Novels 03 The Wise Woman

by Philippa Gregory

  Mother Hildebrande was sitting in the doorway, her tired old face turned to the sun as if she were soaking in the warmth. She opened her eyes when she heard the noise of the pony and stood up, hauling herself up the frame of the door.

  Alys dismounted, tied the pony to the hawthorn bush, and stepped over the sheep stile.

  “Mother,” she said. She glanced around swiftly. The open moorland all around the cottage was bare and empty. Alys knelt on the threshold and Mother Hildebrande rested her trembly hand on Alys’s head and blessed her.

  “You are come at last, daughter,” Mother Hildebrande said.

  Alys stood up. There was determination in the old woman’s eyes.

  “I cannot stay,” Alys said gently. “Not yet. That is what I came to tell you.”

  The old woman eased herself down on the stool at the doorstep. Alys sat at her feet. Mother Hildebrande said nothing. She waited.

  “I am not unwilling,” Alys said persuasively. “But Lady Catherine is ill, near to death, and no one there can care for her. She has miscarried her child and is scouring with a dreadful white fluid which they say is a curse upon her and upon Lord Hugh’s house for the sacrilege of destroying our nunnery. A holy woman is needed there. She needs me to protect her from fear. No one knows what to do. She is mortally afraid and for no fault of her own. I cannot believe that our merciful Lord would want me to abandon her. And anyway, they would not let me go. Even now I am only released from the castle to fetch some herbs and some elm bark for her.”

  Mother Hildebrande said nothing. She sat very still, watching Alys’s clear profile as Alys sat at her feet, leaned back against her knees as she always used to sit—and lied.

  “The old lord is tender with my beliefs,” Alys said urgently. “He does not care which faith he follows. But his son is a Protestant, an unbeliever. It was he who wrecked our abbey, and now he is turning his attention to every religious house for miles around. His father is sheriff of the county but it is Hugo who rides out and does the king’s sacrilege. He believes in nothing, he trusts nothing. He hates the true faith and he captures and imprisons believers. If he knew you were here—the mother of an order he had wrecked—he would hunt you down and hurt you until you were driven to deny your faith.”

  Mother Hildebrande looked at her steadily. “I do not fear him,” she said gently. “I fear nothing.”

  “But what good does it do?” Alys demanded passionately. “What good does it do to risk danger, when with a little care and caution and delay you could get away to safety? Isn’t that the Lord’s work? To get to safety so that you can live according to His laws again?”

  Mother Hildebrande shook her head. “No, Sister Ann,” she said. “Saving your own skin is not the Lord’s work. You are speaking with the persuasive voice of the world. You are speaking of clever practice and winning by deceit. The way we are promised is not that way. The Lord’s work is to proclaim Him in words and to demonstrate Him in our lives. I have never been skilled with words, I have never been a clever woman; but I can be a wise woman. I can be a woman who can show by her life a lesson which a more learned woman would write in a book. I cannot argue truths—but I can demonstrate them. I can live my life, and die my death, as if there were some things which matter more than clinging to goods and staving off death.”

  “It is not wise to die!” Alys exclaimed.

  Mother Hildebrande laughed gently, the dry old skin of her face wrinkling easily with her smile. “Then all men are fools!” she said softly. “Of course it is wise to die, Alys. Everyone will die, all that we can choose is whether we die in faith. Whether your dangerous young lord comes for me today, or whether I die surrounded by my friends in a comfortable bed, does not matter to my immortal soul, just to my frightened body. Wherever and whenever I die, I want to die in my faith and my death will show that the most important thing in my life was keeping my faith.”

  “But I want to live!” Alys said stubbornly.

  The old woman smiled. “Oh, so do I!” she said, and even Alys could hear the longing in her voice. “But not at any price, my daughter. Both of us took that decision when we took our vows. Those vows are harder to keep now than it seemed when you were a little girl and the abbey was the finest home you could have hoped for. But the vows are still binding, and those who have the wisdom to hold to them will have the joy of knowing that they are one with God and with His Holy Mother.”

  They were both silent.

  “Go back to your comrades,” the old woman said gently. “Tell them that Catherine will have to get well without you. And then come back here. If your monstrous young lord comes after you then we will face him with what courage the Lord gives us. If he does not, then we will make a new life here in peace.”

  “I am under guard!” Alys exclaimed. “I cannot come away. They will not let me.”

  Mother Hildebrande looked at her. “Then stay here,” she said simply. “Let us wait for them to seek you here and we can face them together.”

  Alys shook her head. “They would come at once and take us both prisoner,” she said. “We would have no chance at all!”

  “No one can take a wise woman prisoner,” Hildebrande said. “Her heart and her mind belong to herself. If you obey your vows then all the obstacles on your path will fall away.”

  “You don’t know what they will do when they catch you!” Alys exclaimed.

  Mother Hildebrande smiled and shook her head. “Alys, I have been in hiding for ten months, ever since the sack of the abbey. I know exactly what they will do to me. They will question me as to my faith, they will beg me to recant. Then they will show me the instruments of torture. Do you have a torture dungeon at the castle?”

  “I don’t know,” Alys said unwillingly. “I suppose so…I don’t know. I’ve never been there.”

  Mother Hildebrande smiled. “And it is I who am called blind!” she said. “Then I will tell you, Alys. Lord Hugh does indeed have a torture room at Castleton castle. It is in the prison tower in the eastern corner of the inner manse. You can see the roof of the tower from the market-place in Castleton. It is opposite the round tower where Lord Hugh has his rooms. If you do not know of it, then you must be blind indeed.

  “They say that it is a room like a cellar, with no way in and no way out except narrow stairs with a trapdoor into the guardroom, guarded by the soldiers. They have pincers to tear the fingernails and toenails from the hands and feet, they have great shears to crop ears, to slit tongues. They have a little blacksmith’s forge to heat the brands to burn flesh, and they have a rack to stretch and stretch your body until all the bones are wrenched from their sockets and you are a cripple in every limb.”

  “Stop it,” Alys cried with her hands over her ears. “Stop it!”

  “They have a press made of carved wood to crush the breath out of your body and break your ribs. They have a gag which holds your mouth open with sharp metal plates. They have a collar with spikes facing inward which they tighten and tighten until the spikes are driven through your skin into your throat.”

  “I won’t hear this! I won’t listen!” Alys exclaimed.

  Mother Hildebrande waited for Alys to put her hands down from her ears. “I know the dangers I am facing,” she said gently. “It would be a poor act of faith if it were done by accident, would it not? I know what they can do to me if they take me. It is right that I should know the tortures I may face. Our Lord knew all His life what would come to Him. And my pains will be no worse than a crucifixion. No worse than the pains Our Lord suffered willingly for us. If He calls me to do it for Him, how can I say no?”

  Alys shook her head dumbly.

  “Is it fear, Sister Ann? Are you too afraid to travel this road with me?” Mother Hildebrande asked and her voice was filled with pity. “Tell me if it is so, and we will find you another way, a safer way.”

  Alys paused for a moment, thinking of the many safer ways she had chosen. Her flight from the burning abbey and Morach’s dreadful death. She clos
ed her eyes tightly against the pictures of her betrayal.

  “Fear is not a sin,” Mother Hildebrande said gently. “We all fear, Ann, and in our fear we may fall into sin. Have you fallen into sin through fear?”

  “No,” Alys said. She could not trust Mother Hildebrande with the extent of her fear, with the extent of her sin, with her guilt, with her deceit. The horror of telling her mother was too great for her. She could not bear to see her abbess turn away in disgust and shame. “No,” Alys said again. “I am not afraid. I have been your daughter from the moment I saw you. Where you lead I have promised to follow. If it is God’s will and your belief that we must risk this danger, then I cannot refuse.”

  Mother Hildebrande put her hand gently on Alys’s head in a silent blessing. “Then why is it I feel that you hesitate?” she said softly. “Is it the young lord, Sister Ann? Has he become dear to you?”

  Alys shook her head in denial but Mother Hildebrande never shifted her gaze. “Are you in sin, Ann?” she asked gently. “Have you looked at a married man and forgotten his vows to his wife, and your vows to Our Lord? God forgive me, but when I saw you first in that red gown I feared you had become his whore.”

  “I am not!” Alys said in a whisper.

  “He is young and handsome and they say that he loves lust and young women. If he forced you, Ann, or even if he seduced you into consent, you can tell me, and we will find a penance for you. You can expiate your sin. Our Lady is merciful, she will intercede for you.”

  “I have done nothing,” Alys said defiantly. She could not trust Hildebrande with her sin of lust. The slavish perverse afternoon with the three of them writhing together in bed was not fit for speech, not even confession. Alys was too ashamed. “I have not been seduced, I belong to no man,” she said. She looked up at Hildebrande and for one moment the old abbess saw the hungry child of the herb garden who swore she had no kin and no one to prevent her coming to the abbey.

  The old woman paused a moment longer, searching Alys’s clear, open face. “I pray that it is so,” she said at last. “Go now, Alys, and tell them you are not returning to the castle with them. We have to start our new life here at once. God is not to be delayed with excuses. His call comes before that of a lady in a castle—whoever is her husband.”

  Alys rose reluctantly. “Do you have enough food?” she asked.

  The abbess smiled. “I feasted like a prince on your gift,” she said. “There is plenty, and when that is gone Our Lady will send plenty once more. We will not hunger here, Sister Ann. We will not be cold and lonely. The Lord will guide us. I trust Him to set a table for me, and my cup will run over.”

  “I’ll light the fire,” Alys said.

  “You can do it when you come back,” the abbess said.

  “I’ll do it now. The cottage needs airing. The sooner the fire is lit the better.”

  The abbess let her go inside, closed her eyes to the sunlight, and murmured a prayer of thanksgiving that Sister Ann was found, the finest child of the abbey, found and restored to God once more. Whatever her sins—and there must have been many sins during ten long hazardous months out in the world—the girl would confess them and expiate them. It was a joy as great as that of a holy conception to have the child, her beloved daughter, returned to her. “Like the prodigal son,” the abbess whispered softly. Under her closed eyelids she could feel the prickle of tears. Sister Ann had been spared the fire and been spared rape, and had been led home.

  “It’s alight,” said Alys tersely, coming out into the sunshine again with dirty hands. “In a few moments you can put some of the wood on. Put only one piece at a time, it’s damp.”

  The old woman nodded, smiling. “I shall walk along the river to meet you as you come back from your escort,” she said. “The river here flows underground, you can sometimes hear it as you walk along the banks, Ann, did you know? It made me think of our faith—sometimes underground and sometimes above, but always flowing.”

  Alys nodded. She could not look at the caves uncovered by the drought without thinking of Morach’s drowned body trapped and rotting in the crooked darkness of one of the holes. She could not sense the deep, secret wetness of the water under the rocks. All she could see was the glare from the limestone slabs. All she could feel was their merciless aridity.

  “I won’t be long,” she said.

  Chapter

  28

  Alys rode toward 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’s 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’s 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.”