Stormbringers (Order of Darkness) by Philippa Gregory

alongside the pilgrimage they would have to stop and eat where the children ate, and that would mean that food would be scarce and poor. Were they to eat nothing but rye bread and drink water from streams? Were the ladies to sleep in barns and in fields? he demanded irritably. And how were they to carry the tools of the inquirer’s trade: Brother Peter’s little writing desk, the manuscripts for reference, the Bible, the money bag? How were they to carry their luggage: the ladies’ clothes and shoes, their combs, their hand mirrors, their little pots of scented oils? Would it satisfy their desire to appear more humble if they walked like poor people, but Freize followed behind them riding one horse, leading four others, and the donkey with the baggage tied at the end of the string? Would they not be play-acting a pilgrimage and pretending to poverty? And how was that more holy?
     
    ‘Surely we can walk with them during the day, and stay in pilgrim houses or inns for the night?’ Isolde asked.
     
    ‘Walk away and leave them sleeping in a bare field?’ Freize suggested. ‘Join them in the morning after you’ve had a good sleep and a hearty breakfast? And then there’s illness. One of you is almost certain to take a fever, and then either you’ll be left behind or we’ll all have to stay with you, and nobody going anywhere.’
     
    ‘He’s right. This is ridiculous. And you can’t walk all that way,’ Luca said to Isolde.
     
    ‘I could not allow it,’ Freize said pompously.
     
    ‘I can walk!’ Isolde said indignantly. ‘I can walk with the children. I’m not afraid of discomfort.’
     
    ‘You’ll get headlice,’ Freize warned her. ‘And fleas. It’s not a beautiful mortification of the flesh that you’ll look back on with secret pride: it’s dirt and bites and rats and disease. And long tedious days of trudging along while your boots rub your feet raw and you hobble like an old lady with aching bones.’
     
    ‘Freize,’ she said. ‘I am determined to go to the Holy Land.’
     
    ‘You’ll get corns on your feet,’ he warned her. ‘And you’ll never be able to wear a pretty shoe again.’
     
    It was inarguable, and he knew it. Despite her serious intentions she was silenced.
     
    ‘You’ll smell,’ he said, clinching the argument with a mighty blow. ‘And you’ll get spots.’
     
    ‘Freize,’ she said. ‘This is not a whim, it is a vision. I am sure that my father would want me to go. Ishraq is determined to go. We are going. Nothing will stop us.’
     
    ‘What about a nice boat to Bari?’ Freize suggested.
     
    ‘What?’
     
    ‘Go by boat,’ Freize repeated. ‘We can ship the horses and the baggage and the ladies by boat, we three men can walk with the children and help as we are required to do. The ladies can get there without walking, get there before us, find themselves an inn and wait in comfort till we arrive.’
     
    He looked at Isolde’s mutinous face. ‘My lady, dearest lady, you will have to travel in heat and dirt when you get to the Holy Land. Don’t think you are taking the easy way. Discomfort will come. If you want to trudge along in burning heat and miserable dirt, attacked half the time by madmen in turbans, scratching yourself raw with flea-bites, sleeping in sand with cobras under your pillow, your ambition will be satisfied. But do it when you get to the Holy Land. There’s no particular merit in walking on rough ground in Italy.’
     
    ‘Actually,’ Brother Peter intervened. ‘If the ladies were to be at Bari first then they could make sure that the ships were waiting for us. We’ll be – what? – three days on the road? Perhaps four?’ He turned to the two of them. ‘If you were willing to go ahead, I could give you the papal letters of authorisation, and you could get the food ready for the children, and make sure there were enough ships. It would be very helpful.’
     
    ‘You would be helping the pilgrimage, not escaping the