Novels 03 The Wise Woman

by Philippa Gregory

  Hugo blundered into Alys’s room as she dozed in her first sleep, making her jump awake with fear.

  “Is it fire?” she demanded, coming out of sleep.

  Hugo laughed aloud. He had been drinking till late in the hall and was boisterous. He pulled the covers off Alys and slapped her rump playfully.

  “Heard the news?” he demanded. “My marriage is to be annulled. I am to be wed to a girl straight from the nursery! And Stephen can get no sense out of the old woman from Bowes Moor!”

  Alys snatched the covers back and pulled them up over her shoulders. “I know all the news,” she said sourly. “Except about the old woman. What is he doing to her? Is he hurting her?”

  “Oh no,” Hugo said. “He’s no barbarian. She’s an old lady. He’s questioning her and arguing theology with her. It sounds as if she is holding her own. He was in a vile mood after dinner. He told me all about it over a pitcher of hippocras. They have been arguing over transubstant—transubstant—trans…” Hugo chuckled and gave up. “Whether it’s bread or meat,” he said vulgarly.

  “Will he let her go?” Alys asked. She sat up in bed. Hugo was flushed and merry. He unbuttoned his fine doublet and tossed it toward the chair. It fell on the floor and he unbuckled his belt and codpiece, untied his hose and pulled them down, and slung them all toward the pile of clothing. He came to her bedside, his shirt billowing.

  “Move over, wench,” he said contentedly. “I shall sleep here tonight.”

  “Will he let her go?” Alys asked again. Hugo held her tight around the waist and nuzzled his head into her belly.

  “Who, the old woman?” he asked, rearing up, his hair tousled. “Oh, don’t ask me, Alys, you know what Stephen is. He wants to do right by his God, and he wants to do right by his bishop, and he wants to do right by every simple soul, and he wants to do right by himself. If he finds she is an innocent old woman in error then he will persuade her to take the oath, let her go, and I will pop her over the border into Appleby for you and there will be an end to it.”

  Alys lay back and closed her eyes. “An end to it,” she said softly.

  “Why not?” Hugo demanded. “What matters one more old lady or no? Stephen and I will be going to London to see the little bride within a month. My father must be in his dotage. His preference for me is a child of nine, to be betrothed in name alone.” Hugo laughed. “I care not!” he said. He patted her belly with a gentle hand. “Catherine set aside and you big with my child. A new wife can come or wait. It matters little. As long as you give me a son which I can make my heir, and then another, until the castle is full of them. I have plenty of time to get children, Alys. There is plenty of time. Plenty of time. Plenty of wealth and land and ease for all of us.”

  Alys let him rock her in time to his words and slid her arms around his back. She found she was smiling.

  “You would not believe what troubles I have had today,” she said. “Catherine has been hysterical, your father threatened to throw me out of the castle for a word spoken out of turn, I have been worried sick about the old lady, and then Eliza frightened me into fits with some horrid ghost story.”

  Hugo chuckled and reached below the covers to slide Alys’s shift up her body. “My poor love,” he said. “You should have come out with me. I was supposed to ride over to Cotherstone Manor but I saw such a buck on the way that I stopped and chased him. He led us for hours and would you believe I missed him with a crossbow? I was close, but I had sweat in my eyes and I could not see. I missed him! A clear shot to the heart and all I could see was a blur. William killed him for me in the end. I was raging! You shall have him for your dinner next week.”

  He penetrated her with a gentle thrust and a gasp of pleasure. “Be joyful!” he said, moving gently inside her. “We shall be rid of Catherine and she can do as she pleases. My father’s mind is on a new match and he can think of nothing else. Your old lady is holding her own against Stephen and needs neither your help nor mine, and these ghosts are terrors for little girls only, not a woman, Alys, not a wise woman like you.”

  He sighed, and Alys felt his hand stroke her breast persuasively. She opened her legs wider.

  “Are you joyful, little Alys?” he breathed. He started moving more urgently, consulting his own pleasure.

  “I am well enough,” Alys said. Her mind roamed over the fears and triumphs of the day while her body moved accommodatingly under Hugo. She smiled and let him do what he would.

  “Oh yes,” said Hugo.

  And then they both were still.

  “Alys,” Hugo said urgently. “Alys!”

  She woke at once. The moonlight was streaming through the arrow-slit in a silver bar across the green and yellow counterpane on the high bed.

  “What?” she demanded, her own fear leaping up at the terror in his voice.

  Hugo was white-faced. “Mother of God,” he said. “A dream! I had such a dream! Tell me I am awake and it was nonsense!”

  The sheets were wet with his sweat. In the moonlight Alys could see his hair sticking damply to his shiny face. His eyes were wide like a man with a fever.

  “Did you dream of dolls?” Alys cried incautiously. “Little dolls coming to the castle?”

  “No!” Hugo said. He stretched out his hands. They were shaking. “Mother of God! I dreamed my fingers had gone numb. I dreamed my fingernails had gone. I dreamed my fingertips were gone. My fingers had gone, as if I had the leprosy. All I had were horrid stumps!”

  Alys blenched. “What a dream!” she said unsteadily. “But you are awake now, Hugo. Don’t fear.”

  He threw his arms around her and buried his face in the warm skin of her neck. “God alive, I was afraid!” he said. “The tips of my fingers, Alys, they were melted away. Melted like wax!”

  Alys lay very still, her arms around him, and felt him tremble. “Hush,” she said, as if she were speaking to a little child. “Hush, Hugo my love, my dear. Hush, you are safe now.”

  After a little he stopped shaking and lay quiet in her arms.

  “God! What terrors!” he said. He gave a little laugh for bravado. “You will think me a babe in arms!” he said, embarrassed.

  Alys, lying like a fallen statue in the moonlight, her belly like ice, shook her head. “No,” she said. “I have my nightmares too. Sleep now, Hugo.”

  He settled himself like a child, one head on her shoulder, one arm sprawled across her body. “A dreadful dream!” he said softly.

  Alys put her hand up and stroked his head, the damp, matted curls of his hair. “I was screaming like a babe,” he said with a chuckle.

  Alys gathered him closer still. Soon he was breathing steadily, his fears fallen away from him. Alys lay beside him and thought again of all the terrors, flying like pigeons with their beady, bright eyes to their homes.

  Hugo’s arm across her belly was too heavy. She lifted his hand to free herself from the weight, and then she paused. In the darkness she could not see well, but she stroked his fingertips with her own. The fingernails were short, surely they were shorter than they had been before. She pulled his hand into the moonlight to see better. Surely the tips of the fingers were blunt and the nails were shorter and squarer at the top, as if they had been rubbed away.

  Alys gave a little moan of terror, slipped from the bed and pattered over to the fire, thrust a taper into the red embers and lit a candle. She walked back to the bed, the flickering flame throwing huge shadows all around her. She walked slowly, reluctant to know. She thought of the little doll of Hugo which she had shaped with such determination and anger all those months ago when she had wanted nothing but to be left alone by him. She had smoothed his mouth and bid him not call her. She had rubbed away the fingertips and ordered him not to feel her. She had scraped away the ears and ordered him not to hear her. She had scratched his eyeballs and ordered him to be blind to her. And now Hugo dreamed that his fingers were melting, and he had already missed his shot.

  She sat on the bed and put the candlestick on the table
nearby. She did not trouble to shield the light. She had a certainty as deep and as cold as death that it would not waken him; he would not be able to see the glow of it through his closed eyelids. She took his hand and held it close to the candle so that she could see clearly what she feared to see.

  The tips of his fingers were blunt as if they had been nipped off. Hugo’s long strong hands were shorter, the last joint of each finger disproportionately stunted. His fingernails stopped short, square as if they had been roughly filed; shorter than the ends of his fingers, cut back. Alys shuddered. His hand looked as if someone had pruned the tips of every finger, leaving the nails clipped, the plump balls of the fingertips cropped.

  She turned his hand over and looked at it as if she were reading his palm. The tips of his fingers were as smooth as the skin of his smiling, sleeping face. He had no fingerprints. They were rubbed away. On each fingertip there was nothing, no mark, just smooth, pink skin, squared off at the top like an ill-modeled statue. Alys gave a little sigh like a groan and sat with his malformed hand in her lap for a moment.

  She leaned forward and held the candle high to look at his ears. Already they were tiny, the ears of a child. Only Hugo’s long curly hair and the caps he always wore had prevented her from seeing it before. She looked at his lips. The sharp profile of his upper lip was blurred. The attractive, kissable bow of the upper lip and the sharp pout of the lower lip had melted. Only the perimeter of the dark shadow of stubble marked where his lips should start. The light flickered as the candle shook in Alys’s hands. On an impulse she bent over him and gently shook him.

  “Open your eyes, Hugo!” she said softly. “Open your eyes a moment!”

  He rolled away from her touch, mumbling something in his sleep, but when she shook him again his eyelids flickered open though he was still dreaming. In the moment before he closed them again and sank back into sleep, Alys peered closely at them. Across each dark pupil there was a tiny trail of cloudy gray as if someone had drawn a fingernail across his eyeballs.

  Alys let him sleep and put the candlestick carefully on the bedside table. She slipped into bed beside him and piled the pillows up against the heavy carved headboard and sat upright, waiting for the dawn. She was cold and white but she made no move to pull the covers around her shoulders or to huddle down beside Hugo’s contented sleeping warmth. Alys sat upright in her rich bed with the young lord beside her, his arm thrown lovingly across her, and waited for the dawn of another day with her face as grim and fearful as her betrayed mother Morach had looked all the years of Alys’s childhood, when magic was not enough to make them safe.

  In the morning Hugo was in a hurry to be off hunting. Stephen had brought him a new horse and he wanted to try its paces. The day was sunny and it would be too hot for hard riding later on. Besides, he had to be home early for the court in the afternoon. He barely noticed Alys’s pale wakefulness.

  “Are you well?” he asked, pausing in the doorway wearing only his shirt. “You well, Alys?”

  She blinked at him, her blue eyes strained and red-rimmed from the long night of watching. “I dreamed,” she said. “Bad dreams.”

  “Good God, so did I!” Hugo said, remembering. “I dreamed my fingers had gone. Gone like a leper. God! What a terror!”

  Alys tried to mirror his relieved grin, but she could not. “Show me your fingers,” she said. “Show me them.”

  Hugo laughed. “It was only a dream, sweetheart. See!”

  He stepped back in the room and held out his right hand for Alys to inspect. In the bright dawn light from the arrow-slit she looked at the back of his hand. The fingernails were perfect, smooth and strong. His fingers were long and well-proportioned.

  Alys gave a little hidden gasp of relief and turned his hand over. On each finger there was a perfect whorl—his fingertips were sound.

  “We’re both as fey as each other!” Hugo exclaimed. He bent down and gave her a quick buss on her cheek. “Let me go, Alys! I’m going hunting!”

  “Are your ears all right?” she demanded, as he went to the door.

  He turned and grinned at her, as feckless as a child. “Yes! Yes! Every part of me is well, and some parts of me are superb! Now may I go?”

  Alys laughed unwillingly, her heart lightening despite her fear. “Go then!” she said.

  The door banged and he was gone. Alys pulled up the covers and slid down into the warmth where his body had lain. She shrugged her shoulders against her night fears.

  “I won’t think about it,” she said to herself as her eyes closed. “I won’t think about it.”

  Catherine’s door was open when the women came into the gallery in the morning. She was sprawled across the bed, door flung wide, waiting for them.

  “I’ll have my breakfast here!” she yelled. “You, Ruth, bring me bread and ale. I’ll have some roast beef or venison, and some goat’s cheese. I fasted last night and I am hungry today. Fetch it for me at once.”

  Eliza shot a quick irreverent grin at Alys. “She’s drunk!” she whispered. “Good God, what now!”

  Alys stepped up to the door. By Catherine’s bed was a jug they kept in the cupboard of the gallery; it was rolling on its side, leaving a trail of red lees over the floorboards.

  “Where did you get wine, Catherine?” Alys asked.

  Catherine’s face was flushed, her hair tousled, her eyes bright. “Went down to the hall at dawn!” she said triumphantly. “I can serve myself when I need, you know. I’m not some whey-faced child that they can torment. I’ve been Lady Catherine here for years. I kicked a page awake and he brought me dinner and wine. I’ve been drinking ever since.”

  The women fluttered behind Alys in consternation.

  “Downstairs in her shift,” Ruth said softly. “Oh dear!”

  Alys bit back a smile. “You’re drunk,” she said concisely to Catherine. “You had better eat some bread and then sleep. You’ll be sick enough later.”

  Catherine shook her head and pointed imperiously to her window. “I give the orders here, Alys. I am not yet commanding a pig and a cow on the edge of the moor. I am not yet set aside and shamed for the benefit of you and whatever you carry in your belly! Go and fetch me some more wine. I’ll have clary wine—that’s a good wine to drink in daylight. And I’ll have ale with my breakfast! And then tell them to bring me a bath. I shall bathe and wear my rose and cream gown. And I shall dine in the hall today.”

  Alys heard Eliza’s giggle smothered from behind her hand. She turned around. “She’s impossible,” she said to the women. “One of you sit with her. We’ll have to do as she wishes. She’ll pass out with the drink soon enough.”

  “She can’t go down to dinner like this,” Ruth said, scandalized.

  Alys shook her head. “She’ll be sick long before dinnertime if she’s been drinking all night.”

  “My breakfast!” Catherine shouted imperiously, with the authority of the enormously drunk. “At once, girl!”

  No one had called Alys “girl” for many months. Alys smiled wryly and nodded toward Catherine. “At once,” she said with mock obedience. She closed the heavy carved door and pointed to Ruth and then Mary.

  “You fetch her breakfast, what she wanted. It makes no difference, she’ll be vomiting it up in moments. And you, Mary, go to the kitchen and tell them to set water to heat, and order her a bath.”

  The two nodded. Alys led the rest of them downstairs for their breakfast, and waited in the lobby for the old lord and David to come down the stairs from the round tower.

  “Good morrow, Alys,” the old lord said.

  Alys stepped forward and kissed his hand.

  David opened the door for the two of them and they entered the hall together.

  Breakfast was a meal taken without ceremony at the castle. There was too much to do in the early hours of the day for much delay. The kitchen sent out a continuous stream of messes—four-person platters of bread and cheese and cold bacon. Serving-women and -men went around the hall serving ale an
d hot water. People came and went, with a quick bow to the high table when one of the lords was seated and dining.

  Hugo was long gone—out hunting with Stephen. Most of the soldiers were fed and at their posts by the early light. Alys sat at the lord’s side and ate the best bread with him and drank a small cup of hot water with a sprinkling of chamomile on the top.

  “What’s the brew?” the old lord asked.

  “Chamomile,” Alys said. “For calmness.”

  The lord gave a snort of amusement. “Calmness is for the grave,” he said. “I’d rather have panic any day. Tells me I am still alive.”

  “Then you should have been born a woman,” Alys said.

  He gave a quick guffaw of laughter. “God forbid!” he said. “What panics are you suffering, little Alys?”

  “Catherine,” Alys said. “She got hold of some wine in the night and she’s still carousing this morning. She thinks of coming to dinner, primped up in her best, and winning back your affection.”

  The old lord slapped the table with his hand and roared with laughter. Men taking breakfast on the nearby tables looked up, smiling, and one shouted, “Share the jest, my lord!”

  Lord Hugh shook his head, his eyes streaming. “Women’s troubles! Women’s troubles!” he called back. All the men smiled and nodded.

  “So!” he said, when he could catch his breath. “When may I expect this seduction?”

  Alys nipped the inside of her lips to contain her irritation and sipped her tea. “She will come down to dinner unless someone prevents it, and she will make a scene and shame herself and shame you,” she said. “If she spews all over you and over the young lord it will not be so merry, I suppose. We cannot stop her in the gallery. We cannot order the servants not to give her wine. She will have her own way unless you order it.”

  Lord Hugh was still chuckling. “Oh lord, Alys, don’t bring me these hen-coop troubles,” he said genially. “Give her wine and a drop of one of your sleeping herbs in the cup. Send her to sleep for a few hours and when she wakes sober and sick she’ll have learned her lesson. I’ll have the papers through in a few days and she can sign them and leave the castle forever.”