" '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.
They had dismounted, laughing, amorous, and Katherine on finding a fairy ring of mushrooms in the grove had cried that by means of this enchantment on Midsummer Eve she would bind her love to her forever, so that he might never once leave her side.
Nor had he left her that night, though a great company awaited the Duke at the Savoy. They had lain together, hot with passion, under the birches while a belated nightingale sang to them from a thicket.
Katherine stumbled on the road to Walsingham while her remembering body betrayed her with an agony of longing. My dear dear love, I cannot bear it. At once answer came, in Brother William's voice, "Dignum et justum est." It is meet and just that you bear it.
Katherine clenching her hand on her staff went forward along the road. "It is meet indeed and just - -" the preface to the reception of the Holy Sacrament from which she was debarred by sins so loathsome that there was no absolution. Sin that had been ever compounded and augmenting. On that carnal pagan night beneath the willow tree she had thought of nothing but her adulterous love. She had indeed kept John with her, and the next day too, though the Duchess awaited him at Hertford Castle for the solemn celebration of his saint's day which he had always spent with her in ceremonious observance.
Katherine had laughed with Hawise at this slight put upon the Duchess. God forgive me, Katherine thought, for still she was glad that he had not gone to Costanza. She stumbled on a rock that jutted up from the road, and welcomed the sharp pain that shot through her wrenched ankle.
The days and nights merged into a long grey plodding. The ankle swelled, Katherine's feet festered until she could not walk, and she lay over at a convent where the nuns were good to her. After some time her feet and ankle healed, she gave the nuns her last jewel, an emerald-studded buckle, in gratitude, and they sent her on her way again, begging that she would remember them in her prayers at Walsingham.
It was on a searing hot day that Katherine at last reached Houghton-in-the-Dale, a mile south of the shrine, and stopped as did all pilgrims at the little stone slipper chapel. Here she encountered a noisy party of mounted men and women who had left London but a few days ago, though Katherine had been weeks on the road. They were a gaily clad group of young merchants and their wives, and it was apparent from the ribald tune that one of the men played on his bagpipes, from the flask of wine that they passed from hand to hand, and from their noisy laughter, that this pilgrimage was but pious excuse for a summer junket.
Even the casual pilgrim however was required to leave his shoes at the slipper chapel and walk the last mile barefoot. Many were the little shrieks of pain, and giggles, as one by one the London wives filed into the chapel, and came out treading like cats on hot bricks.