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home to Botley through the little river gate below the castle, but changed her mind once she was in the network of marsh and streams outside the town walls. Where she was inclined to go now first required her to get rid of her shadow, Margery.
    ‘We shall go to Godstow Nunnery now, Margery.’
    The stocky servant’s face fell.
    ‘The… er… nunnery, madam? Why is that?’
    Ann smiled to herself. She knew that Margery had an irrational fear of being locked away for life in a nunnery. That somehow her employer would trick her into entering the cloister, from where she would never be allowed to return. Ann continued to play on that fear, knowing that she would thereby free herself of Margery’s suffocating presence. The little monkey-face took her job of keeping an eye on her mistress on behalf of her absent master too seriously for Ann’s liking.
    ‘Oh, no reason, Margery. Wouldn’t you like to see inside the nunnery? See how pleasant the life is there?’
    ‘P–pleasant?’ Margery’s face was as white as freshly washed linen at the idea of entering a nunnery, even momentarily. ‘No, madam. I think I had better return to the manor. Old Sekston will need some help in the kitchen garden. He is getting so frail now, he can’t carry all the vegetables by himself.’
    Soon, Margery was scurrying away down the road to Botley and Ann was left to make her way alone to Godstow. Picking the meandering dry path between the many streams that infested the meadows north and west of Oxford’s walls was difficult. But eventually she came to the rickety wooden bridge that led to the gatehouse of the nunnery. Ann had come to like the prioress who ran the nunnery with an iron fist, though it had not been so when first she had met her. Peter Bullock, the constable of Oxford town, had asked Ann to stay at the nunnery after one of its inmates had been found dead. Lady Gwladys had agreed to the subterfuge reluctantly, and had been quite obstructive. But after Ann had winkled out the truth of the mysterious death, she had softened in her attitude to the calm and clever Ann Segrim. They had met on several occasions since then, especially after Sir Humphrey had left for the Holy Lands. Ann had needed someone to confide her troubles in and the prioress had obliged. Even though Gwladys’s own rules, strictly applied, made it difficult for a more permanent friendship to blossom.
    Before Gwladys’s time as prioress, the nunnery had been lax, and men had slipped in and out with ease. She had had the bishop’s approval to prevent a nun speaking to anyone without another nun present. And on no account could a nun speak to an Oxford scholar at all for fear of exciting ‘unclean thoughts’. Ann had always smiled wryly at that particular injunction, bearing in mind the thoughts that William aroused in her. Now, with the arrival of Saphira Le Veske, she was less amused by the idea.
    At the gatehouse, she presented herself to the gatekeeper, Hal Coke. He was a wrinkle-faced, sour old man, who had lost a great deal in income when his trade of passing tokens and messages from scholars to nuns had been cut off. Ann had been surprised that Gwladys had kept him on, but in one of her rare expressions of humour, she had said the penance was good for his soul. Coke saw Ann and slowly pulled himself up from his stool, setting aside his jug of watered beer.
    ‘Mistress. You wish to see the Lady Gwladys?’
    ‘Yes, Master Coke. If you please.’
    The gatekeeper mumbled under his breath something to the effect that it didn’t please him to be disturbed at his rest, but what was there to be done. Ann smiled sweetly, pretending not to have heard what he said, and followed him into the outer court of the nunnery. On two sides of this court there stood both St Thomas’s Chapel and the lodgings for a chaplain and priest who assisted the prioress in her duties. On the third, south, side stood the range that led to the inner cloister and the nunnery proper.