The Wise Woman (32 page)

Toward the end of the month of March, Hugo came back from his ride, found his father in the ladies’ gallery, and asked him for permission to go away to visit his friends in Newcastle. Alys froze and kept her eyes on her sewing. Catherine was all smiling interest.

“Of course you must go!” she said confidently. “We will be well enough here! Your father will guard us and Morach and Alys will keep me well.”

Hugo smiled at them all. Alys felt his eyes on her and did not look up.

“Then I shall go with a clear conscience and come back with a light heart,” he said pleasantly. “And you and all your ladies must make me a list of things to bring you from the city.”

“I should like some silk,” Catherine said consideringly. “And David will certainly need tea and spices.”

“I shall ride like a pedlar,” Hugo said, smiling. “Alys, can I bring anything for you?”

Alys looked up, her face indifferent. “No thank you, my lord,” she said coolly. “I want for nothing.”

He nodded. The other women asked for little fairings, colored silk ribbons for a gown, a purse of spices. Hugo wrote down their requests seriously and tucked the list inside his doublet.

“I’ll leave at daybreak,” he said. “So I’ll bid you farewell now.” He took Catherine’s hand and kissed it. “Stay well, my dear,” he said. No one could have been deaf to the tenderness in his voice. “Stay well for the sake of my son, and for yourself.”

Alys got quietly to her feet and left the room. Pausing outside the door she heard his farewells to the others and then she went down to the lobby between the stairs and the entrance to the round tower where he must pass.

He came light-footed down the stairs, whistling.

“Alys!” he said, as she stepped forward into the light. “I’m glad you waited for me.”

There was a brief silence between them as Hugo assessed Alys’s stony face.

“I am sorry,” he said frankly. “I know these days have been hard on you. As hard for you as for me. I’ve seen you growing pale and thin, Alys, and it has cut deep into me. I need to be away, I need to be away from here, Alys. I am sick of these wintry days and these long evenings with women. I know you are in pain, watching Catherine as you do. I know how it must hurt you.”

Alys turned her head away from him, but her cold hand gripped his.

“I
have
to endure this,” Hugo said urgently. “Catherine is my wife, she is carrying my son, I have no choice, Alys. And I cannot long for you and look for you, and snatch little moments with you. I want to be either with you or without you; this half-life of occasional desire is worse than nothing.”

Alys nodded unwillingly.

“I need to put some leagues between this place and myself,” Hugo said urgently. “Enmeshed between one duty and another I feel myself being pulled a thousand different ways at once. Some days I feel like I want to run away!”

“You are fortunate in having the freedom to run,” Alys said dryly.

He smiled at her. “Don’t scratch at me,” he said softly. “I am going away to think, Alys. When I come back I shall tell my father that you and I must have some time together. We can make arrangements. We can find somewhere for you to live in comfort nearby, where I can be with you. I am going away to think of how it can be managed. Wait for me.”

Alys turned her pale, unsmiling face toward him. “I have to wait for you,” she said grudgingly. “There is nowhere else for me to go. I love you.”

He beamed at that, but there was no joy in either Alys’s face or her voice. “It seems I am just a woman like any other,” she said sulkily. “Neither your vows to me nor my magic have kept me safe from this pain.”

“Sweetheart…” he started and drew her closer to him. Then the door above them on the stairs opened and he dropped her hand and went by without another word. Alys looked after him with a desire so sharp that it felt like hatred.

In the long month he was away he wrote every week to his father and it was Alys’s task to read his scrawled letters. He spoke of his friend’s trading company—Van Esselin and Son—and his plans of expansion. He spoke of Lord Newcastle’s son, and nights of roistering along the waterfront. He wrote well and the old lord and Alys would sometimes laugh together in the middle of a letter, when Hugo wrote of a struggle which ended in the River Tyne, or a mountebank on a street corner with a dancing bear. His letters made him vivid in Alys’s mind and she wanted to hear his voice tell his stories, and see that sudden smile warm and lighten his dark face. She forgot the weeks of longing and looking for him and the nightly walk of moonlight across her bedroom wall. She forgot the sour taste of curdled desire, and the passion which felt like hatred, not love. Instead she laughed with his father and thought—without consciously thinking—If he and I were married, it would be like this.

The old lord would wipe his eyes and tell Alys to read the section again, and then he would laugh again. “He’s a rogue!” he exclaimed. “But there’s no one in the world who could resist him! Don’t you think so, Alys?”

And Alys, alone in the tower room with the father of the man she loved, would lean back against his chair and nod. “Irresistible,” she said.

The old lord tweaked one of her curls which tumbled from the back of her hood. “You hot for him still?” he asked.

Alys nodded, turned her head, and smiled at him. “I love him,” she said. “And he loves me.”

The old lord sighed, his face kindly. “He has to have his heir,” he said gently.

“I know,” Alys said. “But we can love each other.”

“Maybe,” the old lord said, with a lifetime of whoring and loving and fighting behind him. “Maybe for a while.”

Catherine had her letters too. He wrote asking after her health every week and telling her those things of Newcastle that he judged fit for her ears.

I know the real Hugo, Alys would whisper to herself while Catherine read his letters aloud to the circle of ladies. I know what he was really doing that night, when he tells Catherine that they went for a night sail and then early to their beds. He writes the truth to his father, and he knows I will read his letters, his true letters. Catherine does not know him, not as I know him.

Alys was happier in the long, cold days while Hugo was away. She slept at nights, a deep sleep so sweet that she could hardly bear to wake in the morning. She dreamed that Hugo was home, that she was wearing Catherine’s rose and cream gown, that she was leaning on Hugo’s arm as they walked in the garden, that it was summer, high summer, and the sky was smiling down on them both. She dreamed that she was sleeping in Catherine’s big bed with Hugo’s arm possessively around her. She dreamed that she was sailing on Hugo’s tall-masted trader, sailing to the very edge of the world, and Hugo was at the wheel, laughing with her, with his eyes screwed up against the glare of the sunlight on the long rolling waves. She dreamed that she was taking Catherine’s seat at the high table in the great hall. Hugo drew back her chair for her because she was big with child. All the faces turned toward her were smiling. They were cheering her because she was carrying the heir. As she woke she heard them shout “Lady Alys!”

Catherine was happy and busy while Hugo was away. Pregnancy suited his wife. Her temper was sweet as fruit and she laughed and sang in the mornings. Her color had risen in her cheeks and she looked rosy when she read Hugo’s letters and came to the end and said, “There is a little piece here I will not tell you. It is for my eyes only.” Then she would slip the letter in the purse at her girdle and pat it, as if to keep it safe.

Alys would turn her head from that. Catherine would leave the letter spread out on her pillow, ostentatiously reading it when Alys was combing her hair, inviting Alys to pry. Alys resorted to icy indifference, she would not stoop to spy on Catherine’s letter and besides, she knew Hugo could promise anything. Words of love were light currency to him.

It means nothing, Alys said to herself softly. He is planning our life together, his life with me. He said he needed time to make his plans. And while he is planning he is keeping her sweet with a few little words. I will not begrudge her a few little words. They are like nonsense spells. They mean nothing. They mean nothing.

“By God, you look sour,” Morach said cheerfully as they went to bed one evening. “Pining for the young lord?”

Alys shrugged a thin shoulder, jumping into the bed, and pulled the covers up to her ears.

“Painful, ain’t it?” Morach said. “This nonsense of love? You’d have done better to keep him at arm’s length forever then to love him and lose him without even having him. You’d have done better to forget your promise to him to surrender magic, just as he has forgotten his promise to you.”

“He hasn’t forgotten,” Alys said fiercely. “You know nothing about it, Morach. I haven’t lost him. He asked me to wait for him and I am waiting. When he comes home it will all be different. I am waiting. I am happy to wait for him.”

“You look it,” Morach said ironically. “You’re losing your looks, your face is white and strained. You get thinner every day. Your breasts are less and less, your belly is as flat as a dice-board. If you wait much longer you’ll be worn out with waiting.”

Alys lay down and turned her face to the wall. “Bank up the fire before you come to bed,” she said coldly. “I’m going to sleep.”

Morach and Lady Catherine had made a surprising alliance. Every day and every evening they chattered and gossiped in the overheated gallery. Alys sat as far as she could from the fire and Catherine, a bully by nature, was amused to have met her match. One day Morach insisted on going to her cottage though the snow was thick and wet and the sky low and threatening. Lady Catherine forbade it. “You can go tomorrow,” she said.

Morach nodded, and went to her chamber and came out with a cape around her shoulders and a shawl over her head.

“I said you could go tomorrow,” Catherine said impatiently.

“Aye,” Morach said, unmoved. “I
could
go tomorrow, and I
could
go the day after, or next week. But it’s my desire to go today.”

Catherine snapped her fingers. “You’d best learn, Morach, that in this castle you do things by my desire. Not yours.”

Morach gleamed her slow secret smile. “Not I, my lady,” she said. “I am different from the rest of them.”

“I can still have you whipped,” Catherine threatened.

Morach met her angry look without fear. “I wouldn’t advise it, my lady,” she said. Then she turned her back and went from the gallery as if she had permission to leave and Catherine had wished her “God speed.”

There was a stunned silence and then Catherine burst into loud laughter. “God’s truth, the old woman will be hanged,” she said. The women chimed in with the laughing, exchanging scared glances. Alys alone sat silent. When Morach came back in the evening, after having completed her own mysterious business, Catherine behaved toward her as if they had never disagreed.

One day, at the end of March, Hugo sent a letter to Catherine saying he would be home within a few days. She flushed pink with pleasure.

“Hugo is coming home,” she announced. “And within the week! I have missed him.” She smoothed her gown over her rounded breasts. “I wonder if he will see a difference in me. What d’you think, Alys?”

Alys was watching the logs in the fire. “I expect so, my lady,” she said politely.

“D’you think he will desire me as he did before?” Catherine asked. “D’you remember those wild nights when our son was conceived? D’you think he will still be mad for me?”

Alys turned a blank, insolent face toward Catherine. “Maybe,” she said. “But you had best have a care, lady. It would be a sad end to your ambitions if your rough games shook the baby out of your belly.”

Catherine shot a look at Morach. “That can’t happen, can it?” she asked in sudden fear. “That can’t happen?”

Morach pursed her lips. “Depends on what you do,” she said. “Depends on how he likes it.”

Catherine laughed a ripple of excited laughter. She leaned toward Morach and whispered in her ear. Morach chuckled. “That shouldn’t harm the baby,” she said out loud. “Not if it pleases you!”

Catherine put her hand on her heart and smiled broadly. Then the two of them put their heads together and whispered like village girls outside an alehouse.

Alys felt unreasonably irritated with Morach. “Will you excuse me, my lady?” she said, rising to her feet. “I have to read to Lord Hugh before dinner.”

Catherine barely looked up to nod dismissal. Morach was whispering something behind her hand.

“And then he did what?” Catherine asked incredulously. “I did not know that men could do that. What did his wife say—in heaven’s name?”

Alys shut the door behind her and leaned back against it and closed her eyes. She could hear the ripple of laughter even through the massive wood. She turned wearily and went down the stairs, through the lobby and up the winding narrow staircase of the round tower to Lord Hugh’s chamber.

Hugo was there. He was sitting on a stool at his father’s feet as Alys walked into the room and he sprang up to greet her. Alys staggered and her face went white and then blushed red.

“I did not think to see you for days yet,” she said. “Hugo, oh Hugo!”

He took her hand and squeezed it tight to warn her to be silent. The old lord looked from Alys’s thin flushed face to his son’s bright smile.

“I came home early,” Hugo said levelly. “I have a great scheme to lay before my father and I wanted to see you all again. How is my wife? Is her pregnancy going safely?”

“She is well,” Alys said. She could hardly speak for breathlessness and she did not want to speak of Catherine. She wanted to hold him, to touch his face, the soft skin around his eyes, to kiss his merry smile. She wanted to feel his arms around her like he had held her that one night, that first night, and his kisses on her hair.

“What is this scheme of yours, Hugo?” the old lord asked. He beckoned to Alys to stand behind his chair and she crossed the room to his side and watched Hugo’s animated face as he talked.

“It’s Van Esselin,” he said. “He has plans to fit a ship for the longest voyage they have ever undertaken—around Africa, even as far as the Japans. He has the ship’s log from a Dutch pilot that shows a clear passage. I have seen it, it is true. And he plans to take goods and baubles to trade all along the way and to come back with a cargo of spices and silks and all the rich trade. It’s a great opportunity for us, Father. I am certain of its success.”