The Wise Woman (36 page)

Alys was silent for a moment, her bewitching whisper falling into the quietness of the room.

“I had a Seeing of Hugo and me together,” she murmured. “Perhaps that meant you died, Catherine. Perhaps you’re going to die. Perhaps you’re going to drown. Perhaps you’re going to drown now.”

Walking a short distance behind the couple Morach paused and put her head on one side as if listening to some distant noise.

“Perhaps it will happen now,” Alys whispered. She was pressing up against the window-sill, leaning her whole body against the cold stone, forcing her will through the very walls of the castle.

“Perhaps now, Catherine,” she said. She started humming, very deep in her throat, a powerful sleepy noise like a swarm of toxic bees. “Perhaps now,” she whispered yearningly. “The water is very deep and very cold, Catherine. The rocks are very sharp. If you slip and fall now, you will be swept downriver and by the time they get you out, your lungs and your belly will be filled with icy water. You nearly drowned me. I know how it feels. And soon, you will know it too.”

Morach was standing as alert as a hound listening for the horn. Then she whirled toward the castle and stared toward it, raking the arrow-slits with her stare as if she were looking for Alys, almost as if Alys had called loudly and clearly toward her. She looked straight toward the narrow slit of window in the great tower where Alys stood. For a moment the two women stared toward each other and Alys knew that—despite the distance, the narrowness of the arrow-slit, and the darkness of the room—Morach was looking into her eyes and reading her mind. Then Morach yelled a wordless warning and started running toward Catherine.

Hugo turned at the shout and his hand went to his sword. Catherine swung around and lost her footing on the mud of the path, stepped backward, and with the awkward misbalance of pregnancy stumbled on the very edge of the path. Her arms flailed like a helpless child. Alys, watching with burning eyes, was humming louder and louder, deep in her throat; and it was as if the power of the sound was pressing down on the little figure, wrapped tight in bulky furs. Catherine clawing helplessly at the air, her mouth wide in a scream, fell slowly backward. Then she was gone—head over heels, clear over the rocks at the edge of the river, into the deep pool and down into the fast flooding waters.

Hugo tore at his sword and flung it aside, yelled at the soldiers for help, and jumped down onto the rocks and boulders at the river’s edge, throwing himself toward the water. But Morach was quicker. In an instant she dived out over the rocks, deep into the pool, and went down below the water like a questing otter. She came back up and duck-dived again.

“Get out of the way, Morach,” Alys breathed through the window, shaking with dismay. “You’re
my
kin, not hers. You’re working for my interests, not hers. Leave her, Morach. Leave her be!”

Morach shook her head, as if to rid herself of a voice in her ears, and dived. There was a flash of white as her feet kicked in the air and then a flurry of color of drowned cloth as she surfaced with Catherine in her arms. Hugo waded in, waist deep in the water, and grabbed Catherine. Alys could see that she was limp, perhaps stunned. She knew the woman was not dead. It would have been a rare piece of luck if she had broken her neck or staved in her head on a rock.

Hugo gathered Catherine into his arms and then reached out a hand for Morach. One soldier jumped down and passed the two women up to his fellow on the bank. Alys watched it all, dry-eyed, white-faced. She watched Hugo scoop Catherine back into his arms for a stumbling run toward their horses. She saw Catherine grab the pommel of the saddle with one limp hand as she was handed up onto the horse, and Morach was tossed up behind one of the soldiers. The little cavalcade moved out of sight around the curve of the tower and Alys guessed they would hurry back into the castle by one of the sally-ports. At any moment now there would be an alarm and people running, and everyone worried about Catherine and praising Morach.

Alys pushed herself stiffly away from the window and pulled out a footstool to sit at Lord Hugh’s feet and watch the flames of the fire. She shivered a little as she remembered the icy greenness of the moat. Then she leaned forward and put her chin on her hands and stared with blank, unseeing eyes into the very heart of the redness—and waited for the noise and the shouting to start.

She did not wait long. Lord Hugh jumped out of his sleep at the yell from the great hall which echoed up to his room.

“What is that? What is that?” he demanded. “Alys! Are we under attack? What is that noise?”

“I’ll go and see, my lord,” Alys said smoothly.

She went to the door but as she opened it David came in. “Nothing to alarm you, my lord,” he said swiftly. “The Lady Catherine had a fall in the river and Lord Hugo has brought her safe home. She is being put to bed by her women. Her wise woman says she thinks the child is not hurt.”

“God be praised!” the old lord said, crossing himself. “Tell her I’ll come at once. Alys! D’you hear that! Catherine near-drowned and the heir with her! God’s breath! That was a narrow escape!”

“I’d best go to her,” Alys said.

“Yes, yes. Go and see how she is and come straight back to me. I’ll come and see her myself when she permits. And tell Hugo to come to me as soon as his wife is settled.”

Alys slipped from the room and ran down the stairs to the ladies’ gallery. The place was in uproar. Servants were running around with wood-baskets, ewers of hot water, jugs of mulled wine and hot mead. Catherine’s women were shrieking orders and then canceling them, snatching up Catherine’s hands to chafe and kiss. Hugo, supporting Catherine, was yelling for them to put a warming-pan in Catherine’s bed and clear the room so she could be undressed. Morach, ignoring the hubbub, dripped a wet path to Alys’s chamber. She checked when she saw Alys in the doorway and their eyes met.

“You swim like a witch,” Alys said, not caring who heard her.

“And you curse like one,” Morach replied, venom in her voice.

“Why meddle?” Alys asked, dropping her voice so her words were lost in the shouting. “You heard my power, you know what I was doing. Why meddle in my work?”

Morach shrugged. “That’s a death I’d wish on no one,” she said. She shuddered as if she was chilled to her soul. “I’d hate to die by water,” she said. “I couldn’t stand by and see a woman die by water. Not a young woman, not a young woman with child, not one that I’d served. You’re a harder woman than me, Alys, if you could have stood by and watched her drown.”

“I was holding her under with all the power I have,” Alys said through her teeth.

“And I pulled her out,” Morach said, blazing. “There are some deaths no woman should suffer. I’d rather any death than drowning. I’d rather any death in the world than going under the water and choking my way to hell.”

Alys glanced around her. Eliza Herring was within earshot, though screeching instructions to a servant. “Thank God you were there,” Alys said loudly.

Morach gleamed under her dripping mat of gray hair. “Thank you for your good wishes.” She pushed past Alys and went into the little room, slamming the door.

Alys turned and clapped her hands together. “You men!” she said, her voice clear above the noise. “Out! All of you! We cannot get Lady Catherine abed with you all here. Eliza! Turn down her bed. You girl!”—to a passing maid—“Get those warming-pans into her bed. And you”—to another—“see the fires are banked high in her chamber and this one.”

The room emptied at once. “Out of the way!” Alys said crossly to the maidservants and to Catherine’s ladies who still cluttered the room. She took Catherine’s other arm and she and Hugo led the shivering woman into her chamber and lowered her into a chair by the fire.

“Fetch towels and sheets,” Alys ordered Hugo, without looking at him. She pulled off Catherine’s sodden fur cloak and dropped it on the floor. Then she unpinned her headdress, undid her gown, and stripped her with hard hands until the woman was naked.

Hugo passed her the towels and both of them rubbed her hard all over until her white skin glowed pink and the roughness of her gooseflesh had subsided. Then Alys wrapped her tight in the warm sheets and Hugo lifted her into bed. Alys piled rugs on top of her and pulled the warming-pans out to refill them with fresh embers, while Hugo gave her hot mead to drink. Her teeth chattered pitifully on the cup. Alys, at the fireside, shoveling embers, hunched her shoulders.

“I’m cold,” Catherine said.

Hugo shot a despairing look at Alys. The room was as hot as a bread-oven. Alys’s face was flushed, her forehead damp with sweat. The mud on Hugo’s boots was dried to dust by the heat, his wet clothes were steaming.

“Drink some more mead,” Alys said, without turning round. She slammed the scorching lid of the warming-pan and then wrapped it in a towel and thrust it into the bed under Catherine’s feet.

“I’m so cold, Alys,” Catherine said. Her voice was high and thin, like a child. “I’m so cold, Alys. Can you not give me something to make me warm?”

Alys turned to the chest and pulled out one of Catherine’s great fur cloaks with the hood. “Sit up a little,” she said. “We’ll put this around you like a shawl, and you can have the hood over your wet hair. You’ll soon warm up.”

Together they raised her on the bed. Alys looked away when her robe fell open and the rounded part of her belly was exposed. She looks like a mead-pot, Alys thought irritably, all gross curves. Beside the plump naked woman, Alys felt herself to be a shadow, a specter of darkness. She tucked the thick furs around Catherine and then pulled the bed-clothes up again.

“Warmer?” she asked.

Catherine nodded and tried to smile, but her face was still white. Hugo held her cold hands in his own. He turned them over, her fingernails were blue.

“Should she be blooded?” he asked Alys. “Should we send for a surgeon and bleed her?”

Alys shook her head. “She needs all her blood,” she said. “She’s choleric in humor. She’ll warm up.”

“And the baby?” he asked. He turned a little away from the bed so Alys could hear him, but Catherine could not. “The baby is the most important thing. Will the baby be all right?”

Alys nodded. She had a very sour taste in her mouth. She did not want to put her face too close to Hugo, she thought her breath would smell foul. “I doubt this will harm the baby,” she said. “You will be laughing about this in a few days. Both of you.”

Hugo nodded but his face was dark with worry. “Pray God that’s so,” he said.

Alys turned away. “I have to go to your father,” she said. “He sent me to find news of Lady Catherine. Shall I send one of the other women in to sit with her?”

Hugo shook his head. “I’ll go to him,” he said. “And I’ll come back at once. You stay here and watch over her. I trust you to care for her, Alys. You know how much this child means to me. He will be my future—and my freedom. He will make my fortune this autumn if we can get him through to a safe birth and to his grandfather’s arms.”

Alys nodded. “I know,” she said.

Hugo turned back to the bed where Catherine lay, her arms wrapped around herself, shivering in the baking heat of the bedroom. “I am going to tell my father that you are safe and well,” he said. “I will leave Alys here to care for you, and I will come back in a few moments.”

Catherine nodded and lay back, her jaw clenched to keep her teeth from chattering. Against the dark furs her skin was white as thick vellum. The door shut quietly behind Hugo as he went out.

The two women were alone. The room was silent. In the gallery outside the bedroom door, Catherine’s other women waited around the fire twittering like nervous birds. Catherine did not have the strength to call them, she could not reach out her hand to the bell. She was as much in Alys’s power as if Alys had her bound and gagged and a knife whetted ready for her throat.

Alys turned from the door and came slowly to the foot of the bed. Catherine’s pale brown eyes looked up at her.

“I felt as if I was pushed,” she said. Her lip trembled, like a little child that has suffered some unimaginable unkindness. “I felt as if someone pushed me. But there was no one there.”

Alys looked back at her, her face impassive.

“I heard a humming noise, a loud humming noise—like bees, or like a person humming—and then I felt someone push me, push me hard, push me into the water,” she said.

Alys’s lovely face was clear, her blue eyes confident. “These are fancies,” she said, her voice lilting, sweet as a song. “You have had a grievous fright. Pregnant women have these fears, my lady. There was no one near you, my lady. How could anyone hum and throw you in the river?” She laughed gently.

Catherine put a hand out of the nest of furs toward Alys. “Will you hold my hand, Alys?” she asked pitifully. “I am afraid. I feel so afraid.”

Alys came a little closer. She could hear the humming in her own head now, like a drowsy hive. She knew that if she touched the smallest fingertip of Catherine’s white cold hand she would succumb to temptation and snatch up the pillow and crush it down over her frightened face. The humming was too loud to resist.

“I have been cruel to you, Alys,” Catherine said, her voice a thin thread. “I have treated you unkindly and tormented you. I was jealous.”

Alys kept her face blank, and held on to the noise of the humming. Louder and louder the noise swelled, while Catherine beckoned her closer.

“I am sorry,” Catherine said softly. “Please forgive me, Alys. Hugo looked on you with such desire I could not bear it. Please forgive me.”

The humming was drowning out thought. Catherine was reaching out for her. Alys’s hands trembled with the desire to lock around her fat neck and squeeze and squeeze until there was no breath left in that plump, white, indulged body.

“Please, Alys,” Catherine said pitifully. “You do not know what it is to feel jealousy such as I felt for you. It led me into the sin of unkindness to you. I know I taunted you and tormented you. I am afraid I made an enemy of you. Forgive me, Alys. Please say you forgive me.”

Alys stepped a little closer. Catherine’s face was pitiful. Alys found herself smiling, warm with joy at what she was about to do. Catherine reached out for her murderer with imploring hands. Alys took another step closer, stretched out her own hands…