The Burning Time (27 page)

Then all his questions were answered at once.

It spoke.

It called out to them with a ringing voice, in a tone of absolute command.

Phrases clipped with contempt came riding over the storm’s roar with the majesty of lightning itself.

“Merry Meet, this Samhain Sabbat. You need search for Me no longer. You have met the One you seek.”

DAME ALYCE KYTELER
, fugitive, exile, former Lady of Kyteler Castle and numerous Kilkenny lands and estates, pinched out her bedside candle flame between calloused fingertips and slumped back against her pillow.

She was tired. She was often tired these days, and her bones ached from ten years of enduring the damp English climate. She remembered with something akin to awe how energetic her former self had been, always up and doing, confident of her judgment, acting decisively.… She offered a snort of sarcasm to the room’s darkness. These days, although she functioned well enough, she did so at a slower pace, finding herself grateful for gradual progress, simple daily accomplishments, small victories. She’d assumed it was a sign of age. Knowing herself stubborn, she had always found transitions difficult, but this particular transition—from the Mother cycle of life to that of the Crone—seemed especially trying. Certainly she
felt
ancient. Too ancient, some might sniff, to be raising seven children and overseeing a modest
but productive manor that provided for its own and managed to send surplus wool and fresh produce to market at fair prices.

She stretched warily, feeling joints creak and muscles twinge as she turned over in bed. Grimalken, a scrap of dove-grey velvet barely out of kittenhood, woke from her nest in the quilt’s folds. All eyes, ears, and tail, she came alert in an instant, decided the movement signaled playtime, and pounced on Alyce’s toes with the full ferocity of her tiny body.

“Alright—Owww!” Alyce called out, “I said
alright
! You caught the toe and bravely killed it, alright?” She feinted a little kick in self-defense and Grimalken, now in full night-hunter mode, leapt off the bed with a low growl to go in search of other prey.

“Yes, please do,” Alyce called after her, “Go sit watch at the hole where you once spied a mouse back in 1066. But keep that watch, now! One never knows.…”

She eased herself back onto her side, curled her legs up into a position that relaxed the ache in her spine a bit, and with a wince of a smile wondered why she could not successfully treat herself as a patient. She had long ago reconstructed her medicinal shelves. She had brought the children through croups and teethings, fevers, broken bones, influenzas—and now, with the older ones, adolescent skin rashes, first blood, stomach-ache, and the heart-ache of unrequited love. She had a healer’s reputation again, for miles around. But she could not heal herself—not from the black, cold sickness deep inside her.
She knew she hid it well. None of the children suspected. Except perhaps Sara …

At the thought of the children, her heart lifted a little. If Sara’s curiosity continued to drink in knowledge as it did, she would grow into one of the most skilled Lore and Legend Keepers in all the Isles—and the child only twelve summers old. So self-assured, too; when she spun tales for the other children, even the older ones sat spellbound. She had a way with language, sensing naturally how well-spun words could ensorcell. And how enchanting she looked, with those blonde ringlets, not as pale as her mother’s white-gold hair but with the same fine texture.

Her mother …

Feeling suddenly chilled, Alyce pulled the quilt up tighter under her chin, her thoughts turning obsessively to the past, as they had for so many nights over so many years. This was an interval she had come to loathe: the drowsy time when her brain rang, helpless, under the same hammering questions before sleep lent her a brief, merciful unconsciousness; it was the space where she knew her thoughts were spinning but going nowhere, like cart wheels mired in mud.

Will, sweet young Will … a man now. All her letters unanswered. Surely there would have been some way, some secret manner in which … beloved Will, whose heart was always greater than his judgment. Again and again, her brain dredged the lake of memory, trying to find an acceptable
answer to the puzzle; over and over, as one might pick through poppy seeds to estimate the safe amount for a soothing balm of forgetfulness.

And why had she never heard from any of the others? Surely most of the fugitives had made it to England, or at least Wales. Even if—she tensed at the thought—even if some had been apprehended, why no word from the rest? All of the scouts she had employed to search for them, both in England and Wales, to no result.… Perhaps they had not
wanted
to be found? Perhaps they wanted to resettle on their own, free from all attachment to their mistress? Certainly she had seen to it that each of her people had been given more gold coin than they had ever seen before. Nor had she forgotten those faces, fervent with their own purposes, defying her in the torchlight of the castle cellar. Yet surely the parents of the young ones she had been raising, they would have tried to find their children! Night after night, year after year, these questions. But there were no answers, and no forgetting. Only the same riddles, the same sick wave of despair at never, ever, being able to solve them.…

A banging at the door brought her fully awake again.

It was not her bedroom door. It was the great door downstairs.

She sat up, listening cautiously. No one wished her harm here in England, but she was on guard all the same from years of habit. The pounding came again, louder. Then she remembered
that she had sent her doorkeeper—Edgar, the tottery old man she had taken in as a stray last year—to bed with a poultice for his ague. So she heaved herself out of bed, grunting with soreness and effort, and drew a cloak around her nightdress against the Eanáir cold. “
January
,” she muttered, as she thrust her feet into slippers and reached for the added warmth of a heavy wool shawl, “January, not Eanáir. I
must
remember to name the months in English, not Erse. You would think after all this time … I am a slow learner, t’is the wretched truth …” She struck tinder for a flame, then hastened down the stairway, clutching her candle.

“Who goes there?” she cried, scuttling through the lower hall toward the door.

The reply came as if from a far distance, as if from out of time.

“Helena. Helena Galrussyn. From Kilkenny.”

“
Helena
!” she gasped. Fingers fumbling in eagerness, she hurriedly unbolted the door.

But when she swung it open and peered out, no one was there.

Then she looked
down
—but scarcely recognized the creature hunched on the snow before her. It was a woman half as tall as Helena had been, a woman stooped and twisted, leaning heavily on a gnarled staff. Only the face squinting up at her was vaguely familiar.

“Helena!” she cried again, trying not to show her dismay. She engulfed the woman in an embrace and hurried her inside.

“Where—when—” Alyce began in a frantic voice. But seeing how haggard her guest looked, she drew her quickly through the hall to the kitchen, where she stirred alive the last embers glowing in the fireplace, adding some kindling and a log. Her visitor slouched down onto a stool, wordless, staring at the hearth as flames began to lick and crackle, feeding on the fresh wood.

“Well,” Alyce said nervously, “I—I shall not ask, hear, or answer anything until you are warmed and fed, so … so you rest there.”

Swiftly, she cleared the table of its pile of books, a spindle, and a skein-winder in mid-yarn, and brought bread and cheese. With shaking hands, she poured brandywine into a goblet and pressed it on Helena, who took a gulp and collapsed in a fit of coughing.

“No, no, sip it
slowly
,” Alyce said, “Oh. Water. You are thirsty. Of course.” She poured some from a jug and placed the cup before Helena, who grabbed it and gulped it down. “Good, good. Drink, my dear. Here, more water. Then sip some brandywine, but slowly. It will warm you. Warmth, yes. Here.” She stripped off her heavy shawl and wrapped it around Helena.

“Soup. You need soup.” She ran to the larder, took down a kettle, and filled it with soup from a large crock, then rushed
back to the kitchen—Grimalken having reappeared to weave between her ankles in hope of getting fed. Swinging the spit to one side, Alyce hung the kettle on its hook over the fire. There she hovered, stirring it with a wooden spoon, hardly able to keep from gawking at her visitor’s haggard face.

Helena drew her stool closer to the stone-topped table and fell on the bread like a starving beast. While she ate, she watched her host through wide, frightened eyes, as if seeing a phantom. Alyce ladled the now steaming leek-and-mushroom soup into a bowl and placed it in front of her. Helena ate and drank rapidly, furtively, glancing over her shoulder, as if the food might be taken away at any moment.

Finally she slowed her pace, breaking her silence with one word:

“
Dana
?”

“Safe. Thriving. A bonny, bright, loving child. Almost ten and a half. I have told her many stories about her parents and her grandfather and how much you all loved her. Do you want to see her now? I can wake her—” Alyce was moving toward the door, but Helena stopped her.

“No. Later. Not while I be like—this. I only needed to know if she—if she be—” Helena broke down, able only to sit clutching a chunk of bread, tears raining down her face. Alyce ran to her side, knelt, and held her. The half-sentences that followed were fractured by sobs.

“—to know if she be
 … alive
. Safe. Fed. Ten summers old already and I never even … my nursing babe, my Dana. Sysok’s daughter. John’s grandchild. Came so early and so hard. You remember …”

“Yes, Helena. I remember the night she was born. She is safe and healthy and fine,” Alyce soothed.

Gradually the outburst subsided, and Helena was able to speak without gasping.

“I canna remember when last I wept. Years, mayhap. I dinna think I ever could weep again
.…
Ach, what have they done? What have they done to us?”

Alyce drew up a stool and sat beside her. Fire-lit, the women’s shadows were cast high on the walls, two giant house-spirits outlined against the stone of an old English dwelling. A lame wren fluttered down from a shelf, hopping about the table with a slight limp to peck at Helena’s crumbs. One wing was bandaged while its fragile bones, reset by Alyce, were knitting.

“Tell me.” Alyce placed her hands perfectly still in her lap by an act of will, readying herself for the news she had hungered for yet dreaded over ten years. “Tell me, Helena. Please.”

“What do ye know? Have any of the others—”

“I know almost nothing. I have made inquiries, countless times. All my inquiries, formal or private, have gone unanswered. It is as if a wall rose between me and Ireland. Finally,
last year, I gave up sending scouts. I continue to write to my son, but he … I know one thing only. I know that Will was captured and imprisoned for two months, but then released. He himself has never written. I am certain he dare not, even after all this time. Or perhaps my letters have never reached him. It was Roger Outlawe, his kinsman, who sent me word, years ago. But he too has not written since, no matter how often I have sent to him.… He wrote that Will had been fined—sentenced to pay for the cost of re-roofing St. Canice’s Cathedral all in lead—and also ordered to attend mass thrice a day.”

“Aye,” Helena said, “t’is true.”

“Apparently Roger did much to help Will, paying his fine and bringing family influence to bear. The sentence seemed fairly light—thanks be to The Mother—so I assumed that others, too, if they had been apprehended, also had … that is, I hoped.”

Helena closed her eyes at the realization of how little this woman knew. She felt unspeakably weary, and her breathing came hard.

But she opened her eyes, looked at Alyce, and began, as gently as she could.

“T’is true the Lord Justice and your son’s other relatives on his father’s side came to his aid. With great pots of money. But they did so only for him. T’is also true that in further penance, your Will was sent on a pilgrimage to Saint Thomas’s Shrine at Canterbury. Ye were not told about that?”

Alyce shook her head.

“At Canterbury … Your Grace, at Canterbury … he recanted. He renounced The Craft. He forswore everything he had ever done as a Wiccan.”

“Oh … well. That is to be expected. A public recantation hardly means—”

“Then your William was wed, M’am. To the Seneschal’s niece. The Bishop celebrated their nuptial mass at the Cathedral. They were permitted to take up residence at Kyteler Castle, but Lord William was allowed to preside only over the castle keep and nearest outlands. All other lands are confiscate.”

“All other … well, at least Will is alive. And at home, on his own ancestral land, even if there is less of it now.… I promised him that one day he would manage the estate, and be good at it, too. I am certain he secretly welcomes Wiccans and quietly holds Sabbats. I am certain he—”

“He holds no Sabbats, Lady Alyce. Him and his Lady be active in the Church, giving alms and observing saints’ feast days and proving they be devoted Christians. I heard tell the Covenstead is grown over in tall grasses and briars. Your son be lost to The Craft, my Lady. He
renounced
it. He renounced
you
. By name. Publicly. As apostate, heretic, and
damned
. T’is sure the real reason he has not written.”

A tiny muscle jerked in Alyce’s temple.

“He—was ever a dear lad, though … sometimes a bit clumsy. You remember? He must have had no choice. You know, he
was really so impressionable … I remember how he scampered after Robert de Bristol like a puppy, wanting to imitate whatever Robert did. He was too young to face this. And I myself told him … I told him we all must do
whatever
was necessary to survive this catastrophe, whatever was necessary to keep the land. So it is not his fault, you see, really, he merely—” She knew she was babbling, and she could not avoid seeing the pity in Helena’s eyes. Tears smarted, but she controlled them. “So. It would seem that the precious land
was
saved—well, a bit of it. If the precious son was lost, that was a too-costly exchange.… Still, the land may yet work its own magick on him, so that someday he will remember, he
will
realize—perhaps when he himself has children … do you know if—?”