Sentence The Fourhundredandsixtyfourth

Which was how it came about that the small party of 'time-travellers' as they had come to think of themselves, disguised as pilgrims in clothing supplied by Father Boisel and Greta, having left St Mary of Wedale early that morning, were just approaching the high point of the track over Middleton Moor, when they encountered the two women; though they were dressed in what had once been fine

clothes, they were sitting in a hollow, mud-stained and thorn-torn, and their faces were filled with alarm as they first saw the mendicant friar and three nuns turn the trees and approach them, but it was the younger woman who initiated the first exchange of words: “good morrow, father,” she said in her naturally sonorous voice, “you are heaven-sent, as we were waylaid by a party of footpads who took our ponies and provisions and abandoned us here, without footwear or food,” and the quick eyes of Sister Tamarind caught sight of bloodied rags torn from cambric petticoats which the two women had wrapped round their feet to protect them from sharp stones: “I have salves and potions here,” she said, and if you give leave I can provide better dressing that you have been able to do yourselves,” and the relief was quick to brighten the faces of the two unfortunates; Friar Tavish doffed his shapeless hat in deference to the social status of the two bedraggled women and, with that long-learned lack of any compunctious need to tell the truth, when 'cover stories' were necessary to preserve life, limb and, mind and spirit, introduced himself and the three Poor Clares with whom he was travelling and was in turn introduced to Sister Evadne Eglantyne and her own sister, Griselda of Longformacus; shuffling though the virtual card index which was the memory system in his mind, Tavish was soon rewarded with basic information about these two who, he now realised, must have recently escaped from the clutches of Sir Parlane MacFarlane, but he could not tell them that he had but recently murdered MacFarlane and his body servant in Melrose; and he did not need to, for it was Sister Evadne who alluded to it: “my pursuer and torturer is no more,” she whispered, “by some Act of Our Lord I am spared him, yet there are others in his Brotherhood who have now redoubled their

efforts to return me to that awful oubliette beneath his House, and it is they from whom we flee – kind Brother Tavish, I would not wish your mercy to us to put your own lives at risk, for these are evil men who would so little disdain from killing three more Sisters as from one, and any innocents who come between them and their prey will be trampled underfoot,” but Tavish and his three companions would not be swayed by this advice and although Sister Licinda (but everyone calls me Lolly, she had said in a strange accent) looked like a baby carrot compared with her companions, and was clearly a novice, yet possessed of a spirit of resilience which Sister Evadne could well imagine might give her superiors headaches; “if my recollection is sound,” said Griselda, “I believe that the Duke of Albany's Palace stands not more that 10 miles in that direction, though I have never seen it, but he is a distant kinsman of ours – well, very distant – and might give us some shelter and succour,” and she looked at Evadne and down at herself and laughed, “if he even recognises us as being who we say we are, we are hardly in a fit state to go in a peasant's cottage, let alone a Ducal Palace,” and Tavish chipped in: “faint heart never won hot gravy,” which made the women, with the exception of Lolly, laugh, but she simply did not understand what Tavish meant, so we can forgive her that.