Novels 03 The Wise Woman Read online

  “Get out of the way, Morach,” Alys breathed through the window, shaking with dismay. “You’re my kin, not hers. You’re working for my interests, not hers. Leave her, Morach. Leave her be!”

  Morach shook her head, as if to rid herself of a voice in her ears, and dived. There was a flash of white as her feet kicked in the air and then a flurry of color of drowned cloth as she surfaced with Catherine in her arms. Hugo waded in, waist deep in the water, and grabbed Catherine. Alys could see that she was limp, perhaps stunned. She knew the woman was not dead. It would have been a rare piece of luck if she had broken her neck or staved in her head on a rock.

  Hugo gathered Catherine into his arms and then reached out a hand for Morach. One soldier jumped down and passed the two women up to his fellow on the bank. Alys watched it all, dry-eyed, white-faced. She watched Hugo scoop Catherine back into his arms for a stumbling run toward their horses. She saw Catherine grab the pommel of the saddle with one limp hand as she was handed up onto the horse, and Morach was tossed up behind one of the soldiers. The little cavalcade moved out of sight around the curve of the tower and Alys guessed they would hurry back into the castle by one of the sally-ports. At any moment now there would be an alarm and people running, and everyone worried about Catherine and praising Morach.

  Alys pushed herself stiffly away from the window and pulled out a footstool to sit at Lord Hugh’s feet and watch the flames of the fire. She shivered a little as she remembered the icy greenness of the moat. Then she leaned forward and put her chin on her hands and stared with blank, unseeing eyes into the very heart of the redness—and waited for the noise and the shouting to start.

  She did not wait long. Lord Hugh jumped out of his sleep at the yell from the great hall which echoed up to his room.

  “What is that? What is that?” he demanded. “Alys! Are we under attack? What is that noise?”

  “I’ll go and see, my lord,” Alys said smoothly.

  She went to the door but as she opened it David came in. “Nothing to alarm you, my lord,” he said swiftly. “The Lady Catherine had a fall in the river and Lord Hugo has brought her safe home. She is being put to bed by her women. Her wise woman says she thinks the child is not hurt.”

  “God be praised!” the old lord said, crossing himself. “Tell her I’ll come at once. Alys! D’you hear that! Catherine near-drowned and the heir with her! God’s breath! That was a narrow escape!”

  “I’d best go to her,” Alys said.

  “Yes, yes. Go and see how she is and come straight back to me. I’ll come and see her myself when she permits. And tell Hugo to come to me as soon as his wife is settled.”

  Alys slipped from the room and ran down the stairs to the ladies’ gallery. The place was in uproar. Servants were running around with wood-baskets, ewers of hot water, jugs of mulled wine and hot mead. Catherine’s women were shrieking orders and then canceling them, snatching up Catherine’s hands to chafe and kiss. Hugo, supporting Catherine, was yelling for them to put a warming-pan in Catherine’s bed and clear the room so she could be undressed. Morach, ignoring the hubbub, dripped a wet path to Alys’s chamber. She checked when she saw Alys in the doorway and their eyes met.

  “You swim like a witch,” Alys said, not caring who heard her.

  “And you curse like one,” Morach replied, venom in her voice.

  “Why meddle?” Alys asked, dropping her voice so her words were lost in the shouting. “You heard my power, you know what I was doing. Why meddle in my work?”

  Morach shrugged. “That’s a death I’d wish on no one,” she said. She shuddered as if she was chilled to her soul. “I’d hate to die by water,” she said. “I couldn’t stand by and see a woman die by water. Not a young woman, not a young woman with child, not one that I’d served. You’re a harder woman than me, Alys, if you could have stood by and watched her drown.”

  “I was holding her under with all the power I have,” Alys said through her teeth.

  “And I pulled her out,” Morach said, blazing. “There are some deaths no woman should suffer. I’d rather any death than drowning. I’d rather any death in the world than going under the water and choking my way to hell.”

  Alys glanced around her. Eliza Herring was within earshot, though screeching instructions to a servant. “Thank God you were there,” Alys said loudly.

  Morach gleamed under her dripping mat of gray hair. “Thank you for your good wishes.” She pushed past Alys and went into the little room, slamming the door.

  Alys turned and clapped her hands together. “You men!” she said, her voice clear above the noise. “Out! All of you! We cannot get Lady Catherine abed with you all here. Eliza! Turn down her bed. You girl!”—to a passing maid—“Get those warming-pans into her bed. And you”—to another—“see the fires are banked high in her chamber and this one.”

  The room emptied at once. “Out of the way!” Alys said crossly to the maidservants and to Catherine’s ladies who still cluttered the room. She took Catherine’s other arm and she and Hugo led the shivering woman into her chamber and lowered her into a chair by the fire.

  “Fetch towels and sheets,” Alys ordered Hugo, without looking at him. She pulled off Catherine’s sodden fur cloak and dropped it on the floor. Then she unpinned her headdress, undid her gown, and stripped her with hard hands until the woman was naked.

  Hugo passed her the towels and both of them rubbed her hard all over until her white skin glowed pink and the roughness of her gooseflesh had subsided. Then Alys wrapped her tight in the warm sheets and Hugo lifted her into bed. Alys piled rugs on top of her and pulled the warming-pans out to refill them with fresh embers, while Hugo gave her hot mead to drink. Her teeth chattered pitifully on the cup. Alys, at the fireside, shoveling embers, hunched her shoulders.

  “I’m cold,” Catherine said.

  Hugo shot a despairing look at Alys. The room was as hot as a bread-oven. Alys’s face was flushed, her forehead damp with sweat. The mud on Hugo’s boots was dried to dust by the heat, his wet clothes were steaming.

  “Drink some more mead,” Alys said, without turning round. She slammed the scorching lid of the warming-pan and then wrapped it in a towel and thrust it into the bed under Catherine’s feet.

  “I’m so cold, Alys,” Catherine said. Her voice was high and thin, like a child. “I’m so cold, Alys. Can you not give me something to make me warm?”

  Alys turned to the chest and pulled out one of Catherine’s great fur cloaks with the hood. “Sit up a little,” she said. “We’ll put this around you like a shawl, and you can have the hood over your wet hair. You’ll soon warm up.”

  Together they raised her on the bed. Alys looked away when her robe fell open and the rounded part of her belly was exposed. She looks like a mead-pot, Alys thought irritably, all gross curves. Beside the plump naked woman, Alys felt herself to be a shadow, a specter of darkness. She tucked the thick furs around Catherine and then pulled the bed-clothes up again.

  “Warmer?” she asked.

  Catherine nodded and tried to smile, but her face was still white. Hugo held her cold hands in his own. He turned them over, her fingernails were blue.

  “Should she be blooded?” he asked Alys. “Should we send for a surgeon and bleed her?”

  Alys shook her head. “She needs all her blood,” she said. “She’s choleric in humor. She’ll warm up.”

  “And the baby?” he asked. He turned a little away from the bed so Alys could hear him, but Catherine could not. “The baby is the most important thing. Will the baby be all right?”

  Alys nodded. She had a very sour taste in her mouth. She did not want to put her face too close to Hugo, she thought her breath would smell foul. “I doubt this will harm the baby,” she said. “You will be laughing about this in a few days. Both of you.”

  Hugo nodded but his face was dark with worry. “Pray God that’s so,” he said.

  Alys turned away. “I have to go to your father,” she said. “He sent me to find new