Philippa Gregory - The Wise Woman

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.