The Wise Woman (65 page)

Alys smiled. “What was she like, your wife?” she asked.

Lord Hugh thought. “Oh, good,” he said vaguely. “Well born, religious. Dull.” He racked his brains. “She read a good deal,” he said. “Lives of the saints, church books, that sort of thing. She had very black hair—that was her best feature. Long, thick, black hair. Hugo has her hair.”

“Did she die young?” Alys asked.

The old lord shook his head. “Middling,” he said. “She was forty or thereabouts—a good life for a woman. She was ill with all her childbirths. And miscarriages. Lord! She must have had a dozen. And at the end all we had to show for it was two worthless daughters and Hugo.”

A companionable silence fell between them, Lord Hugh smiling at some old memory, Alys sitting beside him, composed.

“That old woman,” she said casually. “What became of her?”

“The suspected witch?” Hugh roused himself. “Oh, she was no witch. They put her to question under torture and she said nothing that could be called witchcraft. Even Stephen accepted that, and he sees a warlock in every doorway.”

Alys chuckled, a strained, unconvincing sound. “He’s very enthusiastic,” she said.

Lord Hugh cocked an eyebrow at her. “Everything to gain,” he said. “It’s the king’s church now. Progress upward and there is the king’s court at the top and God’s heaven beyond that. A tempting enough prospect, I should think.”

Alys smiled and nodded.

“I don’t know where it will all end,” he said. “I shan’t see the end of it, that’s for sure. I used to think they would go back to the old ways but I can’t see how anymore. The abbeys are half destroyed, the priests have all taken the oath to honor the king. Still, it is Hugo’s inheritance. And he’s all for the new ways. He will have to find his path through them. I don’t doubt he has the skill. As Stephen ascends, Hugo rises too. They have hitched their stars together.”

Alys nodded again. “The old woman…” she started.

“A papist,” the old lord said. “Accused of heresy and treason. When they got her off the rack and drenched her with cold water until she could speak again, she denounced them all, and said she was ready to die for her faith. We’ll try her tomorrow. I doubt she’ll recant. She’s a powerful woman.”

“Can’t she be released?” Alys asked. “Shipped off somewhere? She’s such an old lady and she will die soon anyway. She’s no danger to anyone.”

Lord Hugh shook his head. “Not now she’s arrested,” he said pedantically. “She’s in the court records, Stephen knows of her. His report goes to his bishop, mine goes to the council. She can’t just disappear. She has to be tried and found innocent or guilty.”

“But on what you say, she’s bound to be guilty!” Alys exclaimed. “Unless she recants, she’s bound to be found guilty.”

The old lord shrugged. “Yes,” he said simply. He leaned his head back against the sun-warmed stones. “You could bake bread on this wall,” he said. “It holds the heat like an oven.”

“It serves no good purpose to execute her,” Alys insisted. “She’s so old and frail that people will hate you and Hugo for hurting an old woman. They could turn against you. It’s hardly worth the risk.”

The old lord turned his head to Alys. “It’s out of my hands,” he said gently. “She is accused before the court and I will try her tomorrow. Stephen will be reasoning with her and questioning her. She wanted no one to represent her. If she does not repent, take the oath of supremacy and acknowledge the king as head of the church, then she has to die. It’s not whim, Alys. It’s the law.”

“Couldn’t you…” Alys started.

Lord Hugh turned his head toward Alys and his look was acute. “Do you know her?” he asked sharply. “Was she from your old order? Are you pleading for her?”

Alys met his eyes squarely. “No,” she said. “I have never seen her before in my life. She means nothing to me, nothing. I am just sorry for her. Such a foolish old woman to die for her delusions. I feel distressed that my complaint has brought her here, nothing more.”

Hugh leaned forward and clapped his hands at the hens. They scuttered out of reach. The cock flapped his wings and jumped awkwardly to the flat top of the little box-hedge. He stretched his neck and crowed.

Alys watched the deep emerald shimmer on his throat.

Lord Hugh shook his head. “It’s not your fault,” he said. “She would have preached or taught people. She would have gathered people around her. She would have come to our attention one way or another. And then we would have had to take her up. She is an old fool looking for sainthood, that one. She would never have taken the easy route, never altered her faith and her vows to suit the times. She’s a foolish old martyr. Not a wise woman like you, Alys.”

Alys walked slowly into the castle through the doorway of the great hall. After the golden sunshine of the garden the smoky darkness of the great hall was a relief. She walked without purpose, without direction. Hugo was riding out to his new house, practicing archery, riding at the dummy in the tilt-yard, or trifling with one plaything or another. Hugo would make no difference. Alys paused at the top of the hall and leaned against the table where the senior soldiers sat for their dinner. Hugo was like a child. His father’s long life and power had kept Hugo as a merry child—happy enough when things were going well, sullen and resentful when his will was crossed. He would not save Mother Hildebrande at Alys’s request. He would not care enough. Not for her—a poor old woman who should have died last year. Not for Alys.

There were men sleeping off their dinnertime ale in the shadows of the hall, on the benches under the tables. Alys walked quietly past them, mounted the dais, and drew back the hanging over the lord’s doorway. One of them turning over in his sleep caught sight of her and crossed himself. Alys saw his gesture. Superstition hung around her still. She must remember that she was not safe herself. She put a hand to her belly. Her only safety was in the baby she carried: Hugo’s son. She started wearily to climb the stairs to the ladies’ gallery.

She might carry Hugo’s son but the old lord had planned all along to take the child from her and adopt him as his own. Alys had not thought of that. She had not known that such things could be done. She had thought that the baby boy would be her passport into the family. She paused on the stairs, waiting for her breath to come back and the dancing black spots to go from her vision.

“I am ill,” she said aloud.

If she was ill then Catherine would not insist that they share a bed, Lord Hugh would not threaten her. If she was ill and in her own bed then no one could blame her when Mother Hildebrande rushed upon martyrdom without Alys saying one word to save her. No one could blame Alys for Mother Hildebrande’s hunger for sainthood, especially if Alys were ill.

“I am ill,” she said again with more conviction. “Very ill.”

She walked slowly up the steps to the ladies’ gallery and opened the door.

It was empty and quiet. Mary was sitting at the fireside, stitching some plain work. She laid it aside when Alys walked in and bobbed her a curtsy.

“Lady Catherine has been asking for you, my Lady Alys,” she said pleasantly. “Shall I tell her you are here? Or should you lie down?”

Alys looked at her with dislike. “I will see Lady Catherine,” she said. “She was disturbed when she looked from her window and saw you flirting with her husband in the courtyard.”

Mary gave a little gasp of surprise.

“The young Lord Hugo will take his pleasures where he wishes,” Alys said distantly. “But do not flaunt yourself, Mary. If you distress Lady Catherine she will turn you out of the castle.”

Mary’s cheeks were blazing. “I am sorry, my lady,” she said. “It was just words and laughter.”

Alys’s look was as sour as if she had never heard words or laughter, or seen Hugo’s hot, merry smile. “If your humor is lascivious you had better avoid the young lord,” she said coldly. “It would go very ill for you indeed if you offend his wife. You told me yourself your father is poor and out of work. I suppose it would be difficult for all of them at home if you returned without your wages and without hope of work in service again.”

Mary dipped her head. “I beg your pardon, my lady,” she said humbly. “It won’t happen again.”

Alys nodded and went into Catherine’s room, the taste of spite very sweet and full in her mouth.

Catherine was dressed, sitting in a chair by the window, looking out over the courtyard and the garden, the sun-drenched wall of the inner manse and the tops of the apple trees in the outer manse. The smooth round prison tower stood like a dark shadow behind the little bakehouse. Alys, looking past Catherine out of the window, saw nothing else.

“How well you are looking, Catherine!” Alys said. Her voice was high and sharp, the words a babble. “Are you feeling better?”

Catherine’s face when she turned to Alys was bleak with sorrow. The old hard lines had reappeared from the rosy plumpness of pregnancy.

“I just saw you in the garden,” she said. “Talking to the old lord.”

Alys nodded, her face alert.

“I have been a fool,” Catherine said suddenly. “I called your girl in here and asked her if you were with child and she curtsied to me and said, ‘Yes, my lady,’ as if it were a known fact, as if everyone knew!”

Alys drew up a chair and sat down.

“Is it Hugo’s?” Catherine asked fiercely. “Is it Hugo’s child? I must have been blind not to see it before. When you walked across the garden I could see how you thrust your belly forward. Are you with child, Alys? Hugo’s child?”

Alys nodded. “Yes,” she said quietly.

Catherine opened her mouth wide and began to cry soundlessly. Great drops of tears rolled down her sallow face. She cried shamelessly like a hurt child, her mouth gaping wide. Alys could see the white unhealthy furring on her tongue and the blackness of one bad tooth.

Catherine snatched a breath and swallowed her grief.

“From when?” she asked.

“June,” Alys said precisely. “I will give birth in April. I am three months pregnant now.”

Catherine nodded, and kept nodding, like a little rocking doll. “So it was all lies,” she said. She took a scrap of linen from her sleeve and mopped at her wet face, still nodding. “You will not come with me to the farm, that was all lies. You will stay here and have Hugo’s child and hope to rise higher and higher into his favor and into the favor of the old lord.”

Alys said nothing.

Catherine gulped back sobs like a carp bubbling in the fish ponds. “And while I thought that you would come to love me and that you were pledged to live with me you were scheming to have me sent away so that you and Hugo could romp together in public,” Catherine said, nodding wildly. “You have shamed me, Alys. You have shamed me before the whole castle, before the whole town, before the country. I thought that you were my friend, that you would choose me instead of Hugo. But all this morning when I was talking with you and planning our life together you were playing with me. Scheming to have me sent away.”

Alys sat still as a rock. She felt the high flood-tide of Catherine’s anger and grief wash around her but leave her dry.

“You have betrayed me,” Catherine said. “You are a false friend. You are untrue.” She choked on another rich sob. “You act the whore with Hugo and you are sweet as a daughter to the old lord,” she said. “You play the false friend with me and you queen it among my women. There is no truth in you, Alys. Nowhere is there a scrap of honor or truth. You are meaningless, Alys, meaningless!”

Alys, her eyes on the round tower without windows, inclined her head. What Catherine said was probably true. “Meaningless.” What would they be doing with Mother Hildebrande in there now? Alys rose to her feet. “I am not well,” she said. “I am going to my chamber to rest before supper.”

Catherine looked up at her pitifully, her sallow face wet with her tears. “You say nothing to me?” she asked. “You will leave me here as I am, grieved and angry? You do not defend yourself, you do not even try to explain your false faith? Your disloyalty? Your dishonor?”

Alys glanced toward the round tower once more as she turned to the door. “Disloyalty?” Alys repeated. “Dishonor?” She gave a shrill little laugh. “This is nothing, Catherine! Nothing!”

“But you have lied to my face,” Catherine accused her. “You promised to be my friend, promised to be my lover. I know you are false.”

Alys shrugged. “I am unwell,” she said flatly. “I am too ill. You will have to bear your pain, Catherine. I cannot be responsible. It is too much for me.”

Catherine’s face grew pale. “Are you sick as I was?” she demanded. “Is his child turning rotten inside you, as mine did? Is that all that Hugo can father? Candle wax?”

Alys’s dream of the maggot-filled roadside and then the little dolls hastening to Castleton, seeking their mother, rose very vividly in her mind. She blinked hard and shook her head to rid herself of the walking dolls. “No,” she said. She put her hands on her belly as if to hold the baby safe. “My baby is whole and well,” she said. “Not like yours.”

That gesture—the simple gesture of pregnancy—broke Catherine’s anger into grief. “Alys! I forgive you! I forgive you everything! The deceit and the lies, the shame you have laid on me. Your infidelity with my husband! I forgive you if you will come with me. They will have me thrown out of the castle, I shall have to go. Come with me, Alys! We will look after your son together. He will be my child as well as yours. I will make him my heir! My heir, Alys. Heir to the manor that they will give me and my dowry which they will return. You will be rich with me. You will be safe with me and so will your son!”

For a moment Alys hesitated, weighing the odds, scanning her chances. Then she shook her head. “No, Catherine,” she said coldly. “You are finished. Here in the castle they are finished with you and will be rid of you. Hugo will never touch you again. The old lord will never see you. I was playing with your desires to get you to leave without making an uproar, and to do my lord a service in furthering his ends. I never meant to go with you. I never wanted your love.”

Catherine’s hands were over her mouth. Her wide eyes stared at Alys over her spread fingers. “You’re cruel!” she said disbelievingly. “Cruel! You came to my bed with Hugo, you held me in your arms this very morning! You nursed me in my sickness and kept my secret safe.”