At once the shutter opened. "Welcoom, who'er it be that seeks me."

Father Clement gently pushed Katherine towards the window, which was obscured by a thin black cloth. "Speak to her," he said.

Katherine had no wish to speak. It seemed to her that this was a crowning humiliation, that she should be standing in a tiny unfamiliar churchyard with a hunchback and commanded to reveal her suffering, to ask for help, from some unseen woman whose voice was homely and prosaic as Dame Emma's, and who spoke moreover with a thick East Anglian burr.

"My name is Katherine," she said. Through her weary pain resentment flashed. "There's nothing else to say."

"Coom closer, Kawtherine," The voice behind the curtain was soothing as to a child. "Gi' me your hand." A corner of the black cloth lifted; faintly white in the darkness a hand was held out. Unwillingly Katherine obeyed. At the instant of contact with a firm warm clasp, she was conscience of fragrance. A subtle perfume such as she had never smelled, like herbs, flowers, incense, spices, yet not quite like these. While the hand held hers, she smelled this fragrance and felt a warm tingle in her arm. Then her hand was loosed and the curtain dropped.

"Kawtherine," said the voice, "you are ill. Before you coom to me again, you must rest and drink fresh bullock's blood, tonight, at once - and for days - -"

"By the rood, lady!" Katherine cried angrily, "I've tasted no flesh food in months. 'Tis part of my penance."

"Did our moost Dearworthy Lord Jesus gi' you the penance, Kawtherine?" There was a hint of a smile in the voice, and Katherine's confused resentment increased. Everyone knew that the sinful flesh which had betrayed her must be mortified.

Suddenly the voice changed its tone, became lower, humble and yet imbued with power. Katherine was not conscious of the provincial accent as Julian said, "It was shown to me that Christ ministers to us His gifts of grace, our soul with our body, and our body with our soul, either of them taking help with the other. God has no disdain to serve the body."

For a startled moment Katherine felt a touch of awe. "That is strange to me, lady," she said to the black curtain. "I cannot believe that the foul body is of any worth to God."

"And shall not try tonight," said the voice gently. "Father Clement?"

The priest, who had drawn away, came up to the window. Julian spoke to him at some length.

Katherine was given a chamber reserved for travellers in the rectory across the alley from the church. She was put to bed and cared for by Father Clement's old servant, a bright-eyed woman of sixty, who adored him.

They brought Katherine fresh blood from the slaughterhouse, and a bullock's liver, which they chopped up raw and blended into a mortrewe with egg, they fed her boiled dandelion greens, minced so that she need not chew. They made her eat. Katherine for the first day thought this was a worse penance than any she had undergone, but she was too weak to protest or even to wonder that Dame Julian had said she should not be bled, that it was not sensible to put in blood at one place and take it away from another.

Father Clement twinkled as he told Katherine this, and she smiled feebly, wondering how it was that a man so hideous and deformed always seemed happy. He laboured tirelessly for his parish, yet was always unhurried. He never scolded, or questioned, or exhorted. There was a sunniness about him that shone through all his clean shabby little rectory.

In four days Katherine had gained strength, her pains were less, the bluish sores on her legs had ceased oozing. She began to worry about the expense that she was giving Father Clement, but he laughed at her, saying with truth that the odd things Lady Julian had prescribed for her to eat were to be had for the asking at the shambles, while the greens came from his own garden.

"Never did I think that I should he destitute as I am now," Katherine said on a long sigh. Yet it had become a dream - the glamour and the lavish bounty of all those past years. A guilty dream.

The priest looked at her softly. "Destitute? Perhaps 'tis that you've always been. For our soul may never have rest in things that are beneath itself."

"Ah, see-" she cried bitterly. "Now at last you speak like a priest. 'Tis what Brother William would have said - God keep him - that was killed because of me - he, and others."

The priest seemed not to notice. "The Lady Julian waits for you," he said quietly. "She believes you well enough to come to her today."

Katherine had thought much about the anchoress during these days of recovery, and been astonished to find a longing to speak with her again. She went back that afternoon to the little churchyard and knocked at the cell window. The voice through the black cloth told her to come in at the door which had been unlocked.

Katherine entered Julian's cell nervously, puzzled, curious. It was but six paces long and wide, and curtained down the middle with fine blue wool. There were two windows, the "parloir" window to the churchyard, and above a wooden prie-dieu a narrow slitted window that opened into the church. Through this, Julian could see the altar and take part in the Mass. There was a small fireplace, a table and two wooden chairs on the warm brick floor. The bumpy flint walls had been painted white.

A moment after Katherine shut the door, Julian came around the blue curtain. A plain little woman, neither fat nor thin, with greying hair beneath a. white coif. She wore a soft unbleached linen gown. A woman nearing forty and so ordinary that one might see a hundred like her in any market-square, except that, as she took Katherine's hand and smiled, the cell filled with the undefinable fragrance, and at the touch of the square blunt fingers Katherine felt a strange sensation, as though there had been an iron fetter around her chest that now shattered, to let her breathe a light golden air.

"So you are the Katherine Father Clement brought," said Julian, in her comfortable slow voice. She sat down in one chair and motioned Katherine to the other. "The pains're better? Can you chew? 'Twould be a shame to lose those pretty teeth, and tell me-" She asked several frank physical questions, which Katherine answered with faint amusement and disappointment. She had come for the spiritual guidance that Father Clement seemed so certain of, and Lady Julian talked of laxatives. Yet there was still the strange sense of freedom.

"This sickness that you have," said Julian, "I too had once, when I had fasted overmuch. And was in great trouble and pain, so near death that my confessor stood over me." She glanced towards the crucifix that was mounted on her prie-dieu, and said simply, "God in His marvellous courtesy did save me."

"By the visions," said Katherine, sighing. "Father Clement told me of them."

"Ay - by the sixteen showings, but I don't know why they were vouchsafed to me. Truly it was not shown me that God loved me better than the least soul that is in grace. I'm certain here be many that never had showings, nor sight but of the common teaching of Holy Church, that love God better than I."

"It's very hard to love God," said Katharine below her breath, "when He does not love us."

"Oh Katherine, Katherine - -" Lady Julian smiled, shaking her head. "Love is our Lord's whole meaning. It was shown me full surely that ere God made us He loved us, and when we were made, we loved Him."

It was not Julian's words, which Katherine barely heard, that brought an odd half-frightened thrill. Like the first time Katherine had climbed to the top of the minster tower at Sheppey and seen the island stretching out for miles to other villages and blue water in the distance, a landscape she had not dreamed of.

She stared unbelieving at the homely broad face beneath the greying hair and wimple, for suddenly it looked beautiful, made of shining mist.

"Lady," whispered Katherine, "it must be these visions were vouchsafed to you because you knew naught of sin - not sins like mine - lady, what would you know of - of adultery - of murder - -"

Julian rose quickly and placed her hand on Katherine's shoulder. At the touch, a soft rose flame enveloped her, and she could not go on.

"I have known all manner of sin," said Julian quietly. "Sin is the sharpest scourge. And verily as sin is unclean, so verily it is a disease or monstrous thing against nature. Yet listen to what I was shown in the thirteenth vision." She moved away from Katherine. Her voice took on the low chanting note of power.

"I had been thinking of my sins, I was in great sorrow. Then I saw Him. He turned on me His face of lovely pity and He said: It is truth that sin is cause of all this pain: sin is behovable - none the less all shall be well, and all shall be well, you shall see yourself that all manner of thing shall be well. These words were said to me tenderly, showing no kind of blame. And then He said, Accuse not thyself overdone much, deeming that thy tribulation and thy woe is all thy fault: for I will not that thou be heavy or sorrowful indiscreetly. Then I understood that it was great disobedience to blame or wonder on God for my sin, since He blamed me not for it.

"And with these words, I saw a marvellous high mystery hid in God, which mystery He shall openly make known to us in heaven; where we shall truly see the cause why He suffered sin to come. For He made me see that from failure of love on our part, therefore is all our travail, and naught else."

Julian looked at Katherine and smiled. "Do you understand?"

"Nay, lady," said Katherine slowly, "I cannot believe there could be so much comfort." Julian sat down and spoke again, simply and quietly.