The Wise Woman (47 page)

“I may divert it and dam it and make some little lakes,” he said. “For fish and for pleasure. I love the sound of water. It’s the only thing I will miss when we leave the castle, the sound of water.”

Alys nodded. “And you must plant pretty gardens,” she said. “I shall supervise an herb garden, a proper knot garden, an orchard and an aviary!”

Hugo laughed. “Yes, you shall,” he said.

“And a still-room,” Alys said. In her mind she could smell the clean, light smell of the still-room at the nunnery. “We shall have a physic garden, an herb garden, and a still-room where I shall make medicines for you and me and our family.”

“You can have some of the gear from the nuns,” Hugo said. “A lot of it was brought away safe. Pestles and mortars and measuring bowls and the like. Some good glass bottles, too, with golden labels.”

Alys felt her mouth grow dry. Then she nodded, shook her head back and laughed, a high reckless laugh. “Yes,” she said. “Why not! Everything that the nuns had and that you took from them we can use. Why should it go to waste? Why should anything be spoiled? Let us take and take anything we need until we have the house just as we want it!”

Hugo jumped down from his horse and held out his arms to her. Alys slid off her horse down to him and leaned against him as he held her close. “I love you, Alys,” he said. “I love your hunger for life. You would rob an old nun of her very shift, wouldn’t you—if you had need of it?”

Alys looked up into his dark smiling face. “I would,” she said. She felt at once a fierce, destructive joy. “I have no patience with nuns, always confessing and forbearing, and avoiding sin. I want to live now. I want to have my joys now and my pleasures. If I am a damned sinner then at least I shall go to my punishment with the taste of everything I wanted still warm on my tongue.”

Hugo laughed with her. “You must make some magic here,” he urged. “When the workmen leave one evening we will come and you can summon your wild sisters and we can lie on the half-built walls and on the ground together and we can claim the very stones and the slates back from the nuns and dedicate the house to ourselves and to our pleasure!”

“Oh yes!” Alys said hollowly. “Yes.”

“I
want a green gown,” Alys said idly. She and Hugo were sprawled on the high bed in her room. There were new hangings on the wall to match the new curtains on the bed. A fire burned in the grate with sweet-smelling pinecones and a pinch of incense. Outside the summer sky was striped with gold as the sun slowly set. “I want a green silk gown for summer.”

Hugo lifted a hank of Alys’s golden-brown hair. “You’re an expensive wench,” he said idly. “I have given you yards and yards of cloth for one gown after another. Anyway, you have no right to wear silk.”

Alys chuckled, a low, lazy laugh. “You can give it to me as a portent,” she said. “Your father has promised me land and money when our son is born. Then I will be a freeholder.”

“Has he?” Hugo looked surprised. “You have him under your thumb, my little witch, don’t you? I’ve never known him give land away before. Not even Meg, his favorite whore, had land from him! He has you very close to his heart, doesn’t he?”

Alys looked smugly at him. “He loves me as if I were his daughter,” she said with quiet pleasure. “And he wants me to go out with him when you cut the last of the hay. And
I
want a new green gown. A trader showed it to me yesterday. It’s pure silk, it will cost a fortune. He brought it to show Catherine but she would not fit a wagon-cover. He showed it to me instead and I long for it, Hugo!”

Hugo chuckled. “Persistent wench! You have as many gowns as Catherine—I swear it.”

Alys sighed and dropped a kiss on his bare shoulder as he lay naked and at peace on her bed, his long limbs gilded with the sunlight from the arrow-slit. “No,” she said. “Catherine has more gowns than me. She has all the gowns from her mother’s chests. And you have bought her more gowns than you have ever bought for me.”

Hugo shook his head. “Damned if I can think when,” he said. “No more than one a year for all the years we have been married. But you, Alys! You want a gown a week!”

Alys smiled. “Why should I not have as many gowns as Catherine?” she asked. “You would rather see me in a new gown than her, wouldn’t you? And you would rather strip me, than her, wouldn’t you?”

Hugo shrugged. “How many does she have?” he asked in mock weariness.

“Twelve,” Alys said.

Hugo rolled over onto his belly. Alys saw that his eyes were bright and he was laughing. “And how many do you have, my little witch?” he asked.

“Eleven!” Alys said triumphantly. “And now I want a green gown!”

“
Then
will you be satisfied?” Hugo demanded.

Alys sat up, threw back her hair and swarmed up along his body so she was lying along his back. She pressed her hips forward slightly, pushing against Hugo’s warm, naked buttocks.

“Do you want me satisfied? Satisfied and plump? Plump and tired? Boring?” she asked. She thrust a little harder with each word. Hugo groaned and closed his eyes.

“Witch,” he said under his breath. “You would make a dead man feel desire.”

Alys laughed and put her arms around his waist. Her hand slid between his belly and the rumpled sheets of her bed. She found his penis and held him, hard. Hugo groaned and tried to turn over.

“No,” Alys said, whispering into his ear. “I have you in my power, Hugo. I will have you like this!”

Hugo struggled for only a moment and then as Alys’s hand insistently pressed him he plunged his face and his body deeper into the bed and felt her push and push him from behind, her hand working, until with a slow groan he lay still. Alys laid her cheek against his sweating shoulder blade, and rested, lying like a long, naked snake along his back.

Hugo shook his head like a man waking from a powerful dream and rolled over. “Alys, my love,” he said.

She smiled at him. “The green gown,” she stipulated. “And ribbons and gloves to match.”

He took her in his arms. “A thousand gowns,” he said, kissing her neck, the hollow of her collarbone and the rumpled mass of her hair. “A thousand gowns of green, of silver, of royal purple or gold. Whatever you wish.”

Alys lay back and shut her eyes. Hugo kissed her breasts and then nuzzled her belly.

“You’re very thin still,” he said thoughtfully.

Alys’s eyes opened, she smiled at him. “I wondered when you would notice,” she said.

He sat up. “Notice what?” he asked. “What should I notice?”

Alys stretched like a cat. “Why, that Catherine’s baby makes her fatter and lazier every day and that my baby has left me as slim as a virgin.”

Hugo shrugged. “I thought only that different women took their pregnancy in different ways. But what of it, Alys?”

“I lied to you,” Alys said coolly. “I lied to you and to Lord Hugh. I said I was pregnant when I was not.”

Hugo choked. “You did what!” he exclaimed.

“I lied,” Alys said again simply.

Hugo put his hand out and turned Alys’s face toward him. The lines at the roots of his eyebrows were growing deep, his mouth was grim. “You said that you were carrying my son and you lied to me and to my father?”

Alys nodded fearlessly.

Hugo pushed her away from him and got up from the bed. He flung his jacket around his shoulders and stared out of the arrow-slit at the river and the green hills behind.

“Why?” he demanded, without turning around.

Alys shrugged. “Morach had just died,” she said. “I was afraid you might blame me, too, and have me sent away. Catherine hated me when she first met me, if she knew we were lovers she would have turned against me again. Your father cares for nothing as much as a son to come after you. I needed something to keep me here safe.”

Hugo turned back to see her. “You are a schemer,” he said with dislike. “You have tried to entrap me.”

Alys sat up, threw her shift over her head, and slipped from the bed, tying the strings of the white linen gown at her shoulders as she walked toward him. “You entrapped yourself,” she said. “Your desire for me has trapped you in a way that no lie could ever do.”

Hugo reached out his hand and touched the base of her neck. Her pulse beat steadily, unhurried by any alarm, under his finger.

“You are not carrying my child,” he said, showing his disappointment.

Alys smiled at him. “I
was
not carrying him when I first said,” she said. Her blue eyes twinkled. “But I am a liar no more! I am with child now, as I foretold. I missed my term this month and soon I shall be as fat as you could desire.”

Hugo’s face warmed, the deep frown lifted.

“Our son will be born in April,” Alys said with unshaken confidence. “I am glad it is this way, Hugo. The first time we were lovers it was not good. You had lain with Catherine and you went back to her bed. Our son could only be conceived when you lay with me heart and soul. And I only want a son conceived in my passion.”

Hugo drew her to him. “And you think it is a son?” he asked.

Alys nodded. “I know it is a son,” she said. “He will be born when the strongest lambs are born, when the weather is good. He will be born in your grand new house if you make haste and build me a beautiful chamber with wood paneling and big bright windows. Build me a room which overlooks the river where I can have sunshine all day, and I will give you a son that will be the best of both of us. Your courage and my skills. Think of a lord who could play with magic, Hugo! He could rise and rise until he was the greatest lord in all the land.”

He tightened his grip on her. “What a boy he would be!” he said.

Alys smiled up at him. “How high he could go!” she said. “And the daughter who will come next—think who her husband could be, Hugo! How high our family could rise with our noble, magical children!”

They were silent for a moment. Alys could see the ambition in Hugo’s face. He and his father had craved sons, but this reign had taught men the value of pretty women as pawns in the power game.

Hugo checked himself and returned to the present. “Never lie to me again,” he said. “I shall feel a fool telling my father and everyone around the castle will know. I don’t like to be teased by you, Alys. Don’t lie to me again.”

Alys chuckled idly. “I promise,” she said easily. “I needed to lie then, but I will never need to lie again. I am safe now. I am safe enough in your love, am I not? There is nothing I could do to lose your love, is that not so, Hugo?”

He closed his arms around her and buried his face in her hair. “That is so,” he said. “There is nothing you could do which would lose my love.”

“And I am your father’s best companion and most trusted friend,” Alys said contentedly. “And now I am carrying his grandson. There is nothing which can threaten me now.”

Hugo rocked her gently, feeling her lightness, his tenderness and desire rising again.

“Nothing can threaten you,” he said gently. “I am here.”

Alys put her arms around him and held him close. The breeze through the window smelled of hay and meadow flowers. She closed her eyes and smiled. “I am safe now,” she said.

“But don’t lie to me,” Hugo said with residual resentment. “I hate women who lie.”

Next day was the last day of haymaking and Alys and Hugo rode out to watch them making hay in the high meadows between the moorland and the river. Half of the castle went with them, the cooks and serving-maids and lads, the soldiers, their women, the young pages and girls who worked at sewing or baking or brewing or spinning. Even the old lord came out for the day, riding a stocky old war-horse, with David, very smart in a dark velvet suit, riding beside him. A hundred people took a holiday from the castle, walking in a laughing, singing crowd across the stone bridge at the foot of the castle to the fields on the far side, and before them all rode Hugo and Alys on her new roan pony, wearing her new green gown.

She wore her hair brushed loose, tumbling over her shoulders and down her back, trimmed with ribbons of green and gilt, in defiance of the fashion of the new modest queen. The silver gilt glinted like real silver in the sunlight and the green ribbons flickered around her head. She wore light leather gloves for riding trimmed with green ribbons, and new tan leather boots. The roan mare which Hugo had bought cheap at the Appleby sales was quiet and Alys rode confidently, with her head up, smiling around her as if she owned the fertile fields and the singing people. When Hugo leaned over and spoke softly to her she laughed aloud as if to tell everyone that the young lord shared his secrets with her alone.

Catherine had stayed behind with Ruth and Margery, a handful of servants, a couple of cooks, and the soldiers on guard. “She doesn’t want to come,” Alys had told Hugo. “She is too tired she says, she is always too tired for anything. It will be better without her.”

Hugo did not hide his concern. “She has three months before the child is born,” he said. “If she takes to her bed now, what will she be like by October?”

Alys had giggled. “She will be a haystack,” she said unkindly. “Have done, Hugo! She is tired, she wants to rest; you cannot force her to come. Sit with her in the evening when we come home and tell her all about it. It is no kindness to her to drag her out of her chamber and into the hot sunshine when she is so gross and weary.”

It was the last hayfield to be cut of the demesne and Hugo was to cut the last swathe. They had left a narrow strip of pale green grass standing, ready for Hugo to come and scythe it down. The party from the castle scattered around the edges of the field, the serving-girls and lads started spreading cloths and unpacking big jugs of ale and unwrapping loaves of bread and meat. Half a dozen musicians stood in one corner of the field, tuning their instruments for the dance, making a clamor like howling cats. The laboring men and their women had been waiting in the hot sunshine since before noon. They had cut down branches and bent them into an arbor and placed a seat inside for the old lord. He was helped down from his horse and went to sit in the shade while David scuttled around the field, missing nothing, ordering everything for the feast.