'And your chaplain,' she urged. 'Father Stephen. He is a holy man, and a true servant of yours. I ask for nothing more than my safety and your safety and the safety of Lord Hugo. If she is a witch as I think then she should be taken, my lord. Taken and tested and strangled.'

'This is nonsense…' the old lord started. 'Wind and women's malice… When Hugo comes he will explain all.' He gathered his strength. 'And you will say nothing,' he ordered. 'You will hold your tongue. I permit you to stay but if you speak I will have you thrown from my chamber. I can do that, Madam, remember it.' 'I'll be silent,' she promised readily. 'But ask him one thing before you release him and before you believe the lies he will tell for her.' 'What?' he grunted.

'Ask him how you are to die,' Catherine said, her voice strong with spite. 'The witch foretold your death as well as her triumph over me. She said you will die next year.' Lord Hugh gasped.

'Who should know better?' Catherine asked silkily. 'She gives you your medicine, she handles your herbs. She is by your side when you are ill. If she did not hex you outright she could poison you. And now she has promised him your death.'

Lord Hugh shook his head. 'She is my vassal,' he said, half to himself. 'She is my little maid.'

'But what if she were suborned?' Catherine said quickly. 'What an enemy she would make against you! Think where you have put her, my lord! You have raised her as high as David, your confidant! She knows all your secrets, she nurses you. If she were turned against you by ambition, or lust…' The door opened and Hugo came in. Catherine whirled around at the sight of him and fled behind the old lord's chair. With her hand resting on the high back of the chair and her eyes fixed on her husband's face it looked as if the two of them were united against him.

The young lord took in the scene in one rapid glance and beamed in mockery at the sight of his wife's white face.

'Why, Catherine, we meet again,' he said pleasantly. Then he took two swift strides forward and knelt before his father. 'My liege,' he said. 'I'm told you sent for me. I hope I have not kept you waiting?'

The old lord put out his hand and rested it for a moment on his son's dark curly head. Catherine's sharp eyes saw he trembled slightly.

'The Lady Catherine has brought me some troubling news,' he said softly. 'And she has named Alys, my clerk, as a witch. She says you are bewitched, Hugo.'

Hugo got to his feet and shot Catherine a merry glance. 'I think there is no witchcraft here but the magic of a maid,' he said. 'You should not have troubled my father with a quarrel between us, Catherine. It would go ill for you if I ran to him every time I have a complaint against you.'

She took a breath at the warning tone in his voice, but the old lord silenced her with a gesture.

it's no jesting matter,' he said flatly. 'Catherine says that Alys promised to conceive your son and that I will die. Is this true?'

Hugo hesitated. 'She did not know what she was saying…'

'Was she in a trance?' The old lord leaned forward, his face grave.

'No.' Hugo hesitated. 'The maid was drunk, or half asleep. It was the wine talking.'

'Witches can use wine to give them the Sight,' the old lord warned. 'Did she know you?'

Hugo hesitated, remembered Alys' confident chuckle and the warmth of her voice as she said 'none better'.

'I don't know,' he said. His mind was racing to see a safe way out for Alys. 'I don't know, Sir. I spoke with her very little.'

'When was this?' the old lord asked. Catherine, restrained by her promise to be silent, leaned forward as if she would suck the words from her husband's mouth. 'Yesterday, after the Twelfth Night supper,' Hugo said unwillingly. 'When I took her to her room – at your command, my lord, you remember. She was drunk.'

Catherine nodded. The old lord shot a look at her over his shoulder. 'Stand a little further off, Catherine,' he said. 'And remember your promise to hold your tongue.'

Hugo's eyes narrowed. 'My Lady Catherine has perhaps mistaken some words I said to her in the heat of a quarrel,' he said to his father. 'It would ill become me to tell you what she said, or did in the darkness of the stairway. Let it suffice that she struck me, and abused me, and angered me and I was perhaps too harsh with her. She begged me to take her like a whore on the stairs and I was offended to see my lady – and your daughter-in-law – hold herself so cheap.' There was a little gasp of horror from Catherine at Hugo's calculated betrayal. 'There is more, Sir, and it is worse,' Hugo said pointedly. 'But I will not weary you with it. I am prepared to ask her forgiveness, and let this quarrel end here.'

The old lord cocked an eyebrow at Catherine. 'Is this all there is?' he asked. 'If Hugo begs your pardon, and makes amends to you as a husband,' he stressed the word 'amends' and the heat of Catherine's constant desire rose up in her sallow cheeks, 'then is the quarrel ended, and Alys can work for me. She need not serve as a lady in your rooms if you have taken against her, Catherine. And Hugo need not see her.'

'No,' Lady Catherine said with an effort. 'Not until Father Stephen has heard this, my lord. And not until we have heard from Eliza.'

At the old lord's frown she leaned forward. 'Lord Hugo says it is naught but a quarrel – but that is the witchcraft speaking,' she said urgently. 'Of course he would try to protect her! We have to inquire further, not just to protect him, but to protect you, my lord. It was your death she foretold.'

The old man crossed himself. 'Send for Eliza,' he said to his son. 'And send for the priest.'

Hugo shrugged as if the trouble were hardly worth it and then he opened the door of his father's room and shouted 'Holloa!' down the stone steps to the guardroom. One of the lads came running. 'Fetch Eliza Herring and Father Stephen,' he said.

The three of them waited in awkward silence until the tire-woman and the priest came in. Lord Hugh scowled impartially at them both.

'I have called you, priest, to listen to a discourse,' he said. 'It seems we have need of your wisdom.'

Father Stephen nodded solemnly, his dark, intense glance taking in Catherine's high colour, and Hugo's concealed rage. Eliza shrank back as near to the door as she could, in a white-faced trance of guilt.

'It's all right, Eliza,' the old lord said kindly. 'No one is accusing you of anything.'

She was trembling so much she could hardly speak. Her black eyes shot from the young lord to her stony mistress.

'All we need is for you to tell the truth,' the old lord said gently. 'Whatever you tell us – whatever it is, Eliza – you are under my protection. You can tell the truth.'

'Put her on oath,' Lady Catherine said, trying to speak without opening her mouth.

The old lord nodded and Hugo shot a look at his wife, measuring her courage that she dared speak when she had been ordered to silence.

'On oath then,' the old lord said. He nodded to the priest who stepped forward to the table by the little window and brought a bible forward.

'Do you promise on the Holy Book, on the sacred life of Jesus Christ and His holy Mother and God the Father to tell the truth?' he asked Eliza. 'Remember that the power of the devil is very strong in these disturbed times. You have to be on the side of God or surrender yourself to hell. Will you tell the truth?' 'Amen,' Eliza muttered. 'I promise. Oh God!' 'Tell us what took place when Lord Hugo carried Alys from the hall last night,' the old lord said. 'And tell us everything. And remember you will roast in hell if you lie.'

Eliza crossed herself and shot a quick scared glance at Hugo. He was watching her impassively. She shuddered in her fright. 'The young lord told me to go with the two of them,' she started. Then she stopped like a sweating filly on a twitch.