'I am ill,' she said aloud.

If she was ill then Catherine would not insist that they share a bed, Lord Hugh would not threaten her. If she was ill and in her own bed then no one could blame her when Mother Hildebrande rushed upon martyrdom without Alys saying one word to save her. No one could blame Alys for Mother Hildebrande's hunger for sainthood, especially if Alys were ill.

'I am ill,' she said again with more conviction. 'Very ill.'

She walked slowly up the steps to the ladies' gallery and opened the door.

It was empty and quiet. Mary was sitting at the fireside, stitching some plain work. She laid it aside when Alys walked in and bobbed her a curtsey.

'Lady Catherine has been asking for you, my Lady Alys,' she said pleasantly. 'Shall I tell her you are here? Or should you lie down?'

Alys looked at her with dislike. 'I will see Lady Catherine,' she said. 'She was disturbed when she looked from her window and saw you flirting with her husband in the courtyard.'

Mary gave a little gasp of surprise. 'The young Lord Hugo will take his pleasures where he wishes,' Alys said distantly. 'But do not flaunt yourself, Mary. If you distress Lady Catherine she will turn you out of the castle.'

Mary's cheeks were blazing. 'I am sorry, my lady,' she said. 'It was just words and laughter.'

Alys' look was as sour as if she had never heard words or laughter, or seen Hugo's hot, merry smile. 'If your humour is lascivious you had better avoid the young lord,' she said coldly. 'It would go very ill for you indeed if you offend his wife. You told me yourself your father is poor and out of work. I suppose it would be difficult for all of them at home if you returned without your wages and without hope of work in service again.'

Mary dipped her head. 'I beg your pardon, my lady,' she said humbly. 'It won't happen again.'

Alys nodded and went into Catherine's room, the taste of spite very sweet and full in her mouth.

Catherine was dressed, sitting in a chair by the window, looking out over the courtyard and the garden, the sun-drenched wall of the inner manse and the tops of the apple trees in the outer manse. The smooth round prison tower stood like a dark shadow behind the little bakehouse. Alys, looking past Catherine out of the window, saw nothing else.

'How well you are looking, Catherine!' Alys said. Her voice was high and sharp, the words a babble. 'Are you feeling better?'

Catherine's face when she turned to Alys was bleak with sorrow. The old hard lines had reappeared from the rosy plumpness of pregnancy.

‘I just saw you in the garden,' she said. 'Talking to the old lord.' Alys nodded, her face alert.

‘I have been a fool,' Catherine said suddenly. ‘I called your girl in here and asked her if you were with child and she curtsied to me and said, "Yes, my lady," as if it were a known fact, as if everyone knew!' Alys drew up a chair and sat down. 'Is it Hugo's?' Catherine asked fiercely. 'Is it Hugo's child? I must have been blind not to see it before. When you walked across the garden I could see how you thrust your belly forward. Are you with child, Alys? Hugo's child?' Alys nodded. 'Yes,' she said quietly. Catherine opened her mouth wide and began to cry soundlessly. Great drops of tears rolled down her sallow face. She cried shamelessly like a hurt child, her mouth gaping wide. Alys could see the white unhealthy furring on her tongue and the blackness of one bad tooth. Catherine snatched a breath and swallowed her grief. 'From when?' she asked.

'June,' Alys said precisely. ‘I will give birth in April. I am three months pregnant now.'

Catherine nodded, and kept nodding, like a little rocking doll. 'So it was all lies,' she said. She took a scrap of linen from her sleeve and mopped at her wet face, still nodding. 'You will not come with me to the farm, that was all lies. You will stay here and have Hugo's child and hope to rise higher and higher into his favour and into the favour of the old lord.' Alys said nothing.

Catherine gulped back sobs like a carp bubbling in the fish ponds. 'And while I thought that you would come to love me and that you were pledged to live with me you were scheming to have me sent away so that you and Hugo could romp together in public,' Catherine said, nodding wildly. 'You have shamed me, Alys. You have shamed me before the whole castle, before the whole town, before the country. I thought that you were my friend, that you would choose me instead of Hugo. But all this morning when I was talking with you and planning our life together you were playing with me. Scheming to have me sent away.'

Alys sat still as a rock. She felt the high flood-tide of Catherine's anger and grief wash around her but leave her dry.

'You have betrayed me,' Catherine said. 'You are a false friend. You are untrue.' She choked on another rich sob. 'You act the whore with Hugo and you are sweet as a daughter to the old lord,' she said. 'You play the false friend with me and you queen it among my women. There is no truth in you, Alys. Nowhere is there a scrap of honour or truth. You are meaningless, Alys, meaningless!'

Alys, her eyes on the round tower without windows, inclined her head. What Catherine said was probably true. 'Meaningless'. What would they be doing with Mother Hildebrande in there now? Alys rose to her feet. 'I am not well,' she said. 'I am going to my chamber to rest before supper.'

Catherine looked up at her pitifully, her sallow face wet with her tears. 'You say nothing to me?' she asked. 'You will leave me here as I am, grieved and angry? You do not defend yourself, you do not even try to explain your false faith? Your disloyalty? Your dishonour?'

Alys glanced towards the round tower once more as she turned to the door. 'Disloyalty?' Alys repeated. 'Dishonour?' She gave a shrill little laugh. 'This is nothing, Catherine! Nothing!'

'But you have lied to my face,' Catherine accused her. 'You promised to be my friend, promised to be my lover. I know you are false.'

Alys shrugged. ‘I am unwell,' she said flatly. 'I am too ill. You will have to bear your pain, Catherine. I cannot be responsible. It is too much for me.'

Catherine's face grew pale. 'Are you sick as I was?' she demanded. 'Is his child turning rotten inside you, as mine did? Is that all that Hugo can father? Candlewax?' Alys' dream of the maggot-filled roadside and then the little dolls hastening to Castleton, seeking their mother, rose very vividly in her mind. She blinked hard and shook her head to rid herself of the walking dolls. 'No,' she said. She put her hands on her belly as if to hold the baby safe. 'My baby is whole and well,' she said. 'Not like yours.'

That gesture – the simple gesture of pregnancy -broke Catherine's anger into grief. 'Alys! I forgive you! I forgive you everything! The deceit and the lies, the shame you have laid on me. Your infidelity with my husband! I forgive you if you will come with me. They will have me thrown out of the castle, I shall have to go. Come with me, Alys! We will look after your son together. He will be my child as well as yours. I will make him my heir! My heir, Alys. Heir to the manor that they will give me and my dowry which they will return. You will be rich with me. You will be safe with me and so will your son!'

For a moment Alys hesitated, weighing the odds, scanning her chances. Then she shook her head. 'No, Catherine,' she said coldly. 'You are finished. Here in the castle they are finished with you and will be rid of you. Hugo will never touch you again. The old lord will never see you. I was playing with your desires to get you to leave without making an uproar, and to do my lord a service in furthering his ends. I never meant to go with you. I never wanted your love.'

Catherine's hands were over her mouth. Her wide eyes stared at Alys over her spread fingers. 'You're cruel!' she said disbelievingly. 'Cruel! You came to my bed with Hugo, you held me in your arms this very morning! You nursed me in my sickness and kept my secret safe.'

Alys shrugged and opened the door. 'It meant nothing,' she said coldly. 'You mean nothing. You should have drowned in the river that day, Catherine. All the destinies are coming homeward like evil pigeons. She will burn, and you will drown. There is no escaping your fate, Catherine. There is no escape for her.'

Catherine looked around wildly. 'What d'you mean, Alys? What fate? And who will burn?'

Alys' face was sour and weary. 'Just go, Catherine,' she said. 'Your time is finished here. Just go.'

She closed the door on Catherine's wail of protest and went across the ladies' gallery. The other women had come in from the garden and were taking off their head-dresses and combing through their hair, complaining of the heat. Alys went through them all like a cold shadow.

'What ails my lady?' Ruth asked, as they heard Catherine's cries and saw Alys resentful face. 'Shall I go to her?'

Alys shrugged. 'She's to leave the castle,' she said succinctly. 'My lord has ordered it. She's to be set aside, the marriage annulled.'

There was a moment's silence and then an explosion of chatter. Alys threw her hands up to fend off the hysterical questions. 'Ask her yourself! Ask her yourself!' she said. 'But remember when you give her your service that she's soon to be a farmer on a little manor at the back end of nowhere. She's Lady Catherine no more.'

Alys smiled at the sudden stillness in the room. Each one of them was silent, fearful for their own future. Slowly, one after another, they looked to her.

'I will wash before supper,' Alys said composedly. 'Eliza, order a bath for me. Margery, order them to light a fire in my bedroom. Ruth, please mend my blue gown, I kicked out the hem the other day when I was walking upstairs. Mary -' she looked around. The girl was standing by the chamber door, her eyes cast down, the picture of the perfect maidservant. 'Lay out my linen, I will wear a fresh shift.'