Katherine

by Anya Seton

  “By corpus, he looks like a maid,” cried the irrepressible Elizabeth, examining her cousin critically. “I trust he’ll cease to be such a mollycoddle, now he’s King!” She had scant use for Richard, who was poor at games, liked only to mess about with little paint pots or to read, and clung to his mother’s skirt when teased.

  “Tomorrow he will be God’s anointed,” said Philippa severely, frowning at her sister. “You must not speak like that of the King’s Grace.”

  Elizabeth subsided, faintly awed, so that Katherine could give her whole attention to the group of lads that followed Richard on foot. She singled Tom out first and showed him to Blanchette, aware that the child had drawn back and ceased to look at the procession as the Duke rode by. “Look, sweet,” she said taking her daughter’s hand, “how bravely our Tom marches with all the young lords.” And how much he looks like Hugh, she thought with a pang. The dusty-looking crinkled cap of hair, the square Saxon face, the forthright stride - these were all from Hugh, so was the boarhead-crested dagger that dangled on his hip. The Duke had given him a far handsomer dagger, but Tom obstinately preferred his father’s.

  “He’s m-much t-taller than L-lord Henry, though he’s younger,” said Blanchette. Katherine squeezed the passive little hand and agreed, but she sighed. Blanchette’s pride in her brother was natural enough, yet this remark, like nearly everything Blanchette said, showed her animosity to the Duke and all who belonged to him. Well, she would have to get over it, thought Katherine with sudden impatience.

  The two Hollands came cantering up at the tail of the procession, waving their great swords and crying to the people to stand back and wait until the King had passed the cathedral before they rushed to the wine fountains. These two young men were the Princess Joan’s sons by her first husband and, beloved as Joan was, no one felt that they did her much credit, except apparently Elizabeth, who had recovered from Philippa’s reproof and pointing at the younger Holland, John, said, “There’s a comely lusty-looking man! ‘Tis Jock Holland. He picked up my glove when I dropped it t’other day at Westminster. Nan Quilter,” she added admiringly, “says he has more paramours than any other man in London.”

  “Elizabeth, you’re disgusting!” cried Philippa. “Must she for ever tattle servants’ gossip, Lady Katherine? You must find some way to refine her tastes.”

  Before Katherine could speak, Elizabeth tossed her dark curls and said, “In truth, ‘tis not my lady here should chide me that I speak of paramours.”

  Katherine felt herself go crimson and heard a little gasp from Blanchette.

  “This is not the moment to discuss your rudeness, Elizabeth,” Katherine said, mastering her voice with difficulty, “but I must remind you that whatever your opinions may be, your father’s grace has put you in my charge.”

  Elizabeth flounced, but she looked down and began to twiddle with a loosened pearl on her bodice.

  Philippa put her hand on Katherine’s knee, shook her head and said gently, “I ask pardon for my sister.” Her pale eyes rested on Katherine with sorrowful affection.

  “God’s blood, what a fuss about naught!” cried Elizabeth suddenly giggling. “I meant nothing.” She looked up through her lashes at Katherine.” ‘Tis too joyous a day for long faces,” she said coaxingly. “Oh, my dear lady - please - mayn’t we buy some of those comfits?” Elizabeth’s giddy eye had caught sight of a sweets vendor who was pushing through the crowd.

  Katherine silently drew some silver from her purse and gave it to the page, who darted after the vendor. Elizabeth had been insolent certainly, yet bitter it was for Katherine to realise that she could hardly be punished for stating a simple truth.

  But what of Blanchette? Could she at ten know the meaning of “paramour”? Or had she gasped only because she saw that in some way Elizabeth was attacking her mother?

  Katherine looked down with an aching tenderness at the little head with its silken crop of flaming curls and was dismayed to see that the round chin was trembling. “Here, darling,” said Katherine brightly, taking a sweet from the plate the page proffered, “you love marchpane. Look - ‘tis made like a perfect little crown in honour of the day.”

  “I c-can’t, Mamma,” said Blanchette shrinking. “I feel sick.” She clapped her hand over her mouth. Katherine jumped up and putting her arm around the child rushed her down off the stand to a street gutter.

  Poor lamb, thought Katherine, holding the clammy little forehead. It was the heat and excitement. Hawise must make a wormwood physic for her when they got back to the Savoy, and Katherine would make time somehow to pet the child and sing her to sleep.

  Even the Duke’s influence was not sufficient to procure for Katherine a good view of the actual coronation ceremonies in the Abbey. As High Seneschal of England he had been ruling on hereditary claims and matters of precedence for days, and therefore honour demanded that he show no favouritism. Katherine was accordingly jammed into a section half-way down the nave amongst other wives and widows of obscure knights.

  Her pregnancy was not yet obvious when she hid her slightly thickened waist under a green silk mantle as she had today, but hours of standing or kneeling were an ordeal, and she would have begged leave to miss the ceremony, except that the Duke wished her to be there, and wanted her to share with him, no matter how imperfectly, in this tremendously moving occasion.

  But there was another reason besides her condition which had made her reluctant. At the margin of the sanctuary dais, on a gilt carved and velvet throne as splendid as the Princess Joan’s, sat the Duchess of Lancaster, holding, by right of her claim to the kingdom of Castile, a small lion-headed sceptre.

  The Duchess had duly arrived at the Savoy last night, Katherine having retired some days past to the Monmouth Wing with her children. John had spent the night at Westminster Palace with Richard so that Katherine had not had the anguish of the thought of him with Costanza. A humiliating anguish which she each time believed to be conquered. She knew that there was no love between them and that whatever union they had resulted from a sense of duty. And yet—

  Today in her coronation robes, a sparkle of jewelled crimson and ermine, the Duchess was a handsome woman. At this distance, anyway, she seemed imbued with a dark slender majesty that dominated the other royal wives, and even the Princess, who appeared to be an enormous mound of periwinkle blue surmounted by an orange blob of hair. Katherine closed her eyes and leaned her aching back against a pillar.

  Outside to the sound of trumpets and tabors, the solemn processional wound its way from Westminster Palace to the north door of the Abbey along a carpet of striped red worsted. The Duke carried the great blunted sword of mercy, Curtana, and behind him, his enemy, the Earl of March, whose baby son was Richard’s heir, carried the sword of state. The bitterness between March and the Duke was abeyant just now, like other enmities, and John had gone out of his way to conciliate the nervous, spiteful little earl The Earl of Warwick followed with the third sword; Edmund of Langley and Thomas of Woodstock carried the orb and sceptre.

  Over Richard’s bare head, the barons of the Cinque Ports, by ancient right, upheld a cloth-of-gold baldaquin supported by four silver poles. After them came old Sudbury, the Archbishop of Canterbury, his wrinkled face working with emotion, his blue-veined hands trembling on his crosier - and after him the bishops and the abbots and priors and monks.

  As they entered the Abbey and Richard was placed on a platform half-way between the choir and the High Altar, the clergy burst forth in a great anthem, “Firmetur Manus Tua.”

  Katherine’s eyes filled, the people around her wept as the glorious singing mingled with the exultant organ and the Abbey was awash with beauty of sound, enclosed by the beauty of stone.

  She could see very little of what took place, but in the suddenly tense, quiet church she heard a quavering boy’s voice repeat the coronation oath and when the archbishop turned to the people and asked if they would have and hold Prince Richard for their King, she cried joyously with the thous
and other voices, “Ay, we will have him!” while her spine tingled.

  The ceremony progressed: the Veni Creator, the Litany, the Collects. Then the King was anointed with the holy oil and invested with all the ceremonial robes and the regalia. Finally he was crowned and installed upon his throne. The archbishop commenced the Enthronement Mass, and first of all Richard’s subjects, the Duke of Lancaster knelt before the child to do him homage.

  Richard’s reign started with bright promise. Only the most superstitious thought ill-omened two small occurrences.

  The little boy drooped and had gone very pale when the Mass and homage were at last over and he walked down the transept to quit the Abbey. He swayed giddily as he stepped into the North Porch. His old tutor, Sir Simon Burley, was watching. He swooped the child up in his arms and ran with him towards the Hall, where Richard still must endure the banquet. When Burley lifted him, one of the King’s red-velvet consecrated slippers flew off and must have been seized by some knave in the watching crowd, for it was never seen again.

  So soon had Richard lost a part of his kinghood.

  And at the banquet in Westminster Hall, the child complained that his head ached dreadfully from the weight of the crown. His cousin Henry sat opposite him in his father’s place, since the Duke and other lords were riding their horses up and down the Great Hall, keeping order.

  “Feel the thing, Henry,” said Richard, pushing at his crown. ” ‘Tis heavier than an iron helm.”

  Henry curiously reached his stubby little hands across the board to try the crown’s weight, but the Earl of March intervened violently and snatched the crown from Richard. “I will hold it for Your Grace,” said the Earl, “so that you may eat in comfort.”

  Henry shrugged and returned to his roast peacock, of which he was very fond. This pother about the crown seemed to him silly, and Richard was always whining about something, anyway. Henry wondered if he could get Tom Mowbray off in a corner for a wrestling match pretty soon, and then remembered that he couldn’t.

  Richard was going to make Tom Earl of Nottingham after the banquet, and make a lot of other new earls too. Lord Percy would turn into Northumberland, Uncle Thomas of Woodstock was finally going to get a title of his own and turn into Buckingham. The old King hadn’t cared much for his youngest son and had done mighty little for him, not even a title. But small wonder, thought Henry, Uncle Tom’s a mump.

  In a tapestry-hung gallery at the far end of the Great Hall, the Princess Joan ate with the royal ladies and a few selected peeresses. She had soon given up making conversation with the Castilian Duchess, who responded in polite monosyllables while pecking at her food and sipping her wine with what the Princess, who adored eating, considered maddening affectation.

  Joan was therefore thunderstruck when the Duchess lifted her head and, turning her huge black eyes, said sombrely, “LaSweenford, es vero que - zat she is wiz child again?”

  Joan for all her experience did not know how to take this, and her instinct was to protect Katherine. She answered, “Why - I know nothing about it, Duchess.” Though she did.

  Costanza gave the Princess a shrewd stare from under her thick white fids. Beneath the ermine cape her thin shoulders sketched a shrug. “I do not inquietarme about hees - bastardos,” she said, “except - -” She stopped, obviously searching for words, and the Princess, embarrassed but curious, suggested that French might be easier.

  Costanza’s eyes flashed. It was the perfidious French who had been supporting the usurper Trastamare on the throne. She never spoke French.

  She continued frigidly, “La Sweenford she make heem - el duque - soft. He forget - Castile!”

  And a very good thing too, thought the Princess, who began to get the drift of this, as Costanza’s dark glance moved down the Hall and rested on Richard’s little golden head. Joan had no intention of using her new influence to take up the cudgels for Castile. The French depredations in Sussex were quite enough worry. So she ignored Costanza’s real meaning and said with her charming sunny smile, “Oh, I don’t believe the Duke has grown soft, in any way. On the contrary, I think he’s showing great wisdom lately. We must straighten out the tangles in our own land first, don’t you think?”

  Costanza understood enough to realise that here was not the ally she had hoped for; a curious blankness like a mist obscured her brilliant eyes. Her lips quivered, and she muttered passionately in Spanish, “Why will not God let me bear a son?” She clutched at the reliquary on her chest.

  Joan was not introspective, or given to moral judgements, and her own youth had contained a decidedly questionable love escapade. But it did occur to her that whether Costanza really minded or not, she was being increasingly wronged by this flagrant affair of John’s with Katherine, and that probably the Duchess suffered more than her colossal pride would let her admit. Joan’s facile fondness for Katherine slipped a little.

  Spurred by her ever-alert watchfulness for Richard’s safety, she viewed John’s liaison with sudden alarm. Look how the old King’s prestige had waned because of Alice Perrers, how the Commons had almost lost reverence for royalty and actually rebelled against the crown.

  In truth it would be wiser for John to be more discreet in regard to Lady Swynford. Not cast her off, of course, no need for that. He could send her to one of his northern castles, Knaresborough, Pickering, or better yet, to Dunstanburgh on the Scottish border. There people would forget her and he could visit her in secret.

  Joan decided to take up this matter tactfully in a day or so when she had no doubt that John would soon see the wisdom of her advice.

  She was destined to be completely disappointed.

  Part Five (1381)

  “Forth, pilgrim, forth! Forth beast out of thy stall!

  Know thy country, look up, thank God for all;

  Hold the highway, and let thy soul thee lead;

  And truth thee shall deliver, it is no dread.”

  (Ballade de Bon Conseil)

  CHAPTER XXII

  It snowed softly in Leicester on Christmas Day of the year 1380, and to the hundreds of guests sheltered at the castle and the Abbey of St. Mary-in-the-Meadows, and in other foundations and lodgings throughout the town, the pure white drifts were good omen for young Henry of Bolingbroke’s wedding to little Mary de Bohun.

  Of all the Duke’s country castles since he had abandoned Bolingbroke, Kenilworth and Leicester were his favourites, and the latter was the more fitting for the marriage of the Lancastrian heir.

  The Duchess Blanche had been born here and her father, the noble Duke Henry, was buried here in the beautiful Church of the Newarke which he himself had built to enshrine his most treasured relic, a thorn from Christ’s crown of martyrdom.

  This joint celebration of Christmastide and a wedding had tuned Leicester to feverish pitch. Each night mummers came to the castle dressed as bears and devils and green men, to scamper on their hobby-horses through the Great Hall. And each night a fresh boar’s head was borne in to the feasting and greeted by its own carol, “Caput Apri Defero.”

  And this Christmastide was a feast of light and music. Scented yule candles burned all night, while the streets of Leicester were extravagantly lit by torches that cast their rosy flames on the snow. The waits sang “Here We Come a-Wassailing” in the courtyards, the monks chanted “Veni Emmanuel” in the churches, and in the castle gallery the Duke’s minstrels played carols without ceasing.

  On the night of the wedding there was a riotous banquet in the castle hall. Katherine’s sides ached from laughing at the Lord of Misrule, who was dressed in a fool’s costume, a-jingle with tiny bells, and wore a tinsel crown on his head to show that he was king and must be obeyed. The Lord of Misrule had been chosen by lot, and happened to be Robin Beyyill, though one soon forgot that, because he was masked. Robin’s nimble brain thought of many a comical jape, and he won laughter even from the frightened little bride when he seized a peacock feather in lieu of sword and solemnly knighted Jupiter, the Duke’s oldest
hound.

  Katherine sat beside the Duke, but they were not in their usual seats of honour, for those were given to the bride and groom - and Richard.

  The King and many of his meinie, including his beloved Robert de Vere, had come to Leicester for his cousin’s wedding, though not his mother, the Princess Joan. Joan sent polite messages to Katherine occasionally but they had not met since the coronation. To this wedding invitation Joan had answered that her aching joints and swollen leg veins confined her to Westminster. This avoidance had hurt Katherine for a while, and then she accepted it, with a certain defiance. The Duke had told her of the Princess’ request that he hide Katherine away in one of the northern castles and of his indignant repudiation of the idea, adding with tenderness, “It seems Joan has forgot what love is, sweet heart, or she couldn’t suggest such a thing.”

  In fact, Joan’s intervention had but increased his ardour, and far from hiding Katherine during these three and a half years, he had taken her with him on all his journeys throughout England. The constables of his Yorkshire castles, Pickering, Knaresborough and the gloomy Pontefract, of the High Peak in Derbyshire, of Newcastle-under-Lyme and Tutbury in Staffordshire, as well as of Kenilworth and Leicester, had grown accustomed to receiving Lady Swynford in the Duchess’ place.

  Nor during that time did these constables ever see the Castilian Duchess. She remained at Hertford in retirement. Rumour said that she was sickly, a little crazed. Certain it was that she bore no more children - which could not be said of Lady Swynford. There were four Beaufort bastards now, the last, a year-old girl, christened Joan for her father. The Duke appeared to dote on all these babies as wholeheartedly as though they had been fair-born.

  The three little Beaufort boys, John, Harry and Thomas, squatted now on stools by their parents’ knees, gaping at the antics of their elders, while the Duke caressed the curly yellow head of his namesake and asked Katherine some laughing question with all the fond domesticity of a contented husband.