The Wise Woman Read online

  'He is a rogue!' the old lord said proudly when he heard of Hugo's ready violence.

  Alys did not seek Hugo and neither did he summon her. A deep secret gulf of silence had opened up between them. She did not waylay him on the stairs, or even attempt to catch his eye when he was sitting with Catherine and her ladies. Alys waited, like the living water beneath the frozen ice of the river, for better times.

  He was gentle with Catherine and she, eating well, sleeping well, attended by her ladies and popular with her father-in-law, gleamed with satisfaction. Hugo lay with her once or twice, and though the women listened they heard no screams of pain and pain-shot pleasure. On those two nights Alys sat up all night by the arrow-slit, watching over the white landscape on the other side of the river, chilled to the bone by the icy wind which blew off the high moor. All night she stared out over the desert of snow, white-faced and wide-eyed as a barn owl, seeing nothing. In the morning Morach exclaimed at the ice of her hands and the deep violet shadows in folds of skin beneath her eyes.

  Towards the end of the month of March, Hugo came back from his ride, found his father in the ladies' gallery and asked him for permission to go away to visit his friends in Newcastle. Alys froze and kept her eyes on her sewing. Catherine was all smiling interest.

  'Of course you must go!' she said confidently. 'We will be well enough here! Your father will guard us and Morach and Alys will keep me well!'

  Hugo smiled at them all. Alys felt his eyes on her and did not look up.

  'Then I shall go with a clear conscience and come back with a light heart,' he said pleasantly. 'And you and all your ladies must make me a list of things to bring you from the city.'

  'I should like some silk,' Catherine said consideringly. 'And David will certainly need tea and spices.'

  'I shall ride like a pedlar,' Hugo said smiling. 'Alys, can I bring anything for you?'

  Alys looked up, her face indifferent. 'No thank you, my lord,' she said coolly. 'I want for nothing.'

  He nodded. The other women asked for little fairings, coloured silk ribbons for a gown, a purse of spices. Hugo wrote down their requests seriously and tucked the list inside his doublet.

  I'll leave at daybreak,' he said. 'So I'll bid you farewell now.' He took Catherine's hand and kissed it. 'Stay well, my dear,' he said. No one could have been deaf to the tenderness in his voice. 'Stay well for the sake of my son, and for yourself.'

  Alys got quietly to her feet and left the room. Pausing outside the door she heard his farewells to the others and then she went down to the lobby between the stairs and the entrance to the round tower where he must pass.

  He came light-footed down the stairs, whistling.

  'Alys!' he said, as she stepped forward into the light. 'I'm glad you waited for me.'

  There was a brief silence between them as Hugo assessed Alys' stony face.

  'I am sorry,' he said frankly. 'I know these days have been hard on you. As hard for you as for me. I've seen you growing pale and thin, Alys, and it has cut deep into me. I need to be away, I need to be away from here, Alys. I am sick of these wintry days and these long evenings with women. I know you are in pain, watching Catherine as you do. I know how it must hurt you.'

  Alys turned her head away from him, but her cold hand gripped his.

  'I have to endure this,' Hugo said urgently. 'Catherine is my wife, she is carrying my son, I have no choice, Alys. And I cannot long for you and look for you, and snatch little moments with you. I want to be either with you or without you; this half-life of occasional desire is worse than nothing.'

  Alys nodded unwillingly.

  'I need to put some leagues between this place and myself,' Hugo said urgently. 'Enmeshed between one duty and another I feel myself being pulled a thousand different ways at once. Some days I feel I want to run away!'

  'You are fortunate in having the freedom to run,' Alys said drily.

  He smiled at her. 'Don't scratch at me,' he said softly.

  'I am going away to think, Alys. When I come back I shall tell my father that you and I must have some time together. We can make arrangements. We can find somewhere for you to live in comfort near by, where I can be with you. I am going away to think of how it can be managed. Wait for me.'

  Alys turned her pale, unsmiling face towards him. 'I have to wait for you,' she said grudgingly. 'There is nowhere else for me to go. I love you.'

  He beamed at that, but there was no joy in either Alys' face or her voice. 'It seems I am just a woman like any other,' she said sulkily. 'Neither your vows to me nor my magic have kept me safe from this pain.'

  'Sweetheart… 'he started and drew her closer to him. Then the door above them on the stairs opened and he dropped her hand and went by without another word. Alys looked after him with a desire so sharp that it felt like hatred.

  In the long month he was away he wrote every week to his father and it was Alys' task to read his scrawled letters. He spoke of his friend's trading company – Van Esselin and Son – and his plans of expansion. He spoke of Lord Newcastle's son, and nights of roistering along the waterfront. He wrote well and the old lord and Alys would sometimes laugh together in the middle of a letter, when Hugo wrote of a struggle which ended in the River Tyne, or a mountebank on a street corner with a dancing bear. His letters made him vivid in Alys' mind and she wanted to hear his voice tell his stories, and see that sudden smile warm and lighten his dark face. She forgot the weeks of longing and looking for him and the nightly walk of moonlight across her bedroom wall. She forgot the sour taste of curdled desire, and the passion which felt like hatred, not love. Instead she laughed with his father and thought – without consciously thinking – if he and I were married, it would be like this.

  The old lord would wipe his eyes and tell Alys to read the section again, and then he would laugh again. 'He's a rogue!' he exclaimed. 'But there's no one in the world who could resist him! Don't you think so, Alys?'

  And Alys, alone in the tower room with the father of the man she loved, would lean back against his chair and nod. 'Irresistible,' she said.

  The old lord tweaked one of her curls which tumbled from the back of her hood. 'You hot for him still?' he asked.

  Alys nodded, turned her head and smiled at him. 'I love him,' she said. 'And he loves me.'

  The old lord sighed, his face kindly. 'He has to have his heir,' he said gently. 'I know,' Alys said. 'But we can love each other.' 'Maybe,' the old lord said, with a lifetime of whoring and loving and fighting behind him. 'Maybe for a while.'

  Catherine had her letters too. He wrote asking after her health every week and telling her those things of Newcastle that he judged fit for her ears.

  I know the real Hugo, Alys would whisper to herself while Catherine read his letters aloud to the circle of ladies. I know what he was really doing that night, when he tells Catherine that they went for a night sail and then early to their beds. He writes the truth to his father, and he knows I will read his letters, his true letters. Catherine does not know him, not as I know him.

  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 towards 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 bu