as my own daughter. I wouldn’t see you on your back under a man who cares nothing for you.’
Alys looked into the sharp old face. ‘Thank you,’ she said simply. She looked carefully into Morach’s dark eyes. ‘Thank you,’ she said again.
‘And if it goes against you,’ Morach said challengingly, ‘if it’s found, or if they know they’ve been hexed, I want my name out of it. You tell them you carved this yourself, it was your own idea. That is the condition. I’ve made them but I won’t take the danger of them. You tell them they are your own if you are ever caught. I want to die in my bed.’
The moment of tenderness between the two women was dispelled at once.
‘I promise,’ Alys said. She caught the look of suspicion on Morach’s face. ‘I promise,’ she said again. ‘I will make you a solemn oath. If anyone finds these I will tell them they are my own, made by me and used by me.’
‘Swear on your honour, on your old abbess, and on your God,’ Morach said insistently.
Alys hesitated.
‘Swear you will say they are yours,’ Morach demanded. ‘Swear it or I’ll take them back!’
Alys shook her head. ‘If anyone finds them I am lost anyway,’ she said. ‘Owning them would be enough to see me hanged.’
Morach nodded. ‘Throw them in the moat on your way home if you’ve changed your mind,’ she said. ‘If you need magic there’s a price to pay. There’s a price for everything. The price for this is your oath. Swear by your God.’
Alys looked at Morach with desperation in her face. ‘Don’t you see?’ she demanded. ‘Don’t you know? I can have no God! My Lord Christ and Our Lady have turned their faces away from me. I ran from them when I left the convent and I hoped to take them with me. But all my efforts cannot keep them by my side. I kept the hours of prayer while I lived with you, Morach – as far as I could guess the right time. But in the castle they are near to being Protestants, heretics, and I cannot. And so Our Lady has abandoned me. And that is why I feel lust for the young lord, and why I now put my hand to your black arts.’
‘Lost your God?’ Morach asked with interest.
Alys nodded. ‘So I cannot swear by Him. I am far from His grace.’ She gave a harsh laugh. ‘I might as well swear by yours,’ she said.
Morach nodded briskly. ‘Do it,’ she said. ‘Put your hand on mine and say, “I swear by the Black Master, by all his servants, and in the power of all his arts, that I will own these dolls as my own. I wanted them, I have them, I acknowledge them.”’
Alys shrugged and laughed her bitter laugh again – half crying. She put her slim white hand on Morach’s and repeated the oath.
When she had finished, Morach captured her hand, and held it. ‘Now you are his,’ she said slowly. ‘You’ve summoned him now. You must learn the skills, Alys, you must know your master.’
Alys gave a little shiver in the bright wintry sunlight. ‘I am his until I can get back to my abbey,’ she said. ‘I will loan him my soul. I am damned until I can get back to an abbey anyway.’
Morach gave a harsh laugh and struggled to her feet. ‘Good Christmas,’ she said. ‘I’m away to collect my Christmas goods from my neighbours. They should be generous this year, the plague has stayed away from Bowes, and the vomiting sickness has passed on.’
‘Good Christmas,’ Alys replied and reached in her pocket. ‘Here,’ she said, offering a silver threepenny piece. ‘My lord gave me a handful of coins for fairings. Have this, Morach, and buy yourself a bottle of mead.’
Morach pushed the coin away. ‘I’ll take nothing from you today but your oath,’ she said. ‘Nothing but your solemn oath that if they find the dolls you claim them as your own work.’
‘I promise!’ Alys said impatiently. ‘I’ve promised already. I’ve promised by the devil himself!’
Morach nodded. ‘That’s binding then,’ she said. Then she pulled her shawl over her head again and turned back towards the town.
They celebrated the Christmas feast with a series of great dinners at the castle which started on the first day of Christmas and went on till the early winter darkness fell on the twelfth day. They had singers and dancers and a troupe of dark-skinned tumblers who could walk on their hands as well as their feet and whirled around the hall going from hands to feet so fast that they looked like some strange man-beast – an abomination. They had a man with a horse which could dance on its hind legs and tell fortunes by pawing out ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on the ground.
On the second day they brought in a bear and forced wine on her and made her dance around the great hall while the young men leaped and cavorted around her – always making sure to keep clear of those huge flailing paws. When they were sick of the dance they took off her mask and baited her with dogs until three hounds were killed. Then Hugo called a halt. Alys saw he was distressed by the loss of one dog, a pale brown deer-hound. The bear was still snarling and angry and her keeper fed her with a dish of cheat-bread soaked with honey and some powerful mead. She went all sleepy and foolish in minutes and he was able to put her mask back on and take her from the hall.
There were some who would have liked to kill her for the sport of it when she was dozy and weak. Hugo, who had been excited by the danger of her and the speed of her sudden charges, would have allowed it but the old lord shook his head. Alys was standing behind his chair.
‘Do you pity her? The great bear?’ she asked.
He gave his sharp laugh. ‘Hardly,’ he said. ‘But the keeper sells her play very dearly. If we had wanted to kill her it would have cost us pieces of gold!’ He glanced back at Alys with his knowing smile. ‘Always check a man’s purse before you scan his heart, little Alys. That is where most decisions are made!’
The next day the young men went out hunting and Hugo brought back a deer still alive, with its thin legs bound, so that they could release it in the hall. It leaped in terror on to the great trestle-tables, sliding on the polished surface, frantically glaring around the hall for escape, and people ran screaming with laughter out of its way. Alys watched its shiny black eyes bulging with fear as they drove it from one corner to another. She saw the slather of white sweat darken the russet coat until they hustled it forwards and up to the dais so that the old lord could plunge his hunting dagger into its heart. The women all around her screamed with pleasure as the brilliant red blood pumped out. Alys watched the deer fall, its dainty black hooves scrabbling for a foothold even as it died.
On the morning of the twelfth day they held a little joust. David had ordered the castle carpenters to build a temporary tilt-yard in the fields of the castle farm, and a pretty tent of striped material for the old lord to sit at his ease and watch the riders. Catherine sat beside him, wearing a new festive gown of yellow, bright in the hard winter sunlight. Alys sat in her dark blue gown on a stool at his left hand to keep the score of hits for each rider.
Hugo was monstrous and exciting in his armour. His left shoulder was hugely enlarged by a great sheet of metal forged into shape and studded with brass nails which terminated in a gross gauntlet. His right shoulder and arm were scaled like a woodlouse
