LITMIR.BIZ

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no means among the worst places I had endured as a traveller; it smelled strongly of the sweat of men and horses, but so did every place in this heat. I tugged my shirt out from my breeches and flapped it up and down. The room the innkeeper had given us was at the top of the house and the heat of the day was trapped under the eaves; even with the casement open, the air seemed to crush the breath from you. I glanced down at the small truckle-bed that pulled out from under the main bed, meant for a servant to sleep alongside his master. I decided I would sleep in my underhose; even if Sophia had not been there, I had learned from experience that it was never wise to go to bed entirely naked in a roadside inn, however hot it might be. You never knew when you might need to leap to your feet at a moment’s notice.

      I unbuckled the belt holding my purse and the bone-handled knife and laid them carefully on the floor before turning back to look at her. Her hair was spiked at the front from the water and her efforts at washing had merely succeeded in spreading the dust over her face in different patterns, giving her an endearingly impish look. She met my eyes, then wrapped her arms around herself awkwardly before glancing across the room. Her gaze fell on a cracked piss-pot in the corner and immediately I understood.

      ‘I think I will just go and check on the horses,’ I said quickly, pulling my boots back on. Poor Sophia – this was one of the hardest parts about her disguise, and the one most likely to betray her, I thought – that she could not piss like a man. Earlier in the day I had had to wait by the side of the road holding her horse’s bridle while she looked for a spot in some trees, away from the eyes of passers-by. More than her voice, we must take care that her refusal to relieve herself on any street corner alongside other boys did not attract undue attention. ‘Latch the door behind me and don’t open it to anyone,’ I added, standing up. I tucked the knife into the waist of my breeches, just in case. We had drawn stares in the tap-room, I supposed because between us we looked so exotic. One day’s ride in the sun had tanned my Italian skin the colour of olivewood, making me look yet more foreign, and Sophia, for all her filthy clothes, was so striking as to make any man look twice. Even if no one suspected she was a woman, there were always plenty of men in any roadside tavern whose tastes were broad enough to include a pretty, soft-skinned boy.

      Outside in the courtyard the day’s heat had ebbed away, leaving cool shadows and a gentle night breeze. It would be more comfortable to sleep out here, I thought, picturing Sophia lying alongside me among the hay bales stacked against the wall of the stable, under the stars. I wandered across to the open door of the stable building, to give her time to finish her ablutions in private, exchanged a few words with the stable boy, gave him a groat to make sure our horses were well brushed down and fed for the morning, and strolled back slowly towards the inn, glancing up at the windows, some still lit by the flickering amber glow of candles. Occasionally the shadow of a figure would cross in front of the casement, and I looked up at the row of gabled windows in the attic storey, trying to work out which was ours. In one of those upper rooms, Sophia was undressing, unbinding her breasts, stretching out her long, aching limbs on the coarse sheets. I shook my head and tried to discipline my wayward thoughts. This business in Canterbury would be difficult enough without deliberately tormenting myself over Sophia and fantasies of what I could not – yet – have. The surest way to secure her trust and affection was to perform the role she required of me, which for the moment was that of trusted friend.

      Between the bullying husband and his drunken, lusty son, she had seen enough of men whose only interest was what they could take from her. She had come to me because she believed I was different, and I wished her to see that she was right. Though I was a man like any other, I had learned during the years I lived as a monk to master the urges of the body that prove such a powerful distraction to men, especially those trying to concentrate on the life of the mind or of the spirit. As a sixteen-year-old novice I had served for a little time in the infirmary as assistant to the physician, and there I saw some among my brother Dominicans writhing in pain, burning up from within, clawing at festering sores, screaming every time they passed blood-streaked water, or sinking towards death in the incoherent ravings of madmen, all because of an ill-judged tumble with a whore or a serving girl. I had asked the brother physician what had brought these men – some of them not much older than me – to such a pass. ‘Sin,’ he had replied emphatically, through clenched teeth. No further explanation was needed. These early lessons in the price to be paid for the fierce cravings of desire had led me to value my health and my sanity above the insistent clamour of my body; it was partly thanks to those poor tortured souls that I had chosen to devote myself to philosophy and worked hard to acquire the discipline needed to live the life of the mind. But Sophia was something different altogether; from the first moment I had seen her, across her father’s dinner table in Oxford, I had found her impossible to forget. Her return to me had all the irresistible force of an event decreed by the stars – or so I could almost believe.

      I laughed drily at myself as I stopped to piss against a wall of the courtyard.

      ‘Be another hot one tomorrow.’

      I looked up; the speaker was a stocky man also relieving himself a few yards along from me. He nodded up at the cloudless sky.

      ‘I think you are right,’ I said, finishing my business and retying my breeches.

      ‘We’ll have no harvest at all if we don’t get some rain soon,’ he remarked, his stream still splashing vigorously against the stones. His words were slurred from drink and he swayed slightly as he continued to let loose the evening’s beer. I could not see his face in the half-light. Across the yard a horse whinnied, making me start. ‘Then there’ll be riots, you’ll see. Where you from, then?’

      ‘Naples.’ I took a step towards the inn, then added, ‘Italy,’ when I saw there was no response. I had no wish to engage in small talk with this fellow, particularly about myself, but neither did I wish to give offence. Sophia and I were vulnerable enough without deliberately putting ourselves on the wrong side of fellow travellers.

      ‘And the boy? What is he, your servant?’

      It was a casual question, thrown over his shoulder as he finished, shook off the last drops and tied himself away, but immediately I felt myself tense and the skin on my neck prickled. Whoever he was, he must have been watching us earlier and was sober enough to have recognised me. More than that, he had taken notice of Sophia.

      ‘My assistant.’ I answered him coolly enough, but my fists were clenched at my sides.

      ‘Assistant, is it?’ He laughed as he lurched towards me in the direction of the inn’s rear door. To my ear it sounded lascivious, though I knew I may have been over-sensitive. ‘What’s he assist you with, then?’

      ‘My business is books.’

      ‘Oh, aye? Do you get much trade?’

      ‘I make a living.’

      Fortunately, it seemed he had little more to contribute on the subject of the book trade. He fell clumsily into step beside me as I made for the tavern door.

      ‘Come and have a game of cards with us, my friend, you and your assistant. Too hot to sleep, night like this.’ He clapped me on the shoulder; instinctively I flinched, though he was too drunk to notice.

      ‘I thank you,’ I said, moving a step away as we reached the threshold, ‘but we must make an early start tomorrow. Besides,’ I added, trying to keep my tone light, ‘I’m afraid I am a hopeless card player, no matter what the game.’

      ‘You’d be all the more welcome at our table, then,’ he said, with a wheezing laugh that showed a few remaining brown stumps of teeth. I smiled and bade him good night, only realising as I climbed the stairs how I had been holding my breath. The man’s curiosity had seemed harmless enough, but it was further proof that Sophia and I made an odd sight travelling together, and one that attracted the eyes of strangers. We would need to be vigilant at every moment; one careless word or gesture, one instant of forgetting who we were supposed to be or failing to keep an eye over our shoulders, and our mission in Canterbury might be over before we even reached the city walls.

      I gave a soft tap at the door. After a moment, I heard the lifting of the latch and slipped through into the warm

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