The Wise Woman

The girl bowed her head at the mockery. 'May I come in?' she asked humbly.

Morach stepped back, eyed her brightly. 'To stay?' she asked conversationally – as if the world were not black as pitch outside her door and a wind with rain at the back of it howling down the valley, gathering speed in the darkness.

Sister A

She nodded again. The dark smears on her bare head and face gave her the look of an old striped plough ox.

'Coming back to live here?' Morach asked, covering old ground again for the pleasure of reviewing the landscape.

A

She paused for a moment. 'My mother is dead,' she said very low. 'Mother Hildebrande, the abbess. She will be in paradise this night, in paradise with all her daughters, with all her true daughters.' Sister A

Morach paused a moment. The girl was coming back, she had known it the moment she let her cross the threshold. But Morach was a woman whose skills led her to savour each moment.

'I might,' she said, consideringly. 'You're young and strong, and you have the Sight. You were my changeling child, given to me for my apprentice, and I would have made you the next wise woman after me but you chose the nuns. I've not replaced you. You could come back.' She stared at the pale sullen face, the clear shape of the bones. 'You're lovely enough to send a man mad,' she said. 'You could be wed. Or we could sell you to a lover.'

Sister A

She turned her face from the smoking light and took one step towards the door. A sharp scud of rain rattled through the open door and into her face. She did not even blink.

'Come in!' said Morach irritably. 'Away inside! We'll speak of this more. We'll speak of this later. But you can go no further tonight.'

She let Morach take her by the arm, lead her to the little fire in the centre of the room where the banked down embers glowed under the peat.

'Sleep here,' Morach said. 'Are you hungry? There's porridge in the pot.'

She shook her head and, without another word, sank to her knees before the fire, her hand fumbling in her gown for her beads.

'Sleep then,' Morach said again, and took herself up a rickety ladder to the loft which spa

From that little eyrie she could watch the girl who did not sleep for a good hour, but kneeled before the cooling fire and prayed very earnestly, moving her lips and telling her beads. Upstairs, in the shelter of a dirty nest of torn blankets, Morach pulled out a bag of carved white bones, and in the light of the smoking tallow candle spilled out three of them and summoned what powers she possessed to see what would become of Sister A

She laid them in a row and stared at them; her dark eyes narrowed to slits with pleasure.

'Married to Lord Hugo!' she said softly. 'Or as good as! Fat eating, soft living.' She leaned forward a little closer. 'Death at the end of it,' she said. 'But there is death at the end of every road – and in any case, she should have died tonight.'

She picked up the bones and slid them back into the little ragged purse, hid them beneath her mattress of straw. Then she pulled a verminous bit of woollen shawl up around her shoulders, kicked off her rough clogs, and slept, smiling in her sleep.

Sister A

Softly, under her breath, she said her prayers, over and over with little hope of a hearing. There was no comforting chant of the prayers around her, no sweet strong smell of incense. No clear high voices soaring upwards to praise the Lord and His Mother. She had deserted her sisters, she had abandoned her mother the abbess to the cruelty and rage of the wreckers and to the man who had laughed like the devil. She had left them to burn in their beds and she had run like a light-footed fawn all the way back to her old home, as if she had not been a child of the abbey for the past four years, and Mother Hildebrande's favourite. 'You awake?' Morach said abruptly.

'Yes,' replied the girl with no name. 'Get some fresh water and get the fire going. It's as cold as a saint's crutch this morning.'

She got up readily enough and pulled her cape around her shoulders. She scratched the soft white skin of her neck. All around her neck and behind her ears was a chain of red flea bites. She rubbed at them, scowling, while she kneeled before the hearth. All that was left of the fire on the little circle of flints embedded on the earth floor was grey ash, with a rosy core. She laid a little kindling and bent down her bald head to blow. The curl of wood-shaving glowed red. She blew a little more strongly. It glowed brighter and then a red line of fire ate its way down the curl of wood. It met a twig, lying across it, and the light died as it smouldered sullenly. Then with a little flicker and a puff the twig caught alight, burned with a yellow flame. She sat back on her heels and rubbed her face with a grimy hand. The smell of the wood smoke was on her fingers and she flinched from it, as if she smelled blood.

'Get the water!' Morach shouted from her bed. She pushed her cold feet into her damp boots and went outside.

The cottage stood alone, a few miles west of the village of Bowes. In front of it was the dull silver of the River Greta, slowly moving without a ripple. The river rose and sank through great limestone slabs at this stretch, deep and dangerous in winter, patchy in drought. The cottage had been built beside one of the deeper pools which was always filled, even in the driest of summers. When Sister A

If he had not been so thoroughly hated in the village it would have gone badly for Morach after that. But his widow was a pleasant woman, glad to be free of him, and she made no complaint. She called Morach up to the farmhouse and asked her for a poultice to ease her backache, and overpaid her many times to ensure that Morach bore no dangerous grudge. The old farmer's death was explained easily enough by his family's history of weak hearts. Morach took care not to boast.