by Ken Follett
"No one knows the king's plan," Rollo told them. "He may go south and advance on Paris, or swing northeast to Calais and hope to meet up there with his Flemish allies. But you'll be able to follow his trail. Just keep the blackened fields on either side of you."
Before they disembarked, Rollo gave them a ham. "Thank you, but we've got some smoked fish and hard cheese in our saddlebags," Caris said to him. "And we have money--we can buy anything else we need."
"Money may not be much use to you," the captain replied. "There may be nothing to buy. An army is like a plague of locusts, it strips the country bare. Take the ham."
"You're very kind. Good-bye."
"Pray for me, if you would, Sister. I've committed some heavy sins in my time."
Caen was a city of several thousand houses. Like Kingsbridge, its two halves, Old Town and New Town, were divided by a river, the Odon, which was spanned by St. Peter's Bridge. On the riverbank near the bridge, a few fishermen were selling their catch. Caris asked the price of an eel. She found the answer difficult to understand: the fisherman spoke a dialect of French she had never heard. When at last she was able to make out what he was saying, the price took her breath away. Food was so scarce, she realized, that it was more precious than jewels. She was grateful for Rollo's generosity.
They had decided that if they were questioned they would say they were Irish nuns traveling to Rome. Now, however, as she and Mair rode away from the river, Caris wondered nervously whether local people would know from her accent that she was English.
There were not many local people to be seen. Broken-down doors and smashed shutters revealed empty houses. There was a ghostly hush--no vendors crying their wares, no children quarreling, no church bells. The only work being done was burial. The battle had taken place more than a week ago, but small groups of grim-faced men were still bringing corpses out of buildings and loading them onto carts. It looked as if the English army had simply massacred men, women and children. They passed a church where a huge pit had been dug in the churchyard, and saw the bodies being tipped into a mass grave, without coffins or even shrouds, while a priest intoned a continuous burial service. The stench was unspeakable.
A well-dressed man bowed to them and asked if they needed assistance. His proprietorial manner suggested that he was a leading citizen concerned to make sure no harm came to religious visitors. Caris declined his offer of help, noting that his Norman French was no different from that of a nobleman in England. Perhaps, she thought, the lower orders all had their different local dialects, while the ruling class spoke with an international accent.
The two nuns took the road east out of town, glad to leave the haunted streets behind. The countryside was deserted, too. The bitter taste of ash was always on Caris's tongue. Many of the fields and orchards on either side of the road had been fired. Every few miles they rode through a heap of charred ruins that had been a village. The peasants had either fled before the army or died in the conflagration, for there was little life: just the birds, the occasional pig or chicken overlooked by the army's foragers, and sometimes a dog, nosing through the debris in a bewildered way, trying to pick up the scent of its master in a pile of cold embers.
Their immediate destination was a nunnery half a day's ride from Caen. Whenever possible, they would spend the night at a religious house--nunnery, monastery, or hospital--as they had on the way from Kingsbridge to Portsmouth. They knew the names and locations of fifty-one such institutions between Caen and Paris. If they could find them, as they hurried in the scorched footprints of King Edward, their accommodation and food would be free and they would be safe from thieves--and, Mother Cecilia would add, from fleshly temptations such as strong drink and male company.
Cecilia's instincts were sharp, but she had not sensed that a different kind of temptation was in the air between Caris and Mair. Because of that, Caris had at first refused Mair's request to come with her. She was focused on moving fast, and she did not want to complicate her mission by entering into a passionate entanglement--or by refusing so to do. On the other hand, she needed someone courageous and resourceful as her companion. Now she was glad of her choice: of all the nuns, Mair was the only one with the guts to go chasing the English army through France.
She had planned to have a frank talk before they left, saying that there should be no physical affection between them while they were away. Apart from anything else, they could get into terrible trouble if they were seen. But somehow she had never got around to the frank talk. So here they were in France with the issue still hanging unmentioned, like an invisible third traveler riding between them on a silent horse.
They stopped at midday by a stream on the edge of a wood, where there was an unburned meadow for the ponies to graze. Caris cut slices from Rollo's ham, and Mair took from their baggage a loaf of stale bread from Portsmouth. They drank the water from the stream, though it had the taste of cinders.
Caris suppressed her eagerness to get going, and forced herself to let the horses rest for the hottest hour of the day. Then, as they were getting ready to leave, she was startled to see someone watching her. She froze, with the ham in one hand and her knife in the other.
Mair said: "What is it?" Then she followed Caris's gaze, and understood.
Two men stood a few yards away, in the shade of the trees, staring at them. They looked quite young, but it was hard to be sure, for their faces were sooty and their clothing was filthy.
After a moment, Caris spoke to them in Norman French. "God bless you, my children."
They made no reply. Caris guessed they were unsure what to do. But what possibilities were they considering? Robbery? Rape? They had a predatory look.
She was scared, but she made herself think calmly. Whatever else they might want, they must be starving, she calculated. She said to Mair: "Quickly, give me two trenchers of that bread."
Mair cut two thick slices off the big loaf. Caris cut corresponding slabs from the ham. She put the ham on the bread, then said to Mair: "Give them one each."
Mair looked terrified, but she walked across the grass with an unhesitating step and offered the food to the men.
They both snatched it and began to wolf it down. Caris thanked her stars that she had guessed right.
She quickly put the ham in her saddlebag and the knife in her belt, then climbed onto Blackie. Mair followed suit, stowing the bread and mounting Stamp. Caris felt safer on horseback.
The taller of the two men came toward them, moving quickly. Caris was tempted to kick her pony and take off, but she did not quite have time; and then the man's hand was holding her bridle. He spoke through a mouthful of food. "Thank you," he said with the heavy local accent.
Caris said: "Thank God, not me. He sent me to help you. He is watching over you. He sees everything."
"You have more meat in your bag."
"God will tell me who to give it to."
There was a pause, while the man thought that over, then he said: "Give me your blessing."
Caris was reluctant to extend her right arm in the traditional gesture of blessing--it would take her hand too far away from the knife at her belt. It was only a short-bladed food knife of the kind carried by every man and woman, but it was enough to slash the back of the hand that held her bridle and cause the man to let go.
Then she was inspired. "Very well," she said. "Kneel down."
The man hesitated.
"You must kneel to receive my blessing," she said in a slightly raised voice.
Slowly, the man knelt, still holding his food in his hand.
Caris turned her gaze on his companion. After a moment, the second man did the same.
Caris blessed them both, then kicked Blackie and quickly trotted away. After a moment she looked back. Mair was close behind her. The two starving men stood staring at them.
Caris mulled over the incident anxiously as they rode through the afternoon. The sun shone cheerfully, as on a fine day in Hell. In some places, smoke was rising fitfull
y from a patch of woodland or a smoldering barn. But the countryside was not totally deserted, she realized gradually. She saw a pregnant woman harvesting beans in a field that had escaped the English torches; the scared faces of two children looking out from the blackened stones of a manor house; and several small groups of men, usually flitting through the fringes of woodland, moving with the alert purposefulness of scavengers. The men worried her. They looked hungry, and hungry men were dangerous. She wondered whether she should stop fretting about speed and worry instead about safety.
Finding their way to the religious houses where they planned to stop was also going to be more difficult than Caris had thought. She had not anticipated that the English army would leave such devastation in its wake. She had assumed there would be peasants around to direct her. It could be hard enough in normal times to get such information from people who had never traveled farther than the nearest market town. Now her interlocutors would also be elusive, terrified, or predatory.
She knew by the sun that she was heading east, and she thought, judging by the deep cartwheel ruts in the baked mud, that she was on the main road. Tonight's destination was a village named, after the nunnery at its center, Hopital-des-Soeurs. As the shadow in front of her grew longer, she looked about with increasing urgency for someone whom she could ask for directions.
Children fled from their approach in fear. Caris was not yet desperate enough to risk getting close to the hungry-looking men. She hoped to come across a woman. There were no young women anywhere, and Caris had a bleak suspicion about the fate they might have met at the hands of the marauding English. Occasionally she saw, in the far distance, a few lonely figures harvesting a field that had escaped burning; but she was reluctant to go too far from the road.
At last they found a wrinkled old woman sitting under an apple tree next to a substantial stone house. She was eating small apples wrenched from the tree long before they were ripe. She looked terrified. Caris dismounted, to seem less intimidating. The old woman tried to hide her poor meal in the folds of her dress, but she seemed not to have the strength to run away.
Caris addressed her politely. "Good evening, mother. Will this road take us to Hopital-des-Soeurs, may I ask?"
The woman seemed to pull herself together, and answered intelligently. Pointing in the direction in which they were heading, she said: "Through the woods and over the hill."
Caris saw that she had no teeth. It must have been almost impossible to eat unripe apples with your gums, she thought with pity. "How far?" she asked.
"A long way."
All distances were long at her age. "Can we get there by nightfall?"
"On a horse, yes."
"Thank you, mother."
"I had a daughter," said the old woman. "And two grandsons. Fourteen years and sixteen. Fine boys."
"I'm very sorry to hear that."
"The English," said the old woman. "May they all burn in Hell."
Evidently it did not occur to her that Caris and Mair might be English. That answered Caris's question: local people could not tell the nationality of strangers. "What were the boys' names, mother?"
"Giles and Jean."
"I will pray for the souls of Giles and Jean."
"Have you any bread?"
Caris looked around, to make sure there was no one else lurking nearby, ready to pounce, but they were alone. She nodded to Mair, who took from her saddlebag the remains of the loaf and offered it to the old woman.
The woman snatched it from her and began to gnaw it with her gums.
Caris and Mair rode away.
Mair said: "If we keep giving our food away, we're going to starve."
"I know," said Caris. "But how can you refuse?"
"We can't fulfill our mission if we're dead."
"But we are nuns, after all," Caris said with asperity. "We must help the needy, and leave it to God to decide when it's time for us to die."
Mair was startled. "I've never heard you talk like that before."
"My father hated people who preached about morality. We're all good when it suits us, he used to say: that doesn't count. It's when you want so badly to do something wrong--when you're about to make a fortune from a dishonest deal, or kiss the lovely lips of your neighbor's wife, or tell a lie to get yourself out of terrible trouble--that's when you need the rules. Your integrity is like a sword, he would say: you shouldn't wave it until you're about to put it to the test. Not that he knew anything about swords."
Mair was silent for a while. She might have been mulling over what Caris had said, or she might simply have given up the argument: Caris was not sure.
Talk of Edmund always made Caris realize how much she missed him. After her mother died he had become the cornerstone of her life. He had always been there, standing at her shoulder, as it were, ready when she needed sympathy and understanding, or shrewd advice, or just information: he had known so much about the world. Now, when she turned in that direction, there was just an empty space.
They passed through a patch of woodland then breasted a rise, as the old woman had forecast. Looking down on a shallow valley, they saw another burned village, the same as all the rest but for a cluster of stone buildings that looked like a small convent. "This must be Hopital-des-Soeurs," said Caris. "Thank God."
She realized, as she approached, how used to nunnery life she had become. As they rode down the hill, she found herself looking forward to the ritual washing of hands, a meal taken in silence, bedtime at nightfall, even the sleepy peacefulness of Matins at three o'clock in the morning. After what she had seen today, the security of those gray stone walls was alluring, and she kicked the tired Blackie into a trot.
There was no one moving about the place, but that was not really surprising: it was a small house in a village, and you would not expect the kind of hustle and bustle seen at a major priory such as Kingsbridge. Still, at this time of day there should have been a column of smoke from a kitchen fire as the evening meal was prepared. However, as she came closer she saw further ominous signs, and a sense of dismay slowly engulfed her. The nearest building, which looked like a church, appeared to have no roof. The windows were empty sockets, lacking shutters or glass. Some of the stone walls were blackened, as if by smoke.
The place was silent: no bells, no cries of hostlers or kitchen hands. It was deserted, Caris realized despondently as she reined in. And it had been fired, like every other building in the village. Most of the stone walls were still standing, but the timber roofs had fallen in, doors and other woodwork had burned, and glass windows had shattered in the heat.
Mair said unbelievingly: "They set fire to a nunnery?"
Caris was equally shocked. She had believed that invading armies invariably left ecclesiastical buildings intact. It was an iron rule, people said. A commander would not hesitate to put to death a soldier who violated a holy place. She had accepted that without question. "So much for chivalry," she said.
They dismounted and walked, stepping cautiously around charred beams and scorched rubble, to the domestic quarters. As they approached the kitchen door, Mair gave a shriek and said: "Oh, God, what's that?"
Caris knew the answer. "It's a dead nun." The corpse on the ground was naked, but had the cropped hair of a nun. The body had somehow survived the fire. The woman was about a week dead. The birds had already eaten her eyes, and parts of her face had been nibbled by some scavenging animal.
Also, her breasts had been cut off with a knife.
Mair said in amazement: "Did the English do this?"
"Well, it wasn't the French."
"Our soldiers have foreigners fighting alongside them, don't they? Welshmen and Germans and so on. Perhaps it was them."
"They're all under the orders of our king," Caris said with grim disapprobation. "He brought them here. What they do is his responsibility."
They stared at the hideous sight. As they looked, a mouse came out of the corpse's mouth. Mair screamed and turned away.
C
aris hugged her. "Calm down," she said firmly, but she stroked Mair's back to comfort her. "Come on," she said after a moment. "Let's get away from here."
They returned to their horses. Caris resisted an impulse to bury the dead nun: if they delayed, they would still be here at nightfall. But where were they to go? They had planned to spend the night here. "We'll go back to the old woman with the apple tree," she said. "Her house is the only intact building we've seen since we left Caen." She glanced anxiously at the setting sun. "If we push the horses, we can be there before it's full dark."
They urged their tired ponies forward, and headed back along the road. Directly ahead of them the sun sank all too quickly below the horizon. The last of the light was fading when they arrived back at the house by the apple tree.
The old woman was happy to see them, expecting them to share their food, which they did, eating in the dark. Her name was Jeanne. There was no fire, but the weather was mild, and the three women rolled up side by side in their blankets. Not fully trusting their hostess, Caris and Mair lay down clutching the saddlebags that contained their food.
Caris lay awake for a while. She was pleased to be on the move after such a long delay in Portsmouth, and they had made good progress in the last two days. If she could find Bishop Richard, she felt sure he would force Godwyn to repay the nuns' money. He was no paragon of integrity, but he was open-minded, and in his lackadaisical way he dispensed justice evenhandedly. Godwyn had not had things all his own way even in the witchcraft trial. She felt sure she could persuade Richard to give her a letter ordering Godwyn to sell priory assets in order to give back the stolen cash.
But she was worried about her safety and Mair's. Her assumption that soldiers would leave nuns alone had been quite wrong: what they had seen at Hopital-des-Soeurs had made that clear. She and Mair needed a disguise.
When she woke up at first light, she said to Jeanne: "Your grandsons--do you still have their clothes?"