The Wise Woman. Philippa Gregory

out. The cooks ate well after the hall had been served, the kitchen staff had emptied the jugs of wine and dozed now in corners. Only the kitchen boy, stripped down to his shorts, monotonously turning the handle of the spit roasting the meat for supper, stared at Alys as she walked through, her skirts lifted clear of the muck.

      She walked out of the kitchen door and through the kitchen garden. The neat salad beds ran along one side of the path, the herbs were planted on the other, all edged with box-hedging. At the tower which guarded the inner ward the guards let her through with a ribald comment to her back, but they did not touch her. She was well known to be under the old lord’s protection. She walked across the bridge which spanned the great ditch of stagnant murky water and then across the outer ward where the little farmyard slept in the pale afternoon sunshine and a blackbird sang loudly in one of the apple trees. There were hives and pigsties, hens roaming and pecking, a dozen goats and a couple of cows, one with a weaned calf. There were sheds for storing vegetables and hay, there was a barn. There were a number of tumbledown half-ruined farm buildings. Alys knew from her work for Lord Hugh that they would never be repaired. It was too costly to run a complete farm inside the castle walls. And anyway, in these days, there was no threat to the peace of the land. Scotland’s army never came this far south and the mosstroopers threatened travellers on lonely roads, not secure farms, not the great Lord Hugh himself.

      Alys walked through the farmyard area towards the great gate where the portcullis hung like a threat and the drawbridge spanned the dark waters of the outer moat. The gate was shut but there was a little door cut into the massive timbers. There were only two soldiers on duty, but an officer watched them from the open door of the guardroom. The country might be at peace but the young lord was never careless of the safety of the castle, and the soldiers were expected to give him value for money. One of the guards swung the door open for Alys and she bent her head and stepped out into a sudden blaze of winter sunshine. As the shadow of the castle lifted from her, Alys felt free.

      Morach was waiting for her, dirtier and more stooped than ever. She looked even smaller against the might of the castle than at her own fireside.

      ‘I brought them,’ she said, without a word of greeting. ‘What made you change your mind?’

      Alys slipped her hand through Morach’s arm and walked her away from the castle. The market stalls were set out along the main street of the town, selling fruits, vegetables, meat, fish, eggs and the great pale cheeses from the Cotherstone dairies. Half a dozen travelling pedlars had set out their stalls with fancy goods, ribbons, even pewterware for sale, and they shouted to passers-by to buy a Christmas fairing for their sweethearts, for their wives. Alys saw David walking among the produce stalls, pointing and claiming the very best of the goods and nodding to a servant behind him to pay cash. He bought very little. He preferred to order goods direct from the farms inside the manors which belonged to the castle. Those farmers could not set their own prices, and anything the lord required could be ordered as part of the lord’s dues.

      She drew Morach away, past the stalls and the chattering women, down the hill, and they sat on a drystone wall which marked the edge of someone’s pasture and looked down the valley to the river which foamed over the rocks at the foot of the castle cliff.

      ‘You’re getting prettier,’ Morach said, without approval. She patted Alys’ face with one dirty hand. ‘You don’t suit black,’ she said. ‘But that hood makes you look like a woman, not a child.’

      Alys nodded.

      ‘And you’re clean,’ Morach said. ‘You look like a lady. You’re plumper around the face, you look well.’ She leaned back to complete her inspection. ‘Your breasts are getting bigger and your face finer. New gown.’

      Alys nodded again.

      ‘Too pretty,’ Morach said shrewdly. ‘Too pretty to disappear, even in a navy gown and a gable hood the size of a house. Has the tisane worn off? Or is it that your looks fetch him despite it?’

      ‘I don’t know,’ Alys said. ‘I think he speaks to me for mere devilry. He knew I did not want him and he knows his wife watches me like a barn owl watches a mouse. He is playing with me for his sport. He takes his lust elsewhere. But the devil in him makes him play with me.’

      Morach shrugged. ‘There’s nothing you can take to stop that,’ she said. ‘Lust you can sometimes divert, but not cruelty or play!’ She shrugged. ‘He’ll take his sport where he wishes,’ she concluded. ‘You will have to suffer it.’

      ‘It’s not just him,’ Alys said. ‘That icy shrew his wife says she’ll give me a dowry and have me wed. I thought it was just a warning to stay clear of her damned husband, but one of her women, Eliza, is wife to a soldier and she said that Lady Catherine has told one of the officers that she’s looking for a husband for me.’

      ‘It can’t be done unless the old lord consents,’ Morach said, thinking aloud.

      ‘No,’ Alys agreed. ‘But if the soldier is told that we are as good as betrothed, and Lady Catherine pays over a dowry, and then sees that we are alone together …’

      Morach nodded. ‘Then you’re raped, and maybe pregnant or poxed, and you’ve lost the game,’ she concluded with a grim smile. ‘No return to an abbey for you with a belly on you or pox-scabs on your pretty face.’

      ‘There’s worse,’ Alys said miserably. ‘He talks to me of his plans and his ambitions, he tempts me to join his cause. He is seducing me while I watch him.’

      ‘For desire?’ Morach asked.

      ‘I don’t know!’ Alys burst out. ‘For desire or devilry, or worse.’

      ‘Worse?’

      Alys leaned forward and spoke in Morach’s ear. ‘What if he wants me in his power to suborn me against the old lord?’ she whispered. ‘What if he wants me to spy on the old lord, to copy his letters? What if he takes me as a pawn in his game to play against the old lord?’

      Morach shrugged. ‘Can’t you tell him “no”?’ she asked. ‘Tell the old lord what he’s doing and claim his protection?’

      Alys met Morach’s look with a fierce glare. Morach scanned her pale, strained face, and her eyes which were filled with a new expression, a kind of hunger.

      ‘Why, he has caught you and you are ready to own it at last!’ she said with sudden insight. She burst into a cackle of laughter. ‘You’re hot for him! My little nun! You’re dragging yourself into hell with desire for him! Your Lady couldn’t protect you from the heat between your legs then! Your God has no cure for that after all!’

      Alys nodded grimly. ‘I desire him,’ she said bitterly. ‘I know I do now. I feared that I would when I came to you for the herbs. But I thought if I could keep the thought away then I could keep myself safe. Then I thought I was sick of some illness, I was burning up with heat, I could not sleep, I could not eat. When I see him I feel as if I shall faint. If I do not see him I feel sick to my very soul with longing for him. I am trapped, Morach. Damn him – he has caught me.’

      Morach whistled softly as if she would summon a storm. ‘Have him then,’ she said simply. ‘It should cure your heat. That’s what they always say. Take him like you would take a bottle of wine, drink yourself sick of him and then never touch him again. I can show you a way to have him and not get with child. Have him and satisfy your hunger. Why not?’

      ‘Because I am a bride of Christ,’ Alys said through her teeth. ‘I cannot taste him and gamble that once or twice or even a hundred times will be enough. I am a nun. I should not even be in the world and this is the reason. I should not be able to look on a man. And now I have looked, and seen him, and I want him more than my life itself. But I am still the bride of Christ and Hugo must leave me alone. You forget very easily, Morach. You forget my vows. But I do not!’

      Morach shrugged, unrepentant. ‘Then what will you do?’

      ‘I dare not trust him, and I fear the jealousy of his wife,’ Alys said. ‘I have to find a way to have some power in this