by Anya Seton
So - thought Nirac - it is like that. But surely this desire was easily satisfied - and why then all this tohu-bohu about the husband? He saw from the softened look upon the Duke’s face that he might venture a question, and he said, “Mon due, then you will want to send Sir Hugh out of Bordeaux before she comes?”
John’s lips tightened, then he gave a half-angry laugh. “I fear she wouldn’t come unless it were to join her husband.”
“Merde! You mean she’s virtuous?” cried Nirac, astounded, and seeing assent in the Duke’s silence, understood at least that he had quite misread the situation when he had been at Kettlethorpe. “Oc,” he added thoughtfully, “she ‘as spirit and strength, cette belle petite dame - I saw it when I was there.”
John having once broken through the barrier he had erected against Katherine, now felt great desire to go on talking of her, and to question Nirac for any memories of her during those months the Gascon had spent at Kettlethorpe. Yet he resisted it. He was ashamed of his longing, ashamed that he had not forgotten her as he had willed himself to do and that the calculated slaking of his lust with two court ladies and the Norman whore had left him disgusted and uncured.
It angered him to suspect that she should disobey his summons - though rightly so, no doubt, considering what had passed between them - if he tried to bring her here solely under guise of serving his new Duchess. Swynford’s authority must be invoked as well. By humiliating subterfuge, Hugh must be made to summon Katherine himself, his wound would serve as excuse. But there’d be no trouble managing Hugh, thought John, he’d be pleased enough at the honour done his wife in the appointment to lady-in-waiting and pleased enough to see her too, God rot him.
And when Katherine came - what then?
John turned and slammed the shutter on the window so hard that Nirac, who had been watching him anxiously, jumped.
Well, when Katherine came and he saw her again, he would be cured. No woman on earth had the beauty and the appeal he had gradually endowed her with since she ran from him in the Avalon Chamber. Doubtless by now she had grown fat or scrawny, her peasant blood would tell as she grew older, the earthy vitality which had first offended him at Windsor would do so again, as crudeness always had offended him. He would see the blemishes - her rough chilblained hands, the black mole on her cheekbone, the breathless headlong way she sometimes talked, even the sudden quiet dignity that came to her in stress could be seen as a ridiculous pretension - in short, he would be cured.
“I’ll give you complete instructions tomorrow,” he said to Nirac and walked out of the garderobe to the chamber where his fidgeting retinue was waiting.
On the tenth of August the Grace a Dieu, four days out of Plymouth, ran into heavy seas past Finistere in Brittany, and the tricksy Biscayan winds hurled themselves at the little ship and threatened to blow her back to England. The master had been through worse weather on his many voyages between the home ports and Bordeaux, and after a few hearty curses he ordered the sail lowered and the sea anchor put out. He checked on the steersmen at the rudder, then retired to the castled poop with a keg of strong ale, prepared to ride out the storm until the Blessed Virgin should send them a north or westerly wind to blow them again in the right direction.
Though it might well be that St. James would take as much interest as the Blessed Mother in this voyage, since besides the party bound for Bordeaux at the Duke of Lancaster’s orders, there were ten pilgrims for the holy shrine of St. James of Compostela in Spain. These pilgrims had been stuffed in the hold with the freight and were constantly and abominably seasick, but their fares represented extra profit on the voyage and the Duke’s receiver at Bordeaux would be pleased.
In the wainscoted, tapestried cabin below the castled poop, the women were seasick too. The Princess Isabel de Coucy lay in the largest bunk and groaned, occasionally raising a saffron face to vomit into a silver basin held for her by one of her sniffling, retching women. Lady Scrope and Lady Roos of Hamlake lay together in another bunk and each time the Grace a Dieu wallowed and slid over a wave Lady Scrope clutched her companion and whispered wildly, “Blessed Jesus, save us, we shall all be drowned!” Lady Scrope was Lord de la Pole’s sister, but she was a timorous little wisp of a woman, quite unlike her brother.
For Katherine there was no bunk at all, she and a squire’s lady were assigned two pallets on the broad-beamed floor. Katherine was a little frightened by the storm, though it exhilarated her too, and she longed to be out on deck away from the stench of vomit and other odours resultant upon the day and night confinement of eight women in so small a room, but the captain had barred the door so that his valuable passengers might come to no harm by running about the heaving deck or tumbling overboard.
There being no help for it, Katherine lay as quietly as possible on her pallet. Her head was turned away from the unpleasant sights and sounds behind her and she braced herself as best she might against the ship’s rolling pitch. She had not been seasick in these days since leaving Plymouth, and she was not so now. This small superiority over the Princess Isabel gave her satisfaction. The Princess had been unremittingly patronising from the moment of their meeting at Plymouth Hoe, before they ascended the gang-plank into the Grace a Dieu.
The King’s daughter had been a spoiled beauty in her youth, famous for her caprices and wanton extravagance. Now at forty she was no longer a beauty, though she considered herself one. She was fat and moustached and dark, for she took after her mother Queen Philippa’s people. Isabel’s hair, though sedulously dyed with walnut juice and vinegar, had turned a streaky grizzled brown. And her cheeks, though rouged with cochineal, were mottled with liver spots. Katherine’s pity might well have been aroused had the Princess’ manner been pleasanter, for it was known to all on the ship that Isabel had seized avidly upon this opportunity to cross the sea so that she might try once again to find her runaway husband, the Lord Enguerrand of Coucy, who was many years her junior.
Isabel had twice before this tried to find him, in Flanders, and in Holland; but her elusive lord had always fled before she came. Now it was rumoured that he lived in Florence, and Isabel, in talking to Lady Roos in the cabin, was frank enough about her intentions. “Since I’m suffering this frightful voyage to please my brother of Lancaster and attend his wedding, I shall demand that he give me escort and safe conduct on my way to Italy later.” Though she spoke to Lady Roos, no one in the cabin could ever escape that loud penetrating voice, except now - thought Katherine gratefully - when it was diminished into groans.
An enormous wave hit the ship, which mounted, shivered and plunged with a shock that knocked Katherine against the bulwark. Lady Scrope screamed again, crying on St. Christopher, St. Botolph and the Blessed Virgin to save them, for the ship would surely sink.
Katherine thought it quite probable. She clutched her beads tight against her breast and tried to stem growing panic with Aves and Paternosters, while her thoughts beneath ran in confused images of home, especially of the day Nirac came with the puzzling letter from Hugh, dictated to a scrivener and summoning her to Bordeaux, “at the Duke’s command”. Her first feeling had been of anguished shock at the news of the Duke’s intended marriage. The violence of this feeling had distressed her deeply, for gradually throughout the placid days at Kettlethorpe, alone with her babies and Philippa, she had almost trained herself not to think of the Duke except as her feudal overlord whose bounty had much eased their life. The day after receipt of Hugh’s letter she had reasoned herself from that first anguish into resignation and relief. For now that the Duke was marrying the Queen of Castile, there could be nothing more between them, ever, and she need not fear that seeing him again might upset her hard-won equilibrium. Her second thoughts were of conscience-stricken concern for Hugh. Nirac was extremely uncommunicative about the extent of Hugh’s wounds or indeed on any matter pertaining to Bordeaux, so that she knew little beyond the sparsely worded letter.
But there was no question of her refusing to go. Philippa settled
that at once. Dual command from husband and Duke must be obeyed. Philippa had her own baby now, also a little Tom, and had been at Kettlethorpe so long that she felt she owned it. Chaucer, still coming and going on official business, was glad enough to leave her there.
So Katherine had set forth on her journey with Nirac, stopping two days in London with Hawise, whose Jack had returned from France and claimed her. The affection between the two women was even stronger than it had been before the months Hawise had spent at Ketdethorpe, and Hawise had shed many hearty tears at parting from Katherine. “Ay, my sweeting, God shield ye on this voyage - I’ll keep a candle burning to Saint Catherine for ye, night and day - I had a dream last night - nay, I’ll not say it - -would I could come wi’ ye, my dear lady.”
But here Jack Maudelyn had frowned very black and said his wife had had enough of strampaging about and must abide in London at her own hearthfire, and he muttered something more beneath his breath about the scurvy whims of lords and ladies. Jack was not the merry hobbledehoy he’d been five years ago on May Day. His years in the army had changed him, he had become rough-tongued and brutal, a malcontent, disinclined for steady work. Though he was a master weaver now, he had scant interest in his loom, but much in his guild privileges and he spoke often of the City’s rights, making angry allusions to “royal rogues and tyrants” who must be taught better if they dared to infringe on these rights.
Again the little ship quivered and plunged. The wind blew harder. The master abandoned his keg of ale and lost his fortitude, when he glimpsed through the driving rain squalls a dark mass of rock and tiny specks of moving light around its base. If that were the Isle d’ Ouessant and they were blown upon its shores, the bloodthirsty wreckers waiting on the beach would dispatch whatever souls the waves spared. And even if they escaped the island, the Grace a Dieu could not long survive this pounding. Her seams were parting, and the naked sweating men in the hold had shouted that the pump no longer kept down the rising water.
The master crossed himself and touched the wooden image of the Virgin that was carved on the mast, then, lurching and floundering through green water on the deck amidships, he unbarred the cabin door and stumbled in on a great blast of howling wind and rain. The women raised their heads, staring at him in terror, while the candles in the swaying horn lamps guttered, then flared up.
The master’s bearded cheeks were pale as the women’s as he said, “Noble ladies, we’re in great danger. I doubt we’ll outride this storm wi’out a miracle. Ye must pray and make vows.”
Lady Scrope screamed and wrung her hands. “Which saint,” she cried, “which saint will help?”
The master shook his head. “I know not. We mariners pray to the Blessed Virgin of the Sea - in the hold they pray to Saint James - mayhap your own patrons will intercede for you. But without a miracle we’re doomed.”
The women stared at him yet another moment, then the Princess Isabel pulled herself to her knees on her bunk crying wildly, “I vow my ruby girdle and my gold hanap to you, Saint Thomas a Becket, if you will save me, and I vow to Saint Peter that I’ll make pilgrimage to Rome as well.”
Katherine knelt with the rest, bracing herself between the thwart and a bolted-down chest. Through her mind like a shout ran passionate words: Don’t let me die, yet, don’t let me die, for I have never really lived! Quick as light she felt a fearing shame that she could have so wicked and untrue a thought at this moment when her soul was in peril, and she clasped her hands crying silently, Sweet Saint Catherine, save me! But her thoughts would not compress themselves into the vow. Candles, yes, and money, yes - but she felt that Saint Catherine would not save her just for these. For what, then? Suddenly in this moment of danger she saw into a dark corner of her heart she had kept hidden, and she made her vow.
The miracle was wrought, by which saint or all of them together there was no means of knowing, though the master gave credit to the Blessed Queen of the Sea. At any rate, just as dawn broke over the bleakly distant shore of Brittany, one of the mariners had seen a strange light in the sky and pinkish cloud beneath it shaped like a lily. This was a sign that their prayers were heard, for the wind died at once and they had drifted to the lee of the baleful little Isle d’ Ouessant, where the water was calmer, and yet the outgoing tide kept them off shore while they caulked their leaks and pumped the hold dry. On shore the frustrated wreckers danced and shook their fists at the ship, but they dared not try to board because of the cannon mounted on the decks and the archers who ranged themselves along the rail.
By noon a gentle wind had sprung up from the north, the Grace a Dieu’s great painted sail filled, and the ship resumed her course for Bordeaux.
Four days later, on the vigil of Our Lady’s Assumption, the Grace d Dieu sailed up the broad Gironde with the afternoon tide arid veered south into the narrower Garonne while the village church bells along the banks rang for the beginning of the festival. It seemed excessively hot to the Englishwomen, who were seated on deck beneath a striped canopy. They had never seen a sun so white and glaring, or river water so turbidly yellow, and even Princess Isabel’s insistent voice was stilled.
In anticipation of the landing at Bordeaux, all the ladies had dressed in their best; which entailed furs and velvets far too warm for the climate. Katherine’s best was of dark Lincoln green with a sideless apricot surcote trimmed with fox. The cauls which confined her hair on either side of her face were woven of gold thread, which deepened the tone of her glossy bronze hair as they accented the golden flecks in her grey eyes. She knew that no colours suited her quite so well as the richness of dark green and gold, and she was happy in the possession of becoming clothes, but she had, as always, little consciousness of the challenging quality of her beauty.
Now at twenty the last angles of extreme youth had softened into rounded bloom, and she moved with languorous grace. Her beauty had an exotic flavour far more vivid than when Geoffrey Chaucer had first sensed it at Windsor. It was this flavour that caused Princess Isabel’s angry whisper to Lady Roos, as she watched Katherine, who stood by the rail leaning her chin on her hand and gazing out at the strange white plaster houses, gilt crosses and red roofs of this new land.
“That woman’s no true-born of that herald de Roet! She’s some bastard he got on a Venetian strumpet - or mayhap Saracen. Look how she holds her hips!”
“To be sure,” said Lady Roos, striving to please, “and her teeth are most-un-English - so small and white.”
“Mouse teeth!” said the Princess, angrily pulling her lip down over her own teeth, of which several were missing.” ‘Tis not that I mean! But her effrontery - I shall tell my brother of Lancaster that I find her most unsuitable choice for a waiting-woman - though in fact I believe she’s invented that tale as excuse to worm her way over here, that and the pretty story of a wounded husband! I’ve seen a great deal of the world, and I can scent a designing woman quick as smell a dead rat in a wall, I can alway - s - ” The Princess’s suspicions were cut short by a rushing of mariners and archers to the starboard rail amidships and a chorus of halloos, while the watch in the crow’s-nest dipped the Lancaster pennant and raised it again on the mast.
The Princess heaved herself up from her chair and went to the rail. “Why, ‘tis John - come to meet me!” she said complacently, peering down at the approaching eight-oared galley. Her younger brother was standing in the prow, his tawny head brilliant and unmistakable in the sunlight.
Katherine had discovered this fact some five minutes earlier when the galley first glided in sight down the river, and the sudden violent constriction in her chest stopped her breath. Her first instinct was flight - down to the cabin. She controlled herself and remained where she was. Sooner or later this moment must be met, and she armoured herself with the certainty of his indifference to her.
The galley drew alongside and the Duke ascended the ladder, followed by the Lords de la Pole and Roos. The Duke jumped lightly on to the deck and smiled at the assembled mariners and archers.
Katherine, watching from above, saw Nirac dart out from the crowd of men and, kneeling, kiss his master’s hand. The Duke said something she could not hear but Nirac nodded and drew back with the others. Then the Duke came up the steps to the poop deck and walking to his seated sister, kissed her briefly on both cheeks, while the other ladies curtsied. There was a further flurry of greeting when the other gentleman clambered up. De la Pole greeted his sister, Lady Scrope, and Lord Roos his wife, while Katherine still stood rooted in the angle of the rail.
The Duke turned slowly, negligently, as though without intent until he saw Katherine. Across the heads of the fluttering, chattering ladies their eyes met in a long unsmiling look. She felt him willing her to come to him, and her lids dropped, but she did not move. After a moment he covered the space between them, and she curtsied again without speaking.
“I trust the voyage was not too disagreeable a one, my Lady Swynford,” he said coolly, but as she rose her eyes were on a level with his sunburned throat and there she saw a pulse beating with frantic speed.
“Not too disagreeable, Your Grace,” she said and rejoiced at the calm politeness of her tone. She felt the slight hush behind them and saw the Princess’ watchful stare; lifting her voice a trifle she added, “How does my husband? Have you heard, my lord?”
“Better, I believe,” John answered after a moment, “though still confined to his lodgings.”
Katherine again meeting his gaze saw the colour deepen beneath the tan of his cheeks. “I’m longing to see Hugh and care for him,” she said. “May Nirac guide me to Hugh’s lodging directly we disembark?”
A strange almost bewildered look tightened the muscles around his eyes, but before he answered a strident voice called imperiously, “John, come here! I’ve much to tell you - you’ve not heard yet the peril we were in on this wretched ship - the King’s Grace, our father, has sent special message - and how long are we to be kept sweltering here in this infernal heat?”
