"You don't know me - Your Grace?" said Katherine very low, looking steadily up at the King. "Yet last Christmastide we shared wassail at Leicester Castle." She saw blank impatience in Richard's eyes. She opened her scrip, fumbled quickly inside and brought out the Duke's sapphire signet ring. "You remember this, my lord?" She held it up so that only he could see the carved Lancastrian crest.

Richard stared at the ring, then into her wide grey eyes. "Christi!" he cried, pleased as a child that has found answer to a riddle. " 'Tis Lady Swy - -"

"Your Grace, for the love of God, don't name me!" she whispered frantically, "No one must know - it is for penance."

Richard's capricious fancy was caught. He would have questioned her except that it was forbidden to infringe upon a penitential vow and brought ill luck to the offender, but he leaned down close from the saddle and whispered, "You want that naked churl? Is he truly yours, lady?"

"Ay," Katherine said, "from Kettlethorpe, a fugitive. I would deal with him myself."

"I would have drawn and quartered him, and hope you do," said Richard, his eyes sparkling. "When my men caught him back there in the forest, he screamed out all manner of treason. But you shall have him."

"Grand merci - most Gracious Majesty," whispered Katherine. "Wait my lord, I pray you. I have a daughter, Blanchette, of your own age. Do you remember her at Leicester?"

"I think so," answered Richard, puzzled and losing interest. "She was small with ruddy curls."

"Have you seen aught of her since then?"

"Nay, lady, I have not - how odd a question."

"Forgive me." She curtsied and kissed the boy's gold gauntlet. "Christ's blessings on your generosity, sire."

Richard smiled graciously.

There were murmurs of astonishment and one of sharp protest from Buckingham as the King ordered that the end of Cob's rope be untied from the saddle and given to the pilgrim widow, but Richard, who loved a secret, did not explain except to say that it was part of a penitential vow. Buckingham, who had as little possible to do with his brother of Lancaster, had never seen Katherine close, and, suspected nothing.

No one impeded her as she led her stumbling dazed serf away from the heath, and they were at once forgotten when Richard and his army returned to the congenial punishment of the captured rebels.

She led. Cob out of sight and off the road into the forest, until she saw a rainwater pool in a glade of holly bush and beeches. The pool was fringed by a mossy bank, dappled with golden light that filtered through the rich leaves of a huge sheltering beech. Katherine gently tugged at the now resistant Cob's rope, and pointing to the soft turf, said, "Rest here, Cob."

His pale-lashed eyes stared at her with numb hatred. But he collapsed on the edge of the pool and plunged his swollen purplish-black hands in the water. The leather thong that bound his wrists had bit so deep that the flesh was puffed in ridges. He rested his elbows on the turf and bending his face to the pool lapped up water avidly while the knobs of his little backbone stuck out like walnuts beneath his dirt-caked bleeding skin.

Katherine unclasped her scrip again. In it she carried all that she possessed, the few jewels she had seized that Thursday in the Savoy, the change that remained from the gold nobles, a comb, a coarse towel, a cup and a bone-handled knife.

She took out the knife and kneeling by Cob said, "Keep your arms steady - Sainte Marie, I pray this knife is sharp enough."

Cob jumped back, staring in terror at the knife. He tried to get up on his quivering legs, but the dangling end of his waist rope caught in a holly bush and yanked him down.

"Oh Cob, Cob - poor wight," said Katherine. "How can you think I'd harm you? I want to cut that thong for you."

He sucked at his lips, darting at the surrounding forest glances of beastlike wariness; his hands drew up tight against his scrawny chest.

"Look at me, Cob," said Katherine. His eyes shifted slowly and raised to her grave sorrowful face. She smiled at him, took his bound hands in hers and pulled them away from his chest. He held himself quiet, ready to spring. Katherine slid the knife carefully between his jammed arms and working it upwards sawed on the thong. It frayed at last, and she threw it on the turf. "When you can use your hands again," she said, "you must help me get that rope off you too."

Cob swallowed, staring at the cut thong. Then he winced, his teeth began to chatter from the pain that throbbed through his freed hands. "What d'ye mean to do wi' me?" he gasped.

"I'll get away from ye again, I'll - -" He clamped his lips on the threats he had nearly uttered. For sure, she'd not be so calm did she not have men hidden behind the beeches over there, or the King's men might have followed. That was it. What else had she been whispering to the King? God's blood, the clodpolls they'd all been to have believed the King's word. serfs you are and serfs you shall remain. 'Twas clear enough now. Swynford serf. Her serf. Just as it had always been. Branded once for running away, and this time there'd be an end to it - a length of rope from the gibbet on Kettlethorpe green, like Sim the reeve. Unless - Cob glanced at the knife Katherine had left lying on the bank by a clump of purple bell flowers, while she soaked her towel in the pool.

He tried to flex his throbbing fingers but they were still useless.

Katherine came to him with the wet towel and began to cleanse the blood and dirt off his little trunk that was sharp-breasted and bony as the carcass of a squab. Cob hunched himself tight. She cleaned as best she could the raw abrasions, the stone-cuts on the taut skin and said at last, "Oh Cob, Cob, have you had naught to eat? We must get you food at Waltham."

"Eat!" he cried, twisting out from under her hands. "Ay, I've had crusts from the monks and fern fronds i' the forest, and thought me well fed, whilst I still had me freedom!"

She sank back on the turf looking at the matted sweat-darkened tow hair, the naked little body, the F brand on the cheek next to the sullen slufting eyes. Cob chafed his numb hands desperately.

"You are free, Cob o' Fenton," said Katherine in a low clear voice. "A freeman from this moment."

Cob's muscles jerked. His hands ceased moving. He peered into her face, then quickly down the shadowy glades between the beeches. In the silence, wood doves cooed, and crackling in a thicket told of a red deer that stared at them, and scampered off as Cob cried, "Ye think to diddle me, lady, wi' yet another trick! 'Tis sport for ye belike. Ay - shout ye now for King's men, sure they be near - string me up at once, and ha' done with it. See, here's the noose - all ready." He pounded his fists on the rope about his waist.

"Small wonder that you'll not believe me," said Katherine sadly. "Yet, Cob, could you think me so ungrateful for what you did that day the Savoy burned that I would so cruelly fool you? I've longed to thank you, was glad you had your freedom from the King. Since it seems that you have not, I give it to you, Cob."

"And if 'twere true," he cried in a shaking voice, "who'd believe it? Think ye I could go home - to Kettlethorpe, in peace, to your steward - d'ye know what he'd do to me?"

"Yes," said Katherine sighing and rising, "I know. You shall have a writ of manumission under my seal, and this the steward will obey."

"Another charter-" Cob whispered. "And if it prove false as the King's - -"

" 'Twill not prove false, Cob. I swear it on the cross." She kissed the small rough crucifix that hung from her hempen girdle.

It was many hours before Cob believed, though he came with her back to Waltham under cover of her cloak; though she bought him food, ale and a long woollen smock to cover his nakedness. She inquired from the hostelkeeper where she might find some man of law, and was directed to a learned clerk who lived by the bridge on the river Lea.

The clerk was at home, standing at his desk and copying out a land grant when Katherine and Cob were ushered in. When the clerk understood that the widow had money for a fee, he pulled out a fresh parchment from a pile and shoved a Bible towards Katherine. "Do you kiss the Book and truly swear that this serf is your property? Yours to dispose of as you will?"

"I do," said Katherine while Cob shrank into the shadow behind her.

"And what disposition would you make of him?"

"I wish to free him."

The clerk lifted his scraggy eyebrows. "Is't one of the rebels? Has he been intimidating you? There's no need to fear them now the King is enforcing law and order."

"I know," said Katherine. "I wish to free him."

"For what reason? It must go on the deed of enfranchisement."

"For the brave and loyal service he has rendered me, beyond his bondage duty," she said softly.

The clerk shrugged and scribbled rapidly, asking at the proper place for names. Katherine gave hers with reluctance, but the clerk had never heard of her. He sanded the writing, watched Katherine sign her name, heated red wax and waited. She pressed the sapphire signet ring into the seal, praying that he would not recognise the Lancaster crest, though this crest made it certain that her steward would honour the writ.

But the clerk was incurious, and busy. He stamped his own notary seal beside hers, demanded his fee and thrust the parchment out to Cob, saying briskly, in the traditional phrase, "By the grace of God and your manor lord - serf, native, villein, bondsman, this you are no more. Hail, freeman of England!" The clerk pulled over the land grant and began to write on it again.

Cob, making a hoarse sound in his throat, stood rooted to the floor. Katherine put her arm around his shoulders and led him out of the house. "Here, here," she said smiling, "Cob - you dolt, you've dropped your writ of freedom, sure that's no way to treat it!" She picked it up and starting back cried, "Ah no - don't-" for the little man had thrown himself on the road and was kissing her muddy bare feet.

"My lady, my lady," he sobbed, "I'll serve ye till I die, I'll never leave ye. And to think I meant to kill ye, and I nearly robbed ye back there in London - and 'tis from that very money that ye paid the clerk for my freedom. Oh my lady - what can I do for ye-" He raised his stained wet face, looking up at her with worship.

"Pray for me, Cob," said Katherine, " 'Tis all that you can do for me."

Cob and Katherine parted that afternoon at the fork where the North road branched off the Palmers' Way to Walsingham. Cob begged to go with her but she would not let him: the penance must be suffered alone, and, too, she saw how much Cob longed for home. He spoke constantly of Kettlethorpe, of his ox and his little cot, and of a lass in Newton, a freeman's daughter that now he might wed. There was no happier man in England that day than Cob in his new smock and shoes and scarlet hood, with the fine hunting knife Katherine had given him, pennies in his pocket for the journey, and his writ of manumission sewed to his smock against his skin.

His joy could not help but lighten Katherine's heavy heart for a time, but when they had parted and she took up her pilgrimage again, night fell on her spirit as inexorably as it fell on the darkening ridges of the Essex hills. She had listened to Cob's talk of Kettlethorpe with the old shrinking distaste, a revulsion that had spread to include all the scenes of her past life. The taint of corruption had spoiled every memory from the day that she left Sheppey's convent and set out for Windsor. Self-loathing filled her, of the fleshly beauty she had fostered, of the sinful thoughts that she had refused to recognise. The past was evil, the future blank and menacing.

She had no goal but Walsingham and the miracle, when the All-Merciful Lady there would tell her how to find Blanchette, how to make reparation.

As she limped toward the hospice where she would spend the night, fresh pain tormented her. It was Midsummer Eve, the Vigil of Saint John, and through the dusk on every hill the boon fires flared against the sky as they had done on this night since the time when England was young, to placate the fairy folk and elves, in honour too perhaps of some fearsome Druid sun god who had once exacted sacrifice.

Last year this night she had been at the Savoy with John.

From the Avalon Tower they had watched together the boon fires twinkling around London, when a wild enchanted mood had come to them, born of the magic of the rose-scented June dusk and of the wine they had drunk in celebration of this eve of John's own saint's day. They had called for horses and galloped off into the country, until they came suddenly upon a hidden patch of greensward beside a brook, and a grove of silver birches.