Novels 03 The Wise Woman Read online

  “Perhaps they heard of the ordeal?” David suggested helpfully. “Or of Alys’s dream of her and Hugo? Or maybe they suspect her learning—unusual in a girl from a country hovel? Or the sudden drowning of old Morach? I heard a rumor that she was a witch and drowned while running away.”

  The sun on the field was very hot, but Alys in the underwater green of the arbor shivered as if she were cold.

  “I am carrying Hugo’s son,” she said steadily. “I am the second woman he has ever got with child in all his life. If anything were to happen to Catherine or her child then my baby would be your only grandchild, my lord. I do not think it befits us to gossip like common people about witchery and sorcery and nonsense. Hugo and I are lovers, and I am the mother of his child. If an old fool like Goodwife Norton wishes to make a scene and spoil a day why should we have our peace disturbed?”

  The old lord nodded. “No wonder it is to be a long pregnancy, Alys, since this baby protects you from all ills. Thirteen months by my reckoning?”

  Alys smiled. “He has told you then,” she said easily. “I have begged his pardon for my mistake. It was a natural mistake. I wanted Hugo’s child so much that I mistook the signs. But I am sure now. You will see me growing soon. But never growing, I hope, as big as the Lady Catherine!”

  The old lord chuckled. “Vixen,” he said without heat. “Don’t scratch at her. There can never be too many sons. There is room for you both.”

  Hugo had reached the end of the line. He stooped and picked up a bunch of the grass and the spindly sweet-smelling flowers. The blond girl ran forward with his jacket and held it out for him to slip it on. As he put it on he turned around and put his arm around her shoulders, kissed her heartily on both cheeks, and tucked the flowers into the neck of her gown. The girl leaned back against his arm and smiled at him. She was young and bright, dressed in her best gown of bright blue, cut very low and square across her creamy, plump breasts.

  “Looks like you have lost your flowers, Mistress Alys,” David observed.

  Alys stood up and smiled at him. “Then I shall make Hugo pick me some more,” she said recklessly.

  She turned her back on both of them and walked out into the bright sunlight, smiling. All around her people were spreading white cloths on the newly cut grass, the scything gang were raking the hay into long rows to dry in the wind and the sun. Jars of ale were opened and earthenware mugs thrust forward for filling. Alys walked toward Hugo across the field with her flat belly thrust forward to make it look bigger, smiling, gambling on her power. And as she came close, the girl with the flowers stuffed in the bodice of her gown twisted out of Hugo’s careless grip and fell back to avoid Alys’s glance, and then slipped away.

  “Alys,” Hugo said grimly.

  “You have thrown away my flowers,” Alys said. The smile was still on her face.

  Hugo bent to the heap of hay at his feet and picked up a swatch of grass mixed with flowers. “Here,” he said ungraciously. “Take these, I am going to open the dancing.”

  “With me?” Alys asked.

  Hugo’s face was grim. “Since you have started a storm which I shall have to calm, I shall dance first with you and then with every wench in this field, until they are all content.”

  Alys’s smile never wavered. She took Hugo’s outstretched arm and together they walked toward the musicians. Other couples fell into place behind them. But they moved quietly, as if they were bound to dance and too obedient to refuse.

  Alys stepped back and faced Hugo, waited for the music to begin, and froze. Behind Hugo’s shoulder was a face she knew.

  It was Tom, and a hard-faced woman hanging on his arm beside him.

  Alys’s face never flickered. Her eyes went past him without a glimmer of recognition, her clear bright smile impartial, unchanging—Tom brushed his wife Liza off his arm and came toward the dancers. Alys’s face was a lighthearted mask, her head on one side, listening to the music, her foot tapping to the beat. Tom, unbidden, walked unstoppably forward.

  “Alys!” he said.

  Hugo spun round. Tom was standing immediately behind him, but he did not even look at the lord, did not uncover his head. He ignored him as if he were a post in the hayfield. All he could see was Alys in her new green gown, her green and gilt ribbons plaited into her golden-brown hair, heartbreakingly lovely.

  “Alys,” he said again.

  Alys looked at him as if noticing him for the first time. She put her head on one side as if she were viewing some strange specimen.

  “Yes?” she said interrogatively.

  Tom gulped. “I will take you away,” he said, in a sudden awkward rush of speech. “I will take you, Alys. I will take you away. I’ve heard what they said of you…it’s not safe for you here. I will take you now.”

  Alys threw back her head and laughed. A clear brittle sound like breaking glass. She tossed her head and smiled at Hugo.

  “Who is this?” she asked. “Is he simple? Does he mistake me for someone?”

  Tom blenched as if she had struck him. “Alys!” he said in a hoarse whisper. Hugo tapped him on the shoulder, his face grim. “You interrupt the dancing,” he said. “Go your ways.”

  Tom seemed not to feel the touch, he did not hear his lord. He did not take Hugo’s warning. His eyes were fixed on Alys’s bright, unconcerned face.

  “I want to save you, Alys!” he said desperately. “They have called you a witch—you are in danger. I’ll take you—I’ll take you away, cost me what it will!”

  Liza behind him said, “Tom!” in a hard, sharp command.

  “Who is this?” Hugo asked her. “Some friend of yours?”

  Alys turned her bright clear gaze on him. “I don’t know,” she said, detached. “I don’t know him.”

  “I will take you,” Tom said again. “I won’t fail you. I will leave my farm and my wife, even my little children. I will save you, Alys. You need not stay in the castle with those people and their vices. I will take you away. I have some money saved. We will find a little farm somewhere and I will keep you safe. You will be as my wife, Alys! I will be true to you and guard you with my life!” He broke off. “You will be a virtuous woman again, Alys,” he said softly. “You were a good girl, I loved you then. You are a good girl still. You will be my little sweetheart once more.”

  She stared at Tom in open amazement and her gaze never wavered. She looked straight through him, as if he were a man of straw, a man of water, as if he were not even there. The smile lilting on her lips never even flickered.

  “You’re babbling, goodman,” she said coolly. “I know you not.”

  “Alys!” Tom exclaimed, and then he stopped short. He could not believe that his playmate, his childhood love, should look through him as if he were clear glass. As if he were nothing to her. As if he had never been anything to her. He stared at her for one long moment, and her face never altered, never changed from bright-eyed indifference.

  Then he spun on his heel and tore away from her, tore away from her empty, smiling face, through the crowd, vaulting the gate at the corner of the field and plunging out of sight.

  Alys laughed again, a merry, carefree laugh, and waved at the musicians who had lost the beat and were falling into silence.

  “Why do we wait? Let’s dance!” she cried gaily. “Let’s dance!”

  Chapter

  23

  Catherine was sleeping when they came home. Alys and Hugo went quietly past her closed door to Alys’s bedroom and told Eliza to call them as soon as Catherine awoke. Hugo strode over to the arrow-slit and looked out. Alys took the ribbons from her hair and pulled down her gown to show her warm creamy shoulders.

  “My lord?” she said softly.

  Hugo glanced around. “Not now,” he said coldly. “Who was that lad in the field?”

  Alys ignored his rejection. “No one I know,” she said.

  “The maid I danced with, the little blond one, said he was an old lover of yours. His wife speaks against you. Says you have