Alice handed the letter back. “It was good of her to remember and to write. Yes, I’d like to see Tours again. I wonder if the boys will be there? Theudovald must be – what? – ten or eleven by now, I suppose. Probably training for war already. This war! What must it be like to live always with the ‘very real threat’ of it?”

The duke smiled. He was looking better already. Alice thought: the prospect of travel always pleased him, but it was not only that. Her marriage, the settlement of the estate; yes, that, too. But most of all – and she accepted it with sadness – the knowledge that soon, now, the time would come for his final dedication to God’s service.

He tucked the scroll back into his sleeve. “Not many years ago, and that was the case here in Britain, too. I suppose one gets used to anything, and I doubt if the Franks would be grateful for peace even if it were offered! I gather from the courier – and these King’s men hear everything – that it’s true that the Burgundian war looks imminent. When did it not? But it’s also true that the roads are still open, and pilgrims safe enough. And with Queen Clotilda’s protection … Yes, I will certainly go, but if you would rather not – ?”

“Of course I would like to go! It may be my last journey, too, and in any case my last chance to go with you.”

This time next spring, she was thinking, this time next spring … My father still alive, please God, and happy in your service, and myself still here in Castle Rose, and sitting with Mariamne making baby-clothes for Madoc’s child?

She looked into her father’s anxious eyes and smiled brilliantly, reassuringly.

“Then let’s get those letters off to Count Madoc, and to the queen, and start thinking about summer silks! And our souls, too, of course!”

Her father laughed, kissed her, and went to set his scribe to writing the fateful letters.

18

Arrangements for the “last pilgrimage” were soon under way. One precaution was taken; the party would not this time risk the long overland journey through Frankish territory, but would take ship right to the mouth of the Loire, and, changing vessels there, sail clear up the river to Tours itself.

Nothing more had been heard from Queen Clotilda. Nor from Madoc, who, it appeared, was abroad somewhere, but who – said the message from his man of affairs – “would of a certainty be more than happy to discuss the duke’s proposal; the alliance was one which had, it was well known, been for a long time near to his heart”.

“I’m sure it has,” said Ansirus, a little drily, and left it at that.

They embarked in mid-April. The voyage was uneventful, the weather calm, turning steadily from spring to early summer as they sailed south. They dropped anchor briefly at Kerrec, in Less Britain, and stayed there for some days, resting at the house of a kinsman. From there Duke Ansirus sent a message to Queen Clotilda, letting her know of his party’s progress. This as a mere matter of courtesy, but when at length their ship docked safely at Nantes, the busy estuary port of the Loire, they were surprised and flattered to find an escort waiting for them, a strong troop of armed men bearing the old queen’s colours, and sent by her, their officer said, to help the British party re-embark on the smaller ship that would take them to Tours, and to accompany them there in safety.