The Burning Time (10 page)

She sought shelter with Lady Alyce Kyteler of Kilkenny, a stranger whose name she’d remembered hearing from another kitchenmaid. That forlorn woman once had gone to Kyteler for a potion to free her from her eighth pregnancy, and had blessed
Alyce’s name ever after. Indeed, from what was whispered about Alyce Kyteler by more than one woman, she sounded less like a noble lady than like a possible friend—even an
amchara
, the cherished soul-comrade ancient Celtic culture had celebrated, the parent of one’s best self, trusted intimate of one’s secrets, reflection of one’s truest spirit. And Alyce Kyteler had in fact changed Petronilla’s life.

Not only her physical existence but everything she had been taught to believe without questioning—everything—had been transformed at Kyteler Castle. She had thought the Church merciful, yet found her priest pitiless; she had believed the aristocracy cruel, yet, arriving as a stray, found a noblewoman who treated her like a guest. Now she had as much food as she might wish to eat; she had a clean bed and two small rooms all to herself and her daughter, with her own fire—of real wood, not peat—in her own hearth; she wore warm dry woolens in winter and soft muslins in summer. Now she was learning numbers and letters, music and laughter and friendship. After a year and a half, she was still struggling to adjust to this way of living: days and nights with no fear, the emotion that had defined her entire existence. Most miraculously, she watched Sara growing into these freedoms early enough so that the child might never acquire the scars her mother bore.

But now there was danger. Now Petronilla was terrified that the Bishop might harm this woman who sheltered them.
Now she was cold with dread that the violence of her former world would collide with the safety of her current one. With a sudden ferocity, she realized she would do anything to protect what Sara and she now had.

Such were the notions flickering through Petronilla de Meath’s mind as she sat grinding herbs with a mortar and pestle at the kitchen table on the day before Lugnasad Eve. But she kept these thoughts to herself, glancing at her mistress and saying only, “Well, my Lady, may our Holy Saint Brigid grant you be right about the Bishop and his boyos doing no hurt to nobody.”

All four women chuckled at the joke. Brigid was one of the oldest of all Irish names for The Mother—in Her capacity as Goddess of fire and keeper of poets, healers, and smiths. When the people of the Isles refused to cease their devotions to Her, the Church had created a new saint named Brigid—who quickly became the people’s favorite. It was an ideal Irish solution, one with a wink: the congregation could now be good Catholics while still offering devotions to their older deity, and the priests could pride themselves on the conversion of so many souls.

“Yes, well, I admit the Bishop and his fellows are a devious bunch,” Alyce agreed. “And if I seem unafraid, Petronilla,” she added, “t’is because in times like these a witch learns to hide her feelings. De Ledrede was so wroth about my delivering a baby—
can you imagine what he would have thought if he suspected how many women I have helped
not
to have babies?”

“Here sits one—and glad of it,” cackled Annota Lange, “four was three too many.”

“So do not worry, Pet,” Alyce continued, “I am on guard against the Bishop and his monks. I suspect he would like nothing better than to burn me as his first Irish witch.”

“
No
!” Petronilla shocked herself by shrieking. “They canna have
you
! Never
you
, never! I canna let ’em!” She clutched her pestle like a club and glared across the table.

“Well let us not be so military about it!” Alyce laughed. “Truly, I would swear there must be warrior strains in your blood—not only that Anglo-Norman name, but the Viking ice glittering in that hair! Did you know, Pet, that the whole of Wexford county, where you were born, was settled by Vikings more than five hundred years ago? Perhaps you do come from warrior people!”

Petronilla knew that her mistress was trying to smooth the conversation toward another subject. But she could not stop circling, like a moth the flame, her own anxiety.

“I dinna know aught about my people. I dinna even know how old I am. My name—I dinna know if t’was my mam’s or my da’s, or if the Church give it me when they took me in as a foundling to raise me—”

“Well, you belong here now. They shall not get you back.”

“But the Bishop—” Petronilla began again.

“The Bishop will not get you, either, Pet. You shall go on being safe and content, and raise wee Sara here to a happy womanhood.”

“You could raise her for me. Better’n me. T’is a fact,” Petronilla murmured, a tinge of jealousy shadowing the admiration in her voice—though whether it was jealousy of Alyce or of Sara she could not tell.

Alyce shot her an exasperated look.

“What kind of dismal talk is this for the day before a Sabbat Eve? Could we please forget bishops and plots and miseries, and concentrate instead on the holy-day? Much has yet to be done! We need to consecrate the Working Tools for the Ritual—which means that someone must go to fetch the Athame from Alyce and Henry. William could do it—that is,
if
he and Robert ever finish pretending they are knights jousting with those menacing billowy red clothes hanging out there
SARA
!”

Alyce let out a screech and dived to the floor where Sara sat silently turning blue as a Pict painted with woad. She had a nutshell fragment stuck in her throat, having begun to chew the shells once she had dispatched the nutmeats. One thwack on her shoulders brought the shell out, along with a fit of coughing. The delayed wail that followed worked beautifully: it maneuvered her onto Alyce’s lap to be cuddled and successfully averted a scolding from her mother for her reckless eating habits.

As the crisis subsided, Annota brought out a gift for the little girl. It was to have waited until the following day,
but seemed a helpful diversion now: a tiny kirtle embroidered with yellow thread—stalks of wheat against a deep orange background the shade of peachblush. Labor paused for everyone to admire Annota’s needlework—which naturally had to be tried on and displayed by Sara at once, although intended for wearing at the Sabbat festivities. The child twirled around the kitchen, receiving applause from the four women and curtseying like a tiny queen accepting her subjects’ fealty. Then Helena brought forth a snack of boiled oats and cream and hung a kettle on the fire, while the conversation turned to cheerier subjects than the Bishop’s intrigues.

But Petronilla de Meath—stooping to clip fresh mint leaves for tea from the herb garden just outside the kitchen door—was not so easily distracted. She stood upright again and sighed, staring off into space, indifferent to the fragrant sprigs in her hand. Well in the distance, beyond the sunlit gardens and, further on, the paddocks, a small mass of clouds let loose a local rainfall; it advanced slowly, as a silvery column of mist, across the heath. But Petronilla did not notice it. She found herself imagining the Bishop of Ossory huddled in consultation with Father Donnan of Wexford Parish. One face was florid and fleshy, the other bony and pinched: greed complementing denial. In her mind’s eye, these uneasy allies were conspiring with a common purpose as well as a common power. And despite Alyce Kyteler’s reassurances, she was not consoled.

IT WAS LUGNASAD EVE
, the night of the Sabbat.

The heath was dimming toward summer darkness as Alyce Kyteler dressed herself. She did so slowly, with attention to each detail. Having dismissed her maidservants, she had bathed in warm water scented with rose petals, then blotted herself with a thin sheet of fine wool. She had brushed her damp long hair dry until it flamed in the candlelight, then left it hanging loose. Finally, standing alone and naked in her turret chamber, lit by the gleam of three candles—one red, one white, one black—she ceremonially anointed herself with Sabbat Oil.

“Blessed be my brain, that I may conceive of my own power,”
she whispered, touching the tip of her left-hand third finger first to the small clay bowl filled with heated oil, then to her forehead.

“Blessed be my breast, that I may give nurturance,”
she continued, again touching her fingertip to the liquid gold and then to each nipple point and to the hollow between her breasts where her heart had begun to pulse more strongly with excitement.

“Blessed be my womb, that I may create what I choose to create,”
she murmured, touching the warm oil to her naked belly.

“Blessed be my knees, that I may bend so as not to break.”
She grazed each kneecap with the oil, which had begun to give off the fragrance of the herbs and essences steeping in it: flakes of saffron, poplar leaves, hemlock, moonwort, cinquefoil, crushed almonds.…

“Blessed be my feet, that I may walk in the path of my highest will.”
She anointed the arch of each bare foot.

Then she stood still, the Five-fold Blessing complete, and inhaled the perfume of her own body.

Moving deliberately, she slipped into loose linen trousers of her own design and Annota Lange’s tailoring, similar to but less restricting than the hose and breeches men wore. Then she donned a pleated linen gown with slender wrist-length sleeves, the whole dyed a rich strawberry red. She slid over her head a shorter crimson silk tunic embroidered at its collar and its hem in gold thread, with tiny pomegranates exquisitely worked in scarlet against the gold—Annota’s artistry again. Last came an open, sleeveless, light surcoat of unbleached linen the colour of young wheat. Then she stepped into the soft leather soles of her best sandals, and strapped the thongs around her ankles. The Ritual Jewels would come later. For now, she took up a casket of rosewood inlaid with red enamel, lovingly carved with runes surrounded by spirals, cones, and whorls—the recurring images of Celtic art. With this secured
under one arm and her graceful but stout ash staff in the other hand, Alyce was ready. She emerged from her turret chamber and descended the Great Stairs to join the others for the procession to the Cromlech.

It was a perfect summer night, clear and balmy, with the full moon agleam so that people barely needed their staffs to aid them in making their way across the fields. Leading the column from the castle to the Covenstead, Alyce smiled to herself at how foolish were Church accusations about witches flying on broomsticks and staffs. Let a priest try walking over the fields on a moonless night, she thought with grim amusement, lit only by candles carried in hollowed-out gourds as makeshift lanterns; let a priest move across hillocks and rabbit holes and other wee treacheries underfoot—and see if
he
can manage not to break his neck without something sturdy on which to lean. Although she did have to admit to herself that a sabbat made her so light-headed with pleasure she
felt
almost air-borne. Each time she approached a Ritual, she did so recalling in her heart the passwords with which she, like every Neophyte, had long ago entered her first Circle:
Perfect love and perfect trust
.

From all directions, people were moving across the heath, approaching the Covenstead. As they converged at the gently sloping mound inside the curve of standing stones, they embraced, their calls of “Merry Meet!” ringing through the night’s stillness. Children scampered about, eager to show off their holy-day finery. Familiars and family
pets—cats, dogs, now and then a lamb, a kid, or a tame robin or wren—circled, sniffed, perched, and were vocal in adding their various greetings.

Finally, when everyone seemed present, when the feast had been assembled but not yet unpacked from the hammocks and baskets of transport, when the infants had been bedded down cozily on quilts and the children had settled from frenzy to mere delirium, Alyce signaled to William.

That young man was torn between nervousness (about performing well in the dances), pride (over his dashing new leather hose), longing (that Maeve Payne would notice how well the hose set off his calf muscles), and jealousy (that she was watching Robert twirl his new mantle about). Consequently, he didn’t notice his mother’s signal until she repeated it: a second, firmer nod of her head, this time accompanied by a sharp look. Sheepishly, he drew from its silk wrappings the Horn of Lugnasad.

Three blasts young William blew upon the curved bronze throat of the trumpet, slow and stately—and something about the instrument transformed his breath into three calls, each one primeval, vibrating with mystery.

At the first call, the entire company, including the animals, fell silent.

At the second, they arranged themselves in a circle around the heap of pear and ash logs layered over straw.

At the third, Alyce Kyteler appeared, taking up her position on the southern point of the Circle. She bent and placed her staff at her feet. A sigh of satisfaction rose from the crowd, in welcome of their High Priestess.

She stood before a low stone altar—a broad, flat rock resting on two upright plinths, a smaller version of the great dolmen towering behind her, that massive capstone balanced on twin stone pillars. On the altar sat the casket, its red enamel seeming to glow in the moonlight. Alyce opened the box, and a low murmur of expectation rippled around the Circle. One by one, she brought forth her Tools of Art.

The High Priestess’s Necklace she raised in dedication to the moon, then fastened around her throat: a crescent torc, a massive collar of thinly hammered gold incised with a rim of interhatched triangles. It framed her face like a ruff of light, giving off moonglow from above and her own flush from within. This was the Lunula.

Next she lifted the Talismanic Ring, its bevelled crystal stone winking like a star caught and clasped between the jaws of two serpents—one gold, one silver—whose intertwined bodies comprised the ring itself. This she slid onto the third finger of her left hand. This was the Ring.

A plain length of braided red yarn came next, to be wound and knotted about her waist. This was the Cord to bind the spells.