Novels 03 The Wise Woman

by Philippa Gregory

  “In a few days?” Alys confirmed.

  Lord Hugh nodded. “Aye. So you can drink ale for breakfast and not handfuls of grass, my dear.” He chuckled again. “Calmness. Oh Lord!”

  Alys smiled thinly and broke some bread on her silver plate. “Hugo tells me you have settled on the young girl for his bride,” she said. “The little girl of only nine?”

  Lord Hugh nodded. “The best choice,” he said. “I was torn. I’d have liked to see a quick wedding, bedding, and birthing, but the girl’s family are the very people we need as kin. And she herself is from fertile stock. Her mother had fourteen children, ten of them sons, before she died. All before she was twenty-five!”

  “A fortunate woman indeed,” Alys said sarcastically.

  Lord Hugh did not hear. “The wench will come and live here and we can school her as we wish,” he said. “If you’ll be kindly to her, Alys, you can stay by her and serve her. She’s no fool. She’s been serving as a maid in the Howard household and at court since she was seven. She’ll be fit to bed at twelve, I should think. I may yet see her son.”

  “And my son?” Alys pressed.

  “He’ll be mine as soon as he is born,” the old lord said. “Don’t fret, Alys. If he is a strong and bonny child he’ll be my heir and you can stay as long as she permits and as long as we desire. This is a good outcome for you, as it happens. Your luck follows you like your shadow, does it not?”

  “Like my shadow,” Alys assented. Her voice was low and quiet. Lord Hugh could hardly hear her. “My luck follows like a shadow,” she said.

  He pushed his plate away from him and a page came up with a silver bowl and ewer and poured water for him to wash his hands. Another came up with embroidered linen and he dried his hands.

  “We dine early,” he reminded Alys. “There are the rest of the trials this afternoon. I shall rest this morning. They weary me, all these stolen pigs and missing beehives. And besides, the law changes with every messenger that comes. It was better in the old days when I did just as I wished.”

  “What of the old woman?” Alys asked.

  Lord Hugh turned as he was going out of the door. “I don’t know,” he said. “Father Stephen was talking with her again, after his supper last night. And this morning he went out riding with Hugo. She may not come to trial, Alys. It is Father Stephen’s decision if she has no case to answer.” He grinned. “She was leading him a merry dance as he told it at dinner last night. She is as learned as he and when he reproached her in Latin she defended herself in Greek and he was hard-pressed to follow. I suppose I shall conduct her trial in Hebrew for the purity of the language!”

  “Might he release her?” Alys asked.

  The old lord shrugged. “Maybe,” he said. A mischievous gleam came into his eyes. “Do you wish to appear for her?” he asked. “Her learning and your quickness would be a formidable defense, Alys. Shall I tell Stephen that you will speak for her? Is it your wish to stand before us all and defend a papist and traitor, no matter what it costs?” His dark eyes scanned her face, his smile was cruel.

  Alys ducked her head. “No, no,” she said hastily. “No, she is nothing to me. Father Stephen shall be the judge. I cannot be involved in this. I have too much to do, and my health needs all my care. I cannot be troubled with this as well.”

  Lord Hugh gleamed his malicious smile. “Of course, Alys,” he said. “Leave it to us men. I’ll let you know if we need chamomile.”

  He swept out through the door, his wide flared surcoat swaying from his shoulders. Alys heard him laughing as he went up the stairs to the round tower. She finished her cup of chamomile tea in silence and then led the women back to the ladies’ gallery.

  Catherine was singing loudly. They could hear her from halfway down the stairs. Eliza snorted with laughter as they opened the door and saw Catherine seated in her old chair before the gallery fire, a jug of ale in one hand and a cup in the other.

  She beamed as she saw them. “My handmaids!” she said. “My companions!”

  “You must go to bed,” Alys said, stepping forward. “You will be sick with all this drink, Catherine.”

  Catherine waved the jug.

  “Now Robin did a courting go—

  To the leafy woods so green,

  And Marion his lady-fair…”

  “This is impossible,” Alys said through her teeth.

  “I want my bath now,” Catherine ordered abruptly.

  Alys looked toward Mary. “They’re bringing it,” she said, dropping a curtsy. “But she wanted your herbs and oils in it, my lady.”

  “Like last time,” Catherine said with drunken enthusiasm. “When you bathed me in perfume flowers and rubbed me with oils and Hugo came and had us both.” There was a gasp from all the women. “When it was so nice, Alys. When you laid on me and licked my breasts and poked me with your fingers. Like that.”

  Alys shot a warning glance around the women. Eliza’s face was scarlet with suppressed laughter. Ruth was white with shock and she was crossing herself against the sin of venery.

  “Get the bath,” Alys said to Mary. “She can have herbs in it.”

  The women stood in silence seething with unspoken gossip while the servants carried in the heavy wooden bath-tub, draped it with linen and then poured in churn after churn of hot water. Alys fetched mint oil from her chest of goods, hoping that it would sweat the drink from Catherine’s sodden blood. Catherine gaped blankly at the gallery fire and did not see the curious glances of the servants as they came and went with the hot water.

  “He will return to me,” Catherine said suddenly. “He can have me and he can have Alys. What man could resist? I have my dower lands and Alys is with child. I will accept the child. What man could want more?”

  Alys grabbed Catherine under the elbow and nodded Margery to support her from the other side. “Hush, Catherine,” she said warningly as they tottered toward the chamber where the bath was steaming and scented before the blazing fire. “Hush. You shame yourself with this talk.”

  “I will accept you,” Catherine said, looking at Alys. “I will love you like a sister and we can all live here together. Why not? We are the lords. We can live as we please. And Hugo would be happy with us both.”

  “Hush,” Alys said again. Her brain was working fast. Hugo might indeed accept a life financed by Catherine’s dowry and inherited by Alys’s children. The dynastic ambitions for the new young bride were his father’s—it had always been his father’s plots and schemes—Hugo wanted his place at court, he wanted the money for his voyages and his ventures, he wanted to sink mine shafts and quarry lime, but if Catherine and Alys could make a truce and Alys bear him a son, he might abandon the venture of another wife.

  “It’s too late,” Alys said thoughtfully. “The old lord is determined.”

  Catherine was still rolling drunk. She staggered as Mary untied her shift and pulled it off over her head. It took three of them to steer her safely into the bath. She sat on the low stool in the tub and leaned her head back against the linen-covered side.

  “You could deter him,” she said. She was slurring her words and her eyelids were drooping. “You could persuade him. There is my dowry and your child. He wants these things.”

  Alys rolled up her sleeves and roughly rubbed Catherine’s shoulders and grimy neck. The folds of fat hung loosely around her body now that the baby had gone.

  “Or if the old lord died,” Catherine suggested. Her voice was far too loud for safety. Margery, at the window, heard her. Eliza, waiting by the door, heard her. Mary, airing the shift before the fire, turned quickly and stared at Catherine lolling in the tub, lazy, corrupted.

  “Don’t say it!” Alys said sharply. “My lord is well and will live for many years yet, please God.”

  Catherine opened her drunk, unfocused eyes and smiled at Alys. “It’s true though,” she said. “Hugo would never have the will to set me aside. Hugo likes his pleasures at once. He would never wait for a nine-year-old bride. These are
not his plots and schemes. If the old lord was gone we could live well, us three.”

  “Hush,” Alys said again. It was true. If the old lord died and Hugo inherited tomorrow then Catherine would stay as nominal lady of the castle and Alys’s position would be assured. Hugo had neither the energy nor the skill to rid himself of Catherine and negotiate a new marriage. And besides, he liked his comforts and his easy way of life. Catherine as lady and Alys as mistress was an ideal combination for Hugo, giving him wealth and sensual pleasure without effort.

  “More hot water,” Catherine said. “I will lie in the bath and drink more wine.”

  Eliza sniggered at that, but a sharp look from Alys sent her from the room.

  “Give her more hot water and a cup of watered wine,” Alys ordered. “I am going to my room. It is too hot for me here.” She turned to Catherine. “After your bath you must lie down and sleep,” she said firmly. “You can dress in your rose gown after your rest. I will have you awakened in time for dinner, but you must sleep now.”

  Catherine was already drowsy. Her large features, blurred in the scented steam, were soft with sleep. “All right, Alys,” she said agreeably. “But will you come and touch me? Will Hugo come and mount you while I watch? Like we did before?”

  There was an utter silence in the room. “You are dreaming,” Alys said roughly. “Bawdy dreams, Catherine. Your humors are too hot. Your bath has overheated you. You must rest.”

  She turned and went quickly from the room before the others could read the guilt in her face. As she shut her chamber door she heard a soft scandalized shriek and the babble of whispers at the oriel window in the gallery, as the women fled from Catherine’s room to repeat what she said.

  Alys went to the arrow-slit window and looked out. Over the bridge the white road uncurled itself around the hill and then headed straight as a Roman spear over the moor. The fields at the riverside were a dusty yellow-green. The hay was cut, the corn was in. They were tossing straw into wind-rows and would gather it this month. In the higher fields beyond the river there were cows picking over the hayfield stubble. Beyond them was the rough green and gray hide of moorland with a few sheep scattered across it. The heather was in flower and a traveler crossing the moor would have to wade through thigh-deep clumps of purple and walk all day in a cloud of sweet pollen. The fords would be dry, a man could walk northward across the high hills and drop down into dale after dale—the Greta, the Lune, Cotherstone—without ever wetting his feet or finding a drop of clean water to drink.

  Alys looked at the thin track of the white road and wondered where her little dolls were now, and if they were still walking wearily toward the castle, still trailing a little thread of candle wax slime behind them wherever their tiny feet pattered. They would make slow progress along the dusty road, leaping aside into the grass at the roadside for fear of cartwheels and feet and the dangerous clatter of hooves. The doll of the old lord would be hobbling, the doll of the miscarried woman trailing slime, and the doll of Hugo staggering sightlessly with his blunt insensate hands stretched before him.

  In the warm air blowing through the arrow-slit Alys shivered, as cold as if she were trapped in a dank cave with flood water rising.

  A flock of pigeons wheeled and turned in the sunlight, their feathers bright and golden, moving as one. They flew like a fletch of arrows straight toward Alys at the window and then wheeled at the last moment and settled out of her sight on the round tower, where the pigeon lad would settle them in their boxes and cut the messages from their cherry-red legs. Alys shuddered and drew back from the window, lay down on her bed and stared upward at the rich green and gold embroidery of the tester above her head.

  She must have dozed. She was wakened by a banging on her door and a high, sudden scream of fear, the noise of running feet, and someone calling her name in a voice sharpened with terror. Alys had jumped from her bed and torn open her door before she was awake.

  “Is it fire?” she demanded urgently. Then she swayed and leaned back against the door. “What is the matter?”

  “Lady Catherine!” Eliza said. She took Alys by the shoulders and shook her awake. “It’s Lady Catherine. She’s drowned! She’s drowned! Come at once!”

  Alys stumbled but Eliza dragged her forward, across the gallery and to Catherine’s chamber. Alys, still dazed, looked around all the faces expecting to see Morach soaking wet, her shock of white hair slicked down by river water, beaming with pride and saying “I saved her!”

  “She didn’t drown,” Alys said stupidly. “Morach pulled her out.”

  “Wake up!” Eliza said. She pushed Alys roughly toward Catherine’s doorway. There were many people crowded into the gallery, soldiers and servants, all of them milling helplessly around and shouting instructions.

  “Warm her up!”

  “Fetch Father Stephen!”

  “Put her in her bed!”

  “Give her usquebaugh!”

  “Burn horsehair!”

  Alys, pushed by Eliza, fought her way into Catherine’s chamber and fell back when she saw the bath-tub.

  Catherine was blue. Her staring, blank face and all over her flaccid body was stained veinous-blue. Blue fingernails, blue feet, blue lips, white-blue face.

  Someone had heaved her up out of her bath-water and then let her slide in again so her head was tipped back against the edge of the bath, limp as a doll. She looked like a dreadful parody of the sensual Catherine who had shouted for wine and more water. A woman who had given herself up to selfish pleasures and was now given up to death.

  “How did this happen?” Alys asked. Her voice was still croaky from sleep. She coughed to clear it.

  “We left her alone,” Eliza said. Alys could hear the grief and guilt in her harsh tone. “She wanted to be alone and we shut the door and left her. God knows what I was thinking of. I knew she was drunk. But she was maudlin and dull. She ordered us out of the room and we went. We left her.”

  “Did she fall?” Alys asked.

  “I’d have heard if she had fallen,” Ruth said sharply. Her face was nearly as pale as Catherine’s horrid whiteness. “I was listening for her call. I was not gossiping about sin and lechery. If she had fallen I would have heard. I heard nothing. Nothing.” She broke off, and turned her face away, a handkerchief to her eyes and sobbed. “Nothing,” she said.

  “She was drunk,” Mistress Allingham said. “I think she just slid under the water and could not get herself out again.”

  “Can you do nothing?” Eliza demanded. “Open a vein, bleed her! Something!”

  Alys shook her head. “Nothing,” she said slowly. “There’s no blood pumping around Catherine any more. She’s dead.”

  She drew back. “Close the door. Get these people out of here,” she said. “Send for someone to cover her nakedness and lift her out of the bath. The old lord will have to be told, and Hugo. They should not see her like this.”

  There was a movement among the crowd in the gallery as they went to obey Alys.

  “I’ll tell the old lord,” Alys said numbly.

  Ruth gave a loud, thin cry and ran to her room. Eliza turned to go after her. “Odd,” she said. She paused and looked at Alys. “That she should escape drowning in the winter river, bobbing with ice floes, treacherous with rocks, and then go under in her bath.”

  Alys shook her head, half closed her eyes. “It is a nightmare,” she said honestly. “A nightmare.”

  Chapter

  32

  They dressed Catherine’s cold, water-logged body and they laid her in the little chapel which stood by the gatehouse in the outer manse, a branch of candles at her head and at her feet. Father Stephen, rushed off his horse from hunting and into his black archdeacon’s gown, ordered prayers to be said for her soul, but there were no nuns and no monks to keep a vigil for Lady Catherine. All that had gone and no one knew how to mourn for the lady of the castle any more.

  Father Stephen told four soldiers the prayers which should be said and they kept a
vigil like a guard duty. But it was not done well. Everyone knew that it was not done well now there were neither monks nor nuns to pray for the soul of a woman drowned while deep in sin. Ruth stayed by the makeshift coffin, one hand on the side, her head bowed, fingering her rosary and saying the prayers she had learned as a child. She would not be moved away.

  The other women tried to pull her away to the gallery and Eliza stood before her, trying to hide her, when Father Stephen came into the chapel. He raised his eyebrows at the murmur of Latin prayers and the click of the rosary beads but one glance at Ruth’s agonized white face prevented him from interrupting her.

  “What is this?” he demanded of Alys in his sharp, accusing voice. “Is this woman a papist? I knew she was devout but I never knew she used the rosary and prayed with the old prayers. She has taken the oath, has she not? She knows the king is head of the English church?”

  Alys nodded. “It’s the shock. She loved Lady Catherine. When she is recovered from the shock she will behave as she should.”

  “And the other women?” he demanded. Alys could hear his excitement rising. “Are the other women also steeped in Roman heresy? Do they not understand the nature of the true church?”

  “No, no,” Alys said quickly. “We are all good Christians now. Ruth is sick with shock.”

  “Take the rosary from her,” Father Stephen said.

  “Is it a sin?” Alys asked in confusion. “I thought it was allowed.”

  “Some say it does no harm but I believe, and my bishop believes, that it is a graven image as bad as any other false god,” Stephen said passionately. “It is a doorway to sin, if it is not a sin itself. Take it from her.”

  Alys hesitated. “It is her own,” she said. “She is using it only to keep count of her prayers.”

  “Take it,” Stephen said firmly. “I cannot permit it—not even to mourn Lady Catherine. It is a doorway for sin and confusion.”