The Wise Woman

by Philippa Gregory

  'Tisn't natural,' Eliza said one night to Alys. The candle was out, they were lying in the dark. In the other corners of the room they could hear the quiet breathing of Mistress Allingham and a rumbling snore from Ruth. Eliza had long ceased to laugh at the antics of Lord Hugo and his lady. All the women were appalled at the turn the two had taken.

  'Did you hear her this evening?' Eliza asked. 'I reckon she's bewitched. It isn't natural for a woman to beg for a man like she does. And she lets him do anything he wishes to her.'

  'Hush,' Alys said. 'It's her way. And she'll sleep well tonight and be sweet-tempered in the morning. And soon we'll know if she's in foal.'

  'Whelping,' Eliza said with a sleepy giggle. 'But it isn't natural, Alys. I've seen bruises on her that he's made with his belt. And when I showed them to her she gave me a smile…' She paused. 'A horrid sort of smile,' she said inadequately. 'As if she was proud.'

  Alys said nothing more and soon Eliza was breathing deeply, sprawled out across Alys' side of the bed. For an hour Alys lay sleepless in the darkness, watching the cold finger of moonlight move across the ceiling, listening to Eliza's snuffling snores. Then she slipped quietly from the bed and went out to the gallery, and threw a couple of logs on the fire, and a handful of pine twigs.

  The twigs spurted little flames and a sharp resinous scent filled the room. Alys sniffed at it and sat down on the warm fleece before the fire to watch the flames.

  The castle was wrapped in utter winter darkness and utter night-time silence. Alys felt she was the only being awake or even alive in the whole world. The embers of the fire formed into little castles and caverns. Alys stared deep into their red glow, trying to make out shapes, pictures. The sweet tangy scent of the burning pine reminded her of Mother Hildebrande and her quiet study where the little fire had been made of pine cones. Alys used to sit at her feet and lean against her knees while reading, and sometimes Mother Hildebrande would rest her hand gently on Alys' head and lean forward to explain a word, or chuckle tolerantly at a mispronunciation.

  'What a clever girl,' she would say in her soft voice. 'What a clever girl you are, my daughter Ann!'

  Alys took the sleeve of her nightshift and rubbed at her eyes. 'I won't think of her,' she said into the silence of the room. 'I must go on not thinking of her, stopping myself thinking of her. I will be without her now. Without her, forever.' She thought instead of Morach and the cold dark little cottage at the foot of the moor. Morach's hovel would be up to the eaves in snow by now. Alys grimaced remembering the long, dark, winter days, and the ceaseless unrewarding labour of digging out a track from door to midden to carry the slops.

  'Whatever I am doing now,' she whispered, 'whatever it costs me – it is better than that life. Mother Hildebrande would know that. She would understand that. She would know that even though I'm very deep in sin… she would know…' Alys broke off. She knew that the abbess would never have accepted an argument which said that hardship justified a sinner in one sin after another, down to the very doors of hell itself. 'I won't think of her,' Alys said again. She sat in silence for a little while, then the fire shifted and roused her from her daydream. She tossed a little log on to the soft embers at the back and watched it glow and then blacken and flame.

  Very quietly behind her, the door of Lady Catherine's bedroom opened and Hugo came out. He was wearing only breeches, his chest and back bare, carrying his boots, his shirt and his doublet. He checked in surprise when he saw Alys, so still at the fireside. Then he came on.

  'Alys,' he said.

  'Hugo,' she replied. She did not move her head to look at him, she had not started at the sound of a voice in an empty room.

  'Did you know I was there?' he asked. 'I always know when you are near,' Alys said. Her voice was dreamy. Hugo felt himself shiver as he came near her, as if all around her was some circle of deep power.

  'I have not seen you for days,' he said. 'I have not seen you, to speak with, since the night of your ordeal.'

  Alys thought of the purse on her girdle with the little figures still safe inside, stuffed under her pallet in her room. She thought of the blinded model of Hugo knocking and rubbing against the fat belly and cavernous slit of the doll of Catherine. 'No,' she said.

  'You lied, didn't you?' Hugo asked gently. 'When you told them that you were hot for me, and that you had made up a false prophecy to snare me?'

  Alys shrugged as if it hardly mattered. 'That was a lie, but I don't know the truth,' she said slowly. 'I truly cannot remember that night. I remember you carrying me from the hall but that is all. After that it was just sleep.'

  Hugo nodded. 'So you did not desire me?' he asked. 'You were lying when you said it. You did not desire me then and you do not desire me now?'

  Alys turned her head and looked at him. One side of her face was rosy with firelight, the other side in flickering shadow. Hugo felt the breath catch in his throat.

  'Oh yes,' she said softly. 'I desire you. I have wanted you, I think, since the moment I first saw you. I came into the great hall and your face was graven deep with hard lines – and then I saw you smile. I fell in love with you then, in that instant, for the joy in your smile. I hate her being with you, I hate the thought of you touching her. I cannot sleep when I know you are with her. And I dream of you, constantly. Oh yes, I desire you.'

  'Alys,' Hugo breathed. He put out his hand to touch her cheek, cupped his palm around her face as if she were a rare and lovely flower. 'My Alys,' he said.

  Alys hissed an indrawn breath. 'Can you feel me?' she asked. She took his hand from her cheek and examined it carefully.

  'Are you telling my fortune?' Hugo asked, amused. Alys turned the hand over and looked at the clean short fingernails. She turned the hand back and looked at the perfect idiosyncratic whorls on the fingertips.

  'Can you feel me?' she asked again. 'Can you feel my touch?'

  'Of course,' Hugo said, puzzled. 'With every fingertip? With every one?' she asked. He laughed a little. 'Of course,' he said. The words spilled out from him as if he had held them back for too long. 'My little love, my Alys, of course I can feel your touch. I have waited and waited for you to reach out your hand to mine. Of course I can feel you!'

  'When I whisper, like this,' Alys said, hardly breathing the words, 'can you hear me?'

  'Yes,' Hugo said, surprised. 'Of course I can. My hearing is good, Alys, you know that.'

  Alys put her hand out to his face and stroked with infinite tenderness his eyelids and the delicate lined skin around his dark eyes.

  'Can you see me?' she asked. 'Can you see as well as you ever did?'

  'Yes,' Hugo said. 'What is this, Alys? Are you afraid I am ill?'

  Alys clasped her hands in her lap and looked back towards the fire.

  'No,' she said. 'It is nothing. I thought for a time that I wanted you blind and deaf to me. I know now, this night, that is not true. It never was true. Maybe my desire for you is stronger than anything else. Maybe my desire for you is stronger than my wish for safety. Perhaps even stronger than…' She broke off. 'Anything else,' she said weakly.

  Hugo frowned. "What "else"?' he asked. 'What d'you mean "anything else"? Is it some herbalism or some old women's trickery?'

  Alys nodded. 'I wanted you to look away from me,' she said. 'I feared Lady Catherine's jealousy. After that time – when she made me take the ordeal – I knew she would catch me at something, force me to some test. And sooner or later I would fail.'

  Hugo nodded. 'And so you cast some silly girl's spell to keep me away from you, did you?' he asked, half amused. 'You must despair of your powers, Alys. For here I am, seeing you, touching you, hearing you and desiring you.'

  Alys glowed in the darkness like a pearl suddenly opened to the light.

  Hugo chuckled. 'Of course,' he said easily. 'What other end could there be between you and me? I love you. I looked down the hall and saw you in that red gown which was too big for you, and your poor shorn head and your clear little face and your nig
ht-blue eyes and I wanted to take you and bed you at once. And I have waited and waited for the lust to pass – and instead of passing it has become love.

  'I would have had you that night – Twelfth Night. I would have taken you when you were drunk and you could neither refuse nor consent. But when I touched you I saw you smile, and you said my name as though we had been lovers for years. And as soon as you did -I wanted that. I didn't want to take you like a whore. I didn't want to force you. I want to make a life with you like that. I don't believe you have the Sight. I don't believe in that stuff. I don't fear you are a witch or a magician or any of that silly mountebank stuff. But I do believe in a life for the two of us. No – three of us. Me, you and my child: a son for me.'

  Alys was silent for a moment. She looked again at his fingertips and then she put out her hand to his face and gently touched the soft skin around his eyes. 'And your wife?' she asked softly. 'None of her business,' Hugo said promptly. 'What you and I are to each other is none of her business. Besides, she's well served these days. Soon she must conceive.'

  Alys turned her face towards him and looked steadily at him. 'And why is that?' she asked.

  Hugo shrugged. 'Because I go to her,' he said impatiently. 'And why is that?' Alys asked again. 'I don't…' Hugo stopped the sentence short. 'D'you think it's your doing, Alys?' he asked, near to laughing.

  Alys glanced behind her at the darkened room and at Lady Catherine's chamber where the woman lay asleep, smiling even in her sleep at his abuse of her; bruised, drained, satisfied.

  'I don't know!' she said sharply. 'I can't tell! How would I know? I'm not trained in the black arts, I know nothing more than I saw old Morach do, up on the moor, to frighten stupid women out of their money. I don't know why you lie with her. Nor do I know why you hurt her and abuse her. It disgusts me, Hugo. I don't know why it should be like that between you two. I would not have made it like that between any man and woman – not even if I hated her. I hexed you to lie with her – I admit that! But I did not plan that you should beat her and spit on her and force her into abominable acts. I did not plan that she should love you for it!'

  'I don't know why it is like that,' Hugo conceded. He moved to sit closer to Alys and laid his arm around her shoulder. She leaned towards him. 'It disgusts me too,' he said, his voice very low. 'I've never treated any woman like that – not the poorest whore. But something in me drives me to slap her and ride her and whisper curses to her… ' he broke off. 'And the more I do, the worse I am, the more she adores it.'

  He shook his head. 'It sickens me to my soul in the morning,' he said. 'And I can only touch her when I am drunk. Alys, you should see her. She lies before me and begs me to hurt her in any way I please. It makes me feel… fouled.'

  Alys nodded. 'I made a spell that you would give her a son,' she said softly. 'I am sorry that I touched you. I'm sorry that I made such a spell. I felt driven to it, I did not know what else to do to make myself safe here. I wanted my power. But now I wish I had not done it, Hugo.'

  'D'you think it is your magic which is driving her?' Hugo looked from the fire to Alys' clear profile. He kissed her temple where a tendril of golden hair curled. 'I don't think it is your spell, my lovely Alys. I think Catherine's tastes have always been for pain. She was hot for our marriage even though she knew I did not care for her. She has always begged me to lie with her, even when we were quite little children. She has always allowed me to abuse her. It has never been as bad as this before. But I have never felt so angry with her before. I never felt constrained before now.' 'Constrained?' Alys asked.

  Hugo nodded. 'You know why,' he said. 'Your safety lies in her conceiving. You cannot stay here with her waiting to trap you. She has to be satisfied. You were driven to your little spell, I am driven to lie with her. I know she has to be satisfied for her to leave you alone.'

  'The spell made no difference?' Alys asked. She turned and looked at him and he saw her face lightening as if he was taking some guilt away from her.

  'No difference at all,' he said honestly. 'It is all nonsense, and you should not fear your power like this. I am acting as I wish. I am doing what I decide. I am doing my duty by Catherine as I should have done long before. I do it without desire, so I do it drunk and cruelly. And she – by some twist in her own appetites -likes me to be drunk and harsh with her. So she is well served. There is no magic in it.'

  Alys gave a little sigh. 'I have been afraid,' she admitted. 'I was afraid it was all my doing, and the ugliness and the bitterness of my spell had made you ugly and bitter with her.'

  Hugo gathered her into his arms and settled her on his lap, his arms around her, her cheek against his.

  'Fear nothing,' he said. 'I want a future for us. But I don't believe in magic and all the old spells and fears. It is a new world we are building, Alys. A world free of superstition and fear. A world we can explore, full of new lands and adventures, full of wealth and opportunity. Don't cling to old dark ways, Alys. Come out with me into the light and put that all behind you.'

  Alys turned her face to him and laid her cheek against the warm stubble of his chin.

  'You are so strange,' she said with half a smile. She pulled back and touched his face, her fingers tracing the lines around his eyes, the deep cleft between his eyebrows. 'You are so strange to me and yet I feel I have known you all my life.' 'My friend, Lord Stanwick, told me I was cunt-struck!' Hugo said with a low laugh. 'I was drinking with him the other day and I told him I loved a girl so much that I was in danger of a breach with my wife, with my father, and with my duty. He laughed till he wept and said he must meet you. He could hardly believe in the existence of a girl who could turn me from hunting and whoring and scheming for the future.'

  Alys smiled. 'And you?' she asked. 'Are you – what d'you call it? Cunt-struck? Or is it something real which will last?'

  He tightened his grip around her. 'It will last till I die,' he said simply. 'You have my heart, Alys, I am yours till death.'

  Alys stirred at once. 'Don't say that!' she said. 'Don't speak of death! I want us to live forever, I want us to be young forever. I want this night to last forever!'

  He laughed. 'God! You're fey, Alys. We will love while we are young, and while we are old, and then we will grow older and die and go to heaven and be two angels together. What is there to fear in that? Did you think I might go to hell for my few little sins? I have confessed! I am cleared! And you can never have sinned in your life. Not with a face as clear and as sweet as yours. Not my little maid Alys.'

  Alys hesitated. She wanted to tell him of the abbey, of the smoke, of her panic in the firelit darkness. She wanted to tell him that she had run from her sisters and left them to burn. She wanted to tell him that she had once loved someone and been beloved. That she was not truly an orphan for she had been held and taught and loved by a mother. And that she had betrayed her and then denied her. Left to die in her sleep, shrouded with smoke, eaten alive by flames. 'What is it?' he asked.

  'Nothing,' she said. She did not dare.

  'Will you surrender your magic?' he asked. 'The little spells and charms?'

  Alys hesitated. 'Why d'you ask it of me? You keep the things that give you power – your weapons, your wealth. My magic is all the power I have, it keeps me safe here.'

  Hugo shook his head. 'It does nothing except frighten you and make you feel that all the world's sins are at your door,' he said roundly. 'Keep your herbs and your crystal and your real skills, the ones you have used to make my father well. Keep your medicines and throw away your spells, Alys. There is real danger for you when you play with them. Not because they are true -for they are nothing but nonsense to frighten peasants! – but because they give your enemies a handle on you. Throw away the magic and keep the medicine.'

  'All right,' Alys said reluctantly. 'I agree. Unless I have need of them, unless I have need of that power, I will stop.' She thought of the figures in her purse, stuffed deep in the mattress in her room. 'I never know whether it wor
ks or not,' she said honestly, I was sure I had hexed you and Catherine, and now you tell me it is your own tastes.'

  He nodded. 'We were always like that,' he said. 'No spell on earth could make me use a woman so if it were not to her taste as well as mine.'

  'I will throw it away,' Alys said. 'I should never have started but for that ordeal. I was afraid and I wanted some power – at any price.'

  Hugo tightened his arm around her shoulders. 'Don't be frightened,' he said, his voice low. 'I love you, I will protect you. You have my power around you now.'

  He took her hand and turned it palm upward. As if he were sealing a bond he planted a kiss in the centre and folded her fingers over. She took his hand to do the same for him. She kissed each fingertip one by one, as if to bless them, as if to keep them whole. Then they sat by the fire until the darkness of the arrow-slits started showing pale.

  'I must go,' Hugo said.

  Alys held her face up for his farewell kiss. He took it in both hands and kissed her lips, and then very gently, both eyelids. 'Sleep,' he said and his voice held a tenderness she had never heard from him before. 'Sleep and dream again of the time I will be with you night and day and no one will come between us.' 'Soon,' Alys whispered. 'I swear it,' Hugo said.

  'I want to be your wife, Hugo,' Alys said softly. 'I want to belong here, as you do, without question. And I want to have your son, as I said in my dream.'

  He chuckled. 'Marriage is something else, my darling,' he said softly. 'You and I were made to be lovers, we should be together. But marriage is business: land, property, dowry. Not for lovers like us. I want you to freely love me, to freely be mine. Not marriage, my darling, but long nights and days of love; and a son for me. Now sleep and dream of it.'

  He kissed her again and went from the room. Alys stayed for a moment, listening to his soft steps down the stair and then went into the women's room and quietly closed the door.

  She looked swiftly around. None of them had stirred, they were still all four deeply asleep. Noiselessly she crossed to her pallet on the floor and fumbled among the straw, pushing her arm deep into the bed. At last she found it and drew out the little purse with the three candlewax figures. She threw her cloak around her shoulders and went, barefoot, to the door.