Nicholas gives a regretful smile. His desire to be away so swiftly has an ulterior motive. For all his bonhomie, Father Peacham cannot be unaware that the queen’s Privy Council sometimes sends agents to spy upon the priests of the English College, agents who pass themselves off as Catholics fleeing persecution. A spy would say he intended to stay awhile. A spy would seek to insinuate himself into one’s confidence, ferret out names, make a note of appearances, tease out intentions.
‘It is true that you have a long, hard road ahead of you,’ the Jesuit says. ‘I will pray that God finds time to smooth it a little.’
‘Thank you, Father,’ Bianca says softly.
Peacham looks up at Nicholas, his face suddenly full of sadness. ‘The queen’s physician, you say – executed?’
‘Yes. There was a crowd.’
He sighs again, this one a little more protracted, a little more heartfelt. ‘Even when we seek to give them bodily succour, they turn on us. It is a sign of just how much they have need of us to open their eyes.’
Nicholas suddenly has the awful suspicion that Peacham intends to make the journey to England, to follow in the doomed footsteps of so many of his fellows. ‘I wouldn’t go over, if I were you,’ he says, before the words have even formed in his mind. ‘They have watchers at all the ports now. You’d be caught before you stepped ashore.’
‘If God calls, my son, we cannot refuse Him simply because the path might be rocky and sown with thorn bushes.’
Nicholas has the sudden urge to shout at this gentle little man, ‘Don’t go! There is nothing for you in England but an agonizing and humiliating death. It’s not worth it.’ But he suspects Father Peacham has a martyr’s steeliness beneath his merry carapace.
When Nicholas and Bianca come away from the Basilica of Saint-Remi, each has a map in their mind of the journey ahead. But it is not the same map. Each has a different destination. Bianca is heading home. Nicholas feels that he is walking further into exile.
Returning to their lodgings, they see a group of pilgrims in plain smocks and broad-brimmed straw hats preparing to depart. Their faces glow with expectation. Most are of middling age, fleshy, prosperous men, the sort who’ve decided it might be time to gain a little favour with the Almighty before it’s too late and think the Via Francigena is the way to do it. They remind Nicholas of the churchwardens and sidemen at St Saviour’s, paragons of comfortable piety.
Close by are two younger men, talking to the owner of the hostelry. Their heads turn as Nicholas and Bianca pass, their gaze more penetrating than merely curious. At once Nicholas feels a prickle of concern crawl over his skin. Are they pilgrims? Or something else? Why have they suddenly taken an interest in him?
He considers the possibilities. Perhaps they’re from Father Peacham’s seminary, keeping an eye on the English pilgrims to make sure they are who they claim to be. Perhaps the ebullient little priest wasn’t as trusting as he appeared. There again, they could be agents of the Privy Council. The English Crown is bound to have its watchers in the city, because for every pilgrim Peacham sends along the Via Francigena, there will be several more being prepared to make a different pilgrimage: into England, carrying with them papist sedition. If that’s who they are, then news of an unknown Englishman and his wife appearing in Reims could reach Whitehall in a matter of days.
Reaching the hostelry door, Nicholas nods to the owner. He confines his greeting to a mumbled grunt; no point in advertising his Englishness. Once inside, he positions himself behind Bianca and glances back. As he does so, he catches the pair in a clearly ribald exchange, their eyes firmly on Bianca’s back as she begins to climb the stairs. They hurriedly look away, but not before Nicholas spots the sudden blushing of their cheeks. Not spies then, merely two young fellows who’ve seen a comely woman walk past.
‘He was a sweet old fellow,’ says Bianca, climbing a few steps ahead of him.
‘Who, Peacham?’
‘I’d be happy if he were my priest. He seemed a goodly man.’
‘I just pray he doesn’t take it into his head to try to slip into England. He must know what will happen to him if he does. They’re bound to catch him eventually.’
‘Martyrs come in all shapes and sizes, Nicholas. But they share the same courage.’
‘He’d be throwing his life away, and for what end?’
Bianca reaches the landing. She lifts the latch and opens the door to their chamber. ‘You’re of the queen’s faith, Husband,’ she says. ‘You’ve never had to–’
On the far side of the room – not directly in her line of sight, for the ancient floor slopes unevenly, so that Bianca must drop her gaze a little – Hella Maas is on her knees by the window, gazing rapturously towards the cathedral.
In the two weeks they have spent together on the road, Bianca has grown accustomed to the maid’s displays of relentless, doom-laden piety. She seems to fear that God will take it into His head to announce that today is Judgement Day unless she intercedes on humanity’s behalf every couple of hours. So it is not the sight of a penitent deep in prayer that stops Bianca in her tracks, it is what she holds in her hand: a silver crucifix of St Peter, raised to the window so that it gleams in the light, the upside-down torso offered to the cathedral across the square.
It is Bianca’s Petrine cross.
‘What are you doing with that?’ Bianca asks, too startled at first to be really angry. Then the realization strikes. ‘You’ve gone through my bags. Why?’
Hella turns to her. She lowers her hands so that the saint’s nailed feet are pointing towards her, the transverse beam like a crossbow aimed at her heart.
‘I am praying for you, Bianca,’ she says, her face suffused with a frightening intensity. ‘You must be grateful. It is necessary.’
Bianca is speechless. The cross is one of her most intimate possessions. It is her late father’s cross, one of the few remembrances she has of him. It is on its way home. And now it has been taken from its hiding place without so much as a please. She feels as though she has been robbed.
‘Of course it’s necessary to pray,’ she replies, almost biting her tongue. ‘But… but I can do it for myself, thank you.’ She walks forward and reaches out to take the cross from the kneeling girl.
‘It won’t be enough. You do know that, don’t you?’
The statement has a coldness about it that chills Bianca to the bone.
‘If this is another of your warnings about the end of days, Hella, I think we have had one too many of them. It’s going to be a long enough journey, as it is. So from now on, Nicholas and I would be grateful if you would keep your peace on the matter. Now give me the cross.’
Hella rises to her feet and holds out the Petrine cross. But she continues smiling the beatific smile of a martyred saint. And it has none of the warmth in it that Father Peacham’s smile had.
‘I have been speaking with my sister, Hannie,’ she says. ‘Hannie has seen something she wants me to relay to you.’
‘You have a sister – in Reims?’ Nicholas says.
‘No, not in Reims; in heaven. Hannie is dead. All my family are dead, save for me and one other.’
‘And what exactly has this sister Hannie of yours seen that concerns us?’ Bianca asks, an icy knot of disquiet suddenly forming in her stomach. She stays the hand reaching out for the cross, her fingers closing on empty air.
‘A dead child,’ Hella says. ‘That is why I was praying for you. Hannie senses the presence of a dead child. I sense it, too. We could always sense things together, Hannie and I.’
‘This is an old building, Hella,’ Bianca says. ‘Many people – including children – may have died in this room over the centuries.’