Novels 03 The Wise Woman

by Philippa Gregory

  Alys recoiled, thinking it must be some worm, perhaps a snake. Then she saw more clearly.

  A little white hand.

  Alys screamed aloud, but made no sound except a soft groan.

  As she watched, the little hand parted the curtain of a dock leaf and the little wax doll walked out. It was the doll of Hugo—the worst of the three. Eyeless, earless, fingerless, mouthless. It waddled on little legs through the thick leaves and flowers of the bank and down to the road. Behind it, like tiny toy soldiers, came the other two. The doll of Lord Hugh, stooped and more tired, but marching determinedly behind Hugo, and behind him came Catherine. With helpless fascination Alys leaned down from her horse to see better. The doll of Catherine had changed. The great fat belly had gone, torn away. There was a ragged edge to the doll’s body and a cavernous hole where the belly had been. At every step the doll took it left a little trail, like the slime of a snail, where molten candlewax dripped from the wound.

  “Where are you going?” Alys moaned.

  The Catherine and the Lord Hugh dolls checked at her voice. But the little doll of Hugo could neither hear her, nor see her, feel her, nor speak to her. It trudged on like a little unstoppable toy.

  “To Castleton,” the two little dolls said in their piping, innocent voices. “To find our mother who made us.”

  “I buried you!” Alys shouted at them. “I left you on holy ground. I left you there. Lie quiet! Lie quiet, I command you!”

  “We want our mother!” they said in their high, bright voices. “We want our mother, our mother, little Sister Ann!”

  “No!” Alys’s scream broke through her sleep. She heard her door bang open as Mary came into the room, asking if she were ill.

  “No!” Alys said again, the dream fading as she felt Mary’s hand on her arm.

  But she heard their reply, from three miles out on the Castleton road. “We want you, Mother,” they cried joyfully. “WE WANT YOU!”

  Chapter

  29

  The morning was clear and sun-filled, just as the old lord had predicted. The storm had drenched the mist and blown away the clouds. Alys, waking from a second sleep, went over to the arrow-slit and stared out toward the moor where the white ribbon of the road snaked westward.

  For long moments she stood staring toward the moor as if she thought that she might see something coming along the road. Then she shrugged and turned away.

  “I fear nothing,” she said under her breath. “Nothing. I have not come this far to be fearful of dreams. I am not a fool like Catherine. I shall fear nothing.”

  Mary tapped at the door and came in, laden with a platter of bread and meat, and a pitcher of ale. Alys went back to bed and ate heartily, sitting up in bed, and reviewing one gown after another as Mary took them from the chest and spread them out before her.

  “The new blue gown,” she said at last. “And I’ll wear my hair loose.”

  Mary laid out the dress, poured hot water from a ewer to a basin, and helped Alys lace tight into the gown. It had been remade from some blue silk in Meg’s box, sewn by the castle seamstresses in the style favored by the new Queen Jane. Alys smiled. The dress might have come into fashion precisely to show off her growing belly. The stomacher was cut short, it pressed across the breasts and laced at the back like a bodice. In the front the fullness of the gown was gathered across the belly. Even virgins wearing such a fashion would look pregnant; Alys, with the curve of her belly emphasized by the folds of silk, looked like a queen of fertility. She opened the door, bid “good day” to the ladies, and strolled across the gallery to visit Catherine.

  Catherine was still in bed. Her breakfast tray was pushed aside, she was drinking from a mug of ale. She put it down when Alys came in the door and held out her arms to her. Alys bent over the bed and allowed Catherine to hold her and nuzzle her damp face into Alys’s neck.

  “Alys,” Catherine said miserably. “You must help me.”

  Alys pulled up a chair to the bed without invitation or permission and sat down. “In what way, Catherine?” she asked pleasantly. “You know I would do anything in my power for you.”

  Catherine sniveled weakly and hunted in the pillows for her handkerchief. She rubbed her eyes and her moist nose. “I cannot stop weeping,” she said thickly. “All day and even all night. Alys, I weep even in my dreams.”

  Alys examined her clasped hands against the blue of her robe. They were as smooth and as white as a lady’s. No one would look at them now and think Alys had ever plied anything heavier than a needle. “Why do you weep?” Alys asked, without much interest.

  Catherine pressed the backs of her hands against her pink cheeks to cool them. “Hugo will not see me,” she said flatly. “He will not see me and he refuses to touch me because I have not been churched. But Father Stephen is not here so I cannot be churched. Hugo knows that. He is using it as an excuse to snub me. I know it. I know it.” She broke off, her voice had risen high and angry. She took a deep breath.

  “I do not even know if Father Stephen believes in churching,” she said resentfully. “If he calls it superstition and refuses to do it, and Hugo still will not touch me until it is done, then what can I do? It is a trick. Hugo is punishing me for losing his child. But it is not my fault! I am not to blame!” Her voice had grown high and shrill again. She took a quivering breath, trying to calm herself. Alys barely looked at her.

  “The old lord will not see me,” she said. “He says he will see me when I am well again and fit to be seated at table; but I know he is angry with me.” She hesitated, her voice very low. “I suspect him,” she said softly. “I suspect him of trying to have me put aside.”

  Alys glanced up at her but said nothing.

  “You must know,” Catherine said with sudden energy. “You write his letters for him, he tells you his business. Is he writing to have me set aside and the marriage annulled?”

  “Yes,” Alys said precisely. “If his friends at court will support his application.”

  The flushed color went from Catherine’s face, leaving her waxy white. “On what grounds?” she whispered.

  “Too close kinship,” Alys replied.

  “There was a dispensation…” Catherine began.

  “Bought from the pope,” Alys answered. “The king decides these matters now. Not the pope.”

  Catherine was silent, staring at Alys. “What does Hugo say?” she asked. “Does he love me still? Does he want to keep me? Will he stand against his father?”

  “Hugo doesn’t know,” Alys answered. “But I doubt he would go against his father’s will in this matter.”

  “No,” Catherine said, shaking her head. “He would not. He married me because his father ordered it, and he lay with me because they needed an heir. Now I cannot give an heir I am of no use to anybody. So they will throw me away.”

  Alys looked at her fingernails. They were pale pink and regular, with clear white tips and little half-moons of whiteness at the base. Alys inspected them approvingly.

  “I am lost,” Catherine said hollowly.

  Alys waited, indifferent to Catherine’s pain.

  “What will they do with me?” Catherine asked.

  “You could marry again,” Alys suggested.

  A little of the color came back into Catherine’s cheeks. “After Hugo?” she demanded.

  Alys nodded, conceding the point. “Or you could have a little house of your own, with your own servants on your dowry land. Perhaps a little manor, a farmhouse.”

  Catherine’s plump face trembled with her grief. “I have been the lady of the castle,” she said. “The wife of Lord Hugo. Do they expect me to live in a cottage and keep ducks?”

  Alys smiled. “Could you fight them?”

  “I’d lose,” Catherine replied promptly. “Catherine of Aragon could not sway them, a princess in her own right. The Boleyn woman’s own uncle found her guilty and sent her to be killed. It’s not likely that they would listen to me! The king’s council do not like to hear ab
out male impotence, male infertility. It is easier for them to blame a wife.”

  Alys glanced behind her to see that the door was safely shut. “That’s treason,” she said flatly.

  Catherine looked defiantly at her. “I don’t care,” she said. “They have used me like a toy and now they will throw me on the midden. Hanging as a traitor could not hurt me worse than this betrayal.”

  There was silence for a few moments. Alys saw that Catherine’s constant tears had dried on her cheeks. Underneath the rosy plumpness of Catherine’s face the old hard lines were beginning to show again.

  “Who will they marry him to?” Catherine asked. “Have they written to anyone?”

  Alys kept her voice level, her joy and confidence concealed. “Lord Hugh has made no approaches,” she said. She waited for Catherine to guess that Alys would be the new lady, waited for her explosion of rage, of jealousy which would carry her out of the castle in a fit of pique and then beach her outside, never to return, in a little manor farm, visited only now and then by David with unwanted goods from the castle. Impoverished. Alone.

  “I suppose they will wait until the annulment has gone through,” Catherine said. Alys smiled inwardly at Catherine’s stupidity. “Then they will look about them for a girl, a young girl, fertile and strong and wealthy. That’s who they will wait for. Some noble little thing who will fall passionately in love with Hugo as I did. And then wear away her life with longing and jealousy—as I have done. And then wait and wait for a child from him. For it is he who has no seed. It is he who is corrupt.”

  Alys kept her face down so Catherine could not see her smile. There was no young noble bride in the offing. There was no list of candidates. Alys was as close to Lord Hugh as anyone in the castle. If there had been marriage plans for Hugo then Alys would have known—even before Hugo himself. The annulment was planned. A second marriage would be left to Hugo’s desires, to Lord Hugh’s preference. Alys knew that when Catherine left the castle the new lady would be Alys.

  Catherine threw back the covers of the bed and went to the window. She drew back the curtains and flung open the shutters. The morning sunlight poured into the room, the dust from the strewing herbs dancing in the sunbeams.

  “Look at him,” she said with deep resentment. “Blithe as ever.”

  Alys went to her side. In the courtyard below, Hugo was detaining Alys’s new serving-girl, Mary, with one casual hand on her arm.

  “Who is she?” Catherine said in a half-whisper.

  “A new girl, my maidservant. David found her in Castleton to wait on me,” Alys said. She could feel herself getting breathless; deep in her belly she felt her pulse speeding with jealousy.

  Hugo’s laugh echoed around the courtyard, they could see Mary toss back her hair and smile at him.

  From the round tower behind them, the prison tower, a soldier came out of the little doorway and strolled down the external stone stairs, calling some jest to Hugo. The watching women could see Mary shrug her shoulders and laugh.

  “So now you know,” Catherine said triumphantly. “Now you know how I felt when they brought you in, straight off the moor, and I saw Hugo turn and watch you every time you crossed a room. They called you one of my ladies but I knew you were here for their delight—Hugo’s and the old lord’s. It killed me inside to see him burning for you. And now you can watch your maid, a silly ignorant girl, and see Hugo burning for her. And every time she walks across the room you will see him turn his head away from you and watch her.”

  Alys leaned against the window-sill and looked down, the stone wall cold and hard against her. Hugo had his arm around Mary’s waist, he was whispering in her ear. Mary had leaned back along his arm, her neck seductively stretched, the tops of her breasts showing over her bodice. As Hugo’s wife and Hugo’s mistress silently watched, Hugo dropped his dark head and kissed her neck and her breasts. They heard Mary’s ripple of laughter and then she pushed him away. She ran a few steps from him, as if she were unwilling, and then she glanced at him over her shoulder, inviting the chase. When he did not follow, she set her basket on her jutting hip and swayed across the courtyard. Hugo stood and lazily watched her walk away until she was out of sight.

  “How long do you think she will hold out against him?” Catherine asked. “A month? A week? Until tonight?” She gave a cracked, bitter laugh and leaned back against the bedpost. “It was always better, I found, if they gave in swiftly. He gets bored then. The worst agony for me was when he was hot for you. You delayed so long. It was such pain for me, waiting and waiting for him to have his fill of you and come back to me.”

  Alys shook her head. She could not match the torment and storm-lit madness of last night with Hugo’s prosaic flirtation in the sunny courtyard.

  “Only last night we were lovers,” she said unguardedly. “How could he want a slut like her today? We were together in madness last night. How could he wake and want her?”

  “He used to go from my bed to yours without even pausing,” Catherine replied. “Hugo’s infidelities happen at speed. You, of all people, should know that.”

  Alys nodded. “But last night…” she said. She broke off. Catherine was right. Of all women she should have known of the fickleness of men’s desire. From her earliest childhood she had heard Morach warning girls wanting love potions that you can arouse lust but not liking. You can hex someone to obsession but not to affection.

  “Do you love him?” Catherine asked curiously.

  “No,” Alys replied absently. “I did, at first. I was sick with love for him, I gambled everything—my soul itself—to make him love me. But since then…” She sighed. “I sometimes desire him,” she said. “And I need him now to keep my place here. I like to be the lady here, I like to be first with him and with his father. But I cannot say I love him tenderly. I have only loved one person tenderly.”

  She thought of the old woman in the cottage on the moors coming out into the innocent sunshine at the sound of the horses, and then the soldiers taking her roughly and bundling her on a horse behind some lad who would crack jokes and call her “Grandma” and then sling her down like a sack in Appleby market. “And I think I may have failed in my love for her,” Alys said evasively.

  “Morach?” Catherine guessed.

  Alys thought of the old corpse rolling round and round in the roiling waters of the cave. “Not Morach,” she said. “But it is true that I failed her too.”

  Catherine slid an arm around Alys’s waist. “When I go will you come with me? To the manor farmhouse? We could live together, Alys, you could practice your healing. We would be comfortable.”

  She hesitated, glancing sideways at Alys. “I would care for you. I would protect you. I would be like a husband to you. I desire you, Alys. I wanted you the night that Hugo brought you to me, and I had desired you before. It was my idea that he should have us both. He tempted me into telling my desires once, and I told him that I longed for you.

  “Even when you were my rival I hated you and wanted you, all at once. I used to think of Hugo lying with you and I longed for you both, I envied you both. You—because you had Hugo at your beck. And he—because he could lie on you and master you. I longed to see you together, your body and his. But now, since I lost the baby, I hate Hugo. I hate the thought of him and his foul seed. But I still want you. I dream of you.”

  Alys stepped out of Catherine’s cuddling arm, her mind whirling with possibilities. “I don’t know,” she said, playing for time. “I never thought.”

  Catherine’s face was eager. Alys felt her power flowing through her as she saw Catherine’s need for her, Catherine’s desire. Alys laughed softly, seductively. “I never knew you desired me, Catherine,” she said. “I never knew.”

  Catherine reached out for Alys once more, pulled at her waist. “I would keep you safe,” she said urgently. “Here in the castle, if Hugo tires of you, you are lost. When the old lord dies they will blame you for his death, perhaps charge you with witchcraft. Have you tho
ught of that? But with my money and my land I can keep you safe.”

  “I am safe here,” Alys objected. “Hugo may flirt with a serving-wench but he desires no one but me. I will have a place here long after Mary is out on the streets of Castleton plying her trade as a whore. Hugo will never tire of me.”

  Catherine nodded. “Not now,” she said. “But later. When the new wife comes in, she may demand that you are sent away. If she is young, noble, and beautiful, Hugo will do everything he can to please her. She will snub you and insult you. She will bring her own women and you will have nothing to do in the gallery. They will tease you and abuse you. And when Hugo comes to sit with them they will laugh and say you are awkward and foolish and out of fashion. Your gowns will be wrong, Alys, and they will laugh at your speech and even at your healing. They will mortify you and humble you and then laugh at your pain. I can save you from that, from humiliation when the new wife comes in. And I would like to live in a manor-house with you. Far from Hugo, far from his father. Just you and me with a little farm, Alys!”

  Alys felt her skills slick and warm at her fingertips. She felt her power around her like a puppet-master’s cloak when he spreads it wide as a backcloth and sets his little dolls dancing. She slid her arm around Catherine’s broad waist and felt the big woman yearn toward her. “If I agree to come to you when Hugo’s new wife arrives, will you go peaceably now?” she asked. “The old lord has said he will be generous with money if you accept the end of the marriage graciously. You could get all the money we need by obliging him.”

  Catherine stiffened. “Make it easy for them!” she exclaimed.

  “Make it easy for us,” Alys corrected her. “Take their money, and then, when you are safe in your own little manor—take me too!”

  Catherine drew Alys to her, drenched her neck in kisses, moved her lips up across Alys’s face toward her mouth. “Then I can have you, like Hugo used to have you,” she said. “I used to dream of what he did with you, I used to burn up with jealousy and desire dreaming of him with you. Now I cannot have him and he hates me, and he has made me foul to myself. But at least I can steal his whore from him. At least I can take you.”