The Wise Woman

Seven

They celebrated the Christmas feast with a series of great dinners at the castle which started on the first day of Christmas and went on till the early winter darkness fell on the twelfth day. They had singers and dancers and a troupe of dark-skinned tumblers who could walk on their hands as well as their feet and whirled around the hall going from hands to feet so fast that they looked like some strange man-beast – an abomination. They had a man with a horse which could dance on its hind legs and tell fortunes by pawing out 'yes' or 'no' on the ground.

On the second day they brought in a bear and forced wine on her and made her dance around the great hall while the young men leaped and cavorted around her -always making sure to keep clear of those huge flailing paws. When they were sick of the dance they took off her mask and baited her with dogs until three hounds were killed. Then Hugo called a halt. Alys saw he was distressed by the loss of one dog, a pale brown deer-hound. The bear was still snarling and angry and her keeper fed her with a dish of cheat-bread soaked with honey and some powerful mead. She went all sleepy and foolish in minutes and he was able to put her mask back on and take her from the hall.

There were some who would have liked to kill her for the sport of it when she was dozy and weak. Hugo, who had been excited by the danger of her and the speed of her sudden charges, would have allowed it but the old lord shook his head. Alys was standing behind his chair.

'Do you pity her? The great bear?' she asked. He gave his sharp laugh. 'Hardly,' he said. 'But the keeper sells her play very dearly. If we had wanted to kill her it would have cost us pieces of gold!' He glanced back at Alys with his knowing smile. 'Always check a man's purse before you scan his heart, little Alys. That is where most decisions are made!'

The next day the young men went out hunting and Hugo brought back a deer still alive, with its thin legs bound, so that they could release it in the hall. It leaped in terror on to the great trestle-tables, sliding on the polished surface, frantically glaring around the hall for escape, and people ran screaming with laughter out of its way. Alys watched its shiny black eyes bulging with fear as they drove it from one corner to another. She saw the slather of white sweat darken the russet coat until they hustled it forwards and up to the dais so that the old lord could plunge his hunting dagger into its heart. The women all around her screamed with pleasure as the brilliant red blood pumped out. Alys watched the deer fall, its dainty black hooves scrabbling for a foothold even as it died.

On the morning of the twelfth day they held a little joust. David had ordered the castle carpenters to build a temporary tilt-yard in the fields of the castle farm, and a pretty tent of striped material for the old lord to sit at his ease and watch the riders. Catherine sat beside him, wearing a new festive gown of yellow, bright in the hard winter sunlight. Alys sat in her dark blue gown on a stool at his left hand to keep the score of hits for each rider.

Hugo was monstrous and exciting in his armour. His left shoulder was hugely enlarged by a great sheet of metal forged into shape and studded with brass nails which terminated in a gross gauntlet. His right shoulder and arm were scaled like a woodlouse with overlapping plates of jointed metal so he could move freely and hold the lance. His chest and belly were covered by a smooth polished breastplate, shaped to deflect any blow, and his legs were encased in jointed metal. He walked stiffly and awkwardly to his horse, the big roan warhorse, which was also plated from head to tail, only its bright, excited, white-ringed eyes showing through the headpiece.

'Is it dangerous?' Alys asked Lord Hugh. He nodded, smiling. 'It can be,' he said. Hugo's challenger was waiting at the other end of the lists. Catherine leaned forward, her eyes gleaming with excitement, and dropped her yellow handkerchief. At once the horses sprang forward and the two charged one another. As they came closer the lances came down, and Alys shut her eyes, dreading the sound of lance against body. All she could hear was the thunder of hooves, and then the horses were still. Lord Hugh nudged her.

'No score,' he said. 'Pair of boys.' In the second run Hugo struck his opponent on the body, on the third he took a blow to his shoulder, and on the fourth his lance hit his challenger smack in his metalled belly and threw him from the horse.

There was a great yell of approval from the watching crowd and the townspeople, who were crowded in at the gate end of the ground, threw their caps in the air and shouted 'Hugo!'

Hugo pulled his horse up and trotted back down the lists. They were bending over the challenger and taking his helmet off. 'Are you all right, Stewart?' Hugo called. 'Just winded?'

The man raised his hand. 'A little tap,' he said. 'But I'll let someone else unseat you!'

Hugo laughed and trotted back to his place. Alys sensed his complacent smile hidden beneath the helmet. They jousted until the early afternoon and then only went in for a late dinner as the light began to fail. Hugo stripped off his armour at the ground floor of the tower and ran up the spiral stairs in his shirt and hose shouting for a bath. He was washed and dressed in his red doublet in time for dinner and sat at his father's right hand and drank deep. As the lords ate, the mummers sang and danced, and when Lord Hugo called for the bowl and washed his hands and was served with hippocras wine the Lords of Misrule marched in from the kitchen with the lowliest server at their head.

Lord Hugh laughed and vacated his seat at the high table and took a chair at the fireside with Catherine standing behind him. They seated him comfortably and then brought a dirty apron for Hugo and ordered him to serve them all with wine. The women in the body of the hall shrieked with laughter and sent the young lord racing around the hall with one order after another. The serving-lad sat in the lord's chair and handed down commands and judgements. A number of men were outrageously accused of girls' play, and ordered to be tied one on another's back in a long laughing line, to see how they liked a surfeit of it. Several of the serving-wenches were accused of venery and taking the man's part in the act of lust. They had to publicly strip to their shifts and wear breeches for the rest of the feast. A couple of soldiers were accused of theft while raiding in Scotland with Hugo, a couple of the cooking staff were named for dirtiness. A wife was accused of infidelity, a girl who worked in the confectioner's department of the kitchen was accused of scolding and had to wear a scarf tied across her mouth.

The serving-lad giggled and pointed to one servant after another who shrieked against the accusation and could plead guilty or not guilty and was judged by the roar of the crowd.

Then he turned his attention to the gentry. Two of the young noble servers were accused of idleness and ordered to stand on their stools and sing a carol as punishment. One of Lord Hugh's cousins was accused of gluttony – sneaking into the kitchen after dinner begging for marchpane. Hugo's favourite, a young lad who was always in the guardroom talking warfare with the officers, was named a seeker of favours, a courtier, and had his head blackened with soot from the fireplace.

People laughed even more and the serving-lad grew bolder. Someone cast Lord Hugh's purple cape around his shoulders and he stood on the seat of the carved chair, jigging from one foot to the other, and pointed his finger at Hugo who was clowning around at the back of the hall with a tray and a jug of wine.

'Lust,' he said solemnly. The hall rocked with laughter. 'Venery,' he said again. 'I shall name the women you have been with.'

There were screams of laughter, and around Alys at the women's table a nervous ripple of discomfort. The serving-lad was lord of the feast, he could say anything without any threat of punishment. He might name any one of them as Hugo's lover. And Catherine would not be likely to forget, nor pass off the accusation as the fun of the feast.

'How shall you remember them all?' someone yelled from the back of the hall. 'It has been more than three hundred days since last year! That is at least a thousand women!'

Hugo grinned, postured, throwing back the apron to show his embroidered codpiece, thrusting his hips forward while the girls screamed with laughter. 'It's true,' he said. 'More like two thousand.'

'I shall name the women he has not had,' the serving-lad said quickly. 'To save time.'

There were screams of laughter at that. Hugo bowed. Even the old lord at the fireplace chuckled. The hall fell silent, waiting to hear what the lad would say to cap the jest.

'There is only one woman he has not had,' the lad said, milking the joke. He swung around and pointed to Catherine where she stood beside the old lord at the fireside. 'His wife! His wife! Lady Catherine!'

The hall was in uproar, people were screaming with laughter. Catherine's women, still in their seats at the table on the dais, clapped their hands over their mouths to smother their laughter. Hugo bowed penitently, even the old lord was laughing. Soldiers clung to each other and the serving-lad took off Lord Hugh's purple jewelled cap and flung it in the air and caught it to celebrate his wit. Only Catherine stood, white with anger, unsmiling.

'Now the old lord!' someone yelled. 'What has he done?'

The serving-lad pointed solemnly at Lord Hugh. 'You are very, very guilty, and you become guiltier every year,' he said. Lord Hugh chuckled and waited for more. 'And every year, though you do less, you are the more guilty,' the serving-lad said.

'A riddle!' someone yelled. 'A riddle! What is his crime?'

'What is my crime?' Hugh asked. 'That I do less and less every year and am more and more guilty?'

'You grow old!' the serving-lad yelled triumphantly. There was a great roar of scandalized laughter led by Lord Hugh. He shook his fist at the lad. 'I had best not see you tomorrow,' he shouted. 'Then you shall see how old my broadsword is!'

The serving-lad danced on the chair and knocked his skinny knees together, miming terror. 'And now!' he yelled. 'I order dancing!'

He slid from the cape and left the cap on the great chair and led out the dirtiest, lowliest slut from the kitchen to take his hand at the head of the set. Other people, still chuckling, fell in behind them. Alys leaned towards Eliza.

'D'you see her face?' she said softly. Eliza nodded. 'He's worse than last year,' she said. 'And he was impertinent enough then. But it's a tradition and it does no harm. The old lord loves the old ways and Hugo doesn't care. They always make a butt of Catherine; she's not well liked and they love Hugo.'

One of the mummers came to the ladies' table and laid rough hands on Ruth. She gave a soft shriek of refusal but he dragged her to the floor.

'Here's sport!' Eliza said joyfully, and chased after Ruth to find a partner for herself. Alys went down the hall like a shadow in her navy gown to stand behind Lord Hugh and walk with him back to his chair on the dais.

'Not dancing, Alys?' he asked her over the loud minor chords of the music and the thump of the drum. 'No,' she said shortly.

He nodded. 'Stand behind my chair and no one will call you out,' he said. 'It's rough sport but I love to watch it. And Hugo – ' he broke off. Further down the hall Hugo was on his knees to a serving-wench, half hidden behind a mask of a duck's head. Catherine, unwilling, her face set and pale, was dancing in a set partnered by one of the young knights. 'Hugo is a rogue,' the old lord said. 'I should have matched him to a girl with fire in her belly.'

They danced all afternoon and well into the night. A lad stood and sang a madrigal very sweetly, a gypsy girl came into the hall and danced a wild strange dance with clackers made of wood in her hand, then to a roar of applause the servers came from the kitchen and processed around the hall with the roast meats and set them down on the high table and in messes – four persons to a platter – at all the other tables. It was their final dish of the feast and grander even than all that had gone before. There was swan from the river, roasted and refeathered so that it was as white and complete as a live bird, head rearing up from the serving dish. At the other end of the top table there was a peacock with its tail feathers nodding. The lower tables had cuts of roast goose, turkey, capons, wild duck. Everyone had the best bread at this feast – manchet, a good white bread with a thick golden crust and a dense white crumb. The lords ate with unceasing appetite; Catherine beside them wiped her plate with her bread and took another slice of wild swan, though her face was still set and angry.

The jugs of wine came in, and one dish followed after another. Alys, rocking with weariness, ate little but drank the sharp red wine, cool from the barrels in the cellar. It was midnight when the sweetmeats finally came in, two for the top table. A perfect marchpane copy of the castle with Lord Hugh's flag fluttering over the round tower was put before the old lord. The women got up from the side table to see it and crowded around.

'Too pretty to cut,' Eliza said admiringly. Before Hugo they placed a little model of a country house set square on a terrace with little sugar deer in a park all around it.

'My plans for the new house!' Hugo exclaimed. 'Damn those servants, they know everything before I know it myself. Here, Sir, see what they have done!'

Lord Hugh smiled. 'Now you can see the two side by side,' he said. 'I know where I would rather live!'

Hugo bowed his head, too full of wine and dinner to quarrel with his father. 'I know your preferences, Sir,' he said respectfully. 'But it's a pretty fancy of mine.' Hugh nodded. 'Can you bear to eat it?' he asked. Hugo laughed and took his knife up in reply. 'Who will have a slice of my house?' he asked. 'My pretty little house which I have drawn in an idle moment and then found these kitchen hounds stealing my papers and copying my dreams into sugar?' 'I will!' Eliza said invitingly. Hugo threw her a smile.

'You would have a slice of anything of mine, Eliza,' he said. 'You would beg for a lick, would you not?'

Eliza gave a little scream of protesting laughter. Hugo smiled at her and then switched the heat of his look to Alys. 'Alys?' he asked. 'Will you taste my pretty toy?'

She shook her head and slid back to the women's table at the rear of the dais. When the others came back with their trenchers Eliza set a piece of the marchpane house before her.

'From him,' she said, nodding at the back of Hugo's chair. 'He served it for you under the nose of his wife. He has given you the front door. By – you're playing a dangerous game, Alys.'

When the eating was done, and there was nothing on the tables but the voider course of dried fruit and hippocras wine, David stood behind the lord's chair and called one man after another up to the dais for Lord Hugh to give him a gift or a purse of coins. Hugo sat at his father's right hand, occasionally leaning forward with a word. Lady Catherine sat on Lord Hugh's left, smiling her meaningless, small smile. She had given and received her gifts with her women on New Year's Day and she had nothing for any of the castle servants nor for the soldiers. The line of servants and soldiers went on and on. There were a round four hundred of them. Alys, at the women's table at the rear of the dais, unable to see, dozed after the revelry of the Christmas days and the sleepless fortnight which preceded them.

'It's dull this,' Eliza whispered mutinously to her. 'Everywhere else does gifts on New Year's Day. It's only Lord Hugh who is too mean to gather everyone for a feast twice in the bad season!' Alys nodded, uncaring.

'Let's have another jug of wine!' Eliza suggested. She flapped her hand at a passing serving-wench. Margery frowned. 'You'll get drunk,' she said.

'I don't care!' Eliza said. 'It's the last day of the feast. She won't want us tonight. She'll dress in her best nightgown and lie wakeful all night in her chamber in case the wine has roused Hugo's lust.' 'Hush,' Ruth said with her usual caution. Eliza giggled and poured from the new jug. 'Maybe his Christmas gift to her is a decent tupping at last,' she whispered.

Margery and Mistress Allingham collapsed into scandalized laughter. Ruth shot an apprehensive backwards look at their mistress. Alys sipped from her glass. She liked the smell of wine. They had set glassware on the women's table today in honour of the feast and Alys liked the feel of the cool glass against her lips. At Morach's she had drunk from earthenware or horn, and in the castle she drank from pewter. She had not had the touch of glass against her lips since the nunnery. This wine tasted of itself, without a tang of ill-cleaned metal, the glassware was light and thin, appetizing. Alys sipped again. The drunkenness and the barbarity of the feast days had floated past her. No one had snatched her in a dark corner and tried for a kiss, she had danced with no one. The old lord watched for her, and when a soldier approached her for a dance, the old lord scowled at him and David waved him away. Lady Catherine smiled her thin smile at that and leaned back towards the women's table.

'In the spring we will dance at your wedding, Alys,' she said, her voice acid-sweet. She glanced towards the young man who had gone back to his place. 'That was Peter – a bastard son of one of Lord Hugo's officers. He is the one I have chosen for you. Don't you think I have chosen well?'

Alys looked down the hall towards him. He was well enough, slim, brown-haired, brown-eyed, young. She had seen him stab a knife into a dying dog at the bear-baiting. She had seen him screaming with excitement at the cock-fighting. She thought of what her life would be like as his wife, bound forever to a man with that perilous streak of excitement at the sight of pain.

'Very well, my lady,' she said. She smiled deceitfully into Lady Catherine's face. 'He seems a fine man. Has his father told him?'

'Yes,' Lady Catherine said. 'We must persuade the old lord to find a proper clerk to replace you, and then you can be married. Maybe at Easter.'

'Very well,' Alys said softly and lowered her eyes to her plate so that Lady Catherine could not see the gleam of absolute refusal.

Alys sipped her wine again. All through the days of feasting and the nights of drunken games she had felt the young lord watching her. Lady Catherine watched her too. Alys rested the cold glass against her cheek. She had to break the net, the net that the three of them, the old lord, the young lord and the shrew, had all cast around her. She had to take her power, she had to make the little dolls come alive and dance to her bidding.

Above the table – as it was Christmas – the waiting-women had pure wax candles in the candelabra. On the table was a silver candle-holder with pale, honey-coloured candles. Alys watched the bobbing yellow flame and the pure transparency of the wax. There was the slightest hint of sweetness in the vapour. These were pure beeswax candles. A memory flickered to the surface of Alys' mind and she winced as she realized that the candles would have been made by the nuns at the abbey with beeswax from the abbey hives.

Eliza poured more wine in her glass and she drank again.

In her purse tied on the girdle at her waist were the three candlewax dolls. They knocked against her gently when she moved. Alys had been tempted to fling them from her window down the steep side of the castle to smash against the rocks and tumble into the river below. It was death to be found carrying them and she was too afraid to hide them anywhere in the castle. She had not yet found the courage, or the desperation, to use them. She held to them like a talisman, like a final weapon which would be ready to her hand if their time ever came.

The tart cool taste of the clary wine flooded into her mouth and washed through her. I must be getting drunk, Alys thought to herself. All the voices seemed to come from a long way away, the faces around the table seemed to flicker in a haze. 'I wish…' Alys said thickly. Eliza and Margery nudged each other and giggled. 'I wish I was Lady Catherine,' Alys slurred. Ruth, the quiet one, glanced behind her to see that the two lords, watched by Lady Catherine, were still paying out gifts. 'Why?' she asked.

'Because… ' Alys said slowly. 'Because… ' she stopped again. 'I should like to have a horse of my own,' she said simply. 'And a gown which was a new gown – not belonging to someone else. And a man…'

Eliza and Margery exploded with laughter. Even Ruth and Mistress Allingham tittered behind their hands.

'A man who left me alone,' Alys said slowly. 'A man who was bound to me and wed to me, but a man who would leave me alone.'

'Not much of a wife you'll make!' Eliza said laughing. 'Poor Peter will get short commons I reckon.'

Alys had not heard her. 'I want more than ordinary women,' she said sorrowfully. 'I want so much more.'

All the women were laughing openly now. Alys, with her heavy gable hood sliding back off her mop-head of curls and her serious pale face, was exquisitely funny. Her deep blue eyes were staring unfocused at the candles. The young Lord Hugo, who now carried an awareness of Alys like a sixth sense, glanced back and took in the scene with one quick look.

'Your young clerk seems the worse for her wine,' he said softly to his father.

The old lord glanced back. David demanded his attention for another of the soldiers coming up for his gift.

'Get them to take her to her room,' he said briefly to the young lord. 'Before she pukes on her gown and shames herself.'

Hugo nodded and pushed his chair back from the table. Lady Catherine had not heard the soft-voiced exchange and glanced up in surprise. 'My father has an errand for me, I'll only be a moment,' he said softly to her, and then he turned towards the women. 'Come, Alys,' he said firmly.

Alys looked up. Against the candlelight of the hall his face was shadowed. She could see the gleam of his smile. There was a ripple among the women like a flurry in a hen-coop when a fox gets in the door.

'I'll escort you to my lady's rooms,' he said firmly. 'You,' he nodded at Eliza. 'Come too.'

Alys got slowly to her feet. Magically the floor beneath her rolled and melted away. Lord Hugo caught her as she swayed forward and lifted her up. He nodded at Eliza who drew back the tapestry and opened the little door at the back of the dais. They stepped out into the lobby behind the hall, and up the shallow stone steps to Lady Catherine's rooms above. Eliza flung the door wide and Hugo strode into the gallery carrying Alys.

'I'll give you a shilling to keep watch here and hold your tongue,' he said briefly to Eliza.

Her brown eyes were as large as saucers. 'Yes, my lord,' she said.

'And if you gossip I shall have you whipped,' he said pleasantly. Eliza felt her knees melt at his smile.

'I swear it, my lord,' she said fervently. 'I'd do anything for you.'

He nodded to her to open the door to the women's chamber and she scuttled ahead of him and swung it open. He walked the length of the gallery carrying Alys easily. She opened her eyes and saw the moonlight from the window briefly illuminate his face and then they were in shadow again. He pushed open the door to the women's room and laid Alys down on a pallet.

Without any haste, he pulled the pins from her hood and tossed it to one side. Alys fell back on the pillow, her face pale, her eyes closed. 'I feel sick,' she said.

He rolled her to her side, skilfully unlacing her stomacher and the gown below it, so that when he rolled her on her back and lifted her legs and then her body to pull the gown over her head she was stripped down to her shift. Alys dropped back on the pallet, her arms above her head, her golden hair a tangle about her face. Lord Hugo sat back on his heels and scanned her, from her small dirty feet to her outflung hand. Alys snored lightly.

Lord Hugo pulled down his breeches with a little sigh and moved to cover her.

Alys' dark eyes flew open as she felt the weight of him come down upon her and he readied himself to put a hand over her mouth to still her protesting scream; but her eyes, out of focus and hazy, were warm with welcome and she smiled.

'Hello, my love,' she said, as easily as if they had been wed for twenty years. 'Not now, I am too sleepy. Love me in the morning.'

'Alys?'

She chuckled, the warm, confident sound of a woman who knows she is deeply beloved. 'Not now, I said,' she repeated. 'I am tired out with your wants, and your son's wants. Let me sleep.' Her eyelids flickered shut and Hugo watched the lashes sweep her cheek. 'Do you know me?' he asked in confusion. Alys smiled. 'None better,' she said. She rolled on her side away from him and put her hand back towards him. In a gesture so familiar as to be unconscious, she felt for his hand and then pulled his arm around her and tucked his hand between the warm comfort of her thighs. Hugo, following the demanding tug of her small hands, snuggled up so that his body was cupped around hers. He could feel a deep ache of desire that he would normally have satisfied quickly and roughly on a woman whether she consented or not. But something about Alys' drunken dream made him pause.

'How old are you, Alys?' he asked. 'What year is it?' 'I'm near eighteen,' she said sleepily. 'It's 1538. What year did you think it was?'

Hugo said nothing, his mind whirling. Alys was dreaming of the future two years ahead. 'How is my father?' he asked.

'Dead, nigh on twelve months ago,' Alys replied sleepily. 'Go to sleep, Hugo.'

Her casual use of his christian name brought him up short. 'What of Lady Catherine?' he asked.

'Oh hush!' Alys said. 'No one is to blame. She's at peace at last. And we have all her lands for little Hugo. Go to sleep now.'

'I have a son?' Hugo demanded. Alys sighed and turned away. Hugo, raising himself up on his elbow, looked down on her face and saw that she was deeply asleep. Gently he pulled his hand away from between her legs and saw a little flicker of regret cross her face. Then she turned deeper into the pillow and slept again.

He sat up on the pallet and put his head in his hands, trying to think soberly enough to understand. Either Alys was drunk beyond belief, dreaming some girl's fantasy of him; or the wine had released in her some of her magic and she had spoken true. In two years' time he would be the Lord of Castleton, Catherine would be gone and Alys would be his woman and the mother of his child.

He leaned forward and stirred up the fire so the light flickered in the little room. Alys' clear, lovely profile gleamed in the half-light.

'What a son we would have!' he said softly. 'What a son!'

He thought of the confident way she had tucked his hand between her legs, and her lazy command of loving in the morning, and he felt himself ache with desire again. For a moment he thought of taking her while she slept, without her consent; but then he paused.

For the first time in his life Hugo paused before taking his pleasure. She had given him a glimpse of a future which was luminous with satisfactions. She had given him a glimpse of a woman who was his equal, who desired him as he desired her. A woman who would plot and scheme alongside him, who had given him a son, and would give him more. He wanted Alys' dream. He wanted that intimacy, he wanted to be on tender terms with her. More than anything else: he wanted her to give him a son.

He chuckled softly in the quietness of the room. He wanted her to call him Hugo, he wanted her to command his loving. He wanted to see her tired with the demands of his son, tired by his lust. Incredulously he looked towards her again. He would do nothing to spoil that promise between them, he thought. He would not force her, he would not frighten her. He wanted her as she was in that glimpse of the future: confident, sensual, amused. A woman of power, confident of her own power to command him, to rule her own life.

He threw a rug over her and she did not stir. He leaned over and gently put a kiss on the smooth curve of her neck, just below her ear. The smell of her skin stirred him again. He chuckled. 'My Lady Alys,' he said softly. Then he got to his feet and walked out of the room.

Eliza was hovering at the doorway, her round face bright with excitement.

'All quiet, my lord,' she said. 'Aren't you having her? Don't you want her now?'

Lord Hugo shot a quick look down the steps to the great chamber beneath them. 'Lift your skirts,' he said tersely. Eliza's mouth made a little round 'oh' of surprise. 'My lord… ' she said in a delighted half-protest. He took her gown in one hard hand and wrenched it up to her waist. He backed her against the stone wall and rammed himself into her. Eliza screamed with the sharp pain of it and he at once clapped a hand over her mouth and hissed, 'Fool! D'you want half the castle here?'

Above his hand Eliza's eyes bulged at him imploringly. He thrust into her three, four times, and then he froze, his eyes tight shut, his mouth grim in a spasm of release which felt like anger.

Eliza gasped with discomfort as he released her, and staggered to one side, holding her bruised throat and mopping her gown against her crutch. Hugo reached into his pocket and threw her a couple of silver coins. 'You'll keep quiet about that too,' he said. He turned his back on her and sauntered across the gallery and down the steps to the great hall.

She went to the doorway and watched him go down the stairs and pause in the lobby, straightening his clothes, and then she saw his shoulders go back and his smile appear as he opened the door to the dais and went back to sit with his father and his wife.

'God curse you, Hugo,' she said under her breath. She flinched with discomfort and turned towards the women's room. 'A new gown half ruined, half strangled, and tupped for a shilling,' she said miserably to herself. She hunkered down on her pallet and looked across at Alys who lay, still sleeping, as Hugo had left her.

'And all because that damned jade hexed you into losing your manhood with her,' she muttered grimly. 'I saw you, you poxy bastard. I saw you lie beside her and stick your finger in and dare do no more while she muttered spells against you and all your family. And then you stick your cock in me! Damn you,' she grumbled, stripping off her gown and pulling a rug over herself. 'Pox-ridden bastard.'

Alys turned over in her sleep, her hand stretched out, seeking him. 'My love,' she said very softly.

Alys was sick the next day, heavy-eyed, white-faced, poisoned with the wine. She would eat nothing and would drink only water. Indeed, the whole castle, from Hugo down to the poorest scullion, had drunk better than they had drunk all year and were paying the price.

It was not until after dinner that any of the women felt better. Then Lady Catherine commanded them to sit in the gallery and sew while she spun. Alys was ordered to read aloud from a story book.

Alys, nauseous and with her head throbbing, read until the badly printed words danced before her eyes. They were love stories, tales of ladies in castles and knights who worshipped them. Alys let her mind wander as she read the romance – life was not like these stories, she knew.

'Lord Hugo carried you up the stairs last night?' Lady Catherine's arid voice cut into the reading. Alys blinked. 'Carried you all the way to your room, did he?' 'I am sorry, my lady,' Alys said. 'I cannot remember. I was faint and I did not know what I did.'

'Did he carry her?' Lady Catherine turned to Eliza. 'Yes,' Eliza said baldly. She ached inside this morning and she blamed Alys that Hugo's lust had soured into violence.

'Into your room?' Lady Catherine asked. 'Yes,' Eliza said again.

'You were with them?' Lady Catherine confirmed. Eliza hesitated. She would have given much to have her revenge on Hugo by telling that he had ordered her to stay outside. But the risks were too great. The young lord's anger was swift and unpredictable, and she had stains on her gown and two silver sixpences which would support an accusation against her.

'Yes,' she said. 'He tossed her down on her pallet and told me to watch her and make sure she did not vomit and lie in it like a dog.' Alys' pale skin flushed crimson. 'How disagreeable for him,' Lady Catherine said in mild triumph. 'I think you had better drink ale in future, Alys.'

'I think so too, my lady,' Alys said quietly. 'I am very sorry.' Lady Catherine nodded with a glacial smile and stood while Mistress Allingham moved the spinning wheel for her into a patch of winter sunshine which fell on the wooden floor, brightly coloured from the stained glass of the oriel window.

'Did he do that?' Alys whispered urgently to Eliza. 'Did he throw me down?'

'He lay beside you,' Eliza said spitefully. 'I've saved your skin with my lady by not telling. He gave me two silver sixpences to keep watch. I stood guard at the door while he tossed you down on your pallet and stripped you and lay beside you and stuck his finger in you.'

Alys went white and looked as if she might fall. 'It's not possible,' she said.

'It happened,' Eliza said harshly. 'I saw him do it.' 'But I feel nothing,' Alys said.

'What are you girls whispering about?' Lady Catherine interrupted.

'About the colour of the silk, Lady Catherine,' Eliza said at once. 'I think it is too bright. Alys wants to keep it as it is.'

Eliza lifted up the tapestry which Alys had painstakingly stitched in the previous week and Lady Catherine considered it with her head on one side. 'Rip it out,' she said. 'You are right, Eliza, it needs to be a paler colour, anyone could see that. Alys will have to stop reading and rip it back and do it all again.'

Alys picked up a pair of silver scissors and started snipping at the cloth, the work of seven days to be done all over again. Eliza bent over it.

'It didn't hurt because you wanted it,' she whispered. 'You let him take your gown off and you took his hand and guided it in, just like any slut! And after all you've said about not wanting to go with a man.'

Alys felt her world shift and heave. 'It's not possible,' she said.

Eliza shrugged. 'Don't you remember anything?' Alys closed her eyes. Vaguely, like a dream, she could remember a sleepy sensuality, a confidence and an affection which she had never felt in her waking life. She remembered a gesture, rolling over on her side and pulling his arm over her, tucking his hand between her thighs. She flushed a sweating scarlet. 'Oh my God,' she said.

'What d'you remember?' Eliza demanded eagerly. 'What did you say to stop him?'

Alys shook her head wordlessly. 'I desired him,' she said. Her voice was hollow with her unhappiness. 'What?'

'I was drunk and I desired him,' Alys said again. 'If he had wanted to take me he could have had me. You would not have stopped him, and I would not have wanted him to stop. He could have had me like any little whore in the castle, I would have had no words to stop him. I felt wanton. He could have had me.' She rubbed the back of her hand hard against her eyes. 'I am lost unless I can stop this sickness,' she said. 'I will lose everything unless I can guard myself. I am lost unless I take my power. I must guard myself with all the power I can hold.' Abruptly she threw down her sewing and went to the door.

'Alys!' Lady Catherine commanded. 'What do you think you are doing? How dare you march out of the room without my leave?'

Alys rounded on her, her eyes, her whole face, blazing with anger and despair. 'Oh, go your ways, Lady Catherine!' she said bitterly. 'I have no fear of you now. The one thing you could have taken from me has gone. I was not born to be a woman like you, a woman like these… ' She made a sharp, dismissive gesture at the four women whose stunned faces were turned to her, gaping. 'These pitiful slaveys. But now I have seen myself truly. I am no better than any of you. There is nothing about me which is special. I am a sinner and I am a fool. But at least now I see my way clearly. Now I am a woman without fear.'

Lady Catherine recoiled from her anger, but then blustered, 'Don't speak to me like that, girl, 'I'm taking my power,' Alys swore. 'You will not call me girl again! You will not rule me! And your husband will not have me as his plaything. You have driven me to it between you and I am taking my power!'

'Stop!' Catherine shrieked. Alys threw her a look like a burning brand and slammed out of the room. They could hear her feet pattering down the stone steps and then the bang of the door of the great hall. 'Is she leaving?' Mistress Allingham asked. Only Lady Catherine stayed seated, the rest of them crowded to the wide oriel window and craned their necks to see the steps from the great hall below them into the garden, and the path to the gatehouse over the inner moat.

'She's going,' Eliza confirmed. 'She's in the garden heading for the gate. Shall I run after her and order her to be brought back, my lady?'

Lady Catherine's face was pale, her mouth pressed tight as she marshalled her fears and her suspicions. 'Let her go,' she said. 'Let her go.'

The old lord did not miss Alys until that evening just before supper, when he wanted a letter written. David came to the women's quarters to ask for her and Lady Catherine kept her plain face blank as she told him that Alys was missing.

'I will come in her place,' she said. She threw a dark cloak around her shoulders, pulled the hood over her head, and followed him to the old lord's room in the round tower. On the dark corner of the stairs they passed young Lord Hugo, openly waiting for them. He put out his hand to stop her.

'Alys,' he said. She had never heard that tone from him before, he poured a world full of yearning into the girl's name.

His wife put back the hood of her cloak. Her bony face gleamed hatred at him, her eyes were filled with triumph. 'I thought so,' she said, venom in her tone. 'I thought so.' Hugo recoiled. 'Madam, I… '

David the seneschal exchanged one look with Hugo and went on up the stairs to the old lord's chamber, out of earshot.

'Don't bother pretending,' she said passionately. 'I wondered what hold she had over you and the old man. I suppose she has been bedding you both.' Her mouth worked angrily. 'Bedding you both! Him in his dotage and you who run after anything in a skirt! As soon as I saw her in that whore's dress I knew what was happening. But I waited and I watched. And I saw you eyeing her and I knew what you were thinking. God knows I've seen it often enough! God knows I've seen you looking at one woman after another with that smile of yours and that hot look. Then I saw you look at her, and I saw you carry her out of the feast. Carried her to her bed, did you? And paid that fool Eliza to look the other way! Paid that fool Eliza to play blind, and to lie to me, and to laugh at me behind her hand. And paid her to play the slut!'

She rounded on him and hit him hard with her open palm across the face. Hugo jerked back at the ringing slap and then stood still.

'And what about me?' Her voice rose from a passionate whisper into a muffled scream of rage. 'What about me? You never look at me like that. You never come to my room wearing that smile! Every whore in the castle can have a hot look from you! Every slut in the town, every drab in every village can have you between her dirty legs – but me, your own wife, you ignore!' She seized him by the shoulders. 'You ignore me!' she said. Tears were pouring down her face. She shook him hard. 'You ignore me!' she cried again.

Hugo was rigid in her grasp, his whole body rejecting her with its stillness.

'Oh God!' she said in sudden longing. 'Hugo, do to me what you do with her! Take me here!' She drew back into the shadow of the corner of the stair and feverishly pulled up her gown, grasped at the cord of his breeches, tugged at his codpiece, thrust herself against the embroidered padding, moaned as the stiff embroidery touched her. 'Do it now!' she said desperately.

Hugo stepped back and pushed her away from him. In the shadows she could see his face, as unmoved as if it had been carved from stone.

'Have done,' he said, his voice low and level. 'I did not touch the wench, whatever you fear and whatever women's tattle you have heard. I did not lay a finger on her. I carried her to her pallet and I stripped off her gown, covered her with a rug and left her there.'

Lady Catherine staggered as if he had slapped her. She dropped the hem of her skirt and pulled it down over her hips. She was still panting but the coldness of Hugo's voice had entered into her awareness like ice. Her face was white and strained.

'You took off her gown and you did not have her?' she asked, as if she could not believe her ears. Hugo nodded, and turned to leave.

'Hugo!' Lady Catherine ran down the steps after him and clawed on his arm. 'Hugo, tell me you did not desire her. Tell me you did not desire her and that is why you did not have her!'

He paused on the bottom step, smiling his cruel half-smile. "What now, my lady?' he said acidly. 'First you berate me for tupping her, and now you cannot believe that I did not.'

Lady Catherine gave a little moan and tugged on the fine slashings of his doublet. 'Please!' she begged. 'Tell me truly what passed between you. I cannot bear not knowing. I cannot bear the thought of you…'

'You cannot bear what?' he asked acidly. 'You cannot bear me lying with her, and you cannot bear me not lying with her. You must tell me, Madam, what I should do to please you.'

She stared at him as if she could not comprehend his speech. 'Oh God, Hugo,' she said hungrily. 'I don't want you to lie with her. But most of all I don't want you to spare her. I'd rather you raped her than spared her. I don't understand what you are doing if you are gentle with her. I don't understand what it means! What are you thinking of if you treat her tenderly? I wish you'd raped her and hurt her! I wish you had torn her inside to slake your lust rather than be tender!'

He looked back up at her and for a moment she flinched from the disdain on his face. 'You'd rather I raped her than spared her,' he said wonderingly. 'You want a little maid of sixteen, in your care, torn inside by your husband's rape? Good God, Madam, you are an ugly woman.'

She gasped and fell back against the stone wall.

'I did not touch her because she was so warm and so loving,' he said, his voice very low. 'She had a dream and she foretold a future for me, a future for me and for her. My father will die and I will be master here. She will give me a son.'

'No,' Lady Catherine moaned and sank to the floor as her knees buckled beneath her.

'Make your mind up to it, lady,' Hugo said remorselessly. 'You struck me for the last time just now. Your days here are done. I shall have the wench from Bowes Moor in my bed.'

'My dowry…' Lady Catherine said. 'And my lands…'

'Damn your money,' Hugo swore. 'Damn your lands! And damn you. I want the wench from Bowes Moor and I will risk anything – the castle itself – to have her.'

He flung himself away from her and strode across the guardroom.

Lady Catherine sat on the stairs in the cold for many minutes, then she raised herself up awkwardly, as if she were an old woman. The cold light of the rising moon shone through the arrow-slit on to her beaky, vengeful face. Then she said one word, the most dangerous word of any in her fearful, dangerous world.

'Witch.'