The serving-lad giggled and pointed to one servant after another who shrieked against the accusation and could plead guilty or not guilty and was judged by the roar of the crowd.
Then he turned his attention to the gentry. Two of the young noble servers were accused of idleness and ordered to stand on their stools and sing a carol as punishment. One of Lord Hugh's cousins was accused of gluttony – sneaking into the kitchen after dinner begging for marchpane. Hugo's favourite, a young lad who was always in the guardroom talking warfare with the officers, was named a seeker of favours, a courtier, and had his head blackened with soot from the fireplace.
People laughed even more and the serving-lad grew bolder. Someone cast Lord Hugh's purple cape around his shoulders and he stood on the seat of the carved chair, jigging from one foot to the other, and pointed his finger at Hugo who was clowning around at the back of the hall with a tray and a jug of wine.
'Lust,' he said solemnly. The hall rocked with laughter. 'Venery,' he said again. 'I shall name the women you have been with.'
There were screams of laughter, and around Alys at the women's table a nervous ripple of discomfort. The serving-lad was lord of the feast, he could say anything without any threat of punishment. He might name any one of them as Hugo's lover. And Catherine would not be likely to forget, nor pass off the accusation as the fun of the feast.
'How shall you remember them all?' someone yelled from the back of the hall. 'It has been more than three hundred days since last year! That is at least a thousand women!'
Hugo grinned, postured, throwing back the apron to show his embroidered codpiece, thrusting his hips forward while the girls screamed with laughter. 'It's true,' he said. 'More like two thousand.'
'I shall name the women he has not had,' the serving-lad said quickly. 'To save time.'
There were screams of laughter at that. Hugo bowed. Even the old lord at the fireplace chuckled. The hall fell silent, waiting to hear what the lad would say to cap the jest.
'There is only one woman he has not had,' the lad said, milking the joke. He swung around and pointed to Catherine where she stood beside the old lord at the fireside. 'His wife! His wife! Lady Catherine!'
The hall was in uproar, people were screaming with laughter. Catherine's women, still in their seats at the table on the dais, clapped their hands over their mouths to smother their laughter. Hugo bowed penitently, even the old lord was laughing. Soldiers clung to each other and the serving-lad took off Lord Hugh's purple jewelled cap and flung it in the air and caught it to celebrate his wit. Only Catherine stood, white with anger, unsmiling.
'Now the old lord!' someone yelled. 'What has he done?'
The serving-lad pointed solemnly at Lord Hugh. 'You are very, very guilty, and you become guiltier every year,' he said. Lord Hugh chuckled and waited for more. 'And every year, though you do less, you are the more guilty,' the serving-lad said.
'A riddle!' someone yelled. 'A riddle! What is his crime?'
'What is my crime?' Hugh asked. 'That I do less and less every year and am more and more guilty?'
'You grow old!' the serving-lad yelled triumphantly. There was a great roar of scandalized laughter led by Lord Hugh. He shook his fist at the lad. 'I had best not see you tomorrow,' he shouted. 'Then you shall see how old my broadsword is!'
The serving-lad danced on the chair and knocked his skinny knees together, miming terror. 'And now!' he yelled. 'I order dancing!'
He slid from the cape and left the cap on the great chair and led out the dirtiest, lowliest slut from the kitchen to take his hand at the head of the set. Other people, still chuckling, fell in behind them. Alys leaned towards Eliza.
'D'you see her face?' she said softly. Eliza nodded. 'He's worse than last year,' she said. 'And he was impertinent enough then. But it's a tradition and it does no harm. The old lord loves the old ways and Hugo doesn't care. They always make a butt of Catherine; she's not well liked and they love Hugo.'
One of the mummers came to the ladies' table and laid rough hands on Ruth. She gave a soft shriek of refusal but he dragged her to the floor.
'Here's sport!' Eliza said joyfully, and chased after Ruth to find a partner for herself. Alys went down the hall like a shadow in her navy gown to stand behind Lord Hugh and walk with him back to his chair on the dais.
'Not dancing, Alys?' he asked her over the loud minor chords of the music and the thump of the drum. 'No,' she said shortly.
He nodded. 'Stand behind my chair and no one will call you out,' he said. 'It's rough sport but I love to watch it. And Hugo – ' he broke off. Further down the hall Hugo was on his knees to a serving-wench, half hidden behind a mask of a duck's head. Catherine, unwilling, her face set and pale, was dancing in a set partnered by one of the young knights. 'Hugo is a rogue,' the old lord said. 'I should have matched him to a girl with fire in her belly.'
They danced all afternoon and well into the night. A lad stood and sang a madrigal very sweetly, a gypsy girl came into the hall and danced a wild strange dance with clackers made of wood in her hand, then to a roar of applause the servers came from the kitchen and processed around the hall with the roast meats and set them down on the high table and in messes – four persons to a platter – at all the other tables. It was their final dish of the feast and grander even than all that had gone before. There was swan from the river, roasted and refeathered so that it was as white and complete as a live bird, head rearing up from the serving dish. At the other end of the top table there was a peacock with its tail feathers nodding. The lower tables had cuts of roast goose, turkey, capons, wild duck. Everyone had the best bread at this feast – manchet, a good white bread with a thick golden crust and a dense white crumb. The lords ate with unceasing appetite; Catherine beside them wiped her plate with her bread and took another slice of wild swan, though her face was still set and angry.
The jugs of wine came in, and one dish followed after another. Alys, rocking with weariness, ate little but drank the sharp red wine, cool from the barrels in the cellar. It was midnight when the sweetmeats finally came in, two for the top table. A perfect marchpane copy of the castle with Lord Hugh's flag fluttering over the round tower was put before the old lord. The women got up from the side table to see it and crowded around.
'Too pretty to cut,' Eliza said admiringly. Before Hugo they placed a little model of a country house set square on a terrace with little sugar deer in a park all around it.
'My plans for the new house!' Hugo exclaimed. 'Damn those servants, they know everything before I know it myself. Here, Sir, see what they have done!'
Lord Hugh smiled. 'Now you can see the two side by side,' he said. 'I know where I would rather live!'
Hugo bowed his head, too full of wine and dinner to quarrel with his father. 'I know your preferences, Sir,' he said respectfully. 'But it's a pretty fancy of mine.' Hugh nodded. 'Can you bear to eat it?' he asked. Hugo laughed and took his knife up in reply. 'Who will have a slice of my house?' he asked. 'My pretty little house which I have drawn in an idle moment and then found these kitchen hounds stealing my papers and copying my dreams into sugar?' 'I will!' Eliza said invitingly. Hugo threw her a smile.
'You would have a slice of anything of mine, Eliza,' he said. 'You would beg for a lick, would you not?'
Eliza gave a little scream of protesting laughter. Hugo smiled at her and then switched the heat of his look to Alys. 'Alys?' he asked. 'Will you taste my pretty toy?'
She shook her head and slid back to the women's table at the rear of the dais. When the others came back with their trenchers Eliza set a piece of the marchpane house before her.
'From him,' she said, nodding at the back of Hugo's chair. 'He served it for you under the nose of his wife. He has given you the front door. By – you're playing a dangerous game, Alys.'
When the eating was done, and there was nothing on the tables but the voider course of dried fruit and hippocras wine, David stood behind the lord's chair and called one man after another
up to the dais for Lord Hugh to give him a gift or a purse of coins. Hugo sat at his father's right hand, occasionally leaning forward with a word. Lady Catherine sat on Lord Hugh's left, smiling her meaningless, small smile. She had given and received her gifts with her women on New Year's Day and she had nothing for any of the castle servants nor for the soldiers. The line of servants and soldiers went on and on. There were a round four hundred of them. Alys, at the women's table at the rear of the dais, unable to see, dozed after the revelry of the Christmas days and the sleepless fortnight which preceded them.
'It's dull this,' Eliza whispered mutinously to her. 'Everywhere else does gifts on New Year's Day. It's only Lord Hugh who is too mean to gather everyone for a feast twice in the bad season!' Alys nodded, uncaring.
'Let's have another jug of wine!' Eliza suggested. She flapped her hand at a passing serving-wench. Margery frowned. 'You'll get drunk,' she said.
'I don't care!' Eliza said. 'It's the last day of the feast. She won't want us tonight. She'll dress in her best nightgown and lie wakeful all night in her chamber in case the wine has roused Hugo's lust.' 'Hush,' Ruth said with her usual caution. Eliza giggled and poured from the new jug. 'Maybe his Christmas gift to her is a decent tupping at last,' she whispered.
Margery and Mistress Allingham collapsed into scandalized laughter. Ruth shot an apprehensive backwards look at their mistress. Alys sipped from her glass. She liked the smell of wine. They had set glassware on the women's table today in honour of the feast and Alys liked the feel of the cool glass against her lips. At Morach's she had drunk from earthenware or horn, and in the castle she drank from pewter. She had not had the touch of glass against her lips since the nunnery. This wine tasted of itself, without a tang of ill-cleaned metal, the glassware was light and thin, appetizing. Alys sipped again. The drunkenness and the barbarity of the feast days had floated past her. No one had snatched her in a dark corner and tried for a kiss, she had danced with no one. The old lord watched for her, and when a soldier approached her for a dance, the old lord scowled at him and David waved him away. Lady Catherine smiled her thin smile at that and leaned back towards the women's table.
'In the spring we will dance at your wedding, Alys,' she said, her voice acid-sweet. She glanced towards the young man who had gone back to his place. 'That was Peter – a bastard son of one of Lord Hugo's officers. He is the one I have chosen for you. Don't you think I have chosen well?'
Alys looked down the hall towards him. He was well enough, slim, brown-haired, brown-eyed, young. She had seen him stab a knife into a dying dog at the bear-baiting. She had seen him screaming with excitement at the cock-fighting. She thought of what her life would be like as his wife, bound forever to a man with that perilous streak of excitement at the sight of pain.
'Very well, my lady,' she said. She smiled deceitfully into Lady Catherine's face. 'He seems a fine man. Has his father told him?'
'Yes,' Lady Catherine said. 'We must persuade the old lord to find a proper clerk to replace you, and then you can be married. Maybe at Easter.'
'Very well,' Alys said softly and lowered her eyes to her plate so that Lady Catherine could not see the gleam of absolute refusal.
Alys sipped her wine again. All through the days of feasting and the nights of drunken games she had felt the young lord watching her. Lady Catherine watched her too. Alys rested the cold glass against her cheek. She had to break the net, the net that the three of them, the old lord, the young lord and the shrew, had all cast around her. She had to take her power, she had to make the little dolls come alive and dance to her bidding.
Above the table – as it was Christmas – the waiting-women had pure wax candles in the candelabra. On the table was a silver candle-holder with pale, honey-coloured candles. Alys watched the bobbing yellow flame and the pure transparency of the wax. There was the slightest hint of sweetness in the vapour. These were pure beeswax candles. A memory flickered to the surface of Alys' mind and she winced as she realized that the candles would have been made by the nuns at the abbey with beeswax from the abbey hives.
Eliza poured more wine in her glass and she drank again.
In her purse tied on the girdle at her waist were the three candlewax dolls. They knocked against her gently when she moved. Alys had been tempted to fling them from her window down the steep side of the castle to smash against the rocks and tumble into the river below. It was death to be found carrying them and she was too afraid to hide them anywhere in the castle. She had not yet found the courage, or the desperation, to use them. She held to them like a talisman, like a final weapon which would be ready to her hand if their time ever came.
The tart cool taste of the clary wine flooded into her mouth and washed through her. I must be getting drunk, Alys thought to herself. All the voices seemed to come from a long way away, the faces around the table seemed to flicker in a haze. 'I wish…' Alys said thickly. Eliza and Margery nudged each other and giggled. 'I wish I was Lady Catherine,' Alys slurred. Ruth, the quiet one, glanced behind her to see that the two lords, watched by Lady Catherine, were still paying out gifts. 'Why?' she asked.
'Because… ' Alys said slowly. 'Because… ' she stopped again. 'I should like to have a horse of my own,' she said simply. 'And a gown which was a new gown – not belonging to someone else. And a man…'
Eliza and Margery exploded with laughter. Even Ruth and Mistress Allingham tittered behind their hands.
'A man who left me alone,' Alys said slowly. 'A man who was bound to me and wed to me, but a man who would leave me alone.'
'Not much of a wife you'll make!' Eliza said laughing. 'Poor Peter will get short commons I reckon.'
Alys had not heard her. 'I want more than ordinary women,' she said sorrowfully. 'I want so much more.'
All the women were laughing openly now. Alys, with her heavy gable hood sliding back off her mop-head of curls and her serious pale face, was exquisitely funny. Her deep blue eyes were staring unfocused at the candles. The young Lord Hugo, who now carried an awareness of Alys like a sixth sense, glanced back and took in the scene with one quick look.
'Your young clerk seems the worse for her wine,' he said softly to his father.
The old lord glanced back. David demanded his attention for another of the soldiers coming up for his gift.
'Get them to take her to her room,' he said briefly to the young lord. 'Before she pukes on her gown and shames herself.'
Hugo nodded and pushed his chair back from the table. Lady Catherine had not heard the soft-voiced exchange and glanced up in surprise. 'My father has an errand for me, I'll only be a moment,' he said softly to her, and then he turned towards the women. 'Come, Alys,' he said firmly.
Alys looked up. Against the candlelight of the hall his face was shadowed. She could see the gleam of his smile. There was a ripple among the women like a flurry in a hen-coop when a fox gets in the door.
'I'll escort you to my lady's rooms,' he said firmly. 'You,' he nodded at Eliza. 'Come too.'
Alys got slowly to her feet. Magically the floor beneath her rolled and melted away. Lord Hugo caught her as she swayed forward and lifted her up. He nodded at Eliza who drew back the tapestry and opened the little door at the back of the dais. They stepped out into the lobby behind the hall, and up the shallow stone steps to Lady Catherine's rooms above. Eliza flung the door wide and Hugo strode into the gallery carrying Alys.
'I'll give you a shilling to keep watch here and hold your tongue,' he said briefly to Eliza.
Her brown eyes were as large as saucers. 'Yes, my lord,' she said.
'And if you gossip I shall have you whipped,' he said pleasantly. Eliza felt her knees melt at his smile.
'I swear it, my lord,' she said fervently. 'I'd do anything for you.'
He nodded to her to open the door to the women's chamber and she scuttled ahead of him and swung it open. He walked the length of the gallery carrying Alys easily. She opened her eyes and saw the moonlight from the window briefly illuminate his
face and then they were in shadow again. He pushed open the door to the women's room and laid Alys down on a pallet.
Without any haste, he pulled the pins from her hood and tossed it to one side. Alys fell back on the pillow, her face pale, her eyes closed. 'I feel sick,' she said.
He rolled her to her side, skilfully unlacing her stomacher and the gown below it, so that when he rolled her on her back and lifted her legs and then her body to pull the gown over her head she was stripped down to her shift. Alys dropped back on the pallet, her arms above her head, her golden hair a tangle about her face. Lord Hugo sat back on his heels and scanned her, from her small dirty feet to her outflung hand. Alys snored lightly.
Lord Hugo pulled down his breeches with a little sigh and moved to cover her.
Alys' dark eyes flew open as she felt the weight of him come down upon her and he readied himself to put a hand over her mouth to still her protesting scream; but her eyes, out of focus and hazy, were warm with welcome and she smiled.
'Hello, my love,' she said, as easily as if they had been wed for twenty years. 'Not now, I am too sleepy. Love me in the morning.'
'Alys?'
She chuckled, the warm, confident sound of a woman who knows she is deeply beloved. 'Not now, I said,' she repeated. 'I am tired out with your wants, and your son's wants. Let me sleep.' Her eyelids flickered shut and Hugo watched the lashes sweep her cheek. 'Do you know me?' he asked in confusion. Alys smiled. 'None better,' she said. She rolled on her side away from him and put her hand back towards him. In a gesture so familiar as to be unconscious, she felt for his hand and then pulled his arm around her and tucked his hand between the warm comfort of her thighs. Hugo, following the demanding tug of her small hands, snuggled up so that his body was cupped around hers. He could feel a deep ache of desire that he would normally have satisfied quickly and roughly on a woman whether she consented or not. But something about Alys' drunken dream made him pause.
The Wise Woman Page 13
