‘I understand we’re taking that whippersnapper with us,’ he said in a low voice. He lifted a hand. ‘All right. No need to explain how it happened. Tells me he asked you outright, so I don’t suppose there was much you could do except agree. But for the sweet Virgin’s sake, watch what you say in front of him. My guess is he’s not such a fool as he looks. Lord!’ His mood lightened. ‘You ought to see the hat he’s wearing. A pointy thing with a great blue feather. Behave yourselves and try not to laugh.’
With that, he was gone, except for a parting shot instructing us not to dawdle. The sun was up and he was anxious to be on the road.
I was surprised, when I at last set foot out of doors, to discover that the morning had suddenly grown colder and that everything was beginning to freeze. I tested a puddle with the toe of my boot and found it solid ice. Trapped in its depth was a cluster of bubbles like a shower of tiny, pale green stars. My hands burned with cold as I mounted my horse and took the reins, and I drew my cloak more tightly around me. Eloise, too, was muffled to the eyes in her grey camlet cloak, the hood pulled well forward to shield her face from the wind, a pair of gauntleted gloves covering her hands. John Bradshaw wore his good frieze cloak, hat and sensible leather boots, and I was glad to see that Philip had also acquired from somewhere similarly warm garments to protect him against the bitter chill. But it was Master Lackpenny who arrested the attention. In addition to the hat that I had come to know so well, he was enveloped in a scarlet fur-lined cloak — although, on closer inspection, I recognized the fur as merely rabbit — matching boots of scarlet leather and a pair of doe-skin gloves, a tribute to the glove-maker’s art. He bestrode a showy chestnut and looked altogether too fine for our party, in spite of my new clothes and Eloise’s efforts at refinement.
We set off at a decent pace, and for the first stage of the journey were mainly silent. All I really remember, until we stopped eventually for a dinner of cheese and apple pasties and small beer at a remote wayside inn, was the smell of the cold air and the thud of the horses’ hooves as they struck sparks from the frost-bitten earth. After we had eaten, however, and rested for half an hour, we mounted once again and continued southwards at a fair pace, although this mode of travelling necessitated frequent rests to feed and water the horses.
It was during one such pause that Eloise said roundly we must change our plans and stop at Canterbury for the night. There was no way she could continue with our original plan to cover the forty-odd miles between Rochester and Dover in a single day. Moreover, she was unwell. We all knew what that meant, but I was appalled to find myself thrust into such an intimate situation with a woman who was not my wife. For his part, John Bradshaw was silently fuming over his inability to argue the point with her, William Lackpenny’s unwanted presence limiting him to the role of servant and deferential silence.
Lackpenny, himself, agreed with Eloise.
‘I must say — ’ he beamed at me — ‘I thought you by far too optimistic to imagine you could travel from Rochester to Dover in just one day, particularly — ’ here he bowed gallantly in Eloise’s direction — ‘with a lady in the party. Don’t worry. Leave everything to me. There’s a cosy little inn in the lee of Canterbury Cathedral where I’m well known to the landlord. Besides,’ he added, ‘even if you’d reached Dover tonight, there might have been little, if any, likelihood of getting a ship first thing tomorrow morning.’
He had a point, and a good one. Furthermore, when we finally reached the coast, everything depended on the wind and the tides. There was a possibility that we could be trapped at Dover for several days.
‘Master Lackpenny’s right,’ I said, trying to speak with the authority of the leader of the party and avoiding John Bradshaw’s fulminating eye.
Again, as my servant, he could do nothing but agree, though it went against the grain with him, I could tell. However, once we had entered the town and settled into Will Lackpenny’s ‘cosy little inn’, I think even he was relieved to be out of the wind and biting cold. When I had seen Eloise installed in our bedchamber with our saddlebags, I went in search of him, finding him still in the stables, bullying poor Philip.
‘Just get on with things and keep your mouth shut,’ he was saying as I entered. He turned and saw me and made a bad-tempered grimace. ‘This journey is not turning out as I planned it,’ he went on savagely. ‘If we’re not careful, Olivier le Daim will have left Paris before we even arrive. We’ll have to spend at least one night in Calais and then at least two more on the road before we get there. This damn Lackpenny attaching himself to us has been a disaster. All right! All right! I agree you couldn’t have refused him.’
‘Besides,’ I said, leaning against the door of the chestnut’s stall and absentmindedly patting his rump, ‘Mistress Gray is unwell. You heard her say so. The onset of the flux is always the most painful part of it, at least so Adela tells me.’
‘Well, she’ll have to travel tomorrow, painful or not,’ he snapped back. ‘Did you want something? Why did you come to find me?’
‘I need to talk to you. Alone.’
He raised his eyebrows and regarded me thoughtfully. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘After supper, tell the other two you have some instructions to give me and meet me here, in the stables. We can go into one of the empty stalls. Philip, you can make yourself scarce. Go and have a drink in the ale room.’
Philip nodded without saying anything. In fact, he had said practically nothing all day yesterday or today except ‘yes’ and ‘no’ and ‘thank you’. And even those meagre words had been little more than grunts. He continued to be sunk in the black despair that had gripped him ever since Jeanne’s death. I went up to him and put my arm about his shoulder.
‘Philip-’ I was beginning, but he thrust me off.
‘Leave me alone, Roger.’
I shrugged, hurt and offended.
‘Very well! If that’s how you want things.’ I turned. ‘After supper, then, Jack. Here.’
He nodded, eyeing Philip inimically. ‘He’ll get over it,’ he said to me.
‘He’ll have to,’ I agreed coldly, still smarting from my rebuff, and without looking at my old friend again, I returned to the bedchamber.
Eloise was seated on the narrow window seat, still huddled in her cloak.
‘I’ll sleep on the floor tonight,’ I said abruptly. ‘Then you can have the bed to yourself.’
‘What?’ She stared at me for a moment uncomprehendingly. Then she laughed. ‘Oh, I see,’ she said. ‘There’s no need. Trust a man to jump to the wrong conclusion.’
‘It was what you implied,’ I answered indignantly.
She hesitated before admitting, ‘Well, perhaps. But you can be easy. I shall not be wearing the red rose for another three weeks.’
‘Then why. .?’
‘As a matter of fact,’ she began, looking uncomfortable, ‘while we were eating our pasties this morning, Master Lackpenny asked me if there was any way of changing your mind about pressing on to Dover today. He not only thought it too tiring but also considered it foolish as we should be travelling the last miles after sundown, in the dark and the cold. Besides which. .’ She faltered to a stop.
‘Besides which?’
‘He was hoping to meet some friends here. Friends who are, like him — like us — on the way to France. I promised him I would do what I could. So. . I lied a little. It makes sense to stop for the night,’ she added defensively, watching my face. ‘We’re all tired and hungry, and although we’re travelling south, the weather is getting very much colder.’
‘You. . you took it upon yourself to oblige Master Lackpenny?’ I gasped. ‘For God’s sake, woman, are you out of your senses? You know how secret our mission is and that we may be short of time.’
‘As to the secrecy,’ she retorted with spirit, ‘it seems to me it would have looked far more suspicious for us to have insisted on hurrying on to Dover tonight in spite of fatigue and the obviously worsening weather. Concerning the time, who’s to say positively that Cousin Olivier will turn up in Paris at all? The whole expedition may be a fool’s errand.’