The pardoner looks from one to the other for a moment before replying. It is as if he is coming to a decision. Any number of answers might now come from his lips, none of them the truth, but at length he says:

‘I have scrofula. The King’s Evil.’

Both Thomas and Katherine stop chewing. The mule stamps in the dark. The pardoner sighs, puts down his own piece of bread, and then reaches up to tug his hood from his crown. The light of the fire falls on his face. Roiling down his neck, from ear to collar bone, is a whorl of clustered growths, the largest the size of a ripe damson.

‘You see?’ he says, pulling his hood back up, casting his face into shade again. ‘So it is that I avoid the company of men. Last night I approached a village to the west of here, to buy some ale. The alewife mistook these for buboes.’

He crosses himself, as if this might ward off the plague.

‘She raised the hue and cry and I was lucky to escape with my life, let alone with my mule and baggage. The men must have been away hunting, or at the wars perhaps, for it was only boys who came after me, throwing stones mostly, though one of them had his bow. In the end I thanked St Sebastian that I looked to have the plague, for at least they were too frightened to approach.’

‘Though you have that weapon,’ Katherine says.

‘Yes,’ the pardoner laughs. ‘It is antique, and quite useless. I bought it from a man who claimed it belonged to Joan, the French witch. Can you imagine?’

The pot begins to steam. The pardoner leans forward and crumbles pieces of dried fish with long fingers and drops them in.

‘How do you know your affliction is not the plague?’ Katherine asks. She seems unwilling to let the matter drop.

‘If it were the plague, I would be long dead,’ the pardoner says. ‘These signs have been with me a year or more now, growing steadily larger, like old friends, or a family.’

‘Do they hurt?’ Katherine asks.

The pardoner shakes his head.

‘No,’ he says. ‘They are cold though. To the touch, I mean. Though that is no strange thing this winter.’

‘We will pray for you, sir,’ Thomas offers, and Katherine murmurs something vague.

‘Thank you,’ the pardoner says. ‘Thank you both. With your prayers and God’s blessing I shall find a cure, in France.’

‘In France?’