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