'In your own time, Alys,' he said pleasantly, and he swung out of the room and ran up the curving stairs of the tower to his father's room.
No one had seen them, no one had heard them. But Lady Catherine knew.
When Alys was summoned to the ladies' chamber to sew, Lady Catherine waved her to a stool near her own chair, where she could watch Alys' face as the others talked.
'You're very quiet,' she said to Alys. Alys glanced up with her polite, deferential smile. 'I was listening, my lady,' she said.
'You never speak of your own kin,' Lady Catherine said. 'Do you have any family other than the mad old woman on the moor?'
'No,' Alys said. 'Except those at Penrith,' she corrected herself.
Lady Catherine nodded. 'And no sweetheart? No betrothed?' she asked idly. The other women were silent, listening to the interrogation.
Alys smiled but made a tiny movement of her shoulders, of her head, to signify her regret. 'No,' she said. 'Not now. Once I had a sweetheart,' she glanced to Mistress Allingham. 'You would know of him, Mistress Allingham. Tom the sheep farmer. But I had no portion and I went away to Penrith and he married another girl.'
'Perhaps we should dower you, and send you off to be wed!' Lady Catherine said lightly. 'It's a dull life for you here, where no man sees you and nothing ever happens. It's well enough for us – we're all married women or widows or betrothed – but a girl like you should be wed and bearing children.'
Alys sensed the trap opening up before her. 'You're very kind, my lady,' she said hesitantly.
'That's settled then!' Lady Catherine said brightly. Her voice was as gentle as a diamond scratching glass. 'I will ask my Lord Hugo to look among the soldiers for a good man for you, and I will give you a dowry myself.'
'I cannot marry,' Alys said suddenly. 'I cannot marry and keep my skills.'
'How is that?' Lady Catherine asked, opening her grey eyes very wide. 'You do not need to be a virgin to be a healer unless you deal in magic, surely?'
'I use no magic,' Alys said swiftly. 'I am just a herbalist. But I could not do my work if I belonged to a man. It is time-consuming and wearisome. My kinswoman lives alone.'
'But she's a widow,' Mistress Allingham interrupted, and was rewarded with a swift, small smile from Lady Catherine.
'So you can wed and still keep your arts,' Lady Catherine said triumphantly. 'You are shy, Alys, that is all. But I promise you we will find you a fine young husband who will care for you and use you gently.'
Eliza Herring and Margery tittered behind their hands. Ruth, who feared Lady Catherine more than they did, kept very silent and stitched faster, bending low over her work.
'You do not thank me?' Lady Catherine asked; her voice was clear and underneath it – like an underground river – was a current of absolute menace. 'You do not thank me for offering to dower you? And have you married to a good man?'
'Yes, I do indeed,' Alys said with her clear, honest smile. 'I thank you very much indeed, my lady.'
Lady Catherine turned the talk to the gossip of London. She had a letter from one of her distant family in the south which spoke of the King and his growing coldness towards the young Anne Boleyn, his new Queen, even though she was big with his child again. Alys, who blamed the King and the whore, his pretend Queen, for all her troubles, smiled an empty smile as she listened, and hoped that Lady Catherine had been merely amusing herself by tormenting her with promises of marriage.
'And the new Queen was nothing more than a maid-in-waiting in the old Queen's bedchamber when she took the King's fancy,' Eliza Herring said tactlessly. 'Think of that! Serving a queen one day and being a queen yourself the next!'
'And the one he looks to now, Lady Jane Seymour, has served them both!' Margery said. 'Served the old Queen – the false one I mean – and now Queen Anne,'
'A fine place to have at court, a lady-in-waiting,' Eliza said. 'Think how high you might rise!'
Lady Catherine nodded but her face was impassive. She looked at Alys as if to warn her. Alys ducked her head down and sewed.
'Those are London manners,' Catherine said with soft menace. 'And what is right and proper for the King is not always a course for his subjects.'
'Of course not!' Margery said, flustered. 'Besides, if Queen Anne has a son, he will cleave to her! No King would put aside a wife who gave him a son! It is only barren wives who get that treatment!'
Catherine's face went white with anger.
'I mean…' Margery stumbled.
'The King's marriage was annulled because Catherine of Aragon was his brother's wife,' Catherine said icily. 'That was the only reason for the annulment of the marriage, and you have all sworn an oath of allegiance recognizing the King's rightful heir and the truth of his marriage to Queen Anne.'
The women nodded, keeping their heads down.
'Any talk of divorce at the whim of the King is treason,' Catherine said firmly. 'There can be no divorce. The King's first marriage was invalid and against the law of God. There can be no comparison.'
'With what?' Eliza asked dangerously.
Catherine's grey eyes stared her down. 'There can be no comparison between your positions and the Queen's ladies,' she said with acid clarity. 'You are none of you high enough to wear scarlet, whatever borrowed clothes Alys may use. I hope that none of you would want to overset the natural order, the God-given order. Unless Alys hopes to see herself in purple? Married to a lord?'
The women laughed in a nervous, obedient chorus.
'Who did the gown belong to, Alys?' Catherine asked vindictively.
'I was told it belonged to a woman called Meg,' Alys said, clearing her throat and speaking low.
'And do you know who she was, Alys?' Catherine asked.
Alys lifted her head from her sewing. 'Lord Hugh's whore,' she said softly.
Catherine nodded. 'I think I would rather wear brown than flaunt borrowed colours,' she said. 'I would rather wear honest brown than the gown of a whore who died of the pox.' Alys gritted her teeth. 'Lord Hugh ordered me to wear this gown, I have no other.' She shot one look at Catherine. 'I hope I do not displease you, my lady. I do not dare disobey Lord Hugh.' Catherine nodded her head. 'Very well,' she said.
'Very well. But you had best borrow only the gown, Alys, and not the manners of the last owner.' Alys met Catherine's hard, suspicious gaze. 'I am a maid,' she said. 'Not a whore. And I shall stay that way.'
After that she kept even more carefully away from anywhere that she might meet the young lord. When he came to his father's room she sat in a corner, in the shadows. She put off the cherry-red gown which the old lord had given her, and asked if she might take a new one from the box. She chose a dark blue one, so dark that it was almost black, and wore it with a black stomacher tied as flat as a board across her belly. It was too large for her and came too high up under her chin, hiding the swell of her tight-pressed breasts. She rummaged in the box and found an old-fashioned gable hood in the style which had gone out with the old queen, the false Queen Catherine. Alys scraped back her growing curly hair into a black cap pinned tight. Then she pulled the gable hood on top of the cap and pinned it down. It was heavier than her wimple and hotter with her hair underneath, but it reminded Alys for a moment of the steady pressure of the wimple and the bindings around her face which she had worn for so long.
'You look like a nun,' the old lord said. And when he saw her swift guarded look at him he said, 'No, wench, you're safe enough. You look like a woman who is trying to be invisible. Who are you hiding from, Alys? Lady Catherine? Hugo?'