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was, thought this older Katherine lying on the strange hostel pallet, for now that release had come at last, all past disappointments seemed trivial. I will be good and please Philippa and the Queen, she thought vaguely, quite unable to visualise either of them. Of the husband who would be allotted to her she scarcely thought at all, except that it would be delightful if he were young and handsome like Roger de Cheyne.

CHAPTER II

    It took them four more days to reach Windsor, and only for Katherine were the small mishaps and adventures of the road consistently interesting. The two nuns grew weary of strange beds and food, their middle-aged bones ached, their muscles cramped from all this riding. Moreover, Dame Cicily had caught a cold after her ducking in the Swale, and her doleful sneezes grew as monotonous as the slow clop of the horses, or Long Will's increasingly exasperated oaths. He was on fire to get back to Windsor where the festivities would be already under way; the preliminary jousting in the lists, bull-baitings and cockfights by the river, while fair Alison of Egham had promised to give her old husband the slip and be waiting at the alehouse to join Will in merry dalliance. Yet by Sunday the party from Sheppey had travelled no farther than Southwark, and there was no means of hurrying them. Dame Cicily's nag limped, the prioress's cob shied and then baulked at anything which annoyed it, which meant pedlars, dogs, puddles, geese and particularly the sound of bagpipes, which they encountered with frequency while they were on the Pilgrims' Way, since most groups bound for Canterbury included amateur musicians.
    So Long Will chafed and endured a journey of nearly six days, though it had taken him less than three alone. And at Southwark he would not allow his charges to cross the Bridge and enter London, which would have meant more delay.
    The tired nuns did not care. The prioress had twice been to London before this, once as a girl with her family, and once on pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Edward the Confessor at Westminster; as for Dame Cicily, she had reached a stage of snivelling apathy, longing only for the safe quiet of Sheppey and the ministrations of the infirmaress.
    But for Katherine it was different. To be here at last by London town, which lay across the river with its teeming traffic of wherries, wine-laden galleys from Gascony and gorgeously painted private barges; to glimpse the shining walls and the stately four-turreted White Tower, the bustling Bridge hung with banners; to hear the hum and rhythm of the city below the jangling of a hundred different church bells - and to be allowed no nearer, that was a bitter disappointment. Still, she was by temperament reasonable and by training obedient, so she contented herself with a few timid questions.
    That tremendous high spire to the left, so strong and up-thrust above the city? Why, St. Paul's Cathedral of course, said the prioress. And that great pile of masonry down by the water's edge? The prioress did not know, but Long Will took pity on the girl. That's Baynard's Castle, damoiselle; it belongs to the Earls of Clare. Nearly all the nobles have city houses, but the finest of all is the Duke of Lancaster's Savoy. Look -"
    He swung his horse around and directed Katherine's gaze upriver, a mile or so beyond the city walls. "Can you see it?"
    She squinted into the noon light and made out a huge mass of cream-coloured stone and many crenellated turrets from which fluttered tiny splashes of red and gold, and one sharp-pointed gilt spire which marked the private chapel, but she could see few details, and no premonition seized her that the great Duke's palace might ever be more to her than an object of curiosity and awe. Indeed, she passed on quickly to strain her eyes farther in the direction of Westminster, but she could not see it because of the bend in the river, and Long Will, though usually tolerant of Katherine, was hurrying them on again. They