Passion and betrayal fuse in this powerful novel of Tudor England.
Alys joins the nunnery to escape poverty but finds herself thrown back into the outside world when Henry VIII's wreckers destroy her sanctuary. With nothing but her looks, her magic and her own instinctive cunning, Alys has to tread a perilous path between the faith of her childhood and her own female power.
When she falls in love with Hugo, the feudal lord and another woman's husband, she dips into witchcraft to defeat her rival and to win her lover, only to find that magic makes a poor servant but a dominant master. Since heresy against the new church means the stake, and witchcraft the rope, Alys's danger is mortal. A woman's powers are no longer safe to use...
'Compulsively readable.' ANDREA NEWMAN, Sunday Express
'Gregory's principal feat in this elaborate novel is the irrefutable artistry with which she lends her prose a constant sense of history.' Sunday Times