The Wise Woman (67 page)

She sat on the bed and put the candlestick on the table nearby. She did not trouble to shield the light. She had a certainty as deep and as cold as death that it would not waken him; he would not be able to see the glow of it through his closed eyelids. She took his hand and held it close to the candle so that she could see clearly what she feared to see.

The tips of his fingers were blunt as if they had been nipped off. Hugo’s long strong hands were shorter, the last joint of each finger disproportionately stunted. His fingernails stopped short, square as if they had been roughly filed; shorter than the ends of his fingers, cut back. Alys shuddered. His hand looked as if someone had pruned the tips of every finger, leaving the nails clipped, the plump balls of the fingertips cropped.

She turned his hand over and looked at it as if she were reading his palm. The tips of his fingers were as smooth as the skin of his smiling, sleeping face. He had no fingerprints. They were rubbed away. On each fingertip there was nothing, no mark, just smooth, pink skin, squared off at the top like an ill-modeled statue. Alys gave a little sigh like a groan and sat with his malformed hand in her lap for a moment.

She leaned forward and held the candle high to look at his ears. Already they were tiny, the ears of a child. Only Hugo’s long curly hair and the caps he always wore had prevented her from seeing it before. She looked at his lips. The sharp profile of his upper lip was blurred. The attractive, kissable bow of the upper lip and the sharp pout of the lower lip had melted. Only the perimeter of the dark shadow of stubble marked where his lips should start. The light flickered as the candle shook in Alys’s hands. On an impulse she bent over him and gently shook him.

“Open your eyes, Hugo!” she said softly. “Open your eyes a moment!”

He rolled away from her touch, mumbling something in his sleep, but when she shook him again his eyelids flickered open though he was still dreaming. In the moment before he closed them again and sank back into sleep, Alys peered closely at them. Across each dark pupil there was a tiny trail of cloudy gray as if someone had drawn a fingernail across his eyeballs.

Alys let him sleep and put the candlestick carefully on the bedside table. She slipped into bed beside him and piled the pillows up against the heavy carved headboard and sat upright, waiting for the dawn. She was cold and white but she made no move to pull the covers around her shoulders or to huddle down beside Hugo’s contented sleeping warmth. Alys sat upright in her rich bed with the young lord beside her, his arm thrown lovingly across her, and waited for the dawn of another day with her face as grim and fearful as her betrayed mother Morach had looked all the years of Alys’s childhood, when magic was not enough to make them safe.

In the morning Hugo was in a hurry to be off hunting. Stephen had brought him a new horse and he wanted to try its paces. The day was sunny and it would be too hot for hard riding later on. Besides, he had to be home early for the court in the afternoon. He barely noticed Alys’s pale wakefulness.

“Are you well?” he asked, pausing in the doorway wearing only his shirt. “You well, Alys?”

She blinked at him, her blue eyes strained and red-rimmed from the long night of watching. “I dreamed,” she said. “Bad dreams.”

“Good God, so did I!” Hugo said, remembering. “I dreamed my fingers had gone. Gone like a leper. God! What a terror!”

Alys tried to mirror his relieved grin, but she could not. “Show me your fingers,” she said. “Show me them.”

Hugo laughed. “It was only a dream, sweetheart. See!”

He stepped back in the room and held out his right hand for Alys to inspect. In the bright dawn light from the arrow-slit she looked at the back of his hand. The fingernails were perfect, smooth and strong. His fingers were long and well-proportioned.

Alys gave a little hidden gasp of relief and turned his hand over. On each finger there was a perfect whorl—his fingertips were sound.

“We’re both as fey as each other!” Hugo exclaimed. He bent down and gave her a quick buss on her cheek. “Let me go, Alys! I’m going hunting!”

“Are your ears all right?” she demanded, as he went to the door.

He turned and grinned at her, as feckless as a child. “Yes! Yes! Every part of me is well, and some parts of me are superb! Now may I go?”

Alys laughed unwillingly, her heart lightening despite her fear. “Go then!” she said.

The door banged and he was gone. Alys pulled up the covers and slid down into the warmth where his body had lain. She shrugged her shoulders against her night fears.

“I won’t think about it,” she said to herself as her eyes closed. “I won’t think about it.”

Catherine’s door was open when the women came into the gallery in the morning. She was sprawled across the bed, door flung wide, waiting for them.

“I’ll have my breakfast here!” she yelled. “You, Ruth, bring me bread and ale. I’ll have some roast beef or venison, and some goat’s cheese. I fasted last night and I am hungry today. Fetch it for me at once.”

Eliza shot a quick irreverent grin at Alys. “She’s drunk!” she whispered. “Good God, what now!”

Alys stepped up to the door. By Catherine’s bed was a jug they kept in the cupboard of the gallery; it was rolling on its side, leaving a trail of red lees over the floorboards.

“Where did you get wine, Catherine?” Alys asked.

Catherine’s face was flushed, her hair tousled, her eyes bright. “Went down to the hall at dawn!” she said triumphantly. “I can serve myself when I need, you know. I’m not some whey-faced child that they can torment. I’ve been Lady Catherine here for years. I kicked a page awake and he brought me dinner and wine. I’ve been drinking ever since.”

The women fluttered behind Alys in consternation.

“Downstairs in her shift,” Ruth said softly. “Oh dear!”

Alys bit back a smile. “You’re drunk,” she said concisely to Catherine. “You had better eat some bread and then sleep. You’ll be sick enough later.”

Catherine shook her head and pointed imperiously to her window. “I give the orders here, Alys. I am not yet commanding a pig and a cow on the edge of the moor. I am not yet set aside and shamed for the benefit of you and whatever you carry in your belly! Go and fetch me some more wine. I’ll have clary wine—that’s a good wine to drink in daylight. And I’ll have ale with my breakfast! And then tell them to bring me a bath. I shall bathe and wear my rose and cream gown. And I shall dine in the hall today.”

Alys heard Eliza’s giggle smothered from behind her hand. She turned around. “She’s impossible,” she said to the women. “One of you sit with her. We’ll have to do as she wishes. She’ll pass out with the drink soon enough.”

“She can’t go down to dinner like this,” Ruth said, scandalized.

Alys shook her head. “She’ll be sick long before dinnertime if she’s been drinking all night.”

“My breakfast!” Catherine shouted imperiously, with the authority of the enormously drunk. “At once, girl!”

No one had called Alys “girl” for many months. Alys smiled wryly and nodded toward Catherine. “At once,” she said with mock obedience. She closed the heavy carved door and pointed to Ruth and then Mary.

“You fetch her breakfast, what she wanted. It makes no difference, she’ll be vomiting it up in moments. And you, Mary, go to the kitchen and tell them to set water to heat, and order her a bath.”

The two nodded. Alys led the rest of them downstairs for their breakfast, and waited in the lobby for the old lord and David to come down the stairs from the round tower.

“Good morrow, Alys,” the old lord said.

Alys stepped forward and kissed his hand.

David opened the door for the two of them and they entered the hall together.

Breakfast was a meal taken without ceremony at the castle. There was too much to do in the early hours of the day for much delay. The kitchen sent out a continuous stream of messes—four-person platters of bread and cheese and cold bacon. Serving-women and -men went around the hall serving ale and hot water. People came and went, with a quick bow to the high table when one of the lords was seated and dining.

Hugo was long gone—out hunting with Stephen. Most of the soldiers were fed and at their posts by the early light. Alys sat at the lord’s side and ate the best bread with him and drank a small cup of hot water with a sprinkling of chamomile on the top.

“What’s the brew?” the old lord asked.

“Chamomile,” Alys said. “For calmness.”

The lord gave a snort of amusement. “Calmness is for the grave,” he said. “I’d rather have panic any day. Tells me I am still alive.”

“Then you should have been born a woman,” Alys said.

He gave a quick guffaw of laughter. “God forbid!” he said. “What panics are you suffering, little Alys?”

“Catherine,” Alys said. “She got hold of some wine in the night and she’s still carousing this morning. She thinks of coming to dinner, primped up in her best, and winning back your affection.”

The old lord slapped the table with his hand and roared with laughter. Men taking breakfast on the nearby tables looked up, smiling, and one shouted, “Share the jest, my lord!”

Lord Hugh shook his head, his eyes streaming. “Women’s troubles! Women’s troubles!” he called back. All the men smiled and nodded.

“So!” he said, when he could catch his breath. “When may I expect this seduction?”

Alys nipped the inside of her lips to contain her irritation and sipped her tea. “She will come down to dinner unless someone prevents it, and she will make a scene and shame herself and shame you,” she said. “If she spews all over you and over the young lord it will not be so merry, I suppose. We cannot stop her in the gallery. We cannot order the servants not to give her wine. She will have her own way unless you order it.”

Lord Hugh was still chuckling. “Oh lord, Alys, don’t bring me these hen-coop troubles,” he said genially. “Give her wine and a drop of one of your sleeping herbs in the cup. Send her to sleep for a few hours and when she wakes sober and sick she’ll have learned her lesson. I’ll have the papers through in a few days and she can sign them and leave the castle forever.”

“In a few days?” Alys confirmed.

Lord Hugh nodded. “Aye. So you can drink ale for breakfast and not handfuls of grass, my dear.” He chuckled again. “Calmness. Oh Lord!”

Alys smiled thinly and broke some bread on her silver plate. “Hugo tells me you have settled on the young girl for his bride,” she said. “The little girl of only nine?”

Lord Hugh nodded. “The best choice,” he said. “I was torn. I’d have liked to see a quick wedding, bedding, and birthing, but the girl’s family are the very people we need as kin. And she herself is from fertile stock. Her mother had fourteen children, ten of them sons, before she died. All before she was twenty-five!”

“A fortunate woman indeed,” Alys said sarcastically.

Lord Hugh did not hear. “The wench will come and live here and we can school her as we wish,” he said. “If you’ll be kindly to her, Alys, you can stay by her and serve her. She’s no fool. She’s been serving as a maid in the Howard household and at court since she was seven. She’ll be fit to bed at twelve, I should think. I may yet see her son.”

“And my son?” Alys pressed.

“He’ll be mine as soon as he is born,” the old lord said. “Don’t fret, Alys. If he is a strong and bonny child he’ll be my heir and you can stay as long as she permits and as long as we desire. This is a good outcome for you, as it happens. Your luck follows you like your shadow, does it not?”

“Like my shadow,” Alys assented. Her voice was low and quiet. Lord Hugh could hardly hear her. “My luck follows like a shadow,” she said.

He pushed his plate away from him and a page came up with a silver bowl and ewer and poured water for him to wash his hands. Another came up with embroidered linen and he dried his hands.

“We dine early,” he reminded Alys. “There are the rest of the trials this afternoon. I shall rest this morning. They weary me, all these stolen pigs and missing beehives. And besides, the law changes with every messenger that comes. It was better in the old days when I did just as I wished.”

“What of the old woman?” Alys asked.

Lord Hugh turned as he was going out of the door. “I don’t know,” he said. “Father Stephen was talking with her again, after his supper last night. And this morning he went out riding with Hugo. She may not come to trial, Alys. It is Father Stephen’s decision if she has no case to answer.” He grinned. “She was leading him a merry dance as he told it at dinner last night. She is as learned as he and when he reproached her in Latin she defended herself in Greek and he was hard-pressed to follow. I suppose I shall conduct her trial in Hebrew for the purity of the language!”

“Might he release her?” Alys asked.

The old lord shrugged. “Maybe,” he said. A mischievous gleam came into his eyes. “Do you wish to appear for her?” he asked. “Her learning and your quickness would be a formidable defense, Alys. Shall I tell Stephen that you will speak for her? Is it your wish to stand before us all and defend a papist and traitor, no matter what it costs?” His dark eyes scanned her face, his smile was cruel.

Alys ducked her head. “No, no,” she said hastily. “No, she is nothing to me. Father Stephen shall be the judge. I cannot be involved in this. I have too much to do, and my health needs all my care. I cannot be troubled with this as well.”

Lord Hugh gleamed his malicious smile. “Of course, Alys,” he said. “Leave it to us men. I’ll let you know if we need chamomile.”

He swept out through the door, his wide flared surcoat swaying from his shoulders. Alys heard him laughing as he went up the stairs to the round tower. She finished her cup of chamomile tea in silence and then led the women back to the ladies’ gallery.

Catherine was singing loudly. They could hear her from halfway down the stairs. Eliza snorted with laughter as they opened the door and saw Catherine seated in her old chair before the gallery fire, a jug of ale in one hand and a cup in the other.

She beamed as she saw them. “My handmaids!” she said. “My companions!”

“You must go to bed,” Alys said, stepping forward. “You will be sick with all this drink, Catherine.”