‘What do you mean gone?’ Couldn’t the parchment pushers keep track of documents? ‘One doesn’t just misplace a communication with the Pope,’ he snapped back. ‘Particularly when it involves something like this. Someone must remember. Who were his clerks? Do you know?’
‘Yes,’ he answered, slowly. ‘I was among them.’
Nicholas was surprised, though perhaps he shouldn’t have been. ‘And did you work on this case?’
The answer came slowly. ‘No.’
Not surprising. He certainly would have said so before now if he had. Or perhaps not. The Archbishop seemed to be having trouble remembering, as the Prince had feared. Or, perhaps, his memory was selective.
‘The records must still exist.’ Dusty parchment, as the Prince had said. ‘Someone must have copied the petition before it went.’
‘To find them will take time.’
‘Then you had best begin,’ Nicholas snapped, tired of the tedium and heedless of his immortal soul. ‘Time is the one thing we do not have.’
He bowed just low enough for ceremony, a request for the Archbishop to wave his hand and mutter a blessing so Nicholas had leave to go, but the man did not oblige. Finally, Nicholas raised his head. Islip sat, silent, eyes narrowed as if trying to peer into the past.
‘More than ten years,’ the man said, just above a whisper. ‘Since then, we have lost a third of our people to the Death. And then more to the French. Who alive remembers where a single piece of parchment might be?’ He looked at Nicholas, suddenly realising he was not alone. ‘What if we cannot find it?’
Until they are wed, your task is undone. Dread settled on his shoulder. What choices would be open to him then?
He met the man’s eyes, to be certain he would be understood. ‘If you cannot find it, then you will have the honour of informing His Grace and the Prince that they must cancel the wedding.’
* * *
All morning, Agatha had chattered away as Anne sat near a window in the common room, alternately looking down at her needle and up toward the street, watching for Nicholas’s return.
The lodgings he had selected for them were within sight of the Cathedral, but designed for travellers, not pilgrims. No one minded that she stitched instead of prayed as she waited.
Though she did pray, silently and fervently, that Nicholas would discover nothing to raise his doubts.
That all would be as it must.
Yet when he walked in, a scowl marring his face, she bit her lip and motioned for Agatha to leave them. She saw no hint of suspicion, no reason to fear danger, and yet...
‘You do not look pleased,’ she said.
His eyes met hers and he seemed to soften, just for a moment. Because of her? She dared not hope for that.
He sank onto the tavern bench and called for ale. ‘I’ve spent the morning trying to make a stubborn man of seventy remember and hurry. It went about as well as you would expect.’
She let a smile escape. No reason to fear. Yet. ‘But all will be as it must.’ Her voice held a question.
‘You mean, as Edward and Joan want it?’
‘As I do. And as you do, as well.’
He sighed. ‘Yes, it will. He’ll find what he needs to bless the previous dissolution or he’ll bless their union without it.’
The tightness in her stomach eased. The scowl was impatience only. There was nothing to fear.
‘I know it is not an easy thing and I thank you for that,’ she said. ‘I know Edward and Joan will, too.’
‘Speak of other things,’ he said, abruptly. ‘What did you do today?’ Today. She had waited by the window, as unmoving as a stone.
‘I skipped about Canterbury’s outer wall, then danced in a ring with the pilgrims waiting at the church’s door.’
Shock appeared on his face at her words. They were bitter words she would never have used around Joan. But she had let resentment steal her tongue. What could she do? Nothing without help. Instead, she had thought of all she wanted to do, to have, to be. Things she would never have, no more than she would be able to skip or dance.
He shook his head. ‘A thoughtless question.’
‘A rude answer. What I did in truth was finish a piece of needlework that will be part of the hangings in my lady’s new bedchamber.’ She held it up, at once proud of the lush, green stitches and wistful that it would grace a marital bed.
He nodded, without really looking at it. ‘Don’t feel as if you have to say only what would please me.’
She smiled. ‘It must be evident that I don’t.’
‘And you have heard me say things that...’
‘That you are glad I have not shared with my lady?’
The ease of his smile warmed her. ‘We have both, I think, had many years of minding our words.’
Oh, yes. Years and more until she had thought she would never, never be able to share herself with anyone. Even now, to reveal even a sliver of all she hid from the world day after day was a gift beyond measure, so precious that she could almost forget that earning his trust had been a duty to her lady.
‘And I’m afraid,’ he said, not waiting for her to answer, ‘that I let my temper slip in front of the Archbishop today. But I knew little more than he did about the events surrounding Lady Joan’s first dispensation from the Pope.’
She murmured something intended to sound sympathetic. Outside, the Cathedral’s bells sounded, sparing her the need to speak in the silence that followed.
His gaze returned to her, as if he had discovered an idea. ‘Do you?’
She was silent for too long.
‘Do you, Anne?’
She rushed into speech, so she would not have to answer the question. ‘What about the man who carried the petition to the Pope as you just did? That man would know something.’
‘Who even remembers that man?’ A foolish question, but it seemed as if he were saying who will remember me? ‘Do you know who he was?’
Safe to answer, since she did not. She shook her head.
She could almost see his thoughts as he explored other possibilities, other paths. ‘But there must be someone. Who wrote the documents that were sent? Who talked to Lady Joan and Sir Thomas?’
She wanted to help him. No, to help her lady. To put all this quickly aside. ‘I was but a child.’ Only half the truth. She was twelve by then. She was as old as Joan had been when she and Holland first....
An impossible, sceptical frown
