'From him,' she said, nodding at the back of Hugo's chair. 'He served it for you under the nose of his wife. He has given you the front door. By – you're playing a dangerous game, Alys.'

When the eating was done, and there was nothing on the tables but the voider course of dried fruit and hippocras wine, David stood behind the lord's chair and called one man after another up to the dais for Lord Hugh to give him a gift or a purse of coins. Hugo sat at his father's right hand, occasionally leaning forward with a word. Lady Catherine sat on Lord Hugh's left, smiling her meaningless, small smile. She had given and received her gifts with her women on New Year's Day and she had nothing for any of the castle servants nor for the soldiers. The line of servants and soldiers went on and on. There were a round four hundred of them. Alys, at the women's table at the rear of the dais, unable to see, dozed after the revelry of the Christmas days and the sleepless fortnight which preceded them.

'It's dull this,' Eliza whispered mutinously to her. 'Everywhere else does gifts on New Year's Day. It's only Lord Hugh who is too mean to gather everyone for a feast twice in the bad season!' Alys nodded, uncaring.

'Let's have another jug of wine!' Eliza suggested. She flapped her hand at a passing serving-wench. Margery frowned. 'You'll get drunk,' she said.

'I don't care!' Eliza said. 'It's the last day of the feast. She won't want us tonight. She'll dress in her best nightgown and lie wakeful all night in her chamber in case the wine has roused Hugo's lust.' 'Hush,' Ruth said with her usual caution. Eliza giggled and poured from the new jug. 'Maybe his Christmas gift to her is a decent tupping at last,' she whispered.

Margery and Mistress Allingham collapsed into scandalized laughter. Ruth shot an apprehensive backwards look at their mistress. Alys sipped from her glass. She liked the smell of wine. They had set glassware on the women's table today in honour of the feast and Alys liked the feel of the cool glass against her lips. At Morach's she had drunk from earthenware or horn, and in the castle she drank from pewter. She had not had the touch of glass against her lips since the nunnery. This wine tasted of itself, without a tang of ill-cleaned metal, the glassware was light and thin, appetizing. Alys sipped again. The drunkenness and the barbarity of the feast days had floated past her. No one had snatched her in a dark corner and tried for a kiss, she had danced with no one. The old lord watched for her, and when a soldier approached her for a dance, the old lord scowled at him and David waved him away. Lady Catherine smiled her thin smile at that and leaned back towards the women's table.

'In the spring we will dance at your wedding, Alys,' she said, her voice acid-sweet. She glanced towards the young man who had gone back to his place. 'That was Peter – a bastard son of one of Lord Hugo's officers. He is the one I have chosen for you. Don't you think I have chosen well?'

Alys looked down the hall towards him. He was well enough, slim, brown-haired, brown-eyed, young. She had seen him stab a knife into a dying dog at the bear-baiting. She had seen him screaming with excitement at the cock-fighting. She thought of what her life would be like as his wife, bound forever to a man with that perilous streak of excitement at the sight of pain.

'Very well, my lady,' she said. She smiled deceitfully into Lady Catherine's face. 'He seems a fine man. Has his father told him?'

'Yes,' Lady Catherine said. 'We must persuade the old lord to find a proper clerk to replace you, and then you can be married. Maybe at Easter.'

'Very well,' Alys said softly and lowered her eyes to her plate so that Lady Catherine could not see the gleam of absolute refusal.

Alys sipped her wine again. All through the days of feasting and the nights of drunken games she had felt the young lord watching her. Lady Catherine watched her too. Alys rested the cold glass against her cheek. She had to break the net, the net that the three of them, the old lord, the young lord and the shrew, had all cast around her. She had to take her power, she had to make the little dolls come alive and dance to her bidding.

Above the table – as it was Christmas – the waiting-women had pure wax candles in the candelabra. On the table was a silver candle-holder with pale, honey-coloured candles. Alys watched the bobbing yellow flame and the pure transparency of the wax. There was the slightest hint of sweetness in the vapour. These were pure beeswax candles. A memory flickered to the surface of Alys' mind and she winced as she realized that the candles would have been made by the nuns at the abbey with beeswax from the abbey hives.

Eliza poured more wine in her glass and she drank again.

In her purse tied on the girdle at her waist were the three candlewax dolls. They knocked against her gently when she moved. Alys had been tempted to fling them from her window down the steep side of the castle to smash against the rocks and tumble into the river below. It was death to be found carrying them and she was too afraid to hide them anywhere in the castle. She had not yet found the courage, or the desperation, to use them. She held to them like a talisman, like a final weapon which would be ready to her hand if their time ever came.

The tart cool taste of the clary wine flooded into her mouth and washed through her. I must be getting drunk, Alys thought to herself. All the voices seemed to come from a long way away, the faces around the table seemed to flicker in a haze. 'I wish…' Alys said thickly. Eliza and Margery nudged each other and giggled. 'I wish I was Lady Catherine,' Alys slurred. Ruth, the quiet one, glanced behind her to see that the two lords, watched by Lady Catherine, were still paying out gifts. 'Why?' she asked.

'Because… ' Alys said slowly. 'Because… ' she stopped again. 'I should like to have a horse of my own,' she said simply. 'And a gown which was a new gown – not belonging to someone else. And a man…'

Eliza and Margery exploded with laughter. Even Ruth and Mistress Allingham tittered behind their hands.

'A man who left me alone,' Alys said slowly. 'A man who was bound to me and wed to me, but a man who would leave me alone.'

'Not much of a wife you'll make!' Eliza said laughing. 'Poor Peter will get short commons I reckon.'

Alys had not heard her. 'I want more than ordinary women,' she said sorrowfully. 'I want so much more.'

All the women were laughing openly now. Alys, with her heavy gable hood sliding back off her mop-head of curls and her serious pale face, was exquisitely funny. Her deep blue eyes were staring unfocused at the candles. The young Lord Hugo, who now carried an awareness of Alys like a sixth sense, glanced back and took in the scene with one quick look.

'Your young clerk seems the worse for her wine,' he said softly to his father.

The old lord glanced back. David demanded his attention for another of the soldiers coming up for his gift.

'Get them to take her to her room,' he said briefly to the young lord. 'Before she pukes on her gown and shames herself.'

Hugo nodded and pushed his chair back from the table. Lady Catherine had not heard the soft-voiced exchange and glanced up in surprise. 'My father has an errand for me, I'll only be a moment,' he said softly to her, and then he turned towards the women. 'Come, Alys,' he said firmly.

Alys looked up. Against the candlelight of the hall his face was shadowed. She could see the gleam of his smile. There was a ripple among the women like a flurry in a hen-coop when a fox gets in the door.

'I'll escort you to my lady's rooms,' he said firmly. 'You,' he nodded at Eliza. 'Come too.'

Alys got slowly to her feet. Magically the floor beneath her rolled and melted away. Lord Hugo caught her as she swayed forward and lifted her up. He nodded at Eliza who drew back the tapestry and opened the little door at the back of the dais. They stepped out into the lobby behind the hall, and up the shallow stone steps to Lady Catherine's rooms above. Eliza flung the door wide and Hugo strode into the gallery carrying Alys.