The old lord used her as his clerk still, but there were only a few letters he cared to write during his sickness, during Lent. But when she was sitting at the wide oriel window of the ladies' gallery on the Wednesday after Easter Day Alys saw a half-dozen homing pigeons winging in from the south, circling the castle in a broad determined swoop and then angling, like a flight of sluggish arrows, towards their coops on the roof of the round tower. It meant urgent news from London. Alys bobbed a curtsey to Catherine and left the ladies' gallery. She arrived at Lord Hugh's door as the messenger came down the stairs from the roof of the tower with the tiny scrap of paper in his hand. Alys followed him into the room. 'Shall I read it?' Alys asked. Lord Hugh nodded.

Alys unfurled the little scrap. It was written in Latin. 'I don't understand it,' Alys said. 'Read it,' Hugh said.

'It says: On Easter Tuesday the Spanish envoy refused an invitation to dine with the Queen. The King took mass with him and the Queen's brother was ordered to attend him: 'That all?'

'Yes,' Alys said. 'But what does it mean?' 'It means the Boleyn girl has fallen,' Lord Hugh said without regret. 'Praise God I am friends with the Seymours.'

He said it like an epitaph on a gravestone, and closed his eyes. Alys watched his hard, unforgiving face as he slept and wondered if Queen Anne yet knew that she was lost.

After that day there was little work for her in the castle except reading to the old lord and sitting with Catherine. She could not be trusted to sew an intricate pattern – she lacked attention, Catherine complained. She had lost her intuition for herbs and Catherine shivered at the touch of her cold fingers. Day after day Alys had less and less to do but watch and wait for Hugo – and then see him pass by her without noticing her in the shadows.

She grew thinner and she took to drinking more and more wine at dinner as the food stuck in her throat. It was the only thing which helped her sleep, and when she slept she dreamed long wonderful dreams of Hugo at her side, and his son in her arms, and a yellow gown slashed with red silk and a snow-white fur trim.

As snow turned to sleet and then rain, the ground grew softer. At the end of April the young lord rode out every dawn and did not come back till dusk. They had started digging the foundations for the new house and on the day they had completed the outline he came home early, at midday, dirty with mud, bursting into Catherine's gallery, where she was sewing a tapestry with Morach idly holding the silks on one side of her and Alys and Eliza and Ruth stitching at the border.

'You must come and see it!' Hugo said. 'You must, Catherine. And you shall see the rooms I have planned for you and for our son. She can come, can't she, Morach? She can ride the grey palfrey?'

His glance flickered past Alys to the older woman. Alys kept her eyes on her work but she could feel him near her as a trout can feel a fisherman's shadow.

'If it's a very quiet horse,' Morach replied. 'Riding will not harm either of them, but a fall could be fatal.'

'And all your ladies,' Hugo said expansively. 'All of them! You must be pining to go out – mewed up here like fat goshawks! Wouldn't you like to smell the moorland air again, Alys? Feel the wind in your face?' Catherine smiled at Alys. 'She won't leave your father,' she said. 'She is always with him or running errands for him. She can stay. And also Margery and Mistress Allingham. I will come, and Eliza and Ruth and Morach.'

'As you wish,' Hugo said readily. 'As you wish. We'll go tomorrow. I'll walk out with you today, after dinner.' He caught sight of Alys, face down-turned to her work. 'You don't begrudge us our pleasure, Alys?' He had a wish, as wilful as a teasing child, to see her face and her eyes and to hold her attention.

She did not look up at him. 'Of course not, my lord,' she said, her voice thin but steady. 'I hope you and my lady have a pleasant day.'

'You must be thirsty, my lord,' Catherine interrupted. 'Alys, call for some wine for my lord before you leave us. You are bid to go to Lord Hugh, are you not?' Alys rose to her feet and went to pull the bell. 'Is my father ill?' Hugo asked.

'Oh no,' Catherine reassured him. 'Alys does not tend his health now. She has lost her skill. Isn't that strange? Morach tends him now. But he likes Alys to read to him. Doesn't he, Alys?'

Alys shot a quick look at Hugo from under her eyelashes. 'Yes,' she said. 'May I go now?'

Hugo smiled, his eyes resting on her, his look thoughtful, and nodded her away. Alys, her eyes on the floor, her face pale, went out of the heavy door and closed it quietly behind her.

'Not long now,' Morach said, watching Hugo's eyes following Alys to the door. 'Not long now,' she said with malicious satisfaction. 'What?' Catherine demanded impatiently. Morach's grin was irrepressible. 'I said, not long now. I was thinking of a game I know.'

The old lord kept Alys with him after dinner, he had a letter by messenger from his cousin in London. The man had come slowly, overland up the Great North Road, travelling with others delayed by snowdrifts. The news he brought was a week old. But gossip and rumours have a long life. Lady Jane Seymour had been given her own apartments at Greenwich Palace – as grand as those of the Queen. Rochford, the Queen's brother, was not to be elected to the Garter. That honour was given elsewhere. The King had danced with Lady Jane Seymour all evening. The King and the Queen were to watch a May Day joust together but the court was seething with stories of a quarrel between the Queen and King when she had stripped the baby Princess Elizabeth naked and thrust her at him, demanding if he could find a flaw, a single flaw, on the chubby little body. Another perfect child would follow the first, she swore. But the King had turned away.

Alys read the letter to him and then burned it when he nodded to the fire. There was also a letter from the College of Heralds. Lord Hugh wanted to add a quartering to his shield to greet his new grandson. There was a precedent for the honour in Catherine's family and the old lord and the college were haggling about the justice of the claim and the price that would have to be paid for the added lustre to Hugh's name. He shook his head at their demands. 'I must watch my ambition,' he said. 'See what ambition is doing to the Boleyns, Alys. The safest place to be is halfway down the hall. Not too near the top table.'

There was a lease sent from the Bowes manor for his inspection. A tenant was resisting a change of his holding from entry and occasional fines to an annual rent. He wanted to pay his fines in goods but the castle was hungry for cash. Alys read the medieval Latin of the lease slowly, stumbling over the archaic words. Lord Hugh watched the flames in the fireplace, nodding first with concentration and then with weariness, and then his eyes slowly closed. Alys read on a few sentences more and then softly laid down the parchment and looked at him. He was fast asleep.

She rose quietly from her chair and went softly to the arrow-slit in the westward wall and looked out. Below her on the far side of the river-bank she could see Lady Catherine walking awkwardly, wrapped in furs, one hand on Hugo's arm. He was leaning towards her so that he could hear what she said above the rushing of the water. Even at that distance Alys could see Catherine's adoring gaze up at Hugo and her smile.

The old lord was dozing behind Alys, the fire crackled in the grate. Alys watched how Hugo leaned towards Catherine and how he helped her across the muddy parts of the path. At a distance Morach followed, with a basket on her arm and Eliza Herring walking at her side. The other ladies must have stayed indoors. Behind them were two armed servants on horseback. Hugo was taking no chances with the safety of his wife and unborn son.