They passed a wharf, and then in a short while another, small ports each with a single jetty serving some settlement that crowded at the water’s edge, where river-boats were moored, and where ferries plied. Here there was bustle. Waggons were drawn up at the wharfs, or moved slowly along the roads, pulled by their yokes of white oxen. The fact that all the waggons were heading the same way – westward – or that most of them seemed to be piled high with what looked like household goods and furnishings, did not mean anything to Alice, as she stood dreaming in the sunshine by the ship’s rail, but she did wonder what her father and the queen’s officer were taking so long to talk over below decks, and – a fleeting thought this – wished that, marriage or no marriage, they were all safely home again.

It must have been a full hour later, and the Merwing was steering carefully between islands shaded with gilt-green willows and alive with nesting birds, when Duke Ansirus came on deck again to his daughter’s side, motioning Mariamne out of hearing. One look at his face set Alice asking anxiously: “Father? Is there bad news? What is it?”

“Bad enough.” He laid a reassuring hand over hers on the ship’s rail. “No, not for us, child, I hope; we are still pilgrims, and this is a Christian country, may the good St Martin bear witness! But it will be a brief pilgrimage. This time the talk of war was no mere cry of ‘Wolf!’ There has been fighting already, and we cannot guess what more is still to come.”

“Fighting? With Burgundy?”

“Yes.”

“But – oh, Father, this is terrible! And poor Queen Clotilda –”

“No poor about it,” said the duke, curtly, for him. “She herself planned it. She persuaded her sons – no, drove them to it. I believe she is still fighting King Clovis’s long battle to bring all Gaul under Salian rule, but that is not the lure she used to bring the Frankish kings, her own three sons and Theuderic, together against Burgundy.”

“Then what?”

“What would appeal to these wolves? A crusade for Christ?” Ansirus spoke with a kind of sad and bitter contempt. “Hardly! No, she called for revenge.”

“Revenge against Burgundy?” exclaimed Alice. “For what? I thought she herself was born a princess of Burgundy.”

“Indeed. And Sigismund of Burgundy – he and his brother Godomar – murdered her mother and father. And would have killed her, too, doubtless, if Clovis had not seen her and demanded her hand.”

“But surely – all those years ago –”

“The stories are still told, and they are tales not easily forgotten. And how could Clotilda, Christian or not, forget?”

Below the ship’s rail a flight of small wading-birds flew with glinting wings and a chorus of sweet calling. They were flying westwards. Alice watched them almost wistfully; her instinct had been true.