Alan kept up such a hard pace that by sunrise on the fourth day after the Duke’s interment, they clattered onto the quayside at Dieppe. They hoped to sail with the next tide. It had been a beautiful dawning, with the sun rising in unclouded splendour and the sea reflecting the blue calm of the skies. Alan slid from Firebrand, and stretched his legs. His thighs were aching – they had ridden roughly thirty miles a day with hardly a pause.
‘Gwenn, will you hold the horses?’ he asked, flinging her his reins and trying not to look at her. She was still mounted, and he wondered whether her legs were aching as much as his were. His conscience stirred. Perhaps, given her condition, he should have set a more sedate pace. Perhaps he should link his hands and squire her down from Dancer. But he couldn’t trust himself to touch her. Nodding brusquely at her, he made for the gangplank of the nearest vessel, where a couple of loud-mouthed sailors were soliciting custom by proclaiming they had space on the deck of their ship.
Gwenn watched Alan march off with dull eyes, vaguely aware through her misery that something was upsetting him. He had been off-hand ever since they had left Paris. Wincing, she tumbled from the saddle.
A flock of black-backed gulls was bobbing up and down on the swell in the harbour, waiting for scraps of gutted fish to be thrown back to the sea; while above them a handful more wheeled and circled, buttercup-coloured legs trailing, bills ajar. Their cries hung thin and plaintive on the warming air. Gwenn’s legs were so fatigued they were shaking, and she had pins and needles in her feet.
She was missing Ned. She felt the lack of him as a dull, persistent ache which sat in her belly alongside his child. Dear, kind, sweet Ned, who always had time for quick smile and a loving glance. She bitterly regretted not telling him she loved him more often. She wished she had told him how much she appreciated his steady affection and his constancy. Poor Ned. She had known that he adored her, and she had meanly withheld the full measure of her love from him, holding out for... For what? Something better? There was nothing better than what Ned had to offer, and now that it was too late, now that Ned was gone, she could see that. She had been his world. He had put her first, and would always have done so, and that made his love the purest, cleanest love there was. She was no soothsayer, but she knew that whatever God planned for her future, no man would ever love her as Ned had done, wholeheartedly and unreservedly. He had made her feel safe, and she, ungrateful wretch that she was, had begun to chafe at his love, to feel bound by it. Well, God had snatched Ned from her. She was on her own.
Gwenn turned her face into the Dancer’s warm shoulder and stifled a groan. Why was it that she had had to lose Ned before she had learned to appreciate him?
Dancer whickered softly at her.
‘No doubt you are as relieved as I that we’ve stopped, Dancer,’ Gwenn murmured, patting the proud arch of the mare’s neck. ‘Alan has been a slave driver, hasn’t he? Do you think he grieves for Duke Geoffrey as well as Ned? Do you think that’s what ails him?’
One of the sailors had taken Alan onto the deck of the merchantman. He had his back to her and was talking to someone, no doubt the ship’s captain. Wearily, Gwenn shook her numbed feet in turn, and while she waited for the blood to flow, she rested against the satiny coat of her mother’s mare and thought about Alan. In his cold, efficient way, he was her rock in this latest tragedy. She didn’t know why she had gone through that pretence of hiring him, for it had been a pretence, and they had both known it. Had Alan been Ned, she would have been able to ask him outright for help. But Alan was not Ned, and blurred with grief as her thoughts had been, she had been desperately afraid that Alan might refuse her request. She could not have withstood his rejection. Her feelings for Alan had never been the least like her feelings for Ned. The first shock of her grief was fading, and she realised that her relationship with Ned would always have remained platonic if it had not been for the extreme circumstances into which they had been flung. But Alan was different. Alan had always been different.
On the ship, Alan turned, and seeing her watching, half-lifted his hand in acknowledgement.
‘Handsome devil, isn’t he?’ Gwenn murmured. ‘I have always been attracted to him. At first I didn’t even like him, but I have always been attracted to him. Why, oh why, could I not have been attracted to Ned in the same way? Alan can be vile. And at the moment, he’s...’ She broke off, for Alan had concluded his business with the captain and was striding towards her, an odd, tight smile on his lips.
‘Unless the winds change we’ll be in England this evening,’ he announced, with a touch of triumph in his voice. ‘The captain wasn’t carrying a full cargo, and he is glad to have us aboard.’
England was Alan’s home, not Brittany, Gwenn remembered. He would be pleased to see it. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘And the horses?’
‘I’ve reserved a bay on the uncovered section of the deck. Shall we go and inspect it?’
‘Lead on.’
***
The first night in England, they secured places in a Benedictine guesthouse. Their cells were in different parts of the monastery, for these monks did not permit married men and women to sleep under the same roof, let alone unmarried ones. That night Gwenn chanced to be the only female guest, and there was nothing for it but that she must spend the night on her own.
‘You’ll be alright here?’ Alan asked, depositing her saddlebag onto the pallet.
‘I’m sure I will.’
They were standing close in the doorway, almost touching. The cell was barely large enough to contain the mattress, and there was nowhere else to be. It could hardly be plainer, with its peeling limewashed walls and stone floor. A wooden cross hung crookedly under the single window slit. Under her summer tan, Gwenn was drawn and her mouth turned down. Alan felt uneasy about leaving her. ‘I don’t know what you’ve got in your bag, Gwenn, but it’s heavy.’ His innocuous comment brought a rich blush rushing into her cheeks.
Her eyes slid away and fastened on the window slit. ‘Th...there’s n...nothing much in it. Only some of Ned’s belongings which I imagine his mother might like.’
Alan grunted, and kicked the pallet with his boot. It rustled, being no more than two sacks stuffed with straw and sewn together. ‘I hope you sleep well, Gwenn. The mattress looks lumpy.’
Gwenn almost groaned aloud. She had said much the same thing to Ned in the Bois de Soupirs on their wedding night. The rush of misery which accompanied this thought had her wrapping her arms about her middle. The coldness in her belly that was associated with the loss of Ned seemed to have grown larger and more solid with the passage of time. Would she have to carry this burden around with her forever?
She forced her lips to move, ‘My thanks, Alan. I’m sure it will be fine.’
‘Good night,’ Alan said, but he did not go, and Gwenn felt his eyes on her as she turned and began to fumble with the catches on her pack.
Head bowed, she answered without turning round, ‘Good night, Alan.’ Quietly, Alan closed the cell door.
Gwenn sank onto the palliasse and put her head in her hands. She had decided on impulse to come to England. Had she done the right thing? She felt so lonely, so alone. She wanted to talk to Alan, but he was making a point of keeping his distance, and she was afraid of confiding in him.
What would Ned’s mother be like? She must be a kind woman to have borne a son like Ned, but would she welcome a foreign daughter-in-law? Perhaps it would have been better if Gwenn had returned to Ploumanach. She was not concerned about her siblings’ physical welfare, for she did not doubt that Alis would lavish every care on her orphaned brother and sister, but Katarin might be missing her. She resolved to beg some parchment from the monks in the morning. She must write to her aunt, and explain what had happened. She would confess that she had sold Ned’s gelding, and she would promise to visit them as soon as she could. She must give Sir Gregor the money his horse had brought.