The Wise Woman

by Philippa Gregory

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

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

  'Why?'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Eighteen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  'Have you used it?' Alys asked curiously.

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

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

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

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