offensive.
"Because innkeepers, and especially their wives, are the most professionally inquisitive people in all creation," I said impatiently. "Their whole business is to observe and speculate on the travellers who come through their doors. We've been lucky so far, but any more than one night in the same hostel and someone will deduce right away that Kit is not what he claims to be. No." I shook my head. "Lie low with the Huguenots. I will be enough of a curiosity on my own." I rubbed a hand across my chin; four days' growth of dark beard only reinforced the foreignness of my appearance, especially now that the sun had tanned my face to a colour it had not been since I was a boy running free all day on the slopes of Monte Cicada. My hair, too, had been neglected over the past weeks when I was preoccupied with finishing my book; I could not remember the last time I paid a visit to the barber, and it had grown sothat it fell across my eyes at the front and curled over my collar at the back. "One of my first tasks once we are inside the city gates must be to get a shave and a haircut," I complained, pushing my fringe back from my face.
"You look better with no beard," she remarked, her voice brighter. "Younger, I mean. It suits you."
I glanced up, surprised, but she remained preoccupied with plucking blades of grass and scattering them around her and did not look at me. I was reminded again of how little I understood a woman like Sophia. I hardly considered myself an expert on the ways of women, but it had been eight years since I cast off my Dominican habit and with it my vows, and at the court of Paris I was given ample opportunity to observe the flirting and simpering of fashionable ladies at close quarters. Sophia had learned none of these wiles, yet her artless frankness was far more disarming; she could offer a compliment as casually as remarking on the weather and every time, like a fool, I allowed it to quicken a little spark of hope.
"It's a pity we can't get you a beard somehow," I said, after a moment's silence, watching how the shadow of the leaves fell across her smooth cheek. "It would help your concealment no end."
"My aunt had the beginnings of one," she said, looking up with an unexpected grin. "She was forever trying to pluck hairs from her chin. I suppose we can't wait for me to reach her age."
"If we don't make your disguise convincing, you won't live to reach her age," I said, and immediately regretted it; her smile vanished on the instant and her eyes clouded again. She returned to pulling up the grass with renewed force.
"Are you afraid?" I said.
She looked directly at me then and held my gaze in those expressionless, honey-coloured eyes.
"Canterbury is a small city, as you'll see. Now that we are so close to its walls, I wonder what I was thinking, coming back." She passed a hand across her brow and sank onto her elbows. "But this place has never beenanything other than a prison to me since I was first brought through its gates. I don't suppose a real prison would be all that different."
The careless note in her voice was betrayed by the tightness around her mouth, the way she pressed her lips into a white line. I remembered her silent tears in Faversham. She was afraid, but she was damned if she was going to let me see it. I glanced up at the sky, where a single skein of pale cloud interrupted the eggshell blue.
"Well, then," I said, levering myself to my feet. "Into the lion's den."
T HE VAST CIRCULAR towers of the city's West Gate loomed up ahead of us on the road, solid and forbidding in dark, flint-studded stone, set in the thick walls like the entrance to a fortress and visible from some distance away. To either side the road was lined with modest buildings of wood and plaster. We crossed a little stone bridge over a rivulet just before the gate and as we followed the road into the cool shadow of its great central archway I felt my skin rise in gooseflesh and my bowels clench. Now that
"Because innkeepers, and especially their wives, are the most professionally inquisitive people in all creation," I said impatiently. "Their whole business is to observe and speculate on the travellers who come through their doors. We've been lucky so far, but any more than one night in the same hostel and someone will deduce right away that Kit is not what he claims to be. No." I shook my head. "Lie low with the Huguenots. I will be enough of a curiosity on my own." I rubbed a hand across my chin; four days' growth of dark beard only reinforced the foreignness of my appearance, especially now that the sun had tanned my face to a colour it had not been since I was a boy running free all day on the slopes of Monte Cicada. My hair, too, had been neglected over the past weeks when I was preoccupied with finishing my book; I could not remember the last time I paid a visit to the barber, and it had grown sothat it fell across my eyes at the front and curled over my collar at the back. "One of my first tasks once we are inside the city gates must be to get a shave and a haircut," I complained, pushing my fringe back from my face.
"You look better with no beard," she remarked, her voice brighter. "Younger, I mean. It suits you."
I glanced up, surprised, but she remained preoccupied with plucking blades of grass and scattering them around her and did not look at me. I was reminded again of how little I understood a woman like Sophia. I hardly considered myself an expert on the ways of women, but it had been eight years since I cast off my Dominican habit and with it my vows, and at the court of Paris I was given ample opportunity to observe the flirting and simpering of fashionable ladies at close quarters. Sophia had learned none of these wiles, yet her artless frankness was far more disarming; she could offer a compliment as casually as remarking on the weather and every time, like a fool, I allowed it to quicken a little spark of hope.
"It's a pity we can't get you a beard somehow," I said, after a moment's silence, watching how the shadow of the leaves fell across her smooth cheek. "It would help your concealment no end."
"My aunt had the beginnings of one," she said, looking up with an unexpected grin. "She was forever trying to pluck hairs from her chin. I suppose we can't wait for me to reach her age."
"If we don't make your disguise convincing, you won't live to reach her age," I said, and immediately regretted it; her smile vanished on the instant and her eyes clouded again. She returned to pulling up the grass with renewed force.
"Are you afraid?" I said.
She looked directly at me then and held my gaze in those expressionless, honey-coloured eyes.
"Canterbury is a small city, as you'll see. Now that we are so close to its walls, I wonder what I was thinking, coming back." She passed a hand across her brow and sank onto her elbows. "But this place has never beenanything other than a prison to me since I was first brought through its gates. I don't suppose a real prison would be all that different."
The careless note in her voice was betrayed by the tightness around her mouth, the way she pressed her lips into a white line. I remembered her silent tears in Faversham. She was afraid, but she was damned if she was going to let me see it. I glanced up at the sky, where a single skein of pale cloud interrupted the eggshell blue.
"Well, then," I said, levering myself to my feet. "Into the lion's den."
T HE VAST CIRCULAR towers of the city's West Gate loomed up ahead of us on the road, solid and forbidding in dark, flint-studded stone, set in the thick walls like the entrance to a fortress and visible from some distance away. To either side the road was lined with modest buildings of wood and plaster. We crossed a little stone bridge over a rivulet just before the gate and as we followed the road into the cool shadow of its great central archway I felt my skin rise in gooseflesh and my bowels clench. Now that
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