"In truth you aren't much alike," cried Long Will, having just discovered that when she smiled Katherine was the fairest maid he had ever seen. Her teeth were small and white as daisy petals, her smile had a radiant charm, and yet a wistfulness that would melt your heart. It was a sad pity she could hope for no great marriage. No doubt the Queen had some one of her yeomen in mind or a squire. Long Will knew little of the background for his mission to the little Kentish priory except that it was like a dozen others he had performed for Queen Philippa, whose heart and charities were large. She always concerned herself with orphaned children, particularly those, like the de Roet girls, whose fathers had been her own countrymen.

"Are many of the royal family now at Windsor?" asked Katherine presently. She thought of them as clothed in misty glitter, King Edward and Queen Philippa, and their princely sons and daughters; vague names seldom heard at Sheppey where the talk was all of the proper observance of saints' days, the shiftlessness of the priory serfs or the recurrent fits, perhaps divinely inspired, which afflicted one of the novices.

"Most of 'em'll be at Windsor for the Saint George Day's feasting and jousting," said Long Will, "but I don't know just which ones. They all move so much from place to place, and now there's this new talk o' war."

"War?" cried the prioress sharply. "But we've been at peace with France these six years." Blessed Mary - not war again, she thought, knowing from bitter experience how war increased her administrative problems. Labour was scarce and grudging enough on the manor as it was. After the terrible Black Death in forty-nine there had been no strong serfs left at all to do the work. The nuns had laboured in the fields themselves - those of them that survived the plague - and Sheppey had nearly gone under. Godeleva had been a novice then, and too young to realise the stark anxieties of her superiors. But they had struggled through. A new generation of serfs had grown up, though not the gentle biddable types of the old days, for these new ones flocked off to war by preference instead of waiting to be called. It had been so before the Peace of Br6tigny, it would be so again if war came and no one left to labour except feeble old men and gloomy women.

"Not war with France, but with Castile, I hear," answered Long Will. "The Prince o' Wales, God gi' him grace, interests himself in the matter at Bordeaux." Suddenly bored with the women and his mission, Long Will spurred his horse and rode ahead cursing the plodding priory nags. If war came he'd not be sent on silly errands like this - herding virgins through the countryside.

"Come up, come up, my reverend dames," he called back impatiently turning in his saddle. "I see the ferry waiting."

Long Will's patience was further tried by the crossing of the Swale. Bayard baulked again, refusing for half an hour either to swim or board the ferry. Dame Cicily, who was even more afraid of water than she was of horses, managed to slip off the foot-plank and was hauled out weeping, her black robes soaked and clinging to her skinny legs. And the ferryman, seeing the royal badge on Long Will's tunic, naturally tried to extort double fares. The Queen was thrifty like all Flemings and the purse she had provided for the journey would barely cover expenses, so that the messenger had to subdue the ferryman with a rough and practised tongue.

Katherine sat on a mossy stone on the farther bank of the Swale and listened dreamily to a spate of oaths she had not known existed, while waiting for their guide to finish with Bayard and the ferryman. She was happy to be on the mainland at last, and a little frightened too. The April sun shone warm on her back, blackbirds sang in a wild cherry tree, and from over the hill on the road to London she heard the confused baa-ing of sheep and the tinkle of the bellwether.

She gazed across the Swale at the Isle of Sheppey where she had spent most of her conscious years. She could see the battlements of the unfinished castle but not the priory's squat little minster, nor hear the bell which must now be calling the nuns to Tierce, and she thought of the first day she had heard that bell over five years ago when she had been delivered at the convent from a cart, along with a side of beef and half a tun of wine sent as gifts to Sheppey by the Queen. The Queen sent three gold nobles as well for Katherine's keep and Prioress Godeleva had been jubilant.

True, Katherine was neither a royal ward nor a well-dowered novice, nor even nobly born; she was simply a child, like many others, for whom the motherly Queen felt responsibility; but the prioress had been elated by this unexpected mark of royal interest, for Sheppey had never before been so honoured. Usually it was large aristocratic foundations like Barking or Amesbury that were chosen.

It was because of Queenborough Castle, to be rebuilt on an old Saxon stronghold to guard the Thames, that the Queen had thought of the nearby priory - thought of it, and then apparently forgotten all about it again.

Katherine grew tall and strong; she had soon eaten up the gold nobles, and become an expense to the convent, but nothing more came from the Queen or from Philippa, Katherine's sister, except the young squire's message last year.

Royal personages, however kind, may be forgetful, Katherine had learned early, yet the Queen had said that she would never fail in remembrance of her compatriots and especially one who died in battle, as Katherine's father had.

Payn de Roet came from Hainault, the Queen's wealthy little Netherlands country, but he had married a French girl from Picardy who had died in childbed. After her death Payn had left his two little daughters with their grandparents when he followed the Queen to England. Payn had been a dashing, handsome man inclined to dress above his station and thus well fitting his nickname of Paon, the peacock.

He found favour with King Edward, who appointed him one of the royal heralds - King-of-Arms to represent the province of Guienne - then finally so distinguished himself fighting in France just before the peace in 1360 that King Edward had knighted him on the field, along with many other deserving soldiers.

Sir Payn did not live long enough to enjoy either his knighthood or the truce, for a Norman arrow pierced his lungs during a skirmish outside the walls of Paris, and he expired with an anguished prayer for the future of his two little daughters in Picardy.

Queen Philippa heard of this later when the King returned to England, and was saddened. Soon she had occasion to send a messenger across the Channel with letters to Bruges and she entrusted him with various other commissions along the way.

So the messenger stopped at the farm in Picardy and found that Sir Payn's family was indeed desperate for help. The plague, as it returned that winter for its second great smiting, had recently struck the household. The grandparents had died of it and all the servants. No one was left but Payn's two small daughters, and one, the younger, had been stricken too, but miraculously recovered, though she continued to ail. They were being reluctantly tended by a neighbour.

These little girls were aged thirteen and ten. The elder was named Philippa, for the Queen who had been her father's patroness, and the younger was Katherine. Finding them thus completely orphaned, and knowing the Queen's good heart, the messenger carried the children back to England with him on his return trip.

Of this voyage across the Channel and her arrival in a foreign country, or of the jolting ride through pouring rain to the royal palace at Eltham, and eventual reception by the Queen, Katherine remembered almost nothing. For she had been ill the whole time with a wasting fever and bloody flux.

Katherine had a dim memory of a kind fat face topped by a gold circlet, and of a thick comfortable voice speaking to her first in Flemish then French, but though her sister Philippa admonished her sharply to answer the Queen, Katherine could not, and she remembered nothing else.

The Queen had had her carried to a forester's cottage where the goodwife, skilled with herbs, had managed to nurse the child back to health. By that time the Queen had moved to her favourite palace of Woodstock and taken little Philippa with her in her household, and when reminded that Katherine had most surprisingly recovered, she sent letters arranging for the child's admission at Sheppey.

How unhappy I was, and how homesick, the last time I crossed this river, thought Katherine, looking down at the muddy waters of the Swale.

"Viens, Katrine - depeches-toi!" called the prioress from the road, preparing to hoist herself on to the white horse. Katherine jumped up. The prioress used French only in moments of ceremony or admonition and she spoke it with a flat Kentish twang, so that Katherine had not understood one word when she first came to the convent, but now this uncouth French was as familiar to her as the English the nuns always spoke among themselves.

Katherine jumped up behind Godeleva, and the little procession jogged off. Dame Cicily at the rear was still sniffling and shivering, and at intervals she called on St. Sexburga, the patroness of their convent, to protect her from more such mishaps. But the sun grew warmer, the muddy road dried, the soft Kentish air was bright with fragrance and bird-song, and when they met a flock of sheep coming towards them - a very good omen - Dame Cicily cheered up and began to look about her at the changing countryside.

Long Will was singing again - a rippling ballad of alewives and cuckoldry, the words fortunately not quite audible to his charges. Even the prioress expanded under the rare pleasure of going on a journey, and said to Katherine, "Oh, child, may Saint Mary and our Blessed Lord forgive me, and They know I would never leave my convent except for such very good reason, but it is pleasant to be out in the world."