Secrets at Court (10 page)

An impossible, sceptical frown now. ‘Anne, it would help me, it would help your lady, if you could tell me anything else about all this. Obviously the Pope granted the petition, with the full support of the King and Queen. I know all was in order, I just need to find the pieces and put them together. The Prince said you have been with her for many years. Do you remember when Holland returned? Do you remember anything about that time?’

‘I...’ She swallowed. ‘I was not in the household during most of it. I was with my lady.’

Surprise on his face. ‘And where was she?’

‘In the tower.’

Some combination of shock, confusion and comprehension mingled in his expression. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Salisbury...locked her there.’

‘His own wife?’

‘Or was she the wife of Thomas Holland?’ Salisbury’s wife, yes, who now wanted to leave him, now that the strong warrior Holland had come back into her life. But Salisbury was young, knighted less than a year, still foolish and hot-headed. He thought if he kept her away from Holland, she’d forget the man.

As she had once before.

‘So did her counsel visit her there? To take her statement so he could represent her before the Pope?’

She shook her head. ‘Salisbury would not allow it. She was kept under guard...’ The memory of that year made her shudder. She had been her lady’s sole companion for months. It had nearly driven them both mad.

‘But the church requires that she testify, have counsel...’

She shrugged. She had said too much already. And she knew little of what had gone on beyond the tower walls while they waited together.

‘How long?’ His question, sharp. ‘How long did this go on?’

The time had seemed endless then. ‘I don’t remember. A year?’

‘But Salisbury let her speak, finally.’

‘Yes.’ She should have said nothing at all. To answer even one question would lead to more, to all the ones she must not answer.

‘Why? Did the Archbishop intervene? Or the King?’

To answer would tell him too much. The King, the Queen, Joan’s mother, all of them had supported Salisbury. But Holland, relentless, sent another plea to the Pope, and another and another... ‘Such matters are beyond the knowledge of a maiden.’

She must end this. Now.

So she pushed herself to her feet and Nicholas immediately rose, reaching out to steady her, and she at once craved and feared to have him so near again. Now she was beginning to understand the hunger that drew Edward and Joan, the hunger that ignored everything that stood between them, the hunger that meant they would do anything,
anything,
to be together.

‘And so, Sir Nicholas, I have reached Canterbury. While the Archbishop searches his files and his memory, may I visit the tomb of St Thomas?’

He nodded. ‘Yes. You will have your pilgrimage, Anne.’

The hopeless, dishonest pilgrimage that she did not want.

Chapter Ten

T
he road leading to the Cathedral stretched before them, lined with pilgrims. Very few walked. The rest crawled, hobbled, crept forward on their knees. It was as if the very ground moved.

Hoping. Every one of them hoping for a miracle.

Anne did not hope.

Nicholas, beside her, touched her arm, his support stronger than the crutch that held her upright. He nodded to the road ahead. ‘Do you want to...?’

‘Crawl?’ To get on hands and knees like a dog? Not in front of Nicholas. Not in front of anyone. ‘No. God allows me the grace to stand upright. I shall keep my head high.’

He lifted his arms, as if uncertain whether she needed, or wanted, his help. ‘What can I do?’

His question humbled her. Had anyone ever asked that of her? In that way? Not as if she must be pitied or hidden, but as if her wishes deserved to be honoured and her pain witnessed.

‘I would be grateful,’ she said, her voice as unsteady as her feet, ‘if you would walk beside me.’

He nodded. ‘I am no pilgrim, but I will see that you reach the shrine.’

Not because he cared, she told herself. Only because he was a man accustomed to making arrangements and solving problems. Still....

Together, they turned to the Cathedral. With Nicholas beside her she would approach the church door as if to seek blessing for a marriage.

Something she must never think.

A fraud, all of it. A pretence for her to be here at all. A diversion for today so he would ask no more questions, discover no more truths. Yet now that the great Cathedral rose before her, now that she forced herself to go through motions as if she were in a mystery play, it felt real. More real, more important than anything she had ever done.

And despite her refusal to hope, hope lifted her. Each step grew easier and gradually, the Cathedral loomed larger, as if it were a plant, growing taller before her eyes as it stretched toward the sun.

They walked not in respectful silence, but surrounded by noise—wailing, cries of pain, muttered prayers, and songs, songs that pilgrims sang so they would forget the miles passing beneath their feet.

And standing beside the road, even hawkers of souvenirs were yelling as if they were selling sweets in the market. ‘Badges! Take home a badge!’ The toothless pedlar waved a small, stamped tin emblem, the head of St Thomas Becket, wearing the mitre of his bishop’s office, all framed by finely made arches that must have been copied from the Cathedral itself.

Nicholas paused. ‘Let me buy one for you.’

‘Look,’ the man said, pulling out every sample of his wares. ‘I have the saint in a ship and this one here shows the tomb itself, with all the detail. You see? That’s beautiful work. And in this one they are killing the martyr, cutting off his head right in front of the altar.’

‘Which one do you like?’ Nicholas asked.

And suddenly, she
wanted
one, wanted something of her own that she could hold and look at and remember.
One day, a handsome man stood by my side and cared what I thought.

The badge seller had laid out his collection on his left arm, marching up his sleeve from wrist to elbow.

She studied the riches, then pointed to St Thomas on horseback. ‘That one.’

‘To remind you that you rode all the way here.’

So quickly, he had understood. For some pilgrims, walking was penance, but she had conquered riding long distances.

‘Thank you.’ Hard words to say. She was weary of a lifetime of endless thanks. But she saw no pity in his eyes, no disdain in his gift.

He pulled out coin enough for two and took them both. Surprised, she watched him put one in his pouch and hand the other to her. It was unexpectedly light in her hand. ‘Are you a pilgrim, too?’

‘No,’ he said, as they moved on. ‘Yet I have travelled so many places and have carried nothing away from any of them. This time, I will have a memory.’

A memory. Was it of her? Or was it Canterbury that moved him?

She slipped the image of St Thomas into her pocket. Ahead of them, the line stretched, slow moving, to the Cathedral door, where a monk stood repeating the story of the martyred St Thomas to each pilgrim who entered.

It would be sunset, or dark, by the time she reached the shrine.

They moved slowly, without speaking, for some time. Then, she looked over at Nicholas, who seemed to be searching for another entrance, or an exit. Restless. Ready to move on.

‘You need not stay with me,’ she said. She had not expected him to come at all.

And when he looked at her, she could see she had caught him thinking of escape. ‘I will not leave you. Not after you have come so far.’

Now she was the one ashamed, for she had not come for this, but at her lady’s behest, sent to work a miracle of her own. A miracle to prevent Nicholas from finding out the truth, while he had been sent here at his lord’s command, and that of the Pope, to do near the opposite.

She wondered which side God favoured.

‘I do not want to make you wait,’ she said. That, at least, was true.

‘It is the Archbishop who is making me wait, not you. We can tell each other stories.’

A strange suggestion. She knew no stories.

‘Unless you prefer to pray,’ he said, quickly, when he saw the puzzled expression on her face.

Poor man, ever stumbling as if her lameness was his fault.

‘No,’ she said. No need for more prayers and supplication. Better to dream of the impossible than to remind God of her sins. ‘Tell me of the places you have travelled. Tell me of France.’

* * *

France? Nicholas searched his memories. What was there to say of France?

He shrugged. ‘All earth looks alike to a man at war, except where the marsh makes the land treacherous or the hills offer the best defence for battle.’

She looked at him as if he were jesting. ‘You must have seen rivers, castles, cathedrals...’

They reached the stairs, he helped her climb and they paused by the monotone monk who told them the story they already knew. Then, they were shuffled to the transept where Becket had been killed. Wide-eyed, Anne seemed to gobble each vision, raising her eyes to the ceiling of the soaring Cathedral.

‘Look.’ She pointed to the coloured-glass windows. ‘It looks as if God himself might live so high, then just reach out and create such beauty.’

He followed where her finger pointed, surprised at the excitement in her voice. She was a woman who had seemed to be awed by little. And yet this Cathedral...

He had not been a man to spend more time in church than custom required. ‘Yes, I saw cathedrals in France.’

And nowhere had he picked up so much as a rock. Yet here, he had paid for a badge. The man who had never wanted to be burdened with anything had chosen a cheap tin badge to carry away as a memento. To remind him of a saint?

Or was it Anne he wanted to remember?

‘What cathedrals?’ she said. ‘Tell me? Did you see Chartres?’

Chartres. Yes, he knew that name. As he recalled, he had seen Chartres right after the terrible storm when the King decided to sign a treaty. Nicholas had been searching for benches and a scribe and the church was where he found them. ‘Yes. I did.’

‘What was it like? Was it as beautiful as this?’

He was grateful that she gazed back at Canterbury’s windows and did not see him struggle to summon a vision of a church.

Any church.

But all that he remembered were dead men and exhausted horses and an unending cycle of light and dark. He had travelled countless miles through France and could remember nothing but the war that travelled with him.

She looked back at him, expectant. ‘Or Notre Dame?’

The mirror of his memory was empty. ‘I was not there to look at churches.’

Her smile drooped. ‘What about castles? Mountains? The sea?’

He shook his head, feeling as if he had failed her.

But she washed the disappointment from her face. ‘Then I will tell you of my travels. When I was in France with Lady Joan, we lived in a castle in Normandy with two round towers and a square tower. There was an abbey close by and at the top of one of the pillars was a carving of the Green Man with a great swoosh that made it look as if he was swallowing his own, long hair.’

She laughed at the memory and went on to describe the abbey’s windows and the view from the castle’s tower in such detail that he could see it before him. A castle he had visited, at least, he must have, but he could summon no more of it than that the curved walls looked strong, but should have been higher.

Yes, he had been there. And to so many other places, but he had focused only on the needs of the moment because he cared more to keep moving than to be where he was. There would always be some place new.

But Anne, forced to move slowly, all but trapped in each place, had absorbed the vision of it as if it were a gem, to be savoured and saved, treasured and revisited in memory in later days.

The loss of all he had seen, yet not
seen,
cut his breath. How many days, how many sights, had been lost to him? When he turned to look at the years behind him, he saw only war and mud and windswept sky.

Now, he was in England’s most revered cathedral. Today, he could take away more than a badge. He could take away a memory, a vision to summon up when he was days and miles gone from here. Something to remember of his life.

He looked around, but all he saw was a blur of pilgrims, all he heard was the din of their prayers and the monk’s description of how the evil men cut off the head of the saint.

And in front of him, Anne smiled, silent, because she had realised he was no longer listening to her description of the abbey.

‘How do you do it?’ he asked.

‘Do what?’

‘How do you see so clearly, remember so much?’

They were close to Trinity Chapel now, and the tomb of the saint himself, crowded with pilgrims. ‘Tell me what you see,’ she said. ‘Right now. Look down.’

‘Stone.’ Something to stand on. Something to walk over.

‘Not just stone. See, this is older, more worn. And over there, it is newer. More polished.’

They had reached the stairs and she leaned on him to climb. One, two, three, four. Not quite in the chapel yet, but above the heads of the crowd, he could see the edge of the golden shrine, beckoning them. But instead of studying the tomb, he scanned the crowd, looking for a path of escape. There were so many people, so closely packed, that he could not see beyond them. What if he needed to get her away? How would he do that?

Beside him, a little breathless, she looked up at the windows and the carved pillars, as if she had come to see the Cathedral instead of to seek a cure. ‘There, that window. It shows St Thomas’s martyrdom. And the three murderers. And there, that one shows him curing the lame daughters of Godhold of Boxley.’

A moment before, he had thought only of how they would move through this space and how he would take care of her. Now, as he saw with her eyes, bits of colour became a story.

And he was struck with an unexpected sense of wonder. Not for the saint and his miracles, but for the men who had made such lasting beauty.

‘How long have they been here?’ he asked. ‘These windows?’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. Hundreds of years.’

Hundreds. He had spent his life foolishly proud that he could arrange for food and supplies that would vanish within a day, handling details that would be forgotten by Yuletide. Meanwhile, with their lives, these nameless, long-dead men had left something that would last until the Second Coming.

What would he have at the end of it all? Nothing more than he had today. No home, no family, not even memories.

Nothing but a blur of days and miles, travelled, but not lived.

* * *

Relieved, Anne saw they had reached the final steps. Had Nicholas heard anything she had said? Noticed anything around them? It did not matter now. Just a few more and she would be in the chapel with St Thomas’s relics.

Steps again. One, two, three...an endless struggle. A good reminder. Struggle was her life, not this moment of joy. Not this strong arm offered to support her.

She let go of Nicholas. ‘I will go on alone.’

He frowned. ‘Are you certain?’

She nodded and turned her back on him.

Yes, she was certain. She had become weak and soft these last few days. Oh, the travel, the riding had been difficult, but she had been able to lean against this man, even dreaming that he might see more than the leg she dragged behind her.

More fool she. Not only could Nicholas threaten everything, but in a few weeks he would be gone.

She took each step carefully, no longer letting the windows distract her. Some of those around her could move no more easily than she. That was what she must remember. She was fortunate for only one reason. A reason she must not jeopardise.

Another step. Step seven, eight, almost done. The steps were as uneven as waves, worn by the feet of too many pilgrims to count. There were too many surrounding her now, a crush of broken humanity, some with wounds visible, others atoning for sins she could not see.

Now, close to their final goal, they began to push and shove. Someone knocked against her. Her stick slipped off the smooth worn stone and she went down on one knee, hard enough to rattle her teeth and make her bite her tongue.

No tears. No tears
.

Her stick clattered down the stairs behind her and disappeared in the crowd, just as Nicholas had.

Do you want to crawl?
It seemed as if God would insist on that. A good reminder. Penance for the lie that brought her here.

She tried to rise, but her bruised knee protested. Someone crawled over her hand. Her fingers slipped on stones worn as slick as ice, and she slid down a step.

Where was Nicholas?

But she saw only a wall of bodies between her and the tomb. Above their heads, the top of it shone like a golden sun embedded with twinkling rubies, so close it seemed that God must want her to reach it. Instead, she was going to slide to the bottom of the stairs and be trodden on by the next wave of seekers.