Free The Wise Woman by Philippa Gregory Page A

again, as early as you like, tomorrow.”
    “You stay,” he said again. His black eyes scanned her from head to foot. “I’ll tell you, lass, there are those who would buy you to poison me within these walls this night. There are those who would take you up for a cheat if you fail to cure me. There are men out there who would use you and fling you in the moat when they had their fill of you for the sake of your young body. You are safest, if I live, with me. You stay.”
    Alys bowed her head and retied Morach’s shawl around the goods.
    For the next five days Alys lived in a little chamber off the old lord’s room. She saw no one but Lord Hugh and the dwarf. Her food was brought to her by the dwarf; one day she caught him tasting it, and then he tasted the food for Lord Hugh. She looked at him with a question in her face and he sneered and said: “Do you think you are the only herbalist in the country, wench? There are many poisons to be had. And there are many who would profit from my lord’s death.”
    “He won’t die this time,” Alys said. She spoke with real confidence. “He’s on the mend.”
    Every day he was eating more, he was sitting up in bed, he was speaking to the dwarf and to Alys in a voice loud and clear like a tolling bell. On the sixth day he said he would take his midday dinner in the hall with his people.
    “Then I shall take my leave of you,” Alys said when he was dressed with a black hat embroidered with little seed pearls set rakishly on his long white hair. He had a fur-lined robe which swept from his shoulders to the floor over his thick padded doublet and dark-colored hose. He wore embroidered slippers on his feet. “Farewell, my lord, I am glad to have been of service to you.”
    He gleamed at her. “You have not finished your service,” he said. “I have not done with you yet, wench. You will go back to your home when I say, and not before.”
    Alys bowed her head and said nothing. When she looked up her eyes were wet.
    “What is it?” he demanded. “What’s the matter with you?”
    “It’s my kinswoman,” Alys said softly. “Morach of Bowes Moor. I had a message that she is ill with a fever in the belly. She is all the family I have in the world…”
    She snatched a glance at him and saw he was nodding sympathetically.
    “If I could go home…” she half whispered.
    Lord Hugh snapped his thin white fingers. The dwarf came to his side and bent low. There was a low rapid exchange in a language Alys did not know. Then Lord Hugh looked at her with a wide grin.
    “When did your kinswoman fall ill?” he asked.
    “Yesterday…” Alys said.
    “You lie,” Lord Hugh said benignly. “She came here this morning and asked for you at the gatehouse and left a message with David, that she was well, and that she would come next week with more herbs for you.”
    Alys flushed scarlet and said nothing.
    “Come on,” Lord Hugh said. “We are going to dinner.”
    Halfway to the door he paused again. “She looks a drab!” he exclaimed to David. Alys’s old habit, singed by the fire and trailed in the mud, was tied around her waist with a shawl. She had another gray shawl over her head tied under her chin.
    “Get her a gown, one of Meg’s old gowns,” Lord Hugh tossed over his shoulder. “She can have it as a gift. And take that damned shawl off her head!”
    The dwarf waved Alys to wait and flung open a chest in the corner of the room. “Meg was his last whore,” he said. “She had a pretty gown of red. She died of the pox two years ago. We put her clothes in here.”
    “I can’t wear her clothes!” Alys exclaimed in revulsion. “I can’t wear a red gown!”
    The dwarf pulled a cherry-red gown from the chest, found the shoulders, and shook it out before Alys.
    Alys gazed at the color as if she were drinking it in. “Oh!” she said longingly and stepped forward. The cloth was woven of soft fine wool, warm and silky to the touch. It was trimmed at the neck, the