Philippa Gregory - The Wise Woman

The pages set hippocras and fruit and wafers on the tables. Alys took a small glass of hippocras and felt the sweet wine warm her through.

'It doesn't seem right, eating and drinking with my lady dead this hour,' Eliza said.

Alys shrugged. 'You can join Ruth in her vigil if you wish,' she said. 'But the castle will run as my lord commands. It seems right to him -I shall not argue.'

Eliza nodded. 'As you say,' she said, dropping her eyes away from Alys' cold face.

Lord Hugh looked behind him. 'Alys!' he said peremptorily.

Alys rose up from the table and stood behind his chair, leaning forward.

'Father Stephen is engaged in the arrangements for Catherine's funeral and questioning the old woman, so you shall be my clerk for the trials. Come to my room within an hour and we can prepare the papers. The trials start here at two.'

'I shall not know what to write,' Alys said unhelpfully. 'Could not David serve you better? Or even my Lord Hugo?'

‘I’ll tell you what to write,' Lord Hugh said firmly. 'It is all done by rote. We have a book to enter the charge and the sentence. Any fool could do it. Come to my room before two and you shall see.'

'Yes, my lord,' Alys said unenthusiastically. 'You can leave now,' he said. He shot a quick glance at her pale face. 'Not sick are you?' he asked. 'The baby is well? Catherine's death did not shock you, damage the child?'

'No,' Alys said coldly. She thought of claiming illness and avoiding the trials but she knew she could not again wait in her room knowing nothing. Mary's account of Mother Hildebrande's trial for witchcraft had been so sparse as to be worse than hearing nothing. Alys thought she would sit at the women's table at the rear of the dais with her head down, writing what Lord Hugh commanded, and then at least she would hear all that was said.

‘I am well enough to be there,' Alys said. 'It is my wish to serve you.'

Lord Hugh nodded, noting the whiteness of Alys' face, the strain which showed in dark shadows around her eyes and the hard set of her mouth. 'Rest afterwards,' he said gruffly. 'You look dreadful.'

'Thank you, my lord,' Alys said steadily. 'I will.'

The great hall was packed with people. They had been waiting outside the castle gates from noon while the lords finished their dinner and sat over their wine. The trestle-tables had been dragged back against the wall as soon as dinner was finished, the fire which had burned since Alys had first come to the castle was doused and the ashes swept away so that people could sit side by side in the whole body of the room. The benches and stools were arranged in concentric rings around the high table and crowded with people sitting too close. Behind them, and pressing continually forward, was a mob of people – some of them servants in the castle, many of them from Castleton. At the rear of the hall were more benches and people standing on them in unsteady lines, leaning forward to overlook the others.

Alys sat with the women, behind the high table at the rear of the dais, shrinking back against the wall. The fine weather of yesterday and the morning had gone, the sun turned grey, shrouded in mists. The hall was dark though it was only two in the afternoon. Alys leaned back into the shadows. She had the book which recorded Lord Hugh's quarterly sessions of justice, and two pens and a pot of ink spread on the table before her. The other women sat facing the high table leaving Alys room to write.

The door behind the tapestry opened and Lord Hugh's trumpeter, stationed high in the minstrel gallery over the hall at the far end, played a flat blast on the horn. Everyone in the hall rose to their feet and a bench overturned and crashed backwards on to someone's toes, making them cry out and swear. Lord Hugh walked into the hall, wearing his best gown with the fur-lined collar, and took his seat at the high table. Hugo followed him, and sat on his right, in his usual dinnertime seat. 'Bring in the accused,' Lord Hugh said quietly. The man was already waiting. He stepped forward: 'John Timms, my lord,' he said respectfully.

Lord Hugh looked around. 'Alys!' he said irritably. 'I can't see what you are doing back there in the shadows. Bring your book up here so I can see the entries.' Alys hesitated. 'I prefer…' she started. 'Come on,' Lord Hugh said abruptly. 'We don't have all day. The sooner this is done the sooner we can have this rabble out of the castle and back to their work.'

Alys picked up her book and went to Catherine's seat on the left hand of the old lord. Eliza followed her with the ink-pot and pens. Alys seated herself and bent her head low over the page. In her dark gown and the large black gable hood she thought that she might pass unnoticed, melting into the background as a lowly, unimportant clerk.

'Write John Timms,' Lord Hugh said, pointing one finger to a column.

Alys obediently wrote. There was a long column of names, then the occupation and age, then the charge, then the verdict and then the sentence. Most of the verdicts read guilty. Lord Hugh was not a man to offer anyone the benefit of the doubt.

'Failure to practise archery,' Lord Hugh read from a crumpled piece of paper in a pile before him.

John Timms nodded. 'Guilty,' he said. 'I am sorry. The business was doing badly and I had no time and my son and the apprentices had no time either.'

Lord Hugh glared at him. 'And if I have no time to keep a pack of soldiers and the Scots come down on us, or the French make war on us, or the damned Spanish choose to call on us – what then?' he demanded. 'Fine three shillings. And don't neglect it again.' Alys scribbled quickly.

The next case was a stolen pig, as the old lord had predicted. The accused, Elizabeth Shore, alleged that the pig had strayed into her yard and eaten the hens' feed and had thus been fed by her for free all the summer. Her accuser claimed she had tempted it away. Lord Hugh gave them some moments to squabble before slapping his hand on the table and ordering them to jointly feed the pig up, kill it and share it: three-quarters of the pig to the owner and one leg and some lights to the accused.

Next was a man accused of failing to maintain roads, then a man accused of theft, a woman accused of slander, a merchant accused of shoddy goods, a man charged with assault. Alys wrote the names and the charges and the people came and went, dispatched with speed and sometimes justice by Lord Hugh.

'Is that it?' he asked, when there was a lull in the proceedings.

An officer stepped up to the table. 'That is all the common cases, my lord,' he said. 'I have not heard if Father Stephen wished to charge the old woman from Bowes Moor.' Alys looked up from her page.

'Send to him and ask him,' Lord Hugh said irritably. 'If he is unsure, the old woman can be released. I don't want her persecuted over some bookish detail.'

Alys bent her head down to the page again. The paper seemed very white, the letters on the page very black and spiky. She swallowed on her hope and pressed her lips together so that they would not move in a silent prayer to whatever gods might listen.

Hildebrande might be set free. If she were turned out of the castle into Castleton it would be easy to send her money and clothes and set her on her way. Southwards perhaps, or even east to the coast and to France. She would have learned now what danger she was running with her plans to work and pray in the rules of the Order. She would have been frightened, Alys told herself, and perhaps treated a little roughly. That would have warned her that the world had changed, that there was now no room for piety and devotion to the old religion. Alys pulled at the feather of the quill. Hildebrande would have learned that the old ways were truly gone. She might now be prepared to live out her days quietly, in a little farm somewhere. Alys might find her some people who would house her and treat her kindly. She might be content to be an old lady sitting at the back door in the sunshine. Now she might have learned the wisdom to take the easy way.