Katherine

Philippa, it seemed, would stay here where she could be of help to her future family in these critical hours, but Chaucer had thought Katherine would do better at a friend's house. The abode of death was no place for a bride. The Pessoners in Billingsgate awaited her now, and he directed Hugh to their home. Katherine silently kissed her sister and remounted her mare.

Guy le Pessoner was a wealthy fishmonger, and an important official in that all-powerful guild. His fine house, many-gabled and newly-tiled, stood just past the entrance to London Bridge and had its own dock on the river for the unloading of fish. He had a garden, too, though the roses and lilies that bloomed there made little impression on the all-pervading odour. The Pessoners did not mind; they were a jolly crew and enjoyed life whether it smelled of lilies or herrings, and they welcomed Katherine, Hugh and Ellis most heartily, leading them at once to the Hall where the family were still supping.

The oak board was loaded with joints of beef and mutton, with pigeon pies and boiled capons spiced with ginger and cinnamon. There was a mess of jellied eggs in a wooden dish, white loaves of bread, and great tankards of ale and mead. And for sweets there were honey and almond pastes, nutmeg custards and a basket heaped high with boiled raisins.

Nobody waited for ceremony, all reached and helped themselves, cutting chunks off the roasts with their hip knives, or ladling meat juices on to the bread trenchers with the great dipper. Katherine's hunger was such that she forgot all the prioress' careful schooling and soon was reaching, gulping, smacking with the rest of them. There were a score of people in the Hall, prentices in leather aprons not quite cleansed of fish scales, two maidservants and the large Pessoner family. Large in size as well as in number, from Guy himself, who was built like one of his own herring barrels, and Dame Emma, who was round, firm and red as an apple, through the eleven children to the baby, who brandished fat arms and suckled greedily at Dame Emma's ample bosom. Katherine had never seen such plump and merry people. She noted that even Hugh, who sat beside his host, looked less surly and once or twice when Guy made some ribald joke, Hugh gave a grunt of laughter.

Katherine herself sat on the bench beside Hawise, the eldest daughter, and when everyone had quenched his thirst and Hawise no longer had to keep running down to the cellars for more ale, she had leisure for Katherine, and turned to their visitor with sympathetic curiosity. Katherine satisfied it willingly, saying without visible tremor that she was to be married Saturday morning, and that yes, Sir Hugh, there, was her betrothed.

"Is it so?" said Hawise, examining the knight. "He's naught so bad, young enough, too. I'd mislike an old man's bed - dry as bean straw. Is he rich?"

Katherine laughed. It appeared that all the Pessoners said right out whatever was in their minds. "I - I think so. I don't know rightly," she answered.

Hawise looked startled. Even in her own class no marriage ever took place without a complete airing of all financial matters, and amongst the gentry and nobility she knew that this airing went much further into a pother of jointures and settlements and papers to be signed.

Hawise questioned more and found out all the lonely circumstances of Katherine's life, and her warm heart was touched. She felt drawn to the girl and protective, though she was but two years older.

Suddenly she stroked Katherine's cheek with one finger. "How fair you are, damoiselle" she said without a trace of envy. "Sheen as a fairy woman, I trow."

She herself was neither shining nor fair, being a stout, big-boned lass, sandy-haired, freckled as a thrush's egg, and with a front tooth missing. Yet there was about her the wholesome strength of a healthy animal, and a mind for fun and colour that made her very likeable.

After Hugh had taken an inarticulate leave of Katherine, and he and Ellis had returned to the Savoy for the night, Katherine mounted thankfully to the loft over the fish-shop, where she climbed into a big bed beside Hawise and two younger sisters, who were already asleep. She would not see Hugh again until they met at the church door, because it was not seemly to meet during the twenty-four hours before their marriage; and she resolutely tried to forget him.

Hawise started to talk of the wedding, but on seeing that Katherine fell silent and sighed often, the older girl let the topic alone and spoke instead of her own young man. This was Jack Maudelyn, weaver's apprentice, and Hawise loved him dearly, though they were not betrothed. The Pessoners were people of consequence in London, and Master Guy was loath to give his daughter to a mere prentice. Moreover, though the weavers had a fine enough guild, her father looked down on them and thought them not a patch on the wealthy victuallers such as the fishmongers, the vintners and grocers. "I misdoubt Dada'll ever give consent, until I get me with child by Jack," added Hawise cheerfully, snuggling her head into the goose-feather pillow.

"Blessed Sainte Marie!" cried Katherine, sitting up straight in bed. "You wouldn't do that, Hawise. 'Tis mortal sin, it's - it's horriblel"

The other girl chuckled, she put her arm around Katherine's slender naked shoulders, and pulled her down again. "Easy to see you're convent-bred, sweeting. 'Tis no such sin, an' ye get wedded in time. It happens often enough in London. God's bones, I'll be eighteen come Michaelmas!"

Katherine was shocked, but she was fascinated, too. Could there be different ways of looking at a thing, even mortal sin? And was it possible that this ordeal which awaited her Saturday could be viewed in this cheerful and matter-of-fact light, could even be pleasurable? Ah, but Hawise loved her Jack, surely that made a difference, though Philippa said not, Lady Agnes de Saxilby said not, too-that love had nothing to do with duty. Suddenly, there swam before her eyes an image of the Duke as he had smiled up at his wife at the tournament. She shut her eyes tight and fingering the wooden beads that hung around her neck, began the Paternoster.

She was awakened before daybreak by Hawise's playful slaps. "Get up, get up, damoiselle, for we must bring in the May!"

The whole Pessoner household was astir. The maids were raking out the floor coverings of stale, matted rushes, and laying down sweet-smelling new ones to last the month. Dame Emma stood over the kitchen fire seething eels and pike in claret to make her famous galantine, for though this was Friday, she saw no reason to keep strict fast, so long as one touched no meat. Indeed it was one of the most joyous of holidays, and Katherine, scampering barefoot in a borrowed kirtle through the London streets with Hawise and a dozen other lads and lasses from their ward, forgot the dignity of her fifteen years, forgot that she would be a wife tomorrow, and giggled and danced and sang with the rest of them.

At every block they were joined by a new band of young people from other districts, and they all poured through Bishopsgate into the open fields and woods past St. Mary Bedlam's hospital. Now they scattered, darting in all directions, hunting for the thickest-blossomed hawthorns, for branches of apple and sycamore and flowering cherry. Through the fresh dew-sparkled dawning, the lads' jerkins and maidens' kirtles flitted like scarlet, yellow and green butterflies.

Katherine and Hawise, having found their May boughs, were sitting in a meadow, feverishly weaving a garland of primroses and bluebells, when someone threw a mistletoe ball at Hawise's head. It bounced into her lap amongst the flowers and she looked up giggling." 'Tis Jack," she said to Katherine, "I'll pay him out!" She stuffed the heavy bannock her mother had given her against hunger dexterously into the mistletoe, and when a shock of brick-red hair peered around the trunk of the nearest beech, she flung her missile hard. It hit Jack full on the mouth; he let out a roar of mock fury, and rushing for Hawise tumbled her backward upon the grass, tickling her until she howled for mercy.

Katherine drew a little aside during this rough play, but she laughed, too, and when Jack finally released his victim with a smacking kiss, she saw that he was a big hulking lad, as freckled and sandy as Hawise herself.

His eye lit on Katherine, and thinking her naught but a pretty barelegged maid, he seized her around the waist, pinched her little rump and nuzzled her neck. Katherine struggled and twisted, which he took for coyness, and he twined his hands in her long shining hair.

"Nay, nay, Jack!" cried Hawise. "Let her be. She's not one o' us. She's convent-bred! She's betrothed to a knight."

Jack's lantern jaw dropped; he released Katherine's hair, then peered fearfully around the quiet meadow.

"Her knight's not lurking here, you great booby!" laughed Hawise.

"Come help us with our garland, quick!" It brought extra good fortune to bring in the May before the sun was fairly up. And when the garland was finished, Katherine had already forgiven Jack. The three young people ran back together into town, singing in round, as they skipped down Bridge Street, the oldest of all the springtime greetings, "Sumer is icumen in, lhude sing cuccu."

In after years when Katherine thought of this last day of her girlhood she saw it lit up with a golden gaiety.

Spring bloomed in all the dark houses, every rafter and every post were festooned with greenery. The girls wore wreaths of flowers in their hair, the men tucked flowers behind their ears and under their belts. They drank the May wine, perfumed with wild thyme and violets. And they went to dance and sing around the enormous gilded Maypole which each year was erected by St. Andrew's church in Cornhill. So famous was this Maypole that it had given its name to the church, St. Andrew-under-shaft, at which some of the stricter clerics frowned, deeming the May frolics pagan things that lured the folk to licence. But most of the clergy thought no harm, and in the smiling ring of onlookers about the Maypole there was many a passing friar or parson, and even the black-garbed Benedictines stopped to watch.

Ah, Katherine should have been May Queen, cried Hawise, for she was fairer than any other maiden! But the queen had been chosen long ago, and already sat on her flowery throne beside the dancing. The May Queen's father was a goldsmith, and his metal seemed to shimmer in his daughter's hair, while her eyes were round and blue as forget-me-nots, so that Katherine knew Hawise was but being kind in calling her the most fair. Still, this kindness warmed her, and added to the glory of the golden day the feeling that she had found a true friend.

She did not forget Philippa mewed up in the house of illness. Once they stopped in the Vintry to inquire and found that Master John Chaucer seemed neither better nor worse. Philippa, full of pleasurable importance, had taken charge of the kitchen, so as to release Dame Chaucer for the nursing. Katherine felt guilt that she should be enjoying herself so much while her sister toiled. But Philippa wanted no help, it was plain that she was too busy to think of Katherine, who therefore continued to enjoy her freedom, which ended at last when they all danced the hay-de-guy around a bonfire in the wide square near the Guildhall.

How different was Katherine's awakening on Saturday morning. The lovely weather had dissolved into a steady rain. She awoke long before Hawise, against whose sturdy shoulder she had slept fitfully, and lay staring at the rafters and listening to the drip. It seemed as though a cold hand was gripping her heart, and she dared not move for fear the cold would spread and freeze her whole body.

The kindly Pessoners tried to rally her spirits with sly jests and rough teasing. They were sorry for this bride who had no mother to weep with her, and no kin to dress her. Hawise indeed took over the latter rite, tending Katherine lovingly, anointing her with a fragrant essence of gillyflowers, dressing her in the Duchess's green gown, which had been cleansed and freshened yesterday by one of the Pessoner maids. She brushed the curling dark auburn hair until it gleamed like Bohemian garnets, and left the mantle of hair to flow loose down to Katherine's knees in token of virginity. She set a bridal wreath of garden flowers on the girl's head, volubly cursing the rain as she did so. "But don't ye mind, my sweeting, mayhap it'll clear, thanks be to Saint Swithin!" Her heart ached for this still, quiet figure who allowed herself to be dressed and tended like a wax image, when yesterday she had been all rosy laughter. Bad luck, thought Hawise sadly, that it should rain, always an ominous wedding portent, and worse hick yet to be married in May. Blessed Mary grant the girl didn't know that, being yet so unworldly, or it might further depress her spirits.

The Pessoner parish church, St. Magnus, had but just finished ringing for Tierce when there was a knock at the door. It was Philippa with Geoffrey, come to conduct the bride to St. Clement's.

"She's ready," said Hawise, drawing the hood carefully over Katherine's wreath to protect it from the rain and fastening the cloak at the neck with the Queen's brooch.

"And a most beautiful bride," said Geoffrey, chucking Katherine gently under the chin; but his gaze lacked its usual alertness. He had been up the last two nights with his father, who still lingered. Both he and Philippa were tired and distraught. Philippa, in fact, could scarce keep her mind on the marriage, because now Dame Agnes Chaucer had taken ill, too, with vomiting and purging, and the neighbour who had come in to tend house in their absence seemed doltish as a sheep.

It was a silent, dripping-wet little company that plodded on foot along Thames Street towards Ludgate. Hawise came with them, and Jack Maudelyn, who had sneaked off from his loom. Katherine had asked them both yesterday when the world had been joyous and gay.

When they reached St. Clement Danes they saw Hugh and Ellis on horseback, awaiting them by the lych-gate. Katherine raised her eyes once to Hugh. She saw a kind of fearing relief in his taut face, and that he was close-shaven; his stubborn beard subdued with oil, his crinkled hair, too, smoothed down and closer cut. She saw the scar across his cheek stand out purple on his flushed skin, and that his lips trembled. She saw all these things as though she looked through mist. Hugh seemed not real, she herself seemed not real, and she moved obediently and gave her hand and murmured answers like a docile child.

They stood first in the church porch, outside the iron-hinged door. There was a priest, called Father Oswald. There were vows. Geoffrey, Philippa, Ellis, Hawise and Jack pressed close, crowded under the porch to keep out of the rain. The priest then opened the door and they all went into the church. It was dank and musty and smelled of burning mutton fat from the votive candles at St. Clement's shrine. There were two wax tapers lit at the altar. A fitful grey light came through the coarse glass windows. Hugh and Katherine knelt at the altar rail, the others on prie-dieus behind. A runny-nosed little acolyte darted out from the vestry, and the priest turned to start the celebration of Mass.

Katherine heard a commotion in the nave, the sound of footsteps on the stone floor, the clink of metal, the rustle of garments. The priest faltered and paused, he swallowed nervously, staring into the back of the church, then he went on hastily with the Mass. Katherine did not turn her head; she felt no curiosity; she fixed her eyes on the gilded dove above the tabernacle, and her lips moved mechanically.

But Hugh turned to see, and she heard him make an exultant sound under his breath. She wondered vaguely why. The Mass went on, the bridal couple communicated. It was over. The priest spread his hands and said, "Benedicite. Go in peace, my children," then surreptitiously cuffed the altar boy who had forgotten his duties and stood staring open-mouthed into the nave.

Hugh should have kissed her then, but he did not. He still held her hand as the priest had joined them, and his grasp tightened as he pulled her sharply around and after him down the aisle.

It was the Duke and Duchess of Lancaster who stood there by the west door. They were most splendidly apparelled in crimsons and gold and jewels, and they each wore their ducal coronets, for they were going to a state banquet later. They lit up the grey church like torches.

"We're deeply honoured, my lord and lady," stammered Hugh, dragging Katherine after him. She pulled her hand from his and curtsied low.

The Duchess smiled. "We thought to wish you well at your wedding.'' It had been by chance that she had heard of it, through the gossip of one of her ladies who knew Ellis de Thoresby, but then her interest in Katherine had revived. She had asked the Duke to accompany her to the church, since it would be a matter of a few minutes only, and been a trifle surprised that he consented so readily, but thought he had decided to reinstate Hugh as a wedding boon. Yet now he did not look at Hugh, nor return his greeting. Instead he stood staring fixedly at Katherine.

"You've not kissed your wife, Swynford," said the Duke in a deep mocking voice. "It seems you need example." He leaned over, with a certain swift grace peculiar to him. He drew Katherine into his arms and kissed her slowly, deliberately, on the mouth. Fire shot through her, and as she gasped, her lips opened under his. In mat instant she felt the hardness of his body under the velvet surcote and melting sweetness flowed through her bones, depriving her of strength. The Duke, feeling her yield, tightened his arms to support her. Then he released her, and laughed. "Her mouth tastes of honey, Swynford. Fortunate you are that you may drink your fill."

He spoke thus tauntingly, and gazed at Hugh with careless arrogance, to hide a perplexing emotion he had felt as the girl's lips opened under his. Not desire, nor surprise that her body should be so tender, though both these thoughts had come to him, but a strange new impulse to protect.

Hugh's face was flushed with anger, knots stood out on his jaw, but he dared say nothing. He grabbed Katherine and gave her a rough, clumsy kiss. She scarcely noticed it. Her whole mind was bent on recovery, on controlling the trembling of her knees, and hiding tears that had stung her eyes as the Duke released her. For shame she could not raise her eyes towards the Duchess. But the Lady Blanche saw nothing out of the way. There were always kissings and sport at a wedding.

And now that they had honoured the couple, the Duchess was anxious to hasten on to the banquet which could not start until they arrived. She held her long white hand out to Katherine, kissed her on the cheek and said, "May God bless your marriage-bed, my dear, and make it fruitful. I'll see you again, no doubt, later this year in Lincolnshire, for I intend going to Bolingbroke when my Lord Duke sails for Aquitaine." Her gracious smile drifted from Hugh and Katherine over the rest of the wedding guests, who stood silently respectful farther up the nave. She slipped her hand through the Duke's arm.

The Duke said "Farewell," and bowing slightly, turned on his heel, his gold spur clinking against a stone column. He found that the thought of Katherine's marriage-bed disgusted him. Nor did he feel as tolerant of Swynford as he had. Were it not for the need of good fighters in Castile-He snapped off these confused thoughts, and with Blanche joined their mounted retinue which awaited them on the street.

In the church porch, the others clustered around the bridal pair and offered awed congratulations. Philippa was delighted at the honour done her sister, and said so repeatedly. "Nearly as grand as though the Queen herself had come! I couldn't believe my eyes!"

Hawise was much excited at having seen these great folk so near. "Was there ever so stalwart and fair a man as the Duke!" she cried to Jack, who did not share her enthusiasm, but scowled, and grumbled that gold, jewels and coronets would make any man look handsome to a foolish woman.

Hawise paid no attention to this and turning to Katherine cried, giggling, "Cock's bones, I just wish it'd been me he kissed on the mouth so - so masterful - like he did you, my lady!"

My lady. Katherine heard her new title with shock. I'm the Lady Katherine Swynford, the wife of a knight. This is my husband. She stole a frightened glance at Hugh but he had turned his back and was conferring acidly with Ellis about a loose girth on his saddle.

Only Geoffrey made no comment on the unexpected appearance of the Lancasters. Perceptive as always, he had seen more in the Duke's kiss and Katherine's reaction to it than a careless gesture, and his eyes had flown in loyal anger to the Lady Blanche's lovely unconscious face.

No, she would never suspect evil. Remote and shining as the moon, no grosser passions touched her. Yet for the first time in his long worship, Geoffrey wondered what it would be like to be mated to the moon, so cool and predictable and exalted. And then he smiled and reproved himself for harbouring foolish whimsies, because he had felt during that moment in the dingy church an odd fear, as though some turbulent, even menacing, force had been set in motion. One that none of these people, not even the all-powerful Duke and Duchess, might be able to withstand.

CHAPTER VI

Katherine's wedding night was spent at a pilgrim inn near Waltham Abbey. Hugh had meant to go farther, but he listened to Katherine's timid plea that she might stop and see the famous shrine of the black cross as they passed by. He was himself now willing to postpone the hour when they would be alone. Nervousness diminished his desire for her and at the thought that he would soon make her wholly his he grew afraid. She seemed to him unearthly beautiful, sitting straight and quiet on the little dappled palfrey he had given her. She had thanked him for the mare with startled gratitude, her voice soft-toned as he had never yet heard it for him. This had caused his heart to quiver and jump like a hare's. Hugh was not in the least devout; he had never bothered to visit any shrine before, but Waltham Abbey was of some interest to him because it was no Norman shrine. It held the bones of Harold, the last Saxon king, and its miraculous black marble cross had been placed here by Tofig, a Danish thane.

As he and Katherine took their place amongst other pilgrims in the abbey, the huge shadowed nave inspired Hugh with awe, while the brass spirals on the thick round columns seemed to writhe at him like snakes. No holy feeling did they engender, but rather a superstitious shrinking that stirred the hairs on the back of his neck. And after they mounted the pilgrim's steps, while he looked up at the black cross, a strange thing happened. Somehow the buckle which fastened his scabbard to the belt had loosened; as he bent his knee, his sword fell to the pavement with a great clatter, then rolled down the steps to the chancel floor, where it lay pointing towards the western door.

The other pilgrims shrank back, murmuring and exclaiming. It was a sign, they said, that the Holy Cross was angry with the knight. It wanted none of his worship and had flung off his sword to point in such a way that he must leave the sanctuary. And they looked askance at Hugh, wondering what secret sin he might be guilty of.

Then a fat monk hurried up from behind the shrine, and said that indeed it was a sign, almost a miracle, but they must be careful of interpretation. He deemed that the Holy Cross wished the sword offered to it as a gift, that only in this way could the knight appease divine wrath.

Hugh stood silent on the top step gazing down at his fallen sword. The scabbard was of silver-gut intricately carved, the sword itself of finest Damascus steel, the hilt encrusted with small rough emeralds. This sword had been his father's and had saved Hugh's own life in France and in many a skirmish since. He looked down at it with fear, feeling that in some way his manhood, too, had fallen from him, and he shook his head muttering, "I will not give up the sword."

The people jostled and exclaimed again, whispering that hell fire would claim the knight for such disobedience, and one old crone lifted her wheezy voice to cry that she had seen a great white hand dart through the air from the Holy Cross and strike the sword off the knight's girdle.

The monk peered into Hugh's shut face, and finally said that there might be another way to avert wrath. The shrine had need of embellishment. The Holy Rood at Bromholme, though but a mean inferior miracle-worker, had a new cloth of woven gold, but there was none like that here. It might be that for the price of the sword the Blessed Cross would be appeased.

Hugh looked from the monk to the heavy black cross. A tiny image of the Saviour had been fastened to its gleaming surface, but the cross breathed neither of pity nor redemption. Like the stone idols his ancestors had worshipped, it towered dark and sinister above him. What portent was this for his marriage? He saw that Katherine had drawn aside from the other pilgrims and stood watching, her cheeks gleaming white in the darkness of her hood.

He opened his purse and put four marks into the monk's outstretched hand. The monk's splay fingers closed over them. He murmured benediction and walked quickly back behind the shrine. Now the people murmured again, some thinking the knight got off too easily, but most thought that so great a sum would surely propitiate the cross.

Hugh descended the steps, picked up his sword and strode from the church, while Katherine walked after him. She had been frightened at the shrine when the sword clattered down and the people cried it was a sign. But when she saw fear on Hugh's face, too, she had felt a twinge of doubt. Had it been the Blessed Virgin or a saint he had somehow offended, she would not have questioned, but this lumpish black stone which contained not even a relic of the true cross seemed to her an ugly thing. Might it not have been that the sword had fallen because Hugh, hindered by his wounded hand, had not fastened it properly? And the fat monk with greedy piggish eyes, had he not been overglib in his interpretations? Yet, she realised with sudden shame, these were impious thoughts, and perhaps she entertained them only so that she need not think of the moment which was fast approaching.

They went to a mean and shabby inn, The Pelican, because Hugh had given up nearly all the money that he had, nor would he seek free shelter for them at the abbey hostel, where they would have been separated into different dorters.

The stuffy little loft-room assigned them at the inn was no fitting bridal bower. The straw was mouldy on the square box bed and hidden but in part by stained old quilts. Smoke seeped up through the rough planking from the kitchen fire below and in the dusty corners black beetles scampered.

Hugh looked sideways at Katherine, then he shouted for Ellis to bring up a flagon of strong ale, and of this he drank cup after cup in frantic haste as though he drank for a wager. He offered some to Katherine, but she merely wet her lips, and gave him back the cup. She had become very still, and stood by the tiny-window, gazing out into the twilight towards the abbey. It seemed to her like a crouching beast; the chancel was its head, the double transepts its arms and legs, the nave its massive tail. A monster, ready to spring at her through the dusk. She turned her head a moment when Hugh banged down the oaken strip that bolted the door. She saw that his face had grown dark red, and heard the sound of his breathing. She shrank nearer to the window, and her hand clenched on the sill.

He came up behind her, gripping her shoulders with furious strength. "Katherine!" he cried, his voice as though he hated her. "Katherine - -" The pain of his grip on her shoulders almost made her scream, and yet she knew that his fury was not directed at her, and through her fear, pity flickered and was gone.

In the quiet dawn light after Katherine had been weeping for many hours, she heard the nightingales singing from a thicket behind the inn. She lay and listened to their carefree bubbling song and at first it seemed to her an unbearable mockery. She eased her bruised body into a new position as far on the straw from Hugh as possible. He lay on his back snoring heavily; the room stank of sour ale and sweat. But as she listened to the nightingales, her tears dried, some peace crept into her heart, with a tough strength. She thought that no matter how her body was violated, it could not affect her unless she let it. She was still Katherine, and she could withdraw with this knowledge into the secret chamber where no one else might penetrate by violence. She could surround herself with an impregnable wall of hidden loathing and contempt.

As she thought this the abbey bells began to call the monks to Matins. The clangour of the great-throated bells and then the chanting of male voices drowned out the nightingales. Her hand went to her beads, and she began the Ave, but the beads slipped from lax fingers. What can the spotless Queen of Heaven know of that which befell me this night, what can Saint Catherine know, who was a virgin martyr? Leaning down from their purity, they may be gracious, but they cannot truly understand. So I am alone. I need nobody else. All that must be, I can endure alone.

Hugh stirred and murmured in his sleep. He reached his arm out as though he searched for her. She lay motionless, watching him, coldly, through narrowed lids. He looked younger in his sleep, yet his mouth drew in tight at the corners as though he suffered. His groping hand found the spilled masses of her hair and grasping a strand he pulled it to his cheek so that the jagged scar lay on her hair.

His gesture did not touch her, he was as alien to her now as had been the panting, heaving beast earlier. But she would never be afraid of him again, nothing that he did could touch her. She would be a dutiful wife, she would accept the hard lot that fate had given her, but yet she would be free. Because he loved and lusted and floundered, while she did not, she would be forever free.

Thus Katherine thought on her first morning of wifehood in the ugly loft-room of the inn at Waltham Cross.

On their way up to Lincolnshire, Hugh, Katherine and Ellis spent three more nights on the road. Katherine was neither happy nor sad. She treated Hugh in a cool, friendly enough manner, acceded indifferently to his nightly demands, and yielded nothing of her inward self. He marked with jealousy that she spoke to Ellis in the same polite aloof way she spoke to him, and that all her warmth and tender pleasure went to the little mare he had given her. She had named it Doucette, saying that it was sweet as the doucettes of cream and sugar she had tasted at Windsor, and she was forever patting its neck and murmuring little love words to it. Hugh felt hot anger at the horse, but this he tried to hide, being afraid of Katherine's scorn.

He could not have put words to his feelings, but in a confused way he realised that when he had forced and then possessed her body she had somehow managed to escape him completely. But still he thought that she would come closer to him later, and he reminded himself often of how young she was, though very young she did not seem to him. For he had never seen her dance and romp as she had in London on May Day, nor had he ever heard her joyous quick laughter.

At Wednesday noontime, when they were a few miles south of Lincoln town, they turned off the Ermine Way and climbed the Ridge to see Hugh's smaller manor of Coleby, which he held in fee from the Duke of Lancaster. This manor was much neglected, its house nothing but a crumbling shell, where Hugh's reeve, a sottish drunken lump of a man named Edgar Pockface, dwelt in the leaky hall with a brood of fifteen children. The reeve came lurching out of the door as he heard horses in the weed-choked courtyard and stood aghast at seeing his manor lord. He tugged his Forelock and began mumbling. Hugh dismounted, glaring around at the tumbledown dovecote, the byres and stables half unroofed, the scanty piles of fodder mouldering unsheltered on the dank earth.

"By God's blood, Edgar Pockface!" he cried. "Is this the way you oversee the villeins, is this the care you give my manor!"

Edgar mumbled something to the effect that the serfs were unruly, that they refused to do their regular week-work for their lord, let alone the boon-work, that it had been so long since Sir Hugh or his bailiff had come here they had near forgot they were not freemen.

Hugh raised his hand .and struck the stupid face a vicious blow across the mouth. "Then this will remind you that you are not free!"

The man staggered back and fell in the muck beside the drinking well. He sat up spitting blood from a loosened tooth and weeping drunkenly.

Then, as though he had settled the whole matter of the manor's management, Hugh mounted his horse and gesturing, to Katherine and Ellis, led the way back to the High Road.

Katherine was pained and puzzled. Should Hugh not inspect his serfs? Should he not ride over the rest of his land to see in what condition it was? Should he not above all eject the drunken reeve, and find one who could manage the tenants and obtain from them the requisite labour? She rode in silence for a while, then ventured, "Will you not get a new reeve, Hugh, for Coleby?"

He shrugged. "Oh, Edgar'll do well enough now, he's learned a lesson. Fear makes the best taskmaker."

Katherine doubted it, but she said no more. She did not yet know that Hugh was the most indifferent of landlords, caring nothing for husbandry, and interested in his manors only enough to demand that they yield him sufficient rents and fines so that he might satisfy his few needs. He had not been home for three years and had left everything in the hands of his steward at Kettlethorpe, whom he had good reason to trust. So long as Hugh gave knight's service to the Duke, his wants and those of Ellis were provided for, and soon his war-time wages from the Duke would commence.

It was on the prospects of these that he had raised cash from a money-lending Lombard in London to finance his wedding and buy Katherine's palfrey. But the forced gift to the black cross at Waltham had so reduced him that now he had but a few pence left. This troubled him not at all. Gibbon his bailiff must produce an accounting at Kettlethorpe and replenish Hugh's purse, and that was all there was to it.

Katherine did not think long about the dilapidation of Coleby, assuming that all would be different at Kettlethorpe, the home manor. Yet her yeoman blood had been disquieted. She remembered a little of the great farm in Picardy where she had spent her childhood. She remembered the reverent voices of her grandparents as they spoke of their land, her grandmother's incessant orderly bustle to make, to tend, to repair. She remembered her grandfather, riding forth at all hours of the day or night to peer with shrewd weatherwise eyes at every field of grain and vegetable patch and pasture on his land. Katherine had loved them, too, those fertile sunlit acres, and the feeling of happy abundance after Michaelmas when the granaries were full, and the sweet hay stacked high in the lofts.

An ache for the past came to her as she looked out across the flat grey fenland. She thought the fens were ugly and forlorn. It had been drizzling all day, but now the dun clouds dropped lower and the rain sliced cold and straight as knives. When at last they reached the little suburb of Wigford across the river Witham from Lincoln town, Hugh was in a great hurry to cover the remaining ten miles to Kettlethorpe and would not let Katherine linger to gaze up the hill at the cathedral. She could see it but dimly through the clouds and rain, but it seemed to her a wondrous fair site for a house of God. The three great spired towers floated up towards heaven as though they had no roots in the sinful world below.

And how comforting it was to see a hill again, and a town, after the miles of flatness, punctuated only by isolated hamlets. They had come to a remote world in these days of travel. London seemed to her now as far off as France, as Rome, as the fairy land of Cockaigne. Their very speech was different here - it twanged and burred so she could scarcely understand it. She felt ungladness in the people. They smiled seldom and dressed in sober hues. So the glimpse of Lincoln heartened her, and she was pleased that Kettlethorpe was near.

But it was not. The ten miles dragged like thirty. Here and northward along the vale of the Trent it had been raining since St. George's Day and the full moon tides had thundered up the downrushing swollen river in an eagre; this sinister wave, high as a man, had burst many of the earthen dykes and flooded much of the land. And though now the water had receded and lay in pools and patches on the sodden fields, the highway was a mire of sticky red mud, so deep at times that the horses slipped and floundered; their hooves sucked in and out like uncorked bottles. While they used the towpath along the side of the Fossdyke progress was not so difficult, for on this busy link of navigation the bargemasters had placed stones and branches to give their towhorses some footing, but when the road turned from the canal at Drinsey Nook it became wellnigh impassable.

Katherine's little Doucette had begun to tire, and when beneath a puddle of water its hoof caught in a deeper hole the mare gave a frightened snort and fell splashing on its side. Katherine jumped instinctively and landed unhurt beside Doucette, but covered with the cold sticky mud and near to tears.

Hugh, swearing furiously, first picked her up, then with Ellis's help tried to raise the kicking, plunging palfrey. This they could not do until Katherine spoke to the little beast and soothed it with her coaxing. Katherine would have gone on afoot, but Hugh commanded her to mount again, and finding that the water on the road came nearly to her knees, she obeyed. Hugh took Doucette's bridle and led the horse after him; Katherine clung to the pommel in sodden misery. The drenched hood and cloak no longer kept off the rain at all. She found that she had lost one leather shoe back there in the mud, but it made no difference, her stockinged foot in the stirrup was no colder than the shod one.

As they drew nearer the manor lodge the wind came up and blew the rain in their faces, but the footing improved a trifle, for now the road ran through light moorland soil and sand which comprised most of the parish. Yet it was dark when they saw upon the left a pair of tall iron gates, and a cottage just inside them.

"Kettlethorpe!" said Hugh. "We'll soon be dry and sheltered, Katherine."

But no one came to open the gate, though Ellis kicked it and hammered on it, and both men shouted. The lodgekeeper's thatched shanty remained dark, and no smoke came from its chimney.

"The devil and his foul friends take this wretched churl! I'll have him put in the stocks, I'll lop off his deaf ears!" Hugh drew his sword and dealt the old padlock a violent blow. The chain that held it was near eaten through with rust and at the second blow it parted; the padlock dangled free. Ellis pushed back the creaking gates and said in surprise, "This road has not been used for long, Sir Hugh. 'Tis full overgrown."

There was in fact, no road at all, though its place was marked by an avenue of magnificent wych-elms, tall as steeples, their branches writhing and tossing in the strengthening wind. Beneath the elms there was a tangle of weeds, bushes, long grasses and brambles that tore at Katherine's skirts. The horses baulked, twisting and seeking some easier way. Ellis had to go ahead of them on foot, beating down the thicket with his sword.

Is there no end to this journey? Katherine thought, shivering, and she noted that Hugh did not meet this new hindrance with cursing, but had fallen silent while he constantly peered ahead. She could not see his face, but she felt his uneasiness, and her own discomfort grew.

For near a mile they fought their way along the abandoned road, then suddenly Katherine saw a church on her right, a dark shape of the cross against the darker sky, while to the left there was a huddle of buildings and a squat round tower. Still there were no lights, and no sound but the wind in the trees and the slash of rain.

They rode into the muddy outer court between the church and the house, and now Katherine saw the dull gleam of a small moat and a low stone gatehouse, its wooden bridge drawn up flat against the arch.

"Ho, Kettlethorpe!" shouted Hugh. "Gibbon le Bailey! Lady Nichola! Open up!"

Still the uncanny silence held. Then it was broken by a frenzied baying from the inner court, one deep menacing note over and over like a tocsin.

" 'Tis old Ajax," cried Hugh, with unconcealed relief. "Someone's in there."

"Unless it be the demon pooka hound," said Ellis, laughing nervously and crossing himself.

"Shut up, you bloody fool. You know well it's not been seen in Swynfords' time, 'twas of the old days. Open up! Open up in the name of the Trinity!''

At this a dim white head peered out of the peephole above the gatehouse, and a peevish old voice cried, "Who is't now that makes such clamour?"

"Toby Napper, by God, what ails you all? Don't you know me? A fine welcome this for the lord of the manor and his new lady!"

The white head disappeared, the windlass began to creak, until the rickety bridge flopped into the mud across the narrow moat. The horses crossed into the inner courtyard, where the hound came bounding and growling at them. But he knew Hugh's voice, and when Hugh gave him a powerful kick he slunk into the shadows.

Then Hugh turned on the gatehouse keeper, who stood holding a wavering horn lantern, his head wagging feebly. "Where're the stableboys? Where the house carls?" Hugh seized the old man's shoulders and tried to shake wits into him.

"Naught but me, m'lord, for this year past. M'lady turned 'em out. No one sleeps in the manor but me and m'lady - and - and Gibbon."

"Ay, ay, and what of Gibbon? Why isn't he here?"

"Ah, he's dying, is Gibbon," said the old man unctuously. "There's a worm gnawing of his bones. They've turned limper'n eels, his bones has. He lies abed all day and will not move. A young man was Gibbon, but now he's older than I be." The wheezing voice broke into a cackle of laughter.

Hugh made an exclamation, loosing the skinny shoulders, grabbed Toby's lantern and threw open the unbolted door to the Great Hall. Inside it was as dark and dank as out. There was no fire, nor sign of any, on the central hearth. The eating trestles, planks and benches were stacked high on the far wall. Rain splashed through a hole in the thatched roof on to a corner of the lord's dais.

"Ellis!" Hugh cried. "Gallop to the village and bring me back serfs. By God's nails, we must have food and warmth, no matter what's amiss here!"

The squire ran out and mounted his horse. Hugh put the lantern on the hard-packed earthen floor. He turned his face slowly from one end of the Hall to the other, remembering it in the days of his boyhood, when there had been torch and firelight, the smell of roasted meat, and ten servants running to attend the Swynford appetites.

Katherine crumpled down in one of the window embrasures, leaning her head against the stones, so cold and weary that she could not think. Her teeth chattered, and beneath her dropped lids the flickering shadows in the Hall swayed like water.

Then through her exhaustion she heard a rustling at the door, and opened her eyes. A woman stood there staring at Hugh. She was small and thin as a stick, her black gown flapped around her in the wind from the re-opened door, and her triangular widow's coif was no whiter than her narrow face.

"Is it you - Hugh? Have you come?" She spoke in a high sighing voice in which there was no surprise, or pleasure or dismay. "I thought you'd come. They told me so."

Hugh had jumped back as she appeared suddenly gliding into the hall. The contempt he had always felt for his stepmother and the anger at the havoc she had obviously wrought on his manor were both checked by the unfocused stare of her red-rimmed dark eyes.

"Ay lady," he said warily after a moment, not moving towards her. "I've come home with my bride." He pointed to Katherine, who slid slowly from the window and made a curtsy. "And I mislike the welcome you give to the new lady of Kettlethorpe."

The woman turned her mournful gaze on Katherine. "A bride?" she said, shaking her head in disbelief. "A bride at Kettlethorpe? They did not tell me that."

"Who did not tell you, madam?" Hugh snapped.

The Lady Nichola Swynford waved a bony hand vaguely towards the east. "The folk who live in the water, in the river, in the well. One mustn't say their name. They tell me many things."

"God's wounds," Hugh whispered, crossing himself and stepping close to Katherine. "She's lost the few wits she had."

The girl nodded and sat down again in the window niche. She looked at her husband, mud-spattered, his habitual scowl modified by the uneasy glances he threw his stepmother. He stood near the lantern, legs wide apart, his bandaged hand resting on his sword hilt. They both watched the Lady Nichola, who began to drift restlessly around the Hall. As the black-robed figure came to the water that streamed through the roof on to the dais, she stopped. She cupped her hands and caught some of the water, murmuring soft words to it as though in greeting.

Katherine shut her eyes again. A merciful blankness fell across her mind.

During the next days at Kettlethorpe, Katherine had opportunity for the exercise of many qualities she had not known she possessed. Her strong young body recovered soon from the drenching and exhaustion of her arrival; the recovery of her spirits and the acceptance of conditions so different from her imaginings took longer. Yet a sturdy common sense came to her aid. For better or worse this was now her home, and she the lady of the manor. She was child enough to feel pride in the sudden responsibilities thrust upon her. It was a little like the games of being grown-up ladies she had played with other girls at Sheppey, yet this feeling of play-acting did not preclude a hard-headed realism. She thought often of Philippa in those first days and wondered how her sister's orderly methods would have righted this muddle.

Kettlethorpe parish stood in the isolated corner of Lincolnshire at the south-west tip of Lindsey. It was bounded by the River Trent on the west, Nottinghamshire on the south and the angled Fossdyke on the east and north - a parcel of some three thousand acres including, besides the manor village, two hamlets called Fenton and Laughterton. It had formed part of the Saxon Wapentake, or Hundred, of Well, and owed feudal dues to the Bishop of Lincoln, under whom the Swynfords held this manorial right.

It had never been a populous or especially productive manor, the soil being suited only to the growth of hay, flax, hemp and such-like, and most of the land being in virgin forest for the pleasure of its lords. Earlier owners, such as the de la Croys, had had large holdings elsewhere to supplement their rents, as indeed so had Hugh's father until mismanagement had dwindled off Nichola's dowry, leaving the Swynfords only Coleby and Kettlethorpe.

Yet these two would have supported them all in sufficient comfort, were they well administered, Katherine thought. Hugh still had over sixty serfs at Kettlethorpe, man, woman and child; plenty to give him week-work on his home farms, boon-work at the harvests and inside work to run the manor.

The trouble here, of course, was twofold; the Lady Nichola's eccentricities and the mortal sickness which had attacked Gibbon, the bailiff.

Three days after Katherine's arrival she felt well again and decided to see this man who lay in a wattle-and-daub hut at the end of the courtyard between the dovecote and the bakehouse.

The weather had at last cleared and Hugh, having bullied and whipped some sulky serfs from their own fieldwork and back into the manor kitchen, had taken Ellis and ridden off into the forest to hunt for sorely needed food. He was not sorry to put off the countless tasks which awaited him. A manor court must be called, the serfs brought to punishment, their overdue fines collected, a new bailiff found. But above all the larders must be replenished; they were completely empty. Lady Nichola lived, on sheep's milk and stewed herbs which she cooked herself in an iron pot in the tower-room where she spent all her time when she was not wandering through the marshes and fields towards the river. Gibbon existed on the fitful donations of Margery Brewster, the village alewife, who felt kindly towards him, having several times shared his bed in the days of his strength, but whose tavern duties and brood of babies left her little time for charity.

Katherine had not asked Hugh's permission to visit the bailiff. Already she had learned that the mention of painful subjects induced in him an angry stubbornness which might well have led to refusal.

She waited until she saw the tip of his longbow disappear into the forest on the other side of the moat, then set herself to a leisured inspection of her domain, much irked that she still had no proper clothes except the travel-stained green gown the Duchess had given her, not even a linen coif to hide her hair and show her housewifely status. No matter, she thought, braiding and looping the great ruddy ropes neatly on either side of her face. She was determined not to be discouraged, and to meet this new life with calmness. Since there was no one to help her, she must depend on herself, and again, as it had on the morning after her marriage, this thought gave her strength.

She decided to visit the Lady Nichola first in the tower-room. She had not seen her mother-in-law since the night of arrival, but smoke and steam sometimes drifted through the arrow-slit windows and twice she had heard a not uncheerful crooning sound from up there.

The low defensive tower had been built, as had the manor, a hundred and fifty years ago, in the reign of King John. It was attached to the hall and solar, but there was no communication with these except by the outside staircase, which also served the solar. The manor plan was simple and old-fashioned. There was the thatched two-storied Hall, forty feet long, and the narrow solar where Katherine slept with Hugh was tacked high on to its western end. Beneath the solar lay an undercroft for stores. At the eastern end of the Hall there was a kitchen, and a half-loft above it where the servants slept. These and the tower with its ancient donjon and two round rooms above were all there was to Kettlethorpe. No private chapel, no spare chambers, garderobes or latrines.

The demands of nature were answered in an open corner of the courtyard behind the dovecote.

It was a more primitive dwelling than any Katherine had ever known; even the convent at Sheppey and her grandparents' great farmhouse had been more luxurious, while the Pessoner house in London, and of course the great castle at Windsor, had shown her entirely different standards of comfort.

And the furnishings at Kettlethorpe she deemed shockingly plain and scanty for a knight's home. The planks and trestles and benches in the Hall were barren of carving and as roughly hewn as those in a rustic's cot, while the solar was furnished only with a square box frame heaped with a mouldering goose-feather bed and a flea-infested bearskin for a coverlet. It surprised her much that they should drink the small ale Hugh had commandeered from the village out of coarse wooden mazers and that there should be no object of the slightest value to be seen, not even a saint's statue, or a tapestry to keep out the constant draughts. She longed for explanation of this singular poverty, but did not dare ask Hugh, seeing that he felt shame at the condition of his estate and tried to hide it by loud rantings against his stepmother. All the more she could not ask him because she had brought him no dowry, nor had he reproached her with its lack. In justice, she owed him all her help to straighten out his affairs.

As she ascended the outside flight of wooden steps into the tower, her heart beat fast, for she heard the Lady Nichola's high murmuring float out on to. the still air. The dairymaid said that the Lady Nichola had water-elf sickness, a fearsome spell; and none of the servants would go near her. Katherine paused to gather courage and looked across the courtyard wall and the moat, towards the cross on the church spire. She had not yet been over to the church, and there was no Mass except on Sundays. The parson, grown slack, as everyone eke on this manor, was not even at home, but had gone some days ago to Lincoln on business of his own.

She mounted the stairs and entered the tower's ancient guardroom. Many generations had passed since it had heard the clash of steel and the oaths of men-at-arms, and its slit windows, sunk seven feet deep into the walls, had never heard the whir of defending arrows. No other baron had coveted this isolated manor. The first lord had built the tower and dug the moat because it was the fashion of building in his day, and he had used Kettlethorpe chiefly as a hunting lodge. Katherine, glancing quickly about, saw that the room contained only two ironbound chests. In the centre of the stone floor there was a rusty grille over the only airshaft to the donjon beneath. In the time of Hugh's father, Sir Thomas, this donjon had been used occasionally for the detention of serfs awaiting trial, but now it had long been empty of all but the rats who tunnelled upward from the surrounding moat. Katherine saw that dust lay thick as her hand on the chests and that a drift of dead leaves had blown into the corners.

She climbed the narrow stone steps that were built in the thickness of the wall and came to the top room. A mangy deer-hide barred the doorway. The murmuring had stopped, there was a listening silence within.

Katherine cleared her throat and called softly, "My lady Swynford! It's Katherine, Hugh's bride. May I enter?"

She heard a. scuffling noise as though something were being quickly hidden, and a tiny stifled sound, sharp and high. Her heart beat faster, but she called again. Still there was no answer, but she heard the rasp of frightened breathing.

She pushed the deer-hide and entered. "Ah no!" she cried when she saw the little black figure. "My poor lady, you mustn't be afraid of me!"

The Lady Nichola, her arms clasped tight across a lumped cloth on her breast, was cowering behind her bed. Her dark eyes were fixed on Katherine with dumb terror. When Katherine drew nearer, she flattened her shoulder blades against the wall as though she would break through its stones. From the lumpy cloth she strained to her chest there came again the stifled sound.

"Dear lady, I won't hurt you. I've come up to do you honour, as is right. See, I'll come no nearer. I won't move from here." Katherine's voice, low and soft as a viol, thrilled with pity.

Nichola, who had heard no kindness since she had come to Kettlethorpe ten years ago, stared unbelieving. "You'd take her away from me-" she whispered. "Don't take her away - she does no harm."

The girl shook her head and tried to smile reassurance. Though the Lady Nichola was over forty and her scant dark hair was streaked with grey, yet her little face, twisted by fear, was somehow child-like.

Katherine stood stock-still as she had promised and saw the clutch of the claw hands slowly relax on the bundle they protected. The cloth heaved and squirmed.

"What have you there, my lady?" said Katherine very gently. "I swear by Saint Mary and her Blessed Son that I'll not touch it, nor do anything you don't wish."

"But Hugh would - he'd take her away from me and beat me as his father did. Beat me because I'm barren."

Katherine stiffened. "No," she said, her jaw tight. "No one shall beat you."

The Lady Nichola crept forward to the bed, her wide-straining eyes fixed on Katherine's face. She put the bundle down on the coarse hemp coverlet. The girl waited quietly, though the flesh on her back tingled. The cloth heaved and from underneath there walked out a small bedraggled kitten. It was striped in pale buff and it wore a collar made of woven grass from which dangled a leash of plaited scarlet wool.

Almost Katherine laughed, for she had expected some shocking thing, a baby perhaps - crazed women did steal babies - or sign of witchcraft like a serpent. But pity quenched her smile as Lady Nichola snatched up the kitten and covered it with kisses, while it mewed feebly.

"Dear my lady," said Katherine, " 'tis no sin for you to keep a kitten. No need to be so fearful."

Suddenly the unseeing stare left Nichola's red-rimmed eyes, and the young wild look left her face. Now wrinkles dented around her drooping mouth and between her brows. "So there's a new Lady of Kettlethorpe," she said in a much lower voice. "How did you come to be here?" She sat down quietly on the bed.

Katherine was startled at the change. She saw that the madness had ebbed suddenly to disclose a dead weariness of spirit beneath. Now for a few minutes while there was sanity in Nichola's questions, Katherine told her something of her life and how she came to marry. Nichola nodded from time to time and listened sadly. "I too came from the south," she said, "to this most dismal place. But I was always afraid. He would not have hated me so, had I not been afraid. Even though I bore no children. He broke my arm once - see-"

She pulled up her black sleeve to show a crooked lump of bone beneath the mottled skin. "But I was ugly - like a monkey, my lord said." She twisted her head and looked up at Katherine. "You're beautiful, fair as they are that I see in the water when the other life is on me. Yet you will moulder here, even as I, and grow ugly and afraid unless - unless-" She jumped up, her voice soared to its high chanting note and she cried, "I'll weave a spell for you, Hugh's bride. I have the herbs; the hazel and the bloodwort and the secret ones. I have water here from the Holy Well in Rough wood. I'll make a potion that'll save you - -"

She ran to the iron pot which hung on a tripod against the smoke - blackened wall, she blew the smouldering charcoal embers in the pan beneath and catching up a fistful of dried herbs began to cast them in the pot.

"Nay, lady," said Katherine gently, "I want no potion." But she saw that it was useless. The moment of reason had passed. Nichola did not hear her. The wild yet happier look came back into her face. She picked the kitten from the floor and, carefully untying its wool leash, held it to her breast and began to croon softly, "Ah my pretty one - my poppet, my sweeting, you too shall stir the potion - " And she held the kitten's paw on the ladle.

Katherine turned away and lifting the deer - hide, slipped from the tower - room. She felt no fear now of the Lady Nichola, but she was heavy of heart. She descended the steps to the courtyard and let the sun stream on her uplifted face while trying to recapture the hopeful energy she had felt earlier. Ajax, the great mastiff, walked over to her stiff - legged from his kennel, sniffed her gown, then stalked away towards the stables. She followed him and entering went straight to Doucette's stall. The little mare greeted her with a whinny, and she threw her arms around its neck. Then her arms fell slack. "One Lady of Kettlethorpe has nothing to love but a kitten and I - " She looked at her horse and sudden anger possessed her.

She spied a stable - boy's bare legs protruding from a mound of straw in the next stall. "Wake up, you lazy churl!" she cried sharp and loud. "Get up!" The lad jumped to his feet, knuckling sleep out of his eyes.

"What's your name?" Katherine surveyed him with disgust - his filthy hair, dangling red hands and torn dung - spattered smock.

"Wat - that be Walter - Wat's son, m' - lady," he stammered, not very sure who this tall angry maiden might be. He had heard that the new Lady of Kettlethorpe was but a soft child who had laid abed all yesterday.

"Well, Wat Watson!" cried Katherine. "Why have you not curried my palfrey? Why is the hayrick empty?"

Wat swallowed and ignoring the first question, said that the hayrick was empty because there was no hay.

"There's green grass in the meadow beyond the moat," she snapped. "Go pull enough to fill the manger, then curry Doucette, water and saddle her. I will ride her later." "Aye, m'lady," said Wat.

"And," added Katherine, "when you've finished that, clean out this foul stable. By God's sweet dignity, you should be shamed!"

Buoyed on the wave of her anger, Katherine quitted the stables, picked her way through ancient refuse past the empty granary set high on posts for safety against vermin, past the mammoth bake - oven where the serfs should have been bringing their, loaves and paying the manor levy on each baking. The iron oven door was missing from the wrenched hinges. No doubt someone had found use for it, she thought grimly, and use for the iron locks which had plainly been prised from the doors of other buildings.

She came to the low daub - and - wattle hut where she knew the bailiff lay and tapped upon the door. A man's harsh voice said, "Who's there?" and she answered with firmness, "Katherine Swynford, the new Lady of Kettlethorpe."

"Enter then!"

The stench inside the hut near knocked her over, and she stood blinking in the darkness and retching uncontrollably while red fear smote her. Was this perhaps the stink of plague? Her nostrils still remembered the vileness of the night in Picardy when her grandparents died. But this man had laid here for months and plague victims did not linger. But there was worse than plague! She gasped and stepped back into the courtyard.

"Is he unclean?" she whispered, not knowing that she spoke.

"Nay, lady," said the bitter voice in the darkness, "I'm no leper. Would that I were, for in the lazaretto I'd be with others of my kind and tended by the brothers. I'd not be lying here alone in my own .ordure."

Katherine's stomach heaved again, she put her hand tight against her mouth and came back within the door.

"Open the shutter, lady," said the voice, half sneering. " 'Twill sweeten the air for squeamish noses."

Katherine flung back the little window shutter. The cool spring breeze blew from the forest across the room and out of the door. She looked down at the man who lay on a straw pallet on the floor. A russet mantle such as men had worn in the early days of Edward's reign covered all his body; she could see but his arms. On the sharp bones and knobbed joints the flesh hung slack as a bag. And in his ivory skull - head the eyes were sunk so that she scarce could see that they were blue. Only the long curling brown hair of his head and his matted beard showed that he had been a comely man. His lips drew back from his strong white teeth, and he shut his eyes, for light made them ache.

"Behold Gibbon, your steward, my lady," he said. "I can move nothing but my head, and these fingers - see! He clenched his jaw, veins stood out on his forehead and his left hand jerked on the mantle.

"What is it, Gibbon?" she asked, steadily enough.

"I know not. It began two years ago with a weakness in my legs. They trembled much. The trembling crept from limb to limb, but now they do not even tremble."

"You've had a leech?"

"A barber from Torksey. He bled me often. It does no good. While I yet could get about I burned candles at Saint Hugh's shrine in Lincoln Minster. That did no good, either, nor will it - this is punishment for the sin of my begetting."

"Does no one tend you, Gibbon?"

"Oh, ay - when they remember. Old Toby at times, big Margery Brewster from the vill, the parson when he's not chaffering in Lincoln for fine meats and wines to fill his fat belly."

Katherine frowned and lifted her chin. "There must be many changes on the manor!" she cried. "I'll see that you're tended, properly - a serf to care for you night and day. Then you'll get better."

He looked at her then with some attention. A feeble smile narrowed his sunken lids. "You're full young to be so resolute," he said. Young and very fair, he thought. Shining with indignation, burning to set wrongs right, and certain that it could be done. Like Saint Michael with the sword and scales. Ay, he thought, and shut his eyes again - once I would not have compared so female a creature to Saint Michael. He felt the weight of his dead body that hung to his neck like a sack of stones. Soon the neck too would be dead, and then the head.

"Is there much pain?" she said softly. There was a flagon of ale on the floor and a piece of bread. She poured ale into a wooden cup and held it to his lips. Almost she felt courage to pull back his mantle and cleanse him, but yet she could not. She had seen no man naked save Hugh, and at him she had not looked.

He shook his head to the ale. "Margery was here this morning, I was fed. No, there's no pain." He added in a stronger voice, "Where's Hugh gone? I heard the horses in the courtyard."

"Hunting in the forest. We need meat." She said it lightly, that he might not think it a reproach to his stewardship. She had meant to ask him many questions about the manor, but now she felt she could not disturb so ill a man with her ignorance. She would like, too, to question him about himself; his turn of speech astonished her. Here was no peasant twang or clumsy grammar; he spoke as well as any knight at Windsor court, better, in fact, than Hugh. What then, did he as bailiff here?

Gibbon had become intuitive during these months when nothing seemed to live in him but his brain. He felt her thoughts. "Hugh told you naught about me, did he?" He looked up at her with the faint smile. It had been long since anyone had lingered to talk to him.

"No," she said, "he spoke never of you, nor of his manors."

"Ay, it was always that way. Hugh has little interest in his lands, but I had. I fended for him, and I ruled his villeins. I collected his rents and fines and though I paid out each Michaelmas the twenty pounds service fee Kettlethorpe owes the Bishop of Lincoln and the fees due from Coleby, yet we were prospering. Soon here we might have furnished and made the manor, worthy of Swynfords. I had even thought to build a pleasure garden, between the tower and the moat, in case Hugh got him a bride." His lips twisted from his teeth. "Now there is a bride - but no pleasure garden, no handsome furnishings to greet her. And the manor - I can guess what condition it's in."

"I've wondered," she said, hesitating, "why there are no furnishings here, except the rudest."

"Hugh sold them all at his father's death. He had to pay relief and heriots to his feudal lords, of course, before he could claim his inheritance. You must know that," he added in surprise.

She shook her head. "I know nothing."

"Hugh should find a new bailiff at once, and you will need help to administer your dowry."

"I bring no dowry," said Katherine quietly. "Hugh would have me, none the less."

Gibbon fell silent. This seemed to him very bad news. Since he had known of Hugh's return home with a wife he had passed some of the interminable black hours in wondering what dowry she brought, and how it could be best expended for the rehabilitation of the manor which had to him been wife, family and salvation for years. That the girl was fair and intelligent he saw, that she had some tenuous connection with the court he had heard from Ellis, but none of this offset the lack of dowry. In fact, he had hoped that Hugh when he finally returned home, might see the wisdom of wooing the Lady Matilda, sister to Philip Darcy, the lord of Torksey. True, Matilda was a widow, and something brown and shrivelled in looks, having lost most of her teeth, but she had borne children and was not yet past the age to bear others. Besides, Hugh had never seemed the man to be finicky about the women he bedded. The Torksey lands were rich and adjoined Kettlethorpe on the north; the marriage would have restored the Swynford fortunes.

"It irks you that I bring no property," said Katherine, flushing. His silence hurt her so that she forgot his illness and added sharply, "Is it the custom in Lincolnshire for the hired bailiff to concern himself so deeply in his master's affairs as this?"

Gibbon turned his eyes back to her. "Ah, but you see, madam. I too am a Swynford, and debarred by birth from owning land myself. I yet make shift to serve my house - or did."

The hot stain faded from Katherine's forehead, she looked down at him amazed. "You are a Swynford, Gibbon?" "Ay. Hugh and I are half - brothers." "But I don't understand - "

He made a derisive sound in his throat. "Simple enough, for I'm a bastard."

She could not prevent a shocked sound. Bastardy had always seemed to her the most pitiable of states!

Gibbon's sardonic voice went on. "Ay - our most dear father, Sir Thomas, strewed others like me from Grimsby to Grantham, though his only true - born son was Hugh. Yet was I a special case, for my mother was a nun at the Fosse Priory, not two miles from here."

Katherine swallowed. "Sweet Jesu," she whispered.

"Two days after she bore me, she drowned herself in the Trent, but this I did not know until my father died. He had me reared by the Gilbertines at Sempringham, and not knowing then I was a bastard I once thought to join their order. When my father made full confession on his death - bed, the gentle Gilbertines were scandalised. They prayed for my mother's lost soul, and my father's black one, but they turned me out."

The muscles of his throat ached from so much talking, and he sighed. "What then, Gibbon?" Katherine whispered, putting her hand on his inert arm.

"Why, then Hugh was the heir, and he summoned me to aid him on the land, swearing that none here should taunt me with the infamy of my birth. It was generously done, and I was grateful."

"Ay, it was generously done," Katherine murmured, turning this new aspect of her husband over in her mind. Generous yet expedient, too; Hugh had needed someone he could trust to run the manor.

"Gibbon," she said, "will you help me when you can, tell me what must be done here?"

His lips moved in assent, then fell slack.

She went quickly out of the hut into the sunny courtyard and shut the door. Dear God, this is now my home, she thought. Soon Hugh and Ellis will go to Aquitaine and I shall be here alone with a crazed woman, a dying man and a pack of rebellious serfs. Of a sudden she thought of Hawise with a desperate longing, the tough, shrewd, bouncing girl with the merry tongue and the warm heart. If I had her here to help me, to laugh with me as we did on May Day.

Hawise had said as she kissed Katherine good - bye outside the church porch, "Remember I'd do anything for ye, my lady. Ye've but to let me know." Katherine had neither listened nor responded, had mounted Doucette in a daze - bemused, drunken - because of the Duke of Lancaster's contemptuous kiss.

"You little fool," said Katherine aloud to the deserted courtyard. "Ah, I hate him. He meant to make a fool of me."

Then from the forest she heard a wild hallooing like a battle - cry, and the fainter winding of a horn. At least, she thought, there would be meat for dinner.

CHAPTER VII

According to the Duke's instructions, Hugh left Kettlethorpe for Southampton in the middle of August, on the day after the Feast of the Assumption. They had managed to celebrate this feast with some of the traditional lavishness, thanks to Hugh's and Ellis's skill at hunting. There had been venison enough for all the village, and a wild boar that Hugh had slain across the Trent in Sherwood Forest.

The sun shone, there had been dancing on the Green, while to the little church for blessing the people had brought their samples from the harvest: oats, barley, peas, beans and flax plants, in woven baskets.

It was at Gibbon's suggestion that the Swynfords made special effort to celebrate the feast day for their tenants. Hugh, intent on his departure, would never have thought of it.

In June the manor court had been held in the great Hall, and Hugh had dealt out irritable punishment to his serfs, saying that as all had grown lax there was no use inquiring into the merits of each case. He exacted immediate payment of the overdue rents and fines and clapped those who asked for time into the stocks, besides personally flogging others. He decreed boon - work at once on his home fields and would have withdrawn every able - bodied man, woman and child from necessary work on their own plots, had not Gibbon intervened, pointing out that total failure of the tenants' crops would hardly benefit the manor.

Katherine had had a litter made for Gibbon, and he had been carried into the Hall to attend the court, and when he found the strength to give advice, Hugh, after the first impatient objections, usually heeded.

So now in August, the administration of the manor had improved. New officers had been appointed from amongst the villeins, a hayward to guard the fields and pastures, and a reeve, Sim the tanner, the shrewdest man in the village. Sim was cold - eyed and slippery as a mackerel, but he was proficient at figuring on the abacus and would brook no lame excuses from the villeins it was now his duty to oversee. From having been a leader of the malcontents, and adept at petty swindling from the lord's possessions, Sim now reversed himself to guard Hugh's interests, being mightily pleased with his position and the small wage that went with it.

Gibbon had foreseen this, too, and suggested that the tanner be chosen. No life had returned to the bailiff's useless limbs, but, cared for now by a husky lad and often consulted by Katherine and the reeve, his mind had lightened and a trace of colour come into his bone - pale skin.

No new bailiff had been found, and in truth Hugh would not have known how to look for one, or spare the money for his wages. And there was another reason, scarce acknowledged to himself, why Hugh sought no new bailiff, who might be a lusty man and would inevitably see much of Katherine.

On the night of the feast, when Hugh and Katherine went to bed, he, being hot with ale and suddenly aware of how sorely he would miss her, pulled her roughly towards him and began to fumble with her breasts.

"Let me be, Hugh," she said sharply, pushing him away. "I'm queasy and tired."

His anger flared at the reminder that always she submitted to him in tense endurance, making no sound except a sigh of relief when he quitted her. But she had never before denied him outright. "By God's blood!" he shouted. "How dare you shove me from you!" And as she stiffened, turning her head from his drink - soured breath, he struck her, though not hard, across the cheek.

"Ay," she said with biting contempt, sitting up in bed and pulling her long hair around her nakedness, "like father like son. But you will not need to beat me with a blackthorn stick for that I'm barren."

"And why should I not! Why should not he have beat that mewling rag of a - " Then he caught her meaning. His clenched fists fell open and he, too, sat up, trying to see her face in the darkness. "Are you with child, Katherine?"

"So I believe," she said coldly. She had had no one to consult, and her knowledge of the signs was sparse, yet the lewd talk of Fat Mab, the Sheppey cook, had been enlightening.

"When think you it'll be born?" Hugh's voice cracked with gladness. He had hoped for this, not so much that it would provide him with an heir as that breeding would make her unattractive to other men, and surely it would change her indifference to himself.

"In May, I suppose," she answered him in the same chill tone. It seemed to her impossible, even ridiculous, that a new life had started growing in her belly, especially one in which Hugh had a share, for she felt herself as alone and untouched as ever; but she could not ignore the changes in her healthy young body, or the new exhaustion and distaste for food.

"In May?" said Hugh eagerly. "No doubt I'll be back with you. It won't take us long to beat the Castilian bastard's rabble." He flexed his broken hand to try it, as he did many times a day. It had healed well and was strong as ever.

"I hope you'll be back, Hugh." She spoke more gently, though in truth she could not imagine how it would be in May, and longed to have him go. It seemed to her that it would be bliss to be alone in bed, and freed from the importunities of this hairy, naked man.

The next morning, before the dew was off the grass, the church bell rang and all the villagers assembled to God - speed their manor lord. They gathered in the outer court beyond the moat, and Katherine stood amongst them holding the stirrup cup of strong ale.

Hugh was dressed in gleaming armour, from which Ellis had polished every trace of rust or stain. Katherine herself had mended the linen jupon which covered his hauberk of chain mail like a tight - fitting shirt. The jupon's embroidered blazon proclaimed Hugh's identity as did his silvered shield with black chevron and three gold boars' heads painted on the leather. His fighting helmet was of iron, shaped like a beehive, yet far lighter than the great ceremonial heaume he had worn at the tournament.

Ellis followed him, dressed in Lincoln green with his master's badge sewn on his arm. Wat, the stableboy, led the two great destriers, their harnesses a - jingle with tiny brass bells.

As Hugh came through the gatehouse and crossed the drawbridge, his serfs gave a polite cheer; there were a few invocations to St. George and the Blessed Mother for Sir Hugh's safe return from the wars. Though there was no special enthusiasm, and their well - wishing came rather in response to immemorial feudal custom than to any personal interest in Hugh, the little demonstration nevertheless proved that the feast yesterday had mollified them; at least they were no longer openly rebellious.

They made way for the parish priest, who lumbered through the lych-gate to give final blessing. Hugh and Ellis knelt on the ground to receive it. The priest asperged them with holy water.

Hugh arose and clambered into the saddle from the mounting block, then he sat stiff and high to look down at Katherine. "Farewell, lady," he said below his breath, and into his small truculent eyes there came a look, as though he would say more, but could not. He was at his best on horseback, where one saw neither his bandy legs nor his chunkiness. His ram's - wool hair, trimmed by Ellis, lay neat and close to his head as war - time fashion demanded, and when Katherine, smiling, proffered him the stirrup cup, he took it from her and drank with a sober grace. "God keep you, my Katherine," he said, very low.

"And you, my lord and husband," she returned. "Guard him well, Ellis," she added, her dazzling smile moving to Hugh's squire. That stolid young man started and bowed. He had never had personal interest in his master's lady, seeing her simply as one of Sir Hugh's possessions, like his horses and his manor. He had not even wondered at Hugh's choice of a dowerless maiden, for it was not his way to wonder. But now, as Katherine's smile rested on him, several impressions penetrated his slow wits. One was the astonished recognition of her beauty. Tall and slender like a young queen, she stood there in her shabby green fur - trimmed robes. Her cleft chin was held high, her great eyes shone like crystals between the thick black lashes. And her smile was brilliant and gracious as an April morning. But should there have been a smile, however gracious? This girl, so young and untried, upon being left alone by her war - bound lord, should she not have wept?

Katherine dutifully waved good - bye until the two trotting horses faded from sight down the avenue of wych-elms that led to the Lincoln road. The villeins noted that she had shown decorum throughout the speeding, and they drew back respectfully now, that she might rush into the house and let loose her grief in private. But Katherine felt neither grief nor the slightest doubt that Hugh would return. Her certainty of his safety beyond the seas in Aquitaine arose not so much from her ignorance of war as from a blind unrecognised trust in the overlord he would serve. Because the Duke of Lancaster was invulnerable, lofty and beyond the touch of mischance, so would his men be. Hugh would certainly return, and in the meantime she had respite.

"The day grows warm, lady," said the priest, mopping his shining red face with a corner of his claret - coloured gown. He moistened his thick lips and glanced towards the manor house. "'Twill soon be Prime."

Katherine took the hint. "Come in and break your fast with me, Sir Robert. I believe there's still some mead left over from the feast."

On the last day of October, All Hallows' Eve, Katherine, having supped alone as usual at the High Table in the dark dreary Hall, sat idly watching Ajax, the mastiff, nosing for bones in the littered rushes below the dais. The house carls had fastened hazel branches across the doors and the windows to keep out the witches and bogles which infested this particular night, and from across the moat she could hear the chanting of the villagers who were circling their homes with lighted candles for the same purpose. The servants, having flung her food on the table, had early sneaked off to the village for apple - bobbing and fortune - telling.

Katherine's despondency reached a point where she felt that she would have welcomed goblins or any other weird visitant which might break the monotony and isolation of Kettlethorpe, when Ajax suddenly abandoned his bones, stiffened and growled.

She crossed herself, staring fearfully at the protecting hazel withes, then she heard the halloo of a human male voice and Old Toby's quavering answer, while Ajax precipitated himself against the door, barking and growling.

She spoke to the dog, held him by his collar and opened the door waiting eagerly. No visitors had come to Kettlethorpe since a wandering friar after Michaelmas. But it was only Sir Robert, who had just returned from amusing himself in Lincoln for three days.

Katherine was so disappointed that tears spilled down her cheeks, a display she knew to be revoltingly childish. "The smoke - " she said." 'Tis so smoky in here." As indeed it was.

A goblin wind had blown up and puffed all the fire smoke back into the Hall through the open roof hole.

"Ay, a wuthering night," said the priest, brushing twigs and mud off his robes. He shuddered. "I mislike Hallow E'en, there's things abroad - best not thought on. I'd not of come back today but for the Feast of All Saints tomorrow. There be some in the will want Mass said."

"I should certainly hope so - I know I do," said Katherine shortly. Father Robert's idea of his parochial duties was exceedingly flexible. Which pleased Hugh well enough.

"I was calling at the George 'n' Dragon, in the town, ye know where it is? The big tavern near the castle uphill from what folks used to call the Jewry, not in our time, nor our gaffers' time either though - "

"Yes," murmured Katherine. There was never any hurrying the priest's thick ramblings, especially when he was bursting with ale like an overripe plum. She glanced wearily at the roof over the dais, where the thatcher had not properly repaired the leak. It must have started to rain, for the usual trickle plink - plonked on the table.

"Tavernkeeper - Hambo o' Louth he's called, he knows I drop in from time to time - he told me, Hambo did, there was a pedlar come through Lincoln, three days back, on his way to Grimsby. Pedlar what carries mostly ribbons, threads, gewgaws for the women. Seems he'd started in London and bore a letter. He left it with Hambo, for when someone from here'd drop by."

"Letter!" Katherine jumped up. "Letter for Kettlethorpe! Jesu. Father, give it to me!"

The priest's fat fingers fumbled with maddening slowness at the buckle of his pouch. Finally he held out a sealed piece of parchment. "Is it sent to you?" he asked, having puzzled for some time over the looks of the inscription, and this being the first letter he had ever seen close.

"Yes, yes," she said, tearing at the seal. "Why, it's from Geoffrey!"

She read rapidly, while her mouth trembled, and her eyes darkened. "No bad news about Sir Hugh?" cried the priest.

"No," Katherine said slowly. " 'Tis not bad news. It's from a King's squire called Geoffrey Chaucer; he and my sister were married in Lammastide. They're living in London, in the Vintry, until my sister returns to service with the Queen."

Father Robert was impressed. So glib she talked about the King and Queen. He pursed his thick lips and looked at her with new respect.

"London," said Katherine, on a long sigh, gazing around the dark bare Hall, "seems very far away."

"Well and it is" said the priest, rising reluctantly, for she was staring at the letter and obviously not going to offer him anything to drink for his pains.

When he had gone, she re - read her letter, and one sentence especially. Geoffrey had written, "Philippa bids you not grow overworldly in the luxury and High Estate which you now enjoy - but I dare add I hope you amuse yourself right well, my little Sister."

Katherine smiled bitterly when she read that and put the letter at the bottom of her coffer.

More and more during the autumn months as her pregnancy advanced, lethargy came over Katherine, and she drew into herself. Her mind felt as though it grew thick as pottage, and she was continually benumbed by cold. Her initial interest in the manor waned, she scarce found the energy for talks with Gibbon any more, and he, seeing this, did not trouble her, having established a fair working relationship with the reeve.

After the leaves fell and the freezing November rains began, Katherine stayed almost entirely in her room, either shivering by the smoking fire or huddled in the great bed beneath the bearskin, trying to shut her ears to the howling wolves in the forest. Sometimes she aroused herself and plied a listless needle to make swaddling clothes for her baby. But the baby still seemed imaginary. Even though her belly and her breasts had swollen and grown hard, she had no sense of its presence within her.

"It'll be different when you quicken, lady," said Milburga. This was the servant Katherine had chosen as personal waiting - maid, because she was cleaner and less stupid than the others. But Milburga was old, being over thirty and a widow, and she treated Katherine with a blend of oily deference and petty bullying that the girl found annoying.

On St. Catherine's Day, November 25, Katherine awoke to find that she had been crying in her sleep, and knew that she had dreamed of her childhood. In the dream she had been little "Cat'rine" again, crowned with gilded laurel leaves and perched on cushions in the middle of her grandparents' kitchen table at the farm in Picardy. There were laughing faces around her, and hands stretched out towards her with gifts - straw dolls and shining stones and apples - while many voices sang, "Salut, salut la p'tite Cat'rine, on salut ton jour de fete!"

Then in the dream her big handsome father lifted her from the cushions and kissed her while she snuggled in his arms, and he pressed a little gingerbread figure of St. Catherine into her mouth. She tasted the heavenly sweetness of it until someone wrenched her jaws apart and snatched the sweetmeat away. And she awoke weeping.

There had been light snow in the night, the wind had blown a fine drift through the loosened shutter and there was a ridge of white along the bare stone floor beneath the iron perch where her cloak hung.

The fire had died to ashes. Katherine looked at the cold grey ashes and her tears changed to a loud and passionate sobbing. When Milburga bustled in from the outside stairs with the morning ale, die maid exclaimed, "Mistress, what ails ye?"

As the girl merely hid her face in her arms and continued to sob, the woman drew back the covers and made a quick examination.

"Have you pains, here or here?" she demanded. Katherine shook her head. "Leave me be. Go away," and she sobbed more violently.

Milburga's sallow face tightened. "Stop that rampaging at once, lady! Ye'll harm the child."

"Oh, a murrain on the child!" cried Katherine wildly, rearing herself on the bed.

"Saint Mary protect us!" gasped Milburga, backing away. Her pale mouth and pale eyes were round with horror. She receded to the door and stood gaping at her mistress.

The wild angry grief fell off Katherine like a mantle, leaving her afraid. "I didn't mean it - " She put her hands on her belly, as if to reassure the dark outraged little entity inside. "Send for Sir Robert. Tell him he must celebrate a Mass - this is my saint's day - my sixteenth - that's why - why - "

But of what use to explain to that tight shocked face that she had been sobbing for her own childhood, for the dear lost days of special cherishing and festival. Even at Sheppey, where she had been the only Katherine, the nuns had made a little atmosphere of fete and congratulation for her on this saint's day. Here there was nobody to either cherish her or care.

Milburga, bound on her errand to the rectory, paused in the kitchen below to regale the other servants with their mistress' shocking behaviour. They clustered around exclaiming, the cook, and the servitor and the dairymaid. All work stopped at once, except that little Cob o' Fenton, the towheaded spit - boy, crouched in his niche in the great fireplace, automatically turning the handle with his toes while he longed to be out in the raw misty air fishing in the Trent. They were roasting a lean old ewe, and her scanty grease smelt rancid as it hissed into the fire. In truth the manor food was poor, and slackly prepared, for there was no one at the High Table now that Lady Katherine kept to her room so much and was growing as strange and solitary as the Lady Nichola.

" 'Tis the curse, no doubt, creeping on them both," said Milburga, shaking her head with gloomy relish. "Soon we'll hear the pooka hound a-baying in the marshes."

"Jesus save us!" squealed Betsy, the dairymaid, her child - mouth quivering. They all crossed themselves.

"Nay," said the cook sourly, shaking his knobby grey head. "I believe 'tis no Swynford curse, though well they deserve it. The demon hound was sent by the devil to haunt the de la Croys for their grievous sins. That's why they sold us and the manor to Swynfords." He eased his rheumatic joints on to a bench.

The others listened respectfully. Will Cooke was over fifty and well remembered the old days under the de la Croys. He and his fathers before him had always been manor cooks, yet he had no liking for the lords or his work.

During the years of Hugh's absence he had moved into his daughter - in - law's cot in the vill and taken happily to wood - carving.

He had been the most defiant of the serfs when at the manor court Hugh had ordered him back to his hereditary duties, and had flogged him so hard that his shoulders oozed blood for days. Will would have run off to hide in Sherwood forest, had he been younger, but his stiffened knees hampered him, as did the dead weight of custom. Kettlethorpe lords had always been so. Sir Hugh was no worse than the de la Croys who had thrown his father into the tower dungeon for the inadvertent scorching of a spiced capon.

"If ye're to call the parson," he said, scowling at Milburga, " 'twill mean that fat ox'll feed here after, and our fine young lady be down for once, God damn her finicking foreign ways." He picked up his sharpest knife and on the worn chopping block began to slice the old sheep's entrails for a mortrewe.

The initial good will Katherine had aroused in the manor by reason of her beauty, youth and the promptness with which she had done her duty in conceiving an heir had soon died down. After all, she was a foreigner, not only alien to Lincolnshire, but actually born in the country which they held to be their hereditary enemy. She spoke an English they had trouble in understanding. "Norman English," said Will Cooke contemptuously. And yet she was neither nobly born nor rich. She was no lady they could boast of to the serfs on nearby manors, at Torksey or Stow. And, moreover, she was a nuisance. Were it not for her, the house carls might all have returned to their village cots and own pursuits,, as they had before Sir Hugh's brief visit. Defying the nearly helpless Gibbon and the reeve, they might well have mutinied against her, even braving Hugh's displeasure later. But they were deterred by the usage of generations. Satan grinning from his hellish flames waited eagerly to pounce upon the serf who disobeyed his feudal lord, and while Katherine might be unpopular, she yet carried within her the Swynford heir to whom they would all someday do homage.

Katherine, sunk in sickliness and torpor, knew that they gave her grudging service, but had not the spirit to care. The chill dampness which crept upward from the moat seemed to have got in her bones. She shivered often and coughed; of nights her throat grew so sore that it awakened her to swallow.

On the fourth Sunday in Advent the December day was clear and bright for a change. Katherine dragged herself up and feeling a trifle better, crossed over to the church for Mass. She sat alone in the lord's high boxed pew by the chancel and leaning her heavy head against a carved oaken boss, vaguely watched the priest lurch and gabble through the service. She could not see the villagers in the choir, but she heard their responses, and heard, too, the chaffering and giggles and gossiping that went on in the nave below. The dark little church grew steamy with the peasant smell of sour sweat, leeks and manure. She tried to fix her thoughts upon the Elevation of the Host, yet all she could think of were the rolls of pink fat on the priest's neck and the quivering of oily curls around his tonsure.

It was at that moment that she felt the baby quicken, and was frightened. This tapping and fluttering in her belly seemed to her monstrous. Suddenly she thought of a tale she had heard at Sheppey of a boy who had swallowed a serpent's egg, the egg had hatched inside him and the snake, frantic to escape, gnawed -

Katherine stifled a cry and rushed from the pew through the side door of the church into the open. She sank on the coffin bench beneath the lych - gate and drew great lungfuls of the cold sparkling air. Two of Margery Brewster's children were sliding on an iced puddle beside the church path and they stopped to stare at her in wonderment. Her terror receded and she grew ashamed. She must go back in church and apologise to the Blessed Body of Jesus for her irreverence. She got slowly to her feet, then turned round in amazement, for a horse came galloping down the frozen road beneath the wych - elms.

The children turned from gaping at her and gaped at the horseman. He reined his mount before the drawbridge to the manor, and Katherine with a great leap at her heart saw that he wore on his tunic the Lancaster badge.

She ran across the court and greeted him fearingly. "Whence do you come? Is there news of the war?"

The lad was Piers Roos, the Duke's erstwhile body squire, who had been left at home to serve the Duchess. He had a fresh freckled face and a merry eye. He pulled off his brown velvet cap to disclose a mass of tow curls, and grinning at Katherine said with some uncertainty, "My Lady Swynford?"

She nodded quickly. "What news do you bring?"

"Nothing but good. At least we know no war news yet from Castile. I come from Bolingbroke, from the Duchess Blanche. She sends you greeting."

"Ah -" Katherine's drawn little face softened with pleasure. She had never dared hope that the Lady Blanche would indeed remember her; and during these months at Kettlethorpe the London and Windsor days had gradually faded into fantasy.

"She bids me escort you to Bolingbroke for the Christmas festival, if you'd like to come."

Her indrawn breath and the sudden shining of her shadowed eyes were answer enough, and Piers Roos laughed, seeing that she was even younger than he himself and not the solemn, weary woman she had seemed as he dismounted.

"We'll go tomorrow then, if you wish. The ride'll take but a day."

"I - I cannot go fast," faltered Katherine, suddenly remembering, and blushing. "I - they - think I should not ride at all."

"What folly," said Piers cheerfully, understanding at once. "The Lady Blanche is larger than you and she still rides out daily."

"The Lady Blanche!" Katherine repeated, wondering that she should be amazed, and why the young squire's information came as a small unpleasant shock. "When?"

"Oh, March or April, I believe. I know naught of midwifery." He laughed outright, and Katherine after a minute joined him.

The energy Piers' invitation brought her buoyed Katherine through all difficulties. She ordered Doucette to be curried and groomed and ignored the gloomy disapproval of her household.

The next day her sore throat had disappeared, the fluttering in her belly she did not notice; she smiled and hummed as she crossed the inner court to take leave of Gibbon.

"Ay, mistress," he said sadly, as he stared up at her from his pallet. "You're in a fever to be quit of Kettlethorpe."

"Only till the Twelfth Night," she cried. "Then I'll - I'll be back. And I'll not pine any more, I promise. I'll help you in the manor again."

"God - speed," he said and closed his eyes against the light. Hugh would not like it, and yet even Hugh would not have made Katherine refuse an invitation from the Duchess. I could not stop her from going, thought Gibbon, and sighed. Could not, since he had neither strength nor power, and would not, for she was still such a child, and he knew well how much maturity it took to withstand loneliness and boredom. He did not believe with the villeins that she was wilfully imperilling her baby, but many nameless forebodings came to him in the long night hours, and he wished as heartily as the rest of the village that Hugh had seen fit to marry the noble Darcy widow, of Torksey.

CHAPTER VIII

Bolingbroke lay clear across the county near the eastern coast of Lincolnshire. It was a small fair castle set in meadow - lands and encircled by the protecting wolds. Even in winter the meadows were green beneath their coating of hoar - frost; and the little turrets and high central keep, all beflagged in scarlet and gold, had a gay welcoming look. It was the Lancasters' favourite country castle; there Blanche had spent much of her girlhood, and there she and John had come for seclusion in the first days of their marriage.

It held for her many happy memories, and she had returned to it now, knowing that its homely shelter would help her bear the anxiety of her lord's absence, and the anxiety of awaiting the new baby. This time her prayers and pilgrimage to the Blessed Virgin of Walsingham must be answered. It would be a boy, and it would live, as the other baby boy had not.

From the moment when the Lady Blanche herself met Katherine in the Great Hall and, taking the girl's hand kissed her on the cheek, through the twelve days of Christmas, Katherine managed to forget Kettlethorpe. With the rest of the Duchess' company, Katherine immersed herself in the serene and gracious aura which surrounded Blanche.

The Duchess, thickened by pregnancy, no longer made one think of lilies, yet she was no less beautiful in her ripe golden abundance, and Katherine admired her passionately.

There were few guests, for Blanche smilingly explained that she had enough of company at the Savoy or at court and wished for quiet. The Cromwells from nearby Tattershall Castle rode over on Christmas night, and the. Abbess of Elstow, who was cousin to Blanche, spent the days between St. Stephen's and New Year's, but so intimate was the castle gathering that Katherine wondered much, while she rejoiced, that she had been invited.

She put it down to kindness of heart, and tried to repay the Duchess in every way she could. The Duchess responded with affection and growing interest in the girl. And yet it was a sentence contained in a letter she had received from her husband which had prompted the invitation.

The Duke had written soon after landing in Brittany and assembling his command of four hundred men - at - arms and six hundred archers for the march south to join his brother and the exiled Castilian king at Bordeaux. He wrote in a happy confident mood, telling his tres - chere et bien - aimee compagne many items of news: that the fair Joan, Princess of Wales, was enceinte again and near to term; that King Pedro, God restore him to his rightful throne, had with him at Bordeaux his handsome daughters, and that the desolate plight of these wronged princesses had captured the sympathy of all the English, who would certainly triumph over that baseborn fiend Trastamare, and the lilies and leopards of England would float at last above Castile and fulfil Merlin's age - old prophecy.

Descending into less exalted vein, the Duke had shown his usual consideration for Blanche's comfort, asking if the steward at Bolingbroke had repaired the bridge over the outer moat yet, and how the masons were progressing with the stone portraits of the King and Queen on the refurbished church, for "it is there, dearest lady, that our child will be christened, and I pray I may return in time."

Blanche kissed the parchment when she read this, and sinking to her knees on the prie-dieu beside the great bed had communed with a jewelled image of the Blessed Virgin which stood flanked by candles and holly greens in the niche above.

When she returned to the letter she found in the last paragraph the question: "Have you seen ought of the little Swynford? Her clodpoll knight is here in camp and confides (as though it were a rare and difficult feat) that he has got her with child. It might be kindness to see how she does, alone, on their manor."

Blanche had not wondered that, of all their acquaintance, her lord had mentioned by name only this little bride; neither suspicion nor speculation had ever troubled the purity of her love, and she hastened to obey without question and in generous measure. She was rewarded, for she enjoyed Katherine's visit,

The girl's admiration touched her. Though there were ten years between their ages, besides the greater gulf of Blanche's lineage and experience, she found Katherine companionable. The two women sat together and embroidered through the winter dusks, and Blanche noted how the girl's red chilblained little hands tried to imitate the skill of her own long white fingers: Sometimes Blanche picked up her lute or gittern and they sang - plaintive love songs, or Christmas carols to the Virgin. And at the singing Blanche knew herself surpassed, for her high passionless voice, like a choir - boy's, sometimes went flat, while Katherine hit true and round on every note, and once she had overcome her timidity and learned the songs, they poured like honey from her slender throat.

"Do you make much music at Kettlethorpe?" inquired Blanche idly one evening when they had finished singing Adam de la Halle's rondeau, "Fais mari de vostre amour".

"No, madam," said Katherine after a moment, the pleasure dying from her face. She had, from pride and a desire to forget the place, always evaded the Duchess' few polite questions about her manor.

"Are your minstrels unskilled?" asked the Duchess in some surprise.

Katherine thought of her Hall, which was barer and meaner than the cow - byres here, and could not help laughing. "We have no minstrels, madam. It's not," she added quickly, "a manor quite like any you have known."

The Duchess raised her pale arched brows, and seeing Katherine's unwillingness, said no more. Bred to unlimited wealth, reared in a succession of castles of which this one was the simplest, it was true that she could not imagine a manor such as Kettlethorpe. She was familiar with the hovels of the poor where she dispensed lavish charity, but that a landed knight's home might be almost as meagre and uncomfortable had never occurred to her. Nor did it now, but her sky - blue gaze focused and she noted for the first time the shabbiness of Katherine's clothes, though she was far from recognising or remembering the let - out and altered green dress she had given Katherine at Windsor. But she determined to make the girl some presents on New Year's Day and, dismissing the matter, she turned smiling, as her two little girls ran into the Ladies' Bower to announce that a new batch of mummers from Lincoln had arrived and had playfully chased the children around the courtyard. Elizabeth, the baby, was squealing with excitement.

"Dragon, Mama! All fire!" she shrieked, dancing on her little red shoes and pointing to the window. "Big dragon! He'll eat us up!"

"It's not a real dragon, Mother," explained Philippa earnestly. "It's only a man in disguise. You mustn't be frightened."

Katherine, watching, thought how like the good little Philippa that was. At six and a half, she was already a blurred copy of Blanche, well - mannered and considerate. She never had tantrums, never disobeyed. She was as blonde as her mother too, though she gave no promise of Blanche's beauty. Her flaxen hair hung in lank strands either side of her narrow Plantagenet face, and her skin, owing, no doubt, to her recurrent bilious attacks, had a sallow greenish tinge.

She was a devout child and had already made her first communion; she could read the psalter very well, and when she played, it was always a solemn re - enactment of one of the saint's lives.

Elizabeth, who was not yet three, outshone her elder sister on all counts. She was wilful, demanding and extremely spoiled, for she had charm. She had red cheeks and a mop of russet curls which would one day darken to brown. She was said to resemble her sinister great - grandmother. Queen Isabella of France, and certainly she was not like her fair - haired parents.

Elizabeth soon gave up trying to pull her mother off to meet the dragon. Blanche, who had seen quantities of mummers, merely smiled her lovely calm smile and said, "Presently, my poppet" - not stirring from her carved armchair. She was larger with this pregnancy than she had ever been, and more indolent.

So the baby danced over to Katherine singing, "Dragon, dragon, come see 'Lisbet's dragon!"

Katherine was more than willing. She looked to the Duchess for permission, then she took the children's hands. Elizabeth tugged and tumbled ahead of her down the winding stone stairs, but Philippa followed sedately, clutching Katherine's hand in a damp, careful clasp.

When they reached the courtyard, it was full of retainers and villagers who had come to see the fun. The mummers let out a shout of greeting to the ducal children and cavorted around the trio, singing "Wassail, wassail!" hoarsely through their masks. There were a score of them, each disguised as an animal - goats, rabbits, stags, dogs and bulls - except their leader, the Lord of Misrule, who wore a fool's costume tipped with jingling bells and whose face was splotched with blobs of red and blue.

The dragon was indeed a wonderful object, he writhed realistically on the stones and, opening and shutting his painted canvas jaws, emitted clouds of evil - smelling brimstone. When the dragon seized the small rabbit - headed figure in his mouth and pretended to eat him up while the capering fool emitted falsetto screams and beat at the dragon with a peacock feather, Katherine laughed as heartily as all the others in the courtyard and even little Philippa gave a round - eyed, nervous smile.

But then the mummers' play grew bawdy. The fool shouted that since the dragon was on fire, good Christians all must sprinkle water on him, and began to do so in the most natural manner. Katherine, though she could not help laughing, gathered up the wildly protesting Elizabeth and shepherded Philippa back to their mother.

By the time they reached Blanche's fire - lit bower, Katherine had silenced the baby with a firm command and then the crooning of a little French nursery song from her own childhood; and when she went to put her down beside her mother, Elizabeth clung fast to Katherine's neck.

"You're truly good with the children, my Katherine," said the Duchess, seeing this, and also that Philippa clung trustingly to the girl's skirts. "But you should not carry that heavy child in your condition - Elizabeth, let my Lady Swynford go!"

"Won't," cried the child, clinging harder to Katherine, and as she saw her mother's face darken with a rare frown, she shrieked, "I like her best, I like her best!"

It was only a piece of baby naughtiness; it ruffled the Duchess not at all, who merely raised her voice and called Elizabeth's nurse from the ante - room, yet it gave Katherine a strange guilt as though she had somehow stolen from the Duchess, and unwittingly hurt this lady who had been her kindest friend.

She thrust Elizabeth at the nurse, who vanished with her howling charge, and while Philippa still remained and gave her mother a solemn account of the mummers, Katherine picked up her embroidery and went to the far corner of the bower, out of sight, while she fought off the unease that had come upon her.

It passed, of course. She reasoned it away, telling herself that women in her state were given to fancies and that it was a piece of presumption for her to think she might affect the Duchess in any way at all, just as her cheeks grew hot with shame when she remembered what a ridiculous dither she had been in at the Duke's perfunctory kiss in the church.

Here in his castle with his wife and children, she saw her folly in its true light, and in some way allied to this, she began to think more kindly of Hugh and her duties at Kettlethorpe.

In this the Duchess unconsciously helped, by assuming that Katherine must be pining for her husband, even as she was for her own lord. And by stressing quite without intent the remarkable good fortune which had transformed Katherine from a charity orphan into a lady of quality. "The Blessed Saint Catherine must have you under special protection, my dear."

"Yes, madam," said Katherine humbly.

"Some day," continued Blanche, "you should make the pilgrimage to Our Lady of Walsingham in Norfolk, she gives great sanctity, and is especially kind and merciful to mothers." She paused, and a misty light shone in her eyes. "I went to Her in June - from Her bounteous grace She has rewarded me." She glanced towards her lap and added very low, "And I know She'll give me a healthy son."

"Ah, dearest lady," cried the girl. She took the Duchess' hand and laid it to her cheek, looking up at the fair white face, the high placid brow and the ropes of golden hair entwined with tiny pearls. "You who are like the Queen of Heaven Herself, of course She has rewarded you!"

"Hush, child," Blanche turned her hand and put it gently over Katherine's mouth. "You mustn't say foolish things. But indeed I love you well, too - we must see each other after our babes are born. It saddens me to part with you."

Katherine sighed agreement, for the parting was on the morrow, Epiphany Day. And the hope Katherine had briefly held, that the Duchess would ask her to stay on a while, had long ago vanished. Blanche thought the girl eager to get back to the manor for which she was now responsible, and the Swynford heir, of course, must be born on its own lands. This was the code, and as the Duchess herself never hesitated to put duty before inclination, so it never entered her mind that a girl of Katherine's obvious worth could do so.

Katherine duly returned to Kettlethorpe in Piers Roos' charge, but the Duchess, having decided that the roads were too icy for horseback, sent her in one of the great ducal chariots. It was drawn by four horses and was as lavishly carved, gilded and painted as Blanche's own bridal chests. Katherine lay inside on a velvet couch and despite the jouncing and lurching of the springless wheels, she found that this piece of generosity somewhat alleviated her sorrow at leaving Bolingbroke. So did the other evidences of Blanche's kindness which lay stacked in coffers at the rear of the long carriage. Katherine had two dresses now, and a length of Flemish woven wool with which to make a third. There was fine linen for baby clothes, and there was a lute, an English psalter and an ivory crucifix.

The Duchess, after consultation with Piers, had finally realised something of conditions at Kettlethorpe and done her best to mitigate them.

Katherine had poignantly grateful thoughts on the long ride and made many good resolutions for her future. She would be as much like the Duchess as possible - always gracious, charitable and devout. She doubted her power to force Sir Robert to celebrate daily Mass as did the Duchess' chaplain, but at least she could pray every day and she need not wickedly skip Sunday Mass because of trifling illness, as she had through the autumn. She saw now clearly that she had grown guilty of the sin of accidie - spiritual sloth. The nuns had talked much of that sin at Sheppey.

She had time for conscience - searching, as the ride home took fifteen hours. The lumbering carriage travelled slowly; after they had rested the horses at Lincoln, it began to snow, and the last miles to Kettlethorpe were nearly as wearisome as they had been when she first came there in May with Hugh. And her welcome was scarcely better. The manor house was dark, the servants, not expecting her, had gone to bed in the kitchen loft and when routed out by Piers were surly and unhelpful and scarcely attended to Katherine in their wonder at the great painted carriage and their resentment of the supercilious ducal postilions.

Katherine went up to her dank musty - smelling solar. She did not undress but crept as she was between the clammy sheets. The night candle flickered and blew out in a gust from the east wind through the shutter. The east wind also carried sound from the tower. An intermittent wailing chant, with sometimes a sharper call as of a question. The Lady Nichola talking to her cat, or to the snowflakes, or to some ghostlier figment of her sick mind - what did it matter?

Nothing had changed. Katherine pulled the bearskin around her ears and clenching her teeth prayed violently for resignation.

The winter snows melted in the strengthening sun. Its fight moved southward and now awakened Katherine through the solar window that gave on to the forest, where nesting rooks began their incessant cawing. A film of ice no longer glazed the moat each morning, and as the pastures turned a tender green, the new - born lambs, white as swan's - down, filled the fragrant air with plaintive bleats.

April came in with soft cloudless days, and gentle nightly showers - prime growing weather; and as the danger to the new - sown crops from freezing or floods abated, the grim faces of the serfs grew softer. They sang often in the fields and the dairies and the malthouse; they even smiled at Katherine while they bobbed their heads to her.

The whole manor pulsed with spring, and Katherine spent most of her time outdoors basking on a bench in the courtyard or strolling dreamily through the lanes, listening to the thrushes and blackbirds. She could not walk far now before her back ached and her ankles swelled, but she was no longer sickly or unhappy. She existed from day to day, peacefully expectant as any fecund animal, yet so accustomed now to her burden that she could not remember how it felt to be free.

In Holy Week, a wandering Grey Friar turned up at the manor to beg a night's hospitality for his small shaggy donkey and himself. Katherine was delighted to accommodate him, and all the more so as he brought news. Brother Francis was bound north into the wilds of Yorkshire on a preaching expedition, but he had come from Boston town, near Bolingbroke. He told Katherine that on April 3, eleven days ago, the Duchess Blanche had been safely delivered of a fair, healthy son who had been christened Henry after her father. "All the countryside rejoiced," added the friar. "I thought our bell at Saint Botolph's church would crack from the wild pealings, and the bonfires in our streets set alight two houses."

"Oh I'm glad!" cried Katherine, "so very glad!" Tears came to her eyes, of honest joy for Blanche, but of hurt too. "All the countryside rejoiced" - and yet she had known nothing of it, had worried and prayed for her friend, who might have sent some messenger from amongst her retinue to tell the news. And yet why should she? The Duchess lived in the midst of vast concerns, made vaster now by the birth of a male heir at last; she knew nothing of loneliness or isolation. Doubtless she thought Katherine had heard the news long ago, if she ever thought of her at all. But the hurt persisted.

"This new little Henry of Lancaster," pursued the friar, a small merry man who enjoyed gossiping, "is born to great inheritance, but he has no hope for the English throne, especially since the birth of his new cousin."

"What cousin?" said Katherine, pouring ale for the friar.

"Why, Richard, of course! He that was born at Bordeaux to the Princess of Wales on Epiphany Day." He looked at her quizzically. "Surely, lady, you live here close as the kernel in a nut - most proper though in your state and with your lord away!"

Katherine was nearly stung into telling him that she was not such a country bumpkin as he thought her, that she had visited the Duchess and had stayed at court where her sister waited on the Queen; but the impulse died, for he might think her boastful or lying and, besides, his chatter rippled on without pause.

"When King Edward dies, God give him grace, our glorious Prince of Wales will reign, and after him come his two sons, little Edward - a sickly lad though and given to fits - but now we also have the tiny Richard. If aught should happen to all of them" - he raised his hand and murmured - "Christus prohibeat! - there's the Duke Lionel and his get, present and future, for I hear he's to marry again, and then the Duke of Lancaster and finally our little Henry Bolingbroke, fifth in line if no new ones are born." He shook his head. "Nay, lady, we'll never have a Lincolnshire - born king - a great pity."

"Indeed," said Katherine somewhat dryly. She was growing tired, and her love for Lincolnshire was not such as to make her appreciate this aspect of young Henry's birth. Besides, her heart was still very sore and she desired to hear no more about the Lancasters.

On the last day of April, Katherine awoke early and was filled with restless energy. She dressed and went downstairs to the courtyard before the sun was fairly up. She awakened Toby to make him lower the drawbridge, and walking into the woods, gathered armfuls of flowers and flowering branches. She carried them to the Hall and began to prop them in corners, and in the windy embrasures. Then, seeing that the long oak table was spattered with candle wax and other grease, she called into the kitchen for Milburga.

The maid found her mistress violently polishing the table, and noting the flowers and branches already placed in the Hall, nodded sagely. "Ay lady, I see ye're hands 're restless and ye feel the need for busyness. For sure your time be nigh."

Katherine looked up startled. "Nay, I feel well, better than for long. I but wanted to bring the May into the house ready for tomorrow." Her voice wavered, for she thought of May Day a year ago in London, with Hawise.

"I'll go tell Parson's Molly ye'll be needing her later on," said Milburga stolidly. As usual she managed to convey a subtle contempt for Katherine.

"Nonsense, the baby isn't due yet. Get a rag and help me with this table." Katherine didn't know for sure when the baby was due, but Milburga always aroused, her to opposition.

"Ay, I'd best warn Parson's Molly," repeated the woman as though Katherine had not spoken, "or she might be off at sundown to light the fires and launch Ket's boat on the river."

Katherine bit her lips. Her palm itched to slap the smug sallow face. Milburga well knew that Katherine had forbidden the outlandish ritual performed by her tenants on this St. Walburga's Eve. Gibbon had warned her of it, and described it as a brutish heathen festival which had come down from Druid times and had to do with sacrifice to some dark goddess they called Ket, though some said it was in honour of the Dane, Ketel. No matter which, the proceeding seemed outrageous to Katherine.

The serfs, it seemed, always lit fires in a small circle of ancient stones on a hill near the Trent and after an orgy of dancing, guzzling and worse, they then launched a coracle on the river. The coracle would contain three new - born slaughtered lambs - slaughtered, with wild cries and leapings, on a stone they called an altar. The whole ceremony was called the "Launching of Ket's Ark," Gibbon told her, and his objection to the function sprang not so much from moral indignation at this pagan folderol but from the wanton waste of the lambs and waste of two days' work, one of preparation, and one of recovery from the drinking throughout the night.

But Katherine had been shocked and rushed at once to the priest demanding that he stop the preparations. "Oh, I cannot, lady," said Sir Robert, astonished. "They've always done so here. 'Tis custom. I've often gone myself to launch Ket's ark." "But it's heathen!"

The priest shrugged and looked honestly bewildered.

Then Katherine, calling all her housefolk together and the reeve, had issued a command forbidding them to hold Ket's rite this May Eve. They had said nothing, merely listened to her and dispersed silently. But she had heard the reeve's mocking laugh and Milburga's high - pitched whinny in the courtyard.

"I told you, Milburga, that I forbid this thing tonight," said Katherine, trying to speak with dignity. "I expect to be obeyed."

The maid's lips twitched. "To be sure, lady. So I needn't warn Molly?"

"Certainly not!"

Thus it was that night, an hour after sundown, that Katherine felt her first pains and found herself alone, deserted by all the housefolk. They had fed her her supper, and Katherine, not dreaming that they would defy her and being still in a restless mood, had gone up to the solar and sitting by the window with her lute, strummed random chords while she tried to remember a song she had sung at Bolingbroke.

She took pleasure in her music, and though mostly self - taught, had become a fair player, so that at first she did not notice the growing sharpness of an ache in her back. But the pain grew more insistent, and she stood up, thinking to ease the cramp. Sure enough, it ebbed. She leaned out of the window, gazing idling into the dark forest beyond the moat and thinking of Hugh. She had had no news of him except that given her by the Duchess in January of his arrival overseas, but she had expected none. Even if he had found someone to write a letter for him, whom could he have sent to deliver it? Yet he had hoped to be home in May and perhaps he might be. It seemed to her that if he came she would be neither sorry nor glad, though she would feign gladness.

She sighed, then tensed, holding on to the rough stone of the embrasure and hearing her own startled breathing. The ache in her legs and back had returned more strongly, and this time before ebbing sent a stab of pain up through her loins.

She ran to the door and down the stairs calling "Milburga!" There was no answer; no lights in Hall or empty kitchen, where the embers had been raked under the curfew for the night. She went out into the quiet court and clenched her hands while another pain came and went. "Toby!" she shouted underneath the gatehouse windows. Though the bridge was down the keeper was not there.

She stumbled to Gibbon's hut, and flung the door open.

"God's wounds, what is it?" cried the man's slow voice in the darkness. "Is it you, my lady? Open the shutter." After a moment she obeyed, and he saw her in the gloaming light. She was crouching, her arms laced tight across her belly.

"Jesu - " whispered the sick man. "Poor creature, so your time has come - but lady, go up to bed, send for the midwife. Oh ay - I'd forgot - God blast them all - they've gone to Ket's hill." A spasm twisted his yellow face. "Is no one here?"

"No - one," she gasped, "and I dare not try to reach the village."

" 'Twould do no good, there'd be nobody there. I heard them go - they were laughing, shouting drunken songs." The veins corded on his forehead. "Devil take this stinking useless body of mine - "

"What shall I do, Gibbon?" she asked dully.

"Go to your bed." He spoke briskly to hearten her. "It can't be long before they come back. I'll listen and shout, send someone to you. Be brave for a little while, it won't be long." Though he knew well that last year they had stayed the night through at their wicked rites.

"Ay," she said, "I'll go to bed. That would be best." She could not think for herself, and Gibbon's words brought her relief. "The pains're not so bad," she added, trying to smile. "Not near so dreadful as I'd heard."

Not yet, poor lady, he thought, turning his head from her innocent face. She groped her way through the door. She crept up to the solar and throwing off her gown lay on the sheet in her shift. The night was warm, but had it not been, she would have needed no covering, for soon the sweat began to pour off her heaving body.

Towards midnight Gibbon, lying in the hut, heard the first scream shrill down across the courtyard, and slow tears oozed from beneath his shut lids. In her tower - room, the Lady Nichola too heard the scream, and raised her head, wondering. She had been dripping water from a flagon into a clay pot and carefully greeting the drops as they fell.

This mater for self, this water for elf,

Nixie, pixie, kelpie, sylph.

She was about her own May Eve rites. The cat, a full - grown tabby now, lay curled on the bed, purring lazily.

When Nichola heard the strange sound again, she put the flagon down on the hearth and spoke to the cat. "Are they calling me, sweeting, d'you think? Is it She Who Lives in the Holy Well?"

Then she shook her head; into her staring dark eyes there came a look of anxiety, for dimly through the floating mists she felt the hard stab of human urgency. She smoothed down her rumpled widow's weeds and bound her greying hair into a must - stained coif. She picked up a twisted rush and lit it at the fire. "I must see what they want," she said, stroking the cat. "I'll not be long - - "

She wandered down the stone steps in the tower and across the guard - room to the outside stairs, when she heard the sound again. She knew it came from the solar and was puzzled. She pushed the door slowly open and stood holding the rush dip high, gazing into the dark room.

The sounds came from something on the bed where she had once slept herself with her lord. What was it on the bed that writhed and tossed, and ever and again gave forth a wailing cry?

She moved nearer and saw a mass of tangled hair and two wild eyes in a glistening face.

"Hugh's bride?" she whispered, unbelieving. She blinked, leaned over the bed and seeing red stains, cried, "What has been done to you, Hugh's bride?"

"For the love of God, lady!" cried Katherine, " 'tis my baby that will not be born." She grabbed at Nichola's hand, clenching it until the bones cracked, and with the pain from that desperate grip the shadows receded in Nichola's mind.

She had borne no child herself but she had seen birth once long ago on her father's manor. She sat on the bed and held Katherine's hands, nor winced when the girl pulled on them frantically; and between the pains she murmured soothing words and wiped the sweat - drenched face with a corner of the sheet.

Presently Katherine quietened a little, falling into an exhausted doze until the grey dawn light filtered into the solar and the larks and thrushes trilled beneath the forest window. Then the girl's labouring body renewed its struggle.

The sun had climbed above the forest top when she was delivered at last.

"Oh, what is it?" Katherine cried when she could speak again. "Does it live? Is it all right?" She tried to raise herself and fell back panting.

" 'Tis a baby girl," said Nichola slowly, staring down at the bed. "It seems all right, I think - but I remember - there is something needs to be done - " She fumbled at her girdle, where she kept the little knife she used for cutting herbs. She bound the cord tight with a strip torn from the sheet, then clipped sharply. The baby gasped and let out a wavering cry. Nichola started when she heard the cry. She pulled the linen coif from her head and wrapped the baby in it, then cradled the little bundle against her chest.

"Ah, let me see her," Katherine whispered, holding out her arms. "Give her to me - - "

Nichola drew back a step, uncertainty came into her face, which had been sure and intent before. "What do you want, Hugh's bride?" she asked in a high singing tone, shaking her head. "What is it that you want?"

"I want to see my baby, bring her here, lady - " The girl, all dazed and numb, could not understand why this woman, who had been her only comfort the night long, should back away and shake her head. Neither of them heard a commotion in the courtyard below, men's voices and the clop of horses' hooves.

The baby whimpered and Nichola, bending quickly, kissed its face. "Ah there, my dearling," she crooned, "my pretty one you want to see them, don't you? We'll go now by the river - "

Deadly fear smote Katherine. "Lady!" she cried. "Come here!" Nichola backed yet another step towards the door. She looked at Katherine slyly and said, "You'd take her from me but she's mine -"

"Jesu, Jesu - -" Katherine whispered; she lurched upright on the bed and would have leaped on to the floor, but she dared not, for she saw Nichola glance sideways at the door and that she strained the bundle ever tighter to her chest. Katherine mastered the chattering of her teeth. "And if she's yours lady," she said and forced a coaxing tone, while she tried to hold the black eyes with her own, "you must tend her carefully; she may be cold, you know, so put her down a moment and stir up the fire that you may warm her - "

Nichola stood hesitant, looking from Katherine to the dark fireplace, then she shook her head again. "Nay, I think not. They of the river want to see her first. I must hasten - " She put her hand on the door latch. Katherine stumbled from the bed - and screamed and lurched across the room. She screamed again, for Nichola ran through the door, while footsteps clattered up the stairs.

The woman shrank by the open door, cowering over the baby. A man stood on the landing staring at them with amazement.

"Oh, stop her, stop her!" Katherine sobbed. "She's stealing my baby!" Swift as light the man leaned down and took the bundle from Nichola, who let out a long, quivering moan. He put the baby on the bed, then turned to the panting girl who had fallen to her knees on the floor. "In God's name, Katherine!" he cried, and picking her up in his arms he laid her on the bed beside the baby. She stared up at him, seeing vivid blue eyes frowning with concern in a sun - bronzed face. "My Lord Duke," she whispered in feeble wonder, and then his eyes and the room and Nichola's moaning faded into greyness.

It was past high noon when Katherine came to herself again and heard the subdued muttering of women's voices, and at first she could not think what had happened, but lay in a vague dream watching through heavy lids the dance of dust motes in a sunbeam. She turned a little in the bed and her hand fell on her flat belly, then she remembered and started up with a cry, "My baby!"

The kind round face of Parson's Molly bent over her. "Here, lady, here's the tiny maid, all snug and swaddled and content." She put the infant in the crook of Katherine's arm. "As fine and fair a babe as I ever see," and over Molly's shoulder Milburga's frightened, peering face nodded agreement.

Katherine looked down at the tiny head covered with darkish fuzz, the crumpled nose and moist pink lips. "Put her to the breast," said Molly, pulling down the sheet, "let her suck to bring the milk in." Katherine felt the hungry tug of the little mouth, and a wave of delight such as she had never known washed through her body. She felt that they two were floating in a golden bath together. The dark doings of the night before seemed a foul dream long past, neither fear nor pain could touch her ever again, for here was love come at last, incorporate in this tiny thing that breathed and nestled and belonged to her alone.

When the baby fell asleep, she moved it so that its head lay against her cheek and slept too. The women let her be while they whispered fearingly together.

No one knew what the Duke would do to them. His anger had been terrible as he came down the solar stairs into the courtyard when the housefolk came stumbling and lurching back across the drawbridge from Ket's rites. He had not whipped them nor berated, but his eyes had flashed like swords and the tone of his voice as he gave them orders banished their drunkenness like a purge.

They had run frantically to obey him, themselves appalled when they found out what had happened in their absence. The Lady Nichola, sobbing and beating her breasts, had been already chained to her bed in the tower by the Duke's men, for he had brought five with him.

And when Parson's Molly came running to the manor from the village, they found what sad plight their little mistress was in, wallowing unconscious in fouled sheets and the stench of birth - blood, while the babe lay naked, though unhurt - praise be to the Blessed Virgin!

The women now heard the shouts of men - at - arms below, and a squeal of pain from Toby as one of the Duke's retainers cuffed him; and they huddled by the fire, glad of the sanctuary of the birth - room. Then they heard footsteps on the wooden landing and a knock outside. Molly's fat cheeks mottled, but she went to the door and opened it bravely. She curtsied as she said low, "Our lady sleeps, my Lord Duke, but we've washed her and the babe."

John pushed her aside and strode to the bed. He stood looking down at Katherine. White and spent as a plucked windflower she seemed to him, lying there defenceless with her baby next her cheek. And the small happy smile on her pale lips increased his pity. It was pity that he felt and again that strange urge to protect that he had known when he had kissed her a year ago, but now there was no desire mingled with this other feeling. She seemed to him as childlike and pure as his own daughters. Her long lashes quivered and she opened her eyes. They no longer reminded him of Isolda's for there was in them no urgency, no appeal - clear and untroubled they looked up at him.

She saw him through a dreamy haze, so big and shining with his tawny head, a topaz velvet tunic over powerful chest and shoulders, and eyes blue as speedwells against his sunburned skin.

"I don't wish to disturb you, Katherine," he said gently. "I came to see how you did - and the babe." He took her hand, noting with tender amusement that it was still somewhat rough and the nails bitten.

"I do well, my lord." She let her hand He trustingly in his, scarcely aware that it did. "Is she not lovely?" - she nuzzled the baby's head.

John smiled assent, though the infant looked like all others to him and not nearly so comely as his own son, who had lost the new - born pulpy redness.

"How came you here, my lord?" she asked, drawing her arched brows together. "It seems strange - now I begin to - to wake."

"Having business in Lincoln, I thought to pay you a May morn visit, and - I scarce expected to be so opportune." He frowned, glancing at the frightened women by the fire. "I thought you might like news of Hugh."

"Ay - where is Hugh?" she murmured.

"Still in Castile, at Burgos with my army but unharmed. I'll send him back soon. I see you sorely need him."

"But you're here," she whispered smiling, drugged with the torpor of exhaustion and peace.

"Not for long - my ship waits for me at Plymouth. I came back because I have a son."

"Ah yes," she said. "I knew - I had forgot - how does my Lady Blanche - - "

"Fairly," he said and no more, seeing that Katherine was not fully awake and making an effort to be courteous. He dropped her hand and turned to the window.

Blanche was not churched yet. He had returned to find her very ill with milk fever and one of her legs so red and throbbing that she cried out when it was touched. But the blissful shock of his unexpected return had improved her at once.

She had been well enough for him to leave Bolingbroke and make this hasty trip to Lincoln to inspect its castle, which he owned. Conferences with the constable had taken little time and it had been on impulse that he decided this fine May Day morning to ride on to Kettlethorpe and see Katherine. In truth, he had not thought of her at all these last months - - months of triumph, culminating in the glorious victory at Najera on Saturday, April 3. The memory of that arid sunbaked Castilian plain gave him sharp joy.

With the always able help of Sir John Chandos, and his English bowmen, the Duke had led the shock troops in the vanguard of the Prince of Wales' army, and they had loosed a barrage of whirring arrows that turned the tide almost at once. The Castilians fell back, they disintegrated, they ran, and, forced into the flood - swollen river Najerilla, they drowned - twelve thousand of them. The rushing waters had turned red as wine. By noon the battle was over and King Pedro, sobbing with gratitude, had kissed his champions' hands, had knelt on the blood - soaked earth before the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Lancaster.

It was unfortunate that amongst the bodies of the Castilian slain they could not find that of the bastard Trastamare, but otherwise the victory had been complete even to the capture of the redoubtable Sir Bertrand du Guesclin. All the victors had held high feast in Burgos, Castile's fair capital. And there, when the messenger from Bolingbroke found him ten days later, John discovered that he had fresh cause for exultation. His son Henry had been born on the same day as the triumph at Najera, surely a most auspicious bit of fortune. He gave thanks in the cathedral and determined to make a quick trip home to see his son - and Blanche. But neither sentiment nor paternal pride alone could justify the time expended on such a voyage, for there were still angry matters to smooth out in Castile and his brother needed him. So John bore letters to the King at Westminster and, more important, had seized the opportunity to replenish his purse from funds held by his receiver - general at the Savoy. The campaign, however glorious, had been expensive.

These matters passed through his mind as he stood by the window and he almost regretted the impulse that he sent him here this morning; for he saw that he could not leave at once as he had planned, while Katherine lay helpless, at the mercy of her serfs and the mad woman Nichola. Yet he was sorely pressed for time and turned plans over in his mind which might best ensure her safety until he could send Hugh back.

He returned to the bed and saw that she had awakened, and was softly kissing the baby's head. "Your villeins must be punished, Katherine," he said, smiling at her. "I understand from your bailiff that you and he forbade their extraordinary rites last night and yet they left you here alone."

"That was my fault, my lord." Through this dreaming bliss she felt no anger towards anyone. "The midwife would have stayed with me but I wouldn't let Milburga fetch her."

The two listening women looked at each other. Molly whispered, "Our little mistress is kind." Milburga shrugged. They held their breaths.

John shook his head impatiently. "These serfs cannot be permitted to defy you - there's no strong arm on this manor, that I see well, nor can I forgive Swynford for leaving you in charge of such a bailiff - a dead man - it was dangerous folly - - " His anger rose at Hugh, though in Castile he had felt none, for Hugh had again proved himself a powerful fighter.

"Poor Gibbon does the best he can," said Katherine softly. "It's I who have been lax."

"Nonsense, child! It's only that you're far too young to have learned the arts of ruling and you must have help. I've decided what shall be done."

"Yes, my lord," said Katherine, humbly. Though he was but twenty - seven he seemed to her the embodiment of unquestioned authority as he stood there, his shining head thrown back, his eyes stern. He spoke to her as her father had used to long ago. There was no tension between them now, nor did she remember that there ever had been. He was but her overlord and her rescuer.

"I shall leave one of my men here to guard you. A Gascon named Nirac de Bayonne and - for a Gascon - trustworthy." John smiled suddenly. Nirac amused him with his quick tongue, nimble wits and sly humour. Nirac was a man of many parts, he could concoct licorice potions or spice hippocras; he could fight with the dagger and sail a ship, the latter accomplishment learned during years of smuggling and freebooting between Bayonne and Cornwall. Though Gascony and the rest of Aquitaine belonged to England, Nirac had not troubled himself about allegiance, until the Prince of Wales' officers caught him and pressed him into military service in the recent Castilian war. And that temporary allegiance would have dissolved as soon as he had been paid, except for the entirely fortuitous circumstances that John had saved his life at Najera.

This was no deed of chivalry - the Duke had simply interposed his well - armoured body between Nirac and a Castilian spear; but the fiery little Gascon had been passionately grateful and attached himself doggedly to the Duke.

John was a shrewd judge of those who served him and he knew that Nirac would obey his commands loyally, and he thought too that of the men with him today, Katherine would be safest with this one. Nirac belonged to that type of man who had but tepid interest in the love of women.

John glanced towards the courtyard window where the sun already slanted above the church spire and said, "Yes - I'll leave you Nirac. He'll keep your churls in order until Swynford gets home. And, Katherine - - "

She looked up at him and waited.

"Your baby must be christened! - now."

Katherine gasped and drew the baby closer. "Is there danger for her? The women said she was unharmed - does there seem something wrong to you?"

"No, no - there's nothing to fear. But we'll christen the babe at once, because I shall be its godfather."

"Oh - my sweet lord," whispered Katherine, flushing with delight. During the vague unreasoning months of her pregnancy she had wondered once or twice who might be found to sponsor the baby if it were actually born.

"It is a very great honour - -" she whispered.

"Yes," said the Duke, "and will help ensure your safety and the babe's." It was for this reason he had suggested it. The spiritual parentage of an infant was no light thing; it linked the sponsor with the real parents in bonds of compaternity, it incurred obligation for the infant's material as well as religious nurture and if, as in this case, the sponsor were of royal blood and the most powerful noble in the land, it endowed the baby with an exalted aura.

A child so honoured on earth and in heaven would be powerfully protected and even Katherine's unruly serfs should be intimidated.

The christening took place an hour later at the old Saxon font in the little church across the lane. The nave was crowded, because the Duke had sent his men to summon all the villagers, many of whom had been shaken and slapped from their drunken snorings. Parson's Molly held the baby and served as godmother since there was obviously no one else in the least suitable on the manor. At the baptismal questions, John took the baby from Molly and made the responses himself, though waiting with barely concealed impatience while the flustered Sir Robert tried to remember the Latin form, could not, and reverted to English.

The baby was christened Blanche Mary as Katherine had asked. And she wailed satisfactorily when the holy water doused her head and the devil flew out of her.

Katherine, lying tense and strained on her bed, heard the glad ringing of the church bell and dissolved into happy tears. My tiny Blanche, she thought, Blanchette, named for the lovely Duchess and the Blessed Queen of Heaven. She would be safe now for ever from the horrors that menaced the un-baptized. And surely all the good fairies had hovered near this christening and brought the baby luck, though there was scarcely need for luck greater than sponsorship by the Duke.

How good he is, she thought, and she felt for him die same gratitude and humble admiration she did for the Lady Blanche, and she felt too that she was purged completely from those other darker feelings towards him which now seemed to her incredible.

When the Duke preceded Molly and the baby back into the solar, Katherine greeted him with a soft little cry and, taking his hand, kissed it in a childlike gesture of homage.

The Duke, receiving it as such, bent over and kissed her quickly on the forehead. "There, Katherine, your babe is now a Christian and you and I have become spiritual brother and sister. So I must leave you. I can scarce reach Bolingbroke tonight as it is."

She nodded. "I know, my lord. I'm sorry. And when you see Hugh - -"

"Ay," he broke in with sudden curtness, "I'll tell him all and send him back. In the meantime, here is Nirac."

The little Gascon had been hovering in the doorway and skipped in at his master's call crying "Oc! oc! seigneur -" followed by a further string of liquid syllables which Katherine could not understand. The man was like a blackbird with his bright round eyes, his cocky strut and a cap of hair like glossy blue - black feathers. He wore the Duke's blue and grey household livery, and the tunic clung like a glove to his spare wiry body.

John laughed and said to Katherine, "Nirac speaks the langue d'oc, but much else as well, some Spanish, the barbarous Basque, French of course."

"And English, seigneur, also - I am a man of many tongues and many talents."

"Daily you prove that Gascon bragging shames even the devil," said John a trifle sternly, "but I'm entrusting you here. You will guard this lady -"

"With my life, seigneur, with my honour, with my soul, I swear by the Virgin of the Pyrenees, by Sant' Iago de Compostela, by the English Saint Thomas, by -"

"Yes, well, that's enough, you little jackanapes. I trust you'll never be forsworn. I've told the serfs that I leave you here in my place until their rightful lord comes home. You'll know how to make them obey?"

The bright beady eyes sobered and gazed intently up at the Duke's face. "Oui, mon duc." He nodded once. "Your wish shall be done in every sing - long as Nirac de Bayonne has breat' in body - -" His narrow brown hand fingered the hilt of his dagger.

"No, said the Duke, glancing at the dagger, "you must be chary of violence. The English have laws on the manor, 'tis not like your wild mountain country. You must be guided by the Lady Katherine."

The Gascon's hand dropped, he looked at the pale girl on the bed, then back into the Duke's face as though reading something there. He ran to the bedside and knelt. "Votre serviteur,belle dame," he said. "I shall guard you for the Duke."

Neither of them gave any deeper meaning to these words or guessed that Nirac had misconstrued the situation. He came of a primitive southern race where emotions were as simple as they were violent. There was love and there was hate, and no nuances between. He loved the Duke; therefore he would love this girl whom he took to be the Duke's leman, else why should his master waste all this time attending to such trivial matters as baptisms and peasants? Perhaps the baby was the Duke's - that would explain matters, and explain too why the young mother never spoke of her husband in the days that followed, but spent all her time nursing and petting her baby.

She listened though, when Nirac spoke of the Duke, while a smile, naif - wistful and half - awed, would light her grey eyes. Nirac, eager to please her, sang often of the Duke's bravery at the battle of Najera. Sir John Chandos' herald had made up a song after the battle, and it began:

En autre part le noble duc

De Lancastre, plein de vertus

Si noblement se combattait

Que chaqu'un s'en emerveillait. . . .

She listened and she took pleasure in Nirac's company. They often spoke French together, he was gay, and of some help to her on the manor by his very presence, though the serfs resented him bitterly. Still, for the next few weeks they gave no further cause for complaint, being thoroughly cowed by the ducal visit. But there were many whispered conferences in the alehouse and on the whole the distrust of Katherine increased, now that she was forever shadowed by this other foreigner whom the terrifying Duke had foisted on them. Singing they were, the lady and that strutting little rooster at all hours in the Hall, in a gibberish no one understood. The manor folk longed for their rightful English lord to return.

Parson's Molly always defended her mistress when she heard the others reviling her. She pointed out how the lady had shown mercy in many ways and particularly in the matter of the Lady Nichola. She had ordered that the crazed woman be unchained and simply confined to her tower - room behind a locked door, and Lady Katherine herself brought up milk and bread and spoke gently to the woman who had tried to steal her baby. But the Lady Nichola never answered, she crouched now day and night in a corner of her room while floating little pieces of straw in a pan of water, nor even cared about her cat. At Lady Katherine's orders, they carried Nichola down to the church during Mass and tied her to the rood screen that the evil spirits might be exorcised, and Lady Katherine saw to it that nobody poked or pinched the mad woman at these times, for the little mistress was clement.

And no woman, Molly said, could be a better mother than the Lady Katherine, that was plain for all to see.

"And what of it?" sniffed Milburga. "The ewes and the sows do as much, and she thrives on it herself - the quean."

Even to the most reluctant eyes. Katherine's beauty could not be ignored. Her curly dark auburn hair shone with a new lustre, as did her skin, where the healthy rose again stained the cheek-bones. All girlish angularity had left her small-boned body. It had regained its supple slenderness, but now her arms were rounded and her breasts, once somewhat undeveloped, had swollen to globes that strained the bodice of her gowns.

When she walked to the church or down the village street, the menfolk eyed her sideways, and there were lip smackings and uneasy jests when she had passed, yet despite this new voluptuousness there was something pure and unawakened in her yet, and even Milburga could find no excuse for accusing Katherine of light conduct.

The hours her mistress spent with the Gascon were always in the Hall or courtyard in full view of everyone, and at night not only was the solar door bolted but Katherine had taken little Betsy, the dairymaid, to sleep with her and help tend the baby.

"This honour should by rights have gone to Milburga, and the slight augmented her ill-will. But it seemed that the lady noticed little of the undercurrents on her manor, her whole thought centred in the baby and even when she talked or sang with the Gascon she held her child in her arms and joyfully suckled it whenever it whimpered.

The twenty-ninth of June would be the feast day of St. Peter and St. Paul, and the important one of the year for Kettlethorpe folk since it celebrated the dedication of their parish church. On this day, after morning Mass, the villagers had always held high carnival with sports and copious drinking, which reached its climax with the lighting of bonfires on Ket's hill and at the four corners of the parish. This year, they were uneasy about their celebration, having sharply in mind the unfortunate consequences of their May Eve rites and being uncertain of Lady Katherine's attitude or that of Nirac, the hateful little watch-dog the Duke had set over them.

A week before the festival they deputed their reeve to approach Katherine and find out her wishes. On the afternoon when Sim Tanner, the reeve, walked on his wooden clogs from the village to the manor house, it was pouring cold rain from a dun-coloured sky. He presented himself dripping at the door of the Hall, his leather jerkin stained with mud.

Katherine was in the Hall with Nirac and Gibbon, whom she often had carried there so that he might he by the fire and have a change of view. She greeted the reeve courteously, thinking that he came to consult Gibbon on some farm matter, then seated herself again on the low chair and picked up her spindle.

Nirac had been amusing himself by whittling a set of chessmen from an alder slab. When they were finished he hoped to teach Katherine chess, of which game he had learned a smattering from one of the Duke's squires. Nirac found life at Kettlethorpe exceedingly dull and looked up eagerly at the reeve's entrance, then, disappointed that it was not some more interesting visitor, returned to his whittling.

Gibbon lay on a pile of deerskins near the central hearth. This was one of his good days when his mind was clear and he fancied that he could feel a faint tingling in his legs. His speech, however, had grown thicker and more halting in the last months and he seldom forced it. His eyelids flickered greeting to the reeve, then his veiled gaze returned to Katherine. Watching her was the last pleasure left him, and he always made the servants deposit him close to her chair.

She was not yet skilled at spinning, but since the baby had come she had forsaken lute-playing and embroidery for more useful arts. She twirled the coarse grey fibres on to her spindle from the distaff and watched the process with a small frown of concentration that Gibbon thought bewitching. The baby lay gurgling in a plaited willow basket at her feet and whenever her eyes left the baulky yarn, which frequently knotted or broke, they strayed downward towards the basket and a light came into them. If she ever looks at a man like that - thought Gibbon, what rapture she would kindle. But it'll never be Hugh. He sighed, and thought with some pity of his half-brother.

Sim, who had been standing as near the fire as he dared while his jerkin steamed drier, now cleared his throat. "Prithee, m'lady, I come to ask ye summat. I speak for all your villeins."

"Aie - e!" cried Nirac, cocking his head and instantly alert. "And now what does that meaching canaille want of her?"

The reeve's slit mouth tightened, his cold haddock eyes flicked to the Gascon then back to Katherine, who laid down her spindle and waited. "Next Tuesday's our church day, lady," he continued. "Since the time of our great gaffers and long before, Kettlethorpe folk've held the day special for sport and feasting."

"Pardieu!" Nirac threw down his knife and jumped up to stand by Katherine. " 'Tis all they do here, these worthless churls - feasting and sporting. Never do they think of work!" This was manifestly unfair, for the serfs had had no time off since May Eve, but he despised the serfs and considered that anything that thwarted them advanced Katherine's interests.

"Tell him, madam," he said, lower, to Katherine, "to take his farouche fishface out of here and return to his tasks."

"Peace, Nirac!" said Katherine sternly. She didn't like the reeve, who treated her with the same veiled disrespect Milburga did, but Gibbon said he served the manor well. She glanced down at Gibbon, who was watching her with a faint smile on his bloodless lips. He did not try to answer her unspoken question because he felt that she must learn to handle manor matters herself and, besides, he knew not what advice to give. In strict justice, the villeins deserved their feast day as they had always had it, yet there would be drunkenness and brawling and probably deaths as there had been other years. The manor could ill afford to lose a single strong pair of arms, though the lechery that accompanied their celebration was beneficial to the manor. The more brats that were bred in the fields and haycocks the better, since on each one a cash fine of leyrewite would be due to Hugh. On the other hand, the "custom of the manor" decreed largesse from its lord with free ale and meat provided, and this would seriously tax the manor's slender larder. Since the serfs were forbidden to hunt game, and Nirac had no experience of lordly sports, there was no one to bring in meat, and Katherine's resources would be seriously depleted by the slaughter of a sufficient amount of oxen or sheep.

Katherine knew little of these practical considerations and she knew that the reeve's request was reasonable enough; but his insolent pop-eyes annoyed her and she said coldly, "And if I refuse permission, you might defy me as you did on May Eve?"

Sim's long face flushed and, before he could answer, Nirac sprang forward like a cat. "They cannot defy you, for they have me to reckon with - me, Nirac le Gascon! My sword is ready. I shall carve the miserable ladrones into mincemeat, I shall slice their ears and fingers-"

"Chut! Nirac-" Katherine cried impatiently. She was used to his extravagances, but the reeve had gone chalk-white and his voice was high and thin like a neighing horse. "And whilst you're brandishing your sword and dagger, you greasy meacock, what think you we'll be doing? We've pitchforks, and axes, and scythes - we can carve off ears and fingers too, ay, and cods and stones-"

"Sim - Sim-" gasped Gibbon from his pallet. Nobody heard him. Katherine stood frozen, while a dangerous stillness flowed over the Gascon. "You t'reaten me?" he said softly. "Do you forget, miserable serf, that I wear the livery of the Duke of Lancaster?"

The reeve's face convulsed, his furious breath flattened his nostrils. "He's not my overlord!" he shouted. "I spit upon your Duke of Lancaster!"

The instant the spittle left his mouth, the reeve was frightened. Nirac gave him no time for repentance, he scooped the whittling knife off the table and sprang.

"Holy name of God, Nirac!" Katherine screamed, as a spurt of blood jetted against the stone wall. "You'll kill him! He's unarmed." Neither of them heard her. The panting bodies struggled, knocking against the stools and table. Katherine grabbed the baby and ran on to the dais. "Help!" she cried. "For Christ's sake, help!"

A slow sob rose in Gibbon's throat and his left hand twitched. The fighting men rolled and stumbled over him as though he were part of the floor, his mantle became drenched with the reeve's blood.

The kitchen folk heard the noise and their mistress's cries. They crowded around the wooden screen, peering fearfully.

"Stop them, Will!" cried Katherine. "Hurry!" The cook did not move. He had not yet understood the scene except for a vague hope that the reeve was murdering the hated Gascon.

The men rolled near the corner of the dais and Katherine heard a bubbling liquid groan. Nirac was on top, his knees on the reeve's chest, his knife hand raised again. She put the baby in the centre of the great table and, jumping from the dais, clenched her teeth and, grabbing a handful of Nirac's streaming black hair, jerked with all her might. "Halte!" she shouted, "au nom du duc!"

Nirac's grasp loosened, he shook his head in a dazed way, trying to free his hair. She pulled harder so that his face was forced upwards and he saw hers. "You don't want that I kill him?" he panted. "Yet you heard what he said!"

"I think you have killed him. Get up!" She hauled him off the inert reeve who lay gasping and bleeding on the flags. She knelt beside the man, and distractedly wiped his face with the hem of her gown. "Milburga, bring water and linen - someone get the priest. Hurry!"

"Bah!" said Nirac, smoothing his hair back and wiping his knife on a handful of rushes, "the salaud won't need the priest." He examined his victim with a practised eye. "A few cuts, my knife is short - he's had no more than a good blood-letting. Had I had my dagger-"

Nirac was right, it appeared, for by the time Sir Robert and his Molly came puffing into the Hall, Sim was recovering. There was no need for the priest nor even need of Molly's leechcraft. The cuts and stabs had hit no vital spot except for the artery in the arm and that stopped spurting when Katherine tied the liripipe of the reeve's own hood tight above the wound.

The manor folk clustered around, glancing sideways at Katherine, who had rushed back to the dais to soothe her crying baby and remove it from the table. They did not look at Nirac, who had nonchalantly returned to his stool and was whittling. Will Cooke and old Toby helped the reeve to his feet and supported him out of the door and back to his cot in the village. The reeve had not said a word or raised his bloodshot eyes as he tottered away.

"Lord shield us, lady, but what took place here?" asked the priest, settling himself into a chair and toasting his wet shoes at the fire. "What has Sim Tanner done?"

"He insult me!" said Nirac, carving a flourish on the Rook-piece, "and he insult mon seigneur le duc -" He shrugged and quirked his mouth in a contemptuous smile.

"Ah?" said Sir Robert, thoughtfully, and seeing that Katherine was suckling her baby and not likely to offer him anything, he helped himself to the remains of a cup of ale which Milburga had brought in for the reeve. Nirac's explanation satisfied him, and after all no great harm had been done.

The rain beat harder on the tile roof. Little Cob o' Fenton came in with candles. He stoked the fire with applewood and began to fling knives and wooden trenchers on the High Table in readiness for supper. Ah, that Nirac! thought Katherine. His notions of serving her and his lord made him a dangerous nuisance, and yet she had grown quite fond of him.

Her gaze passed from Nirac to the priest, who sat dozing while he waited for food. His claret-coloured robes overflowed his chair and from them rose a pungent odour of hound dog. Her eyes dropped to the last of the three men, and Gibbon was looking up at her, though as always she could see little of the expression beneath the sunken lids. She smiled at him, and thought sadly that he had failed in these last months and with compunction that she must tell Cob to cleanse him from the reeve's bloodstains and renew the fouled padding of hay beneath his hips. She had half risen, when her sharp ears heard unusual sounds through the beating rain.

"Hark!" she said. "What can that be?"

Ajax from his kennel let out his warning bay, and now they all heard the clack of horse-hooves on the drawbridge. The Duke is back, Katherine thought,' and a wild sweet joy exploded like a shower in her breast, then vanished so fast she never knew she had felt it, for as she ran to the door she heard a voice in the courtyard.

"It's Hugh come home!" she cried to those within the Hall, her cry trembling with what passed for gladness. She flung wide the door.

Thanks be to God in His mercy, thought Gibbon, now at least she will be safe.

Part Two (1369)

"To Danger came I all ashamed,

The which afore me hadde blamed,

Desiring for to appease my woe;

But over hedge durst I not go,

For he forbade me the passage

I found him cruel in his rage

And in his hand a great burdoun."

(Romaunt de la Rose)

CHAPTER IX

The year of 1369 was one of disaster for England. John Wyclif's wandering Lollard preachers were not slow to point out that the corruption and wickedness of the clergy - and the court - had attracted God's wrathful eye. The four dread horsemen of the Apocalypse were let loose across the land to scourge it again with famine, war, pestilence and death. There had been all manner of sinister omens. A remarkable comet had flashed across the sky, its fiery tail pointing unmistakably towards France. In the south the earth had quaked and shuddered a warning, in Northumbria a woodman hacked into an oak that shrieked and shed human blood. And soon all England heard of the first disaster. The young Duke Lionel of Clarence, the King's second Son, the great golden giant who had laughed and drunk and jousted his way into the hearts of the people, he was dead in Italy. He had died on his wedding trip after marrying the Milanese heiress, Violante, and there were some who spoke of poison.

The period of mourning for Lionel was scarcely over before the people heard disquieting news which affected their lives more nearly. There was rebellion in Aquitaine. The treacherous and disloyal English subjects of Guienne and Gascony had refused to pay the hearth tax that the Prince of Wales had levied, though it was obvious that only by thus raising money from them could their own soldiery be paid for fighting the Castilian campaign. Worse than that, Charles the Fifth, the sly mealy-mouthed king of France, had dared to meddle in these English affairs, and suddenly find flaws in the execution of the treaty of Bretigny. The Prince of Wales, and later King Edward himself, responded with hot counter-charges. In April of 1369, after nine years of uneasy peace, war with France was declared again.

For a time in that catastrophic summer these national affairs scarcely affected Kettlethorpe, but the Swynfords shared more immediate troubles with the rest of England's rural population. .

It had been a winter of vicious cold, and when a late spring unlocked the deep-frozen earth it brought with it weeks of unremitting rain. Day after day the sullen skies lowered, and no sun showed. In June at the moon tide, an eagre thundered up the swollen Trent and burst the dikes as far as Newton, then the swirling waters rushed over the sodden land, drowning and devastating as they advanced.

At Kettlethorpe, one of Sir Robert's and Molly's little boys had been drowned, as he fished by the river; but the other villagers had taken refuge in the church, which was built on higher ground.

Around the manor house the moat merged with the flood waters until the building seemed to stand in the margin of a vast lake and the forest trees to the south pierced this lake like monstrous reeds. In the manor hall and courtyard, water had lain a foot deep for two days and the manor folk had huddled in the solar or the tower guardroom, in chill and hungry fear, until the flood at last subsided to leave behind a coating of viscous black mud, drowned sheep, and ruined crops.

Besides the drowning of the priest's boy and the devastation of the land, the flood brought Kettlethorpe another tragedy. The sound of rushing waters so near to her had roused the Lady Nichola from the mindless stupor into which she had fallen after little Blanche's birth. She had become greatly excited and, cramming her wasted body into the embrasure of her window, called out words of wild greeting to the river sprites. The waters rose higher until from her window she could see nothing but a shining sea, and this had provoked her to spine-chilling laughter. For months afterwards Katherine heard the echo of that laughter and felt remorse that she had not gone to try and calm the poor lady but instead had stopped her ears and stayed in the solar soothing her two babies and thinking of nothing but their safety.

Somehow, with the cunning and uncanny strength of madness, the Lady Nichola had loosened the bolt on her door. She had clambered up the stones to the roof of the tower and with one long triumphant cry had flung herself down into the waters below. It was many days before they found her body and brought it back to the little church for a Requiem Mass which the priest was reluctant to celebrate. Katherine overrode him fiercely, saying that it was the water elves that had bewitched the poor lady and driven her to suicide, and that therefore her soul could not be damned. Sir Robert, by no means certain of this theological point, finally gave in, and the Lady Nichola was laid to rest beneath the aisle slabs near the church altar - next to Gibbon.

Gibbon had faded slowly out of life, and last Christmas Eve had died in a manner as quiet and unassuming as the Lady Nichola's leave-taking had been frenzied. Katherine had mourned deeply for Gibbon, and Hugh had too. They had made a special trip into Lincoln to the cathedral to buy Masses for his soul, but Katherine had had no leisure for much mourning. Besides the care of little Blanche, there was the new baby, Thomas, there was the manor work, and there was Hugh.

On a searing hot afternoon in late August, Katherine sat on a heap of straw with the babies in the portion of her courtyard that was shaded by the gatehouse and listened to the tolling of their church bell from across the moat. It would toll for three hours in memory of yet another death, and though Katherine's tears did not flow as they had for Gibbon or even for Lady Nichola, she felt a poignant sadness, and she sat with folded hands and murmured, "Requiescat in pace."

On Lady Day, August 15, the good Queen Philippa had died at Windsor, when the labouring heart had no longer been able to struggle on beneath its burden of dropsical flesh. Sim, the reeve, had heard the news in Lincoln where he had gone to try and buy seed corn to replace the ruined crops. He brought back the doleful tidings about the Queen and also a letter from Geoffrey Chaucer which confirmed them and added more. Geoffrey wrote that there was plague in London and the south, an outbreak more virulent than any in eight years. Geoffrey was worried about his own Philippa, who was apparently pregnant at last, and much distraught over the Queen's death. After the funeral ceremonies and the Queen's interment in Westminster Abbey, Geoffrey thought to bring Philippa to Katherine in Lincolnshire, far from the dangerous London air, and leave her there, for he himself was ordered to France, on a mission for the King.

It had been over three years since the sisters had met, and this prospect helped temper Katherine's sadness. She looked down at the Queen's little brooch, with which today she had fastened the neck of her gown. Foi vainquera, she thought, touching the motto, and wondered if the Queen's faith had truly sustained her through these last years. Even at Kettlethorpe, one heard of the shameless Alice Perrers and the bejewelled splendour with which she openly flaunted her position as the King's mistress and adviser.

"Non, non, Blanchette!" cried Katherine, recalled from her abstraction by the straying of her eldest towards the stables. "Come back to Mama!" The baby giggled naughtily, her fat little legs ran faster. She was of an enterprising turn of mind, and she loved the stables and Doucette, her mother's palfrey; but there was danger from Hugh's stallion. Katherine flew across the courtyard and swooped the baby up in her arms, administering a gentle spank on the wriggling behind. "Mechante!" she whispered, burying her face in the plump little neck. Sometimes she talked French to the babies, though Hugh didn't like it. Blanchette pouted, then decided to nestle close to her mother. Katherine sat down again with the child on her lap. Blanchette was a vital, lively little thing, with a mop of marigold curls and round smoky grey eyes like her mother's, but darker. She was continually getting into mischief and Katherine adored her, as she had from the hour of her birth.

With little Tom it was different. Katherine looked down at the withe cradle where her son slept. He had been born in September on St. Matthew's Day nearly a year ago. He had given no trouble then, and he gave none now. He was a stolid child who seldom smiled and never gurgled or shrieked as Blanchette did. He had hemp-coloured crinkled hair and was in fact remarkably like his father.

Katherine sighed when she thought of Hugh. This morning when he rose at dawn to hunt the red deer in the forest, his bowels had griped and run with bloody flux again, and he had been so weakened after an hour at the privy pit behind the dovecote that even with Ellis's help he had scarce been able to mount his horse. This dysentery that Hugh had brought back from Castile often seemed cured and yet each time returned, despite Katherine's nursing and all the remedies suggested by Parson's Molly. They had tried garlic and ram's gall clysters, they had bled Hugh regularly, sprinkled his belly with holy water, and even called in the leech monk from St. Leonard's priory in Torksey. This monk fed Hugh a potion made of powdered toadstone, bade the ailment begone in the name of the Trinity and gave him a paper to wear above his navel on which was written, "Emmanuel, Veronica," but still the seizures and the flux came back at intervals, and Hugh suffered grimly.

The mourning bell, after a pause, clanged out again the first of fifty-six long tollings, one for each year of the Queen's life. Katherine recited a prayer, then settled herself more comfortably on the straw and leaned her head against the gatehouse wall. Blanchette had gone to sleep and Katherine eased the child down beside her. Flies buzzed lazily over the stinking dung pile near the cow-byre, where several chickens scratched for seed, but otherwise the courtyard was quiet, its usual activities suspended out of deference to the Queen. The afternoon grew warmer and Katherine longed for a drink, but she feared to disturb Blanchette and in any case was too drowsy to walk across the court to the well, and she would not tap the keg of ale they kept in the undercroft beneath the solar, for they must eke out the little they had left. God alone knew when they could brew more, since the flood had ruined the barley crop, and the scanty replacement had been sown so late and under the wrong aspects of the moon.

Katherine sighed again. She had been up since daybreak, caring for the babies and trying to help poor Hugh before attending the Queen's memorial Mass. She pulled Tom's cradle close to Blanchette and, curling around her sleeping children, nestled into the straw.

It was thus that the Chaucers found her a half-hour later. They had dismounted by the church, tied their horses to the lych-gate and walked across the drawbridge to inquire, because Philippa, on seeing the manor house, had been quite sure that there was some mistake. She was accustomed to royal castles and the palatial homes of noblemen, and nothing through the years of their separation had arisen to shake her conviction that her sister's enviable marriage to a landed knight presupposed baronial grandeur.

"I'll take oath this can't be Kettlethorpe Manor," she said to her husband as they entered the courtyard. "It must be the bailiff's home." Her high insistent voice penetrated Katherine's dreams, and the girl stirred and slowly raised her head. The movement caught Philippa's incredulous eye, and she turned.

"Blessed Saint Mary - 'tis Katherine! God's love, sister, do you sleep on straw, like a beast, here?" The shock momentarily outweighed Philippa's affection and she spoke in sharp dismay.

Since the day was so hot, Katherine had after church laid off her linen coif and bundled her masses of ruddy hair into a coarse hemp net - like a byre-maid, thought Philippa. Bits of straw were stuck amongst the damp curls that clung to the girl's cheeks. Her gown was of blue sendal but looked much like a peasant's kirtle, since Katherine had not covered it with the sideless furred surcote which befitted her rank; and worse than that, she had looped the long skirt up beneath her girdle so that it was plain to see that she wore no hose. Bare white ankles showed above the scuffed soft-leather shoes. Philippa was appalled.

Katherine blinked, still thinking that these two whom she had not seen for so long were part of her dream - a short plump young couple, both dressed in black, both gazing at her with, surprise - then she scrambled to her feet with a glad cry and rushing to her sister threw her arms around her neck. Philippa returned the kiss, but Geoffrey, who knew the signs, saw what his wife's next words would be like, and, himself kissing Katherine on each cheek, said quickly, "By God's mercy, my dear - you're fairer than ever - and these are the babes? La petite Blanche, wake up, poppet! Your uncle has brought you trinkets from London! And there's a fine fat boy! We'll have one just like him, eh, Pica?" and he pinched his wife's round cheek.

"With Christ's grace," said Philippa glancing at the babies, but not to be diverted. "Katherine, is this the way you keep your state as lady of the manor - what example do you give your servants? And-" She glanced frowning around the littered courtyard and at the small building and one low tower; her sharp eyes noted the crumblings between the aged stones, the mouldering thatch on the roof, the general air of dilapidation, and she finished more feebly," 'Tis not what I thought."

Katherine smiled at her sister, even welcoming the old atmosphere of reproof and admonition which took her back to childhood. "Kettlethorpe is small," she said temperately, "but we did well enough until this summer. We had a fearful flood and all our crops washed away. Our flocks too. Were it not for produce from our holdings at Coleby, which is on higher ground, I don't know where we'd turn. Hugh is hunting in the forest, but game is hard to find, the wild things were all driven out by the waters."

"Ah, yes," said Geoffrey sadly, "throughout England there's the smell of doom. We saw as we came north fires, famine - but here at least you've no plague - -"

Katherine glanced in sudden fear at her babies. Tom slept on, but Blanchette hid behind her mother and peered round at the strangers. "I've heard of none," she said, and crossed herself. "Is it so bad in the south - you - you haven't lost -"

She faltered, glancing at their mourning clothes which were of rich sable wool trimmed with velvet and strips of black fox. Philippa's tightly coiled dark braids were bound with an onyx and silver fillet, and beneath it her earnest face was round and neat as a penny.

"Oh, no," said Philippa, "we wear this for the Queen, God assoil her gentle soul. The suits were given us by the King's orders," She spoke with a certain complacence, though she sighed. She had been devoted to the Queen and now had no idea where her next permanent home would be, since Geoffrey was away so much on King's business and even now must return to Dover, then report to the Duke of Lancaster at Calais.

She was fond of Katherine, but in view of what she had already seen of Kettlethorpe, she could not but be doubtful about the protracted visit Geoffrey had planned for her. The Queen had left her a pension of a hundred shillings yearly, and Philippa suspected with natural annoyance that she might have to pay board instead of living in the luxurious elegance she had imagined, while saving her income for the benefit of her long-awaited baby.

"We had the Queen's Requiem Mass today - you hear the passing bell," said Katherine diffidently. "You mustn't think we don't sorrow for her here, though we are so far away."

Geoffrey's bright hazel eyes glanced at the girl and softened. Ever quick to catch human overtones, he heard the wistfulness in her voice, thought that she was more unhappy than she knew and bore herself with a rather touching gallantry. It was true that she was more beautiful than ever, her cheeks like red and white daisies, her lustrous eyes grey and soft as vair; she glowed with bright health though she was slender as a birch. Despite the two children and despite her eighteen years, there was still something virginal about her.

He reflected that it was not thus he had expected Katherine to be now, when he had first seen her at court three years ago, when he had said that she had le diable au corps and thought her a flame to light man's lust. He had thought that there was the mark of destiny upon her. And he had been wrong. The stars had held for her, it seemed, only the fate shared by thousands of other women; motherhood, housewifery, struggle and - as he at once discovered when Hugh returned - the endurance of a difficult, ailing husband.

By the time Hugh came in from hunting, the Chaucers had been settled in Lady Nichola's old tower-room and were in the Hall awaiting supper.

Hugh made an effort to greet his guests cordially. He sent Cob to broach the last keg of ale. Little Cob, the erstwhile spit-boy, was now nineteen and had been promoted to servitor, though he was still flax-haired and undersized, also sulky, for he liked farming and loathed his kitchen duties. He brought up a flagon of ale to the Hall and spilled some, at which Hugh gave him a savage kick on the shins.

Then Hugh filled the wooden mazer, said "Wassail," drank and passed it to Philippa as hospitality demanded. She answered "Drinkhail" uncertainly before she sipped. These Saxon customs were seldom seen at court, and Philippa tightened her lips. The ale was inferior and besides, she was used to wine. If it weren't for the plague - she thought unhappily - but there was no other place for her to go, and anyway she dared travel no farther in her condition

The wassail cup passed from Katherine to Geoffrey and back to Hugh, who took a deep draught, and spat most of it out on the rushes. Swallowing started the gripes. "What news of the Duke in Picardy?" he said through his teeth to his brother-in-law. "How goes the war?"

Geoffrey shrugged. "A standstill, I believe. Our noble Duke makes alarums and excursions, but that wily Valois fox has run to earth and will not fight; his skulking faineantise serves France well. He has but to wait until the Prince of Wales has insulted the last of our Gascon allies, then the whole of Aquitaine will revolt against us."

"You speak thus of the Prince?" Hugh said, frowning.

"My dear Hugh - I speak truth. In Aquitaine they call Edward 'the Black Prince,' and not only from the colour of his armour. Since Castile he steeps himself in wrath, he plunders and kills without mercy One by one he estranges his barons there, demanding that they maintain his magnificent English court at Bordeaux and yet allowing them no positions of importance. They're proud, those Gascons, as proud as we are. Is it wonder that they turn to the honied soothing welcome of the French king?'

'Thaw!" said Hugh, "the Gascons are scurvy riffraff - like any cur, they do better for a flogging!"

Katherine had retired to a corner behind the table while she suckled little Tom, but she looked at her husband when he said this, and wondered if he thought of Nirac.

There had been a fearful scene with Nirac, after Hugh's return two years ago. The wounded reeve had lost no time in taking his grievance to his lord, and he had slandered Katherine too. Hugh had gone berserk, accusing her of whoredom with the Gascon. Her own house servants had reluctantly come to her defence, and they and poor Gibbon had finally convinced Hugh Of her innocence. But Hugh had struck Nirac a violent blow across the mouth the kicked him off the manor. Nirac had gone without saying anything except one soft aside to Katherine in French. "Adieu, madam, I obey the Duke - but I shall not forget your brave knight." And his black eyes had glittered like a lizard's.

Hugh had aged much since Geoffrey had seen him last. There were white threads amongst the woolly drabness of his hair and beard. He had grown thin and had lost the chunky look he used to have. His high-necked, loose-sleeved blue cote-hardie hung on him slackly; deep furrows ran from his sharpened nose down either side of his clamped-in lips; the scar on his cheek lumped purple against the pallor of his skin. He could not be over thirty, but a young man's vigour had seeped out of him. Poor Katherine, thought Geoffrey, as Hugh with a muttered oath clutched at his belly and, doubling over, stumbled out into the courtyard. The jest that Geoffrey might, at another time, have made about this most ludicrous of human ailments died as he thought of it, and instead he said, "Is it because of these attacks that Hugh has not gone to join the Duke in war service?"

Katherine wiped the baby's mouth and put him down in the cradle. "Nay, for sometimes he is well," she said slowly, buttoning her bodice. " 'Tis that my Lord Duke ordered him not to come. He wrote from the Savoy that Hugh must stay on our manor to - to care for it." Katherine coloured and looked away from Geoffrey's sharp gaze. The Duke's letter had actually said, "You are ordered to remain at Kettlethorpe to give proper guardianship and care to your lady." Hugh had been hurt and angry. He had felt himself discarded, "put out to grass," though he made only that one comment. Nor had he ever said much about the ducal visit at the time of Blanchette's birth, except to express gratification at the honour done the baby.

"We've heard nothing else from Their Graces of Lancaster all this time," said Katherine, "except that the Duke sent that hanap for Blanchette." She pointed to a silver-gilt chalice which stood on a wall bracket below Hugh's hanging armour.

The cup had been specially engraved for the child with delicate foliage and tendrils supporting the Swynford blazon; on the knob of the richly carved cover there was a cabochon emerald - Blanchette's birthstone. "Nor should we expect to hear," she added hastily not wanting Geoffrey to think her presuming.

"Of course not," said Philippa, who knew better than Katherine the constant demands, confusion and movement from castle to castle that regal living entailed; and moreover there was war and the royal mournings. "I trust you were properly grateful for the Duke's favour, Katherine," she said crossly, looking at the cup. She had never received such a gift herself, and she thought it looked remarkably out of place against the damp sooty stones of this meagre Hall.

"I - we sent back thanks by the messenger," said Katherine uncomfortably. She had tried to write a letter to the Duke but had been ashamed to send it, though she had hunted for words to copy from the psalter. Writing was very different from reading, and the priest at the convent had taught her little of the art.

"The Duchess Blanche is this week to arrive at Bolingbroke," said Philippa. "She too flees from the plague."

"Is she, indeed?" A pang, half sweet, half bitter, shot through Katherine's heart. She thought of those twelve days of Christmas she had spent with the Duchess at Bolingbroke nearly three years ago and of the sympathy between them and the joy she had felt. She had not ceased to love the Duchess, even though the Lady Blanche forgot her.

"Why don't you ride over to Bolingbroke and wait on her, Katherine?" suggested Geoffrey. "'T'would be fitting."

Hugh had come back into the Hall and crouched in his high-backed chair, his knees drawn up to ease the cramps. His dull eyes lifted now to his brother-in-law's face, and he frowned.

"By all means!" cried Philippa, having instantly seen the advantages. "She was fond of you, and once she sees you, will renew her favours - though heaven knows you were stupid enough in that regard with the Queen - God absolve her soul - but still, the Lancasters have always taken some interest, and if Hugh's out of favour with the Duke-"

"Nay, he is not!" cut in Katherine sharply, as she heard her husband make a sound. "What a foolish thing to say -"

"Pica didn't mean that," said Chaucer, as usual covering his wife's bluntness. "Everyone knows that Hugh fought most bravely in Castile and doubtless the Duke's giving him special consideration in return. But 'twould be courteous to wait upon our most lovely lady since she's so near. Hugh would accompany Katherine."

"No," said Hugh sombrely. "I want no truckling in women's bowers. I'll abide here till the Duke sends. Ellis can escort Katherine since you think it seemly that she go." He leaned his chin on his hand and stared into space.

It was strange that Hugh never looked at his wife, Geoffrey thought. There seemed an excessive constraint or embarrassment, though perhaps explicable by his heavy nature or bodily discomforts.

"I'd like to go-" said Katherine hesitating. She sent towards Hugh an anxious smile to which he paid no attention. "For a few days - and take Blanchette, except not yet a while until Tom is weaned - and Hugh is better again - and, too, I -"

"Oh, peace to this babbling, Katherine!" said Philippa briskly. "You shall go next Monday before the whole of Lincolnshire knows that the Duchess is at Bolingbroke and the castle's swamped with supplicants. I'll take charge here and you may be easy in your mind. As for the baby, there must be some woman in the vill can give him suck. 'Tis time you stopped anyway, for you're thin as a rake-handle. Blanchette is yet too young to go, besides, she'd hinder you from full attention to pleasing the Duchess. You must use your wits, Katherine."

"My wits?" the girl repeated, half amused. She saw the well-remembered zeal in Philippa's eye, and wondered what the house carls would think of the determined hand which would be laid on them.

"Your wits, of course, p'tite imbecile! The Duchess has given you fine gifts before - and by the rood, you could use some now. Besides, a wise wife will find way to further her husband's interests. You should plainly tell her you're in want at Kettlethorpe, that Hugh has sickness he caught in the Duke's service, and perhaps a pension - -"

"I want no pension!" shouted Hugh furiously, "until I fight again."

"Bosh - Geoffrey has one from the King - twenty marks a year. 'Tis clear as glass to me, you two've no more sense than a couple of sheep."

Geoffrey chuckled. "Sheep or not, you'd best listen to Pica. Always she knows whereof she speaks."

" 'Tis fortunate," said Philippa, having accepted her husband's tribute and seeing that the Swynfords made no further protest but in their separate ways looked somewhat dazed, "that Katherine had had the plague and recovered. Maitre Jacques, the Queen's leech, says that when that happens, and 'tis most rare, the Black Death never strikes again."

"Did I?" said Katherine, startled. "You mean in Picardy - I remember that I was very ill when our grandparents died of plague. But I thought children were spared."

"Most were, it passed me by, but you turned speckled brown as a thrush, you bled from the nose and you had a plague boil big as an apple in your armpit. I remember when it burst, for we were alone in the farmhouse, you and I - everyone had deserted us."

"Ay-" said Katherine slowly. "The pain comes back now, and the relief when the matter spurted out. You gave me milk to drink - you nursed me, child that you were yourself. My sister, you were good to me." Katherine leaned over and kissed Philippa. "But I didn't know before how brave."

"By Saint Sebastian, I knew no better," said Philippa matter-of-factly, patting Katherine's arm. " 'Tis different today. In London, I took no chances with the impure air. I stuffed my nostrils with borage and trinity flowers, I carried the bezoar stone, and Geoffrey did too."

He nodded gravely. "Few have courage when the plague bells jangle and red crosses brand the doors... Katherine, will you play your lute and sing to us? Some cheerful tune."

"I've not played for long," she said. "Do you, Geoffrey, read to us instead, for you have some books in your saddlebag?"

"That he has," snapped Philippa, "crammed so full of them, he'd no room for change of linen or a pair of seemly shoes! An ink-horn, too, he's brought - and quills!"

Katherine met Geoffrey's eyes in a smile, as she remembered how her sister had thought to cure him of his perverse reading and scribbling.

"I've been trying to English Le Romaunt de la Rose," Geoffrey said with some diffidence. " 'Tis not near so good as Guillaume de Lorris's fair verses, but if you like to listen to that tale of courtly love-"

"Oh please!" cried Katherine. She gathered up Blanchette who had grown tired of playing with a blackamoor puppet the Chaucers had brought her, and settled the child comfortably in her arms.

Philippa sniffed, and seeing no help for it, picked up Katherine's neglected spindle and began to twirl yarn from the distaff.

Hugh gave a grunt of dissent, and saying that he wished to find Ellis, got up and went out of the Hall.

Geoffrey drew close-written parchments from his pouch and pulled his stool near the window light. "It begins by telling of dreams," he said to Katherine, "like this -

For this trowe I, and say for me,

That dreams signifiaunce be

Of good and harm to many wights,

That dreamen in their sleep a-nights

Full marry things covertly,

That fallen after openly."

Yes, that's true thought Katherine. Many things fell out as she had dreamed them. Some nights ago she had dreamed of a coffin and a great horde of weeping mourners garbed in black - and lo, the Queen was dead. But the poem was about love not death, and Katherine listened intently to the excerpts that Geoffrey read. With the dreamer of the story, she met Dame Idleness, Sir Mirth, the Lady Courtesy. She wandered in an enchanted garden so fair "that there is no place in paradise, so good in for to dwell or be, as in that garden." The God of Love, Lord of this garden, he was crowned with roses, and he had a young knight to serve him that was called "Sweet-looking". This young knight held two bows with which to shoot Love's arrows. There were five fair arrows and five foul arrows, and as Geoffrey read how the arrows were named, Katherine listened yet more eagerly, for it seemed to her that she might learn a little about this romantic love and its meanings.