Katherine

He groaned, "Sweet Christ, but I've a fearful pain - the gripes again."

She called to Ellis, and when he woke, told him to fetch a light from the kitchen fire. Hugh writhed and moaned. When Ellis came back and lit a candle, she saw that Hugh's cheeks had gone hollow, there was slime on his lips and his glistening face was greenish. Then he began to vomit and purge. She and Ellis worked frantically trying to ease him.

"What can have happened, lady?" whispered the squire.

"I know not," she whispered back, distracted. "It's the flux again, but worse than I've ever seen it - dear God - Ellis, can you find the Grey Friar?"

The squire stumbled downstairs and ran out through the court. The violent bloody vomiting and purging eased a little, Hugh lay back exhausted. She wiped the sweat from him and murmured gentle sounds while her heart beat fast with fear. Could it be the fruit that had loosened his bowels? Hugh had eaten several of the luscious figs and peaches. Oh Blessed Mother, she thought, I should not have let him eat the fruit.

She put her arm under his head and raised it a little. "Hugh dear - finish Brother William's draught - it must help you - would to God there were more of it." She held the cup to his lips and he swallowed mechanically, then he fell back crying, "Water!" There was a little in the washing pitcher, she mixed it with wine to make it wholesome and gave it to him in the clay cup.

Suddenly he started up and looked at her wildly. "Don't you hear it?" he cried. "It's across the Trent in the forest. Listen! It comes nearer. It scents me now - it scents death."

"Hugh, my dear husband-" She put her arms around him, trying to hold him down, while he twisted and turned, regardless of his injured leg, unknowing of her.

Soon he gave a great cry of pain, and, doubling over with spasm, began again to vomit. When the Grey Friar came running in with Ellis, he stood by the bed and shook his head. "God pity him!" he murmured sadly, feeling Hugh's pulse, which was so feeble and lagging, and the wrist so clammy-cold that the physician knew there was no time to be lost in giving him the last rites.

Katherine knelt in the other room, while the friar's voice intoned the prayer for the dying. She could not pray, she could not think. She was held in a great dazed disbelief.

The friar called her and they stood together by the bedside. Hugh's eyelids fluttered, he said quite clearly, "Tis a bloody struggle, the pooka hound and the bull - the hound has him by the throat." His eyes opened wider and he looked up at Katherine. "A bloody struggle, Katherine-" he said.

"Christ have mercy -"

She bent and kissed the grey forehead. He was quiet for a few more minutes while Ellis kneeling on the other side of the bed wept with dry racking sobs.

Then Hugh gave a long shudder and his breathing stopped. The friar crossed himself, and Katherine followed suit. She felt nothing but the vast disbelief.

CHAPTER XV

Brother William stayed the night in the Swynford lodgings. After summoning the old crones who laid out the corpse, he took pitying charge of Katherine and Ellis. To the former he gave a sleeping draught, but the young squire, who could not stop blubbering and moaning, he kept busy with many necessary tasks.

The Grey Friar was accustomed to the sad procedures attendant upon the death of an English knight abroad. In the morning he started to make arrangements for the Requiem Mass, temporary disposition of the coffin and passage for it on a homebound ship, when the friar bethought him that perhaps the Duke should be notified first. To be sure, His Grace had for some time shown no interest in Sir Hugh's welfare and also was of so impatient and puzzling a humour lately that the friar hesitated to bother him. Still, there was poor Lady Swynford to be considered, and her now undetermined position.

Having left Katherine sleeping under the opiate and Ellis hunched in a corner and drinking himself into oblivion, the friar set out for the palace.

The Duke was in Council. He sat listlessly on the gilded throne of Aquitaine, beneath the embossed lilies and leopards of the blazon. He had none of his usual alertness nor held his long body with the decorum he normally showed to the office his brother had bequeathed him. His legs crossed, his fingers worrying a loose fringe on the crimson velvet arm-rest, he listened moodily to the propositions and wrangles of his councillors.

Sir Guichard d'Angle, reporting on his most recent trip to Bayonne, informed them all wryly that the Castilian court there, sure now of England's eagerness for the marriage, was acting with ridiculous pride and greed. "One would think 'twere the daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor His Grace would wed! They demand yet another jointure settled on the Queen. They demand that she may bring twelve of her ladies with her and as many courtiers. They refuse to let her near Bordeaux until after the ceremony."

The Captal de Buch twirled the cup of wine that stood ever at his elbow and gave a great laugh. "Bluster, mon vieux," he said to Sir Guichard, "nothing but bluster. The Castilians can haggle as well as the Jews, you know."

"Then," broke in de la Pole hotly, "we must use a firm hand."

The Duke leaned forward. "Nay," he said in a tone of angry command. "Give them what they want. And the marriage may take place at Roquefort."

The captal, shrugging, buried his formidable beak in his cup. Sir Guichard bowed to the Duke and, beckoning to the clerks who waited with parchment spread at a smaller table, said, "Then we will draft a letter, my lord."

This business was proceeding when they were interrupted by a commotion near the door. The yeoman-on-guard expostulated with someone, until a shrill determined voice cried, "But it is vairy important, le duc will agree!"

John frowned and again raised his heavy lids. "By Our Lady, Nirac!" he called irritably, "what is it?"

The little Gascon slithered past the door and ran to his master. He knelt on the dais and gabbled very low, in the langue d'oc, "Brother William Appleton is here, 'e has something to tell you."

"In God's name - you little fool - do you burst in here to tell me that! - ah?" John stared down with startled question into Nirac's unwinking black eyes. The Gascon raised his brows slowly - with meaning.

"I'm sorry, gentlemen," John said, rising. "A matter I must attend to."

"But Your Grace," cried Sir Thomas Felton, "there's grave trouble in the north, Bertrand du Guesclin-"

"I'll return shortly, Sir Thomas, but I think you forget I resigned full power here. 'Tis now in your hands to administer Aquitaine, you and the captal. No doubt you'll do far better than I have." He gave the two men a cold nod and, followed by Nirac, walked out of the Council room. The men stood up and bowed as he passed them, then reseated themselves in some consternation.

"Mauvaise humeur" said the captal, chuckling. "His temper grows as thorny as the poor Prince of Wales'. Norn de Dieu - these Plantagenets! They should laugh more - enjoy life. What that one needs," he jerked his plump chins towards the door, "is a woman!"

"So you keep saying," growled de la Pole. "He's getting one, isn't he?"

"A warm complaisant wench," said the captal imperturbably, "not a yellow bag of bones who thinks of naught but avenging her dead papa. I could find him a woman; - I know a little dancer, a Navarrese - round thighs - -breasts like pillows - lips juicy as mulberries." The captal, ticking off these attractions on stubby fingers, would have continued, but the Englishman snorted impatiently, and Sir Guichard interrupted with a smile.

"Enfin, captal - no doubt she's superb, your little Navarrese. But to a determined man, all cats are grey at night.

Also Costanza is proud - mon Dieu, how proud! And jealous too, I'll warrant. If the Castilians got wind of dalliance now, it might wreck the marriage."

"A plague on the marriage!" cried Sir Thomas Felton. "The question is what are we to do about du Guesclin?"

John stood by the empty fireplace in the antechamber of his private suite and heard the Grey Friar speak in a calm and sorrowful voice the incredible words, "And so, my lord, the poor knight is dead, God absolve his soul!"

"What-" said the Duke so low that it was scarcely a whisper. "What did you say?"

"I said, my lord, that Sir Hugh Swynford suffered a violent attack of dysentery and is dead."

"But he can't be - he was getting well. He can't be!"

This cry was uttered on so strange a note and the Duke turned his back on the friar so violently that Brother William took it for anger and said humbly, "Your Grace, forgive me. I did my best. I applied all the skill God has granted me, but it was not His Will that the knight should live."

Nirac stood unnoticed near the door, his arms crossed on his chest, now he hugged them tight around himself, for he could see his master's face though the friar could not. He saw the look of dazed incredulity give way to awe, and then the blue eyes blazed wide open. The Duke repeated, slowly and in a shaking voice, "It was not His Will that the knight should live!"

"The funeral arrangements, Your Grace-" persisted the friar, puzzled by the Duke's averted back and choked speech. "I can attend to all that, but 'tis a melancholy situation for the widow, and the squire. I thought perhaps you might wish to direct your chamberlain or some other of your household officers to call?"

"The widow," said the Duke. "Aye, the widow, you said, Brother. I shall attend to that myself," and now as the Duke turned, the astounded Grey Friar saw what Nirac had seen - the face of joy - the young, eager, tremulous face of joy.

Brother William started back, frowning. "My lord, what would you of her? She is in great grief, unprotected, and I believe a truly virtuous woman-"

"I know that. And I shall not forget. But there are things you do not know." The Duke smiled with a tenderness that astonished the Grey Friar and added softly, "God has heard my prayers and given me blessing. Nay, good Brother, don't look so sour, you're not my confessor. You've done all you need. Wipe out this matter from your mind. Here, take this." He opened the purse at his belt and thrust into the friar's unwilling hand a dozen gold nobles. "For the poor, for the sick, for the lepers, for anything you like. Now leave me alone!"

For the next three days the court was mystified by their ruler's behaviour, though the younger lords and ladies were delighted. Between one breath and the next, it seemed, the Duke had thrown off all the heavy brooding and ill temper he had shown for months.

Each day he rode out hawking by the river with a party of congenial courtiers and shouted triumph when his great white gerfalcon, Oriana, brought down wild duck and heron. Each day he took part in joustings and small deeds of arms with one or another of his knights. And there was dancing and singing in the Grande Salle at night.

Amongst the courtiers, only the Captal de Buch knew the reason for this volte-face on the part of the Duke, who had consulted him on a certain matter. The captal, of course, highly approved, chuckled often to himself, but kept his own counsel as he had been told to do.

On the fourth day after Hugh's death, the Duke sent word to the Princess Isabel that he would be absent for a while and that she and Edmund were to preside over the High Table in his place.

At dusk the Duke and Nirac left the palace by the privy stair, both of them enveloped in dark grey cloaks and hoods without insignia, and though John rode his strongest and favourite charger, Palamon, the horse's trappings were simple enough to befit a plain Bordelais burgher. They rode silently through the streets past the cathedral to the Swynford lodgings, where the frowsy courtyard was deserted except for a snuffling pig and some chickens that scratched at the manure pile.

Upstairs, Katherine sat by the empty bed, staring at the note from the Duke which she had received earlier that day. Nirac had brought it and waited for her answer. "I'll be here at vesper time and will receive my Lord Duke," she had said to Nirac. "But tell him that is all. It must be farewell."

After Nirac had bowed and gone, she had sat on, scarcely moving, forgetting food and drink, as she had for days. It seemed as though someone else inhabited her body while the real Katherine still slept under the opiate the friar had given her. Her body, swathed and veiled in black, had attended the

Requiem Mass and the brief ceremony when the coffin was consigned to the cathedral crypt to await transportation home. Her eyes had even wept as her hands took off the clumsy Swynford betrothal ring and placed it in the coffin. Later she had tended Ellis, who had passed through roaring drunkenness into stupor. But no special thought had accompanied any of these things.

Even the Duke's note had not awakened Katherine, though somewhere within her there had been a shivering. Like the distortions dimly heard and seen through that yellow plague fog at Bolingbroke, life came to her muffled.

When the noise of horses clattered up from the courtyard, Ellis had been burnishing Hugh's armour, rubbing off every fleck of rust. At times when he was less drunk than others, this occupation gave him some comfort. " 'Twill do for little Tom," he said to Katherine. "Little Tom'll soon grow to it, now he must fill his father's shoes."

She nodded, but her babies seemed as remote as everything else.

The courtyard sounds augmented, and Ellis peered out of the window. "There's two horsemen coming upstairs," he said, putting down Hugh's hauberk. "What can they want?" He opened the door, and Katherine stood up.

A tall man walked in, and threw back his hood.

"My Lord Duke!" cried Ellis, dropping to his knees. His bloodshot befuddled eyes squinted up uncertainly. Nirac hovered on the landing.

"I've come for you, Katrine," said John quietly, ignoring Ellis and looking over his head at the girl.

"No, my lord," she whispered, but some of the muffling veils around her dissolved, her breathing quickened. Ellis stumbled to his feet and stood, swaying a little, his jaw thrust out, peering from his lady to the Duke, who spoke again.

"Ay - dear heart. You're coming with me. There's nothing now to keep us apart." Lifting his arms, John took a step towards her as she stood mute and still by the bed.

"You dare not touch her!" shouted Ellis, his wits clearing. "You dare not touch my lady!" Lunging suddenly, his great hamlike fist shot out and blundered harmlessly past John's shoulder. The Duke stepped sideways, then with swift negligent motion hit Ellis squarely on the chin. The squire reeled, tottered over backward and lay gasping on the floor. Katherine gave a cry and would have run to the squire, but John forestalled her with another swift movement. He picked her up in his arms and held her so cruelly tight that she could not move. He laughed exultantly and kissed her on the mouth until she ceased to struggle; still holding her pinioned, he walked downstairs with her and, mounting Palamon, placed her in front of him on the saddle, half covered by the folds of his cloak. The horse jumped forward at the spur.

The saddle, which had been built for a man in full armour, easily held them both, and Katherine made no further protest. Her head fell on John's chest, where she heard the beating of his heart.

The horse cantered for many miles before it slackened, then John, looking down at the head on his breast, shifted her weight a little on his arm and said with a gentle laugh, "And do you sleep, Katrine?"

"No, my lord," she said looking up at him in the darkness. "I think I am happy. It's very strange."

He bent and kissed her. "You will be happy, and always."

A cool salt-laden wind sprang up, she felt it on her face,. and at the same time Palamon slowed to a walk while the sound of his great hooves grew dull and plodding. She roused herself and hearing the shrill cry of a gull said, "Are we near the sea, my lord?"

"Ay," he said, "we're in Les Landes, Katrine. We go to the captal's Chateau la Teste. Do you know where that is?"

"No," she said quietly. "I only know that from wherever it is that we're going there can be no turning back."

He tightened his arm around her, they rode on in silence.

Les Landes was the weirdest and most desert portion of France. On its sand and tufa wastes nothing grew except the stunted furze or bracken, and reeds in the salt marshes. Here the airs were thick with mist and the ever-encroaching ocean pushed the sand dunes back and back over the undetermined land.

There was one track marked by white stones across these marshes. It was maintained by the Captal de Buch, whose ancestors, centuries ago, had built themselves a secluded fortress on the Gulf of Arcachon. It was but thirty miles from Bordeaux, yet deep in an isolation desirable to a tribe of sea barons.

As they neared the castle, two of the captal's retainers, mounted men-at-arms holding torches, came down the road to meet them and guided them the rest of the way. They went beneath the raised portcullis through massive walk and stopped by the door of a round donjon tower. Katherine was so cramped and chilled that she could scarcely stand. John put his arm around her waist and they ascended the rough winding stairs to the Hall.

Here, though no servants were visible, the captal's varlets had ably followed his orders, as relayed from the Duke. An enormous driftwood fire blazed on the hearth, in the iron brackets a dozen perfumed candles burned. The mouldering stone walls had been covered with painted silk hangings and arras brought from Bordeaux, the floor was strewn with sweet rushes and rose petals, while the single small damask-covered table was banked with jasmine.

John, watching Katherine tenderly, saw the deep breath with which she drew in the delicious fragrances, and he smiled. He had created beauty for her here, in this dank old fortress, and he had forgotten nothing which would add to the sensuous enhancement of their joy.

"Take off your black robe, Katrine," he said, "and refresh yourself, my dear heart. You'll find everything needful here." He led her to a small room adjacent to the Hall. Here too a fire blazed, and the bed which had been brought by wagon from Bordeaux was furnished with silk sheets and pillows and hung with gold taffeta powdered with tiny jewelled ostrich feathers and crowns.

A fat tiring-woman curtsied as they entered, and, holding out a basin of warm water to Katherine, waited with dull incurious eyes. The Duke withdrew saying, "Hurry!" on an eager laugh.

While the girl washed, the tiring-woman brought her a gown from the garde-robe. "For you to wear - le captal wants," she said. Actually the Duke himself had ordered the gown made for Katherine, but the tiring-woman had never left La Teste and knew of no lord but the captal.

The robe was of cream-white sendal trimmed only by an embroidered gold and green cipher on the low-cut bosom. The cipher was a J and K intertwined with leaves and set in a heart. Katherine looked at the cipher and her eyes filled with bitter-sweet tears. She slipped the gown over her head and the woman girded it, then, unbinding Katherine's hair, she began to comb out the long shimmering auburn strands.

John came back to the door as Katherine started to replait her hair. "Nay" he cried, "don't bind it, my love! Leave it loose!"

"Like a bride?" she whispered, half smiling, yet troubled. He came to her and seizing a handful of the gleaming hair carried it to his lips. The tiring-woman backed away, John made a quick gesture, and she turned and waddled off to the stairs.

They supped together at the table near the fire in the Hall. Nirac would have waited on them, but as he bent over to fill the gold hanaps with pale delicate wine from the captal's cellars, a shrinking repulsion penetrated Katherine's enchantment. When the little Gascon had retired to the serving table she said softly, "My dear lord, could we not be alone? I can serve you."

"Of course," he said instantly, and dismissed Nirac, though John was faintly surprised. He had thought that his choice of servitor was the precise one which would save her all embarrassment. "You don't dislike Nirac, do you?" he asked when they were alone.

She shook her head, not knowing herself what had caused the shrinking. "A whim, my dearest lord," she said. "Women have them-" Suddenly across the table she gave him her tenderly wistful and seductive smile. "Will you be gentle with my whims?"

She was all beauty as she sat there in her white dress. Her hair fell nearly to the rushes and glistened like the carnelians he had once compared it to, her red lips were parted, her grey eyes dark with love. He trembled, and going to her knelt beside her.

"I shall not always be gentle, Katrine," he said looking up into her face. "But by the soul of my mother, I shall love you until I die."

She bent over and opening her arms drew his head against her breasts. A gull mewed again outside the fortress, the fresh tang of the sea crept through the windows to mingle with the warmth of jasmine.

He raised his head from her breast and they looked without fear or striving, but quietly; deep into each other's eyes.

They stayed three days at the captal's old fortress in Les Landes and during that time they never left the Hall and the bedchamber.

The ecstasy of their union brought to each of them a wondering awe. Katherine had nothing but dreams with which to compare this sweet agony of passion, unslaked even by the bliss of fulfilment, and the total merging of herself into another, so that even for the moments they were away from each other's arms she felt him as much part of her flesh as its throbbing veins.

John had known love before, but not like this. How palely gentle and courteous now seemed that far-off time with Blanche! Then there had been reticences and dignity, and quietly maternal indulgence, and always, on his part, gratitude.

Now there was no need for reticence or gratitude. Here in the sea-scented bedchamber were a man and a woman who came together naked and unashamed, proudly bestowing on each other the beauty of their bodies and thereby finding ineffable joy.

On the third evening they sat on piled cushions before the fire, drinking wine from a single cup, laughing at nothing and whispering little words such as lovers have always used.

Then John reached out his arm for the lute which hung by a red velvet ribbon from a hearth peg and said, "Lovedy, listen. Now I think I have the tune for the song I wished to sing you - -"

She drew a little from his arms that he might play unencumbered, and they smiled at each other as he rippled his fingers tentatively across the strings. "You, my Katrine, are all love-some things,'' he said softly, "and I am the man who says -

She is coral of goodness, ruby of tightness.

She is crystal of cleanness, and banner of beauty.

Site is lily of largesse, periwinkle of prowess.

She is marigold of sweetness, and lady of loyalty.

For her love I cork and care,

For her love I droop and dare,

For her love my bliss is bare

And I wax all wan. For her love in sleep I slake,

For her love all night I wake,

For her love I'd mourning make

More than any man."

He sang the old English words to a haunting melody that had come to him, and when he repeated the chorus she joined him, changing only the pronoun to, "For his love I cark and care, for his love I droop and dare," singing in her rich golden voice.

So lovely was their duet that the Captal de Buch who had paused, panting from the stairs, outside the door of the Hall, turned with startled emotion to Nirac who had followed him. "Norn de Vierge! Can that be the Duke? They sing like angels in there together. Are they then so happy?"

Nirac shrugged and answered with harshness, "No doubt they are, captal. I've not seen them in three days. The tiring-woman waits on them."

The captal raised his bushy eyebrows and laughed. "Oh la belle chose, hein?" he said winking at Nirac. "One forgets all else!" He thumped with his fist on the door, but they were finishing their song and did not hear him, so he opened the door. Earthy libertine though he was, the captal's roguish greeting died in his throat when he saw them.

The two on the cushions seemed to be bathed in light. The girl was but half clothed yet so pure was the beauty of her arms and breasts gleaming like alabaster between strands of long auburn hair, and so adoring the expression on the Duke's face, that the captal saw no lewdness, but felt instead a bitter stab of nostalgia. Thirty years ago there had been a moment almost like this for him too, but it had lasted only a little while, when the woman had died.

"Your pardon, my lord - lady - -" he stammered, backing off. He saw the measure of the entrancement which held the Duke, in that he did not flash with fury at this interruption. Instead he put his arm around the girl and held her against him in a gesture so tender and protective that the captal swallowed hard.

"What is it, my good de Grailly?" John said. "Have you come to be thanked for your wondrous hospitality?" He smiled and bending his head laid his cheek for a moment against Katherine's hair. "We will not need paradise, I think, my Katrine, after Chateau la Teste."

The girl raised her brilliant eyes and moved in her lover's arm, as though she nestled closer.

The captal cleared his throat. "I came, my lord, because you told me to. It - it is now Thursday night. There are - are many urgent matters awaiting you at Bordeaux." He saw the wincing that passed over the girl's face and added uncomfortably, "May I have a few words with you, my lord?"

The Duke started to refuse, but Katherine, clutching her white robe around her, slipped from his arm, and giving the captal a proud tremulous smile, walked back into the bedchamber.

"She's of a great beauty, your little Swynford, mon duc," said the captal, recovering his aplomb now that Katherine was gone. "I congratulate you on a delicious interlude. I deeply regret to wrest you out of it."

The Duke looked at him strangely, and said, "She is my heart's blood. My life. I want nothing but her."

"Doux Jesu!" murmured the captal He walked to the wine flagon and pouring himself a goblet full, drank it hastily. "The Castilian commissioners have returned with the signed contracts and ring, Your Grace. You are now formally betrothed to the Queen of Castile. The marriage is set for the Feast of Saint Matthew in the church at Roquefort as you commanded."

The Duke said nothing. Lines drew themselves around his mouth. His eyes grew harsh, the face which had been glowing and young as Katherine's showed all of his thirty-one years.

"Yesterday," pursued the captal, "John Holland of Kent arrived from England with wedding presents and letters from the King's Grace, your father, and the Prince of Wales. I have brought them to you - I had," he added, "a bad time hiding your whereabouts. At last I told them you were fulfilling a secret vow. It is a vow to Saint Venus, pardieu!" He chuckled and slapped his thigh, then sobered at the look in the Duke's eyes.

The captal opened his pouch and extracting two folded parchments, each impressed with red ribbon and large royal seals, held them out to the Duke, who stared at them in silence without taking them.

The man is bewitched, thought the captal, uneasily. "Be reasonable, my lord. One must never let one's little pleasures interfere with the really important affairs of life. Nor have I ever known you do so before. John Holland says that in England they buzz with excitement about your marriage. The people seem much pleased at the alliance."

"The devil take the commons - what care I for them? And the devil take my marriage," said the Duke. He looked towards the arras which covered the door of their bedchamber. "The thought of Costanza sickens me!"

The captal was shocked. He gulped the rest of his wine while wishing passionately that some eloquent man like Guichard d'Angle or even de la Pole could deal with this dangerous frame of mind.

"Costanza is but means to an end, mon duc" he said at last. "She means Castile. You will be King." Aha touche, thought the captal as he saw the blue eyes flicker. He belched with relief, settled his girdle over his paunch and continued. "Once married and in England, you may naturally do as you please. The little Swynford need not leave you. It isn't as though she were someone you might marry."

The Duke's tall body slumped. He flung himself in a chair and gazed down at the fresh jasmine petals which were strewn amongst the rushes. "You speak twofold truth, captal," he said after a silence. "I could never marry her and she must never leave me."

"Ah bon, so all will arrange itself," laughed the captal. He tore the leg off a raisin-stuffed capon that stood untouched on the table, amused to see that little of the excellent food his cook had sent up to the lovers had been eaten. "We'll set out for Bordeaux, then, at daybreak? Your Council will be waiting you at nine."

"No," said the Duke. "I'll not go to Bordeaux tomorrow. Nor for a fortnight."

The captal put down his capon leg. "But my lord-"

"For two more weeks, Katrine and I shall be alone together. I'm going to take her to the Pyrenees."

"Pitie de Dieu! But you can't!" stammered the captal. "What would people say? And there's no time, the wedding arrangements - this is folly!"

John got up from the chair and lifted his eyebrows. "You forget, de Grailly, whom you are addressing!"

The captal flushed and murmured apology while he thought, These English - they are mad. Sentimental, stiff-necked fools, God pity them. He cannot go running around the country with his harlot just now, it's imbecile. Fraught with clanger too, political and personal.

But the captal found there was no help for it. The Duke gave him minute instructions and ended the interview by calling "Katrine" in a voice of intense longing.

The lovers left Chateau la Teste the next noon, headed for the south, and dressed as a nondescript couple of pilgrims, John in the brown sackcloth he had used earlier when he found Katherine at the cathedral, and she in a short green kirtle and cape which had come from a chest in the keep. Green was the colour of true love and they were delighted with the find. With them on the journey went two of the captal's men, a shepherd and a blacksmith, both sturdy fellows well acquainted with the nearly trackless wastelands they must traverse, but of wits too dull to question this expedition or the couple they escorted.

Nirac did not accompany his master, as he had expected to do when he heard of the plan. Even had Katherine's lightest request not been law to John at that time, he himself felt less affection for Nirac than he used to. The little Gascon had lost his charm and impudent smile, he had received the Duke's orders to return to Bordeaux in heavy silence. His eyes were bloodshot, his sallow skin had a grey tinge, so that John had said kindly, "Have you a fever, Nirac? You don't look well. You must rest till I return. Here," and he gave him a gold noble, "a little reward for your many services."

"For my services, mon duc" Nirac repeated in a peculiar tone. The Duke glanced at him, but though he heard something like "You know not what service I've rendered you," he dismissed it as a vagary.

When they left the courtyard of La Teste, Katherine rode pillion behind John on Palamon. As she glanced back in farewell towards the round tower where she had known rapture, she saw Nirac standing against the wall apart from the stable-boys who had gathered in the court.

Nirac's little monkey face was twisted as though he were crying. It was turned up towards the oblivious Duke, but when the Gascon felt Katherine's gaze, his glance shifted to her and she waved to him in sympathy, feeling something of Nirac's miserable jealousy. He did not wave back and at that distance she could not be sure, but it seemed as though his eyes glinted at her with sudden bleak hatred.

This distressed her for only a second, then she forgot him. Her arms tightened around John's waist and she leaned her cheek on his shoulder. Beneath the musty harsh sackcloth she sensed the warmth of his skin and its cleanly male tang of bergamot.

He raised one of her hands from his girdle and kissed the palm, then turned and smiled at her. "You are happy, sweet heart?"

"Happy, my dearest lord."

"Nay, Katrine, for these-" He could not bear to put a term to the time they would be like this together, nor had she asked. They spoke of nothing but each other and their love. "For this journey I am not your 'Lord,' we are but John and Katherine, a respectable couple bound like many another on pilgrimage to Compostela. We are nothing else."

He did not know himself why he yearned to take her to the wildness and grandeur of the Pyrenees. Perhaps it was that he wished to be alone with her in lands which did not owe him suzerainty and where no one could know him. Perhaps it was the more primitive instinct of seeking the most beautiful of natural frames for their love.

And on the second day as they crossed Les Landes, when they saw the Pyrenees, ragged crests of purple shadows tinged with silver, sharp-etched against the southern sky, Katherine caught her breath. Tears came to her eyes. She shared at once with him the mystic exaltation that called out to them like a great chord of music from these mountains, and as they penetrated through the strange Basque lands into Navarre, climbing ever upward amongst rushing streams, rock cliffs and the darkness of pines, their love deepened. No longer frenzied in its physical hunger but sustained and quietened by a spirit higher than themselves.

One day they reached Roncevalles at the top of the pass near the Pas de Roland where Charlemagne's great paladin had been killed six hundred years before. Here there was a large abbey built for the accommodation of travellers and pilgrims between Spain and France. But they avoided the abbey with its curious priests and summer load of wayfarers and pushed on some miles to a tiny mountain inn.

This inn was a rendezvous for smugglers and accustomed to receiving all manner of guests. The black-eyed landlady asked no questions, responded with a shrug to John's halting Basque, bit the silver coin he gave her, and allotted them a small clean chamber over the storage room, while the captal's two servitors were quartered in one of the many caves hollowed out of the cliff.

The days that John and Katherine spent at the inn were a timeless enchantment. They slept on a pile of sweet-smelling hay. They drank the strong heady wine that was poured from goatskins, and ate trout and ecrevisses and hot tasty dishes brewed with the red peppers that dangled like strings of great rubies along the creamy inn walls. They wandered off amongst the mountains and found a small pastured valley by a waterfall where-Katherine picked wild flowers: the tiny lemon-coloured saxifrages, violet ramondia, white spiky asphodel, and alpen-rose. She wove them into garlands while John lay on the velvet greensward beside her, pelting her lazily with the flowers, or content to watch her. Sometimes they sang together, and he often recited to her poems and ballads he had learned in his youth.

In this bright secret valley which they had made their own, there was a ruined chapel, abandoned long ago by the mountaineers, who thought it haunted by the wild mountain spirits. Two of the chapel walls had fallen into rubble, but against a portion of the east wall the rough square altar still stood. It was carved with odd runic scrolls and supported a stone crucifix.

When nearly a week had passed there came a night that Katherine felt a change. New dark urgency and restlessness were on her lover, he embraced her with more violent, even brutal, passion. Several times he started to speak to her but checked himself, and she was afraid.

She fell at last into heavy, miserable sleep. When she awoke the first rays of the sun came through the window. She started up with a cry, for he was not beside her. She waited and called, but there was no answer. She dressed with clumsy shaking fingers, ran down through the deserted inn and outside into the cool sunrise.

Palamon was in the stable. He whickered gently as she spoke to him, so she guessed where John had gone, and ran up the stony hills and through the beech and pine copses until she reached their valley. At first she could not find him,, then she looked upward and saw a tall solitary figure standing on top of a little peak that guarded the valley to the south.

She slowed her pace and climbed up to him silently. He did not move as she joined him on the summit; she thought he had not heard her. His head was lifted, his tawny hair stirred in the wind, while he gazed with fixed sombre intensity over distant plains that lay spread out far below them to the dim horizon.

Her heart beat hard and painfully, seeing that he had indeed gone from her, and there was no welcome.

Yet as she turned to go he spoke, without looking at her, his gaze still fastened on the horizon. "That is Castile, far yonder where the gold light falls on the hills."

Castile. The word hissed like an adder. "I hate it, hate it!" she cried. The hoarse shaking voice was not her own, she tried to stop it and could not. "I hate it, and I hate her, the Castilian woman! Tell me, my Lord Duke-who-would-be-king, when will the Castilian wench become a bride?"

His nostrils flared, he jerked around on her with a violence to match her own, "You dare to speak to me like that! You forget, Katrine - -"

"Forget! Can I ever forget that this is pretence! Can I ever forget your royal birth or your royal hopes? Yet I do dare to say I hate them. I am no duchess, no queen, but I have been your equal in love, for this I dare to tell you how I feel."

Anger died from his eyes. He bent his head and stepped towards her. "Dear heart, we are equal in love. You've no cause for hatred, for you shall never leave me. I've been thinking, and have decided what's to be done. You shall go back to England at once and wait for me at the Savoy-"

"And I'm to be your leman for all the world to see, like Alice Perrers to the King? And what of your new Duchess, the Queen Costanza? How will she like this arrangement?"

He stiffened and said coldly, "You have little knowledge of courts. It is a common arrangement. Be reasonable. After all, we have been lovers this past fortnight without scruples."

"This past fortnight, my lord, we have hurt or dishonoured no one. We are both - still - free." Her voice broke. She looked at him with anguish and fled down the hillside, stumbling and tripping on the rough ground until she reached the valley, where moved by blind impulse she ran into the little ruined chapel and flung herself down to her knees with her hands clasped on the altar.

She felt him kneel down beside her and then, after a moment, a touch on her arm. He said very low, "Look at me."

She raised her head slowly and obeyed. Tears stood in his eyes, and his arrogant mouth quivered. He took her right hand in his and spoke solemnly, "Here on consecrated ground, I, John, do plight thee, Katrine, my love and in token do give thee this ring, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." He drew from his finger the sapphire seal ring that Blanche had given him and slipped it on Katherine's middle finger. She stared down at it and a sob tore up from her chest.

They both turned to the blunted little stone crucifix, and through the roofless chapel their prayers floated out to mingle with the murmur of the waterfall.

On September 18, three days before the Feast of Saint Matthew, Katherine sat alone in a guest chamber of the Benedictine nunnery at Bordeaux. Her travelling chest had been brought here to her, and she was again dressed in her black mourning robes, her braided hair bound into black velvet cauls and covered with a thin veil. A breeze pungent with the tang of fresh-trampled grapes from a hundred villages carried the distant shouts of the peasants working in the vineyards. Katherine sat quietly by the window looking out over the harbour where a cluster of masts dipped and swung with the ripples of the Garonne. Her face was white and still. Though her eyes were swollen from nights of stifled weeping, now she had no more tears.

She waited for the summons she knew would come, and wondered without interest on which of those ships out there she was to sail on the morrow.

A little nun knocked on the door, entered, flustered and blushing, to say that madame had a most important caller - the Duke's own physician, the Franciscan, Brother William. He was awaiting her in the parlour.

Katherine smiled thanks and rose. The little nun peered up at her admiringly. If the prioress knew anything about this beautiful widow who seemed so unhappy and gave no information about herself, she was the only one at the convent who did.

Cause enough to be unhappy, said the cellaress acidly, with the poor lady's husband dead and she so far from home. Yet the nuns were not satisfied, there was some mystery about Lady Swynford and a glamour that intrigued them. They whispered about her as they sat at work or walked in the cloisters and found her nearly as interesting as the topic that excited all Bordeaux. The royal wedding in three days. When the Duke and new Duchess returned from the marriage at Roquefort there would be a procession right down the street past the convent; by hanging out of the windows they would see the handsome Duke, golden as the sun, strong as a lion, people said, and see his Castilian bride - a queen, for all she was but seventeen.

" 'Tis such a pity, madam, that you do not stay for the wedding," said the little nun, as she accompanied Katherine down to the parlour. "It will be so gay with fifty trumpeters, they say, and jongleurs from Provence!"

Lady Swynford did not answer.

Brother William had been chatting with the portress, he turned as Katherine entered and bowed. Beneath his black cowl his eyes were severe, he did not smile at her as he used to do.

He glanced at the portress and the nun, who vanished. Katherine sank down on a stool, clasping her hands tight on a fold of her skirt, but she raised her face to the friar and waited with mute dignity for him to speak.

His gaze softened only a trifle as he stared down at her and saw the shadows beneath her wide grey eyes and the lines of suffering that pulled at her mouth. Then he shook his head. "I had never thought to come to such a woman as you, with the sort of message I bring. The Duke awaits you in his presence chamber. He cannot receive you except as one of the many who are filing through for audience, because at present great discretion is required." Brother William stopped, frowning.

"I know," she said. Dull red flowed up her cheeks. Her gaze rested on the knotted scourge that girded the friar's grey habit, then dropped to his dusty bare feet.

"It would be wise," continued the Brother with chill distaste, "for you to remove that ring you wear. It would be as familiar to many at the palace as it is to myself."

She took off the sapphire seal ring and slipped it in her bosom.

"The Duke will manage that you have a few minutes alone together, but the time must necessarily be brief so as not to arouse suspicion. I am therefore directed to repeat the arrangements His Grace had made for you and to which he commands and also implores your final consent."

Katherine swallowed and said dully, "I am sailing tomorrow on whatever ship he has selected."

"Ay, and when you land you proceed to the Savoy bearing official letters which will grant you fifty marks at once and appoint you Resident Governess to His Grace's two little daughters, the Ladies Philippa and Elizabeth. You may send for your sister, Mistress Chaucer, and your own two children from Lincolnshire to join you at the Savoy, where they also will be provided for. You will remain at the Savoy until the Duke returns." The friar paused, before adding with biting emphasis, "When, I gather, further intimacies will continue to be suitably rewarded."

"Brother William!" Katherine jumped to her feet. "You've no right to speak to "me like that! I've already refused these arrangements. I did refuse them, though now - now-" She bit her lips until the blood surged back into them purple. "You've no right to judge! What can you know of love, or of a woman's heart? Do you think I don't suffer?"

The friar drew a long sigh. "Peace, child," he said, "peace! I don't judge you, that is for God to do. He knows what's in your secret heart. I see only a guilty love. Guilty," he repeated half to himself and gazed at her intently with his keen physician's eyes. "Nirac de Bayonne is ill," he said.

"Nirac - -" she cried in an amazement that the watchful friar knew was" innocent and unfeigned. "Why do you speak of him, now? Oh, I'm sorry he's ill, poor little scamp. He'll cure soon enough if the Duke is kind to him, I warrant."

So, I believe that I am quite wrong, thought the friar with deep relief. This girl at least knew nothing, if there were truly anything to know. Nirac had had two attacks like fits of madness, in which the Grey Friar had been called to tend him and soon discovered that these fits came from the taking of drugs obtained from some disreputable alchemist in the Basque quarter of town. During these fits Nirac had shouted out strange words and vague sinister allusions, coupled with Katherine and Hugh Swynford's names but actually nothing more than what an excited brain might invent. The friar was ashamed of the dreadful suspicions that had come to him.

He spoke more kindly to Katherine as they hurried towards the palace together.

To reach the Presence Chamber they had to traverse the palace cloisters. In the central garth a crowd of lords and ladies amused themselves, some tossing a gilded leather ball, some wagering piles of silver coins on the roll of ivory jewel-studded dice. The Princess Isabel sat on a blue velvet chair in the shade of a mulberry tree, munching candied rose petals and gossiping with Lady Roos of Hamlake. Her brother, Edmund of Langley, lounged beside her chair while he tickled the sensitive nose of Isabel's spaniel with an ostrich feather.

The Princess' sharp eyes missed very little. She spied Katherine's black-robed figure as the girl approached the Great Stairs and called out peremptorily, "My Lady Swynford!"

The girl started and glanced at the Grey Friar in distress. He said, "You must go to her," with some sympathy, for he did not like the Duke's sister.

Katherine moved slowly across the turf and curtsied to the Princess, who said, "I've heard some rumour that your knight has died, God rest his soul. I see," she glanced at Katherine's gown, "that it is so. A pity. Was it not some time ago?"

"A month, madam," said Katherine faintly. Edmund having made the spaniel sneeze looked up, his mouth fell open as he stared at Katherine. He scrambled to his feet and waving the ostrich feather cried, "And where have you been since, my lovely burde? So fair a widow should not go unconsoled." He leered at her with mawkish gallantry, and Katherine looked away, stricken by the caricatured resemblance to his brother in this weak, foolish face.

"Quiet, Edmund," said the Princess as though she addressed the spaniel. "Where are you bound now?" she pursued to Katherine, her instinctive resentment sharpening her voice, though in truth she had forgotten Lady Swynford since she saw her on the boat and had no motive but curiosity.

"To crave leave of departure from my Lord Duke, madam. It - it has been arranged that I sail home tomorrow."

"Ah," said Isabel satisfied, "back to that North Country whence you came? Some village with a silly name, a kettle in it, what was it?"

"Kettlethorpe, madam," said Katherine, and stood waiting while Isabel chortled and Edmund giggled amiably and continued to eye the girl with warmth. "Have I your leave to depart now, madam?"

Isabel nodded and crammed another fistful of sugared comfits into her mouth. Katherine curtsied again and rejoined Brother William, who had been watching the way she bore herself and thinking that she was hard to condemn as wholeheartedly as his conscience bade him do for this scandalous intrigue she had plunged into while her husband lay but four days dead. As she stood before those two Plantagenets in the garden, she had seemed more royal than they and fashioned of a finer metal. Yet she was weak, debased by the sins of the flesh, and he must guard himself from excusing her because of the beauty of her flesh: a lure devised by the ever-guileful Devil.

They entered the crowded anteroom past the yeoman-on-guard, and Brother William introduced her to the chamberlain, who said that my Lady Swynford would be received in her due turn. Katherine sat on a bench between one of the Castilian envoys and a Florentine goldsmith who held on his lap a casket of jewelled trinkets which he hoped to sell to the Duke as gifts for the bride.

The Grey Friar bowed to Katherine gravely and said, "I'll leave you now, my child, and shall pray that Christ and His Holy Mother strengthen you. Benedicite."

She bowed her head.

Her head remained bowed while those ahead of her filed into the Presence Chamber: an abbess from Perigueux, a distressed knight and his lady from the Dordogne, the Castilian, the goldsmith, a messenger with letters from Flanders. At last the chamberlain spoke her name and a page resplendent in dazzling blue and grey livery came to usher her. An unknown squire received her at the door of the Presence Chamber and opened it for her to enter.

The Duke sat in a gilded canopied chair that was raised on a low dais. On his head he wore a coronet studded with cabochons, rough lumps of emeralds, balas rubies. His surcote of crimson velvet was furred with ermine and above the gold Lancastrian SS collar his face was tired and bleak.

They looked at each other, then looked away while the Duke said in his voice of chill command, "I will see this lady alone." The squire and a clerk who had been seated at a table silently withdrew.

She stood where she was in the middle of the floor, until he reached out his hand and said, "Come to me, Katrine."

She went over to the dais and kissed his hand. He drew her slowly up against him and kissed her on the lips.

"Brother William gave you my message?"

"Yes, my lord."

"You'll not refuse again, my dear one. I must know that you'll be there, waiting for me."

"I cannot refuse again," she said in a strangled voice, "for I believe I bear your child."

"Jesu!" he cried, his eyes blazed with light. "My child! My son! You will give me a son, Katrine. Another royal Plantagenet!"

"A bastard," she said, turning her head.

"But my son. He shall never suffer from it. Katrine, now you cannot leave me! I'll give you the world and all that's in it, I'll cherish you, care for you, you'll never know a hardship or a worry! You shall see what it is to be loved by the Duke of Lancaster!"

"And in return, my lord, I give you my good name - -"

"Nay, darling, it need not be. No one need know. I'll do all to protect your good name. 'Tis fitting enough that you should be appointed Governess to my daughters, they're fond of you. And everyone knows I care for my people, that your husband died in my service and that you were" - he paused - "were beloved of the Duchess Blanche."

She looked at him sadly, thinking that men saw only what they wished to see, and that it would be no easy thing to conceal their love or the fruit of it. In truth he did not realise how they would shrink from the furtive, from a prolonged course of lies and subterfuges. In that they were alike, both imbued with reckless pride.

"I cannot see far ahead, my dear lord," she said sighing, "but I'll do as you say until you return, and I'll do my best for your children.'' And mine, she added silently, for in these last days that she had been alone in Bordeaux she had thought much with painful yearning of her true-born babies, as though to reassure them that her love for them was untouched by this other all-compelling love that had come to her, nor changed by the new baby that she carried in her womb.

A nourish of trumpets sounded from outside the window. They both started.

"The heralds practise for your wedding march," she said, the words dropping like stones on a wooden dish. "Adieu, my lord."

"Katrine," he cried. He pulled her close against him. "You must be careful* you will be safe on this journey. 'Tis the best master we have, the staunchest ship. I'll have two priests pray for your safety night and day in the cathedral. Oh my Katrine, do you love me?"

The bitterness left her eyes, she put her arms around his neck, and met his hot demanding lips with a gentle kiss. "Ay, my lord, I love you," she said with a laugh that was half a sob. "I think you need not ask."

Part Four (1376-1377)

There saw I first the dark deceptions

Of Felony; and all the counterplots,

Cruel anger, red as any coal

Pickpockets, and eke the pale Dread ...

(The Knight's Tale)

CHAPTER XVI

On the afternoon before St. George's Day, 1376, April bloomed in Warwickshire. The young lambs bleated from the pastures beyond the mere, while a hazy gold light turned the sandstone of the battlements to the colour of a robin's breast. All Kenilworth Castle, cleansed and garlanded for the festivities, waited for the Duke to come again.

Katherine sat on a sunny stone bench in the Inner Court near the old keep, lending an indulgent ear to the happy shouts of the children as they romped through the courtyards. From this bench she could watch the entrance to the castle at Mortimer's Tower and be ready when the trumpet sounded and the first member of the Duke's company should gallop through from the causeway. This time she had not seen him for two months.

She was dressed in the gown he preferred to most of the others he had ordered for her: an amber tunic beneath a clinging sideless surcote of apricot velvet, furred with ermine. Her golden girdle was inlaid with enamel plaques blazoning her own arms - the three Catherine wheels or, on a gules field. A thin topaz-studded fillet encircled her high arched forehead, her eyebrows were plucked, her lips lightly reddened with cochineal paste as the Duke liked to see them. Her dark auburn hair was perfumed with costly ambergris, imported from Arabia, that he had appropriated for her in some hastily abandoned castle on his Great March through France, three years ago.

That march had been a foolhardy deed of courage. He had forced his weakening and finally starving army through enemy territory the length of France, from the north to Bordeaux. He had exposed his own person to danger time and again, and suffered with his men. Even the French thought this chevanchee a triumphant feat, spectacular as any his brother the Black Prince had ever achieved, and yet in the end there was loss, not gain. The lands through which he marched had bowed under the trampling feet like long grass, and sprung up again when he had passed.

When John had returned to England, embittered, his dream of conquering all France and then Castile once more postponed, he had found himself the target of an angry, puzzled England. For there was unrest everywhere and dissatisfaction with conditions. The people clamoured for another Crecy, another Poitiers, but times had changed. A new and wilier king sat on the French throne, and the once great English king was senile, his policies unstable, blowing now hot now cold, obedient to the greedy whims of Alice Perrers, and caring only to please her.

Yet now there was a truce with France, a precarious amnesty negotiated by the Duke at Bruges last year. The thought of John's months at Bruges brought sharp pain to Katherine, though it was a pain to which she was well accustomed.

John had taken his Duchess with him to Flanders and there at Ghent, his own birthplace, Costanza had been delivered of a son - at last.

But the baby did not live! Katherine crossed herself as she sat on the bench in Kenilworth courtyard and thought, Mea Culpa, as she had when she first heard the news that the baby had died - for shame of the fierce joy she had felt.

My sons live, thought Katherine. She glanced up to the windows of the Nursery Chamber in the South Wing. A shadow passed behind the clear tiny panes, and Katherine smiled. That would be Hawise, or one of the nurses, tending the infant Harry in his cradle, or perhaps fetching some toy to distract little John as he ate his supper - for he was a fussy eater and prone to dawdle. Healthy rosy boys, both of them, golden as buttercups, with their father's intense blue eyes.

A high jeering singsong shattered the peace of the courtyard. "Scaredy cats! Scaredy cats! Cowardy cowardy custard, go get thyself some mustard! - Ye dursn't do what I do - -"

That was Elizabeth, of course. Katherine jumped up prepared for trouble and hurried through the arch to the Base Court. Though the Duke's younger daughter was twelve years old and near to womanhood, Elizabeth's reckless enterprises still had to be restrained before they led herself and the younger children into actual danger.

This time Elizabeth was hopping on one foot upon the slate roof of the ducal stable and clinging to the weather-vane. Tom, Blanchette and the three little Deyncourts were all cramped into various stressful positions on the slippery slates as they tried to climb up to the taunting figure above them. Blanchette, her mother saw at once, was crying while she teetered on a window-ledge, and fumbled for fingerholds in the stone gutter.

"Elizabeth!" called Katherine sharply, to the stable roof. "Come down at once!" She ran to rescue Blanchette by climbing on a mounting block and holding her arms up to the child, who dropped thankfully into them. "Little simpleton," scolded Katherine, kissing her. "When will you learn you cannot and must not do all Lady Elizabeth says?" She ran on from Blanchette and pulled down the Deyncourt children. But her own Thomas wanted no help. He turned a sulky face to his mother and said, "Let me be, lady. I shan't go to the roof, but I shall get down as I please," which was as typical of Tom at eight as it had been all his life. Never openly disobedient, but a headstrong sulky boy who reminded her often of his father, Hugh.

"Well, Bess," called Katherine to the culprit on the roof, "I told you to come down - -"

"Can't," quavered the child. Her swarthy little face had paled, she clung so hard to the weather-vane that its veering cock shook as in a high wind.

"Then be brave a few more minutes and hold tight," called Katherine more gently. She clapped her hands crying, "Groom! Here!" A stablerboy ran out, brought a ladder and soon had Elizabeth safe on the ground - safe and defiant. "I wasn't scared, I was just gammoning you, my lady."

Katherine wasted no time in dispute, Elizabeth was for ever getting into pickles from which she could not extricate herself. "Beat her!" advised Dame Marjorie Deyncourt, wife to the castle's constable. "You spare the rod too much." The Deyncourt children were beaten as regularly as they attended Mass. Five years back, when Katherine first assumed responsibility for the rearing of the Duke's two daughters, she had had recourse to frequent switchings as the only way to handle Elizabeth - Philippa needed no such measures, ever - but gradually Katherine had learned that firm kindness and the minimum of punishment better controlled the child. And John would seldom have her punished either; this giddly little daughter could always cozen him by climbing on his lap, shaking her dark curls and pouting her red lips, which were plump as cherries and gave promise of disquieting sensuality.

"Go, Bess, and find one of your maids," said Katherine sternly. "Tell her to wash you, you cannot greet your father in this state. Then stay in your chamber till you're summoned."

Elizabeth shrugged, but she went off to the castle, scuffing her feet. She liked Lady Swynford well enough and knew her to be just, but lately she had been puzzled by the situation between this lady and her father, which before she had accepted without interest. That the two baby boys called John and Harry Beaufort were her half-brothers, she knew, and that her father loved Lady Swynford she had seen often enough with jealous eyes; but no one had ever explained these matters and mention of them was shushed. Servants' gossip overheard last week had awakened her to the knowledge that there was something strange about her governess, something the tiring-women snickered about behind their hands, and Nan, the laundry maid, had cried dramatically, "Ah, me heart bleeds, indeed it do, for that poor betrayed Duchess, a-pining away at Hertford or in them North Country wilds at Tutbury. 'Tis a mortal shame."

But Elizabeth had not liked her father's Spanish wife at all, the time that she and Philippa had been taken to Hertford to call on her. The Duchess had glittering eyes like pieces of jet, while the touch of her bony hand was cold and moist as a fish. Nor would she speak one word of English. She had given Elizabeth and Philippa an unsmiling scrutiny, then turned to talk in Spanish with the Castilian ladies who hovered near. Elizabeth had been sent to play with little Catalina, who was her half-sister, too. Catalina was four years old like Lady Swynford's John Beaufort, but three months younger than he. This fact had been part of the servant's mysterious sniggers.

Katherine had felt a change in Elizabeth's attitude towards her of late, and thought, with the flinty resignation she had been learning, she's beginning to realise, and it may be will rebel against me completely. But there was nothing to be done. It is as it is, thought Katherine. This Plantagenet motto gave her sombre comfort; to John's amusement she had asked that it be graven on the gold rim of the diamond brooch he had given her last New Year's. She wore the brooch today on her apricot velvet bodice, and had long since put away the old Queen's trumpery little silver nouche with its saccharine "Foi vainquera."

Katherine walked back towards the Inner Court, while Blanchette skipped happily beside her. The other children had run off to the tiltyard outside the walls to watch the making of St. George's effigy for the games tomorrow. But Blanchette stayed with her mother whom, at nine, she already greatly resembled. She will be prettier than I could ever be, thought Katherine, rumpling the silky curls that were bright as new-scoured copper. The little girl's eyes were grey too, but darker than Katherine's, even as her hair was lighter. The round eyes looked up at her mother now with confiding sweetness, and Katherine kissed her again.

How strange that Blanchette, begotten by an unloved father, born in anguish and loneliness, should still be the dearest of all her children, precious though John's babies were. Was there always a special tenderness for the first-born? Yet John was less fond of his Philippa than any of the others. Was it then that Blanchette was a girl and Katherine saw there her own childhood, or was it that, because of John's arrival that morning of her birth, Blanchette had seemed like his own child? No use to question the mysterious alchemy of the heart, and certain it was that amongst the tormenting things her equivocal situation had brought to her, she had found solid material compensations, too. There was not one of her family who had not benefited, and John had provided lavishly for his godchild.

Last year he had granted to Katherine for Blanchette the wardship of the lands and heir of Sir Robert Deyncourt, cousin to the constable here at Kenilworth, and the marriage of this heir with all its fees and appurtenances. The wardship alone brought income to build Blanchette a handsome dowry. But, Katherine thought with relief, it would be some years before one had to think of Blanchette's marriage.

"Here comes Lady Philippa," announced the child, who had crawled up on the bench beside her mother and was playing with a kitten she had fished out from the throng of mewing cats that were gathered hungrily about the door of the great kitchens. Katherine looked up to greet this elder of her two ducal charges and felt, as so often with Philippa, a touch of exasperated pity. Here was a girl about whom one must indeed think of marriage for she was full sixteen, and the Duke had entered into tentative negotiations with the courts of Flanders, Hainault, and even Milan.

Yet it was impossible to imagine Philippa bedded. She was pale, devout, submissive and so sexless as to make virginity seem inevitable.

"Good even, Lady Katherine," she said curtsying and speaking in her whispering little voice. She glanced rather anxiously at the Mortimer Gate Tower, "No sign yet of my lord father?"

"No," said Katherine, making room for the girl on the bench. "Didn't you think to wear the new crimson gown he had sent you?" Philippa was swathed in a dun-coloured robe that spared none of her bad points, the flat chest and clumsy waist.

"I - I didn't-" said the girl fingering her sagging girdle nervously. "I feel so discomfited in crimson. Will he be angry with me?"

Katherine smiled reassurance, knowing that Philippa feared her father as much as she admired him. But he would not be pleased, and she would have to protect the girl from his annoyance that reduced Philippa to tears and long hours of penitence on the prie-dieu in her chamber.

"You're so beautiful, Lady Katherine," said Philippa wistfully. "He's never angry with you."

"Ah, but he is!" Katherine laughed. "At times. One must wait until it passes, it soon does."

Philippa pulled from her reticule a square of samite, part of the chapel altar cloth she was embroidering. She was shortsighted and, bending her long serious face close to the needleful of gold thread, said without rancour, "Ay, for he loves you."

Katherine started. The blush that still plagued her, despite her twenty-five years, stained her fine skin. Philippa had never said anything so frank, though a girl of sixteen could be in no doubt as to the situation. Still, it had been tacitly ignored.

In the beginning, when John brought Costanza back from France and for some years thereafter, the lovers had been very discreet. For little John's birth, Katherine had gone to Lincolnshire, not indeed to Kettlethorpe - that would have shamed her doubly, as a slur on Hugh's memory - but to Lincoln itself, to a house on Pottergate, privily secured for her by the Duke. And for a time, the exact date of Hugh's death abroad having been left uncertain, they had fostered the assumption that this was Hugh's posthumous child.

No such covering assumption was possible when little Harry was born. It was plain enough for all to see that Lady Swynford had no husband; and the Duke, welcoming his new son, had renounced all further pretence and bestowed on the little boys one of his territorial titles, Beaufort, for lands in Champagne, long since lost to France and unlikely ever to prejudice the interests of his legitimate heirs.

Katherine had been glad when concealment of their relationship was no longer possible and relieved that at the two of his castles where she chiefly stayed with the children, Kenilworth and Leicester, all the retainers, from the stewards and constables down, continued to treat her with obedient deference. The Duke would have seen to that had not her own dignity quelled any overt disrespect. But there were times when something pierced the tough shell she had grown, and Philippa's calm statement filled her with unease.

She glanced at the girl, then at Blanchette, who had wandered off with her kitten towards the kitchens; she held her head high and stiff, and said in a thickened voice, "Do you mind, Philippa?"

"Mind what, Lady Katherine?" The mild eyes stared. "Oh, that my father should love you? No. For I have loved you myself, ever since the time at Bolingbroke when you did get shriving for my blessed mother on her death-bed, God keep her soul in peace." She crossed herself and, bending close, took a slow stitch on her embroidery. "And you've been good to us since our father put us in your charge. But-" She moistened her lips, looked unhappily at Katherine, then away.

"But what, Philippa?"

" 'Tis mortal sin you live in - you and my father!" she whispered. "I'm frightened for you. I pray - pray for your souls."

Katherine was silent, then she put out her hand and touched the girl's pale hair gently. She got up from the bench and walked across the courtyard towards the gate that led out to the mere and the pleasaunce where she herself had directed the planting of new flower beds and a boxwood maze. The garden was alight with daffodils, lilies and violets; in moments of disquiet she sought its comfort as instinctively as Philippa sought the chapel. She put her hand on the iron gate latch, then turned with a glad cry. Clear on the spring air there came bugle notes and the rumble of many galloping hooves from the south where the road skirted the mere.

She started to run towards the entrance, wild as any hoydenish girl, but checking herself, walked with a shaking heart to stand quietly, as was proper, next to Philippa on the first step of the Grand Staircase that led up to the Hall.

Lancaster Herald cantered first through the arch and saluted them with a dip of his trumpet and its pendent Lancaster arms. The court filled with jostling, shouting horsemen, with stable-boys and pages, who must be alert to catch dropped bridles and run with mounting blocks.

Thirty or more had accompanied the Duke. In the confusion she noted only the clerics: a tall black-robed priest, vaguely familiar, and the Carmelite, Walter Dysse, sleekly plump as a white tomcat, who made her an. unctuous salute as he dismounted. Again there was no sign of Brother William, the Grey Friar. Though he was still the Duke's chief physician, Katherine knew that Brother William avoided her. The few times that they had met perforce, in the years of her connection with the Duke, the friar had looked at her with sad inscrutable eyes. Once he mentioned Nirac, who had died over there in Bordeaux sometime after she left it, but he had seen how little Nirac interested her now, and after listening to her conventional murmur of regret had hurried away.

The Duke's favourite hounds, Garland and Echo, came gambolling through the arch, they leaped at her in greeting and she patted their narrow grey heads, while she waited.

At last she saw him on Palamon as he paused to call back some instructions to Arnold, his head falconer, who rode on towards the mew bearing the great hooded white gerfalcon, Oriana, on his gauntlet.

Each time that she saw John after deprivation, her body flamed and seemed to melt. She thought him comelier, more princely than ever, and loved him the more for the increasing reserve he showed to the world, because it heightened the rare sweet moments of their intimacy. Though he was now thirty-six, he had grown no heavier - indeed what true Plantagenet could ever be stout? His hair, cut shorter than it used to be, had dulled from gold to sun-bleached sorrel, but it was thick as ever; and while Raulin d'Ypres, the Flemish squire, held the stirrup, John jumped down from Palamon with the easy grace of his youth.

He walked to the stairs, while Katherine and Philippa curtsied. Farther up the steps John Deyncourt, Kenilworth's constable, bowed low and cried, "God's greeting, Your Grace."

The Duke smiled briefly at his daughter, his eyes passed over her dress with a faint frown, then, resting on Katherine, widened in a private signal of greeting. "You look well, my lady," he said softly, and taking her hand, bore it to his lips.

"I am, now that you're here-" she whispered.

"The little lads?" he asked.

"Hearty as puppies. The babe has grown much since you saw him, he speaks ten words." "God's blood! And does he! - Henry!" the Duke, chuckling, called over his shoulder. "I'll vow you never were so forward as your new brother. He speaks as many words as he has months! Come pay your duty to Lady Swynford!"

Today the Duke had brought his heir with him, the nine-year-old Henry of Bolingbroke, who was a thoughtful, matter-of-fact child, somewhat short for his years but sturdily built so that he did well at knightly sports. His hair and eyes were russet-toned, his snub nose was peppered with freckles. He favoured his grandfather and namesake, the first Duke of Lancaster, rather than his handsome parents, yet from them he had his character, from Blanche, a sweetly courteous dignity, from John, ambition and a lightning temper usually controlled. From them both he had pride, and consciousness of rank.

The Duke mounted the grand outer staircase to the Hall, which he had as yet but partially rebuilt, though it was finished enough to show that in grace of proportion, airiness of tinted windows and carving of stone it deserved its growing reputation as one of the most magnificent rooms in England. Usually upon his arrival at Kenilworth the Duke's first act would be eager inspection of the work done by the master masons since his last visit; but today, though the oriel in the Sainteowe Tower had been completed, and in the Hall a window of stained glass depicting the garden from the Romaunt de la Rose had been installed since he was here, he gave these changes but an abstracted look, and Katherine saw that some matter was disturbing him.

She knew better than to question. In any case they would have no privacy until late that night, when he would come from the great White Chamber, up the hidden stairs to her solar - and her bed. Until then she must wait and do her duty as chatelaine towards all the company he had brought. She must find out whether the chamberlain had readied sleeping quarters for them all, and she was already certain that not enough of the precious spices had been doled out to season food for so many.

John at once retired to the White Chamber with Raulin in attendance. While the guests were occupied with drinking in the Hall, Katherine went upstairs to fetch the keys which unlocked the spice chest. In her solar she found Hawise industriously shaking a rowan branch over the bed and muttering some sort of charm.

"Holy saints, wench!" cried Katherine laughing. "What are you doing?" She looked at this dear maid and companion with amused affection. They had been through much together since Hawise had come back into her service before little John was born. Well-paid service now; the days had passed when Katherine must accept her maid's own money to exist. Hawise's present wages were equal to the Pessoners' yearly income from fish, and the fishmonger marvelled at this, proud that his daughter had such good fortune, particularly as her husband, Jack Maudelyn, had returned of sour puzzled temper, neglectful of his looms and prone to traipse off into Kent after the Lollard preachers and come back full of their heretical mouthings against the monks, the bishops, and God's manifest plan of rich and poor, lord and commoner.

Hawise's stout arm continued to weave the branch over the bed, until she concluded the magic words which whistled a little through her gapped teeth before she turned and favoured her mistress with a stern look. "I'm fixing it so ye'll not conceive again now that my Lord Duke's back wi' ye. Two bastards is aplenty for ye to bear, my poppet, and you so bad wi' the milk leg after Harry, I thought I'd lost ye."

"Oh, Hawise-" Katherine laughed, colouring a little.

"I must take what God sends, I suppose." She bent and peered at herself in a silver-backed mirror, rubbed a little more red salve on her lips, frowned at a roughening she thought she saw on her chin.

"Ye needna fret," said Hawise watching. "Breeding's not harmed your looks, I'll grant that, ye've still a waist like a weasel." She spoke tartly because it hurt her to see her beloved mistress frowning at the mirror and reddening her lips like any of the lewd court women, and there were other small changes too in her lady. God blast him, Hawise thought as many times before. Since he couldn't marry her, why didn't he let her be! She's too fine for this game, however many play it. It'll kill her if he tires. Though as yet there were no signs of his tiring.

"The Duke is concerned about something, I fear," said Katherine, gesturing for Hawise to bring her the bunch of keys from their hiding cranny beside the chimney. " 'Tis perhaps that the Prince of Wales is worsening and may not live the summer out? Yet that's no new thing."

"Nay, more like 'tis this matter of Parliament next week," said Hawise, who had been down to London to see her husband for Easter, and there heard much angry talk. "The Commons are in savage mood. No doubt His Grace has wind of what they'll ask, and, by cock's bones, they don't see eye to eye, Commons and His Grace!" Indeed she had checked her Jack sharply for the hateful things he repeated of the Duke, but this she did not tell her mistress.

Katherine nodded, vaguely relieved. Inclination as well as good taste kept her from interest in national affairs. She was no Alice Perrers, whose greed for power and money were all but wrecking England, so they said. Katherine's only desire was to live quietly removed from the hurly-burly of the court, to keep herself and her children from public scrutiny and receive John when he came as any lady would her rightful wedded lord who must be often absent on man's business.

This meant ignoring a great part of his life. It also meant ignoring Costanza and that other child of his at Hertford Castle - Catalina - which meant Katherine in English. The Duchess Costanza had wished to name her child for a favourite Spanish saint, not knowing, in the summer of 1372, of Katherine Swynford's existence. John had laughed when he told Katherine of this. It amused him that his wife should name their daughter for his mistress, all unknowing, and part of his unkind laughter had come from his anger with Costanza for producing a girl, and no suitable heir for the throne of Castile. Katherine had felt faint pity for that other woman, all the easier to feel since she had never seen the Duchess.

Costanza had heard of Katherine's existence now, no doubt though Philippa Chaucer said there was no telling what the Duchess knew, always jib-jabbing in her own heathenish tongue to those Spaniards, but mum as a clam to her English household.

The Duke had appointed Katherine's sister as one of the English waiting-women to his new Duchess, and granted her a handsome annuity of ten pounds. Philippa had been delighted and looked upon the appointment as heaven's just reward for the dull years of hardship at Kettlethorpe. That she owed this windfall to Katherine's peculiar connection with the Duke, she accepted with brisk realism, though seldom alluding to it. Ever shrewd judge of a bargain, Philippa considered that the manifold benefits now enjoyed by all Katherine's family nicely counterbalanced moral qualms. And she frequently thanked God that Hugh had died so opportunely, "Or you might have been shackled till Doomsday to that grumbling ha'penny husband, Katherine, and we'd all still be pigging it at Kettlethorpe."

Philippa's attitude had hurt Katherine, at first; she had felt her love cheapened by it, and for some time mention of Hugh gave her dull pain, like remorse, oddly mixed with anxiety.

But that was in the beginning, now when she thought of Hugh there was nothing but a blank.

Katherine rose from the dressing-stool and fastening the keys to her girdle, smiled at Hawise. "I must see to our guests. I scarce know who has come with His Grace."

The company assembled in the Great Hall were culled from the Duke's retainers or close friends and mostly men, of course. Katherine was accustomed to that. Still, a couple of the young knights had brought their wives, and Lord Latimer, the King's chamberlain - a sly-eyed man, long-nosed as a fox - had his lady with him up from London. An honour so unusual that Katherine, as she received Lady Latimer's subdued civilities, thought that his lordship must need very special favour from the Duke. And she was increasingly aware of tension beneath the surface of this gathering.

Lord Michael de la Pole was his bluff hearty self and greeted Katherine with the semi-paternal pinch of the cheek he always gave her; but then he drew to the corner by the north fireplace and, scowling, whispered with the huge glowering Lord Neville of Raby. Both barons glanced sideways at Latimer, then with deepened frowns their eyes turned to the tall priest in the black doctoral robes, as though they wondered what he did there.

Katherine wondered too, for the priest was John Wyclif, leader of the heretical Lollards. Wyclif had responded to her greeting with a slight bow and left her at once to stand by himself near the Romaunt de la Rose window, which he examined with apparent interest. Katherine too looked at the new window, admiring the blaze of emerald light surrounding the god of love and the ruby rose.

"Do you understand Love's Garden better now than once you did, little sister?" said a voice in her ear.

She whirled around crying, "Geoffrey!" and caught his hand in pleasure. "I didn't see you or know you were coming. I thought you at Aldgate."

"I was. But since his Grace was so good as to include me in Saint George festivities, I came. I grow dull alone with my sinful books, my scribblings and my wool tallies."

His hazel eyes twinkled as they always had, faintly mocking. In the months since she had seen him, he had grown stouter, and there was grey in his little forked beard. His gown was deeply furred like any prosperous burgher's; he wore a gold chain that had been given him by the King, but there were still ink stains on his fingers and a battered pen-case hung at his neck with the chain.

"Nay, Geoffrey," she said. "You know you're never dull alone, you like it."

They smiled at each other. Though Phillippa sometimes got leave from her duties to the Duchess Costanza and visited her husband in his lodgings over Aldgate, where she cleaned and clucked and harried him out of his easy-going bachelor habits, these visits sprang largely from a sense of obligation, and the Chaucers were both more contented apart. Their little son stayed with his mother, so Geoffrey lived alone.

"How goes your work at the Custom House?" Katherine asked. "Somehow I never thought to see you smothered in wool."

"Don't sneer at wool, my dear," he said lightly, " 'Tis the English crown's chief jewel. God bless those glittering fleeces that pour through the port of London out to a wool-hungry world. I value them high as ever Jason did. Our kingdom'd be bankrupt without them. If," he added, frowning suddenly, and glancing at Latimer, "it isn't so already."

"What is it with Lord Latimer?" she asked in a low voice. "I sense unease here today, and my Lord Duke seems heavy of mind."

Well he may, thought Chaucer. There was trouble seething over a perilous fire. No telling how far the Commons were prepared to go in attacking the crown party, in this first Parliament called in three years; but they would not tamely grant the new subsidy which would be demanded by the King. That no one who had come from London could ever doubt. They would not dare attack the old King directly, nor yet perhaps the Duke, unpopular as he had grown. But they might conceivably fly for game as high as Latimer, who was King's chamberlain, keeper of his privy purse and the Duke's associate as well. Doubtless Latimer was an unscrupulous opportunist who had been feathering his own nest at crown expense like many another; but they said worse of him, far worse than that.

"Why, Latimer is the butt of many rumours. What man in high place is not?" said Geoffrey to Katherine, shrugging as though the matter were of no consequence. He understood the Duke enough to know that he preferred that Katherine should be kept apart from the turmoil of his public life. In truth, Geoffrey thought that the protective tenderness his patron showed to Katherine was one of the most admirable traits in a complex character.

A rustle of attention by the Sainteowe door to the Hall, and the glimpse of a coroneted head, showed that the Duke had entered. Katherine, her eyes clearing at once from the frown with which she had asked of Latimer, hurried down the Hall to meet him.

Geoffrey settled himself inconspicuously on a cushioned window seat and surveyed the company. He looked at the radiant Katherine as she sat near the Duke, in her velvet and ermine and new jewels. So he had been right when he saw her first at Windsor and thought her destined to rise high in life by reason of her rare beauty. The drabness of her years at Kettlethorpe had after all been but a transient step. Yet this relation with Lancaster was not the role he had vaguely imagined for her either. This was too frank, too crude in its flouting of the chivalric code which demanded above all a delicate secrecy in the pursuance of illicit love. More fitting far if they had managed to conduct their love like that of Troilus and Criseyde, unsuspected by the censorious world. His thoughts played with the story of Criseyde, and almost he could see Katherine as the lovely Trojan widow.

Nay, thought Geoffrey, smiling at himself, my mind has gone a-blackberrying. And he looked at the Duke, who was now in earnest converse with Wyclif and obviously far from love-longings. It was no soft bond that linked these two, the great Duke and the reformer whose teachings now infiltrated England. This bond was indignation. Between them, though no doubt for different motives, they were agreed on debasing and despoiling the fat monks and fatter bishops who were bleeding the land.

Wyclif - so spare, so dedicated to his startling theories, of communal property, to his attacks on the Pope, to his denial of the need for confessions, saints or pilgrimages - seemed a strange colleague for Lancaster, whose orthodoxy had never been in question.

Yet they seemed to have respect for each other, thought Chaucer, and it was folly ever to listen to the slanders put out by their many enemies. The house of fame, he thought, is built on melting ice, not steel, and rumbles ever with a sound of rumours, while the goddess of fame is as false and capricious as her sister - Fortune.

Geoffrey's hand went to the pen-case that hung at his neck and, forgetting the Duke and Wyclif, his eyes darted around the Hall. Seeing no writing materials, he slipped quietly through the North door to the office of the constable. Here, as he'd hoped, a clerk was working on the castle accounts which would be submitted to the Duke's auditor tomorrow.

Geoffrey borrowed what he needed and huddling on a stool beside the clerk, noted the words, and the rhymes they presently suggested. " 'The great sound ... that rumbleth up and down, in Fame's House, full of tydings, both of fair speech and eludings, and of false and truth compound.' "

He wrote on. The verses he had had in his head for many weeks began to shape as he wished them.

That night when the guests had all retired, Katherine lay waiting between silken sheets for her lord to come. Her naked body glowed from the sweet herbs with which Hawise had cleansed her, her skin was fragrant with the amber scent, and she rejoiced that it was firm and fresh as it had ever been. She thought how the responses of this body had increased and that her passion now was equal to his, though for modesty she tried sometimes to hide it. Yet carnal love was no sin, she thought stoutly, if the love be true-hearted. A hundred romances had taught her this, and since no strict confessor exhorted her, she no longer felt the sense of sin. Brother Walter Dysse, the Carmelite friar, listened with placid indulgence to her infrequent confessions, as he did to the Duke's. And she went to Mass only as an example to the children and the castle folk.

The room grew chill in the April dawn before John came, sliding without a word into her bed while her arms closed about him hungrily; but later he did not fall asleep on her breast. He lay staring up at the shadowy bed canopy that was strewn with tiny diamond stars.

She put her hand softly on his forehead, for sometimes he liked to have her stroke his hair, but he turned his head away.

"What is it, my dear heart?" she whispered. "The Blessed Mother forfend you are not displeased with me?"

"No, no - lovedy," he drew her tight against him so that her cheek was in the hollow of his neck, but still he stared up at the canopy. He would not speak, lest the baffled rage which fermented in his soul should sound like fear.

It was Raulin, his stolid Flemish squire, who had given him a hint of what they said in London. John had listened in contempt, unmoved at first, so ridiculous were the slanders. Corruption, disloyalty, designs against his brother, the dying Prince, against little Richard, the heir apparent - this was but monkey talk, the spiteful chatter of the rabble which would never dare say these things to his face. But then Raulin went on "Another thing they visper, Your Grace - ach - such folly, 'tis not vorth repeating."

But John had commanded him to speak, knowing that he would be better armed to protect the crown for the coming fight in Parliament if he knew all their preposterous weapons.

"Some cock-and-bull tale that Your Grace is a changeling, not of royal birth."

"Bah! How feeble" - John had laughed. "Their other inventions are better. What more do they say of this? What particulars?"

" 'Tis all I heard," said Raulin, "no von beliefs it."

John had shrugged and spoken of something else, but in his stomach it was as though a cannon ball had gutted him, and his whole body trembled inwardly like that of the child who had first heard the word "changeling" nearly thirty years ago. Beneath his intercourse with others, beneath his joy at seeing Katherine, he had been trying to turn cool logic on this shameful fear. The King of Castile and Leon, the Duke of Lancaster, the most powerful man in England, to be overwhelmed by a vague whisper, to feel like a whimpering babe - cowering in terror of treachery, and injustice and loss. Last night he had dreamed of Isolda, and that he, a child again, looked up to her for comfort; but her grey eyes held naught but contempt and she sneered at him saying, "And did you believe me, my stupid lordling, when I said Pieter had lied? He did not lie, and you are hollow, empty as a blown egg, no royal meat within you."

"My dearest, what is it?" cried Katherine again, for the muscle of his arm jerked and the hand that had lain along her thigh clenched into a fist.

"Nothing, Katrine, nothing," he cried, "except I shall deal with my enemies! The hellish monks and the ribauds of London town - I'll crush them till they crawl on their bellies, snivelling for mercy; and I'll show none!"

She was frightened, for she had never heard him like this, and she said timidly, "But great men such as you, my lord, always have enemies and ever you have been above them - just and strong."

"Just and strong," he repeated with a bitter laugh. " 'Tis not that they call me - ay - do you know what they think, Katrine? They think I have no loyalty to my father and my brother. They think I plot to seize the English throne. The curse of God be on the fools!"

He shut his mouth, scowling into the darkness. His father and his brother - the idols of the nation, both feeble, ailing, moribund and at loggerheads just now. The Prince of Wales, frantic to conserve the kingdom for his son, little Richard, and to soothe the dangerous unrest of the English people, had called this Parliament and caused it to be subtly known that he would back the Commons in its attack upon the corruption around the doddering King. The Prince from his sick-bed looked to John for support in this. The King too, caring only to giggle and toy with Alice Perrers, yet looked with childish faith to John to spare him discomfort and uphold the divine rights of the crown. Mediator, scapegoat! John thought violently. I bow my head to obey them both, to fight for what they each demand, and hear myself called traitor for my pains.

Yet this injustice but bred a clean contemptuous anger, not like that other squirming shameful fear which he now subdued again, helped by the unquestioning love of the woman beside him. What use to fear a vague slander which might well have been a chance shot and a not uncommon one in history, when fears were felt for the rightful succession? Doubtless, as Raulin said, few knew of it and none believed it.

He breathed deeply and turning to Katherine, kissed her. "By Saint John, my love," he said in the light tender voice he kept for her alone, "I've been tilting with a phantom. I'll cease my folly."

She understood nothing of this, except that his dark mood had passed and that in her he found comfort.

But while he slept at last in her arms, it was as though his distress had passed to her and she suffered that there was so much of his life she did not know.

CHAPTER XVII

St. George's Day was a happy one at Kenilworth. The Duke was his gayest, his most charming.

For two days and two more nights John and Katherine knew poignant joy, poignant in that it must be so brief; then on Friday morning the horses were again assembled by the keep, and the heavy carts and wagons lined up below in the Base Court, while varlets scurried to them from the castle bearing travelling coffers.

At six, Lancaster Herald blew a long plaintive blast of farewell. Katherine, standing on the stairs, bade them all Godspeed - to little Henry of Bolingbroke, who, of course, returned to London with his father, to Geoffrey on his bony grey gelding, to the Lords Neville and de la Pole on their brass-harnessed destriers; to Lord Latimer, whose long vulpine nose was red from the chill morning wind as he stood beside his lady's litter. And to John Wyclif, the austere priest, who alone of this company had held himself apart from the merrymaking. Not discourteously, but as one whose thoughts were elsewhere, and whose interest lay only in moments of earnest converse with the Duke.

They had all mounted before the Duke turned to Katherine, who waited with bowed head, holding out to him the gold stirrup cup.

"God keep you, my love," he said very low, taking the cup and drinking deep of the honied mead. "It'll not be long this time, I swear it by the Blessed Virgin," he added in answer to the tears in her eyes. "You know I ache for you when we're apart."

She turned away and said, "Do you stop now at Hertford?" This question had been gnawing at her heart, and she had not dared voice it.

"Nay, my Katrine," he said gently, "I go straight to London to be ready for Parliament, you know that. You may be sure the Queen Costanza's no more eager for my company than I for hers."

She did not know whether he lied to her, out of kindness, but her heart jumped at the cold way he spoke of his Duchess, and she looked at him in gratitude, yet lifting her chin proudly, for she would not be a dog fawning after a bone for all the watching meinie to see.

He kissed her quick and hard on the mouth, then, mounting Palamon, cantered through the arch.

On the twenty-ninth of April, shortly before the hour of Tierce, as the Abbey bells were ringing, the King opened Parliament in the Painted Chamber at Westminster Palace. Then he seated himself on his canopied throne, while his sons disposed themselves according to rank on a lower level of the dais. But the Prince of Wales lay on a couch, half concealed by his standard-bearer and a kneeling body squire. The Prince was a shocking sight. His belly was swollen with the dropsy as his mother's had been, his skin like clay and scabrous with running sores. Only his sunken eyes at times shone with their old fierce vitality, as he turned them towards the King, or to his brother of Lancaster, or out past the bishops and lords to the crowd of tense murmuring commoners at the far end of the long hall.

King Edward held himself erect at first and gazed at his Parliament with something of the calm dignity of his earlier years; but gradually he drooped and shrank into his purple robes of state. His palsied fingers slipped off the sceptre, and his face grew wrinkled and mournful like a tired old hound's. Except when he glanced towards the newel staircase in the corner behind the dais and saw the painted arras quiver. Then he brightened, and tittered behind his hand, knowing that Alice was hidden there on the turn of the stair.

The Duke of Lancaster sat on a throne too, one emblazoned with the castle and lion, for was he not - however far from his kingdom - the rightful ruler of Castile and Leon? Next sat Edmund of Langley, his flaxen head nodding with amiable vagueness to friends here and there amongst the lords, while he cleaned his fingernails with a little gold knife.

On the King's left his youngest son, Thomas of Woodstock, dark and squat as his Flemish ancestors, scowled at the wall where there was painted a blood-dripping scene from the Wars of the Maccabees. Thomas was not yet of age and never consulted by his father or brothers. He resented this but bided his time in wenching and gaming, and quarrelling with his wealthy young wife, Eleanor de Bohun.

The morning was indeed dull. It opened with the expected speech by Knyvett, the chancellor, who droned on for three hours while exhorting the Houses to be diligent in granting the kingdom a new subsidy; money urgently needed, said the chancellor, for the peace of the realm, defence against possible invasion and resumption of the war in France, also - here he glanced at the Duke - in Castile.

As Parliament was invariably called for like reason, the speech held no surprises and those on the royal dais and the lords on their cushioned benches muffled yawns.

The Commons were ominously quiet. At the conclusion they asked permission to retire to the Abbey chapter house for consultation. The King, who had been drowsing, sat up and quavered happily, "So it's all settled. I knew there'd be no trouble. The people love me and do my bidding." He rose and glanced towards the arras. He wanted his dinner, which would be served him in a privy chamber with Alice, and he wandered towards the stair. His two elder sons looked at each other, John in response to a gesture walked over to his brother's couch.

"Let him go," whispered the Prince. "He'll not be needed now." He fell back on the cushions, gasping. His squire mopped his temples with spirits of wine and after a moment the

Prince spoke again. "Nor am I needed. Christ's blood, that I should come to this - useless, stinking mass of corruption! John, I must trust you. I know your loyalty - whatever they say. Conciliate them - listen to them. Hold this kingdom together for my son!" Tears suddenly spurted down his cheeks and a convulsion shook his body.

John knelt by the couch. His own eyes were moist, while he silently kissed his brother's swollen hand.

Very soon the Commons began to show its mettle. A delegate requested that certain of the lords and bishops might join with them in conference in the chapter house. The Duke agreed graciously and waited with sharp interest to hear their choice, nor was surprised that amongst the twelve men named were two of his bitterest enemies, his nephew-in-law, the Earl of March, and Bishop Courtenay of London.

The earl, still at twenty-five pimply and undersized, had never forgiven the slight Lancaster had put upon him after the Duchess Blanche's death, when he had been kept cooling his heels in the Savoy. Each year his jealousy had grown and was now reinforced by fear. March's two-year-old son, Roger Mortimer, was heir presumptive to the English crown, after Richard. Unless the dastardly Lancaster should plot to force the Salic law on England and grab the crown himself. For Roger's claim came through his mother. This fear added fresh fuel to March's loathing; and the earl, upon hearing his name called, looked up at the Duke with a sly triumphant sneer, which Lancaster received with a shrug. March was a poor weedy runt whose spite was worth no more return than bored contempt.

Courtenay was more formidable. As Bishop of London he was the most powerful prelate in the country after Canterbury, and the Duke's well-known views on Episcopal wealth and his association with Wyclif had long ago incurred Courtenay's hatred.

The Commons' choice of these two lords to bolster up their coming attack against the crown gave some measure of the difficulties ahead, but was not startling. The choice and the acceptance of Lord Henry Percy of Northumberland, however, was dismaying.

The lords remaining in the Painted Chamber settled back in an uneasy rustle of silks and velvets and let loose a buzz of consternation. Michael de la Pole detached himself from his fellows and coming up to the Duke said with the familiarity of long friendship, "By God's blood, Your Grace, what's got into Percy? The blackguard's gone over to the enemy! Yet a month ago he swore passionate love to you and the King!"

The Duke laughed sharply. "He has no enduring passion except for himself and his wild Border ruffians. He's swollen with pride and no doubt March has been puffing it with the hot air of promises."

He sighed, and de la Pole looking at him with sympathy said, "There's a vicious battle ahead, and I don't envy you the generalship."

In the ensuing days, the Commons' line of attack became abundantly clear. The first mine was sprung with the election of Peter de la Mare as their Speaker. De la Mare was the Earl of March's steward. He was also a blunt fearless young man who wasted little time in presenting reply to the chancellor's demand for a subsidy. What, he asked, had become of all the money already granted?

The people, de la Mare went on, were grievously dismayed at the shocking waste and corruption in high places, and they wished the guilty parties brought to justice. He stopped.

There was a long silence in the Painted Chamber. Everyone looked at the Duke, who finally said, inclining his head, "Indeed, if this be so, the people are within their rights. Who are those whom you would name, and what are their alleged crimes?" And he smiled with perfect graciousness.

The smaller fry were dealt with first: a customs collector, and the London merchants John Peachey and Richard Lyons, both accused of extortion, monopoly and fraud. These men were summarily tried, found guilty and sent off to prison.

Then, as the Duke and his friends had suspected, the Commons went for Lord Latimer. They accused him of a dozen peculations, of having helped himself to twenty thousand marks from the King's privy purse and finally of treason in Brittany.

Here John momentarily lost his calm and spoke out in anger, for Latimer, however unattractive a personality, had been his friend, and though he was quite probably guilty of malversation, the accusation of treason the Duke considered to be outrageous, and said as much. It was thereupon withdrawn, but Latimer was found guilty on the other charges and the Duke, biting his lips and avoiding the convicted peer's frightened foxy eyes, made no further effort to save him.

The Commons exulted openly: they had for the first time in history succeeded in impeaching a minister of the crown!

John had been to Mass that morning and mere prayed that he might be guided by justice in the coming trials and that he might be given strength to conciliate the people as his brother had implored him to do. Revolt, civil war - like the evil smell of brimstone in plague time - pervaded the air of the Painted Chamber, indeed the air of all England. The Prince thought compromise the best way of clearing it, and he might be right.

The indictment of Lord Latimer had been expected, the identity of their next quarry had not.

A collective gasp rose from the lords' benches as de la Mare called, "Lord Neville of Raby!"

"What's this!" cried Neville, jumping to his feet and turning purple. His fierce little boar's eyes glared at the Speaker and then at his hereditary enemy, Percy of Northumberland. He strode down the hall towards the Commons, his great chest swelling. He shook his fist shouting, "How dare you churls, ribauds, scum - to question me, a premier peer of the realm!"

Some eighty pairs of eyes stared back at him defiantly. He swivelled and charged through the centre of the Chamber past the four woolsacks up to the dais. "You cannot permit this monstrous act, Your Grace!"

The Duke's nostrils indented and he breathed sharply. For Latimer he was not responsible, but Neville was his own retainer who had served him for years. A rough, violent man of war, like the other Border lords, yet ever loyal to Lancasters. The Duke hesitated, men he said quietly, "It seems that we must hear, my Lord Neville, what they would say."

The Speaker bowed and launched forth at once, raising his voice over Neville's uproarious objections. The Commons' charges of illicit commissions were trivial, a matter of two marks a sack in some wool transaction which Neville furiously denied, but he could not sustain his innocence. The next accusation, that four years before he had produced an insufficient number of men to serve in Brittany and then allowed these men to conduct themselves licentiously while awaiting shipment, Neville contemptuously refused to answer at all.

Commons, considering that the charges were proved, requested that he be removed from all his offices, and heavily fined.

This is ridiculous, thought John, 'tis only to insult me that they attack Neville. Though mere had been slight dishonesty proved, what man among the Commons, what man among the twelve turncoat lords had not done as much? But he tightened his jaw and held his peace. He waited for the next accusation in grim suspense and was relieved at the object of their final and most virulent attack - Alice Perrers.

There was truth in what they said of Alice: that she was rapacious, venal and a wretched influence on the King; that she bribed judges, forged signatures, and helped herself to crown funds and jewels. Moreover, they said, it had been discovered that she was married and thus wallowing in flagrant adultery and that her hold on the King could only be the result of witchcraft. A Dominican friar had given her magic rings which had produced enslavement.

He equably acceded to the Commons' wish and had Alice summoned to the bar. She came before them soberly dressed and demure, her little cat face hidden by a veil, her head meekly bowed, which did not prevent her from casting voluptuous, imploring glances sideways at the Duke.

He had her sentence softened to banishment from court, and they forced her to swear on pain of excommunication and forfeiture of all her property that she would never again go near the King. Then they appointed two sergeants-at-arms to go with her and see that she obeyed.

"And now, by God," said Lord de la Pole to the Duke, on the day that Commons finished dealing with Alice, "I think we're out of this stew. See that sharp-toothed young de la Mare's jaded at last, there's no more bite in him. I was proud of you, my lord. 'Twas no easy thing to let them override your inmost wishes and your loyalty. And yet I think it had to be, some of their claims were just and it may be wise to sacrifice royal prerogative at times, if it gain the love of the people."

"Ay, so my brother of Wales thinks," said John, smiling into the bluff, affectionate eyes of the older man. "But by Christ's sweet blood, now they must be contented. Is it too much to hope they may even be content with me?" He looked at his friend with a sudden wistfulness.

Before the baron could answer they were interrupted by a messenger who rushed into the Painted Chamber and, throwing himself to his knees before the Duke, panted out urgent words. The Duke shook his head with a look of deep sorrow. He rose and held his hand out to still the hubbub. "Lords and Commoners all," he said, "we must adjourn. The Princess of Wales has sent from Kennington. This time there is no hope of his rallying."

Edward of Woodstock, the Black Prince, died on Trinity Sunday, the eighth of June in his forty-sixth year. The King his father, and the Duke his brother, knelt by the bedside, and to those two he confided the care of his wife, Joan, and the nine-year-old Richard. The King and Duke kissed the Bible held out to them by the Bishop of Bangor to seal their oath.

Then the old King beat his breast and fell into a pitiable childish weeping, until the Princess Joan led him away.

The Duke and the bishop remained with the Prince until the end came, when John leaned down and kissed the brow which had been contorted with pain and was now suddenly at peace. As the Bishop of Bangor folded the gnarled warrior hands across the still breast, John left the bedside and walked into the antechamber, where the old King whimpered in his chair and stared with frightened eyes at the crucifix that was fastened to the wall.

Princess Joan knelt on a rich carpet beside her little son, holding him close and crooning to him tender mother words of reassurance. Richard's body was stiff in her arms, his delicate girlish face was glassy from the horror of hearing his father's last agonised cries.

"It is finished," said John crossing himself. "God give his soul rest." The three in the antechamber made the sign of redemption, while the Princess gave a low shuddering sob.

John slowly sank to one knee before the child. He took the icy little hand and laying his forehead on it, said, "I John, King of Castile and Leon, Duke of Lancaster, do swear allegiance to thee, Richard, who art now the heir of England." The child's round cornflower eyes stared down at his uncle's bowed head. This big magnificent man had always seemed a being as godlike and remote as King Arthur.

Richard turned whispering to his mother. "Why does my uncle of Lancaster kneel to me?"

"Because you will be King of England, Dickon - when-"

She glanced at the old man humped over in his chair. "Some day." She looked down at her brother-in-law, and her tear-blurred eyes were beseeching. "God pity us, John," she said, "and you must pity us. Who is there but you who can protect us now that my dear Lord is dead?"

"I have vowed to protect you, my sister, and Richard shall be - by reason of his holy birthright - ever first with me and before my own son."

"I believe you," she said after a long moment.

For Katherine, the summer months were slow and heavy with longing. Kenilworth, scarce three days' journey from London, was not isolated. Messengers went back and forth to the Savoy, and Katherine had the comfort of brief letters from the Duke, but she did not see him. She knew that he loved her, yet she knew too that he threw himself into whatever aspect of his life was uppermost with single-minded vehemence, and the news that came through from London made clear the enormous pressure put upon him now.

Parliament sat on until mid-July. And there were the multitude of duties and arrangements resultant from the Prince of Wales' woeful death. And the King was ill, had taken to his bed at Havering-atte-Bower, pining for the banished Alice more than for his dead son, so the people whispered. The Duke was virtually regent of England.

Katherine strove to be reasonable. She played with her babies; she supervised the studies and games of the older children; she sat embroidering with Philippa and their women; and often they all rode out with the hounds and bows and the Duke's foresters to hunt the roebuck. Katherine had become a fair shot herself under the Duke's tutelage, and even Philippa enjoyed the chase.

The months passed, and Katherine lived for the receiving and writing of letters. She had mastered writing now, had practised with the children while they learned from an elderly friar. She wrote to John of the children, and frankly of her love and longing, and she wearied him with no reproaches.

At last, at the beginning of September, a messenger arrived from the Savoy and bore joyful news. The Duke summoned Katherine and some of the household down to London.

"Ma tres chere et bien-aimee," the Duke wrote to her in French, as he always did, and told her that he could not yet leave London; but it would not be improper if she as governess accompanied his daughters on the occasion of the annual obituary service for their mother, the Duchess Blanche, at St. Paul's. He directed that she leave her Swynford children and the two Beaufort babies at Kenilworth with their nurses, since the London air was not so healthful for little ones as that of Warwickshire; and he ended with an enigmatic little quotation which was private to them.

"Il te faudra de vert vestir" he wrote, and she finished it aloud, laughing softly, "c'est la livree aux amoureux," thinking of the first time they had said it to each other at the Chateau la Teste when she had worn the green kirtle as they started for the Pyrenees.

"Ay, now ye'll be merry as a popinjay again and juicy with love like a plum," said Hawise, acidly coming into the solar with an armful of Katherine's white silk shifts and glancing at the letter. "Well, when does he come?"

"He doesn't. We're going to the Savoy instead."

"Peter! That's a new betaking!" Hawise's sandy eyebrows shot up. "Will it not cause talk, an ye go to London?"

Katherine's glowing face hardened. "What more fitting than that I should pay respect to the memory of my beloved Duchess?"

Ay, you've no cause to fear her, Hawise thought, but what of the other Duchess? And she said, "There may be discomfortable things for ye to meet down there, sweeting."

Katherine lifted her chin. "I must chance it. Dear God, Hawise" - she turned with sudden passion -"do you not remember how long I've been parted from him?"

Katherine, the two ducal daughters, Hawise and a score of household servants journeyed down to London four days later.

Blanchette cried frantically when her mother left, but Tom did not even bother to say farewell, having embarked at dawn on a rabbit-snaring expedition with one of the Deyncourt boys.

Katherine worried about Blanchette for some time as they rode along the causeway and around the mere to cross the Avon. Beside the river bridge there stood a tavern; on its swinging sign was painted the Duke's arms. She gazed lingeringly, thinking that despite the thousands of times she had seen it this blazon never failed to give her a thrill of delight. And she forgot Blanchette.

At first the arrival at the Savoy was dismaying. She had not remembered how vast it was, how filled with people and commotion. Numerous as were the household officials, those of the chancery were greater. And, too, at the Savoy, most of the Duke's retinue were quartered. Katherine was given a chamber to herself near the falcon mew and close to the ducal suite, but she felt nearly as remote from him as she had when first she stayed here at the Beaufort Tower seven years ago.

Hawise helped to dress her in green satin trimmed with seed pearls, and then Katherine waited two hours in her room without word before a page tapped on her door to say that His Grace wished her to come to the Avalon Chamber.

He sat writing at the well-remembered carved-oak table frowning at a private missive to Wyclif, which he did not wish to dictate to a clerk. But he flung his pen into the sand cup and jumped up to give her greeting. He held out his arms and she ran to him with a low cry of joy.

He laughed, holding her from him, looking at her so that her pulses pounded. "And so you're wearing green, dear heart, as I asked - and I too." He pointed to the lining of the dagged sleeves of his brocaded robe. "We'll do full justice to love's colour, won't we, Katrine!" He put his hand on her breast and kissed her avidly.

He lifted her and carried her to the great crimson velvet bed which stood by the Avalon tapestry.

Before the honied oblivion overwhelmed her, she thought of that other time so long ago when he had carried her to this bed, and she had denied him with fear and anger. How strange that she had done so. For the space of the thought's flash she could not remember the reason. But it was because of Hugh, was it not? The answer seemed to her as flatly meaningless as a problem on the abacus. More than Hugh though, she had been full queasy of conscience in those days, a priggish child. But she could not remember what that girl had felt.

When their bodies were close they often caught echoes from each other's minds, and John, seeing the faint shadow in her languorous eyes, said, "Ay, darling, I never thought we'd be here like this, that other time when you ran from me." He laughed low in his throat. "Nor did I guess how hot a love my pope-holy little nun could show, though 'tis true she has the hidden mark of Venus." He kissed a certain small brown mole.

Quick rose dyed her cheeks, she pushed him away from her with mock anger, yet her voice trembled as she said, "You reproach me, my Lord? You would have me more coy? Maybe I should check your desire with stern looks and remind you that this is a fast day, and for conscience' sake we must abstain!"

At this he laughed again, with tenderness. "Do you think my love could have been held so close by a cold and canting woman?" He seized her hands as they pushed against his chest and holding them pinioned wide apart, looked down at her teasingly, and then with the darkening grimness of passion until her lips parted and she ceased to struggle.

The Duchess Blanche's Requiem Mass was to be held on her death day, September 12. A week at the Savoy had passed in a delicious haze. Taking their cue from their lord, the courtiers showed no recognition of Katherine's actual position, but there was an undercurrent of indulgent approval of the lovers. And except for the few of the ladies who were jealous of her beauty and would have liked to enjoy the Duke's favours themselves, she was treated with respect. It was a happy week. One day they held a fete champetre in the famous gardens. Tables strewn with thyme and loaded with simple country fare were set up beneath the rose arbours, and later the lords and ladies, glowing from the ale they had drunk, girded up their velvet robes to dance the Hey and cut other rustic capers.

On another sparkling morning the Duke ordered out his barges. All seven of them, garlanded, and canopied with tapestries, started down the Thames on a junket to Deptford. The Duke rode in his great barge of state with his two daughters, a half-dozen of his gentlemen - and Katherine. She sat on a cushion beside the Duke, her hand curled into his beneath a concealing fold of his outspread satin mantle, and dreamily watched the London banks stream by. Above the gabled houses the church spires pierced the violet sky like arrows, and the music of their bells nearly drowned out the gay songs from the minstrels' barge.

They came to the Bridge with its load of higgledy-piggledy houses so squeezed it seemed that some must slide into the rushing current, nor was Katherine's dreamy peace disturbed by the row of severed heads that were stuck on iron pikes along the Bridge. Though one young curly head was fresh and still dripped blood, she felt but a dim pity. There were always rotting heads on London Bridge, and she neither knew who these men were nor for what crimes they had suffered.

The sun sparkled on the water and the warm firm hand clasped hers tenderly beneath the mantle fold. Today John was relaxed and pleased to share with her his knowledge of the scene around them. He pointed out a galley from Venice, spice-laden so that the pungency of cloves and nutmeg drifted to them across the river, and an English ship, Calais-bound, with a cargo of the precious wool. Once they laughed together at a drunken monk so fat he overweighted the wherry he was crossing in, and howled with rage each time his great rump splashed in the water.

It was her last day of merriment.

That evening they returned with the tide as the Savoy chapel bell rang for vespers. They disembarked at the barge landing and followed the Duke through the arch to the Outer Ward. Katherine saw at once from the throng of horses and people that some new company had arrived, but beyond noting that they must be foreigners, for there was something odd about their clothes and she heard words in a strange tongue, she thought nothing of so usual an occurrence. Except for a pang because the arrival of important guests would necessitate prolonged entertainment and inevitably postpone the hour when she and John might be alone.

As she followed behind him she saw him start and heard him say, "Christ's blood!" in an angry tone before he strode ahead into the crowd of new-comers.

She stood uncertainly by the bargehouse when suddenly her arm was clutched and she looked down at her sister.

"Philippa!" she cried, staring at the plump face beneath the neat white coif. "What do you do here?"

"My duty, naturally!" said Philippa shrugging. "But I expected warmer greeting after the time we've been apart."

Katherine bent and kissed her sister on each cheek. "I was startled, I thought you at Hertford with - with-" She faltered, glancing towards the new-comers. Bitter coldness checked her breath.

"Ay, so," nodded Philippa. "The Duchess is here. To visit her wedded lord. She took the notion in the night, from a dream. Her father the murdered King Pedro appeared to her and told her to come. Or so I've gathered from the only one of her ladies who'll speak English to the rest of us. Faith, Katherine," she added patting the girl's hand, "you're white as bleached linen. You'll have to make the best of it. Show me to your chamber. I dare say I can sleep with you?"

"Where will the Duchess sleep?" asked Katherine very low.

"In the ducal suite, of course. She always does when she comes here."

Katherine turned and silently led the way up to her chamber, where Hawise was drowsing by the fire waiting for her mistress. Hawise and Philippa greeted each other in the offhand manner of long but tepid acquaintanceship.

"This'll not be easy for my lady," said Hawise, glancing at Katherine, who had moved to the window to stare out through the tiny leaded panes at the silver Thames below.

"Bah! She needn't fret." Philippa hung her serviceable squirrel-trimmed mantle carefully on a perch and bent to adjust her coif in Katherine's mirror. "The Duchess hasn't come for bedsport, that I'll warrant."

"How d'ye know that?" Hawise saw Katherine's slender back stiffen.

"Because," said Philippa briskly, "she cannot, if she would; which sport I think was never to her liking. But since she gave birth at Ghent last winter an infirmity has gripped her in her woman's parts."

Katherine turned slowly, her dilated eyes were dark as slate. "Then if this is true, she will but hate me the more, as I know I would."

"What whimsy!" Philippa had no use for morbid speculations. "I dare say she never thinks of you at all. What wonder to her that the Duke should have a leman, indeed what great noble has not?"

Katherine flinched, her nails dug sharply into her palms. She turned back to the window and leaned her cheek against the stone mullion.

"Ye shouldna've said that." Hawise scowled at Philippa, who was searching in Katherine's little tiring coffer to find a pin.

"Why ever not? 'Tis simple truth. By the rood, Hawise - can you not keep your mistress' gear in better order? This coffer's like a pie's nest. Hark - there's the supper horn. You must hurry, Katherine."

"I'll not come down," she said in a muffled voice.

But to such folly Philippa would not listen. She flattened Katherine with stern elder sister edicts. And her common sense, though devoid of imagination, was not untinged with sympathy. Katherine was here, the Duchess was here, sooner or later they must meet, best get it over.

Katherine, hastily attired by Hawise in the splendid apricot velvet gown, accompanied Philippa down and across the Inner Ward to the Great Hall, where the chamberlain separated them and seated each according to rank. Philippa went to the long board by the door where were fed the mass of commoners: heralds, squires, waiting-women, friars, the lowlier chancery officials and their wives. Katherine, no longer entitled to her usual seat, since all room at the High Table was preempted by the Castilian retinue, was put amongst the knights and ladies at the board below the windows. She slid quickly into place but could not raise her eyes from her pewter trencher which the varlets heaped with gobbets of smoking brawn. Yet soon she was forced to notice the knight beside her, Sir Esmon Appleby. He rubbed his foot against hers, he made play of brushing her arm as he reached across her to dip into the salt, he cast sideways looks into her bosom. She moved away on the bench, though wedged as she was between him and the elderly clerk of the Duke's privy expenses this was difficult.

Sir Esmon gripped his hand on her velvet-covered knee and whispered with wine-soaked breath, "No need to be so prim tonight, sweet burde. His Grace is occupied, pardee!"

"Leave me alone!" she said, shaking with anger.

"Nay, sweet heart," the knight's hand crept upwards along her thigh, "play not the virgin with me! I can show you many a lusty trick I'll vow His Grace ne'er thought of!"

She seized the meat knife from her trencher and slashed it down across the groping hand.

"Jesu!" yelped the knight, jumping up and staring at his welling blood. The lady next him squeaked with laughter, even the old clerk snorted into his cup as Sir Esmon, dabbing at his hand with his napkin, picked up his trencher and angrily moved to a place at the far end of the board.

Katherine sat stiff and faint with humiliation, staring at her untouched food. At last she raised her head and looked at the High Table, at the great high-backed golden chair beside the Duke which had always been empty till now.

Dear Mary Mother, she thought. The misery which had receded with Philippa's revelation in the chamber washed over her in a muddy flood.

The Duchess was small and young. She was not ugly as they had said.

Katherine, like one who cannot cease from pressing on an aching tooth, strained her eyes down the Hall. Young. Four years younger than I! Costanza was still but twenty-one. For all that Katherine had known this, yet she had resolutely pictured the Duchess as middle-aged, and big with a haughty maturity. She had not guessed the smallness.

The duchess was dressed in a sombre grey. Katherine could see no jewels except her crown and a long sparkling pendant at her neck, which must be the reliquary she wore always and which Philippa said contained one of St. James's fingers.

Katherine looked from the glossy black wings of Costanza's netted braids beneath the golden crown to the dark eyes below. Even at this distance, one could see that they were large and brilliant, and they seemed to gaze out with brooding intensity from the long narrow face, even when the little head tilted towards the Duke.

Katherine, watching in anguish, saw that they spoke but seldom together. His face that she knew so well in all its moods was set into the stern mask which she passionately told herself always hid boredom. But she could not escape noting another quality she had never seen in him - deference. The

Duke and Duchess ate from the same gilt salver, drank from the same hanap, and Katherine saw that he held back from each sip and morsel, so that Costanza might partake first, and then every motion of his body and the carriage of his head showed obeisance.

For Christ's sweet mercy - will he not look towards me once? Her fingers ripped a hunk from the soft, white bread and kneaded it like clay.

"You eat nothing, my lady?" said the old clerk on her left. He looked at her curiously.

"Nay, sir - I - I have a touch of fever." She seized her wine cup and drained it. The thick heady vernage burned in her stomach. She picked up a breast of roast partridge, dipped it in the sweet pepper sauce, then put it down again untasted. The meal dragged on.

Katherine sat and waited for the moment when she might be released. He had no thought for her, he had forgotten the sweetness of last night, of this very day in the barge. She drank more of the vernage, and her bitterness grew close to hatred. Ah, Katherine, where can you run to now, as once you ran from him? Where in the whole of England could you hide from him now, he who pretends to love you? Cold, cruel, heartless - so deep was she in her turmoil that she paid no heed to an announcement by the herald.

She caught its echo only because of the buzzing of the people around her. The Duke had commanded that all those who had not previously been presented to the Queen of Castile should come up now as their names were called.

This too, she thought - he wishes to humiliate me, to see me pay homage to his wife. And she steeled herself in anger. One by one, lords, knights, and their ladies were summoned by the chamberlain.

Then she heard "Lady Katherine Swynford." She walked stiff kneed down the Hall, her cheeks like poppies. There were snickers quickly checked, and she felt the slyness of spearing eyes.

She reached the Duchess's chair and curtsied low, touching the small cold hand extended to her, but she did not kiss it. She raised her eyes as Costanza said something quick and questioning in Spanish, and she heard the Duke answer, "Si."

The women looked at each other. The narrow ivory long-lipped face was girlish and not uncomely, but seen close like this one felt only its austerity. The black eyes glittered with a chill fanatic light. They seemed to appraise Katherine with the scrutiny of a moneylender examining a proffered trinket,' and again Costanza spoke to the Duke.

He leaned slightly towards Katherine, saying, "Her Grace wishes to know if you are truly devout, my Lady Swynford. Since you have the care of my daughters, she feels it essential that you neglect not religious observance."

Katherine looked at nun then, and saw behind the sternness of his gaze a spark of amusement and communion.

Her pain ebbed.

"I have tried not to neglect my duties towards the Ladies Philippa and Elizabeth," she said quietly.

The Castilian queen understood the sense of this, as indeed she understood far more English than she would admit. She shrugged, gave Katherine a long enigmatic look, waved her hand in dismissal as the chamberlain called another name.

Katherine quitted the Hall, walked slowly across the courtyard. Oh God, I wish I hadn't seen her, she thought; yet he doesn't love her, I know that. No matter that she is so young and a queen, it's me that he loves, and it does her no real wrong - and she doesn't care - one can see it, and she cannot even bear him a son. Yet, Blessed Virgin, I wish I had not seen her.

Throughout the sleepless night in her lonely bed, Katherine's thoughts ran on like this.

CHAPTER XVIII

The Duchess Costanza that night announced to the Duke that she wished to make pilgrimage to Canterbury at once. It was for this that she had come to London. Her father, King Pedro, in her dream had directed her to go, and also told her certain things to tell the Duke.

"He reproaches you, my lord," said Costanza to John when they were alone in the state solar. Her Castilian women had been dismissed for the night, having attired her in the coarse brown robe she now wore to bed. Her large black eyes fixed sternly on her husband, she spoke in vehement hissing Spanish. "I saw my father stand beside me, groaning, bleeding from a hundred wounds that traitor made in him. I heard his voice. It cried, 'Revenge! When will Lancaster avenge me?' "

"Aye," said John bitterly, "small wonder he cries out in the night. Yet twice I've tried - and failed. The stars have been set against us. I cannot conquer Castile without an army, nor raise another one so soon."

"Por Dios, you must try again!"

"You need not speak thus to me lady. There's nothing beneath heaven I want more than Castile!"

"That Swynford woman will not stop you?" she said hoarsely. Into the proud cold face came a hint of pleading.

"No," he said startled, "of course not."

"Swear it!" she cried. She yanked the reliquary from beneath her brown robe. "Swear it now by the sacred finger of Santiago!" She opened the lid and thrust the casket at him. . He looked at the little bleached bones, the shreds of mummied flesh and thick, ridged nail. "My purpose needs no aid from this."

She stamped her foot. "Have you been listening to that heretic - that Wyclif? In my country we would burn him!" Her shaking hand thrust the reliquary into his face. "Swear it! I command you!" Her lips trembled, red spots flamed on her cheek-bones.

"Bueno, bueno, dona," he said taking the reliquary. She watched, breathing hard, as he bent and kissed the little bones.

"I swear it by Saint James." He made the sign of the cross. "But the time is not ripe. The country is weary of war, they must be made to see how much they need Castile. They must" - he added lower and in English -"regain their faith in me as leader. Yet I think the people begin to look to me for guidance. They say that in the city yesterday they cheered my name."

She was not listening. She shut the reliquary and slipped it back under her robe. "Now I shall go to Canterbury," she said more quietly. "My father commanded it. It must be that since I am in this hateful England, an English saint is needed also for our cause. I shall see if your Saint Thomas will cure me of the bloody flux, so I may bear sons for Castile."

The Duke inclined his head and sighed. "May God grant it, lady." But if, he thought wryly, 'tis not God's will that I should lie soon with her again, I shall submit with patience.

He held out his hand to Costanza, and with the ceremony she exacted and which he accorded to her rank, he ushered her up the steps to her side of the State Bed. He held back for her the jewelled rose brocade curtains. She thanked him and, shutting her eyes, began to murmur prayers. Her narrow face was yellow against the white satin pillow, and his nostrils were offended by her odour. Costanza's private mortifications included denial of the luxury of cleanliness, Beneath the requisite pomp of her position, she tried to live like a holy saint, contemptuous of the body.

In the first years of her marriage she had not been so unpleasing. Though she had brought to their bed only a rigid endurance of wifely and dynastic duty, still she had allowed her ladies to attire and cleanse her properly at all times, and taken pride in the smallness of her high-arched feet, the abundance of her long black hair. She had been quieter, gentler, and though they had soon ceased, there had been moments when she showed him tenderness, had once spoken of love, which greatly embarrassed him. Only once however. And since the birth and death of the baby boy in Ghent she had become like this, indifferent to all things but her religious practices, her strange dreams and her consuming nostalgia for Castile.

John climbed into his side of the great bed, glad that space enough for two separated them.

He heard her whispering in the dark, "Padre, Padre - Padre mio - -" and his flesh crept, knowing that it was not God, but the ghost of her own father that she supplicated.

Yet Costanza had no tinge of madness. Brother William had said so, three weeks ago when John had sent him to Hertford to examine the Duchess. "Disorders of the womb do oft-times produce excitable humours in the female," the Grey Friar had reported. "I've given Her Grace a draught which may help her, but her Scorpio is afflicted by Saturn. That is not all that afflicts her," added the friar with stern unmistakable meaning.

"Her Grace is nothing disturbed by my - my association with Lady Swynford!" John had answered hotly. "She has never suffered from it, nor does she care."

"Perhaps not, my lord. But God cares - and the sin of adultery you live in now is but the stinking fruit of the viler crime which gave it birth."

"What's this, friar?" John had shouted in anger. "Do you join my enemies in the yapping of vague slanders - or is it that your bigot mind sees love itself as such a vileness? Speak out!"

"I cannot, my lord," said the friar after a time. "I can but remind you that Our Blessed Lord taught that the wish will be condemned even as the deed."

"What wish? What deed? You babble like a Benedictine! You had better stick to leeching."

"Do you pray sometimes, my lord - for the salvation of Nirac de Bayonne's soul?" said Brother William solemnly.

Until now, when Costanza's behaviour had reminded him of Brother William, John had put this conversation from his thought, deeming that the friar, like all the clergy, puffed himself up with the making of dark little mysteries and warnings. He had answered impatiently that no doubt Masses had been said for Nirac in St. Exupere's church in Bayonne, since money had been sent there for that purpose. He had resented the friar's steady accusing gaze and said, "It was not my fault that the little mountebank's wits unloosened, or that he dabbled in witchcraft! You weary me, Brother William."

"Aye," said the friar, "for you've a conscience blind as a mole and tough as oxhide. Beware for your own soul, my Lord Duke!"

No other cleric in the world could have thus spoken without instant punishment, and the rage that injustice always roused in John had hardly been controlled by the long liking and trust he had for this Brother. But he had sent the friar away from the Savoy before Katherine came. Sent him far north to Pontefract Castle, where the steward had reported several cases of lung fever.

At the thought of Katherine, John stretched and smiled into the darkness. Tomorrow night she would be here with him again, since Costanza was leaving for Canterbury. Nay - not tomorrow night, for that was sacred to the memory of Blanche and would be spent in mourning and fasting, as always on this anniversary. The next night then. He hungered for Katherine with sharp desire, picturing her as she would be now in her bed - white and rose and bronze, warmly fragrant as a gillyflower.

The Castilian Duchess left the Savoy next morning with six of her own courtiers and a few English servants. She was dressed in sackcloth, her head was powdered with ashes and she rode upon a donkey, for that was the humble beast used by Our Blessed Lord.

Katherine from her chamber window watched the pilgrimage move slowly from the courtyard through the gatehouse to the Strand, and her eyes shone with happy tears as she turned to her sister. "Blessed Jesu - so she's gone again! God be thanked she didn't stay for the Requiem Mass."

"The Duchess cares for no past but her own," said Philippa dryly. "Now that I've a fortnight's leave," she added considering, "I think I'll go back with Geoffrey to Aldgate. His lodging must be in sore need of my care. Last time he'd let an ale keg drip for days - ruined the floor-cloth - and the fleas!"

"Geoffrey'll meet us at Saint Paul's?" asked Katherine, but she knew the answer. He, of all people, would never fail in respect to the memory of Blanche. Katherine too thought of Blanche with loving reverence like that one gave the saints.

Later that morning, the Lancastrian procession from the Savoy to St. Paul's Cathedral was led by the Duke. They were all dressed in black and all afoot. Katherine's position was between Elizabeth and Philippa, behind little Henry, who followed his father at two paces.

Katherine and John exchanged hurried words while the procession formed. He had bent close to her and whispered, "Dear heart, we shall be together again tomorrow," and she had pulled her black veil quickly across her face to hide her unseemly joy.

As they marched across the Fleet bridge and entered the City at Ludgate, the Londoners made way respectfully. The men uncovered, many of the women ducked a curtsy as the Duke marched slowly past. There were cries of "Lancaster" and "The Duchess Blanche, God rest her sweet soul!"

At the corner of Ave Maria lane, a woman's voice somewhat thickened with drink shouted out, "Cock's bones, but the Duke's a handsome kingly wight, belike he'd be no bad ruler for us after all!"

She was shushed by a hundred whispers, but John felt a contented glow. He thought the temper of the London crowd was for him as it never had been before, and he thought that his poor brother had been right to counsel moderation in the handling of the Commons, "The Good Parliament," the people called it now. And the sacrifice had not been too great, barring the whimperings of the old King, bereft of his Alice. The imprisoned merchants doubtless had deserved some punishment, the Lords Latimer and Neville, too. The new Privy Council which the Commons had appointed to the King was harder for John to stomach, and yet here too magnanimity might be shown; for little Richard's sake it might be possible to conciliate and work with even such enemies as the Earl of March.

His softened mellow spirit deepened as he walked down St. Paul's immense nave, through the choir and to the right of the High Altar where he knelt in Blanche's chantry beside her marble tomb. His retinue filed in. The nobles filled the choir, the rest overflowed into the aisles. Philippa, Elizabeth and Henry knelt on purple cushions at the far end of their mother's chantry.

The priests in black and silver chasubles commenced the celebration of the Mass. "Introibo ad altare Dei - ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam - -"

The chanting and responses went on, but for John three words echoed and re-echoed - Laetificat juventutem meant, the joy of my youth. He looked up at Blanche's effigy, all but her face covered with a black velvet pall. The twenty-eight candles, one for each of her years on earth, illumined the serene alabaster profile. Joy of my youth - yes. But you would not begrudge me joy now, my Blanche, you know that you've lost nothing that was ever yours in this new love that has come to me.

His exaltation grew, and with it a certainty that all would go well with him from now on. His enemies would melt away, success would come in war, in peace. Castile would crumble for him like a marchpane subtlety, and he would build it up anew of strong and shining steel while all of England rang with the glory of his name, as it had once rung for Edward.

"Requiescat in pace - -"

The Mass was over, John felt exalted, cleansed, much as he had felt long ago during the sacred vigil before his father knighted him.

He walked down the nave. Throughout the vast church his people rose from their knees to follow him. He stepped out to the porch, and stood blinking in the sunlight, still bemused, and not comprehending why there was a great crowd in the walled close. Again he heard "Lancaster," and he threw his head up to smile at them, thinking they came to do him honour. He checked himself, seeing that there was no answering warmth in the upturned faces. They appeared shocked, some even dismayed, but the strongest impact from those gaping faces was a malicious curiosity.

"Make way - make way!" cried Lancaster Herald, bustling out of the church and brandishing his baton and trumpet. "Make way for John, King of Castile, Duke of Lancaster, and for his meinie!"

The crowd did not move. There were a few nervous snickers then from the midst of the rapidly swelling throng a man's voice shouted, "Fine-sounding titles, herald! But tell us why we should make way for John o' Gaunt, a Flemish butcher's son!"

John stood rooted to the pavement. The sky darkened and across the close the house roofs wavered like water. There was a roaring in his head.

Katherine with the ducal daughters had come out on the porch in time to hear a man shout, but at first she was simply puzzled like the others. Then she saw whom the crowd was warily watching: like a great collective beast of prey, uncertain of its quarry's next move. And the Duke did nothing, he stood as if some witchcraft had turned him to stone.

Katherine instinctively moved nearer to him as the vanguard of his retinue began to trickle from the church.

"Ay," cried the same taunting voice, "John o' Gaunt seems wonderstruck! He's not yet read the placard what's nailed on yonder door. The good monk there was passing, and he read it to us, my lord, so we maught all share the secret o' your true birth!"

Katherine, utterly bewildered, looked where the crowd did and saw Benedictine monks hovering near a recess of the church porch. Their faces were sunk deep in their black cowls. As she looked, the monks vanished, slipping through a side door into the church.

The crowd roared, half with laughter at the disappearing monks, half in the jeering excitement with which they would pelt stones at miscreants in the stock. Yet some were uneasy. The Duke's motionless figure was uncanny. He stared over their heads as though weird signs were painted on the western sky.

Their spokesman shouted out once more, but in less certain tone. "Will ye not read the placard, m'lord? 'Tis on Paul's door behind ye. It tells strange tidings o' a noble lord what holds his head so high!"

Katherine's heart began to pound. She noted something familiar in the voice and stood on tiptoe to peer into the crowd. She saw a broad red face, a sandy thatch of hair beneath a peaked cap, with the badge of the weavers' guild. My God, she thought, 'tis Jack Maudelyn! She glared down at Hawise's husband with some confused idea of quelling him, when Lord de la Pole rushed out on the church porch, crying, "Christ's blood, what's ado here! What's this mob?" His shrewd eyes darted over the scene, and he drew his sword, shouting, "A Lancaster! A Lancaster! Come forth to your Lord!"

Inside the church there were startled answering cries. The great doors were flung wide. The Duke's knights and squires came running out, fumbling at their sword hilts.

The crowd wavered and pressed back against the wall, then as though a cork had been drawn they poured, stumbling, scrambling, through the churchyard gates, and fled up Paternoster Lane.

"Shall we after them, Your Grace?" cried a young knight eagerly.

The Duke made no answer. He had not moved on the step while his retinue surrounded him.

De la Pole sheathed his sword. "No," he said to the knight. " 'Twould not be seemly here on this day of mourning. 'Tis no doubt some prentice prank. They've done no harm - -"

He faltered as he got his first direct look at the Duke. "God's bones, my lord - you've not been wounded?"

The Duke's face was grey as the church stones and beaded with moisture. His lips were drawn in like an old man's.

Katherine too stared at her lover's face, and she ran to him crying, "My darling - why do you look like that? They were but silly japes the man called out."

He pushed her aside, and walking to the church door, shut the half his men had opened. On the door dangling from an iron nail hung a large square of parchment. It was inscribed in English in a fine writing suggestive of the cloisters. The Duke clasped his hands behind his back and read it slowly.

Know men of England, how ye have been wickedly deceived by one who incontinently plots to seize our throne. The Duke of Lancaster is no Englishman, but a Fleming. He's none of royal Edward and Philippa's blood, but a changeling. For ye must know that in Ghent, the Queen's Grace was delivered of a son that a nurse overlay. In fear of her lord the King, the Queen did send to find another infant of the same age. It was a butcher's son, and fie whom ye now call John of Gaunt. This secret did the Queen confess to the Bishop of Winchester, on her deathbed, so it is said.

The Duke drew his dagger from its jewelled sheath. Its hilt was enamelled with the lilies and leopards, tipped with a ruby rose of Lancaster. He thrust the dagger through the parchment and left it quivering there.

He turned to his bewildered courtiers. He saw none of them, nor Katherine, nor his children. His face became one only his fighting men had seen, as his lips drew back in a terrible smile. "They shall learn whether I am Edward's true-born son."

That night at the Savoy uneasy speculation hummed. In the kitchens and cellars the varlets whispered together, and the men-at-arms in their barracks. The chancery clerks and the chapel priests buzzed as unceasingly as did the Duke's squires, or the knights and lords who headed his retinue. The Duke had gone to Havering-atte-Bower to see the King. He had put off his mourning clothes and ordered his fastest horse to be saddled. Galloping as though Beelzebub's own fiends pursued him, he had set off for Essex. He had chosen none of his men to accompany him, nor spoken to anyone: he had gone alone. This, a circumstance so unprecedented and foolhardy, that Lord de la Pole, anxiously frowning, spoke of it in the Great Hall that night. "God's wounds! Who can guess what's in his mind? He's like a man bewitched!" He spoke to Sir Robert Knolles, another old campaigner who had served with the Duke for twenty years.

Sir Robert gnawed on his grizzled moustache and cried staunchly, "Why, he will avenge this insult to his honour. What man can blame him?"

"Yet such paltry nonsense," answered de la Pole. "They've whispered far worse of him than this farradiddle about a butcher's son, or even that he plots for the throne."

"Whispered, ay," said the old knight, "but this was written down."

De la Pole was silent. He himself, who could read a little, had awe of the written word, but to the common folk writing was a sacred oracle.

"By God!" cried de la Pole, angrily banging his hand on the table. "No one who saw him today could doubt him a Plantagenet! D'you remember Prince Edward's face at Limoges massacre? No mercy, and no quarter when the fury's on them."

"But that was war," said Sir Robert. "His Grace can hardly massacre the whole of London."

"Nay, and our Duke has a keener mind than his brother ever had. He'll find subtler means of vengeance. But," he added frowning, "I cannot guess what."

Katherine, sitting at her old place at the High Table, heard this conversation, and her troubled heart grew heavier still. Her hurt that he had no more thought of her than for the rest of his meinie was eclipsed by her suffering for him. She had read the placard. The shock it gave her was not at its absurd content but at the vicious hatred which had prompted it. And she who knew John better than anyone, guessed at some uncertainty, or fear. She thought of the night at Kenilworth, when he had said, "I've been tilting with a phantom."

Her unhappiness culminated later in violent anger at Hawise. Katherine turned on her maid the moment their chamber door was dosed and they were alone. "It was your Jack, the whoreson churl, who shouted insults at my Lord!" she cried. "No doubt you knew it. You faithless slut, no doubt 'tis nothing to you to take the Duke's bounty, while your own man sneers at him and yammers filthy lies!"

Hawise gasped. "Don't, sweeting, don't," she cried. "I didna know till now that Jack had aught to do wi' that scrummage today. And God help me, but I love ye better'n him or mine own child. 'Tis in part for this that Jack do hate the Duke."

Katherine turned and flung her arms around the stout neck. "I know, I know. Forgive me," she cried. "But if you had seen my lord standing there - -alone - on the step - I would have shielded him - I couldn't-"

"Hush, poppet, hush." Hawise stroked the wet cheek and made the gentle soothing sound she used to Katherine's babies. I'll speak sharply to Jack when I see him, she thought, but Jack cared little what she said any more. Since she had left him to serve her lady he had taken some Kentish wench to live with him.

" 'Tis nothing so grave after all, sweeting," she said. "Jack was tipsy, no doubt, and meant no real harm. The Duke didn't know who 'twas shouting?"

Katherine shook her head. "Only I up there would've known him. And my lord was dazed, you could see. Oh, Hawise-" She shut her eyes with a long unsteady breath while the maid's thick nimble fingers set to unfastening her brooch and girdle.

"Sleep now," said Hawise, "for 'tis late, and shadows cast by candle are vanished in the sun. The Duke'll be back here wi' ye on th' morrow, I'll take oath on't."

All through that autumn the Duke stayed at Havering Castle with the old King, who received him with delight, clung to him and mumbled gratitude to his dear son. For the Duke at once recalled Alice Perrers. He sent the King's own men-at-arms to fetch her from her place of banishment in the north. He met her in Havering courtyard himself and gave her his hand in greeting.

In jewels and brocades and a whirl of musk, Alice flounced triumphantly out of her chariot, her three little dogs frisking and barking after her. She raised her thickly painted face to the Duke.

"This is different, Your Grace," said Alice with her sideways smile as she curtsied, "from that time at Westminster when you did bow to Commons and send me away. I thought you could not mean it." Her wooing voice caressed him, she squeezed his hand softly.

He withdrew his hand. "Dame Alice, much has changed since that day in the Painted Chamber, and now I bow to no man - or woman." He looked at her in such a way that she was frightened, and she nodded quickly.

"My lord, I'll do your bidding in everything. I've some influence in my own fashion; but I - I - I do beg of you one more boon."

He inclined his head and waited.

She breathed sharply, her green eyes narrowed. "I crave the head of Peter de la Mare," she said, watching the Duke closely yet sure of her ground. "I did not like the things he said of me, my lord."

The Duke laughed, and Alice involuntarily stepped back.

"The Speaker of the Commons already lies in chains in Nottingham Castle dungeon," he said. "I shall decide what's to be done with him after I deal with other matters. You may go now to the King."

One by one and day by day the Duke of Lancaster reversed all the measures which the reform Parliament had put through in the spring. He summarily dismissed the Privy Council that the Commons had appointed. The Lords Latimer and Neville were released from their confinement and reinstated at court. The merchants impeached by Commons were released from jail.

The old King signed whatever papers his son gave him, much pleased that his beloved Alice and John were now in agreement, and mistily aware that he was helping to punish a pack of upstart rebels who had dared to interfere with royal prerogatives.

The Duke stayed in Essex at Havering Castle with his father, but after the first few days of inner frenzy, his mind regained control. His purpose became a staunch ship, steered by his skilful brain, and gliding relentlessly forward along the cold channel of his fury.

He had the force of the King's authority and the King's men behind him, and backed it by his own equally powerful Lancastrian feudality. He summoned key men of his retinue to Havering, he kept messengers galloping in a constant stream between Havering and the Savoy. He sent them farther afield to the far-flung corners of his vast holdings. From Dunstan-burgh in the north to Pevensey in the south, from his Norfolk manors in the east to Monmouth Castle on the Welsh border - the stewards and constables were alerted to be ready in case of need.

But there was no need. Commons had dissolved long ago. The members had scattered to their homes all over England. Their Speaker was imprisoned, and the lords and bishops who had given them support now wavered one by one and attached themselves to the winning side.

All but the Earl of March and Bishop Courtenay of London.

The Duke let the bishop be, for the present. Courtenay he would deal with later, and he had a special weapon in mind. But for the proper punishment of March, one ally was essential. The Duke summoned to Havering the powerful Border lord, Percy of Northumberland, and in an hour's secret conference showed him plainly where self-interest lay and how worthless had been March's promises.

The frightened little Earl of March thereupon was ordered to leave the country on foreign service. He refused. Assassination on shipboard or in Calais seemed to him quite as possible as the already accomplished imprisonment of his steward in Nottingham dungeon. Instead he resigned his marshalship of England and fled across the country to barricade himself in Ludlow Castle.

The Duke rewarded Percy's rejuvenated loyalty to the crown with the abandoned Marshal's staff.

These measures it soon appeared were but preliminaries.

At the end of October, the Duke attacked William of Wykeham, the Bishop of Winchester. He summoned him before the new Lancastrian Privy Council on charges of graft, and robbery of the public funds.

So one morning the corpulent fifty-four-year-old bishop stood before the King, the Duke and the members of his council, facing them all with more bewilderment than anger. He had always been in high favour at court, he had been the King's chaplain, the King's architect, the Queen's confessor, and Chancellor of the Realm. He had had no enemies until now.

His podgy fingers tightened on his crosier; beneath his gorgeous red satin cope his portly belly rumbled with nervousness.

"I cannot understand, Your Majesty," he began his defence to the King, but seeing that his old patron's wrinkled eyelids had shut and the grey, crowned head was nodding, he turned to the Duke. "Your Grace - these charges, they're outrageous! They deal with matters ten years gone."

"But they were true - my lord bishop?"

"By the Blessed Virgin, how can I remember after all this time how I came by every groat? 'Tis impossible, my lord."

"Maybe your memory will sharpen if you be relieved of the clogging burden of your revenues and temporalities," said the Duke. "Holy poverty is much desired by the clergy, I believe." He glanced to the corner of the chamber where stood a priest in plain dun-coloured robes, John Wyclif, whom the Duke had called here from Oxford. They exchanged a grave slight smile.

The bishop's mouth fell open. His jowls quivered, his voice was shrill as he cried, "Your Grace, why do you prosecute me? There are many other bishops - you've always shown me favour before - -"

The Duke's eyebrows raised slowly. He folded his hands on his lap and gazed back at the flushed sweating face beneath the jewelled mitre.

"It cannot be," cried the bishop, suddenly perceptive, "that you believe I had aught to do with that preposterous changeling story!"

"The scroll said that you had this secret of my true birth from Queen Philippa on her death-bed." The Duke spoke so soft, the members of the council strained to hear, and the bishop stared with stupefied eyes.

"But the Queen confessed no such thing, Your Grace! 'Tis all a lie!"

"That I know, my Lord Bishop. But someone started this he. Your name was written."

"By the Holy Trinity, it wasn't I. You must believe, Your Grace, it wasn't I!"

The Duke shrugged. "Yet you've admitted your memory is faulty." He glanced at his council. "The trial will proceed."

It proceeded and soon ended. The Bishop of Winchester was stripped of his rich manors, and his coffers full of gold. At one stroke all his worldly possessions were removed from him - though his episcopal office even the Duke could not touch - for that had come down through St. Peter from God.

The Duke's retinue rejoiced. They swaggered and boasted of their lord's power. They laughed openly at the whole lot of discomfited bishops. In the taverns and halls and on the streets they jeered also at the Commons, and at the cocky bantling Peter de la Mare who had thought to defy the Duke and now found himself rotting in a dungeon.

Alone of all Lancaster's knights, Baron de la Pole had reservations. He had expressed them to the Duke and been sent away from Havering for his pains. On a November morning in his chamber at the Savoy he was gloomily letting his squire array him in hunting costume when his page announced Brother William Appleton, and the barefoot friar walked in.

"Well now, Brother," cried the baron heartily. "I'm glad to see you. How was it at Pontefract, are you just back?"

"Some time ago," said the Franciscan. "I've been staying with my brethren at Greyfriars. I hear strange things of his Grace."

"Not so strange!" said the baron, instantly defending his Duke. "He but vindicates his honour like any noble knight!"

"I hear," said the friar, "that no act of the last Parliament has been suffered to stand, that the Speaker is imprisoned, the Earl of March banished."

"It is so," said de la Pole.

"I hear that the Bishop of Winchester is homeless, virtually begging his bread from door to door."

"Like a friar, my dear Brother, like a friar!" de la Pole laughed. " 'Twill do the fat bishop no harm! And remember" - the baron leaned forward - "it is to little Prince Richard that he gave all the bishop's confiscated lands. That should stop their foul talk of plots against the child."

"Nothing but a miracle will stop talk. The Duke's acts are-frightening the people."

The baron sighed and, sitting on a stool, held his legs out for his squire to put on his leather hunting shoes. "He no longer cares. He wants only revenge."

"Has he not had enough?" said the friar sternly.

" 'Twas that placard. He knows not who put it there, or wrote it. So he strikes out blindly. 'Twill be Bishop Courtenay next. A tougher stick to break than Winchester was, and for this he's using Wyclif."

The friar nodded. He had heard Wyclif had been preaching in the London pulpits, preaching his doctrine of church reform and church taxation so that the burden of the people's own taxes might be lessened.

"An honest man, Wyclif," said the friar thoughtfully, "and his teachings touched by Holy Truth, I think, but they may dangerously inflame the commons - -"

"Lancaster too is an honest man!" broke in the baron, "though hot of temper like all his race. And still he's shown forbearance. Mind you, Sir Friar, there's been no bloodshed!

He's even checked the King's whore in her clamour to kill de la Mare."

"Bloodshed-" The friar smiled faintly. "Blood is all you knights understand. There are far worse sufferings. But 'tis not of that I'd speak." He glanced at the baron's squire who was polishing the tip of his master's spear. The baron took the hint and waved dismissal.

Brother William sat down on a stool and explained. "All this that we've been saying is common knowledge. I'll not spread any rumour that is not. 'Tis about that placard. I believe I know who wrote it."

"God's nails - -" breathed the baron, sinking back open-mouthed in his chair. "Do you indeed? His Grace has sent spies throughout the city to listen in the taverns and question offhandedly, but to no purpose."

The friar hesitated. This knowledge had not come to him through any secrets of the confessional, for if it had his lips would have been as sternly sealed as they were on another matter relating to the Duke. Shortly after his return to London from the north, he had been called to examine a sick monk at St. Bartholomew's Benedictine priory, so great was his reputation as leech that even the monks called on him at times.

As he had left the priory infirmary, he had been shocked to hear drunken voices coming from the scriptorium and a bleating laugh like a goat's. He had been about to hurry past the door, thinking that the prior kept lax rule here, when the same bleating voice called out, "And this one'll hang on Paul's door too, 'tis better than the changeling - -"

Someone said "Hist!" and there was a sharp silence.

The friar walked into the scriptorium. Two monks, their foolish young faces red with the ale they had shared from a mazer, gaped at him blankly. The third man was perched on a high stool at a desk, a quill in his hand, a square of parchment under it. His robes and semi-tonsure showed him to be a clerk. His pock-marked face instantly became bland as cheese, but his little eyes fastened on the friar with ratlike caution.

"You make merry in here while you inscribe your scrolls?" said the friar pleasantly, trying to edge near enough the desk to see what the clerk had written. "You treat of merry topics, Sir Clerk?"

One of the monks in evident confusion said, "This clerk is none of us, he but lodges here at the priory. He has lately come from Flanders."

"Nay, I'm an Englishman - of - of Norvich," said the clerk quickly in his bleating voice. "Johan of Norvich, I but spent a time in Flanders."

"Johan?" said the monk in surprise. "We've called you Peter - -"

"Johan - Peter - both." The clerk slid off his stool, and the friar with keen disappointment saw that the scroll was blank but for two words "Know ye - -"

"Is't the custom at St. Bart's that Grey Friars haf right to nose around and question us?" said the clerk to the monks, and limping to the mazer he took a long draught.

The Grey Friar had made some civil remark and gone, but he had been mulling this matter over in his mind ever since. He had consulted his superior, he had prayed on it, and now, knowing the baron's loyalty and shrewdness, he had come to him.

He told the baron what he had overheard, but added, "There's no proof, they'd say I heard wrong, the parchment with the two words will have vanished. And there is much that's puzzling. Whate'er this clerk may call himself, he spoke with Flemish accent. And never had I seen malice so pure in a man's eyes. What can he have so harsh as this against the Duke? The young monks are fools and swayed by this man, though willing enough to spite Wyclifs patron, no doubt."

"The clerk is being bribed?" suggested de la Pole. "By March? Or Courtenay?"

"Ay - mayhap - he had gold rings on his fingers - but the nub of the matter is - shall I go with this tale to the Duke?"

The baron pondered. "Not now. There's no proof, and the Duke may be led to more blind violence. His rage is nearly slaked, 'twill all die down - if nothing further happens. The clerk and Benedictines maybe will bate their tricks, since they must guess you heard them."

Nodding thoughtfully and with relief, the friar stood up. It went against his grain to carry tales that he had got by eavesdropping and he decided to wait for developments. It might well be too that the Duke would not receive him, since they had parted last on a discordant enough note.

This reminded him of something and he said, "How is't with Lady Swynford? What part has she played in all this coil of His Grace's?"

"None at all," answered the baron. "I doubt that he's seen her since it started." His face softened. "Poor fair lass, she moped here at the Savoy for days and then returned to Kenilworth, with the ladies Philippa and Elizabeth. And yet it seems he loves her dearly when he has a mind for love."

"A vile adulterous love," said the friar grimly, pulling up his cowl and adjusting the knotted cord at his waist. "God will scourge them for it."

CHAPTER XIX

Katherine kept Christmastide alone with the children at Kenilworth. The Duke divided his festivities between his father at Havering and his nephew, little Richard, who remained with the Princess Joan across the Thames at Kennington.

His establishment at Kenilworth was not, however, entirely forgotten. In February, the Duke sent belated New Year's presents to everyone, and a silver-gilt girdle for Katherine herself, but the accompanying note was stilted, though it indicated that she should return to the Savoy for a visit with the Lady Philippa, that there was an envoy coming from the Duchy of Luxembourg who wished to see Philippa with a view to possible marriage negotiations.

It was an official missive, dictated, and there was no private message to Katherine. He sent the note and the gifts by a new young squire Katherine did not know, a Robert Beyvill, who was to escort the ladies back to the Savoy.

Katherine received the letter while she sat amongst her household in Kenilworth's beautiful new Hall. She kept rigid control of her face as she read and thought, Dear Mother of God, he has then really ceased to love me or he could not write thus. I shall not go - I'll refuse. Even as she thought this, her heart began to deny it. His love had been buried but surely it was still there despite the evil demon, or whatever the incubus was, that drove him. She must not let her pride strike back at him, since he had again summoned her, no matter how coldly. She would go to London.

And underneath ran bitter realisation. What choice had she but to obey? This castle was his, the bread she ate, the clothes she wore came from his bounty. Like the hundreds in his retinue, like his children, like this young squire who stood waiting respectfully before her, she had no course but submission.

Suddenly she thought of Kettlethorpe. That place was wholly hers, her widow's rights had been confirmed. How small and mean it was compared to these lovely castles where she lived now here, now there, at the Duke's whim; and yet that crumb of far-off Lincolnshire was the only thing in the world entirely her own.

The thought was fleeting. She looked at her little Swynfords - Blanchette's golden curls bent over a grubby bit of embroidery while Philippa gravely helped her. Tom whittling an arrow on the hearth - both well grown, finely clad, and educated better than most nobles' children. And she thought how much they had profited by their mother's situation. She turned her eyes to the young squire and said quietly, "Then we must make ready to leave for London, must we not? What are you named, sir?"

"Robert Beyvill, my lady, but mostly I'm called Robin."

"Robin," she said with her sudden enchanting smile, thinking him well named. He had sharp eyes, a curly brown head, and his tunic was a bright rusty red. He was tall and merry-looking. Altogether far more pleasing a squire than Raulin d'Ypres had been - or Ellis.

Katherine rose abruptly and poured wine for Robin. She never allowed herself to think long of Hugh's erstwhile squire. She had seen Ellis once in Lincoln when little John was born. She had met him by chance as she walked up Pottergate to the house the Duke had leased for her. Ellis had stopped squarely in front of her, his heavy Saxon features twisted to a mask of loathing. "Whore!" he had cried, and spat directly into her face. She had not told the Duke the whole of it but she had seen to it that Ellis de Thoresby was sent off to his estates in Nottingham.

"I dare say Lady Philippa and I shan't be gone long," said Katherine, sitting down again and addressing her household. She spoke soothingly, for she knew there would be bad moments with Elizabeth, who adored the gaieties of London and resented being left out of anything. Worse than any tantrums Elizabeth might have was the stricken look in Blanchette's eyes as the little girl raised them to her mother. Plain as speech they said, And so you leave me again - for him.

"Come here, darling," said Katherine to her. "Shall we sing 'Havelock the Dane'? Will you play it on your lute?" That was the child's favourite ballad, and it used to be that to the point of weariness she begged Katherine for it.

But Blanchette shook her head and lowered it over the embroidery. "No, thank you, Mama," she said in a dull, flat little voice.

Katherine, Philippa and Robin Beyvill, the squire, left for London on the fifteenth of February, accompanied by the usual escort of men-at-arms, varlets and baggage carts, while Hawise and Philippa's waiting-women were stuffed into a wagon with the mistresses' travelling coffers.

Robin enlivened the way by telling the two ladies all that had been happening in London, but Philippa did not listen as she rode sedately along on her white mare. She was praying to the Blessed Virgin, supplicating that understanding Lady with conflicting petitions. First, that the marriage negotiations with Luxemburg would come to naught and second, that she would always have the will to obey her father. But Katherine listened eagerly to the squire and learned more about the Duke's activities than she had ever known. Robin had an uncritical admiration for his lord, whom he had served four years, though only recently promoted to be one of the Duke's own personal squires.

There was plenty of time for talk as they wended along the frozen muddy roads, and Catherine's interest was enlivened by feminine amusement when she discovered that Robin was casting her in the classic role of the unattainable lady fair.

He had too much humour to sigh and groan, as the love-stricken squire should do, but he demonstrated the other signs. His hand trembled when he helped her to dismount, he blushed when she looked at him, and once, when she dropped a sprig of holly which she had been wearing on her bodice, she saw him stealthily pick it up and, kissing the red berries, slip the whole twig into his pouch.

Katherine's sore heart was warmed by this adoration, in which she saw no danger; after all, the lad was barely twenty, and she full twenty-six. She relaxed with him and enjoyed his company, perhaps all the more so because Robin was not of high blood. His father was a franklin in Suffolk, a prosperous one, who farmed ample lands and owned a new half-timbered house.

Robin went on to say proudly that his father, Richard, was even now sitting in Parliament at Westminster, a new member of the Commons. "For," said Robin laughing, "the Duke has seen to it that this Parliament shall be properly packed with his own supporters, so there'll be no trouble like there was last spring."

They jogged out of Buckinghamshire towards Woburn Abbey, where they would sleep that night, while she considered what Robin had said, and she spoke thoughtfully. "So all goes well with His Grace now? He has no more enmities to fight against?"

"God's body, lady, I wouldn't say that!" Robin laughed again, then sobered and turned sharply in his saddle. "There's still the bishops! May the devil's pitchforks prick their fat rumps until they've bled out all the gold!"

"Robin!" cried Katherine.

Philippa looked up from her vague gazing at the road. "Are you a Lollard, Sir Squire?" she said stiffly; her long mild face showed a flash of Lancastrian hauteur. It was only in matters of piety that Philippa dared differ from her father's views.

"I ask your pardon, my lady," said Robin to Philippa, "I spoke too crude." But his eyes never lingered on the girl, and they returned at once to Katherine as he explained eagerly, "I feel as Wyclif does, and our lord the Duke. We've had the 'poor preachers' come to our home in Suffolk - they're good honest men, lady."

"Well-a-day," said Katherine, uninterested in Wyclif's preachers or indeed in Wyclif. "What is it between the Duke and the bishops now?"

"They most damnably defy His Grace!" cried Robin, his brown eyes flashing. "The Bishops' Convocation has dared to summon Wyclif for trial at Saint Paul's on Thursday. 'Tis Courtenay's doing."

Katherine could see no reason for Robin's vehemence. The bishops were powerful, of course, everyone knew that, but the Duke was omnipotent - all that Robin had told her proved it, and some struggle over Wyclif seemed to her of scanty importance. She now thought that she had been overly frightened for the Duke when he had faced the mob that jeered about the placard; and as they drew nearer to London she began to wonder with increasing anxiety what was really in her beloved's heart, and to suffer a miserable, vague jealousy, not of Costanza; but there were plenty of designing ladies at court. And he had apparently been seeing much of Alice Perrers - and the Princess Joan.

John was not aware that he had neglected Katherine. There were times when he longed for her and desired her, but these emotions took place at the back of his attention and were overwhelmed by the obsession which had come to him. The demonstration of power was a drink heady as the strongest metheglin ever the wild Saxons brewed, and yet continual imposition of his will did little to appease the pain which drove him on to further fight.

This pain smouldered like a hidden coal in his breast, and sometimes at night it became an actual fiery lump that rose into his throat and stuck there, so that he choked and gasped and sweated as he tried to swallow it down. Alone in his great State Bed, he would roll in shameful distress, clenching his fists and struggling for each breath, until at last he fell back exhausted and the thing dissolved. Then he would think of witchcraft and pull himself from bed to pray at Blanche's prie-dieu in the corner of the chamber.

In the mornings he could barely remember what had happened, and would awaken with increased passion to outwit his enemies.

On Wednesday, February 18, he rose after a badly troubled night and angrily shouted for his squires to come and dress him. His head ached and he was annoyed at the lateness of the hour. Parliament would open today at eight, and he must hurry to Westminster. This docile Commons was voting as it should, but they needed constant guidance.

Just as he was leaving the Savoy he remembered to summon the chamberlain, and told him to prepare rooms in the Monmouth Wing for Lady Philippa and Lady Swynford, who might arrive today from Kenilworth. The chamberlain looked startled. The Monmouth Wing was not where Lady Swynford had lodged before, and it was half the length of the Savoy from the Duke. The Duke caught the flicker in the man's eye, and some realisation of Katherine's feelings pierced his preoccupation. But nothing on earth would induce him to let anyone see him in those humiliating nightly attacks, and besides he had no time for love.

He flung himself on to his horse and pursued by two of his squires galloped along the Strand to Westminster.

After the day's session, he dined in the Hall with many of the lords. Percy of Northumberland sat on his right. They had much to discuss about Wyclif's trial tomorrow at St. Paul's, and the showdown with Bishop Courtenay.

"But," said the Duke, sipping without relish some very fine malmsey, "we must be temperate, Percy. Wyclif should be his own best advocate."

Northumberland irritably hunched his massive shoulders, while he speared himself a gobbet of smoking sturgeon from the platter offered him by his kneeling son, who was acting as his squire. The baron crammed his mouth full, sputtered with pain and spewed the fish out on to the rushes.

"Sweet Christ! M'tongue's burned off!" He clouted young Percy violently on the ear.

His thirteen-year-old son had a temper to match. " 'Tis not my fault, my lord, an you gobble like a swine!" he cried, throwing down the platter.

Father and son glared at each other. The blue Percy lions on their sutcotes jigged in and out with their fierce breathings. Then the baron thwacked his heir across the shoulder, upsetting him into the filthy rushes. "Hotspur, Hotspur!" he roared, slapping his thigh. He turned to the Duke, "Saw you ever such a game cockerel - dares flout its own sire!"

"Certainly your young Hotspur shows a spirit which will be useful to keep the Scots in order," said the Duke dryly, thinking of his own Henry's excellent manners.

"Ay - the Scots-" said Northumberland, rinsing his blistered mouth with wine. "First we must keep London in order."

"You cannot tamper with the City's liberties," said the Duke firmly. They had been through this before. Percy, as new Marshal of England, was continuously annoyed that the City did not admit his jurisdiction.

"Hen piddle!" cried Percy. "That pack of baseborn tradesmen - what right have they to liberties? Let the mayor stick to his needles and threads, 'tis all he's fit for."

"If you abolish the mayoralty and take to yourself the ruling of the City, do you think the Londoners'll submit?"

"By the rood, they'd have to! Jam the bill through Parliament, through their own Commons. They've awe enough of that!"

The Duke turned away. His ally's loud voice rasped on him. The headache which had plagued him all morning began to throb. He longed for sleep, and roused himself with an effort.

Later that afternoon as London church bells were ringing for vespers the Duke and Lord Percy rode into the City bound for the tatter's town residence at Aldersgate. This mansion was but a few hundred yards beyond St. Paul's, and it had been decided to use it for headquarters.

En route from Westminster to the City, the Duke had stopped at the Savoy to pick up certain of his men and Brother William Appleton. The Franciscan, now fully reinstated in the Duke's favour, was to be one of Wyclif s advocates. The other three - a Carmelite, a Dominican and an Austin - were to meet them at Percy's "inn".

They crossed the wide market-place at West Chepe. All the booths and stalls were battened down now, and only the lowing of penned cattle from the shambles disturbed the quiet. They entered St. Martin's Lane, and at the bend where it narrowed by the Goldsmiths' Hall the Grey Friar suddenly saw three figures in the gloom ahead. Startled, he stood up in his stirrups and peered over the Duke's shoulder. There was still light enough to recognise two black-habited monks and a third shorter man in a dark cleric's robe. The three figures paused and wavered in a moment of obvious confusion, when they saw the horsemen approaching. Brother William caught the flash of something white and stiff being thrust into the clerk's sleeve.

"My lord!" cried the Grey Friar, "we must catch that man!" He kicked his mule and clattered past the astonished Duke, the two monks swivelled and, hiking up their robes, pelted as fast as their legs would take them towards Aldersgate. The clerk limped frantically behind, while his head jerked this way and that searching for cover.

The friar overtook the hobbling figure as it was about to dart into an alley, and swooping down with a long arm, collared a handful of cloth.

The Duke galloped up as the struggling clerk had nearly freed himself and, leaning from the saddle, grabbed the man's wrist. "What's this, Brother William?" cried the Duke with some amusement, his powerful grip tightening on the plunging wrist. "What games do we play with this wriggling little whelp? I never knew you so sportive."

The friar had flung himself off his mule, and plunged his hand into the clerk's sleeve. He brought out a roll of white parchment and squinted down quickly in the waning light.

"This is the man, my lord, who wrote the placard on Saint Paul's door," he cried.

The Duke started, his grip loosened, and the clerk, twisting suddenly free, would have made off but a score of retainers had come up, and he was surrounded. He stood still in the central gutter and pulled his hood down over his face.

"Bind him," said the Duke in a deadly quiet voice. A squire jumped forward with a leather thong and tied the clerk's wrists behind his back.

"Take him to my inn!" cried Lord Percy. "We'll deal with him there."

The clerk suddenly found his voice. "You can't," he shrilled. "You haf no right to touch me! I know my rights. I claim the City's protection!"

"Hark at him!" roared Percy. "Hark who speaks to the Marshal of England. Take him, men!"

The clerk was picked up and rushed down the street to Percy's gate. The Duke and Percy followed. The courtyard gate closed behind them. They dragged the clerk into the house and flung him down on the floor of the Hall. He hitched himself slowly to his knees, then to his feet. He stood swaying; his chin sunk on his chest, his bound hands opening and closing spasmodically behind his back.

The retainers of both lords crowded around, staring curiously, eager to inflict more punishment. As it was, blood dripped from the long ferrety nose, and a lump big as a chestnut rose from the bald spot on the tonsure.

"We'd best flog him, afore he's put in the stocks," said Percy with relish. "What's he done, by the way?" He looked at the Duke, who was standing six feet from the clerk and regarding him fixedly.

The Duke held his hand towards the friar without answering, and Brother William gave over the large square of parchment.

"Bring me a light," said the Duke. A varlet ran up with a torch. The rustlings and murmurings ceased, the Hall grew still while they watched the Duke read, until he raised his head and said, "This time it seems that I - John of Gaunt - for reason of my base birth am therefore without honour, so have made secret treaty with King Charles of France to sell him England."

There were a few gasps, Percy's red face grew redder, but nobody moved. The Duke took the torch from the varlet and bending down held it near to the prisoner.

"Let me see your face!"

The clerk's knees began to quiver, he hunched his shoulders higher around his ears and the sound of his breath was like tearing silk.

The Duke knocked his head up with a blow of the fist beneath the chin and stared down by the torchlight. Suddenly he reached out and yanked the clerk's collar from his stringy throat. A jagged white scar ran from the jaw to the Adam's apple.

"And so it is you, Pieter Neumann," said the Duke softly. He handed the torch back to the varlet. "You still bear the mark a boy made on you thirty years ago at Windsor."

"I don't know what you mean, Your Grace. I am Johan, Johan Prenting of Norvich. This scar is from a wound I got in France, I fought well in France for England, Your Grace. I know not what is on the parchment, it vas the monks at St. Bart's wrote it. I've done no harm - -"

"He lies, my lord," interrupted Brother William solemnly. "For I myself saw him writing on the parchment."

"He lies - -" said the Duke. "As he always lied - lied - -" he repeated, but in the repetition of the word, the friar heard a wavering. He noted this with astonishment. What could it be that the Duke doubted, what uncertainty had caused that stumbling inflexion, and what earlier association could there have been between these two?

"We'll hang him!" cried Lord Percy, who had finally comprehended the situation. "Haul him out to the courtyard!" Four of his men sprang forward.

"Wait - -" The Duke held up his hand. "Take him to some privy place, put him in the stocks. I would talk to him alone first."

Percy's men hustled the clerk through the kitchens and below stairs to the cellars, where in the darkness there was a small dungeon. The clerk's wrists and ankles were clamped into the holes in the wooden stocks, and the men pulled savagely on his twisted leg to make it fit in the hole.

The Duke had followed them. He watched impassively while the prisoner groaned and cursed and tried to ease his dangling rump on the dungeon paving-stones. Then he said, "Leave a torch in the bracket and go." Percy's men obeyed. The Duke, clanging shut the iron door, leaned against the wall.

"You suffer now, Pieter Neumann," he said, "but you will suffer far more than this before you die, if you don't speak truth to me. Where have you been since that day at Windsor Castle when you did steal your mother's purse and ran away?"

Pieter's eyes slithered to a heap of rusty chains and fetters and he said sulkily, "In Flanders."

"Where?"

"In Ghent jail and at the Abbaye de Saint Bavon vere you were born, Your Grace. The monks taught me to write." A sly hope came to him as he noted a change in the Duke's face when he mentioned the abbey. He rested his chin on the rough plank-top of the stocks and waited.

"What brought you to London?"

Pieter considered quickly. He had fled from Flanders after stealing a gold chalice from, the abbey church, landed off a fishing boat in Norfolk and made his way here, knowing there would be more scope for his talents. He had not been disappointed. "I longed to see England again," he said, "the country vere my poor mother died - Isolda, who nursed you and loved you so, my lord," he added in a sort of hissing whine.

The Duke's breathing quickened, he bent over crying, "And who has paid you now to write these placards? Who?" He clutched the skinny shoulder, his fingers dug in until the bones crunched.

The clerk whimpered and twisted, finally gasped out, "Courtenay."

The Duke straightened up. "By God," he said softly under his breath. "Would even the Bishop of London stoop so low?"

"If you set me free, my lord, I could write another placard," whispered Pieter. "I could say that after all you're no changeling, that-" He broke off and screamed, "Ah - Your Grace

- haf mercy - nay, nay don't!" Plain in the torchlight he had seen murder leap in the Duke's eyes.

John folded his arms and leaned back against the dripping fetid wall stones. "Did you think that the King's son would kill you as you hung there trussed like a fowl on a spit, my poor Pieter? Nay, 'tis not so you shall die - though how you shall die I've not yet decided." He smiled quietly and turned.

"Your Royal Grace, dear sweet lord, don't leaf me hare like this, I - I'll crawl on my hands and knees, I'll kiss your feet, I'll - -"

The Duke opened the iron door and going out into the cellar, banged the door behind him and shot the bolt. He walked down the passage between rows of piled wine casks until he reached the steps up to the kitchens. From there he could no longer hear the echo of Pieter's hysterical screams.

Katherine and her companions duly arrived at the Savoy that afternoon. The bowing chamberlain met them in the Outer Ward and informed them that His Grace would not be there this night, he was staying with the Lord of Northumberland in the City. The chamberlain had been given no special messages for either lady, and doubted whether His Grace would even return on the morrow, since it was known that he intended to sup in the City after the trial at St. Paul's.

Philippa let out a long sigh of relief. No marriage talk for the present anyway.

But Katherine followed the chamberlain to the Monmouth Wing with a dragging step. If this banishment to a part of the Savoy so remote from him were truly a symbol of the way he wished it to be between them, why then had he summoned her here at all?

The next day she sent Hawise to fetch Robin from the squire's dormitory and when he eagerly presented himself, she told him that she wished to attend the trial today in the cathedral and asked him to accompany her. She felt that she must see John again, no matter what the circumstances, and that then perhaps she would know what was amiss between them.

Hawise was grimly disapproving. "You're full young and brash, m'lad, to have the care of our lady here, there'll be a rough crowd jammed into Paul t'see the fun. Can you keep her from harm?"

"That I can, you old mulligrubber," said Robin, chucking Hawise under the chin. "You know well," he said, giving Katherine a soft yearning glance, "I'd give my life for her gladly, if 'twere needed."

"Humph," said Hawise with an unwilling smile, "sheep's eyes, calf talk - nay, lady dear, ye mustn't wear that gown!"

Katherine, hardly listening to them, had pulled the gorgeous apricot velvet robes from her travelling coffer and was smoothing down the ermine bands. She looked up astonished, then flushed. She had been following instinct in planning to make herself beautiful, but she knew that Hawise was right.

"The old grey woolsey, and your plain russet mantle," said Hawise with decision, lifting these garments from the coffer and shaking them out. " 'Twere best ye be not noticed, an' ye must go."

Katherine and Robin arrived early at St. Paul's, but it was already jammed. The mayor and his aldermen, and their wives, filled the choir aisles; while packed around them stood members of the great guilds: the vinters, the goldsmiths, the mercers, the grocers, all recognisable by their banners.

The largest nave in England had St. Paul's, but it would not hold all the Londoners who wished to see their bishop defy the Duke of Lancaster. Folk clambered on the tombs, they clung to the windowledges and the carved-stone traceries of the pillars, but still more kept pressing in.

Robin shoved and coaxed and threatened until he got Katherine nearer to the Lady Chapel. Here all the bishops were assembled around Sudbury, the gentle old Archbishop of Canterbury, who looked and doubtless felt distressed, for he was ever a man of peace. Robin put his hands around Katherine's waist, and, blushing a little at this liberty, lifted her to a high perch between two iron bars of a chantry.

Katherine looked first towards Blanche's tomb, and could see the brightly painted stone canopy and the wrought-iron grille that enclosed her chantry, but not the lovely alabaster face. Still she felt comforted by her nearness to Blanche.

They waited a long time, and the crowd grew restless. There were stampings of feet and impatient whistles, when high in the tower above them Paul's great bell began to clang.

Katherine craned forward and saw William Courtenay. Bishop of London, appear majestically on the choir steps. He held his crosier at arm's length to rest the tip on the tapestried carpet, and stood like a Roman general, awaiting the homage of a conquered people.