The Wise Woman. Philippa Gregory
at once to see you.’
‘Your farm’s the other way,’ she said drily.
He flushed a still deeper red. ‘I had to take a lamb over to Trowheads,’ he said. ‘This is my way back.’
Alys’ dark eyes scanned his face. ‘You never could lie to me, Tom.’
He hung his head and shuffled his thick boots in the dust. ‘It’s Liza,’ he said. ‘She watches me.’
‘Liza?’ Alys asked, surprised. ‘Liza who?’
Tom dropped to sit on the heather beside her, his face turned away, looking back over the way he had come. ‘Liza’s my wife,’ he said simply. ‘They married me off after you took your vows.’
Alys flinched as if someone had pinched her. ‘I didn’t know,’ she said. ‘No one told me.’
Tom shrugged. ‘I would have sent word but …’ he trailed off and let the silence hang. ‘What was the use?’ he asked.
Alys looked away, gripping the beads in her pocket so tight that they hurt her fingers. ‘I never thought of you married,’ she said. ‘I suppose I should have known that you would.’
Tom shrugged. ‘You’ve changed,’ he said. ‘You’re taller, I reckon, and plumper. But your eyes are the same. Did they cut your hair?’
Alys nodded, pulling the shawl over her shaven head a little tighter.
‘Your lovely golden hair!’ Tom said, as if he were bidding it farewell.
A silence fell. Alys stared at him. ‘You were married as soon as I left?’ she asked.
Tom nodded.
‘Are your mother and father still alive?’
He nodded again.
Alys’ face softened, seeking sympathy. ‘They did a cruel thing to me that day,’ she said. ‘I was too young to be sent among strangers.’
Tom shrugged. ‘They did what they thought was for the best,’ he said. ‘No way for them to foretell that the abbey would be burned and you would be homeless and husbandless at the end.’
‘And in peril,’ Alys said. ‘If the soldiers come back they might take me. You won’t tell anyone that I was at the abbey, will you?’
The look he shot at her was answer enough. ‘I’d die rather than see you hurt,’ he said with a suppressed anger. ‘You know that! You’ve always known it! There never was anyone else for me and there never will be.’
Alys turned her face away. ‘I may not listen to that,’ she said.
He sighed, accepting the reproof. ‘I’ll keep your secret safe,’ he said. ‘In the village they think only that Morach has a new apprentice. She has said before that she was seeking a girl to do the heavy work. No one has thought of you. You’ve been forgotten. The word is that all the nuns are dead.’
‘Why did you come this way then?’ Alys demanded.
He shrugged his shoulders, his coarse skin blushing brick-red. ‘I thought I’d know,’ he said gruffly. ‘If you had died I would have known it.’ He thumped his chest. ‘In here,’ he said. ‘Where I carry my pain for you. If you had died it would have gone … or changed. I would have known if you were dead.’
Alys nodded, accepting Tom’s devotion. ‘And what of your marriage?’ she asked. ‘Are you comfortable? Do you have children?’
‘A boy and a girl living,’ he said indifferently. ‘And two dead.’ He paused. There were four years of longing in his voice. ‘The girl looks a little like you sometimes,’ he said.
Alys turned her clear, heart-shaped face towards him. ‘I have been waiting to see you,’ she said. Tom shivered helplessly. Her voice was as piercing and sweet as plain-song. ‘You have to help me get away.’
‘I have been racking my brains to think how I can serve you, how I can get you away from that wretched old woman and that hovel!’ Tom exclaimed. ‘But I cannot think how! Liza watches the farm, she knows to a groat what we have made. My mother and she are hand in glove. I took a risk coming to see you at all.’
‘You always did dare anything to be with me,’ Alys said encouragingly.
Tom inspected a callus on the palm of his hand. He picked moodily at the hard skin with one stubby fingernail. ‘I know,’ he said sullenly. ‘I ran to you like a puppy when I was a child, and then I waited outside the abbey for you like a whipped dog.’
He shifted his gaze to Alys’ attentive face. ‘Now you are come out of the abbey everything is changed again,’ he said hesitantly. ‘The King’s Visitors said that you were not true nuns and the lord’s chaplain says Hugo did well to drive you out. The abbey is gone, you are a free woman again, Alys.’ He did not dare look at her but stared at the ground beneath his feet. ‘I never stopped loving you,’ he said. ‘Will you be my lover now?’
Alys shook her head with an instinctive revulsion. ‘No!’ she said. ‘My vows still stand. Don’t think of me like that, Tom. I belong to God.’
She paused, shot him a sideways glance. It was a difficult path she had to find. He had to be tempted to help her, but not tempted to sin. ‘I wish you would help me,’ she said carefully. ‘If you have money, or a horse I could borrow, I could find an abbey which might take me in. I thought you might know of somewhere, or can you find somewhere for me?’
Tom got to his feet. ‘I cannot,’ he said simply. ‘The farm is doing badly, we have only one working horse and no money. God knows I would do anything in the world for you, Alys, but I have neither money nor a horse for you.’
Alys’ pale face was serene though she was screaming inside. ‘Perhaps you will think of something,’ she said. ‘I am counting on you, Tom. Without your help, I don’t know what will become of me.’
‘You were the one who always did the thinking,’ he reminded her. ‘I just came to see you, running like a dog to the master’s whistle, like I always have done. The moment I heard the abbey was fired I thought of you. Then when I heard Morach had a new wench I thought she might be you. I came running to you. I had no plans.’
Alys rose too and stood at his shoulder, very close. She could smell the stale sweat on him, and the stink of old blood from butchering, sour milk from dairying. He smelled like a poor man, like an old man. She stepped back.
Tom put his hand on her arm and Alys froze, forcing herself not to shake him off. He stared into her face. Alys’ dark blue eyes, as candid as a child’s, met his gaze.
‘You don’t want me as a man,’ he said with a sudden insight. ‘You wanted to see me, and you talk sweet, but all you want is for me to save you from living with Morach, just as your old abbess saved you from her before.’
‘Why not?’ Alys demanded. ‘I cannot live there. Morach is deep in sin and dirt. I cannot stay there! I don’t want you as a man, my vows and my inclinations are not that way. But I need you desperately as a friend, Tom. Without your help I don’t know what I will do. We promised to be true to one another and to always be there when the other was in any need or trouble.’ She tightened the rack on his guilt. ‘I would have helped you if you had been in need, Tom. If I had a horse you would never walk.’
Tom shook his head slowly, as if to clear it. ‘I can’t think straight!’ he said. ‘Alys, tell me simply what you want me to do! You know I will do it. You know I always did what you wished.’
‘Find somewhere I can go,’ she said rapidly. ‘Morach hears nothing and I dare not go further than Castleton. But you can travel and ask people. Find me a nunnery which is safe, and then take me there. Lord Hugo cannot rage around the whole of the north. There must be other abbeys safe from his spite: Hartlepool, Durham or Whitby. Find where I can go, Tom, and take me.’
‘You