by Anya Seton
It was Blanchette that Katherine had borne within her as she had heard those words long years ago - and surely it was for Blanchette’s sake that the Lady Blanche had given Katherine some answer at last.
Katherine remained until the following Saturday with the Pessoners, and each day searched for Blanchette. Master Guy sent forth two of his prentices to cry through the streets that there would be a reward for any information respecting a little maid of fourteen with copper-toned hair, and dark grey eyes, whose Christian name was Blanche; while Katherine herself visited the convents where the child might have taken shelter.
They went all through London and over to Southwark and as far as Westminster, but no one had seen the girl. Steeling herself and telling no one of her purpose, Katherine made yet other visits - to the stews along Bankside, where the whoremongers received this pale grave woman kindly enough when they understood that it was a mother searching for a crazed girl, but nobody knew anything of Blanchette.
On the Friday evening before Katherine’s departure on pilgrimage to Walsingham, the Pessoners had an unexpected visitor.
Katherine was upstairs in the chamber above the fish-shop when Dame Emma opened the door to a knock and greeted with pleased surprise a plump little man with a forked brown beard. “Why master Geoffrey, welcome! Guy,” she called over her shoulder, ” ‘tis Master Geoffrey Chaucer come to see us!”
Geoffrey came in with appropriate greetings, accepted a mug of ale, then said in a tone of anxious wonder, “Is it really true that Lady Swynford is here?”
“That she is, poor thing,” said the fishmonger, settling down with his own ale, and preparing for a pleasant chat with the Controller of the Customs, who was an important man in London and one Master Guy respected. “Ay, Lady Katherine’s here, and a fearful time she had o’ it last week in the revolt. Burned out o’ the Savoy she was - and her lass gone daft - or,” said the fishmonger shaking his head, “dead more like. We begin to think, Emma and me, the child never got out o’ the Savoy, certain ‘tis there’s no trace o’ her. And if she did, crazed as she was and not rightly well from scarlet fever, there’s little chance either. Cock’s bones!” - he broke off as he saw Chaucer’s change of expression - “I clean forgot the little maid was your niece.”
“Yes,” said Geoffrey soberly, “and I’d no idea of any of this until I heard your street-crier today and questioned him.”
Geoffrey had returned from a trip on the night before the revolt and had been snugly ensconced in his rooms over Aldgate when Jack Strawe and his Essex men had streamed and bellowed through the gate beneath him. And there he had stayed unmolested, reading and writing during the three days of the violence, being a peaceable man and temperamentally indifferent to political factions. But on his emergence he had been shocked by the extent of the destruction, and now more shocked to find that Katherine and Blanchette had been at the Savoy.
“Where is Lady Swynford? I’d like to see her,” he said.
“Ye’ll find her sadly changed.” Dame Emma came bustling up with a dish of her saffron buns. “She’s shaved off her hair, and fasts like an anchorite. Seems like she blames herself for the loss of her child - and for the Grey Friar’s death too.” The dame slammed the plate on the table and her eyes snapped. “But ‘twas that cursed Jack Maudelyn really killed the Grey Friar, I got that much out of .her. The devil’s own spawn is Jack, but Beelzebub’ll soon get him, I hear, and a good thing too.”
“Wife, wife,” said Master Guy shaking his head. ” ‘Tis Hawise’s wedded husband, ye shouldna wish him damned, no matter what.” He turned to answer Chaucer’s exclamation. “Jack, he run around for all the days o’ the hurling time with his jaw broke and now his head’s swollen up like a melon and he can’t breathe but what the good monks at St. Bart’s hospital stick a straw down his gullet, and they say he won’t last the day out.”
“I’ll buy no Masses for his soul,” snorted the dame.” ‘Twas he gave Lady Katherine the blow on her head too.”
“By the rood, but these are fearful matters!” cried Geoffrey, horrified. “I dread to think what this’ll mean to the Duke when he hears. Why hasn’t Katherine gone north to meet him then?”
Dame Emma shook her head. “I believe that is no part of her plan. I tell ye, she’s much changed. More happened to her than we know on last cursed Thursday, She goes off tomorrow on pilgrimage but where to she won’t tell.”
Geoffrey’s concern increased at each thing he heard, and when Katherine finally came into the kitchen he could not repress an exclamation. She was dressed in a coarse rusty black gown of woven hemp such as the humblest widows wore. Her slender white feet were bare and dusty; around her neck there was a wooden rosary, and on her forehead a great smudge of ashes. Her shaven head was tightly bound with a square of the black cloth. She had beauty still, the thinness of her flesh but exposed the grace of her bones and sinews, but the great brooding eyes were circled by umber shadows and the thick black lashes seemed too heavy for the weary lids.
“Katherine, before God, what does this mean, my dear?” Geoffrey cried, kissing her on the cheek.
“Geoffrey,” she said with a faint smile. “I’m glad to see you, and I know that you’ll help me.”
“Ay, for sure, little sister, but - -” He hesitated, at a loss for words. Religious-minded Katherine had never been. These past years with the Duke she had been a warmly vibrant creature of dancing and laughter, with an aura of hot sensual love about her; and in matters of devout observance he had deemed her of a most indifferent turn of thought. This strict penitential garb and talk of pilgrimage were surely some passing derangement, and if he could not change her mind, the Duke most certainly would.
“How can I help you?” he said as she waited, looking at him soberly.
Katherine read some of his disapproval in his face and made an effort to understand it. So dense and high a barrier reared up between this Katherine and the old one that she could barely perceive how strange she must seem to him.
“Come outside with me, Geoffrey,” she said, “I must talk to you alone, and show you something.”
They went out to Thames Street into a golden June evening, and Katherine turned towards the Bridge.
“Your sister has been in danger too during the revolt,” said Geoffrey with a hint of reproach as he walked beside her and she did not speak. “On that Wednesday when the trouble began Philippa was at Hertford with the Duchess but they were warned and fled in time to the north. Only today I got word that after a perilous journey they were safe in Yorkshire. During this time of the ‘Grande Rumoer’ it seems that all belonging to him are included in this senseless unjust hatred of the Duke.”
“Senseless?” said Katherine pausing and staring at the street, “Unjust? I thought so once. But now I know it’s all God’s punishment for our great sin.”
“By Christ’s holy wounds, Katherine, this is sickly talk! Your fleshly sin was not so great as that of many of the monkish fellows who accuse you of it, and yours is redeemed by a true love.”
She gave him a dark sad look and walked on, guiding him up the wooden step on to London Bridge. They passed along the Bridge between the clustering overhanging houses until they came to a small tower with spikes set up around it and vultures wheeling and screaming around the many decaying heads upon the spikes.
Geoffrey’s steps faltered; he tried to protest, but Katherine pulled him on until they stood below an eyeless skull on which the drying maggoty flesh hung in ribbons. A skull whose bleaching brainpan had been cleft nearly in two. A piece of parchment had been tied to the spike below this head, and Katherine, seeing Geoffrey’s look of shocked incomprehension, said, “Read.”
He bent and peered at the parchment, then drew back sharply, crossing himself. “Brother William!” he whispered. “Ah - may God rest his poor soul.”
“Yes,” said Katherine, “Brother William! He died because he came to the Savoy to protect me, and he died trying to save my soul.”
Geof
frey swallowed while a prickle ran down his back. He turned from the rotting head to lean against a stone balustrade and stare down into the swirling yellow water below. A; length he said, “But Katherine, you can buy Masses for him. ‘Twas not your fault - -“
She drew her breath in harshly and answered in a voice that jangled like an iron bell, “I can buy Masses for him, and for Blanchette - and I can buy Masses for my husband Hugh - who was murdered. Ay - murdered, Geoffrey. You may well whiten and shrink from me! Now do you still think the sin in which the Duke and I have lived so light a one?”
“Hush - for the love of God, Katherine,” Geoffrey cried, staring at her. He glanced quickly at the people who passed by on the Bridge. “Come over here, where we’ll not be overheard.” He drew her to an angle made by the tower buttress, and gazed with incredulous pity into her haunted eyes. “Now tell me,” he said quietly.
In the morning when Katherine set out on foot for the north road that led to Walsingham, Geoffrey too left London, bearing a letter from Katherine to the Duke - wherever he might be. An unwilling messenger was Geoffrey, none of the hundred missions he had fulfilled on King’s service had been as difficult as this. He knew what Katherine had written, and he suspected that not even the destruction of the Savoy and Hertford castles nor any as yet unreported catastrophe would shock the Duke as this letter would.
Katherine’s revelations and her agony of penitence had startled him into shame. He felt that he had himself been drifting into light-minded worldliness. He thought with remorse of the pagan delight, the immorality, he had written into his Troilus and Criseyde. They had read this love story at court, Richard had been charmed with it, the frivolous Duchess of York had wept over it, Katherine herself had heard portions of it, never suspecting in how many tender ways she had been Criseyde’s model.
On this trip to the north, while bearing Katherine’s despairing letter, conscience rode with Geoffrey. He knew very well that his writings were enjoyed by and influenced many who were bored by the moral Gower’s homilies or Langland’s fierce indictments, and in his light-minded treatment of carnal love he had most certainly ignored the Church’s teachings. He had not pointed out that the devil’s hand with the five fingers of lechery gripped a man by the loins, to throw him into the furnace of hell.
Instead of writing of penitence and punishment he had dallied with lewd levity. Was it, Geoffrey thought, because tragedy had never touched him personally before, and because his whole nature shamefully recoiled from grimness and heavy accusations?
The Troilus should be abandoned for the present and later, if he worked on it again, he would make it clear that he had written only of “Pagan’s cursed old rites,” and he would warn young folks to cast their visage up to God. And he felt how he had wronged Katherine in thinking of her in terms of his compliant and fickle little Criseyde.
CHAPTER XXVII
On the Saturday night on June 20 that Katherine set out on pilgrimage to Walsingham and Geoffrey left for the north, the Duke was impounded on the Scottish side of the Border outside the walls of Berwick-upon-Tweed.
While he furiously paced the rough ground beneath a hastily erected tent, two of his most devoted knights, Lord Michael de la Pole and Sir Walter Ursewyk, watched him anxiously, but neither of them dared speak. The two knights had withdrawn to a far side of the tent and, seasoned worldly-wise men though they were, they found incredible this new humiliation that had come upon their Duke.
“I can’t believe it,” whispered Ursewyk to de la Pole. “Denied entry back into his own country, and at this time. That even Percy should have so villainous a heart!”
“May God strike Percy dead for this!” growled the baron, clenching his gnarled fists. “Could I but lay hands on the whoreson-” Angry breaths whistled through the gaps in his teeth, his great bearded jaw knotted.
Three hours ago, the Duke and his men had marched here from Scotland heading with all possible speed for home, frantic to find out what had actually happened during the revolt, of which the most hideous rumours had reached the Duke while he treated with the Scottish envoys. The frightened messenger who bore the secret news said that he believed all England was in rebellion against the Duke, that he had heard all of his castles had fallen into the peasants’ hands, that the fate of his family was uncertain. The messenger had further added that the King - hiding in the Tower - had been forced to repudiate his uncle, had denounced him as a traitor and was thought to side entirely with the peasants.
De la Pole had never so much admired his Duke as he had then. The Scottish truce negotiations had been at the most delicate concluding point when John privily heard this news of total disaster, but no trace of fear of the torturing uncertainty had shown on his handsome face. He had given the Scots no inkling that now in this hour of England’s civil war had come Scotland’s golden moment to strike, and overrun the weakened torn south. He had suppressed all his personal concern until the Scots had signed an advantageous three-year truce, then he turned and hurried back towards England.
And England would not receive him. At least Percy, the Lord of Northumberland, would not permit him to cross the Border. The gates of Berwick were closed. Percy’s forces were massed along the Tweed and planted throughout the Cheviot Hills and he had sent word by Sir Matthew Redmayne, Warden of Berwick, that this outrage was done in obedience to the King’s orders.
Here in a tent outside the city walls they had been confined these last hours while the cold rain hissed on the painted canvas, and while the Duke paced up and down like a chained bear. Suddenly he turned on his heel and confronted his friends. “Michael,” he cried to de la Pole, “how many of my men are left here now?”
De la Pole gnawed his grizzled moustache and said with weary despair, “Not a hundred, my lord - not now.” Many of the Duke’s small band had melted away when Northumberland’s position had become known. “We cannot fight, my lord,” said the old campaigner bitterly. “Percy has a hundred thousand knaves to back him.” And our luggage train as well, he added to himself. The Duke’s main supplies had been trustingly left in Percy’s charge at Bamborough before the Duke entered Scotland.
“Why do the hundred stay?” said the Duke through his teeth. “Why do you stay with me, de la Pole - and you, Ursewyk? Twill profit you nothing to cling to a ruined leader, an exile whom all the English wish to kill, whose King has turned against him. Go join Percy like the others - -“
“My lord John - -” said de la Pole softly. He rose and taking the Duke’s cold hand kissed it. “We are not weather-vanes, Ursewyk and I, nor Marmion neither, not Le Scrope and many another that you well know. Nor, my lord, do I believe that the King has given this order. I think it’s entirely Percy’s malignant invention. You know well he’s jealous of your power.”
“By God - it seems he has no need to be. Betrayed by my countrymen, sacrificed by my King - and Jesu - what has been happening to my family - to Katrine-” he added beneath his breath.
John threw himself down on a folding campstool, and leaning his elbows on the rough plank table bowed his head against his clenched fists.
His two friends glanced at each other. They both racked their brains for an answer to this stunning new reversal, but it was the wise de la Pole who found it first.
“Write to the King, my lord,” he said after a moment. “Ask him his true intention. ‘Tis the only way to deal with this.”
John lifted his head and said grimly, “And are you fool enough to think Percy’ll let my herald safely through? Has Percy shown allegiance to any honour?”
“Nay, I’d not count on it,” answered the baron, “But I think Percy’ll not dare to stop me, my lord, for he knows the King has trust in me.”
The Duke looked startled. “Ay, mayhap you’re right, ‘tis worth a chance. I should have thought of it; though in truth, I’m loath to have you leave me, Michael.” He looked with deep affection at the older man who had been his friend and counsellor for so many years, and the baron’s bluff weather
-beaten face flushed with an answering emotion.
John called for pen, ink and parchment, wrote his letter. He handed it silently to de la Pole for reading. The old warrior’s eyes misted as he laboriously spelled out the sense of the brief message. The Duke had written that if it were indeed his King’s wish that he should remain in dishonoured exile, he would obey, albeit with a heart so heavy that he would care no more for life. Or if the King had need of him, yet had been incontinently brought by wicked counsels to fear his uncle, then would John return alone with no one but a squire to attend him. But that he most piteously prayed his King and lord, no matter the decision, to have mercy on all those in England who were dear to Lancaster.
The baron handed the letter back with an embarrassed approving grunt. Surely even that highly strung and unpredictable young King would recognise here the authentic note of much-tried loyalty, though it was doubtful that Richard would have the wisdom to see how sorely tried that loyalty was, not if his other uncle, Thomas of Buckingham, were pouring poison in his ears. But, thought de la Pole, the Duke had at his hand a measure that would right all the wrongs he had suffered, that would take him in triumph back into his own country and might Very well lead him to the throne itself, if he were so minded.
“Your Grace,” said the baron, leaning near the Duke and speaking very low, “the Scots love you; they respected your kingly father but they love you for yourself. You’ve but to speak the word and the Earls of Carrick and Douglas would back you with an army of their Scots, you’ve but to lead them south through England to London itself. There’s no need to grovel before your capricious nephew.”
