The Wise Woman (33 page)

“Trade?”

“It’s not huckstering in the butter-market,” Hugo said quickly. “It’s honorable trade. It’s a great adventure, as exciting as a war, as distant as a crusade. The world is changing, Father, and we have to change with it.”

“And what if this great ship sinks?” the old lord asked cynically.

Hugo shrugged. “Then we have lost the wager,” he said. “Van Esselin asks us only for a thousand pounds to back him. We can gamble a thousand pounds for the rewards this promises to bring.”

“A thousand pounds?” Lord Hugh repeated incredulously. “One thousand!”

“But think of the return, Father!” Hugo said urgently. “We would get it back twenty, maybe fifty times over. If they bring back spices and silks thay can sail into London and make a fortune in a sale on the quayside itself. Or they can bring it back to Newcastle, or even take it up to Scotland. People are desperate for spices—think of the prices we pay in the kitchen! This is the way for us to make our fortune, not struggling to get our rents from snow-bound farmers!”

Lord Hugh shook his head. “No,” he said slowly. “Not while I am lord here.”

Hugo’s face grew dark with one of his sudden rages. “Will you explain to me why?” he asked, his voice shaking.

“Because we are lords, not traders,” Lord Hugh said with disdain. “Because we know nothing of the sea and the trade your friend does. Because our family’s wealth and success has been founded on land, getting and keeping land.
That’s
the way to a lasting fortune, the rest is mere usury in one shape or another.”

“This is a new world and things are different now,” Hugo said passionately. “Van Esselin says we do not even know what lands the ship may find! What riches it might bring back! There are tales of countries where they use gold and precious stones as playthings! Where they desire our goods above anything else!”

The old lord shook his head. “You’re a young man with a young man’s ambition, Hugo,” he said. “But I am an old man with an old man’s love for order. And while I am alive we will do things in the old way. When I am dead you may do as you please. But I imagine that when you have a son of your own you will be as unwilling to gamble with his inheritance as I am unwilling to gamble with yours.”

Hugo made an impatient noise and flung himself toward the door. “I have as much power here as a woman!” he shouted. “I am thirty-two years old, Father, and you treat me like a child. I cannot bear it! Van Esselin is a year younger than me and he runs his father’s company. Charles de Vere’s father has given him his own house and retainers. I cannot be your lapdog, sire, I warn you.”

Lord Hugh nodded. Alys glanced at him, expecting him to fire up, but he was sitting very still in thought. “I understand that,” he said levelly. “Tell me, Hugo. When does this Van Esselin want the money?”

“This time next year,” Hugo said. He came back toward his father in his eagerness. “But he needs to have the firm promise of it by the autumn.”

“I’ll do this for you then,” the old lord said. “If Catherine has a son safely delivered in October, then I’ll find the thousand pounds for you. And it shall be your money and your son’s money. A gift to celebrate his birth. You may do as you wish with it. Buy land in good heart and with set rents, or throw it to the winds and the seas with this venture. Let us see how your judgment is, when you have a son in your arms to be provided for, another generation to come after you.”

“If Catherine has a son, I have a thousand pounds?” Hugo asked.

The old lord nodded. “You have my word,” he said.

Hugo stepped quickly to his father, dropped to one knee and kissed his hand. “I shall make my fortune then,” he said delightedly. “For Catherine is certain she is carrying a boy. Isn’t she, Alys? You think so, don’t you?”

Alys nodded stiffly. Her neck was tight with strain.

“I’ll go to her now and see how she fares,” Hugo said delightedly. He bowed to his father, nodded blithely at Alys and strode from the room. Alys did not move as the door shut behind him.

The old lord chuckled. “I shall have some peace in this castle yet,” he observed. “I shall set myself up as a marriage broker. Wait till you see how he cossets her now that she means an heir, a future, and a thousand pounds for him!”

Alys moved her stiff lips in a smile, and took up the book she was reading to him.

A
lys spent the evening on the other side of the ladies’ gallery fireplace from Hugo and watched with an impassive face as Catherine tapped him on the shoulder in reproof at a jest, rested her hand on his shoulder, and twisted one of his dark curls around her finger.

Alys was ordered to bring Hugo some more Osney wine from the sideboard. She went down on one knee to serve him. He smiled down at her.

“Are you well, Alys?” he asked under his breath, so that only she could hear. “When I wrote to my father of all my doings I thought of you, reading the letters. I wrote to you as well as to him, you know.”

Alys’s hand pouring the wine shook a little and the bottle rattled on the lip of the cup.

“When I lay with a whore I thought of you, Alys,” he said, his voice very low. “I wondered if you were playing with me. If you have played with me all along, and with my father, and with my wife. What dark games do you have, Alys? Have you truly given up play and magic after all, as you promised?”

He glanced swiftly around. No one was watching them. “I went away half mad for you,” he whispered. “Everywhere I went in Newcastle the edge was off my pleasure. I kept wondering what you would think of a thing, how you would like it. And then I was angry with you, Alys. I believe you bewitched me after all. I believe you have played with me to spoil my peace.”

“I have no magic, my lord,” Alys said stiffly. “I have a little skill with herbs, sickness, and childbirth.” She shot a quick look at him from under her eyelashes, then she stood with the bottle of wine still in her hands. “And my peace is spoiled too,” she said.

Hugo laughed up at her, his white teeth sharp in his smile. “I’m ready to be witched,” he said. “I’m ready to be tempted! But see how I am placed now, Alys! There can be nothing in my life till October—I get everything then. We could make merry till then, you and I. But in secret.”

“What are you saying?” Catherine interrupted. “What are you saying to my lord, Alys? Don’t you think she has grown thin, Hugo? Thin and white. I am afraid we are not feeding her well enough. She was so pretty when she first came to the castle and now she is as bony as a spinster at her distaff!”

The women laughed in an obedient chorus. Alys met Hugo’s quick scrutiny with a look of blank resentment.

“Are you unwell?” he asked neutrally so that they could all hear.

“No,” Alys said in a tone as level as his. “I am weary with being indoors so much. That is all.”

“Leave us now,” Catherine interrupted. “One of you check that my bed is warm.” She shot a look at Hugo. “Though I will be hot enough in a moment, I reckon,” she said in a loud whisper.

Hugo laughed and took the hand she reached out for him. “Away to bed, my lady,” he said caressingly. “You must rest for the health of my son. You don’t know what a fortune I have riding on him!”

Eliza went into Catherine’s bedroom and checked there were fresh herbs on the floor and under the pillows. Then she bobbed a half-curtsy to the two of them before the fire and she, and all the ladies, went to their rooms.

“Not so hot for you these days,” Morach commented as she and Alys stripped off their gowns and scurried into the cold bed in their shifts.

“No,” Alys said shortly.

“Why’s that d’you think?” Morach pried.

“I don’t know,” Alys said.

“I wonder why,” Morach said, undeterred.

“The old lord has him fast,” Alys said, in sudden impatience. “He did it today, I heard every word. He will make Hugo’s fortune if Catherine bears a healthy son. He has promised him a thousand pounds for his own free use.”

Morach gave a low whistle. “So Hugo’s bought off!” she said. “No future for you then, Alys. I reckon that work you did with the moppets worked better than you thought!”

“I’ve wished that away a thousand times,” Alys said.

“Why?” Morach asked. “Because you love him and desire him now? Because you want him so much that you will risk everything to lie with him? While you look at him so coldly and walk past him without looking back, are you praying he will put her aside and come to you, as hot for you, as you are for him?”

Alys pushed back the covers and jumped down to the cold floor.

“Yes,” she said through her teeth. She rattled the wood basket and threw a log on the fire. “I am sick to my very soul for him. I cannot eat, I cannot sleep, and now tonight he lies with her again, and after this child there will be another, and another, and all there will be for me will be the leavings from her dinner.”

Morach chuckled delightedly. “Pass me my shawl,” she said. “And put on another log to bank up the fire. It’s as good as the mummers, life in this castle. You’re lost now she’s with child, you know. Even without the money he wouldn’t stop going with her. He has the taste of her now.”

Alys threw the shawl to Morach. “What d’you mean?” she asked. She took a comb from the chest of clothes and a steel mirror and started to comb her hair. It was shoulder length now, a tangle of brass and gold. Alys picked impatiently at the knots.

“The taste of her?” Morach asked. “Oh, men are trapped by it. When their women are carrying a child. Men see their women’s breasts grow fuller, their rounded bellies. They like the evidence of their own rutting, even as they do it. It’s two parts male swagger, and one part something else. Something old, deeper. And Hugo has it badly.”

Alys pulled at her hair mercilessly and coiled it into a rough plait. “Badly?” she asked.

Morach cocked an eyebrow at her. “Sure you want to hear?” she asked.

Alys nodded.

“He had her this afternoon,” Morach said. “After he had been with his father. You were still in the old lord’s chambers. He came striding down here and shooed all the women out of the room and he took her like he was possessed. If this is your magic moppets then they’ve done their job well. He can’t leave her alone. First this afternoon and then tonight again.”

Alys’s face was shocked. “How were they together? Was he as rough with her as ever? He was never tender with her?”

Morach shook her head. “He didn’t bind her this time,” she said. “But he did everything else he had a mind to do. He slapped her a little and he pulled her hair. Then he made her take him in her mouth. He’s careful for the child so he would not lie on her. He thrust himself into her mouth and bellowed like a bull with pleasure.”

“Stop it,” Alys said abruptly. “You’re disgusting, Morach. How d’you know all this? You’re lying.”

“I watched,” Morach said, smiling, tucking the fine shawl around her shoulders and moving the pillow behind her tousled head. “I needed to know. Of course I watched.”

Alys nodded. Nothing Morach could do would surprise her.

“And what about her?” Alys said abruptly. “Why does she permit it? Now that she has his child. Why is she still so demanding?”

Morach chuckled. “She’s not demanding—you silly little virgin!” she exclaimed. “What should she demand? She’s getting everything a woman could want—and more than a decent woman would admit to wanting. She lies there, like a pink soft mountain, and lets him crawl all over her.”

Alys scowled. “He said he would go to her no more once she was pregnant,” she said. “He said he had to have a son, and then he would come to me. Then he said he would go to Newcastle to think what to do—that he longed to live with me and yet he had to keep her sweet. All this time I have been waiting and waiting. All this time, Morach! Waiting and waiting for him.”

Morach looked at her without sympathy. “Go to him then,” she said. “You cannot fight her whelping heat with your convent coldness. Go to him and tell him that you want him, and that he’s to leave her. Hex him, promise him darkness and passion. Pain beyond pain and pleasure beyond pleasure. There are things you could give him, there are things you could do, that he has never even dreamed of with his little drabs. Tell him you’re a witch and that if he comes to you you can give him pleasures that mortal men only dream of. He’s like any man—they all long for witchery and wickedness at night. If you want him, Alys, take him! You don’t have much time, you know.”

“Time?” Alys asked instantly. “You’ve foreseen something, Morach?”

“Away.” Morach flapped her hands, fending Alys off. “You’ve not much time when you’re young and beautiful. The plague could come any day and mark your face. The wind could blow and scar you. You could fall sick and lose the clear color of your skin and your eyes and hair. You’re getting thinner every day with this passion burning up inside you—a month from now and you’ll be a plain spinster. If you want something you should get it at once. Waiting is a trial for no one but yourself.”

Alys nodded. “I am on a rack of desire for him,” she said softly.

“Shall I tell him?” Morach asked. “I’m the last person to leave them at night. I could take him to one side and tell him that if he leaves Catherine’s room he can come here. And I’ll keep guard till the two of you are done.”

Alys turned toward the bed and looked at the old woman. Her face was suspicious. “Why?” she asked. “Why would you risk offending Lady Catherine—you who stand so high in her favor, paid twice what the rest get, free to come and go, eating like a pig and free to speak your mind to her? Why risk it?”

Morach chuckled. “It’s a game, child,” she said indulgently. “It’s like casting the runes, or reading the cards, or making herbs. It’s a game. What will happen next? All magic is the question—what will happen if…? I want to know what will happen to you when Hugo has you. I want to see that happen. It takes my fancy, that’s all.”

“Can’t you see it?” Alys asked. “Why can’t you see the future as you used to see it, Morach?”

The old woman shrugged. “I can see you don’t have long; that should be enough for you. When I look, it all goes dark, I can see nothing except darkness and water. So you’d best act as any woman would—never mind the Sight. What will it be? Shall I tell him you want to see him?”