by Anya Seton
“My lord!” cried the Grey Friar, “we must catch that man!” He kicked his mule and clattered past the astonished Duke, the two monks swivelled and, hiking up their robes, pelted as fast as their legs would take them towards Aldersgate. The clerk limped frantically behind, while his head jerked this way and that searching for cover.
The friar overtook the hobbling figure as it was about to dart into an alley, and swooping down with a long arm, collared a handful of cloth.
The Duke galloped up as the struggling clerk had nearly freed himself and, leaning from the saddle, grabbed the man’s wrist. “What’s this, Brother William?” cried the Duke with some amusement, his powerful grip tightening on the plunging wrist. “What games do we play with this wriggling little whelp? I never knew you so sportive.”
The friar had flung himself off his mule, and plunged his hand into the clerk’s sleeve. He brought out a roll of white parchment and squinted down quickly in the waning light.
“This is the man, my lord, who wrote the placard on Saint Paul’s door,” he cried.
The Duke started, his grip loosened, and the clerk, twisting suddenly free, would have made off but a score of retainers had come up, and he was surrounded. He stood still in the central gutter and pulled his hood down over his face.
“Bind him,” said the Duke in a deadly quiet voice. A squire jumped forward with a leather thong and tied the clerk’s wrists behind his back.
“Take him to my inn!” cried Lord Percy. “We’ll deal with him there.”
The clerk suddenly found his voice. “You can’t,” he shrilled. “You haf no right to touch me! I know my rights. I claim the City’s protection!”
“Hark at him!” roared Percy. “Hark who speaks to the Marshal of England. Take him, men!”
The clerk was picked up and rushed down the street to Percy’s gate. The Duke and Percy followed. The courtyard gate closed behind them. They dragged the clerk into the house and flung him down on the floor of the Hall. He hitched himself slowly to his knees, then to his feet. He stood swaying; his chin sunk on his chest, his bound hands opening and closing spasmodically behind his back.
The retainers of both lords crowded around, staring curiously, eager to inflict more punishment. As it was, blood dripped from the long ferrety nose, and a lump big as a chestnut rose from the bald spot on the tonsure.
“We’d best flog him, afore he’s put in the stocks,” said Percy with relish. “What’s he done, by the way?” He looked at the Duke, who was standing six feet from the clerk and regarding him fixedly.
The Duke held his hand towards the friar without answering, and Brother William gave over the large square of parchment.
“Bring me a light,” said the Duke. A varlet ran up with a torch. The rustlings and murmurings ceased, the Hall grew still while they watched the Duke read, until he raised his head and said, “This time it seems that I - John of Gaunt - for reason of my base birth am therefore without honour, so have made secret treaty with King Charles of France to sell him England.”
There were a few gasps, Percy’s red face grew redder, but nobody moved. The Duke took the torch from the varlet and bending down held it near to the prisoner.
“Let me see your face!”
The clerk’s knees began to quiver, he hunched his shoulders higher around his ears and the sound of his breath was like tearing silk.
The Duke knocked his head up with a blow of the fist beneath the chin and stared down by the torchlight. Suddenly he reached out and yanked the clerk’s collar from his stringy throat. A jagged white scar ran from the jaw to the Adam’s apple.
“And so it is you, Pieter Neumann,” said the Duke softly. He handed the torch back to the varlet. “You still bear the mark a boy made on you thirty years ago at Windsor.”
“I don’t know what you mean, Your Grace. I am Johan, Johan Prenting of Norvich. This scar is from a wound I got in France, I fought well in France for England, Your Grace. I know not what is on the parchment, it vas the monks at St. Bart’s wrote it. I’ve done no harm - -“
“He lies, my lord,” interrupted Brother William solemnly. “For I myself saw him writing on the parchment.”
“He lies - -” said the Duke. “As he always lied - lied - -” he repeated, but in the repetition of the word, the friar heard a wavering. He noted this with astonishment. What could it be that the Duke doubted, what uncertainty had caused that stumbling inflexion, and what earlier association could there have been between these two?
“We’ll hang him!” cried Lord Percy, who had finally comprehended the situation. “Haul him out to the courtyard!” Four of his men sprang forward.
“Wait - -” The Duke held up his hand. “Take him to some privy place, put him in the stocks. I would talk to him alone first.”
Percy’s men hustled the clerk through the kitchens and below stairs to the cellars, where in the darkness there was a small dungeon. The clerk’s wrists and ankles were clamped into the holes in the wooden stocks, and the men pulled savagely on his twisted leg to make it fit in the hole.
The Duke had followed them. He watched impassively while the prisoner groaned and cursed and tried to ease his dangling rump on the dungeon paving-stones. Then he said, “Leave a torch in the bracket and go.” Percy’s men obeyed. The Duke, clanging shut the iron door, leaned against the wall.
“You suffer now, Pieter Neumann,” he said, “but you will suffer far more than this before you die, if you don’t speak truth to me. Where have you been since that day at Windsor Castle when you did steal your mother’s purse and ran away?”
Pieter’s eyes slithered to a heap of rusty chains and fetters and he said sulkily, “In Flanders.”
“Where?”
“In Ghent jail and at the Abbaye de Saint Bavon vere you were born, Your Grace. The monks taught me to write.” A sly hope came to him as he noted a change in the Duke’s face when he mentioned the abbey. He rested his chin on the rough plank-top of the stocks and waited.
“What brought you to London?”
Pieter considered quickly. He had fled from Flanders after stealing a gold chalice from, the abbey church, landed off a fishing boat in Norfolk and made his way here, knowing there would be more scope for his talents. He had not been disappointed. “I longed to see England again,” he said, “the country vere my poor mother died - Isolda, who nursed you and loved you so, my lord,” he added in a sort of hissing whine.
The Duke’s breathing quickened, he bent over crying, “And who has paid you now to write these placards? Who?” He clutched the skinny shoulder, his fingers dug in until the bones crunched.
The clerk whimpered and twisted, finally gasped out, “Courtenay.”
The Duke straightened up. “By God,” he said softly under his breath. “Would even the Bishop of London stoop so low?”
“If you set me free, my lord, I could write another placard,” whispered Pieter. “I could say that after all you’re no changeling, that-” He broke off and screamed, “Ah - Your Grace
- haf mercy - nay, nay don’t!” Plain in the torchlight he had seen murder leap in the Duke’s eyes.
John folded his arms and leaned back against the dripping fetid wall stones. “Did you think that the King’s son would kill you as you hung there trussed like a fowl on a spit, my poor Pieter? Nay, ‘tis not so you shall die - though how you shall die I’ve not yet decided.” He smiled quietly and turned.
“Your Royal Grace, dear sweet lord, don’t leaf me hare like this, I - I’ll crawl on my hands and knees, I’ll kiss your feet, I’ll - -“
The Duke opened the iron door and going out into the cellar, banged the door behind him and shot the bolt. He walked down the passage between rows of piled wine casks until he reached the steps up to the kitchens. From there he could no longer hear the echo of Pieter’s hysterical screams.
Katherine and her companions duly arrived at the Savoy that afternoon. The bowing chamberlain met them in the Outer Ward and informed them that His Grace would not
be there this night, he was staying with the Lord of Northumberland in the City. The chamberlain had been given no special messages for either lady, and doubted whether His Grace would even return on the morrow, since it was known that he intended to sup in the City after the trial at St. Paul’s.
Philippa let out a long sigh of relief. No marriage talk for the present anyway.
But Katherine followed the chamberlain to the Monmouth Wing with a dragging step. If this banishment to a part of the Savoy so remote from him were truly a symbol of the way he wished it to be between them, why then had he summoned her here at all?
The next day she sent Hawise to fetch Robin from the squire’s dormitory and when he eagerly presented himself, she told him that she wished to attend the trial today in the cathedral and asked him to accompany her. She felt that she must see John again, no matter what the circumstances, and that then perhaps she would know what was amiss between them.
Hawise was grimly disapproving. “You’re full young and brash, m’lad, to have the care of our lady here, there’ll be a rough crowd jammed into Paul t’see the fun. Can you keep her from harm?”
“That I can, you old mulligrubber,” said Robin, chucking Hawise under the chin. “You know well,” he said, giving Katherine a soft yearning glance, “I’d give my life for her gladly, if ‘twere needed.”
“Humph,” said Hawise with an unwilling smile, “sheep’s eyes, calf talk - nay, lady dear, ye mustn’t wear that gown!”
Katherine, hardly listening to them, had pulled the gorgeous apricot velvet robes from her travelling coffer and was smoothing down the ermine bands. She looked up astonished, then flushed. She had been following instinct in planning to make herself beautiful, but she knew that Hawise was right.
“The old grey woolsey, and your plain russet mantle,” said Hawise with decision, lifting these garments from the coffer and shaking them out. ” ‘Twere best ye be not noticed, an’ ye must go.”
Katherine and Robin arrived early at St. Paul’s, but it was already jammed. The mayor and his aldermen, and their wives, filled the choir aisles; while packed around them stood members of the great guilds: the vinters, the goldsmiths, the mercers, the grocers, all recognisable by their banners.
The largest nave in England had St. Paul’s, but it would not hold all the Londoners who wished to see their bishop defy the Duke of Lancaster. Folk clambered on the tombs, they clung to the windowledges and the carved-stone traceries of the pillars, but still more kept pressing in.
Robin shoved and coaxed and threatened until he got Katherine nearer to the Lady Chapel. Here all the bishops were assembled around Sudbury, the gentle old Archbishop of Canterbury, who looked and doubtless felt distressed, for he was ever a man of peace. Robin put his hands around Katherine’s waist, and, blushing a little at this liberty, lifted her to a high perch between two iron bars of a chantry.
Katherine looked first towards Blanche’s tomb, and could see the brightly painted stone canopy and the wrought-iron grille that enclosed her chantry, but not the lovely alabaster face. Still she felt comforted by her nearness to Blanche.
They waited a long time, and the crowd grew restless. There were stampings of feet and impatient whistles, when high in the tower above them Paul’s great bell began to clang.
Katherine craned forward and saw William Courtenay. Bishop of London, appear majestically on the choir steps. He held his crosier at arm’s length to rest the tip on the tapestried carpet, and stood like a Roman general, awaiting the homage of a conquered people.
Then she heard shouts at the great door. Her head turned with a thousand other heads to look down the nave. She saw a stocky man in armour covered by a surcote embroidered with blue lions. He waved a white staff and shouted, “Get out o’ the way, you scurvy knaves.” His arms threshed like flails, and she saw him pound someone’s head.
“Who is it?” Katherine whispered.
Robin, standing on tiptoe, answered, “Percy, with his marshal’s staff. The people won’t give way for him.”
The Bishop of London descended the choir steps and called out angrily to Percy, “What entrance is this you make into the House of God! Throw down your staff or by St. Paul himself I’ll have you thrown out!”
Katherine did not hear the answer, for behind Percy and topping him by a foot, she saw John. The Duke stood where a ray of amber sunlight streamed through the painted glass of the western window on to his head. The blue and red velvet of his sleeves, the three ermine tabs on his chest, the lilies and leopards of his surcote, the gold of his coronet all glowed in a soft yellow nimbus, while his face seemed to shine. Humility struck Katherine, even shame that she had dared to expect love from such a man as this.
But then the Duke strode forward, pushing past Percy, and hurried to the choir steps. She could hear nothing that was said, but she saw that he shouted something to the bishop, who shouted back, and that there was great wrath between them.
The Duke plunged again amongst the muttering people and led forward Wyclif and four friars. The priest walked sturdily with downcast eyes and the crowd fell back, for many of them had listened to him preach and many admired him. It was not Wyclif that they feared.
Wyclif entered the Lady Chapel and the people surged forward again. They climbed up on to each other’s shoulders so as to see. Katherine’s view was blocked but not her knowledge of what was taking place, for those in front called back to others and murmurs blew like wind throughout the church. “The Duke demands a seat for Wyclif! Our bishop will not allow it!” - “Now Percy shakes his fist in the bishop’s face” - “The Archbishop seems to plead and try to calm them but no one listens” - “Now by God’s body - Lancaster-“
“Oh, what’s happening?” cried Katherine in an agony. She heard nothing but “Lancaster” as a sullen roar like mounting surf beat to the vaulting of the church.
Robin cried, “I cannot tell. Sweet lady, I must get you out from here-” But he saw no way to move her through the throng.
A great fellow in a leather jerkin called out, “The Duke threatens our bishop - Jesu, he’s drawn his sword - Lancaster would kill - -“
“Kill - kill - kill-” Like the senseless repetitions of a nightmare, a thousand voices bawled the word. There was a sharp crack of wood from the rood screen as the mob heaved against it. The tapers rocked in their holders. A woman screamed.
“Quick!” cried Robin, “we’ll try for that door.” He scooped Katherine off her perch and holding her tight in his left arm edged backward along the wall to a small recessed door. Sweat broke out on his forehead when he found that it was open. He pushed Katherine through. They were in the cloisters. From there a gate led to the churchyard and through the gravestones on to Watling Street.
Katherine had obeyed her squire blindly, so frightened by that roaring mob that she could not think. But in the street she clutched Robin’s arm and cried, “What will happen to him? Jesu, we can’t leave here like this.”
“No harm can befall our Duke,” cried Robin fiercely, wiping his forehead on his sleeve. “I must get you to safety - ‘twere madness to stay in there, ‘twould do no good-“
“Yes, yes,” she cried, “then take me to the Pessoners in Billingsgate - ‘tis near. Hurry, Robin, hurry - so you may go back - -“
He nodded instantly and they ran together through the streets towards the Bridge until they came to the fishmonger’s half-timbered house on Thames Street.
“Lady Katherine!” cried Dame Emma in amazement as she opened to their frantic knocks.
“Let me stay here,” panted Katherine. “Robin, run back and see - then tell me-” She sank on to the settle by the bright fire and struggled to catch her breath.
Dame Emma was alone, the children were working on the fish wharf, the maids all in the brewhouse grinding malt. The dame let Katherine recover on the settle while she went to the still-room for a bunch of dried sage, prime remedy for nervous upsets. When the brew was cool enough, she brought it to Katherine and made her drin
k it with the same kind firmness that Hawise had inherited.
“Cock’s bones, m’lady, what’s ado?” she said then, her smile as warming as her applewood fire. “Is’t some trouble at Paul’s?” she added, and her smile faded, for her husband Guy, and Jack Maudelyn too, had gone to see the trial.
Katherine explained quickly and Dame Emma shook her head. “There’ll be cracked pates and brasted bones if no worse, the City’s been heaving like a pot o’ porridge these past months. This’ll boil it over. I pray me goodman keeps his wits, though I’ve scant hope o’ Hawise’s Jack - sore as a bear on a chain is Jack.”
Katherine did not answer; she twisted her hands together and looked continually towards the window hoping for Robin’s return. She sipped the sage brew, she wandered about the cheerful low-ceilinged room, presently she sat down by Dame Emma and despite the good dame’s protests helped her with the cracking and picking out of hazel nuts. Dame Emma thought how those white soft hands had once been rough and red with chilblains, and of the frightened fifteen-year-old bride who had so touched her heart and Hawise’s.
“Lady Katherine, how does my wench?” she asked suddenly. “Does she serve you well?”
“Oh, Dame Emma, I cannot tell you how well! She’s my sister, my friend - indeed I - I-” Her eyes, though shadowed by worry, shone with wistful gratitude.
Katherine threw down the cracker and pick amongst the tray of rattling nuts and wandering to the window peered out again. “Robin’s coming, he’s past St. Magnus’ church!” She opened the door and flew out to the street.
