The Wise Woman Read online

  Hugo was sucking frantically, his forehead was damp with sweat, his dark curls sticking to his face, desperate with unsatisfied lust. 'Yes,' he said. 'I can see her now! I can see her white body and her hair.'

  Alys leaned forward and rubbed her breasts against his face, gasping a little as his stubble scratched across her nipples. 'This is my sister the Sun Witch,' she said. 'D'you feel the warmth of her skin? She is shameless, Hugo! She cares for nothing but heat and pleasure!'

  Hugo groaned aloud and butted his head against Alys' moving breasts. 'Give me your heat, Sun Witch,' he demanded. 'I want your shamelessness.'

  Alys lowered herself a little to his lap, her slim thighs astride him. 'She is coming to sit on you,' she whispered. The Star Goddess, she wants to feel your body between her legs.'

  The drug of the earthroot held Hugo passive. He could only arch his back as Alys lowered herself and pulled away, lowered again, and then succumbing to her own lust, gripped him with her thighs and rubbed herself against his breeches, against his padded codpiece.

  'I want… I want…' Hugo stammered. Saliva drooled from his mouth, his eyes were turned up in his head, only the whites showing.

  'You want us all,' Alys said. 'Every one of us in every way you can dream of.'

  'Yes,' Hugo said. 'Alys, please!' Alys untied the codpiece, pulled away the flap of his breeches; he was naked underneath. He thrust upwards and she dropped her body down to meet him. As they joined she felt a great surge of pleasure bounding up through her, and she clung to the thick padded shoulders of his jacket while the waves of it washed over and over her.

  'She is here!' she said triumphantly. 'The mistress of all of them has you in her thrall. Open your eyes and look at her. You are planting your seed in her, open your eyes and see the mistress you will never match, never replace, never reject.'

  Hugo, drugged to the point of blindness, forced his eyes open and saw her.

  'Mistress… my lady… Alys!' he exclaimed in surprise.

  'I am my own mistress,' Alys said, joyful in her power. 'I am my own mistress at last.' She fell forward and clung around his neck and heard his harsh gasp as his body tightened and throbbed inside her, and then quietened.

  As they grew cool she lifted herself away and pulled her cape around her shoulders, and tossed a handful of pine cones on the fire. She put the flagon of wine and the glasses back in the chest, all the time watching Hugo's deep, trance-like sleep and his flickering eyelids, as he dreamed of more and more extravagant orgies. He groaned once or twice and thrust his hips upwards, into the empty air.

  Alys put another log on the fire and scattered pine needles on it so that the room smelled resinous and sweet. Then she drew up the stool and sat, hugging her knees and waiting for Hugo to wake from dreams of colours so bright, smells so pungent and touches so intimate, that they were more vivid than reality. Alys watched the man she loved rear upwards in his chair and thrust his hips into nothingness in a drugged ecstasy, calling her name once, and then again; and she felt as far away from him as if she were walking alongside the cold river-bank on the snow-blown moorland and he were dead and still in his grave.

  He came to his senses slowly. He blinked and stared disbelievingly around him, shook his head in bewilderment, and then focused on Alys, calmly seated at the fireside, her hair tumbled over her naked shoulders, the cape thrown back, her bare skin warmed into a thousand tones of peach by the firelight.

  'Alys,' he said. 'What hour is it? And how long did I sleep? I had such a dream!'

  Alys smiled steadily, her eyes mysterious. 'It is nearly time for supper,' she said. 'You have not slept, it was no dream. I was here, you were here, all of them were here with us for all of that time.'

  Hugo leaned forward, grabbed her hands. 'They were?' he demanded. 'It was no dream? They were here, your sisters? And we were together, all of us?'

  Alys laughed a deep ripple of pleasure. 'Oh yes,' she said silkily. 'We were all here and you enjoyed every one of us. It was such pleasure, Hugo, wasn't it?'

  'Yes,' Hugo assented, dazed. 'Oh yes. My God, Alys. I've heard of such things but I never dreamed they could happen. But I saw them! I touched them.' 'You touched them!' Alys agreed, smiling. 'You touched us all. I promised you a time beyond all the times you had ever had. What did you expect, Hugo? Some whorish tricks? Or your nasty cruelties with Catherine? I can give you your dreams – the cream of your desires – nothing less.'

  Hugo leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes again. 'I feel drunk,' he said. 'I feel as if I drank for a week and then dreamed for a year.'

  Alys shrugged. 'Time means nothing when you are with us all,' she said. 'And my kisses and my sisters' kisses are powerful wine for a man.'

  Hugo opened his eyes and looked at her, his gaze suddenly piercing. 'Is this a trick?' he asked acutely. 'Is it a trick you have played on me? With herbs or poisons or some stuff? Tell me the truth, Alys. I never want more pleasure than you gave me – but I am awake now and want to know the truth. I am not some country clown at a fairground to be fooled. It makes no difference to my love for you – so tell me. Was it the wine you gave me? Or some trickery?'

  Alys laughed. 'You tell me, Hugo,' she said. 'You have been drunk many times – have you ever been potent like that in drink? Have you ever seen my sisters before when you were drunk or sober? Have you ever woken clear-headed, feeling strong after drinking?'

  She gambled on the power of the earthroot. 'You know what you saw. You know what you did! Was it one woman or twenty? Did you have the pleasure of one woman, or did you have the pleasure of twenty? Was it me, or was it me as the mistress of your dreams, and all of my wicked, desirable sisters?'

  Hugo nodded, leaned back and closed his eyes again. 'Deep, deepest magic,' he said. 'There were many, many of you. And you, Alys, as mistress of them all.'

  Alys smiled and rose up from the stool and stood before him. 'Yes,' she said calmly. 'I am mistress of them all. I am in my power. And the pleasure you have with us I can give you whenever I wish. Whenever you ask and whenever I consent.'

  Hugo's eyes darkened with the remainder of the drug and with desire. 'They will come again?' he asked.

  Alys smiled. 'Whenever I summon them,' she said. 'My sisters and I – we like to play with you, Hugo.'

  Hugo smiled. 'Alys,' he said. 'My love.'

  Twenty-one

  All through the next week, and the week after, Catherine was sluggish and tired. In the morning her women found her pillow damp with her sweat and tears. She slept badly at night, dreaming of her long-dead mother, and her father who had been reported for speaking treason against the King and died in the cold cells of York prison while waiting for his trial. During the day she mourned Morach – the only friend she had made in all the years she had spent as Lord Hugh's ward and young Hugo's wife. It was as if the loss of Morach had added to all the losses she had felt in her life and her grief for all of them overflowed and oozed from her eyes, from between her legs, from the very pores of her skin, in a steady unstoppable, cold dampness.

  Catherine, who had been a tyrant to her women and a bully to the servants, ceased giving orders or making demands. Alys had nothing more to do than sit with Catherine in the morning before dinner, and then again in the afternoon while Hugo went riding alone. Catherine drank deep of clary – a French red wine – which Alys assured her would build her blood, and ate at dinner and supper like a pig in farrow, with shameless gluttony. Dazed and sleepy from the wine, belching with rich food, and weary as her pregnancy entered its fifth month, Catherine dozed on her bed every afternoon after dinner, and fell asleep immediately after supper every night. If Hugo desired, he and Alys could be together all afternoon and all evening while his wife dozed and – after she fell into a drunken sleep – all night. He did desire. The earthroot worked its potent magic nearly every day and Alys found he needed smaller and smaller doses to fall into his waking dreams of desire. When he came out of them, blear-eyed and slack-muscled, he always told Alys that she w