of the bridge came into sight, the waters backed up behind it and spreading in a great sheet of flood water as shiny as polished pewter. Morach's cottage, like a little ark, stood on a hillock of higher ground away from the waters of the flood. Alys stood up in the stirrups and shouted: 'Holloa! Morach!' so that Morach was standing in the doorway, shading her eyes against the low, red winter sun when Alys came trotting up on her pony. 'What's this?' she asked, without a word of greeting. 'A loan only,' Alys said casually. 'I'm not home for ever, I am allowed to visit this evening. And I need to talk with you.'

Morach's sharp dark eyes scanned Alys' face. 'The young Lord Hugo,' she stated.

Alys nodded, not even asking how Morach had guessed. 'Aye,' she said. 'And the old lord has forbidden me to give him anything to kill his lust.'

Morach raised her black eyebrows and nodded. 'They need an heir,' she said. 'You can tether that animal outside the gate, I won't have him near my herbs. Come in.'

Alys tied the pony to a twisted hawthorn bush which grew at Morach's gateway, picked her fine red gown clear of the muck, and went in.

She had forgotten the stink of the place. Morach's midden was downwind at the back of the cottage but the sweet sickly odour of muck and the tang of urine hovered around the cottage, seeped through the walls. The midden heap was as old as the cottage, it had always smelled foul. The little fire was flickering sullenly on damp wood and the cottage was filled with a mist of black smoke. A couple of hens scuttered out the way as Alys entered, their droppings green and shiny on the hearthstone. Under Alys' new leather shoes the floor felt slippery with damp. The body of flood water only yards from the threshold made the very air wet and cold. At dusk the mist would roll along the river valley and seep under the door and in the little window. Alys gathered her new cloak closer and sat by the fire, taking Morach's stool without asking.

'I brought you some money,' she said abruptly. 'And a sackful of food.'

Morach nodded. 'Stolen?' she inquired without interest.

Alys shook her head. 'He gave it me,' she said. 'The old lord. Gave me these clothes too.'

Morach nodded. 'They're very fine,' she said. 'Good enough for Lady Catherine herself. Good enough for Lord Hugh's whore.'

'That's what they think me,' Alys said. 'But he is old, Morach, and has been very sick. He does not touch me. He is…' She broke off as the thought came to her for the first time. 'He is kind to me, Morach.'

Morach's dark eyebrows snapped together. 'First time in his life then,' she said thoughtfully. 'Kind? Are you sure? Maybe he wants you for something and he's keeping it close.'

Alys paused. 'He could be,' she said. 'I've never known a man to plan so far ahead. He has thought of everything, from his deathbed, to the death of the young lord's son who isn't even conceived. He has a place for me in his schemes – to work for him now, he needs a clerk who will keep secrets, and he'll see me safe to a nunnery when my work is finished.' She broke off, meeting Morach's sceptical black glare. 'It's my only chance,' she said simply. 'He says he will get me to France, to a nunnery there. He is my only chance.'

Morach muttered something under her breath and turned to climb the ladder to her sleeping platform.

'Put the water on,' she said. 'I've some chamomile to mash. I need it to clear my head.'

Alys bent her head and blew at the fire and set the little pot of water on its three legs in the red embers. When the water started to bubble Alys threw in some chamomile leaves and set it to stand. When Morach came down with her bag of fortune-telling bones, she and Alys shared the one chipped horn cup.

Morach drank deep, and then shook the bones in their little purse.

'Choose,' she said, holding out the purse to Alys. Alys hesitated.

'Choose,' Morach said again.

'Is it witchcraft?' Alys asked. She was not afraid, her blue eyes were fixed challengingly on Morach. 'Is it black arts, Morach?'

Morach shrugged. 'Who knows?' she said carelessly. 'To one man it's black arts, to another it's wise woman's trade, and to another it's a foolish old woman muttering madness. It's often true – that's all I know.'

Alys shrugged and at Morach's impatient gesture took one of the carved flat bones, then another, then a third, from the little pouch.

Morach stared at her choice. 'The Gateway,' she said first. 'That's your choice, that's where you are now. The three ways that lie before you – the castle life with its joys and dangers and its profits; the nun's life which you will have to fight like a saint to regain; or here -poverty, dirt, hunger. But…' She laughed softly. 'Invisibility. The most important thing for a woman, especially if she is poor, especially if she will grow old one day.'

Morach studied the second bone with the rune scrawled on it in a rusty brown ink. 'Unity,' she said, surprised. 'When you make your choice you have the chance for unity – to travel with your heart and mind in the same direction. Set your heart on something and stay true to it. One goal, one thought, one love. Whatever it is you desire: magic, your God, love.'

Alys' face was white, her eyes almost black with anger. 'I don't want him,' she said through her teeth. 'I don't want love, I don't want lust, I don't want desire, I don't want him. I want to get back where I belong, to the cloister where my life has order, some peace and some security and wealth. That's all.'

Morach laughed. 'Not much then,' she said. 'Not much for a drab from Bowes Moor, a runaway wench, a runaway nun. Not much to wish for – peace, security and wealth. Not a great demand!'

Alys shook her head irritably. 'You don't understand!' she exclaimed. 'It is not a great demand. It is my life, it is what I am used to. It is my proper place, my deserts. I need it now. Holiness – and a life where I can be at peace. Holiness and comfort.'

Morach shook her head, smiling to herself. 'It's a rare combination,' she said softly. 'Holiness and comfort. Most holy roads tend to the stony, I thought.'

Alys shrugged irritably. 'How would you know?' she demanded. 'What road have you ever followed but your own choice?'

Morach nodded. 'But I follow one road,' she reminded Alys. 'And they call me a wise woman rightly. This is what the Unity rune is telling you. Choose one road and follow it with loyalty.' Alys nodded. 'And the last one?'

Morach turned it around, looked at both sides and studied the two blank faces for a moment. 'Odin. Death,' she said casually and tossed the three back into the bag.

'Death!' Alys exclaimed. 'For who?'

'For me,' Morach said evenly. 'For the old Lord Hugh, for the young Lord Hugo, for you. Did you think you would live forever?'

'No…' Alys stumbled. 'But… d'you mean soon?' 'It's always too soon,' Morach replied with sudden irritation. 'You'll have your few days of passion and your choices to make before you come to it. But it's always too soon.'

Alys waited impatiently for more but Morach drank deep of the tea and would not look at her. Alys took the little purse of copper coins from her pocket and laid it in Morach's lap. Morach knocked it to the floor. 'There's no more,' she said unhelpfully.

'Then talk to me,' Alys said. For a moment her pale face trembled and she looked like a child again. 'Talk to me, Morach. I am like a prisoner in that place. Everyone except the old lord himself is my enemy.'

Morach nodded her head. 'Will you run?' she asked with slight interest. 'Run again?'

'I have the horse now,' Alys said, her voice quickening as the idea came to her. 'I have a horse and if I had money…' Morach's bare dirty foot stepped at once to cover the purse she had knocked to the floor. 'There must be an order of nuns where they would take me in,' Alys said. 'You must have heard of somewhere, Morach!'

Morach shook her head. 'I have heard of nothing except the Visitors and fines and complaints against nunneries and monasteries taken as high as the King,' she said. 'Your old abbey is stripped bare – the benches from the church, the slates from the roof, even some of the stones themselves are pulled down, and carted away for walls, or mounting blocks. First by Lord Hugo's men from the castle and now on his order by the villagers. It's the same in the north from what I hear, and the south. They'll have escaped the King's investigations in Scotland, you could try for it. But you'd be dead before you reached the border.'

Alys nodded. She held out her hand for the cup and Morach refilled it and handed it to her.

'The mood of the times is against you,' she said. 'People were sick of the wealth of the abbeys, priests, monks and nuns. They were sick of their greed. They want new landlords, or no landlords at all. You chose the wrong time to become a nun.'

'I chose the wrong time to be born,' Alys said bitterly. 'I am a woman who does not fit well with her time.'

Morach grinned darkly. 'Me too,' she said. 'And a whole multitude of others. My fault was that I gained more than I could hold. My sin was winning. So they brought the man's law and the man's power against me. The man's court, the law of men; I have hidden myself in the old power, in the old skills, in woman's power.'

She looked at Alys without sympathy. 'Your fault is that you would never bide still,' she said. 'You could have lived here with me with naught to fear except the witch-taker but you wanted Tom and his farmhouse and his fields. Then when you saw something better you fled for it.

'They thought Tom would die of grief for you, he begged me to order you home. I laughed in his face. I knew you would never come. You'd seen something better. You wanted it. I knew you'd never come back of your own free will. You'd have stayed forever, wouldn't you?'

Alys nodded. 'I loved Mother Hildebrande, the abbess,' she said. 'I was high in her favour. And she loved me as if I were her daughter. I know she did. She taught me to read and to write, she taught me Latin.

She took special pains with me and she had great plans for me. I worked in the still-room with the herbs, and I worked in the infirmary and I studied in the library. I never had to do any heavy dirty work. I was the favourite of them all, and I washed every day and slept very soft.' She glanced at Morach. 'I had it all then,' she said. 'The love of my mother, the truest, purest love there is, comfort and holiness.'

'You'll not find that again in England,' Morach said. 'Oh, the King cannot live forever, or he may cobble together some deal with the Pope. His heirs might restore the Church. But English nuns will never have you back.' They might not know I ran…' Alys started. Morach shook her head emphatically. 'They'll guess,' she said. 'You were the only one to get out of that building alive that night. The rest burned as they slept.'

Alys closed her eyes for a moment and smelled the smoke and saw the flicker of flames, orange on the white wall of her cell. Again she heard that high single scream as she ducked through the gate and kilted up her habit and ran without care for the others, without a care for the abbess who had loved her like a daughter, and who slept quiet, while the smoke weaved its grey web about her and held her fast till the flames licked her feather mattress and her linen shift and then her tired old body.

'The only one out of thirty of them,' Morach said with subterranean pride. 'The only one – the biggest coward, the fleetest of foot, the quickest turncoat.'

Alys bowed her head. 'Don't, Morach,' she said softly.

Morach smacked her lips on a sip of the chamomile tea. 'So what will you do?' she asked.

Alys looked up defiantly. 'I won't be defeated,' she said. 'I won't be driven down into being another dirty old witch on the edge of the moor. I won't be a maid-in-waiting or a clerk. I want to eat well and sleep well, and wear good cloth and ride dry-shod, and I won't be driven down into life as an ordinary woman. I won't be married off to some clod to work my life away all day and risk my life every year bearing his children. I'll get back to a nunnery, where I belong, one way or another. The old lord won't break his promise to me – he'll send me to France. If I can escape the notice of the young Lord Hugo and the malice of his wife, and if I can keep myself a virgin in that place where they think of nothing but lust – I can get back.'

Morach nodded. 'You need a deal of luck and a deal of power to accomplish that,' she said thoughtfully. 'Only one way I can think of.' She paused. Alys leaned forward. 'Tell me,' she said. 'A pact,' Morach said simply. 'A pact with the devil himself. Have him guard you against the young lord, make him turn his eyes another way. I know enough of the black arts to guide you. We could call up the dark master, he would come for you, for sure – a sacred little soul like yours. You could trade your way into comfort forever. There's your way to peace and order and safety. You become the devil's own and you are never an ordinary woman again.'

For a moment Alys hesitated as if she were tempted by the sudden rush into hell, but then she dropped her face into her hands and moaned in torment. 'I don't want to,' she cried as if she were a little girl again. 'I don't want to, Morach! I want a middle way. I want a little wealth and a little freedom! I want to be back in the nunnery with Mother Hildebrande. I am afraid of the devil! I am afraid of the witch-taker! I am afraid of the young lord and of his icy wife! I want to be somewhere safe! I am too young for these dark choices! I am not old enough to keep myself safe! I want Mother Hildebrande! I want my mother!'

She broke into a storm of crying, her face buried in her arms, leaning slightly towards Morach as if begging wordlessly for an embrace. Morach folded her arms and rested her chin on them, gazing into the fire, waiting for Alys to be still. She was quite untouched by her grief.

'There's no safety for you, or for me,' she said equably when Alys was quieter. 'We're women who do not accord with the way men want. There's no safety for our sort. Not now, not ever.'

Alys' sobs weakened against the rock of Morach's grim indifference. She fell silent, rubbing her face on her fine woollen undersleeve. A piece of wood in the fireplace snapped and burned with a yellow flame.

'Then I go back to the castle and take my chance,' Alys said, resigned. Morach nodded.

'Our Lady once chose me,' Alys said, her voice very low, speaking of a holy secret. 'She sent me a sign. Even though I have sinned most deeply, I hope and I trust that She will guide me back to Her. She will make my penance and give me my absolution. She cannot have chosen me to watch me fail.'

Morach cocked her eyebrow, interested. 'Depends on what sort of a goddess she is,' she said judicially. 'There are some that would choose you to see nothing but failure. That's the joy in it for them.'

'Oh!' Alys shrugged impatiently. 'You're a heathen and a heretic, Morach! I waste my time speaking with you.'

Morach grinned, unrepentant. 'Don't speak with me then,' she said placidly. 'Your Lady chose you. So She will keep you safe to play Her game, whatever it is. Depend upon Her then, my little holy lamb! What are you doing here, drawing the runes and praying for the future?'

Alys hunched her shoulders, clasped her hands. 'The young lord is my danger,' she said. 'He could take me from Our Lady. And then I would be lost.'

'She won't strike him blind to save you?' Morach asked sarcastically. 'She won't put out Her sacred hand to stop him feeling up your gown?'

Alys scowled at Morach. 'I have to find a way to defend myself. He would have me for his sport,' she said. 'He ordered me to his room tonight. If he rapes me I'll never get back to the nuns. He'd have me and throw me aside, and his wife would turn me out. I'd be lucky to get through the guardroom once they knew the young lord had done with me.'

Morach laughed. 'Best keep your legs crossed and your Latin sharp then,' she said. 'Pray to your Lady, and trust the old lord.' She paused. 'If you would stoop to take them, my saint, there are some herbs I know which would make you less sweet to him.'

Alys looked up. 'I may not kill his lust,' she warned. 'The old lord forbade it and he will be watching me. I cannot give Hugo anything to weary him of venery.'

Morach rose from the floor and went to the bunches of herbs dangling on strings from the beams of the sleeping platform. 'It is you who takes this,' she said. 'Make it into a tisane, every morning, and drink it while it cools. It kills a man's desire for the woman that drinks it.'

Alys nodded. 'And what would you use to kill a woman's desire?' she asked casually.

Morach turned, her dark face under the shock of grey hair alight with mischief. 'A woman's desire?' she said. 'But my little nun, my precious virgin, who is this lustful woman? We were talking of the young lord and his persecution of your sainted virginity!'

'Have done,' Alys said sulkily. 'I was asking for one of the women in the gallery.'

Morach chuckled. 'I would have to meet her,' she said slyly. 'This woman, is she young or old? Has she known a man or is she a virgin? Does she long for his love, his devotion – or is she just hot for his body to crush her and his wetness inside her and his hands all over her?'

Alys flushed rosy. 'I don't know,' she said grimly. 'If she asks me again I will bring her to you.'

Morach nodded, her eyes sparkling with amusement. 'You do, pretty Alys,' she said. 'Do bring her to me.'

Alys tucked the bunch of herbs into her pocket. 'Anything else?' she asked. 'To kill Hugo's ardour? Anything else I should do?'

Morach shook her head. 'I have no other herbs, but you could bring me some candlewax when you next come and I'll make images of them all,' she offered. 'We'll make them all into moppets to dance to your bidding, you and me.'

Alys' eyes widened. 'It cannot be done!' she exclaimed.

Morach smiled darkly and nodded. 'I've never done it before,' she said. 'It's deep magic, very deep. But the old woman who was here before me taught me the words. It never fails except…

'Except what?' Alys asked. She shivered as if she were suddenly cold. 'Except what?' she asked. 'Sometimes they misunderstand.'

Alys drew a little closer. 'What?' she asked. 'Who misunderstand?'

Morach smiled. 'You take the little figures and you bind them with deep magic. Understand that?' Alys nodded, her face pale.

'You order them to do your bidding. You command them to do as you wish.' Alys nodded again.

'Sometimes they misunderstand,' Morach said, her voice very low. 'I heard of one woman who ordered her lover to come alive again. He was dead of the plague and she could not bear to lose him. She made the candlewax moppet while he was lying cold and poxed in the room next door, the sores all over him. When she made the moppet walk, he walked too, just as she had commanded.'

Alys swallowed against a tight throat. 'He was better?'

Morach chuckled, a low chilling laugh. 'No,' she said. 'He was dead and cold, covered with sores, his eyes blank, his lips blue. But he walked behind her, as she had commanded; everywhere she went he walked behind her.' 'A ghost?' Alys asked. Morach shrugged. 'Who knows?' Alys shook her head. 'That's foul,' she exclaimed. 'That's black arts, Morach! As foul as your pact with the devil. I'll not touch magic, I've told you before. You tempt me and you bring me no good!'

'Wait till you are in need,' Morach said scathingly. 'Wait till you are hungry. Wait till you are desperate. And then bring me the candlewax. When you are desperate – and you will be desperate, my little angel – you will be glad enough of my power then.'

Alys said nothing.

'I'm hungry,' Morach said abruptly. 'Fetch the food and let's eat. I've only enough wood for another hour, you can gather some more in the morning.'

Alys looked at her resentfully. 'My hands are softening,' she said. 'And my nails are clean and growing again. You can get your own wood, Morach. I've brought you food and money, that should be enough.'

Morach laughed, a harsh, sharp sound. 'So the little virgin has claws, too, does she?' she crowed. 'Then I'll tell you – I have a good woodpile out the back. Now fetch the food.'