Novels 03 The Wise Woman Read online

  “Venison,” Mistress Allingham said with satisfaction. “David orders a good table.”

  “David?” Alys asked involuntarily. “Does David command the meals?”

  “Oh, yes,” Margery said. “He’s the old lord’s seneschal—he commands all that happens inside the castle and manages the tenants, commands the demesne, watches over the manors, tells them what crops to grow and takes the pick for the castle. The young Lord Hugo partly serves as seneschal for outside, he rules the villages and sits in justice with his father.”

  “I thought David was a manservant,” Alys said.

  Mistress Allingham tittered, and Alys flushed. “Best not let him hear you say that!” she said brightly. “He’s the most important man in the castle after my lord and the young Lord Hugo.”

  “And the most dangerous,” one of the women said low. “As spiteful as a little snake, that David.”

  They had to wait a long time for their food. It was brought on thin pewter platters, only the two lords and Lady Catherine ate off silver. They ate the meat with their fingers and knives, and then a bowl of broth and bread with a thick-handled spoon. The bread was a thick trencher of well-milled rye flour. At the top table they had a wheaten loaf, Alys could see its pale, appetizing color. All the food was tepid, except for the broth, which was cold.

  Alys set her spoon down.

  “Not to your liking?” one of the other women asked. “My name is Eliza Herring. Is it not to your liking?”

  Alys shook her head. “It’s cold,” she said. “And too salty for my taste.”

  “It’s made with salted meat,” Mistress Allingham said. “And from the bottom of the barrel, I’ll be bound. But it’s always cold. They have to carry it from the kitchen. I haven’t had hot meat since I left my own home.”

  “I daresay you’d rather stay, cold meat and all,” Eliza Herring said sharply. “From what I hear, the new young wife your son married wouldn’t have fed you venison, hot, cold or raw.”

  Mistress Allingham nodded. “I wish the plague would take her!” she exclaimed, then she stopped and looked at Alys. “Can you work on a woman you don’t know?” she asked. “Could you soften her heart toward me? Or even carry her off? There’s much sickness about—no reason why she should not take an ague.”

  Alys shook her head. “I am an herbalist, nothing more,” she said. “I cannot cast spells and I would not do so if I could.” She paused to make sure that all the women were listening. “I cannot make spells. All I have is a little skill in herbalism. It was these skills that cured my lord. I cannot and I would not make someone sick.”

  “But you could make someone fall in love?” asked the young woman called Margery. Unconsciously her eyes rested on the young Lord Hugo. “You have love potions and herbs which stir desire, don’t you?”

  Alys was suddenly weary. “There are herbs to stir desire, but nothing can change what a man thinks. I could make a man hot enough to lie with a woman—but I couldn’t make him like her after he had taken his pleasure.”

  Eliza Herring went off into hoots of laughter. “You’d be no further on then, Margery!” she said delightedly. “For he has lain with you a score of times and despised you each time until he feels the itch again.”

  “Hush, hush!” said the fourth woman desperately. “She’ll hear! You know how she listens!”

  A servant came to each of them and poured them ale. Alys looked toward the lord’s table. In the clear light of the wax candles she could see the shine on the silver plates. The napery was white linen, unmarked by any blemish. They were drinking wine from glassware. Alys found she was snuffing at the air, breathing in the smell of clean burning wax, clean linen, good food. It reminded her of the abbey and of the overwhelming hunger she had felt when she first saw the cleanness of it, and the order. She had been a half-starved child—she would have worked at the abbey for the garbage from the kitchens alone. She had been cold all her childhood, she had worn wooden clogs, no stockings or hose for her feet. All winter her feet were blue with cold except for where they were blood-red with chilblains. When she had seen the fires in the abbey and the thick woolen robes and the good leather boots she had longed for them, as only the cold and the hungry can long. And more than anything else she was a child who hungered for affection. Morach’s protection, her gruff sharing of her wisdom were not enough. Alys wanted a mother to love her—and in the abbess she found a woman with a deep love for all her novices, and the wisdom and courage to express it. And Alys had been the abbess’s favorite—as beloved as a daughter. Nothing was too good for her. Then the statue of Our Lady had smiled on her, confirming her desire to be there, sanctifying Alys’s need for comfort, for food, for love. Alys felt herself blessed in her calling, in a holy place, in a state of grace.

  She bowed her head over her plate to hide her face twisted with disappointment. She had lost everything in one night: her faith, her friends, her chance of wealth and comfort, and a life for herself. Alys could have risen to the highest office in the abbey, she could have been Reverend Mother herself one day. But then in one single night it was all gone. Now she was on the outside looking in, again. She had lost her future—and her mother too. Alys forced herself not to think of Mother Hildebrande and shame herself before them all by weeping for loneliness and loss at the dinner-table.

  The lords’ table was served with fillets of salmon and salad of parsley, sage, leeks, and garlic. Alys watched them as they were served. The greens were fresh, from the kitchen garden she guessed. The salmon was as pink as a wild rose. It would have been netted in the Greta this morning. Alys felt the water rush into her mouth as she looked at the pale succulent flesh, shiny with butter. A serving-lad shoved a trencher of bread before her spread thickly with paste of meat sweetened with honey and almonds, and his fellow poured more ale into Alys’s goblet.

  Alys shook her head. “I’m not hungry,” she said. “I want to rest.”

  Eliza Herring shook her head. “You may not leave the table until Father Stephen has said grace,” she said. “And until the lords and my lady have left. And then you must pour your mess into the almoner’s bowl for the poor.”

  “They eat the scraps from the table?” Alys asked.

  “They are glad of it,” Eliza said sharply. “Didn’t you give to the poor in Penrith?”

  Alys thought of the carefully measured portions of the nuns. “We gave whole loaves,” she said. “And sometimes a barrel of meat. We fed anyone who called at the kitchen door. We did not give them our leavings.”

  Eliza raised her plucked eyebrows in surprise. “Not very charitable!” she said. “My Lord Hugh’s almoner goes around the poorhouses with the bowl once a day, at breakfast-time, with the scraps from the dinner and supper table.”

  The priest, seated at the head of the table below the dais, rose to his feet and prayed in a clear, penetrating voice in perfect Latin. Then he repeated the prayer again in English. Alys listened carefully; she had never heard God addressed in English before, it sounded like blasphemy—a dreadful insult to speak to God as if he were a neighboring farmer, in ordinary words. But she kept her face steady, crossed herself only when the others did so, and rose to her feet as they did.

  Lady Catherine, the old lord, and the young lord all turned toward the door beside the waiting-women’s table.

  “What a lovely gown you have,” Lady Catherine said to Alys, as if she had just noticed it. Her voice was friendly but her eyes were cold.

  “Lord Hugh gave it me,” Alys said steadily. She met Lady Catherine’s gaze without flinching. I could hate you, she thought.

  “You are too generous, my lord,” Lady Catherine said, smiling.

  Lord Hugh grunted. “She’ll be a pretty wench when her hair is grown,” he said. “You’ll have to take her into your rooms, Catherine. She did well enough sleeping by me when I was sick. If she is to stay, she’d best have a bed with your women.”

  Lady Catherine nodded. “Of course, my lord,” she said pleasantly. “Wha