from a pulpit could quell any congregation. One taste of his displeasure could bring the most wilful apostate back into the fold. He was far older than Melhuish, with more weight, more wisdom, more conviction and more skill. He also had more relish for the joys of coercion, for the destruction of any opponent with the full might of the Church at his back. He would cure Mistress Eleanor Budden of her delusions. Five minutes with the Dean would send her racing back to her bedchamber to fornicate with her husband in God's name and to make amends for her neglect of his most sacred right of possession.
But there was an unforeseen snag. She was closeted with the Dean for over two hours. And when she emerged, it was not in any spirit of repentance. She had the same air of unassailable confidence and the same seraphic smile. It is not known in what precise state of collapse she left the learned man who had tried to bully her out of her mission. Her certitude had been adamantine proof.
Humphrey Budden was waiting outside for her.
'Well?'
'My examination is over,' she said.
'What passed between you?'
'Much talk of the Bible.'
'Did the Dean instruct you in your duty?'
'God has already done that, sir.'
'He made no headway?' said Budden in disbelief.
'He came to accept my decision.'
'Madness, more like!' Do you find your wife mad, Humphrey?' In this frame of mind.'
Then must you truly despise me.'
They were standing among the gravestones in the churchyard. The sky was dark, the clouds swollen. The wind carried the first hints of rain. Eleanor Budden usually dressed in the fashion of burghers' wives with a bodice and full skirt of muted colour, a cap to hide her plaited hair and a lace ruff of surpassing delicacy, this last a source of professional pride to her husband who wanted her to display her demureness to the town and thereby advertise his trade, his happiness and his manhood. She had now cast off any sartorial niceties. A simple grey shift and a mob-cap were all that she wore. Her long hair hung loose down her back.
Ironically, he wanted her even more. In that dress, in that place, in that unpromising weather, he yet found his desire swelling and his sense of assertion stiffening. Mad or misguided, she was beautiful. Immune to the vicar and impervious even to the Dean, she was still the wife of Humphrey Budden and could be brought to heel.
'You will remain chaste no longer!' lie said.
'How now, sir!'
'Return home with me this instant!'
'I like not your tone.'
'Had you heard it sooner, with a hand to back it up, we might not now be in this predicament.'
'Do you threaten me, sir?'
She was calm and unafraid and he was halted for a moment but those round blue eyes and smooth skin worked him back into resolution. He grabbed her arm.
'Leave off, sir. You hurt me.'
'Come back home and settle this argument in our bedchamber. You will not be the loser by it.'
'Unhand me, Humphrey. Mingling flesh is sinful.'
'Not in marriage.
'We arc no longer man and wile.'
He grabbed her other arm as she tried to pull free and wrestled with her. The feel of her body against his drove him on beyond the bounds of reason.
'Submit to my embraces!'
'I will not, sir.'
'It is my right and title.'
'No further,'
Her struggling only increased his frenzy the more.
'By this hand, and you will not obey, I'll take you here on the spot among the dead of Nottingham.'
'You dare not do so.'
'Do I not?' he wailed.
'God will stop you.'
Roused to breaking point, he laid rude hands on the front of her shift and tore it down to expose one smooth shoulder and the top of one smooth breast, but even as the material ripped, it was joined by another sound. The door of the church opened and Miles Melhuish emerged in a state of frank bewilderment. He could not understand how Eleanor Budden had vanquished the Dean. When he saw the scene before him, however, he understood all too well and trembled at the sacrilege of it.
'Here upon consecrated ground!' he boomed.
'I was driven to it, sir,' bleated the lacemaker.
'To use force against the gentler sex!'
'You counselled strength of purpose.'
'Not of this foul nature.'
'Forgive him, sir,' said Eleanor. 'He knows not what he does. I looked for no less. God warned me to expect much tribulation. And yet He saved me here, as you did see. He brought you from that church to be my rescue.'
Eleanor fell to her knees in earnest prayer and Melhuish took the defeated and detumescent husband aside to scold him among the chiselled inscriptions. When she was finished, the vicar helped her to her feet and nudged her spouse forward with a glance.
'Forgive me for my wickedness, Eleanor.'
'You acted but as a man.'
'I sinned against you grievously.'
'Then must you wash yourself clean. Call on God to make you a pure heart and to put out all your misdeeds.'
Humphrey Budden was desolate. Abandoned by his wife and now censured by the Church, his case was beyond hope. Instead of taking home a dutiful partner in marriage, he had lost her for ever to a voice he had never even heard.
'May I know your will, wife?'
'I follow the path of righteousness.'
'She must answer the Dean's command,' said Melhuish.
'I go to Jerusalem,' she said.
'To York,' he corrected. 'Only the holy Archbishop himself can pronounce on this. You must bear a letter to him from the Dean and seek an audience.'
'York!' Budden was distraught. 'May I come there?'
I travel alone,' she said firmly.
'What will you do for food and shelter?'
'God will provide.'
'The roads are not safe for any man, let alone for a woman such as you. Be mindful of your life!
'There is no danger for me.
'For you and for every other traveller.'
'I have the Lord's protection on my way.'
It began to rain.
Oliver Quilley cursed the downpour and spurred his horse into a canter. There was a clump of trees in the middle distance with promise of shelter for him and his young companion. Quilley was a short, slight creature in his thirties with an appealing frailty about him. Dressed in the apparel of a courtier, he was an incongruous sight beside the sturdy man in fustian who rode as his chosen bodyguard on the road from Leicester. The trees swished and swayed in the rain but their thick foliage and overhanging branches promised cover from the worst of the storm. As
