‘We’ll have to tell her,’ said Brigit. Not me, I thought. ‘Let’s leave her for a little while,’ said Father Tim and as it turned out that was the wise thing to do. Within the hour we heard footsteps on the stairs, very slow, and then there was Dame Lucy, looking pale and with her hand raised to us. ‘Don’t speak,’ she said. ‘Not a word. When Lionel and Dobbe get back, have them wait here in the hall. Be sure you all stay with them and fetch the clerk, too, and anyone else who’s here at the hospital.’ Then back she went.
We did just as she’d said and fetched the clerk and some other pilgrims who’d come in, and who were quite puzzled to be asked to stay in the hall. After a time Lionel and Dobbe came back from wherever they’d been, and looked round in surprise at the crowd gathered there. Father Tim fetched Dame Lucy, who came down the stairs with the script in her hand. Those gentle folk have funny ways, though. If this had been my neighbours in Minster there’d have been shouting and punches and clouting with sticks but Dame Lucy spoke in a slow, flat sort of voice, quite as if none of it mattered a fig. ‘Is it true, Lionel,’ she asked, ‘that you’re first cousin of my husband Walter?’ The way his eyes opened wide I knew the answer to that. ‘My dear,’ he said, ‘what are you saying?’ ‘Yes or no?’ she asked and, smiling like the whole thing was foolishness, he answered yes, as it happened he was Walter’s cousin, though it mattered not at all. ‘I came here to Rome for love of you,’ he said, ‘only for you.’
Don’t let him coax you, I thought to myself, don’t soften, Dame Lucy, but I needn’t have worried. Now I understood why she’d wanted a big crowd there. ‘Your clothes,’ she said. ‘Take them off, both of you.’ When Lionel stared at her confounded she told him, ‘They’re not yours, you’ll remember? They weren’t my gift to you. I lent them to you and now I want them back.’ I don’t know if the folk all around knew something of Dame Lucy and Lionel or if they’d only guessed, but they were laughing. Lionel tried to laugh too. ‘But my sweet, we have no others.’ ‘That’s no concern of mine,’ Dame Lucy told him, cold as ice. ‘Give them to me now, if you please, or I’ll have to have one of the pope’s officers called.’ The clerk of the hospital was smirking like he’d gladly go out and find one. Lionel looked about him, wondering what to do, but then his hulking servant Dobbe, who’d seen the moment clearer than his master, was already pulling off his boots. So Lionel did the same, still trying to smile like it was all a great sport, till they were both stripped down to their unders. Dame Lucy had Alwyn take the gear from them and then she told them, ‘And the same will go for your horses seeing as they were loaned too.’ That was when Lionel lost all pretence and looked up at her, beseeching. ‘But how will we get home?’ ‘You have legs to carry you, don’t you,’ Dame Lucy said, ‘and hands to beg with?’
If it was hard on Lionel it was good for me. Dame Lucy never said sorry to me, nor to any of the rest she’d disbelieved, which was no surprise I dare say, as it wasn’t for dames to say sorry to their lowers, but she gave me Lionel’s clothes, which fitted me well enough and were most handsome, I have to say, and much better than the ones she’d given me before. ‘How fine you look, Tom,’ Brigit said. ‘If I didn’t know better I’d think you a proper gentleman.’ Another thing Dame Lucy did was to let me eat freely from her food, which meant I wasn’t hungry any more. Better again she sold the other clothes she’d bought for me before, and Dobbe’s clothes too, and with the silver she got for them she bought a vernicle and a silver cross for Sir Toby, and she said I didn’t need to pay for either, which I couldn’t have of course. Together they only cost two shillings and eightpence in English coin, and though I said that meant I still owed Sir Toby two shillings and fourpence, Dame Lucy just laughed and said what a funny fellow I was, Tom, as what did that matter seeing as he’d never know?
So she never got her Rome wedding in the end but she did get her Rome divorce. Not that there were many of us left to celebrate. Because of course Joan had gone by then, after the big disputation she and Constance had. That had been on the same night after we got back from seeing Motty and Merry. Paul did as the physician had told him and ate a tiny speck of wheat and sure enough after a time he was itching himself and wheezing, though not badly, as it had been so little. Then Constance told Joan that they weren’t going to Jerusalem and after that the two of them were like a pair of boxers landing punches on each other. Constance said she knew it wasn’t her sin that had made Paul sick but eating wheat, which she’d learned from a physician who was a Jew, though he’d shown more mind for Paul than Joan ever had. Then Joan said that was nonsense and that God had only given Paul his affliction because Constance had whored herself for her cousin, and that she was a fool just like her husband had been, and that she’d regret her Jew loving when she found herself in hell. Next Constance told Joan that she thought only of herself and always had, and she’d never cared a fart for her or for her Paul either. Finally Constance said she wasn’t walking another step in Joan’s company, and that Joan could beg her way home alone. Then they each cursed the other, saying all the foul things they wanted the other to suffer, and Joan foretold that Paul would be sick again within the week. I worried that by talking of the Jew doctor Constance had broken her promise to Mary and Helena about not saying anything about them, but then I doubted it would much matter as, having no silver to stay another night in Rome, Joan set off for home the very next day.
In the end Dame Lucy’s divorce feast wasn’t quite so small as I’d thought, as we had a guest none of us had expected. The dinner was almost ready and Alwyn had gone out to get some Roman wine in case we ran short, and when he came back he called out, ‘Look who I found.’ I knew the fellow of course and yet I didn’t know him too, as from his face he seemed like a different man. Gone was the sorry, sly look he’d had before and now he seemed proud and knowing almost like a priest. It was Jocelyn the advocate. He’d not come to stay at the English Hospital, he said, as he’d been keeping with an advocate friend who was down here. Though his last parting from us had been sour, that seemed long ago now and Dame Lucy and Constance both made him welcome. When we all sat down to eat and Brigit got merry on the wine, and asked him if he’d found any tree stumps to sit on in Rome and any pretty putains to give his tail a clean, Jocelyn wasn’t troubled at all and said no, his every day in Rome had been spent visiting churches and repenting. ‘I’m all God’s now,’ he said. ‘In fact I’ve been thinking of giving up the law and joining the church instead.’ We all laughed then. ‘You, in the church?’ said Brigit. ‘And why not,’ Jocelyn answered, like he was surprised it was even asked. ‘I tell you, there’s no folk God has more need of than advocates.’ He might work in one of the church courts, he told us, though his real wish was to serve the almighty as a confessor. ‘Most of them don’t know what they’re doing,’ he said, ‘as they’re blind to what sins they should be looking for.’ As an advocate he’d know just what unrights people got up to, he said. Including your own, I thought. ‘Why, I might even write a guide for confessors,’ he said. He’d stay in Rome a few weeks longer, he said, to meet people who might help him.
But not the rest of us. Now that Dame Lucy had got her divorce and wasn’t going to have her wedding there was no reason to keep us any longer, and we all set out on the road a couple of days later. Going home was a much sweeter journey than the one I’d had coming, which was all thanks to Lionel. Dame Lucy decided to sell her cart seeing as it slowed her down so, and she sold it and some of her things that she’d decided she didn’t need. Then she told Constance and Paul that they could ride Dobbe’s horse and I could have Lionel’s, who was a handsome creature, all grey except for a little black dapple on his rump. Every few miles I’d glance at Paul to be sure he wasn’t growing sick once again, as Joan had said he would, while Constance looked at him a good deal more often, but no, now that he stayed away from gentle folk’s bread he was fine as could be.
Going on horseback being so much faster than walking, over the days and weeks that followed we caugh
t up with our fellow pilgrims one after another. First, when we were coming close to Siena, were Lionel and Dobbe, though I hardly knew either till we got close. I don’t know where they’d got their clothes but it couldn’t have been much of a spot, as they were hardly better than the rags I used to wear. And something had gone all awry with Lionel’s seemly blonde hair too. Whether something had dripped on him or been thrown at him I couldn’t have said, but it must have been strong, staining stuff as his head was marked a muddy black on one side. He’d shorn his hair, trying to get rid of the blot as I guessed, so his long locks were gone. ‘You look seven times handsomer than him now, Tom,’ said Brigit, laughing. ‘And I’ve got his horse,’ I answered. When he saw us going by him, Lionel ran up to Dame Lucy and called out to her, ‘My dear sweetheart, I beg you, take pity on one who adores you with all his heart and always has.’ She just laughed. ‘I will if I find one,’ she said, looking down from her horse. ‘But I don’t see one anywhere here.’ Then she tugged at her reins and left him behind. Lionel, seeing that I was in his clothes and riding his horse, gave me a burning look. I gave him a little wave as I passed him by.
The next we came to, which was just after Siena, was Joan walking with a crowd of dirty, ragged folk, worse even than Lionel and Dobbe. She and Constance, they didn’t say a word to each other, but Constance rode her horse so close that Joan got a good coating of dust from his hooves. After that we didn’t see another of them till we met Dame Alice at Lucca. She must’ve been asking for us, hoping we’d pass by, as we’d hardly set our packs down at the inn where we were staying when there she was, begging a shilling from Dame Lucy to try and get her husband and her boy out of jail. I swear that fellow just couldn’t let anything be. He’d gone back to the very same taverner who he’d clouted when we’d come through the first time, saying he’d watered the wine, and clouted him again but worse. So a proper little battle had broken out, with Gawayne and him throwing punches at anyone who came near. This time the Luccans wouldn’t make do with tuppence paid to the taverner. Dame Lucy gave her the shilling. ‘I just hope I can get him free,’ said Alice then, ‘and that he won’t be sent back to Rome in penance again.’ That monk in Saint Peter’s will clap his hands in joy if he sees them all coming back, I thought.
The very next day we passed Warin and Beatrix, sat by the side of the road, and I was sure I heard God’s voice croaking out of Beatrix’s mouth, saying something about how her boots weren’t right, though Warin just told him, ‘Put a stop in it, will you,’ which didn’t seem very reverent, so I thought. Then Warin saw us and grumbled something about high folk perched on their horses. Which made me laugh loud, as never in all my days had I thought of myself as high. But the strangest meeting we had was a good few miles after then, at a town named Nicia that was further along the coast, which we’d kept to so we wouldn’t be frozen by blizzards in the mountains. We were staying at a little inn that looked out over the sea. I’d just gone down to the stables with Alwyn to check that the horses were all right and when I walked back out I saw a party of three had arrived and were dismounting from three very fine-looking beasts. I squinted up my eyes for a moment, thinking it can’t be, but it was, no mistaking. There, climbing off a beautiful white charger, and wearing a long, white gown, was Matilda Froome. ‘Tom, Alwyn,’ she called out when she saw us. Then, seeing our surprise, she pointed to the two fellows she was with, telling us they were Flavio and Georgio, who were both messengers of the pope. One was bound for London and the other for Cologne, and as the road was the same for most of the way they were riding together. ‘So Cardinal Antonio said I should go with them,’ Matilda told us. ‘It’s so fast and commodious you wouldn’t believe it. Everywhere we stop to spend the night there are fresh horses waiting, so we never have to waste an hour pasturing them.’
Cardinal Antonio? It was at dinner that we learned her story. Not long after Constance had met her begging on the street in Rome, she’d gone to a church to pray, where she’d begun sobbing and howling like she did, and though the priest had told her she must leave, as she was spoiling the mass, a woman in very fine clothes followed her out, and instead of cursing her, like Matilda had expected, she’d invited her to her house. ‘She has such a beautiful place,’ Matilda said, ‘just across the river in Trastevere. I stayed there three weeks, in a lovely little room in the tower that overlooks the whole city. And she had a fine table too, so I was never hungry.’ I could see she hadn’t been, as she was no starveling now, and where there’d been one chin there was a second sprouting out. The lady, who was a countess, gave Matilda money, so did her rich friends, and they didn’t care when she gave it all away to beggars afterwards. As for weeping and howling, the more she did it the gladder they were. They bought her not one but two fine new white dresses, and all they’d asked in return was that Matilda should bless them and all their kin, and their houses and their animals and carriages. And they asked for her old dress that was half blanket, which they cut up into little pieces and shared among themselves.
‘But why?’ asked Dame Lucy, and though Matilda threw up her hands like she couldn’t say, the next thing she talked about was a Spanish woman who’d died some years back, and who’d been famous for weeping and moaning and such, and who’d lately been made a saint by the pope. ‘So these Romans think you’ll be a saint soon,’ said Dame Lucy. And though Matilda laughed and put up her palms and told her, ‘No, a hundred times no, that’ll never happen,’ I could see from her smile that she wouldn’t be against the notion. After the countess and her friends had shared out Matilda’s old dress, they’d made arrangements for her to go home and Cardinal Antonio, who was the countess’s cousin, had suggested she journey with the pope’s messengers. ‘He’s such a righteous man,’ said Matilda. ‘And he’s a good friend of the Bishop of Norwich. He’s given me a letter to take to him, asking if he might find me a little cell or shed where I can live in holy devotion, all alone.’ A dreamy look came into her eyes. ‘I’d love that.’
‘But what happened to your Welsh friend?’ asked Brigit. ‘He’s in Naples, of course,’ said Matilda, like we should have known. She’d brought him to meet her grand new Roman friends and Cardinal Antonio had taken a great liking to him, for his gentle nature and also for his nation, as it turned out Cardinal Antonio was a keen reader of tales of King Arthur and his court, and he was most happy to meet a true Briton, especially one who knew so many languages. He’d helped Iorwerth with the cause he was pleading for his abbey, which was resolved, and then he’d asked if he might work as his secretary. ‘I have a letter here to send to Iorwerth’s abbot in Wales,’ Matilda told us, ‘asking his permission for Iorwerth to be let go, and telling his wife and children that they should go and join him.’
But Matilda’s best news, she told us, was her last. ‘I’ve got married,’ she said joyfully. That puzzled us all. ‘But I thought you already were,’ Dame Lucy said. ‘No, no,’ she said, laughing at our foolishness. ‘To God, of course.’ He’d come to her not long before she’d left Rome, she said, and had asked her to wed him. ‘So this was the gift that Jesus promised me in Rome, you see,’ she said. And though she’d told God that she’d rather marry Jesus, seeing as he was younger and had more manhood, God had insisted she must marry him and so she had. Jesus had been at the wedding, she told us, and there’d been quite a crowd there, as the Holy Ghost had come, together with all twelve apostles and a good number of saints and virgins, too. ‘I worried Jesus might be angry,’ she said, ‘but no, he was most lovesome.’
We bade Matilda farewell early the next morning, when she rode off with the two messengers, giving us a merry wave and a last howl. I was glad she’d found her feet and the Welshman, too. I’d never minded him, in spite of his spurning us. And though Matilda could be irksome, there were plenty of folk on this earth who were a good deal worse than her. As for the one who we met next, he was hardly less cheery than Matilda had been. Soon after Nicia we turned inland and a week or so later, at the pilgrim hospital in a city na
med Lions, we met our old friend Oswald. How he laughed when he saw me in Lionel’s clothes, pulling off his hat like I was a proper lord. He’d been hoping he might meet us somewhere along the road, he said, as he’d wanted to give us his news. ‘You’ll never guess the good fortune that’s come to me.’ It turned out that at a little place not far to the north of Lions Oswald had met an Englishman from Chester who’d been burning with fever and coughing blood. He’d made an oath to pilgrimage all the way to Jerusalem for the soul of his dead wife and, knowing that his life was slipping away, he’d given every penny of his travelling money to Oswald and asked him to go in his stead. ‘He didn’t linger long either,’ Oswald told us brightly, ‘and just two days later he was gone. How blessed I am. Because I’ve always wanted to get to Jerusalem. Now that I’ve seen Rome, it’s the one spot I’ve never been to, and it’s the best of them all. I felt like jumping for joy.’
After we said our farewells to him and left Lions, Dame Lucy took us on to Paris, seeing as it wasn’t far off our route, now that we were taking another road, while she’d heard it was a fine city, and so it was, I thought, with a most handsome cathedral on the castle island in the river. Then we journeyed north to the coast and crossed the sea, which kept calm enough for us. And so I found myself back in England once again, though it seemed like half a lifetime since I’d been there last. I was pleased to be back, of course, but as we rode towards London I was sorry too, knowing that I’d soon have to give back Lionel’s horse and say goodbye to my fellow pilgrims, as they’d all be taking the same road together that led north to Thetford and then to Lincoln, while I’d be walking westwards to Minster all alone. And then I’d be back home, tilling the earth in a cold wind. When we came in sight of Southwark I told Dame Lucy, ‘We’ll be saying our farewells soon. I should give back the fine clothes you gave me,’ though I was rather hoping she’d tell me I could keep them, as I liked the thought of stounding the folk back in Minster. Instead of answering me, though, she said something that I could make little sense of. ‘Don’t worry about those now, Tom, as we’ll be on the same road together a little while longer,’ and when I asked her how come, and where she was going to, she just laughed and told me, ‘You’ll see.’
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