She longed to eat.
Earlier today, she had been fortunate. A red-haired monk walking to the chapel had discovered her. When he learned she was hungry, he had begged a portion of bread and even a mouthful of fish and cheese from the nearby inn. Were it not for pilgrims, she would starve. Since they were strangers, many living in Walsingham distrusted those who came to see the shrines, but she survived on the mercy of these penitents, their souls tender with the pain of sin and fearful of how greatly they had offended God.
She was also lucky that the monk had given her the food before Father Vincent caught her near the chapel. If the priest had seen her, he would have chased her off, hurling rocks and screaming that she was Satan’s creature who polluted God’s shrines.
Not long ago, he had caught her in his chapel as a merchant was swyving her. The man swore she had enchanted him, and, when he promised a donation to the priest’s shrine, the priest’s eyes grew blind to the fact that a bone-thin child had little protection against a man who was three times her weight. Father Vincent would deny that the gift affected his judgment, but Gracia knew better. When her parents died, she lost the privilege of innocence.
On reflection, she knew she would have been wiser had she swallowed her anger and claimed demonic possession when he accused her of being the instrument of the Devil. Making an enemy of a man who owned the means to offer charity was ill-advised, and she had few ways of keeping herself alive. Had she been a boy with no kin she might have joined others who formed packs like dogs, stealing what they could use or sell. Girls, whatever their age, were left to whore.
Gracia had been determined to do otherwise. After the death of her parents, she had learned to become as efficient as a feral cat. With keen senses and clever wits, unusual in one so young, she had survived.
She had also been lucky.
Glancing around again, the girl still saw no threat and concluded she might allow herself the distraction of eating. She lowered her head and began to gnaw carefully and slowly at the monk’s gift. Hunger demanded she gorge herself. Her wits advised her to save some for the morrow. One meal was never a promise of another.
The bread was fresher than she usually ate, containing no mold or bugs and still soft enough for her loose teeth and tender gums. The cheese was pale but pungent. The fish was filled with bones. She tore the latter into tiny bits and sucked on them, spitting out sharp fragments before swallowing.
This was a king’s feast.
Gracia again paused to peer about, her eyes searching for any hint of danger in the narrow street overhung with looming buildings. Nothing alarmed her, so she went back to her meal, reflecting on a tale she had overheard.
If it were true that King Edward was coming here to worship the relics at Walsingham Priory, might she not hope to enjoy a tiny bit of a king’s bounty?
Being short and thin, she was able to slip around adults or between their legs. They would be distracted as they cheered the king’s entry into Walsingham. If she crept close enough when his minions tossed coins, she might snatch one or even two.
That was a dream, and fancy was a luxury only full bellies could afford, but she decided she was not foolish to expect to reap some benefit.
As soon as word spread about King Edward’s visit, additional pilgrims would travel to this famous religious site. Shrines drew those who longed for God’s grace, but kings lured men who hoped for an earthly lord’s favor. Between the crowds who came for God and those who came for the king, there would be more people to toss her scraps, bits too small to interest a dog but enough, perhaps, to keep her alive a while longer. Extra coin might even get her through another winter…
She froze.
There had been movement in the shadows down the road.
Pulling the rag of a hood over her head to keep the pallor of her face from betraying her in the darker shadows, she pressed the food to her chest and listened.
Footsteps echoed in the silence of the streets.
They came closer, slowed, and stopped.
Too close, Gracia thought, and shivered in terror. She had been a fool to let hunger overrule caution and eat without first finding a better place to hide. A howl of dread filled her throat, but she swallowed it. Any sound from her might bring a beating, another rape, or even prove fatal.
She bit her lip. If God were kind, she would remain unnoticed in the gloom. If He were not, rape was surely more likely than death. She reminded herself that she had survived abuse once. She could endure it again. Those were brave words, but her trembling belied her belief in them.
The footsteps began again, slower but increasingly distant.
The girl peeked out through a hole in her hood.
That shadow belonged to a man, she decided, but he was not the one who had made her bleed. She would never forget his stoutness. This shape owned a leaner form.
Holding her breath, she waited until the man’s shadow slipped past the inn and merged into the deeper darkness beyond.
Then she rose from her corner, looked down the road in both directions, and escaped toward the Augustinian priory.
The wind muted all sound of her flight.
Chapter Four
Thomas lay on his back and stared at the indistinct outlines where two dark beams braced the ceiling of his small chamber.
He shifted onto his side.
The stone floor was hard, and his thin straw mattress scratched his face. Although he could ignore those annoyances, sleep’s mockery he could not. For once it was not his familiar attack of melancholia that kept him awake. The unbalanced humor, from which he suffered tonight, was choler.
With a sigh, he surrendered to the futility of trying to sleep and sat up. After rubbing grit from his aching eyes, he glanced behind him and saw that the narrow bed in which Father Vincent should be sleeping was vacant. Above the priest’s bed a large wooden cross hung on the wall, a vague shape made clearer by weak candlelight that flickered through the partially open door. The priest must have gone into the chapel to pray, he thought.
“As well he ought,” he muttered in a low tone that betrayed dislike for his host. But it was not the priest’s evident displeasure at having to share his tiny room that drew Thomas’ ire. It was the man’s lack of compassion.
Earlier in the day, Thomas had noticed a skeletal child in the street sitting against a urine-stained wall. Although he had seen other beggar children, this girl had caught his particular attention.
Her clothing possessed more holes than cloth, and she stank of the filth she slept in. When she opened her mouth, her breath was foul from rotted teeth. But there was something about her eyes that drew him to her. From one angle, they were ice blue, from another a warm gray. In either case, they revealed an intelligence rarely seen in one so young and worn by hunger.
“Have you eaten?” he had asked. The answer was obvious, but he wanted to hear her voice and hoped to gain her trust.
She had tilted her head to look up at him, and then murmured a reply. There was no guile in her expression, only a straightforward longing for bread.
And so he had gone to the inn to ask for scraps, failing to mention the exact mouth to be fed. If the innkeeper thought the food was for a monk, the man might choose a greater charity. Taking the offering, Thomas bowed his thanks and left to pass the still warm nourishment on to the child.
As he feared, she had snatched the food and fled. What he did not foresee was her whispered word of gratitude as she rushed by, a courtesy unusual amongst small beggars who rarely lived as long as she.
Like a burr, the troubling image of this girl buried itself into his heart, and Thomas decided to mention her to Father Vincent, priest of Ryehill Priory and guardian of a minor relic some distance from those of Walsingham Priory. Surely, the monk said, a warm corner in which to sleep and regular food from the nuns’ kitchen could be provided the unfortunate child.