The Wise Woman

Twenty-five

When Alys rode up to the inner castle gate Eliza came dashing down the stairs, pushing past the soldiers and dragging her from the saddle.

'Come at once! Come at once!' she said in an urgent undertone. 'It's Catherine! She's in pain. None of us know what to do! Thank God you're back now! They were about to send the soldiers out to look for you!'

Alys let Eliza grab her and rush her across the drawbridge, through the great hall and up the stairs to the ladies' gallery.

The place was filled with people. Servants were dodging in and out carrying trays. Sheets were airing before the fire. Someone had let Hugo's deerhound into the room and it growled when it saw Alys. Two serving-men were labouring up the stairs with the bath-tub, another two coming behind with churns of hot water.

'She said she wanted a bath,' Eliza said. 'She wanted you to bath her again, like you did yesterday. Then she said she felt pains in her belly. She was walking around to ease them. We made her get into bed. Hugo has only just come in himself, we were afraid you were off together and would be gone all day. David has just gone to tell Lord Hugh. Catherine's in her bedroom -go to her, Alys! Go to her!'

Alys clapped her hands. 'Out of here!' she shouted. All of her anger and fear and frustration boiled over in one releasing burst of rage. 'Out of here, you useless toss-pots!' she yelled. She took one of the servants by the shoulder and spun him around and thrust him out of the room. He staggered on the stairs and collided with another, hurrying up the stairs with extra sheets. Alys grabbed a page-boy by the ear and pushed him out of the room. One of the serving-wenches was giggling helplessly at the chaos. Alys smacked her hard across the face and watched with vicious pleasure as the red marks of her fingertips showed on the girl's cheek.

'Now get out,' Alys said to them all. 'I will call you if I need any of you.'

She left them scrambling for the gallery door and stalked towards Catherine's bedroom.

Hugo was at the head of the bed, holding Catherine's hands. Her women, Ruth, Mistress Allingham and Margery, were on the other side of the bed. Ruth was swinging a censer of silver which Alys recognized as part of Hugo's haul from the nunnery. The air was thick with the throat-rasping smell of incense. Margery was sponging Catherine's head. She was tossing on the pillow, with her eyes shut. Every now and then she gave a gasp of pain and strained her body upwards as if some giant hand had gripped her in the middle and hauled her to the roof.

'Stop that,' Alys said irritably to Ruth. 'And open a window. The place stinks.'

Hugo looked up, his scowl disappearing. 'Thank God you're back, Alys,' he said. 'No one knew what to do, and the physician in Castleton is away all week. I was on the edge of sending for the wise woman from Richmond.' 'When did the pains start?' Alys asked. Catherine opened her eyes at Alys' voice. 'This morning,' she said. 'When I woke.'

Alys nodded knowledgeably, though she knew nothing more. 'I'll have to look at her,' she said. 'You'd better wait outside.'

Hugo leaned over Catherine's bed and pressed a kiss on her forehead. As he passed Alys he laid a hand on her shoulder. 'Save my son,' he said in an undertone. 'Nothing in the world is more important than that.'

Alys did not even look at him. 'Of course,' she said curtly.

Hugo's pat on her shoulder was that of a man to a trusted comrade. Alys, remembering his hands cupped on her breasts as he thrust her towards Catherine's smothering embrace, shot him an angry glare, but he was looking at Catherine. He did not even see her.

'Give her something to ease her pain,' he said softly. 'She's being very brave. I'll be outside all the time. I'll come in if she wants me.' 'Certainly,' Alys said frigidly.

Hugo led the way out of the room, the women scuttling after him. 'Shall I stay?' Eliza asked.

'What could you do?' Alys asked cruelly. 'You know nothing. What use could you be? Tell them to bring the chest of my things from my room.'

Catherine moaned again and Alys went swiftly to her side.

'What sort of pain is it?' she asked. 'Like opening,' Catherine gasped. 'Like opening up and splitting. Alys, help me!'

There was a tap at the door. Two serving-men came into the room carrying Alys' chest of herbs and oils, put it gently on the floor and went out. Alys opened the chest and took out a twist of powder in a piece of paper. 'On the right side or on the left?' she asked. Catherine groaned again. 'All over,' she said. 'I feel strange, Alys. As if this were not me. I feel in the grip of something else.'

'Open your mouth,' Alys said. Deftly she tipped the powder down Catherine's throat and then held a glass of water for her to sip. At once Catherine's colour came back into her cheeks and she breathed a little more easily.

'What can it be, Alys?' she asked. 'It's something wrong with the baby, isn't it?'

'It's coming before its time,' Alys said. 'Could you have been mistaken with the dates, Catherine? You are only nearing your seventh month. It should not come yet.'

Catherine gasped as another pain seized her. 'I could be, I could be,' she said. 'But not two or three months wrong. There's something wrong. I can feel it!'

'What can you feel?' Alys asked urgently. Hidden away at the back of her mind was the thought that perhaps Catherine's pregnancy was going wrong. That the child would not be born, or would not be a son. Or would be born dead. Or if Catherine were to die…

‘I feel strange,' Catherine said. Her voice sounded unreal, as if she were calling from a long way away. 'Help me, Alys! You love me dearly I know! Help me, Alys! I feel as if the child is slipping out of me, melting and slipping away!'

Alys stripped back the covers. Catherine's plump, puffy legs were stained with veins of blue, flushed pink with heat. Alys pulled up Catherine's shift with reluctance and peered at her. The lower sheet was stained with a pale, creamy juice.

'Is this your waters? Have your waters broken?' Alys asked.

Catherine shook her head, her body twisted as a spasm of pain took her. ‘I don't know, I don't think so,' she said. ‘I have had nothing but this oozing.'

'No blood?' Alys asked.

'No,' Catherine said. 'Alys, keep the baby inside me. I can feel it melting.'

Alys pulled Catherine's shift down and rested her hand on Catherine's round belly. 'You are being foolish,' she said firmly. 'Foolish and hysterical. Babies do not melt. I can see you are in pain and I can help you bear your pain; but there is no blood and your waters have not broken. Your baby is still inside you and he is well. Babies do not melt.'

Catherine started up on the bed, half-supporting herself with her arms. She glared at Alys and her face was wild, her hair tossed around her face, her eyes bulging. 'I tell you he is melting!' she screamed. 'Why won't you listen to me, you fool! Why won't you do as I tell you! Do something to make the baby safe! He is melting. I feel him melting! He is melting inside me and slipping away!'

Alys pushed Catherine back down on the pillows and held her hard by the shoulders. 'Hush,' she said roughly. 'Hush. That cannot be, Catherine. You are mistaken. You are gibbering nonsense.'

She rested her hand on Catherine's rounded belly and then snatched it away again in instinctive horror. Catherine gave another groan. 'I told you,' she wept.

Alys put her hand back, she could hardly believe what she had felt. Under the palm of her hand she distinctly felt the round fullness of Catherine's belly reduce and subside. Something under the thick layer of flesh shifted and bubbled. As it did so, Catherine groaned again.

'The baby is going,' Catherine said despairingly. She was groaning deep in her throat, an animal growl, not like a woman at all. 'I cannot hold him. He is going,' she said.

Alys pulled Catherine's shift up and looked again at the woman's parted legs. The pool of creamy white juice had spread over the sheets. Alys gagged and swallowed her saliva.

'I don't know what this stuff is. I don't know what to do,' she muttered.

Catherine did not even hear her. She was straining her body upwards, and as she thrust her belly towards the ceiling Alys could see the shape of the rounded bump flowing and changing like river slime.

'Lie still, lie still,' Alys commanded helplessly. 'Lie still, Catherine, and nothing will happen!'

'He's going!' Catherine cried. 'I cannot hold him in. I cannot hold him. Ohhh!'

As she groaned, Alys saw the birth canal open, widen. She caught a glimpse of pale body and thought for a sudden moment of hope that the baby would be born whole, that she might even save it, that Catherine might have her dates all wrong and the baby was ready to be born.

'I see him!' she said. 'Let him come, Catherine, let him come. You are ready to give birth to him. Let him come!'

Catherine bore down, her stomach muscles fighting to push her baby out into the world. Alys slid her small skilled hands into the birth canal and gently gripped the tiny body inside. For a moment she felt the baby, small, well-formed; felt his rounded buttocks and a firm, muscled leg. Her hands slid over his perfect shoulder and felt his little arm, his hand clenched in a fist. He was slightly askew. Alys smiled through her concentration and felt upwards, along the warm, wet body to find the head, to guide him outwards, to bring him head outwards for his little journey. His shoulder was rounded and smooth to her touch. Alys' gentle hands went up to his rounded, hard skull and sensed the delicate shaping of his face.

Catherine groaned again as her muscles contracted. Alys slipped her hands away from the clamp of the muscles and then slid in again to turn and guide the little body. He was turning, he was coming right, head first into the world. She took either side of his skull in a gentle firm grip and pulled him towards her, out of the slippery tight canal of Catherine's body. 'Yes,' she said. 'I have him safe.' Alys had forgotten that this was her rival, that this was Hugo's heir which would threaten her own safety, her own son. She was entranced by the desire to aid the birth. She was moving in the unconscious rhythm of all wise women who go deep into a mother to bring a baby out, safe, into the light. Alys pulsed with the baby, moved with Catherine, timed her touches and her tugs to the rhythm of the birth. 'He is coming!' she breathed excitedly. 'He is coming.'

The little body turned again, Alys reached deep inside Catherine, gripped the skull and the little shoulder and steadily, carefully, pulled.

With a sickening jolt her fingers broke through the soft crust of his skull and punctured his body, as soft as lye soap. An arm came away in her hand, a gout of liquid cascaded into her palm. Alys screamed with horror.

As she screamed, Catherine pressed downwards again and there was an explosion of white slime into Alys' face, hot and wet, in lumps against her mouth, her lips, her eyes, sticking to her hands, her hair, her dress.

'No! No! No!' Alys screamed, batting both hands against the horror of Catherine's bed. 'No!'

Again and again Catherine pressed down and lump after lump of the white foam was voided from her body until the sheets were covered with the mess of it and the room stank of tallow.

'It's wax!' Alys said in utter horror. 'Oh my God, it's candlewax!'

She backed against the window, her hands caked with wax, hiding her face, where little blobs of wax were drying hard on her skin. 'Oh my God, oh my God,' she said over and over again. 'It's wax. It's candlewax.' Catherine gave one last groan and then lay still. 'My God! It's candlewax!' Alys repeated till the words lost their meaning and became nothing more than a howl of horror. 'Candlewax! Candlewax! Candlewax!'

Alys picked at her face, scratching the drying spots off her skin, shuddering at the wax under her fingernails. She scratched at the backs of her hands, at her palms. She was coated in the stuff. 'I'll never be clean,' she said in the high sharp tones of uncontrollable hysteria. 'Candlewax! I'll never get it off!'

Catherine lay on her back, deaf to Alys' insane whimperings. Her body had expelled its muck and she was exhausted and empty. It was long moments before she moved and then she put up her hand and patted her belly, disbelievingly. It had lost its shape. It was still fat, fleshy and loose; but it no longer jutted proud. Her baby was gone. She pushed herself slowly, laboriously, up the bed to rest on the pillows and looked down at the mess on the sheets and at Alys, backed against the wall, hair and face drenched in candlewax, her eyes black with horror, her hands feverishly picking, picking, picking – at her skin, her hair, her dress.

'What is this?' Catherine asked, her voice thin with horror. 'What is this stuff? What has happened to me?'

Alys swallowed and gagged, swallowed again. She looked down disbelievingly at her working hands and stilled them with an effort. She took a deep breath. 'You have no baby,' she finally croaked. 'Your baby has gone.'

Catherine leaned forward and pushed a finger into one of the white gobbets. 'My baby was this?' she asked.

Alys shook her head. 'It never was a baby, not a flesh and blood baby,' she said. 'This is wax from your body. There never was a real baby at all.' Her voice broke into a little shriek at the end, and she clapped a hand over her mouth to still the noise. 'Just a flux,' she said softly. 'Not a baby.'

Catherine's face was gaunt. 'No baby?' she asked. 'No son for Hugo?' Alys shook her head, not trusting her voice. The two women stared at each other for a moment, silenced with horror.

'Don't tell him,' Catherine said. Her voice was cracked, near madness. 'Don't tell him that it was like this.'

Alys found she was rubbing her hands together. The wax clotted into strips as she rubbed, and dropped away like dried skin. 'Damn it,' she said. 'Damn the stuff!'

'Don't tell anyone it was like this,' Catherine said again, with more urgency. 'Tell them it was a miscarriage. I don't want anyone to know about this. I don't want anyone to know of this… this horror!' Alys nodded slowly in silence.

'If they know about this…' Catherine broke off. Her eyes searched Alys' downcast, horrified face. 'If they knew about this they would get rid of me,' she said, very low. 'They would say I am – unnatural.'

Alys was wringing her hands, rubbing the foul wax away. It had clogged between her ringers. With quick, nervous movements she was picking at her fingernails.

Catherine stared at her. 'How could such a thing be?' she demanded. 'Alys? You have seen many births. How could such a thing happen?'

Alys paused. The memory of the Catherine doll made of wax, with its round belly made of wax, and the little lumps of candlewax she had moulded to shape the roundness of the belly was very vivid in her mind. She had coupled the wax doll of Catherine with the gross wax penis of the Hugo doll. She had commanded the doll, telling it that the baby would be the image of his father, his candlewax father. Morach's warning that 'sometimes they misunderstand' surfaced in her memory.

'I don't know,' she said, her instinct to save herself conquering her terror. 'It must be some vile illness in you. It must be some corruption in your body. You are sterile and all you can conceive and all you can void is this muck.'

Catherine barely flinched, she was so deep in horror. 'My fault,' she said slowly as if she were learning a lesson almost beyond her understanding. 'Something wrong inside me.'

'Yes,' Alys said, careless of Catherine's foundering shame.

They were silent again.

'Hide it,' Catherine said. 'I want no one to know.' She glanced towards the fire. 'Burn it.'

Alys nodded. Catherine dragged herself up from the bed, gasping with the effort, and the two women pulled out the lower sheet, ripped it into half and then ripped it again. Each piece they rolled up and put on the little fire. It smouldered darkly, and when the wax caught fire it flickered and spat, burning with an ominous yellow flame. The smoke smelled like a tannery.

'Your hair,' Catherine said, her voice shaky. 'And your face.'

Carefully she picked the wax out of Alys' hair. Alys rubbed at the skin of her face until it was free of the little white scabs. She shuddered as she picked them off her skin. 'Your gown,' Catherine said.

Alys' red sleeves were white to the elbows with the stuff, the front of her gown was spattered with white dots. Alys stood while Catherine undid her gown and then she stepped out of it. From Catherine's chest she took an old gown which Catherine had not worn since her pregnancy. Catherine laced her into it silently. Alys took a clean sheet from where it was airing by the fire and made up the bed.

'They'll have to come in and see you,' she said.

Catherine nodded. 'They'll ask for the body,' she warned.

Alys nodded. She took a bowl and poured in a little water, tore up a napkin and tied it into little knots, tossed in half a cup of red wine and threw the rest on • the bed. It spread in a deep red stain. Then she covered the bowl with a cloth from the table. 'No one will look too close at that,' she said. 'You may get away with it.'

Catherine had gone a sickly yellow colour. ‘I feel faint,' she said.

Alys nodded. 'See them, and then you can rest,' she said with scant sympathy. 'How do you think I feel? I am ready to vomit.' She went to open the door.

'Alys,' Catherine stopped her. Alys turned.

'Swear you will never tell anyone. Never anyone!' Catherine demanded.

Alys nodded.

'Especially not Hugo,' Catherine said. 'Swear to me that you will never tell Hugo that I had…' she broke off. 'That I had a monster inside me,' she finished.

Alys' face was hard. 'He will have to know that you cannot conceive,' she said tightly.

Catherine paused. She looked at Alys at if she was seeing her for the first time, reading the coldness of Alys' grim face.

'Yes,' Catherine said slowly.

'I won't tell him that it was monstrous,' she said. 'He will never know from me that you voided lumps of white clay. Smelly lumps of clay.'

Catherine dropped her eyes. 'I am ashamed,' she said, very low.

Alys looked at her without pity. 'I will keep your secret,' she said. ‘I won't tell him about that.' She paused for Catherine's reply. When none came she slipped out of the door.

Hugo was waiting nearest the door but at Alys' entrance everyone in the crowded gallery stopped talking and looked towards her. The old lord and David came towards her at once. Alys clasped her hands together and looked down.

'My lord,' she said. 'Lord Hugo. I have some very sad news. The Lady Catherine has been brought to bed too early and she has lost the child.'

There was a buzz of conversation and comment. Hugo's eyes burned into Alys' face, his father was as black as thunder.

'She is able to see you,' Alys said to Hugo. She met his look with one of infinite tenderness. ‘I am so sorry, Hugo,' she said. 'There was nothing anyone could do for Catherine. She was too sterile and sickly from the start.'

He pushed past her and went into Catherine's room. The old lord came up and took Alys by the sleeve.

'What caused the miscarriage?' he demanded. 'She came down to supper yesterday, did she overtax her strength?'

Alys leaned her mouth towards his ear. 'The child would have been malformed,' she said. 'It's as well it is gone.'

The old lord looked as if he had been struck. 'God, no!' he said. 'No! A filthy cripple from my stock! And after all these years of waiting!'

'Can she have another?' David the steward pressed close to Alys. 'In your opinion, Mistress Alys? Will Lady Catherine conceive again?'

Alys met his gaze. 'I think not,' she said. 'You should summon a physician perhaps to judge. But in my mind I am certain. She can conceive no normal child.'

The old lord slumped down into a chair, rested both his hands on his cane and gazed into the distance.

'This is a bitter blow, Alys,' he said softly. 'A bitter blow. Catherine's baby gone, and her chances of another. All in one afternoon. A bitter blow.'

Catherine's door opened again and Hugo came out. His face was set. The line between his eyebrows was deep, his mouth grim. 'She'll rest now,' he said. 'Someone go and sit with her.'

Eliza and Ruth dipped a curtsey and slipped into the room.

'She said she'd see you, Sir,' Hugo said to his father. 'She wanted to ask your blessing.'

'Blessing be damned,' the old lord said, struggling to his feet and thumping his cane on the floor. 'I'll not see her. She's barren, my son! And she's wasted more years in this castle than I care to count. I'll see her when she's fertile. No point sitting by the sick bed of a barren woman. No point in a barren woman! Twenty-three bastards I sired, to my knowledge; and three legitimate children, one son. I've never looked twice at a barren woman by my knowledge, and I never will.'

He snapped his fingers for the page to open the door and stamped towards it. The people in the chamber drew back to let him pass, fearful of his rage.

'You,' he said, pointing to Alys. 'Come to my room! I've got work to do!' Then, as Alys moved towards him, her belly thrust forward against the flowing lines of the gown, he checked himself. 'No, ' he said. ‘I had forgotten. Go and rest yourself. Go and sit down and sew or sing or something. But keep yourself well, Alys.

'David! Pick her out a maid to do her fetching and her carrying for her. And see she has a comfortable chair in her room. She must rest. She must rest. She must stay well. She's carrying Hugo's child. And see that she has what she fancies to eat. Get her whatever she wants! Anything that she wants she must have!' David bowed, his quick, sharp smile raking Alys.

'Yes, my lord,' he said. The old lord nodded. 'Keep her safe,' he said.

'No more riding out for you, Alys, you must stay home in safety.'

He looked at Hugo. 'Don't let her get as fat as the other one,' he said. 'That was the problem there.

Keep her like you would a good brood mare, well-fed but not gluttonous. She's to sit beside me at table every night so I can see what she eats.'

Hugo nodded, unsmiling. 'As you wish, Sir,' he said coldly. ‘I am taking my horse out for a while. I am sick to my soul of these women's doings.'

The old lord nodded. 'Damn right,' he said irritably. 'All that talk and all that expense and then a barren sow at the end of it.'

The two of them left the room, Hugo clattering loudly down the stairs and shouting for his horse. Slowly, the serving-women and men and the off-duty soldiers and the pages straggled from the room, whispering as they left, whispering slander, scandal, ill-willed rumours. Alys stood in the centre of the room, unmoving. As everyone went out they dipped a low curtsey or a bow to her. Alys did not smile, did not acknowledge the homage beyond a curt nod of her head. Then David and Alys were alone.

'Is there anything you would order for supper tonight, Mistress Alys?' David asked slyly.

‘I will have the best,' Alys said simply. ‘I will have the best of whatever there is,' she said. 'The very best of whatever there is.'