When Katherine left Julian's cell that day, she did not know how long she had stayed, nor clearly remember the things that had been told her, but for the time she had ceased to question. As she walked out into the little churchyard, it seemed lit with beauty. She stood bemused in a corner by a dark yew tree and saw meaning, blissful meaning in everything her eye rested on: the blue floweret of the speedwell, the moss on a gravestone, an ant that laboured to push a crumb through the grass - all these were radiant, as though she looked at them through a crystal.

She picked up a black flint pebble that seemed to glow with light like a diamond, while some of Lady Julian's words came back to her. "In this same time, our Lord showed me a spiritual sight of His homely loving. A little thing like a hazelnut, in the palm of my hand, and I thought what may this be? And it was answered: It lasteth and ever shall, for that God loveth it."

During that moment that she held the pebble, Katherine understood this, and why Julian had said, "After this I saw God-in a point, by which sight I saw that He is in all things, be it never so little. Nothing is done by hap or adventure - if it be hap or chance in the sight of man, our blindness is the cause."

These words echoed in Katherine's mind as she held the pebble, joy shimmered through its black flint, there was joy in the grass, the yew tree, the gravestones, the moss. Slowly it faded, and a great sleepiness came over her. She dropped the flint. She scarcely could drag her heavy limbs across the alley to her chamber in the rectory. She laid herself on the bed and slept the night through. There were no dreams.

Each day Katherine went to Julian's cell and listened, each day came back refreshed by glimpses of a love she had not known existed, though the exaltation of that moment in the churchyard did not return.

She argued sometimes, at times cried out in disbelief, unable to hide her doubts, and then indeed Julian once sighed and looked sad and humble, as she said, "All this was shown to me in three ways, Katherine, by bodily sight, by word formed in my understanding, and by spiritual sight. But this spiritual sight, I can not, and I may not, show as openly as I would. I trust in God that He will of His Goodness make you take it more spiritually than I can, or may, tell it."

Humility. Katherine saw in those days how far she had ever been from truly feeling it. She saw that she had never known the meaning of prayer. Her prayers had all been violent commands and bargainings - dictated by fear.

To Lady Julian, prayer was communion. "Prayer oneth the soul with God." And it was thanking. Giving thanks even without reward. In the fourteenth showing, Julian had heard the lovely words, "I am the ground of thy beseeching." And with these blessed words had seen a full overcoming against all our weakness and all our doubtful dreads.

Katherine, ever quick to take guilt, had then berated herself for the wrongness of her former prayers, and Julian patiently repeated, "Accuse not thyself overdone much ... I am sure that no man asks mercy and grace with true meaning, but if mercy and grace have been first given to him."

There came a day when Katherine could no longer listen without pouring out all her anguish to Lady Julian. She did not know what she said, she only heard her own voice calling out the names of those who meant for her the sharpest pain - Hugh, Blanchette and John. When she said the last name, she buried her face in her hands and sobbed.

Now she saw that though she had meant her letter of renunciation, and honestly thought to spend her life in penance, yet she had not really believed that John would let her go. Always she had felt that the miracle would happen at Walsingham, in return for her suffering, in return for giving John's betrothal ring-to the shrine. She had been sure that in some way Blanchette would be restored to her, her sins forgiven, and - -

"That your old life would start again?" asked Julian smiling. "That it would by miracle become fair and clean in all men's eyes, in God's?"

"Ay - ay - I see now that I thought so. Is it any wonder that God is so angry with me?"

"Truly, Katherine, in all the showings, I saw no manner of wrath in God, neither for short time nor for long. I saw no wrath but on man's part, and that He forgives in us."

Then Katherine cried out that if God had no wrath, why should she fear sin?

And Julian answered ever patiently, "Because as long as we be meddling with what we know is sin, we shall never see clearly the blissful countenance of Our Lord. And this is to break us in twain. For we are all in Him enclosed. And He in us. He sitteth in our soul."

Thai Katherine talked of Sheppey, the convent where she would cloister herself. "- - or even to be an anchoress like you, lady. So with true prayer I might come some day to know Him as you do - and to help others."

For the first time, a hint of sternness showed in Julian's face, for the first time she referred to herself apart from the visions, and she said quietly, "When I came here, I had no one left of my own."

Katherine did not understand her meaning then, nor why she said a moment after, "It was shown to me that we may never come to full knowing of God till we know first clearly our own soul."

That night, she saw what the Lady Julian had meant. Katherine awoke suddenly from deep sleep, and the little rectory chamber seemed to be suffused with a soft iridescent light. This light was peace. It bathed her, permeated her flesh, her bones, until her being was made of light. The confusions, the gropings, the struggles for escape were all dissolved in that light. In their place came certainty - the answer so simple, so right and inevitable and so hard.

It would be hard, but now she did not feel it so, for the light sustained her, and in her heart she heard repeated the words the Lady Julian had told her, that He had said: My darling, I am glad thou art come to me: in all thy woe I have ever been with thee; now seest thou my loving.

The next morning Katherine sought out Father Clement. He was sitting in his garden under a mulberry tree, while five children from the parish capered in front of him. He was teaching them the parts they were to play at the pageant of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin next week. He acted each part in turn for them, now squealing through his huge empurpled nose, now growling in imitation of a bear, now flapping his hands on either side his hump for a crow. The children shrieked with laughter, and called him Bo-Bo, a pet name that they had for him. They did not think him hideous, nor did Katherine. She no longer saw his deformities, as she no longer heard the burr in Lady Julian's speech.

He hushed the children as Katherine walked over to them, and looked at her with gladness.

She had washed her pilgrim's weeds and borrowed a clean white coif and shift from his servant. Her hair had grown long enough so that bronze tendrils escaped beneath the coif, and curled at her temples. She was sparkling and fresh, and smelled of the lavender she had rubbed on to her skin. Her illness had nearly left her; the priest saw that she was a lovely woman.

She stopped beneath the clustering purple mulberries, and gazed long at the children. "Father," she said, "I'm going back to Lincolnshire. To the place where I should be."

"Aha?" he said, cocking his head. "And was it not that, you told me on the road here to Norwich, that you could never, never do?"

"It was," she said. "I was wrong. Father, tonight will you hear my confession? I dare to hope that - that tomorrow - at Mass-" Her voice faltered, she drew a deep breath, and

smiled tremulously into his compassionate eyes.

The next morning in the little flint-walled church, from Father Clement's hands, Katherine received again at last the Holy Sacrament. Julian kneeling by the narrow church window of her cell shared in the Blessed Communion and, watching Katherine's rapt face, humbly knew that once more God had used her as a channel to touch another soul with the message of her visions, and a glimpse of His meaning when He had said, It is I, I that thou lovest, that thou enjoy est, that thou servest. It is I that thou longest for, it is I that is all.

Exaltation would fade, the wanhope and doubtful dreads of the world would seep back, but whatever befell, Katherine would never be totally bereft again. This Julian knew.

Later that morning, Katherine set out on the road west across Norfolk, bound for Lincolnshire. She rode on Father Clement's mule. The priest and Lady Julian had lent her money for food and housing on the journey. This money and the mule would be returned after she reached Kettlethorpe.

In the leave-taking, Katherine tried to tell them of her gratitude, but they would not let her. Instead, in the tiny fragrant cell, Lady Julian had given her a hearty kiss on the cheek and much practical advice about proper diet and rest.

Father Clement, while he stood on the stone step outside his rectory, had been equally bracing. He cracked his little jokes and eased the difficult parting moment with brisk directions as to the best road and what to do when Absalom, the mule, baulked.

Katherine was turning to put her foot in the stirrup when the priest said in the same brisk voice, "And here is something that once belonged to you - will you take it now?" He held out his open hand. On the palm lay the Queen's little silver brooch.

"But I cast it away," she cried, "in Walsingham."

"Ay, and I picked it up. 'Tis yours."

She flushed. Pain had gone from the memory of that day in Walsingham, but yet there was a taint of shame. " 'Twas because of the motto I threw it away," she said.