by Anya Seton
“And who are you that comes here?” Stafford had a small toad-face, with low sloping forehead and unwinking eyes, which regarded Katherine disagreeably.
She said with her most charming smile, “I’m Lady Swynford, sir. I - I cannot think that you’ll be too hard on us, for sure a little more time and Sir Hugh will find - -“
“No more time at all,” said Stafford, banging his small ink-grimed hand on the table. “Nor does it help your case, Sir Hugh, to drag in a wheedling woman. Tomorrow noon I’ll have the rents, that’s final. I’ve been too slack already in my duty to His Grace of Lancaster.”
At this the sergeant, who had been listening open-mouthed, cast a look of embarrassed sympathy at the flushed and worried Katherine, and by way of creating a diversion said, “Here, sir, here’s a letter to you from His Grace, sent from the Savoy, sir. I’ve just come from there as escort to my Lady Swynford, sir.”
Stafford took the parchment and examined the seal. Many such documents came to him from the chancery and he started to put it aside and dismiss the Swynfords, when he noticed the small privy seal next the large one and frowned. This he had seen but twice before, and it meant that the letter was sent directly from the Duke and sealed with his own signet ring. At the same time, he captured the echo of the sergeant’s words,
“escort to my Lady Swynford - from the Savoy - -” He glanced up quickly at the tall girl in the black hood, at the truculent knight whom he thoroughly disliked. A poor tenant, and a poor knight also, since it was well known the Duke had not called him back into service.
Stafford broke the seals and cords on the parchment, read it slowly while a deep mauve tint travelled up his flabby cheeks. He cleared his throat and read it again before saying to Katherine, “Do you know the purport of this order?” She shook her head and her heart beat fast. It was plain that Stafford did not believe her, but he turned to Hugh and said in the tone of one gritting teeth over a hateful duty. “My Lord Duke sees fit to rescue you from your embarrassment, it seems.”
He glanced down at the parchment and read the official French aloud in a clipped tight accent. “We, John, Son of the King, Duke of Lancaster, etc., make known that from our especial grace and for the good and loving service which Lady Katherine Swynford, wife of Sir Hugh Swynford, has rendered to our late dearly beloved Duchess, whom God assoil, we do give and grant to the said Lady Swynford until further notice, all issues and profits from our towns of Waddington and Wellingore in the County of Lincoln to be paid at once upon receipt of this letter and thereafter in equal portions at Michaelmas and Easter. In witness, etc., given, etc., at the Savoy this twenty-seventh year of King Edward’s reign.”
Stafford looked up. The woman seemed astounded, and also as though she were going to weep. The knight looked puzzled and uneasy, obviously straining to understand the unfamiliar French legal words. “What does it mean?” he muttered, biting his lips.
“It means,” said Stafford shrugging, “that your wife’s revenues from the Duke’s towns which he has granted her will pay your rents at Coleby and Kettlethorpe, I should judge, with plenty to spare. That’s what it means.”
“Huzzah!” cried the sergeant from near the door and met Stafford’s glare imperturbably.
Hugh glanced at Katherine and then at the paved floor. “It is most generous of the Duke,” he said.
“There’s a postscript,” said Stafford, tapping the parchment with an irritable finger, “which provides that whenever Sir Hugh Swynford shall be absent from home on knight’s service one of the Duke’s own stewards shall be appointed to ride to Coleby and Kettlethorpe to render assistance and manor supervision to Lady Swynford, the costs to be met by this office.”
Ah, I have been well repaid - thought Katherine, with a bitter pang. The great powerful hand had been bountifully and negligently extended to rescue them. We’re only little people, she thought, like the serfs, and what are we but serfs too? She glanced at the grim toad of a receiver. Had chivalry and justice not outweighed the anger that the Duke had felt for her when they parted - there would have been distraint, and punishment. Swynfords would have lost their horses, stock, all chattels - possibly imprisonment too, and the Duke would never have heard of it. But now they were safe.
“Tomorrow at noon,” said Stafford, rising, “you will receive the moneys due you from this grant and will then pay your Coleby rent with interest. I give you good day, sir and lady.”
The Swynfords walked out through the roomful of clerks and scarcely heeded when the sergeant congratulated them and took his leave to report to the constable. There was no one in the stone passage outside and before going into the court where Philippa and the others waited, Hugh suddenly stopped and looked at Katherine. His hand clenched on his sword hilt, his square face whitened. “For what of your services, my lady, has His Grace of Lancaster seen fit to bestow such reward?” he said, his voice croaking like a rook’s.
Her grey eyes met his steadily and with pity, for now she knew what unanswered love was - and jealousy. “For none but what the grant said, Hugh, that I served the Duchess Blanche.” She pulled her beads out from her purse and kissed the crucifix. “I swear it by the sweet body of Jesus and by my father’s and mother’s souls.”
His gaze fell first and he sighed. “I cannot doubt you.” He leaned towards her. She showed none of her inward shiver as he kissed her hungrily on the lips, but she felt sick fear. Was he then cured of the impotence that had afflicted him? Holy Blessed Mother, she thought, I could not endure it. But she knew she must endure it, if it were so. To escape from his rough grasp she made a business of putting her rosary back in her purse and saw the Duke’s letter. “Here,” she said quickly, “this is for you, from the Duke. I had forgot in all that trouble in there. Shall I read it to you?”
He nodded, flushing. She broke the seal and scanned the letter. “It’s an official order for you to report for knight’s duty in Aquitaine. You’re to join the company under Sir Robert Knolles, until the - until the Duke arrives himself - ah, that gladdens you!” she cried, for his face had brightened as she had not seen it in years.
“Ay, for I’ve been ill content to sit at home while others fight, you know that, and I’ve worried much that the Duke did not want me; it seemed a slight, a punishment, for what I know not. Yet I’ve but a slow mind and can’t follow his.”
Nor can I, thought Katherine. I don’t know what he really feels towards me or Hugh.
” ‘Tis not that I wish to leave you, my Katherine, but see he has relieved my mind by providing proper stewardship for you - not, thank God, one quartered at Kettlethorpe like that foul Nirac was after you bore Blanchette. Ay, ‘tis of his godchild that he thinks no doubt in these grants to you, his godchild named for his poor lady. ‘Tis of that he thinks.”
“For sure it is, Hugh,” she said gently. I shall never dwell on the Avalon Chamber again, she thought - it’s finished. All debts are paid, all has been decently resolved. It shall be as though it never happened.
“Come, my husband,” she said smiling. “We have much good news to tell Philippa.” They walked arm in arm from the passage into the sunlit court.
Part Three (1371)
“O Love, to whom I have and shall
Be humble subject, true in mine intent
As best I can, to you Lord give I all
For evermore, my heart’s lust to rend ..
(Troilus and Criseyde)
CHAPTER XIII
In the dusk of Saint John’s Day, June 24, 1371, three portly, middle-aged men enjoyed the freshening air in the cloisters of the Abbey of St. Andrew at Bordeaux, which was now the Duke’s royal palace. Two of the men were great lords of Guienne; one, Jean de Grailly, the powerful Captal of Buch, and the other, Sir Guichard D’Angle, who owned vast tracts in Saintonge and Angouleme. They were both tirelessly loyal to their English overlord and had resisted the blandishments of the French King, though many of their fellow nobles had not. The third man was the big English baron, Michael de la
Pole, whose taste for action had been well gratified since he chafed and cooled his heels while awaiting the Duke of Lancaster nineteen months ago in the Savoy.
“Fine stirring deeds of arms today at the jousting!” said de la Pole enthusiastically. “Our Duke covered himself with glory against the Sieur de Puissances, unhorsed him, pardieu!” The baron spoke in dogged Yorkshire French because it was more fluent than the Guienne lords’ English.
“Aha,” said the captal, belching pleasurably and rolling his tongue around a sip of wine, “he’s almost the knight his brother is.”
“Better, far betterl” cried de la Pole, instantly annoyed. This was an old argument. The captal and Sir Guichard had been the Prince of Wales’ men and though they had obediently transferred homage to Lancaster last January when the Duke took over Aquitaine from the sick and shattered Prince, de la Pole felt that they consistently underrated him.
“Sainte Vierge!” said the captal obstinately. “Lancaster can’t hold a candle to his father! Or his brother Edward, the Perfect Gentle Knight.”
“Perfect Gentle Knight be damned!” cried the baron, glaring. “Look at Limoges! Was that the action of a perfect knight? Women, children massacred without mercy while the Prince lay gloating on his litter - blood, screams, tortures - the whole town slaughtered, except the few our Duke saved. What sort of knight is that?”
Sir Guichard D’Angle interposed, sighing, “Some demon seized upon the Prince, his illness is destroying him.”
“And his line,” said the baron solemnly. The three men were silent, each thinking of the death of little Edward, the Prince’s oldest son, here last winter. After the aged King and ailing Prince of Wales, the heir now to the English throne was Richard, a child of four so fair and frail that he seemed made from gossamer.
“Lancaster is dangerously ambitious!” said the captal, following the natural train of thought. “I feel in him a ceaseless urge to rule, a lust for power greater even than the power he has - fires barely held in check-“
“Yet they are held in check,” cut in de la Pole. “I know him far better than you do. On his loyalty to his brother, ay, and his nephew, little Richard, I’d stake my life and soul.” He lowered his voice and, motioning the page to stand farther off, whispered behind his hand, “I believe ‘tis not the English throne he covets.”
“Ha-ha-ha!” Sir Guichard exploded into laughter half malicious, half indulgent. “Parbleu, man baron, do you think you tell us news! It was I planted it in his head, though the idea found fertile ground. He has thought much about Castile.”
“Has he then made formal suit to the Infanta?” said de la Pole, discomfited and a trifle hurt that the Duke had withheld his confidence.
“Nenni - I think not yet. Something seems to hold him back. A moody man and broods much, unless he’s fighting.”
“He needs a woman,” said the captal, shrugging his massive shoulders. He upended his gilt cup to let the last of the wine trickle down his throat. “Unhealthful to live like an anchorite, it must be months since that Norman whore went to his bedchamber at Cognac.”
“And came out again so soon, one wonders there was time for sport,” said Sir Guichard chuckling. “But soon he’ll have a woman in his bed. The exiled and penniless Costanza’ll not keep him waiting, once he asks her. ‘Tis the best marriage she could ever hope for. All very well to be rightful Queen of Castile, but reigning is another matter when the throne’s already filled. Our Duke will have a hard task to get himself upon it.”
“I think this marriage might be ill judged,” said the captal, shaking his head. “It will throw the weight of Castile definitely to France. Do you think the bastard King will do nothing to save his throne, when he hears the Duke’s plans? We’ve trouble enough holding Aquitaine as it is… . He’ll simply embroil England in yet another war.” He rose and hitched his gilt-bossed girdle below his vast belly. “But whatever we think, the Duke will do as he pleases. C’est un veritable Plantagenet”
On the second floor of the Abbey, John sat on a stool in the garderobe of his private apartments. He was naked, and Raulin was scrubbing off the sweat the grime from the tournament with a handful of lint dipped in hot rosewater. Nirac de Bayonne hovered near with a razor and basin, waiting to shave his master. By the door to the anteroom, Hankyn, the Duke’s chief minstrel, softly plucked a gittern while he sang a plaintive love tune from Provence.
John was tired, and he had twisted a muscle in his shoulder while steadying the heavy lance that had prised the Sieur de Puissances from his saddle. Nor had the shoulder quite recovered from the sword wound it had received at Limoges.
John shut his eyes and allowed his thoughts to drift. On this day his lieutenancy of Aquitaine was ended, he was no longer bound to sit upon the lid of the boiling cauldron his brother had abandoned to him; no longer bound to fight his brother’s battles at his own costs as he had been doing for months. Again, as always in this struggle with Charles the Fifth, there was a stalemate. There had been victories, there had been losses; the French king fought a war of niggling attrition that disgusted John.
But there was a bold and brilliant step awaiting. A glorious chivalric deed blessed by God and rewarded by a prize so dazzling that John’s scalp tingled and his mouth grew dry when he thought of it. Last night he had dreamed that he knelt in the cathedral at Burgos - the gleaming white limestone cathedral where he had given thanks for Najera and the birth of his son - and in the dream, he had felt the touch of the sacred oil as the archbishop anointed him and he had felt, vivid as in waking, the holy pressure of Castile’s golden crown.
I shall send Guichard d’Angle to the Infanta tomorrow, John thought, as he lifted his face that Nirac might shave him, and he said, “Nirac, when you were in Bayonne last month, you said you saw the Infanta Costanza at Mass? The rightful Queen of Castile, that is.”
“Si fait, mon duc, she was near to me as Hankyn there,” Nirac pointed to the minstrel.
“How did she look?” said John as though absently.
“Shabby, ‘er mantle was worn, ‘er shoes-“
“Not her clothes, dunderhead! Her person!”
“Boney,” said Nirac promptly, shaving the golden beard with deft strokes, “breasts flat as plates, white skin, black hair, long upper lip on a mout’ not made for smiling, nor, parbleu, for kissing. Castilian eyes - big, black, angry. She is tres devote, they say she wears hair shirts so she’ll not forget ‘er father. I think she may be a little mad. Her young sister Isabella is much prettier.”
The Duke frowned and Nirac, seeing he had made a mistake, added quickly, “But the Infanta Costanza is vairy young, scarce seventeen, she’ll improve sans doute, and I could not see clear, la cathedrale was dark.”
There was a long silence in the garderobe except for the tinkling of the gittern. John allowed himself to be dressed by Raulin, lifting his arms into the white silk shirt, stepping into the short linen braies to which the long skintight yellow hose were fastened with points. The topaz velvet tunic was dagged into leaflike curls at hem and sleeves and buttoned with pearls. When he was ready dressed, the squire and varlets stepped back expecting him to walk into the antechamber, where some of his gentlemen awaited to invest him with his ducal crown and the regalia of Aquitaine. But he shook his head and breaking the long silence said to Raulin, “Leave me, all of you - except Nirac.”
John walked to the open window and gazed out through the soft southern dusk across red-tiled roofs to the curving Garonne. The river shone like pewter in the twilight, and two English ships with pennants fluttering above the crow’s-nests were moving downstream, bound for home.
John watched the ships a moment and then he said, “Nirac!” The little Gascon was waiting, his bright lizard eyes on his master’s face. “Do you remember the Lady Swynford of Kettlethorpe?” said John, turning slightly from the window.
“Sainte Vierge! ‘Ow should I forget! Belle et gracieuse, la dame Catherine.” Nirac paused, then added, “I do not forget ‘er knight - th
at Swine-ford, either.”
John lowered his eyes and looked at Nirac as though he would rebuke this Impudence. But instead he said slowly, “Knolles makes good report of Swynford, he’s fought fiercely and been wounded twice.”
“But ‘e recovers, parbleu! Nirac did not add, What a pity! though his tone implied it, because he was puzzled by the Duke’s mention of a lady he had thought forgotten long ago, and mystified as to the tenor of these remarks; but yet he felt he need not hide his hatred of the Saxon knight who had so outrageously humiliated him at Kettlethorpe.
“Swynford arrived here at Bordeaux yesterday with the rest of Knolles’ disbanded company,” said the Duke. “He’s bedridden from a leg wound. I sent him Brother William to bleed him and apply poultices.”
The Duke’s own physician for this swine of a knight, thought Nirac, more than ever mystified since he knew that the Duke had not seen Swynford in all these months in Aquitaine. The knight had been attached to Knolles’ savage company up north where the fighting had been hardest, most vicious, most dangerous. As he thought this, a light flickered in Nirac’s mind, but he was not sure. He glanced quickly at the Duke, but the blue eyes were veiled.
“I am going to ask for the Queen of Castile in marriage - all will be quickly arranged thereafter,” said the Duke in the same remote voice. He raised his hand to quell Nirac’s burst of excitement. “It is proper that my royal duchess should be provided with English ladies here to attend on our marriage. I shall send off escort and messengers to summon them. You, Nirac, will return to Kettlethorpe and fetch my Lady Swynford.”
“Ah-ha?” said the little Gascon, somewhat enlightened, but still uncertain; for Raulin, of course, had never mentioned the episodes with Lady Swynford at the Savoy, and Nirac knew that four years had passed since the Duke had been to Kettlethorpe. But his master’s next word left no doubt. In an instant the austere control vanished from the sharp-etched handsome face, and John said passionately, as one who cannot help himself, “I must see her again before I marry.”
