'Rub me,' she said. 'Alys, rub me.'

Hugo chuckled, his wicked spoilt-boy chuckle, held Alys more firmly around her waist and pulled the lace from the holes with a swift hiss. The green stomacher and wide sleeves tumbled off. Hugo pushed down the white linen chemise so Alys' breasts and arms were bare. She made a soft, inarticulate protest.

'My gown,' he reminded her. 'The new green gown. Mine to strip from you, as we agreed.'

He untied the strings of the overskirt and dropped the expensive brocade to the floor. He untied the green silk underskirt and it fell in a ring at Alys' feet. Alys, held by Hugo's careless hand around the waist, both hands captured by Catherine, stood leaning over the bed wearing nothing but her fine linen shift.

'On the bed,' Hugo ordered. He pushed her gently, and when she resisted he pushed her harder. 'I mean it, Alys,' he said. There was an unmistakable threat in his low voice. 'You have no choice, Mistress,' he said.

Reluctantly Alys climbed on the bed beside Catherine. Catherine turned her face to her and smiled. 'Pretty Alys,' she said. Her voice was slurred with desire. 'Take her shift off, Hugo,' she said. 'Strip her.'

Hugo pulled Alys' shift up from her hips and over her head in one smooth motion as Catherine reached out for her and pulled her down beside her.

'I may not enter you, my lady,' Hugo said thickly to Catherine. 'It would be dangerous for the baby and bad for your milk. But I can give you some pleasure, I think.'

Catherine laughed, a delighted, indulged laugh. 'You bring me your whore?' she asked. 'Hugo, you are wicked! You bring me your whore to please me with her silver fingers?'

Hugo chuckled. 'I am a little wicked,' he conceded. They sounded as if they were flirting in some elaborate courtly ritual. Alys between them, naked and shivery, shrank back as Catherine's scented damp body pressed forward.

'But she would tempt a saint, wouldn't she, Catherine?' Hugo asked agreeably. 'You can't blame me for falling into temptation with Alys.'

He took a handful of Alys' hair and pulled her head back. He put his mouth over hers and Alys felt his tongue slide shamelessly into her mouth as he kissed her deeply and fully while Catherine watched. Incredulously, through her own rising desire, she heard Catherine's low aroused chuckle.

Hugo released her. 'See how I share my secrets with you, Catherine!' he said. 'You are my lady! This is my whore.'

Catherine took Alys' limp hand and put it to her breast again. 'Touch me again,' she said. 'Like you were doing before.'

‘I won't be commanded as if I were a toy,' Alys said. She tried to speak with her power in her voice, but she sounded soft, petulant. She felt her power draining from her, mauled by the two of them. She pulled back, away from Catherine's grasping hands, but Hugo was up on the bed behind her and pressing her forwards. His arms came round her waist and caressed her breasts. Alys felt the warmth of his familiar hands stroking her, cupping her breasts, gently pulling at her hardening nipples. Catherine's hands were on her belly, spanning and pinching Alys' narrow waist. 'Don't,' Alys said weakly. She heard consent in her own voice. She felt her rising desire to be taken by them both, to have them both use her as they wished. As if they were two rich, indulged children, and she a new toy for them to finger and destroy. As if she were without value, a nothingness, which they might tease, abuse, reject. If the two of them played with her to destruction, tore her to pieces between their greedy mouths and working fingers, it would be just. It would be her deserts.

'Don't,' Alys said softly. Hugo heard her assent and laughed. 'Little whore,' he said tenderly and nudged her forward, his penis pressing hard against her back. 'Alys, I think you long to see how low you can fall.'

Alys leaned forward over Catherine's big belly and nuzzled at the fat breasts and licked, with the tip of her tongue, at Catherine's nipples. The oil was sweet and pungent, it furred Alys' tongue. She felt trapped in a nightmare of heady sickly tastes and new forbidden sensations.

Catherine shuddered with pleasure at the touch of Alys' tongue, and took Alys in her arms. She snatched at Alys' hand and pushed it down between her legs. Alys, flinching with contradictory repulsion and lust, felt Catherine's bush of thick hair and then a deep slippery canal drenched in liquid, feeling her own thighs grow sticky and wet.

Catherine was breathing fast. Her hands pressed Alys' hand against her body more and more urgently. She arched her back and rubbed herself against Alys' hands, groaning as she did. Alys gave a little gasp of distaste and of desire. She was surrounded by Catherine and Hugo. Catherine squirming beneath her, Hugo bearing down on her from behind. The two of them were playing with her like two malicious cats with a mouse.

And at the same time Alys felt a leap of desire that she should be between them, that Catherine's hands should be pawing her, one at her breast, and one, horribly, delightfully, between her legs. That Hugo should be pressing himself at her back – as hard as a spear -probing between her legs, hard and slippery with her wetness, and then she felt Hugo rear up behind her and plunge himself inside her, at the same moment as Catherine snatched Alys' hand, ground her hot wet flesh against it and thrust it deep inside her.

Catherine and Hugo groaned together, repeatedly thrusting at the same time, as practised lovers reaching release together. Alys, hot with desire, suddenly frantic, twisted and turned between them, but Hugo slackened and stilled, grew small and released her.

Catherine rolled away, her breathing deep and easy, her face rosy and relaxed. Hugo dropped face down into the pillow with a deep sigh. Alys lay between the two of them, silently raging and unsatisfied. The small bones of her hand were aching where Catherine had crushed it against her flesh. Inside her body she was hot and sore, between her legs she was drenched and unsatisfied.

She looked from one to the other; they were both smiling, sated. Neither of them looked at her, neither of them cared whether or not she had any pleasure. The question of Alys' irritable, unsated desire was of no importance. Alys' sensation of drowning in corruption was of no interest. Catherine pulled the covers a little closer, her face slack with sleep and satisfaction. She slept. The fire crackled gently, the scent of lemon verbena was very sweet in the room. The three of them – the two naked pregnant women, and the half-dressed young lord – lay still. The lord and his lady slept.


Catherine came down for supper in the great hall, rosy in her pink and cream gown, her face smiling, fat as a pudding, her hair spread out over her shoulders, her appetite sharp. Hugo had her on his arm as they walked into the dining-hall and there was a shout of appreciation and welcome from all the diners. Alys took her old place at the women's table and cast a hard look around at all of them to warn them not to mock her for her return.

'Welcome back,' Eliza said irrepressibly.

Alys met her bright eyes with a cold stare. 'I am happy to dine with you, Eliza, and with you all,' she said levelly. 'But do not forget that I am carrying Hugo's son in my belly – something each one of you would give a year's pay for. Don't forget that when Catherine takes to her bed again I shall be sitting next to the old lord and that I am his favourite. Don't forget that I am Mistress Alys to you and every one of you. My fortunes may rise and fall, but even at their ebb they are higher than you could dream.'

All the women looked at their plates and supped their broth in silence. Alys let the silence go on and on. She watched Hugo. Half a lifetime ago it seemed that she had sat here with Morach beside her, and watched Hugo's back with a desire so strong that she had thought she would die of it. Now she looked at his shoulders and his neck and the set of his head with silent hatred.

'Are you not eating, Mistress Alys?' Ruth asked quietly.

Alys glanced down at her bowl. The broth had grown cold, thick lumps of grease floated in it. Alys took a sip of wine tainted with the metallic taste of the pewter cup. David the steward had seen that her place on the women's table was laid with pewter, like theirs. Glass was only for the top table, and she had lost her place there.

'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.