The Wise Woman (14 page)

Alys nodded.

“Have you heard more?” the old lord asked. “Any plots, any plans? D’you think his impatience grows so strong that he would poison me, or lock me away?”

Alys’s nostrils flared as if she could smell the danger in the question. “I have heard nothing,” she said. “I was only saying that the young lord is impatient to make his way in the world. I accuse him of nothing.”

“Tssk,” the old lord said impatiently. “I need you to be ready to accuse him, Alys. You are in my daughter-in-law’s chamber, you hear the gossip of the women. Catherine knows full well that if she does not conceive a child within the year I will find a way to be rid of her. Her best way would be to get rid of me before I make a move. Hugo is mad for the court and for London and I block his way south. Listen for me, Alys. Watch for me. You go everywhere, you can hear and see everything. You do not need to accuse Hugo or Catherine, either one or the other. You just have to tell me your suspicions—your slightest suspicions.”

“I have none,” Alys said firmly. “Lady Catherine speaks of your death as an event in the future, nothing more. I have never heard her admit that she fears a divorce or an annulment. And Lord Hugo comes to her rooms only rarely, and I never see him outside your chamber.”

He was silent for a moment. “You don’t see Hugo outside my room?” he confirmed.

Alys shook her head.

“He does not waylay you?”

“No,” Alys replied.

It was true. Either Morach’s tisane had worked, or the old lord had made his wishes plain. When Alys rode back to the castle from Morach’s cottage, Hugo had shot her one unrepentant wink, but never ordered her to his chamber again. After that, she kept out of the young lord’s way as much as she could, and kept her eyes on the ground when she had to walk past him. But one cold morning, in the guardroom below the old lord’s private chamber, she was coming down the little staircase as Hugo waited to walk up.

“Always in a hurry, Alys,” Hugo said conversationally. He took her sleeve in a firm grip between two fingers. “How is my father today?”

“He is well, my lord,” Alys said. She kept her eyes on the stone flags between his riding boots. “He slept well, his cough has eased.”

“It’s this damp weather,” Hugo said. “You can feel the mist coming off the river, can’t you, Alys? Doesn’t it chill you to the bone?”

Alys shot a swift upward look at him. His dark face was bent down toward her, very close, as if she might whisper a reply.

“I have no complaint, my lord,” she said. “And the spring will come soon.”

“Oh, not for months and months yet,” Hugo said. “We have long days of darkness and cold yet to come.” He whispered the words “darkness and cold” as if they were an invitation to the firelit warmth of his room.

“I do not feel the cold,” she said steadily.

“Do you dislike me?” Hugo asked abruptly. He dropped her sleeve and put both hands either side of her face, turning it up to him. “You told my father that I had invited you and that you were unwilling. Do you dislike me, Alys?”

Alys stayed still and looked steadily at the silvery whiteness of the falling band of his collar, as if it could cool her.

“No, my lord,” she said politely. “Of course not.”

“But you never came to my room,” he observed. “And you told tales to my father. So he told me to keep my hands off you. Did you know that?”

He held Alys’s face gently. She stole a quick look at his eyes; he was laughing at her.

“I did not know that.”

“So you do like me then?” he demanded. He could hardly hold back his laughter at the absurdity of the conversation. Alys could feel laughter bubbling up inside herself too.

“It is not my place, my lord, to either like you or dislike you,” Alys said primly. Under his fingers her cheeks were tingling.

Hugo stopped laughing, held her face still with one hand, and with a gentle fingertip traced a line from the outside of her eye, down her cheekbone to the corner of her lip. Alys froze still, unmoving beneath his caress. He bent a little closer. Alys shut her eyes to blot out the image of Hugo’s smiling intent face coming closer. He hesitated, a half, a quarter of an inch from Alys’s lips.

“But I like you, Alys,” he said softly. “And my father will not live forever. And I think you would feel the cold if you were back on Bowes Moor again.”

Alys stayed mute. She could feel the warmth of his breath on her face. His lips were very close to hers. She could not move away from his kiss, she could only wait, passive, her face turned up, her eyes slowly, drowsily closing. Then his hands left her face and he straightened up. Alys’s eyes flew open; she stared at him in surprise.

“In your own time, Alys,” he said pleasantly, and he swung out of the room and ran up the curving stairs of the tower to his father’s room.

No one had seen them, no one had heard them. But Lady Catherine knew.

When Alys was summoned to the ladies’ chamber to sew, Lady Catherine waved her to a stool near her own chair, where she could watch Alys’s face as the others talked.

“You’re very quiet,” she said to Alys.

Alys glanced up with her polite, deferential smile. “I was listening, my lady,” she said.

“You never speak of your own kin,” Lady Catherine said. “Do you have any family other than the mad old woman on the moor?”

“No,” Alys said. “Except those at Penrith,” she corrected herself.

Lady Catherine nodded. “And no sweetheart? No betrothed?” she asked idly. The other women were silent, listening to the interrogation.

Alys smiled but made a tiny movement of her shoulders, of her head, to signify her regret. “No,” she said. “Not now. Once I had a sweetheart.” She glanced to Mistress Allingham. “You would know of him, Mistress Allingham. Tom the sheep farmer. But I had no portion and I went away to Penrith and he married another girl.”

“Perhaps we should dower you, and send you off to be wed!” Lady Catherine said lightly. “It’s a dull life for you here, where no man sees you and nothing ever happens. It’s well enough for us—we’re all married women or widows or betrothed—but a girl like you should be wed and bearing children.”

Alys sensed the trap opening up before her. “You’re very kind, my lady,” she said hesitantly.

“That’s settled then!” Lady Catherine said brightly. Her voice was as gentle as a diamond scratching glass. “I will ask my lord Hugo to look among the soldiers for a good man for you, and I will give you a dowry myself.”

“I cannot marry,” Alys said suddenly. “I cannot marry and keep my skills.”

“How is that?” Lady Catherine asked, opening her gray eyes very wide. “You do not need to be a virgin to be a healer unless you deal in magic, surely?”

“I use no magic,” Alys said swiftly. “I am just an herbalist. But I could not do my work if I belonged to a man. It is time-consuming and wearisome. My kinswoman lives alone.”

“But she’s a widow,” Mistress Allingham interrupted, and was rewarded with a swift, small smile from Lady Catherine.

“So you
can
wed and still keep your arts,” Lady Catherine said triumphantly. “You are shy, Alys, that is all. But I promise we will find you a fine young husband who will care for you and use you gently.”

Eliza Herring and Margery tittered behind their hands. Ruth, who feared Lady Catherine more than they did, kept silent and stitched faster, bending low over her work.

“You do not thank me?” Lady Catherine asked; her voice was clear and underneath it—like an underground river—was a current of absolute menace. “You do not thank me for offering to dower you? And have you married to a good man?”

“Yes, I do indeed,” Alys said with her clear, honest smile. “I thank you very much indeed, my lady.”

Lady Catherine turned the talk to the gossip of London. She had a letter from one of her distant family in the south which spoke of the king and his growing coldness toward the young Anne Boleyn, his new queen, even though she was big with his child again. Alys, who blamed the king and the whore, his pretend queen, for all her troubles, smiled an empty smile as she listened, and hoped that Lady Catherine had been merely amusing herself by tormenting her with promises of marriage.

“And the new queen was nothing more than a maid-in-waiting in the old queen’s bedchamber when she took the king’s fancy,” Eliza Herring said tactlessly. “Think of that! Serving a queen one day and being a queen yourself the next!”

“And the one he looks to now, Lady Jane Seymour, has served them both!” Margery said. “Served the old queen—the false one I mean—and now Queen Anne.”

“A fine place to have at court, a lady-in-waiting,” Eliza said. “Think how high you might rise!”

Lady Catherine nodded but her face was impassive. She looked at Alys as if to warn her. Alys ducked her head down and sewed.

“Those are London manners,” Catherine said with soft menace. “And what is right and proper for the king is not always a course for his subjects.”

“Of course not!” Margery said, flustered. “Besides, if Queen Anne has a son, he will cleave to her! No king would put aside a wife who gave him a son! It is only barren wives who get that treatment!”

Catherine’s face went white with anger.

“I mean…” Margery stumbled.

“The king’s marriage was annulled because Catherine of Aragon was his brother’s wife,” Catherine said icily. “That was the only reason for the annulment of the marriage, and you have all sworn an oath of allegiance recognizing the king’s rightful heir and the truth of his marriage to Queen Anne.”

The women nodded, keeping their heads down.

“Any talk of divorce at the whim of the king is treason,” Catherine said firmly. “There can be no divorce. The king’s first marriage was invalid and against the law of God. There can be no comparison.”

“With what?” Eliza asked dangerously.

Catherine’s gray eyes stared her down. “There can be no comparison between your positions and the queen’s ladies,” she said with acid clarity. “You are none of you high enough to wear scarlet, whatever borrowed clothes Alys may use. I hope that none of you would want to overset the natural order, the God-given order. Unless Alys hopes to see herself in purple? Married to a lord?”

The women laughed in a nervous, obedient chorus.

“Who did the gown belong to, Alys?” Catherine asked vindictively.

“I was told it belonged to a woman called Meg,” Alys said, clearing her throat and speaking low.

“And do you know who she was, Alys?” Catherine asked.

Alys lifted her head from her sewing. “Lord Hugh’s whore,” she said softly.

Catherine nodded. “I think I would rather wear brown than flaunt borrowed colors,” she said. “I would rather wear honest brown than the gown of a whore who died of the pox.”

Alys gritted her teeth. “Lord Hugh ordered me to wear this gown, I have no other.” She shot one look at Catherine. “I hope I do not displease you, my lady. I do not dare disobey Lord Hugh.”

Catherine nodded her head. “Very well,” she said. “Very well. But you had best borrow only the gown, Alys, and not the manners of the last owner.”

Alys met Catherine’s hard, suspicious gaze. “I am a maid,” she said. “Not a whore. And I shall stay that way.”

After that she kept even more carefully away from anywhere that she might meet the young lord. When he came to his father’s room she sat in a corner, in the shadows. She put off the cherry-red gown which the old lord had given her, and asked if she might take a new one from the box. She chose a dark blue one, so dark that it was almost black, and wore it with a black stomacher tied as flat as a board across her belly. It was too large for her and came too high up under her chin, hiding the swell of her tight-pressed breasts. She rummaged in the box and found an old-fashioned gable hood in the style which had gone out with the old queen, the false Queen Catherine. Alys scraped back her growing curly hair into a black cap pinned tight. Then she pulled the gable hood on top of the cap and pinned it down. It was heavier than her wimple and hotter with her hair underneath, but it reminded Alys for a moment of the steady pressure of the wimple and the bindings around her face which she had worn for so long.

“You look like a nun,” the old lord said. And when he saw her swift guarded look at him he said, “No, wench, you’re safe enough. You look like a woman who is trying to be invisible. Who are you hiding from, Alys? Lady Catherine? Hugo?”

“The other gown was dirty,” Alys said evenly. “I have sent it to be washed. And it is time I wore a hood.”

Lord Hugh raised his white eyebrows. “You can have your pick of that chest of clothes,” he said. “And tell David to show you the other chest. You might as well wear them as anyone else while you are here. But when you leave they must stay.”

“Thank you,” Alys said quietly. “Is it not an offense for me to wear scarlet, my lord? I thought only the wife of a landholder could wear red?”

Lord Hugh chuckled. “I enforce the law of the land. The laws are what I say. And anyway, women don’t matter.”

The castle was preparing for the feast of Christmas and the turkeys and geese gobbled innocently on extra feed. The old lord developed a cough which kept him awake at nights and made him tired and irritable during the day. Alys went out in the dawn frost to pick fresh herbs in the little garden outside the kitchen door and bumped into a man, wrapped thick in a cloak, coming in.

He put out a hand to steady her, gripped her arm. As soon as he touched her she knew it was Hugo.

“I gave you a fright.” His smile gleamed from the shadow of his hood. He swept her with him back into the warmth of the kitchen. Servants were sleeping on the floor before the fire and on the benches. Hugo kicked two or three with his booted foot and they staggered sleepily out of his way. He pulled up two stools and thrust Alys down by the glowing embers.

“You’re frozen,” he said. He took her hand. Around her fingernails her fingers were blue with cold.

“I was picking herbs with the ice on them,” Alys said. “Your father’s cough is a little worse.”

Hugo took her cold hands and put them between his warm palms. As the feeling came back into her numb fingers Alys grimaced, pulled her hands away, and shook them. Hugo laughed softly and leaned forward to recapture them. “I’ve been out all night,” he said. His voice was low; no wakeful servant could hear them. “Don’t you want to know what I have been doing, Alys?”