Her inner excitement was well contained. Beneath her figure-hugging brown woollen gown she wore soft leather breeches to prevent her legs from chafing on the saddle over the next four or five days, but this was her only concession to practicality. She had no intention of being mistaken for a party of rustics: that was not the best way to secure the best beds at inns and guesthouses or the best hospitality at an abbey.
With this firmly in mind, she wore her hair in an intricate and beguiling coronet of thick plaits coiled around her face and crown, each plait braided and interwoven with golden cords. From the lower edges of this, a pure white linen veil covered her throat and shoulders and this, with her remarkable peach-velvet skin, made a harmony of tones enough to make even the rough stable-lads gasp and nudge each other.
Nor was her retinue likely to be ignored. Two sumpter-mules were loaded with her personal possessions and those of Allene and Bess, and two pack-horses carried provisions and food for the journey in wickerwork panniers, their matching harness of green-dyed leather and merrily tinkling bells on their bridles showing them to belong to a person of some standing. The same green and gold livery was worn by the two young grooms, Daniel and Pedro, local lads who would have done anything their mistress asked without blinking an eye.
For Allene, not even the too-few hours of sleep of last night could diminish the heady prospect of herding five adults and nine horses all the way to Winchester and back. She called Bess away from the corner where a young house-servant held her captive. “Come on, my lass!” Every female was a lass to Allene. “If your lad wants a job, get him to lift you up into the saddle. It’s time we were off.”
“We’ll set off without them if they’re not here soon,” Merielle called to her. “You’d better mount as well. Pedro, give Mistress Allene a hand.”
Master Bonard laid a hand on the chestnut’s mane, pushing a wiry blond lock over the crest and flicking the green ribbons that cluttered each side of the brow-band. Bells tinkled along the rein-guards. “Give them a moment more,” he said. “You requested their company. You can hardly set off before they—” A shout echoed through the archway that led from the courtyard into the street.
“That’ll be the market traders coming in,” Merielle said to him.
Bonard stepped forward to peer through. “It’s them,” he said, leading Merielle on and passing Allene who hit the saddle with an audible squeak, despite Pedro’s assistance. Her Irish grey rolled its eyes in alarm.
On the Palace Street side of the archway, a party of almost forty riders had come to an untidy halt, filling every available space until one of Merielle’s neighbours opened his door to find a horse in the act of depositing steaming manure on his doorstep. From behind the towering rump, he yelled, “Get over to one side, will you? Clear the way for Canterbury citizens, dammit!”
Realising that she was the cause of the obstruction, Merielle clasped Bonard’s hand in a hurried farewell, took up her reins and moved out into the street, approaching two expressionless nuns, one on either side of a young woman, guarding her closely. Before she could reach them, she was intercepted by a young rider dressed in sober charcoal grey whose pleasant smile and shining tonsure held more of a welcome.
He beamed even more broadly. “Mistress St Martin? Forgive our delay, if you please. Our prayers took longer than we thought.”
A voice joined in with a lilting Scandinavian accent. “Longer because you chimed in, lad. Should’ve left it to the abbot.”
His smile bunched his apple cheeks. “And who’ll be the first person you turn to when there’s a problem, eh?” he countered, winking at Merielle.
“The smith, that’s who,” another voice called to a chorus of laughter. “Come on, let’s get out of here. Is the lady ready? How many are ye, mistress? Just you and the two gentlewomen, is it? Good God!”
Another roar of laughter went up as the three women were joined by Daniel and Pedro leading two horses each and pouring out through the archway like water from a burst pipe. Shouts of raillery rose above the din. “Thought you’d got her to yourself did you, chaplain? Out of your depth already, lad.”
Still smiling, the chaplain hauled upon his reins, confusing his mount and backing it rapidly into the others until, by a deluge of slaps on its haunches, it headed in the right direction accompanied by the wail of bagpipes, drums, and the barely heard sound of the St Martin bells.
All along the Saturday streets of early-morning Canterbury, the jests continued, threading their way through the din that cleared a path past heavily laden traders coming into town. It was market day. The Westgate had just opened to the predictable bottleneck of travellers coming in both directions, testing everyone’s patience in the jostling to present passes, tokens and excuses.
Merielle’s company of nine horses came in for some serious teasing from the men who vied with each other to make the most ridiculous suggestions about what she could possibly be carrying. Running off to meet a lover, was she? No, the lovers would be in the panniers. Merielle smiled and said nothing, not even to Allene’s tolerant grumbles, but their wait at the Westgate gave her a chance to study the nearest fellow-travellers and to realise that the two elderly nuns and the young lady did not join in the laughter nor did they communicate with anyone, not even with each other.
The Scandinavian accents belonged to a bluff Icelandic merchant and his brawny son, both of them smothered in boisterous haloes of pale blonde hair through which they kept up an irreverent comradeship with the young chaplain. Their pack-ponies were laden, they said, with furs and amber, but a third pony carried a stack of wicker baskets with square openings through which appeared beaks and furious eyes, striped backs and mottled breasts. Falcons, ready to be tamed; rare and already priceless.
Except for her own party and the silent trio, the rest of the travellers appeared to be men, for the most part respectably dressed, and mounted on strong beasts for which five days travel was nothing remarkable. And though she knew that the one for whom her eyes searched would not be present, the urge to comb the crowd for a certain breadth of shoulder, a certain height and arrogant stare could not be restrained. The most strident of her inner voices protested relief that he was not to be seen, joy at her artifice, pride at her cunning, but a quietly nagging voice sang to a different tune in a minor key.
“A good crowd,” she said to her nurse. “We made the right choice.”
She recognised the goldsmith and his assistant in the company of two young scholars who would be returning to Winchester after the feast days. Oblivious to the rest of the crowd, their conversation was conducted in a mixture of English and French, and Merielle felt herself fortunate to receive a quick smile and no more. There was a courier, eager to pass with his large leather saddle-bags and air of urgency; he would not be with them for long. There was an unmistakable scattering of palmers, professional pilgrims swathed in coarse wool and lidded with wide-brimmed hats, the front brims of which were turned up to display their collection of pilgrims’ badges like a jigsaw of armour-plating. Around and across their bodies was a medley of clanking tools, pouches, flasks and plates, ropes, sticks and spare shoes, ready for the moment their emaciated mounts dropped dead beneath them. Their talk, tooth-gapped and incessant, admitted only those who could boast of their hardships, adventures and achievements.
They were not the only pilgrims; three noisy young Italians moved closer to Merielle’s party before she could see them coming, foisting upon her their own brand of English which completely disregarded the usual sentence structure. Finding their questions too fractured to understand and suspecting that they were too personal to be answered anyway, she looked behind to see whether a slight tactical manoeuvre was possible. But a party of part-armoured soldiers had moved in close behind them and, beyond the
