The Wise Woman (43 page)

The next day Alys summoned a maid from the kitchen and they cleared the room of every trace of Morach. The kitchen maid was willing—expecting gifts of clothes or linen. To her horror at the waste of it all, Alys piled it all up and carried it down to the kitchen fire.

“You’re never burning a wool gown!” The cook bustled forward, eyeing the little pile of clothes. “And a piece of good linen!”

“They are lousy,” Alys said blankly. “D’you want a gown with a dead woman’s fleas? D’you want her lice?”

“Could be washed,” the cook said, standing between the fire and Alys.

Alys’s blue eyes were veiled. “She went among the sick,” she said. “D’you think you can wash out the plague? D’you want to try it?”

“Oh, burn it! Burn it!” the cook said with sudden impatience. “But you must cleanse my hearth. I cook the lord’s own dinners here, remember.”

“I have some herbs,” Alys said. “Step back.”

The cook retreated rapidly to the fire on the other side of the kitchen where the kitchen lad was turning the spit, leaving Alys watched, but alone. Alys thrust the little bundle into the red heart of the fire.

It smoldered sulkily for a moment. Alys watched until the hem of Morach’s old gown caught, flickered, and then burst into flame. Alys pulled a little bottle from her pocket. “Myrrh,” she said and dripped one drop on each corner of the hearthstone, and then three drops into the heart of the fire. “Rest in peace, Morach,” she said in a whisper too low for anyone to hear. “You know and I know what a score we have to settle between us. You know and I know when we will meet again, and where. But leave me with my path until that day. You had your life and you made your choices. Leave me free to make mine, Morach!”

She stepped back one pace and watched the flames. They flickered blue and green as the oil burned. On the other side of the kitchen the cook drew in a sharp breath and clenched her fist in the sign against witchcraft. Alys paid her no heed.

“You cared for me like a mother,” she said to the fire. The flames licked hungrily around the cloth and the bundle fell apart and blazed up, shriveling into dark embers. “I own that now. Now it is too late to thank you or to show you any kindliness in return,” Alys said. “You cared for me like a mother and I betrayed you like an enemy. I summon your love for me now, your mother-love. You told me I did not have long. Give me that little space freely. Leave me to my life, Morach. Don’t haunt me.”

For a moment she paused, her head on one side as if she were listening for a reply. The dark smoky smell of the myrrh filled the kitchen. The kitchen lad kept his face away from her and turned the spit at extra speed, its squeak rising to a squeal.

Alys waited.

Nothing happened.

Morach had gone.

Alys turned from the fire with a clear smile, nodded at the cook. “All done, clothes burned and the hearth cleaned,” she said pleasantly. “What are you making for the lord’s dinner?”

The cook showed her the dozen roasted chickens waiting to be pounded into paste, the almonds, rice, and honey ready for mixing, the sandalwood to make the mixture pink. “Blanche mange for the main course,” she said. “And allowes—I have some good slices of mutton. And bucknade. Some roasted venison. I have some fish, some halibut from the coast. Would you want me to make something special for Lady Catherine?” she asked ingratiatingly.

Alys considered. “Some rich sweet puddings,” she said. “Her ladyship loves sweet things and she needs all her strength. Some custards, perhaps some leche lombarde with plenty of syrup.”

“She’s growing very fat and bonny,” the cook said admiringly.

“Yes,” Alys said sweetly. “She is fatter every day. There will scarce be room for my Lord Hugo in her bed if she grows much bigger. Send a glass of negus and some custards and some cakes up to her chamber, she is hungry now she is in her fifth month.”

The cook nodded. “Yes, Alys,” she said.

Alys paused on her way to the door, one eyebrow raised.

The cook hesitated, Alys did not move. There was a powerful silence as the cook met Alys’s blue eyes and then glanced away. “Yes, Mistress Alys,” she said, unwillingly giving Alys a title. Alys looked slowly around the kitchen as if defying anyone to challenge her. No one spoke. She nodded to the kitchen boy and he scrambled from the spit to open the door for her into the hall. She passed through without a word of thanks.

She paused as the door closed behind her and listened in case the cook should cry out against her, complain of her ambition, or swear that she was a witch. She heard a hard slap and the spit-lad yell at undeserved punishment. “Get on with it,” the cook said angrily. “We don’t have all day.”

Alys smiled and went across the hall and up the stairs to the ladies’ gallery.

Catherine was resting in her room before dinner, the women gathered around the fireside in the gallery were stealing an hour of idleness. Ruth was reading a pamphlet on the meaning of the Mass, Eliza was day-dreaming, gazing at the fire. Mistress Allingham was dozing, her headdress askew. Alys nodded impartially at them all and walked past them to her own chamber.

The maid had swept up the rushes from the floor as she had been ordered, and left the broom. Alys took it up and meticulously swept every corner of the room, sweeping the dust and the scraps of straw into the center of the room. Carefully she collected it all and flung it on the fire. Then she took a scrap of cloth and wiped all around the room, everywhere that Morach’s hand might have rested or her head brushed. Every place where her skirt might have touched or her feet walked. Round and around the room Alys went like a little spider spinning a web. Round and around until there was no place in the room which she had not wiped. Then she folded the cloth over and over, as if to capture the smell of Morach inside the linen—and flung it into the heart of the fire.

The maid, complaining, had brought new rugs and a spread for the bed and Alys smoothed them down over the one solitary pillow. She shook out the curtains of the bed and tied them back in great swags. Then she stepped back and looked around the room with a little smile.

As a room for two healers, two midwives for the birth of the only son and heir, it had been generous. It was as big as the room next door where the four women slept, two to a pallet-bed. As a room for one woman, sleeping alone, it was noble. It was nearly as big as Lady Catherine’s, the bed was as large, the hangings nearly as fine. It was colder than Catherine’s room—facing west out over the river—but airier. Alys had chosen not to scatter new herbs and bedstraw on the floor, but the room smelled clean. It was clear and empty of the clutter of women, no pots of face paint, no creams, no half-eaten sweetmeats like in Catherine’s room. Alys’s gowns, capes, hoods, and linen were in one chest, all her herbs, her pestle and mortar, her crystal, and her goods were in the other.

There was one chair, with a back but no arms, and one stool. Alys drew the chair up to the fire, rested her feet on the stool, and looked into the flames.

The door opened. Eliza Herring peeped into the room. “There you are!” she said awkwardly.

Alys raised her head and looked at Eliza, but said nothing.

Eliza looked around. “You’ve swept it,” she said, surprised.

Alys nodded.

“Aren’t you coming out to sit with us?” Eliza asked. “You must be bored in here on your own.”

“I’m not bored,” Alys said coolly.

Eliza fidgeted slightly, came a little further into the room and then stepped back again. “I’ll come and sleep in here with you, if you like,” she offered. “You won’t want to be on your own. We could have some laughs, at night. Margery won’t mind me moving out.”

“No,” Alys said gently.

“She really won’t,” Eliza said. “I already asked her, because I guessed you would want company.”

Alys shook her head. Eliza hesitated. “It’s bad to grieve too much,” she said kindly. “Morach was a foul old woman but she loved you—anyone could see that. You shouldn’t grieve for her too long, Alys. You shouldn’t sit here all alone, grieving for her.”

“I’m not grieving,” Alys said. “I feel nothing. Nothing for her, nothing for you women, nothing for Catherine. Don’t waste your worry on me, Eliza. I feel nothing.”

Eliza blinked. “You’re shocked,” she said, trying to excuse Alys’s coldness. “You need company.”

“I don’t want company and I cannot have you sleeping in here,” Alys said. “Hugo will want to be on his own in here with me very often. I have prepared the room for the two of us.”

Eliza’s eyes widened, her mouth made a soundless O. “What about my lady?” she demanded when she could find her voice. “She may not be well, Alys, but she has enough life in her to throw you back into the street. Hugo would never cross her while she is carrying his child.”

Alys’s lips smiled without warmth. “She will become accustomed,” she said. “Everything is going to be different now.”

Eliza blinked. “Just because Morach drowned?” she asked.

Alys shook her head. “It is nothing to do with Morach. I am carrying Hugo’s child. It will be a son. Do you tell me that he will let Catherine rule me when she is carrying one son and I another?”

Eliza gasped. “You have his son?”

Alys smoothed her hand proudly over her perfectly flat belly and smiled with confidence.

“But Catherine’s is legitimate! She carries the heir!”

Alys shrugged. “What of it? You can never have too many sons and Hugo has no other. I think they will treat them both as heirs until they know that the succession is safe—don’t you?”

Eliza held the door against her and peered around it. “Is this dukering?” she asked. “Divining and dukering?”

Alys laughed confidently. “This is mortal woman’s knowledge,” she said. “Hugo has been lying with me ever since he came back from Newcastle. Now I am with his child I want a room to myself and perhaps a little maid to wait on me. Why should Catherine object? It will make no difference to her.”

“She made it bad enough for you before,” Eliza warned.

Alys nodded. “Yes,” she said. “But now she is ill and weary all the time, and I am the only one who can quiet her fears. She would cling to me whatever I did. And I will care for her kindly enough.”

Eliza nodded with begrudging admiration. “You’ve come a long way, Alys,” she said.

“They call me Mistress Alys now,” Alys said. “Would you ring for a tub and a pitcher of hot water? I shall take a bath.”

“Ring yourself!” Eliza exclaimed, instantly indignant.

Alys whirled up from the chair and took Eliza by the shoulders, shook her and held her, putting her angry face very near. “I will warn you once, Eliza,” she said through her teeth. “Everything is different here now. I am Alys no more. I am carrying Lord Hugh’s grandchild by his son who is barren with every other woman but me and his wife. I am second only to his wife. I can count you as my friend, or I can count you as my enemy. But you will not live here long if we are enemies.”

The fight went out of Eliza in a rush. “You’re very lucky,” she said with half-hearted resentment. “You came as nothing and now you’re to be called Mistress Alys.”

Alys shook her head. “I came as a learned woman, a healer and my lord’s clerk,” she said proudly. “I am the daughter of a noble lady. I am fit for this. I am as fit to be the lady here, as Jane Seymour is for the crown. Now ring for hot water, I shall take a bath.”

Eliza nodded, slowly. “Yes, Mistress Alys,” she said.

Two menservants carried the big barrel up the winding stairs and into Alys’s room and set it down close to the fire. A kitchen maid came with a sheet of linen and spread it over the sides and bottom of the bath. Two men behind her brought great buckets of scalding water. They poured it in and went back for two more. Alys sent them for a fifth to leave by the side of the barrel with a ladle to add more hot water as she wished. She shut the door behind them and opened the chest where she kept the herbs. She had dried honeysuckle and rose petals in a purse of linen and she took a handful and scattered them on the water. She had a tiny bottle of oil of chamomile and she rinsed her hair with it. She sat in the hot water with her head resting against the back of the barrel and rubbed her hands all over her body, crushing the flower petals against her skin. Her hands went over and around her breasts until the nipples stood hard and tingled to her touch. She shook out her wet hair and let it tumble over the side of the barrel and drip carelessly on the floor.

As the water cooled she roused herself from the bath, wrapped herself in a warm sheet, and sat in solitary silence before her fire. She sniffed at the skin of her forearm, like a sensuous little animal. She smelled of meadow flowers from the petals, and her fair hair smelled of honey. Her body was lithe and slim and lovely. Her face was grim.

“Tonight,” Alys said softly to herself. “Tonight, Hugo.”

A
lys, washed, scented, oiled, and dressed in a simple blue one-piece gown with a blue ribbon at her waist, had to wait with what patience she could simulate all through a long and tedious day. Lady Catherine was still too grieved to come down to dinner. She whimpered for company; and Hugo, looking in at the ladies’ gallery on his way to the hall, was prepared to dine with her in her room. That left the old lord eating on his own, solitary, at the center of the long high table, glowering under his dark eyebrows. When the meats were taken away Alys left the women’s table and went to him and leaned over him to ask a question. The women heard his sharp laugh and a low-voiced reply to Alys. Then he nodded her, casually, to a stool further down the table, and talked with her until the meal was ended. David’s gaze, as he watched them served with the voider course of wafers, fruit, and hippocras wine, was bright.

“Is Alys to sit with Lady Catherine’s women no more?” he asked the old lord. “Is she your guest now, my lord?”

The old lord gleamed under his eyebrows. “I was bored,” he said uncompromisingly. “And there was no one to talk to. If my daughter-in-law has forgotten her duty to dine at my table and my son takes to her chamber with her like a maid-in-waiting—what am I to do? Sit dumbstruck?”