The Wise Woman Read online

  Alys tightened her grip as she was bid. A fierce hungry smile spread across her face. She could feel the coldness and the darkness pouring from her, pouring out through her hands into Catherine. 'Are you cold?' she asked.

  Catherine shuddered. 'I am freezing, Alys! Freezing!' she exclaimed. 'And all the candles are out! And the fire out! Why is it so cold? Why is it so dark? I feel as if there is no one here who loves me or cares for me at all. Hold my hand tighter, Alys! Talk to me! I am afraid! I am afraid!'

  Alys laughed, a cold ripple of sound in the brightly lit steaming room. 'I am here, Lady Catherine,' she said.

  'Can you not see me? The fire is banked high, it is terribly hot. Can you feel nothing? And all the candles are lit – the lovely bright beeswax candles. The room is as bright as day, as bright as sunlight. Is it all dark for you? Is it all dark for you at last?'

  'Alys!' Catherine said imploringly. 'Hold me, Alys, please! Hold me close! I feel as if the waters are taking me under. I am drowning, Alys! I am drowning in my bed.'

  'Yes!' Alys said exultantly, her own breath coming fast. 'You caught me like this last time, in the moat. You called me to you and then you pulled me down! But this time it is me drowning you! I need not put my hands to your throat. I need not do more than hold your hands as you wish, and you will go down, Catherine. You will go down alone, you will drown in your bed!'

  'Alys!' Catherine cried. Her voice was as thin as a thread, and at the end of the word she choked, as if a wave of green icy water had slapped her in the mouth.

  Alys laughed again, madly, recklessly. 'You're drowning, Catherine!' she said, amazed at her own power. 'Morach could pull you out of the river but nothing and no one can save you from drowning! You're going down, Catherine! You're going down! You are drowning in your bed!'

  The door clicked behind them and Alys whirled around. It was Hugo. Behind him was the old lord and David. He looked from one woman to the other and his face was puzzled. 'What's wrong?' he asked.

  Alys took a deep breath. The bright hot room seemed to swirl around her like the colours in a swinging crystal. 'She is fearful,' she said. Her voice seemed to come from a long way away. 'And she is holding on to me so tight! I tried to call for the women but they did not hear. And I am faint.' She swayed as she spoke and Hugo stepped quickly forward. Alys lurched towards him; but it was David the seneschal who stepped forward and caught her as she fell.

  Hugo did not even turn around to look at her. He had Catherine gathered in his arms and she was sobbing on his shoulder.

  Seventeen

  Catherine was ill for many days, through the springtime weather of May when the sun rose clear and early, and the birds sang till dusk, till the end of that storm-filled, sunshine-filled month; but she did not complain. She lay quietly in her bed which was carried across to the little window so she could sit up on her pillows and see the courtyard and the garden and the life of the castle going on. She wearied easily and she liked to have Alys by her side to read to her. 'I cannot see the print,' she said. 'My head aches so. And Alys reads so sweetly.'

  Lord Hugh passed her books and poems to read, and even some of his letters from London which told of Queen Anne's trial and her execution. '"By the hand of a French swordsman, especially trained and brought over from that country,"' Alys read to Catherine.

  Catherine shook her head. 'I never liked her,' she said softly. 'I was named for Queen Catherine, you know, Alys. I always thought Anne Boleyn would fall. She was an adulteress, first with the King, and then with his courtiers. I won't mourn for her. Her rise was ungodly swift.'

  'No swifter than Jane Seymour's,' Alys said logically. 'She was lady-in-waiting to them both. And she will be queen in her turn. If a man is king, or even master of his destiny, he will choose the woman he wants. And she can rise as he wishes.'

  Catherine turned her head on the pillow and smiled at Alys. 'A marriage for love is best,' she said contentedly. 'A marriage for love between equals is best.'

  Hugo came to her every morning and sat with her until dinner. He dined with her in her chamber at noon, and the table in the big hall seemed strangely empty without them. Alys often waited on them in Catherine's chamber as they ate. Hugo took her service without noticing her. He only watched Catherine, pressing her to eat the finest things, to drink little glasses of good red Mount Rose wine from Gascony to strengthen her blood. It was Catherine who thanked Alys.

  In the afternoon while Hugo went out hunting, Alys would sing to Catherine and play the lute. She would read to her and copy passages from books which Catherine wanted to learn. 'I am so glad you are here, Alys,' Catherine said sweetly one day. 'I am so glad you are here to care for me. I feel so weak, Alys, I can tell you -but don't tell Hugo. I feel so weak I feel as if I will never be strong again. I am glad to have you care for me. I don't think I would have survived my drowning without your care.'

  Morach, sitting idly at Catherine's bedroom fire, shot a quick amused glance at Alys' face. Alys looked blandly back.

  'Who would have thought that you two girls would have become so close?' Morach wondered aloud. 'Such friends as you now are!'

  Alys drew her lips back in a smile. 'It makes me very happy to be your friend, my lady,' she said stiltedly. 'Perhaps you should have your rest now.'

  Every afternoon Catherine slept in her high bed until supper-time, when she dressed to go down to the hall with her ladies. The women and the men, gathered for their supper, gave a little mutter of approval to see her strength growing every day. 'It was a near thing,' Morach said with satisfaction, as she reached for another slice of manchet bread on the ladies' table. 'A near-run thing indeed. I thought for a little while that we might lose her.'

  'It's a miracle,' Ruth said devoutly. 'A miracle that she should be snatched from drowning and then not die of the cold nor lose the baby. I have thanked God for it.'

  'It's a miracle she should turn out so sweet,' Eliza whispered blasphemously. 'She was as sour and as full of acid as a lemon until her dunking. Now she's all honey. And kindly to you.' She nodded at Alys.

  'Will the baby have a fear of water?' Mistress Allingham asked curiously. 'I remember a child in Richmond whose mother fell in the river and she could never touch water without shivering.'

  'I remember her,' Morach nodded. 'Aye, sometimes it takes them that way, sometimes they swim like little fishes in the flood. D'you remember Jade the Idiot? His mother was drowned and I myself reached inside her dead body and pulled him out like a little lamb from a dead ewe. We wrapped him on the very bank of the river while the great flood was up high! And he could swim like he was more fish than man!'

  Margery nodded eagerly and spoke of another fine swimmer. Alys leaned back a little and let the talk wash around her. The beeswax candles were very clear and bright tonight and the wine was sweet. Looking to her left she could see Hugo's back, the padded broad set of his shoulders, the swirl of his cape. On the nape of his neck his dark hair curled tight, his cap was set askew in the new fashion. She stared as hard as she could, willing him to be aware of her, to turn, to see her. She could not do it. He had lost his sense of her. 'You're pale, Alys,' Eliza said. 'Are you sick again?'

  Alys shook her head. 'No, I'm well,' she said. 'A little weary, that's all.'

  Margery blew on her trencher of bread, piled high with her portion of savoury meat mortrews, and bit into it with relish. 'You've been sick since the Christmas feast, I reckon,' she said. 'You were so bright and bonny when you first came to the castle and now your skin is pale as whey.'

  'She'll bloom in the summer,' Morach said. 'Alys never liked being cooped indoors, and the reading and the writing she does would weary anyone.'

  "Tisn't natural, for a woman to have such learning,' Mistress Allingham said roundly. 'No wonder she looks so thin and plain. She's working all the time with her mind and not growing plump and bonny like a girl should.' 'Plain?' Alys repeated, shocked. Eliza nodded, mischievously. 'Why did you think you were so high in my lady's favour? Becaus