'I am not hungry,' she said briefly. 'I will ask Hugo to send me something to my room later.' She rose from the table and went to the high table, to the old lord.

'I wish to leave the table,' she said softly in his ear. 'I have some pains and I feel sick. I wish to go to my room.'

The look he turned on her was kindly enough, but he smiled as if he could see straight into her heart. 'Don't be envious, vixen,' he said softly. 'You come second to Catherine. We always told you that. Go and sit at your place and drink and eat from pewter. She will keep to her room again some time and you can queen it up here then. But when she chooses to eat with us in the hall where she belongs, you take your place at the women's table – where you belong.'

Alys glanced across at Hugo. He was listening to some jest a man was shouting to him from a table further down the hall. He caught the end of the riddle and threw back his dark head in a shout of laughter.

'No,' the old lord said, following her glance. 'There is no appeal against my decision. I am master here still, Alys. Go and sit where you are bid.'

Alys smiled her sweetest smile. 'Of course, my lord,' she said. 'I did not wish to spoil the good cheer and merry company at the ladies' table with my illness. But if you wish it, of course I will sit with them.'

Lord Hugh glanced back at the table and barked a sharp laugh at the four sour faces. They were straining to hear what Alys and the old lord were whispering about.

'Oh, go your ways,' he said indulgently. ‘I will spare you the merry cheer of that crew. Go to your room now, but another time you must sit with the silly bitches.'

Alys dipped him a curtsey and slipped out through the tapestry-hung door behind them. She caught Eliza's eye as she left and remembered her first dinner in the castle when they had told her that no one could leave before the lord.

'Things are better for me now than they were then,' Alys said to herself grimly. She mounted the stairs to the ladies' gallery, pushed open the door and pulled up a chair before the fire. 'It is better for me now than in Morach's ugly cottage.' She threw another log on the fire and sat watching the sparks fly. 'I have forced them to see me for what I am,' she said defiantly to herself. 'I came here as a nobody and now they call me Mistress Alys and I have twelve gowns of my own. I have as many new gowns as Catherine.'

The quietness of the room gathered around her. ‘I have forced them to see me for what I am,' Alys said again. She was silent for a moment, watching the flames.

'They see me as his whore,' she said softly. 'Today I became Hugo's whore. And everybody knows.'

Twenty-four

Alys was alone in her bedroom when the others came up to the gallery. She heard them talking and laughing, she heard the clink of jug on pewter. She sat by her little fireside, her door firmly shut, and listened to them playing a card game as Eliza sang. Then the chatter died down as one by one the women excused themselves and went to their room. Alys listened for Hugo's voice and heard him call 'Goodnight' to one of them. She sat by her fireside and waited. He did not come to her.

In the early hours of the morning, when the darkness was still thick and the moon was setting in the west, Alys wrapped a shawl around her and crept across her floor to the door. She opened it and peeped out. The fire in the long gallery had died down, the ashes cold. Catherine's door was shut. There was no sound.

Alys paused for a moment by the hearth and remembered the time when she had sat there absorbed in her longing for Hugo and he had come from Catherine's room and put his arm around her and told her that he loved her. Alys shrugged. It was a long, long time ago. Before Morach's death, before her deep magic had come to claim her, before she had played the wanton with him – and had him take her at her word.

She crept to Catherine's door and turned the handle gently. Opening it a crack, she could hear deep rhythmic breathing. She slid through the door like a ghost and peered into the room. The room was dark. All the candles were out and the fire had died away in the darkened grate. The little window faced the castle courtyard and garden and no moonlight shone. Alys blinked her eyes, trying to see through the shadows.

In the great high bed was Catherine, sprawled on her back with her high belly making a mountain of the covers. One arm was thrown carelessly above her head; Alys could see the thick clump of dark hair in her armpit. The other arm was cradling the man lying beside her. Alys stepped a little closer to see. It was Hugo. He was deep asleep, lying on his side with his head buried into Catherine's neck, his arm thrown proprietorially over her body. They lay like a married couple. They lay like lovers. Alys watched them without moving while they breathed steadily and peacefully. She watched them as if she would suck the breath out of their bodies and destroy them with the weight of her jealousy and disappointment. Hugo stirred in his sleep and said something. It was not Alys' name.

Catherine smiled, even in the darkness Alys could see the calm joy of Catherine's sleepy smile, and gathered him closer. Then they lay still again.

Alys closed the door silently, and crept back, across the empty, cold gallery to her own room, shut the door behind her, drew her chair up to the fire, wrapped her shawl around her and waited for day to come.

In the half-light of dawn, before the sun was up but while the sky was pale yellow with the promise of sunshine to come, Alys went over and opened the chest of her magic things. Tucked away in the corner was Morach's old bag of bones – the runes.

Alys glanced behind her. Her bedroom door was shut, no one in the castle was stirring. She glanced out of the arrow-slit window. In the pale light she could see strips of mist hovering and rising from the silver surface of the river. As she watched they rose and billowed. One of them looked like a woman, an old woman with grey hair and a shawl wrapped around her.

'No,' Alys whispered, as she recognized her. 'I am not calling you. I will use your runes for I need to know my future. But I am not calling you. Stay in the water. Stay out of sight. You and I will both know when your time comes.'

She watched the mist until it billowed and ebbed and lay fiat and quiet again, and then she turned from the arrow-slit and sat on the rug before the fire.

She shook the bag like a gambler shakes dice and then flung them all out before her. Without looking at the marks she picked three, carefully considering each choice, her hand hovering over one and then moving to another.

'My future,' she said. 'Hugo uses me as his whore and now I am nothing here. There must be more for me. Show me my future.'

She spread the three of her choice before her, one beside another, and gathered the others into their purse again. 'Now,' she said.

The first one she had drawn was face down. The back was blank and she turned it over. The front was blank as well. 'Odin,' she said surprised. 'Nothingness. Death.' The second was blank. She turned it over, and then turned it over again. 'It is not possible; there aren't two blank runes,' Alys whispered to herself. 'There is only one blank rune. All the rest are marked.' She flipped over the third. It was smooth and plain on both sides, one side as empty as the other. Alys sat very still with the three faceless runes in her hand.

Then she raised her head and looked towards the arrow-slit. The mist quivered as it lay on the river, quivered and formed the shape of a resting woman. 'You knew,' Alys said in a low whisper towards the mist. 'You told me, but I did not hear. Death, you said. Death in the runes. And I asked you "how long?" and you would not tell me. Now your runes are blank for me too.'


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