The Burning Time (13 page)

“Holy Mother!” he called out—too late.

Alyce smacked her ash-wood staff deftly at Richard de Ledrede’s substantial target of a stomach and he went down like a struck tent, all silk panels flapping.

Then, as if by signal, there was uproar.

Henry grabbed one of the monks in his brawny arms and tossed him playfully, as one would a ball, into a hillock. His wife Alyce grasped the Athame she’d so proudly sharpened and swung the large dagger in a wide arc around her head, creating a circle all her own upon which no one, priest or witch, was eager to intrude. Young Will was charging about, swatting at anything that looked like a cowan. Helena and her husband Sysok were thrashing two monks with whips of roped flowers, but their anger was so energetic that the clerics seemed not to realize what gentle weapons were being used against them. Eva de Brounstoun, wheezing with rage, crowned another priest with a pastry coffyn, the last drips of its blueberry filling staining his surprised face azure as a Celt’s painted for battle. Even little Sara, wide awake now, joined in what she took to be a jolly adult game and began pelting cassocks with juicy plums that often hit their targets with a satisfying
splat
. She had a talent for catching one cowan in particular: the stringy zealot, Father Donnan, who by now was so decorated with fruit and crumbs, so streaked with creams and butters, as to qualify for a Spectacle himself.

At last Richard de Ledrede and his pack retreated across the heath, pursued for a while by Wiccans yelling, “Blasphemers! Intruders! Barbarians! Go back to Rome or Avignon! This is
Ireland
!” Limping along with his fleeing colleagues, Father Brendan furtively scooped up some quince cream staining his cassock and licked his fingers, grateful that the night and his cowl hid a huge grin he could no longer suppress.

Finally, the last of the Wiccan pursuers straggled back to the Covenstead. More wine was passed round. Alyce moved steadily through the crowd, stooping to inspect any scratch or bruise, though no one was seriously hurt. Slowly, people regained their breath. A few tried to resume the celebration.

But the conversation was now mere chatter, and the feast felt soured by violation. Then Helena saw that Dana was fast asleep at her breast, blissful mouth still clamped on her nipple, so she signaled to Sysok to gather their things. That seemed a sign for others to start packing up and preparing to leave. One by one, family by family, they did so, murmuring their farewells.

“Merry Part until we Merry Meet again.”

Will Payn ambled among the departing guests, sweetening their spirits with the music of his small harp. At last he settled down amid the remaining few and leaned against a stone to softsing the words of
The Song of Amorgin
, older than memory:

“
I am the womb of every holt
,” he sang, echoing the poet who had imagined the words of The Goddess, “I
am the blaze on every hill, I am the queen of every hive
.”

Alyce Kyteler sat quietly beside the dying bonfire. She was deep in thought, her fingers turning the Talismanic Ring round and round on her finger, her eyes fixed on the glimmering garnet embers that occasionally erupted in a few last tongues of flame.

“
I am the shield for every head
,” sang the harpist, the ancient words reassuring in their eternal indifference, “
I am the tomb of every hope
.”

Watching her mistress so withheld in silence, the Ring turning and turning, Petronilla de Meath felt chilled by a night wind that sprang up from nowhere. Clutching a drowsy Sara in her arms, she shivered and drew closer to the fire.

BABY DANA ITCHED
. Her howls left no doubt about that in the mind of anyone within earshot. Baby Dana definitely itched, and Alyce had been lightly rubbing her rash with a cooling salve—soured cream in which had been steeped leaves of savory, calamint, and tarragon, together with finely ground salt and pulverized cucumber—to prevent infection and ease the itching. Now she was murmuring nonsense words of comfort as she cuddled the babe in her lap, feeding Dana sips of weak burdock-and-chamomile tea. Alyce had spiked the tea with a drop of fermented apple cider, so that the infant—and her parents—might eventually get some sleep. The two were sitting on a stone bench in front of the Galrussyn cottage, waiting for the child’s parents and grandfather to return from Kilkenny Town where they’d gone to sell surplus vegetables at market.

Dana was cranky and restless, so to make the waiting pass until the tea took effect, Alyce rocked her slowly, and sang the old
Song of the Running Seasons:

The song was usually sung as a round, with the opening verse recurring at the end—but Alyce was trying to ignore a sense of foreboding as the theme of pursuit continued, so she was relieved when Helena, Sysok, and Old John could be spotted approaching, down the path. Their cart was drawn leisurely by Maude, their old mare who stolidly refused to be rushed. But today Maude’s passengers seemed impatient to get home.

Helena jumped down before the cart had completely stopped. Bobbing a curtsey to Alyce, she rushed to pick up her daughter, hugging Dana and inquiring about the rash.

“Better, I think,” smiled her mistress, pushing a strand of hair out of her eyes. “The salve seems to be clearing it up and the tea helps numb the itch.” Dana’s eyelids had finally begun to droop, but as her mother laid her across one shoulder, patting her back, she offered a contented burp.

“Actually,” Alyce confided, “I think she is tipsy from the drop of cider. Looks ready for a nap. I will leave the rest of the cidered tea with you for using tonight if she turns fretful. You all need some sleep. You look a bit overwrought.”

At a glance from Helena, Old John took his granddaughter from her, worshipfully cradling the baby in his arms, and carried her inside for her nap. Meanwhile, Sysok unhitched the mare while Helena flung herself down on the grass near Alyce.

“Produce sell well at market?” Alyce asked, stretching like a sun-warmed cat now that she was relieved of her bundle.

“Aye, m’Lady,” replied Helena, fanning herself in the heat with her wide-brimmed straw hat, “though we’d so much summer squash I feared we’d never be rid of it. Yet it sold off right away—as did the pears, and every one of the lettuces. But never no mind to any of that. There be news we heard in town—grave news and much of it. I dinna know where to start.”

“At the beginning is a customary place,” smiled Alyce.

“T’is hard to know where that is, M’am. Our troublesome Bishop has not idled away this past week since the Sabbat. He took himself off to Dublin—to the Lord Justice. To demand that a writ be issued. For your arrest!”

“My arrest, is it now?” Alyce laughed. “Well, this bodes to be interesting. The Lord Justice is Roger Outlawe—kinsman to my son Will.”

“Aye, M’am, that he is,” replied Helena, “and he flat out refused to oblige the Bishop. Said such a writ could not be issued until—ach, how was it now?”

“Until the accused parties have been proceeded against at law?” Alyce asked.

“Aye, aye, that’s it!”

“Indeed,” laughed Alyce, “thanks to what remains of our Celtic Brehon law.”

“De Ledrede oh, he dinna like that one bit, Your Ladyship. There was raised voices. People say he stormed out from the meeting, shouting and all, saying that the Church was above, you know, regular law, nonreligious law—how do they call it—”

“Secular law. Well, you have to admire the man,” Alyce said mildly, “He does not give up easily, does he? And him not even Irish!”

But that, as Helena explained, was only part of it.

Sysok, having released the mare to graze, now reappeared, eager to participate in telling the news. Granted permission by Alyce to sit, he joined his wife on the grass. Then John emerged from the cottage. He eased his aged body down onto the stone steps with a few grunts, then reached for some thin strips of soft wood from a pile beside him and swiftly started bending and binding the staves for a barrel. Everyone knew
that Old John was unable to sit still without doing something, but his gnarled cooper’s hands knew his materials of wood, tin, and leather so intimately after a lifetime of cask-making that he worked by touch, not needing to look at what he was doing. Nor did he glance at it now, intent on watching the others and being included in the conversation.

Apparently the Bishop, rejected by the Lord Justice, had left Dublin and taken his personal crusade to the Seneschal of Kilkenny, Sir Arnald le Poer. This gentleman, though a relative of Alyce’s most recent husband, nevertheless had also defied de Ledrede. He had refused to prosecute.

Alyce blinked with amazement.

“You cannot mean that John’s family is actually
supporting
me after all this time? Oh, that is simply not possible! The le Poers regard me as a shrew and a hag!… Though if what you heard has any truth to it, then I would wager it can only be because Arnald has always disliked my husband—his cousin—intensely. Some old family fight about inheritance. So Arnald might see this brawl as a chance for revenge at John, with me as the pawn in his game.”

“Aye.… Or else t’is loyalty to his own,” Sysok ventured—adding, half under his breath, “Nobility hangs together in the end, whilst the rest of us plain hang.”

“Oh
Sysok
,” Helena interjected, seeing a blush shadow Alyce’s face as she overheard him, “these people be not regarding Lady Alyce as family or nobility for years now.”

“I dinna believe that,” he mumbled, with a cautious glance at his mistress, “I dinna believe ‘these people’—though I dinna mean
you
, Your Ladyship
—ever
be forgetting who shares their blood-lines.”

“
I
believe,” Helena persisted with a frown at her husband, “t’is not blood relations nor marriage bonds nor any such connections mattering in this rebellion against the Bishop.
I
think t’is a certain well-known Irish willfulness at work. Bless us, when the troubles come, we turn
more
stubborn, and somehow stand together. The troubles
bind
us, heathen and townsfolk, even the nobles, say I. All we need is something to be
against—
and sure the finest thing of all to be against is a foreigner who dares to meddle in our ways.”

“
That
threat on occasion has even tempted us to ally with the Scots—an extreme remedy,” Alyce grinned.

“Aye,” Helena laughed.

“Howsoever that may or mayn’t be,” Sysok interrupted, annoyed at the drift into international politics when local matters right under everyone’s noses were in need of attention, “I be
trying
to tell Her Ladyship some more
news
here, the Scots aside. See, m’Lady, not only did the Seneschal throw the Bishop out, but then he be declaring in public that de Ledrede—he calls him ‘this vile, rustic, interloping priest’—had … oh, some words like …”

“ ‘Exhausted his patience and outraged his sense of honour,’ ” Helena prompted.

“Aye, t’is close enough,” Sysok said, “I knew outrage and honour were there somewhere.” Then he mumbled, “Always are, with gentry and nobles.”

Alyce chose to ignore the mumble and clapped her hands with pleasure.

“
Good
old Arnald! Perhaps this pawn of his should send him a cask of wine! Considering that he has dared to—”

“Please. Dinna be celebrating yet, Your Grace,” Old John put in quietly, “There is more, and t’is
not
good news. The Bishop was publicly shamed, M’am. That makes the man more dangerous. Now he has gone to rally support—from the filthy English knights who stole those lands ’round Kilkenny.”

“But John, there are so few of them. And they are never
here
. They all live abroad—thanks be.”

“That matters not,” Sysok all but snapped. “Pardon me, Your Ladyship. But what matters is he’s sought them out and written to them and got their pledges to aid him. And here’s the black heart of it: with their support of men and arms, he has—ach, how’d they say it—gathered—”

“Convened,” interjected Helena.

“Aye, that’s it. ‘Convened’ an—an … a church court—”

“An ecclesiastical court?” this from Alyce.

“Aye. And whilst himself was lording over that—”