by Anya Seton
He hushed the children as Katherine walked over to them, and looked at her with gladness.
She had washed her pilgrim’s weeds and borrowed a clean white coif and shift from his servant. Her hair had grown long enough so that bronze tendrils escaped beneath the coif, and curled at her temples. She was sparkling and fresh, and smelled of the lavender she had rubbed on to her skin. Her illness had nearly left her; the priest saw that she was a lovely woman.
She stopped beneath the clustering purple mulberries, and gazed long at the children. “Father,” she said, “I’m going back to Lincolnshire. To the place where I should be.”
“Aha?” he said, cocking his head. “And was it not that, you told me on the road here to Norwich, that you could never, never do?”
“It was,” she said. “I was wrong. Father, tonight will you hear my confession? I dare to hope that - that tomorrow - at Mass-” Her voice faltered, she drew a deep breath, and
smiled tremulously into his compassionate eyes.
The next morning in the little flint-walled church, from Father Clement’s hands, Katherine received again at last the Holy Sacrament. Julian kneeling by the narrow church window of her cell shared in the Blessed Communion and, watching Katherine’s rapt face, humbly knew that once more God had used her as a channel to touch another soul with the message of her visions, and a glimpse of His meaning when He had said, It is I, I that thou lovest, that thou enjoy est, that thou servest. It is I that thou longest for, it is I that is all.
Exaltation would fade, the wanhope and doubtful dreads of the world would seep back, but whatever befell, Katherine would never be totally bereft again. This Julian knew.
Later that morning, Katherine set out on the road west across Norfolk, bound for Lincolnshire. She rode on Father Clement’s mule. The priest and Lady Julian had lent her money for food and housing on the journey. This money and the mule would be returned after she reached Kettlethorpe.
In the leave-taking, Katherine tried to tell them of her gratitude, but they would not let her. Instead, in the tiny fragrant cell, Lady Julian had given her a hearty kiss on the cheek and much practical advice about proper diet and rest.
Father Clement, while he stood on the stone step outside his rectory, had been equally bracing. He cracked his little jokes and eased the difficult parting moment with brisk directions as to the best road and what to do when Absalom, the mule, baulked.
Katherine was turning to put her foot in the stirrup when the priest said in the same brisk voice, “And here is something that once belonged to you - will you take it now?” He held out his open hand. On the palm lay the Queen’s little silver brooch.
“But I cast it away,” she cried, “in Walsingham.”
“Ay, and I picked it up. ‘Tis yours.”
She flushed. Pain had gone from the memory of that day in Walsingham, but yet there was a taint of shame. ” ‘Twas because of the motto I threw it away,” she said.
He nodded, looking up at her quizzically, his head pressed back against the hump. “So I thought.”
She stared at the brooch, thinking of the anguish she had suffered and of that moment by the mill-pond. She looked from the little lathe and plaster rectory across to the churchyard, where she could see Lady Julian’s cell outlined against the blue September sky.
She reached out and took the brooch, remembering what Julian one day had said of faith: “For it is naught else but a right understanding, with true belief, and sure trust of our Being; that we are in God, and God in us.” No more. No demands for proof, no promise that sorrow would be banished. Nothing but sure trust of our Being.
She pinned the brooch at the neck of her black habit, and looked down at the little humpbacked priest, at his purple-pitted nose, the bristly red tonsure on his misshapen head, the long apelike arms and the merry tender brown eyes.
“I remember what you quoted from Dame Julian’s visions, that afternoon by the mill-pond,” she said. “I did not know that I heard it then, but I’ve thought much on it since.”
“And I,” said the priest laughing, “do not remember what I said. This often happens with me. Alas, I fear I talk too much. ‘Tis a parson’s failing.”
She shook her head, thinking how strange it was to feel pure affection, and how that never until she had come here had she received or given an entirely undemanding love, nor known the lack. “It was this you said, and Lady Julian has told me too. ‘Our dearworthy Lord said not, Thou shalt not be tempested, thou shalt not be travailed, thou shalt not be afflicted, but He said, Thou shalt not be overcome!” Father Clement, of all the teachings, this seems to me the most beautiful.”
Glowing strength stayed in Katharine’s heart that day, while she rode her mule along the fair Norfolk road towards King’s Lynn. It was Michaelmas. The crisping air sparkled like a fountain, it smelled of wood smoke, and of the succulent geese that were roasting in many a brick oven for the feast. In the woods and thickets, the leaves were flecked with gold or russet; beneath the beeches and giant oaks, pigs snuffled greedily, rooting for the acorn mast, between clumps of creamy woodbine.
The following day she entered the Breckland heaths. These chalky wastes teemed with rabbits and pheasants so tame that they did not hide while the mule clopped by between the outspread brilliance of the orange gorse, the fading pink and mauve of heather.
Near Castle Acre with its hostel, where she would find night’s lodging, Katherine’s road crossed the Palmers’ Way to Walsingham. She had been alone for some time on the westbound road, but at the crossing a band of pilgrims came along and greeted her courteously. They wore shiny tin Ws fastened to their broad hats, and lead medals of the annunciation on their chests, for they had visited the shrine and were homeward bound. They assumed that Katherine was en route there, and they vied with each other in shouting out the glories she would see.
“No wonder like it in this world!” cried a small dark woman with shining eyes. ” ‘Tis Our Lady Herself, you know, has taken up Her home in Norfolk, when the infidels forced her to flee from Nazareth. No one has ever been to Her but She did help. Look, Dame Pilgrim!” cried the little woman. She rolled back her grey sackcloth sleeve to show a shrunken withered arm. “See!” she cried again while her birdclaw fingers moved one after the other. “Since I was a weanling and God smote me with sickness, these fingers’ve not moved, but whilst I knelt before Our Lady and gazed at the Holy Milk, the miracle happened. Life tingled in my hand.”
“For sure, you were most blessed,” said Katherine, bleakly.
The pilgrims passed on southward, Katherine flicked the mule with her staff and continued towards Castle Acre, but the peace which had sustained her ever since Norwich was gone. She remembered this crossroads and how she passed here at dawn of the day she got to Walsingham. How certain she had been that there would be a miracle for her! The woman with the shrunken hand had said, “No one has ever been to Her but She did help.” There had been no help at all, nothing but further suffering. Ay - what horror would have happened to me had it not been for Father Clement?
Then of a sudden she heard the priest’s laugh, and she heard Dame Julian speaking as she had the first day in that little cell. “Katherine, Katherine - well I saw that nothing is done by hap or chance, but by the foreseeing wisdom of God. ‘Tis our blindness when we do not see that.”
Blindness! Once again it was as though a shutter opened. For there had been a miracle at Walsingham. The Blessed Lady had answered with a marvel as great and yet as simple as any She had wrought. What else but marvel was it that Father Clement had that day ridden to the Austin priory in Walsingham on behalf of one of his parishioners in Norwich? That he had seen Katherine drop the Queen’s brooch, and understood and watched over her, that he had taken her to Julian for cure of body and spirit?
What a weary time it took to learn how homely and direct the answer was, that it needed no thunderbolts and naming wonders for Him to fulfil his promise, I will keep thee full securely. That He had as many ways
of loving as there were droplets in the ocean, the ocean that was yet all one sea.
Katherine rode her mule through the sunset of the quiet rolling heaths, and her heart filled with thanking. Three times, in three different ways, the sure light had come to her: in the churchyard, in the rectory chamber and now on the Norfolk road.
The fourth day after, Katherine crossed the fens and mounted the high ridge way that led to Lincoln. Already she could see the rooftops on the distant hill, and the triple spires of the cathedral against the cloud-massed sky.
She turned off the road at Coleby and rode through the gates to inspect her little manor. She had not been near it for nine years. The reeve that her Kettlethorpe steward had put in did not know her and jeered when she said that she was Lady Swynford.
“Ye’re crazed, widow. Lady Swynford don’t go riding about barefoot on a mule! Why dame, Lady Swynford’s the Duke o’ Lancaster’s doxie, and goes clothed in jingling gold - leastways she did. I’ve heard tell in Lincoln that the Duke’s tired of her - but that’s as may be, get ye gone. We’ve no room for tricksy beggars here. Some hostel in Lincoln’ll take ye.”
Katherine went on her way. Soon the clouds merged and dipped lower. It began to rain, a cold October rain that soaked through her mantle. In time she entered the familiar village of Wigford, the Lincoln suburb that lay on the near bank of the Witham. On the left, in the centre of the long high street, there was a handsome stone mansion, with elegant carved corbels, an oriel window, and above the door a shield with the Duke’s coat of arms painted on it. Katherine knew this house; she had dined here with John on the miserable visit to Kettlethorpe two years ago. It belonged to the Suttons, the wealthy wool merchants whom she had first met on the road to Bolingbroke in the plague time when the Duchess died.
She looked up at the Lancaster arms. The Suttons, having none of their own, proudly blazoned those of their feudal overlord. She hesitated, unable to control a coward shrinking. Tomorrow would do as well. She still had a few pence, and could spend the night in town. One more night before plunging back into all the humiliating things that must be done. Besides, she thought with feeble self-deception, like the reeve at Coleby, the Suttons might not know her.
Katherine got off the mule and tied it to the hitching ring. Of course, the Suttons would know her: they had seen her many times. The Suttons were Lincoln’s foremost citizens. They had been mayors, members of Parliament. Thomas the clerk was now Chancellor of Lincoln Cathedral. They knew everything that went on in town and could best answer the questions she must ask.
She knocked. The door was opened by a liveried varlet, who did not hide his astonished disapproval at her appearance and was reluctant to admit her until she gave him two pennies, whereupon he thawed. He said that old Master John had gone to Calais on business for the staple, and Master Thomas was at the bishop’s palace, that Master Robert was at home. But occupied. A deputy of woolmongers were with him.
“Tell him please that ‘tis Lady Swynford, and I will wait.” Katherine sat down on the wayfarer’s bench in a cubbyhole beside the door.
She waited a long time. When Robert Sutton came at last, walking ponderously from his counting-house to the corner of the Hall where Katherine sat, she saw that he was embarrassed and uncertain how to greet her. Above his glossy dark brown beard, his plump cheeks were flushed. He took one scandalized look at her bedraggled robe, her feet, the wet limp coif that covered her short hair, and his eyes slid away, their thick lids lowered. He fingered the gold chain around his neck, he twitched a fold of his maroon velvet, squirrel-furred sleeve. ” ‘Tis a surprise, lady - -“
A very great surprise, since he had heard that the Duke had bundled her off abroad, sealed her away in some French convent. He had spent the last ten minutes, not with the woolmongers, but alone, wondering if he should receive her.
Katherine drew a deep breath and laced her hands together. The last time she had seen him, he had been deferential, charming, his eyes moist with covert desire. Now his full handsome face was wary, and he tapped his scarlet shoe impatiently. Ay, it will be like this, she thought. From now on.
“Master Robert, I shall not take much of your time. There are only a few questions I’d like to ask you. I’ve been a long while on pilgrimage, and know nothing of what has happened in the world.”
He flushed again and hawked in his throat.
She saw that he wondered if she even knew of the Duke’s renouncement and spoke quickly. “The Duke and I have parted, it was our mutual wish and decision.”
He did not believe the latter, but he grunted uneasily. Her low voice softened him, and her dignity. As she spoke, he began to see glimpses of the beauty he had so enviously admired. But she must be thirty now, he told himself sharply, and a discarded mistress - and if it were money that she wanted-
“Master Robert,” she said quietly, “have you heard aught of my children?”
“The bastards?” he said startled.
“The Beauforts,” she answered.
He swallowed. “Why, I believe they’re well - at Kenilworth.” His wife, in fact, had been buzzing, since the juicy news about the Duke and Lady Swynford had filtered to Lincoln. Delighted with Lady Swynford’s downfall, she had triumphantly garnered every titbit that travellers could tell them.
“How does my manor of Kettlethorpe?” said Katherine. “I know our wool goes through your warehouse.”
“The manor does fairly, I think,” he said frowning. “At least the clips are up to standard. By God’s nails, lady,” his jaw dropped, “you don’t mean to come back and live at Kettlethorpe!”
“Ah, but I do,” said Katherine, smiling faintly. “Where else should I go but my own manor, where my people have need of me? Where else should I bring my children, who have no honest claim on anyone else in the world?”
The wool merchant was dumbfounded. “Surely you mean to sell?” And then take the veil, he thought, far away where no one knows her.
“I will not sell the Swynford holdings,” said Katherine, “that were my husband’s and belong to my Swynford children - children,” she repeated on a lower wavering note.
Sutton looked at her. “I heard the little maid Blanchette was betrothed to some great knight, and already she had a dowry from the Duke. She’ll not need Kettlethorpe.”
Katherine could not answer. She could not force herself to say, “I don’t know where Blanchette is, no one knows but God. But the home she loved and that I took her from will be always waiting.”
“Nevertheless,” she said, “I shall live at Kettlethorpe. And now, Master Robert, I do humbly beg one thing of you.”
He stiffened, crossed his velvet arms over his great barrel chest. “What is it, Lady Swynford?”
“That you will write in my name to the Duke. He has respect for you. He would not accept a letter from me. But I know that he listens to justice. Will you tell him what I propose to do, and will you request in my name that he send me my Beaufort children? Tell him that, when this is done, he shall never be troubled with me again.”
Robert Sutton demurred for some time. He pointed out the practicality of her scheme. Her steward was in the Duke’s pay, and would undoubtedly be withdrawn. It was folly to think she could run the manor herself, especially since her serfs were known to be unruly - why even here there had been a taint of the iniquitous revolt. Only the most violent suppressive measures had kept the villeins in their places. No doubt she understood nothing of this, having been on pilgrimage so long, but he assured her it was so. Katherine made no reply, except to say that none-the-less she would try to run Kettlethorpe herself.
Then Sutton with increasing embarrassment hinted at the discomfort of her position here; she would be ostracized. The goodwives of Lincoln would be outraged at the reappearance of so notorious a woman, and with her bastards too. Moreover, the bishop was a narrow, strait-laced man with a horror of scandal.
Katherine grew paler as he talked, her grey eyes darkened. But she remarked only that Kettle
thorpe was isolated enough, and she would try to trouble no one.
Sutton ended by doing as she wished. He summoned a clerk and dictated the letter to the Duke. When he had finished, a much warmer feeling towards Katherine came over him He could not help but admire her courage, and too, a woman in her position would be grateful for a friend, for a discreet protector. Ay, it was true and unfortunate that Kettlethorpe was isolated, but not so far away that a trip might not be made occasionally. He looked sideways at the slender bare ankles, the faint outline of high firm breasts beneath the hideous black robe, at the cleft chin, the wide voluptuous mouth.
When the clerk had gone, Sutton glanced back into the Hall, saw no one there but servants laying the table. He put his damp hot hand on her bare arm and squeezed. His beard brushed her cheek as he whispered, “You can count on Robert de Sutton, sweet heart, I’ll see that you get along.”
“Thank you for all your kindness,” she said, moving away. “I must go, Master Robert, go home.”
Blessed Mary, it would be hard, she thought, as she rode Absalom across the Witham bridge and turned west along the Fossdyke for Kettlethorpe. She needed the Sutton goodwill, for business reasons, as well as for mediation with the Duke. And on the whole she had always liked Master Robert. Yet would it be possible to keep his goodwill, and still deny all the reward which she saw that he would expect?
Hard. The radiance of those revelations had inevitably receded. It shone still, but behind a veil of outer life with its niggling annoyances, worries, hurts. She was no longer simply “Katherine,” she must adjust again to the various labels that the world would give her, and the demands fair and unfair that it would make.
