The Wise Woman (66 page)

Alys shrugged and opened the door. “It meant nothing,” she said coldly. “
You
mean nothing. You should have drowned in the river that day, Catherine. All the destinies are coming homeward like evil pigeons. She will burn, and you will drown. There is no escaping your fate, Catherine. There is no escape for her.”

Catherine looked around wildly. “What d’you mean, Alys? What fate? And who will burn?”

Alys’s face was sour and weary. “Just go, Catherine,” she said. “Your time is finished here. Just go.”

She closed the door on Catherine’s wail of protest and went across the ladies’ gallery. The other women had come in from the garden and were taking off their headdresses and combing through their hair, complaining of the heat. Alys went through them all like a cold shadow.

“What ails my lady?” Ruth asked, as they heard Catherine’s cries and saw Alys’s resentful face. “Shall I go to her?”

Alys shrugged. “She’s to leave the castle,” she said succinctly. “My lord has ordered it. She’s to be set aside, the marriage annulled.”

There was a moment’s silence and then an explosion of chatter. Alys threw her hands up to fend off the hysterical questions. “Ask her yourself! Ask her yourself!” she said. “But remember when you give her your service that she’s soon to be a farmer on a little manor at the back end of nowhere. She’s Lady Catherine no more.”

Alys smiled at the sudden stillness in the room. Each one of them was silent, fearful for their own future. Slowly, one after another, they looked to her.

“I will wash before supper,” Alys said composedly. “Eliza, order a bath for me. Margery, order them to light a fire in my bedroom. Ruth, please mend my blue gown, I kicked out the hem the other day when I was walking upstairs. Mary—” she looked around. The girl was standing by the chamber door, her eyes cast down, the picture of the perfect maidservant. “Lay out my linen, I will wear a fresh shift.”

Alys watched them move to do her bidding. Her women.

Behind her door Catherine wept as her room grew darker. When suppertime came no one called her, and no one brought her food. She lay on her bed, sobbing into her pillow, and heard the noises of eating and drinking and laughter from the hall below. It grew darker, no one came to light her fire nor bring her candles. They left her in the cool evening air in darkness.

She heard the women come upstairs from the hall and heard their low-voiced chatter. She heard Alys’s laughter, edgy and shrill. But no one came to her door. No one came to see if they could be of service to her.

The silence from Catherine’s chamber put a blight on the gallery. No decision had been made but somehow the new positions had coalesced. Hugo did not ask after Catherine, the old lord had not spoken of her since the miscarriage. And now Catherine’s own women, who had served her since she was a girl, looked away from her shut door and did not offer her service. It was as if she were gone to live far away over the moors already, thought Alys, or drowned and buried; and she laughed again.

“I heard an odd tale today,” Eliza said, pouring the nighttime cup of ale.

Ruth glanced toward Lady Catherine’s door as if she feared her still.

“Tell it!” Margery said. “But not too frightening, I need to sleep tonight.”

“I stepped into Castleton market this morning and met a woman I know selling eggs,” Eliza said. “She had walked the moorland road this morning from Bowes.”

Alys looked up from her cup and watched Eliza’s face.

“Ahead of her in the dust in the road she saw the strangest thing,” Eliza said.

Ruth shuddered and crossed herself. “I’ll not hear talk of the devil,” she warned. “I’ll not hear it.”

“Hush,” the others said. “Go to your chamber, Ruth, if you have not the stomach for the tale. What did she see in the dust, Eliza? Go on!”

“She saw little tracks,” Eliza said mysteriously.

Alys felt herself grow cold.

“Tracks?” she asked.

Eliza nodded. “Footprints. The marks of the heels of riding boots, and a pair of shoes. As if a woman and two men had been walking on the road.”

Margery shrugged. “So?” she asked.

“They were tiny,” Eliza said. “Tiny little footprints, the size of mice feet, she said ‘Tiny.’”

Mistress Allingham exclaimed, “Fairy folk!” She clapped her hands. “Did she wish? Did she wish on the little people’s tracks?”

“She followed them!” Eliza said. “Two tracks from boots and one track from shoes, like two men and a woman.”

The women shook their heads in amazement. Alys said nothing, she sipped her ale. It went down her throat as if it were ice.

“And the little woman’s footprints were dirty,” Eliza said. “Dirty with slime like a snail. Slug juice.”

Ruth crossed herself abruptly and rose up. “I’ll hear no more,” she said. “Nonsense to frighten children!”

The rest of the women were fascinated. “And so?” they asked. “What then?”

“She bent down and poked the trail with a stick,” Eliza said. “She would not touch it.”

They shook their heads. Touching slime from one of the fairy folk could bring all sorts of dangers.

“She said it was…” Eliza whispered. They all leaned closer. “She said it was like candle wax!” Eliza said in triumph. She sat back on her stool and looked around at their faces. “An odd story, isn’t it?”

Alys drained her cup. She noticed her hands were steady. “Where were these tiny tracks?” she asked carelessly. “On the road, which road? Whereabouts were they?”

Eliza gave up her cup to Margery who put them away in the cupboard with the empty pitcher of ale. “Just a mile above the bridge,” she said. “From Bowes Moor heading into Castleton. And coming closer. A horrible story, is it not? But she swore by it.”

Alys shook her head. “Tiny tracks!” she said derisively. “Candle wax! I thought you were going to frighten us with a ghost six feet tall!”

Eliza bridled. “But it is true…”

“I’m weary,” Alys interrupted. “Fetch Mary for me, Eliza, I’ll go to bed.”

Eliza glanced at the closed door to Catherine’s room. “Should I see if she is all right?” she asked Alys. The rest of the women waited for Alys’s decision. Alys, thinking of the little dolls just a mile from her door this night, smiled bleakly.

“It does not matter,” she said. She laughed, a high, sharp laugh, while the women looked at each other in surprise. “Nothing is going to matter after all!” she said. “After all this trouble. Nothing matters at all!”

H
ugo blundered into Alys’s room as she dozed in her first sleep, making her jump awake with fear.

“Is it fire?” she demanded, coming out of sleep.

Hugo laughed aloud. He had been drinking till late in the hall and was boisterous. He pulled the covers off Alys and slapped her rump playfully.

“Heard the news?” he demanded. “My marriage is to be annulled. I am to be wed to a girl straight from the nursery! And Stephen can get no sense out of the old woman from Bowes Moor!”

Alys snatched the covers back and pulled them up over her shoulders. “I know all the news,” she said sourly. “Except about the old woman. What is he doing to her? Is he hurting her?”

“Oh no,” Hugo said. “He’s no barbarian. She’s an old lady. He’s questioning her and arguing theology with her. It sounds as if she is holding her own. He was in a vile mood after dinner. He told me all about it over a pitcher of hippocras. They have been arguing over transubstant—transubstant—trans…” Hugo chuckled and gave up. “Whether it’s bread or meat,” he said vulgarly.

“Will he let her go?” Alys asked. She sat up in bed. Hugo was flushed and merry. He unbuttoned his fine doublet and tossed it toward the chair. It fell on the floor and he unbuckled his belt and codpiece, untied his hose and pulled them down, and slung them all toward the pile of clothing. He came to her bedside, his shirt billowing.

“Move over, wench,” he said contentedly. “I shall sleep here tonight.”

“Will he let her go?” Alys asked again. Hugo held her tight around the waist and nuzzled his head into her belly.

“Who, the old woman?” he asked, rearing up, his hair tousled. “Oh, don’t ask me, Alys, you know what Stephen is. He wants to do right by his God, and he wants to do right by his bishop, and he wants to do right by every simple soul, and he wants to do right by himself. If he finds she is an innocent old woman in error then he will persuade her to take the oath, let her go, and I will pop her over the border into Appleby for you and there will be an end to it.”

Alys lay back and closed her eyes. “An end to it,” she said softly.

“Why not?” Hugo demanded. “What matters one more old lady or no? Stephen and I will be going to London to see the little bride within a month. My father must be in his dotage. His preference for me is a child of nine, to be betrothed in name alone.” Hugo laughed. “I care not!” he said. He patted her belly with a gentle hand. “Catherine set aside and you big with my child. A new wife can come or wait. It matters little. As long as you give me a son which I can make my heir, and then another, until the castle is full of them. I have plenty of time to get children, Alys. There is plenty of time. Plenty of time. Plenty of wealth and land and ease for all of us.”

Alys let him rock her in time to his words and slid her arms around his back. She found she was smiling.

“You would not believe what troubles I have had today,” she said. “Catherine has been hysterical, your father threatened to throw me out of the castle for a word spoken out of turn, I have been worried sick about the old lady, and then Eliza frightened me into fits with some horrid ghost story.”

Hugo chuckled and reached below the covers to slide Alys’s shift up her body. “My poor love,” he said. “You should have come out with me. I was supposed to ride over to Cotherstone Manor but I saw such a buck on the way that I stopped and chased him. He led us for hours and would you believe I missed him with a crossbow? I was close, but I had sweat in my eyes and I could not see. I missed him! A clear shot to the heart and all I could see was a blur. William killed him for me in the end. I was raging! You shall have him for your dinner next week.”

He penetrated her with a gentle thrust and a gasp of pleasure. “Be joyful!” he said, moving gently inside her. “We shall be rid of Catherine and she can do as she pleases. My father’s mind is on a new match and he can think of nothing else. Your old lady is holding her own against Stephen and needs neither your help nor mine, and these ghosts are terrors for little girls only, not a woman, Alys, not a wise woman like you.”

He sighed, and Alys felt his hand stroke her breast persuasively. She opened her legs wider.

“Are you joyful, little Alys?” he breathed. He started moving more urgently, consulting his own pleasure.

“I am well enough,” Alys said. Her mind roamed over the fears and triumphs of the day while her body moved accommodatingly under Hugo. She smiled and let him do what he would.

“Oh yes,” said Hugo.

And then they both were still.

“Alys,” Hugo said urgently. “Alys!”

She woke at once. The moonlight was streaming through the arrow-slit in a silver bar across the green and yellow counterpane on the high bed.

“What?” she demanded, her own fear leaping up at the terror in his voice.

Hugo was white-faced. “Mother of God,” he said. “A dream! I had such a dream! Tell me I am awake and it was nonsense!”

The sheets were wet with his sweat. In the moonlight Alys could see his hair sticking damply to his shiny face. His eyes were wide like a man with a fever.

“Did you dream of dolls?” Alys cried incautiously. “Little dolls coming to the castle?”

“No!” Hugo said. He stretched out his hands. They were shaking. “Mother of God! I dreamed my fingers had gone numb. I dreamed my fingernails had gone. I dreamed my fingertips were gone. My fingers had gone, as if I had the leprosy. All I had were horrid stumps!”

Alys blenched. “What a dream!” she said unsteadily. “But you are awake now, Hugo. Don’t fear.”

He threw his arms around her and buried his face in the warm skin of her neck. “God alive, I was afraid!” he said. “The tips of my fingers, Alys, they were melted away. Melted like wax!”

Alys lay very still, her arms around him, and felt him tremble. “Hush,” she said, as if she were speaking to a little child. “Hush, Hugo my love, my dear. Hush, you are safe now.”

After a little he stopped shaking and lay quiet in her arms.

“God! What terrors!” he said. He gave a little laugh for bravado. “You will think me a babe in arms!” he said, embarrassed.

Alys, lying like a fallen statue in the moonlight, her belly like ice, shook her head. “No,” she said. “I have my nightmares too. Sleep now, Hugo.”

He settled himself like a child, one head on her shoulder, one arm sprawled across her body. “A dreadful dream!” he said softly.

Alys put her hand up and stroked his head, the damp, matted curls of his hair. “I was screaming like a babe,” he said with a chuckle.

Alys gathered him closer still. Soon he was breathing steadily, his fears fallen away from him. Alys lay beside him and thought again of all the terrors, flying like pigeons with their beady, bright eyes to their homes.

Hugo’s arm across her belly was too heavy. She lifted his hand to free herself from the weight, and then she paused. In the darkness she could not see well, but she stroked his fingertips with her own. The fingernails were short, surely they were shorter than they had been before. She pulled his hand into the moonlight to see better. Surely the tips of the fingers were blunt and the nails were shorter and squarer at the top, as if they had been rubbed away.

Alys gave a little moan of terror, slipped from the bed and pattered over to the fire, thrust a taper into the red embers and lit a candle. She walked back to the bed, the flickering flame throwing huge shadows all around her. She walked slowly, reluctant to know. She thought of the little doll of Hugo which she had shaped with such determination and anger all those months ago when she had wanted nothing but to be left alone by him. She had smoothed his mouth and bid him not call her. She had rubbed away the fingertips and ordered him not to feel her. She had scraped away the ears and ordered him not to hear her. She had scratched his eyeballs and ordered him to be blind to her. And now Hugo dreamed that his fingers were melting, and he had already missed his shot.