He paused. 'That must stop,' he said abruptly. 'Running around after the barren woman is too tiring for you. It must stop. Catherine can weep on someone else's shoulder.

'Hugo?' Hugo raised his face from studying his hands clenched on the table before him. The old man nodded. 'You see to it. Tell Catherine she may not disturb Alys. Alys can't wait on her any longer. Alys must not get overtired.' Hugo nodded. 'As you wish, Sire.' 'Aye, you're sour,' the old lord said gently. 'It's not to be wondered at. Nine years waiting and then nothing. But I tell you what, my boy. Our wager still stands. If Alys gives you a son I'll give you a thousand pounds. One son is as good as another when there's no choice. You shall still have your fortune. How's that?'

‘I thank you,' Hugo said. 'You are generous. But I wanted the money to finance the sailing of the ship. Alys' child will not be born until April. My friend will have found other, more eager backers by then.'

The old lord nodded, crumbled his bread thoughtfully. ‘I have some ideas I'll broach with you later, Hugo,' he said. 'You may find you have the money in time. I have a plan or two still in mind.'

Hugo managed a cold, sulky smile. 'You are a great schemer,' he said.

The old lord nodded. 'Music!' he said sharply to David. 'And send for someone to make us laugh. We are sick with melancholy over nothing. A barren woman is a disaster for no one but herself. Get me the new wine, the Flemish wine, and send to Castleton for tumblers or jugglers or a bear, for God's sake. Even a cockfight if there's nothing else to be had! I won't mourn for Catherine. I have new plans! Find someone to make me laugh!'

David nodded and snapped his fingers to one of the pages. He tossed a silver coin high into the air and the lad leaped for it and snatched at it and raced from the hall, the dogs barking and snapping at his heels at the sudden excitement. Half a dozen men scrambled from the benches and fetched their instruments, started to tune them discordantly and cursed each other in their hurry. Then they started to play and the serving-wenches got up to dance, a circle dance, an old village dance. Alys, remembering the music from her childhood, watched them, her foot tapping.

'Dance with them!' the old lord said. 'Take the ladies and dance with them!'

Alys flashed him a smile and beckoned to Eliza and Margery. They broached the circle and then joined in. One of the girls danced in the middle while the others circled her, then she chose a partner and they led the others around in pairs, then the second girl danced alone in the centre of the circle. The girls arched their necks and tossed their heads, conscious of the watching men. They stamped their feet in time to the music and when they took the long sweeping steps around the circle they put their hands on their hips and swayed seductively. Alys, her fair hair flying, danced with one eye on Hugo. When it was her turn in the centre of the circle she danced and bobbed with her head held up, her colour high, and the proud curve of her belly thrust forward. When he looked at her she smiled confidently at him.

He grinned, the blackness of mood lifted from him, the crease between his eyebrows vanished. With a word to his father he jumped down from the dais and broke into the circle. When the time came for Alys to choose a partner he stepped forward and there was a little ripple of applause. Following Hugo, the other men from around the hall stepped into the circle and danced too. The circle grew too wide for the space between the tables and broke into two circles, then four. The music grew louder and more insistent, the beat of the tambour more and more compelling. Alys, in her green gown, whirled in a spell of triumphant sensuality, Hugo leaping and dancing around her. When the music stopped in a cascade of bells she fell into his arms and he swept her off her feet and up to the dais.

Catherine, in her chamber above the hall, heard the music, the laughter, the shouts of applause for Alys, and the joyful thud of dancing feet. Sitting alone in her great bed with her dinner untasted before her she listened, while the fat tears rolled down her cheeks.


The old lord had a swathe of letters for Alys to write in the afternoon. She sat at the little table in the window, in her green gown with a green French hood covering her hair, a green shawl around her shoulders.

'You are like a hayfield in springtime,' the old lord said. 'I like watching you, Alys.' She smiled at him, saying nothing. 'Now to work,' he said briskly. He sat erect in his chair, one hand outstretched leaning on his cane. Without looking at Alys he reeled off a list of the men who were to receive his letters. Alys, dipping her quill into the inkpot, wrote as fast and as clearly as she could.

She forced herself to keep writing at the rapid speed of the old lord's speech. She forced herself to keep translating his curt, idiomatic English into classical Latin. She forced herself to keep her head down, to play the part of the loyal clerk, the doltish scribe; while Lord Hugh begged support from all of his friends currently holding high places in the King's court for his son's forthcoming divorce from his wife on the grounds of her being too close kin.

Six letters the old lord dictated, then he broke off. 'Father Stephen will have to write the letter to the Supreme Court,' he said. 'He will know how it has to be framed, the way the rhetoric has to be done, all of that clerkish nonsense.' 'Will he do it?' Alys asked doubtfully. Lord Hugh shot her a wicked grin. 'He has no choice, my dear. He is in my hands. I have given him, free of any charge, all the benefices in my lands. He is a worldly man, an ambitious man, as well as a fervent churchman. He has hitched his star to my Hugo, they are two of a kind. Hugo's rise will carry him upward as well. He knows the price – he is my man at the church courts.'

'And what will happen to Catherine?' Alys asked, her voice soft.

Lord Hugh shrugged. 'Lord knows,' he said carelessly. 'If it were the old days she could have gone into a nunnery. Now I don't know. She has no family to speak of. I suppose I might find someone to marry her. A widower with sons already who can afford a barren wife might do. She's a personable enough woman, and warm in bed, Hugo says. I'll give some of her dowry back. Or I could give her a little household somewhere in my lands. She could take a couple of her women and some servants.' He nodded. 'As she wishes. She'll be free to do as she pleases. If she does not stand against me she'll find me generous.'

'Does Hugo know of this?' Alys asked. The old lord shook his head. 'No; and he's not to know it from you either, my pretty wench. I'll tell him when I get my replies. If they're favourable we'll go ahead with this plan. Take these letters to David for me and tell him they're to be delivered at once. The messengers are to wait for the reply and come straight back. Tell him I'll give a silver shilling to every man who is prompt. And tell the messengers to neither eat nor drink within the city of London. There's plague in the town again, I don't want it brought back here.

'And then go and lie down. Rest. If Catherine calls you, tell her it is my wish that you rest in the afternoons.' Alys nodded, gathered up the papers and left.


She had not forgotten Mother Hildebrande. At noon, as Alys had smoothed her hair, looking in the mirror before going down to dinner, it was Mother Hildebrande's stern face she saw. She saw her mother, standing in the doorway of the little cottage, shading her eyes against the sun, looking downriver, scanning the riverside path, waiting confidently for the daughter she had found again, certain that she would come, trusting the strict training, the habit of discipline, and – more than anything else – trusting the love which was between the two women. She would wait for an hour, her old legs and her tired back aching. The path would stay empty. She would be puzzled at first – Alys the novice nun had never been late for any lesson, never scuttled in after the others to chapel. Then she would be afraid for her daughter – fearing a fall from the horse, or an accident, or danger for Alys. Then she would turn slowly back into the damp cottage to sit by the empty fireplace and put her hands together and pray for the soul of Alys who had not come, though she was bound by every oath in the world to come; who had failed in her duty to her God, who had failed her mother, the only person left in the world who loved her.

Alys could see Mother Hildebrande in her imagination when she heard the ripple of pleasure at midday dinner as she had come through the door to the hall, with her belly thrust forward, to take Catherine's place. When her food was put before her, Alys had a sudden vision of Mother Hildebrande struggling with damp firewood in Morach's cottage, and the dry taste of stale bread left from yesterday. Alys was aware of her when Hugo's dark scowl lightened and he drained his glass and jumped down to dance; even when his hand slid down her spine and rounded over her buttocks and Alys stood still and leaned into his caress, her long eyelashes sweeping down to hide the pretended arousal in her eyes.

When she translated the letters, using the skills Mother Hildebrande had taught her, part of Alys' mind was still with the old woman. The sides of the river-banks were steep now the river was at its low – she would not be able to get water. When the bread from yesterday was gone there would be nothing to eat unless she climbed the hill and begged from passers-by on the road. Alys thought of the woman she had loved as a mother, with her hand held out to strangers and her quiet dignity insulted by pedlars.

Alys gave the letters and the instructions to David, making special emphasis of the danger of London's plague, and went to her own room, shut the door, kicked off her shoes and lay down on her bed. She gazed upwards at the green and yellow tester like a ceiling above her head, elaborate, luxurious, expensive. She knew, as she had known from the moment when she sat at Mother Hildebrande's feet on Morach's dank earth floor, that she would not go back to live in the little hovel by the river. Alys would never again feel the empty-bellied misery of the poor in winter. Alys would never again break the ice on the river to pull out a bucket of stormy brown water. Alys would never again break her fingernails and bruise her hands scrabbling in frozen earth for icy turnips. Not if she could control her fate.