The Wise Woman by Philippa Gregory Read Free Book Online Page B

Alys would find her mouth running wet with saliva at her dreams of dinners in the quiet refectory while a nun read aloud to them, and always, at the head of the table, was Mother Hildebrande, her arms outstretched, blessing the food and giving thanks for the easy richness of their lives, and sometimes glancing down the table to Alys to make sure that the little girl had plenty. “Plenty,” Alys said longingly. She thought she would never know again the comfort of a full belly. Her hunger went with her everywhere and her face grew gaunt and thin.
    “You’ve grown soft,” Morach said unsympathetically. “How will you manage in midwinter if you are thin as a rake in autumn?”
    “It will kill me,” Alys replied bleakly. “I know it will. I am hungry and I am cold and I am weary to my bones with the labor of living here.”
    Morach grinned. “You won’t die,” she said cheerfully. “It takes more than an empty belly and a nip in the air to kill a woman with a future before her. You should find your courage and put it in your belly, Alys! You should learn to fight, not prepare for death!”
    At the end of October there was a plague of sickness in Bowes with half a dozen children and some adults vomiting and choking on their vomit. Mothers walked the few miles out to Morach’s cottage every day with a gift, a round yellow cheese, or even a penny. Morach burned fennel root over the little fire, set it to dry, and then ground it into powder and gave Alys a sheet of good paper, a pen, and ink.
    “Write a prayer,” she said. “Any one of the good prayers in Latin.”
    Alys’s fingers welcomed the touch of a quill. She held it awkwardly in her swollen, callused hands, like the key to a kingdom she had lost.
    “Write it! Write it!” Morach said impatiently. “A good prayer against sickness.”
    Very carefully Alys dipped her pen and wrote the simple words of the Lord’s Prayer, her lips moving in time to the cadence of the Latin. It was the first prayer Mother Hildebrande had ever taught her.
    Morach watched inquisitively. “Is it done?” she asked, and when Alys nodded, silenced by the tightness of her throat, Morach took the paper and tore it into half a dozen little squares, tipped the dusty powder into it, and twisted the paper to keep the powder safe.
    “What are you doing?” Alys demanded.
    “Magic,” Morach replied ironically. “This is going to keep us fat through the winter.”
    She was right. The people in Bowes and the farmers all around bought the black powder wrapped in the special paper for a penny a twist. Morach bought more paper and set Alys to writing again. Alys knew there could be no sin in writing the Lord’s Prayer but felt uneasy when Morach tore the smooth vellum into pieces.
    “Why do you do it?” Alys asked curiously one day, watching Morach grind the root in a mortar nursed on her lap as she sat by the fire on her stool.
    Morach smiled at her. “The powder is strong against stomach sickness,” she said. “But it is the spell that you write that gives it the power.”
    “It’s a prayer,” Alys said contemptuously. “I don’t make spells and I would not sell burned fennel and a line of prayer for a penny a twist.”
    “It makes people well,” Morach said. “They take it and they say the spell when the vomiting hits them. Then the attack passes off.”
    “How can it?” Alys asked impatiently. “Why should a torn piece of prayer cure them?”
    Morach laughed. “Listen to the running nun!” she exclaimed to the fire. “Listen to the girl who worked in the herb garden and the still-room and the nuns’ infirmary and yet denies the power of plants! Denies the power of prayer! It cures them, my wench, because there is potency in it. And in order to say the prayer they have to draw breath. It steadies them. I order that the prayer has to be said to the sky so they have to open a window and breathe clean air. All of those that have died from the vomiting are those that were