Novels 03 The Wise Woman Read online

  Alys recoiled, thinking it must be some worm, perhaps a snake. Then she saw more clearly.

  A little white hand.

  Alys screamed aloud, but made no sound except a soft groan.

  As she watched, the little hand parted the curtain of a dock leaf and the little wax doll walked out. It was the doll of Hugo—the worst of the three. Eyeless, earless, fingerless, mouthless. It waddled on little legs through the thick leaves and flowers of the bank and down to the road. Behind it, like tiny toy soldiers, came the other two. The doll of Lord Hugh, stooped and more tired, but marching determinedly behind Hugo, and behind him came Catherine. With helpless fascination Alys leaned down from her horse to see better. The doll of Catherine had changed. The great fat belly had gone, torn away. There was a ragged edge to the doll’s body and a cavernous hole where the belly had been. At every step the doll took it left a little trail, like the slime of a snail, where molten candlewax dripped from the wound.

  “Where are you going?” Alys moaned.

  The Catherine and the Lord Hugh dolls checked at her voice. But the little doll of Hugo could neither hear her, nor see her, feel her, nor speak to her. It trudged on like a little unstoppable toy.

  “To Castleton,” the two little dolls said in their piping, innocent voices. “To find our mother who made us.”

  “I buried you!” Alys shouted at them. “I left you on holy ground. I left you there. Lie quiet! Lie quiet, I command you!”

  “We want our mother!” they said in their high, bright voices. “We want our mother, our mother, little Sister Ann!”

  “No!” Alys’s scream broke through her sleep. She heard her door bang open as Mary came into the room, asking if she were ill.

  “No!” Alys said again, the dream fading as she felt Mary’s hand on her arm.

  But she heard their reply, from three miles out on the Castleton road. “We want you, Mother,” they cried joyfully. “WE WANT YOU!”

  Chapter

  29

  The morning was clear and sun-filled, just as the old lord had predicted. The storm had drenched the mist and blown away the clouds. Alys, waking from a second sleep, went over to the arrow-slit and stared out toward the moor where the white ribbon of the road snaked westward.

  For long moments she stood staring toward the moor as if she thought that she might see something coming along the road. Then she shrugged and turned away.

  “I fear nothing,” she said under her breath. “Nothing. I have not come this far to be fearful of dreams. I am not a fool like Catherine. I shall fear nothing.”

  Mary tapped at the door and came in, laden with a platter of bread and meat, and a pitcher of ale. Alys went back to bed and ate heartily, sitting up in bed, and reviewing one gown after another as Mary took them from the chest and spread them out before her.

  “The new blue gown,” she said at last. “And I’ll wear my hair loose.”

  Mary laid out the dress, poured hot water from a ewer to a basin, and helped Alys lace tight into the gown. It had been remade from some blue silk in Meg’s box, sewn by the castle seamstresses in the style favored by the new Queen Jane. Alys smiled. The dress might have come into fashion precisely to show off her growing belly. The stomacher was cut short, it pressed across the breasts and laced at the back like a bodice. In the front the fullness of the gown was gathered across the belly. Even virgins wearing such a fashion would look pregnant; Alys, with the curve of her belly emphasized by the folds of silk, looked like a queen of fertility. She opened the door, bid “good day” to the ladies, and strolled across the gallery to visit Catherine.

  Catherine was still in bed. Her breakfast tray was pushed aside, she was drinking from a mug of ale. She put it down when Alys came in the door and held out her arms to her. Alys bent over the bed and allowed Catherine to hold her and nuzzle her damp face into Alys’s neck.

  “Alys,” Catherine said miserably. “You must help me.”

  Alys pulled up a chair to the bed without invitation or permission and sat down. “In what way, Catherine?” she asked pleasantly. “You know I would do anything in my power for you.”

  Catherine sniveled weakly and hunted in the pillows for her handkerchief. She rubbed her eyes and her moist nose. “I cannot stop weeping,” she said thickly. “All day and even all night. Alys, I weep even in my dreams.”

  Alys examined her clasped hands against the blue of her robe. They were as smooth and as white as a lady’s. No one would look at them now and think Alys had ever plied anything heavier than a needle. “Why do you weep?” Alys asked, without much interest.

  Catherine pressed the backs of her hands against her pink cheeks to cool them. “Hugo will not see me,” she said flatly. “He will not see me and he refuses to touch me because I have not been churched. But Father Stephen is not here so I cannot be churched. Hugo knows that. He is using it as an excuse to snub me. I know it. I know it.” She broke off, her voice had risen high and angry. She took a deep breath.

  “I do not even know if Father Stephen believes in churching,” she said resentfully. “If he calls it superstition and refuses to do it, and Hugo still will not touch me until it is done, then what can I do? It is a trick. Hugo is punishing me for losing his child. But it is not my fault! I am not to blame!” Her voice had grown high and shrill again. She took a quivering breath, trying to calm herself. Alys barely looked at her.

  “The old lord will not see me,” she said. “He says he will see me when I am well again and fit to be seated at table; but I know he is angry with me.” She hesitated, her voice very low. “I suspect him,” she said softly. “I suspect him of trying to have me put aside.”

  Alys glanced up at her but said nothing.

  “You must know,” Catherine said with sudden energy. “You write his letters for him, he tells you his business. Is he writing to have me set aside and the marriage annulled?”

  “Yes,” Alys said precisely. “If his friends at court will support his application.”

  The flushed color went from Catherine’s face, leaving her waxy white. “On what grounds?” she whispered.

  “Too close kinship,” Alys replied.

  “There was a dispensation…” Catherine began.

  “Bought from the pope,” Alys answered. “The king decides these matters now. Not the pope.”

  Catherine was silent, staring at Alys. “What does Hugo say?” she asked. “Does he love me still? Does he want to keep me? Will he stand against his father?”

  “Hugo doesn’t know,” Alys answered. “But I doubt he would go against his father’s will in this matter.”

  “No,” Catherine said, shaking her head. “He would not. He married me because his father ordered it, and he lay with me because they needed an heir. Now I cannot give an heir I am of no use to anybody. So they will throw me away.”

  Alys looked at her fingernails. They were pale pink and regular, with clear white tips and little half-moons of whiteness at the base. Alys inspected them approvingly.

  “I am lost,” Catherine said hollowly.

  Alys waited, indifferent to Catherine’s pain.

  “What will they do with me?” Catherine asked.

  “You could marry again,” Alys suggested.

  A little of the color came back into Catherine’s cheeks. “After Hugo?” she demanded.

  Alys nodded, conceding the point. “Or you could have a little house of your own, with your own servants on your dowry land. Perhaps a little manor, a farmhouse.”

  Catherine’s plump face trembled with her grief. “I have been the lady of the castle,” she said. “The wife of Lord Hugo. Do they expect me to live in a cottage and keep ducks?”

  Alys smiled. “Could you fight them?”

  “I’d lose,” Catherine replied promptly. “Catherine of Aragon could not sway them, a princess in her own right. The Boleyn woman’s own uncle found her guilty and sent her to be killed. It’s not likely that they would listen to me! The king’s council do not like to hear ab