Philippa Gregorys disturbing novel of passion and betrayal in Tudor England

A haunting story of a womans desire in a time of turbulence.

Alys joins the nunnery to escape hardship and poverty but finds herself thrown back into the outside world when Henry VIIIs wreckers destroy her sanctuary. With nothing to support her 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 womans husband, she dips into witchcraft to defeat her rival and to win her lover, but finds as her cynical old foster-mother had advised that magic makes a poor servant but a dominant master. Since heresy against the new church means the stake, and witchcraft the rope, Alyss danger is mortal. A womans powers are no longer safe to use