Lord Hugh nodded, noting the whiteness of Alys' face, the strain which showed in dark shadows around her eyes and the hard set of her mouth. 'Rest afterwards,' he said gruffly. 'You look dreadful.'

'Thank you, my lord,' Alys said steadily. 'I will.'

The great hall was packed with people. They had been waiting outside the castle gates from noon while the lords finished their dinner and sat over their wine. The trestle-tables had been dragged back against the wall as soon as dinner was finished, the fire which had burned since Alys had first come to the castle was doused and the ashes swept away so that people could sit side by side in the whole body of the room. The benches and stools were arranged in concentric rings around the high table and crowded with people sitting too close. Behind them, and pressing continually forward, was a mob of people – some of them servants in the castle, many of them from Castleton. At the rear of the hall were more benches and people standing on them in unsteady lines, leaning forward to overlook the others.

Alys sat with the women, behind the high table at the rear of the dais, shrinking back against the wall. The fine weather of yesterday and the morning had gone, the sun turned grey, shrouded in mists. The hall was dark though it was only two in the afternoon. Alys leaned back into the shadows. She had the book which recorded Lord Hugh's quarterly sessions of justice, and two pens and a pot of ink spread on the table before her. The other women sat facing the high table leaving Alys room to write.

The door behind the tapestry opened and Lord Hugh's trumpeter, stationed high in the minstrel gallery over the hall at the far end, played a flat blast on the horn. Everyone in the hall rose to their feet and a bench overturned and crashed backwards on to someone's toes, making them cry out and swear. Lord Hugh walked into the hall, wearing his best gown with the fur-lined collar, and took his seat at the high table. Hugo followed him, and sat on his right, in his usual dinnertime seat. 'Bring in the accused,' Lord Hugh said quietly. The man was already waiting. He stepped forward: 'John Timms, my lord,' he said respectfully.

Lord Hugh looked around. 'Alys!' he said irritably. 'I can't see what you are doing back there in the shadows. Bring your book up here so I can see the entries.' Alys hesitated. 'I prefer…' she started. 'Come on,' Lord Hugh said abruptly. 'We don't have all day. The sooner this is done the sooner we can have this rabble out of the castle and back to their work.'

Alys picked up her book and went to Catherine's seat on the left hand of the old lord. Eliza followed her with the ink-pot and pens. Alys seated herself and bent her head low over the page. In her dark gown and the large black gable hood she thought that she might pass unnoticed, melting into the background as a lowly, unimportant clerk.

'Write John Timms,' Lord Hugh said, pointing one finger to a column.

Alys obediently wrote. There was a long column of names, then the occupation and age, then the charge, then the verdict and then the sentence. Most of the verdicts read guilty. Lord Hugh was not a man to offer anyone the benefit of the doubt.

'Failure to practise archery,' Lord Hugh read from a crumpled piece of paper in a pile before him.

John Timms nodded. 'Guilty,' he said. 'I am sorry. The business was doing badly and I had no time and my son and the apprentices had no time either.'

Lord Hugh glared at him. 'And if I have no time to keep a pack of soldiers and the Scots come down on us, or the French make war on us, or the damned Spanish choose to call on us – what then?' he demanded. 'Fine three shillings. And don't neglect it again.' Alys scribbled quickly.

The next case was a stolen pig, as the old lord had predicted. The accused, Elizabeth Shore, alleged that the pig had strayed into her yard and eaten the hens' feed and had thus been fed by her for free all the summer. Her accuser claimed she had tempted it away. Lord Hugh gave them some moments to squabble before slapping his hand on the table and ordering them to jointly feed the pig up, kill it and share it: three-quarters of the pig to the owner and one leg and some lights to the accused.

Next was a man accused of failing to maintain roads, then a man accused of theft, a woman accused of slander, a merchant accused of shoddy goods, a man charged with assault. Alys wrote the names and the charges and the people came and went, dispatched with speed and sometimes justice by Lord Hugh.

'Is that it?' he asked, when there was a lull in the proceedings.

An officer stepped up to the table. 'That is all the common cases, my lord,' he said. 'I have not heard if Father Stephen wished to charge the old woman from Bowes Moor.' Alys looked up from her page.

'Send to him and ask him,' Lord Hugh said irritably. 'If he is unsure, the old woman can be released. I don't want her persecuted over some bookish detail.'

Alys bent her head down to the page again. The paper seemed very white, the letters on the page very black and spiky. She swallowed on her hope and pressed her lips together so that they would not move in a silent prayer to whatever gods might listen.

Hildebrande might be set free. If she were turned out of the castle into Castleton it would be easy to send her money and clothes and set her on her way. Southwards perhaps, or even east to the coast and to France. She would have learned now what danger she was running with her plans to work and pray in the rules of the Order. She would have been frightened, Alys told herself, and perhaps treated a little roughly. That would have warned her that the world had changed, that there was now no room for piety and devotion to the old religion. Alys pulled at the feather of the quill. Hildebrande would have learned that the old ways were truly gone. She might now be prepared to live out her days quietly, in a little farm somewhere. Alys might find her some people who would house her and treat her kindly. She might be content to be an old lady sitting at the back door in the sunshine. Now she might have learned the wisdom to take the easy way.

Alys raised her head, she could hear the guards shouting outside the double doors of the great hall. Father Stephen came in, walking slowly, his face grave, a ledger tucked under his arm.

Alys felt her heart speed. She scanned Stephen's face. Surely he was slow and thoughtful because he had to report that there was no case to answer. He had failed to incriminate Mother Hildebrande. Her learning and her old skilful wit had been too much for him. Perhaps she had even shaken his reforming zeal. Alys hid a little smile.

'Please call the old woman to account for herself,' Stephen said. He slid the ledger across the table towards Alys and motioned her to open it. 'There is the charge.'

Dumbly Alys opened the book where a dark ribbon marked the place. The old lord leaned forward to see. Father Stephen went around to the back of the dais, mounted the steps, and took a stool beside Alys at the foot of the table.

Alys looked at the Bishop's Court records in the heavy black ledger. There was a column for the date, and for the name, and for the occupation. There was a space for the charge. There was a space for the verdict. There was a space for the punishment. Alys looked along the page. There were rows after rows of names arraigned for all sorts of crimes, from adultery to heresy. Wherever it said 'Heresy', along the line it said 'Guilty', and then further on it said 'Burned'. 'Burned,' Alys whispered incredulously. 'Do you see how to write it?' Stephen whispered encouragingly. 'And this other paper, the roll, is a record of what is said here this afternoon. I will nod to you when you need to make a note of something. You can write in English, we can copy it fair into Latin later.' 'Make way for the old woman of Bowes Moor,' Lord Hugh said impatiently. He waved at the people in the centre of the hall. 'Let her through, for God's sake,' he said irritably. 'We don't have all day to spend on this.'

Alys leaned towards Lord Hugh. ‘I don't want to do this,' she said urgently. 'I must ask to be excused.'

He glanced down at her white face. 'Not now, not now,' he said. 'Let's get this over and done with. It's a messy business. I like it not.' ''Please,'' Alys hissed.

Lord Hugh shook his head, he was not listening. 'Do your work, Alys,' he said roughly. This is the last case. I am weary myself.'

Alys bowed her head over the ledger, writing the date with exquisite care. She was aware of the commotion in the hall, of the sound of the soldiers coming in slowly, out of step, not marching as they usually did, but delayed by a limping pace.

'Give her a stool,' Lord Hugh said impatiently. 'Give her a seat, the old woman can't stand. And give her some wine.'

Alys kept her head down. She had an insane thought that if she never looked up, if she never raised her eyes, then she would never see Mother Hildebrande sitting on a stool in the centre of the great hall surrounded by staring people. If she kept her head down and never looked, then it would not be Mother Hildebrande. It would be someone else entirely. On a different charge. A different charge entirely. Another person.

'Your name?' Stephen rose to his feet. Alys did not look up.

'Hildebrande of the Priory of Egglestone.' The voice was different, it rasped as if the speaker's throat was scraped. It was deeper, hoarser. And the speech was different too. This old woman could not speak clearly, could not form her words, lisped on her 's' and gargled the other words in her throat. Alys copied 'Hildebrande' in the space in the book for the name of the accused; and told herself that since it was not Mother Hildebrande's clear voice, not Mother Hildebrande's pure speech – it could not be her.