Philippa Gregory - The Wise Woman

Alys lay back and closed her eyes. 'An end to it,' she said softly.

'Why not?' Hugo demanded. 'What matters one more old lady or no? Stephen and I will be going to London to see the little bride within a month. My father must be in his dotage. His preference for me is a child of nine, to be betrothed in name alone.' Hugo laughed. 'I care not!' he said. He patted her belly with a gentle hand. 'Catherine set aside and you big with my child. A new wife can come or wait. It matters little. As long as you give me a son which I can make my heir, and then another, until the castle is full of them. I have plenty of time to get children, Alys. There is plenty of time. Plenty of time. Plenty of wealth and land and ease for all of us.'

Alys let him rock her in time to his words and slid her arms around his back. She found she was smiling.

'You would not believe what troubles I have had today,' she said. 'Catherine has been hysterical, your father threatened to throw me out of the castle for a word spoken out of turn, I have been worried sick about the old lady, and then Eliza frightened me into fits with some horrid ghost story.'

Hugo chuckled and reached below the covers to slide Alys' shift up her body. 'My poor love,' he said. 'You should have come out with me. I was supposed to ride over to Cotherstone Manor but I saw such a buck on the way that I stopped and chased him. He led us for hours and would you believe I missed him with a crossbow? I was close, but I had sweat in my eyes and I could not see. I missed him! A clear shot to the heart and all I could see was a blur. William killed him for me in the end. I was raging! You shall have him for your dinner next week.'

He penetrated her with a gentle thrust and a gasp of pleasure. 'Be joyful!' he said, moving gently inside her. 'We shall be rid of Catherine and she can do as she pleases. My father's mind is on a new match and he can think of nothing else. Your old lady is holding her own against Stephen and needs neither your help nor mine, and these ghosts are terrors for little girls only, not a woman, Alys, not a wise woman like you.'

He sighed, and Alys felt his hand stroke her breast persuasively. She opened her legs wider.

'Are you joyful, little Alys?' he breathed. He started moving more urgently, consulting his own pleasure.

'I am well enough,' Alys said. Her mind roamed over the fears and triumphs of the day while her body moved accommodatingly under Hugo. She smiled and let him do what he would.

'Oh yes,' said Hugo.

And then they both were still.

"Alys,' Hugo said urgently. 'Alys!'

She woke at once. The moonlight was streaming through the arrow-slit in a silver bar across the green and yellow counterpane on the high bed.

'What?' she demanded, her own fear leaping up at the terror in his voice.

Hugo was white-faced. 'Mother of God,' he said. 'A dream! I had such a dream! Tell me I am awake and it was nonsense!'

The sheets were wet with his sweat. In the moonlight Alys could see his hair sticking damply to his shiny face. His eyes were wide like a man with a fever.

'Did you dream of dolls?' Alys cried incautiously. 'Little dolls coming to the castle?'

'No!' Hugo said. He stretched out his hands. They were shaking. 'Mother of God! I dreamed my fingers had gone numb. I dreamed my fingernails had gone. I dreamed my fingertips were gone. My fingers had gone, as if I had the leprosy. All I had were horrid stumps!'

Alys blenched. 'What a dream!' she said unsteadily. 'But you are awake now, Hugo. Don't fear.'

He threw his arms around her and buried his face in the warm skin of her neck. 'God alive, I was afraid!' he said. 'The tips of my fingers, Alys, they were melted away. Melted like wax!'

Alys lay very still, her arms around him, and felt him tremble. 'Hush,' she said, as if she were speaking to a little child. 'Hush, Hugo my love, my dear. Hush, you are safe now.'

After a little he stopped shaking and lay quiet in her arms.

'God! What terrors!' he said. He gave a little laugh for bravado. 'You will think me a babe in arms!' he said, embarrassed.

Alys, lying like a fallen statue in the moonlight, her belly like ice, shook her head. 'No,' she said. 'I have my nightmares too. Sleep now, Hugo.' He settled himself like a child, his head on her shoulder, one arm sprawled across her body. 'A dreadful dream!' he said softly.

Alys put her hand up and stroked his head, the damp, matted curls of his hair. 'I was screaming like a babe,' he said with a chuckle.

Alys gathered him closer still. Soon he was breathing steadily, his fears fallen away from him. Alys lay beside him and thought again of all the terrors, flying like pigeons with their beady, bright eyes to their homes.

Hugo's arm across her belly was too heavy. She lifted his hand to free herself from the weight, and then she paused. In the darkness she could not see well, but she stroked his fingertips with her own. The fingernails were short, surely they were shorter than they had been before. She pulled his hand into the moonlight to see better. Surely the tips of the fingers were blunt and the nails were shorter and squarer at the top, as if they had been rubbed away.

Alys gave a little moan of terror, slipped from the bed and pattered over to the fire, thrust a taper into the red embers and lit a candle. She walked back to the bed, the flickering flame throwing huge shadows all around her. She walked slowly, reluctant to know. She thought of the little doll of Hugo which she had shaped with such determination and anger all those months ago when she had wanted nothing but to be left alone by him. She had smoothed his mouth and bid him not call her. She had rubbed away the fingertips and ordered him not to feel her. She had scraped away the ears and ordered him not to hear her. She had scratched his eyeballs and ordered him to be blind to her. And now Hugo dreamed that his fingers were melting, and he had already missed his shot.

She sat on the bed and put the candlestick on the table nearby. She did not trouble to shield the light. She had a certainty as deep and as cold as death that it would not waken him; he would not be able to see the glow of it through his closed eyelids. She took his hand and held it close to the candle so that she could see clearly what she feared to see.

The tips of his fingers were blunt as if they had been nipped off. Hugo's long strong hands were shorter, the last joint of each finger disproportionately stunted. His fingernails stopped short, square as if they had been roughly filed; shorter than the ends of his fingers, cut back. Alys shuddered. His hand looked as if someone had pruned the tips of every finger, leaving the nails clipped, the plump balls of the fingertips cropped.

She turned his hand over and looked at it as if she were reading his palm. The tips of his fingers were as smooth as the skin of his smiling, sleeping face. He had no fingerprints. They were rubbed away. On each fingertip there was nothing, no mark, just smooth, pink skin, squared off at the top like an ill-modelled statue. Alys gave a little sigh like a groan and sat with his malformed hand in her lap for a moment.

She leaned forward and held the candle high to look at his ears. Already they were tiny, the ears of a child. Only Hugo's long curly hair and the caps he always wore had prevented her from seeing it before. She looked at his lips. The sharp profile of his upper lip was blurred. The attractive, kissable bow of the upper lip and the sharp pout of the lower lip had melted. Only the perimeter of the dark shadow of stubble marked where his lips should start. The light flickered as the candle shook in Alys' hands. On an impulse she bent over him and gently shook him.

'Open your eyes, Hugo!' she said softly. 'Open your eyes a moment!'

He rolled away from her touch, mumbling something in his sleep, but when she shook him again his eyelids flickered open though he was still dreaming. In the moment before he closed them again and sank back into sleep, Alys peered closely at them. Across each dark pupil there was a tiny trail of cloudy grey as if someone had drawn a fingernail across his eyeballs.