The smell in the alley is powerful, and at its end they each turn a different corner and begin to try to make sense of their new clothes. For Katherine it is a strange experience. She needs to hold them up first, to see what they are. Then she pulls on the linen braies, followed by the woven hose. She rolls them over at the top and ties them off around her waist. Then she quickly takes off her cassock, and plunges her naked arms into the undershirt. It is rose-coloured, faded in parts, mossy at the pits and slick with wear. Then comes the tunic, russet-coloured as most men wear, then the coat, green and quilted, but worn and smelling of horses. Down its front on one side is a row of rough horn discs with which she is not familiar, and down the other stitched slits that mystify her. The garment gapes over her bosom and feels wrong. She’s spent her life in a cassock that hangs from her shoulders and these new clothes grip her body in unfamiliar places. Still, she is able to move more freely unhampered by the heavy skirts, and so long as she does not get her feet wet, she imagines she will be warm.

She meets Thomas in the alleyway and they stare at one another for a moment. His jacket is blue and his hose green on one leg, red on the other. His tunic strains where he had done up the buttons on the front. When Katherine sees this, she understands what the bone discs on her own jacket are for and she clumsily presses them home.

‘These are men’s clothes,’ she says.

Thomas nods.

‘It is safer,’ he says. ‘They will be looking for a canon and a sister.’

She nods. Unsure. He too looks askance.

‘Why is he doing this?’ she asks, pulling on the felt cap she’s been given. ‘He has no need to show us such kindness.’

‘It is a penance, I think,’ Thomas says. ‘If he helps us, things will go well for him in France. And if he hopes to benefit from it, then we may take these favours in good conscience, surely?’

She sees he too is in need of persuasion.

‘We would have had to take them from someone, at any rate,’ Katherine says, ‘or we would be dead.’

It is a hard point, and Thomas is silenced.

‘Look,’ he says. ‘I took these from Riven. You should have them.’

He proffers her Alice’s rosary beads. She does not take them for a moment.

‘I did not even know her,’ he says, pressing them on her.

Katherine does not want to gain from Alice’s death, but she takes them, puts them over her head and tucks them into her shirt. For a moment they are cold against her skin.

When the pardoner sees them he laughs.

‘Not perfect,’ he says, ‘but what is perfect?’