The Wise Woman (50 page)

Hugo was dozing on Alys’s bed as she came in, his feet up with his dusty boots on the cover. He opened one lazy eye when he saw her but did not trouble to move. “What are you doing?” he asked. “Is Catherine well?”

“She’s fretful,” Alys said. “I thought a bath would soothe her. She’s complaining that we left her all day alone. She has not dressed. She has not even washed today. I will give her a bath and wash her hair and get her dressed for supper.”

“Good,” he said. He stretched out and closed his eyes again. The dirt from his boots was smeared all over Alys’s new counterpane.

She hesitated for a moment, resentful. Everyone in the castle has their own way with their lives but me, she thought. Hugo can rest and dream of the stupid fair-headed peasant. Catherine can waddle into a bath. I have to run between the two. She nodded without speaking and took the herbs and the oils to Catherine’s bedroom. Eliza followed her, holding the door.

The great bath-tub lined with linen had been set before the fire and was filled to the brim with steaming water. Eliza put the herbs and oils beside it, and at Alys’s nod helped Catherine from the bed.

Catherine’s legs were worse. Around her knees and around her ankles the skin was white and swollen. Her large belly stood out from the rest of her body with the navel protruding. Her breasts were tight and hot, blue-veined and distended. The nipples had swollen and were brown and bruised. Her hands were swollen too, with a deep red mark where her wedding ring was cutting into her finger. Aly took her hand.

“Does this hurt?” she asked.

Catherine nodded. “It’s grown too tight,” she said. “It throbs.”

Alys held her hand and put one arm around Catherine’s wide waist to guide her into the water. Catherine sank, like a beached whale returning to the deep, and sighed with pleasure.

“Fetch your lute,” Alys said to Eliza, “and sing to us.”

Catherine laid her head back against the edge of the tub. Alys folded a thick square of linen and placed it under Catherine’s solid white neck. “There,” she said. “That’s more comfortable for you.”

Catherine shut her eyes but her mouth quivered. “I’m so tired,” she said plaintively. “So tired.”

Alys took a handful of soft waterlogged herbs and scrubbed Catherine’s shoulders in a gentle circular motion. Catherine languidly raised one arm and then another for Alys to wash and rub. When she reached Catherine’s fingers she massaged them with oil and pulled gently at the wedding ring. It was stuck tight. They would have to call a blacksmith to cut it off. Hugo’s wedding ring would have to be cut off Catherine’s hand. Alys hid a smile.

Catherine leaned forward in the bath, grunting as she bent over her fat belly while Alys washed her back. Then Alys went around the tub and lifted and washed one leg after another. The skin was yielding, spongy to the touch. Both ankles were swollen as thick as if they were sprained, and both knees. Alys pressed them hard. Catherine did not complain of any discomfort. Alys’s fingers left dark red marks.

Eliza tuned her lute and started to play very softly. Catherine lay back in the tub, one white foot in Alys’s hands, and shut her eyes. Alys, feeling her healing power welling and pouring through her fingers, rubbed at the sole of Catherine’s swollen foot. She sensed Catherine’s lack of balance, an unevenness about her body, something sickly, something poisonous inside her. She took up the other foot and rubbed it gently with oil.

When she had finished with Catherine’s feet she went to the head of the tub and very gently poured water over Catherine’s thick brown hair, concentrating on the skin of the scalp and the temples, washing it with soap and then rubbing it with oil, and then rinsing it all until the hair was clean.

The discontented look of a lonely child had drained away from Catherine as if Alys’s touch was a panacea. Her face was rosy. When Eliza’s song had finished, she hummed the chorus and then waved her hand:

“Sing it again!” she said. Eliza shot an irreverent wink at Alys and took up the lute for a second time and sang the song through once more.

Catherine sighed with pleasure.

“The water is growing cold,” Alys said. “You must come out, Catherine, or you will chill.”

Eliza laid down the lute and opened the door for a serving-girl. Alys held up the warmed sheet and draped it around Catherine from the front, Eliza threw a warmed sheet over her shoulders and back.

“Clear this,” Alys said abruptly to the serving-girl and Eliza.

She guided Catherine to the bed and patted at her face and hands and shoulders until they were dry, then she combed her fine brown hair and spread it out around her on the warmed sheet so that it would dry without tangles.

Catherine lay like a painted statue, pink from the heat, smiling. Alys dropped the bed-curtains from their bags and drew them around the bed. The serving-men came and took the bath away. When they had gone, slopping water and swearing, the room was very quiet. Alys tied back the curtains at the head so Catherine could see the fire crackling and the flames burning brightly, sweet-smelling with Alys’s incense.

The door behind Alys opened and Hugo came into the room.

He stepped up to the bed and put an arm around Alys’s waist to keep her at her place.

“Are you well, my Lady Catherine?” he asked gently.

Catherine’s eyes fluttered open. She smiled her delight at seeing him.

“Hugo,” she said. “You have been away from me for so long!”

He nodded. “I have neglected you,” he said. “I left you to care for yourself and the child and Alys here tells me that you are not taking the exercise you need.”

Catherine looked at Alys and smiled. “She takes very good care of me,” she said.

“And she has a wonderful touch, has she not, Catherine?” Hugo asked.

Alys looked quickly at him. He was smiling, there was some heat at the back of his smile. Alys could smell his lust like woodsmoke on an east wind. She tensed and tried to move aside. Hugo’s grip tightened on her waist and his smile never faltered.

“Oh yes,” Catherine agreed. “She has been rubbing my back and my feet and my head. Alys has healing in her fingers, her touch is like silver.”

Alys could feel Hugo’s heat through his doublet. She felt danger massing around her, clotting in corners of the room, thickening and rolling closer like woodsmoke from green wood.

“I will leave you,” she said. “I will leave you two alone and order your supper to be served here tonight.”

“No,” Hugo said, not taking his eyes from Catherine’s rosy, relaxed face. “I have a fancy to see you massage my wife with your oils, Alys.”

Catherine’s eyes widened, but she said nothing.

“It is not fit…” Alys started.

“Do it,” Hugo said softly. “You have done everything else I have ever desired. Now I desire this.”

He lifted the sheet which covered Catherine and dropped it to one side. Catherine, reveling in his attention after weeks of neglect, lay still and let him look at her, let his eyes wander over her bloated pale body, distended with her pregnancy.

“I please you?” she asked humbly.

Hugo placed his hand on the mound of her belly. “You do,” he said. “And this pleases me most of all.”

He glanced at Alys, who was motionless, watching the two of them together.

“Do it, Alys,” he said. It was an order.

Alys went slowly to the table and poured lavender and almond oils into the palm of her hand and rubbed them to make them warm. She was thinking feverishly how to escape from the two of them, how to get herself out of Catherine’s chamber and into the safety of the ladies’ gallery where the others were sitting around the fire and chattering about the haymaking. She glanced at Hugo as she walked around to the other side of the bed. His dark eyes were very bright. He looked capable of anything. Alys smelled danger as sharp as a curl of smoke from a spark in a haystack.

She started gently and softly to stroke oil into Catherine’s white puffy shoulders and arms. Catherine lifted her head to expose her thick neck, closed her eyes, and lay still.

With a little laugh Hugo walked to the door. Alys heard the click of the lock as he turned the key and then the rustle of his doublet as he threw it off. When he came back to the bed on the other side, he had rolled up his shirtsleeves and poured a handful of oil into his own hands.

“I will copy you, Alys, and learn your skills,” he said. His voice was like silk; Alys heard the tone of his rising lust and did not look across at him.

Catherine’s nipples were hardening as they stroked her shoulders and her neck.

“A little lower?” Hugo suggested, a ripple of laughter in his voice.

Alys stroked, with gentle small touches, down to the swell of Catherine’s breast. Hugo copied her movements exactly. Catherine arched her back slightly on the bed, her stomach raised, her breasts moving toward their hands.

Hugo chuckled. His palm moved confidently down and Alys watched her lover cup his hand over his wife’s plump breast.

“I should leave you now,” she whispered. She could not drag her eyes away from his confident, caressing hand. Catherine sighed with pleasure, her eyes still closed.

“You do it, Alys,” he told her, smiling his mischievous smile at Alys’s tense, anxious face.

“Do it,” he said again.

Gently she stroked the slope of Catherine’s breast.

“I command it,” Hugo said softly.

Alys slid the palm of her hand over Catherine’s plump nipple and felt the nipple harden beneath her touch with a delicious responsiveness. Catherine moaned.

“Rub me,” she said.

“You do it,” Hugo demanded. He reached across Catherine and took Alys’s other hand and placed it on Catherine’s other breast. At Alys’s touch Catherine smiled. Her face, warm with pleasure, shadowed in candlelight, was lovely. Alys stroked gently all around Catherine’s hot breasts, rubbed the nipples with the flat of her palm, felt a sudden rising desire to press harder, to stroke and pummel Catherine’s warm, bulging, newly washed skin, to pinch her, tease her, see her squirm and arouse her desire.

“I have to tell you, my lady, that I have lain with Alys,” Hugo said quietly.

Alys gasped and froze, but Catherine, her head arched back, her breasts pushed upward to Alys’s hands, was not distracted from her greedy sensuality.

“I could not resist her,” Hugo said gently. “She is a most delicate whore.”

Catherine laughed, a breathless laugh, deep in her throat. “You must take your pleasure where you will, Hugo,” she said. “You are a man. You are the lord. You must have all that you desire.”

“I am going,” Alys said abruptly. She turned for the door but Hugo was quicker. He blocked her way in a moment and she stood, outraged, her eyes blazing.

Hugo’s smile was as feckless and wicked as she had ever seen.

“Turn around, Alys,” he said.

For a moment she hesitated and he took her gently by her shoulders and turned her back to Catherine’s sprawled wanton bulk on the bed. Catherine opened her eyes and smiled at Alys; she looked ready to eat her. Alys shuddered—partly from distaste, partly from a rising, unwanted desire. She was trapped by Hugo’s lust, in Hugo’s fantasy, as she had so often entrapped him.

Gently he pushed her back to the bed.

“Touch her, Alys,” he said softly. “Touch my wife again. You can stroke her—or even pinch her. You can slap her if you wish. I imagine you would like to slap her. She will not mind. She likes it.”

He pushed her gently and Alys leaned forward and slid her hand, still slick with oil, from Catherine’s thick throat down to her fat breasts. Catherine groaned softly and reached her arms out for Alys.

Hugo’s skillful hands went to the back of Alys’s gown and untied the lacings, loosening them swiftly. Alys straightened up to protest, but Catherine, without opening her eyes, still smiling, caught one of her hands and pulled it back on the warm, squashy breast.

“Rub me,” she said. “Alys, rub me.”

Hugo chuckled, his wicked spoilt-boy chuckle, held Alys more firmly around her waist, and pulled the lace from the holes with a swift hiss. The green stomacher and wide sleeves tumbled off. Hugo pushed down the white linen chemise so Alys’s breasts and arms were bare. She made a soft, inarticulate protest.

“
My
gown,” he reminded her. “The new green gown. Mine to strip from you, as we agreed.”

He untied the strings of the overskirt and dropped the expensive brocade to the floor. He untied the green silk underskirt and it fell in a ring at Alys’s feet. Alys, held by Hugo’s careless hand around the waist, both hands captured by Catherine, stood leaning over the bed wearing nothing but her fine linen shift.

“On the bed,” Hugo ordered. He pushed her gently, and when she resisted he pushed her harder. “I mean it, Alys,” he said. There was an unmistakable threat in his low voice. “You have no choice, mistress,” he said.

Reluctantly Alys climbed on the bed beside Catherine. Catherine turned her face to her and smiled. “Pretty Alys,” she said. Her voice was slurred with desire. “Take her shift off, Hugo,” she said. “Strip her.”

Hugo pulled Alys’s shift up from her hips and over her head in one smooth motion as Catherine reached out for her and pulled her down beside her.

“I may not enter you, my lady,” Hugo said thickly to Catherine. “It would be dangerous for the baby and bad for your milk. But I can give you some pleasure, I think.”

Catherine laughed, a delighted, indulged laugh. “You bring me your whore?” she asked. “Hugo, you are wicked! You bring me your whore to please me with her silver fingers?”

Hugo chuckled. “I am a little wicked,” he conceded. They sounded as if they were flirting in some elaborate courtly ritual. Alys between them, naked and shivery, shrank back as Catherine’s scented damp body pressed forward.

“But she would tempt a saint, wouldn’t she, Catherine?” Hugo asked agreeably. “You can’t blame me for falling into temptation with Alys.”

He took a handful of Alys’s hair and pulled her head back. He put his mouth over hers and Alys felt his tongue slide shamelessly into her mouth as he kissed her deeply and fully while Catherine watched. Incredulously, through her own rising desire, she heard Catherine’s low aroused chuckle.