Katherine

by Anya Seton

  “You didn’t know! Nor did the Duke, who cast his poor tool aside when it had blindly committed the foulest of all crimes for him. But can you take this crucifix and kiss it, while swearing that you did not long for your husband’s death? Nor rejoicing in your secret heart when it had happened? Can you’”

  She did not move.

  The friar’s body blotted out a burst of sunlight through the window behind. He held the crucifix towards her with a shaking hand. Dark and terrible as a wall painting of God’s judgment wrath he stood over her, then another shudder seized him. The crucifix rattled down the length of its beads beside the knotted scourge.

  He slumped forward and stumbled to the ivory prie-dieu. He knelt on the white satin cushion which crimsoned with a spreading stain. He clasped his hands together, and raising his face to the golden images of Christ and St. John the Baptist in the niche above, he began to chant, “Ostende nobis, Domine, misericordiam tuam - -“

  Katherine sank slowly to her knees beside the bedpost. Her wide straining eyes fixed themselves on the round white disc of the friar’s tonsure; her lips moved in mindless echo of his prayers.

  Blanchette was huddled in the chair, her face sunk on her breast. She did not stir, she made no sound, but deep in her brain a voice cried on two notes senselessly like the cuckoo. It said, “Murder - murder - murder,” and sometimes it changed its cry and said, “She gave poison to your father - father - father.”

  Below in the Outer Ward the Kentish rebels had arrived with Wat the tiler at their head, though the exhausted priest John Ball remained behind in a friendly alderman’s house to regain his forces. Wat saw by the raised portcullis and the swarming figures near the chancery building and the Great Hall that his men had been forestalled. ‘

  But he cared little for that, the more there were to help, the quicker would be the act of vengeance and destruction. He knew by now that the Duke had escaped them, but they would wreak what vengeance they could on his possessions, as they had on those of other traitors.

  Already on the way here they had torn open the Fleet prison. And they had fired the Temple, burning the legal roles and records on which the cursed ink strokes gave leave to strangle all the rights of common man. A detachment of Wat’s force remained there now to watch the razing of the Inns of Court, to see that no vestige remained of that Temple of Iniquity.

  Here at the Savoy, Wat saw that his predecessors had achieved but little yet. The Essex peasants had broken into the famous cellars and broached the vintage tons and vats. They gulped and sloshed the wine, wandering stupidly and singing, bemused by the feel of this rich liquid in their gullets that had never known anything but small ale.

  Wat took command at once. Some of the Londoners still pounded at the ironbound Treasure Chamber door. Wat and his men added their strength to the timber battering-ram, until the hinges burst, and they were free of Lancaster’s treasure. They dragged out coffers full of gold and silver and piled them unopened in the Great Hall. They took the coronets, the jewelled chains, the diamond-crusted scabbards and broke them up in the courtyard, then ground the jewels to powder beneath great paving-stones.

  “We be not thieves!” roared Wat, as he spied a lad who stuffed a silver goblet in his jerkin. He killed the lad with a thrust of his sword and threw the goblet on the mangled pile that grew in the centre of the Great Hall. Some of them, as the frenzy grew, ran into the gardens trampling on the flowers, uprooting the rose bushes. The place was accursed, no part of it should remain.

  When Wat seized a torch and set fire to the Hall, they roared with joy. It burned but slowly at first, and they threw in the records of the chancery and pieces of furniture that they brought from more distant rooms. They scattered to the outer buildings. Someone fired the Monmouth Wing, another threw his flaming torch into the Beaufort Tower.

  They turned to the Duke’s privy suite. They had left it to the last for it was nearer to the Outer Ward and gate where they must leave in safety themselves. The fires smouldered behind them, licking at the massive timbers of the floors and vaultings, daunted for a while by thickness of stone wall and coldness of tile.

  Wat stayed by the Great Hall to see to the burning of its massed treasure.

  It was a slobbering whey-faced Londoner who led a band up the great State Staircase. A weaver by the badge of trade on his arm, his nose was smashed, his jaw had been knocked awry and stuck out comically beneath his left ear, so that they could understand little of his furious gabbling; but they followed him gladly for he seemed to know the way.

  A short and meagre little man in tattered leather jerkin went in this band too, his flaxen poll was matted thick with sweat and dirt. A branded F was on his cheek, half-hidden by grime. He was one of the outlaws who had crept down from the north and joined the Essex men.

  They swarmed up to the Presence Chamber, hacked at the furnishings, flung silver sconces and candlesticks out of the window. They found the Duke’s garderobe where some of his surcotes hung from the perches. Jack Maudelyn grabbed one down, a cloth-of-gold cote, emblazoned with the Duke’s arms. They stuffed it out with folded cloths, they set it on the Duke’s throne in the Presence Chamber, and put a silver basin, on its head for a crown. They fired arrows at it, they spat on it. They shouted that here was a fine king called John. The weaver danced and jibbered round the effigy, and the little outlaw from the north emitted a burst of shrill excited laughter.

  Tiring of that, they slashed the surcote into shreds and stuffed the tatters down the open hole of the latrine, where they fell into the Thames below.

  And still Jack urged them on with gestures. They swarmed down a passage past a shut door to a suite of empty rooms where they destroyed the furnishings, but the weaver was not satisfied, he pointed back and made them see that they must get inside the shut door they had passed.

  They began to batter at the door, but they had scant room to exert leverage in the passage and the door held firm. The weaver beckoned again and they ran into the Duchess’ bower and heaved against the small door with the massive headboard of the bed.

  Inside the Avalon Chamber, the friar prayed on, through the pounding and the shouts outside the doors, but Katherine rose from her knees, pulling herself up by the bed curtains. She saw the little door begin to give and that the table that was shoved against it, quivered.

  She walked to Blanchette and put her arm around the huddled shoulders. “Don’t be afraid, darling,” she whispered. Blanchette started and recoiled. She twisted out from under her mother’s arm and sprang back, in her eyes there was a look that caused Katherine to cry out in anguish.

  The table rocked and slid. The small door burst open and a huge red-bearded Kentish peasant stepped in first, brandishing a sickle, which he lowered in confusion when he saw the two women and a praying friar. “Cock’s bones,” he muttered, but the other men shoved past him, Jack and the outlaw and twenty more.

  The friar heaved himself to his feet, and grabbing the pike he had taken from the weaver, he backed tottering against the fireplace.

  “Kill! Kill!” Jack screamed in a voice they all understood. He rushed forward with his sword. The friar parried the thrust feebly with the pike, which dropped from his hand. Jack raised his sword again, and the friar stood motionless. He looked past the weaver.

  “God in his mercy help you Katherine!” he cried.

  The sword swished like the spitting of a cat, came down with a dull thud. Blood and brains spurted high, then spattered on the marble and on Blanchette’s skirt. The friar gasped once, fell down upon the tiles, and was still.

  Again Jack lifted his sword; this Lancastrian friar’s head would be carried on a pike to London Bridge with those of the other traitors. The men had held back watching silently, but now the outlaw ran forward and held Jack’s arm. “Not in here,” he said, “not afore them” He jerked his chin towards Katherine and Blanchette, who stood transfixed against the wall on either side of the fireplace.

  Jack furiously shrugged off the restra
ining hand, but the huge red-bearded peasant seized the friar’s feet, the outlaw shot back the bolts on the big door, and they dragged Brother William’s body out into the passage.

  Katherine did not look at what they dragged, she gazed at the flaxen-polled little outlaw. ‘Tis Cob o’ Fenton, she thought, my runaway serf. Soon he’ll kill us too if Jack Maudelyn does not first. It seemed to her strange that Cob should be there, when she had last seen him in the village stocks at Kettlethorpe. It seemed to her almost ludicrous - cause for gigantic laughter. She felt the laughter swelling, choking in her chest. It rose into her mouth and she leaned over and vomited.

  The men cast sideways glances at the two women but did not molest them. They set to work, running around the room, flinging open the hutches and cupboards, following the system which they had used in all the other buildings. They found the saints’ figurines, and the lute and the gittern and game boards, and cast them into the river. They found the two hanaps,

  Blanchette’s and Joli-coeur. They shattered them with axes. Joli-coeur’s crystal splinters gleamed like diamonds in the pool of jellied blood on the hearth, its garnet heart rolled loose into a comer.

  Some chopped up the sandalwood chairs, some the gilded table. The ivory prie-dieu gave them more trouble, but they wrenched it apart and piled it in the centre of the floor with the rugs and the ruby velvet bed hangings and the wooden portions of the bed. They pulled down the Avalon tapestry and hacked it into strips for easier burning.

  Soon the bearded Kentish peasant came back into the room with Cob, leaving Jack in the passage to finish with Brother William’s body, The man from Kent seized the pike the friar had tried to use and amused himself with shattering each of the tinted windowpanes, one after the other, proudly counting as he did so, “Oon, twa, tree, four - -” He had learned no higher than ten, so he started over again.

  He had still two panes left when they heard the shouts of their leader from the passage and Wat Tyler strode into the chamber crying “Come, lads, come. Get on wi’ it. What’s keeping ye so long?” The acrid smell of smoke came with him, charred grey flakes had floated from the fires and settled on his sweat-stained jerkin.

  Jack Maudelyn slithered in behind the tiler, mumbling something through his broken jaw. He pointed to Katherine.

  “Women?” said the tiler scowling. “What do they here? Who are they?” Not servants by their clothes, he thought, nor noble ladies neither.

  Jack’s uncouth noises rose to frenzy as he tried to tell who they were. “Kill - -” he gobbled again and he raised his sword.

  “Nay, weaver - by the rood - ye’ve gone daft!” Wat gave him a great shove that sent him spinning. “I carina get a word this broke-jaw says.”

  “Who are ye then?” He turned impatiently to Katherine. The fires were catching fast in the buildings behind them, they must finish this business up, then on to Westminster, and after, hurry back to their camp by the Tower, where surely there would be word from the King.

  Katherine could not answer. Her tongue was swollen thick in her mouth. The tiler’s form blocked out the sunlight as the friar’s had an hour ago. She stared down at the pile of broken furniture on the floor, the strips of the Avalon tapestry, the bed hangings, no redder than the blood pools on the tiles.

  Cob will tell him who we are, she thought. And that will be the end. But the little flaxen-headed outlaw did not speak. He cast a slanting look at Katherine, and busied himself with chopping off the carved emblems on the mantel.

  “You then!” The tiler rounded on Blanchette, and drew back startled. Almost he made the sign of the cross, the crop-haired girl had so strange a look.

  She had lifted a fold of her skirt and dabbled with her fingers in the stains made by the friar’s blood, and she was smiling. Smiling as one who knows a sly secret that will confuse the hearer.

  “Who are ye, child?” shouted Wat, but more gently.

  Blanchette raised her head and gazed behind the tiler towards the shattered window, where drifts of smoke and flying sparks blew past.

  “Who am I?” she said in a high, sweet, questioning tone. “Nay, that, good sir, I must not tell you.”

  Her eyes moved unseeing over the faces of the other men, who had turned to watch. “But I can tell you who I’ll be” She nodded three times slowly, and she laughed low in her throat.

  Wat swallowed. The men behind did not stir, their mouths dropped open and a shivering unease held them.

  “Why, I shall be a whore - good sir,” cried Blanchette in a loud voice, “like my mother. A murdering whore - mayhap too - like my mother!”

  She gathered up her skirts in either hand as though she would make them all a curtsy. The men gaped at her. Like quicksilver she whirled and ran out of the chamber. She stumbled on the friar’s dismembered headless body in the passage, then sped on swift as light to the Great Stairs.

  “Stop her!” screamed Katherine, dashing forward with her arms outstretched. “Blanchette!”

  Jack Maudelyn snatched out his hand and grabbed Katherine by the flying end of her coif. He jerked her back so violently that she fell. Her head hit the tiles. A thousand lights exploded behind her eyes; then there was darkness.

  The tiler stared down at the woman who lay crumpled, barely breathing, on the tiles. He stared at the door through which the girl had fled. He looked at the weaver’s wry-jawed face. And he shrugged.

  “By the rood, I vow they’ve all gone mad here in this accursed place,” he said. “Well - come, lads. Get on wi’ it. Where’s a torch? Someone carry the woman out. Who’er she be, I’ll not leave her here to be roasted.”

  CHAPTER XXV

  Across the Strand from the Savoy’s gatehouse, there lay an open field that was part of the convent garden belonging to Westminster Abbey. Two of Wat Tyler’s men carried Katherine there and dumped her on a grassy bank near a little brook, before dashing off to join their fellows who were streaming out of the burning Savoy, some heading for Westminster, where they would break open the Abbey prison, and many back towards the City.

  Cob o’ Fenton had followed the men who bore Katherine out of the Savoy and watched from afar as they laid her down. After they ran off, he stood irresolute by the roadside, tugging on his lank tow-coloured forelock. He glanced to his left where Katherine’s skirt showed as a splotch of darker green against the grass; his eyes shifted to the disappearing bands of rebels.

  The Lady of Kettlethorpe was mayhap dying there in the field. Well, let her then! Cob thought with sudden vigour.

  What if it was her negligent order that had freed him from the stocks and given him back his croft? What good was that when her steward still exacted the heriot fine overdue from Cob’s father’s death? - the one ox he owned, and was fond of; company for him that ox had been, since his wife had died in childbed. Then there were the other fines - no end to them: no merchet, leyrewite; tithes to the church, “love-work” - and now the poll tax.

  “Phuah!” said Cob and spat. He fingered the branded F on his cheek - fugitive, runaway serf, outlaw. Ay, and if he could escape recapture by his own manor lord for a year, he would be legally free. But she could still catch him. Cob glanced again towards Katherine. She could have him dragged back to the manor, and the punishment this time would be far worse than stocks and branding. Cob’s watery, white-lashed eyes stared down at the Strand paving-stones, he gnawed at an itching fleabite on his finger, when suddenly he jumped and gasped, jerking his head up to look at the Savoy.

  An explosion had thundered off behind the walls. A sheet of flame shot up as high as the spire on the Monmouth Tower, where the Duke’s pennant still fluttered. The Outer Ward was not yet all afire.

  Cob ran back off the road and clapped his hands to his ears, while another explosion rocked the Savoy, and another. A zigzag crack shot down the Monmouth Tower like black lightning. The tower wavered, seeming to dance and sway like a sapling in the wind, it buckled in the middle, and fell with the rumble of an earthquake, in great white clouds of dust and
flying stone. Half of the Savoy Strand wall caved in beneath the fallen tower, and the gap filled in at once with raging fire.

  Cob ran farther back into the field and, stumbling, fell to his knees. Above the roar and crackle of the fire he heard muffled shrieks, demon-like wails for help, different from the screaming whinnies of the terrified horses in the stables.

  It was some thirty of the Essex men who shrieked. They had escaped Wat’s eye and returned to the cellars and the wine casks, having found a tunnel to the Outer Ward and being sure that they had time to reach it before the fires got too hot. But Wat’s men had flung into the Great Hall the three barrels of gunpowder, and the falling of the tower had trapped the rioters in the cellars beneath. It would take long before the fire ate downward to them through the stone roofing of the cellars, but there was now no way out.

  “God’s passion,” whispered Cob, crossing himself as a deluge of flying sparks fell on him. He scrambled up and took to his heels across the field. He had quite forgotten Katherine, but she lay across his path.

  He stopped, and seeing that sparks had fallen on her wool gown and were charring round smoking holes, he reached down and brushed them off. She lay on her back, her face like the marble effigies he had seen in Lincoln Cathedral. But she breathed. He saw her breasts move up and down.

  And Cob, pinching out a spark that still smouldered, saw at her girdle the purse with her blazon. Through Cob’s uncertain heart there struck a strange feeling. He stared down at the Swynford arms - three yellow boars’ heads on the black chevron. These arms meant home. They were fastened on the manor gate, they swung on the alehouse sign. They meant the fealty that his father had loyally given to Sir Hugh Swynford, and to Sir Thomas before that. They meant the warm smell of earth and ox in his little hut, they meant the mists off the Trent, the candles in the church on holy days. They meant the companionable grumbles of his fellow villeins in the alehouse on the green, and they meant the old stone manor where he himself had done homage to Swynfords - homage to this very woman who lay flat and helpless on the grass.