Carole Mortimer - Historical Romance – The Best Of The Year

‘Are you all right?’ he asked. ‘To ride?’

She nodded. It was not easy. It would never be easy. But the trip to Canterbury had built her muscles and her skills. And it would be the last time she would see any of this. For that, it was worth any pain.

For that, and to steal these final, precious days with Nicholas.

The King had given them leave to stay at his palaces on their way, so the end of the first day’s travel seemed little different than when she journeyed with the court, except that she did not spend her waking hours with an eye out for what the Lady Joan might want.

As a result, she noticed that Nicholas’s squire and Agatha seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time within touching distance of each other. And when it was time for bed, Agatha appeared with rumpled hair and short of breath, a look Anne now recognised.

‘Agatha,’ she began, ‘you know that Eustace will be a knight soon.’

The girl nodded. ‘Within the year, he hopes. As soon as he and Sir Nicholas join the Great Company and he can prove himself...’ Her words faded and she bit her lip, knowing she had revealed too much.

My fault. Anne winced. Keeping not only Nicholas but his squire from their glory. And putting a simple young girl’s heart in harm’s way. ‘And you also know,’ she said, ‘that a knight will never wed a serving girl.’

‘Wed?’ She cocked her head. ‘I never thought so.’

Now Anne felt as if she were the simple one, thinking that a man’s kiss would mean more than momentary pleasure. This girl had learned a lesson Anne had not. ‘So you don’t expect...’

Agatha did not wait for her to find the word. ‘I don’t let tomorrow’s trouble sour today.’

And hadn’t Anne done exactly that? She had taught Nicholas to see, to create something to remember, yet she had let her fears prevent her from relishing the days she had left.

That would change.

* * *

So she asked him, the next morning, as the open road stretched before them, what cathedral they would see. She had travelled with the court, but had only a misty notion of place and direction. Only that Holystone would be far, far away.

‘Which one?’ Nicholas smiled. ‘Ely, Lincoln, York, Durham? All of them!’

Laughter rolled through her, like a thunderstorm passing by in spring. ‘All of them?’

‘Why not?’

‘Because we would be travelling until Yuletide.’ She would not have minded that. She would not have minded travelling beside him for ever. She let the moment, and the wish, fade. ‘You have postponed your life for me long enough. One. We will pick one cathedral.’

He did not argue, but she wasn’t certain he agreed. ‘Ely is the first one. We will see Ely.’

And she thought there was one more memory she would take from this journey.

* * *

They could not help but see Ely Cathedral, Nicholas thought, as they approached the town a few days later.

The Cathedral shimmered in the distance near half a day before they arrived. The land was flat here and the Cathedral’s tower taller than the trees on the horizon, almost like a ship, sailing over the marshy fens.

They had travelled slowly. Nicholas had wanted to be certain they had lodgings each night so Anne would not have to sleep outdoors. She had complained of nothing, protesting that she could sleep anywhere, but there was another reason that he had not shared with her.

It kept her more safely away from him.

Kisses were one thing. But he wanted more than that now. Things he must not have.

There was no castle near Ely, so he arranged for lodgings, making sure that Anne could sleep alone, and left Eustace and Agatha to unload so he and Anne could explore the church while there were no services.

They entered the great doors and paused, looking down the great nave.

‘How does this compare to Chartres?’ Anne whispered, as if not to disturb God.

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

‘But you saw it. You told me so when we were in Canterbury.’

‘I was there. I did not see it,’ he said, realising it was the truth. He had stood before it, walked inside it, even waited behind the King as the treaty was hammered out and signed, but he could no more summon up a vision of it than of any of the countless other buildings he had seen in France.

‘Show me Ely, Anne. Show me so I will know I was here.’

‘Just look,’ she said, as if impatient with a balky student. ‘How many towers has it?’

‘One.’

‘Yes. Only one. Most churches have two.’

He nodded. Something else he had seen without ever really seeing.

‘Now look, there.’ She pointed at the top of the arches lining the nave. ‘You see the carvings up there?’

Not until she had shown them to them.

‘They are of the saint, Etheldreda.’

He squinted to see the place where the columns met the arches. Had he ever noticed anything other than how many men could sleep in a castle’s hall and whether the list he had given matched the food delivered?

So many things that he had not seen. Excited, she did not wait for him to catch up. ‘And the windows, you see? Angels playing music.’

He tried to make out the image. Once he opened his eyes, once he tried to see it all, there was too much to take in.

But already she was pointing out something new. ‘Now look up. Have you ever seen anything like that?’

Above him stretched eight arches, meeting to support a higher structure, floating above the floor. It must have been the dome-like structure they had seen before they even reached the city. It looked as celestial and far above the world as if God had made it and put it in the heavens. Standing directly beneath it, he was dizzy.

Yes, he would remember Ely Cathedral now.

What would the rest of the world look like, through Anne’s eyes? Something to be savoured, rather than endured. To be lingered over instead of passed over. Every place he planned to visit would be different if she were there, if he were travelling slowly enough to notice...

He was still thinking of that, with a moment’s pang for the Canterbury badge he had dropped, at day’s end when they had returned to the inn.

Through supper, Anne told Eustace and Agatha of everything they had seen until the young people finally made their escape. Alone with Nicholas, having re-examined it all, she fell silent as he tossed one of his juggling balls from one hand to the other. Finally, by mutual consent, they rose and he carried a candle to light her way as she took the stairs, one at a time.

In front of her door, she paused. ‘Etheldreda was from Northumberland, you know,’ she said.

He shook his head. ‘No. I didn’t.’

‘I wonder if she missed it.’ Anne was whispering now, barely talking to him at all.

He had no answers for her. From what he had heard, Northumberland was a cold, windswept, barren land, best left to the quarrelling Borderers who lived there.

Italy, at least, would be warm.

But Anne was looking at him now, with an intensity that spoke of the rest of her life. ‘She also died a virgin.’

He looked around, grateful that they were alone. He cleared his throat. ‘Really?’

‘She had two husbands and she died a virgin. I won’t have even one, but I don’t want...’ Looking right at him now. ‘Would you...?’

Of all the questions she had asked him, this was the easiest one to answer. He had longed to hold her once more since the night of the royal wedding.

Yet without his intention, his gaze drifted to all that was hidden beneath her skirt.

The edge of her mouth ticked upwards. ‘It is only my foot. Besides that, I am like other women.’

Embarrassed, he realised she knew what he had been thinking. ‘But you haven’t, you don’t mean—?’