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Justin had never set foot on shipboard, and he’d have been content to go to his grave without ever having that experience. He’d done his best to make the trip tolerable, seeking out a priest to be shriven even before booking passage, and then searching for the dockside alehouse frequented by the crew of his ship, the Holy Ghost. It was easy enough to befriend the sailors, taking no more than an offer to buy them an ale, and by the time he was ferried out to their ship, he had earned an exemption from the casual contempt that sailors worldwide bestowed upon their land-loving passengers.
    His alehouse companions found him a sheltered spot on deck, pointed out the steering oar that acted as a rudder, and showed him how the compass worked—a needle magnetized by a lodestone, then placed on a pivot in a shallow pan of water. One even shared a pinch of ground ginger, swearing it would settle his stomach and keep him from feeding the fish. Justin was grateful for their goodwill. It did not make the voyage any less unpleasant for him, though. He shuddered every time the ship sank into a slough, holding his breath until it battled its way back. The ship was so low in the water that he was doused with sea spray, chilled to the very marrow of his bones, but the sailors insisted that his queasiness would worsen within the crowded, rank confines of the canvas tent set up to shelter the passengers, where men were “puking their guts up” and there was not room enough to “swing a dead cat.” So Justin stayed out on the deck, bracing himself against the gunwale of the Holy Ghost and clinging to the Infinite Mercy of Almighty God.
    Justin had chosen the port of Dover over Southampton because of its closer proximity to London. Claudine’s letter had been sparing with details, but her urgency had been unmistakable. Trouble was brewing, she’d written, and she entreated him to make haste to Paris if ever he’d loved her. Had her family learned about Aline? Had she confided in her cousin Petronilla, only to be betrayed? If she had indeed been disowned by her father and brothers, he did not know what he could do to heal so grievous a wound. He had to try, though. To ease her fears of childbirth and disgrace, he’d promised her that he would always be there when she and Aline had need of him. If that meant Paris and a hellish sea voyage, so be it.
    The Holy Ghost took more than twelve hours to cross the Channel, entering Boulogne harbor that night with the incoming tide. Justin had seen few sights as beautiful to him as the beacon fire lit in the old Roman lighthouse on the hill overlooking the estuary. The customs fee demanded of disembarking passengers was outrageously high, but Justin paid it without complaint, so eager was he to get back upon ground that did not tremble and quake like one of Nell’s egg custards. The next morning he purchased a horse, too impatient to bargain the price down by much, and took the road south toward Paris.
    Four days later, Justin saw the walls of Saint-Denis in the distance, and his spirits rose, for he’d been told the abbey was only seven miles from Paris. Regretting that he could not spare the time to visit the magnificent abbey church, he resolutely pushed on. The road wound its way through open fields and vineyards, deserted and barren under an overcast sky. He had chosen a well-traveled road, though, one paved by long-dead Roman engineers, and he did not lack for company. Heavily laden carts, messengers on lathered horses, pilgrims with sturdy ash-wood staffs, beggars, merchants, soldiers, an occasional barefoot penitent, dogs, several elderly monks on mules, peddlers, a raucous band of students, and a well-mounted lord and his retinue—all converging upon Paris, paying scant heed to the body dangling from a roadside gallows, for the end of their journey was at hand.
    Several years earlier, the French king had begun replacing the wooden stockade that sheltered the Right Bank of the Seine