A man passing behind Katherine on the street saw the brooch drop, picked it up and lumbered after her, as she wandered blindly along the outside of the abbey walls.
"Good pilgrim dame," said the man, "you dropped this nouche."
"Let it be," she said in a muffled voice, not turning. "I do not want it."
The man looked up into her dead-still face, then peered closer and read the tiny letters. Because he had suffered very greatly himself, and because his heart was filled with tenderness, he guessed something of what must have happened to this widowed penitent at the shrine. He put the brooch in his pouch and followed Katherine at a distance. People crossed themselves as he walked by them, but some reached out and touched him for luck. He was a hunchback.
Katherine walked until she came to the market square where there were benches along the garden hedge of the Black Lion Tavern, which was jammed with pilgrims who had already visited the shrine, and were now celebrating. Serving-maids ran out from the tavern with strong ale and meat pasties. The party of London merchants, each now wearing the Walsingham medal, were clustered at a table by the hedge, talking at the top of their voices.
Katherine's throat was parched with thirst, her stomach gnawed. To gain favour from the Miraculous Lady of Walsingham, nothing at all had passed her lips since vespers yesterday. I shall have to beg for my bread now, she thought. She looked at the food the Londoners were guzzling, and was sickened. Pain throbbed in her sore mouth, in her head. Black swimming weakness crushed her. She slumped down on a bench and shut her eyes.
The man with the humped back paused by the market cross some way off, and watched Katherine with compassion.
The voices behind the hedge rose higher. They were shouting London gossip in answer to eager questions from provincial pilgrims. They were recounting with relish the horrors of the revolt in London two months ago, while a Norfolk man insisted that they had had a worse time of it up here than any Londoner could know.
"But 'tis over now for good, that's certain," cried the grocer called Andrew, "since John Ball was caught at Coventry."
"Ay," agreed a self-important voice, "and I was there. With my own two eyes I saw it when the King's men gelded him and gutted him, and he watched his own guts burn - afterwards they quartered him so cannily, he took a rare long time a-dying."
There was laughter until Andrew cried, "Stale news, that is, my friend - but have ye heard the latest of the Duke o' Lancaster?"
Katherine started and opened her eyes. She clenched her hands on the rim of the bench. "John o' Gaunt's renounced his paramour, that's what! Shipped her off to France, or some say to one of his northern dungeons. The King commanded it."
"Nay - but - -" said a woman giggling. " Tis well known he was tired of her anyway and has found someone else, the wicked lecher."
"He'll not dare flaunt his new harlot then, for a Benedictine told me the Duke made public confession of his sins, called his leman witch and whore, then crawled on hands and knees pleading with his poor Duchess to forgive him when they met up in Yorkshire."
Katherine rose from the bench and began to run. The hunchback hurried after her.
She ran north from the town towards the sea and along the banks of the river Stiffkey, until it widened at one place into a mill pond. Here on the grassy bank by a willow tree she stopped. The mill wheel turned sluggishly, as the falling waters pushed on it splashing downward, flowing towards the sea. Katherine advanced to the brink of the pond. She gazed down into the dark brown depths where long grasses bent in the rushing water. She clasped her hands against her breasts and stood swaying on the brink.
She felt a grip on her arm, a deep gentle voice said, "No, my sister. That is not the way."
Katherine turned her head and her wild dilated eyes stared down into the calm tender brown ones of the hunchback. "Jesu, let me be!" she cried on a choking sob. "Leave me alone."
His grip tightened on her arm. "You cry on Jesus' name?" he said softly. "But you do not know what He has promised. He said not that we should not be tempested, nor travailed nor afflicted, but He promised, Thou shalt not be overcome!"
A little wind rustled through the willow fronds, mingling with the sound of the river water as it splashed against the turning mill wheel. She stared at him, while a quiver ran down her back. She did not see him clearly, his brown eyes were part of the beckoning dark depths of the pond. "That was not said for me," she whispered. "God and His Mother have cast me out!"
"Not so. It is not so," he smiled at her. "Since He has said, I shall keep you securely. You're as dearworthy a child of His as anyone."
Katherine's gaze cleared and she recoiled. Now she saw what manner of man it was who was speaking to her. A hideous little man with a hump, whose head was twisted deep into his shoulders. A man with a great purple bulbous nose, scarred by pits, and a fringe of fire-red wisps around a tonsure. She crossed herself, while terror cut her breath. An evil demon - summoned by her from the hell depths of that deep beckoning water. "What are you?" she gasped.
He sighed a little, for he was well used to this, and patiently answered. "I am a simple parson from Norwich, my poor child, and called Father Clement."
Her terror faded. His voice was resonant as a church bell, and his unswerving look met hers with sustaining strength. He wore a much darned but cleanly priest's robe, a crucifix hung from his girdle.
She stepped uncertainly back from the pond, and began to shiver.
"I'll warrant," he said calmly, "you've not eaten in a long time." He opened his pouch, took out slices of buttered barley bread, and a slab of cheese done up in a clean white napkin. "Sit down there," he pointed to a flat stone by a golden clump of wild mustard. "The mustard will flavour the food." He chuckled. "Ah, I make foolish jokes that nobody laughs at but the Lady Julian."
Katherine stared at him dumbly; after a moment, she sat down and took the food.
He saw her wince as she tried to eat and brought her water from the pond in which to soften the bread. He briskly cut the cheese into tiny slivers. While she slowly ate, he pulled a willow whistle from his pouch and with it imitated so perfectly the twitterings of starlings that three of them landed at his feet and twittered answers.
Katherine's physical weakness passed as her stomach filled, but despair rushed back. She folded the white napkin and handed it to Father Clement. "Thank you," she said tonelessly.
"What will you do now?" he asked, putting the napkin and whistle in his pouch. From the bulbous-nosed, pitted face his eyes looked at her with an expression she had seen in no man's eyes before. Love without desire, a kind of gentle merriment.
"I don't know-" she said. "There's nothing for me - nay - -" she whispered, flushing as she saw his question, "I'll not go near - the pond again. But there was no answer for me here at Walsingham, no miracle was wrought." She went on speaking because something in him compelled her to, and it was like speaking to herself. "My fearful sins are yet unshriven - my love - he that was my love now despises me, and my child - -"
Father Clement held his peace. He cocked his massive head against his humped shoulders and waited.
"The cloisters," Katherine said after a while. "There's nothing else. A lifetime of prayer may yet avail to blunt His vengeance. I'll go to Sheppey, to the convent of my childhood. I've given them many gifts through the years. They will take me as a novice."
Father Clement nodded. It was much as he had guessed. "Before you enter this convent," he said, "come with me to the Lady Julian. Speak with her awhile."
"And who is the Lady Julian?"
"A blessed anchoress of Norwich."
"Why should I speak with her?"
"Because, through God's love, I think that she will help you - as she has many - as she once did me."