The Burning Time (8 page)

The Bishop recoiled as if he had been struck.

“
Pagan
!” he spat in horror. He crossed himself. “You are a heathen Devil worshipper! Dear God, you state it openly! You
are
a witch!”

“Well, I do choose to live on the land. ‘Pagan’ is from
paganus
, for rural dweller—can you have forgotten your Latin? And ‘heathen’ is similar—meaning one who lives on the heath—though it comes from the Greek.”

“I know my Latin and my Greek!” he shouted, getting red in the face.

“But with all the languages you have studied—yes, you need not look so startled, I know something of your personal history—did your scholarly monks never teach you that the word ‘witch’ comes from the old Saxon ‘Wicca,’ which means ‘wise one’?”

“It is unseemly for a woman to—to so flaunt her learning! It is—”

“Have no fear. I shall not try to educate you further. I teach only where I am wanted and never inflict knowledge on the willfully ignorant, but—”

“Your
Grace
, I must
protest
! You insult my—” Yet she plowed on, a scythe leveling a field of grain.

“—but your accusation of ‘devil worshipper’! How absurd. The devil is more real to you priests than to any of us. Come, come, we really are quite simple. We celebrate the earth and the seasons, cherishing each moment, living not for the promise of some afterlife brandished from afar to make us more willing to tolerate suffering in this one. We dis
like
suffering, you see—which is why we do not deny the flesh as you do, and why the Irish have risen up more than once against tyrannical lords. But we are wise enough, usually, never to
seek
conflict. Leave us alone and we will leave you alone. Though that is not your way, is it, my lord? You even martyr your own followers if you catch them actually believing in the love you preach, do you not? Crucify them first, sanctify them later?”

The Bishop stared at her, mouth agape, incredulous.

“Ah, yes. That was quite a superb performance you put on for me just now, Bishop—concern for my marriage, my reputation, my soul.” She clapped her hands in mock applause. A manservant immediately appeared in the archway of the Great Hall, but she dismissed him with a wave, turning back to her guest. “Now let us discuss what your visit is really about. You consider us here in Eire ignorant dolts living in a
backwater. But you forget that I can read, and I have means. I employ personal scouts in England and on the Continent, a few trustworthy people who send me news in private reports. I keep up with your Holy Inquisition, you see. I know that your John XXII has issued new papal bulls calling for an outright war against those you accuse of sorcery. I know the Church has its own new blood-sport. I follow all your slaughters, wherein you hunt down and burn alive scores of people, mostly women and girls.”

“Not without provocation! For being hideous heretical—”

“For being healers or teachers or weavers, for questioning, for studying star constellations, for wishing to marry whomever they chose or perhaps not marry at all, for seeing visions, for having dark skin or a mole, for disobeying a father or husband or brother or even son, for being too smart or too simple, too rich or too poor, too plain or too pretty. What have women ever
done
to you but bear, nurse, raise, and love you? Does our existence so unman you that you feel compelled to imprison Divinity in a single shape—reflecting
yours
—and then destroy all who disagree? Is
that
not why your pope sent you to Ireland, Richard de Ledrede? To carry your plague of accusation and massacre here? To hunt witches? I see it in your face as if written across your forehead, like a stain.”

Energy rising in her from the passion of her argument, Alyce began to tremble. But she stood her ground.

“Hearken to me now, Papal Emissary. These people you call rabble have never hurt you or your church. When your priests threaten them, they peaceably
go
to your mass—but they still attend their own sabbats and hold to their own ways. They are poor, these peasants, but they are also not fools. I give you fair warning.
You shall not harm these people!
”

De Ledrede blinked hard and repeatedly, like someone trying to urge himself awake from a nightmare. The stone walls rang with Alyce Kyteler’s words, yet her tone grew even more combative.

“My lord Bishop, you are what we in the Craft call a
cowan
—an outsider—so you would do well to conduct yourself with humility. You are English
and
from the Papal Court, neither of which will gain you many friends here. We Irish have long memories. T’was only two hundred years ago Pope Adrian IV granted overlordship of Ireland to Henry II of England, and we have not forgotten. You are on an island where most people still worship many faces of Divinity, female
and
male, but above all, The Great Mother, She of One Thousand Names, Queen of Heaven and Earth. Here, the leaders of Her Craft are
women
. I am one.”

The Bishop tried to shake himself into action, but he did not know where to begin. Yet he could not just sit there, idiotically silent, as if in her thrall. The Church must be defended. Womanhood itself must be defended.

“The Queen of Heaven—” he sputtered.

“Oh yes,” she said wearily. “You are about to offer your queen of heaven as proof of how the Church respects women. Actually, one of the few good things about your religion
is
the mother of your god. But Mary is a more
 … domesticated
version of our Goddess, and you observe only two of Her three phases—the Virgin and the Mother. Be warned, it is unwise to ignore the Crone, the most powerful of all. In sum, we prefer our original to your imitation. Oh please, do stop looking so perturbed. You need not feel embarrassed that you poached the idea from us; yours is not the first religion to do so—nor, I imagine, will it be the last. I have given hospitality to Kabbalists fleeing from your flames on the Continent, and from these Jews I have learned of their ancient Goddess, also called by many names—Ishtar, Binah, Shekinah. So fret not. She who gives birth to everything belongs to all of us. You cannot steal a freely shared gift. But do not think you can steal our
souls
, or put our bodies to the fire you have so devoutly carried here from France. Best to return to Avignon or Rome or wherever you keep your pope these days, Bishop, and tell him to leave the Irish in peace. And return to John and tell him to leave
me
in peace. There. I have finished. Now you may go.”

The Bishop of Ossory staggered to his feet, edged past where Alyce stood glowering, and scuffled toward the archway in furious silence. Only at the threshold did he pause and
turn, groping for the right remark to dignify his exit. But he became distracted—unable to help being impressed again at how the high-vaulted ceiling rose firm on thick stone walls around the Great Hall’s vastness, how the room’s shadows were cornered by the gleam of torches flaring from bronze bowls and from creamy fat candles guttering in the tall stands of polished silver. The harridan standing in the Hall was unkempt, mad, and heretical—but she was also the richest landholder in this and all the surrounding counties. And she was dangerously intelligent.

With supreme discipline, he marshalled his features into a mask of diplomacy. It was time to exert his own rank by addressing her intimately, as an equal.

“My dear Alyce—” he ventured, “let us not part as—”

“
Your Grace
, the most noble
Dame
Alyce Kyteler to you, Bishop. Daughter of Celtic Queens, Healer of the Sick, High Priestess of the Craft of the Wise. That is how you may address us.”

De Ledrede’s composure deserted him. This
she
-wolf, he thought, this … he cast about for a reply sufficiently withering to trump hers. Instead, he felt the blood seethe to his head, and heard himself swearing through clenched teeth.

“By God, you will regret the words you dared speak today, woman. The Bible commands ‘Thou shalt not suffer a Witch to live!’—Exodus XXII, verse 18! So
you
be warned, Madam—you
and
your serf followers!”

She did not flinch. Rather, she took a step toward him.

“Actually, that phrase is likely a mistranslation of the injunction ‘Thou shalt not suffer a
poisoner
to live’—but perhaps you do not read Greek that well?”

He felt his dignity shatter. Worse, in its place he experienced a bitter admiration for his opponent. At this moment, he would trade his eternal soul for the right riposte to devastate her. His diplomacy dwindling into honesty, he surprised himself by speaking aloud his real thoughts.

“You hold me in disdain, Madam, that much is clear. Yet for my part, I think it a pity you choose to squander the bounty of a mind so learned as yours on superstition, sorcery, and cheap, self-flattering beneficence to the serfs for whom you claim to speak. You profess to save their grubby little bodies while I profess to save their scruffy little souls. I wonder. Which of us, do you think, patronizes them less?”

For a moment, they stared deep into one another, and he thought he saw her blanch.

Then she clapped her hands again and the manservant reappeared.

“The Papal Emissary is leaving us. Show him out,” she commanded, adding, as if in an afterthought, “Oh, by the by, my lord Bishop. I can see that you suffer from dyspepsia and choler. Chamomile leaves brewed as tea, sipped thrice daily, would ease that, you know—and cider vinegar mixed with
honey at meals instead of wine. Chewing fresh mint would also comfort the stomach, and might sweeten your breath.”

Unable to determine whether she was being condescendingly solicitousness or deliberately humiliating, and feeling further diminished by either choice, he wheeled and stomped through the archway in a blur of purple robes and purple face. After him drifted Alyce Kyteler’s now calmer, almost bemused voice, with her maddeningly relentless prescriptions.

“Hulloo? Bishop? A mild tincture of wormwood flowers—only a few drops a day—would lessen the indigestion and all that wind you break. Also, a less rich diet? And some physical exertion would certainly …”

The bang of a far door and the subsequent clash of gates told her he was now beyond hearing.

She looked down at Prickeare, fastidiously licking his left front paw, then at Greedigut, who had folded her legs under herself and settled down for a doze in protest at this tedious human conversation.

“I,” Alyce announced to her companions, “am in dire need of a nap.”

Hurrying from the Hall, she sought and found Petronilla, instructed her to take charge of that afternoon’s planned berry-picking for the holy-day pies, and added that she herself would oversee the other Lugnasad tasks later. Then, wearily, she climbed the stairs to her tower.

Once in her room, the lady of the manor kicked off her sandals and sent them skimming across the floor. Then she flung herself down on the bed fully dressed, groaned once, and instantly fell asleep.

DURING THE WEEKS
that followed the Bishop’s visit, Lady Alyce was so busy that she all but forgot him and his threats of revenge. The keep of Kyteler Castle was a village in itself, and every corner of the estate was being cleaned—from turret to stables, from the central castle buildings to the free-standing peasant cottages in the adjacent fields. On the chance that it might rain on Lugnasad and force the celebration indoors, all the castle rooms and halls had been thoroughly swept, washed down, and sprinkled with clover and fresh rushes; the tapestries had been lugged outside and beaten free of dust, then brushed with care before being rehung on the scrubbed stone walls.

In the dairy, fresh butter was being churned, and crocks of potted cream were being stocked in the unused dungeons that Alyce had converted years earlier into cooling pantries. In the brewhouse, the air was heady with the scent of malt and hops from fresh beer being steeped and golden ale recently hauled up in kegs from the cellars below, where it had been mellowing along with the elderberry wine that still waited down there,
chilling. In the larder, where the winter meats were aged, the bacon cured, and the catch of fish from the nearby River Nore salted down, the usually full salting tubs had been given over to the dipping of special candles for the Ritual, as no flesh—fowl, fish, or mammal—would be handled or eaten during this Sabbat or the days just preceding.

The bakehouse was steamy with aromas of cinnamon and honey, as batch after batch of crescent pastries—plump, dense, crushed-almond delicacies—emerged from the ovens and were set to cool. Alongside them rested still-warm loaves of parslied oatbread heaped in crisp piles on the worktables, ready to be carved into trencher-platters. Since Lugnasad was the festival of grain, a variety of breads were being mixed, kneaded, and baked. There would be barley cakes and wheat crisps, oat fritters, rye muffins, and bran pie-crusts. This Sabbat honoured Lugh, the ancient Celtic Sun-God who in his many-staged life cycle was child, brother, and consort to the Goddess; he was the Green Man who added his powers of fertility to hers to ensure that the grains grew tall.

All the inhabitants of the manor had been bustling about for days, preparing for the Sabbat.

Henry Faber, the blacksmith, had stopped by, together with his wife, also named Alyce and herself a smith as well as a skilled craftswoman at working with precious metals. They had come from their forge to fetch Alyce Kyteler’s ceremonial
dagger, the Athame, for sharpening and polishing, and to deliver a cask of their specially steeped vinegar for burnishing the pewter wine flagons.

Alyce’s son William and his best friend Robert de Bristol had finally finished stacking ash and pear logs in tottery pyramids inside the shed for drying, later to be hauled out to the Covenstead for the Sabbat bonfire. That task, like every other for which the two lads were responsible, had taken twice as long as necessary, because the performance of each chore apparently required much jesting and argument about which of them young Maeve, Will Payn’s bonny black-haired daughter, preferred. Then, under Alyce’s watchful eye, the two reluctant lads had been assigned to wash the ceremonial red garments to be worn at Lugnasad. The linens had to be boiled, the light wools scrubbed with lye cakes, and the silks soaked overnight in warm white wine and water. Already some of the garments flashed, brightening and bellying with the wind—as tunics and kirtles, shirts, cloaks, gowns, and leggings danced on the drying ropes—a spectrum of scarlet and murray, ruby and vermillion, maroon and cherry.