"May Christ bless you!" Katherine whispered.

The Pessoners were all up to see the girls start out. After the first protests against their daughter leaving them, the good-hearted couple had given in, and last night Master Guy had hired a horse from the livery stable down the street and routed out one Jankin, his best prentice, telling him to make ready to escort my Lady Swynford and Hawise at least until they might catch up with some safe company that was also Lincoln-bound. Dame Emma packed a hamper full of cheese; new-baked loaves and a leg of mutton, then crammed the corners with saffron cakes before she helped Hawise make up a bundle of her own belongings. "And what o' Lady Swynford's gear?" asked the good dame, knowing that Katherine had fled to them with nothing but her cloak.

" 'Tis left at the Savoy; she said 'no matter,' there wasn't much, and she's in such a dither to be off, she'll not send for it."

So the Pessoners all stood and waved cheerily on the doorstep. Little Jackie waved to his mother as gaily as any, for Dame Emma had promised him that he should have a gingerbread man for his breakfast.

Hawise rode pillion with Jankin on the hired horse, and Katherine preceded them on Doucette, who had been well curried and fed at the livery stable. Jankin was a great gangling lad of fifteen, strong enough to hoist a hundredweight of cod on to the scales and canny enough to haggle with fishermen at the dock, and he was delighted with this expedition. He and Hawise chattered as they rode along Bridge Street to Bishops-gate, but Katherine rode in silence. Now that she was safely off, each of Doucette's hoofbeats was like a hammer on her heart. If I should never see him again, she thought, Blessed Mother, how could I live, and yet it was the fear of seeing him again which had driven her to this desperate haste. The fear that if he were there so near her she might have crept back to the Avalon Chamber, beseeching, begging - I was wrong, my darling, my dearest lord, nothing matters to me but you, forgive me, take me - -

There in the London street she winced and gritted her teeth, clenching her hands on the pommel. During the night when she had slept a little, she had thought herself in the Avalon Chamber lying in his arms with his mouth on hers, she had heard again each dark shaken tone of his voice and in her dream he told her that he loved her - each time as she wakened she saw only the coldness of his eyes before he turned from her at the end and remembered that from him there had been no talk of love, but only desire. Then shame would flood her that she had dared to dream that he spoke of love while the Lady Blanche stood there between them, and bitter shame that she had cried out to him her own love. Yet it is true, God help me, Katherine thought, and such an anguish came to her that she jerked on Doucette's reins and stopped the mare in the middle of the road while she gazed back past London spires to where the Savoy lay.

"What is't, m'lady?" asked Hawise anxiously as she and Jankin jogged up. Now that she had become Katherine's servant she thought it seemly to use respectful address before others.

Katherine started. "Nothing," she said, trying to smile. "Can you go faster? We should be past Waltham at the nooning."

For to stop again in Waltham she could not bear. The twice she had covered this North road before she had thought herself unhappy, but it had been nothing like this.

It grew colder, the sun gleamed once or twice, then dwindled. The horses' hooves rang out on the freezing road. Their fellow travellers - friars, pedlars, merchants, journeymen and beggars - all huddled themselves deep into whatever covering they wore and omitted greetings to each other.

When they were three miles short of Ware, light snowflakes drifted down and melted on their cloaks. They were hungry and the hired horse stumbled from weariness. They stopped at an isolated alestake that thrust its long bush across the highway. They hitched the horses under a lean-to shed, and Jankin stayed to see that a tattered little knave watered and fed them while the two women entered the tavern with the hamper.

"God's nails!" muttered Hawise, frowning; "have they no brooms in Hertfordshire!" The low smoky room was littered with mouldering straw which had matted on the trampled earth with strewn bones, eggshells, apple peel and chicken droppings from the hens that clucked under the one greasy table. Behind a trestle piled with kegs and flagons the alewife stood, her arms akimbo, staring malevolently. Two men sprawled at the table. They were black-bearded except where a running sore had bared the jaw of the younger one. They were clothed in sheepskin and torn leather breeches. Their feet were wrapped in filthy rags. Their heavy oak staves leaned against the wall. They had a long knife which they silently passed back and forth to cut chunks from a grey-furred loaf of dark bread they had brought. They glanced from Hawise to Katherine, then at each other. One picked a louse off his knee and cracked it between his fingernails.

"You will share our food?" said Katherine faintly. "For sure I can eat none," she whispered to Hawise. The stink of the alehouse sickened her, and she loathed these ugly evil people.

"Why not?" said he of the running sore, grabbing at the hunk of mutton Hawise held out, "for are we not all created equal in the sight o' God? Did He ordain that you s'ld eat while we go empty?"

"What manner o' babble is that?" said Hawise briskly. "If ye are beggars ye can feed at th' nearest abbey."

"Phuaw!" the man spat through his yellow teeth. "Mouldy bread and a slice o' cheese the rats won't touch, whilst the monks sit on their fat arses swilling capon."

"Come, we must go," said Katherine rising. "Leave them the rest of the food." The two men watched intently while Hawise paid the alewife for the sour brew that they had hardly touched. The men stood watching while the trio mounted. Their eyes rested on Doucette and the brass-studded leather saddle, the carved bone stirrups.

Katherine flicked the mare, they started north again at as fast a trot as the hired horse could manage. "A pack of ribauds," said Hawise. "They'd thievery in their eyes."

"Suppose they come after us, and waylay!" cried Jankin eagerly. He burned for battle, and now that the unease of the alehouse was over, he felt disappointment.

"How would they, numskull - they've no horses!"

"A short cut," answered Jankin, considering. "They'd know of one through the fields; they might hide in yonder green wood and then jump out-"

"By the Mass, Jankin, you've too much fancy!" Hawise rapped him angrily on the skull with her knuckles. "D'you wish to frighten our lady?" But she frowned.

"I believe the foul creatures are runaway serfs, outlaws of some kind," said Katherine shuddering. She drew Doucette close to the others.

They entered the wood where trees grew close to the roadside. The snow, which had stopped, began to fall again in lazy, aimless flakes.

"There's something moving in th' thicket there," cried Jankin, pointing unsteadily. With fast-beating hearts they looked, then Hawise said, "Naught but a stray hound!" and kicked their horse again. They were near out of the wood when they heard noises behind them. The pound of galloping hooves. Turning, they saw four helmeted men bearing down on them full-tilt, shouting and waving their arms.

"What now!" cried Hawise. "Do they mean to run us down?" Jankin yanked their horse off the road, and Katherine swerved Doucette so hard that the little mare pranced angrily. But the men pulled up in a flurry of flying clods and jingling harness. A cold stillness descended on Katherine; on each of them she saw the Lancaster badge.

"Ho! men-at-arms, what would you of us?" cried Jankin in a high dauntless voice, while Hawise cried, "Saint Mary! That first one is th' outlandish squire came for my lady yesterday!" and new fear smote her. Katherine sat her horse stiff and straight as though she'd been carved from the oak behind her, and whatever these new-comers had in mind, 'twas plain Jankin could avail nothing against spears and swords and armoured men.

"My Lady Swynford!" cried Raulin, riding directly up to Katherine and wiping his sweating face on a corner of his surcote. "A fine race you haff run us, by my fader's soul, ve haff pounded the road since Tierce!" He spoke with annoyance. Tracking down this extraordinary young woman to Billingsgate yesterday had been simple compared to the difficulties today when he had found she was not at the Beaufort Tower.

"What is it you want?" Katherine, angry at herself for the joy she had felt when she saw the badges, spoke with extreme coldness.

"His Grace promised you escort, I belief - yet you did not vait. He sends letters too."

"Letters for me?" said Katherine faintly.

"Not for you, lady. For your husband, Sir Hugh, and for officers at Lincoln Castle."

Hawise looked sharply at the squire, then at Katherine, thinking: His Grace? The Duke of Lancaster? What is this? when suddenly she guessed the truth and was so startled she nearly fell off the horse.

"These men," said Raulin, indicating the sergeant and two soldiers behind him, "are your escort to Lincoln."

"By Saint Christopher, I'm glad to hear that!" exclaimed Hawise. She had begun to think Jankin far too slender a defence against the hazards of the road. She winked companion-ably at the sergeant, who winked back, grinning.

"Ay, we're glad of escort," said Katherine, but her irresolute heart was heavy again. He had kept his promise, nothing more. As it should be, of course.

Raulin dispatched the rest of his business quickly for he was weary of running about the country after my Lady Swynford.

He repeated the instructions to the sergeant, saw that he put the ducal letters for Lincoln safely inside his hauberk, and then agreed to take the deeply disappointed Jankin back to London with him. Raulin consigned Hugh's letter to Katherine's keeping and said, "There is vun more thing. His Grace send you this." He held out stolidly a triangle of parchment, smaller than the palm of his hand. Katherine took it and turned it over. It was the shield the Duke had drawn for her, her own blazon; the three Catherine wheels had now been painted gold against the field of scarlet.

Oh, what does it mean? she thought. Was it a special message to remind her of that contented moment when they had leaned together on the table and he had drawn this for her? Did it mean forgiveness? Or was it only that he wished to be rid of all thought of her?

She could not know, but after they had said farewell to Raulin and Jankin, and the two women rode with the soldiers on to Ware, she found opportunity to secretly kiss the shield and slipped it in the bosom of her gown.

It was on a fine sunny morning that they rode through the suburban village Wigford, then across the Witham on the High bridge and through the city walls under the great arch of Stonebow and so into Lincoln town.

"God's teeth, could they find no steeper hill to build on?" laughed Hawise, gazing up what seemed to be a perpendicular climb to the castle and the minster above. "Folk here must be goats!" All through the journey her town-bred scorn of the provinces had been leavened by a bright-eyed interest in new sights. "Bustling little place," she added approvingly. It was market day. The narrow streets were lined with booths, and thronged with chaffering goodwives, most of them dressed in the scarlet and green cloth for which Lincoln weavers were famous.

"No bustle like there used to be afore they took the staple away," said the sergeant, who had been to Lincoln before. "Couple years back there'd be a reg'lar Tower o' Babel here wi' heathen sailors from the German ocean an' traders from Flanders an' Florence all a jib-jabbering away like a hassel o' magpies. Tis quiet now."

"A deal better than those dreary fens, forsooth. Hark! There's music!" cried Hawise cocking her head. They had climbed up through the Poultry with its squawking tethered produce, past the skin market at Danesgate, and here in an open court the tanners' guild was rehearsing for its procession on St. Clement's Day. Fiddles, pipes and tabors had the tanners, and they scraped and whistled and drummed while one of their number, dressed in violet Papal robes to represent their patron saint, leaped up and down in rhythm and juggled with a large tin anchor which stood for the instrument of St. Clement's martyrdom.

At a fresh spurt from the fiddlers and a loud tattoo on the tabors, the juggler threw his anchor high and missed it as it fell. It rebounded on the paved courtyard and bounced into the fish market just ahead, clattering down beside a woman at a stall.