The Burning Time (3 page)

“And … poverty and chastity … and faith, surely, my lord?” Father Brendan was not going to be caught out twice on doctrinal familiarity.

“I am a Franciscan, Father Brendan, so I know all about ‘poverty, chastity, and obedience.’ Poverty is dreary. The poor have no power to help humanity; they cannot even help themselves. Chastity … well, yes. But that is no great hardship; personally, I have always lived for my work. Poverty and chastity are greatly overrated virtues. Nor is ‘the greatest of these’ love. It is obedience.”

Father Brendan blinked, unsure whether to be relieved by such frankness or appalled by such cynicism.

“As for faith,” the Bishop continued, “let us be honest. Faith manifests itself, after all the flummery is over, in
deeds
. Deeds bring us back to obedience. Do you see?” Richard de Ledrede smiled again.

Emboldened, Father Brendan asked, “And you, my lord? Dare I inquire as to the road that brought you to the cloth?”

The smile faded.

“That is a long tale. Some other time, perhaps.”

“And do you never miss your own homeland, England?” the younger man persisted, trying to recapture the moment of warmth.

“Hardly,” his superior barked, “Cold. Wet. Populated with almost as many fey eccentrics as Ireland. Now
Avignon—that
is what I miss. You must do whatever you can to visit the Papal Court there one day, Father. It is an amazement. It is …” The Bishop’s gaze grew distant with longing. Then he shook himself back to the present. “Look,” he commanded, “Off there. The shore-skiffs are approaching. We have dropped anchor. I must prepare to disembark.
In nomine Patri …
” Mumbling a blessing and making a brusque sign of the cross, he dismissed his priest, turned, and strode off to descend below deck. Father Brendan, startled by such abruptness, found himself abandoned. Then, genuflecting quickly to the Bishop’s back, he also hurried off, his mind awhirl in anxieties.

Soon the morning was given over to scramble and shouting and rope ladders being dropped over the side and trunks being heaved up from the hold. As the passenger of highest rank, the Papal Emissary was helped to descend, gingerly, into the first dinghy, where a leathery-skinned oarsman sat waiting to ferry him to shore. Once wedged in the small skiff, his hands clutching the sides, his eyes squeezed shut against the damnably lifting and dipping horizon, the Bishop tried to deflect his rising nausea by concentrating on the task ahead. Father Brendan might prove a useful ally, once that youthful idealism was tempered; so they were never fools in Avignon, after all, not even the bureaucrats. He peeked for a second at the detested shore as it drew nearer, then clamped his eyes shut again, recalling the first time he had ever seen it.
Back then, he had been so pitifully enthusiastic to be the Papal Emissary, innocently believing he was being sent to Ireland because of his persuasive powers. Now he knew better. It had been, if anything, a punishment for his presumption.

The dinghy’s hull scraped pebbles and sand as the boat heaved. They had arrived.

The Bishop clenched his jaw. This time he would prove his enemies at Court wrong. When next they recalled him, he would make certain it was a permanent recall—for his ceremonial investiture with a cardinal’s crimson hat. He stepped resolutely out of the dinghy, reeled for a moment in the surf, then marched up the beach toward the waiting horses. His nausea was already beginning to recede and he was actually hungry. He would bring them a second coming of Saint Patrick, by God.

Excusing himself to stay and oversee the unloading of the Bishop’s wardrobe trunks, and promising he would rendezvous with his new master at the Wexford Inn, Father Brendan Canice had remained a discreet distance behind, boarding the third dinghy. So Bishop Richard de Ledrede never saw his tutor and aide step ashore, half-kneel as if to re-lace his boot, and swiftly, discreetly, kiss the blessed soil of Eire.

DAME ALYCE KYTELER
ignored the silver snuffer on her bedside table, pinched out the candle flame between calloused fingertips, and slid in under her goosedown coverlet. Slowly, the Lady of Kyteler Castle stretched her left leg over to one edge of the big bed and her right leg over to the other, encountering no obstacles in either direction. She wiggled her toes, cooing small warbles of delight. What
bliss
to sleep alone, after all the husbands. No elbow to intrude into her ribs, no sag to upset the balance of the sweetgrass reed mattress, no icy feet pressed against her calves, no grunts and snores rupturing her sleep.

The bed curtains were drawn back, so Alyce could lean against her goosefeather-stuffed cushions and look out through the narrow window in her turret bedroom. Sir John le Poer considered his wife quite mad for, among other things, having chosen to sleep in a room with a window. Sensible persons, he insisted, knew perfectly well that night air brought evil humours and disease, excellent reason for not
having windows. Castle windows, John had more than once lectured her, existed solely for military purposes—as sentinel lookouts, and, if besieged, for aiming crossbows and lobbing arrows through. In response, Alyce had shrugged that military purposes were boring and that fresh air was good for you. Besides, the window was small enough, barely a slit, although during the weeks of Mí na Nollag—particularly near the Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year—even this slit of a window provoked gusty dreams, and that despite the tapestry she had hung to cover it during the cold months. How splendid it would be, she thought, hoisting herself up on one elbow, to work a magick beyond her own considerable powers and create an invisible panel or wall that might keep out the cold yet let in the view. Or, failing that, she thought more practically, persuade the Cathedral masons to divulge their secret for forging those leaded, rigid, colour tapestries set high in church walls, tapestries through which the light glowed. Not that a glimpse of the star-jeweled night sky through her own window wasn’t worth a frosty draft or two.…

But at present none of that mattered, anyway. It was the month of Júil. She could lie back down in the warm summer darkness and watch the sliver of a new moon glowing through cloud wisps in a celestial game of hide-and-seek. No chilly drafts—and no complaints from John. Savoring the pure luxury of it, she stretched again, gurgling a low laugh of pleasure.

The young moon would be big-bellied and full in time for the coming holy-day, a happy coincidence to make the next sabbat even more distinctive than it already was: the Festival of Grains and First Fruits that the Druids had named Lugnasad, now also called Lammas. Lugnasad, one of the four great Cross Quarter Days of the year, was only a little more than three weeks away, in fact—a realization that jolted Alyce to start mentally listing all the work yet to be done. Pear and ash wood to be cut and dried for the bonfire, new candles to be dipped, chervil seed and pennyroyal to be pounded for incense, kirn dollies to be braided, crescent cakes to be baked from the thousand-year-old recipe … and all this in addition to the normal round of seasonal tasks: the first of the summer crops to be harvested, the fresh catch from the River Nore to be salted and dried, the—

Alyce sat up with a start as Prickeare, her plump but distinguished elderly cat, landed on the bed with a thud. Prickeare, whose charcoal grey coat was so densely plush it appeared sable black in most light, was performing the ritual he usually observed around this time of night: abandoning his basket for the company of his pet human’s toes. Now he circled his own tail, then settled down with a possessive mew on his mistress’s ankle.

“Hullo, Lightfoot.” Alyce greeted him by one of the many names she used for her beloved Familiar—this particular one
dating back to when he was a lean young catling—as she did so rearranging her legs to make room for this sizeable living pillow that had already begun to purr. The small earthquake of bedclothes erupting from Alyce having shifted position disturbed Prickeare not a whit; he offered a delicate, coral-tongued yawn as he rode the quilt’s ripples and waves like an accomplished sailor wobbling back aboardship after a tipsy revel.

“Been drinking again, eh?” Alyce teased. “For shame, you old sot—
Oh!
By the pope’s boils!” she swore loudly to the cat. “The wine! I never finished adding orris powder to the mulling vats! Ah, and I also forgot to wrap sage-leaf layers around those five cheese wheels ageing in the dairy!” Now she was irked at herself. But any state of irritability soon brought to mind her husband, an always reliable target for blame.

“Pah,” she spat, “All this ado over John’s tantrums and theatrics … I
can
not let it go on distracting me this way! What a nuisance that man was!” Plumping her pillow with a few vicious jabs, she grunted, turned on her side, and tried to settle down again. Prickeare placidly ignored these agitations, while his mistress tried forcing her mind back toward the sabbat and more agreeable thoughts.

How jubilant Kilkenny folk always are at a warm-weather sabbat, she mused. To be sure, during the winter months it was cozy to have the feasting and dancing indoors—torches aflame, thick candles sputtering, Ieul log roaring in the huge
hearth. But there was something … 
deeper
about holding the Rituals outdoors at the Covenstead—that circle of massive stones called the Cromlech out on the heath, centered around the dolmen stone—that the Old People had assembled and raised, back before memory. Was it because the Ancient Ones even before
them
had brought the Rituals from a legendary far-off southern isle where the weather was always warm? No matter. Even on this rocky northern island one could celebrate the mystery of new tendrils upgreening through the earth’s thaw; one could practice the magick of spinning out giddy chain-dances in summer; one could sit spellbound to watch bonfire flames—red edging orange fluttering into blue—race each other up toward the Moon, hot suitors in love with Her distant, cool, white shadow.

“ ‘No other law but love She knows …’ ” Alyce quoted to herself, smiling into the darkness to feel her faith freshen through her like a sudden summer breeze, leaving a sense of relief and generalized affection in its wake. The relief was for John’s departure. The affection was for her serfs—the men, women, and children of her estate—the people with whom she preserved The Old Ways. There was affection, too, for herself: pride. She was proud of the aristocratic blood sent pulsing through her veins by generations of Kytelers; of her beautiful, fertile lands; of her beloved Eire, the isle sacred to and safe in The Old Ways. Then, too, she felt she had earned
the right to be proud, by her own actions. She was proud that she was a skilled healer, and that she did not rule her serfs as other nobles did, but showed generosity to her peasants and cared for their health and well-being. She was proud that her peasants and servants regarded her, she knew, with grateful affection.

Not that she was overly indulgent. She maintained a distance to preserve her authority. But Alyce knew that the peasants’ greatest concern beyond their hardscrabble lives was for the future of their children, and it was here she was aware of being most respected, for two reasons. First, she was that rarity, a woman of learning. Second, she had for years been teaching the peasant children to read and write—beginning with the older ones, who in turn would teach the younger, and sometimes even tutor their own parents. The practice was, she knew, a flirtation with danger, but as such it was a thrilling, guilty pleasure. Townsmen and district gentry thought it an outrage that serfs might become lettered; not many townsfolk and gentrymen could read or write themselves. In idle moments, especially after a trip into Kilkenny Town, Alyce would find herself pondering how much of a real threat their surreptitious grumblings might one day present.

Now she flopped over onto her stomach, trying to dismiss such worries. Public opinion had never before stopped her, she reminded herself, so there was no reason to start being
concerned with it now. Whoever hungered to learn—nobles, peasants, women—should be permitted to learn. For that matter, Alyce knew that in some of her serfs the hunger itself had to be fostered. There were those whose minds had been famished lifelong, so that the slightest whiff of appetite or hope seemed suffocated by despair. Patient, steady coaxing had to be exercised to elicit a gleam of curiosity in their pain-dulled eyes. But the children, ah … they were different.

She burrowed deeper into her bed linen, her thoughts careening back to the work that needed to be done. Soon it would be tupping season, time to put the bucks in with the does and the rams in with the ewes for mating that would produce next spring’s kids and lambs. For that matter, she needed to have her women card more sheared fleece for wool so that she could finish her spinning. In the morning she
must
remember about the orris root. And the cheeses. And sketch out a design for the flowered garlands of the sabbat dancers. Which reminded her that she must speak to William, and find a tactful way to suggest that he should not lead the Spiral Dance this sabbat. The last time he’d done so, he had wound everyone up in a mess of confusion, with much kicking of shins and clonking of heads. Dear Will. Her son never
could
remember the difference between dancing deosil, or sunwise, and widdershins, the counter-direction. It worsened when he became excited—certainly an expectable emotion at a
sabbat—so that he tended to call out an instruction to circle one way while he blithely hopped off the opposite course, yanking baffled dancers after him in a lurching chain that soon collapsed into a heap of crushed garlands, wildly waving arms and legs, and mutual hilarity.

My own sweet boy, Alyce reflected, realizing anew that at sixteen Will was no longer a boy; he was older than she had been when first she’d been betrothed. “How much younger he seems than
I
was then,” she murmured, silently thanking The Great Mother that Will showed few signs of taking after his father, her first husband. For the hundredth time, Alyce hurried her imagination past wondering what life might have been like had her child been a daughter.