The Passionate Pilgrim

“Then why didn’t I?”

“Presumably because you interpreted it the way you wanted to at the time. Men don’t always make themselves plain, do they, when it’s in their interests to be misunderstood?”

“Don’t they?”

“No, mistress, they don’t.”

“So you believe Sir Adam deliberately misled me?”

“To lure you to Winchester? Of course I do. You’d not go so readily if he’d asked you openly to be his mistress, would you? He must know full well that you’d not be allowed to marry, but men like that have to explore every possibility. How d’ye think he’s risen so fast in the king’s favour? By seeking every opportunity and grabbing at it, that’s how. He’s an ambitious man.”

“And how exactly is having a mistress going to advance him?”

Bonard sighed gently and plucked the red scarf away out of sight. “I may be a romantic,” he said, “but I’m not so blind that I cannot see the way men look at you.” He watched her large eyes withdraw beneath deep crescent lids and a thick fringe of black lashes, then waited until they reappeared, veiled with unease. “He can see your interest in the child, but if all he wanted was a mother for it, he’d have married again long before now.”

“It was less than a year ago, Bonard.”

“That’s nothing when a man needs a wife. But it’s you he wants, and he’s hoping that you’ll believe it’s marriage he’s offering. Once you’re there, he’ll try to persuade you. Forewarned is forearmed, mistress.”

“Oh, Bonard. Is that what you believe, truly?”

“Yes, it is. A mother for his infant and you in his bed.”

She flinched at his plain speaking. This was a Bonard she had not encountered before. Even so, there was something he did not know. “But my sister implied that Sir Adam was not…not like that.”

Master Bonard straightened, recognising the gist. “Yes, well, you know what Mistress Laurel was like when she wanted to make a point, don’t you? Unrestrained, could we say?”

“A family trait, I fear.”

He did not contradict her. “Sir Adam was not the man for her, was he? Too set in his ways and too interested in her sister. Hardly likely to qualify him for much praise, was it? Could she have said that to put you off, d’ye think? She certainly did her best to make him jealous, didn’t she?”

“Flirting with that man!” Her voice chilled at the memory.

“It takes two,” he said, quietly. “He’s severe, mistress, but at least he’s honest. Unlike some others we could name.” The quiet comment slipped through the net, and his reference to Gervase of Caen was lost in the previous one, which he extended. “And from the sound of things he may well understand what his uncle’s intentions are, and is trying to protect you.”

“Oh, Bonard!” Merielle looked away with impatience. “That’s inconceivable. The only reason he has for preventing a liaison between me and his uncle is because it would put his inheritance in jeopardy. My personal protection is the last thing on his mind.”

“Perhaps your opinion of him is too harsh, mistress. He was not responsible for what happened afterwards, remember.” His voice dropped, although the servants had long since ceased their arm-laden excursions across the hall and were now seeking dim corners in which to lay their heads for the night. “And however much you dislike him, he must never know that there was more to it than a straightforward fine. If you had not gone to seek the king’s aid in the matter…”

“If that man had kept his nose out of my affairs, Bonard, I would not have needed the king’s aid in the first place. And if I’d known what the price would be, I’d never have gone there that day. Even you could not protect me from that, could you?” She had not meant it to sound like censure, but the tired and angry words had a way of emerging point first. “I’m sorry, my dear friend. You deserve no reprimand. There was nothing you could have done, I know. Nor could I have done without you, that day.”

He had done his best, such as it was, but even the faithful Bonard could not insist on being present at her interview with the king at Canterbury, if the king did not wish it. What had happened then behind the closed doors in the archbishop’s palace where the king was staying had had a direct bearing on the fine which was paid to Sir Rhyan Lombard for Merielle’s defiance of the contract between their late fathers. Afterwards, Merielle had explained nothing, nor had she needed to. The king’s reputation was well known and Master Bonard, romantic idealist, was no innocent in the ways of great men.

“I can make up for it a little,” he whispered, “if you allow me to accompany you to Winchester. No more Latin verses?”

Again, his words were lost on her, brushed aside in her quick, irritable dismissal of the incident. She stood, and Bonard recognised the futility of repeating his offer.

Long past midnight, the relaxation which the longed-for bath was meant to induce was effectively displaced by new problems that could be shared only in part by those she trusted most. In a cloud of steam, she wondered whether it was marriage or widowhood that made problems worse and decided that, but for men, life would have been simple. Regrets crowded after the dilemma of Sir Adam and his intentions; she should never have agreed to go, even to see her infant niece, to hold her, to nuzzle her peachy cheeks. Beneath the foamy waterline, she passed her hands over her womb, sliding them upwards to comfort the sudden ache in her breasts, remembering with a gasp of longing the tragedies contained there, the last of which she had brought upon herself.

The warm summer days of 1356 had already begun to lengthen by the time the news had reached her of Philippe’s sudden death, weeks earlier. From the south, the winds had blown gently, and Sicily was half a world away and what had Philippe been doing in Palermo on his way to Jerusalem? Like many another, it was a question never to be answered in the blank and sickening days that followed. She had not seen the need for him to leave her, nor had she known that the preparations they had made for his temporary absence would now become permanent. Nor had she had time to learn to love him.

“Determined’ had been the best way to describe his wooing, for every time she thought she had seen the last of him in Lincoln, he came back for another try until, finally, she came to look forward to his return; the novel idea of being sought with such constancy found a niche in her lonely existence. He had made Canterbury sound attractive. Their wedding night had been a non-event for which she had no regrets; it was only after supping with friends one evening and drinking rather too much of their fine newly imported Rhenish wine that the two newlyweds came to know each other better than during the previous weeks of celibacy.

Philippe had been good at his work, knew everyone in Canterbury and was well known also by them, and, if he lacked personal authority, his workshop’s reputation made up for that. His business partner, who had died just before their marriage, was not replaced; Philippe’s new wife appeared to be enough for him. And when, after only a few months of marriage, Merielle discovered that she was pregnant, Philippe’s astonishment catapulted him into a pilgrimage, as if thanks offered in the nearby cathedral would not suffice. It was as if they had both been taken unawares by something they had not quite remembered.

Whether from shock or from some other reason, the pregnancy had lasted barely three months, less than a week after the news of Philippe’s death had reached her. Merielle, who had never been truly ill before, thought that her world had collapsed with her beneath it, and, at eighteen, howled for all her dear departed ones and for the infant she had hoped would give her life some purpose. Believing no more in expectancies, only in losses, she was both horrified and frightened by the miscarriage, for the painful contractions were every bit as bad as girlhood scaremongers had said.

Then, during her recovery, had come the icily legal document telling her that her Yorkshire lands were to be repossessed by some grasping and merciless landowner who believed he had more claim to them than she did. A typical case, she believed, of stripping the carcass clean. An excusable exaggeration, in the circumstances.

Her worried expression had been commented upon by a pleasant acquaintance of Philippe’s, one Gervase of Caen, who had listened readily to her angry tale. He had been sympathetic, and helpful, assuring her that there were ways of dealing with scavengers of his sort.

His advice was perfectly timed. “The king,” he had said, leaning elegantly against a half-constructed loom that the carpenter was building. “You must petition the king in cases like this.”

Merielle, who appreciated directness, felt that this was the best advice she had had so far, Philippe’s lawyers having offered scant hope and, seeing little further than the end of her nose at that time, she had allowed Master Gervase to elaborate.

“He’ll be coming to Canterbury in two weeks’ time,” he said, “staying in the archbishop’s palace. You should see the food lists.” He unrolled an imaginary parchment into the air, smiling. “I can arrange an audience for you. He’ll settle the matter.”

In her mind, she had already half-accepted the suggestion, but felt it only polite to protest a little. “But there’ll be dozens of people pestering him, Master Gervase. Isn’t it more usual to leave a petition with one of his clerks?”

His smile had broadened at that and he had taken her elbow to lead her to a stool. “Mistress St Martin,” he said, “when you have friends in the king’s employ, you use them. I can get you a private audience, away from others’ ears, where you can explain the problem to his grace. It won’t be the first time he’s heard of such things happening, you know, to new widows.”

“A fortnight?” She would be fully recovered by then.

“Two weeks. All you have to do is to dress soberly and elegantly, as usual, and I will personally escort you.”

“And Bonard. I must take him.”

“If you will. That will depend on his grace.”

They had taken the letter, too, in Master Bonard’s leather scrip, on a day when darkness had fallen too soon beneath lowered clouds and a heavy drizzle. By the time they had reached the handsome stone porch of the archbishop’s palace in the cathedral precinct, they were almost drenched. Step by dark step, Merielle had followed the curve of the spiral stone staircase from the corner of the porch up to the small anteroom where a fire had been lit within a recess in the wall. She remembered how its stone hood looked like an upturned funnel.

Master Gervase disappeared through a door on the far side of the whitewashed room, and then reappeared some moments later. “His grace will see you alone, Mistress St Martin. No—” he put out a hand for emphasis “—alone, sir, if you please.”

Bonard had looked deeply uncomfortable, but helpless. “It is not seemly,” he protested, in a low voice.

Master Gervase raised his eyebrows. “I cannot argue with his grace if he insists, Master Bonard, can I?”

Through yet another chamber where clerks at tables scratched inky quills across parchments, Merielle was shown into a larger chamber, headily warm after the cold damp outside and glowing with colour from the wood-panelled walls. A fire blazed in one corner and candles made haloes of light that eclipsed whatever was nearest, their sweet scent of beeswax mingling strangely with a lingering aroma of linseed oil.

She had met the king only once before when he had been entertained by the merchants of Lincoln, of whom her first husband had been one. They had given a memorable feast in his honour and lent him vast amounts of money for his French campaigns at the same time and she, as a newly married merchant’s wife, had curtsied and been raised to her feet to meet a pair of admiring eyes. As she was doing on this occasion, only three years later.

His hands beneath hers were firm and warm. He was tall and of athletic build, a man renowned for his valour and skills in battle, his love of jousting, of building schemes, a patron of the arts. He was, she believed, everything one expected of a king. He recalled their meeting as he removed her cloak and, unexpectedly, her damp veil, draping them over a stool near the fire. “There,” he said, “we’ll give them time to dry, shall we?”

He came back to take her hands, rather like an uncle, she thought at the time. “Now, Mistress St Martin, these are sad times, are they not? But if you will sit with me awhile, I will do what I can to help. Your first husband was a staunch supporter of our French cause, you know.”

“Yes, sire. Sadly, he was lost to me soon after your visit to Lincoln.”

“Indeed. And your father also, I believe. You have had more losses than you deserve at your age. What is your age, mistress?”