The Wise Woman Read online

  'Yes, we could have more sons,' she said. 'You would be the sire of a line. Legitimate sons.'

  'More sons than my father had! More sons than my grandfather had!' Hugo babbled. 'I am sick of what they are saying about me – that I cannot father a child. We'll marry and move to the new house and have a hundred sons.'

  'Marry?' Alys asked softly, ready to spring a trap of a verbal betrothal on Hugo. A promise of marriage was the most binding promise of all, an honourable man could not withdraw. 'Do you ask me to marry you?'

  'Hundreds of sons!' Hugo said, with a sudden swing to drunken cheeriness. 'Hundreds of them.'

  'Shall we marry?' Alys whispered insidiously. 'Marry and have legitimate sons. Do you want to marry me, Hugo?'

  For a moment she thought he would answer her, and she would have his word of honour and a chance to blackmail him with his own meticulous code. But he gave a sigh and pitched forward on his face, buried his way into the pillows and started snoring.

  Alys slithered out from underneath him, threw a rug around her bare shoulders and pulled over a chair to the hearth. She watched the flames. 'Odin,' she said, thinking of the blank runes. 'Death of the old way and the birth of the new. The old lives have to die. The old precious loves have to make way. There has to be a death.'

  A log shifted and flamed, its yellow light flickering into Alys' face making her look entranced, witchy. 'Death of the old ways,' she said again. 'There has to be a death.'

  She sat in silence for a moment.

  'A death,' she said softly. 'Not my death, not Hugo's, not the old lord's. But there has to be a death. The old loyalties must be changed. The old loves must die.'

  She said nothing more for a long while but watched the flames in silence. Alys knew that the runes were foretelling a death – she hoped to buy them off with a symbolic death of her old love and her old loyalty. But in her most secret heart Alys knew that the runes would want blood.

  'Not my blood,' she said softly.

  When Hugo woke he was clear-headed and anxious to be off hunting. Alys helped him on with his doublet, patted the thick padded back and shoulders and pulled the rich silk lining through the slashings on the sleeves and chest. Even with the shadows under his eyes from the drink and the dark haze on his chin, Hugo looked very fine. Alys did not correct him when he assumed that he had made love to her. She walked with him to the door of the ladies' gallery and watched him run lightly down the stairs, then she nodded to Eliza sitting at the fire.

  'Bring me Catherine's writing desk,' she said and took a stool with them. Mistress Allingham was sewing the long tapestry they had been working ever since Alys came to the castle. Catherine's mother and her women had started it, Catherine and her ladies had worked it. Alys fancied that she and her women would be working it long after Catherine had left the castle in disgrace. It was only a quarter completed. Idly Alys pulled out the folds and looked at the intricate bright colours of the design. 'Where are Ruth and Margery?' she asked. 'Gone out to the garden,' Mistress Allingham replied. 'Lady Catherine is sleeping, but she was asking for you after dinner.'

  Alys shrugged. 'I was with Lord Hugh,' she said. 'Catherine cannot have me at her beck and call.'

  Mistress Allingham raised her thin eyebrows but said nothing.

  Eliza brought Catherine's ivory writing desk. A quill stood ready in the matching pot of ink, there were smooth sheets of paper and a short candle for the sealing wax, with some scraps of ribbon. Alys took it on to her lap with satisfaction, touched everything, smoothed the paper, brushed her fingertip against the feathers of the quill.

  She took up the pen and wrote. ‘I am sending these things to you by messenger because I cannot come today as I intended. Lady Catherine at the castle is ill and I am commanded to care for her. For your safety and my own I will not endanger us nor bring us to their attention by insisting otherwise. I will come as soon as I can. Say nothing to the messenger. Send me no reply. I will come as soon as I can.

  When she had finished writing she folded the paper three times and dripped sealing-wax in three puddles along the join, pressing the little seal into each one. The seal was a miniature version of Hugo's family crest, used by the ladies of his family for generations. Alys carefully drew an elegant 'A' underneath each seal and then let it dry.’

  'What are you writing?' Eliza asked, unable to contain her curiosity any longer.

  'There is a new wise woman come to Morach's old cottage,' Alys said. ‘I don't know who she is or where she comes from. But I am sending her some things. When my own time comes I shall need a wise woman to deliver my child. If she is skilled and good-natured I shall summon her.'

  The one at Richmond has a fine reputation for childbirth,' Mistress Allingham offered.

  Alys nodded. Then I will send a gift to her too,' she said. 'It is well to be prepared.’

  'It couldn't happen to you, could it?' Eliza nodded towards Catherine's door where Catherine lay asleep in bed, tears sliding out from under her closed eyelids, her sheets soaked with white, creamy slurry. Alys shook her head.

  'They are saying that it is a weakness in Hugo,' Eliza volunteered. 'That he cannot get a woman with child and that if he does the child does not take.'

  Mistress Allingham pursed her lips. 'This miscarriage is like none I have ever seen before,' she said. 'Lady Catherine does not bleed.'

  Alys lowered her voice to match theirs. 'There is a corruption in her humours,' she said. 'Remember how the child was conceived. She is always too hot or too cold. I did what I could to bring her into balance but the child was conceived in heat and dryness and lost in damp and coldness. I can make Catherine well, but I cannot change her nature. No one can make her fertile. No one can make her clean.'

  'Then he'll put her aside,' Eliza hissed, her face alert. Alys nodded and put a finger across her lips. The two women exchanged one bright look. 'And you carrying his child!' Eliza noted. Alys smiled at her and got to her feet, shaking out the folds of the bright green gown. 'And you said I was falling,' she reminded Eliza. 'You were taunting me with falling low. You called me a whore.'

  Eliza flushed red. 'I beg your pardon,' she said. 'I spoke wrongly to you, Alys… Mistress Alys. I spoke too freely, and I was mistaken.'

  Alys nodded. She went to her chamber and took the old dark blue gown from her chest, the gown the old lord had given her from the leavings of his whore Meg. Alys shook out the folds. It would drape around Mother Hildebrande – she had grown so slight and stooped. But it was made of good thick wool and would keep her warm, even in that damp cottage. Alys folded it up and went downstairs through the deserted great hall, to the kitchen.

  The place was quiet. The cooks and servers had slipped out to Castleton, to lie in the fields by the river, to visit friends, to carouse with the off-duty soldiers. The kitchen-lad was there, dozing by the spit he turned all day. There was a big cooked haunch of beef on the spit, left from dinner.

  'Wake up,' Alys said peremptorily. He was on his feet in a second, rubbing his eyes with one grimy hand. When he saw Alys he shrank back.

  Alys smiled at him. 'I am sending some food to a wise woman on the moors, and a gown,' she said. 'You may take it for me. You may ride my mare out.' The lad blinked.

  'Put together a basket of everything you can find which is good to eat,' Alys said. 'A big cut off that joint, bread, fruit, some sweetmeats and a pitcher of wine.' The lad hesitated.

  'Go on,' Alys said. ‘I will tell the cook I ordered it.' He nodded and went to one of the beams where a dozen baskets were hanging. He lifted one down and went to a larder set against the cool outside wall of the castle.

  Alys looked around her. The floor was strewn with herbs. Dried and old, they had not been changed for months. Some hens and a cockerel pecked around on the floor, their white and moss-coloured droppings marked the stone slabs. The fire on the other side of the room smouldered around a great trunk of pine. It would be stoked up for supper and then banked in overnight. One side of the kitchen wall was a blo