Novels 03 The Wise Woman

by Philippa Gregory

  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 toward 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 color 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, jumping 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 then 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 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 toward 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 toward 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 on what you do,” she said. “Depends on how he likes it.”

  Catherine laughed a ripple of excited laughter. She leaned toward 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’s 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 like 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 voy
age 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 honorable 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 thay 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 ambition, 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 toward 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 toward 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 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 judgment 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 to 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.

  Chapter

  15

  Alys spent the evening on the other side of the ladies’ gallery fireplace from Hugo and watched with an impassive face as Catherine tapped him on the shoulder in reproof at a jest, rested her hand on his shoulder, and twisted one of his dark curls around her finger.

  Alys was ordered to bring Hugo some more Osney wine from the sideboard. She went down on one knee to serve him. He smiled down at her.

  “Are you well, Alys?” he asked under his breath, so that only she could hear. “When I wrote to my father of all my doings I thought of you, reading the letters. I wrote to you as well as to him, you know.”

  Alys’s hand pouring the wine shook a little and the bottle rattled on the lip of the cup.

  “When I lay with a whore I thought of you, Alys,” he said, his voice very low. “I wondered if you were playing with me. If you have played with me all along, and with my father, and with my wife. What dark games do you have, Alys? Have you truly given up play and magic after all, as you promised?”

  He glanced swiftly around. No one was watching them. “I went away half mad for you,” he whispered. “Everywhere I went in Newcastle the edge was off my pleasure. I kept wondering what you would think of a thing, how you would like it. And then I was angry with you, Alys. I believe you bewitched me after all. I believe you have played with me to spoil my peace.”

  “I have no magic, my lord,” Alys said stiffly. “I have a little skill with herbs, sickness, and childbirth.” She shot a quick look at him from under her eyelashes, then she stood with the bottle of wine still in her hands. “And my peace is spoiled too,” she said.

  Hugo laughed up at her, his white teeth sharp in his smile. “I’m ready to be witched,” he said. “I’m ready to be tempted! But see how I am placed now, Alys! There can be nothing in my life till October—I get everything then. We could make merry till then, you and I. But in secret.”

  “What are you saying?” Catherine interrupted. “What are you saying to my lord, Alys? Don’t you think she has grown thin, Hugo? Thin and white. I am afraid we are not feeding her well enough. She was so pretty when she first came to the castle and now she is as bony as a spinster at her distaff!”

  The women laughed in an obedient chorus. Alys met Hugo’s quick scrutiny with a look of blank resentment.

  “Are you unwell?” he asked neutrally so that they could all hear.

  “No,” Alys said in a tone as level as his. “I am weary with being indoors so much. That is all.”

  “Leave us now,” Catherine interrupted. “One of you check that my bed is warm.” She shot a look at Hugo. “Though I will be hot enough in a moment, I reckon,” she said in a loud whisper.

  Hugo laughed and took the hand she reached out for him. “Away to bed, my lady,” he said caressingly. “You must rest for the health of my son. You don’t know what a fortune I have riding on him!”

  Eliza went into Catherine’s bedroom and checked there were fresh herbs on the floor and under the pillows. Then she bobbed a half-curtsy to the two of them before the fire and she, and all the ladies, went to their rooms.

  “Not so hot for you these days,” Morach commented as she and Alys stripped off their gowns and scurried into the cold bed in their shifts.
r />   “No,” Alys said shortly.

  “Why’s that d’you think?” Morach pried.

  “I don’t know,” Alys said.

  “I wonder why,” Morach said, undeterred.

  “The old lord has him fast,” Alys said, in sudden impatience. “He did it today, I heard every word. He will make Hugo’s fortune if Catherine bears a healthy son. He has promised him a thousand pounds for his own free use.”

  Morach gave a low whistle. “So Hugo’s bought off!” she said. “No future for you then, Alys. I reckon that work you did with the moppets worked better than you thought!”

  “I’ve wished that away a thousand times,” Alys said.

  “Why?” Morach asked. “Because you love him and desire him now? Because you want him so much that you will risk everything to lie with him? While you look at him so coldly and walk past him without looking back, are you praying he will put her aside and come to you, as hot for you, as you are for him?”

  Alys pushed back the covers and jumped down to the cold floor.

  “Yes,” she said through her teeth. She rattled the wood basket and threw a log on the fire. “I am sick to my very soul for him. I cannot eat, I cannot sleep, and now tonight he lies with her again, and after this child there will be another, and another, and all there will be for me will be the leavings from her dinner.”

  Morach chuckled delightedly. “Pass me my shawl,” she said. “And put on another log to bank up the fire. It’s as good as the mummers, life in this castle. You’re lost now she’s with child, you know. Even without the money he wouldn’t stop going with her. He has the taste of her now.”

  Alys threw the shawl to Morach. “What d’you mean?” she asked. She took a comb from the chest of clothes and a steel mirror and started to comb her hair. It was shoulder length now, a tangle of brass and gold. Alys picked impatiently at the knots.

  “The taste of her?” Morach asked. “Oh, men are trapped by it. When their women are carrying a child. Men see their women’s breasts grow fuller, their rounded bellies. They like the evidence of their own rutting, even as they do it. It’s two parts male swagger, and one part something else. Something old, deeper. And Hugo has it badly.”