by Anya Seton
“Dragon, Mama! All fire!” she shrieked, dancing on her little red shoes and pointing to the window. “Big dragon! He’ll eat us up!”
“It’s not a real dragon, Mother,” explained Philippa earnestly. “It’s only a man in disguise. You mustn’t be frightened.”
Katherine, watching, thought how like the good little Philippa that was. At six and a half, she was already a blurred copy of Blanche, well - mannered and considerate. She never had tantrums, never disobeyed. She was as blonde as her mother too, though she gave no promise of Blanche’s beauty. Her flaxen hair hung in lank strands either side of her narrow Plantagenet face, and her skin, owing, no doubt, to her recurrent bilious attacks, had a sallow greenish tinge.
She was a devout child and had already made her first communion; she could read the psalter very well, and when she played, it was always a solemn re - enactment of one of the saint’s lives.
Elizabeth, who was not yet three, outshone her elder sister on all counts. She was wilful, demanding and extremely spoiled, for she had charm. She had red cheeks and a mop of russet curls which would one day darken to brown. She was said to resemble her sinister great - grandmother. Queen Isabella of France, and certainly she was not like her fair - haired parents.
Elizabeth soon gave up trying to pull her mother off to meet the dragon. Blanche, who had seen quantities of mummers, merely smiled her lovely calm smile and said, “Presently, my poppet” - not stirring from her carved armchair. She was larger with this pregnancy than she had ever been, and more indolent.
So the baby danced over to Katherine singing, “Dragon, dragon, come see ‘Lisbet’s dragon!”
Katherine was more than willing. She looked to the Duchess for permission, then she took the children’s hands. Elizabeth tugged and tumbled ahead of her down the winding stone stairs, but Philippa followed sedately, clutching Katherine’s hand in a damp, careful clasp.
When they reached the courtyard, it was full of retainers and villagers who had come to see the fun. The mummers let out a shout of greeting to the ducal children and cavorted around the trio, singing “Wassail, wassail!” hoarsely through their masks. There were a score of them, each disguised as an animal - goats, rabbits, stags, dogs and bulls - except their leader, the Lord of Misrule, who wore a fool’s costume tipped with jingling bells and whose face was splotched with blobs of red and blue.
The dragon was indeed a wonderful object, he writhed realistically on the stones and, opening and shutting his painted canvas jaws, emitted clouds of evil - smelling brimstone. When the dragon seized the small rabbit - headed figure in his mouth and pretended to eat him up while the capering fool emitted falsetto screams and beat at the dragon with a peacock feather, Katherine laughed as heartily as all the others in the courtyard and even little Philippa gave a round - eyed, nervous smile.
But then the mummers’ play grew bawdy. The fool shouted that since the dragon was on fire, good Christians all must sprinkle water on him, and began to do so in the most natural manner. Katherine, though she could not help laughing, gathered up the wildly protesting Elizabeth and shepherded Philippa back to their mother.
By the time they reached Blanche’s fire - lit bower, Katherine had silenced the baby with a firm command and then the crooning of a little French nursery song from her own childhood; and when she went to put her down beside her mother, Elizabeth clung fast to Katherine’s neck.
“You’re truly good with the children, my Katherine,” said the Duchess, seeing this, and also that Philippa clung trustingly to the girl’s skirts. “But you should not carry that heavy child in your condition - Elizabeth, let my Lady Swynford go!”
“Won’t,” cried the child, clinging harder to Katherine, and as she saw her mother’s face darken with a rare frown, she shrieked, “I like her best, I like her best!”
It was only a piece of baby naughtiness; it ruffled the Duchess not at all, who merely raised her voice and called Elizabeth’s nurse from the ante - room, yet it gave Katherine a strange guilt as though she had somehow stolen from the Duchess, and unwittingly hurt this lady who had been her kindest friend.
She thrust Elizabeth at the nurse, who vanished with her howling charge, and while Philippa still remained and gave her mother a solemn account of the mummers, Katherine picked up her embroidery and went to the far corner of the bower, out of sight, while she fought off the unease that had come upon her.
It passed, of course. She reasoned it away, telling herself that women in her state were given to fancies and that it was a piece of presumption for her to think she might affect the Duchess in any way at all, just as her cheeks grew hot with shame when she remembered what a ridiculous dither she had been in at the Duke’s perfunctory kiss in the church.
Here in his castle with his wife and children, she saw her folly in its true light, and in some way allied to this, she began to think more kindly of Hugh and her duties at Kettlethorpe.
In this the Duchess unconsciously helped, by assuming that Katherine must be pining for her husband, even as she was for her own lord. And by stressing quite without intent the remarkable good fortune which had transformed Katherine from a charity orphan into a lady of quality. “The Blessed Saint Catherine must have you under special protection, my dear.”
“Yes, madam,” said Katherine humbly.
“Some day,” continued Blanche, “you should make the pilgrimage to Our Lady of Walsingham in Norfolk, she gives great sanctity, and is especially kind and merciful to mothers.” She paused, and a misty light shone in her eyes. “I went to Her in June - from Her bounteous grace She has rewarded me.” She glanced towards her lap and added very low, “And I know She’ll give me a healthy son.”
“Ah, dearest lady,” cried the girl. She took the Duchess’ hand and laid it to her cheek, looking up at the fair white face, the high placid brow and the ropes of golden hair entwined with tiny pearls. “You who are like the Queen of Heaven Herself, of course She has rewarded you!”
“Hush, child,” Blanche turned her hand and put it gently over Katherine’s mouth. “You mustn’t say foolish things. But indeed I love you well, too - we must see each other after our babes are born. It saddens me to part with you.”
Katherine sighed agreement, for the parting was on the morrow, Epiphany Day. And the hope Katherine had briefly held, that the Duchess would ask her to stay on a while, had long ago vanished. Blanche thought the girl eager to get back to the manor for which she was now responsible, and the Swynford heir, of course, must be born on its own lands. This was the code, and as the Duchess herself never hesitated to put duty before inclination, so it never entered her mind that a girl of Katherine’s obvious worth could do so.
Katherine duly returned to Kettlethorpe in Piers Roos’ charge, but the Duchess, having decided that the roads were too icy for horseback, sent her in one of the great ducal chariots. It was drawn by four horses and was as lavishly carved, gilded and painted as Blanche’s own bridal chests. Katherine lay inside on a velvet couch and despite the jouncing and lurching of the springless wheels, she found that this piece of generosity somewhat alleviated her sorrow at leaving Bolingbroke. So did the other evidences of Blanche’s kindness which lay stacked in coffers at the rear of the long carriage. Katherine had two dresses now, and a length of Flemish woven wool with which to make a third. There was fine linen for baby clothes, and there was a lute, an English psalter and an ivory crucifix.
The Duchess, after consultation with Piers, had finally realised something of conditions at Kettlethorpe and done her best to mitigate them.
Katherine had poignantly grateful thoughts on the long ride and made many good resolutions for her future. She would be as much like the Duchess as possible - always gracious, charitable and devout. She doubted her power to force Sir Robert to celebrate daily Mass as did the Duchess’ chaplain, but at least she could pray every day and she need not wickedly skip Sunday Mass because of trifling illness, as she had through the autumn. She saw now clearly that she had grown
guilty of the sin of accidie - spiritual sloth. The nuns had talked much of that sin at Sheppey.
She had time for conscience - searching, as the ride home took fifteen hours. The lumbering carriage travelled slowly; after they had rested the horses at Lincoln, it began to snow, and the last miles to Kettlethorpe were nearly as wearisome as they had been when she first came there in May with Hugh. And her welcome was scarcely better. The manor house was dark, the servants, not expecting her, had gone to bed in the kitchen loft and when routed out by Piers were surly and unhelpful and scarcely attended to Katherine in their wonder at the great painted carriage and their resentment of the supercilious ducal postilions.
Katherine went up to her dank musty - smelling solar. She did not undress but crept as she was between the clammy sheets. The night candle flickered and blew out in a gust from the east wind through the shutter. The east wind also carried sound from the tower. An intermittent wailing chant, with sometimes a sharper call as of a question. The Lady Nichola talking to her cat, or to the snowflakes, or to some ghostlier figment of her sick mind - what did it matter?
Nothing had changed. Katherine pulled the bearskin around her ears and clenching her teeth prayed violently for resignation.
The winter snows melted in the strengthening sun. Its fight moved southward and now awakened Katherine through the solar window that gave on to the forest, where nesting rooks began their incessant cawing. A film of ice no longer glazed the moat each morning, and as the pastures turned a tender green, the new - born lambs, white as swan’s - down, filled the fragrant air with plaintive bleats.
April came in with soft cloudless days, and gentle nightly showers - prime growing weather; and as the danger to the new - sown crops from freezing or floods abated, the grim faces of the serfs grew softer. They sang often in the fields and the dairies and the malthouse; they even smiled at Katherine while they bobbed their heads to her.
The whole manor pulsed with spring, and Katherine spent most of her time outdoors basking on a bench in the courtyard or strolling dreamily through the lanes, listening to the thrushes and blackbirds. She could not walk far now before her back ached and her ankles swelled, but she was no longer sickly or unhappy. She existed from day to day, peacefully expectant as any fecund animal, yet so accustomed now to her burden that she could not remember how it felt to be free.
In Holy Week, a wandering Grey Friar turned up at the manor to beg a night’s hospitality for his small shaggy donkey and himself. Katherine was delighted to accommodate him, and all the more so as he brought news. Brother Francis was bound north into the wilds of Yorkshire on a preaching expedition, but he had come from Boston town, near Bolingbroke. He told Katherine that on April 3, eleven days ago, the Duchess Blanche had been safely delivered of a fair, healthy son who had been christened Henry after her father. “All the countryside rejoiced,” added the friar. “I thought our bell at Saint Botolph’s church would crack from the wild pealings, and the bonfires in our streets set alight two houses.”
“Oh I’m glad!” cried Katherine, “so very glad!” Tears came to her eyes, of honest joy for Blanche, but of hurt too. “All the countryside rejoiced” - and yet she had known nothing of it, had worried and prayed for her friend, who might have sent some messenger from amongst her retinue to tell the news. And yet why should she? The Duchess lived in the midst of vast concerns, made vaster now by the birth of a male heir at last; she knew nothing of loneliness or isolation. Doubtless she thought Katherine had heard the news long ago, if she ever thought of her at all. But the hurt persisted.
“This new little Henry of Lancaster,” pursued the friar, a small merry man who enjoyed gossiping, “is born to great inheritance, but he has no hope for the English throne, especially since the birth of his new cousin.”
“What cousin?” said Katherine, pouring ale for the friar.
“Why, Richard, of course! He that was born at Bordeaux to the Princess of Wales on Epiphany Day.” He looked at her quizzically. “Surely, lady, you live here close as the kernel in a nut - most proper though in your state and with your lord away!”
Katherine was nearly stung into telling him that she was not such a country bumpkin as he thought her, that she had visited the Duchess and had stayed at court where her sister waited on the Queen; but the impulse died, for he might think her boastful or lying and, besides, his chatter rippled on without pause.
“When King Edward dies, God give him grace, our glorious Prince of Wales will reign, and after him come his two sons, little Edward - a sickly lad though and given to fits - but now we also have the tiny Richard. If aught should happen to all of them” - he raised his hand and murmured - “Christus prohibeat! - there’s the Duke Lionel and his get, present and future, for I hear he’s to marry again, and then the Duke of Lancaster and finally our little Henry Bolingbroke, fifth in line if no new ones are born.” He shook his head. “Nay, lady, we’ll never have a Lincolnshire - born king - a great pity.”
“Indeed,” said Katherine somewhat dryly. She was growing tired, and her love for Lincolnshire was not such as to make her appreciate this aspect of young Henry’s birth. Besides, her heart was still very sore and she desired to hear no more about the Lancasters.
On the last day of April, Katherine awoke early and was filled with restless energy. She dressed and went downstairs to the courtyard before the sun was fairly up. She awakened Toby to make him lower the drawbridge, and walking into the woods, gathered armfuls of flowers and flowering branches. She carried them to the Hall and began to prop them in corners, and in the windy embrasures. Then, seeing that the long oak table was spattered with candle wax and other grease, she called into the kitchen for Milburga.
The maid found her mistress violently polishing the table, and noting the flowers and branches already placed in the Hall, nodded sagely. “Ay lady, I see ye’re hands ‘re restless and ye feel the need for busyness. For sure your time be nigh.”
Katherine looked up startled. “Nay, I feel well, better than for long. I but wanted to bring the May into the house ready for tomorrow.” Her voice wavered, for she thought of May Day a year ago in London, with Hawise.
“I’ll go tell Parson’s Molly ye’ll be needing her later on,” said Milburga stolidly. As usual she managed to convey a subtle contempt for Katherine.
“Nonsense, the baby isn’t due yet. Get a rag and help me with this table.” Katherine didn’t know for sure when the baby was due, but Milburga always aroused, her to opposition.
“Ay, I’d best warn Parson’s Molly,” repeated the woman as though Katherine had not spoken, “or she might be off at sundown to light the fires and launch Ket’s boat on the river.”
Katherine bit her lips. Her palm itched to slap the smug sallow face. Milburga well knew that Katherine had forbidden the outlandish ritual performed by her tenants on this St. Walburga’s Eve. Gibbon had warned her of it, and described it as a brutish heathen festival which had come down from Druid times and had to do with sacrifice to some dark goddess they called Ket, though some said it was in honour of the Dane, Ketel. No matter which, the proceeding seemed outrageous to Katherine.
The serfs, it seemed, always lit fires in a small circle of ancient stones on a hill near the Trent and after an orgy of dancing, guzzling and worse, they then launched a coracle on the river. The coracle would contain three new - born slaughtered lambs - slaughtered, with wild cries and leapings, on a stone they called an altar. The whole ceremony was called the “Launching of Ket’s Ark,” Gibbon told her, and his objection to the function sprang not so much from moral indignation at this pagan folderol but from the wanton waste of the lambs and waste of two days’ work, one of preparation, and one of recovery from the drinking throughout the night.
But Katherine had been shocked and rushed at once to the priest demanding that he stop the preparations. “Oh, I cannot, lady,” said Sir Robert, astonished. “They’ve always done so here. ‘Tis custom. I’ve often gone myself to launch Ket’s ark.” “But it�
�s heathen!”
The priest shrugged and looked honestly bewildered.
Then Katherine, calling all her housefolk together and the reeve, had issued a command forbidding them to hold Ket’s rite this May Eve. They had said nothing, merely listened to her and dispersed silently. But she had heard the reeve’s mocking laugh and Milburga’s high - pitched whinny in the courtyard.
“I told you, Milburga, that I forbid this thing tonight,” said Katherine, trying to speak with dignity. “I expect to be obeyed.”
The maid’s lips twitched. “To be sure, lady. So I needn’t warn Molly?”
“Certainly not!”
Thus it was that night, an hour after sundown, that Katherine felt her first pains and found herself alone, deserted by all the housefolk. They had fed her her supper, and Katherine, not dreaming that they would defy her and being still in a restless mood, had gone up to the solar and sitting by the window with her lute, strummed random chords while she tried to remember a song she had sung at Bolingbroke.
She took pleasure in her music, and though mostly self - taught, had become a fair player, so that at first she did not notice the growing sharpness of an ache in her back. But the pain grew more insistent, and she stood up, thinking to ease the cramp. Sure enough, it ebbed. She leaned out of the window, gazing idling into the dark forest beyond the moat and thinking of Hugh. She had had no news of him except that given her by the Duchess in January of his arrival overseas, but she had expected none. Even if he had found someone to write a letter for him, whom could he have sent to deliver it? Yet he had hoped to be home in May and perhaps he might be. It seemed to her that if he came she would be neither sorry nor glad, though she would feign gladness.
She sighed, then tensed, holding on to the rough stone of the embrasure and hearing her own startled breathing. The ache in her legs and back had returned more strongly, and this time before ebbing sent a stab of pain up through her loins.
