Eliza licked her lips. 'We peeped,' she said. 'We opened the door really and she had the curtain drawn across it so they didn't know. I peeped around the curtain, I thought I could say we were worried for her if they caught me. Catch me! They wouldn't have noticed if we'd danced in singing.'

'What was he doing?' Alys asked. She was very white. 'He had made her kneel before him,' Eliza said, her voice a delighted whisper. 'He had his cock out and he was hard as a spear -I saw it! And he was rubbing it all over her face, her eyes, her ears, her hair, everywhere. And rubbing himself on her neck and the front of her nightgown.'

Alys was very still, she was thinking of the little dolls and the obscene dance she had made them do before she had tied them together with the ribbon.

'He ripped her gown,' Eliza said. 'And she just knelt there and let him do what he wanted. And he rubbed himself against her breasts. She was shameless. She was there with her gown ripped to her navel and her arms tight around his bum just moaning and moaning for more.'

Alys put a hand to her forehead, she was cold and wet. 'And then?' she asked. 'I suppose he had her?' Eliza shook her head. 'Worse,' she said. 'What?' Alys said.

'He told her to get on the bed and spread herself wide,' Eliza whispered. Alys shut her eyes briefly.

'She looked disgusting!' Eliza said in delighted shock. 'She stuck her legs right out and she opened herself with her hands.'

Alys shook her head. 'Oh, enough, Eliza! I don't want to know.'

Eliza was unstoppable. 'And he climbed on the bed and he rammed inside her as if he hated her,' she said in an awed whisper. 'Then he pulled out again and walked away.' 'What happened?' Alys asked.

'She screamed,' Eliza said. 'She screamed when he thumped in and then she screamed again when he pulled out. She was writhing on the bed like a barrel of eels. She was wild! She kept begging him and begging him to do it to her.'

'Did he?' Alys asked tersely.

Eliza shook her head. 'Not properly, not like she wanted. Over and over again he went to the bed and mounted her once, and then pulled away. And again and again she screamed for more. Then he made her get off the bed.' Alys waited in silence.

'He made her strip naked and tear her shift into pieces,' Eliza said. 'Then he told her to knot the pieces into a rope.'

'Good God!' Alys said impatiently. 'Why did you not stop him? Why did you not at least call to her?'

Eliza looked at her. 'Don't you know?' she asked. 'Are you so cold that you don't know that? She was loving it. She wanted him to treat her like that. She wanted to be his brood mare, his whipped dog. She was not his wife; she was his whore.'

Alys sat very still and let the echo of her spell wash over her and around her. She wondered how deep an evil she had done.

'He made her crawl up and down the floor,' Eliza said. 'He made her crawl on her hands and knees. He tied the shift over her eyes so she could not see and he made her crawl around. Sometimes he entered her from behind, sometimes he went to her head and forced her mouth on to him. And whatever he did,' – Eliza's voice was soft with delighted shock – 'she cried for more.'

'All night?' Alys asked coldly. She was thinking of the two dolls tied together and then their abrupt falling apart.

Eliza shook her head. 'He took the blindfold off her and he put it around his own back,' she said. 'He did it around her so they were bound together. Then he lifted her up and lowered her on to him.'

Alys could feel vomit again rising in her throat from her empty belly.

'She screamed,' Eliza said.' A long really loud scream, as if he had really hurt her that time. And the two of them dropped to the floor and he humped her on the rushes until her back bled.'

Alys hawked and spat into the embers of the fire. 'Give me some ale, Margery,' she said softly. 'This story of Eliza's makes me sick to my very heart.'

'It's done,' Eliza said with quiet triumph. 'The story's done. I said you should have been here.'

Alys sipped the ale. It was warm and stale from standing all night in the pitcher. 'Did he spend the night in her bed?' she asked, but she already knew the answer. Eliza shook her head. 'He untied the rope when he had done with her and sprang away from her as if he hated her,' she said. 'Lady Catherine was still lying on the floor and he slapped her – one cheek and then the other – and then he pulled up his breeches and left her, like that. With her back all bruised and bloody and his hand print on both her cheeks.'

Alys nodded. 'And is she grieved?' she asked, detached.

Eliza shook her head. 'She was singing this morning when I took her cup of ale in to her. She had her hands on her belly and she told me she is sure she has conceived a child. She is sure she is going to bear him a son. She has begged her way into paradise and she is content.' Alys nodded and sipped at the ale again. 'Good,' she said. 'Hugo is back with his wife, his wife is carrying his child. Neither of them will trouble me, I am spared her foul jealousy and his dangerous lusts. I can do what I ought to do – clerk for my lord and keep him and his household well.'

She got up from the stool and shook the dust from her gown. 'It has a bitter taste,' she said quietly to herself. 'I never knew it had a bitter taste.'

'What has?' asked Eliza. 'The ale? It should be sweet enough.'

'Not the ale,' Alys replied. 'The taste of victory.'

It was bitterly cold all February. The river froze into great long slabs of grey and white ice. When the ladies walked along the path beside the river they could see the water dashing along beneath the thick skin. Alys shuddered and drew as far back as the snowy banks would allow. In the second week a thick mist blew across the moors from the south-west and the women stayed indoors for one long winter day after another. It was dark when they woke, then pale and cloudy and brooding all day, then dark again at three in the afternoon. Sounds were muffled in the fog and from the window in the gallery you could not see the river below – from the old lord's room high in the round tower you could neither see nor hear the castle courtyard.

Alys spent all the time she could with the old lord in his little room in the tower. It was warm there and the lord and his steward David were quiet easy company. She wrote as she was bid, restrained condolences to the Princess Mary for the death of her mother, the Dowager Princess Catherine of Aragon, she read to the old lord from bawdy, unlikely Romances and listened to his anecdotes and memories of battles and jousting and of the time when he was young and strong and Hugo had not even been born.

The mood in the women's gallery above the great hall was ominous. Lady Catherine plunged from hysterical gaiety, when she commanded the women to play and sing and dance, into a deep sullen anxiety when she would sit at her loom without weaving and sigh. The women bickered among themselves with the fretful irritation of caged animals. And once or twice a week, like a water-wheel turning against its will, Lord Hugo would come to the women's chamber, bearing a jug of mead.

The evening would start merrily enough, with the women dancing and Lady Catherine in a flutter of excitement. Hugo would drink deep, his jokes would grow more bawdy. He would grab Eliza if she was within reach and fondle her openly, before his wife and the other ladies. Then he would up-end the jug and fling it towards the fireplace, take Lady Catherine by her wrist and drag her off to the bedchamber. As the women tidied the room, sweeping up the broken pottery and setting the glasses to one side on the cupboard, they would hear Catherine's loud shrieks of pain and then her gasping unrestrained sobs of pleasure. At two in the morning, without fail, Hugo would loose his wife from the rope of linen which he always tied around them, and stagger, blear-eyed and foul-tempered, for his own bed.