Katherine

by Anya Seton

  “I’m here,” he announced in a high “grating voice, “to see Lancaster. I have a message for him.” He glanced at the friars, then at the two barons. His companion, Fitz Alan, nodded agreement and spread his stubby hands to the fire.

  “No doubt you do,” said de la Pole, “but he’s not to be disturbed.”

  “By God’s bones, indeed he’s not!” growled Lord Neville. Whatever bickering they might indulge in amongst themselves they were at one against outsiders.

  “I come,” said Lord March imperturbably, “from the King. He summons the Duke to Westminster at once, for conference. He’s to accompany me now. Kindly have me announced.” March’s spotty little face was smug, and the two barons were silenced. No one might disobey a summons from the King, not even a favourite son, but de la Pole thought that a more agreeable messenger might have been chosen. No doubt the choice was Alice Perrers’ doing. She blew now hot now cold on this courtier or the other as her subtle mind conceived it to her advantage, and the King did as she wished.

  Raulin departed on this new errand to the Avalon Chamber, and the company settled to wait for his return. The little earl hunched himself in a gilded chair before the fire and shivered, for his skinny body was always chilly. He stared enviously at two huge Venetian candlesticks which flanked the fireplace. They discontented him with a pair he had recently ordered for himself, as the Savoy discontented him with his own city mansion, and that knowledge that, while he owned ten castles, John of Gaunt had more than thirty. His thoughts turned to the heir his countess was expecting. There at least he bettered the Duke. This babe, whatever it was, stood nearer to the English throne than Lancaster or any get of his.

  “That churlish squire takes long to return,” he said to Fitz Alan who was munching a handful of raisins and spitting the seeds out at an andiron. “That Fleming - why must Lancaster ever show favour to foreigners!” March reached for a raisin, then thought better of it. Two of his teeth were rotting and sweetness hurt them. “By Saint Edmund!” he began peevishly, “the Duke forgets my rank, this is outrageous -” He stopped, for Raulin returned slowly through the door and came up to him, bowing.

  The squire fixed his eyes on a tapestry behind the earl’s head and said without inflexion, “My lord, His Grace sends his love and duty to the King and prays His Majesty to bear with him. He cannot come now but vill anon.”

  De la Pole watching from the window could not hold back a chuckle at the little earl’s expression. March got off the chair and drew himself as high as he could. “D’you mean to tell me it took all this time to produce this insolent message!” he shrilled at the squire, who closed his lips and stared stolidly towards the wall. It had taken no time at all for the Duke to give that message, the time had been taken by another matter which caused Raulin much hidden amazement.

  “Well, my lord,” cried de la Pole cheerfully, “you’ve had your answer!” His own discontent with Lancaster had melted into pride. The Duke was afraid of nothing, not even his father’s famous Plantagenet temper, and de la Pole gave thanks that he owed his homage to the Duke instead of to this pimpled bantling, or any other overlord.

  One by one they departed until the Presence Chamber was emptied of all but the squire. Raulin waited until there was no one on the stairs, then sped out into the courtyard and, obeying the Duke’s orders, made for the Beaufort Tower.

  The porter told him that Lady Swynford was not within. Her mare had been saddled and brought, and she had left some time ago.

  “Did you hear naught of vere she might’ve gone?” pursued Raulin who knew nothing about the woman he was seeking and whose competent Flemish brain was mystified by the dark urgency his master had shown.

  “I might of,” the porter paused and picked his nose thoughtfully, “were’t to my interest.”

  Raulin opened his purse and held out a quarter-noble. The porter bit it and said, “My Lady Swynford did ask the way to Billingsgate, summat abaht fishmongers it were - fishmongers wi’ a fishery French name - Poissoner - Pechoner - she wanted to see.”

  Raulin, finding that the porter could give no other information, set off for the City on what seemed an unlikely quest. But the Duke had forbidden him to return without this Lady Swynford. He rode to town and down Thames Street towards the Bridge and began to make dogged inquiry.

  Katherine had spent the last days in growing dejection. Her grief and horror had worn themselves out at last and she had stood amongst the hordes of mourners in St. Paul’s and felt only sadness. Since then, she had been planning how to get home, but there were material difficulties. She had not enough money for the journey, nor did she dare set off without escort. The wisest thing would be to get a message to Hugh that he might send Ellis for her. But that would take time. In that vast Savoy Palace she felt as lost and forgotten as in a wilderness. The ducal children had been taken with their household to the country air of Hertford Castle, and most of the Bolingbroke people had dispersed after the funeral.

  The decision to go to Billingsgate and seek Hawise had been impulsive, and once she had thought of it, she lost no time and set off in a chill and windy drizzle.

  In three and a half years the Pessoners had changed very little except to grow rounder and noisier. An herb-strewn fire roared on the hearth, where some of the children played at rolling apples. Master Guy was not to be seen for he was counting cod in his warehouse next door. The low-raftered Hall smelt of fragrant smoke and fish. Hawise was standing at the dairy-room door vigorously pounding the dasher in a large butter churn when one of the young Pessoners let Katherine in.

  Hawise gawked for a moment, her bare freckled arms dropped from the churn, then a wide happy gap-toothed grin spread over her big face. “God’s beard!” she cried, ” ‘tis Kath - m’lady Swyhford!” She rushed across the Hall and folding Katherine in her arms kissed her heartily on the mouth. “Sit down, sweeting, sit down - I’m that joyed to see ye! Be’eht we, Mother? When I dropped the porridge ladle this morning I knew we’d have a lucky caller, but I never dreamed of you, love!” She pulled Katherine down beside her on a settle and beamed at her with so much affection that Katherine felt a pricking of gladness behind her lids.

  Dame Emma bustled over with a pewter platter of honey cakes and sugared ginger. “Welcome, welcome, eat hearty o’ these, lady while I mull some ale for us. We’ll have crabs too,” added Dame Emma comfortably, “a bobbin’ o’ their little pink cheeks in the ale.”

  Katherine laughed, basking in the warm kindly atmosphere and the goodwife’s conviction that food was life’s most important matter. She turned to Hawise with girlish eagerness and cried, ‘Tell all! How has it been with you, this long time?”

  “Ay, but first of you,” said the older girl, sobering to glance at Katherine’s black gown. ” ‘Tis worn for the Duchess - nothing else, I pray?”

  “Nay. We’re all well at Kettlethorpe. I’ve two babies, Hawise!”

  “And I one” - Hawise let out a snort of laughter and ran to the court calling. “Jackie, Jackie - come hither, imp - for ever playing wi’ the old sow, he is - ‘tis that he’s but a piglet himself-” She hauled her offspring into the Hall and cuffed him gently on the ear, then wiped him off before presenting him proudly to Katherine.

  Jackie was two years old and a true Pessoner, being fat, cheerful and sandy-haired. He grabbed a fistful of honey cakes and plumped himself on the rushes to enjoy them while his grandmother bent down to add a sugar bun to his hoard.

  “Ay, he’s Jack Maudelyn’s right enough,” said Hawise, seeing that Katherine did not like to ask, “and he was born in wedlock too, though only just. Father held out stubborn long, the dear old goat.”

  “Is Jack still weaver’s prentice?”

  “No prentice now, nor yet weaver neither. He went for a soldier to make us a fortune in booty, we hope. He’s a fine archer, is Jack, and he joined the free companies under Sir Hugh Calverly. They fight for England now that we’re at war again, to be sure.”

  “To be sure,” s
aid Katherine smiling. “So your man is gone, and you’ve come back home to wait like many another.”

  “Is’t the same with you, lady dear - your knight abroad too?”

  “Not now,” said Katherine, turning her face away. But feeling that her curtness rebuffed Hawise, she made an effort and while they drank their hot pungent ale and sat close together on the settle, she told a little of what had passed with her since Hawise had waved tearful good-byes beneath the porch of St. Clement Danes on the wedding day.

  In truth, there seemed not much to tell, nothing momentous at all except the recent time of plague at Bolingbroke and that Katherine slid over quickly. Yet during tile bare recital of her years at Kettlethorpe, she noted that Hawise looked at her with shrewd sympathy, and when Katherine had done, Hawise said, “Have ye no woman there wi’ you save those North Country hinds?” The London-born Hawise spoke as though Lincolnshire folk might be horned and tailed.

  “Well, now for a while there’s Philippa too, you know,” said Katherine laughing.

  “In truth.” Hawise gave a sceptical twinkling glance but from politeness said no more. She had seen something of Dame Philippa while Master Geoffrey still lived in London with the Chaucers, and Hawise thought that Philippa was not a woman to give over the mastery of any household she was in and wondered how it would be when Katherine went home. Again as she had when they had first met, the girl aroused in Hawise a tender feeling. Having no beauty herself she felt no envy, but only a desire to serve it, and she recognised as had no other person except Geoffrey a bitter loneliness in Katherine that muted her shining fairness as dust films a silver chalice.

  She could see that Katherine had had enough of living in splendour at the Savoy, and being intuitive as well as practical, she guessed that there was some embarrassment about getting back to Kettlethorpe. She was turning the matter over in her mind when there came another rap on the door.

  ” ‘Tis doubtless the master o’ that herring ship to see Father,” she said to Dame Emma as she hastened to open it.

  Raulin d’Ypres stood upon the doorstep and asked in his guttural voice, “Does anyone here know uff a Lady Swynford?”

  Hawise, noting the Lancaster badge on the young man’s black tunic, drew back and looked at Katherine, who stood up in surprise. “I’m Lady Swynford.”

  The squire bowed. “Please to come vit me to the Savoy. Someone vishes to talk to you, my lady.”

  “Who does?” said Katherine, in surprise.

  The squire glanced at Hawise and Dame Emma and the tumbling children, then back to Katherine’s puzzled resistant face. “May I speak vit you alone, my lady?”

  Katherine frowned and turned to Hawise, who looked troubled. Hawise reminded herself that she did not know the ways of court folk, but a blind mole could see something out of the way in this. “Shall I call Father to rid you of him?” she whispered in Katherine’s ear.

  Katherine looked back at the stolid squire. He met her gaze and stared down pointedly at the Red Rose embroidered on his breast. How strange, she thought, what could that mean? Most of the men in the palace below knight’s rank wore that badge. “Well, come over here,” she said, stepping into the empty dairy-room, and as the squire followed, she added, “What is this coil?”

  “His grace vants you to come to him, my lady,” said Raulin very low.

  She lifted her head, the pupils of her eyes dilated until the greyness turned as black as her gown. “The Duke?” Raulin bowed.

  “Why does he send for me in secret?” She pressed her hands tight against her breast to still the jumping of her heart, but she stood very quiet leaning against the milk table.

  “Because since the funeral he has seen nobody but me, nor does he vish to, my lady, except now - you.”

  The colour ebbed slowly back into her face and still her great eyes stared at the squire in question, in disbelief, until he said brusquely, “But lady, hasten. It is already long since I vas sent to find you.”

  Katherine moved then, she walked back into the Hall and reached up to the perch where Hawise had hung her wet cloak. “I - I must go,” she said to the anxious Pessoners. “But I’ll see you very soon.”

  “Not bad news-” cried Hawise, quickly crossing herself.

  “Lady, ye look so strange!”

  “Not bad news,” Katherine took a quick breath, smiled at Dame Emma and kissed Hawise, but it seemed as though she did not really see them. When the door had closed behind Katherine and the squire, Hawise turned frowning to her mother. “She was happy here afore wi’ us. What can that gobble-tongued outlander’ve said to throw her into such a maze? ‘Twas like she wandered in a fearing dream and yet feared more to wake.”

  “Fie, daughter,” said Dame Emma, adding cinnamon and nutmeg to the hare she seethed over the fire. “Ye make too much o’ naught. Do ye get on wi’ the churning.”

  Hawise obeyed, but as she pounded slowly in the churn, her cheerful face was downcast and she sang a plaintive little song that she had heard on London streets.

  Blow, northern wind, fend off from my sweeting.

  Blow, northern wind, blow.

  Ho! the wind and the rain they blow green pain,

  Blow, blow, blow!

  CHAPTER XII

  Katherine and Raulin rode back to the Savoy in silence until they had passed beneath the great Strand portcullis into the Outer Ward, and dismounted at the stables. Then Raulin said, “This vay, my lady,” and led her towards the river-side, nearly to the boat landing. In the west corner of the court, between the bargehouse and the massive wing which housed the ducal children’s apartments, there was a low wooden building surmounted by a carving of a large flying hawk. This building contained the falcon mew, and one of the falconers stood always on guard to prevent strangers from entering, or any sudden happening which might upset his high-strung and immensely valuable charges.

  Raulin nodded to the falconer, skirted the mew and plunged suddenly into a dark passage that lay hidden between it and a stone water-cistern. Here was a small wooden door which he unlocked. “But the privy apartments are in the Inner Ward,” protested Katherine nervously as he motioned her up narrow stone steps that were hollowed from the thickness of the wall.

  “This leads to them,” said Raulin patiently. “His Grace does not vish that people see you. It vould make talk.”

  Katherine swallowed, and mounted the steps. They ended on the next floor in a narrow passage that ran along the inside wall of consecutive chambers and ended in another wooden door. This door was concealed by a painted cloth-hanging. Raulin pushed it aside and they emerged into the Duchess’ garderobe, a small oblong chamber.

  Behind another painted hanging they entered the darkened solar; narrow chinks of light around the edges of the closed shutters showed that the vast bed had been draped with a black pall. They went through another chamber where the Duchess’ ladies had used to sit and two more rooms until they turned a corner towards the river into a square tower. Here was the Avalon Chamber.

  Raulin knocked on the carved oak door and gave his name. A voice said, “Enter!” Raulin held the door, then shut it after Katherine, and went away.

  Katherine walked in quietly, her head lifted high, her cloak clutched around her. The Duke was sitting on a gold-cushioned windowseat gazing over the river towards the rocks and stunted trees of Lambethmoor. He did not move at once, and she stood on the woven silk rug that covered the tiles and waited.

  He was clothed in plain black saye, without girdle or mantle, the tight-fitting cote and long hose moulded his lean muscular body and were unrelieved by trimming. He wore no jewels except the sapphire seal-ring that Blanche had given him. His thick tawny hair was cut short below his ears, and he was cleanshaven. This startled her, for it made him seem younger, and when he slowly turned his head towards her, she saw that his chin was square and had a cleft like her own.

  “You summoned me, my lord?” she said, for he did not speak but stared at her with a remote brooding look. His skin had
lost the sunbronze that it had shown when he came to Kettlethorpe, and it was stretched taut across the sharp Plantagenet cheekbones, the narrow cheeks and long high-bridged nose. His mouth, wide-curved and passionate, was drawn thin at the corners like his father’s, and his heavy eyelids seemed as though they would never wholly lift again to disclose the vivid blue beneath.

  She knelt, as was seemly, and taking his hand, kissed it in homage. While she knelt, her cloak loosened and her hood fell back. He touched her curling rain-dampened hair. ” ‘Tis the colour of carnelians,” he said, “the gem that heals anger. Would that it might heal sorrow -” He spoke as though to himself, in a low faltering voice. His hand fell back on to his thigh, and she raised her head, wondering. Through every fibre in her body she had felt that light touch on her hair.

  His gaze slid slowly over her face, then rested on the cream and umber tiles which floored the chamber. “I sent for you, Katherine, that I might thank you. Old Simon of Bolingbroke told me what you did for - for her. You shall know my gratitude.”

  Her cheeks stung with heat. She jumped up from her knees and pulled the cloak around her. “My lord, I told you that I loved her. I want no reward - no payment!”

  “Hush! Leave be, Katherine. I know you’re not venal. I’ve thought of you much these last days, thought of how you were with her at the end - while I - on the day she died- - ” He broke off and, getting up, walked to the fireplace.

  The day she died, he thought, September twelfth, the day when the French had tricked and fooled him, drawn him into battle formation and then sneaked off into the night laughing at the gullible blundering English. A bootless costly mockery had been the whole campaign, and through no fault of his; but he guessed well what they said of his generalship here at home. Blanche would have known how to soften the humiliation.