LXXV

After a prolonged sojourn in my old abbey of Saint-Sulpice where I was well received by Brother Paul, and restored in body and mostly in mind, I rode once more to Rouen to say farewell to Haimo and Berthe, and to settle my affairs with the butcher. Berthe was with child upon which I congratulated them both. Here at their house I found Eliphas again who put me on the path to Juliana. I told him that my purpose was to speak with her one last time before I closed my account and headed for Mortagne.

He approved of my plan but said I would find her changed. ‘She looks much the same but she is different. It is like speaking to someone who has gone through the gate.’

I had no idea what he meant by that but I resolved to find out.

The convent was only a slight detour from the road that led to Perche, and twenty miles or so from the abbey at Saint-Sulpice itself. As I rode Blackberry down the hill to the town of Chambois, set beside the stripling river Dives, I could see the buildings just beyond the town, set on a little eminence. I wasted no time in the town dawdling at the inn, though I could have done with a draught of beer, fatigued as I was from my ride. I wanted to press on for Mortagne where my future lay, but I had to put the past to rest.

I handed Blackberry to the nunnery’s stable-boy and made my way back again to the front gate and the porter. The Sisters had employed a large man for that role. He and his dog growled at me as I entered his lodge. ‘What do you want?’ he asked. ‘Do you have an invitation?’

‘In a way,’ I told him.

He didn’t seem happy with that, so I tried to explain that the Duke’s daughter would like to see me, and that I would tell her father if any jumped-up nunnery porter got in the way.

He rose slowly as if being hoisted by some invisible but neglected device, and went into the main body of the building. He was gone for a little while. The dog – a mastiff cross – looked at me as if I were some kind of felonious chop.

Finally, the man returned.

‘You are to come with me,’ he said. ‘And no funny tricks. Sister will see you now.’

We walked across the front courtyard and entered into a kind of vestibule. A nun appeared from behind a grille.

‘You want to speak to Sister Juliana,’ she said.

‘Yes.’

‘She will see you for quarter of an hour. That is all.’

It was more than I had feared and less than I wished, but I was incandescent with excitement. I was in love with someone else, I knew that and she knew that, but I still felt like a foolish swain with a heart too big for my ribs at the prospect of seeing Juliana again.

There was the sound of a latch, a door opening behind me, I turned, and she was there; my own, my love. They had not dressed her as a nun because she had not yet taken her vows. She wore a simple grey dress. Her hair was up. She took my hand and we walked out into the garden.

She looked paler and, I have to say, older than I remembered. That was good; anything to make me want her less – but it didn’t. She had always been slim, but now she was thin and there was sadness in her eyes. That, I felt, would never change; it was resident. And there was resignation too. Although a king’s daughter, she had been dealt a hard hand. It sounds like treason to say it, but I thought I noticed a silver strand in the golden hair.

‘Come away, Juliana,’ I whispered. ‘You shouldn’t be here.’

‘Come away to what? Come away with you? I think not. My life is over. That is what I want it to be. The meal is over, it is time to digest and reflect. And then, I think, a sleep.’

‘I love you.’

There you are. I blurted it out like a schoolboy.

‘I know you do, but love is really not enough. Love is just the scent of the flower. It attracts the bee who goes tumbling around in the pollen. What a thing is love, says Bertold the Bee!’

There were plenty of them out here, tumbling with the lavender.

‘But, of course, it is just an addictive aroma,’ she continued, ‘a preface to something absolutely basic and rather crude. If you turn it into something else, you’re missing the point. It’s not a nice smell at all. It’s marsh-gas, and the next thing you know, you’re in the marsh, up to your neck.’

Did she really believe what she was saying? Indeed, had she ever really loved me? I didn’t want to ask her. It seemed so callow.

‘Did you ever really love me?’ I asked.

‘Of course I did.’

‘Well, then, let’s leave now and go away together.’

‘You are forgetting something.’

I knew what I was forgetting: Alice. I had never felt more wretched. How hard it is to seem a hero to oneself – and yet we are meant to be the heroes of our own lives.

‘What happened to Eustace?’ I asked.

‘Oh, he’s around. I think someone cut his balls off.’

‘Was that you?’

‘Probably.’

I thought: I am going to kill myself if I stay here much longer.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘I’m sorry too.’

Neither of us wanted to mention her little girls. I thought of them and felt the tears welling up. Funny, isn’t it, how we have no control over our tear ducts. They are rather like the penis in that respect.

Neither of us mentioned the three hundred people who had died. I understood now what Eliphas had meant about passing the gate.

‘Five minutes to go,’ said the nun, coming out with an hour-glass, and then going out again.

‘Let me know how you’re getting on,’ I said.

‘You too.’

We both knew we wouldn’t.

‘It was bad of you to kidnap Alice,’ I said.

‘I didn’t kidnap her. I just said that I had.’

‘So why didn’t she come and find me?’

‘I needed her.’

‘You kidnapped her.’

‘In a way, yes. Alice is very fond of me.’

I thought of that little conversation I had had with Alice on the bed in Berthe’s house.

‘She’s very fond of me too,’ I told her.

‘As I am. We all seem to have trouble with that.’ The ghost of a smile lit up her face for an instant.

‘I had better go,’ I said.

‘Yes. Look out for my father. He’ll be coming round asking questions.’

‘Yes. You too.’

The old nun reappeared and made shooing gestures.

‘I think it would be best if you didn’t come back,’ Juliana said to me.

‘Yes.’

‘I love you.’

‘I love you too.’

‘Goodbye, my dearest, sweetest heart,’ she said. She had never called me that before. She kissed me on the cheek, and held me close for a long moment. And that was how it ended. It was time to leave for home.