Historical Romance – The Best Of The Year. Кэрол Мортимер

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ