The Scandalous Duchess

by Anne O'Brien

‘Our accommodation is limited, my lord, as you see,’ I said lightly, ‘if you wish to remain here rather than be benighted. The stables are the best we can offer to your soldiery, and this space for your squire and servants and Master Symeon if they can withstand the drips…’

  Where we would house the Duke I had no idea. In my chamber, I supposed, while I had a bed set up with Agnes. The Duke was not here in the manner of a lover.

  ‘My thanks. We have slept in worse places on campaign,’ he responded, with a nod to his squire who bowed himself out to begin preparations.

  ‘I am pleased to know that my home offers more than a bivouac in Aquitaine, my lord.’ I could not resist my tart response.

  ‘As am I, my lady, in the circumstances. But not much better.’

  He swept the sheen of drops from his sleeve with an abrupt movement. And as he once again side-stepped a growing puddle, I saw the flash of light in his eye. This superb control, employing this impeccable, heart-wrenching courtesy to mask what I knew to be heated fury, would not hold fast for much longer. It would be a blow to his pride that his mistress had left him without a word, and the Duke had more pride than any man I knew. The gems on his hands refracted the light as he clenched and stretched his fingers.

  ‘I will make arrangements immediately, my lord.’ I nodded to my steward who shuffled out in his habitual gloom, taking my servant with him. ‘Bring wine to my parlour, Master Ingoldsby. If you would care to accompany me, my lord…?’ I would have to face him, and sooner would be better than later.

  The Duke did not stir. Instead, he inhaled sharply.

  ‘What in God’s name are you doing?’

  His voice echoed dully off the damp walls from which pieces of mortar showered down.

  ‘I have come to stay here at Kettlethorpe—for a little while,’ I responded carefully.

  ‘As I am aware. Before God, Katherine, what sort of game are you playing here?’

  ‘I could not tell you of my intentions. You were not there.’

  ‘I know I was not. So do you—and the reason for it.’ And now the anger erupted, spilling over both of us. ‘The pressure in France is building like a pot about to boil over to scald us all. Aquitaine is under attack. So is Brittany. My brother Edward’s not fit to lead an army. The Castile problem’s a running sore with no hope of remedying it in the near future, no matter what Constanza says.’ He took a stride forward, then with a snarl thought better of it as the drips pattered down on him. ‘I’ve just promised my father the King that I will serve overseas for a year and what do I find when I get to Hertford? Constanza in a mood of frenzied religious observance to make herself fit to bear a son and you not there to soothe her.’

  So he was annoyed merely because I was not in attendance on frenzied Constanza. I did not believe that for one moment. ‘That is so,’ I replied equably. ‘I am sure that my sister is quite capable of reassuring the Duchess.’

  ‘You’ve resigned your position, so I am told. You did not see fit to tell me yourself.’

  I folded my hands quietly at my waist. One of us must preserve some modicum of composure. I merely inclined my head in agreement.

  ‘What is this? Are you dissatisfied? Do I not treat you well? Are my gifts insufficient? Do I not show you due regard, Katherine?’

  ‘You show me every consideration, my lord.’

  Now he moved, stalking the length of the hall and back again, exhaling loudly in disgust as he splashed through yet another puddle. Until he spun to challenge me.

  ‘I expect you to be there when I return. Wherever my household resides, I expect you to be there.’

  The raw authority in his expectations heated my blood at once.

  ‘I chose not to be there. I chose to be here.’

  ‘Why?’ His beautiful voice snapped in anger like the breaking of a bough in a winter storm. Simply his presence in my hall, dominating it, was enough to make my heart shake. There he stood, in wool and leather for peacetime travelling, his heraldic badge emblazoned on his breast beneath the intricate chain of livery, his features alive with temper, as imposing and handsome as I had ever seen him. ‘What, in God’s name—’

  ‘I could not stay in the Duchess’s household,’ I broke in.

  ‘Why not? I don’t believe you lack the courage. You were never in any doubt as to the difficulties it would present.’

  ‘Yes, I knew,’ I admitted.

  But perhaps I had not known. Perhaps I had not truly envisaged the pleasure and the pain, the light and the dark of it. I could not tell him how jealousy, thickly laced with guilt, had struck most inopportunely, on seeing his lovely wife holding his daughter, crowned with golden light and with such unexpected maternal love on her face. Now I knew exactly what it would mean for me, the mistress, to live day after day, with the unsuspecting wife, but I could not explain. Nor could I tell him, in this heated atmosphere, what I knew I must.

  I considered making a bald statement of it.

  ‘My lord, I have to tell you…’

  In this mood I could not predict his response. Was I afraid? I think I was.

  Guile, I thought. A touch of very female guile will do it.

  ‘Have you nothing to say?’ Whirling round from stirring a sulky log on the fire with his boot, which did nothing to improve the clammy atmosphere, he faced me. Last time we met, being alone at The Savoy, he had swept me into his arms, off my feet, drugging me with his kisses. Now I could barely see his features in the shadows of my hall, and the last thing he wanted to do was sweep me off my feet. ‘Answer me, Katherine. Has living in this godforsaken place for longer than a week robbed you of your usual wits?’

  I realised that I had been standing there with my guileful plans circling in my mind.

  ‘Come.’ I raised my hand in invitation. ‘Come to my chapel and pray with me, if you will.’ As an invitation it was abrupt.

  ‘For what?’ he fired back. ‘Absolution from our sins, by God?’

  It hurt, but I met his gaze. ‘Yes.’

  ‘And are you intending to take the veil in penitence?’

  ‘Now that, my lord, had not crossed my mind.’

  Allowing my hand to fall, since he had no intention of taking it, I walked through the outer door, turning right, grateful when his footsteps followed. I did not look back but walked calmly on, along the edge of the courtyard, past the wet doves hunched in their dovecote, lifting the heavy latch to push the door open into the small space of my chapel, rough hewn and undecorated except for the crucifix on the altar but essentially private, and finally I knelt before the altar rail. The Duke halted, then knelt beside me as I looked up at the statue of the Virgin and prayed for guidance and the right choice of words. The Duke made the sign of the cross on his breast. I did the same.

  ‘Well, Madame de Swynford. For whom do we pray? Is that too much to ask, since you seem to be keeping your own counsel. When were you ever so silent? I swear it’s like trying to communicate with a stone effigy.’ Despite the holy surroundings his anger had not abated.

  ‘We will make petition,’ I said.

  ‘Do we need a priest?’ he snapped.

  ‘No.’ And I shivered a little. A priest was the last thing I needed in my present state of mind.

  ‘Then let us indeed begin. I hate to hurry you along, Katherine, but I’m cold and damp and my temper is not at its best.’

  ‘I would not have guessed,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, you would. Begin your petition, Katherine!’

  ‘Holy Mother,’ I began, ‘I pray for the safety of Lord John, Duke of Lancaster, in the coming wars in France. I commend him to your care.’

  Which surprised him, if his intake of breath was proof. And our voices were joined. ‘Amen.’

  ‘I pray for the health of Duchess Constanza and the new infant Katalina.’

  ‘Amen.’

  ‘I pray for the good comfort of the whole household at Hertford.’

  ‘Amen.’

  The Duke’s hands were clenched, white-fi
ngered, on the altar rail before him.

  I continued: ‘I lay before you the lives of my children. Blanche and Margaret and Thomas.’

  ‘Amen.’

  ‘Of my sister Philippa, her husband, Geoffrey, overseas, and her family.’

  ‘Amen.’

  ‘I pray—’

  ‘By the Blessed Virgin, Katherine,’ now the Duke murmured, ‘do we pray for the whole of our acquaintance?’

  But I continued. ‘I pray for the clarity of mind of the King. And for your mercy on Prince Edward in his great suffering.’

  ‘Amen.’

  I took a breath.

  ‘I pray for the health of my unborn child. The child of this man who kneels with me to join with me in this petition. We pray for this child who will need the compassion of the Blessed Virgin.’

  The atmosphere in the chapel bore down on us, drenched with the remnants of old incense and a multitude of unconfessed sins. The Duke’s hands gripped harder than ever. So did mine.

  Until: ‘Amen. Amen indeed,’ he whispered on a soft exhalation.

  I was carrying John of Lancaster’s child.

  Why had I, with all my much-vaunted experience, not been more cognisant of the dangers? Were there not methods to prevent such eventualities, known to wise women and any wife with a care for preserving her own health? Or known to a mistress intent on preventing a debacle such as this? In the final weeks of Constanza’s pregnancy, I was, unknowingly, embarking on the first weeks of my own.

  The realisation had travelled with me on the journey from London back to Hertford. I had been a little weary, lacking in energy, but, foolishly, I had never considered that I would fall for a child from that first expression of our love at The Savoy. My reaction was one of wonder. I had spread my fingers over my belly and marvelled at the fact that I carried the child of the man I loved more than I could ever express.

  But then, when Constanza had smiled down into the face of her baby, all my marvelling was undone. There we stood in my mind’s eye. A deadly triangle of husband, wife and lover. This child born out of wedlock might blemish the Duke’s reputation. It would assuredly destroy mine. Could it destroy our love?

  What now? What do I do now?

  The question had echoed again and again in my mind, without any sensible reply forthcoming. Instead, the repercussions struck home with the force of a lance in the hands of a master at the tourney, transmuting my delight to base dismay. How could I continue to exist in that household? How could I continue to live, a secret mistress to a wife untouched by knowledge, and I bearing a child, my belly growing under her interested gaze.

  I did not have the presumption to do that.

  Whilst on a practical level, how would I explain away my burgeoning state, with no husband?

  Even more unnerving—and I confessed to not knowing the answer—what would the Duke say to my predicament? Would he banish me to some distant castle until after nine months my shame was dealt with and my figure restored? Or would he brazen it out at Hertford, and claim the child as his own, with Constanza destroyed by the humiliation?

  I tried to see myself through the Duke’s eyes, and I could not, my thoughts awry. Hypocrisy, as I well knew, was a bitter herb. Subterfuge at this despicable level was intolerable. There was only one course of action for me. I must leave before there was even the hint of suspicion about the width of my girdle. I could no longer be damsel to Duchess Constanza, knowing all the time that I was carrying her husband’s child.

  We would exercise discretion, we had agreed.

  Before God, there was no discretion here.

  And so I had come to Kettlethorpe as if I were some wild animal going to ground. Never had I felt such shame. Shame for me. Sorrow and shame for Constanza. I had looked at Constanza and her child, at the two Lancaster girls, Philippa and Elizabeth, at young innocent Henry, and it humbled me. How was I fit to give them guidance? We had taken a step beyond decency and rightness—and we were faced with the consequences.

  Now I had to face them in the Duke’s unpredictable reaction.

  ‘Amen,’ I echoed.

  I made the sign of the cross.

  ‘Not here,’ he said as I stood to face him. Gripping my hand, he pulled me after him from the main body of the chapel into a little side alcove where an old altar had once stood, now bare and dusty, no longer dressed for worship. ‘I feel better that we speak of this away from the Virgin’s immediate presence.’

  ‘Does it make it any less of a catastrophe where we speak of it?’ My confidence was waning fast.

  ‘Katherine…’

  I could not read what was in his face. Anger or joy? Acceptance or repudiation? For the first time I acknowledged the depths of my fear, for this should never have happened. Was I some irresponsible kitchen maid, enjoying the pleasures of the flesh in her first taste of sexual satisfaction? I knew the dangers. I knew what must not happen between such lovers as we were, for ever in the public eye. There were any number of old wives’ methods that were not unknown to me.

  How to stimulate the menses to achieve bleeding from the womb. Take the root of the red willow…

  My belly clenched, my hands flattening themselves on my embroidered belt. I would not. One sin was enough for the day. I would bear this child.

  I bent my head in sudden despair, until I felt the Duke’s fingers, as cold as mine yet light against my face, lifting my chin so that I must bear the weight of his judgement. Except that his eyes were gentle, the corners of his lips relaxed as they were when I kissed them. All the anger, all the impatience, had gone.

  ‘What were you thinking, to run away from me? What are you thinking now?’ He wiped a stray tear—one I had been unaware of—from my cheek with the back of his hand.

  ‘I am thinking that I do not know what you are thinking.’ I shook my head at how muddled it sounded.

  ‘Very erudite.’ He smiled at little. ‘Is that all?’

  ‘I am thinking that I will carry this child to full term.’

  His hand, smoothing softly against my neck as if I were a restive mare, paused. ‘Did you think I would advise otherwise?’

  ‘No. I know you would not. But it would be a way out for some women.’

  ‘But not for you.’

  ‘No, not for me.’

  ‘Nor for me. Why did you not tell me?’

  ‘I did not know what you would say. I thought you might condemn me.’

  Hands now firmly on my shoulders, he drew me close so that his chin could rest against my confined hair. Although his eyes were closed I sensed a depth of emotion that shuddered through his veins.

  ‘Why would I be? The child is of both our making.’

  ‘But a child born without legitimacy can pose a problem,’ I whispered. ‘It would not be the first time that a powerful man has chosen to rid himself of a mistress who has inconveniently found herself compromised.’

  He raised his head, eyes wide and undoubtedly stern. ‘So you thought I would dispatch you and the child to the depths of the country.’

  ‘You might. For Constanza’s sake as well as your own.’

  ‘And you pre-empted it by coming here.’

  ‘I had to.’

  ‘Because you could not face me? Or was it that you could not face Constanza, day after day?’ he asked with brutal intuition, and did not even wait for my acquiescence. ‘It is my guilt too. We will bear it together. Did you think I would abandon you?’

  The Duke kissed me thoroughly.

  ‘I thought I must remove a complication…’

  ‘I do not see you as a complication. Nor this child.’

  ‘But you must regret what we have done.’ He thought about this, rubbing his fingers over my knuckles. ‘John…?’

  ‘No. It is God’s will. The child is a consequence of our union, and so we will nurture it. Is that not so?’

  ‘Yes.’

  There was no other reply I could make as we stood together in the dusty atmosphere, fingers enmeshed. Until he spread
his palm against my waist, and I covered it with mine.

  ‘How far on are you?’ he asked, surprising me.

  ‘Three months.’

  I could see him calculating. ‘You conceived the first time we lay together at The Savoy.’ The rich tones of his laughter lifted to the roof-beams. ‘How amazingly effective our unplatonic, un-divine coming together proved to be. Perhaps it was the effect of that poor specimen of a rose after all.’ Then sliding his arm around my waist he began to lead me to the door. ‘Will you stay here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll send you timber to stop the drips in the roof.’

  And I laughed with him, in relief and in recognition of a little flame of joy that his acceptance had ignited in me. ‘It will be welcome.’

  And then we were outside, where the rain had stopped and the low sun had begun to shine, coating every surface in diamond drops, and his arm fell away for form’s sake. We walked slowly back, at arm’s length, towards the hall, as if discussing the state of the local highways.

  ‘I’ll come when I can,’ he said as he drew back to allow me to enter before him, managing to brush his hand down the length of my arm, to brush his fingers against mine. ‘You know I’m committed to my father’s naval campaign against France.’

  ‘I will look for you when you can come.’ I must not be selfish.

  And then, when we were standing alone in my private chamber, I became thoroughly selfish as the Duke’s reassurances, murmured against my temple as he loosed the pins from my hair, held all the power of an oath before the Blessed Virgin.

  ‘Although I may be far away, I will have my people watch over you. You will be constantly in my thoughts. This child will be as precious to me as any child that Constanza bears, even those of Blanche. Even my heir. You will be brave and steadfast. There is a fire in you that astonishes me.’

  If I had lacked fire in those insecure days before his arrival, the Duke set it ablaze with a conviction that I loved him enough to face the stigma and the consequences. He spent the night with me in my marital bed, which proved too short for his long limbs, but no detriment to his ardour or his imagination, and then he snatched a second day to spend it riding with me and my steward around the nearer acres of the estate.