any sound of a tread on the stairs.
We reached Canterbury by noon on the fourth day. Alone, I could have made the journey in less time, but Sophia was increasingly suffering the pains of long hours on horseback, and though she never complained, I reasoned it was better to take the journey at a slower pace, for her sake and for the horses’. My anxiety only increased each time we rode into an inn yard at dusk. The second night we spent in Rochester, a small town straddling the river estuary, where I bought some cloth and had it cut into makeshift kerchiefs we could tie around our faces to keep from breathing the dust. The third night we stopped in a village by the name of Faversham, where the clamour of the gulls and cool salt breeze made me long for the nearby sea. That night, she stood by the open window for a long time after I had blown out the candle, looking into the blue-black distance without speaking; when I tentatively approached and she turned, I realised that she was crying. I didn’t ask why, merely allowed her to rest her forehead against my shoulder until the moment passed. Before she got into bed, she touched my hand lightly, twining her fingers with mine for the space of a breath, as if to say thank you. Neither of us spoke, but I felt a surge of hope as I stretched out uncomfortably on my pallet, as if something essential had been communicated without the need for words.
We kept to ourselves, spoke as little as possible in the company of strangers, and survived the three nights and the hard ride with few unwelcome attentions. In every village where we broke our journey to water the horses and buy bread, rumours of the plague travelled before us, quick as flames through dry tinder; the old pilgrim road crawled with refugees clutching few belongings and less money, and the taverns were closing their doors to many. The townspeople wanted as little as possible to do with travellers from London; we were fortunate that money still spoke with a voice louder than fear.
A mile or so outside the walls of Canterbury we stopped in the village of Harbledown to let the horses drink. It was a pretty enough place, surrounded by orchards, no more than a few houses straggling along a single street which rose steeply towards the city in the distance. We led the horses off the road by an old almshouse and found a spot in the shade to sit down and prepare ourselves for the riskiest part of our journey. My head ached and my throat was gritty with dust, despite the kerchief.
‘If the plague fears have reached Canterbury, we may find them more vigilant than usual at the gates,’ I said, passing Sophia a leather bottle of small beer, warm now from hanging by my side along the road, but better than nothing. ‘Though the fact that everyone has a cloth tied around their face ought to work to our advantage. If they stop us, just keep your eyes down, your cap low over your face, and your mouth shut. We can pretend you are a mute. You shouldn’t find that too hard,’ I couldn’t help adding, at the sight of her sullen expression.
She reached for the bottle, held my gaze for a long moment, enough to be sure that I knew she was still angry with me, then took a swig and looked pointedly away, squinting into the sun above the trees. For the best part of an hour she had refused to speak, ever since I had broken the news to her that morning that she would not be able to stay with me in Canterbury and would need to presume again on the hospitality of her Huguenot friends. I had expected her to be displeased by the idea, knowing she would fear for their safety, but I had not anticipated the flash of fury it provoked. She had railed at me, accusing me of reneging on my promise to help her, until I pointed out sharply that we were not the only travellers on the road and that shrieking like a girl-child was the best way to give herself up before we even reached the gates. She had fallen silent after that and remained so, with the occasional simmering glance from beneath her cap, until we stopped.
Now she propped herself up on one elbow and regarded me dispassionately before offering me the bottle. I took a brief sip and winced; my stomach had been feeling queasy since I first awoke and the heat of the day was not improving the symptoms.
‘What if the French houses have been searched, looking for me?’ Sophia said. ‘Someone will have told the constables that I was friends with Olivier, I am sure of it.’
‘Then you should be all the safer. You have been gone from Canterbury more than a fortnight; if the authorities have already searched the city, they will not expect you to return.’
‘I still don’t see why I can’t come with you, if I am supposed to be your servant.’ She tore up a clump of grass with some force, then flung it away as if she found it offensive.
‘Because innkeepers, and especially their wives, are the most professionally inquisitive people in all creation,’ I said impatiently. ‘Their whole business is to observe and speculate on the travellers who come through their doors. We’ve been lucky so far, but any more than one night in the same hostel and someone will deduce right away that Kit is not what he claims to be. No.’ I shook my head. ‘Lie low with the Huguenots. I will be enough of a curiosity on my own.’ I rubbed a hand across my chin; four days’ growth of dark beard only reinforced the foreignness of my appearance, especially now that the sun had tanned my face to a colour it had not been since I was a boy running free all day on the slopes of Monte Cicada. My hair, too, had been neglected over the past weeks when I was preoccupied with finishing my book; I could not remember the last time I paid a visit to the barber, and it had grown so that it fell across my eyes at the front and curled over my collar at the back. ‘One of my first tasks once we are inside the city gates must be to get a shave and a haircut,’ I complained, pushing my fringe back from my face.
‘You look better with no beard,’ she remarked, her voice brighter. ‘Younger, I mean. It suits you.’
I glanced up, surprised, but she remained preoccupied with plucking blades of grass and scattering them around her and did not look at me. I was reminded again of how little I understood a woman like Sophia. I hardly considered myself an expert on the ways of women, but it had been eight years since I cast off my Dominican habit and with it my vows, and at the court of Paris I was given ample opportunity to observe the flirting and simpering of fashionable ladies at close quarters. Sophia had learned none of these wiles, yet her artless frankness was far more disarming; she could offer a compliment as casually as remarking on the weather and every time, like a fool, I allowed it to quicken a little spark of hope.
‘It’s a pity we can’t get you a beard somehow,’ I said, after a moment’s silence, watching how the shadow of the leaves fell across her smooth cheek. ‘It would help your concealment no end.’
‘My aunt had the beginnings of one,’ she said, looking up with an unexpected grin. ‘She was forever trying to pluck hairs from her chin. I suppose we can’t wait for me to reach her age.’
‘If we don’t make your disguise convincing, you won’t live to reach her age,’ I said, and immediately regretted it; her smile vanished on the instant and her eyes clouded again. She returned to pulling up the grass with renewed force.
‘Are you afraid?’ I said.
She looked directly at me then and held my gaze in those expressionless, honey-coloured eyes.
‘Canterbury is a small city, as you’ll see. Now that we are so close to its walls, I wonder what I was thinking, coming back.’ She passed a hand across her brow and sank on to her elbows. ‘But this place has never been anything other than a prison to me since I was first brought through its gates. I don’t suppose a real prison would be all that different.’
The careless note in her voice was betrayed by the tightness around her mouth, the way she pressed her lips into a white line. I remembered her silent tears in Faversham. She was afraid, but she was damned if she was going to let me see it. I glanced up at the sky, where a single skein
