The Wise Woman

Eleven

It was bitterly cold all February. The river froze into great long slabs of grey and white ice. When the ladies walked along the path beside the river they could see the water dashing along beneath the thick skin. Alys shuddered and drew as far back as the snowy banks would allow. In the second week a thick mist blew across the moors from the south-west and the women stayed indoors for one long winter day after another. It was dark when they woke, then pale and cloudy and brooding all day, then dark again at three in the afternoon. Sounds were muffled in the fog and from the window in the gallery you could not see the river below – from the old lord's room high in the round tower you could neither see nor hear the castle courtyard.

Alys spent all the time she could with the old lord in his little room in the tower. It was warm there and the lord and his steward David were quiet easy company. She wrote as she was bid, restrained condolences to the Princess Mary for the death of her mother, the Dowager Princess Catherine of Aragon, she read to the old lord from bawdy, unlikely Romances and listened to his anecdotes and memories of battles and jousting and of the time when he was young and strong and Hugo had not even been born.

The mood in the women's gallery above the great hall was ominous. Lady Catherine plunged from hysterical gaiety, when she commanded the women to play and sing and dance, into a deep sullen anxiety when she would sit at her loom without weaving and sigh. The women bickered among themselves with the fretful irritation of caged animals. And once or twice a week, like a water-wheel turning against its will, Lord Hugo would come to the women's chamber, bearing a jug of mead.

The evening would start merrily enough, with the women dancing and Lady Catherine in a flutter of excitement. Hugo would drink deep, his jokes would grow more bawdy. He would grab Eliza if she was within reach and fondle her openly, before his wife and the other ladies. Then he would up-end the jug and fling it towards the fireplace, take Lady Catherine by her wrist and drag her off to the bedchamber. As the women tidied the room, sweeping up the broken pottery and setting the glasses to one side on the cupboard, they would hear Catherine's loud shrieks of pain and then her gasping unrestrained sobs of pleasure. At two in the morning, without fail, Hugo would loose his wife from the rope of linen which he always tied around them, and stagger, blear-eyed and foul-tempered, for his own bed.

'Tisn't natural,' Eliza said one night to Alys. The candle was out, they were lying in the dark. In the other corners of the room they could hear the quiet breathing of Mistress Allingham and a rumbling snore from Ruth. Eliza had long ceased to laugh at the antics of Lord Hugo and his lady. All the women were appalled at the turn the two had taken.

'Did you hear her this evening?' Eliza asked. 'I reckon she's bewitched. It isn't natural for a woman to beg for a man like she does. And she lets him do anything he wishes to her.'

'Hush,' Alys said. 'It's her way. And she'll sleep well tonight and be sweet-tempered in the morning. And soon we'll know if she's in foal.'

'Whelping,' Eliza said with a sleepy giggle. 'But it isn't natural, Alys. I've seen bruises on her that he's made with his belt. And when I showed them to her she gave me a smile…' She paused. 'A horrid sort of smile,' she said inadequately. 'As if she was proud.'

Alys said nothing more and soon Eliza was breathing deeply, sprawled out across Alys' side of the bed. For an hour Alys lay sleepless in the darkness, watching the cold finger of moonlight move across the ceiling, listening to Eliza's snuffling snores. Then she slipped quietly from the bed and went out to the gallery, and threw a couple of logs on the fire, and a handful of pine twigs.

The twigs spurted little flames and a sharp resinous scent filled the room. Alys sniffed at it and sat down on the warm fleece before the fire to watch the flames.

The castle was wrapped in utter winter darkness and utter night-time silence. Alys felt she was the only being awake or even alive in the whole world. The embers of the fire formed into little castles and caverns. Alys stared deep into their red glow, trying to make out shapes, pictures. The sweet tangy scent of the burning pine reminded her of Mother Hildebrande and her quiet study where the little fire had been made of pine cones. Alys used to sit at her feet and lean against her knees while reading, and sometimes Mother Hildebrande would rest her hand gently on Alys' head and lean forward to explain a word, or chuckle tolerantly at a mispronunciation.

'What a clever girl,' she would say in her soft voice. 'What a clever girl you are, my daughter Ann!'

Alys took the sleeve of her nightshift and rubbed at her eyes. 'I won't think of her,' she said into the silence of the room. 'I must go on not thinking of her, stopping myself thinking of her. I will be without her now. Without her, forever.' She thought instead of Morach and the cold dark little cottage at the foot of the moor. Morach's hovel would be up to the eaves in snow by now. Alys grimaced remembering the long, dark, winter days, and the ceaseless unrewarding labour of digging out a track from door to midden to carry the slops.

'Whatever I am doing now,' she whispered, 'whatever it costs me – it is better than that life. Mother Hildebrande would know that. She would understand that. She would know that even though I'm very deep in sin… she would know…' Alys broke off. She knew that the abbess would never have accepted an argument which said that hardship justified a sinner in one sin after another, down to the very doors of hell itself. 'I won't think of her,' Alys said again. She sat in silence for a little while, then the fire shifted and roused her from her daydream. She tossed a little log on to the soft embers at the back and watched it glow and then blacken and flame.

Very quietly behind her, the door of Lady Catherine's bedroom opened and Hugo came out. He was wearing only breeches, his chest and back bare, carrying his boots, his shirt and his doublet. He checked in surprise when he saw Alys, so still at the fireside. Then he came on.

'Alys,' he said.

'Hugo,' she replied. She did not move her head to look at him, she had not started at the sound of a voice in an empty room.

'Did you know I was there?' he asked. 'I always know when you are near,' Alys said. Her voice was dreamy. Hugo felt himself shiver as he came near her, as if all around her was some circle of deep power.

'I have not seen you for days,' he said. 'I have not seen you, to speak with, since the night of your ordeal.'

Alys thought of the purse on her girdle with the little figures still safe inside, stuffed under her pallet in her room. She thought of the blinded model of Hugo knocking and rubbing against the fat belly and cavernous slit of the doll of Catherine. 'No,' she said.

'You lied, didn't you?' Hugo asked gently. 'When you told them that you were hot for me, and that you had made up a false prophecy to snare me?'

Alys shrugged as if it hardly mattered. 'That was a lie, but I don't know the truth,' she said slowly. 'I truly cannot remember that night. I remember you carrying me from the hall but that is all. After that it was just sleep.'

Hugo nodded. 'So you did not desire me?' he asked. 'You were lying when you said it. You did not desire me then and you do not desire me now?'

Alys turned her head and looked at him. One side of her face was rosy with firelight, the other side in flickering shadow. Hugo felt the breath catch in his throat.

'Oh yes,' she said softly. 'I desire you. I have wanted you, I think, since the moment I first saw you. I came into the great hall and your face was graven deep with hard lines – and then I saw you smile. I fell in love with you then, in that instant, for the joy in your smile. I hate her being with you, I hate the thought of you touching her. I cannot sleep when I know you are with her. And I dream of you, constantly. Oh yes, I desire you.'

'Alys,' Hugo breathed. He put out his hand to touch her cheek, cupped his palm around her face as if she were a rare and lovely flower. 'My Alys,' he said.

Alys hissed an indrawn breath. 'Can you feel me?' she asked. She took his hand from her cheek and examined it carefully.

'Are you telling my fortune?' Hugo asked, amused. Alys turned the hand over and looked at the clean short fingernails. She turned the hand back and looked at the perfect idiosyncratic whorls on the fingertips.

'Can you feel me?' she asked again. 'Can you feel my touch?'

'Of course,' Hugo said, puzzled. 'With every fingertip? With every one?' she asked. He laughed a little. 'Of course,' he said. The words spilled out from him as if he had held them back for too long. 'My little love, my Alys, of course I can feel your touch. I have waited and waited for you to reach out your hand to mine. Of course I can feel you!'

'When I whisper, like this,' Alys said, hardly breathing the words, 'can you hear me?'

'Yes,' Hugo said, surprised. 'Of course I can. My hearing is good, Alys, you know that.'

Alys put her hand out to his face and stroked with infinite tenderness his eyelids and the delicate lined skin around his dark eyes.

'Can you see me?' she asked. 'Can you see as well as you ever did?'

'Yes,' Hugo said. 'What is this, Alys? Are you afraid I am ill?'

Alys clasped her hands in her lap and looked back towards the fire.

'No,' she said. 'It is nothing. I thought for a time that I wanted you blind and deaf to me. I know now, this night, that is not true. It never was true. Maybe my desire for you is stronger than anything else. Maybe my desire for you is stronger than my wish for safety. Perhaps even stronger than…' She broke off. 'Anything else,' she said weakly.

Hugo frowned. "What "else"?' he asked. 'What d'you mean "anything else"? Is it some herbalism or some old women's trickery?'

Alys nodded. 'I wanted you to look away from me,' she said. 'I feared Lady Catherine's jealousy. After that time – when she made me take the ordeal – I knew she would catch me at something, force me to some test. And sooner or later I would fail.'

Hugo nodded. 'And so you cast some silly girl's spell to keep me away from you, did you?' he asked, half amused. 'You must despair of your powers, Alys. For here I am, seeing you, touching you, hearing you and desiring you.'

Alys glowed in the darkness like a pearl suddenly opened to the light.

Hugo chuckled. 'Of course,' he said easily. 'What other end could there be between you and me? I love you. I looked down the hall and saw you in that red gown which was too big for you, and your poor shorn head and your clear little face and your night-blue eyes and I wanted to take you and bed you at once. And I have waited and waited for the lust to pass – and instead of passing it has become love.

'I would have had you that night – Twelfth Night. I would have taken you when you were drunk and you could neither refuse nor consent. But when I touched you I saw you smile, and you said my name as though we had been lovers for years. And as soon as you did -I wanted that. I didn't want to take you like a whore. I didn't want to force you. I want to make a life with you like that. I don't believe you have the Sight. I don't believe in that stuff. I don't fear you are a witch or a magician or any of that silly mountebank stuff. But I do believe in a life for the two of us. No – three of us. Me, you and my child: a son for me.'

Alys was silent for a moment. She looked again at his fingertips and then she put out her hand to his face and gently touched the soft skin around his eyes. 'And your wife?' she asked softly. 'None of her business,' Hugo said promptly. 'What you and I are to each other is none of her business. Besides, she's well served these days. Soon she must conceive.'

Alys turned her face towards him and looked steadily at him. 'And why is that?' she asked.

Hugo shrugged. 'Because I go to her,' he said impatiently. 'And why is that?' Alys asked again. 'I don't…' Hugo stopped the sentence short. 'D'you think it's your doing, Alys?' he asked, near to laughing.

Alys glanced behind her at the darkened room and at Lady Catherine's chamber where the woman lay asleep, smiling even in her sleep at his abuse of her; bruised, drained, satisfied.

'I don't know!' she said sharply. 'I can't tell! How would I know? I'm not trained in the black arts, I know nothing more than I saw old Morach do, up on the moor, to frighten stupid women out of their money. I don't know why you lie with her. Nor do I know why you hurt her and abuse her. It disgusts me, Hugo. I don't know why it should be like that between you two. I would not have made it like that between any man and woman – not even if I hated her. I hexed you to lie with her – I admit that! But I did not plan that you should beat her and spit on her and force her into abominable acts. I did not plan that she should love you for it!'

'I don't know why it is like that,' Hugo conceded. He moved to sit closer to Alys and laid his arm around her shoulder. She leaned towards him. 'It disgusts me too,' he said, his voice very low. 'I've never treated any woman like that – not the poorest whore. But something in me drives me to slap her and ride her and whisper curses to her… ' he broke off. 'And the more I do, the worse I am, the more she adores it.'

He shook his head. 'It sickens me to my soul in the morning,' he said. 'And I can only touch her when I am drunk. Alys, you should see her. She lies before me and begs me to hurt her in any way I please. It makes me feel… fouled.'

Alys nodded. 'I made a spell that you would give her a son,' she said softly. 'I am sorry that I touched you. I'm sorry that I made such a spell. I felt driven to it, I did not know what else to do to make myself safe here. I wanted my power. But now I wish I had not done it, Hugo.'

'D'you think it is your magic which is driving her?' Hugo looked from the fire to Alys' clear profile. He kissed her temple where a tendril of golden hair curled. 'I don't think it is your spell, my lovely Alys. I think Catherine's tastes have always been for pain. She was hot for our marriage even though she knew I did not care for her. She has always begged me to lie with her, even when we were quite little children. She has always allowed me to abuse her. It has never been as bad as this before. But I have never felt so angry with her before. I never felt constrained before now.' 'Constrained?' Alys asked.

Hugo nodded. 'You know why,' he said. 'Your safety lies in her conceiving. You cannot stay here with her waiting to trap you. She has to be satisfied. You were driven to your little spell, I am driven to lie with her. I know she has to be satisfied for her to leave you alone.'

'The spell made no difference?' Alys asked. She turned and looked at him and he saw her face lightening as if he was taking some guilt away from her.

'No difference at all,' he said honestly. 'It is all nonsense, and you should not fear your power like this. I am acting as I wish. I am doing what I decide. I am doing my duty by Catherine as I should have done long before. I do it without desire, so I do it drunk and cruelly. And she – by some twist in her own appetites -likes me to be drunk and harsh with her. So she is well served. There is no magic in it.'

Alys gave a little sigh. 'I have been afraid,' she admitted. 'I was afraid it was all my doing, and the ugliness and the bitterness of my spell had made you ugly and bitter with her.'

Hugo gathered her into his arms and settled her on his lap, his arms around her, her cheek against his.

'Fear nothing,' he said. 'I want a future for us. But I don't believe in magic and all the old spells and fears. It is a new world we are building, Alys. A world free of superstition and fear. A world we can explore, full of new lands and adventures, full of wealth and opportunity. Don't cling to old dark ways, Alys. Come out with me into the light and put that all behind you.'

Alys turned her face to him and laid her cheek against the warm stubble of his chin.

'You are so strange,' she said with half a smile. She pulled back and touched his face, her fingers tracing the lines around his eyes, the deep cleft between his eyebrows. 'You are so strange to me and yet I feel I have known you all my life.' 'My friend, Lord Stanwick, told me I was cunt-struck!' Hugo said with a low laugh. 'I was drinking with him the other day and I told him I loved a girl so much that I was in danger of a breach with my wife, with my father, and with my duty. He laughed till he wept and said he must meet you. He could hardly believe in the existence of a girl who could turn me from hunting and whoring and scheming for the future.'

Alys smiled. 'And you?' she asked. 'Are you – what d'you call it? Cunt-struck? Or is it something real which will last?'

He tightened his grip around her. 'It will last till I die,' he said simply. 'You have my heart, Alys, I am yours till death.'

Alys stirred at once. 'Don't say that!' she said. 'Don't speak of death! I want us to live forever, I want us to be young forever. I want this night to last forever!'

He laughed. 'God! You're fey, Alys. We will love while we are young, and while we are old, and then we will grow older and die and go to heaven and be two angels together. What is there to fear in that? Did you think I might go to hell for my few little sins? I have confessed! I am cleared! And you can never have sinned in your life. Not with a face as clear and as sweet as yours. Not my little maid Alys.'

Alys hesitated. She wanted to tell him of the abbey, of the smoke, of her panic in the firelit darkness. She wanted to tell him that she had run from her sisters and left them to burn. She wanted to tell him that she had once loved someone and been beloved. That she was not truly an orphan for she had been held and taught and loved by a mother. And that she had betrayed her and then denied her. Left to die in her sleep, shrouded with smoke, eaten alive by flames. 'What is it?' he asked.

'Nothing,' she said. She did not dare.

'Will you surrender your magic?' he asked. 'The little spells and charms?'

Alys hesitated. 'Why d'you ask it of me? You keep the things that give you power – your weapons, your wealth. My magic is all the power I have, it keeps me safe here.'

Hugo shook his head. 'It does nothing except frighten you and make you feel that all the world's sins are at your door,' he said roundly. 'Keep your herbs and your crystal and your real skills, the ones you have used to make my father well. Keep your medicines and throw away your spells, Alys. There is real danger for you when you play with them. Not because they are true -for they are nothing but nonsense to frighten peasants! – but because they give your enemies a handle on you. Throw away the magic and keep the medicine.'

'All right,' Alys said reluctantly. 'I agree. Unless I have need of them, unless I have need of that power, I will stop.' She thought of the figures in her purse, stuffed deep in the mattress in her room. 'I never know whether it works or not,' she said honestly, I was sure I had hexed you and Catherine, and now you tell me it is your own tastes.'

He nodded. 'We were always like that,' he said. 'No spell on earth could make me use a woman so if it were not to her taste as well as mine.'

'I will throw it away,' Alys said. 'I should never have started but for that ordeal. I was afraid and I wanted some power – at any price.'

Hugo tightened his arm around her shoulders. 'Don't be frightened,' he said, his voice low. 'I love you, I will protect you. You have my power around you now.'

He took her hand and turned it palm upward. As if he were sealing a bond he planted a kiss in the centre and folded her fingers over. She took his hand to do the same for him. She kissed each fingertip one by one, as if to bless them, as if to keep them whole. Then they sat by the fire until the darkness of the arrow-slits started showing pale.

'I must go,' Hugo said.

Alys held her face up for his farewell kiss. He took it in both hands and kissed her lips, and then very gently, both eyelids. 'Sleep,' he said and his voice held a tenderness she had never heard from him before. 'Sleep and dream again of the time I will be with you night and day and no one will come between us.' 'Soon,' Alys whispered. 'I swear it,' Hugo said.

'I want to be your wife, Hugo,' Alys said softly. 'I want to belong here, as you do, without question. And I want to have your son, as I said in my dream.'

He chuckled. 'Marriage is something else, my darling,' he said softly. 'You and I were made to be lovers, we should be together. But marriage is business: land, property, dowry. Not for lovers like us. I want you to freely love me, to freely be mine. Not marriage, my darling, but long nights and days of love; and a son for me. Now sleep and dream of it.'

He kissed her again and went from the room. Alys stayed for a moment, listening to his soft steps down the stair and then went into the women's room and quietly closed the door.

She looked swiftly around. None of them had stirred, they were still all four deeply asleep. Noiselessly she crossed to her pallet on the floor and fumbled among the straw, pushing her arm deep into the bed. At last she found it and drew out the little purse with the three candlewax figures. She threw her cloak around her shoulders and went, barefoot, to the door.

The stone stairs beneath her feet were icy cold. She passed like a ghost out of the doorway and towards the gate which guarded the drawbridge. The soldiers were sleeping, there was no danger to watch for. Alys tiptoed across the bridge, her feet numb, and went to the moat-side.

She thrust her hand deep into her purse and pulled out the first doll she found. It was the Lady Catherine doll, grotesquely ugly with its monstrous sexuality and bursting belly. Alys shuddered as she held it in her hand and then she tossed it into the moat.

She had expected it to sink, to sink down into the green water and disappear. No one ever drained the moat, no one fished with nets. All sorts of rubbish and offal were thrown into it every day. Alys had thought the little dolls would sink to the bottom and no one would ever find them. Or if they did, the wax would be blurred and broken, and no one would ever think they were anything but candles, wastefully dropped by some negligent servant.

The little wax doll sank beneath the freezing water, and then, as Alys watched, it bobbed up again. Lady Catherine's mocking, ugly smile stared at Alys. The little candlewax eyes looked at her. 'No!' Alys cried aloud. 'Get down.' An icy breeze rippled across the moat. The wax doll bobbed in the waves. The face of Lady Catherine seemed to smile as if she was enjoying Alys' fear.

'Sink, damn you!' Alys dropped to her knees on the frozen bank, leaning out towards the bobbing doll. 'Sink down! Go down!'

The fitful little wind blew the doll closer inshore. 'Go down!' Alys breathed. 'Drown!' At once she caught herself. 'Oh God! I didn't mean that!' she said. In a frenzy of sudden anxiety she reached out towards the little doll. 'I meant the doll to sink, that's all!' she said, as if she were explaining herself to the darkness all around her. 'I didn't mean drown. I just want to be rid of it.'

The breeze was taking the doll away. At the same moment Alys heard someone hammering on the outer gate: servants coming to work, demanding admission.

Alys bunched up her nightshift in one hand and stepped into the glassy cold water. She gasped at the icy touch and reached out towards the little doll. It bobbed out further, just beyond her reach. 'I've got to get it,' she said.

She gritted her teeth and stepped out a little deeper. The water was swirling around her knees. Her feet were aching to the very bones with the cold. Something slimy and icy flickered across her calf. 'I've got to get it,' she said again.

The doll bobbed out further. Her little waxen white head turned away from Alys as if she were obstinate, as if she were playful.

'Come here,' Alys said. She clamped her teeth together to stop them from chattering, the cold seemed to be eating away at her feet, her legs, and now up to her thighs as she stepped further out.

The little doll bobbed in the winter dawn breeze and the face turned back to Alys. The doll was smiling at her.

Alys took one step further out and the little doll's smile widened as if it were about to burst into tinkling, malicious laughter. Her little arms came out above the water, she reached towards Alys. Alys stretched, her fingers just fractions of an inch away from the little wax hands. Alys took one more step forward and then stumbled on the greasy rubbish of the underwater bank of the moat. She heard the doll's tiny peal after peal of laughter as the steep side of the moat suddenly plunged downwards and fell away beneath her feet. Enticed into the depths of the moat Alys dropped like a stone into the slimy icy water, her scream cut short as water rushed into her mouth. Her hand closed over the little doll, her other hand was clenched on the purse. She thrashed helplessly in the water.

Alys had never learned to swim, she sank and then bobbed up gasping for air in a frenzy of panic. When her face broke free of the water she snatched at a breath but then choked helplessly and felt herself going down again.

The cold was her enemy. The icy green waters of the moat were eating her, her legs had gone numb and her thrashing thighs were powerless. Deep in her belly the cold moved in. Alys sank beneath the water and came up, coughing and retching. She opened her mouth to scream and a wave of icy green water swept into her face.

'No!' Alys cried out. She snatched for a breath but it was water she gobbled and it rushed into her lungs and weighed her down, thrust her under the surface. Alys choked and retched and breathed in a lungful of water. Then suddenly there were a pair of hard hands on her arm, and then under her armpit.

'Got you, wench,' a voice said from far away. Painfully, Alys was dragged from the water and beached, whooping and vomiting on the bridge. 'There, lass, there,' the man said. He flung his cape around her and rubbed her roughly, drying her and warming her at the same time.

'Holloa!' he shouted towards the guardroom. 'Let us in!'

He scooped Alys into his arms and carried her into the guardroom where a frowsy-faced lad threw open the door. 'Lass tried to drown herself,' he said tersely. 'Get some hot mead for her, quickly. And a sheet to wrap her in. And another cloak.'

The lad went running. Alys, hidden in the man's cloak, retching and vomiting, fumbled with her shift and thrust the dangerous little doll into her purse with the others.

The man held her. Water poured from Alys' mouth, she wept moat water, she pissed wetness into the wet shift, and her urine was as icy as the rest.

The man thumped her hard on the back and Alys struggled for breath, caught a gulp of air and then vomited a basin of water. 'Head down,' he said.

Water gushed from Alys' nose, her hair stuck like waterweed to her icy face. Remorselessly he held her, head down, until she had stopped choking, then he lifted her upright and thrust her into the chair and chafed her hands.

The lad burst in with a steaming jug and a billowing sheet. 'Good,' the man said. 'Wait outside.' He ripped Alys' nightshift from hem to collar and rubbed her body hard with the warm sheet. Her skin was rough with gooseflesh and her feet and fingers were blue. From thigh to ankle she was bleeding sluggishly from a hundred little cuts and scratches from the rubbish in the moat. Then the man wrapped her tight in his thick cloak, sat her in the chair, and held a mug of hot mead to her mouth.

Alys twisted away. The liquid was scalding. But he held her again and forced her to drink. It went down her sore throat like liquid fire. 'Here, don't I know you?' the man asked. Alys blinked up at him. Her teeth were chattering so badly and she was shivering so hard she could hardly make him out.

'Father Stephen,' she said, when she recognized the priest. 'It's me, Alys. Lady Catherine's woman. Lord Hugh's clerk.'

'More mead,' the priest commanded. He handed her the mug and Alys wrapped her hands around it. She was shuddering with deep chilled shivers.

'Drink it,' he said. 'I insist. It'll drive out the cold. You're looking better already.' Alys nodded. 'I'm grateful you were there,' she said. He frowned. 'Why did you do it?' he asked gently. 'It's a painful death, a nasty way to go. And hell at the end of it, for sure.' Alys nearly denied it, then she caught herself. 'I was afraid,' she improvised quickly. 'After the ordeal… Lady Catherine is suspicious of me… I am afraid of another ordeal, or another. She can make what claims she wishes against me. I could not sleep in the night and then I woke full of dread. I did not know what to do.'

Her teeth chattered as if denying the lie. Alys clenched them on the mug and sipped.

He looked distraught. 'Child, I had no idea,' he said. 'I am to blame for this! I had no idea that the lady's personal vengeance against you went so deep. I would never have allowed an ordeal to satisfy mortal malice! It's a sin to use the ordeal to pay some grudge. I should have known! And to drive you to despair!' He broke off and took two swift strides down the room.

Alys pushed her hand through her hair and squeezed out some of the icy water. She watched him, trying to measure his mood and the extent of her danger.

'You must confess,' he said. 'Confess and pray for the sin of attempting to take your life. It is a mortal sin, God forbids it by name. You must wrestle with your despair and your fear. And I will also ask you to forgive me. I have been too rigorous. I have sought for wrongdoing too eagerly. It is a sin.' He thought for a moment. 'It is the sin of vanity,' he said. 'I have been proud of my record of witch-taking, of hunting heresy. Many have come before me and few have escaped justice. But I must guard against pride.'

'I am innocent,' Alys said eagerly. 'And I was afraid that Catherine would force me to another ordeal. That you would support her and question me. And that some mistake – some innocent mistake – would mean my death.'

He nodded, stricken. 'I have been at fault,' he said. 'I am glad to be a scourge to the wicked, but not to an innocent like you. You must forgive me. I will never set an ordeal for you again. You can have my word. I will protect you against malice. You have proved your innocence, once with the ordeal of bread, and once in the moat. For if you were a witch you would have floated and you were assuredly drowning when I hauled you out.'

Alys nodded, and wrapped the cloak a little tighter around her. Father Stephen caught the movement and handed her another cup of mead. 'Drink,' he said. 'And then you must go to your chamber and make sure you are warm and dry. Fear no more, you are safe from any ordeal ever again. I will never try you and no one will ever test you while I am near to protect you. You were drowning like a Christian, you are no witch.'

Alys nodded again, a small gleam of satisfaction hidden behind the mug.

'Will Lady Catherine be awake? Will she trouble you with questions when you go to your chamber?'

Alys glanced at the slit window of the guardroom. It was grey with the winter dawn. 'She may,' she said. 'She is suspicious of all her women. I have more freedom than the others because I serve the old lord. But she watches us close, and she fears all of us.'

Father Stephen nodded. 'She has much to fear, poor lady,' he said. 'Hugo does not always use her kindly and the old lord is weary of her complaints. He has asked me to speak to my bishop about having her set aside and the marriage annulled.'

Alys felt her interest quicken. 'Can your bishop decide?' she asked.

Father Stephen glanced quickly behind them to see that they were not overheard. 'Of course not!' he said. 'The King is the supreme head of the Church. All matrimonial decisions go before the Church Court and finally to him. But the young lord and Catherine are in close cousinhood, and their grandparents were cousins also. I daresay it could be argued that the marriage was invalid.'

Alys drew a little breath. 'If you were to recommend it, would the bishop do as you advised?' she asked.

Father Stephen smiled. 'I have a degree of influence with His Grace,' he said smugly. 'But I have not yet decided what advice I should give. I have to pray and think on it, Alys. I am Hugo's friend, but in this I have to be God's man before any other claim.'

Alys nodded sympathetically. 'It is a heavy responsibility for you, Father Stephen,' she said. Her face was turned up to him, her dark eyes guileless. 'It would be so wonderful if you could get the young lord released,' she said. 'The castle would be a happier place! And Lady Catherine would be spared the pain she suffers now.'

Father Stephen nodded. 'Marriage is a sacrament,' he said. 'It lasts until God ends it – unless it was invalid from the first. There can be no argument about suiting a man's or a woman's whim.'

Alys nodded. 'But no one knows what my lady endures,' she said. 'Dreadful acts against her. And she so deep in sin that she glories in them like a beast.'

Father Stephen looked appalled. 'That should stop,' he said. 'Whatever the means, I should stop that. That is mortal sin.

'Here!' he said, breaking off. 'You are shivering. Get to your chamber and some dry clothes.'

Alys turned to go.

'Alys,' he said hesitantly. She turned. 'Swear that you will never think to kill yourself again,' he said. 'It is an awful sin, the most dreadful sin. And it would lead you to a terrible judgement and an eternity in hell. An eternity, Alys! Think of it.'

Alys bowed her head, the sodden purse with the magic dolls safe in her blue hands. 'I do think of it, Father,' she said dully. Then she turned and went.