Just a few more visits, he tells himself as he walks back towards the Blackfriars water-stairs. Two… maybe three. Four at the outside. After all, the little arseworm can’t stay hidden for ever.
15
Reims, Northern France, 20th July 1594
The flat marshes of Brabant have given way to the rolling verdancy of the Champagne. Two weeks have passed since Nicholas, Bianca and Hella Maas left Den Bosch. Two weeks of steady march, the long miles of chalky road and meadow path taken yard-by-yard. Two weeks of sleeping in the barns of farmers who think the door to heaven may open a little easier for them if they offer clean straw to the pilgrim, or in the cellars of the pious. They avoid the taverns. Nicholas doesn’t want to make it too easy for any Privy Council searcher already on their tail.
Muscles are stronger now. Blisters are a weakness of the past to be laughed at. Feet have hardened, tendons toughened. Nicholas’s Italian is growing ever more confident, less needful of Bianca’s correction. He is a quick learner. She puts it down to his command of Latin, learned at school and honed during his medical studies at Cambridge, where it had been the predominant form of exchange. She must still speak slowly if he is to catch the full meaning of what she says, but her hardest task is not letting him see her smile when she hears her own tongue spoken with a Suffolk burr.
They hear the bells of the cathedral of Our Lady long before they see the city walls. The slow reverence of their tolling echoes through the gentle valley. It is the accompaniment to the crowning of French kings, and a call to the weary pilgrim to rest awhile in shady cloisters. For Nicholas, the sound provides a welcome respite from a particularly difficult exercise in Italian pronunciation. Out ahead, Hella does not slow her march for an instant.
They follow her at a distance, their boots and ankles floured with chalk dust. They are walking a path between endless rows of vines, the sky lapis-blue above them, the sun’s hot touch brushing their shoulders.
‘It’s as if she’s compelled to reach God before anyone else does,’ Bianca says, looking ahead to where their companion strides out in determined fashion towards the soft rise that will afford them their first sight of Reims.
‘Does she walk with such determination because she’s in a hurry to arrive,’ asks Nicholas, putting voice to a question he has often asked himself since they left Den Bosch, ‘or because she is trying to escape?’
It is a puzzle both of them have yet to solve.
Taciturn she might be, dourly pious without a doubt, but when they enter Reims, Hella also proves herself invaluable. With passable French being just one of her professed accomplishments, she finds them good lodgings, even negotiates a fair price – no mean achievement in a town where to tell someone you’re a pilgrim doubles the cost of anything.
The chamber she finds them lies above a hostelry. It has three straw mattresses, each with a freshly washed sheet embroidered with images of the saints to inspire the weary pilgrim. There is a night-soil pot discreetly hidden behind a similarly embellished hanging. They may empty it themselves – free of charge – on the midden behind the house, or pay a sou to the owner’s grandmother to dispose of it for them. When the shutters are thrown back, there is a fine view from the window, across the busy square to the great cathedral of Notre-Dame de Reims.
‘I must offer my heart to the Lord,’ Hella announces, gazing rapturously at the two blunted spires and the gallery of stone kings who gaze down on the people below with a hauteur that only French monarchs could contrive.
‘I’ve no doubt He’ll be expecting it,’ mutters Bianca as the door closes, leaving her and Nicholas alone. ‘You haven’t given Him a moment’s rest since we left Den Bosch.’
Knowing their journey along the Via Francigena will be long and full of peril, Nicholas decides it would be wise to seek advice. He knows exactly where to find it, even though he has never visited Reims before – the local office of the English College of Douai. Just to set foot in the place could be considered treason. The seminary trains English Catholic priests to infiltrate their homeland and spread the papist heresy. Robert Cecil will expect him to remember faces and names. The next morning, following the directions the landlord of the hostelry has provided, he and Bianca make the short walk to the Basilica of Saint-Remi.
The air in the cloisters is heavy with the scent of wild flowers and the murmuring of summer insects at their prayers. After a short wait, the stillness is broken by the soft slap of sandal leather on flagstones. A rotund little fellow with a tonsure comes pattering towards them like an exuberant puppy.
‘Father Reginald Peacham,’ he announces. ‘What a joy to meet you. English pilgrims are rare these days. Is it true? Is the persecution of the faithful really as bad as we hear?’
‘In June they executed the queen’s physician,’ Nicholas tells him, deciding, somewhat uncomfortably, that Lopez’s death is as good a means as any of establishing his trustworthiness. ‘That was when we decided we could suffer there no longer.’
A nod of commiseration from Father Peacham, a momentary shadow cast across his otherwise-bright disposition. ‘Of course I shall do all in my power to help you. We wouldn’t want you taking a wrong turn and ending up in Muscovy, or Constantinople, would we?’ He beams at Bianca. ‘Lost souls, and all that.’
Pleased with his little joke, Father Peacham sets off on a circuit of the cloisters, moving in joyous bounds and clapping his fleshy hands together when a smile isn’t up to the job. Every now and then he pauses in his monologue of directions, warnings and general advice to sniff the flowers. Try as he might, Nicholas can see not the slightest trace of a seditious agent of the Antichrist anywhere in the man. But that is how Robert Cecil and the Privy Council would view him. They would send this little packet of good-natured piety to the scaffold without a second thought.
From Reims, Father Peacham explains, they will follow the road to Clairvaux Abbey, to the east of Troyes, then on to Besançon on the River Doubs. From there they will ascend into the hills and forests, before dropping again to the shore of Lake Geneva at Montreux. The greatest challenge will be the St Bernard Pass through the mountains – as high as the birds fly, says Father Peacham. From there they will descend into the valley of the River Po. Weariness and blisters will be the least of it, he warns. Two hundred leagues to St Peter’s – some eight hundred miles. There will be brigands and thieves, wolves and bears; high mountains where the weak may stumble or fall, where even the fit can be broken. But worst of all, says Father Peacham with a sudden wide smile, there may be other pilgrims who may prove to be tedious companions. We’ve already got one of those, Bianca wants to say. But she keeps her counsel.
At this point Nicholas shuts his ears to Father Peacham’s trilling voice as he lists the Italian towns they must pass. Rome is of no concern to him. They’re not going there. But Bianca listens. She lets the names of the towns swirl around inside her head, familiar little echoes of her childhood, even though she hasn’t visited a single one of them: Aosta… Pavia… Lucca… Siena…
‘When do you plan to leave?’ Peacham asks when he’s offered up the last of his wisdom.
‘Tomorrow morning, at first light,’ Nicholas says.
‘So soon?’
‘It is a long journey. The sooner we start–’
‘Indeed,’ Father Peacham sighs, ‘but I confess it would have been good to hear a little news of home.’