'No,' Alys said.

'Oh, come on!' Eliza urged. 'They won't believe me if you don't tell them too.'

'No,' Alys said again.

'I thought I would die of fright!' Eliza said excitedly. 'And when you were slow repeating the oath, I thought they would have you! I've never seen anything like it!' She caught at Alys' arm. 'Come on!' she urged. 'Come and tell the others!'

'Let me go!' Alys said, suddenly shaking Eliza off. 'Let me go, damn you! Let me go!'

She pushed Eliza roughly aside and fled down the stairs, through the hall where the servants were putting out great jugs of ale and beer, and out across the yard to the bakehouse. Only there, when she had slipped through the door and slammed it behind her and sunk down to the hearthstone, did she let herself weep. And then, to her horror, she felt her vomit rising, rising up in her throat again.

She kneeled and faced the embers of the bakehouse fire and felt her throat clench against the rising tide of bile. Then she vomited, spewing it out into the ashes. Six times she heaved and puked until her belly was empty and her mouth sour.

And it was then that Alys knew fear. For in the embers of the fire, whole and untouched, unblemished in its white circle, was the sanctified wafer. Not a mark on it, as whole as when she had sworn an oath and chewed it and swallowed it. It had choked her as she had known it would.

Ten

The night drew in, darker and colder, and Alys, still hidden in her refuge at the bakehouse, heard the shouts and clatter of supper and then the querulous voices of tired servants clearing up. From the courtyard she could hear the shouts of servants who were leaving the castle and going into town, she could hear the march of the soldiers coming from their duty at the castle gates, a few steps in rhythm and then a disorderly straggle towards the guardroom, a few shouted jests and then the numbing silence of night. Still Alys waited, shrouded in silence and darkness, waited for the moon to rise above the dark squat bulk of the great hall, waited for the last flickering candles to go out at the little windows. Waited for the peak of the night, sitting on the cooling hearthstone of the bakehouse fire.

As it grew more and more chill she took a ragged old coat from the back of the door, wrapped it around her thin shoulders and put a few little pieces of kindling into the embers. When they flickered into flame she tossed on a dry log. Then she sat very still, watching the flames and saying nothing. Alys sat still and silent in a little island of solitude, as if she were waiting for something to come to her – some clarity or some hope. She knew that she was a sinner; far, far from the God of her mother, from the God of her innocent childhood in the nunnery. Despite the hours on her knees, despite the smile on the face of the statue, she would not be forgiven for running from her sisters when the fires of hell had opened around them. She would not be forgiven for the sin of lust. She could not take the devil on loan. She was so far from the peace of Christ that she vomited if she ate his bread.

Alys threw on another log. The firelight flickered and threw ominous moving shadows around her. Out in the yard someone screamed in mock fright and cried out 'Jesu save me!' but Alys did not cross herself. She knew that she alone, of all the castle, could never be saved. She squatted at the stone hearthside like a stone herself, and watched the flames burn up her hopes, her chance of returning to the abbey, her chance of forgiveness. All night she watched and waited by the dying fire as a mother will watch by the bed of a dying child. All night Alys watched her future cool and crumble, and finally faced her despair. 'I'm lost,' she said softly, just once. All her plans – of escape from the castle, of return to an abbey, of the revival of the Church of Rome and a haven for her – they were all gone. Alys knew that she would never be an abbess nor even a novitiate again. She could not trust herself in a holy place. God had put his mark on her – as she had feared – during that panic-stricken run. She could not whisper in the confessional, she could not eat the sacred bread. Holy wine would curdle if she came close – and turn to blood. Holy water would ice over. The holy bread would rise up in her throat and choke her and if she vomited it out on the chancel steps they would all see, everyone would see, the wafer untouched by her soiled, sinful mouth. No abbess could miss the signs of a woman mired in sin, a woman given over to the devil. She could not coax nor lie her way back to sanctity. She could not confess and be absolved. She was in too deep. She was in too deep. She was black as the deeps of the river at midnight.

Alys breathed out a long, slow sigh of despair. The old life was gone indeed, as surely as Mother Hildebrande – and all her wisdom and love and kindness -was blown away on the moorland winds in a puff of white ash and charred gown. The old life was gone and Alys would never have it back.

She sat and mourned for it, for two long hours, with her eyes on the flames and the white consecrated wafer gleaming palely among the red hot embers. Alys watched it – unburned, not even charred – and knew she was far from Christ, and from His mother, and from her own mother, the abbess. She was as far away from them already as if she were in hell.

At that thought she paused and nodded. 'I'm damned,' she said wonderingly. 'Damned.' She had a moment of pity for herself. In quieter times, in an easier world, she would have made a good nun, a holy woman, a wise woman. As wise and beloved as her Mother Hildebrande. 'I'm damned,' Alys said again, tasting eternal judgement on her tongue. 'Damned without hope of forgiveness.'

She sat still for a few moments longer, then she reached for the fire tongs and hooked the unburned wafer out of the flames. It was cool to the touch. Alys looked at it and her face was stony in the presence of a miracle. Then she took it between her hands and tore and ground it until it broke into one, twenty, a thousand pieces, and she fed each little piece to the flames until they caught and burned and were gone. Alys smiled.

'Damned,' she said again, and this time it sounded like a direction for her to follow.

She knew now she would stay in the castle until she could see which way the wind blew for the old lord and for young Hugo. There could be no abbey, no convent in the future. Alys would be in the world forever and she would take her power in the world with her woman's strengths and the power of a woman damned to hell. She had to turn the eyes of Hugo from her. She had to make him lie with his wife. Catherine had to conceive. Any other outcome from today's black business would end badly for Alys, she knew. Her only chance of using the castle as a stepping stone to higher things, her only chance of escape, was to see the man she desired turn away from her and return to his wife. To watch her triumph, and to see a son in her arms.

Alys nodded, her face brightening in the firelight. If she could accomplish that – then she would be safe for months, even years. She was high in the old lord's favour, she would earn Catherine's gratitude. Between the two of them she might build a reputation which could take her to the highest houses in the land. Even if she only stayed with Lord Hugh and won his complete trust she would eat well and sleep warm and be free to travel when and where she wished. But Lady Catherine must conceive. If she did not conceive, and soon, she would look around her for a scapegoat. There would be another ordeal. And then another after that. And in an ordeal by water, or an ordeal with fire, or an ordeal with holy wine, in any one of them Alys would fail. And then she would face a nightmarish death.

'I have no way out,' she said softly to herself.

In the early hours of the morning, when the bakehouse was as dark as pitch, and reason and the learned code of morality at its lowest ebb, Alys leaned forward and pulled out the log which hid the candlewax figures.

With the cloak as a shield around her shoulders she ranged the three figures on the lap of her blue gown and started to chant the spell Morach had taught her. The words meant nothing to her but as she whispered them into the silence of the darkened bakehouse they seemed to shroud her in power, a new power, one she could claim as her own. The rhythm of the words was like a song. Alys said them over and over, three times, in a low monotone. As she said them she stroked the wax dolls with her fingers until the wax grew as warm as skin, and took the glow from the fire. Three more times Alys whispered the spell to them, and caressed them, and made them her own, then she thrust her hand into the purse at her girdle and brought out a twist of paper. Wrapped in it were three hairs. The long brown one Alys stuck on the head of the doll to represent Lady Catherine, the short black hair was from Hugo, and Alys had one long silver hair from the old lord's comb.

The dolls gleamed in the firelight, each one with a strand of hair, each one moving slightly as Alys stroked them and whispered to them, naming each one of them and claiming them for her own. The embers sighed and settled in the fireplace like the whisper of a ghost. In the dim firelight and the shadows of Alys leaned forward to see more clearly. The little wax torsos moved very, very slightly under her gentle fingertips. The dolls were breathing. They were alive.

Alys let out a little sigh of awe and fear. She leaned over them and looked at them more closely. Then she put the one to represent the old lord carefully down on the hearthstone. 'I want nothing from you,' she said softly to it. 'I want you to be well and strong. And I want you to care for me and protect me for as long as I wish to stay here. And then I want you to let me go.'