The Wise Woman

Fourteen

Next day Alys could not get away to the stables until just before noon. Lady Catherine had an ache in her back and ordered Alys to rub it with oils and essences. Alys worked on the broad fleshy back with mounting impatience. Lady Catherine, prone and sighing with contentment, would not let her go. Alys' hands were hard, unloving on the other woman's flesh, drained of their healing magic by Alys' spite. She had to restrain an urge to pinch. After she had finished rubbing in the oil, Catherine's smooth white back was striped with red.

'That was good, Alys,' she said, in a rare moment of contentment.

Alys curtsied, collected her oils into her basket and shot from the room like a tom-cat. She half threw her basket at Morach and fled for the stairs, down the winding stony treads, across the hall, out of the kitchen door and around to the stables.

It was no good. Hugo had left. The simple lad who worked with the horses smiled his empty smile at her.

'Where is the young lord?' she asked abruptly. 'Was he here?'

'Gone,' the boy said. 'Long, long gone.'

Alys shivered and snapped her fingers under cover of her sleeves to recall her from a shadow of superstition.

'Long, long gone,' said the lad again.

Alys turned and went back to the castle. The stall for Hugo's favourite horse was empty, he had waited for her only a moment. She ached with resentment at his leaving so readily; and disappointment that he could so easily go. Alys knew that if she had been waiting for him she would have been there all day.

She saw him at dinner at midday and he gave her a rueful grin and a wink but they did not speak. In the dying light of the afternoon he took his horse and his great deerhounds down the valley, riding fast by the flooding river, and she did not see him again until suppertime. Alys sat at the little table with the other women and watched the back of Hugo's neck where the dark hair curled. She imagined the feel of that silky hair beneath her fingers and how it would be to grip the nape of his neck in one hand. She felt as if she could grip him and shake him with desire – and with anger too. They left the supper table early and Hugo joined them in the ladies' gallery.

'My back aches again,' Catherine said faintly and Alys watched as she leaned on Hugo's arm and walked slowly into her bedroom. As the door closed Alys' keen eyes saw Hugo's arm go around his wife's waist. Alys waited for him to bid her goodnight and come out again to Alys as she sat with the other women at the fireside. The door stayed shut. Alys felt Morach's mocking black eyes smiling at her. There was no sound from Catherine's bedroom.

'Aye, he's very tender all of a sudden,' Eliza said, her mouth muffled by a thread of embroidery silk. 'There'll be no more slaps and curses now she's in foal.'

Alys looked towards the door again. It stayed shut. 'He's bound to try to keep her sweet,' she said unwillingly. 'He has to have an heir, Catherine has to have her way – at least in these early months.'

Morach hawked and spat into the fire. 'He likes it,' she said contemptuously. 'He'll like the taste of her when she's big with his child. He'll like the thought of a baby in her belly. He'll like her breasts getting fatter and the richness of her body. Men are just babies themselves. He'll suckle from her breasts and roll on her round belly like a new-born infant himself. He's not a man right now, he's a little boy with a new toy.'

Eliza giggled. Alys said nothing. The women sewed in silence, each of them craning their heads to hear what passed in the next room.

The door opened. 'My lady is tired,' Hugo said. He looked towards Morach. 'You or Alys, prepare her a tisane to help her sleep. She needs her rest.'

Morach nodded towards Alys. Hugo smiled at her, one of his open-hearted sweet smiles. 'Thank you, Alys,' he said pleasantly. 'You can bring it in when it is ready.' Then he turned on his heel and went back to his wife.

When the tisane was ready Alys gave it to Ruth to take in. She waited by the fire to see if Hugo came out again. He did not. That night, for the first time in their long, loveless marriage, he stayed in his wife's bed all night long. For the first time in her life Catherine slept with her head on her husband's shoulder and her brown hair tangled across his chest.

Alys sat by the fire with the others and sewed. When she went to bed, with Morach's warm bulk beside her, she did not sleep. She watched the arrow-slit of silver light walk from one end of the chamber to the other as the moon nonchalantly traversed the sky. Alys lay on her back, her eyes open, seeing nothing, thinking nothing. She endured jealousy, as she might endure an attack of deadly ague, stoically; sickened to the heart, saying nothing.

The weather itself was against her, confining her to the castle. March was wild and full of rainstorms and flurries of thick wet snow which clogged doorways and blew into the west-facing windows, leaving puddles on the stone floors. The sky seemed lower than usual and it was dark every afternoon. The castle seemed to shrink in on itself, besieged by winter.

Alys was never alone. Morach shared her bed at night, Lady Catherine ordered her to the ladies' gallery very often, and the old lord took to sitting with them in the afternoons, so Alys could not escape to his chamber in the round tower. Hugo rode out every day, going further and further afield, as restless as a mewed falcon. They heard stories of his adventures: of an alehouse which had been a nest of poachers burned down and the men and women turned out on to the snow-driven moor, of a pitched battle on the highway with some beggars, of a small riot in a bawdy house with mummery and masquers and lechery in the street.

'He is a rogue!' the old lord said proudly when he heard of Hugo's ready violence.

Alys did not seek Hugo and neither did he summon her. A deep secret gulf of silence had opened up between them. She did not waylay him on the stairs, or even attempt to catch his eye when he was sitting with Catherine and her ladies. Alys waited, like the living water beneath the frozen ice of the river, for better times.

He was gentle with Catherine and she, eating well, sleeping well, attended by her ladies and popular with her father-in-law, gleamed with satisfaction. Hugo lay with her once or twice, and though the women listened they heard no screams of pain and pain-shot pleasure. On those two nights Alys sat up all night by the arrow-slit, watching over the white landscape on the other side of the river, chilled to the bone by the icy wind which blew off the high moor. All night she stared out over the desert of snow, white-faced and wide-eyed as a barn owl, seeing nothing. In the morning Morach exclaimed at the ice of her hands and the deep violet shadows in folds of skin beneath her eyes.

Towards the end of the month of March, Hugo came back from his ride, found his father in the ladies' gallery and asked him for permission to go away to visit his friends in Newcastle. Alys froze and kept her eyes on her sewing. Catherine was all smiling interest.

'Of course you must go!' she said confidently. 'We will be well enough here! Your father will guard us and Morach and Alys will keep me well!'

Hugo smiled at them all. Alys felt his eyes on her and did not look up.

'Then I shall go with a clear conscience and come back with a light heart,' he said pleasantly. 'And you and all your ladies must make me a list of things to bring you from the city.'

'I should like some silk,' Catherine said consideringly. 'And David will certainly need tea and spices.'

'I shall ride like a pedlar,' Hugo said smiling. 'Alys, can I bring anything for you?'

Alys looked up, her face indifferent. 'No thank you, my lord,' she said coolly. 'I want for nothing.'

He nodded. The other women asked for little fairings, coloured silk ribbons for a gown, a purse of spices. Hugo wrote down their requests seriously and tucked the list inside his doublet.

I'll leave at daybreak,' he said. 'So I'll bid you farewell now.' He took Catherine's hand and kissed it. 'Stay well, my dear,' he said. No one could have been deaf to the tenderness in his voice. 'Stay well for the sake of my son, and for yourself.'

Alys got quietly to her feet and left the room. Pausing outside the door she heard his farewells to the others and then she went down to the lobby between the stairs and the entrance to the round tower where he must pass.

He came light-footed down the stairs, whistling.

'Alys!' he said, as she stepped forward into the light. 'I'm glad you waited for me.'

There was a brief silence between them as Hugo assessed Alys' stony face.

'I am sorry,' he said frankly. 'I know these days have been hard on you. As hard for you as for me. I've seen you growing pale and thin, Alys, and it has cut deep into me. I need to be away, I need to be away from here, Alys. I am sick of these wintry days and these long evenings with women. I know you are in pain, watching Catherine as you do. I know how it must hurt you.'

Alys turned her head away from him, but her cold hand gripped his.

'I have to endure this,' Hugo said urgently. 'Catherine is my wife, she is carrying my son, I have no choice, Alys. And I cannot long for you and look for you, and snatch little moments with you. I want to be either with you or without you; this half-life of occasional desire is worse than nothing.'

Alys nodded unwillingly.

'I need to put some leagues between this place and myself,' Hugo said urgently. 'Enmeshed between one duty and another I feel myself being pulled a thousand different ways at once. Some days I feel I want to run away!'

'You are fortunate in having the freedom to run,' Alys said drily.

He smiled at her. 'Don't scratch at me,' he said softly.

'I am going away to think, Alys. When I come back I shall tell my father that you and I must have some time together. We can make arrangements. We can find somewhere for you to live in comfort near by, where I can be with you. I am going away to think of how it can be managed. Wait for me.'

Alys turned her pale, unsmiling face towards him. 'I have to wait for you,' she said grudgingly. 'There is nowhere else for me to go. I love you.'

He beamed at that, but there was no joy in either Alys' face or her voice. 'It seems I am just a woman like any other,' she said sulkily. 'Neither your vows to me nor my magic have kept me safe from this pain.'

'Sweetheart… 'he started and drew her closer to him. Then the door above them on the stairs opened and he dropped her hand and went by without another word. Alys looked after him with a desire so sharp that it felt like hatred.

In the long month he was away he wrote every week to his father and it was Alys' task to read his scrawled letters. He spoke of his friend's trading company – Van Esselin and Son – and his plans of expansion. He spoke of Lord Newcastle's son, and nights of roistering along the waterfront. He wrote well and the old lord and Alys would sometimes laugh together in the middle of a letter, when Hugo wrote of a struggle which ended in the River Tyne, or a mountebank on a street corner with a dancing bear. His letters made him vivid in Alys' mind and she wanted to hear his voice tell his stories, and see that sudden smile warm and lighten his dark face. She forgot the weeks of longing and looking for him and the nightly walk of moonlight across her bedroom wall. She forgot the sour taste of curdled desire, and the passion which felt like hatred, not love. Instead she laughed with his father and thought – without consciously thinking – if he and I were married, it would be like this.

The old lord would wipe his eyes and tell Alys to read the section again, and then he would laugh again. 'He's a rogue!' he exclaimed. 'But there's no one in the world who could resist him! Don't you think so, Alys?'

And Alys, alone in the tower room with the father of the man she loved, would lean back against his chair and nod. 'Irresistible,' she said.

The old lord tweaked one of her curls which tumbled from the back of her hood. 'You hot for him still?' he asked.

Alys nodded, turned her head and smiled at him. 'I love him,' she said. 'And he loves me.'

The old lord sighed, his face kindly. 'He has to have his heir,' he said gently. 'I know,' Alys said. 'But we can love each other.' 'Maybe,' the old lord said, with a lifetime of whoring and loving and fighting behind him. 'Maybe for a while.'

Catherine had her letters too. He wrote asking after her health every week and telling her those things of Newcastle that he judged fit for her ears.

I know the real Hugo, Alys would whisper to herself while Catherine read his letters aloud to the circle of ladies. I know what he was really doing that night, when he tells Catherine that they went for a night sail and then early to their beds. He writes the truth to his father, and he knows I will read his letters, his true letters. Catherine does not know him, not as I know him.

Alys was happier in the long cold days while Hugo was away. She slept at nights, a deep sleep so sweet that she could hardly bear to wake in the morning. She dreamed that Hugo was home, that she was wearing Catherine's rose and cream gown, that she was leaning on Hugo's arm as they walked in the garden, that it was summer, high summer, and the sky was smiling down on them both. She dreamed that she was sleeping in Catherine's big bed with Hugo's arm possessively around her. She dreamed that she was sailing on Hugo's tall-masted trader, sailing to the very edge of the world and Hugo was at the wheel, laughing with her, with his eyes screwed up against the glare of the sunlight on the long rolling waves. She dreamed that she was taking Catherine's seat at the high table in the great hall. Hugo drew back her chair for her because she was big with child. All the faces turned towards her were smiling. They were cheering her because she was carrying the heir. As she woke she heard them shout 'Lady Alys!'

Catherine was happy and busy while Hugo was away. Pregnancy suited his wife. Her temper was sweet as fruit and she laughed and sang in the mornings. Her colour had risen in her cheeks and she looked rosy when she read Hugo's letters and came to the end and said, 'There is a little piece here I will not tell you. It is for my eyes only.' Then she would slip the letter in the purse at her girdle and pat it, as if to keep it safe.

Alys would turn her head from that. Catherine would leave the letter spread out on her pillow, ostentatiously reading it when Alys was combing her hair, inviting Alys to pry. Alys resorted to icy indifference, she would not stoop to spy on Catherine's letter and besides, she knew Hugo could promise anything. Words of love were light currency to him.

It means nothing, Alys said to herself softly. He is planning our life together, his life with me. He said he needed time to make his plans. And while he is planning he is keeping her sweet with a few little words. I will not begrudge her a few little words. They are like nonsense spells. They mean nothing. They mean nothing.

'By God, you look sour,' Morach said cheerfully as they went to bed one evening. 'Pining for the young lord?'

Alys shrugged a thin shoulder, jumped into the bed and pulled the covers up to her ears.

'Painful, ain't it?' Morach said. 'This nonsense of love? You'd have done better to keep him at arm's length forever than to love him and lose him without even having him. You'd have done better to forget your promise to him to surrender magic, just as he has forgotten his promise to you.'

'He hasn't forgotten,' Alys said fiercely. 'You know nothing about it, Morach. I haven't lost him. He asked me to wait for him and I am waiting. When he comes home it will all be different. I am waiting. I am happy to wait for him.'

'You look it,' Morach said ironically. 'You're losing your looks, your face is white and strained. You get thinner every day. Your breasts are less and less, your belly is as flat as a dice-board. If you wait much longer you'll be worn out with waiting.'

Alys lay down and turned her face to the wall. 'Bank up the fire before you come to bed,' she said coldly. 'I'm going to sleep.'

Morach and Lady Catherine had made a surprising alliance. Every day and every evening they chattered and gossiped in the overheated gallery. Alys sat as far as she could from the fire and watched the two of them. 'Like a pair of old hags together,' she said under her breath

Morach was not afraid of Catherine like the rest of the ladies; and Catherine, a bully by nature, was amused to have met her match. One day Morach insisted on going to her cottage though the snow was thick and wet and the sky low and threatening. Lady Catherine forbade it. 'You can go tomorrow,' she said.

Morach nodded, and went to her chamber and came out with a cape around her shoulders and a shawl over her head.

'I said you could go tomorrow,' Catherine said impatiently.

'Aye,' Morach said, unmoved. 'I could go tomorrow, and I could go the day after, or next week. But it's my desire to go today.'

Catherine snapped her fingers. 'You'd best learn, Morach, that in this castle you do things by my desire. Not yours.'

Morach gleamed her slow secret smile. 'Not I, my lady,' she said. 'I am different from the rest of them.' 'I can still have you whipped,' Catherine threatened. Morach met her angry look without fear. 'I wouldn't advise it, my lady,' she said. Then she turned her back and went from the gallery as if she had permission to leave and Catherine had wished her 'God speed'.

There was a stunned silence and then Catherine burst into loud laughter. 'God's truth, the old woman will be hanged,' she said. The women chimed in with the laughing, exchanging scared glances. Alys alone sat silent. When Morach came back in the evening, after having completed her own mysterious business, Catherine behaved towards her as if they had never disagreed.

One day, at the end of March, Hugo sent a letter to Catherine saying he would be home within a few days. She flushed pink with pleasure.

'Hugo is coming home,' she announced. 'And within the week! I have missed him.' She smoothed her gown over her rounded breasts. 'I wonder if he will see a difference in me. What d'you think, Alys?'

Alys was watching the logs in the fire. 'I expect so, my lady,' she said politely.

'D'you think he will desire me as he did before?' Catherine asked. 'D'you remember those wild nights when our son was conceived? D'you think he will still be mad for me?'

Alys turned a blank, insolent face towards Catherine. 'Maybe,' she said. 'But you had best have a care, lady. It would be a sad end to your ambitions if your rough games shook the baby out of your belly.'

Catherine shot a look at Morach. 'That can't happen, can it?' she asked in sudden fear. 'That can't happen?'

Morach pursed her lips. 'Depends what you do,' she said. 'Depends how he likes it.'

Catherine laughed a ripple of excited laughter. She leaned towards Morach and whispered in her ear. Morach chuckled. 'That shouldn't harm the baby,' she said out loud. 'Not if it pleases you!'

Catherine put her hand on her heart and smiled broadly. Then the two of them put their heads together and whispered like village girls outside an alehouse.

Alys felt unreasonably irritated with Morach. 'Will you excuse me, my lady?' she said rising to her feet. 'I have to read to Lord Hugh before dinner.'

Catherine barely looked up to nod dismissal. Morach was whispering something behind her hand.

'And then he did what?' Catherine asked incredulously. 'I did not know that men could do that. What did his wife say – in heaven's name?'

Alys shut the door behind her and leaned back against it and closed her eyes. She could hear the ripple of laughter even through the massive wood. She turned wearily and went down the stairs, through the lobby and up the winding narrow staircase of the round tower to Lord Hugh's chamber.

Hugo was there. He was sitting on a stool at his father's feet as Alys walked into the room and he sprang up to greet her. Alys staggered and her face went white and then blushed red.

'I did not think to see you for days yet,' she said. 'Hugo, oh Hugo!'

He took her hand and squeezed it tight to warn her to be silent. The old lord looked from Alys' thin flushed face to his son's bright smile.

'I came home early,' Hugo said levelly. 'I have a great scheme to lay before my father and I wanted to see you all again. How is my wife? Is her pregnancy going safely?'

'She is well,' Alys said. She could hardly speak for breathlessness and she did not want to speak of Catherine. She wanted to hold him, to touch his face, the soft skin around his eyes, to kiss his merry smile. She wanted to feel his arms around her as he had held her that one night, that first night, and his kisses on her hair.

'What is this scheme of yours, Hugo?' the old lord asked. He beckoned to Alys to stand behind his chair and she crossed the room to his side and watched Hugo's animated face as he talked.

'It's Van Esselin,' he said. 'He has plans to fit a ship for the longest voyage they have ever undertaken -around Africa, even as far as the Japans. He has the ship's log from a Dutch pilot that shows a clear passage. I have seen it, it is true. And he plans to take goods and baubles to trade all along the way and to come back with a cargo of spices and silks and all the rich trade. It's a great opportunity for us, Father. I am certain of its success.' Trade?'

'It's not huckstering in the butter-market,' Hugo said quickly. 'It's honourable trade. It's a great adventure, as exciting as a war, as distant as a crusade. The world is changing, Father, and we have to change with it.'

'And what if this great ship sinks?' the old lord asked cynically.

Hugo shrugged. 'Then we have lost the wager,' he said. 'Van Esselin asks us only for a thousand pounds to back him. We can gamble a thousand pounds for the rewards this promises to bring.'

'A thousand pounds?' Lord Hugh repeated incredulously. 'One thousand!'

'But think of the return, Father!' Hugo said urgently. 'We would get it back twenty, maybe fifty times over. If they bring back spices and silks they can sail into London and make a fortune in a sale on the quayside itself. Or they can bring it back to Newcastle, or even take it up to Scotland. People are desperate for spices -think of the prices we pay in the kitchen! This is the way for us to make our fortune, not struggling to get our rents from snow-bound farmers!'

Lord Hugh shook his head. 'No,' he said slowly. 'Not while I am lord here.'

Hugo's face grew dark with one of his sudden rages. 'Will you explain to me why?' he asked, his voice shaking.

'Because we are lords, not traders,' Lord Hugh said with disdain. 'Because we know nothing of the sea and the trade your friend does. Because our family's wealth and success has been founded on land, getting and keeping land. That's the way to a lasting fortune, the rest is mere usury in one shape or another.'

'This is a new world and things are different now,' Hugo said passionately. 'Van Esselin says we do not even know what lands the ship may find! What riches it might bring back! There are tales of countries where they use gold and precious stones as playthings! Where they desire our goods above anything else!'

The old lord shook his head. 'You're a young man with a young man's ambitions, Hugo,' he said. 'But I am an old man with an old man's love for order. And while I am alive we will do things in the old way. When I am dead you may do as you please. But I imagine that when you have a son of your own you will be as unwilling to gamble with his inheritance as I am unwilling to gamble with yours.'

Hugo made an impatient noise and flung himself towards the door. 'I have as much power here as a woman!' he shouted. 'I am thirty-two years old, Father, and you treat me like a child. I cannot bear it! Van Esselin is a year younger than me and he runs his father's company. Charles de Vere's father has given him his own house and retainers. I cannot be your lapdog, Sire, I warn you.'

Lord Hugh nodded. Alys glanced at him, expecting him to fire up, but he was sitting very still in thought. 'I understand that,' he said levelly. 'Tell me, Hugo. When does this Van Esselin want the money?'

'This time next year,' Hugo said. He came back towards his father in his eagerness. 'But he needs to have the firm promise of it by the autumn.'

'I'll do this for you then,' the old lord said. 'If Catherine has a son safely delivered in the October, then I'll find the thousand pounds for you. And it shall be your money and your son's money. A gift to celebrate his birth. You may do as you wish with it. Buy land in good heart and with set rents, or throw it to the winds and the seas with this venture. Let us see how your judgement is, when you have a son in your arms to be provided for, another generation to come after you.'

'If Catherine has a son, I have a thousand pounds?' Hugo asked. The old lord nodded. 'You have my word,' he said. Hugo stepped quickly towards his father, dropped to one knee and kissed his hand. 'I shall make my fortune then,' he said delightedly. 'For Catherine is certain she is carrying a boy. Isn't she, Alys? You think so, don't you?'

Alys nodded stiffly. Her neck was tight with strain. 'I'll go to her now and see how she fares,' Hugo said delightedly. He bowed to his father, nodded blithely at Alys and strode from the room. Alys did not move as the door shut behind him.

The old lord chuckled. 'I shall have some peace in this castle yet,' he observed. 'I shall set myself up as a marriage broker. Wait till you see how he cossets her now that she means an heir, a future and a thousand pounds for him!'

Alys moved her stiff lips in a smile, and took up the book she was reading to him.