As I walked back along the Strand towards the city, I wondered why I had been so reluctant to accost Amphillis openly, and came to the conclusion that there had been something furtive in her manner that had aroused my suspicions, although exactly what I was unable to say.
And then I saw her, ahead of me, passing the Chère Reine Cross. Every now and then, she glanced over her shoulder as if to make certain that she wasn’t being followed. I was right. She was uneasy.
I dodged into the shadows cast by the overhanging houses and went after her.
TEN
Amphillis entered the city by the Lud Gate and walked up as far as St Paul’s, with me still keeping a careful distance of perhaps some ten or fifteen paces behind her.
Once inside the city wall, the crowds thickened and she was forced to slow down, making it easier for me to keep her in view. Moreover, she ceased looking over her shoulder, seeming to gain confidence from the close proximity of other people. Not that I thought her really nervous of being followed: she appeared simply to be taking precautions against. . Against what? Was it just my imagination that this expedition of hers had some nefarious purpose? Or was she merely playing truant from her duties in the sewing room? And if that were so, did she have the cooperation of the head seamstress, or was her absence being cleverly concealed by her companions?
At the top of Lud Gate Hill, Amphillis turned right down Old Dean’s Lane and continued walking, past the house and gardens of the Dominican friary, finally turning left into Thames Street. It seemed that she was returning to Baynard’s Castle — its bulk was already looming just ahead of us — and I felt an acute sense of disappointment. It had been nothing but a pleasure jaunt after all then, a cocking of her nose at authority in order to prove, no doubt, that she could do it. I could well imagine that an independent spirit such as hers would derive great pleasure from the notion. She had been to see a friend: that was all there was to it.
I had begun to slacken my pace when, with a sudden quickening of my heartbeat, I realized that Amphillis had passed the castle gate and was proceeding on her way. Indeed, she was almost out of sight. Cursing myself for a dolt, I hurried to regain the ground I had lost, but it wasn’t easy. Thames Street is always a nightmare of overcrowding. On one side lie the great wharves and warehouses and on the other the mansions of the wealthy merchants and traders. The middle of the roadway is one long traffic jam of drays and carts and sumpter-horses, the drivers and riders abusing each other in the most colourful of epithets and even willing, on occasions, to dismount and use their fists. And if you are on foot, you are jostled by grinning sailors of every nationality, while your ears are assaulted by a veritable Babel of sound as all the languages of Europe (and beyond) seem to vie for dominance.
I had lost her. At the bottom of Old Fish Street Hill, I paused, sweating, but could no longer see Amphillis anywhere ahead of me. Of course, she was short; she was easily overlooked in a crowd. Then I noticed a water trough at the side of the road and stepped up on its rim. The added height enabled me to see well past the turning to Cordwainer Street, and just as I was bemoaning the fact that I had lost my quarry for good, I saw her a few yards further on, a small, quick-moving figure in a blue gown and white coif, hurrying in the direction of Dowgate Hill.
I caught her up, still being careful to stay a good few paces behind her, as she took the short cut through Elbow Lane. This brought her out perhaps some thirty or forty yards up the hill which she climbed steadily, heading for the junction with Wallbrook. It was not so simple to remain unnoticed here where the crowds were thinner, but not once did Amphillis turn her head or give any further indication that she was afraid of being followed.
Suddenly, without warning, she crossed the road from left to right, incurring, as she did so, the righteous wrath of a drayman descending the hill, and plunged into a side turning where the upper storeys of the houses on either side met almost in the middle, shutting out the daylight. At the entrance to the alleyway, I hesitated. It might be dark, but it was also quiet and offered very little cover. A few people were about, but not enough to conceal my bulky figure, and I wondered what excuse I could offer for my presence if Amphillis finally turned and saw me.
My dithering cost me dear, for when I did make up my mind, I found that I had lost her for a second time. Not caring now whether she spotted me or not, I quickened my stride, but she was nowhere to be seen. I soon discovered that the alley was quite short, bearing to the left and, at the further end, opening into the bustle of Candlewick Street. And now I really did curse my bungling ineptitude, calling myself all the names I could lay my tongue to. Why had it not occurred to me that she had merely taken another short cut, just as she had done through Elbow Lane? Why had I jumped to the unreasonable conclusion that this alleyway was Amphillis’s destination? I was getting old and stupid.
At last I decided it was no good standing there. I might as well accept defeat. This time I wasn’t going to catch her up again as I had done before. I had no idea which way she had taken, left towards Wallbrook or right in the direction of Eastcheap and any of the half dozen streets that lay between. I might as well return to Baynard’s Castle.
I turned back into the alleyway, then, with a sharp intake of breath, stopped, hiding in the shelter of a doorway. Amphillis had suddenly reappeared just ahead of me, as if from nowhere, evidently in a hurry and retracing her steps towards Dowgate Hill.
I waited for her to vanish round the bend in the road, then eased my way forward, eager to discover where she had come from. It surely had to be one of the houses on the left-hand side, for there was no opening between any of them that I could see, but how to identify the particular house seemed almost impossible. I could hardly start knocking on doors enquiring whether anyone within was acquainted with Amphillis Hill.
And then I saw it, the narrow frontage of a tiny church huddled like a frightened spinster between two of the larger houses, its well-worn door of weathered oak very nearly invisible in the shadows. Could this be the answer? Had Amphillis simply come all this way in order to pray to a favourite saint?
I turned the ring-shaped handle, half expecting to find the door locked, but it gave easily and silently under my hand, as if it were kept well oiled, suggesting that the place was frequently used. But when I entered, the musty smell of decay met my nostrils, and I noticed that the dust was thick around the perimeter of the floor, although a pathway of scuffed footprints led as far as the altar and back again.
The altar itself was a plain stone slab adorned with nothing more than a couple of wooden candlesticks, holding two sickly-looking candles, and a poor plaster image of the saint to whom the church was dedicated. In the shaft of daylight from the still open door, I could just make out the name carved into its base.
Saint Etheldreda.
I cudgelled my brains to remember what I knew of her and, thanks to Brother Hilarion’s good teaching during my novitiate at Glastonbury, found that I could recall the lady surprisingly well. For those who found Saxon names particularly daunting — which, of course, over the centuries, had included our Norman masters — she was also known as St Audrey. But, being myself of Saxon descent, in spite of the French name my mother had inflicted on me, I preferred to think of her as Etheldreda.
If memory served me aright, she was the daughter of an East Anglian king called Anna, and had been twice married. But marriage was not at all to Etheldreda’s taste and she had rebelled against what she saw as the tyranny of the wedded state until released from its bonds by the death of her first husband. Unfortunately for her, she had then been forced into a second marriage, but this time had been able to persuade her new husband that God wished them to live together only as brother and sister, an arrangement that had led him to renounce her at the end of twelve years. (And who could blame him, poor fellow? I wouldn’t have tolerated such a situation for as much as twelve months.) This had at last left the saint free to go and live a solitary life on the Isle of Ely, where she founded a monastery and also a nunnery of which she became the first abbess. The Venerable Bede tells us that Etheldreda suffered from a disfiguring neck tumour which she regarded as a punishment for having once worn a valuable necklace for her own self-glorification. But when her body was exhumed, some years after she died of the plague, the tumour had miraculously vanished and her flesh was sweet and wholesome. She was, inevitably I felt, the patron saint of all neck and throat ailments.