Morach shrugged her shoulders and tied the twists of powder with a thread. 'I think you will,' she said in an undertone. 'And I think you feel your power in your fingertips, and taste it on your tongue. Don't you, my Alys? When you are alone on the moor and the wind is blowing softly, don't you know you can call it? Bid it go where you will? Blow health or sickness? Wealth or poverty? When you were on your knees in the abbey, couldn't you feel the power around you and in you? I can feel the power in me – aye, and I can feel it in you too. The old abbess saw it clearly enough. She wanted it for her God! Well, now your power is freed again and you can use it where you will.'
Alys shook her head. 'No,' she said determinedly. 'I feel nothing. I know nothing. I have no power.'
'Look at the fire,' Morach said instantly. 'Look at the fire.'
Alys looked towards it, the banks of badly cut peat glowing orange, and the burning log lying on the embers.
'Turn it blue,' Morach whispered. Alys felt the thought of blue flames in her mind, paused for a moment with the picture of blue flames before her inner eye. The flames bobbed, flickered, and then they burned a steady bright periwinkle blue. The embers glowed like a summer sky, the ashes were a deep dark violet.
Morach laughed delightedly, Alys snapped her gaze away from the fire and the flame spurted and flared orange again.
Alys crossed herself hastily. 'Stop it, Morach,' she said irritably. 'Stupid tricks for frightening children. As if I would be fooled by them after a childhood with you and your cheating arts.'
Morach shook her head. 'I touched nothing,' she said easily. 'It was your gaze, and your mind, and your power. And you can run and run from it as fast as you ran from your holy life. But the two of them will keep pace with you forever, Alys. In the end you will have to choose.'
'I am a nun,' Alys said through her teeth. 'There will be no magic and dark skills for me. I do not want them. I do not want you. And I do not want Tom. Hear me now, Morach, as soon as I can leave here, I will go. I swear to you that if I could leave this very night, I would be gone. I want none of it. None of it. If I could, I swear that I would ride away from this place now and never come back.'
'Hush!' Morach said suddenly. Alys froze into silence and the two women strained their ears to listen.
'Someone outside the door,' Morach hissed. 'What can you hear?'
'A horse,' Alys whispered. 'No, two horses.' In a quick gesture Morach tipped the pot of water on to the embers of the turf fire. The glow died at once, the room filled with thick smoke. Alys clapped her hand over her mouth so as not to choke.
The banging on the little wooden door was like thunder. The two women shrank together, their eyes fixed on the entrance as if the door would splinter and fall apart. Someone was hammering on it with a sword hilt.
'I'll open it,' Morach said. In the darkness her face was as white as a drowned woman's. 'You get yourself upstairs and hide under my pallet. If it's the witch-taker it'll likely be for me, you might escape. No one will listen to Tom's wife without others to speak against you; and no one has died this week. Go on, wench, it's the only chance I can give you.'
Alys did not hesitate, she fled towards the ladder and upwards like a shadow.
'I'm coming,' Morach said in a harsh grumbling voice. 'Leave an old woman's door on the hinge, can't you?'
She checked that Alys was hidden above, and then swung the wooden latch to open the door.
The two tall men on horseback filled the skyline like giants. Around their shoulders the stars shone and the dark streams of cloud raced past their looming heads.
'We want the young wise woman,' the man said. His face was muffled against the cold, he was armed only with a cudgel and a short stabbing dagger. 'The new young wise woman. Get her.'
'I'm not rightly sure…' Morach started, her voice a plaintive whine. 'She is not…'
The man reached down and grabbed the shawl at Morach's throat and lifted her up till her face was near his. The horse shifted uneasily and Morach gurgled and choked, her feet kicking.
'Lord Hugh at the castle orders it,' he said. 'He is ill. He wants the young wise woman and the spell against the vomiting. Get her, and no harm will come of it. He will pay you. If you hide her I shall burn this stinking shack around your ears with the door nailed up, and you inside.'
He dropped Morach back on her feet, she stumbled back against the door frame, and turned back towards the cottage, half closing the door.
Alys was looking down from the sleeping platform, her eyes huge in her white face. 'I cannot…' she said.
Morach snatched the shawl from her own shoulders, spread it on the hearth and heaped into it handfuls of herbs, a black-backed prayer-book, four of the twists of powder, a shiny lump of quartz tied up with a long scrap of ribbon, and the pestle and mortar.
'You'll have to try or they'll kill us both,' she said bleakly. 'It's a chance, and a good chance. Others have been cured of the sickness. You'll have to take the gamble.'
'I could run,' Alys said. 'I could hide on the moor for the night.'
'And leave me? I'd be dead by dawn,' Morach said. 'You heard him. He'll burn me alive.'
'They don't want you,' Alys said urgently. 'They would not do that. You could tell them I'm spending the night in Bowes. I could hide by the river, in one of the caves, while they're gone to look for me.'
Morach looked at her hard. 'You've a bitter taste,' she said scowling. 'For all your lovely face you've a bitter taste, Alys. You'd run, wouldn't you? And leave me to face them. You'd rather I died than you took a chance.'
Alys opened her mouth to deny it but Morach thrust the shawl into her hands before she could speak.
'You would gamble with my death, but I will not,' Morach said harshly, pushing her towards the door. 'Out you go, my girl, I'll come to the castle when I can, to get news of you. See what you can do. They grow herbs there, and flowers. You may be able to use your nun's arts as well as mine.'
Alys hefted the bundle. Her whole face was trembling. 'I cannot!' she said. 'I have no skills, I know nothing! I grew a few herbs, I did as I was ordered at the abbey. And your arts are lies and nonsense.'
Morach laughed bitterly. The man outside hammered on the door again. 'Come, wench!' he said. 'Or I will smoke you out!'
'Take my lies and nonsense, and your own ignorance, and use it to save your skin,' Morach said. She had to push Alys towards the door. 'Hex him!' she hissed, as she got the girl over the threshold. 'You have the power, I can feel it in you. You turned the flame blue with your thought. Take your powers and use them now, for your own sake! Hex the old lord into health, Alys, or you and I are dead women.'
Alys gave a little moan of terror and then the man on the horse leaned down and gripped her under both arms and hauled her up before him.
'Come!' he said to his companion and they wheeled their horses around, the hooves tearing up the vegetable patch. Then they were gone into the darkness, and the wind whipped away the noise of the gallop.
Morach waited a while at the cottage doorway, ignoring the cold and the smoke from the doused fire swirling thickly behind her, listening to the silence now that Alys had gone.
'She has power,' she said to the night sky, watching the clouds unravelling past the half-moon. 'She swore that she would go, and in that moment the horses came for her and she was gone. What will she wish for next? What will she wish for next?'
Three
Alys had never been on a galloping horse and she clung to the pommel of the saddle before her, thrown and jolted by the horse's great rolling strides. The wind rushed into her face and the hard grip of the man behind her was that of a jailer. When she looked down she could see the heaving shoulders of the great horse, when she looked forward she saw its tossing mane. They went over the little stone bridge from the moorland road to Castleton with sparks flying upwards from the horses' hooves, and clattered up the cobbled street between the dozen stone-built houses at the same breakneck speed. Not a light showed at any of the shuttered windows, even the smaller houses, set back from the main street on earth roads, and the little shanties behind them on waste ground were dark and silent.