Philippa Gregory - The Wise Woman

Alys inclined her head to show that she was listening. She said nothing.

'And if you serve me well I shall keep you safe, maybe even smuggle you away, out of the country, safe to an abbey in France. How would that be?'

Alys laid her hand at the base of her throat. She could feel her pulse hammering against her palm. 'As you wish, my lord,' she said steadily. 'I am your servant.'

'Fancy an abbey in France?' the old lord asked pleasantly.

Alys nodded dumbly, choked with hope. 'I could send you to France, I could give you safe conduct on your journey, give you a letter of introduction to an abbess, explaining your danger and telling her that you are a true daughter of her Church,' the old lord said easily. 'I could give you a dowry to take to the convent with you. Is that what it takes to buy your loyalty?'

'I am your faithful servant,' Alys said breathlessly. 'But I would thank you if you would send me to a new home, abroad.'

The old lord nodded, measuring her. 'And serve me without fail until then, as a fee for your passage,' he said. Alys nodded. 'Whatever you command.' 'You'll need to stay a virgin I suppose. They won't accept you in the nunnery otherwise. Has Hugo been tugging at your skirts yet?' 'Yes,' Alys said precisely. 'What did you tell him?' 'I said nothing.'

The old lord let out a sharp bark of laughter. 'Aye, that's your way, my cunning little vixen, ain't it? So he no doubt thinks he'll have you, and I think you're sworn to my interest and all along you follow your heretical beliefs, or your mysterious arts, or your own sweet way which is none of these, don't you?'

Alys shook her head. 'No, my lord,' she said softly. 'I want to go to a nunnery. I want to renew my vows. I will do anything you ask of me if you will see me safe into my Order.'

'Do you need any guarding against my son?' Alys shook her head slowly. 'I wish to see my kinswoman. I could stay with her tonight,' she said. 'She will advise me.'

He nodded and rested his head against the back of his chair as if he were suddenly weary. Alys went silently to the door. As she turned the handle she glanced back: he was watching her from under his hooded eyelids.

'Don't poison him,' he said sharply. 'None of your damned brews to kill his ardour. He needs a son, he needs all the vigour he has. I'll tell him to stick it to his wife when he feels his lust rising. You're safe under my charge. And I mean to honour my promise to see you safe behind walls when your work here is done.'

Alys nodded. 'When would that be, my lord?' she asked in a small voice, careful not to betray her anxiety. Lord Hugh yawned. 'When this damned marriage business is settled, I should think,' he said carelessly. 'When I am rid of the shrew and I have a new fertile daughter-in-law in Hugo's bed. I will need you to work secretly for me until I can see my way clear, but I won't need you after that. If you serve me well in this one thing, I'll put you back behind convent walls again.'

Alys took a deep breath. 'I thank you,' she said calmly, and left the room. She paused outside his door and leaned against the wall, looking out of the arrow-slit. The air which blew in was sharp with the cold from the moor. For the first time in months Alys felt her heart lift with hope. She was on her way back to her home.

She borrowed a fat pony belonging to Eliza Herring to ride to Bowes, confident of her ability to manage the overfed old animal, riding astride with the red gown pulled down over her legs, one of the lads from the castle running beside her. As the pony picked its way around the filth of the wet street she saw a few doorways open a crack to eye her, and a thrown handful of stones spattered on the wall behind her. She nodded. She had no friends in the village. She had been feared as a cunning woman and now she would be reviled as the lord's new whore, a village girl vaulted to the highest place in their small world.

She left the letter with the steward of the castle knowing that even if he dared to break the seal and open it, he would not be able to read the Latin. She ordered the lad to go back to Lord Hugh's castle. She would be safe going on alone. The road from Castleton to Bowes to Penrith ran along dry ground at the crest of the moor. Alys, glancing up the hill from the valley of Bowes, could see the pale ribbon of it running straight as a Roman ruler bisecting the country from east to west. It was empty of traffic. These were wild lands. Travellers who had to make the journey would delay on either side of the moor, at Castleton in the east, or Penrith in the west, so that they could travel together and protect each other. There were wild animals – boar and wolves, some spoke of bears. There were sudden snowstorms in winter, and no shelter. Worst of all, there were brigands and moss troopers, marauding Scots, sturdy beggars and vagabonds.

Alys avoided the road and set the pony towards the little sheep track which ran from Bowes alongside the River Greta, through thick woods of beech and elm and oak, where deer moved quietly in the shadows of the trees. The river was full and wide here, moving slowly over a broad rocky bed. Underneath the stone slabs a deeper, secret river ran, a great underground lake stocked with fishes that preferred the dark deeps. Even on horseback, Alys could sense the weight of water beneath the ground, its slow purposeful moving in the secret caves.

The pony broke out of the trees, puffing slightly, and then started the climb westwards and upwards through swathes of poor pastureland where sheep could feed and perhaps a few scrawny cows, and then higher again to the moor. Before the plague had come to Bowes and there had been more working men, someone had walled off one pasture from another. The stones had fallen down now and the sheep could run where they wished. At shearing in spring, or butchering in winter, they would be sorted by the marks on their fleeces. Every village had its own brand – but they all belonged to Lord Hugh.

The river was in spate here, a fast-moving swell of water overlapping the stone of the banks and flooding the meadows in great wet sweeps of waterlogged land. Alys rode beside it, listening to the gurgle and rush of the water, and laughed when the little pony shied sideways from a puddle. Bits of wood and weed were tumbled over and over in the peaty water, and at the river's edge the springs bubbled and gurgled like soup pots, spewing out more brown water to swirl away downstream. The branches of ivy nodding at the tumbled drystone walls carried thick heads of dull black berries, a rowan tree glowed with clusters of scarlet berries against the green and grey of the weak winter grass speckled by small brown toadstools on weak leggy stems. Alys kicked the old pony and surprised it into a loping canter. She sat easily in the saddle and felt the wind in her face as the hood of her cape blew back.

The grey stone slabs of the bridge came into sight, the waters backed up behind it and spreading in a great sheet of flood water as shiny as polished pewter. Morach's cottage, like a little ark, stood on a hillock of higher ground away from the waters of the flood. Alys stood up in the stirrups and shouted: 'Holloa! Morach!' so that Morach was standing in the doorway, shading her eyes against the low, red winter sun when Alys came trotting up on her pony. 'What's this?' she asked, without a word of greeting. 'A loan only,' Alys said casually. 'I'm not home for ever, I am allowed to visit this evening. And I need to talk with you.'

Morach's sharp dark eyes scanned Alys' face. 'The young Lord Hugo,' she stated.

Alys nodded, not even asking how Morach had guessed. 'Aye,' she said. 'And the old lord has forbidden me to give him anything to kill his lust.'

Morach raised her black eyebrows and nodded. 'They need an heir,' she said. 'You can tether that animal outside the gate, I won't have him near my herbs. Come in.'