Katherine, who had no shoes to remove, drew apart, waiting on the brink of the little river Stiffkey until she might go in and say a prayer in peace. So near at last to journey's end that she could not believe it, she dared not let herself think of the Holy Sight which lay ahead of her, nor of the miracle that she was certain would take place.

They glanced at her incuriously as they passed her by, the Londoners all bright as popinjays in their scarlets and blues and greens, and one of the men - a grocer it would seem by the scales embroidered on his shoulder badge - said crossly in a loud voice to the others, "You shall see what mummery all this'll prove to be. Hurry on, Alison, and let's be done with the bowing and scraping. By God, 'tis not the Virgin's milk I long for, 'tis good brown Norfolk ale!"

"Hush, Andrew!" cried his wife angrily. "Here's no place for your wicked Lollard talk!"

Andrew grumbled and walked on.

Katherine heard, and something in her cringed: a doubt, a fear, darted and was gone. She prayed in the chapel and was filled with exalted hope. Her lassitude and headache vanished, she sped along the sacred mile beside the river. Her skin no longer reddened under the fierce sun-rays, the soles of her feet were as tough and calloused as a friar's. She did not feel the torturing fleabites nor the sweat that bathed her body under the hair shirt and the heavy black robe, nor the sore pains in her gums and loosened teeth, pain that had lately made so difficult chewing of the coarse bread, which was all she had allowed herself to eat since starting on pilgrimage. Foul-smelling little sores had broken out on her legs but she had made no effort to poultice them. These afflictions were all sent by God to prove her true contrition, and would ensure the Blessed Lady's favour.

As she neared Wajsingham, other penitential pilgrims joined her on the road, clad in sackcloth, wearing the wide palmer's hat, with ashes on their brows. These kept their eyes fixed on the ground as Katherine did; they did not glance at the little booths which began to line the way, though the owners of these stalls cried their wares incessantly in hoarse pleading voices.

"Come, buy my Walsingham medals - all personally blessed by Our Lady!" Or rosaries, or souvenirs, or gingerbread images of the Virgin, or tin replicas of the vial that held Her Holy Milk.

The town itself was crammed with pilgrim hostels, cook-shops and taverns; by the time Katherine reached the abbey gate she was one of a great throng, amongst them many cripples, and sick folk borne on litters by their relatives. Voices hummed around her speaking in a score of accents, not only the strange dialects of remoter parts of England but in the French tongue, and Flemish, and others that she did not recognise.

Beneath a miraculous copper image of a knight, there was a small postern in the abbey gate, and one by one they filed through under the watchful eye of an Austin canon from the priory which had charge of the shrine.

Katherine's heart beat fast, she wanted to hold back, to think and pray again before entering the sacred enclosure, but she could not. Canons ranged on either side the pilgrim path hurried the folk along, while behind her new pilgrims kept pressing through the gate. They were herded first through a little chapel, where they knelt and kissed a bone, big as the shank of an ox. It was the fingerbone of St. Peter, the attendant canon told them, watching while the pilgrims put pennies in a box.

They left the chapel and went through a covered way into a shed thatched with reeds and garnished with flowers. Here on the ground there were two holy wells, side by side. The monk in charge waved the people back, for a child had been laid in the little space between the twin wells.

The child was a boy of about four, but his head was big as that of a grown man, his tongue lolled from his slack spittle-dribbling mouth, his dull- swollen eyes were mindless as a dead lamb's. The mother knelt beside him, to pull his arms apart so that one little hand should touch each pool. Her lips moved in desperate prayer while the monk made the sign of the cross over the child. The pilgrims watched, holding their breath.

The child struggled, trying to jerk his hands from the water, then let out a long sobbing animal wail.

The mother gave a great cry and gathered the child up in her arms. "A miracle!" she cried rocking the child. "For sure, it is a miracle! He has made no sound in months. Our Blessed Lady has cured him!"

While the people gasped and fell to their knees, the monk smiled, laying his hand on the boy's head. Tears ran down Katherine's cheeks, she turned away and could not look at the mother's wild hopeful face. When her own time came to kneel between the holy wells and plunge her hands in each, she could form no proper prayer. She saw nothing but Blanchette's trusting, adoring eyes, as they had been long ago.

Our Lady of Walsingham's shrine adjoined the church. It was a small chapel without windows, nor needed any, for its hundred votive candles glittered on walls lined with gold and silver offerings, while the Blessed Image, larger than a woman, was crusted so thick with diamonds, rubies, pearls and other precious stones that the eye was blinded.

Katherine had waited long outside the shrine for her turn - though most pilgrims went through in groups, those who wished might worship alone - but before she finally knelt by the dazzling image a priest in white chasuble came up to her to ask what offering she would make to the Queen of Heaven.

She opened her scrip and taking out the Duke's betrothal ring held it up, whispering, "This, Father."

He took the ring, glanced sharply at the gold and sapphire. "It will be acceptable to Our Gracious Lady, my daughter."

He drew aside while Katherine kissed the statue's golden beringed foot, staring up through clouds of blue incense at the smooth painted wooden face beneath a diamond crown.

In the moments that she knelt there, Katherine prayed with the pent-up violence she had not dared to feel before, she prayed in desperation, she supplicated, she commanded. "Give me back my child! Show me the way to forgiveness. Lady, Lady, you who are all-merciful, tell me how Hugh's murder may be forgiven. Tell me where is my child!"

And there was no answer. The white and red painted face, the round upward-staring eyes remained as before, bland, wooden, indifferent.

Still she knelt, until the priest touched her on the shoulder. "There are many waiting to come in here, daughter."

She gave him so frantic and despairing a look that he said, "Come, come, would you gaze on the precious relic? It works more miracles than any other in Christendom!"

She bowed her head, and he waited, glancing at her scrip. "I've but a few pence left, Father," she said in a strangled voice. "And this - -" She held out four silver pennies and the tarnished silver brooch the Queen had given her at Windsor.

"Ah?" said the priest in a flatter tone. "Well, since you have already donated - -" He took the pennies, and ignored the tawdry brooch. He unlocked a small diamond-studded door beneath the Virgin's feet, exposing a crystal vial mounted in the centre of a gold and ivory crucifix. The vial seemed to contain a whitish powder.

Katherine gazed at the vial. It was said that when the Virgin was inclined to answer a pilgrim's prayer, the Holy Milk would leap and quiver within the crystal. She strained her eyes until they blurred with pain, her body pounded, but there was no sign from the relic.

The priest closed the reliquary and locked it, he hurried to the exit door on the other side of the shrine; held it wide open for Katherine to leave.

She went out along another covered way and through a gate into the brilliant sunshine of the street. Something pricked her hand and she looked down at the Queen's brooch which she still clasped. "Foi vainquera" was the motto on that brooch - a lie. Faith had conquered nothing. Our Lady had neither heard nor answered. There were no miracles. Her hand dropped slack. The brooch fell into the filth of the gutter.

A man passing behind Katherine on the street saw the brooch drop, picked it up and lumbered after her, as she wandered blindly along the outside of the abbey walls.

"Good pilgrim dame," said the man, "you dropped this nouche."

"Let it be," she said in a muffled voice, not turning. "I do not want it."

The man looked up into her dead-still face, then peered closer and read the tiny letters. Because he had suffered very greatly himself, and because his heart was filled with tenderness, he guessed something of what must have happened to this widowed penitent at the shrine. He put the brooch in his pouch and followed Katherine at a distance. People crossed themselves as he walked by them, but some reached out and touched him for luck. He was a hunchback.

Katherine walked until she came to the market square where there were benches along the garden hedge of the Black Lion Tavern, which was jammed with pilgrims who had already visited the shrine, and were now celebrating. Serving-maids ran out from the tavern with strong ale and meat pasties. The party of London merchants, each now wearing the Walsingham medal, were clustered at a table by the hedge, talking at the top of their voices.

Katherine's throat was parched with thirst, her stomach gnawed. To gain favour from the Miraculous Lady of Walsingham, nothing at all had passed her lips since vespers yesterday. I shall have to beg for my bread now, she thought. She looked at the food the Londoners were guzzling, and was sickened. Pain throbbed in her sore mouth, in her head. Black swimming weakness crushed her. She slumped down on a bench and shut her eyes.