“Yes, it’s done and we’ll keep it quiet,” Hugo said. “I don’t want to distress Catherine, not at this time. And my father would be disturbed. We’ll collect those little dolls and give them to Father Stephen. He’ll know what to do with them. And we’ll say no more on this.”
Alys nodded again.
“You are lucky it was me that found you,” Hugo said. “If it had been anyone else they would have tried to catch two witches, not just the one.”
Alys shook her head. “I have taken an ordeal,” she said coldly. “I am no black witch. I counseled Lady Catherine against having Morach in the castle, and I warned her that though I am just a herbalist and a healer, Morach always had a reputation for dark work. I warned her and I warned you. No one would listen.”
Hugo nodded. “That’s true,” he conceded. He was silent for a moment while his horse walked up the path to the high moor. “It must have been an odd childhood for you, Alys, all alone on the moorland with a woman like Morach as your mother.”
“She was not my mother,” Alys said. “I am glad of it.” She paused. “My mother, my real mother, was a lady,” she said. “She died in a fire.”
Hugo pulled his horse to a standstill and looked down at the ground.
The spade lay where Alys had dropped it, beside the little hole. The pannier bag was on the ground, split from top to bottom. But there were no little wax dolls anywhere.
The wind stirred the heather all around them and the rain began to fall in great thick drops of water. Alys pulled her hood up over her head and felt the wind tug her cape. There were no little dolls anywhere on the sodden ground.
Hugo jumped down from the horse and kicked around in the clumps of heather. “I can’t see them,” he said. “Hey! William! Come and help me search for them.”
“Search for what, my lord?” William asked, dismounting and leading his horse forward.
“For the dolls, the dolls that the old woman had in her sack,” Hugo said impatiently. “You saw them.”
The young man shook his head. “I didn’t see anything, my lord,” he said. “I just saw the old woman running off and then the hounds followed a hare and ran it to ground.”
Hugo squinted against the driving rain. “You saw nothing?” he asked.
“No, my lord,” William said, his round face wet, his hair plastered to his scalp.
Hugo hesitated, not knowing what to say, then he laughed shortly and slapped him on the back. “Mount up, we’ll go home,” he said and swung back into the saddle himself. “Lead those ponies back to the castle.”
“Will you not hunt for the dolls?” Alys asked, her voice low.
Hugo shrugged his shoulders and turned his horse homeward. “If they were made from lye or tallow they’ll melt quick enough,” he said. “They were maybe broken under the horses’ hooves. Maybe they were fancy and cheating like half the rest of witchcraft. They’re on sanctified ground—for what that is worth—let’s forget it.”
Alys hesitated for a moment, glancing back at the holly tree. There was something white at the root; she leaned forward to see. Hugo tightened his grip around her waist.
“Don’t fret,” he said. “Let’s away, it’s going to pour with rain.”
He turned the horse but Alys did not take her eyes from the roots of the holly tree. She saw a tiny little white root, like a worm, like a little candle-wax arm. She saw a tiny, misshapen, white hand. It waved at her.
“Let’s go!” she said with sudden impatience.
Hugo wheeled the horse and it reared forward into a great loping canter, all the way across the top of the moor until it slowed for the ford south of the castle.
“What shall we tell Lady Catherine and your father?” Alys asked, her words whipped away by the wind.
“That Morach fell in the river and drowned,” Hugo said. “And when the baby comes, you will be able to deliver him, won’t you, Alys? You will care for him and for Catherine?”
“Yes,” Alys said. “I was at every childbirth Morach attended since I was two years old. And I have delivered several babies on my own. I didn’t want to care for Catherine while she hated me, but I can do well enough now. I will care for him as if he were my own child.”
Hugo nodded and held her more closely. “I thank you,” he said formally.
“I won’t fail you,” Alys said. “I shall use all my powers to keep Catherine well. Your baby will be born and I will keep him well. For you, Hugo, and for me. For your fortune and your freedom depend on him. And I love you so well that I want you to be rich and free.”
Hugo nodded, and Alys sensed he was smiling. She leaned back into the rich warm jerkin and felt his body heat warm her through, and his arm tighten around her waist.
“I have news for you that I have been saving,” she said. She hesitated on the lie for no more than a moment. “I am with child, Hugo,” she said. “I am going to bear your child. We lay together only once but I am fertile for you and you are lusty and strong with me.”
Hugo was silent for a moment. “Are you sure?” he asked incredulously. “It’s very soon.”
“It’s nearly two months,” Alys said defensively. “He will be born at Christmas.”
“Christmas!” Hugo exclaimed. “And you’re sure it is a son?”
“Yes,” Alys said determinedly. “The dream I had at the Christmas feast last year was a true Seeing. You and I will have a son and we will be lovers, we will be as man and wife.”
“Catherine is my wife,” he reminded her. “And she is carrying my son.”
“But I am carrying another son,” Alys said proudly. “And your son on me will be strong and handsome. I know it already.”
Hugo chuckled. “Of course,” he said soothingly. “My clever Alys! My lovely girl! He will be strong and handsome and brilliant. And I will make him wealthy and powerful. He and his half-brother can be companions for each other. We will bring them up together.”
Hugo loosened the reins and the big horse moved forward faster in its rolling canter. “My father will be glad,” Hugo said, raising his voice against the wind in their faces and the rain. “His own whores had sons by the quiverful—but his own wife had only the one.”
“And who loved him the best, and who did he love the best?” Alys challenged.
Hugo’s broad shoulders shrugged. “That matters not at all,” he said dismissively. “Love is not for us. Land, heirs, fortune—these are the things that matter for lords, Alys. The poor can have their loves and their passions. We are interested in weightier things.”
Alys leaned back and rested her head against his shoulder. “One day you will love as passionately as a peasant,” she said softly. “One day you will be mad for love. You will be humbled to dirt for it.”
Hugo laughed. “I doubt it,” he said. “I doubt that.”
They rode in silence for a little while, Alys weighing the lie of pregnancy, which should guarantee her safety whatever anyone in the castle said against her or against Morach. Hugo would never lose the chance of another son, even if a proclaimed witch were carrying it. While he thought she was carrying his child he would die to protect her. But once the lie was discovered…
Alys shook her head, she could plot no further than one move at a time, plot and trust to her dreams of herself in the garden in Catherine’s rose and cream gown. A scud of rain hit her in the face, and a low rumble of thunder sounded around the western hills and rolled nearer.
Alys had a sudden vision of Morach listening to the sound of the storm in the dark cave, her head against the stone ceiling, the water roaring and washing around her knees, and the hounds waiting for her outside. She blinked. For a moment she could feel the hard unyielding stone on the back of her own neck as she pressed upward, away from the water. The water around her legs was icy cold, storming with currents, a rising torrent which tumbled around her knees, and poured unstoppably to pull at her skirt around her thighs. Some driftwood banged against her roughly and she stumbled and fell into the water and sp
rang up again, drenched and trembling, clumsy with the weight of the water in her gown.
It was as if the water had tasted her now and wanted more. A great wave buffeted the cave, hitting her sideways, and she knocked her face against the rock wall and felt the weight of the earth all around her. It was now nearly too late to crawl out and face the men but the terror of drowning was suddenly greater than her fear of the hounds, and she scrabbled at the wall, trying to find her way back out. Her hands, bruised and bleeding, battered against the wall of the cave and then suddenly stretched out into a void of water where the river beat its way outward. She stretched out her hands like a blind woman, pummeling the swift current, longing for the cold touch of air. Then her knuckles scraped the roof of the passage out of the cave.
She had left it too late. The narrow hole out of the cave was already filled to the ceiling with the tumbling roil of flood water. All that was left for her was the little pocket of air trapped in the roof of the cave, and as she turned her face upward to breathe into it another surge of water bellowed into the cave and the level of water leaped from waist-height to her shoulders. Her gown was filled with water, the current swirling around her whole body. Pushed and pulled by the torrent she lost her footing and fell, with a roaring noise in her head as the water rushed into her ears, her nose and her mouth. Hunger for life threw her upward again, to the last little hollow of air in the roof of the cave. But as she reached for it her head cracked against the ceiling of the cave and her open choking mouth tasted only water. Alys moaned.
“What’s the matter?” Hugo’s voice pulled her back to the present, to her dangerous gamble, to his arm comfortingly around her. “Did you say something?”
“Nothing!” Alys said brightly.
A great squall like a dark curtain spread down along the valley, blotting out the hills all around them.
“The river’s up,” said Hugo with satisfaction. “The witch is drowned.” He shook the water out of his eyes and pressed the roan horse into a canter. “All speed for home,” he said.
Gossip about Morach’s sudden departure from the castle could not be prevented. Too many people had known that she had ridden out with Alys, and seen Alys return alone with Hugo. William had seen nothing, but the other huntsmen had seen that notorious sight—a witch change herself into a hare—and would not remain silent for ever. But the word could be kept from Catherine. Hugo summoned the women into the gallery while Catherine slept before supper and told them that if he heard one word—one word—spoken out of turn about Morach in Catherine’s presence, he would beat that woman and turn her out of the castle in her shift.
The women opened their eyes wide and muttered among themselves.
“She is drowned,” Hugo said baldly. “With my own eyes I saw her fall into the river and drown. And the man or woman who denies that is calling me a liar.” His hand lightly touched his belt where his broadsword would hang. “I would kill a man for that, and beat a woman. I cannot stop you chattering among yourselves”—he swept them with his dark accusing look—“no power on earth could prevent that. But one word of suspicion or doubt before Lady Catherine and you will wish you had been born mute.”
Only Eliza found the courage to speak up. “What about Alys?” she asked.
“Alys stays with us,” Hugo said. “She is a good friend to our family. She will care for Lady Catherine now, and for my son when he is born. It will be as it was before Morach came to the castle. You can forget Morach. She is gone.”
He waited in case there should be a reply and then he smiled his joyless commanding smile and walked from the gallery to seek his father.
Alys was there before him, sitting in the twilit chamber on a stool at the feet of the old lord, giving him the news before Hugo should come.
“Morach’s gone,” she said without preamble.
The old lord looked sharply at her.
Alys nodded. “She and I were up on the high moor together. She was making some mischief with candle-wax dolls and I went with her, to stop her. Hugo was out with his hounds and they saw her, and chased her down a cave and left her there to drown.”
The old lord said nothing, waiting.
“She was a witch,” Alys said harshly. “It’s good that she’s dead.”
“And you are not,” the old lord said slowly.
Alys turned her pale face up to him. “No, my lord,” she said gently. “Not at my ordeal, when Catherine hated me and tested me so harshly; and not now. I have made my peace with Catherine and I am her friend. I am in love with your son, and I love and honor you. Tell me that I can stay in your household, under your protection. I am free of Morach and I am free of the past.”
The old lord sighed and rested his hand on her hand. “What of your power?” he asked. “You lost it when Morach came and when Hugo would not love you.”
Alys gleamed up at him. “I have it back,” she said. “Morach had stolen it from me and stolen my health as well. She knew I would stand between her and you. She knew I would protect you and yours from her witchcraft. She made me ill and weak and she was starting to work her ill will against you all. Now that she is dead I have my power back and I can keep you safe. Tell me that I may live here under your protection, as your vassal.”
The old lord smiled down into Alys’s bright face. “Yes,” he said softly. “Of course. I wanted you by me from the first day I saw you. Don’t make trouble between Catherine and Hugo, I want a legitimate heir, and after this one I want another. You and Hugo can be what you will to each other—but don’t distress my daughter-in-law while she is carrying my grandson.”
Alys nodded obediently, took his caressing hand and kissed it. “I have news for you,” she said. “Good news.”
The old lord waited, his eyebrows raised.
“I am with child,” Alys said. “Hugo’s child. He lay with me the night he came home from Newcastle. I am not like Catherine, hard to please, hard to conceive. I am with child to Hugo. I have missed two times. The baby will be born near the Christmas feast.”
The old lord gleamed. “That’s good!” he said. “That’s good news indeed. And d’you think it will be a son, Alys? Can you tell if it will be a boy?”
Alys nodded. “A boy,” she said. “A strong, handsome boy. A grandson for you, my lord. I shall be proud to be his mother.”
The old lord nodded. “Well enough, well enough,” he said rapidly. “And it means that Hugo will likely stay here until your child is born. Between you and Catherine, I shall keep him fast at home.”
“Yes,” Alys said eagerly. “Catherine could not keep him home but he will stay for me. I will keep Hugo home for us both, my lord. I want him to leave for London or on his voyage as little as you do.”
The old lord barked his sharp laugh. “Enchant him then,” he said. “And keep him by you.” He paused for a moment and looked at her with pity. “Don’t overleap yourself, Alys,” he said gently. “You will never be his wife. You will always be Catherine’s lady. Whatever goes on at court—and I say nothing about that—whatever goes on at court, we are simple people here. Catherine is your mistress, you serve her well. Hugo is your lover and also your lord. I don’t deny I am fond of you, Alys, but if you forget what is owed to your masters I would throw you from the castle tomorrow.
“Serve Catherine honorably and well and let Hugo take his pleasure with you when he wishes. That was how I kept my women. A wife for the heirs, and a woman for pleasure. That’s order and sense. That’s how it should be done.”
Alys kept her head down and her resentment hidden.
“Yes, my lord,” she said submissively.
David took her by the sleeve as she passed him by on the ill-lit stairs.
“I hear your kinswoman is dead,” he said softly.
“Yes,” Alys replied steadily. Her voice did not quaver, her face was serene.
“A hard death for a woman—drowning in cold river water,” David said.
Alys faced him down. “Yes,” she said.
/> “And what of you now?” David pursued.
Alys smiled into his face. “I shall care for Lady Catherine,” she said. “I shall serve and honor Lord Hugh, and his son. What else?”
David drew her a little closer, pulled at her sleeve so that she leaned down and his mouth was near to her ear. “I remember you when you were a fey wild thing off the moor,” he said. “I saw you naked, changing your rags for the whore’s shift. I heard that you took the ordeal for witchcraft. I saw you sicken and pine for the young lord. Now I ask you. What next?”
Alys twitched her sleeve from his grip, straightened up. “Nothing,” she said blandly. “I will serve Lady Catherine and help her during the birth. I will obey my Lord Hugh and honor his son. There is nothing more.”
The dwarf nodded. His smile gleamed at her in the darkness. “I wondered,” he said. “I truly wondered about you. I thought you had the power to turn this castle on its ears. When you brought in the old woman, the witch, with all her power, I thought you were about to act. I have been watching you and wondering when you would make your move. I have had you in my mind for the new lady of the castle. So close as you are to the old lord! So powerful in your witchery to tame Hugo’s wildness! And if you had a child—as you foresaw in your dream—such a wife you would be for him!”
Alys took a sharp breath but she held her gaze steady on his dark, angry, little face.
“What went wrong?” the dwarf asked curiously. “What went wrong between you and the old witch? You were on your way, weren’t you? The old witch was within Catherine’s confidence, you and she would have attended the birth alone. What would it have been? Stillbirth? Strangled with the cord? Breech? Coming backward and drowning in the blood?”
He laughed, a sharp cruel laugh.
“But you were in too much of a hurry, weren’t you?” he said. “Wanted Catherine dead and out of the way and Hugo all your own? I saw you pining and fading and losing your looks. It was eating you inside like a bellyful of worms, wasn’t it, little Alys? So you hexed Catherine into the river, didn’t you? Hexed her into deep water, wearing her thick furs so that she would drown.”
Novels 03 The Wise Woman Page 33