Katherine

by Anya Seton

  The road ahead was blocked by a plodding procession of heavy carts piled high with woolsacks and drawn by oxen. An oxherd ran back and forth with his goad between each pair of carts, and despite Ellis’s shouts to make way, neither the oxen nor the herds budged an inch.

  Three well-dressed horsemen rode ahead of the carts and one of them, hearing Ellis’s shouts and seeing a young woman, called a command to the nearest oxherd, who stolidly passed it back. In due time the oxen hauled the carts to one side. “I could have ridden through the field around them,” said Katherine to Ellis as she edged past the carts.

  “Oh, no, lady,” Ellis was shocked, “not seemly to give the road to peasants. You must remember your rank.”

  Ay, thought Katherine, I suppose I must, for I’m out in the world again. She arched her neck, patted her hair and replaced her blown riding-hood as she came up to the three horsemen.

  The elder was a merchant and obviously a man of consequence. His surcote was a garnet velvet, particoloured with saffron. He wore a high-crowned glossy beaver hat, a jewelled dagger at his belt, and his iron-grey beard was neatly forked. “God’s greeting, lady,” he said in gloomy tones. “We regret we have impeded your way.” He turned from her. Flicking his horse’s reins, he resumed his slow amble.

  Katherine was so accustomed to startled interest in men’s eyes that her courteous disclaimer faltered. She glanced at the other two riders, and the youngest, having just taken a good look at her, checked his horse and guided it beside Doucette. “Are you travelling far, fair lady?” he asked, and the warmth in his tone restored her assurance. He too was finely dressed in velvet and a beaver hat, but his forked beard was chestnut brown.

  “We go to Bolingbroke,” said Ellis crowding up repressively, “and must be on our way, good sir.”

  “Why, we go there too!” cried the second merchant. “Best that you stay with us, there are outlaws in the forests on the wold.”

  “I’ve heard of none,” said Ellis stiffly, “and I know well enough how to protect my lady. Allow us to pass.”

  “Wait, Ellis, we’ll ride with them a little.” Katherine had talked to no one outside of Kettlethorpe for so long, and Ellis was so dull a companion that she longed for novelty. “Do you also go to see the Duchess, sir?” she asked.

  “Ay,” he nodded and his smooth pink face grew as gloomy as the other merchant’s had, “to ask her help, though we’re bound later,” he said with sudden force, “for that thrice-cursed town of Boston, may the foul fiend snatch it!”

  “And what has Boston done?” said Katherine, trying not to laugh. She glanced at the third horseman, who was dressed in cleric’s robes; his face sunk beneath his black and purple twisted hood, was dismal and long-mouthed as were his fellow travellers’.

  “But we are Lincoln men! We are the Suttons, lady,” cried the young merchant, “so you need not ask what Boston has done.”

  “Indeed, sir, forgive me, but I do not know.”

  “Why, they’ve stolen our staple! The stinking whoresons, vilely wheedling and lying, they’ve persuaded the King - or more like they’ve bribed that infamous concubine of his - to wrest the staple from Lincoln and set it up for themselves.”

  “Ah, to be sure,” said Katherine. Hugh had indeed mentioned that the King had moved the staple from Lincoln to Boston and that it meant grave loss for Lincoln. No longer would all the wool and hides and tin of the country pass through Lincoln for export, no longer could she be the premier cloth town of the north-east, nor its commercial centre. By royal command, she had been debased. Katherine, knowing that this year at Kettlethorpe they would have trouble enough to support themselves and no surplus whatsoever to sell, had thought little of the news. But she looked sympathetically at the three gloomy men and said, “Do you think the Duchess can help you, sir?”

  The young merchant hunched his shoulders. “We can but try. The Duke is our friend, we know him well. We hold manors under him near Norfolk and he has often dined at our house outside Lincoln.”

  Katherine considered this with interest. Mention of the Duke ever gave her a warm and trustful feeling since the day of Blanchette’s birth, though he seemed to her incalculably remote. It was a little like the way one felt about God, a being all-powerful, stern but merciful (if one could catch his ear), yet naturally so engaged in vast enterprises that one would never dare to intrude one’s self.

  The Suttons were wealthy burgesses and one of Lincoln’s most prominent families. Master John, the older one, was the father, these the two sons, Robert, and Thomas the clerk. Master John had been Mayor of Lincoln last year and now held a seat in Parliament. They belonged to a class she had never met, landholders, civic dignitaries and prosperous merchants, entirely pleased with themselves and their station, and yet neither noble nor knighted. They did homage and paid fees for the lands they held under the Duchy of Lancaster but otherwise they were toughly independent, awed by nothing, and Katherine was startled by the way Master Robert spoke of the King. “Taxes, taxes, taxes so the old dotard may satisfy his leman, or satisfy his itch to rule in France, as though we hadn’t enough to do at home. First, it’s a tax in wool, and then it’s a tax on wool, and who’s to pay the piper but us woolmen? Though never fear, we’re not so dull as not to get round that a bit - eh, father?” He nudged master John, who grunted morosely.

  “How may that be?” asked Katherine;

  Robert Sutton was delighted with so attentive and pretty a listener. He winked at her and chuckled. “Why, pass the tax on, as it were. Lower the price we pay for the wool. Our tax goes up? Then the price we pay the peasants goes down and down and down.”

  “Yes, I see,” said Katherine thoughtfully, “but couldn’t they refuse to sell to you?”

  “No other way to sell! We woolmen stick together, and with the staple, all wool must come to Lincoln - but we’ve lost the staple, curse it, unless the gracious Duchess can change the King’s mind. Why do you go to Bolingbroke, lady?”

  For the same reason you do, I suppose, to get something from the Duchess, Katherine thought with sudden shame. And yet that was not wholly true.

  “I go to pay my loving homage,” she said slowly. “Sir Hugh Swynford, my husband, is the Duke’s man.”

  “Oh ay?” said Master Robert, “Swynford - of Coleby and Kettlethorpe? Have you much pasture? I don’t seem to remember any lots of your wool.”

  “We seldom have surplus, and this year none at all. Most of our sheep were drowned in the flood. Nor had we many.”

  It was scarcely past midday and the sun had been glowing fitfully from behind dark-massing clouds. Now wisps and curls of mist began to float by and lie white in the hollows. On the wooded upland of the wolds the tree-tops reared above a bank of lemon-grey vapour.

  “Yon’s an uncanny light ahead,” said the young cleric, speaking for the first time. “Fog looks yellow as saffron, and I ne’er saw fog at midday so far inland.” He pulled his silver beads tip from his girdle and fingered them uneasily.

  “Nay, Thomas!” cried his elder brother, laughing. “For you’ve seen little of the world at all. All things amaze you. My brother,” he said to Katherine, “is but just come home from Oxford where I’ll vow he never stuck his long nose outside Merton close, so bookish is he.”

  Katherine smiled but she too felt a mounting discomfort. The air was thick and still as though it held thunder, and when they reached the wolds and began to climb through heavy yellow mist, they heard the long-drawn hooting of an owl in the unseen forest.

  “What can that be that hoots by day, except a soul in purgatory?” said Thomas, and he crossed himself. One by one the others followed suit, but Robert said, ” ‘Tis only that the fog has fooled the bird to thinking it is night.”

  They walked the horses along in silence after that, all of them watching the rutted way, for they could see ahead but a few feet. They mounted higher and the mist cleared, though they saw that it lay thick as tawny wool below them across the fens to the south-east and in the cup wh
ere Bolingbroke must lie.

  When they began the descent, at once they plunged back into the fog. The shouts of the oxherds behind them grew muffled and distorted and seemed to come from all directions. Otherwise there was an eerie stillness until Master John broke it. “I smell smoke,” he said. He drew off his embroidered gauntlets and nervously chafed his gouty fingers.

  They all sniffed the thick unmoving air. Yes, there was smoke, but in the faint pungency Katherine caught a trace of another odour, a fetid sickening fume that touched in her some uneasy memory.

  “I smell nothing but the fog - Christ’s maledictions on it,” said Robert. ” ‘Twill be luck an’ we can keep the road.”

  They plodded on in the still, yellow half-world - trees loomed up of a sudden on either side of them and as suddenly disappeared. It grew warmer and the strange stench grew stronger until they all felt it sting their nostrils. Then through the fog appeared an orange glow and they heard the crackle and hiss of flames and came upon a bonfire in the centre of the road. The fire burned off some of the fog. They could see no one about, but small houses and an alestake showed that they had entered Bolingbroke village. The fumes came from the fire; its oily suffocating smoke writhed upward and drifted through the air.

  “It smells of brimstone,” cried John button, pulling up his horse and coughing. “Why do they build this here! God’s body, but this stink may harm my wool.”

  “There’s another fire down over there,” said Katherine, “by the castle wall, I think.” She too coughed, her eyes watered. The horses snorted and, tossing their heads, began to trot, trying to rid themselves of the discomfort. No other living thing moved in the village street and, held by dazed uncertainty, they let the horses have their will. The road led around the castle walls and the dry moat. They reached the barbican and saw the great wooden drawbridge was raised flat against the portcullis. The air was clearer here, the horses stopped, and their riders stood staring up at the looming mass of wall when suddenly the mist lifted.

  “Jesu, look!” cried Ellis hoarsely. He pointed with his whip.

  “God shield us,” whispered Katherine. On the bottom of the drawbridge was painted a red cross four feet high. And now she knew that she had smelled a smoke stench like this eight years ago in Picardy.

  “There’s plague in the castle!” cried John Sutton, his voice quavering. “We must turn the wool-carts - Robert, hasten, stop them - don’t let them come nigh here!”

  His son gave a cry and galloped down the street into the fog.

  “We must get ‘round the village away from this contagion,” muttered Master John. “Lady, d’you know of another road - do you, young squire?” He turned distractedly to Ellis. “Oh weylawey, there’s naught but misfortune and disaster for me lately. Thomas pray to Saint Roch - to all the saints - for sure you have the Latin they can understand.”

  The young clerk started and dragged his eyes from the plague cross that glistened red as blood through the mist, his trembling fingers reached for his beads.

  “Come, Lady Katherine, come,” whispered Ellis. He snatched at Doucette’s bridle. A shutter opened in the guardroom of the gatehouse and a man’s helmeted head showed at the window.

  “Now who be ye what gabble and jangle out there?” the guard called out. “For sure ye see that we’ve no welcome to give ye at Bolingbroke except the kiss of the Black Death.”

  “Blessed Virgin, what has happened?’ cried Katherine, clasping her hands tight on the pommel.

  “Sixteen of us are dead, that I know of - God shrive them, for a priest has not! The chaplain died a-first, five nights gone, the friar after him.”

  “Unshriven!” She heard the wail from the two Suttons behind her, and the sudden panic clop of hooves as their horses were spurred.

  Ellis grabbed her arm, and she shook it off. “The village priest!” she cried to to the window. “Get him!”

  “How may we? Since he’s run off to hiding like the rest of the vill!”

  “What of the Duchess and her babes?”

  “I know not, mistress, for since yestere’en I’ve not quit the guardroom and I’ve barred the door.” The voice in the window cracked into high-pitched laughter. “I’ve barred the door ‘gainst the plague maiden and her red scarf and her broom. She’ll not get in, to bed wi’ me.”

  “Come away, lady - come—” Again Ellis seized Katherine’s arm, his face had grown yellow as the smoke.

  “No,” she said, though her heart beat slow and heavy. “I cannot. I’m going in. Belike I’m safe from the contagion, Philippa said so, but whether or no, I must go in to the Duchess.”

  “You’re mad, lady - Sir Hugh would kill me if I let you go -

  She saw that he meant to drag her off by force, his hand clenched on her arm so she near overbalanced in the saddle. Deliberately she called on anger.

  “How dare you touch me, knave!” she said, low and clear. “How dare you disobey me?” And with her free hand she slapped him hard across the face.

  Ellis gasped. His hand fell off her arm. His mind floundered in a coil of fear and uncertainty.

  She saw this and in the same clear voice said, “You need not enter the castle with me, I release you from your duty, but this you must do. Ride fast to the abbey at Revesby, it’s the nearest as I remember. Bring back a monk, at once! In the name of the Trinity, Ellis - -go!” Such force did she put in her voice, such command in the look she gave him, that he bowed his head. “The road to Revesby lies that way,” she said pointing, “then to the west.” He tautened the reins and spurred his horse.

  “Guard! Ho, guard!” Katherine called turning to the castle. The helmet showed again in the window. “Lower the bridge and let me in!”

  “Not I, mistress,” again the man let loose a gust of laughter. “I’ll not budge.” His tone changed as he pushed closer to the window. “What, little maid, and do you lust to join our sports in here? By God’s bones, the Black Death holds merry dances! The postern gate is open since ‘tis through there the castle varlets fled.” He leered down at her.

  Katherine guided Doucette along the dry moat past the south tower to a footbridge that led across to the postern. She dismounted and tied the mare loosely to a hazel bush that it might graze. She unbuckled her saddle pack and hoisting it in her arms crossed the footbridge. Between the batterns on the low oak door another red cross was painted and beneath it in straggling letters, “Lord have mercy on us.”

  She went through the unlocked door into the bailey. On the flagstones near the well another plague fire burned. An old man in soot-tarnished blue and grey livery threw handfuls of yellow sulphur on the smouldering logs. He raised his shaggy head and looked at her dully. Two other figures moved in the bailey. They were hooded and masked in black cloth and they held shovels in their hands. The flagstones had been lifted from a section of the western court near the barracks and she saw that a long ditch had been dug into the earth. Beside the ditch there stood a high-mounded bumpy pile covered by bloodstained canvas, and the stench from this pile mingled with the fumes from the fire.

  Katherine tried to turn her eyes away from the mounded pile but she could not. One man seized a little handbell and, jingling it, muttered behind his mask. He put the bell on the ground, and the two hooded figures silently dragged a limp thing with long black hair from out the pile and heaved it into the ditch, where one blue-spotted wrist and hand protruded for a moment like a monstrous eagle’s claw, then slowly sank from sight.

  Katherine dropped the bag she carried. She ran stumbling towards the private rooms at the far end of the bailey. She reached the foot of the stone staircase that led up to the Duchess’s apartments. Here it was that she had stood laughing at the mummers’ antics with the two little girls in that Christmastime three years ago. She looked back into the smoke-filled silent courtyard and saw the hooded figures fumble again beneath the canvas on the mound.

  Her stomach heaved, while bitter fluid gushed up into her mouth. She spat it out and, turning, began t
o mount the worn stone steps. As she rounded the first spiral the hush that held the castle was broken by the sudden tolling of a bell. Muffled though it was by the stone walls around her, she knew it for the great chapel bell and she clung to the embroidered velvet handrail while she counted the slow strokes. Twelve of them before the pause - a child then, this time - somewhere in the castle and dimly through the knell she heard a long far-off wailing.

  At once much nearer sounds broke out from above her, a wild cacophony of voices and the shrilling of a bagpipe. She listened amazed; in the discordant sounds she recognised the tune of a ribald song, “Pourquoi me bat mon mart?” that Nirac had taught her, and many voices were bawling it out to the squealing of the pipes and the clashing of cymbals.

  As Katherine mounted slowly the noise grew more raucous, for it came from the large anteroom outside the Duchess’s solar, and the door was ajar. There were a dozen half-naked people in the room, all of them in frantic motion, dancing. Nobody noticed Katherine, who stood transfixed in the doorway. Despite the fog heat, a fire was blazing on the hearth and the painted wall-hangings were illuminated by a score of candles. On the table, which had been pushed to the wall, there was the carcass of a roast peacock, a haunch of venison and a huge cask of wine with the cock but half shut; a purple stream splashed down on the floor rushes which had been strewn with thyme, lavender and wilting roses. To the falcon-perch beside the fireplace, a human skull had been tied so that it dangled from the eye-sockets and twisted slowly from side to side as though it watched the company who danced around and around upon the rushes. They jerked their arms and kicked their legs. When the minstrel who held the cymbals clashed them together, a man and a woman would grab each other convulsively and, kissing, work their bodies back and forth while the rest jigged and whirled and called out obscene taunts.