Katherine

Katherine Anya Seton Hodder (2006) Rating: **** Tags: Historical, Fiction

SUMMARY:

This classic romance novel tells the true story of the love affair that changed history that of Katherine Swynford and John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, the ancestors of most of the British royal family. Set in the vibrant 14th century of Chaucer and the Black Death, the story features knights fighting in battle, serfs struggling in poverty, and the magnificent Plantagenets Edward III, the Black Prince, and Richard II who ruled despotically over a court rotten with intrigue. Within this era of danger and romance, John of Gaunt, the king's son, falls passionately in love with the already married Katherine. Their well-documented affair and love persist through decades of war, adultery, murder, loneliness, and redemption. This epic novel of conflict, cruelty, and untamable love has become a classic since its first publication in 1954.

Katherine

ANYA SETON

Copyright (c) 1954 by Anya Seton

About the author

Anya Seton was born in New York City and grew up on her father's large estate in Cos Cob and Greenwich, Connecticut, where visiting Native Americans taught her traditional dancing and woodcraft. One Sioux chief called her Anutika, which means 'cloud grey eyes', a name which the family shortened to Anya. She was educated by governesses, and then travelled abroad, first to England, then to France where she hoped to become a doctor. She studied for a while at the Hotel Dieu hospital in Paris before marrying at eighteen and having three children. She began writing in 1938 with a short story sold to a newspaper syndicate and the first of her ten novels, My Theodosia, was published in 1941. Her other novels include Green Darkness, The Winthrop Woman

Exalted be thou, and thy name

Goddess of Renown or Fame!

"Madame" said they "We be

Folk that here beseechen thee

That thou grant us now good fame . . ."

"I warn you it" quoth she anon

"Ye get of me good fame none

By God! And therefore go your way."

"Alas" quoth they, "And weylaway . . .

Tell us what your cause may be?"

"For me list it not," quoth she.

House of Fame,

by Geoffrey Chaucer

AUTHOR'S NOTE

In telling this story of Katherine Swynford and John of Gaunt, the great Duke of Lancaster, it has throughout been my anxious endeavour to use nothing but historical fact when these facts are known - and a great deal is known about the fourteenth century in England.

I have based my story on actual history and tried never to distort time, or place, or character to suit my convenience.

For those who are interested in sources, I append my main ones below; while for those who may wish to know something of the book's background and the writing of it, here are some brief notes.

My interest in Katherine began one day nearly four years ago when I read mention of her in Marchette Chute's charming biography, Geoffrey Chaucer of England. I subsequently came to know Miss Chute and am extremely grateful for her encouragement.

I then began my research on the fourteenth century, preparatory to the necessary trip to England for more intensive delving and a view of the places associated with Katherine.

Four years of my life have been spent in England, my father was English born, and I have always loved the country dearly, but this special research trip in 1952 was particularly delightful, for it combined the beauties of an English spring with the zest of a treasure hunt.

I visited each of the counties; I studied the remains of John of Gaunt's numerous castles, and searched ever - in the British Museum, in town libraries and archives, in rectory studies, in local legend - for more data on Katherine's life.

Of her little was known, except when her life touched the Duke's and there are few details of that. The Dictionary of National Biography sketch is inadequate, the contemporary chroniclers were mostly hostile (except Froissart), and in the great historians Katherine apparently excited scant interest, perhaps because they gave little space to the women of the period anyway.

And yet Katherine was important to English history.

When, on the English tour, I visited Lincolnshire, I was rewarded with new light. And here I must express my fervent thanks to J. W. F. Hill, Esq., for his cordial help and for his scholarly, comprehensive book, Medieval Lincoln.

I wish also to thank all the kind people in Lincoln who interested themselves in my project, and especially the owners, and the former occupants, of Kettlethorpe Hall Air Vice-Marshal and Mrs. McKee, where I spent charmed days in Katherine's own home, trying to reconstruct the past. Though but a portion of the gatehouse and cellars remains from Katherine's time, the rectory contained one of those invaluable local brochures that are compiled by learned clerical gentlemen. The Manor and Rectory of Kettlethorpe, by R. E. G. Cole, M. A., Prebendary of Lincoln, had a wealth of new information on the early Swynfords, on Hugh and Katherine; and dates - such as the one I have used for Hugh's death - which differ from the accepted ones, but seem incontrovertibly documented. This date suggested the explanation I have used for Hugh's mysterious end.

The names of the major characters in this book will be familiar to students of English history, but I have also tried whenever possible to use actual people for the minor ones; and here John of Gaunt's own registers were invaluable.

For instance, Brother William Appleton, the Grey Friar's, official capacity and eventual fate were as I have shown them. Hawise Maudelyn was Katherine's waiting woman, Arnold was the Duke's falconer, Walter Dysse his confessor and Isolda Neumann his nurse. I have given him no retainers, officers or vassals who are not listed in the "Registers".

To the development and motivations of the story, it has sometimes of course been necessary to bring my own interpretations, but I trust they are legitimate, and backed by probability.

John of Gaunt has been much vilified by historians who have too slavishly followed the hostile chronicles, particularly the Monk of St. Albans' consistently spiteful Chronicon Angliae.

I have naturally preferred the view of his character which was held by his great biographer, Sydney Armitage-Smith, and certainly an impartial look at the facts seems to warrant it.

My "psychological" treatment of the changeling slander arose from several clues. Most of the historians have been puzzled by the Duke's actions at the "Good Parliament" and sudden reversal thereafter; one source ties this in with the probable deep unconscious effect on the Duke of that type of slander, and it seemed to me logical.

In covering a field so vast as the history and politics of this period, I have had to confine myself to those events which would have affected Katherine, but in showing these national events I have tried to extract the truth from the welter of conflicting data and points of view. For the actual accounts of the Good Parliament and the Peasants' Revolt, I have read all the authorities, but have leaned chiefly on the Anonimalle Chronicle of St. Mary's Abbey, York, which gives information not available to the earlier historians.

The existence of Blanchette has been entirely overlooked, but it is documented by Armitage-Smith and also by the "Registers".

These registers have also, by inference, provided me with much of the story, since many entries bear on the personal life of Katherine and the Duke, such as their parting in 1381, attested by a Latin Quit Claim - as well as by those assiduous monkish chroniclers who never lost a chance to attack the Duke - for reasons I have tried to show.

My Latin was not adequate for all this research and various amiable people have helped me, but with Middle French and Middle English I have perforce become familiar and one of the great personal pleasures in writing this book has been the reading of much medieval literature - and Chaucer. It has occurred to me, and here I know I am treading on dangerous ground, that Chaucer may have had his beautiful sister-in-law in mind in occasional passages, particularly in the Troilus and Criseyde.

That I have not invented Katherine's beauty for fictional purposes is borne out I think by the references. John of Gaunt's (now destroyed) epitaph in St. Paul's referred to her as "eximia pulchritudine feminam," an unusual tribute on a tombstone, while the disapproving monk of St. Mary's Abbey called her "une deblesse et enchanteresse"

Lady Julian of Norwich was one of the great English mystics. All her quotations are verbatim from her Revelations of Divine Love. I hope it has been possible to rebuild the little church to which her anchoress' cell was once attached; when I visited it, it was in a pathetic state of demolition as a result of enemy action.

In closing I want to thank again all those who have helped me and particularly my dear friend Isabel Garland Lord, and my English cousin, Amy C. Flagg, of Durham.

I have consulted all standard histories and source books for the period, and most of the Chronicles, but my debt to the following is greatest:

John of Gaunt's Register. Camden Third series, in four volumes covering 1372-1383. These comprise the actual French (occasionally Latin) documents issued by the Duke.

The Genesis of Lancaster, by Sir James H. Ramsay.

John of Gaum, by Sydney Armitage-Smith. The definitive biography.

Chaucer's World, compiled by Edith Rickert.

The Anonimalle Chronicle, 1333-1381, of St. Mary's Abbey, York. Edited by V. H. Galbraith.

Froissart's Chronicles, translated by Thomas Johnes.

It would be tedious to list all the other chronicles, or the biographies of Chaucer, Wyclif, the queens, the Black Prince, Henry IV, Richard II, etc. But I must mention a few of the background books like J. J. Jusserand's Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages; J. Huizinga's Waning of the Middle Ages; all of Eileen Power's vivid and exhaustive works, particularly Medieval English Nunneries; all the fine books by G. G. Coulton; Life on the English Manor, by H. S. Bennett; and Walter Besant's fascinating and beautiful volumes on Medieval London.

London, March 18, 1954

A.S.

Part One (1366-1367)

"If no love is, Ah God what feel I so?

And if love is, what thing and which is he?

If love be good from whence cometh my woe?

If he be wicked, a wonder thinketh me .. ."

(Troilus and Criseyde)

CHAPTER I

In the tender green time of April, Katherine set forth at last upon her journey with the two nuns and the royal messenger.

The invisible sun had scarcely risen as they quitted the little convent of Sheppey, and guiding the horses westward towards the Kentish mainland, rode gingerly down the steep hill. Dripping dun clouds obscured the minster tower behind them and thick mists blew from the North Sea.

The bell began tolling for Prime and Katherine heard through its familiar clangour the bang of the priory's gate and the faint voice of the little wicket nun calling again through the mist, "Adieu dear Katherine, adieu."

"Farewell, Dame Barbara, God be with you," Katherine answered, hoping that her tone was not too gay. She had tried to make herself feel the requisite doleful pang at parting from this convent where she had spent over five years, but her heart would not obey. It bubbled, instead, with excited anticipation.

She had been a puny child when the good Queen had sent her to Sheppey Priory as a boarder, now she was a marriageable woman, for she would be sixteen next October sometime after Michaelmas. And she had had her fill of the cloisters and the hovering nuns, kindly as most of them were. She was sick of the inexorable bell that ruled their lives, tolling for Matins and Lauds and then every three hours throughout the day until Compline at eight o'clock and bed. She was sick of lessons and plain-song, and the subdued admonishing murmurs of women.

No matter how dutiful one tried to feel, it was impossible to be sad at leaving this behind, when the blood ran hot and rich in the veins, and when out in the world there were all the untried beckoning enchantments: dancing, sensuous music, merriment - and love.

Now at last it had come, the summons to court, when Katherine had almost given up hope, and it seemed that the Queen had totally forgotten her early interest in the little orphan. Perhaps the Queen had forgotten but at least Philippa had not. Katherine thought of the coming meeting with the sister whom she had not seen in all these years and gave a sudden bounce of joy, which the old white horse instantly resented. He stumbled in a muddy rut, recovered himself, then stood stock still, his long lips thrust out.

The Prioress Godeleva resented the bounce too, for Katherine was riding pillion behind the prioress.

"What possessed you to jump like that, Katherine!" snapped Godeleva over her shoulder, while she flapped the reins and tried to induce the horse to move. "Bayard hates double weight, and you're not a child to play the fool. I thought we'd trained you better." She flapped the reins again futilely.

"Forgive me, Reverend Mother," said Katherine reddening.

Dame Cicily, the other nun, came fluttering up to them crying, "Oh dear, oh dear, Reverend Mother, what's the matter?" She was riding a decrepit nag borrowed from the convent's bailiff and had perforce dropped behind.

"As you see," said the prioress coldly, digging her heels into the horse's belly and slapping his neck with her small white hand, "Bayard is baulking."

Long Will Finch, the Queen's messenger, who had been riding on ahead and singing a bawdy song to himself suddenly noticed the silence behind him. He turned his roan and peering through the mists came back to investigate. "God's nails - - - " he muttered when he saw the trouble. "These holy old hens should stay in cloister. We'll not reach Windsor till Whitsun at this rate."

He dismounted, hit Bayard a powerful swat on the rump with the flat of his dagger while savagely jerking the bridle. The horse gave an indignant snort but he jumped forward and Katherine clung to the prioress's plump waist.

"You need a switch, Reverend Mother," said Long Will, breaking a branch from a hazel bush and handing it to Godeleva.

The prioress inclined her head in gracious thanks. She was the daughter of a Saxon knight, proud of her lineage, and most anxious that the royal messenger should not think them ill-bred for all that they came from such an insignificant convent.

Long Will was not thinking of the prioress, he was looking at Katherine. Sunlight, now glinting through the fog which hung above the Swale, gave him his first good view of her. A tasty wench, he thought, cocking a practised eye at the face beneath the green hood.

He noted large grey eyes fringed by dark lashes; and two glossy burnished braids, near thick as his wrist, and so long that they swung against the horse's croup, while the loose tendrils, dark red as an autumn oak leaf, clung to a broad white forehead. That one wouldn't have to pluck back her hair to broaden her brow like the court ladies. Nor would she have to rub lead paste on her face. The girl's skin was milky smooth with a rose flush on the cheek-bones - and no blemishes. Her full mouth was wider than the pouting lips admired at court, yet it beckoned a lustiness any man would find challenging, as did the flare of her nostrils and the cleft in her round chin.

She'd be a fine wench for bed-sport, once she'd learned a bit, Long Will thought, as he walked along beside the white cob and stared at Katherine. Ay - she was exceeding fair, though as yet somewhat thin and small-bosomed. If only her teeth were good. Missing or rotted teeth spoiled many a beauty. He determined to make her smile.

"Have ye visited the fine new castle, damoiselle?" he asked pointing to the north where the crenellated towers of Queenborough loomed against the clearing sky.

"Certainly not," cut in the prioress. "I've permitted none of my house to go near the castle, swarming as it has been with lecherous men - workmen and soldiers - and but three miles from the convent."

"To be sure, Reverend Mother," said Long Will grinning, "holy flocks must be guarded, but I thought the Damoiselle Roet being a secular, perhaps she'd wandered that way-"

He winked at Katherine but the girl lowered her eyes as she had been taught. She was thinking that this Will Finch's bold stare was a little like that of the young squire who had come to the convent to see her a year ago. It made one feel warm and embarrassed but not unpleasantly so. The only other men she had ever talked to, the old bailiff and even older convent priest, had no such look in their eyes.

"Then ye didn't see the great Duke of Lancaster when he came himself to inspect the building last year?" persisted the messenger. "A pity. He's the most knightly, and many think handsomest too, of our King's sons, except, to be sure, Edward, Prince of Wales, God gi' him grace."

Katherine was not interested in the Duke of Lancaster, but there was a question she ached to ask. So she leaned forward whispering, "May I speak, Reverend Mother?" and peered around to see that the prioress's face was again bland beneath the fluted white wimple. Godeleva nodded, torn between the impropriety of gossiping with a servant, albeit a royal one, and her own curiosity about what would await them at Windsor.

Katherine turned to Long Will. "Do you perhaps know my sister, Philippa de Roet? She's one of the Queen's damoiselles."

"By cock's bones - of course I do," said Long Will. "Since it was she gave me the Queen's purse and sent me on this trip."

"What's she like then now?" asked Katherine timidly.

"Small, dark and plump as a woodcock," said Long Will. "They call her La Picarde. She's a bustling little body who has charge of the pantry maids and rules them stoutly. She's not light-minded as some of the Queen's ladies, by God!"

"That sounds like Philippa," said Katherine, smiling at last. "She ruled me stoutly enough when we were children."

"In truth you aren't much alike," cried Long Will, having just discovered that when she smiled Katherine was the fairest maid he had ever seen. Her teeth were small and white as daisy petals, her smile had a radiant charm, and yet a wistfulness that would melt your heart. It was a sad pity she could hope for no great marriage. No doubt the Queen had some one of her yeomen in mind or a squire. Long Will knew little of the background for his mission to the little Kentish priory except that it was like a dozen others he had performed for Queen Philippa, whose heart and charities were large. She always concerned herself with orphaned children, particularly those, like the de Roet girls, whose fathers had been her own countrymen.

"Are many of the royal family now at Windsor?" asked Katherine presently. She thought of them as clothed in misty glitter, King Edward and Queen Philippa, and their princely sons and daughters; vague names seldom heard at Sheppey where the talk was all of the proper observance of saints' days, the shiftlessness of the priory serfs or the recurrent fits, perhaps divinely inspired, which afflicted one of the novices.

"Most of 'em'll be at Windsor for the Saint George Day's feasting and jousting," said Long Will, "but I don't know just which ones. They all move so much from place to place, and now there's this new talk o' war."

"War?" cried the prioress sharply. "But we've been at peace with France these six years." Blessed Mary - not war again, she thought, knowing from bitter experience how war increased her administrative problems. Labour was scarce and grudging enough on the manor as it was. After the terrible Black Death in forty-nine there had been no strong serfs left at all to do the work. The nuns had laboured in the fields themselves - those of them that survived the plague - and Sheppey had nearly gone under. Godeleva had been a novice then, and too young to realise the stark anxieties of her superiors. But they had struggled through. A new generation of serfs had grown up, though not the gentle biddable types of the old days, for these new ones flocked off to war by preference instead of waiting to be called. It had been so before the Peace of Br6tigny, it would be so again if war came and no one left to labour except feeble old men and gloomy women.

"Not war with France, but with Castile, I hear," answered Long Will. "The Prince o' Wales, God gi' him grace, interests himself in the matter at Bordeaux." Suddenly bored with the women and his mission, Long Will spurred his horse and rode ahead cursing the plodding priory nags. If war came he'd not be sent on silly errands like this - herding virgins through the countryside.

"Come up, come up, my reverend dames," he called back impatiently turning in his saddle. "I see the ferry waiting."

Long Will's patience was further tried by the crossing of the Swale. Bayard baulked again, refusing for half an hour either to swim or board the ferry. Dame Cicily, who was even more afraid of water than she was of horses, managed to slip off the foot-plank and was hauled out weeping, her black robes soaked and clinging to her skinny legs. And the ferryman, seeing the royal badge on Long Will's tunic, naturally tried to extort double fares. The Queen was thrifty like all Flemings and the purse she had provided for the journey would barely cover expenses, so that the messenger had to subdue the ferryman with a rough and practised tongue.

Katherine sat on a mossy stone on the farther bank of the Swale and listened dreamily to a spate of oaths she had not known existed, while waiting for their guide to finish with Bayard and the ferryman. She was happy to be on the mainland at last, and a little frightened too. The April sun shone warm on her back, blackbirds sang in a wild cherry tree, and from over the hill on the road to London she heard the confused baa-ing of sheep and the tinkle of the bellwether.

She gazed across the Swale at the Isle of Sheppey where she had spent most of her conscious years. She could see the battlements of the unfinished castle but not the priory's squat little minster, nor hear the bell which must now be calling the nuns to Tierce, and she thought of the first day she had heard that bell over five years ago when she had been delivered at the convent from a cart, along with a side of beef and half a tun of wine sent as gifts to Sheppey by the Queen. The Queen sent three gold nobles as well for Katherine's keep and Prioress Godeleva had been jubilant.

True, Katherine was neither a royal ward nor a well-dowered novice, nor even nobly born; she was simply a child, like many others, for whom the motherly Queen felt responsibility; but the prioress had been elated by this unexpected mark of royal interest, for Sheppey had never before been so honoured. Usually it was large aristocratic foundations like Barking or Amesbury that were chosen.

It was because of Queenborough Castle, to be rebuilt on an old Saxon stronghold to guard the Thames, that the Queen had thought of the nearby priory - thought of it, and then apparently forgotten all about it again.

Katherine grew tall and strong; she had soon eaten up the gold nobles, and become an expense to the convent, but nothing more came from the Queen or from Philippa, Katherine's sister, except the young squire's message last year.

Royal personages, however kind, may be forgetful, Katherine had learned early, yet the Queen had said that she would never fail in remembrance of her compatriots and especially one who died in battle, as Katherine's father had.

Payn de Roet came from Hainault, the Queen's wealthy little Netherlands country, but he had married a French girl from Picardy who had died in childbed. After her death Payn had left his two little daughters with their grandparents when he followed the Queen to England. Payn had been a dashing, handsome man inclined to dress above his station and thus well fitting his nickname of Paon, the peacock.

He found favour with King Edward, who appointed him one of the royal heralds - King-of-Arms to represent the province of Guienne - then finally so distinguished himself fighting in France just before the peace in 1360 that King Edward had knighted him on the field, along with many other deserving soldiers.

Sir Payn did not live long enough to enjoy either his knighthood or the truce, for a Norman arrow pierced his lungs during a skirmish outside the walls of Paris, and he expired with an anguished prayer for the future of his two little daughters in Picardy.

Queen Philippa heard of this later when the King returned to England, and was saddened. Soon she had occasion to send a messenger across the Channel with letters to Bruges and she entrusted him with various other commissions along the way.

So the messenger stopped at the farm in Picardy and found that Sir Payn's family was indeed desperate for help. The plague, as it returned that winter for its second great smiting, had recently struck the household. The grandparents had died of it and all the servants. No one was left but Payn's two small daughters, and one, the younger, had been stricken too, but miraculously recovered, though she continued to ail. They were being reluctantly tended by a neighbour.

These little girls were aged thirteen and ten. The elder was named Philippa, for the Queen who had been her father's patroness, and the younger was Katherine. Finding them thus completely orphaned, and knowing the Queen's good heart, the messenger carried the children back to England with him on his return trip.

Of this voyage across the Channel and her arrival in a foreign country, or of the jolting ride through pouring rain to the royal palace at Eltham, and eventual reception by the Queen, Katherine remembered almost nothing. For she had been ill the whole time with a wasting fever and bloody flux.

Katherine had a dim memory of a kind fat face topped by a gold circlet, and of a thick comfortable voice speaking to her first in Flemish then French, but though her sister Philippa admonished her sharply to answer the Queen, Katherine could not, and she remembered nothing else.

The Queen had had her carried to a forester's cottage where the goodwife, skilled with herbs, had managed to nurse the child back to health. By that time the Queen had moved to her favourite palace of Woodstock and taken little Philippa with her in her household, and when reminded that Katherine had most surprisingly recovered, she sent letters arranging for the child's admission at Sheppey.

How unhappy I was, and how homesick, the last time I crossed this river, thought Katherine, looking down at the muddy waters of the Swale.

"Viens, Katrine - depeches-toi!" called the prioress from the road, preparing to hoist herself on to the white horse. Katherine jumped up. The prioress used French only in moments of ceremony or admonition and she spoke it with a flat Kentish twang, so that Katherine had not understood one word when she first came to the convent, but now this uncouth French was as familiar to her as the English the nuns always spoke among themselves.

Katherine jumped up behind Godeleva, and the little procession jogged off. Dame Cicily at the rear was still sniffling and shivering, and at intervals she called on St. Sexburga, the patroness of their convent, to protect her from more such mishaps. But the sun grew warmer, the muddy road dried, the soft Kentish air was bright with fragrance and bird-song, and when they met a flock of sheep coming towards them - a very good omen - Dame Cicily cheered up and began to look about her at the changing countryside.

Long Will was singing again - a rippling ballad of alewives and cuckoldry, the words fortunately not quite audible to his charges. Even the prioress expanded under the rare pleasure of going on a journey, and said to Katherine, "Oh, child, may Saint Mary and our Blessed Lord forgive me, and They know I would never leave my convent except for such very good reason, but it is pleasant to be out in the world."

"Oh it is, it is, dear Mother!"

Katherine, startled by this human confession, looked affectionately down at the small black-covered head in front of her. The prioress had relaxed austerity for once and made some concessions to feminine vanity. Her wimple was glossily starched, she had directed that Dame Joanna, the chambress, refurbish the black cloak and rub cinnamon into the folds to stifle the inevitable odour of mildew and sweat. Her silver signet-ring, badge of office, had been burnished with wood ash until it twinkled like a star on her plump white forefinger, and she had made the sacrist restring her finest coral rosary with gold thread.

Godeleva usually obeyed the Benedictine rule as well as anyone, but there are practical considerations too. On this trip to court, it should be possible to pick up a well-dowered novice for Sheppey, and those who live in the world are regrettably apt to be influenced by appearance. Parents did not like to confide their daughters to impoverished provincial houses, and the competition was strong, since there were in England some hundred and forty convents besides Sheppey, and all of them anxious for benefices.

The prioress twisted around to look at her charge, and thought that Katherine would do Sheppey credit. The girl had grown beautiful. That fact the convent perhaps could not lay claim to, except that they had obviously fed her well; but her gentle manners, her daintiness in eating - these would please the Queen as much as Katherine's education might startle her. Katherine could spin, embroider and brew simples, of course; she could sing plain chant with the nuns, and indeed had a pure golden voice so natural and rich that the novice-mistress frequently had to remind her to intone low through her nose, as was seemly. But more than that, Katherine could read both French and English because "Sir" Osbert, the nuns' priest, had taken the pains to teach her, averring that she was twice as quick to learn as any of the novices. He had also taught her a little astrology and the use of the abacus, somewhat to the prioress's disapproval. Useless learning is a snare of the devil and last year, when Katherine's beauty became obvious, Godeleva had had moments of worry about "Sir" Osbert's zeal for teaching. She had repented of her shameful doubts, however; the priest was a man, to be sure, but a very old one, and the watchful prioress eventually decided that he found in the hours he spent teaching Katherine only intellectual interest, and the alleviation of boredom.

"Drop your chin and straighten your back, child, as we've taught you," said the prioress, arranging the folds of her own habit, which had become tangled in the stirrups.

Katherine obeyed as well as she could on Bayard's jiggling rump, then leaned forward eagerly. "Oh, look, Reverend Mother - a spire over there and a castle and houses. Oh, is it London?"

Long Will heard this and let out a roar of laughter. "No more London than a rush dip is the sun. Yon's only Rochester."

Katherine blushed and said nothing more, but Rochester seemed to her a very great city. Besides the high spire there were at least a hundred chimneys pricking the sky above the massive encircling wall.

"They've a passable ordinary here, madam," said Long Will riding back to the prioress. "My gullet's dry, my belly empty as a tabor, and your's too, very like. We'll dine at the Three Crowns?"

The prioress shook her head. "Not seemly," she said, pursing her lips. "We will go to the abbey guest house. One of my nuns, Dame Alicia, is cousin-german to the abbot."

Long Will and Katherine were much disappointed; Long Will because he liked the ale and the serving maid at the The Crowns, Katherine because she had had quite enough of religious houses and longed to see what a tavern was like; but the little prioress was accustomed to rule. Will grumpily led the way through the city gates towards the abbey.

They aroused interest in the streets, not because of the nuns, for on this way-stop to Canterbury one saw plenty of pilgrims, ecclesiastic and secular, but because of the royal badge on Will's tunic, and the lovely face that gazed down from behind the prioress. Katherine's hood had slipped back, her ruddy hair sparkled in the sun and her cheeks were like apple blossoms.

The citizens of Rochester shrank against the overhanging houses to let the three horses by on the narrow street, and they were free with their comments. "God's bones," cried a leather-monger, spitting amiably towards Will, "have ye been raping a nunnery, Longshanks?" "Worse'n that," answered a passing pedlar sepulchrally. "He's taking the women to be hanged on London Bridge for treason, what else?" Guffaws greeted this sally, and a baker thrust his head through his shop window. "Their bones'll be picked clean in a trice then, for 'tis well known vultures like virgin meat."

"Virgins they may be," cried the leathermonger, "but the girl's too fair for that. Pray don't close her in a nunnery, madam." He swept Godeleva a mock, beseeching bow. "Find yourself another novice, ill-favoured and snag-toothed. This fair maid must warm some lucky man's bed."

"A murrain on the lot of you," cried Long Will, grinning. "The Queen herself'll find this maid a husband. Make way, make way," he shouted to a tangle of dogs and children playing at Hoodman Blind in the street ahead.

The prioress rode imperturbably through the chaffing. She had heard plenty of rough talk in her girlhood at Sandwich and, in fact, scarcely noticed it, being occupied with plans for their accommodations that night. If the abbey could not receive them, they must push on to the priory at Lilliechurch. But Dame Cicily was frightened; her long ferret nose quivered, her eyes grew pink, and she again regretted that she had come.

Katherine was not frightened, but she was embarrassed and pulled her hood close around her face. Can I be really fair? she thought. No one had ever said so before and there was no looking-glass, of course, at Sheppey. She had heard mention of fair women by some of the older nuns and a few of the travellers who knocked at the priory wicket. They had spoken of great beauties like Joan of Kent, wife to the Prince of Wales, and warmly admired in this her native shire; and some said that Blanche of Lancaster, John of Gaunt's Duchess, was nearly as beautiful. But those two were blondes, with hair like gold silk and eyes as blue as the Virgin's robe. Dame Sybilla said so. She had seen both great ladies at a tournament in Smithfield ten years ago, before she came to Sheppey as a novice. Dame Sybilla had read many romances too, before she put away worldly things, and she said the lovely heroines were always fair-haired and blue-eyed, with pursed rosebud mouths.

Katherine could see that her own hair was only of a reddish hue like a horse-chestnut, but she wasn't sure about her eyes, so she had consulted the de Northwode novice. Little Adela de Northwode had examined Katherine's eyes conscientiously. "A sort of speckled grey, like - like a rabbit's fur," she had said at last. "Or perhaps more like thin fog, just before the sun breaks through. But they are very large," she added kindly as Katherine looked dashed, "near as large as a sheep's" - which was not reassuring. Further questioning elicited that neither did Katherine have a tiny, pouting mouth, and she had dejectedly given up all claims to vanity.

All the same, today she had felt a strange sense of power, and she had felt this thing last year when she had met the young squire.

Katherine had plenty of time that night to think about the squire, for she and the nuns stayed in the abbey's female hostel, and after attending Compline that night they went at once to bed on pallets in the dorter, and soon the fetid air was filled with feminine snores and coughs, just like Sheppey. Moreover, the bugs and fleas which lived in the stale rushes on the floor, scenting new flesh, fastened themselves with avidity on Katherine's tender naked body, so that between scratching and excitement she could not sleep.

It was in May, nearly a year ago, that the squire had come riding up to the priory gatehouse asking for the Damoiselle de Roet, and he brought Katherine a message from her sister at court. This was the first message from Philippa since Katherine had come to Sheppey, but the young squire explained that Philippa was sorry about that; she had not had the advantage of a convent education and could not write, so there had been no opportunity before.

Katherine had received her visitor in the prioress's dim parlour, and she had been in such a state of confused pleasure that she had not been able to say much.

The squire's name was Roger de Cheyne and he was one of the Duke of Lancaster's retinue. The great Duke himself was at Queenborough that night, making a visit of inspection to the castle under construction, and Roger had obtained leave to ride to the priory and see Katherine. "Your sister, Philippa la Picarde," said the young man, twirling his jewelled felt hat and peering at Katherine with startled interest, "sends you God's greetings and hopes you are in health, as she is. She bids me ask you" - here he bowed and smiled charmingly towards the prioress - "if it is the Reverend Mother's and your intent that you be now entered here as a novice."

"Oh no! no!" cried Katherine violently, forgetting propriety in her horror.

The prioress frowned. "Mademoiselle de Roet will of course do as the Queen wishes-" She paused, wondering if she was to be asked to receive Katherine without dowry.

The squire smiled at Katherine, and her heart jumped. He was so fresh and young, his skin fine like a girl's and barely shadowed with a golden down. His short chestnut curls clustered about his ears, his surcote of blue wool was embroidered in, gold around the Lancaster red rose badge, he had a jewelled dagger and elegant pointed red shoes, but despite his elegance, his neck was thick-muscled and his shoulders broad. Totally innocent though she was, Katherine felt in him a virility lying beneath the courtly manner, as a tough branch supports the blossoms on a cherry tree.

"I cannot speak for the Queen," he said in his soft, wooing voice. "I've not seen her for months. She suffers much with the dropsy and keeps at Woodstock, but I understood your sister to mean that whether you choose marriage or the cloister, she would endeavour, in time" - he paused, knowing well how long such matters often took - "to suggest your wishes to our sovereign lady, God give her health."

"Oh," said Katherine faintly. So after all she must continue at the convent and await the Queen's pleasure, as before. She turned, biting her lips, to stare through the tiny unglazed window towards the sea.

The squire walked over beside her and touched her bare arm, so light and quick a caress that the prioress did not see it. "Ma belle," he whispered in rapid French, "hast thou yet felt Cupid's arrows that pierce the heart with honey fire?" At Katherine's quick indrawn breath and startled eyes, he went on louder in English, "I may tell your sister, then, that you wish to be wed?"

Katherine blushed scarlet and bowed her head. She knew nothing of the stylised game of courtly love and the young man's question about Cupid and honey fire was gibberish, but a shiver raced through her veins when he touched her and spoke in the almost forgotten accents of her childhood.

"Are you not English, Sir Squire?" she asked breathlessly.

Roger de Cheyne laughed. "English enough since my grandfather came here from Artois with Isabella of France and I was born at our manor in Oxfordshire; but my mother still has lands in France, so I've spent much time there."

"And your father?" asked the prioress. She, too, was interested in this springtime breath from the great world.

"Killed at Crecy, by his own French kinsman, as it turned out," said Roger cheerfully. "My father, of course, was in King Edward's company, but he had many relatives on the other side. Well, that's war. I was born, by the way, on the same day as the battle, so I never saw my father - God rest his soul."

Katherine was counting back. The English victory at Crecy had been in late August of 1346, so the young squire was nearly twenty and born under the sign of Virgo. That meant for a man high ideals of chastity and nobility; often the natives of that sign went into holy orders, like the blessed St. Cuthbert.

She stole an anxious glance at Roger through her long lashes. He did not look like a young man inclined towards the priesthood, but then what did she know of young men and their inclinations, she thought, depressed. Nor would she find out anything now, it seemed, for the prioress had risen, holding out her hand for the squire to kiss her ring.

"It was good of you to come with your message, young sir," said the prioress far less cordially. She had suddenly realised that, charming as young de Cheyne might be, his visit had proved nothing. Katherine was apparently to remain on here as a charity boarder, her future still unsettled; besides Godeleva did not like the languishing glances the youth's bold eyes cast on her charge. There had been no seductions or scandal during her rule at the convent and there would not be - even of a secular. So the prioress herded Katherine back to the mistress of novices and personally supervised the serving of bread and ale to the squire before God-speeding him under the gatehouse.

Katherine did not see him again, but as she lay that night amongst the novices she had heard trumpets blaring from the castle, and fancied that she could also hear the voices of men singing and laughing. The Duke of Lancaster and his meinie would be revelling, and Roger de Cheyne playing perhaps on the lute that she had seen strapped to his saddle. And Katherine had cried softly for a time, stifling the sound with her hair so as not to disturb the sleeping novices.

Sainte Marie, what a baby I was, thought this older Katherine lying on the strange hostel pallet, for now that release had come at last, all past disappointments seemed trivial. I will be good and please Philippa and the Queen, she thought vaguely, quite unable to visualise either of them. Of the husband who would be allotted to her she scarcely thought at all, except that it would be delightful if he were young and handsome like Roger de Cheyne.

CHAPTER II

It took them four more days to reach Windsor, and only for Katherine were the small mishaps and adventures of the road consistently interesting. The two nuns grew weary of strange beds and food, their middle-aged bones ached, their muscles cramped from all this riding. Moreover, Dame Cicily had caught a cold after her ducking in the Swale, and her doleful sneezes grew as monotonous as the slow clop of the horses, or Long Will's increasingly exasperated oaths. He was on fire to get back to Windsor where the festivities would be already under way; the preliminary jousting in the lists, bull-baitings and cockfights by the river, while fair Alison of Egham had promised to give her old husband the slip and be waiting at the alehouse to join Will in merry dalliance. Yet by Sunday the party from Sheppey had travelled no farther than Southwark, and there was no means of hurrying them. Dame Cicily's nag limped, the prioress's cob shied and then baulked at anything which annoyed it, which meant pedlars, dogs, puddles, geese and particularly the sound of bagpipes, which they encountered with frequency while they were on the Pilgrims' Way, since most groups bound for Canterbury included amateur musicians.

So Long Will chafed and endured a journey of nearly six days, though it had taken him less than three alone. And at Southwark he would not allow his charges to cross the Bridge and enter London, which would have meant more delay.

The tired nuns did not care. The prioress had twice been to London before this, once as a girl with her family, and once on pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Edward the Confessor at Westminster; as for Dame Cicily, she had reached a stage of snivelling apathy, longing only for the safe quiet of Sheppey and the ministrations of the infirmaress.

But for Katherine it was different. To be here at last by London town, which lay across the river with its teeming traffic of wherries, wine-laden galleys from Gascony and gorgeously painted private barges; to glimpse the shining walls and the stately four-turreted White Tower, the bustling Bridge hung with banners; to hear the hum and rhythm of the city below the jangling of a hundred different church bells - and to be allowed no nearer, that was a bitter disappointment. Still, she was by temperament reasonable and by training obedient, so she contented herself with a few timid questions.

That tremendous high spire to the left, so strong and up-thrust above the city? Why, St. Paul's Cathedral of course, said the prioress. And that great pile of masonry down by the water's edge? The prioress did not know, but Long Will took pity on the girl. That's Baynard's Castle, damoiselle; it belongs to the Earls of Clare. Nearly all the nobles have city houses, but the finest of all is the Duke of Lancaster's Savoy. Look -"

He swung his horse around and directed Katherine's gaze upriver, a mile or so beyond the city walls. "Can you see it?"

She squinted into the noon light and made out a huge mass of cream-coloured stone and many crenellated turrets from which fluttered tiny splashes of red and gold, and one sharp-pointed gilt spire which marked the private chapel, but she could see few details, and no premonition seized her that the great Duke's palace might ever be more to her than an object of curiosity and awe. Indeed, she passed on quickly to strain her eyes farther in the direction of Westminster, but she could not see it because of the bend in the river, and Long Will, though usually tolerant of Katherine, was hurrying them on again. They turned south to pick up the Richmond road, and tall oaks hid all the north bank from sight.

"Yes," said Will, riding beside Bayard to keep a minatory eye on the horse, and having pursued his own train of thought, "John o' Gaunt's a lucky man - lucky in bed, that is. He's naught but the King's third son, yet I vow he has more lands and castles than his father."

"How is that?" asked the prioress, sighing. It had begun to drizzle and there was still much road ahead before they reached the convent where she intended to stop that night.

"By the marriage-bed, madam," said Long Will, laughing, "and by death-beds, too. The Lady Blanche of Lancaster, bless her sweet face, brought him the greatest inheritance in the kingdom, once her father and sister were dead, may their souls rest in peace. They died of plague five years ago, both of 'em, and so the Lady Blanche got all." Katherine, mildly interested, would have questioned further, but the prioress, who had just developed a crick in her back, sharply told her not to talk so much, and Katherine subsided.

Long Will kicked his roan, which leaped ahead. He hurried them on until they passed near the royal palace at Sheen, deserted now except for a few varlets, since King Edward seldom used it as a residence, preferring Windsor, Woodstock or Eltham when he was not at Westminster. But Sheen was a small, pretty castle floating like a swan on its broad shining moat, and it put Will in a fine humour for the gatekeeper's daughter was a buxom lass, coy enough to make good sport, and she would doubtless be found at Windsor for the merrymaking.

On the following afternoon, Monday the twentieth of April, they finally reached Windsor, and during the last hour's ride, the road was so thronged they could scarcely move at all. Long Will's voice grew hoarse from shouting, "Make way! Make way for the Queen's messenger!"

From all the nearby shires, from as far away as Northumberland and Devon and Lincolnshire, the people were flocking to celebrate St. George's Day at Windsor. Weeks ago the King's heralds had galloped throughout the country proclaiming the great tournament and inviting all valorous knights to come and participate. There would be tilting at the quintain and other knightly games; there would be jousts and challenges, and there would be a climaxing tourney, or melee, for all contenders. Most of the knights had arrived at Windsor some days ago, and the lesser ones who could not be accommodated in the castle were already encamped on the plain below the walls in a bivouac of multi-coloured tents; many had brought their ladies and all, of course, their squires.

But the common people, though not specifically invited, were welcome, too. For these, five hundred oxen were roasting at charcoal fires dotted around the fields, vats of beer had been . set up, and a thousand loaves of barley bread already baked for distribution.

While Long Will expertly wormed his way through the streets of Windsor towards the castle gate they were jostled by prosperous merchants, beggars, palmers with cockleshells in their broad hats, whores in hoods of scarlet ray, respectable goodwives with their children, mummers and gleemen, all clamorous with holiday mood.

Katherine was a little frightened by the noise and confusion, and Dame Cicily was in tears as usual. Her habit had been caught by the gold spur of a passing knight as he shoved his horse impatiently through the press and now a jagged rip divided the black wool and shamefully exposed her skinny leg, fumble as she might to hide it. Even Long Will was disconcerted as he manoeuvred his charges, and said, "God's bones, ladies, I don't know where they'll lodge you for I swear there'll not be a cranny vacant in the castle."

Only the little prioress was imperturbable. "We will wait inside the gates," she said majestically, "until you make known our arrival to the Damoiselle de Roet's sister, who will doubtless have made provision for us."

So they rode through the portcullis to the lower ward and huddled in a corner by the curfew tower near a black-gowned clerk who fidgeted impatiently while he also awaited answer to some message he had sent.

Long Will dismounted, threw his reins to a stable urchin and disappeared.

This great paved courtyard was as full of confusion as the streets. Mounted knights and squires continually came and went, servants ran panting from building to building, a noble lady arrived in a gilt and blazoned chariot, was received by a blowing chamberlain and vanished through one of the myriad doors. Suddenly there was a greater flurry and a flourish of trumpets. Two boys in white livery marched through the gate, one bearing a jewelled mitre and the other a crozier.

They were followed by a plump, red-faced man in gold-embroidered robes, riding on a large grey horse. The Prioress Godeleva uttered an exclamation. She slid down off Bayard, pulling Katherine with her. " 'Tis the Bishop of Lincoln," she whispered and knelt on the paving-stones. Dame Cicily copied her prioress while tugging frantically at her torn habit.

Here and there throughout the courtyard others knelt too. John Buckingham, the bishop, smiled vaguely around, raising two fingers in blessing. Then his eye caught sight of the nuns and he looked startled. He rode over to them.

"Whence come you, Reverend Mother?" he asked Godeleva sharply, having noted her ring of office. "Are you of my flock?"

"No, my lord," said Godeleva. "We come from Sheppey Priory in Kent."

"Oh, the south-" said the bishop, losing interest. Had they come from his own diocese it would be necessary to inquire into the appearance of two nuns in such worldly surroundings, but he was relieved that no steps need be taken, for he was hungry and impatient to be housed.

"We have permission, my lord," said Godeleva. "I bring this girl here at the Queen's command."

"Ah." The bishop glanced down at Katherine, of whom he could see nothing but a cheap green woollen hood, for her head was properly bowed. But he noted her hands, which were very dirty and ringless.

"Some charity wench of the good Queen's no doubt," he said with a condescending laugh, dismissing them all. He murmured "Benedicite," and rode back to his waiting coterie.

Katherine flushed. There was enough truth in the bishop's careless statement to sting. I'm not a charity wench; my father was knighted, she thought hotly and she rose from her knees, staring after the bishop with no proper Christian humility. There were lesser priests around him, all fluttering and fawning except one, who stood apart. This priest wore doctoral robes and a four-cornered hat, and his brooding eyes, deep-set above a huge, hooked nose, were fixed on the magnificent Lord Bishop of Lincoln with a certain irony, visible even to Katherine, who therefore felt sudden interest.

"I wonder who that is?" she said to Godeleva, pointing discreetly; but before the prioress, who did not know, could answer, the clerk behind them spoke.

" 'Tis Master John Wyclif, that was King's chaplain."

"Blessed Virgin!" cried the prioress crossing herself. "Not that priest who's dared defy His Holiness the Pope? Katherine, don't look at him! He's tainted with vile heresy. By Sainte Marie, I've even heard that he wishes to English the Gospels - is't true, Sir Clerk?"

The clerk laughed. "I've heard so. His Lollards, the poor preachers, make all manner of shocking statements to the people."

"Deus misereatur! 'Tis no matter for laughing!" The prioress frowned at the clerk's amused face. She drew Katherine and Dame Cicily away from him, and lectured Katherine apprehensively on the many dangers that must be guarded against in the world. And they continued to wait.

During the next half-hour the girl had ample time to compare her own appearance with that of court ladies who flitted by to become increasingly uncomfortable. The chambress at Sheppey had done the best she could for Katherine, considering that there was no money forthcoming, but the hood and cape were now deplorably travel-stained, and the girl's brown serge kirtle hung loose and baggy like the nuns' habits and was unredeemed by lacings of fur or embroidery. Katherine's courage ebbed very low as time went on. The great folk passed by without even a glance in their direction, and she began inwardly to echo Dame Cicily's lamentations.

"Oh, Reverend Mother, they've forgotten us! Perhaps it was all a jest or a mistake! We were never meant to come! Would that we were safe back at Sheppey! O Merciful Blessed Lady and kind Saint Sexburga, don't desert us!"

"Hush," said the prioress sharply. "Here is Long Will now."

Long Will loped down the ward and behind him there hurried a small .plump girl with a worried smile. She was dressed in a blue robe trimmed with squirrel and her dark hair was looped in tight braids on either side of her round earnest face.

She curtsied to the prioress, then peered at Katherine. "Est-ce vraiment toi, ma soeur?" she said uncertainly.

Katherine leaned down, threw her arms around her sister's neck and burst into tears.

The two girls clung to each other murmuring little choked French endearments while Long Will looked on with sentimental approval, Dame Cicily sniffed in sympathy and even the prioress' controlled face softened.

Philippa drew away first and returned to practical problems. "I fear we've no suitable accommodation up here for you, Reverend Mother," she said apologetically, "but Long Will can guide you to respectable night's lodgings in the town, unless you wish to ride on to Ankerwyck Priory, perhaps?"

Godeleva flushed. "But surely I was to see the Queen. I understood I might have audience with the Queen." In spite of herself her voice trembled, for it was easy to read dismissal in the girl's proposal, and then where were all the golden hopes of royal favour and tardy gratitude for the care of Katherine? Where hopes of picking up new novices?

"The Queen, Our Lady be merciful, is ill, Reverend Mother," answered Philippa uncomfortably for she was used to supplicants at court and quite understood what the prioress wanted. "The dropsy which plagues her is very bad and she keeps to her bed, tended only by two of her ladies. I myself

have not seen her for a week - as soon as she's better, perhaps."

"But she sent for Katherine," protested the prioress. "She must have known I could not let the girl travel alone with a messenger!"

Philippa sighed, knowing that the Queen had given no thought to the matter at all, once she had assented to Philippa's timid request for an Easter boon.

"We will stay in the town then," said the prioress with recaptured calm, "until the Queen is well enough to receive me. Katherine-" She looked at the girl and paused, with a smile which did not quite hide the anxious question in her eyes.

Katherine responded to the unspoken plea with a rush of warmth, and astonishment that the austere little ruler of Sheppey days should be pleading and in need.

"I won't forget, Reverend Mother," she said gently, kneeling and kissing the plump white hand. "Not all you've done for me, nor your wish for audience with the Queen. I won't forget."

The prioress murmured a blessing. "You've been a good girl," she said, turning away. "Continue to be." She mounted Bayard, Dame Cicily clambered up on her horse, and Long Will shrugged, catching Bayard's bridle. He led the two nuns towards the gate.

"Well," said Philippa briskly, "now we must hurry. Tis near the hour for supper. Holy Michael and his angels, but we'll have to clean you up first and find you something fit to wear. You're not a slattern, I trust!" Philippa, hustling her sister past the Round Tower to the upper ward and into the passage that led to the Queen's apartments, had just taken a startled survey of Katherine.

"I trust not," said Katherine trying to laugh, "but we've been on the road since dawn and I've no change of clothes. I'm sorry-"

Philippa made an impatient clucking noise. "We must borrow a decent gown; only Matilda Radscroft is tall enough and she's not over-generous, but if you offer to do something for her . . . She's behind with her tapestry - can you embroider?"

"A little," answered Katherine humbly, stumbling up steep stone stairs after her sister. She understood that Philippa loved her of course, but that the moment of sentiment had passed. She understood too that Philippa would do her efficient duty no matter how she might dislike a disruption of her well-ordered-life.

But Katherine's eyes filled. She was hungry and tired and she felt an amazing pang of homesickness for Sheppey.

Philippa opened a stout oak door and ushered Katherine into the lady-in-waiting's solar. Here in this small low-vaulted room lived six of the Queen's damoiselles when they were in residence at Windsor. The two who were closest to the Queen - Matilda Fisher and Elizabeth Pershore - were now in constant attendance since the illness, and slept on the other side of the wing in the ante-room near their mistress, while the others slept here in three beds; except Alice Perrers, and there was little doubt unfortunately as to where she slept, though in theory she shared a bed in this solar.

Alice was here now, however, when Philippa and Katherine came in. All of the Queen's damoiselles were primping for supper. They hovered near the fire, and held candles for each other as they searched for finery in open coffers which dotted the rush-strewn floor. Only Alice Perrers sat alone, away from the, others, and she was tended by the two tiring maids who were assigned to all of them. One maid held a candle and the other a looking-glass while Alice rubbed cochineal paste into her high cheek-bones and hid her wiry black hair in a net of seed pearls.

She turned her pointed cat face towards Philippa and Katherine, widened her shrewd dark eyes and called, in the caressing voice for which she was famous, "Ah, Pica, my sweet, so is this the little sister, at last?"

Philippa stiffened, made the barest noise of assent and pulled Katherine to the other side of the fire as far as possible from Alice, who gave a laugh like chiming bells, and holding out her perfumed hand admired the sparkle of her new ring. It was of Saracen make, two rubies set in heavy worked gold, and had belonged to the King's mother, Isabella of France.

Katherine was puzzled, but had not time to wonder why Philippa was so rude, for the other ladies closed around them, greeting and exclaiming. They were solid young women and accustomed to work. They were not nobly born, except for Agnes de Saxilby, because the Queen sensibly chose her ladies for the embodiment of the Flemish housewifely virtues, and their positions were in no wise honorary. They gave active service. The wives of great noblemen would not do menial chores, even for the Queen. So these were the daughters or wives of gentry and they welcomed Katherine with rough kindness.

"Oh, so dirty! What frightful clothes! God's nails, but they must be lousy. Burn them!" The ladies summarily stripped Katherine and threw her clothes into the fire while the girl stood naked and shivering trying not to cry as Philippa brought water and a coarse towel and scrubbed her little sister until the beautiful skin turned fiery red and Katherine shrank and tried to protect her delicate round breasts from Philippa's determined scourings. Johanna Cosin unbraided and combed the burnished masses of Katherine's hair; they put on her a spare shift of Philippa's which was much too short, and Matilda Radscroft, carried away by the concerted undertaking, actually pulled her third-best gown from a coffer and slipped it over Katherine's head. The gown was of coarse and .rather shabby velvet, trimmed with narrow bands of rabbit fur, and it hung loosely on Katherine's far more slender body, but its colour was violet, and above it the girl's long neck glowed white as pearls and her still unbound hair, rippling below her knees, caught violet lights from the dress and gold ones from the fire.

"So much hair to make neat and to hold up in the cauls," Philippa grumbled, "and she hasn't even a proper girdle or a surcote for warmth."

"She has something else - a great deal else," said Alice Perrers' soft laughing voice from the corner, "and if you ladies are too stupid to see it, the men won't be. Thanks to God that the King is short-sighted, I can fill his entire vision - and shall."

Philippa stiffened, the other women's heads jerked back. "The bawdy slut," whispered Johanna. They sent Alice looks of hatred but they dared say nothing. Mysterious punishments afflicted those who engaged the creature in open warfare. Agnes de Saxilby had last month spoken her mind to Alice, calling her whore and witch - for it must be witchcraft that would make the King so forget all his former duty and affection for the Queen. Alice, saying nothing, had smiled her sleepy smile, but only yesterday poor Agnes had heard that the King had authorised a ruinous new levy on her father's manor.

The ladies finished with Katherine and put the last touches to their own toilets; they gave her a drink of wine which much revived her, before they all flocked down the steps towards the Great Hall for supper. "Stay near me," whispered Philippa. "Don't speak unless you're spoken to."

Katherine needed none of these admonitions, which simply echoed her convent training, and she clung to her sister, feeling very nervous and wishing that she were not so tall and might hide in that plump little person's shadow.

The Great Hall with its stone vaulting and tinted windows was large enough to have contained the entire convent of Sheppey. Katherine was dazzled by the light from a hundred candles and torches, enchanted by the gay music of the minstrels and amazed by the sweet scent that vanquished the usual aroma of sweat, smoke and food. The floor was strewn with aromatic herbs and a cartload of violets had been mingled with them. At the far end of the Hall on a dais, a line of glittering, gorgeously jewelled men and women sat at the high table and Katherine at once saw the King under the central canopy before she politely lowered her eyes. He looks so old, she thought, startled by the straggling white hair and thin beard and shrunken shoulders. Edward was actually fifty-four but he had the lean Plantagenet frame and years of campaigning and intermittent fever had aged him.

The Queen not being present, the chamberlain waved Philippa and the other ladies-in-waiting towards a side-table with scant ceremony, and Katherine sat on the bench beside her sister.

Suddenly a head was thrust between the sisters and a quick voice said, "So there you are, my fair Pica. I've been searching for you."

Philippa looked up and blushed. Her serious little face was lightened by a smile almost coquettish. "Good even, sir," she said. "I was afraid you might be serving the King tonight. Katherine, this is my betrothed, Geoffrey Chaucer, esquire."

"Betrothed!" echoed Katherine amazed. "You didn't tell me - God's greetings to you, sir," she added hastily, remembering her manners.

Geoffrey smiled, clambering over the bench and wedging himself between the two girls. "Her betrothed is perhaps a matter of small importance to Pica," he said in a tone of faint mockery. "You're the little sister from the convent, of course." He motioned to a servant, who brought him a bowl and cup.

"There was no time to tell her," protested Philippa, "so much to do, receiving her and the nuns and getting her ready to appear here. You can't imagine the condition she was in and-"

"To be sure," interrupted Geoffrey smiling. "I know you were busy as a little wren." He patted Philippa's hand and his hazel eyes twinkled as at some private joke.

Katherine decided that she liked him, though he was by no means the romantic figure she hoped would fall to her own lot. He was short, not much taller than Philippa herself and though he was only twenty-six, already inclined towards stoutness. He was more soberly dressed than the King's other squires; his tunic of a clerical, mouse-grey wool was scantily furred, and his belt and dagger were of simple silver. His fingers were ink-stained and there was a spot on his long sleeve. His stubby brown beard was neither creamed nor perfumed and his hair was cut unfashionably short above his ears; but there were sweetness and humour in his firm lips and a quiet amusement behind his alert gaze. Katherine felt instinctively, as had her betters before her from the King down, "Here is someone trustworthy and intelligent, a man truly debonair."

"You do not eat, ma belle?" Geoffrey said presently to Katherine, wiping his mouth on a napkin and taking a long draught of wine. "The goose patty's excellent."

"I can't," she said, "it's all so bewitching and strange." Her eyes flew back to the royal table. Philippa, used to this sight, did not understand how like a summer dream it was, how impossible to believe that one was actually beholding them in their golds and scarlets, their ermines and coronets, their gauzy veils and jewels; the Plantagenets, a dozen or more of them, laughing, talking, eating, just like all the lesser folk along the side of the Hall.

But Geoffrey understood. "Yes, they're real," he said smiling. He put down his spoon. "You see the King-"

Katherine nodded. The King wore a small gold-pointed crown and the Queen's great empty throne was next to him. The King was half turned from the table and talking to someone a little behind him, someone with a small black head bound by a pearl fillet. "Why, it's Alice Perrers!" cried Katherine. "She's sitting on the arm of the Queen's chair."

"Hush!" whispered Philippa angrily. "You little ninny!"

Geoffrey chuckled. "There are some things we don't say out loud at court. We but whisper them to each other, my dear. But your natural curiosity about your rulers shall be gratified. Look now - see the dark overblown lady in gold with the smouldering gaze which she keeps fixed on her liege lord next her?"

Katherine nodded.

"That is the Princess Isabel and her husband, Lord Enguerrand de Coucy. She dotes on him, having captured him late, and being perhaps none too sure of his affection. She is just up from childbed, a daughter, alas, another Philippa. There's profusion of Philippas named for the good Queen - that's why we call this one 'Pica.'" He smiled at his betrothed.

"And the King's sons-" continued Geoffrey. "Do you know which they are?" Katherine shook her head, and he continued, "They're all home now, except the Prince of Wales, of course, who is at his court in Aquitaine."

He pointed out the royal princes to Katherine. There was Thomas of Woodstock, the youngest, a boy of eleven, who sat with his elbows on the table, scowling into his gilded cup with an expression of surly boredom. He and Isabel showed their mother's heavy Flemish blood. And there was Lionel of Antwerp, who was the eldest of the sons, except for Edward, Prince of Wales. Lionel was a ruddy blond giant and the Queen's favourite. He was goodnatured, stupid, a fairly recent and not too disconsolate widower, whose marriage to the Italian merchant princess, Violante Visconti, was in negotiation.

Lionel had just returned from a most uncongenial sojourn in Ireland, where he endeavoured to rule the lands inherited from his late wife, Elizabeth de Burgh. He detested the Irish and, being now very drunk, was roaring a scurrilous song about them to the tune the minstrels were playing. Chaucer, while pointing him out to Katherine, regarded his former master with amused affection. Geoffrey had entered the household of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, as a page and progressing to squire had served him loyally. But Geoffrey had been much relieved at his recent transfer to the King's own service, having no liking at all for exile in Ireland.

Edmund of Langley, Earl of Cambridge, sat near Lionel and was much paler and smaller than his brother. Edmund at twenty-four was still a pretty boy, with sloping, almost beardless chin. He smiled often as he chatted with Lady Pembroke on his right, while now and again he looked nervously towards his father, who paid not the slightest attention to him or to anyone except Alice Perrers. The King sat with his grizzled head twisted up towards Alice, sharing his ruby-studded cup with her, listening to her whispers and breaking now and then into a shout of laughter.

"I think I have them straight now," said Katherine, having followed Geoffrey's identifications breathlessly. "But the King has another son. Which is the Duke of Lancaster?"

Chaucer tan his eye down the line again and shook his head. 'He's not come in yet, though there is his most lovely Duchess, God give her joy."

Katherine heard the drop to seriousness in the squire's voice which had been, throughout his previous recital, tinged with light irony, and she was startled by the expression in his eyes as they rested on Blanche, Duchess of Lancaster. Katherine glanced instinctively at her sister. But Philippa was discussing the proper distillation of lavender water with Elizabeth Pershore, and not listening.

So Katherine examined the Duchess with avid interest, wondering at first why she had so great a reputation for beauty. From this distance, at least, the Lady Blanche appeared muted and overshadowed by the other vivid and bejewelled ladies at the High Table. Her blond braids were partially concealed by a simple gauze veil and her pale oval face, calm and passionless as a lily, was turned from the others, while her sea-blue eyes gazed out across the Hall with gentle contemplation.

But as Katherine watched, the Lady Blanche responded to some remark from the Earl of Pembroke and she smiled a smile of piercing sweetness, while inclining her shining head in a gesture both humble and gracious. Katherine was suddenly awed. She is like the painting at Sheppey of the Blessed Virgin, she thought.

"Yes," said Geoffrey, who had been watching the girl's face, "she is a very great lady. The greatest in the land, not excepting the Queen."

"Can she have - has she children?" asked Katherine timidly, for it did not seem possible that this exalted lady might have known the dark urgings of the body, the stir of blood Katherine felt dimly in herself.

Geoffrey nodded slowly. "She has had three - Philippa, who is six, a baby John, who died at birth, and Elizabeth, who is two years old, I believe."

Katherine considered this and was led on to another question. "Is there true love between the Duke and Duchess, do you think?" she whispered, not unaware of naivety and boldness but knowing instinctively that she dared ask anything of this wise young man.

A shadow crossed his face, but then he smiled. "Ay, I believe there is, and you don't yet know, child, how rare a thing love is at court, and in a royal marriage."

Katherine would have asked more but was diverted by a commotion of running feet outside the entrance to the Hall, and the blare of trumpets, followed by a herald's voice shouting a gabbled string of titles, "John, Duke of Lancaster, Earl of Richmond and Derby, of Lincoln and Leicester, enters here!"

All the company in the Hall, including those at the royal table except the King and Lionel, rose to their feet. "The noble Duke arrives," said Chaucer somewhat dryly, "with, of course, due ceremony and recognition."

Seven or eight young men strode into the Hall together but nobody could have had difficulty in identifying the Duke.

He was magnificent in a red and azure tunic quartered with the lilies of France and the Leopards of England. A gold girdle, fastened by the ruby rose of Lancaster, hung on his narrow hips and around his wide muscular shoulders lay the SS golden collar of Lancaster. John of Gaunt, who had just turned twenty-six last month, was the best made of all the King's sons. He was tall, though not so uncouthly large as Lionel, and he was slender, but not with the meagre delicacy of Edmund. In John's face the Plantagenet stamp of long nose, narrow cheeks and deep eye-sockets had been softened but not coarsened by the Flemish heritage. His eyes were as bright blue as his father's once had been, his thick hair was tawny yellow, as a lion's pelt. His beard was clipped short and his face shaven to disclose a full and passionate mouth.

As he strode down the Hall between the kneeling varlets and the bowing courtiers, Katherine felt the impact of a ruthless vitality and pride. He is more king than the King himself, she thought, staring fascinated. And many others thought so too, though not with her uncritical adjuration. It was the Lady Blanche's vast inheritance which had raised the King's third son to such power and there were some who thought him dangerously edging towards royal prerogatives and negligent of the proper respect due to his elder brothers, the Prince of Wales and Lionel.

The King had turned from Alice Perrers when his son's advent was announced and waited, frowning a little, until the Duke came up to the royal table and, kneeling, quickly kissed his father's hand and whispered something at which the King's face grew grim; he banged his fist upon the table, nodding slowly.

The Duke stood up again and raised his hand towards the minstrels, who hushed their instruments. He threw back his shoulders and though addressing the royal table, spoke in ringing tones designed to reach everyone throughout the Great Hall.

"A message has just come from our royal brother, the Prince of Wales. There is monstrous news. Henry Trastamare the Bastard has foully usurped the throne of Castile and was crowned on Easter Day!"

A shocked murmur ran around the Hall; it swelled to a chorus of dismay.

The Duke waited for the sensation to subside, then went on, "King Pedro, the rightful, most Christian and unhappy monarch, has applied to us for aid against the shameful traitor!"

Now many Knights jumped forward and there were exultant shouts. Katherine, who understood nothing of this but was gazing entranced at the handsome Duke, heard Chaucer say, "Welladay, so here we go again, poor England."

"What do you mean?" she asked, peering around at him.

He shrugged. "That the King and my Lord Duke will be on fire to right so grievous a wrong, particularly a wrong backed by France, and we shall fight again."

"Don't you want to fight?" said Katherine with some disapproval.

He chuckled in his throat. "I have fought, been captured and ransomed, too. I no longer need to prove myself the flower of chivalry, and I dare say I can serve my King better on missions."

"Missions," repeated Katherine, raising her chin and feeling a little sorry for Philippa. Her eyes flew back to the Duke of Lancaster. He had seated himself beside his wife and was talking animatedly across her to his father and brothers. She could no longer hear what was said but she saw that they were all in a buzz of excitement and indignation. Their royal blue eyes were flashing, and even little Thomas had lost his surly boredom and was hanging over the Duke asking eager questions.

How splendid they were, thought Katherine, and her heart swelled with hero-worship, directed towards the lovely Lady Blanche as much as towards the Duke. Of all the handsome people, those two were the best-looking, and a fairy enchantment surrounded them like a nimbus.

"Ah, yes," said Chaucer, watching her, "the Plantagenets dazzle like the noonday sun - but the Lancasters," he added on a lower note, glancing up at the Lady Blanche, "that one there doesn't dazzle, she glows, gentle as the Queen of Heaven. I think, my dear" - he interrupted himself abruptly - "that you are causing some interest across the Hall."

Katherine had been entirely unaware of herself during the last hour, now she followed Chaucer's gaze and reddened. Several of the Duke's retinue, after accompanying him into the Hall, had seated themselves at a table directly opposite.

Two of the young men were looking hard at Katherine and whispering. _;

For one who stared with such intentness that he seemed to be scowling at her, she felt an immediate antipathy. He had an ugly florid face, square as a box, and kinky hair, short and dusty, buff in colour like sheep's wool. His beard was of the same stubborn texture, so that it did not part neatly in the middle like that of other men, but jutted in a fringe. A jagged purple scar puckered his right cheek and contributed to the repulsion Katherine felt. The small scowling eyes were staring across at her with frank purpose, a look that even Katherine recognised as desire.

"Sir Hugh Swynford finds you appealing, it would seem," said Chaucer with grim amusement. "And so does the elegant young de Cheyne. Pica," he said on a lower note to his betrothed, "we shall have some ado to guard your little sister's maidenhead."

Now Katherine recognised the young man who sat beside Sir Hugh, for he smiled at her and kissed his hand when he at length caught her eye.

"Why, it's the squire who came last year with the message from you, Philippa," cried Katherine, delighted. She smiled and waved back. "He's changed a lot, his beard has grown."

"Katherine!" cried Philippa sharply. "Behave yourself! De Cheyne's no squire now, he's been knighted - and knights are no concern of yours. You'll get into trouble, my girl, if you encourage any of the courtiers, especially of the Duke's retinue. They're only after one thing. You should know that much, even at convent." Philippa gave an exasperated sigh, foreseeing many complications from Katherine's arrival which had not previously occurred to her. She herself did not think the girl's looks particularly striking, indeed she had not yet substituted this new Katherine for her memories of the scrawny, sickly child she had last seen. But Alice Perrers' detestable cooing voice had given one warning and it seemed now that Katherine was attracting an undue amount of attention for a humble little convent girl in an ill-fitting dress. Even Geoffrey, her own betrothed, had spent the whole supper-time answering the girl's silly questions and displaying undue warmth.

Philippa had no sentimental illusions about her betrothal, nor the temperament for sighings and moanings and courtly love games. Her marriage to Chaucer was eminently fitting. The Queen had suggested it, having in her maternal way considered various yeomen and squires in the royal entourage, picked out a handful of possibilities and given Philippa her choice of these and also the assurance of a dowry of ten marks yearly and continued patronage.

Philippa had preferred Geoffrey Chaucer to the other possibilities, though he was but the son of a vintner. Still, he had been attached to the royal family since childhood and was much liked by them. He was also educated as well as monk or clerk, and a sensible, good-humoured man, quite ready to marry and found a family, being already twenty-six. The betrothal pledge had been exchanged on Shrove Tuesday under the Queen's benign eye and the marriage planned for Whitsuntide.

It was all orderly and seemly as Philippa liked it, though during the last weeks of greater intimacy she had come to know some unexpected things about her betrothed. He spent a ridiculous amount of money on buying books and time on reading them and also on scribbling verses - these traits she intended to regulate after marriage. And she had discovered that he had a romantic attachment for the Duchess of Lancaster, which troubled Philippa not at all, though she thought it silly. Some great ladies might amuse themselves by dalliance with humble squires but not Lady Blanche, who had never spoken more than a dozen words to Geoffrey, for all that he had translated a devotional poem to the Holy Blessed Virgin and presented it to the Duchess. There was nothing disquieting in that to a sensible woman, which, thought Philippa, reverting to her worry, Katherine apparently was not. There was but one obvious course. Philippa decisively mopped up a dab of honey paste with the last morsel of her bread, and decided to approach the Queen tomorrow on the matter of Katherine's marriage, no matter how ill the poor lady might be. Symkyn-at-Woode, one of the sergeants-at-arms, would do. He was a bluff, hearty soul, widowered twice over, so would have experience enough to keep a giddy young wife in line.

Philippa's plans for Katherine were destined to be thwarted. No sooner had the royal family arisen and filed out to their own apartments, thus releasing the rest of the company, than the two young men from across the Hall darted over to present themselves. Geoffrey performed the introductions. "Sir Hugh Swynford, Sir Roger de Cheyne - the Damoiselle de Roet."

"Those beautiful eyes that slay me with cruel arrows I have seen once before," said Roger softly in French to Katherine. "More enchanting now even than in the little convent parlour. I've longed to see you again, ma tout belle"

Katherine felt a sharp pinch on her arm and heard Philippa give a warning cough, so that, though she flushed and her heart beat fast with pleasure, she lowered her lids and did not answer. He was more charming than ever, she thought, with his red lips and warm brown eyes. She contrived to look up at him through her lashes with an artless coquetry, seductive enough to the experienced Roger but entirely devastating to the other man, the florid, scowling Sir Hugh, at whom she had not even glanced.

Geoffrey had drawn back a little and was watching them all with a cocked eyebrow and his air of quiet amusement, but Philippa, aware of turgid currents that were quite out of place, was not amused at all.

"You speak gallantly to my sister, Sir Roger," she said, stonily. "You must not tease her, she's very ignorant." As Roger paid no attention to Philippa but continued to gaze amorously at Katherine, Philippa threw her betrothed a beseeching lock.

Geoffrey came to her rescue. "You have recently married, I think, Sir Knight," he said, bowing to Roger. "How do you leave your lady wife?"

"Oh," whispered Katherine involuntarily. She twisted her fingers tight in a fold of her velvet gown, feeling that her disappointment burned on her face like a brand.

"Why, she's well enough," said Roger lightly. "She stays on the manor, of course, since she is enceinte. Ma damoiselle" - he smiled at Katherine - ''will you not come out in the pleasaunce with me? There's a troupe of jugglers and a performing bear you might like to see."

Before Philippa could voice her sharp interdiction, Katherine raised her eyes and said quietly, "No, thank you, Sir Roger. I'm journey-tired. I've been travelling for days."

There was a sudden mature dignity in her low voice that startled all of them. Roger, who was accustomed to over-easy conquests, laughed good-humouredly and his melting eyes caressed her with added interest. Geoffrey thought, Good, the beautiful country mouse is not so simple after all. Philippa gave a relieved grunt and said briskly, "Well, then, let's go to bed. By your leave, sirs, may we pass."

But it was not Roger who blocked the way. It was the other knight, Hugh Swynford. "Damoiselle," he said, swaying a little and frowning at Katherine, "I shall escort you safely across the courtyard, by God."

His speech was thick, with a heavy pause between each word, and Katherine, despite her dismay over Roger and the repulsion she felt for this other knight, had a momentary desire to giggle. He must be drunk, she thought, this scowling lout with the ram's-wool hair.

"By all means, Sir Hugh," said Geoffrey. "Let's all see the ladies to their staircase."

"And sing as we go," laughed Roger. "Ma belle amie, que voit la rose" he carolled, taking Katherine's arm, while Hugh strode silently on the other side.

Chaucer and his betrothed followed behind, since the knight's rank must precede them from the Hall. "This is most interesting," he said to Philippa, watching the three figures ahead as they crossed the courtyard, which was illumined by both moon and torchlight. "Your little Katherine has le diable au corps. Both these noble knights wish to bed her."

"It's disgusting" snapped Philippa. "We must get her married at once. I think Symkyn-at-Woode, you know that sergeant, he wants a wife and - - "

"I think not, m'amie" said Geoffrey. "I think she may look higher than Symkyn. This Sir Hugh is not married and he devours her with his eyes. If Katherine is careful and chaste -"

"Oh, no," interrupted Philippa, "that's impossible! She has no dowry and the Swynfords are of old lineage, great landowners in Lincolnshire. Katherine wouldn't presume."

Geoffrey smiled a bit sadly to himself. He patted Philippa's plump little hand and said nothing, but he had heard the unconscious note of jealousy in the protesting voice. Ay, he thought, it would be hard to marry a simple squire, a tradesman's son and a scribbler, while one's little sister captured a landed knight. This had not happened yet, of course, but with Katherine, he thought, looking at the graceful violet figure moving ahead between the two knights, anything might happen. There was a mark of destiny on her, quite apart from her beauty. He wondered what her horoscope foretold, perhaps a conjunction of Venus and Neptune that explained the rare and subtle quality she emanated.

She made one think of hot, tumbling love and sensual sport, but she made one think of spiritual matters, too, like the mystic rose of tinted glass in St. Paul's window. A strangely fascinating young creature but not for him. His heart was laid at the feet of the lovely white Duchess and his practical future lay with Philippa, who suited him well enough.

CHAPTER III

During the next two days at Windsor, Hugh Swynford afforded much amusement to certain of the Duke's men. Roger de Cheyne had hastened to share the joke with his friends that Swynford, whom they privily called the Battling Saxon Ram, had at last been touched by a softer passion than hunting or fighting; that he had become infatuated with Philippa la Picarde's little sister from the convent.

Katherine herself was almost unaware of Sir Hugh. She saw him occasionally and knew that he stared at her a great deal, but so did other young men, and she was so much absorbed in the excitements presented to her that she had thought for nothing else.

Philippa kept strict watch over her sister and saw to it that she herself or another of the Queen's women should always be with the girl, but even Philippa had relaxed into the general atmosphere of gaiety.

She discharged her duties every morning at six when she marshalled the pantry maids: tallied loaves of bread, unlocked and portioned out the day's allotment of the precious spices which would be used in the Queen's apartments, but after that, the Queen being still abed, Philippa was free. She noted that Katherine behaved modestly in public, that Roger de Cheyne did not press his attentions and that Hugh Swynford made no further attempt to speak to Katherine. So she felt that her fears had been unjustified and decided to wait until after the holiday to broach the girl's marriage to Symkyn-at-Woode.

Hugh, however, was awaiting opportunity. He was obsessed by Katherine, and dismally confused by this new sensation. Heretofore his occasional quick lusts had been as quickly satisfied, by whore or peasant, and had certainly never disturbed the tenor of his life.

But this girl, though she had no strong male protector, was yet a knight's daughter and attached, however nebulously, to the Queen. She might not be tumbled in a haymow or tavern, and in the face of her obvious indifference he did not know how to approach her. He watched for chances to see her alone, but there were none, and for the first time in his life he felt diffidence and regret that he was ugly.

On Wednesday evening his fate relented. There had been showers all afternoon, but after vespers the dying sun sprayed crimson light along the western battlements. In the Queen's ladies' solar there was the usual bustle of preparation for appearance at supper and the clack of women's tongues.

Alice Perrers these last nights had no longer bothered to appear in the solar at all, and the gossip was mostly of her. Katherine was quick to learn, and she now quite understood the reason for Alice's unpopularity. But it did not concern her. The royal family were still only glittering figures to be glimpsed at the High Table, and the Queen only a name. Katherine had nothing to wear except the violet gown borrowed from Matilda and no finery to put on, so she sat idly for a while on the bed that she shared with Philippa and Johanna Cosin, listening to the excited female gabble and longing to be out in the spring dusk. Then she heard the sound of singing outside, a gay lilting air newly come from France.

He dame de Vaillance!

Vostre douce semblance,

M'a pris sans defiance -

Katherine jumped up and, murmuring something to Philippa about a necessary trip to the garde-robe, instead ran down the stone stairs and out into the courtyard. There Hugh, who had been waiting, saw her, but she did not see him. She breathed deep of the soft air and followed the singing voices to the walled pleasaunce behind the eastern state apartments. The postern gate was open and she wandered through. The garden smelled of violets and rosemary, and the yew hedges, some as high as her head, had been clipped at the corners of the paths into peacock and lion shapes. There was no one in that part of the garden. The voices, now changed to a sadder tune, came from farther in by the fountain, whose splashing mingled with the plinking of a gittern.

Katherine loved flowers and was particularly sensitive to odours. She stooped to pick a daffodil and pressing the blossom to her nose, inhaled the sweet scent, when she heard the clanking of a sword and dropped the flower guiltily, suspecting that she had no right to be in the royal pleasaunce.

It was Hugh who strode around the corner of the hedge. He still wore his hauberk of chain-mail, his sword and his spun, for he bad been jousting that afternoon, and had caught sight of Katherine in the courtyard before he had had time to divest himself of all his armour.

"Good evening, damoiselle," he said in so harsh a voice that she was more puzzled than frightened.

"I'm sorry," she said. "Perhaps I shouldn't be here, but the music was so lovely - and the garden." She smiled, a slow radiant smile, its wistfulness belied by the cleft in her chin and a dimple at the corner of her mouth.

"I'll go back now," she said nervously, for the knight was blocking her way as he had on the first evening, scowling at her beneath his bushy crinkled eyebrows, the scar suddenly livid on his cheek. He breathed like a winded stag and his chunky thick-set body seemed to be trembling.

"Don't stare at me so, Sir Hugh," she cried, trying to laugh. "I'm not a witch or a ghost."

"Witch," he repeated thickly. "Ay, that's it. Witchcraft. You've cast a spell on me."

She saw his mouth working, heard the rasp of his breath, and before she could move, he lunged for her. He grabbed her around the waist with one arm while his other hand tore down the shoulder of her dress. The worn velvet ripped like gauze, exposing her arm and one breast. He crushed her furiously against him and the sharp links of his chain-mail ground into her flesh. He bent her backward until her spine cracked. She struggled for breath, then fought him with frantic terror. She beat him in the face with her fists and clawed with her nails until one of her frenzied blows hit his left eye. He tossed his head and loosed her just enough so that she could let out one long agonised scream.

"Don't Katherine, don't-" he panted, his grip on her tightened again. "I want you, I must have you-" He forced her against a hedge, bearing her down towards the ground.

A hand grasped Hugh's shoulder and a powerful arm jerked him upright, off Katherine, who fell to her knees on the path.

"Good God, Swynford," said a voice. "Must you pursue your little amours here?"

Katherine raised her head. One of her braids had come unbound and the cascade of hair half hid the naked shoulder and white breast that was imprinted with bloody flecks from the chain-mail Panting and shivering, she stared up at her rescuer.

It was the great Duke of Lancaster who stood between them on the path, his handsome mouth curled with distaste, his tawny gold hair bright in the dusk. His eyelids drooped over his vivid blue eyes as they always did when he was angry. He looked at his red-faced sweaty knight and spoke in a voice of biting calm. "I find your conduct displeasing, sir. You disturb the beauty of the evening. Who is this lady, who, moreover, seems not to share your lust?"

He turned to Katherine and examined her. He saw that she was very young and frightened and that in a pale tear-stained face two enormous eyes stared up at him with passionate gratitude. His arrogant mouth softened, he leaned down and gave her his hand. She clung to it as she stumbled to her feet and instinctively she moved near to the Duke, leaning almost on his arm. "My Lord," she whispered, "thank you." Her mouth was tinder-dry with fear, her heart pounding in her throat, but she pulled her hair and the torn violet cloth across her breast and stood quietly beside the Duke.

John of Gaunt was touched, alike by her instinctive bid for his protection and by her dignified recovery from sobs and dishevelment. Her beauty he had not yet clearly seen, but he felt the girl's magnetism and turned with increased anger to Hugh. "Who is this lady you've insulted?"

Had it been anyone else but his Duke, Hugh would have replied with equal anger; as it was, he glowered at the ground and said sulkily, "She's naught but a sister to Philippa la Picarde, one of the Queen's waiting-women. I've not insulted her. She's cast a spell on me. Witchcraft!"

"By Saint George's spear - what nonsense! A spell of your own lust, you tom-cat. I say you've most grievously insulted this poor child and-"

"Nay, my lord," interrupted Hugh. He raised his little greenish eyes and gazed at Katherine with a dumb misery. "I wish to marry her," he said heavily, staring at the ground. "She has neither lands nor dowry, but I would marry her."

Katherine gasped and shrank closer to the Duke, but he was staring at his knight with astonishment. "Would you indeed, Hugh?" he said slowly, and Swynford bowed his head.

That changed matters. If the girl were indeed portionless, this offer was amazing. Swynford was of good blood and possessed of considerable property. To the Duke as to all his family, marriage was a commercial transaction, a peace-time weapon for the acquisition of new lands and the extension of power. Love of one's mate was entirely fortuitous, and lovable as was the Lady Blanche, the Duke might not have felt for her such keen devotion had she not brought him vast possessions.

Though like all feudal lords he concerned himself with the marriages, deaths and begettings of his vassals, he would certainly not have pursued this tawdry little incident further tonight had it not been for the girl and the curiosity she was beginning to arouse in him. He made one of his quick decisions and spoke in a tone of easy command. "Well, Hugh, go back to your tent. We can talk of this tomorrow. And you, damoiselle, come with me to the Duchess. I wish her to see you."

Swynford bowed, turned on his heel and disappeared down the path. Katherine was dazed and still said nothing. She obediently followed the Duke through the garden gate and up to the Lancaster apartments.

The Lady Blanche was sitting on a cushion in the window seat of her private solar; across her lap there lay a square of pale blue satin on which she had been embroidering trefoils in emerald silk. She was dressed in her favourite creamy white, and as she had not yet changed for the evening her pale gold head was uncovered and shone against the darkness outside.

Elizabeth and Philippa, her two little girls, played on a Persian rug by the fireplace, near a minstrel who gently twanged Ins harp and sang snatches from the Chanson de Roland.

Audrey, the Duchess's chief tiring-woman moved silently about her duties, perfuming water in a hand-basin and carrying clothes from sundry chests in the solar to the hanging brackets in the garderobe which served as antechamber to the latrine.

The room was bright from twenty wax candles and jewelled with colour. The lights glowed on the crimson and olive of the wall tapestries and twinkled off the bed hangings of silver brocade.

When the Duke strode in with Katherine, the little girls ceased playing and stared round-eyed at their father. The minstrel hushed his harp and pulled his stool into a corner, waiting for dismissal or command to continue.

The Lady Blanche rose with slow grace and smiled at her husband. "I did not expect you so soon, my lord." Her serene blue gaze rested on him tenderly. "I thought you were with the messenger from Bordeaux."

"I was," said John, "and bad news it is, too - but then I summoned some gleemen to sing for me in the garden and banish care for a while. I was disturbed-" He shrugged and indicated Katherine who curtsied nervously, conscious of the curious stares of the tiring-woman and the two little girls.

"Disturbed?" repeated Blanche. "By this child?" She put out her slender white hand to Katherine, smiling kindly, then she leaned forward. "But what's happened? Her gown is torn and there's blood on it. Audrey, fetch warm water and some wine. You're hurt, maiden?"

"Not much, Your Grace," said Katherine, very low. "My Lord Duke did save me."

"From what?" exclaimed Blanche, putting her arm around the girl.

"From rough love-making," said John, laughing suddenly. "But honourable it seems, in the end. Sir Hugh Swynford, you know the Lincolnshire knight they call the Saxon Ram, wishes to wed this young lady - an interesting idea."

"Oh, no," cried Katherine, sending the Duke a look of piteous bewilderment. "I'm sure he didn't mean it - and I couldn't, you must see I couldn't!"

"Hush, child," said the Lady Blanche, surprised that anyone should dare gainsay the Duke, whom she saw to be uncomfortable and wishful of escape. Indeed the girl, now brightly illuminated by the candles, had suddenly made an unpleasant impression on John, though he did not know why. True, many might call her beautiful, but to his taste she seemed overcoloured and earthy next to the exquisite Blanche. He disliked the flaunting profusion of bronze hair, the redness of her bruised mouth, the black abundance of her lashes, and particularly her eyes that stared at him with urgent pleading. They were too large and grey and gleamed with golden flecks in the candlelight. Her eyes disturbed him, evoking an unreasoned confusion of far-off anger and pain. For an instant he knew that someone else had stared at him like that long ago, and there had been betrayal, then the impression vanished, leaving only sharp resentment.

He turned his back on Katherine and said to Blanche, "I'll see you later, lady." He touched his little daughters' curls and strode out of the room, banging the heavy oak door behind him.

"My lord is hasty sometimes," said Blanche, noting the girl's dismay. "And he has grave matters to worry him." She was well used to John's impulsive acts, as to his occasional dark moods, and knew how to temper them, or bide her time until they passed. She hastened now to minister to the unhappy maiden he had brought her and motioned to Audrey to bring the basin and a towel Then she lifted the torn strip of violet cloth and the strands of hair from Katherine's shoulder and found rows of tiny bleeding cuts on the breast beneath. "Tell me about it, my dear," she said quietly, bathing the cuts and salving them with marigold balm.

Hugh sat in his tent on the field near the lists while Ellis his squire removed his armour, but Hugh was unaware of Ellis or his surroundings. His blood ran thick as hot lead in his veins and he suffered desire, shame, and confused torment that nothing in his life had prepared him for.

Hugh Swynford was of pure Saxon blood except for one Danish ancestor, the fierce invading Ketel who sailed up the Trent in 870, pillaging and ravishing as he went. A Swynford girl was amongst those ravished, but she must have inspired some affection in her Dane since she lured him from his thorpe in Lincolnshire to her own home at the swine's ford in southern Leicestershire, where he settled for some years and adopted her family's name.

The Swynfords were all fighters. Hugh's forefathers had resisted the Norman invasion until the grown males of their clan had been exterminated and even now, three hundred years later, Hugh stubbornly rejected any tinge of Norman graces or romanticism. He went to Mass occasionally as a matter of course, but at heart he was pagan as the savages who had once danced around Beltane's fire on May Night, who worshipped the ancient oaks and painted themselves with blue woad - a plant indeed which still grew on Hugh's manor in Lincolnshire.

He was an ungraceful knight, impatient of chivalric rules, but in real battle he was a shrewd and terrifying fighter.

Hugh's branch of the Swynford family had long ago left Leicestershire and returned to Lincolnshire beside the river Trent south of Gainsborough; and when Hugh was a child, his father, Sir Thomas, had fulfilled a long-time ambition and bought the manor of Kettlethorpe where Ketel the Dane had first settled. For this purchase he used proceeds from the sale of his second wife Nichola's estates in Bedfordshire, at which the poor lady wept and lamented woefully, for she was afraid of the towering forests around Kettlethorpe, and of the marshes and the great river Trent with its stealthy death-dealing floods. The Lady Nichola was also afraid of the dark stone manor house, which was said to be haunted by a demon dog, the pooka hound. Most of all she was afraid of her husband who beat her cruelly and constantly reproached her for her barrenness. So her wailings and laments were done in secret.

Hugh thought little about Kettlethorpe one way or the other, beyond accepting it as his home and heritage, and he was a restless youth. At fifteen he struck out into the world. He joined the army under the King, when Edward invaded Scotland, and there met John of Gaunt, who was then only the Earl of Richmond. The two boys were of the same age and Hugh conceived for the young Prince, whose charm and elegance of manner were so unlike his own, a grudging admiration.

At sixteen, Hugh, thirsting for more battle, had fought under the Prince of Wales at Poitiers. Hugh had killed four Frenchmen with his battle-axe, and shared later in the hysterical rejoicing at the capture of King Jean of France.

Hugh won his spurs after that and returned to Kettlethorpe to find that his father had suffered an apoplectic stroke in his absence. Hugh stayed home until Sir Thomas finally died and Hugh became lord of the manor. But as soon as his father had been laid in a granite tomb near the altar of the little Church of SS. Peter and Paul at Kettlethorpe, Hugh made new plans for departure.

He detested his stepmother the Lady Nichola, whom he considered a whining rag of a woman overgiven to fits and the seeing of melancholy visions, so he left her and his lands in charge of a bailiff. He fitted himself out with his father's best armour and favourite stallion, then engaged as squire young Ellis de Thoresby, the son of a neighbouring knight from Nottinghamshire across the Trent.

Thus properly accoutred, Hugh rode down to London, to the Savoy Palace. He owed knight's service to the Duke of Lancaster by reason of Hugh's manor at Coleby, which belonged to the Duke's honour of Richmond, but he had not the money for the fee, and in any case much preferred to become the Duke's retainer, well pleased that his feudal lord should also be the youth he had campaigned with in Scotland.

Though the intervening years had made many changes in John of Gaunt's personal life, for he had married the Lady Blanche and thereby become the wealthiest man in the land, Hugh's own interests remained unchanged. He fought when there was war, and when there was not he pursued various private quarrels, and hunted. Hawking bored him with its elaborate ritual of falconry, for he liked direct combat and a dangerous opponent. The wild stag and the wild boar were the quarries he liked best to pursue through the dense forests. He was skilled at throwing the spear and could handle the longbow as well as any of the King's yeomen, but in close fighting he was supreme.

It was said of him that he had strangled a wolf with his bare hands in the wilds of Yorkshire, and that it was the wolf's fangs which had laid open his cheek and puckered it into the jagged scar, but nobody knew for certain. The Duke's retinue now numbered over two hundred barons, knights and squires, and a man so morose and uncourtly as Hugh excited little curiosity amongst his fellows. They disliked him and let him alone.

But when his extraordinary wish to marry the little de Roet became known, he inspired universal interest at last.

Katherine's frantic protests and tears were of no avail against Hugh's determination and everyone else's insistence that she had stumbled into unbelievable luck.

The Queen's ladies said it, even Alice Perrers said it, and Philippa scolded morning, noon and night.

"God's nails, you little dolt," Philippa cried, "you should be down on your knees thanking the Blessed Virgin and Saint Catherine, instead of mewling and cowering like a frightened rabbit. My God, you'll be Lady Katherine with your own manor and serfs, and a husband who seems to dote on you as well!"

"I can't, I can't. I loathe him," Katherine wailed.

"Fiddle-faddle!" snapped Philippa, whose natural envy increased her anger. "You'll get over it. Besides he won't be around to bother you much. He'll soon be off with the Duke fighting in Castile."

This was pale comfort but there was little Katherine could do except plead illness, hide in the solar and avoid seeing Hugh.

The Lady Blanche on hearing of the girl's aversion to the marriage had broached the matter to her husband and found him unexpectedly obdurate and impatient. "Of course Swynford's a fool to take her. I believe he could have had that Torksey heiress whose lands adjoin his, but I think he is bewitched. Since he lusts so for her, let him have the silly burde."

"You dislike her?" Blanche was puzzled by his vehemence. "I find her quite charming. I remember her father, a gallant soldier. When I was a child he once brought me a little carved box from Bruges."

"I don't dislike the girl. Why should I? I dislike wasting time or thought on such a trivial matter when we're going to war. And the sooner they marry the better, since Swynford will sail for Aquitaine this summer. He might as well beget an heir before he goes."

Blanche nodded. She was no more sentimental about marriage than anyone else, but she was sorry for Katherine and sent a page over with a generous present to help alleviate the girl's unhappiness.

Katherine was alone now because it was the day of the final tournament, and everyone in the castle except the sick Queen and the scullions had gone down to the lists. Though the ladies had urged her and Philippa had commanded, Katherine, who three days ago had so joyously looked forward to this spectacle, would not go.

She was fifteen and incapable of self-analysis. She knew only that this gorgeous new world, at first so entrancing, had resolved itself into a chaotic mass of helplessness and fears, against which she struggled blindly, finding no weapon but evasion. She was much frightened of meeting Hugh again, but vaguely she knew too that this unhappiness was reinforced by a more subtle one. She longed to see the Duke, and this longing upset her as much as Hugh's obsession, for the Duke had not been her champion after all; he had seemed to show her sympathy and as suddenly withdrawn it, and during that moment in his wife's bower he had looked at her with cold distaste, with, in fact, an undoubted and inexplicable repulsion.

Katherine went to the slitted window and gazed down to the plain far below, by the river, where she could see the lists and the forked pennants of the contending knights as their identifying flags fluttered from the pavilions. It was high noon now and the hot sun flashed off the silvery armour; great clouds of dust obscured the actual field, but she could hear the roars of excitement from a thousand throats, and the periodic blare of the heralds' trumpets.

She turned into the room and throwing herself across the bed, hit her bruised breast. She winced and though the tiny cuts were healing the pain seemed to strike through to her heart. If I pray to the Blessed Virgin, she thought, perhaps she'll help me, and the forlorn hope brought guilt, for she had missed Mass these two days of hiding in the solar. True, some of the courtiers did not go every day to Mass, Philippa often skipped herself, but the convent habit was strong.

Katherine slipped to her knees on the prie-dieu and began, "Ave Maria gratia plena," but the whispered words echoed bleakly in the empty solar. Then she heard a heavy knock on the oak door.

Katherine, clad only in her linen shift, threw the woollen cloak around her and nervously called, "Come in."

The door opened and Hugh Swynford stood on the threshold looking at her sombrely. He was dressed in full armour, for he was to be an afternoon contender in the lists. His chain-mail hauberk was covered by the ceremonial white silk jupon embroidered with three golden boars' heads on a black chevron, his coat of arms. He looked formidable, and cleaner than she had yet seen him, his crinkled hair as light as straw, his square beard close-trimmed.

He advanced into the room and Katherine stifled a moan and then hot anger rose in her. Holy Blessed Mother, she thought, I pray to you and this is how you reward me!

She wrapped the cloak around her and stood tall and stiff against the wall, her face hardened like the carved stone corbel. "Yes, Sir Hugh," she said. "I'm quite alone and helpless. Have you come to ravish me?"

Hugh's eyes dropped. Dull red crept up from his mailed gorget. "Katherine - I had to see you - I - I bring you this."

He opened his clenched hand, holding it out stiffly, his eyes on the rush-strewn floor. On his calloused palm there lay a massive gold ring, carved claws around a sea-green beryl.

"Take it," he said hoarsely, as she did not move. "The betrothal ring."

"I don't want it," she said. "I don't want it!" She folded her arms tight against her chest. "I don't want to marry you."

His hand closed again over the ring; she saw the muscles of his neck quiver, and the scar on his cheek go white, but he spoke with control.

"It is arranged, damoiselle. Your sister consents, the Duke of Lancaster consents - and the Queen."

"The Queen?" repeated Katherine faintly. "You've seen the Queen?"

"I sent her a message through Lady Agnes. The Queen is pleased."

It was then that Katherine gave up hope. The Queen, the concept of the Queen, had always ruled her destiny as it had her father's. She owed her life to the Queen, and all her loyalty. Of what use was rebellion anyway, for, as Philippa kept asserting, no woman followed her own inclination in marriage. She knew better than to doubt Hugh's word. Brutal and stupid as he might be, he would also be bluntly honest. And now at her continued silence his ready anger flared.

"The Queen thinks me lack-wit to take you, no doubt! They all do. I see them sniggering behind their hands - that scurvy fop de Cheyne -" He scowled towards the window and the noises of the jousting. "His pretty womanish face. Pthaw!" And he spat on the floor.

"Why do you want to marry me?" said Katherine quietly, "since I bring you nothing but my unwilling body."

He looked at her startled. Certainly he had not meant marriage until the Duke interrupted them in the garden. His assertion then had astonished himself. Was it an aura cast over her by the ducal protection, was it a cool integrity in the girl himself, and the increasing effect on him of her beauty, or was it the hunter's instinct for capture and total subjection? His slow mind baulked at reasons. He knew only that his longing for her was an anguish tinged with fear. It would never have occurred to him to speak of love, so he found refuge again in the excuse he had given the Duke.

"By Saint Anthony and his temptations, maiden, I don't know. You've cast a spell on me - or slipped me a love philtre."

From weariness and futility, Katherine suddenly laughed. "I wish that I had a love philtre, so I might drink it too."

At her laugh his heavy face brightened, his little eyes sought hers in sudden pleading. "The ring, Katherine, put on the ring," he whispered holding it out to her again, "and say the vows with me."

She bowed her head and held her hand out slowly. His blunt fingers shook as he pushed the ring down her middle finger where it hung heavy and loose as an iron shackle. "I, Hugh, plight thee, Katherine - my troth, as God is my witness." He swallowed hard, crossing himself.

Katherine looked down at the ring and the square, freckled sweating hand that clasped hers. She exhaled her breath in a long sigh, "I, Katherine, plight thee, Hugh - my troth as God is my witness."

So be it, she thought. Her aversion to him had not lessened, but she found a bitter new peace in the surrender. He leaned towards her for the betrothal kiss and she yielded her cool mouth, then drew back. He let her go, finding this quiet self-possessed girl far more awesome than the one who had fought him in the garden.

"My Katherine," he said humbly, "will you come to the lists and see me joust now? I - I should like to wear your colours - - "

A sardonic voice spoke in her head. Ah yes, it said, this is what you dreamed of, little fool, those nights at Sheppey. This is the fairy tale come true - a knight who asks to wear your colours at the King's tournament.

"I fear I've nothing to give you, sir," she said flushing, "except - wait-" She looked at the Lady Blanche's brocade dress and, quickly decisive, ripped the long green silk tippet from the left sleeve. "Will this do?"

He took the bright flimsy streamer and held it as though it burned his fingers. "Thank you," he muttered. "I shall hope to do you credit. I'll send back a page to guide you to the lists." He turned stiffly in his armour and the door banged shut behind him.

Katherine sank on the window seat, staring at her betrothal ring. Her first jewel. Massive and unwieldy, it looked on her small roughened hand. It was a cabochon beryl carved with Hugh's boar's-head crest and far too large, since he had worn it himself. The beryl, like all stones, had talismanic powers, it gave victory in battle and protection to the wearer, and it had cost Hugh something to part with it, though he had other amulets to rely on.

Though Katherine knew nothing of this, she could not help but take pleasure in the possession of a ring and feel, especially now that Hugh was no longer near, a great lightening of mood.

She wound thread around her finger to hold the ring and gradually her natural optimism returned. She was honourably betrothed, she had pretty clothes to wear, and she would see the tournament after all. What excuse then for moping, and bewailing that the conditions surrounding these admirable facts were not as she had wanted them? "A bas la tristesse!" said Katherine aloud, and while she washed she hummed the gay French song she had heard in the garden. Hi, dame de Vaillance!

When she had dressed herself in the long green gown, fastened the girdle low on her slender hips and bound her hair into two silver-filleted cauls on either side of her face, much as Alice Perrers wore hers, Katherine looked in the hand-mirror and was startled, not by her beauty, which still seemed to her negligible, but by her air of sophistication. Her high white forehead and the delicate arched eyebrows looked exactly like those of all the noble ladies. If she pursed her mouth it became the two crimson cherry-halves so much admired. She could see that the miniver-trimmed surcote disclosed half-moons of bosom and clung to her long waist without a wrinkle. Even the Duchess had not so sinuous a line. I look like one of them, she thought proudly, a court lady. Except for her hands. They were yet reddened from the winter's chilblains, and the nails ragged and short, for she still sometimes bit them.

Alice Perrers had pomades and unguents as well as face paints in her chest beneath the window. Katherine brazenly rummaged in the chest until she found a rose-water cream which she rubbed into her hands, so as not to shame the betrothal ring.

Honesty compelled her to admit that it was to Hugh she owed the extent of her transformation from the shabby little girl at Sheppey, and when the page he had sent for her tapped on the door, she followed him down to the lists with eager anticipation.

CHAPTER IV

When Katherine and her guide arrived at the lists it was in the intermission before the final melee. Outside the stockades, the common folk who had not been fortunate or agile enough to find perches on top of the barrier were milling about, gulping winkles and pasties and jostling for position near the cracks between the boards where they might see something of the jousting when it recommenced.

The page led Katherine through a gilded gate and up wooden steps to the huge Lancastrian loge, as Hugh had bidden him, and he found for her a space on a red-cushioned bench far off to one side and .directly under the brightly painted canopy that sheltered the loge.

The bench to which the page led Katherine was already fulsomely occupied by two ladies connected with the Lancastrian retinue: Lady de Houghton, and Dame Pernelle, sister of Sir Robert Swyllington, who was the Duke's chamberlain at Pontefract Castle.

Both these ladies were women of mature years with a nice appreciation of their own consequence. As Katherine squeezed herself down beside them they received her flustered apologies with cold astonishment.

"Who in the world-" said Lady de Houghton to her friend, not bothering to lower her voice. Dame Pernelle shrugged, and both stout ladies, breathing heavily, for it was warm under the canopy, looked down their noses at Katherine and waited.

"Katherine de Roet, sister to Philippa la Picarde, Queen's panterer. I've - I've just come to court, my ladies," said Katherine nervously, trying to shrink into the smallest possible bulk.

"Ah-" said Dame Pernelle in a tone of enlightenment.

"The Guienne Herald's daughter, ah yes - one has heard something." She raised her eyebrows significantly and glanced down towards the dais where the Duchess sat in a carved gold armchair.

Katherine, quite aware of the disparaging emphasis on "Herald", said quickly, "My father was knighted on the field at Bretigny, my lady. Shall I move to the end of the bench - it won't crowd you so?"

Suddenly she was rescued, and in a way that silenced the ladies, though in no way decreasing their resentment. The Duchess, turning her chair to accept a cup of wine from a page, caught sight of Katherine, smiled at the girl and, seeing that she looked uncomfortable, raised her pale, bejewelled hand and beckoned.

Katherine, blushing hotly, for those on all the nearest benches craned round to see, most thankfully obeyed the summons and, clambering past the ample knees beside her, ran down the steps to the velvet-coloured platform at the front of the loge.

"Your first tournament, my dear, isn't it?" asked Blanche gently. "Sit here where you can see well." She indicated a cushion on the corner of the platform near her chair.

Katherine's heart melted with gratitude.

The Duchess was today dazzling as the southern May, having dressed to please her husband's taste, in full magnificence of jewels and ermine. Her silver-gilt hair was twined with pearls and she wore her gold and diamond coronet. She smelt of jasmine and Katherine adored her.

Blanche was accustomed to adoration, but she had the warmth of a great lady and she was drawn to the girl. She glanced at the boar-crested betrothal ring on Katherine's childish hand, saw where the tippet had been ripped from the sleeve of her gift, and reconstructed what must have happened.

She leaned down saying, "I wish you happiness, my dear," then turned quickly, her blue eyes focusing on the field as two heralds with trumpets marched solemnly towards each other. Blanche, whose famous father, Henry, Duke of Lancaster, had been the foremost knight in the kingdom, had witnessed many tournaments and appreciated each point of ceremony and honour. She listened intently to the heralds who announced a preliminary joust between John, Baron de Mowbray, and a Gascon knight, the Sieur de Pavignac.

These names meant nothing to Katherine and during the ceremonious exchange between the heralds and pursuivants on each side she had time to look around her.

The lists here at Windsor were very large, with stockades enclosing the hundred-and-fifty-yard field, and permanent loges built in tiers on either side for the spectators. The royal loge, canopied in gold and red striped silk, was in dead centre of the southern side, so that the sun might not bother the royal eyes. The King being present today, the lily and leopard flag fluttered over the canopy.

The Lancastrian loge adjoined the royal one, and Katherine had a good view of the King, who seemed in high spirits, laughing, calling out jests and drinking frequently from a gold and ruby cup presented by one of his squires.

Geoffrey Chaucer was not in evidence because, as Katherine found out later, he had not been able to attend the tournament at all. William of Wykeham, the King's architect, had heartlessly sent Geoffrey on a quick trip to London after the precious pieces of stained glass needed to finish the west window of Henry the Third's renovated chapel in time for the high ceremonial Mass tomorrow.

Nor was Alice Perrers to be seen. The Queen's chair was occupied by the King's daughter, the Princess Isabel de Coucy, and all the surrounding lords and ladies were of the highest rank.

The Queen's waiting-women were huddled together on the last bench of an adjoining loge and Katherine could not have distinguished Philippa at all except that her sister got up and waved at her, accurately expressing by means of the wave her astonishment and approval at seeing her.

Katherine's interest was jerked abruptly back to the lists as there came a roar from the crowd, a fanfare of trumpets from the heralds and a marshal waving his white baton, who shouted, "In the name of God and Saint George, come forth to do battle!" At either end of the lists the squires loosed bridles, and two great destriers thundered towards each other down the field. Clods flew from the hoofs while the riders, with lances poised to aim at the opposing shields, lowered their helmeted heads and braced themselves for the shock.

The crash of wood and metal was deafening, sparks flew from the armour, the crowd shouted approval, which soon changed to a groan of disappointment. At the moment of collision the Baron de Mowbray's charger had veered too far left, the Gascon knight's lance had thus glanced off Mowbray's shield on to his hauberk and, lodging in the joint of the iron roundel which protected his shoulder, prised him out of the saddle, while the stallion was thrown back on its haunches. The baron lay on the ground, a helpless mass of armour. The Gascon knight raised his visor and grinned complacently towards the royal loge.

"Well done!" cried the King, tossing a jewelled medal of St. George towards the victor. "A noble course."

But the crowd of peasants, servants and villeins who had hoisted themselves around the edges of the stockade were not so chivalrous. They booed the foreigner who had unseated their English baron and they booed the discomfited Mowbray, too, as his squires hoisted him on to his feet and he walked angrily off the field.

"That was bad luck for Mowbray - -his destrier is not worthy," said the Lady Blanche judicially. "The beast was frightened." Several of her entourage crowded around agreeing and discussing the best strains for chargers. Katherine listened and learned. She had wondered where the Duke was, and now she heard that he was making ready in the tents. For he was to take part in the final melee.

"I begged him not to," said Blanche, smiling, "and the King nearly forbade it, since the Duke must not risk injury at this time when the Prince of Wales has such need of him, but my lord will not listen. He so loves deeds of arms." She smiled and spoke with a rueful pride, but her eyes were anxious.

"Is it dangerous my lady?*' asked Katherine timidly. "I - I thought the lances were blunted."

Blanche looked down at the girl and thought the concern was for her betrothed. "So they are," she said, "nowadays, but the melee is a mimic battle and there is always danger - when men fight, I suppose. Look, what's this- -"

A knight in brightly polished armour and a covering jupon of blue silk embroidered with tiny deer had ridden up to the barrier in front of the Lady Blanche's loge. His tournament heaume was crested with a stag's head, and he raised the visor as he bowed, disclosing the gay teasing face of Roger de Cheyne. "God's greetings, my Lady Duchess," he called. "I crave a gage from the Damoiselle de Roet to bring me luck in the melee."

Katherine turned as red as fire. She had ignored Roger since the night she had found that he was married, nor indeed had he made any further overtures. His action now sprang as much from a spirit of mischief, and desire to tease Hugh Swynford, as it did from his admiration of Katherine.

"She has a knight to wear her colours already, Sir Roger," said Blanche, seeing that Katherine did not know what to do.

"I know, my lady," said Roger gaily, "but I still may crave a token from her."

This was quite true and proper. Blanche herself had at different times during the tournament flung flowers, ribbons and even scarves to various worthy knights. "Here, child," she said quickly to Katherine as she plucked an iris from the bouquet by her chair, "stand up and give him this."

Katherine, her heart beating fast, obeyed the Duchess, tossing the blue flower in a graceful arc, and Roger caught it neatly in his gauntlet. He kissed the iris and tucked it into a joint of his heaume, where it waved jauntily beside the stag's head.

"Grand merci, ma toute belle damoiselle" he called, kissing his hand and lowering the pointed visor. He spurred his stallion and cantered easily down the field towards the other contending knights.

The King himself had watched this pretty by-play with approval. It had been gracefully performed with the requisite style and spirit. So many of the knights had grown lax in these degenerate days, impatient of ritual, and skimping the full chivalric observances. In fact it had been with a view to restoring these and bringing back the glorious days of King Arthur's Round Table that he had instituted the Order of the Garter twenty years ago. He inquired who the knight was, and his master herald, whose business it was to identify all coats of arms, replied that it was the young Sieur de Cheyne, one of the Duke of Lancaster's men; but the King's further inquiry about the favoured damoiselle the herald could not answer.

Katherine had subsided into confusion, wishing very much that the debonair Roger of the merry eyes and charming smile could be her knight in earnest, and interested to realise that even the Duchess saw nothing improper in this public attention from a married man. It was all part of the courtly game and not supposed to be taken too seriously.

Hugh Swynford, however, did take it seriously. He had watched Roger's sally down the field with savage uncertainty, not quite sure at that distance exactly what had happened, and he awaited Roger at the barricade.- "Who gave you that flower?" He pointed his lance at the nodding blue iris.

Roger raised his visor and grinned. "La petite de Roet, may Venus bless her."

"She's betrothed to me." Hugh's eyes narrowed, he looked at Katherine's green streamer which fluttered from his own helmet.

"Splendid, mon gar" said Roger cordially. "She's a beauty, a prize." He smacked his lips delicately and rode on, the blue iris bobbing in rhythm to the horse's trot.

Hugh wheeled his destrier and beckoned to his squire. Ellis de Thoresby eagerly held up the helmet and shield. He was a brawny lad of eighteen, doggedly devoted to his master. Ellis had been born at Thoresby Hall in the heart of Sherwood Forest and he was quite as impatient as Hugh was of the finicking graces exhibited by many of the foreign knights.,

"Not yet," said Hugh, refusing the helmet and shield. "Where's the Duke?"

"Over there, sir," said Ellis, pointing. "But it's time to buckle your helmet," he added anxiously, for the twenty knights who were to contend on this side of the general melee were starting to line up, while each squire hauled at the bridle of his master's destrier.

Hugh did not answer; he spurred his horse and cantered between the tents until he reached the Duke, who was drinking a last stirrup cup of spiced malmsey. John was magnificent in full tournament regalia. His helmet was topped by a crowned gold lion guardant, and around the lion was draped Blanche's scarf of silver tissue. His engraved brass armour shone like a mirror, and the gold lilies and leopards blazed against vermilion and azure on his jupon. Palamon, his great charger, was restive and two squires clung to the red-tasselled bridle as Hugh came up crying "My Lord Duke!"

John tossed his cup to a squire and looked at his knight in surprise. "What is it, Swynford? You're not ready? The melee's starting."

"I wish permission to fight on the other side, my lord."

"You what!" John cried, half laughing, staring at the square angry face surmounted by the skull-cap of brown cloth which would cushion the great helmet. "What foolishness is this?"

"I wish," cried Hugh furiously, "to tilt against Roger de Cheyne in a deed of arms."

The Duke was both amused and annoyed. The twenty rival contenders at the other end of the lists had been a fairly arbitrary choice. His brother the Duke Lionel headed that side, and there were Lancaster knights there as well as Frenchmen and a Scot. But these arrangements had been made for days, and a sudden change transgressed proper tournament procedure.

"If you wished a private joust with de Cheyne, why didn't you challenge him earlier?" said John, frowning and stroking his prancing horse.

"I did not know in time, my lord, and the tourney ends today." Hugh's eyes slid from the Duke's face and rested on his own helmet. Ellis de Thoresby, who had run after his master, held it cradled in his arms. John followed the glance and saw the green tippet. "Is that Katherine de Roet's?" he asked, enlightened.

Hugh nodded grimly. "And de Cheyne wears the flower she gave him."

"Oh," said the Duke, and he thought, with sudden anger, that maudite girl again. She's a nuisance and a troublemaker, and has certainly bewitched this poor knight. "Go then," he said impatiently, anxious to be rid of the whole episode. "Explain to the Duke Lionel and have him send one of his men here to replace you - but remember," he raised his voice sternly as Hugh turned with muttered thanks, "this is no jousting a l'outrance - there'll be real fighting enough for all in Castile. This is but knightly sport today."

Hugh's lips tightened. He made no reply, but galloped around behind the lists and the galleries to the opposite end of the field while Ellis jumped on his own horse and hurried as best he could after him.

In the loges the spectators had become impatient at the delay. Even the Lady Blanche's long fingers fidgeted nervously with the sapphire clasp of her girdle, and she strained her eyes down the field to try to make out the helmet with the golden lion while her lips moved in prayer to St. John the Baptist, her husband's patron.

But at last the trumpets brayed, the marshals advanced brandishing their white sticks and followed by the heralds and pursuivants at arms. The crowd hushed and listened avidly to the announcement. It was to be a general tournament melee with twenty of the bravest knights on each side, and fought for the honour of St. George and the King. The prize was to be a gold noble to each knight on the winning side, and an additional prize of one of the King's best falcons to the knight adjudged most worthy.

The combat was to start on horseback with the breaking of spears, but might then be pursued on foot with the flat of the sword as the only weapon. The lances must have coronal heads to cull them, and the swords were blunted by heavy lead foils. A knight would be adjudged hors de combat if he were unhelmeted, lost hold of his weapon or if any part of his body touched the stockades around the lists.

The marshals finished shouting the rules, while the heralds yelled, "Laissez al-l-le-e-r-," and scampered for safety over the barricades as the gates were raised at either end.

Katherine gave a frightened cry when the forty opposing horses thundered down the field towards her centre loge with the roar of an earthquake. The long lances streaked like light while from many of the knightly throats came bloodcurdling battle-cries. The shock of their meeting shook the loges, there was a tremendous crash of steel, the cracks of splintering wood and the wild high whinnies of the stallions.

"Oh, Blessed Sainte Marie," whispered Katherine, shrinking and clenching her hands. "They'll all kill each other!"

Some of the knights were at once unhorsed, more unhelmeted. The field became a threshing mass of shields and broken lances, armoured bodies and armoured horses. She could recognise nobody, but after a moment she heard the Duchess say with quiet pride, "He's still in the saddle, and his helmet untouched."

Then Katherine distinguished a tall knight with golden lion crest and knew by the emblems on his shield that it must be the Duke. He had broken a lance with his brother Lionel, who was a gigantic figure in armour as black and shining as that often worn by his older brother, Edward.

The two dukes, both furnished with fresh lances by darting squires, had drawn to the far side of the field and separated for a second course. They ran this course fast and decorously and again at the shock of impact on the shields their lances splintered fairly. But Lionel's horse had twisted a tendon and one of the girths on his saddle had parted. He moved to the rear for a fresh mount while John pulled to one side of the lists and waited.

Suddenly Blanche laid her hand on Katherine's shoulder. "Look, child, your two knights are fighting each other! See, over there near the Duke."

Katherine saw then the helmets, one with her green streamer on it, and the other with the stag's head, though the iris she had given de Cheyne had long since been knocked off. The two men were afoot, having both been unhorsed in the first violent collision. They were fighting with swords and de Cheyne seemed to be giving inch by inch under the furious onslaughts of the shorter, stockier figure.

Before the melee the Duke had had time to warn Roger of Hugh's intent, and Roger had been amused. "So the little ram is fuming? By Saint Valentine, I'll be pleased to give him satisfaction, my lord!"

But now Roger was no longer amused. This was no chivalrous contest for a lady's smile in which he found himself engaged. The blows from the flat of the sword rained on his helmet and hauberk with stunning force. Swynford handled his sword as his ancestors had used the battle-axe. Through the slit in the visor Roger could see the glint of murderous eyes and hear a panting drone of fury.

Roger parried the blows as best he could, but the blood was bursting in his ears and nose; he stumbled and fell to one knee while the crashing shocks of steel redoubled on his helmet and shoulders. He struggled to his feet and made a desperate lunge, and at the same moment he felt a flash of fire in his neck. The lead foil had come off Hugh's sword.

Hugh, berserk with blood lust, did not know it, the marshals, watchful as they were of each separate combat, had not seen it - but the Duke saw.

Lionel had not yet signalled for the beginning of the third course, and John had been watching Swynford and de Cheyne uneasily. He saw the younger knight stagger and a spray of crimson spurt through the joint between the helmet and gorget, he saw the naked sword-tip flash, and he galloped up, shouting, "Halt, Swynford!"

But Hugh did not hear. He knew only that his quarry was weakened at last, and he beat down harder.

John might have stopped Hugh with a blow from his lance except for the rule that a mounted man must not touch one afoot, so he flung himself out of the saddle and ran up, drawing his sword; then, lifting it high, sliced it down between the two knights as barrier. Hugh staggered back for a moment, and Roger slumped prone on the ground. His squire darted over with a pursuivant, and the two men carried his limp body off the field.

But Hugh could see little through the visor slit, and his eyes were half blinded with sweat. He knew only that here in the moment of victory over de Cheyne there was somehow new battle. And he turned on the Duke.

There was a rumble of astonishment from those spectators who had noticed this particular engagement, whispers of "Lancaster's unhorsed! Who's he fighting? What happened?"

One of the marshals galloped up and then paused uncertainly. By the rules of combat any knight on the one side might singly engage any one of the opponents, but in actual practice nowadays this was unusual, and the two princely leaders were tacitly reserved for each other.

But Blanche knew what was happening. She stood up, marble-still, her eyes fixed on the figures across the lists. And Katherine knew. She had held her breath while she watched the fight between Roger and Hugh, but the spectacle had not seemed very real; it was like the banging, slashing battles the mummers played, and there had been room in her heart for a primitive female thrill, since the two knights fought over her.

But when she saw that the Duke had somehow taken Roger's place her detachment fled and fear rushed in. She gasped at each of Hugh's lunges and tightened as though to receive them on her own body; her lips moved incessantly. "Make him win, Blessed Mother, make him win," and it was the Duke that she meant.

It lasted only three minutes. Hugh's crazy rage did not abate, but he was no match for John of Gaunt, whose cool head, lean, powerful body and chivalrous training from babyhood had made him the most accomplished knight at court. John parried the vicious blows and waited until Hugh's right arm was raised, then he hit the gauntleted hand a tremendous blow. Hugh's sword went spinning down the field.

The Duke with studied deliberation lowered his own sword and thrust it into the ground, while thundering applause shook the loges, and the King, cupping his hands, shouted, "Well done, Lancaster! Well done, fair son!"

It was then that Hugh realised who his opponent was. He staggered backwards, raising his visor. "My Lord Duke, I'm honoured."

John gazed at him with icy eyes. "You're not honoured, Swynford, you're disgraced. Look at your sword-" He pointed with his mailed shoe at the unguarded point of Hugh's sword as it lay in the dust. "And you wounded young de Cheyne in unfair combat."

Hugh turned purple under the sweat-caked dust. "By God, sir, I didn't know. I swear it."

"Get out of the lists," said the Duke. "We'll deal with you later." Hugh turned and limped slowly off the field.

John dismissed the problem of Hugh and, mounting his horse again, accepted the lance from his squire and rested it in the socket, preparatory to running the final course with Lionel. He saw that this course would be the end of the tournament, since the lists were cleared of all but two combatants, a French knight and Sir Michael de la Pole, his own man. He beckoned to the marshal. "How has it gone? What is the tally?" he asked.

"It is a near thing, Your Grace. The Duke of Clarence was ahead until you bested that knight." The marshal indicated Hugh's retreating figure. "But now, I see, his forces are ahead again." For even as they conferred, the French knight dexterously backed Sir Michael against the far stockade, and the Englishman raised his sword-hilt high in token of submission.

"By Christ's blood, then, we must try to even the contest," cried the Duke and he waved his lance in signal to Lionel.

The crowd, which had been restive, quietened and watched with delight as the two resplendent Plantagenets ran the final course against each other. Here was no blind unruly jousting, but an elegant deed of arms with each fine point of technique observed. The ceremonious bowing of the helmeted heads as the herald's trumpet sounded, the simultaneous start from the lines drawn at either end of the lists, the lances held precisely horizontal, the control over the snorting destriers who were always liable to swerve, the shivering impact of the lances square on the opposing shields and the final neat thrust sideways of Lancaster's lance, which dexterously knocked the helmet up and off Lionel's head, where it dangled by the lacings from the gorget.

"Splendid, splendid!" cried the King, proud of his sons.

John and Lionel came riding up to their father's loge and bowed to him while the heralds, once more taking the centre of the field, proclaimed that the great tournament in honour of St. George had ended in a draw. The crowd groaned with disappointment. But, continued the heralds, the prizes would be given anyway by lot tonight at the Feast of the Garter and the special prize for the knight adjudged to have been most worthy in the tournament would also be presented then.

"Lancaster! Lancaster!" yelled a hundred voices, and John flushed. "Lancaster's the worthiest knight!"

It was the first time he had heard himself acclaimed by the mob, and he found it unexpectedly sweet. The King, his father, was immensely popular, of course, and Edward, Prince of Wales, was an idol. Even Lionel, the great blond giant who now sat good-naturedly grinning at his brother, had always, except in Ireland, enjoyed public admiration.

But John was a third son, and the most reserved of all Edward and Philippa's brood. He could inspire deep devotion amongst his intimates, but he had not the gift of easy camaraderie. He knew that most people, and certainly the common folk, thought him haughty and cold. He had been quite indifferent to their opinion, but now at the continuing shouts he felt a pleasant warmth.

He rode over to Blanche's loge and looked up at her smiling. "Well, my dearest lady," he said, "did you enjoy the tournament?" He looked very boyish with his ruddy gold hair tousled by the helmet, streaks of dirt on his cheeks and a happy look in his brilliant blue eyes, which gazed only at Blanche. He had not seen Katherine down on the platform, and he ignored the other admiring ladies around his wife.

"You were wonderful, my lord," said Blanche softly, leaning over the parapet towards him. "Listen how they shout for you. Grand merci to the Blessed Saint John who protected you from harm."

Oh, yes, thought Katherine fervently, gazing at the Duke. A strange pain twisted her heart, and she looked away quickly.

Blanche caught the motion of Katherine's head. "Is young de Cheyne all right?" she asked, leaning closer to her husband whose tired horse now stood quiet next to the parapet. "I couldn't understand just what happened, but Sir Hugh-"

"- is a dangerous fool," snapped John, his face darkening. "I shall deal with him. Though it's that wretched girl's fault."

"Hush, my lord," cried Blanche, glancing swiftly at Katherine. "The poor child's not to blame."

It was then that John saw her sitting below his wife's chair. Her grey eyes with their long shadowing lashes were gazing out over the lists towards the distant oaks. In one quick angry glance he saw the change her new clothes had made in her, the long creamy neck exposed and the velvet flesh in the cleft of her breasts, which were outlined by the tight green bodice. He saw the dimple in her chin and the voluptuous curve of her red lips, he saw the tiny black mole high on her cheek where the rose faded into the gleaming white of her innocent forehead. He saw the rough, reddened little hand, the great beryl ring on the middle finger. She was sensuous, provocative, glowing with colour like a peasant, and it seemed to him an outrage that she should be ensconced here next to his Duchess.

"Apparently you have no interest in the fate of your chevaliers, madamoiselle de Roet," he called in a tone of stinging rebuke.

Fresh dismay washed over Katherine. The unkindness of his voice did not hurt her so much as the stab of her own conscience. For it was true, she had been thinking not of her betrothed or the charming young man to whom at the convent she had given so much thought. She had been immersed in a sudden fog of loneliness, unable to look at the soft expression of the Duke's eyes as they gazed up at his lovely wife. What's the matter with me? she thought, and she turned her head with her own peculiar grace and said quietly, "I am indeed concerned for Sir Hugh and Sir Roger, my lord. How may I best show it?"

John was silenced. The girl's poise showed almost aristocratic breeding, though she came of yeoman stock. And it was true that she could not run down to the leech's tent amongst all the disrobing men and find out for herself. He beckoned to one of his hovering squires, but the young man already had the required information, having just come from the pavilions.

He said that Roger de Cheyne, though faint from loss of blood, would recover, the stars being propitious. The King's leech, Master John Bray, had poulticed the neck wound. Sir Hugh Swynford was uninjured except for a twisted wrist and a bone or two broken in his hand, as a result of the Duke's blow. He had refused the services of the surgeon and gone at once to his tent.

John and all those near enough to hear the squire listened attentively and nodded approval. A gratifying tournament, few casualties and probably no deaths. At least today. Everyone knew that injuries bred fever and putrefaction later, but the outcome would depend on a man's strength, the skill of the physician and his ability to read the astrological aspects aright.

"Farewell, my sweet lady," said the Duke to his Blanche. "I'll see you at the banquet." Ignoring Katherine and the rest of the Duchess's entourage, he trotted his horse off towards the pavilions. It was necessary to punish Hugh in some way for flagrant transgression of the rules, but the heat of John's anger had passed. Poor Swynford was bewitched and doubtless couldn't help his behaviour. Besides, a fierce and vengeful fighter was invaluable in war, however improper at a tourney.

And war was now John's great preoccupation. War with Castile. A deed of arms so chivalrous as to reduce these little jousts and melees to the pale counterfeits they were.

That very morning four knights, Lord Delaware, Sir Neil Loring and the two de Pommiers had arrived at Windsor from Bordeaux bearing official letters from Edward the Prince. There had been no time for the King to digest these letters yet, but John had read them. They contained an impassioned plea from his brother, asking for help in righting a great wrong. All of England must help, all of Christendom should help, in restoring King Pedro to his throne and driving out the odious usurping bastard, Henry Trastamare. King Pedro and his young daughters had been reduced to ignominious flight, and had to throw themselves on Edward's mercy at Bordeaux and beg for help, reminding him most pitifully of England's long-time alliance with Castile. That rightful anointed kings should find themselves in such desperate plight must move every royal heart to valorous response and to arms! That was the gist of the Prince's letters, and certainly John's own heart had responded at once.

He burned to distinguish himself in battle as his elder brothers did. His military role, so far had been unimpressive, through no fault of his own, but he chafed under the memories.

At fifteen he had gone to France with his father, full of hope that he might find glory in another Crecy as his brother Edward had done nine years before. But this French campaign bogged down into a welter of plots and counter-plots. King Jean of France blockaded himself behind the walls of Amiens and would not fight; it was all anticlimax and disappointment. King Edward knighted young John anyway, but there was no glorious deed of arms to give the ceremony savour, and the King, moreover, was preoccupied with trouble in Scotland.

The English returned home in a hurry, prepared to subdue the impudent Scots who had, as usual, seized any opportunity to capture Berwick. John was jubilant again. The Scots would do as well as the French as a means to prove his courage and new knighthood. Again he was disappointed. Berwick, unprepared for a siege, gave up at once, and then the infamous Scottish king, Baliol, surrendered his country to King Edward for two thousand pounds, and the English marched unchecked to Edinburgh, burning and looting as they went.

There was nothing in this moment of Scotland's abasement to thrill a boyish heart, fed on the legends of King Arthur's days, and fretting to prove himself the perfect knight. But in Edinburgh he at least had a glimpse of chivalry. His father, the King, had intended to burn Edinburgh as a final and conclusive punishment for the Scots. But the lovely Countess of Douglas flung herself weeping before the angry conquerors, imploring him to spare the city.

And the King had listened, had raised the sobbing beauty and kissed her on the forehead in token of gallant submission. Young John himself had been one of those sent to check the soldiers and their flaming torches. That day he had conceived affection for the city they had spared, and surprised admiration for the Scots, whom he had previously thought to be uncouth monsters.

He had been sorry to leave Scotland and deeply chagrined later that year that his father had not allowed him to return to France and join the Prince of Wales. For by Michaelmas they heard the stupendous news in London. The Prince and his remarkable general, Sir John Chandos, had not only won a brilliant victory at Poitiers, but they had captured the French King!

Young John rejoiced with all England. He took his part in the triumphant pageants and tourneys that greeted the return of the young conqueror and his royal prize, but he had had to fight envy. Edward was a brilliant hero, Edward was heir to the throne, the court adored him, the people quite properly doted on him, but what was there left for a third son who felt himself potentially as great a warrior?

Lionel didn't care. He liked sports and wenching and drinking. He amiably tried to fill any role his father told him to, and beyond that he had no ambitions. But John cared very much and spent many bitter hours. His rebellion was entirely inward and soon subdued by his strong sense of loyalty, both personal and dynastic. Gradually his seventeen-year-old energy, that winter of 1357, baulked of glory, flowed in other channels. He developed an interest in art, music and reading, where his taste ran to the romantic and stirring tales of olden time.

He also discovered passion. He became infatuated with one of his mother's waiting-maids, Marie St. Hilaire, a handsome, good-natured woman in her mid-twenties who initiated him into the forthright pleasures of sex. This affair lasted over a year, when she became pregnant. The Queen, who demanded a high moral tone from her ladies, was disgusted and angry with her son too. The King, however, and John's older brothers, were amused. His father remarked jovially that at least the boy was a truly virile Plantagenet, and this episode turned the King's mind to finding John a suitable wife.

Marie was well provided for and bore her baby without fuss in London. It was a girl, and she named it Blanche in honour of the bride the King had picked out for the baby's father.

By this time John was nearly nineteen and had quite outgrown Marie. It was easy for him to fall in love with the beautiful Blanche of Lancaster. He saw her first in her father's rose garden at the Savoy Palace, and in her white-robes with her silver-gilt hair unbound as she played a Provencal melody on her lute, she epitomised for him all the Elaines, Gueneveres, Melusines of who he had read.

His marriage brought him luck and a great measure of the power he wanted, yet now at twenty-six he had still not found the opportunity to achieve glory on his own.

Castile would do that. The very sound of "Castile" was like the martial clash of cymbals, and he repeated the seductive word to himself while he rode towards the pavilions after the tournament. His heart beat faster as he saw how he would answer his brother's need at the head of an avenging host, in a latter-day crusade to fight for justice and the divine right of Kings.

He would issue the call to arms throughout his vast domains. He could raise an army of his own retainers almost overnight, and finance the expedition from his own pocket. This was to be the Duke of Lancaster.

John's musing eyes grew brilliant and he flicked Palamon to a faster pace.

As he neared the pavilions a child darted out from behind one of the tents and waved her dirty little claws. "Great Duke," she whined, "gi' alms, gi' alms - we've naught to eat."

Her slanting dark eyes peered up at him through a tangle of dusty black hair, lice crawled on the filthy rags that barely hid her skinny little body. The stallion moved away from her under the pressure of John's knees as he said, "There's food for all down by the river - bread, ale and roast oxen." He pointed to the crowd of feasting peasants.

She shook her head with a sly smile. "We darena, noble lord, we'm outlaws - me da's skulking in tha' forest."

John shrugged and gestured to Piers Roos, his young body squire who rode behind him with others of the Duke's men. Piers opened the purse at his waist and flung the girl two silver pennies. She caught them in mid-air and darted off like an otter to disappear in the bushes.

"I suppose the woods are full of runaway churls today," remarked Piers laughing to his companions. "Come as near as they dare to the feasting. And as for that ugly maid, she's a veritable changeling."

John was not listening, and yet the last word uttered by Piers' clear young voice penetrated his mind with an effect of shock. Changeling. What was there in that word to stir up turmoil? His heart of a sudden pounded heavily and his stomach heaved as though with fear. Grey eyes, grey woman's eyes seemed to stare at him from the sky - troubled, far-seeing eyes like the de Roet girl's. No - eyes like Isolda Neumann's.

He turned in his saddle and spoke sharply to the young men behind him. "Go to your tents, all of you, and leave me alone. I wish to ride in the forest."

Piers Roos looked startled; solitude was a state rarely desired by the Duke or anyone else, except of course hermits and anchorites. He scanned his lord's face, which seemed angrily tense, and wondered if the jousting had inflicted some obscure injury. "You'll want your helm, my lord?" he said diffidently, holding it out. "There are outlaws in the greenwood - there might be danger."

"Bah-" said John, kicking Palamon's flank. "What danger to me could there be from a handful of renegade villeins?" He spurred the horse and cantered off through the holly bushes and elders on the fringe of Windsor Great Forest.

Piers watched the yellow head and the scarlet and azure jupon until they disappeared, then turned to his companions. "Palamon is winded and lathered from the tourney," he said, frowning. " Tis not like him to neglect the stallion, whatever strange mood has come to him-" The other young men merely laughed; and, delighted to be released from duty, shouted for the pages to bring them wine, as they clambered from the saddles.

John was not thinking of the stallion, but he allowed the tired horse to slacken pace and rode slowly beneath the dappled beeches while he suffered for the first time in years from memories so painful that it was impossible even now in his maturity to dwell on them calmly.

Isolda Neumann had been John's foster-mother for eight years, from the moment of his birth at the Abbey of St. Bavon in Ghent. She had nursed him at her breast, while the baby she herself had borne soon died. John remembered of her clearly only her calm grey eyes, and the softness of her voice as she sang to him and that he had loved her more than anyone in the world. His parents, the King and Queen, had been remote gods, infinitely respected, but preoccupied with great affairs, seldom at home, and, too, there were the other eight children to claim their attention. Isolda had belonged to him alone.

She was the handsome widow of a respectable Flemish burgher, and she had a remaining child, an only son four years older than John. This boy, Pieter, had naturally accompanied Isolda when Queen Philippa's whole household moved back from Flanders to England. Pieter had been born with a twisted leg, but otherwise he was healthy and large for his years. A sly, pimpled boy, given to spiteful tempers and tale-bearing, he had apparently felt from the beginning for little John, his mother's nursling, a vicious jealousy. Perhaps Isolda had not bothered to hide the far greater love she bore her charge, while perhaps she neglected her own son, pushing him too soon from her bed to sleep with the stable-boys and vagrants in the castle cattle-sheds.

Whatever the reason, Pieter's shrewd little mind, which was as twisted as his leg, eventually concocted a subtle revenge.

It had happened here at Windsor in the fetid death-dealing summer when red crosses were painted on every other house in London and the plague bells jangled day and night; but to all the children isolated behind the great castle walls there seemed to be safety enough, and they played together in the courtyards and gardens with carefree joy augmented by the relaxed vigilance of their terrified elders.

John now could not remember exactly how Pieter's persecution began, except that when a score or so of the castle children were playing together, Pieter would contrive to sneer at John's small failures, and whisper words the child did not quite understand. If John fumbled the leather balloon ball thrown to him, or missed his mark when tilting at a miniature quintain, Pieter would limp up and under cover of sympathy add directly in John's ear that his lack of skill was not surprising, that no more could be expected of a changeling.

So quickly was this done that the eight-year-old child was only puzzled, then quickly forgot in the interest of play.

Pieter bided his time until an afternoon when they were alone except for John's younger brother Edmund, who was six, and his little sister Mary, who was four. It was a sultry August day and the royal children's three nurses gossiped in the shade under the Norman gate while their charges played in the garden at the foot of the Round Tower. Pieter, who had special privileges because of his lameness, lounged near the children watching John. Mary amused herself floating peony petals in the tiny pool, but John had his new gerfalcon with him, of which he was exceedingly proud, and was showing her off to Edmund. She was a snowy northern bird hatched in the royal mew and already well trained by the King's falconer, so that she sat hooded and quiet on John's embroidered gauntlet, or when at times she flew high into the air to the length of her creance, which was fastened to John's glove, her twin bells tinkled gently and she returned to him at his call.

"Ah, sweet noble Ela," cried John, stroking his bird's neck with a blade of grass. "In a few years, Edmund, maybe father will give you one, too, on your saint's day," he added, swaggering a little before his admiring younger brother.

Pieter suddenly threw a large pebble at the falcon, which started and bated violently, her great white wings thrashing the air.

John turned on his nurse's son with fury. "What possessed you to do that, churl! You've frightened her."

Pieter shrugged. "Let me take her," he said in his thick Flemish voice, and kicking off his soft-leather shoe, he thrust his left hand into it to make a perch for the falcon; watching John slyly, he extended his hand, "Geef her to me, I can manage her."

John's mouth dropped open as surprise replaced his anger. "Why, Pieter, you know you may not touch her," he said in all seriousness, and with a hint of pity. "She's a royal gerfalcon. You must get yourself a sparrowhawk."

The narrow rat-face glinted, for now the opportunity had come. Pieter knew as well as the Prince and everyone else in England the iron-clad laws of falconry: that smaller hawks were each assigned to a different class of men, as were merlins to noble ladies, peregrines to earls, but only those of royal blood might own or touch a gerfalcon. He thrust his face close up to John's and spoke not so loud that his mother and the other nurses might hear. "I haf as much right to her as you - changeling."

John jerked his head back from the hateful face - while the falcon again bated her wings - and he felt his heart begin a slow hard thumping. "What do you mean?" he said steadily enough.

"That you're no King's son, nor Queen's neither. You're naught but the brat of a Flemish butcher. The Queen smuggled you into her bed when the child she bore died, and she feared to tell the King."

For John the bright August afternoon had dimmed, then blackened, while Pieter's voice swirled disembodied around his head, and the hissing words lost meaning. His belly heaved as it did when he had eaten too many gooseberry pasties, but he stood rigid, staring at Pieter, and still holding the gerfalcon carefully on his outstretched hand.

"You lie," he said at last, and could not control a quaver. He shut his lips tight. Edmund, who had squatted down to splash Mary at the pool, looked up, hearing something strange in his elder brother's voice, but seeing nothing was happening to interest him, scooped water over Mary's legs.

Pieter shook his head, but he stepped back, a trifle frightened now of what he had said and of the other boy's white face. "You're naught but a Flemish butcher's brat, a changeling'' he repeated more feebly, and almost believed it himself, forgetting that this invention had first sprung from a minstrel's lay he had heard at Whitsuntide.

"I shall go with this tale to the Queen, my - my mother," John said, holding his head high, "and to Isolda."

"Nay," said Pieter quickly, " 'twould be no use. They'd neffer admit it for fear of the King."

John stood yet one moment, then he made a sharp high sound as tears burst from his eyes, and he sprang forward, hitting out with all the strength of his right fist.

The other boy was four years older and a head taller, but between his lameness and the suddenness of the onslaught he fell backward on the slope of the mound, and John, on top of him, found a sharp stone in his hand and cut down wildly, opening a gash in Pieter's neck. Pieter let out such a bellow that the nurses and the guards from the Round Tower all came running. They rescued Pieter and staunched the blood that flowed from his neck wound.

Then was John in disgrace; the King his Father scolded him harshly for two transgressions of the knightly code, hitting a cripple afflicted by God, and especially for damaging by his turbulence the royal gerfalcon, which had in the uproar torn one of her talons in her struggles to escape. A falcon such as Ela was worth a hundred marks, and King Edward took her away from his son as punishment.

John scarcely missed the falcon which had been his chief delight, for the poison Pieter had instilled spread slowly through his soul. He ceased to play with the other children, but kept to himself and grew silent and morose. He lost interest in food. Isolda saw the change at once and fear gripped her, for now there were cases of plague in the town just outside the castle walls. She dosed him with snake treacle, she tied a toadstone around his neck with his medal of St. John, she washed him in pig urine, she hung a plague amulet with "Abracadabra" inscribed above his bed and questioned him anxiously. But he turned away from her and would not tell what ailed him. Nor would he go to see his mother, who was lying-in of another son, little William.

John, the Duke of Lancaster, riding aimlessly through the forest dusk, thought of these matters in his childhood, and the agony of those summer weeks eighteen years ago gripped him again. He had been shaken from all he knew, no longer sure that he was a proud Plantagenet, no longer daring to assert himself or claim affection from the family he had thought his. Was he indeed baseborn, a butcher's son, a changeling? Perhaps he had not wholly believed the boy's story, even then, but the doubt had been enough. Pieter himself had disappeared, the very night that John knocked him down. He had stolen his mother's purse and the jewelled trinkets the Queen had given her, slipped through the castle gate and vanished. Nor did Isolda mourn for him; she knew him for what he was, warped in mind and body. And soon she guessed that the woeful change in her little Prince had something to do with her son.

And worse was yet to come, for it was Isolda who caught the plague, and caught it because her concern for John sent her into Windsor town to find a well-known leech-wife reputed skilled at treating mysterious vapours and humours. She came back with a secret philtre which she persuaded John to take, and also insisted that he should sleep in her bed that night so she might watch its effect, and from his mutterings and troubled cries as he slept she began to understand. She drew him tight against her breasts, kissing his golden head and coaxing him with soft questions, until he began to weep and, still half asleep, told her all that Pieter had said.

Then Isolda jumped from bed, and picking John up in her strong arms, carried him from that room where others were sleeping and down some steps and through passages to the private chapel. She set the startled child down by the altar rail. It was cool in the chapel and dark except for votive lights burning before the statues of St. George and the Blessed Virgin.

"Look, my little lord," whispered Isolda, "do you see where you are?" He nodded, wondering.

"Then listen and remember always. Pieter most damnably lied. I swear it. Holy Saint Mary and Saint George and the Blessed Body of Christ are my witnesses. You are the King's son and were born to the Queen in March eight years ago on the eve of Lady Day, and I received you into my own hands as you came from your mother's womb."

John looked up, awed, into her shining grey eyes. He understood what she said, but the strangeness of the place and her urgency overpowered all else.

"Pieter wanted to hurt you," she said, putting her hand on his head. "In years to come there may be many people who try to harm you because of envy, and they will tell lies, many lies. You must be too strong for them, my sweet lordling, and yet you must be merciful, because you're strong - will you remember? And will you vow it?"

He nodded solemnly. Her white face seemed to shimmer in the dusk and her eyes looked down at him with anxious love. He held his arms up to her as he used to do when he was a baby, and kneeling on the cushioned altar step, she gathered him close.

"But you'll be with me always," he had whispered confidently. "You'll keep them from harming me?"

"I will," she cried, "I will - I'll never leave you."

How long they knelt there by the altar rail together he did not know, but that was the last time he saw Isolda.

She put him back in his own bed with his brothers, and the next day when he looked for her they told him she was ill. When she died three days later, there could be no concealment. Even the smallest children knew that there was plague in the castle; besides Isolda two knights died of it, and five squires and many scullions and maidservants. The stench of burning corpses hung over the castle, and the world was a jangle of church bells, handbells and the beating of tin pans to break up the thick, deadly air.

The royal family was spared, all except the Princess Joan, who died of plague at Bordeaux on the eve of her marriage to the heir of Castile, but the strange hysteria of plague-time so permeated Windsor that John scarcely understood what had happened to Isolda, who had promised never to leave him, nor felt reassurance from that hour with her in the chapel. Both shocks had been too violent for a child to absorb. Fear and loss and a sense of injustice attacked him in nightmares for years. In these dreams it was as though Isolda had betrayed him by her death when he so needed her, and he would see her urgent eyes fixed on him in the darkness until he called to them, when they shut against him and dissolved into the black eye-sockets of a skull.

Palamon stumbled suddenly, and the Duke, jerking up the jewelled reins, made a sound of exasperation, not at the horse but at himself. What was he doing wandering in the forest, when they awaited him at Windsor for the Garter feast? Why had the pleasant mood left by the acclaim at the jousting and the plans for Castile been so stupidly shattered by a memory of childish fears touched off by Piers' chance word? It's that de Roet maid, he thought in anger, but on this instinctive anger he now turned a cooler look, having recognised part of the cause. It was not her fault that her grey eyes were like someone whose memory was laced with bitter pain. Nor, doubtless, was it her fault that she was possessed of a troubling beauty. And yet he still disliked the girl.

That clod of a Swynford's welcome to her, he thought, and turning Palamon he rode out of the forest.

CHAPTER V

Katherine and Hugh were to be married in London, and as soon as possible. Hugh said that as there were no families on either side to be consulted, no jointure or dowries to be arranged, there was no reason to wait. All the more since he was useless for fighting until his broken hand mended, and wished to visit his Lincolnshire manors before he left for Bordeaux with the Duke's forces. No this was the natural time for a bridal trip.

These practical arguments deceived nobody. Everyone from the page-boys to Katherine herself could see the jealousy that possessed him, and the fever to get the girl alone away from everyone.

Katherine accepted the imminence of her fate without further protest, and had little time to realise it, for the last days in Windsor were filled with the bustlings of departure. The King and his train left immediately for Westminster, where Parliament would sit on May 4, while the Queen decided to return to the healthier air of Woodstock.

Katherine saw no more of the Duke or Duchess of Lancaster. Their great household was on the move, even before the King's, as they set off for the Savoy Palace, and Blanche had many things to think of besides Katherine. At the Savoy, the Lancasters kept regal state with an establishment of six hundred people: barons, knights, squires and servants, besides the feudatories from all over England who were beginning to assemble in response to the Duke's call to arms.

Hugh wished to be married at St. Clement Danes, a little church near the Savoy where the priest was a Lincolnshire man, and Katherine's wishes, of course, were not consulted. Hugh went down to London some days ahead to make arrangements and left Ellis de Thoresby behind at Windsor to guard Katherine and conduct her to London with Philippa.

The Queen was a trifle better. When Philippa applied for leave of absence so that she might accompany her sister and see her married, the Queen, after granting permission, expressed a desire to meet Katherine at last. So on Katherine's final day at Windsor, Philippa guided her sister to the Queen's apartments.

From this interview Katherine received an impression of sadness and suffering. The Queen's room was darkened, quiet. A physician and the two most favoured ladies hovered near the fire while the Queen's secretary, a young Hainaulter in clerical robes named Froissart, sat at a high desk scratching on parchment by the light of a single candle.

The Queen lay in a huge four-poster bed hung with gold brocade and gaudily painted with her ostrich-feather badges. The coverlet was of blue velvet embroidered with the Queen's motto, Ich wrude muche. And she had indeed laboured hard all her life, to produce her twelve children and rear the nine who survived infancy; she had laboured to help the King, and for the advancement of her adopted country, but now she could no longer labour at anything except the daily struggle to exist in a prison of bloated aching flesh.

Katherine knelt to kiss the swollen hand extended to her. The fingers were taut and white as veal sausages, and the girl repressed a shudder. She raised her eyes to the mountainous figure under the coverlet, saw the balloon face with its small features nearly hidden by the puffed cheeks. But the sunken brown eyes looked kindly on the girl while the wheezing voice spoke in guttural French.

"So, la petite Katrine de Roet, you've already found yourself a husband! A brave knight! Your papa, whom may God absolve, would be very proud."

"Yes, madam," Katherine whispered and would have said more but the Queen turned fretfully, beckoning to her physician. "Maitre Jacques, it gives me no relief yet." The Queen pointed to her belly, where the physician had applied both leeches and hollow needles in an endeavour to drain off the dropsical waters.

"It will, madam, it will in time," he said gravely, and he held against her nostrils a wad of wool saturated with the brain-soothing juices of lettuce, poppy and henbane. The Queen inhaled, sighed, and closed her eyes. She had forgotten Katherine, and the girl looked at her sister, wondering if they should go, but Philippa shook her head. She knew the wandering habits of the Queen's mind these days, and she had no intention of letting Katherine leave Windsor without a wedding present if she could help it.

"Madam," put in Philippa anxiously, seeing that the Queen's thoughts were beginning to wander again, "Katherine is leaving Windsor tomorrow. She's to be married soon, if it please Your Grace."

"Ah yes," said the Queen. "She must have a little marriage gift, in memory of her brave father. What would you like, child?"

Philippa sighed with relief. She nudged Katherine. "Ask for a purse," she whispered, "money."

But Katherine had yet to learn the importance of money, and besides she still had the silver the Duchess had given her. At this long-awaited audience with the Queen, she thought only of her promise to the prioress, and the moment in the courtyard when the stern mentor of her childhood had looked at her with appeal.

"Your Grace is very kind," she said quickly, not knowing how to express herself. "Could you, would you help Sheppey? The little convent where Your Grace placed me five years ago. They were good to me and they are in need."

"You little fool," hissed Philippa.

The Queen looked startled. "Has Sheppey had no benefices? Did I send nothing for your keep?"

"Not since the day I came there, madam, and I fear I ate a great deal," said Katherine apologetically. "The convent is very poor."

The Queen sat up straighter and spoke with something of her old energy. "You show gratitude and loyalty, child. I'm pleased. Froissart, write an order. We will send Sheppey a tun of Gascon wine and" - she hesitated -"a gift of two marks. Also we will send them" - she thought a moment -"the d'Aubricourt girl as novice. She'll bring a dowry of near a hundred pounds sterling."

Froissart wrote industriously.

"Oh, dearest madam, thank you!" cried Katherine, thinking of the joy these generous gifts would bring to Sheppey. Gascon wine, when they had never been able to afford anything but home-brewed ale! While with two marks they could repair the dangerous minster steeple, buy cloth for new habits, perhaps enough gilt to freshen all the shabby saints' statues.

"And for yourself, my dear," said the Queen, warmed by the girl's unselfishness, but also mindful of the perennial skimpiness of her privy purse, "you shall have something to wear on your wedding day. Matilda," she called, "bring me the little coffer."

Her waiting-woman rose and fetched a small iron-bound casket from one of the great oak chests along the wall. In this were kept the Queen's second-best jewels, chiefly the ones she had brought with her from Hainault. Matilda put the casket on the bed and unlocked it with a key she carried at her belt, then she held a candle down so that the Queen might see. The Queen poked in the casket, turning over buckles and clasps, and little tablets enamelled with pictures of the saints. Several times she fished up a piece of jewellery and hesitated, reluctant to part with any of these souvenirs of her early life, and her interest was ebbing as her bodily discomforts increased. She needed the privacy of the drawn curtains again, and the ministration of her ladies.

"Here then, fillette," she said hurriedly, plucking out a small silver brooch of crudely wrought leaves and vines entwining a motto. "What does the raison say? I've forgotten. Can you read?"

"Yes, madam," said Katherine proudly. She peered at the lettering. "It says, Foi vainquera, I think."

"Ah yes," murmured the Queen, "a good saying. The best. Faith will conquer. Live by it, petite, and take my blessing

Katherine would have kissed the swollen hand once more, but the Queen gave a moan and cried, "Matilda, quick!" The waiting-woman ran to the bed and drew together the heavy brocade curtains.

Once back in their own solar, which was empty for the moment, Philippa began to scold. "Really, Katherine, you might have had a decent present instead of that trumpery little nouche. It isn't worth ten pence."

"But I helped Sheppey," said the girl dispiritedly, "as I promised."

"Oh, no doubt," Philippa shrugged. "Very noble, but you might have done both if you'd had any sense. One must know how to deal with great folk. Now the Queen gave me ten marks for my wedding. Geoffrey'll be delighted." Philippa, pleased by this thought and having rebuked her feckless sister, now' turned briskly to her coffer and began to pack it in readiness for the move to London tomorrow.

Katherine watched her sister's efficient hands folding and stowing linen shifts, veils, hose and towels. She herself had nothing to pack, and her eyes wandered to the window where she could see the tilting field, barren now of gaudy tents and pennants. She sighed. "I wish I were marrying someone like your Geoffrey, or - or, dear God, not marrying at all."

"What rubbish!" Philippa rolled a pair of scarlet wool stockings and stuffed them in a corner of the chest. "Don't start all that again! You wanted to get married. That's why you came to court, instead of taking the veil. And you've had the luck of the angels."

"I suppose so," said Katherine, gazing at her betrothal ring, "but - but - oh, Philippa - aren't you - aren't you ever afraid?" Quick rose stained her skin, and her head bent lower.

"Of what?" Philippa raised her face from the chest to examine her sister. "Oh, you mean the wedding night? They say it isn't bad. Agnes de Saxilby says she just shut her eyes and thought of something else. One gets used to it quickly."

It occurred to Philippa then that her convent-bred sister might well be ignorant of certain pertinent facts, though no one at court could be. She got up from her knees and put her arm around Katherine's shoulders. "You know what happens, of course?" she asked more gently.

Katherine winced. There had been bitches and dogs at the convent, there had been Philo, the manor bull, bellowing in a stockade to which the village cows were brought one by one. And there had been Fat Mab, the convent cook, who swilled ale all day long and loved nothing better than to bawl out hoarse descriptions of the bed-sport of her younger years.

So Katherine was not entirely ignorant, though there was much she did not know and found that she did not wish to know. She said "Yes" hastily, and though grateful for her sister's caress, slid off the bed and made pretence of poking the fire. Philippa did not understand; the unknown held for her no fears that she could not vanquish by common sense. She was handicapped neither by imagination nor a restless yearning for beauty and fulfilment. The image of Hugh's face rose before Katherine, softened now by distance, but bringing with it the familiar repulsion and a faint tinge of pity. Holy Blessed Mother, help me to be a good wife, she thought, but the words were empty.

Katherine and Philippa set out for London on the last day of April with Ellis de Thoresby as escort, and a pack-horse to carry Philippa's coffers. Despite occasional showers, the morning was soft and sweet as honey. The roadside bloomed yellow with buttercups and primroses, pale blue with forget-me-nots.

In many of the villages through which they rode the young lads had stolen time from work and were setting up Maypoles for the morrow. In the larger towns where they had a permanent Maypole, the gilded wheel with its streaming coloured ribbons had already been set on top of the stout oak shaft, and children were practising at twining ribbons while they danced and sang May carols.

How beautiful the world is, thought Katherine, forgetting what lay before her. There had been little beauty and no frolic at Sheppey. High on a bleak hill continually swept by the North Sea winds, neither the convent nor its dependent hamlet had had the spirit for merrymaking.

Much of Katherine's pleasure, too, came from the horse she was riding. It was only a hired one, to be sure, like Philippa's, but it was a stout little brown mare and the first decent horseflesh she had ever mounted. When they passed through the village of Hammersmith and came up with a band of minstrels bound for Westminster Palace and singing to the tinkle of their gitterns, Katherine began to hum with them until she caught the tune and could not help joining in with her fresh, lovely voice.

The hedges and trees they are so green.

As green as any leek.

Our heavenly father, he watered them

With his heavenly dew so sweet

The sun shines bright, and the stars will give their light

A little before it is day.

So God bless you all, both great and small,

And send you a joyful May.

The gleemen laughed'and waved approval, crying that the maid had a voice as fair as her face. Philippa primmed her lips to say, "Katherine, I cannot understand where you learned to be so forward," though then she smiled a little and beat time with her feet in the stirrups. Ellis de Thoresby paid no attention except to clear a way through the gleemen for his charges.

When they passed Westminster Palace, the great Abbey bell was tolling for Nones, so it was yet mid-afternoon, and. they had made good time. Katherine, excited at the prospect of seeing London at last, gaped at the royal buildings like any country girl, but thought them small and unimpressive after Windsor. And when a mile farther downstream they came at the bend of the river to the gleaming white walls of the Savoy, Katherine saw that the Lancastrian palace was more magnificent than the King's. The Savoy was crenallated but not fortified, having been built less than a hundred years ago, and its windows were of good size, and most of them glazed. It was built in a series of quadrangles, turreted at the corners and covering three acres between the Strand and the river. Pennants, imprinted with the red rose, fluttered from the turrets, but from the tall gilt spire of the private chapel there hung a flag with Lancaster's own arms - France ancient and England quarterly under a label of three points ermine - to show that the Duke himself was in residence.

"Sir Hugh was to meet us here," muttered Ellis, drawing his horse up by the Savoy's Strand gate, "but we're early."

Katherine, in no hurry to see her betrothed, drew back into the shadow of the great white wall and watched the traffic clatter by on the newly paved Strand.

There were country folk in leather jerkins returning to their villages and pulling empty carts, having sold their produce at markets in the Chepes. There were richly dressed city merchants, sometimes accompanied by their wives, ambling back to town for supper. There was a splendid painted chariot drawn by two horses and containing an enormously fat and bejewelled Benedictine abbot. There were crippled beggars and noisy young prentices, and there was a street vendor tinkling a bell and urging his wares. "Hot pies! Hot pies! Good sirs and dames, buy me hot pies!"

Katherine looked longingly at the little meat pasties on the pieman's tray and said to Philippa, "Couldn't we get some? I'm so hungry. I have pennies."

But Philippa shook her head. "Save what few pennies you've left from the Duchess' bounty - and if you'd listened to me you might have had more than pennies from the Queen. We'll sup soon, when Sir Hugh comes."

Katherine sighed. Her healthy young stomach growled with hunger.

When Hugh finally came galloping up the Strand towards them he was in a black temper from a brawl with a horse-dealer in Smithfield from whom he had just bought a palfrey for Katherine. He was also in some pain from his wounded hand and he did not greet them courteously, though his eyes lightened when they saw Katherine. He merely said, "So you're here! Well, come along, all of you. You're to lodge at Chaucer's. We'll sup there now and I'm in sore need of it." He whacked Katherine's mare on the rump. The horse jumped forward, nearly unseating the girl. He's a churl, she thought furiously. I detest him. God help me.

Hugh leaned over from his saddle and clasped his good hand tight on her thigh. She could feel the heat of it through the green Silk of her skirt. "Katherine," he said roughly, "d'you see that church?"

She moved her leg and pulled the horse away from Hugh's. She said nothing, though she looked at the small wooden parish church ahead.

"That's Saint Clement Danes," he said. "That's where we'll be married Saturday."

"Saturday!" she cried, whitening. "Not this Saturday! It's too soon. What of the banns?"

Saturday was the day after tomorrow. A shiver ran down her back, she stared at the church again and her throat closed.

"I had the banns all cried at once on Saint Mark's Day," said Hugh, frowning. "The priest's a Lincoln man and beholden to Swynfords for his living. It's all arranged for Saturday morning - Katherine- - -" He put his hand out towards her again, but on seeing her stony profile, he let it drop. He knew not how to woo her, he knew only that with her he became even more harsh and clumsy than usual He had not even wit enough to explain his tardiness, which had been caused for her sake. He suffered bitterly from her repugnance to him, though it increased his desire for her, but he had persuaded himself that once he possessed her she would turn yielding and warm. Young virgins always did, they said. He himself had had nothing to do with decent women, let alone virgins.

They rode along in silence, with Philippa and Ellis behind them. Katherine was turning wild, impossible plans over in her mind. Tonight, from the Chaucer house, she might escape, after everyone was asleep; she would hide somewhere until the city gates opened in the morning, take cover in the greenwood, in Epping Forest; she saw it now, a dark sea of emerald to the north. There must be berries there to eat and maybe kindly outlaws who would help her. She would first find a knife and cut her gown off at the knees so as to run better. She looked down at the Duchess's gift and thought how shocked that gracious lady would be if she knew these wicked plans.

"You've seen my Lady Blanche - and the Duke?" said Katherine coldly at last as they squeezed through Ludgate into the narrow streets of London town.

"No," said Hugh and clapped his lips together. Though he slept in a loft with other knights in a corner of the vast Savoy he had seen nothing of his lord and lady because the Duke was punishing him for his behaviour at the tournament. He had sent Hugh word by a page that Hugh was forbidden to eat in the Great Hall, nor might he wait upon the Duke until after returning from his manor of Kettlethorpe in August. That Hugh must then report at Plymouth, ready to embark for Bordeaux. This punishment was not severe, but Hugh found it galling to his pride and had no intention of telling it to Katherine.

They rode past St. Paul's, and Katherine had no heart to admire the great cathedral of which she had heard so much. The London she had longed to see now seemed to her very cramped and dark and noisy with an earsplitting din from the rattling of carts, street criers and bells clanging for vespers from the hundred and fifty parish churches. She was conscious chiefly of foul smells and increasing weariness. They turned down Thames Street and into the Vintry where Geoffrey's father, Master John Chaucer, lived in a large half-timbered house near St. Martin's church. A cargo of Gascon wine had that day been delivered from off a galley at Dowgate slip, and piled barrels still cumbered the street outside the Chaucer door.

Hugh dismounted and helped Katherine down, though he left Philippa to his squire. He knocked loudly. They waited long for an answer while Philippa looked worried and Hugh remarked under his breath that it was a pity Geoffrey was so little eager to see his own betrothed. Hugh banged again on the door, this time with the hilt of his dagger. A window was thrown open above, and a woman's voice cried, "Hush, for the love of Jesu, hush - there's grave sickness here."

Philippa gave a little cry and crossed herself and they all stood silent for a moment, until at last the door opened softly and Geoffrey himself stepped out. "No, it's not I who is ill, sweetheart," he said to Philippa in answer to her expression. He took her hand and held it in his, then turned to the others. "God's greetings to you, Katherine, Sir Hugh and Ellis de Thoresby. I'm sorry to give you such a poor welcome, but my father has this day suffered a strange kind of fit, he gasps for breath and moans with pain. I fear-" Geoffrey shook his head. His bright little hazel eyes were sad. "We've sent for the parson." He gestured towards the church, and at that moment the priest emerged, treading solemnly, his silver-gilt crucifix held at arm's length before him.

The priest's eyes were half shut and his lips moved in prayer. He was followed by a small acolyte who bore the sacred pyx on a pillow beneath a lace cloth. Geoffrey threw wide the door of his house and fell to his knees, with the girls, beside the doorstep. Hugh and Ellis uncovered and kneeled also. With bowed heads they all .waited while the Sacred Body passed between them and up the stairs to the dying man.

Katherine rose with her rebellious heart somewhat chastened. It had seemed to her that there was a glow of unearthly light shimmering above the shrouded mystery as it passed her so near, and that a voice had spoken to her in reproof. She thought with shame of the mad plans she had made for escape, and guiltily murmured the words of contrition. She kept her head low and stood quietly by the house wall while the others made immediate arrangements.