Novels 03 The Wise Woman Read online

  The fire crackled gently, the scent of lemon verbena was very sweet in the room. The three of them—the two naked pregnant women, and the half-dressed young lord—lay still. The lord and his lady slept.

  Catherine came down for supper in the great hall, rosy in her pink and cream gown, her face smiling, fat as a pudding, her hair spread out over her shoulders, her appetite sharp. Hugo had her on his arm as they walked into the dining-hall and there was a shout of appreciation and welcome from all the diners. Alys took her old place at the women’s table and cast a hard look around at all of them to warn them not to mock her for her return.

  “Welcome back,” Eliza said irrepressibly.

  Alys met her bright eyes with a cold stare. “I am happy to dine with you, Eliza, and with you all,” she said levelly. “But do not forget that I am carrying Hugo’s son in my belly—something each one of you would give a year’s pay for. Don’t forget that when Catherine takes to her bed again I shall be sitting next to the old lord and that I am his favorite. Don’t forget that I am Mistress Alys to you and every one of you. My fortunes may rise and fall, but even at their ebb they are higher than you could dream.”

  All the women looked at their plates and supped their broth in silence. Alys let the silence go on and on. She watched Hugo. Half a lifetime ago it seemed that she had sat here with Morach beside her, and watched Hugo’s back with a desire so strong that she had thought she would die of it. Now she looked at his shoulders and his neck and the set of his head with silent hatred.

  “Are you not eating, Mistress Alys?” Ruth asked quietly.

  Alys glanced down at her bowl. The broth had grown cold, thick lumps of grease floated in it. Alys took a sip of wine tainted with the metallic taste of the pewter cup. David the steward had seen that her place on the women’s table was laid with pewter, like theirs. Glass was only for the top table, and she had lost her place there.

  “I am not hungry,” she said briefly. “I will ask Hugo to send me something to my room later.” She rose from the table and went to the high table, to the old lord.

  “I wish to leave the table,” she said softly in his ear. “I have some pains and I feel sick. I wish to go to my room.”

  The look he turned on her was kindly enough, but he smiled as if he could see straight into her heart. “Don’t be envious, vixen,” he said softly. “You come second to Catherine. We always told you that. Go and sit at your place and drink and eat from pewter. She will keep to her room again some time and you can queen it up here then. But when she chooses to eat with us in the hall where she belongs, you take your place at the women’s table—where you belong.”

  Alys glanced across at Hugo. He was listening to some jest a man was shouting to him from a table further down the hall. He caught the end of the riddle and threw back his dark head in a shout of laughter.

  “No,” the old lord said, following her glance. “There is no appeal against my decision. I am master here still, Alys. Go and sit where you are bid.”

  Alys smiled her sweetest smile. “Of course, my lord,” she said. “I did not wish to spoil the good cheer and merry company at the ladies’ table with my illness. But if you wish it, of course I will sit with them.”

  Lord Hugh glanced back at the table and barked a sharp laugh at the four sour faces. They were straining to hear what Alys and the old lord were whispering about.

  “Oh, go your ways,” he said indulgently. “I will spare you the merry cheer of that crew. Go to your room now, but another time you must sit with the silly bitches.”

  Alys dipped him a curtsy and slipped out through the tapestry-hung door behind them. She caught Eliza’s eye as she left and remembered her first dinner in the castle when they had told her that no one could leave before the lord.

  “Things are better for me now than they were then,” Alys said to herself grimly. She mounted the stairs to the ladies’ gallery, pushed open the door and pulled up a chair before the fire. “It is better for me now than in Morach’s ugly cottage.” She threw another log on the fire and sat watching the sparks fly. “I have forced them to see me for what I am,” she said defiantly to herself. “I came here as a nobody and now they call me Mistress Alys and I have twelve gowns of my own. I have as many new gowns as Catherine.”

  The quietness of the room gathered around her. “I have forced them to see me for what I am,” Alys said again. She was silent for a moment, watching the flames.

  “They see me as his whore,” she said softly. “Today I became Hugo’s whore. And everybody knows.”

  Chapter

  24

  Alys was alone in her bedroom when the others came up to the gallery. She heard them talking and laughing, she heard the clink of jug on pewter. She sat by her little fireside, her door firmly shut, and listened to them playing a card game as Eliza sang. Then the chatter died down as one by one the women excused themselves and went to their room. Alys listened for Hugo’s voice and heard him call “Good night” to one of them. She sat by her fireside and waited.

  He did not come to her.

  In the early hours of the morning, when the darkness was still thick and the moon was setting in the west, Alys wrapped a shawl around her and crept across her floor to the door. She opened it and peeped out. The fire in the long gallery had died down, the ashes cold. Catherine’s door was shut. There was no sound.

  Alys paused for a moment by the hearth and remembered the time when she had sat there absorbed in her longing for Hugo and he had come from Catherine’s room and put his arm around her and told her that he loved her. Alys shrugged. It was a long, long time ago. Before Morach’s death, before her deep magic had come to claim her, before she had played the wanton with him—and had him take her at her word.

  She crept to Catherine’s door and turned the handle gently. Opening it a crack, she could hear deep rhythmic breathing. She slid through the door like a ghost and peered into the room.

  The room was dark. All the candles were out and the fire had died away in the darkened grate. The little window faced the castle courtyard and garden and no moonlight shone. Alys blinked her eyes, trying to see through the shadows.

  In the great high bed was Catherine, sprawled on her back with her high belly making a mountain of the covers. One arm was thrown carelessly above her head; Alys could see the thick clump of dark hair in her armpit. The other arm was cradling the man lying beside her. Alys stepped a little closer to see. It was Hugo. He was deep asleep, lying on his side with his head buried into Catherine’s neck, his arm thrown proprietorially over her body. They lay like a married couple. They lay like lovers. Alys watched them without moving while they breathed steadily and peacefully. She watched them as if she would suck the breath out of their bodies and destroy them with the weight of her jealousy and disappointment. Hugo stirred in his sleep and said something.

  It was not Alys’s name.

  Catherine smiled, even in the darkness Alys could see the calm joy of Catherine’s sleepy smile, and gathered him closer. Then they lay still again.

  Alys closed the door silently, and crept back, across the empty, cold gallery to her own room, shut the door behind her, drew her chair up to the fire, wrapped her shawl around her, and waited for day to come.

  In the half-light of dawn, before the sun was up but while the sky was pale yellow with the promise of sunshine to come, Alys went over and opened the chest of her magic things. Tucked away in the corner was Morach’s old bag of bones—the runes.

  Alys glanced behind her. Her bedroom door was shut, no one in the castle was stirring. She glanced out of the arrow-slit window. In the pale light she could see strips of mist hovering and rising from the silver surface of the river. As she watched they rose and billowed. One of them looked like a woman, an old woman with gray hair and a shawl wrapped around her.

  “No,” Alys whispered, as she recognized her. “I am not calling you. I will use your runes for I need to know my future. But I am not calling you. Stay in the water. Stay out o