by Anya Seton
“Don’t Katherine, don’t-” he panted, his grip on her tightened again. “I want you, I must have you-” He forced her against a hedge, bearing her down towards the ground.
A hand grasped Hugh’s shoulder and a powerful arm jerked him upright, off Katherine, who fell to her knees on the path.
“Good God, Swynford,” said a voice. “Must you pursue your little amours here?”
Katherine raised her head. One of her braids had come unbound and the cascade of hair half hid the naked shoulder and white breast that was imprinted with bloody flecks from the chain-mail Panting and shivering, she stared up at her rescuer.
It was the great Duke of Lancaster who stood between them on the path, his handsome mouth curled with distaste, his tawny gold hair bright in the dusk. His eyelids drooped over his vivid blue eyes as they always did when he was angry. He looked at his red-faced sweaty knight and spoke in a voice of biting calm. “I find your conduct displeasing, sir. You disturb the beauty of the evening. Who is this lady, who, moreover, seems not to share your lust?”
He turned to Katherine and examined her. He saw that she was very young and frightened and that in a pale tear-stained face two enormous eyes stared up at him with passionate gratitude. His arrogant mouth softened, he leaned down and gave her his hand. She clung to it as she stumbled to her feet and instinctively she moved near to the Duke, leaning almost on his arm. “My Lord,” she whispered, “thank you.” Her mouth was tinder-dry with fear, her heart pounding in her throat, but she pulled her hair and the torn violet cloth across her breast and stood quietly beside the Duke.
John of Gaunt was touched, alike by her instinctive bid for his protection and by her dignified recovery from sobs and dishevelment. Her beauty he had not yet clearly seen, but he felt the girl’s magnetism and turned with increased anger to Hugh. “Who is this lady you’ve insulted?”
Had it been anyone else but his Duke, Hugh would have replied with equal anger; as it was, he glowered at the ground and said sulkily, “She’s naught but a sister to Philippa la Picarde, one of the Queen’s waiting-women. I’ve not insulted her. She’s cast a spell on me. Witchcraft!”
“By Saint George’s spear - what nonsense! A spell of your own lust, you tom-cat. I say you’ve most grievously insulted this poor child and-“
“Nay, my lord,” interrupted Hugh. He raised his little greenish eyes and gazed at Katherine with a dumb misery. “I wish to marry her,” he said heavily, staring at the ground. “She has neither lands nor dowry, but I would marry her.”
Katherine gasped and shrank closer to the Duke, but he was staring at his knight with astonishment. “Would you indeed, Hugh?” he said slowly, and Swynford bowed his head.
That changed matters. If the girl were indeed portionless, this offer was amazing. Swynford was of good blood and possessed of considerable property. To the Duke as to all his family, marriage was a commercial transaction, a peace-time weapon for the acquisition of new lands and the extension of power. Love of one’s mate was entirely fortuitous, and lovable as was the Lady Blanche, the Duke might not have felt for her such keen devotion had she not brought him vast possessions.
Though like all feudal lords he concerned himself with the marriages, deaths and begettings of his vassals, he would certainly not have pursued this tawdry little incident further tonight had it not been for the girl and the curiosity she was beginning to arouse in him. He made one of his quick decisions and spoke in a tone of easy command. “Well, Hugh, go back to your tent. We can talk of this tomorrow. And you, damoiselle, come with me to the Duchess. I wish her to see you.”
Swynford bowed, turned on his heel and disappeared down the path. Katherine was dazed and still said nothing. She obediently followed the Duke through the garden gate and up to the Lancaster apartments.
The Lady Blanche was sitting on a cushion in the window seat of her private solar; across her lap there lay a square of pale blue satin on which she had been embroidering trefoils in emerald silk. She was dressed in her favourite creamy white, and as she had not yet changed for the evening her pale gold head was uncovered and shone against the darkness outside.
Elizabeth and Philippa, her two little girls, played on a Persian rug by the fireplace, near a minstrel who gently twanged Ins harp and sang snatches from the Chanson de Roland.
Audrey, the Duchess’s chief tiring-woman moved silently about her duties, perfuming water in a hand-basin and carrying clothes from sundry chests in the solar to the hanging brackets in the garderobe which served as antechamber to the latrine.
The room was bright from twenty wax candles and jewelled with colour. The lights glowed on the crimson and olive of the wall tapestries and twinkled off the bed hangings of silver brocade.
When the Duke strode in with Katherine, the little girls ceased playing and stared round-eyed at their father. The minstrel hushed his harp and pulled his stool into a corner, waiting for dismissal or command to continue.
The Lady Blanche rose with slow grace and smiled at her husband. “I did not expect you so soon, my lord.” Her serene blue gaze rested on him tenderly. “I thought you were with the messenger from Bordeaux.”
“I was,” said John, “and bad news it is, too - but then I summoned some gleemen to sing for me in the garden and banish care for a while. I was disturbed-” He shrugged and indicated Katherine who curtsied nervously, conscious of the curious stares of the tiring-woman and the two little girls.
“Disturbed?” repeated Blanche. “By this child?” She put out her slender white hand to Katherine, smiling kindly, then she leaned forward. “But what’s happened? Her gown is torn and there’s blood on it. Audrey, fetch warm water and some wine. You’re hurt, maiden?”
“Not much, Your Grace,” said Katherine, very low. “My Lord Duke did save me.”
“From what?” exclaimed Blanche, putting her arm around the girl.
“From rough love-making,” said John, laughing suddenly. “But honourable it seems, in the end. Sir Hugh Swynford, you know the Lincolnshire knight they call the Saxon Ram, wishes to wed this young lady - an interesting idea.”
“Oh, no,” cried Katherine, sending the Duke a look of piteous bewilderment. “I’m sure he didn’t mean it - and I couldn’t, you must see I couldn’t!”
“Hush, child,” said the Lady Blanche, surprised that anyone should dare gainsay the Duke, whom she saw to be uncomfortable and wishful of escape. Indeed the girl, now brightly illuminated by the candles, had suddenly made an unpleasant impression on John, though he did not know why. True, many might call her beautiful, but to his taste she seemed overcoloured and earthy next to the exquisite Blanche. He disliked the flaunting profusion of bronze hair, the redness of her bruised mouth, the black abundance of her lashes, and particularly her eyes that stared at him with urgent pleading. They were too large and grey and gleamed with golden flecks in the candlelight. Her eyes disturbed him, evoking an unreasoned confusion of far-off anger and pain. For an instant he knew that someone else had stared at him like that long ago, and there had been betrayal, then the impression vanished, leaving only sharp resentment.
He turned his back on Katherine and said to Blanche, “I’ll see you later, lady.” He touched his little daughters’ curls and strode out of the room, banging the heavy oak door behind him.
“My lord is hasty sometimes,” said Blanche, noting the girl’s dismay. “And he has grave matters to worry him.” She was well used to John’s impulsive acts, as to his occasional dark moods, and knew how to temper them, or bide her time until they passed. She hastened now to minister to the unhappy maiden he had brought her and motioned to Audrey to bring the basin and a towel Then she lifted the torn strip of violet cloth and the strands of hair from Katherine’s shoulder and found rows of tiny bleeding cuts on the breast beneath. “Tell me about it, my dear,” she said quietly, bathing the cuts and salving them with marigold balm.
Hugh sat in his tent on the field near the lists while Ellis his squire removed his armour, but
Hugh was unaware of Ellis or his surroundings. His blood ran thick as hot lead in his veins and he suffered desire, shame, and confused torment that nothing in his life had prepared him for.
Hugh Swynford was of pure Saxon blood except for one Danish ancestor, the fierce invading Ketel who sailed up the Trent in 870, pillaging and ravishing as he went. A Swynford girl was amongst those ravished, but she must have inspired some affection in her Dane since she lured him from his thorpe in Lincolnshire to her own home at the swine’s ford in southern Leicestershire, where he settled for some years and adopted her family’s name.
The Swynfords were all fighters. Hugh’s forefathers had resisted the Norman invasion until the grown males of their clan had been exterminated and even now, three hundred years later, Hugh stubbornly rejected any tinge of Norman graces or romanticism. He went to Mass occasionally as a matter of course, but at heart he was pagan as the savages who had once danced around Beltane’s fire on May Night, who worshipped the ancient oaks and painted themselves with blue woad - a plant indeed which still grew on Hugh’s manor in Lincolnshire.
He was an ungraceful knight, impatient of chivalric rules, but in real battle he was a shrewd and terrifying fighter.
Hugh’s branch of the Swynford family had long ago left Leicestershire and returned to Lincolnshire beside the river Trent south of Gainsborough; and when Hugh was a child, his father, Sir Thomas, had fulfilled a long-time ambition and bought the manor of Kettlethorpe where Ketel the Dane had first settled. For this purchase he used proceeds from the sale of his second wife Nichola’s estates in Bedfordshire, at which the poor lady wept and lamented woefully, for she was afraid of the towering forests around Kettlethorpe, and of the marshes and the great river Trent with its stealthy death-dealing floods. The Lady Nichola was also afraid of the dark stone manor house, which was said to be haunted by a demon dog, the pooka hound. Most of all she was afraid of her husband who beat her cruelly and constantly reproached her for her barrenness. So her wailings and laments were done in secret.
Hugh thought little about Kettlethorpe one way or the other, beyond accepting it as his home and heritage, and he was a restless youth. At fifteen he struck out into the world. He joined the army under the King, when Edward invaded Scotland, and there met John of Gaunt, who was then only the Earl of Richmond. The two boys were of the same age and Hugh conceived for the young Prince, whose charm and elegance of manner were so unlike his own, a grudging admiration.
At sixteen, Hugh, thirsting for more battle, had fought under the Prince of Wales at Poitiers. Hugh had killed four Frenchmen with his battle-axe, and shared later in the hysterical rejoicing at the capture of King Jean of France.
Hugh won his spurs after that and returned to Kettlethorpe to find that his father had suffered an apoplectic stroke in his absence. Hugh stayed home until Sir Thomas finally died and Hugh became lord of the manor. But as soon as his father had been laid in a granite tomb near the altar of the little Church of SS. Peter and Paul at Kettlethorpe, Hugh made new plans for departure.
He detested his stepmother the Lady Nichola, whom he considered a whining rag of a woman overgiven to fits and the seeing of melancholy visions, so he left her and his lands in charge of a bailiff. He fitted himself out with his father’s best armour and favourite stallion, then engaged as squire young Ellis de Thoresby, the son of a neighbouring knight from Nottinghamshire across the Trent.
Thus properly accoutred, Hugh rode down to London, to the Savoy Palace. He owed knight’s service to the Duke of Lancaster by reason of Hugh’s manor at Coleby, which belonged to the Duke’s honour of Richmond, but he had not the money for the fee, and in any case much preferred to become the Duke’s retainer, well pleased that his feudal lord should also be the youth he had campaigned with in Scotland.
Though the intervening years had made many changes in John of Gaunt’s personal life, for he had married the Lady Blanche and thereby become the wealthiest man in the land, Hugh’s own interests remained unchanged. He fought when there was war, and when there was not he pursued various private quarrels, and hunted. Hawking bored him with its elaborate ritual of falconry, for he liked direct combat and a dangerous opponent. The wild stag and the wild boar were the quarries he liked best to pursue through the dense forests. He was skilled at throwing the spear and could handle the longbow as well as any of the King’s yeomen, but in close fighting he was supreme.
It was said of him that he had strangled a wolf with his bare hands in the wilds of Yorkshire, and that it was the wolf’s fangs which had laid open his cheek and puckered it into the jagged scar, but nobody knew for certain. The Duke’s retinue now numbered over two hundred barons, knights and squires, and a man so morose and uncourtly as Hugh excited little curiosity amongst his fellows. They disliked him and let him alone.
But when his extraordinary wish to marry the little de Roet became known, he inspired universal interest at last.
Katherine’s frantic protests and tears were of no avail against Hugh’s determination and everyone else’s insistence that she had stumbled into unbelievable luck.
The Queen’s ladies said it, even Alice Perrers said it, and Philippa scolded morning, noon and night.
“God’s nails, you little dolt,” Philippa cried, “you should be down on your knees thanking the Blessed Virgin and Saint Catherine, instead of mewling and cowering like a frightened rabbit. My God, you’ll be Lady Katherine with your own manor and serfs, and a husband who seems to dote on you as well!”
“I can’t, I can’t. I loathe him,” Katherine wailed.
“Fiddle-faddle!” snapped Philippa, whose natural envy increased her anger. “You’ll get over it. Besides he won’t be around to bother you much. He’ll soon be off with the Duke fighting in Castile.”
This was pale comfort but there was little Katherine could do except plead illness, hide in the solar and avoid seeing Hugh.
The Lady Blanche on hearing of the girl’s aversion to the marriage had broached the matter to her husband and found him unexpectedly obdurate and impatient. “Of course Swynford’s a fool to take her. I believe he could have had that Torksey heiress whose lands adjoin his, but I think he is bewitched. Since he lusts so for her, let him have the silly burde.”
“You dislike her?” Blanche was puzzled by his vehemence. “I find her quite charming. I remember her father, a gallant soldier. When I was a child he once brought me a little carved box from Bruges.”
“I don’t dislike the girl. Why should I? I dislike wasting time or thought on such a trivial matter when we’re going to war. And the sooner they marry the better, since Swynford will sail for Aquitaine this summer. He might as well beget an heir before he goes.”
Blanche nodded. She was no more sentimental about marriage than anyone else, but she was sorry for Katherine and sent a page over with a generous present to help alleviate the girl’s unhappiness.
Katherine was alone now because it was the day of the final tournament, and everyone in the castle except the sick Queen and the scullions had gone down to the lists. Though the ladies had urged her and Philippa had commanded, Katherine, who three days ago had so joyously looked forward to this spectacle, would not go.
She was fifteen and incapable of self-analysis. She knew only that this gorgeous new world, at first so entrancing, had resolved itself into a chaotic mass of helplessness and fears, against which she struggled blindly, finding no weapon but evasion. She was much frightened of meeting Hugh again, but vaguely she knew too that this unhappiness was reinforced by a more subtle one. She longed to see the Duke, and this longing upset her as much as Hugh’s obsession, for the Duke had not been her champion after all; he had seemed to show her sympathy and as suddenly withdrawn it, and during that moment in his wife’s bower he had looked at her with cold distaste, with, in fact, an undoubted and inexplicable repulsion.
Katherine went to the slitted window and gazed down to the plain far below, by the river, where she could see the lists and the forked pennants
of the contending knights as their identifying flags fluttered from the pavilions. It was high noon now and the hot sun flashed off the silvery armour; great clouds of dust obscured the actual field, but she could hear the roars of excitement from a thousand throats, and the periodic blare of the heralds’ trumpets.
She turned into the room and throwing herself across the bed, hit her bruised breast. She winced and though the tiny cuts were healing the pain seemed to strike through to her heart. If I pray to the Blessed Virgin, she thought, perhaps she’ll help me, and the forlorn hope brought guilt, for she had missed Mass these two days of hiding in the solar. True, some of the courtiers did not go every day to Mass, Philippa often skipped herself, but the convent habit was strong.
Katherine slipped to her knees on the prie-dieu and began, “Ave Maria gratia plena,” but the whispered words echoed bleakly in the empty solar. Then she heard a heavy knock on the oak door.
Katherine, clad only in her linen shift, threw the woollen cloak around her and nervously called, “Come in.”
The door opened and Hugh Swynford stood on the threshold looking at her sombrely. He was dressed in full armour, for he was to be an afternoon contender in the lists. His chain-mail hauberk was covered by the ceremonial white silk jupon embroidered with three golden boars’ heads on a black chevron, his coat of arms. He looked formidable, and cleaner than she had yet seen him, his crinkled hair as light as straw, his square beard close-trimmed.
He advanced into the room and Katherine stifled a moan and then hot anger rose in her. Holy Blessed Mother, she thought, I pray to you and this is how you reward me!
She wrapped the cloak around her and stood tall and stiff against the wall, her face hardened like the carved stone corbel. “Yes, Sir Hugh,” she said. “I’m quite alone and helpless. Have you come to ravish me?”
