'I promise I will try,' Miriel said with what she hoped was convincing penitence and to this end kept her head bowed and her eyes lowered.
The Abbess gave her a dubious look. 'I hope you will. Perhaps Father Gundulf was unduly harsh in his punishment, but you had committed a grave breach of our rule.'
'Yes, mother, I know, and I am sorry.' Which was true. If Miriel had known what discomfort lay ahead, she would never have removed her wimple to show off her hair to Nicholas.
Mother Hillary's expression softened. 'I trust that you are. It distresses me to have to chastise any of my daughters.' She brought her palms down on the trestle to emphasise her next point. 'Our guest is leaving us this morning, so temptation will no longer be in your way, and that can only be to the good. I was young once, and I well understand the man's attraction to a girl not long of the noviciate.'
Miriel felt the heat of a blush crawl up her throat and across her face, although for more complex reasons than those imagined by the Abbess.
'You will not see him again, child. I have made as much plain to him and, to his credit, he was disposed to agree with me.'
'Yes, Mother Hillary,' Miriel said meekly without raising her eyes lest the look in them give her away.
'Good, I am glad you understand. You will spend the rest of today in the infirmary with Sister Margaret. She needs help with brewing syrup for winter coughs.'
Dismissed from the Abbess's parlour, Miriel walked swiftly - but not so swiftly that she was chastised for haste - through the cloister to the abbey kitchens. Here she purloined bread and cheese with the excuse that Sister Margaret needed them for the infirmary. A quick, furtive visit to the guest house revealed that Nicholas had left but, glancing up the path, she saw him talking to the porteress at the door. He now had a dark travelling cloak to go with the hood, and he was leaning on a stout quarterstaff.
Miriel darted back inside the guest house. She hastened to Nicholas's bed, grabbed the blanket he had left neatly folded and opened it out to use as a cloak. Off came the linen bolster case, and into it she stuffed the bread and cheese.
From the guest house, Miriel sped round the back of the necessarium to the abbey gardens. Ladders were propped against the orchard trees in readiness for harvesting the late season crop of apples and pears. She stooped to add several of the less bruised windfalls to her bolster case, then dragged one of the ladders over to the garden wall. She propped the ladder against the rough-cut stone and ensured that the feet were safely embedded in the soft ground. Her heart hammered and panic chivvied her to move ever faster. Someone was going to see her. Sister Euphemia was going to drag her down off the rungs and whip her senseless with the willow switch.
As Miriel scrambled up the steps, her foot caught in a fold of her habit and almost sent her toppling. Cursing, she took a grip on her imagination and tugged the surplus fabric through her rope girdle. No one was going to catch her. She wouldn't let them.
Soon she was straddling the top of the wall. For the briefest instant she paused to view the stone and timber abbey buildings. Smoke rose from the louvres in the kitchen roof and she could hear the squeak of the windlass on the well-housing as someone drew a bucket of water. For almost six months Saint Catherine's had been her prison, but now she had sprung her own lock.
A swift glance in the opposite direction granted her the sight of open fields on the higher silt, changing gradually to reed fen on the horizon. Immediately below her, the abbey's two mules grazed the home meadow with a herd of goats. She also glimpsed Nicholas emerging from the gatehouse, his hood raised against the chill of autumn. She watched him wave to the porteress and set out on the path that would take him to the Lincoln road. Once out of the nun's sight, however, he doubled back, and took the track leading towards the coast. Miriel watched him with narrowed eyes. Something was afoot here, something curious and interesting that made the shorn hairs tingle on the nape of her neck.
Aware of her vulnerable position on the wall, she leaned down to the ladder and with a grunt of effort, hauled it up, over and down the other side. It was an awkward descent. She was dreadfully hampered by the bulk of her skirts and the precariousness of the ladder, but finally, gasping with fear and effort, she reached the ground.
She beat at her habit which was badly stained with moss and stone dust. The goats came to investigate, drawn by the appetising smells coming from the bolster bag. Miriel slapped them away and made shooing noises, but to little avail since the goats were accustomed to such human abuse and ignored it. The mules joined in, long ears pricked with curiosity and nostrils ruffling.
Miriel eyed the animals. Unfastening the rope girdle at her waist, she caught the nearest mule by its fuzzy mane and threw a makeshift halter around its neck. Docile with age, it ambled after her willingly. So too did the goats until they reached the bank of a ditch filled with soupy brown water. With a shudder, Miriel bunched her habit and undertunic on her free arm and waded across. The water was freezing and took her breath. The mule balked and had to be persuaded to follow her with much tugging and encouraging clicks of her tongue. At last it consented, and splashed across, soaking Miriel in dirty spray. The goats, to her relief, chose to remain in their pasture, and the other mule, although it set up aloud braying, did not follow its companion.
Wet, cold, but fired by determination, Miriel set off in pursuit of Nicholas. He was but a moving dot in the distance, but she did not seek to close with him. There was time enough for that. Just now she was vastly curious as to his intentions. Why was he going to the sea instead of taking the road inland? If he walked along the coast, he would come to some hamlets in a few miles, but they had nothing to offer unless he wanted to hire a fishing boat. He might be on his way to pay his respects to those who had died, but Miriel doubted it. They had been his companions in disaster but, by his own admission, his enemies too.
The late October sun made a white haze through the clouds. Except for the crying of gulls and the hiss of reeds in the brisk wind off the sea, there was silence. Occasionally Miriel glanced over her shoulder, expecting to see a host of irate nuns in pursuit, Sister Euphemia in the lead like a bloodhound, but of course there was nothing. Even when the women did discover her missing, they would look to the Spalding road first, and probably not even consider the marshes.
Near the mouth of the estuary, Nicholas stopped abruptly and turned in a half-circle as if taking his bearings. Miriel hastily crouched, so that if he looked round, all he would see in the distance was a grazing animal. He stood for a long time just staring. Then slowly, measuring each pace, he retraced his steps, veering a little to the right, where a bank of trees rose above the reeds and grasses.
Miriel thought that she was bound to be discovered, but his angle of direction grew sharper so that even in his side vision he would not have been able to see her.
When she decided it was safe to move, Miriel rose from her crouch and continued to follow him.
At first Nicholas had a dread that he would be unable to find the place where he had concealed the chest. The memory lay on the other side of high fever and near-death. The fens had been swallowed in fog when he had hidden it, and he had been close to collapse.
As he walked, that initial fear subsided. He possessed an innate sense of direction that had been honed on numerous journeys across the seas between Flanders, Normandy and
He curbed a desire to rush for he was still weak from his illness. Although he felt bright for the nonce, he knew he did not have the lasting stamina of full health. A mount would have been useful, but he could not have asked one of the nuns. They had already given him clothing, a day's food, and enough money to buy him lodgings for at least two nights. He was counting on the contents of the chest to provide him with the means to buy transport - to buy a new life, come to that. It was the least that the House of Anjou owed him.
Once he had the sensation of being followed and glanced round sharply. A shape in the distance proved to be a grazing animal and he let out the breath he had sucked in. The glance showed him what he had missed before and he turned to retrace his steps. Then he left the path and pushed through the tall, yellow grass towards a thicket of alder and willow trees growing on the edge of a small mere. The water was dark and peaty, its surface a mirror for the autumn leaves flickering from the trees like twists of shaved gold.
The hiding place was innocuous. Despite his extremity, he had concealed it well, and it looked so natural that he even began to wonder if he was standing on the right spot. He reached for the costrel bottle that the nuns had given him and, drawing the stopper, took a fortifying swallow of strong, sweet mead.
As it surged through his veins, he set to work, casting aside the dead branches and sheaves of grass and reaching inside the alcove to drag the chest from its hiding place. Sweating and trembling with excitement and effort, he rested a moment to let the strength flow back into his limbs. A breeze shimmered the dark surface of the mere and the tree reflections performed a dance of running gold, eerie and beautiful. A fitting backdrop. Feeling stronger, he gave his attention to the chest. It was heavily salt-stained and a little battered, but still intact, the red and blue enamels sharp enough to cut the eye.
'God, if you love me, show it now,' he entreated and, licking his lips, set the tip of his eating knife to the brass hasp.
Opening the chest was far more difficult than the finding. It took Nicholas several nicked fingers from slips of the knife and a mountain of struggling and swearing before the fastenings finally yielded and he was able to throw back the lid and gaze upon the contents.
Leather money pouches were packed two layers thick around a second box with exquisitely carved ivory panels and fastenings of wrought gold. With unsteady hands, Nicholas lifted out one of the pouches and loosened the tough drawstring cord. A shimmer of silver pennies poured out into his cupped palm, each one stamped with John's head one side, and a deeply scored cross on the other. Nicholas estimated that he was looking at about forty shillings in all. If each bag held the same, then the stuffing around the smaller chest was worth four hundred marks, sufficient to carve himself a fresh life twice over. As a footsoldier he would expect to earn five shillings a week if he was fortunate. Now he would be able to equip and accoutre himself properly and become the master, not the hireling. He smiled at the irony. From his grave, King John was paying back some of what he owed to the de Caen family.
With great care, he tipped the coins back into the pouch and, wiping his damp hands on his tunic, he turned to consider the second chest. As with the first, there was no key and he had to break the lock with the point of his knife. He pushed back the lid to reveal a sea-stained cloth of embroidered purple silk which was swathed around a large circular object. Drawing it forth, he gently unwrapped the protective layers of fabric.
Pleasure and dread flowed through him as he stared at the crown. It wasn't John's; it was too small and was wrought in an older stylo. This had been made for a woman and consisted of a wide golden band bordered with pearls and set with huge, square-cut gemstones. Two arches of enamelled gold curved over each other above the circlet, each one hemmed with more pearls and smaller beads of precious stone. Fine gold chains dangled beneath the crown at regular intervals and at the end of each chain was a golden trefoil, each leaf set with a pearl.
'God's eyes,' he muttered, knowing that there was no safe way to keep the object. Yet it would be sacrilege to melt it down and destroy such craftsmanship and beauty.
A sudden intuition, coupled with the enormity of what he had rescued from the sea, caused him to spin round. The nun ducked down among the grasses, but not quickly enough. The bay mule at her side did not even flinch at her sudden movement but stolidly munched a mouthful of yellowing grass.
'Come out,' Nicholas commanded, the crown still in his hands, for it was too late to conceal his prize. He too had not been quick enough.
Slowly Miriel stood up. Her face was flushed with chagrin, but there was a familiar thrust to her jaw that told him she was ready to fight.
'What are you doing?'
She shrugged. 'I followed you to see where you would go,' she said, as if the notion was perfectly reasonable. 'When you left St Catherine's, so did I.' She held up the bolster case in her right hand. 'Bread, cheese and fruit,' she said. 'It was all I had time to bring.'
Astonishment and fury made Nicholas brutal. 'You need not think you are travelling with me,' he snarled. 'I want neither you nor your company.'
Her face whitened but she stood up to him and took a deliberate pace closer to the box. 'I would say that you have no choice.'
Nicholas moved to bar her way so that they stood mere inches apart, the crown glittering between them. 'But I do,' he said, his voice breaking hoarsely in the aftermath of his illness. 'Do you think with this fortune in my hands that I would balk at killing you?'
She met his eyes without flinching, then dropped her gaze to the sheathed knife on his hip. 'Yes, I think you would,' she said calmly. 'Besides, you are newly risen from your sick-bed and I am easily a match for your strength. You would not succeed in disposing of me. Indeed,' she added with a half-smile, 'I might win.' She reached to touch one of the pearl trefoils swinging on the end of its chain. 'You owe your life to me; I am only claiming the debt.'