Katherine

Then she heard shouts at the great door. Her head turned with a thousand other heads to look down the nave. She saw a stocky man in armour covered by a surcote embroidered with blue lions. He waved a white staff and shouted, "Get out o' the way, you scurvy knaves." His arms threshed like flails, and she saw him pound someone's head.

"Who is it?" Katherine whispered.

Robin, standing on tiptoe, answered, "Percy, with his marshal's staff. The people won't give way for him."

The Bishop of London descended the choir steps and called out angrily to Percy, "What entrance is this you make into the House of God! Throw down your staff or by St. Paul himself I'll have you thrown out!"

Katherine did not hear the answer, for behind Percy and topping him by a foot, she saw John. The Duke stood where a ray of amber sunlight streamed through the painted glass of the western window on to his head. The blue and red velvet of his sleeves, the three ermine tabs on his chest, the lilies and leopards of his surcote, the gold of his coronet all glowed in a soft yellow nimbus, while his face seemed to shine. Humility struck Katherine, even shame that she had dared to expect love from such a man as this.

But then the Duke strode forward, pushing past Percy, and hurried to the choir steps. She could hear nothing that was said, but she saw that he shouted something to the bishop, who shouted back, and that there was great wrath between them.

The Duke plunged again amongst the muttering people and led forward Wyclif and four friars. The priest walked sturdily with downcast eyes and the crowd fell back, for many of them had listened to him preach and many admired him. It was not Wyclif that they feared.

Wyclif entered the Lady Chapel and the people surged forward again. They climbed up on to each other's shoulders so as to see. Katherine's view was blocked but not her knowledge of what was taking place, for those in front called back to others and murmurs blew like wind throughout the church. "The Duke demands a seat for Wyclif! Our bishop will not allow it!" - "Now Percy shakes his fist in the bishop's face" - "The Archbishop seems to plead and try to calm them but no one listens" - "Now by God's body - Lancaster-"

"Oh, what's happening?" cried Katherine in an agony. She heard nothing but "Lancaster" as a sullen roar like mounting surf beat to the vaulting of the church.

Robin cried, "I cannot tell. Sweet lady, I must get you out from here-" But he saw no way to move her through the throng.

A great fellow in a leather jerkin called out, "The Duke threatens our bishop - Jesu, he's drawn his sword - Lancaster would kill - -"

"Kill - kill - kill-" Like the senseless repetitions of a nightmare, a thousand voices bawled the word. There was a sharp crack of wood from the rood screen as the mob heaved against it. The tapers rocked in their holders. A woman screamed.

"Quick!" cried Robin, "we'll try for that door." He scooped Katherine off her perch and holding her tight in his left arm edged backward along the wall to a small recessed door. Sweat broke out on his forehead when he found that it was open. He pushed Katherine through. They were in the cloisters. From there a gate led to the churchyard and through the gravestones on to Watling Street.

Katherine had obeyed her squire blindly, so frightened by that roaring mob that she could not think. But in the street she clutched Robin's arm and cried, "What will happen to him? Jesu, we can't leave here like this."

"No harm can befall our Duke," cried Robin fiercely, wiping his forehead on his sleeve. "I must get you to safety - 'twere madness to stay in there, 'twould do no good-"

"Yes, yes," she cried, "then take me to the Pessoners in Billingsgate - 'tis near. Hurry, Robin, hurry - so you may go back - -"

He nodded instantly and they ran together through the streets towards the Bridge until they came to the fishmonger's half-timbered house on Thames Street.

"Lady Katherine!" cried Dame Emma in amazement as she opened to their frantic knocks.

"Let me stay here," panted Katherine. "Robin, run back and see - then tell me-" She sank on to the settle by the bright fire and struggled to catch her breath.

Dame Emma was alone, the children were working on the fish wharf, the maids all in the brewhouse grinding malt. The dame let Katherine recover on the settle while she went to the still-room for a bunch of dried sage, prime remedy for nervous upsets. When the brew was cool enough, she brought it to Katherine and made her drink it with the same kind firmness that Hawise had inherited.

"Cock's bones, m'lady, what's ado?" she said then, her smile as warming as her applewood fire. "Is't some trouble at Paul's?" she added, and her smile faded, for her husband Guy, and Jack Maudelyn too, had gone to see the trial.

Katherine explained quickly and Dame Emma shook her head. "There'll be cracked pates and brasted bones if no worse, the City's been heaving like a pot o' porridge these past months. This'll boil it over. I pray me goodman keeps his wits, though I've scant hope o' Hawise's Jack - sore as a bear on a chain is Jack."

Katherine did not answer; she twisted her hands together and looked continually towards the window hoping for Robin's return. She sipped the sage brew, she wandered about the cheerful low-ceilinged room, presently she sat down by Dame Emma and despite the good dame's protests helped her with the cracking and picking out of hazel nuts. Dame Emma thought how those white soft hands had once been rough and red with chilblains, and of the frightened fifteen-year-old bride who had so touched her heart and Hawise's.

"Lady Katherine, how does my wench?" she asked suddenly. "Does she serve you well?"

"Oh, Dame Emma, I cannot tell you how well! She's my sister, my friend - indeed I - I-" Her eyes, though shadowed by worry, shone with wistful gratitude.

Katherine threw down the cracker and pick amongst the tray of rattling nuts and wandering to the window peered out again. "Robin's coming, he's past St. Magnus' church!" She opened the door and flew out to the street.

They came back together and Katherine cried to Dame Emma, "All's well with the Duke! Thanks be to God and His Holy Mother - tell - tell what happened, Robin."

The young squire laughed and picking up some hazel meats crunched them in his strong teeth. "When I got back, His Grace and Lord Percy had already left the church with Wyclif. I talked to one of Percy's squires, he thought it all a rare good joke. With the turmoil and the shouting, and a score of bishops darting here and there, the folk got confused; and then the rood screen tumbled down and frightened them so they rushed back into the nave."

"And then?" cried Katherine.

"Why, then, the Duke and my lord Percy simply walked out through the Dean's door, mounted and rode off towards Cornhill, where they are to sup with Sir John d'Ypres. Percy's squire said my lords were cool as spring water and very tickled at the breakdown of the trial."

"There's a-many won't be," said Dame Emma, frowning. "God's nails, 'tsounds a disgraceful brawling all around."

Yes, it is so, Katherine thought bitterly. She sank down on a little three-legged stool within the hearth and rested her forehead on her cold hand. She closed her eyes and saw John as he had stood beneath the amber light of Paul's great window, when she had thought him a god. Now she knew that he had never been less godlike. Hot temper he had always had and arrogance, but not like this. She thought of the furious shoutings and the clash of a sword next to Blanche's quiet tomb.

The squire and Dame Emma looked at the brooding, desolate figure on the stool within the hearth. Firelight shimmered on the burnished head, on the lovely lines of the brow and straight nose and round cleft chin, and they glanced at each other.

Robin yearned to kiss the little hand that plaited and un-plaited a fold of the grey skirt, to implore her to smile.

The goodwife's impulse was more practical. "Sir Squire," she said, "since me men folk're out, do ye go down cellar t'far corner behind a keg o' malmsey. Ye must move the keg to reach a stone crock o' peach brandy wine I put down last Lammas. Fetch the crock an ye'll be so kind, 'tis prime cure for low sperrits."

When Robin had made off into the courtyard, bound for the passage that led to the cellars, Dame Emma reached up to a shelf and taking down her two engraved silver cups began to polish them; for she never served her famed liquor in ordinary mugs. Dame Emma had but dipped her cloth into the powdered pumice when she heard the pound of running feet outside and a banging on the door. In the excited shouts she recognised Jack Maudelyn's voice.

Dame Emma jumped up and yanked the settle around so that it hid Katherine. "Stay there," she whispered, and pulled the bolt. Her son-in-law shot in.

"Out of me way, old mother," he cried, dancing with impatience. "I want me headpiece and bow and quiver, Master Guy too, get down his pike and sword." He flung open the door to the passage where the Pessoner weapons were kept and began to pull them feverishly off the wall pegs.

"Not so hot, not so hot, me lad!" cried Dame Emma, grabbing his arm. "What's all this coil? Where's Master Guy?"

"He's coming." He shook her off as he grabbed a handful of arrows from his quiver. "Where's Longshot? Where's me best goose-tipped shaft? The devil take it - who's been meddling here! - and this pike's dull as wood - no matter, 'twill serve-" He thrust his sandy shock-head into the helmet and slung the quiver over his shoulder.

"Serve for what, Jack Maudelyn?" cried Dame Emma in a great voice.

"Why, to pierce the Duke's black heart, if God gi' me that honour!" He was fumbling with the leather lacings of his headpiece and did not hear Katherine's gasp from behind the settle, but Dame Emma ran to the hearth as though to mend the fire. She held her finger to her lips and shook her head violently.

Katherine had started up but she sank back on to the stool. The dame returned to the passage and said sternly, "What d'ye mean by that wicked speech, ye rascallion!"

Jack seized his longbow, shouldered his pike and cried exultantly, "I mean that John o' Gaunt and that whoreson Percy'll never see another sunrise! Men o' London're roused at last! They've gone off to Percy's now - then we're on to the Savoy after Lancaster!"

"Jack, Jack!" cried Dame Emma, starting back, "ye couldna do this fearful thing an' ye would, the Duke's own guards - -"

Jack broke in contemptuously. "The Duke's own guards'll not stand against two thousand men! Hush your blab, old 'oman, I'm off, tell Master Guy to hurry after - -" He dashed through the kitchen and the slam of the front door shook the house.

Katherine stood up. Her face had gone pale as the plaster wall. "Call Robin, quick!"

The dame obeyed.

The squire had been tugging at the malmsey keg but he heard the frightened voice, ran up to the court and into the kitchen. Katherine stood in the centre of the rush-strewn flags, her looks so white and strange that Robin cried out in alarm. She shook her head impatiently to still him and spoke with tense restraint.

"Listen - a mob two thousand strong is after the Duke. They would kill him - but they think him at the Savoy. You know where he is?"

Robin gaped, but the control with which she spoke conveyed urgency quicker than if she had shouted. "At Sir John d'Ypres' in Cornhill," he whispered. "But Lady, how know you this

"No matter. Hurry, Robin, warn him - my God - -" Her voice rose suddenly. "But where can he go - tell him west out of the city!"

"He would not run from a rabble, lady." Robin, breathing fast, had now caught the full impact of her news. "Not our Duke, and with this reckless spirit he has shown."

She nodded, biting her lips, frowning with the force of her desperate concentration. "Then tell him little Richard is in danger too, that he must get across the river to Kennington and protect the boy. Make him go!"

Robin turned with his hand on the latch, when Dame Emma ran up with a paring knife, "Best take this off," she cried and slicing the stitches, yanked the Duke's badge from Robin's shoulder.

The squire grunted and dashed out. While the door was opened both women heard the distant roars of the mob. "They must be at Ludgate," whispered Dame Emma. "Christ's blood, but they've gone mad - and you, too, Guy le Pessoner!" she shouted, for her husband came lumbering along the street, his moon face purple, his paunch heaving beneath his guildsman's tunic.

"No, you don't," she cried, pushing him down on the settle as he started for the armoury passage. "Ye'll not go out again to join those ribauds!" The dame, arms akimbo and eyes snapping like sparks, glared down at her panting husband.

"Emma, forbear," stammered the fishmonger. "Ye don't know what they're doing to us. They aim to make us serfs here, to take London's liberties. They've a bill at Westminster ready now, to put that stinking marshal over us. Already he's ta'en a prisoner he'd no right to, had 'im mewed up in a dungeon. We freed the knave and burned the stocks they'd put him in. We searched for Percy - -"

"And did ye find him? Nay, stay there," Dame Emma thrust the poker at her lord's belly and he sank back on the settle.

"Not yet - he'll be at the Savoy wi' t'other traitor - Peter - who's this?" The excited fishmonger had just caught sight of Katherine standing like a church statue beyond his angry wife.

Katherine walked forward around Dame Emma, and looked down at the fishmonger. "What has the Duke of Lancaster ever done to you, Master Guy, that you should requite him like this?" she said.

The fishmonger dropped his eyes. "What does Lady Swynford here?" he muttered, twisting his leather-shod feet beneath the settle.

"Fled here for shelter from ruffians like you," cried Dame Emma. "Would ye deny it to her?"

Master Guy swallowed, he waggled his head distractedly. At length he said, "Nay," and sighed. "Ye can put the poker down, Emma. Me blood's cooling. But wrong's been done us - great wrong. Would ye have us take these wrongs like gelded conies?" He reached to the hearth for a flagon of ale and his wife, putting down the poker, brought him a cup. He drank, then looked at Katherine. "Ay, poor lass, I've had bitter thoughts of ye, many a time, but now I've room for pity. Me blood's cooled down to be sure - but out there - I doubt they'll be slaked until they've slain your - -" The word he would have used was paramour, yet there was something in Katherine's face which checked him. "Until they've got Lancaster," he finished looking down into his cup.

Katherine shuddered, yet still she spoke with biting calm. "They'll not get him, Master Guy. For they say God is just, and will know that the Duke has suffered wrongs as much as you have."

"Brave words, my dear," said the fishmonger. "At least in this world he has you to speak for him."

"And cares not," she whispered, turning away.

CHAPTER XX

Katherine slept that night of the riots at the fishmonger's. After a few hours of exhaustion, she awoke with a jump when St. Magnus' bells rang for Prime and, hurrying down to the kitchen, was received kindly by the Pessoners, who told her the latest tidings.

Little harm had been done after all, yester eve. The Duke and Percy both had somehow escaped, said Master Guy, and here Emma made a private signal to Katherine, for she had not disclosed Katherine's part in warning the Duke.

It seemed that Bishop Courtenay himself had finally appeared and berated the mob leaders, saying that they had carried their disorders too far and that he was ashamed of his flock. So one by one they had slunk off to their homes, contenting themselves with reversing the Duke's coat of arms wherever it hung outside a shop and then pelting the blazons with mud and excrement.

"And I'm glad enough now, no harm came to the Duke," said Guy, donning his leather apron which was plastered with fish scales, " 'Twas a good night's work as 'tis, in especial that we let loose the wrongfully held prisoner from Percy's Inn. The marshal'll not try those tricks again."

"What prisoner was that?" asked Dame Emma, coaxingly pushing a dish of fried eggs towards the silent Katherine.

"Some fellow from Norwich. I didna see him. 'Twas said he was in mortal fear o' the Duke. Th' instant he was freed, he hared it off for sanctuary in St. Paul's."

Dame Emma sighed. "And think ye, chucklehead, that this is the end o' London's trouble? Can ye get it through your numskull that violence but breeds violence? D'ye think the Duke will smile and thank ye for this night's work?"

The fishmonger thrust his lip out and said stubbornly, "He should not a tampered wi' our liberties, he should not a set hisself against the Commons."

The goodwife sighed again. "Ay, Commons've no friend at court these days." She bustled over to pat Katherine's shoulder. "Ye don't eat, my lady?"

"No," said Katherine rising, "forgive me but I can't. I must get to the Savoy. God be thanked the Lady Philippa and Hawise seem to've suffered no harm. I had forgot them last night."

Ay, poor lass, you forgot all else but one man's danger, Emma thought as she said, "Ye canna go alone. Go wi' her, Guy, she'll be safe wi' you."

The fishmonger grumbled that a load of herring awaited him at the wharf, that his prentices must be chivvied to work, that there was a mess of cod to be delivered to the Guildhall, but finally he took off his apron and mounted Katherine behind him on his great bay gelding. He was a good-hearted man, and he admired Katherine's fair face, but he was increasingly convinced that Hawise's devotion to this woman was unfortunate, even dangerous. The mortal hatred aimed at the Duke might well glance off and hit those near him, as indeed it already had; and though no coward, Guy did not like certain remarks he had heard last night which reflected on his own connection with the Duke through that of his obstinate daughter.

He rode along in gloomy silence until they had crossed the Fleet bridge, then he said, "How long d'ye look to be down here, m'lady?" For he thought that since Hawise could not legally be forced to break her service indenture to Lady Swynford, and would not if she could, at least the farther away they went, the better.

"Not long," said Katherine with a cold vehemence that astonished the fishmonger. "I shall see to that, Master Guy."

"To Kenilworth, then, or Leicester?"

"No," she said, "to Lincolnshire, to my own home."

"By Saints Simon and Jude!" Guy twisted his fat neck around to stare at her. "Will the Duke allow it? Are ye not contracted to him as governess to his little ladies, as well as by other - other ties?"

"I believe the Duke will not hold me," she said, sitting stiff and straight on the pillion. "And by the Blessed Virgin, I am no serf, to be bound against my will!"

"Well-a-day!" cried Guy, thinking that the riot had very properly frightened her into caution. " 'Tis a sensible plan."

Katherine did not answer.

The gelding jogged along the Strand past St. Clement's little church. Katherine had passed the church fifty times without special notice; today as she glanced at it, eleven years slid away. She saw in the porch a priest and a knight with crinkled hair, and a girl with a wreath of garden flowers on her head. Handfasted, they stood, the girl and the knight, while the priest intoned, "To have and to hold from this day forward to love... and to cherish... till death..."

She turned away from the church and stared down the Strand ahead, then Master Guy started and cried, "By God, see what they did here!"

Katherine looked up at the gatehouse. They had wrenched off the Duke's great five-foot painted shield and hammered it back again upside down.

"'Tis what they do to traitors!" said Master Guy and chuckled suddenly. "Them leopards look mortal silly a-standing on their little heads a-waving their little legs." His chuckles grew into a rumble.

"For the love of Christ - stop it!" Katherine cried, shaking his arm. "Can't you see what you're doing to him? What man could stand the vile lies - the hatred - you know he's not a traitor. Oh, God curse the lot of you!" She jumped down off the horse.

That afternoon, unable to come to rest anywhere, Katherine went out into the Savoy gardens. It was chilly, the clipped yew hedges and the shrouded rosebushes were drenched in grey mist, but she had flung a warm squirrel-lined cloak over the grey woolsey. Nor would she have felt the cold in any case, while she paced the deserted brick paths and thought of her new-found decision.

She would leave here tomorrow. She and Hawise and the Kenilworth servants who had come down with them would return there at once. She would pick up her children and hasten to Lincolnshire - to Kettlethorpe.

John might be momentarily annoyed at her taking their two babies from the luxury of Kenilworth, but since they obviously no longer interested him any more than she did herself, his protest would be a formality. He should have no cause to reproach her for negligence in her duties to Philippa and Elizabeth either. Until he should appoint a new governess, Lady Dacre here at the Savoy would be delighted to wait upon Philippa - and delighted to get rid of me, Katherine thought. Well she knew that most of the ladies treated her with contempt when the Duke was not around. Secure in his love and protection she had always ignored these slights.

Now this was changed.

Back and forth she walked between the frosty yews and thought harsh practical thoughts. She would keep the wardships and annuity he had already given her if he allowed her to, for she owed it to his children, that Kettlethorpe might be made habitable for them. But she needed nothing more. She would be invulnerable again and alone, .with this wicked unwanted love walled out of her heart.

Suddenly she looked down at the ring he had put on her finger in the ruined chapel in the Pyrenees. Betrothal ring. She stared at the round translucent sapphire, the stone of constancy.

Her lips tightened as she twisted the ring from her finger and walked to the river-bank. She stood on the marble pier and holding the ring outstretched in her hand, gazed down at the lapping waters.

"Nay - I cannot," she said, after a moment, turning from the river. She slipped the ring into her scarlet purse that was embroidered with her arms, Swynford boars impaling the Catherine wheels; the blazon he had made for her.

Am I then nothing of myself? she thought with anguish. Can I not live apart from memories of him - -

She sank down on a stone bench, and stared out across the river to the barren stony hummocks of Lambethmoor. The mists grew thicker and downstream the pale lemon light faded over London. One by one from its churches the bells rang out for vespers; near at hand the Savoy chapel gave forth its sprinkle of silvery chimes. She stirred restlessly on the bench.

The bells drowned out the sound of approaching oars on the river until a barge appeared out of the mists quite near the pier. Katherine started for the steps, unwilling to be gaped at, when an eager voice called out, "My Lady Swynford, is it you?"

She turned and recognised Robin's feathered cap and rusty tunic as the squire waved from the barge's prow. She came down the steps and waited while the oarsmen steered up to the pier. "So you've returned," she said quietly. "Your errand last night, Robin, was well done, I've heard."

The youth jumped to the pier and cried, "I've been sent for you, my lady, to come to Kennington. You're to come back with me at once!"

"No - -" said Katherine, unsmiling. In the shadow of her hood her face gleamed hard as pearl, her eyes were cooler than the mists.

Robin was dismayed that the lovely laughing girl who had been his most precious charge was transformed into a stern woman with a stranger's eyes. He stammered, "But, my lady - 'tis a command - you are summoned to Kennington Palace."

" 'Tis kind of His Grace," she said. "You may tell him that I know he has never been lacking in courtesy when he thinks there's cause for it, but in sending you to warn him I did nothing that his lowliest varlet would not have done."

Robin blinked, and looking down at the toe of his leather shoe, said unhappily, "It is not His Grace who summons you."

The bells ceased their ringing and there was silence on the pier. "Who does then?" said Katherine.

"The Princess Joan, my lady - she commands in the name of Prince Richard that you shall come at once."

"Whyfor?" said Katherine, in a less sure tone. "I've never met the Princess, what could she want of me? Robin, is His Grace not at Kennington too?"

"Ay - he was - locked in a chamber with Percy, I believe. I've not seen him since we crossed the river last night. Lady dear - I beg of you to hurry, the Princess was most anxious."

Since there was now no queen in England, Princess Joan was sovereign lady and must be obeyed. Katherine reluctantly let Robin help her into the waiting barge. The oarsmen bent their backs and pulling sturdily against the current moved their craft upstream. They passed Westminster and crossing to the Lambeth bank landed at the Kennington pier.

They went up a terraced path to the fair small country palace where the Prince of Wales had died. Robin led the way through a courtyard and upstairs to the Princess Joan's bower, where a waiting-woman admitted Katherine at once, then left her alone.

The room was gaudy as a jewel box; the walls hung with painted silks, the floor covered with bright woven flowers in a Persian carpet. The furniture was gilded, and in a gold cage studded with crystals two white birds twittered.

As Katherine looked at the birds the Princess entered hurriedly, in a rush of pink velvet and a wave of heavy scent, crying with warm impetuosity, "Welcome, Lady Swynford, I've been awaiting you!" She held out a fat dimpled hand so loaded with diamonds that Katherine, as she curtsied, could scarce find space to kiss.

"I have come, madam, as you commanded," said Katherine distantly, and rising, she waited.

"Take off your mantle and sit down, my dear," said the Princess, while she settled her billowing hips into a canopied chair. Katherine obeyed, wondering what was wanted of her, and her pride hardened still further, for she thought that she could guess.

The Princess was like a large blowzy rose. Katherine noted the dyed hair, the excessive plumpness of the rouged cheeks, the charcoal blackening the scanty lashes, and thought how the nuns of Sheppey Convent had admired this fair maid of Kent, and of how she had once heard a knight say that when Joan had married the Prince of Wales she was "la plus belle femme d'Angleterre - et la plus amoureuse."

Perhaps his brother thought so still.

The Princess cleared her throat and leaning forward said, "My dear, you're not at all as I expected. I see now why - yes - I'm glad I summoned you." The girl looked high-born and well-bred, Joan thought in surprise, with most lovely features. The firm cleft chin showed character too. She was relieved at this new view of Lancaster's mistress, for gossip had it that the little Swynford was an upstart strumpet, and some said that she kept him from the Duchess by the use of black arts.

Joan smiled, the gay confiding smile which had won many a heart, and said, "I have something to ask of you, Lady Swynford - 'tis a delicate matter."

"Perhaps I may save you embarrassment, madam, by telling you that I intend to leave the Duke's service tomorrow, and shall go to live permanently in my own manor in Lincolnshire," said Katherine. "Is that far enough away?"

The Princess' eyes grew round as turquoise discs. "Blessed Saint Mary!" she cried. "Did you think I asked you here to beg you to give up the Duke? Great heaven, child, it is quite the opposite!"

"What!" cried Katherine sharply. "Madam, you are jesting." For the Princess was laughing in small muffled spurts.

"Nay, listen," said Joan wiping her eyes on her pink velvet sleeve. "Forgive me, I don't know whether I laugh or weep, for I am frightened - -frightened - don't stare at me with those great angry eyes - my dear, I need your help." The Princess rose and walking to Katherine cupped the girl's chin in her hand and gazed down earnestly. "Do you really love my brother of Lancaster?" Katherine looked away, and her colour rose. "Ay, I see you do."

"He loves me no longer," said Katherine very low. "He's had no thought of me in months - there are many signs - it is finished."

The Princess sighed and wandering to the carved mantel absently traced the pattern of acanthus leaves with her finger. "I believe you're wrong," she said, "and for two reasons. I lived fifteen years with his brother and in many ways they are like as two cockleshells. Edward never ceased to love me and come back to me, and yet when the dark violent fits were on him."

She shook her head. Her hand dropped from the mantel and she sat down again. "And the other reason is this. Three weeks ago we held a Christmas mumming here for my Richard. John came, of course, with many others to do Richard honour, and late that night when we had all retired I could not sleep for missing my own dear lord and fearing for the future of my little son. Then I heard a strange noise in the State Chamber which is next to mine, and where John slept. It was a sound of outcry and struggle. I opened the door between and listened fearfully, meaning to shout for the guard, and then I knew that he was in the grip of some frightful dream. He choked and panted and cried out your name. 'Katrine! Katrine!' He cried it with a frenzy that would wring your heart. I went to him and woke him, and he was angry with me and bade me get out. We did not speak of it again."

The hardness in Katherine's breast dissolved a little, and she said with a faint smile, " 'Tis something to know that he yet thinks of me in dreams. But what is it you would have me do, madam?"

The Princess, gripping her chair arms violently, cried, "Go to him! Go to him - and somehow, make him listen - -make him stop these dreadful things he's planning - Christ's mercy! I think he has gone mad!"

The girl got up and ran to kneel by the weeping Princess. "Dear lady, he is not mad, I know he's not - but he would never listen to me, never has he told me his plans."

The Princess clutched the girl's arm. "All morning I pled with him, Sir Simon Burley - Richard's guardian - pled. I even summoned the old archbishop here, John would not see him, do you know what he means to do?" She shuddered, and her tear-blurred eyes grew fixed. "He means to muster an army, his own people and Percy's from the north, he means to march it on to London! Civil war! Worse far than what my dear lord dreaded. There'll be no England left for Richard."

"And this gathering of an army is not all," cried the Princess. "He proposes this night to violate sanctuary - to seize some prisoner who has fled to St. Paul's - to drag him out from the altar - hang him."

"Jesu, no!" cried Katherine in horror. For this sacrilege seemed to her the worst of all that the Princess had said. The right of sanctuary was God's most sacred law and to violate it meant damnation.

"Ay," said the Princess with a groan. "Every man's hand would be against him then. John will be killed. He was saved last night, Katherine, but after this nothing could save him. As surely as his grandfather was murdered in Berkeley Castle, so will John be killed and thousands of others with him."

"This prisoner," cried Katherine, "who is he?" In the blackness of her confusion, there was a glimmering. An intuition.

"Some knave who did write placards about the Duke, so Percy said." The Princess spoke with weary impatience. She thought this a foolish question indeed when the welfare of her son and England was at stake.

But Katherine's intuition grew stronger. In some way the prisoner held the key to John's unreason. All these things which he had done to so inflame the people dated from the time he read the placard at St. Paul's. Suddenly prideful hurt and anger vanished, and her love flowed back on a wave of pity, while she felt in her own breast a vibration from the wild submerged pain he had been suffering. She saw that the Princess Joan was right, and that she alone had love enough for him to wrestle with his demon.

The bower door opened and a child walked in, a lad with curling flaxen hair and a face so delicate that but for his particoloured hose and royal blazoned surcote he might have been a girl.

"Dickon!" cried the Princess holding out her hand. "Come to me, love. Here, Lady Swynford," she said as the child stood by her knee, "is England's hope." She looked at Katherine with pleading, praying that the girl's hesitation would be finally resolved by the sight of this fair royal child.

Katherine started from her thoughts and curtsied. Richard bowed to her in a courtly manner, and said, "Mama, my lord Uncle John is leaving - he's on the stairs - I thought you didn't wish him to go."

"Dear God!" cried the Princess jumping up, "he must not go. If he leaves here - Katherine - can you stop him - for I know that I cannot."

"Perhaps," whispered the girl. She shut her eyes. Her mind formed no prayer, she importuned no saints nor even the Blessed Virgin for help, and yet it seemed that some new calm strength came to her.

The Princess rushed to the door. They went out together and down the newel stairs to the courtyard.

The Duke, in brass helmet and full armour, his hand resting on his sword, stood by the river gate shouting last instructions to Percy: "Then by dawn we'll have raised a thousand men between us, 'twill do for now. The Savoy - -"

He stopped and stared, as Katherine came up to him. "My lord - -"

So full was he of his new plans that at first it seemed he did not know her. Beneath his lifted visor his face was set and haggard, his eyes the sharp ice-blue she had always feared.

She looked at him softly, but she spoke with the force that had come to her. "My lord, I must see you alone now."

"Katrine!" he said bewildered. "What do you here? You were at the Savoy - nay, in Billingsgate - I remember Robin Beyvill said you sent him. 'Twas not well done, they were in no danger here at Kennington. I would have faced them down in London, they'd not have dared to touch me,"

"My dearest lord," said Katherine, looking steadily up into his face, "I wish to see you alone."

"What tiresome folly!" He jerked his mailed hand on his sword hilt. "I'm off to the Savoy. My men are gathering, and I've other work to do this night."

Katherine drew herself high, her chin lifted and she said inflexibly, "All this will wait until you've talked with me. I command it, my lord."

"Command!"

"Yes," she said unflinching. "By reason of this you gave me." From her purse she drew the sapphire ring and held it out to him on her palm. "And this is the first thing I have ever asked of you, my lord."

He looked at the ring, and then at Katherine.

He turned impatiently to Percy. "You go on ahead. I'll follow shortly. Now, Katrine, what do you wish of me?"

The Princess saw that the first battle had been won and came forward hastily. "There's a fire in the State Chamber, my lord, you can talk to Lady Swynford there. I'll send food and drink to you, for you've not eaten all this day - -" She saw his face darken, and added with the desperate guile she had often needed for her Edward, "Supper will give you more strength and a clearer head for whatever it is you plan to do tonight."

John frowned, but he walked over to the stairs without comment. The women followed, while the Princess pulled Katherine a little behind. "God help you, child," she whispered, "and Saint Venus help you too. You'll have need of every help to turn him from his purpose. Make him drink much - and - by Peter, I wish there were time to dress you in one of my silk chamber gowns, though 'twouldn't fit - no matter, you must know the ways to make him think of love. Woo him, cajole him, weep - -"

"Dear madam," whispered Katherine, "I'll do what I can." But not for you nor me, nor England, she thought, but because he is destroying his own soul.

She entered the State Chamber and the Duke turned sharply on her. "What would you say to me, Katrine - I've little time."

"Time enough to rest a bit though, my lord. And I can't talk to a man standing in full armour, 'tis frightening." She gave him a gay coaxing smile, though her heart beat fast.

He grunted and sat down on the wide oak chair where his brother had used to sit. She went to him and quickly unhooked the latchet of his brass helmet and lifted it off his head. "And you can't eat in these," she said, unbuckling the straps that fastened his mailed gauntlets. "Here comes Robin with wine - won't you let him take off the rest of your armour? 'Twill be quickly donned again when you wish to leave."

She gestured to Robin, for still John did not speak.

He was fighting a great weariness that had come on him when he sat down. He had not slept in two nights, the first at Percy's Inn, the second here. His head swam, and because it blunted his purpose, he fought off too the realisation of how strongly he had responded to Katherine's touch as she drew off his helmet.

He suffered Robin to unbuckle the other sections of his armour and hang them with his great sword from gilded wall pegs where the Prince of Wales' black tilting gear still hung. Then he took the cup of wine that Katherine brought him and drank quickly.

As he had hoped, it cleared his head. "What are you doing at Kennington?" he said scowling. "Why didn't you wait at the Savoy to see me?"

Katherine considered quickly. Robin and the server were gone and she was preparing a plate of food. She had never lied to him, nor would she, but she knew that she must choose all her words with care.

"It is not always so easy to see you at the Savoy, my lord," she said, pulling a corner of the table over so that he might eat in comfort, "nor for me to see you at all - of late." She smiled, with no hint of reproach, and sat down close to him on a stool. "You look very tired, won't you eat, please? Alas that 'tis only Lenten fare, but these oysters are well roasted."

He started to protest hotly, to say that if she had forced him to delay his start simply to babble of oysters, he would be gone this instant, but instead, and to his astonishment, he said a very different thing.

"Why don't you wear the ring I gave you, Katrine?" She had dropped it back into her purse as they left the courtyard.

She was startled too, but she answered evenly, "Because I thought that it had lost its meaning."

A quick dull flush mounted his thin cheeks. "Nay, how could you think that, lovedy?" The little pet name which he had so often called her slipped out as unawares as had his question, yet he felt aggrieved. Whether he saw her or not, he had known her ever there in the background - waiting, like his jewelled Order of the Garter, seldom worn, yet the possession of this most special badge of knighthood was of steady importance to his life. "I have had matters to think of," he said roughly, "but these matters had nothing to do with women."

"Yes," she said, filling his cup, "I believe that now, my lord."

She brushed against his shoulder as she put the flagon back on the table, and he smelled the warm fragrance of her skin. His arm lifted of its own accord to slip around her waist and pull her closer to him, but she moved away before he touched her and sat down again.

His arm dropped. He drank, and spooned up the oysters, eating fast, for he found that he was famished and this the first food in weeks that had had savour for him. While he ate, he felt another new factor, a quality of rest and lessening of strain. He resented the thought that this easing came somehow from Katherine, who sat beside him quietly, gazing into the fire. He had forgotten too how beautiful she was, nor did he wish to think of it now.

He picked up the gold-handled table knife and cut himself a slice from the bread loaf, while pulling his mind back towards his purpose. They were massing at the Savoy, men-at-arms from his nearby castles at Hertford and Hatfield. They'd be there by now since he had sent messengers off at dawn, and the King's guard from Sheen too. It would take a month to gather all his forces from the whole of England, but already' he had sufficient fighters to back the first move that he would make.

Pieter Neumann - he threw down the bread and his fingers gripped the hilt of the knife. This time he would kill Pieter with his own hand - no mercy.

Katherine had turned to look at him as he threw down the bread and gripped the knife and she forced a long steady breath to master her dismay. She saw that he had lost awareness of her, his skin had turned the colour of mould, he swallowed hard and painfully, and in his eyes as they stared at the knife the pupils had swollen so that there was no blue.

Katherine felt a shock of recognition. Somewhere there had been a child who looked like that, an uncomprehending terrified child. She searched hard for the memory, and when it came it seemed to her so incongruous that she rejected it. The reminder was of her little John. Last summer he had wandered into the cow-byre at Kenilworth, and a playful calf had galloped at him, knocking him down. The child had believed the calf to be a werewolf, fitting it somehow into a horrible tale a serving-maid had told him.

Katherine had reasoned with her boy, had made him pet the calf, and got him to laugh at his terror, yet a month afterwards the child had had a nightmare from which he awoke to scream that the calf was after him with the slobbering fangs and blood-red eyes of a werewolf, and still when he saw a calf he trembled and grew white.

It were folly indeed to make a comparison between the thirty-six-year-old Duke of Lancaster and a four-year-old child, and yet - in both she had seen the same intrinsic shape of fear.

The Duke stirred and put down the knife, he wiped his lips on the damask napkin. "I must go," he said in a voice that wavered. He stood up and glanced towards his armour.

Katherine rose too, and took his hand in hers. "Why must you go, John?" She looked up solemnly into his resistant face. "Is it to kill the man who is in sanctuary at Saint Paul's? Is it to do sacrilegious murder, that you must go?"

He snatched his hand from hers. "How do you know that? And if it were, what right have you to question me? Katrine, you've never before - get out of my way!" For she had backed so that she barred the way to the armour, and the door.

Her wide grey eyes fixed on him with compassion, but her tone was cool and searching as when she rebuked her children; "Of what, my dear lord, are you so afraid?"

He gasped and raised his hand as though to strike her.

"No, dear," she said. "To hit me'll do no good. All these last months have you not been striking out, and has it eased you? You know that it hasn't. I believe that to speak out might ease you. I love you, John, trust me."

He listened, looking at her and then away. "No man or woman has ever thought me a coward," he whispered. "And now you, who say you love me - -''

"Holy Christ, my dearest, you're no coward. I know well how you lead your men in battle, and how you've risked your life a thousand times, and yet there is something that you fear."

The angry force drained from him. His big shoulders sagged, and he said in a listless voice. "Witchcraft - witchcraft - the man must die this night, for he has cast on me a monstrous spell." He made the sign of the cross and turning, walked to the cushioned banquette beneath the window, sat down and rested his head in his hands.

"You are the strongest, the most powerful man in England, my dear lord, so can you not be merciful?"

His head twisted around and he looked at her strangely. "Isolda said that! When we vowed in the chapel. But she did not keep her vow"

Blessed Virgin, he's drunk, she thought, trying to check her terror that this might be worse than drunkenness. "Isolda?" she questioned, as steadily as she could.

"Isolda Neumann - my foster mother." And having said it, he sighed and added in a tone of wonder, "In all these years I've never spoken her name." He reached over for the flagon and his crystal cup, poured until the rich golden wine splashed on the table and drank.

Katherine was amazed. She guessed that she was circling nearer to the answer, but what was this of his milk-nurse, and vows in a chapel, and why had he never spoken the woman's name? She dared not question too much, fearful of rupturing this quieter mood.

She glanced frowning at the State Bed, where the Prince had died - still hung with gloomy sable mourning velvet - when John spoke again.

"The man you asked me of, the one I shall kill, is Pieter Neumann, who was Isolda's son."

"Ah," Katherine breathed, still more startled and trying to understand this revelation. She ventured on what seemed at first sight to be likely. "And he injured his mother in some way? And you, loving her very much perhaps, have not forgiven?" She stopped, for as she spoke this sounded too weak, too pat.

Yet John said, "Yes," with a peculiar quickness. "Yes, that was it." He glanced off from the truth, she knew. What was it the Princess had said of the man in sanctuary? "Some knave that wrote placards about the Duke." The placard on Paul's door - the ridiculous changeling slander.

He stood up suddenly, swayed and caught at the table. "Late," he said thickly, "must go. Don't like your eyes - Ka-Katrine - grey eyes that lie - break vows - she said she'd never leave me but she did - she vowed something else - else - vowed Pieter had lied-" He rolled his head back and

forth as though to rid it of a weight, and stumbled a few steps.

Katherine ran to him and flung her arms around him. "Here, dear love, you must rest."

He stumbled again and by wedging her shoulder beneath his armpit she got him to the bed. He fell prone on to the black coverlet amongst the embroidered argent ostrich feathers.

As she brought a candle to the bedstead and herself climbed up beside him, pulling her furred cape over them both, he rolled over on to his back, and he began to speak in thick disconnected sentences.

She leaned over him and listened while her heart pounded with her desperate effort to understand what he would tell her. At first she thought he did not know that she was there and that these were only drunken ramblings, but his eyes opened, and he looked at her with recognition, though his speech was so slow and heavy that she could scarcely follow the words.

Vows in the Chapel of St. George at Windsor, broken vows. He said it over and over. Isolda had betrayed him.

"How, darling?" Katherine whispered at last. "How did she betray you?" and thought she should not have spoken for he grew silent, and turned his head away, gazing vaguely at the black folds of the bed curtains.

But after a while he spoke. "She went away that night, though she vowed she'd never leave me. She died," he added in a fainter voice. "She died of plague."

Katherine waited tensely. This was no moment for reason, for saying that Isolda could not help her death.

"She lied in that," said John. Suddenly he struggled up on to his elbow and staring into Katherine's white face he said with a remote and terrible quietness, "So perhaps she lied when she denied what Pieter said at Windsor."

"What Pieter said-" repeated Katherine. "What Pieter said?"

"Changeling," he muttered. His lips drew away from his teeth and he fell back onto the pillow. "Jesu," she whispered. "Jesu - now I can see-"

She twisted up on to her knees and crouching over him she cried, "And you believed it then, that you were naught but a butcher's son? Part of you believes it now! It is this that you must prove to England - to yourself - John, look at me!"

She took him by the shoulders and shook him. "Wake up and listen! It's the foolish frightened child in you that believes this. As your son believes that a playful calf is a werewolf!"

He gazed up bewildered at her grey eyes shining in the candlelight. They were desperate in her desire to reach him. The fog cleared a little in his mind.

"Isolda told you the truth!" she cried. "Oh, John - you who are most like the King of all his sons, so like that men say you are twin to what he was when young. How could you doubt your birth?"

He moistened his lips and gave a curt harsh laugh. "I did not know that I doubted it - until tonight." His hand moved gropingly and caught a fold of her skirt, and his eyes closed.

She stretched herself beside him and took his head against her breast. He did not know it, though he moved as though seeking the position in which they had so often lain together. His breaths grew quiet and even.

The Duke slept nearly the clock around, and for many hours without stirring.

When the palace bells rang for morning Mass, there was a knock on the door of the State Chamber. Katherine, slipping her arm carefully from beneath John's head, hurried from the bed.

She opened the door and held her fingers to her lips.

The Princess stood in the passage round-eyed and anxious. "Is all well?" she whispered, noting Katherine's dishevelment: the grey gown twisted and wrinkled, the great coils of bronze hair that had tumbled on her shoulders, the white tiredness of the girl's drawn face.

Katherine stepped out in the passage. "I hope so, madam," she said gravely. "He sleeps."

The Princess, enfolding Katherine in a smother of soft-scented flesh, kissed her impulsively. "Ah my dear, if you have by any means brought him out of these fits of mad revenge, God will bless you as I do." She went down the passage towards the chapel thinking that all the rumours she had heard about John's leman were false, and that it was a sorry shame that Katherine could not have been born Queen of Castile instead of that cold dark foreigner at Hertford Castle.

All that day, while the outer world hummed and messages went back and forth to the Savoy, Katherine stayed in the State Chamber watching over John as he slept. Robin brought food and drink to the door, and she took a little. Sometimes she rested, far on the outer edge of the bed so as not to disturb him. And she thought long and hard about this secret thing that had so deeply troubled him. She saw on what two-fold foundation the whole structure of his early life had been built: Isolda's love and the sacred privilege of royal birth. And that when to the child's view these two had dropped away from under him together, a part of him had shattered as truly as though a mine had exploded at his feet.

Yet he was strong and tough as had been his father, and most of the royal Norman line; while from his mother he had staunch Flemish common sense. So time had passed and he had built his world up again, and forgotten this shock that had frightened him once - until the placard brought it back, hideously grown because now the whole of England witnessed it. Since then this buried dread had gripped him and he had fought back as a child does with blind fury. And yet because he was not a child but a man, composed by now of as many colours and shapes as a painted glass window, there had been deep-seated struggle in his soul. For he was merciful, by nature, never had he killed senselessly or maimed even in war, as his brothers had done, and of all Edward's sons he was the most sensitive.

Katherine thought this and much else throughout the long day. She thought of the fearful power of a lie, of all evil - and she thought of her own children, and how she had believed herself capable of guiding their lives rightfully, of easily salving their hurts, and that by providing for their mind and body nurture she had fended off all harm.

Now she was uncertain, and dismayed. Little John's misconception about the calf was minor enough, and would pass in time; but what other concealed demons might not be preying on a child?

And with a painful twisting at the heart she saw Blanchette's stricken eyes as she had looked up from her embroidery the last day at Kenilworth. It was useless to deny that her firstborn and dearest child had lost her old happy confidence and was drawing away into some -bitter, jealous little climate of her own.

But what can I do? Katherine thought despairingly. She glanced towards John as he lay sleeping still. Her love for him had grown tenfold since he had trusted her last night with a glimpse of his naked soul. Yet yesterday she had been swamped with a resentful pride, even with the hatred that seemed welded, like the obverse of a shield, to love. What then was certain? What was there that would not shift and veer at the mercy of the winds of feeling?

Sanctity, the clergy said. Prayer. The practice of religion. The benevolence of the holy saints. The Grace of God.

Katherine rose and walked to the Prince of Wales' prie-dieu in the corner beyond the armour. A gilt, elaborately enamelled triptych hung above the prayer desk. The centre panel depicted Calvary, the side ones snowed various tortures of the damned. These were intricately detailed: naked bodies writhed in orange flames, and from severed limbs and seared eyes dripped ruby gouts of blood. The Christ's face on the Cross expressed only contorted agony and above the panels was written, "Repent Ye!"

She gazed at the triptych with repulsion. Here was no message of steadfastness. Here naught but warning and more fear. Her rebellion grew, and she wondered, What guidance do we truly get from the saints or even from the Blessed Mother and Her Son? Why did not they, or St. John, protect my lord from harm?

What of the vow she herself had made to St. Catherine in the storm at sea? Had the saint in truth really saved her? And this vow she now felt had had nothing to do with heavenly guidance. The necessity of faithfulness to Hugh, however bitter, had sprung from her own self-esteem, her own integrity. For I believe, thought Katherine, there is nothing beyond or above ourselves.

At once - and for an instant she was frightened - she heard plain in her head how Brother William would cry "Heresy!" in his stern tired voice. Then she forgot her painful questions and ran to the bedside, for John stirred and said, "Katrine?"

"My lord," she whispered, bending over him.

His eyes were clear as the sky of Aquitaine, and the smile he gave was one she had not seen in long. He reached his arms up and pulling her down kissed her hard on the mouth. Then he sat up and yawned and said, "Christ, what a sleep I've had -" He looked at the curtained window. "Is't dark still?'

"Again!" she answered smiling. "You've slept the day through."

"By the rood! And did I then?" He scooped his hair back from his forehead and stretched prodigiously. He ran his tongue around his mouth and said, "Dry as tinder. It seems that I was drunk last night - it seems to me too that I babbled much nonsense." He quirked his brows and looked at her half laughing.

"You don't remember?" she said softly.

"Nay - only that you were near me, and most patient. And that I love you, sweet heart." He pinched her cheek and grinned at her. "I shall prove it soon - but not in this gloomy bed. Lord, what a dismal room. We must get back to the Savoy."

He got up and walked into the garde-robe. She heard him whistling beneath his breath and the splashing of water. "Send for food, lovedy," he called to her, "I'm famished."

She picked up the hand-bell and rang it. There was a pause before it was answered, for the page, who stood ever ready in the passage, had been given orders.

When the door opened, it was the Princess who came in, and with her was her chief adviser, Sir Simon Burley, a grave-eyed conscientious man whose grizzled beard waggled anxiously as he said, "The Duke's awake?"

Katherine nodded and gestured towards the garde-robe. John walked out, his face and neck still aglow from the vigorous sluicing he had given them. "Good evening, Joan," he said to his sister-in-law. "Did you think you had old Morpheus himself for guest?" He turned to Burley, "And you, Sir Simon, I see by that long face that there's more ill news. Can't it wait until I'm fed?"

"My lord, of course, but you should know that a deputation of Londoners have gone off to Sheen, to the King's Grace to beg him to reconcile your quarrel with the City. They know your troops are massing at the Savoy. The-people are affrighted."

"And so they should be," said John with calm sternness, "and shall make just reparation."

The Princess and Burley glanced at each other both remembering the terrible rage of yesterday, the threats of war, of violation to St. Paul's, of murdering revenge.

"What is just reparation, my lord?" said the Princess nervously.

"By corpus' bones, Joan! I'll decide that when I've got to Sheen and heard what they offer. Certain it is our poor father won't know what to do. My sweet sister, have your cooks all been drowned in the Thames? Or shall I roast a leg of yonder chair myself over the fire?"

The Princess laughed and called orders to the hovering page.

"My lord," she said, her fair fat face all a-quiver with relief, "you sound yourself again. Your sleep did great good." Impatience, arrogance and sternness he showed as always, but she saw that the wild consuming unreason had left him, and she sent Katherine a look of deepest gratitude.

CHAPTER XXI

Neither Katherine nor the Duke ever mentioned the night at Kennington Palace, though it had an immediate effect on their relationship.

His need for her deepened, he talked to her more freely about all his concerns, and he kept her with him constantly, showing her many public as well as private signs of his love.

Katherine bore herself with discretion, but all of the Duke's meinie, and soon many others outside, grew aware of her new status. At the Savoy, her lodging was changed from the Monmouth Wing, nor was she put in the small room near the Privy Suite which she had occupied on earlier visits. She was given the Duchess' small solar adjacent to the State Chamber, while her nights were spent with John in the Avalon Chamber's ruby velvet bed. At the High Table in the Hall her seat was shifted to one next to the Duke, and though decorum was observed by the vacancy of the Duchess' place to his right, it pleased John to order for Katherine a chair no less magnificent than his own, with gilt carvings, topaz velvet cushions, and her embossed Catherine wheels for a headrest.

These elevations naturally set many spiteful tongues to wagging, but they wagged in secret, not only for fear of the Duke, but because the Princess Joan made plain her tolerance of the situation and treated Lady Swynford with marked favour.

The Duke had received the frightened London deputation at Sheen and after listening to their apologies and extenuations, had exacted mild enough punishment - a public penitential procession to St. Paul's in which the City dignitaries should carry a candle painted with his coat of arms - and had ordered that the unnamed instigators of the disturbance should be excommunicated. When these orders had been grudgingly obeyed, he saw to it that the obnoxious parliamentary bill to curtail the City's liberties was quietly dropped. When the people demanded a fair trial for Peter de la Mare, who was still imprisoned in Nottingham, this was granted. In the course of some weeks the Speaker of the Commons was released and rode in triumph back to London.

Against William of Wykeham the Duke's hostility lasted longer, since he was not adverse to making an example of the bishop as a lesson to the episcopal party.

Upon finding the Duke implacable, Bishop Wykeham bethought him of another method to regain his rich temporalities, and by the promise of a colossal bribe to Alice Perrers, convinced that lady, and through her the King, of the injustice of his pitiable poverty. King Edward duly signed a bill for Wykeham's restitution.

John when he heard this was displeased, but he shrugged and let the matter rest. This happened in June when the King was obviously failing and there was a great deal else to be thought of besides the chastisement of one fat greedy bishop.

Katherine was interested to hear of these various clement measures and gradually began to understand something of the conflicting ambitions and turbulence which made difficult any clear cut policy.

But in the matter of Pieter Neumann's fate she felt vivid personal concern. And on this one topic, John would not speak to her. She saw that the hidden wound, though purged of its prurience and healing rapidly, yet would always leave a sensitive scar, and she forbore any mention of Pieter, though she ached to know what had been done with him.

She found out at last in Easter-tide, on Maundy Thursday after the foot-washing ceremony. On this Thursday the act of humility in imitation of the Blessed Christ was performed throughout the Christian world in palaces, monasteries and manors, and at the Savoy the line of beggars began to form in the Outer Ward directly after Mass. It was customary to number the poor by the age of the lord who would humble himself to them, but the Duke magnificently augmented his own thirty-seven years by the ages of his three Lancastrian children, thus making forty additional ragged and filthy candidates to be honoured.

The ceremony took place in the Great Hall and Katherine stood watching at one side of the dais where the paupers, looking both proud and frightened, were seated on benches, and tittered nervously as the great Duke of Lancaster commenced the washing of their dirty scabrous feet.

The Duke was dressed in a humble russet tunic devoid of ornament. Two squires held silver basins of warmed rosewater, and Robin held a towel. The Duke smiled gravely at his paupers and worked quickly and conscientiously. He made the sign of the cross on each foot, then kissed the toes, while murmuring the words of humility.

Upon dismissal the owners of the feet went on to material rewards. On a table by the kitchens stood vats of broken meats and bread, from which the paupers were permitted to fill large sacks, and at the door the Duke's almoner doled out pieces of maundy silver.

When the ceremony was concluded and the gratified paupers had begun to gabble and bicker amongst themselves, the Duke came to Katherine and said, "Shall we visit the mew, sweet heart? Twill smell far better than in here, and we must see how your little merlin does."

Katherine assented gladly. Falconry had become a passion with her, and she was as eager as the Duke for her merlin to be trained, so that they might ride out again to hawk in Moorfields.

Arnold, the Duke's head falconer, met them at the door of the mew with a finger to his lips, and the sad tidings that Oriana had some puzzling ailment. The great white northern falcon had drooped upon her perch for days, she had refused gobbets of raw meat, and even tiny new-born rabbits with which Arnold tempted her.

John, instantly concerned - for his royal gerfalcon had no peer in England, and aside from his affection for her, was worth nearly two hundred marks - had framed a question as to her medication, when he was interrupted by Brother William Appleton.

The Grey Friar on his mule had trotted through the gatehouse into the Outer Ward and on seeing the Duke standing at the door of the mew, dismounted and walked over. "My lord," he said gravely, gazing at the Duke from beneath his pointed black cowl, "it is done. The ship sailed from Pevensey on Monday." He glanced coldly at Katherine.

She saw John draw a long shaking breath while he said very low, "Chained in the galleys?"

"Even so, my lord. He'll not trouble you again."

"And the Benedictine monks?"

"Have been stringently disciplined by their prior."

John sighed once more, and into his eyes there came a vague look, as though he listened to an echo. "Good," he said at length. "You've done well, and I thank you." He clapped his hands together once, then let them drop, and turning to Katherine said, "Wait here, lovedy. I must see Oriana, but 'twill disturb the birds if you come too."

He entered the mew with Arnold, and the Grey Friar made as though to leave, but Katherine cried out, "Brother William, I beg you!"

The friar paused and examined her. She wore a new gown of emerald brocade so lavishly furred with ermine that it befitted royal rank, and the gold fillet that bound her hair was jewelled and scalloped like a noble's coronet. "Lady Mede," he thought angrily. "Pride be painted here and pomp of the world." It was Alice Perrers that Long Will satirised in his Piers Plowman as Mede, the corrupt courtesan - yet here was another such, and worse, by reason of the crime which had exalted her.

"What do you wish, Lady Swynford?" he said with fierce emphasis on her surname.

She felt in his gaze some deeper meaning than the abhorrence of an ascetic friar for the sin of unhallowed love. He frightened her, but she persisted urgently. "This man of whom you spoke to the Duke, the one snipped in the galleys, is it Pieter Neumann? I've a right to know," she added sharply, as his lips tightened, "for my dear lord's sake. Ay, I know you think me worthless and lewd, but by the Holy Blood at Hales my love for him has not harmed him, it may even be that it has helped him at times." She ended on a note of quivering hurt.

The friar, opening his mouth to cry that no good could come from evil, and that she was a fool to think her love had caused no harm, yet did not speak. The candid innocence of her eyes restrained him, and he felt that there was still some good beneath this wicked flaunting beauty. After a moment he said curtly, "It was Pieter Neumann, deported on a ship bound for Cyprus where he'll remain in exile - if he survives the voyage."

"But he was in sanctuary - -"

"And stayed there the allotted forty days," answered the friar seeing that she knew more of this matter than he had supposed. "All was done with due regard for the laws of sanctuary. I myself was present at his hearing, and have just seen that the sentence of banishment was duly executed."

"Bishop Courtenay didn't try to save him?" she asked.

"No," said the friar startled. "Courtenay's now ashamed of his tool, and rightly so."

"Did the Duke not see Pieter?"

The friar hesitated, but again he answered her. "No - I believe he did not trust himself."

"God in his mercy be thanked," said Katherine. "My dear lord is then truly and honestly rid of his fardel."

She spoke with simple fervour and more to herself than the friar, but Brother William was softened. He bent close and spoke in a tone he had not used to her since the night of Hugh's death. "My child," he said earnestly, "Rouse yourself before it's too late. I believe you have the strength!"

"Rouse myself?" Her mobile face hardened and she stepped back from the friar.

"Give up the Duke - and this unclean love of yours! Uncleaner than you know - -" His sunken eyes blazed a warning, then he checked himself.

"Ay, to you all earthly love's unclean," she said bitterly. "You threaten me with hell, I suppose. It may be so - but I don't believe it. I have come," she said looking at him defiantly, "to believe only in myself, and my love."

He shook his head and looked at her with sadness. "You speak foolishly, Lady Swynford. Disaster will come to teach you better. Nor do I mean hell fire - but in this life - disaster!" he repeated on a sharper note and suddenly he clutched his crucifix.

As happened sometimes during his strict Lenten fasts, strange dreams had come to him of late, dreams so vivid that almost, in his pride, he had thought them holy visions. But the dream last night must have come from Satan, so full of senseless horror had it been, of glaring bearded faces gibbering, of the smell of smoke, and blood. When he had said "disaster" now, he remembered that he had seen Katherine's tearful tender face bending over him in his dream; and that she and he had been linked together in fear.

"Christe eleison" he whispered, much disturbed by the memory of this dream and the foreboding that had come with it, disturbed too that he should have dreamed of Katherine, for it was long since the devil had injected a woman's face into his sleep.

"Benedicite" he muttered, abruptly, and walked rapidly away towards the chapel.

Katherine waited by the mew for the Duke to come out and the discomfort Brother William had aroused in her soon melted in the warm spring sunshine. Presently she wandered towards the mossy old bargehouse. Clumps of violets and the yellow celandine had rooted in scanty pockets of earth between the stones, and she touched the little flowers as she passed. Through the water gate she could see an arch-shaped bit of the

Thames glinting sapphire beneath the warm blue sky where rooks cawed and wheeled towards their nests in the elms across the river. She walked down to the landing and breathed softly. The air smelt of new-turned earth and the budding greenwood.

When the Duke, having finished inspecting Oriana, walked up behind her on the pier she had a lapful of violets and like an absorbed child was flinging them into the river to watch the little purple specks go bobbing away over the ripples while she sang in her sweet warm voice, "Oh Lenten is come wi' love to town, sing hi! sing hey!"

He laughed and kissed the top of her bent head. "Moppet," he said, "you've forgotten your weight of years and many children?"

Katherine giggled and rising from the step saw that no one watched except the old bargemaster. She flung her arms around John's neck and kissed him heartily. "Many children, my lord, but not yet a full bevy," she whispered against his ear.

The Duke looked startled as he took her meaning. "It is so, my Katrine?" His eyes darkened and he looked down at her anxiously.

"You aren't pleased?" she asked while her smile faded.

"Ay, I shall welcome it. You know that. But you were very ill last time, lovedy - two nights I didn't sleep and prayed until I wore down the cushions at the altar rail."

"Ah, dear heart," she whispered turning her cheek against his shoulder, for she had not known of that. When Hawise had finally nursed her through the childbed fever into full consciousness again, he had been gone from Kenilworth and on his way to Bruges to negotiate the truce - with Costanza.

"Nay, but all will go well - this time," she said quickly. "I'm a fruitful woman and shall bear you another brawny son." She could not forbear the little note of triumph, for the scale dipped heavy on the other side and she could hear voices sniggering, "What, again a Beaufort bastard! Surely shame itself must blush by now!"

He looked down at the lovely curved cheek that rested trustfully against his russet-clad shoulder, and taking her hand he said in a harsh voice, "Thank God, Katrine - you wear my betrothal ring again."

He started to tell her of the pain he felt for her and all that he would do in recompense; of his Nottinghamshire manors that he would give her and a necklet of rare Eastern pearls a Lombard goldsmith had sent word of to the palace. But she stopped him. "Nay, darling, I know, You needn't fret yourself like that. See, it's for this I had you engrave the reason on my brooch." She touched it, "It is as it is."

"Cold comfort," he said roughly beneath his breath. He drew her tight against him and they stood silent on the pier watching the quiet Thames flow by.

On the twenty-first of June in his palace of Sheen at Richmond, the old King died at last. He was in the sixty-fifth year of his life and the fifty-first of his reign, and most of his subjects felt that both had lasted too long. The glories of Crecy and Poitiers were far in the past, and many now thought that those victories were negated by the interminable warfare that succeeded them and was not yet ended. The very week of the King's death the French were harrying the coast of Sussex.

Yet even those who despised the King for his insensate lust to rule France at whatever cost to England, and for his extravagance and blind follies, were shocked by his end.

The King was alone with Alice Perrers when he was stricken with an apoplexy. She had been sitting on his bed, casting dice with him, and provoking him to delighted titters by the outrageous stakes she demanded - the Archbishop of Canterbury's mitre, the province of Gascony, the crown regalia - when the King gave a loud cry and began to gobble in his throat. His staring eyes swam with red, one lip drew up in a snarl, as half of his face was turned to stone.

Alice screamed and jumped off the bed. The King fell back on the pillows. He gave forth great snoring gasps as she watched him, horrified. She saw that he must die and that her long power was at an end. She bent quickly and pulled three richly jewelled rings from off his flaccid fingers.

She thrust the rings in her bodice and backed away trembling, then she turned and fled from the chamber, pausing only to shout at a page that he must get a priest. She ran from the palace to the river, had herself ferried over, and by bribing an innkeeper on the western bank secured a horse and set out for safety to a nook in Bedfordshire where a certain knight owed her return for many favours.

The old King died soon and alone, except for a friar that the frightened page had found. His sons and little Richard, who was now the King of England, did not reach Sheen for some hours.

England mourned courteously for the King, the people wore sad clothes, black cloth shrouded their windows, and Requiem Masses were said throughout the land. Edward's funeral procession and burial next to Queen Philippa on the Confessor's mound in Westminster Abbey were conducted with doleful pomp. The dirge-ale was drunk to the accompaniment of decorous sighs. But everywhere eyes turned with hope and rejoicing to the fair charming boy who would be crowned on the sixteenth of July.

Angers faded. The bishops checked their fulminations against Wyclif and the Duke of Lancaster, the Lollard preachers turned their sermons from the injustices done to the poor and spoke on Isaiah's text, "A little child shall lead them." The great nobles ceased their jealous strivings, and the London merchants amicably prepared to spend a prodigious sum upon their share of the coronation festivities.

On the Feast of St. Swithin, July 15, the day before the ceremony in Westminster, Richard's procession from the Tower through the City surpassed in magnificence any civic celebration ever seen.

Katherine viewed the procession from a tier of wooden benches which had been erected on West Chepe for the accommodation of privileged ladies. The Princess Joan sat on a dais, flanked by two of her sisters-in-law, Isabella of Castile, Edmund's frivolous and empty-headed wife, who was as unlike her sister Costanza as a chaffinch to a raven, and Eleanor de Bohun, the great heiress, Thomas of Woodstock's bride. Eleanor was a high-nosed girl with a mouth like a haddock, who fussed so loudly over some matter of precedence that Katherine could hear her acid complaints from where she sat at some distance from the royal ladies, with Philippa, Elizabeth and her own Blanchette. The Swynford children had been brought down from Kenilworth for this extraordinary occasion, and her little Tom by special favour of the Duke had been permitted a place in the procession amongst the nobly born boys of approximately Richard's own age.

St. Swithin, doubtless propitiated by countless prayers, had in the morning duly cleared some threatening rain clouds from the sky, and the afternoon was as dazzling as the white silk banners and the cloth of silver draperies that were festooned along the line of march.

On the Chepe the great open conduit, new-painted in blue and gold, gurgled pleasantly near the grandstand, and the heat grew such that Katherine sent a page over with a flagon to be filled. The conduit, for the three hours of the procession, ran with wine. Good wine, and even young Philippa drank thirstily before resuming her sedate composure.

Elizabeth fidgeted and yawned as detachment after detachment of the Commons walked past City wards, all garbed in white in honour of the child king.

Blanchette sat quietly beside her mother. Her wondering eyes moved from the marching men to a gold-painted canvas tower where four gold-costumed little girls of her own age were perched in the turrets and in great danger of falling out as they hung over the flimsy parapets.

The Commoners had all disappeared down Pater Noster Lane and the men of esquire rank were filing past when Blanchette leaned forward and said, "Th-there's Uncle Ge-Geoffrey," with the little stammer in her speech which had developed during Katherine's last absence from Kenilworth.

"So it is, darling!" her mother answered, staring at the rotund figure in the white linen over-robe that made him look comically like a Cistercian monk. She had not seen Geoffrey in months, for he had been again in France on King's business. As his file of esquires passed the ladies' stand, he looked up and waved at them, then peered quickly along the benches looking, no doubt, for his wife. But Philippa Chaucer was not there.

The Duchess of Lancaster would attend the coronation tomorrow and was even now en route from Hertford with her ladies, including Philippa, but a secular parade did not appeal to her.

The knights and knights banneret followed the squires, then the aldermen, and the new mayor - the wealthy grocer, Nicholas Brembre. He complacently curbed his prancing horse with as much negligent skill as any knight, while he bowed to the stand where his lady mayoress Idonia was ensconced on silver cushions at a place of honour near the Princess Joan.

"He looks almost a gentleman, except he's so greasy and sweaty," said Elizabeth of the mayor in a shrill astonished voice.

"Hush, Bess," said Katherine sharply. "Gentlemen sweat too, in heat like this."

"Not my father's grace," retorted Elizabeth pointing proudly. "He's never slobbery, no matter what."

Katherine bit her lips against a laugh, for Elizabeth was quite right. The lesser earls and barons had passed by and Richard's uncles, led by the Duke, had appeared at the curve by Chepe Cross. In cream velvet trimmed with silver and riding on a snow-white horse, John gleamed as immaculate as an archangel. His brothers, the pale slouching Edmund, and the swarthy bull-faced Thomas, seemed to Katherine like a couple of nondescript rustics by comparison.

She had no opportunity to admire John as she wished or to respond properly to the bow he sent in their direction, for as the little King approached in a blare of herald's trumpets and the rattle of drums, the ladies surged to their feet amidst cheers and roars of "Long live Richard!"

The small girls in the canvas castle were prodded from below and in a sudden frenzy began to fling out gold florins and tinsel leaves across the King's path. Someone hidden in the tower pulled a string so that a canvas angel with jerking arm brandished a crown over Richard's passing head.

The boy looked up, startled, laughed, a high fluting tinkle audible even through the tumult of his acclaim.

The ten-year-old Richard was pink and white and delicate as an apple-blossom. His thistledown curls were yellow like a new-hatched chick. His shoulders seemed too slight for the vast white and brilliant-studded mantle they had draped on him, albeit he sat his horse sturdily and pricked it angrily with his golden spurs of knighthood when the beast lagged.

"By corpus, he looks like a maid," cried the irrepressible Elizabeth, examining her cousin critically. "I trust he'll cease to be such a mollycoddle, now he's King!" She had scant use for Richard, who was poor at games, liked only to mess about with little paint pots or to read, and clung to his mother's skirt when teased.

"Tomorrow he will be God's anointed," said Philippa severely, frowning at her sister. "You must not speak like that of the King's Grace."

Elizabeth subsided, faintly awed, so that Katherine could give her whole attention to the group of lads that followed Richard on foot. She singled Tom out first and showed him to Blanchette, aware that the child had drawn back and ceased to look at the procession as the Duke rode by. "Look, sweet," she said taking her daughter's hand, "how bravely our Tom marches with all the young lords." And how much he looks like Hugh, she thought with a pang. The dusty-looking crinkled cap of hair, the square Saxon face, the forthright stride - these were all from Hugh, so was the boarhead-crested dagger that dangled on his hip. The Duke had given him a far handsomer dagger, but Tom obstinately preferred his father's.

"He's m-much t-taller than L-lord Henry, though he's younger," said Blanchette. Katherine squeezed the passive little hand and agreed, but she sighed. Blanchette's pride in her brother was natural enough, yet this remark, like nearly everything Blanchette said, showed her animosity to the Duke and all who belonged to him. Well, she would have to get over it, thought Katherine with sudden impatience.

The two Hollands came cantering up at the tail of the procession, waving their great swords and crying to the people to stand back and wait until the King had passed the cathedral before they rushed to the wine fountains. These two young men were the Princess Joan's sons by her first husband and, beloved as Joan was, no one felt that they did her much credit, except apparently Elizabeth, who had recovered from Philippa's reproof and pointing at the younger Holland, John, said, "There's a comely lusty-looking man! 'Tis Jock Holland. He picked up my glove when I dropped it t'other day at Westminster. Nan Quilter," she added admiringly, "says he has more paramours than any other man in London."

"Elizabeth, you're disgusting!" cried Philippa. "Must she for ever tattle servants' gossip, Lady Katherine? You must find some way to refine her tastes."

Before Katherine could speak, Elizabeth tossed her dark curls and said, "In truth, 'tis not my lady here should chide me that I speak of paramours."

Katherine felt herself go crimson and heard a little gasp from Blanchette.

"This is not the moment to discuss your rudeness, Elizabeth," Katherine said, mastering her voice with difficulty, "but I must remind you that whatever your opinions may be, your father's grace has put you in my charge."

Elizabeth flounced, but she looked down and began to twiddle with a loosened pearl on her bodice.

Philippa put her hand on Katherine's knee, shook her head and said gently, "I ask pardon for my sister." Her pale eyes rested on Katherine with sorrowful affection.

"God's blood, what a fuss about naught!" cried Elizabeth suddenly giggling. "I meant nothing." She looked up through her lashes at Katherine." 'Tis too joyous a day for long faces," she said coaxingly. "Oh, my dear lady - please - mayn't we buy some of those comfits?" Elizabeth's giddy eye had caught sight of a sweets vendor who was pushing through the crowd.

Katherine silently drew some silver from her purse and gave it to the page, who darted after the vendor. Elizabeth had been insolent certainly, yet bitter it was for Katherine to realise that she could hardly be punished for stating a simple truth.

But what of Blanchette? Could she at ten know the meaning of "paramour"? Or had she gasped only because she saw that in some way Elizabeth was attacking her mother?

Katherine looked down with an aching tenderness at the little head with its silken crop of flaming curls and was dismayed to see that the round chin was trembling. "Here, darling," said Katherine brightly, taking a sweet from the plate the page proffered, "you love marchpane. Look - 'tis made like a perfect little crown in honour of the day."

"I c-can't, Mamma," said Blanchette shrinking. "I feel sick." She clapped her hand over her mouth. Katherine jumped up and putting her arm around the child rushed her down off the stand to a street gutter.

Poor lamb, thought Katherine, holding the clammy little forehead. It was the heat and excitement. Hawise must make a wormwood physic for her when they got back to the Savoy, and Katherine would make time somehow to pet the child and sing her to sleep.

Even the Duke's influence was not sufficient to procure for Katherine a good view of the actual coronation ceremonies in the Abbey. As High Seneschal of England he had been ruling on hereditary claims and matters of precedence for days, and therefore honour demanded that he show no favouritism. Katherine was accordingly jammed into a section half-way down the nave amongst other wives and widows of obscure knights.

Her pregnancy was not yet obvious when she hid her slightly thickened waist under a green silk mantle as she had today, but hours of standing or kneeling were an ordeal, and she would have begged leave to miss the ceremony, except that the Duke wished her to be there, and wanted her to share with him, no matter how imperfectly, in this tremendously moving occasion.

But there was another reason besides her condition which had made her reluctant. At the margin of the sanctuary dais, on a gilt carved and velvet throne as splendid as the Princess Joan's, sat the Duchess of Lancaster, holding, by right of her claim to the kingdom of Castile, a small lion-headed sceptre.

The Duchess had duly arrived at the Savoy last night, Katherine having retired some days past to the Monmouth Wing with her children. John had spent the night at Westminster Palace with Richard so that Katherine had not had the anguish of the thought of him with Costanza. A humiliating anguish which she each time believed to be conquered. She knew that there was no love between them and that whatever union they had resulted from a sense of duty. And yet-

Today in her coronation robes, a sparkle of jewelled crimson and ermine, the Duchess was a handsome woman. At this distance, anyway, she seemed imbued with a dark slender majesty that dominated the other royal wives, and even the Princess, who appeared to be an enormous mound of periwinkle blue surmounted by an orange blob of hair. Katherine closed her eyes and leaned her aching back against a pillar.

Outside to the sound of trumpets and tabors, the solemn processional wound its way from Westminster Palace to the north door of the Abbey along a carpet of striped red worsted. The Duke carried the great blunted sword of mercy, Curtana, and behind him, his enemy, the Earl of March, whose baby son was Richard's heir, carried the sword of state. The bitterness between March and the Duke was abeyant just now, like other enmities, and John had gone out of his way to conciliate the nervous, spiteful little earl The Earl of Warwick followed with the third sword; Edmund of Langley and Thomas of Woodstock carried the orb and sceptre.

Over Richard's bare head, the barons of the Cinque Ports, by ancient right, upheld a cloth-of-gold baldaquin supported by four silver poles. After them came old Sudbury, the Archbishop of Canterbury, his wrinkled face working with emotion, his blue-veined hands trembling on his crosier - and after him the bishops and the abbots and priors and monks.

As they entered the Abbey and Richard was placed on a platform half-way between the choir and the High Altar, the clergy burst forth in a great anthem, "Firmetur Manus Tua."

Katherine's eyes filled, the people around her wept as the glorious singing mingled with the exultant organ and the Abbey was awash with beauty of sound, enclosed by the beauty of stone.

She could see very little of what took place, but in the suddenly tense, quiet church she heard a quavering boy's voice repeat the coronation oath and when the archbishop turned to the people and asked if they would have and hold Prince Richard for their King, she cried joyously with the thousand other voices, "Ay, we will have him!'' while her spine tingled.

The ceremony progressed: the Veni Creator, the Litany, the Collects. Then the King was anointed with the holy oil and invested with all the ceremonial robes and the regalia. Finally he was crowned and installed upon his throne. The archbishop commenced the Enthronement Mass, and first of all Richard's subjects, the Duke of Lancaster knelt before the child to do him homage.

Richard's reign started with bright promise. Only the most superstitious thought ill-omened two small occurrences.

The little boy drooped and had gone very pale when the Mass and homage were at last over and he walked down the transept to quit the Abbey. He swayed giddily as he stepped into the North Porch. His old tutor, Sir Simon Burley, was watching. He swooped the child up in his arms and ran with him towards the Hall, where Richard still must endure the banquet. When Burley lifted him, one of the King's red-velvet consecrated slippers flew off and must have been seized by some knave in the watching crowd, for it was never seen again.

So soon had Richard lost a part of his kinghood.

And at the banquet in Westminster Hall, the child complained that his head ached dreadfully from the weight of the crown. His cousin Henry sat opposite him in his father's place, since the Duke and other lords were riding their horses up and down the Great Hall, keeping order.

"Feel the thing, Henry," said Richard, pushing at his crown. " 'Tis heavier than an iron helm."

Henry curiously reached his stubby little hands across the board to try the crown's weight, but the Earl of March intervened violently and snatched the crown from Richard. "I will hold it for Your Grace," said the Earl, "so that you may eat in comfort."

Henry shrugged and returned to his roast peacock, of which he was very fond. This pother about the crown seemed to him silly, and Richard was always whining about something, anyway. Henry wondered if he could get Tom Mowbray off in a corner for a wrestling match pretty soon, and then remembered that he couldn't.

Richard was going to make Tom Earl of Nottingham after the banquet, and make a lot of other new earls too. Lord Percy would turn into Northumberland, Uncle Thomas of Woodstock was finally going to get a title of his own and turn into Buckingham. The old King hadn't cared much for his youngest son and had done mighty little for him, not even a title. But small wonder, thought Henry, Uncle Tom's a mump.

In a tapestry-hung gallery at the far end of the Great Hall, the Princess Joan ate with the royal ladies and a few selected peeresses. She had soon given up making conversation with the Castilian Duchess, who responded in polite monosyllables while pecking at her food and sipping her wine with what the Princess, who adored eating, considered maddening affectation.

Joan was therefore thunderstruck when the Duchess lifted her head and, turning her huge black eyes, said sombrely, "LaSweenford, es vero que - zat she is wiz child again?"

Joan for all her experience did not know how to take this, and her instinct was to protect Katherine. She answered, "Why - I know nothing about it, Duchess." Though she did.

Costanza gave the Princess a shrewd stare from under her thick white fids. Beneath the ermine cape her thin shoulders sketched a shrug. "I do not inquietarme about hees - bastardos," she said, "except - -" She stopped, obviously searching for words, and the Princess, embarrassed but curious, suggested that French might be easier.

Costanza's eyes flashed. It was the perfidious French who had been supporting the usurper Trastamare on the throne. She never spoke French.

She continued frigidly, "La Sweenford she make heem - el duque - soft. He forget - Castile!"

And a very good thing too, thought the Princess, who began to get the drift of this, as Costanza's dark glance moved down the Hall and rested on Richard's little golden head. Joan had no intention of using her new influence to take up the cudgels for Castile. The French depredations in Sussex were quite enough worry. So she ignored Costanza's real meaning and said with her charming sunny smile, "Oh, I don't believe the Duke has grown soft, in any way. On the contrary, I think he's showing great wisdom lately. We must straighten out the tangles in our own land first, don't you think?"

Costanza understood enough to realise that here was not the ally she had hoped for; a curious blankness like a mist obscured her brilliant eyes. Her lips quivered, and she muttered passionately in Spanish, "Why will not God let me bear a son?" She clutched at the reliquary on her chest.

Joan was not introspective, or given to moral judgements, and her own youth had contained a decidedly questionable love escapade. But it did occur to her that whether Costanza really minded or not, she was being increasingly wronged by this flagrant affair of John's with Katherine, and that probably the Duchess suffered more than her colossal pride would let her admit. Joan's facile fondness for Katherine slipped a little.

Spurred by her ever-alert watchfulness for Richard's safety, she viewed John's liaison with sudden alarm. Look how the old King's prestige had waned because of Alice Perrers, how the Commons had almost lost reverence for royalty and actually rebelled against the crown.

In truth it would be wiser for John to be more discreet in regard to Lady Swynford. Not cast her off, of course, no need for that. He could send her to one of his northern castles, Knaresborough, Pickering, or better yet, to Dunstanburgh on the Scottish border. There people would forget her and he could visit her in secret.

Joan decided to take up this matter tactfully in a day or so when she had no doubt that John would soon see the wisdom of her advice.

She was destined to be completely disappointed.

Part Five (1381)

"Forth, pilgrim, forth! Forth beast out of thy stall!

Know thy country, look up, thank God for all;

Hold the highway, and let thy soul thee lead;

And truth thee shall deliver, it is no dread."

(Ballade de Bon Conseil)

CHAPTER XXII

It snowed softly in Leicester on Christmas Day of the year 1380, and to the hundreds of guests sheltered at the castle and the Abbey of St. Mary-in-the-Meadows, and in other foundations and lodgings throughout the town, the pure white drifts were good omen for young Henry of Bolingbroke's wedding to little Mary de Bohun.

Of all the Duke's country castles since he had abandoned Bolingbroke, Kenilworth and Leicester were his favourites, and the latter was the more fitting for the marriage of the Lancastrian heir.

The Duchess Blanche had been born here and her father, the noble Duke Henry, was buried here in the beautiful Church of the Newarke which he himself had built to enshrine his most treasured relic, a thorn from Christ's crown of martyrdom.

This joint celebration of Christmastide and a wedding had tuned Leicester to feverish pitch. Each night mummers came to the castle dressed as bears and devils and green men, to scamper on their hobby-horses through the Great Hall. And each night a fresh boar's head was borne in to the feasting and greeted by its own carol, "Caput Apri Defero."

And this Christmastide was a feast of light and music. Scented yule candles burned all night, while the streets of Leicester were extravagantly lit by torches that cast their rosy flames on the snow. The waits sang "Here We Come a-Wassailing" in the courtyards, the monks chanted "Veni Emmanuel" in the churches, and in the castle gallery the Duke's minstrels played carols without ceasing.

On the night of the wedding there was a riotous banquet in the castle hall. Katherine's sides ached from laughing at the Lord of Misrule, who was dressed in a fool's costume, a-jingle with tiny bells, and wore a tinsel crown on his head to show that he was king and must be obeyed. The Lord of Misrule had been chosen by lot, and happened to be Robin Beyyill, though one soon forgot that, because he was masked. Robin's nimble brain thought of many a comical jape, and he won laughter even from the frightened little bride when he seized a peacock feather in lieu of sword and solemnly knighted Jupiter, the Duke's oldest hound.

Katherine sat beside the Duke, but they were not in their usual seats of honour, for those were given to the bride and groom - and Richard.

The King and many of his meinie, including his beloved Robert de Vere, had come to Leicester for his cousin's wedding, though not his mother, the Princess Joan. Joan sent polite messages to Katherine occasionally but they had not met since the coronation. To this wedding invitation Joan had answered that her aching joints and swollen leg veins confined her to Westminster. This avoidance had hurt Katherine for a while, and then she accepted it, with a certain defiance. The Duke had told her of the Princess' request that he hide Katherine away in one of the northern castles and of his indignant repudiation of the idea, adding with tenderness, "It seems Joan has forgot what love is, sweet heart, or she couldn't suggest such a thing.''

In fact, Joan's intervention had but increased his ardour, and far from hiding Katherine during these three and a half years, he had taken her with him on all his journeys throughout England. The constables of his Yorkshire castles, Pickering, Knaresborough and the gloomy Pontefract, of the High Peak in Derbyshire, of Newcastle-under-Lyme and Tutbury in Staffordshire, as well as of Kenilworth and Leicester, had grown accustomed to receiving Lady Swynford in the Duchess' place.

Nor during that time did these constables ever see the Castilian Duchess. She remained at Hertford in retirement. Rumour said that she was sickly, a little crazed. Certain it was that she bore no more children - which could not be said of Lady Swynford. There were four Beaufort bastards now, the last, a year-old girl, christened Joan for her father. The Duke appeared to dote on all these babies as wholeheartedly as though they had been fair-born.

The three little Beaufort boys, John, Harry and Thomas, squatted now on stools by their parents' knees, gaping at the antics of their elders, while the Duke caressed the curly yellow head of his namesake and asked Katherine some laughing question with all the fond domesticity of a contented husband.

No one else took much notice of the Duke and Katherine, all eyes were turned on the Lord of Misrule, the bridal couple and the King; but Geoffrey Chaucer watched his sister-in-law with sharp interest.

By the rood, thought Geoffrey, settling back in slightly tipsy contentment, little Katherine had thoroughly tamed that fierce Plantagenet leopard! It must be nine years that she had enthralled him, and to judge by the Duke's attitude now, his passion for her was strong as ever. That was a long time for the sweet fire to burn so bright, Geoffrey thought with a touch of envy, yet he had always deemed Katherine an exceptional woman. She had borne six children, she must be about thirty, but her beauty was undimmed, though it had acquired assurance and lost the touching wistfulness. The new quality was not brazenness, certainly; Katherine could never be that. Yet there were changes. Her gown was low-cut as that of Edmund's promiscuous Isabella, and Katherine leaned openly against the Duke's shoulder as she had never used to. Still, her grey eyes were clear as crystal, her high white brow smooth as a girl's and the new-fashioned Bohemian headdress gave to her a look of shining delicacy. Though on many women the balanced crescent moon above their faces unfortunately suggested a horned cow. It was so with his Philippa.

It was a year of weddings and matchmaking. The Duke, singlehearted in all that he did, having turned his mind to domestic matters, had now married off two of his children in ways most advantageous to their prosperity if not their happiness. However, nobody expected happiness from marriage and least of all the Duke, though he had achieved it once. Even now, though Geoffrey was fat and forty, his staid heart felt a springtime thrill at the memory of the Duchess Blanche.

The Duke had procured for his Henry another great English heiress, such as Blanche had been, but the marriage of these two children promised no such felicity. Henry was thirteen and his bride twelve. Up there at the High Table, in her glittering finery, one could see the child trembling like a little white leveret. But she would return to her mother's care tomorrow. The Duke had no intention of prematurely taxing the breeding powers that would eventually produce the next Lancastrian heir, though some less wise fathers threw the children into bed together at any age and accepted whatever consequences might arise.

"She's an ill-tempered vixen," asserted Philippa suddenly, enunciating with great care. "She's scowling at me."

"Who?" asked Geoffrey, looking around.

Philippa raised her spoon and pointed at the hawk-nosed Countess of Buckingham. "Her. Bride's sister."

Geoffrey said, "Nonsense!" soothingly. " 'Tis simply that she dislikes this wedding, scowls at everyone."

Though it was true that Eleanor de Bohun's angry eyes rested on Philippa's dishevelment with disgust, her fish mouth was set in continual disapproval anyway. Thomas of Woodstock's wife vehemently agreed with her husband, and resented the Duke's perfidy in snatching her little sister from the convent where they had sent her to be a nun. Mary's return to secular life and marriage to Henry reinstated her as coheiress to the vast Bohun fortune and correspondingly halved Eleanor's share.

Only an uneasy desire to keep an eye on the proceedings, lest worse befall, had brought Eleanor to the wedding at all, and she made no effort to be civil.

"She glares at me," retorted Philippa belligerently, "because she dares not be rude to Katherine. Oh, I heard her in the garde-robe, squawking to her ladies that I'd no right to be seated above the salt. She called me a pantry wench married to naught but a scribbling wool-counter."

Geoffrey recrossed his legs and considered with amusement the Lady Eleanor's contempt. Scribbling wool-counter no doubt he was, but a much travelled one on the King's secret service. Peace negotiations, royal marriage negotiations, in France, in Flanders, in Italy, he had acquitted himself well in these. Though general recognition might be pleasant, its absence was not upsetting.

"I wot myself best how I stand

For what I dree, or what I think

I will mysehen all it drink...."

He had written that in his poem on the unreliability of Fame, verses he had started at Kenilworth and never quite finished. He had abandoned it before the end since the royal "love tidings" he had meant to celebrate had not materialised. The little Princess Marie of France had died before she could be betrothed to Richard.

There were love tidings a-plenty now to celebrate. He glanced again at the new-wed couple. Henry, chunky and serious in his white velvet suit, was politely trying to entertain his pop-eyed bride by carving a horse out of bread. And Geoffrey looked at the King, whose betrothal to Anne of Bohemia, sister of the Holy Roman Emperor, would soon be public.

Richard at barely fourteen still resembled a golden meadow full of pink and white daisies. His German bride-to-be, a year older, was reputed to be lumpish and brown as a nut. It was hard to fit either the flowery conceits of courtly love, or the forthright pleasures of mature mating to these dynastic marriages of children.

Geoffrey's eyes veered to the Lady Elizabeth, the Duke's younger daughter. Her marriage yielded even less inspiration. At Kenilworth last summer when Elizabeth was sixteen she had become the Countess of Pembroke by means of an eight-year-old husband, John Hastings, who had promptly suffered an attack of measles and returned to his mama for nursing.

There was grave doubt that Elizabeth would wait until the years should bring virility to her little husband. At this moment her cheeks were flushed, her dark eyes bright with wine, or lechery, as she lolled against John Holland and teased him with pouting lips. The King's half-brother was no Joseph, and his repute for wenching was great. It was a wonder that the Duke did not curb his wild young hoyden, but the dallying pair were hidden from his sight behind a festoon of hanging bay-leaves, and none so easily hoodwinked as a fond father - except a husband.

There remained the Lady Philippa. Decorous as always, she sat smiling quietly at some quip made by her Uncle Edmund. Her pale hair was braided in the old manner at either side of her cheeks. She had much of her mother's gentle dignity, but never Blanche's beauty.

Of Philippa there had been many, abortive, love tidings. Scarcely a prince in Europe but had been mentioned for her husband, but none found to be suitable. So Philippa at twenty-one was as yet unwed, and happy that she was still virgin, Katherine had said.

Geoffrey's eyelids drooped as he thought with sudden impatience that though poetical eulogies of royal matings often produced pleasing rewards, he no longer felt the requisite chivalric fervour to do them justice. St. Valentine concerned himself with common folk as well as courtly ones, and the saint's influence on all folk was humorous enough to the onlooker. Yet it was no saint, nor Venus or Cupid, who moderated the affairs of love. No one but Dame Nature. And a gathering of amorous birds would serve to show various kinds of love as well as any gallant knights and languishing ladies. The turtle-dove, the falcon, the goose, the cuckoo and the eagle - he thought, much entertained with his idea - fowls of every kind, a parliament of fowls.

He started as a wand of jingling bells thumped him on the shoulder.

The Lord of Misrule stood on the inside of the board grinning down at him beneath a red-spotted half mask.

"Ho, Dan Chaucer!" shouted Robin. " 'Tis crime to doze when all make merry! In punishment we decree that you give us a rhyme. Come tell of love, my master! Tell us of love!"

Geoffrey laughed and rose. His loosened girdle fell off with a clatter of sword, another button popped off his surcote. "I am undone, Your Majesty," he twinkled to Robin. "Your pardon."

"Ay - granted - -ay," cried the young squire, shaking his fool's sceptre threateningly. "But sing to us of love!"

The young people on the dais ceased chattering as the King stood up, hushed the minstrels and watched expectantly. Richard had an eager appreciation of poetry as of all the arts, and though he preferred French, had read one or two of Master Geoffrey's English translations with pleasure.

Katherine rose too, and seeing that it was Geoffrey that Robin teased, walked a few steps down the Hall and smiled at him encouragingly.

Geoffrey bowed, lifted his arm in solemn invocation, and declaimed,

"Since I from Love escaped am so fat

I think no more to be in prison lean

Since I am free, I count him not a bean..."

He sat down.

There was a startled roar of indignation. "For shame, for shame," called Richard on a trill of his high childish laughter. "My Lord of Misrule, you cannot pass so ungentle an offence! What penance will you give him?"

Robin waved his sceptre as he considered. "By Saint Venus, I command that he shall kiss his wife!"

Philippa bridled at the shouts that greeted this, but Geoffrey promptly rose again and, seizing her by the chin, kissed her heartily on the lips. " 'Tis naught so great a penance," he cried, and her indignant splutterings died away.

Then Robin's usually level head forsook him. This brief time of power had made him drunker than the wassail. By all the rules of Christmas, no man could gainsay him, and he shouted exultantly, "Now shall each man kiss the lady of his heart!"

He whirled, and before she had the faintest conception of what he would do, Robin had covered the few steps between them and, grabbing Katherine around the waist, pressed his eager young mouth passionately to hers.

Few people saw it, because Robin's command was being obeyed, in a whirl of fumblings and giggles and coquettish screams.

Katherine was so astounded that for a moment she could not move. She had continued to treat Robin as a boy and had come scarcely to notice the adoring looks he gave her, but this was no boyish peck. It was a man's kiss, hot with desire, and when she finally jerked her head away, he whispered, "Three years I've waited for this, my heart's life. I shall die if you be not kind to me!" and he kissed her again.

"Jesus, my poor Robin - you're mad," she whispered, pushing at his chest that was covered with gilt bells. Robin held her tighter and muttered a torrent of love words against her cheek. She gave him a great terrified shove - as a voice spoke beside them.

"Here's a pretty little piece of Christmas mumming! 'Twould seem you play your parts well." The voice of stone, the eyes of murderous blue flint.

Robin's arms slackened.

She released herself and cried wildly, "To be sure, my lord - why not? The King of Misrule must be obeyed, it seems he feels most sportive, and has just told me he would kiss all the ladies."

"No!" cried Robin, past all caution, and still gazing at her through the mask. "I want only - -"

"The Lady Isabella," cried Katherine, seizing the arm of Edmund's fight-minded wife, and thrusting her at Robin. "Here's a king dies of love for you, my lady!"

Isabella giggled and preened herself, her voluptuous Castilian eyes gleamed at Robin. She hiccuped gently and clutched at the young squire's arm.

"My lord," said Katherine to John, moving quickly, "shall we not join the dancing?" Here at Leicester a special chamber had been built for dancing. The King and the bride already were gyrating hand in hand in the popular Pavo.

"Nay, my lady," said the Duke, "I do not feel like dancing."

"You're tired} my dearest lord, come to our solar, well rest awhile."

"I feel no need of rest." He did not look at her, the corners of his nostrils were dented white. He swung on his heels and strode under the minstrels' gallery towards the guard-room, where his men-at-arms were feasting.

Katherine ran after him in great fear. She had forgotten in these three quiet years that his eyes could look like that-

"My lord," she cried desperately, "you cannot be angry at a boy's tipsy yuletide kiss. " 'Tis unworthy of you."

At first she thought he would not heed, but at last he stopped by a torch-lit recess and turned on her. "Tipsy - ay! Wine makes a window for the truth. I marked well how little you resisted, no doubt because these kisses are not so unaccustomed."

Her own eyes blazed as hot as his, but she knew that Robin's safety depended on her control. "I must believe that this outrageous slur gives proof of your love," she said trembling. "If you have lived so long with me and cannot trust, then all our life is mockery."

John's fists fell slowly open. Her bitter voice spoke to his heart but yet he was deafened by the shock he had felt when he saw her in another man's arms. A new shattering pain, since never by word or deed had she given him cause for jealousy. He had seen how men admired her, but so sure had he always been of her love that no doubts had troubled him.

"If you did not welcome his kisses, why did you babble that folderol to protect him and thrust Isabella at him?" he cried. "And why didn't you strike his foul slobbering face?"

Why not? she thought. Why, because she liked Robin and love is not so plentiful in this world that one should receive it anywhere with odium. But this she could not say, so she told part of the truth.

"I spoke for fear of you, my lord. What you might do - - "

"You think you need to guard my honour?" he cried with new fury. "This yeoman churl that I hired as squire, did you think I'd challenge him to knightly combat! Indeed Katrine, 'tis your own peasant blood that speaks - 'tis perhaps the bond between you two."

"Ay - Your Grace?" said Katherine, flatly, staring at him. After a moment she continued, "I thought you would set your guards on him - though your chivalry might well breed mercy to such lowborn folk as Robin - and me."

Katherine's eyes stared into those of the Duke.

At last he sighed and dropped his head. "I'm sorry, Katrine," he said unsteadily, "but the sight of you in that ribaud's arms - -" His hands shot out. He grabbed her shoulders and yanked her towards him. He bent and kissed her savagery. "Were his kisses sweet as mine, lovedy! Did your mouth open for him too?"

His fingers dug into her shoulders until the skin sprang up livid. She gave a sobbing laugh. "You know that you are my whole life - you know it - -"

"Dear Christ, that I should love you still like this," he said through his teeth. "That I can desire you now, as much, nay, more than I did in Bordeaux - do you feed me love potions, Katrine?"

"No, do I have need to?" she whispered. They stood looking at each other, breathing as though they raced with time.

He caught her round the waist. "Come," he said, and pulled her down the passage towards the solar stairs.

"No," she cried, "we've been gone long now. What will they think? You cannot so slight the King!"

He laughed in his throat. "The King will wait on love as well as any man."

In the partially emptied Hall, the varlets stacked the trestle boards and renewed the candles. Geoffrey still sat on, warming himself at the fire. His Philippa had gone to sleep in a chair and snored softly, with her hands folded on her stomach.

Geoffrey had seen what passed between Katherine, Robin and the Duke, and made a shrewd guess as to its meaning. But he had seen something else as well - the look on Blanchette's face when Robin kissed her mother.

He was fond of his pretty niece, but she puzzled him as he knew she did Katherine, who treated the girl's dark moods with an anxious forbearance. Blanchette's marigold curls and dimples, her small delicate body, belied the intensity of her sombre slate-grey eyes. Girls of about fourteen were often flighty, but Blanchette's brooding silences, her stammering speech and unwillingness to join with other young folk in any pastime seemed stranger than the normal humours released by puberty. Throughout the banquet, Blanchette had sat next to a stalwart knight called Sir Ralph Hastings, who was cousin to the Earl of Pembroke. Sir Ralph owned much land in Yorkshire near Pontefract, he was one of the Duke's most able knights - and a widower. Recently he had become enamoured of Blanchette and had asked Katherine for her, who had told the Chaucers of it.

"A splendid marriage!" Philippa had cried. "By Saint Mary, what luck! Why, she'll have noble kin - she'll be cousin to the Lady Elizabeth! Speed the matter, Katherine, lest Sir Ralph change his mind. 'Tis not everyone would want a sulky little snip like Blanchette, and no heiress either."

"She has income from the Deyncourt wardship my lord granted her," said Katherine slowly, "and her share some day in Kettlethorpe. But the child says she hates Sir Ralph."

"Rubbish!" had cried Philippa sharply. "She but hates whatever you, or His Grace, tell her to do. 'Tis the very thing for her, a wise older man'll soon straighten out these dumpish moods. You humour her too much."

"Maybe - -" Katherine's smooth brow had creased in a worried frown. "My lord thinks so. Yet it twists my heart to force the child - -"

Blanchette had, however, been forced to the extent of sitting next to Sir Ralph at the banquet and sharing his cup. A comely man, Sir Ralph, with high florid colour, and curling brown beard. Blanchette sat beside him with downcast head, until Robin began to jingle and caper along the Hall between the trestles. Then her great clouded eyes had fixed on Robin and at the moment when he kissed Katherine, Geoffrey had seen the girl start back and whiten. She had left the table at once, glided out into the courtyard. Nor had she returned to the Hall.

Was that violent flinching because the girl had some special feeling for Robin? Was it because she felt her mother besmirched?

It was hard to tell what Blanchette felt. But, Geoffrey thought pityingly, there was fey quality about the girl, not sulky as Philippa and many others believed - but tragic.

On the morning after the banquet, John and Katherine lay late in bed, as did most of the castle inhabitants. The winter sun had risen to its full brilliance, and the folk of Leicester town were already out skating and sliding on the frozen Soar before Katherine awoke. She listened to the shouts of the holiday-makers on the ice, and seeing a strip of orange-coloured light through the brocaded bed curtains, murmured that it would be a fine day for the stag hunt in Leicester forest, and yawned voluptuously. In the great enclosed bed it was warm, snug as a walled garden. She lazily kissed the corner of John's jaw, and nestled against him, savouring with drowsy delight the hard strength of his muscles.

He acknowledged her caress with a smile and a gentle pinch on the satin skin of her hip, but he had been awake for some time, and thinking.

"Lovedy," he said, "Robin Beyvill must go. I'll not answer for my temperance, if I see him making calf eyes at you now, and besides there's another reason."

Katherine blinked. She had quite forgotten Robin. "Yes," she said thoughtfully, "it were better he leave here - but not in disgrace, my dear lord. He's served you well."

"Not in disgrace. But he shall go today. To the Scottish border - to my fortress of Liddel. There he may cool his ardours by taming the Scots, who are rampaging as usual. God bless them."

John chuckled. He still had affection for the violent brood that harassed the border, affection born of his early visit with his father when he was a lad, and which was incongruously enough returned. He could arrange truces with the Scots, when no one else could. Certainly not Percy, who had deliberately provoked the latest Scottish hostilities. Percy be damned, John thought. The Earl of Northumberland had taken to snorting and pawing at the Lowlands again, regardless of England's safety - and need. At last a new approach had opened towards the seizure of Castile, to the final victory over France. This was no time for enraging the ancient rival to the north as well.

Two incredibly fortunate deaths had given England her chance to strike. Last year the usurping Castilian bastard, Trastamare, had died, leaving the throne to his degenerate son, Juan. And now Charles the Fifth, the wily "avocat" who had so long plagued the English, was gone too. His successor, Charles, was but a boy of twelve, and subject to fits. Spain and France were both, therefore, virtually leaderless, plunged into turmoil. And Portugal had risen as an English ally.

"Ay," said John aloud on a note of solemn exultation, "this time we'll succeed. I know it."

Katherine stiffened inwardly. She had no need to ask what he meant. Nowadays he told her freely of his plans, and she had never but once requited his confidence with the intrusion of her personal fears.

That once she had said, "But what will happen to me, my lord, if you enter at last into your kingdom?"

And he had answered in surprise, "Why, you'll come too, Katrine, after Castile's affairs have settled down. There's a little castle on the Arlanzon outside of Burgos where you shall be installed."

She had said no more and tried to forget the pangs this prospect gave her, and the bitter misgivings.

As anointed Queen of a Castile which she herself had brought to John, would Costanza show the same forbearance she showed now when she was but a penniless alien in her husband's country? And already there had been a change. Philippa said that when the Duchess heard the news of Trastamare's death, she had laughed loud and shockingly. She had decreed a three-day festival at Hertford, her chapel bell had pealed from dawn to dusk and her jewel-studded statue of the Virgin was carried through the streets to the accompaniment of Spanish hymns of thanksgiving. And she had summoned the Duke to Hertford, where he had stayed a week - all matters it were better not to think of.

"Thank God, darling," said Katherine at last, sighing, "that at least you don't leave England soon. 'Tis something I couldn't bear."

He frowned. Her remark pressed on a subject of deep concern. His brothers Edmund and Thomas were to be the vanguard of the new campaign. But he himself must remain at home for a while to strengthen domestic affairs, and cope with both Scottish and Welsh disorders. Richard's council, the Princess Joan and his own judgement had concurred in this policy, though it irked him and he had little trust in Edmund's diplomacy in Portugal.

"I'd not stay here, lovedy," he said gravely, "if it weren't wiser in the long run."

"Nay," she said with a sharp laugh. "I know your love for me could never keep you here - nor should it," she added with quick penitence. "Forgive me."

He turned and looked at her: the luminous eyes between their thick black lashes, the straight little nose, the voluptuous red mouth above the cleft chin, the transparent rose of her cheeks, the tumbled bronze of her fragrant hair, and the blue veins and white curves of her firm full breasts.

"By the Holy Rood, Katrine," he said, half angry, half rueful, "I hope it's not you who keeps me here. That were shame indeed."

There were those who thought so; Costanza did. He had denied it furiously and with truth. No woman, not even Katherine, could turn him from his goal. As the Castilian throne drew nearer to his grasp its lure shone even brighter. But he had learned prudence in these last years, and the need for careful planning. Money must be raised for an army, and sporadic little bursts of rioting, not only on the borders, but in English shires, must be put down with a firm hand - and then Castile.

Katherine heard his deep breath, and knew that he was thinking of those sun-baked plains that he had shown her from their mountaintop in the Pyrenees. She understood now better than she had then why that far-away land was the summit of his dreams.

She no longer wondered that he was not satisfied with being the greatest nobleman in England and its virtual ruler. Not when he could be a veritable anointed king, king of a country nearly twice as large as England. What complete answer that would be to continuing slanders that he plotted for Richard's throne! And, thought Katherine - that other thing. The ghost of the changeling story had been laid, even his enemies had forgotten it, and John could now refer to it with no more than the passing scorn he gave to all rumours about him. But the scar was there.

The King of Castile would be far above all rumours.

Katherine reached an arm through the curtains for the hand bell which would summon Hawise and a valet of the chamber. The bell made her think of Robin, who as body squire had often answered it, and she said, "My lord, you spoke of a second reason why Robin must be sent away?"

"Lollard," said John succinctly.

"But," she protested, "you've never been against the Lollards!" Half the court, the Princess Joan and until recently John himself had subscribed to most of Wyclif's doctrines.

"The Lollards now go too far," said John impatiently. "Their preachers are inflaming the people. And you know very well that I can no longer champion poor old Wyclif. I think his wits've addled. Though I'll not let his enemies harm him either. He shall propound his dreadful new heresies in peace at Lutterworth, but I want no active Lollards in my meinie."

Wyclif against the bishops, and the corrupt clergy, had been worthy of help. Wyclif against the Pope, particularly that now, since the schism in 'seventy-eight, there were most confusingly two popes, had merited many an intelligent person's approval.

Wyclif against the spiritual teachings of the Church was another matter. John had been sympathetic with the Englished Bible which Wyclif wanted given to the people, there was no harm in that, and the Duke believed in learning. He had been patient with the fiery black-robed doctor's arguments against the idolatry of saints, the folly of pilgrimage, the futility of confession.

But lately Wyclif had attacked the sacredness of the Mass itself, had dared to deny the miracle of transubstantiation. He had actually stated that the consecrated wafer and the wine did never change at all into the Blessed Body and Blood, that they were merely symbols. He had said it was better to worship a toad than the Sacrament, for a toad at least had life. And here John's long tolerance had shattered.

Perhaps, thought Katherine, Brother William had had something to do with John's revulsion against Wyclif. The Grey Friar himself no longer had the least sympathy for the reformer. And as for me, thought Katherine wearily, I cannot care either way. The observance of her religion had become dim, meaningless, boring.

John was truly devout in a hearty male way.. He believed as his father and mother had believed, so Wyclif had ended by horrifying him. And yet, she thought, it was like him to continue to protect Wyclif despite their quarrel.

His enemies misunderstood as usual. They gave him no credit for the loyalty that was his strongest trait. When he showed mercy they called it cowardice. But well-a-day, thought Katherine, what use to dwell on gloomy things? Today we'll have the stag-hunt and tonight we'll dance, my lord and I. She smiled, for their bodies were attuned in all ways and they danced so well together that even the most spiteful were forced to admire.

"God's greeting, my lady," said Hawise, popping her broad face through the curtains. "You look gay as a goldfinch. My lord too " She gestured with her white-coiffed head towards the garde-robe, where the Duke's voice could be heard singing,

"Amour et ma dame aussi

Votre beaute m'a ravie!"

while his squires rubbed him down with a herb-steeped sponge. "His Grace is in good spirits, I hear. 'Twas not his mood last night in the Hall, by corpus!" She enveloped Katherine in a chamber robe, encased the slim feet in embroidered kid slippers.

"How do you know that?" asked Katherine startled.

"Even common folk've eyes, sweeting. Tis known through the castle that fool of a Robin bussed you too hotly last night, and the Duke went black as iron. Some thought he'd beat you to a jelly with a pikestaff, some that Robin's bloody corpse'd be found afloating in the Soar; but I never fretted. You can do anything with His Grace nowadays."

"Robin leaves today for Cumberland," said Katherine, while soaking her hands in a basin of warm cream. Still every winter she had to fight recurring chilblains.

"Ay - I'm not surprised. Poor gawk. He lost his head, but small wonder. He's been panting for you like a thirsty dog, this age past."

"I didn't know - at least I never thought much about it," said Katherine ruefully. "Half the young squires're sighing and languishing after somebody, it's the fashion."

"Truth is - ye're blind as a midday bat to all but the Duke," said Hawise chuckling. She began to rub separate coppery strands with a silk cloth to increase their sheen and added in a different tone, "Yet there's one who'll be heart-stricken that Robin's to be sent off."

"Who?" asked Katherine idly.

"Blanchette, m'lady - nay, I see ye'd not guessed. The poor little wench keeps a button he wore under her pillow, and I've seen other signs."

"Blessed Saint Mary--" cried Katherine on a long note of mingled pity and exasperation. "That child. What am I to do with her? Still it can't be serious, she's too young, and Robin's shown her no special notice, has he?"

"Nay. Robin's had eyes for no woman but you."

Katherine sighed. This then was one explanation of Blanchette's increasing hostility. Lately she had hurt Katherine by her silences, her stubborn refusal to comply with any of Katherine's requests, though Katherine had shown tolerance in the matter of the betrothal to Sir Ralph. The Duke had even been annoyed with her about it. Blanchette could scarcely hope for another such offer, and Sir Ralph was not the man to be kept dangling.

"Robin'd be no match for her, even if he'd have her," said Katherine slowly. "She must look higher than a hobbledehoy Suffolk yeoman. God's blood, I don't know what ails the girl. She cares nothing about all we've done for her!"

Hawise was silent while she began the elaborate braiding of her mistress' hair. She sympathised with Katherine's worries about this child who never smiled any more. Hawise wound and netted the thick braids at the back of Katherine's head in readiness for the moony headdress later, and offered thoughtfully, "She seemed brighter on that visit to Kettlethorpe than I've seen her in donkey's years."

"Kettlethorpe!" repeated Katherine with disgust. She put down the mirror, and frowned at the unpleasant memory.

A year ago in November, after she had recovered from the baby Joan's birth, the Duke, having business in Lincoln, had decided that they should visit Kettlethorpe and see how Katherine's property did. They took Tom and Blanchette in their train, so that the Swynford children might see their birthplace, and they had stayed at Kettlethorpe for three very uncomfortable days.

The Duke had long ago appointed a resident steward under the direction of his Lincolnshire feodar, William de Spaigne, so that the manor had been kept in repair and was being as efficiently run as possible. But to Katherine, Kettlethorpe had presented a picture of bleak desolateness. It was so small and draughty and damp. Comforts which she had come to take for granted were entirely lacking, a dense November fog chilled the bones, and she, who was so seldom ill, promptly came down with violent chills, streaming nose and a racking cough. She had viewed her erstwhile home through a haze of physical and spiritual disease.

They had held a love-day and ale feast in the manor Hall. Herded by the steward and a new reeve, her serfs had filed through and apathetically knelt to do her homage, while little Tom stood by her chair with a proud smile, savouring this parade of his own future possessions.

There had been many deaths since she was here before, some bowel complaint had carried off half of Laughterton. Then there had been three runaways. Odo the ploughman's twin lads had taken to their heels and disappeared in Sherwood Forest. Cob o' Fenton, the former spit-boy, had refused to pay his heriot fine on his father's death, and made off too, but he had been caught at once and brought back. His property confiscated, he had been branded with an F on his left cheek, for "fugitive", and was even now in the village stocks as an example.

The steward had walked Katherine to the village green, where a gibbet had. been set up, beside the stocks where Cob the runaway was being punished.

Cob had changed little since the old days. Still small and flaxen-polled, though he must be thirty. Between white lashes his pale eyes had stared at Katherine sullenly - while the branded F reddened on his cheek.

She turned quickly from him, and recoiled as she saw the gibbet. Two rotting half-naked bodies dangled from the nooses. Katherine took one shrinking look and recognised - despite the bloated livid features - the long skull and jaw of Sim Tanner, the reeve. She gave a horrified cry and the steward said, "Ay, my lady. Sim took to thieving and poaching as soon as I turned him from his reeveship. Had got used to little luxuries no doubt, and wouldn't give 'em up."

So Sim had escaped Nirac's dagger so long ago, to end finally like this. The fog swirled thickly in from the Trent, Katherine's teeth chattered with another chill and she had hastened back to the dubious warmth of the Hall. Later she had ordered that Cob be freed from the stocks, and that his plot of land be restored to him, for she had been sickened by all the sights on the village green.

Dear Mother of God, how she had detested Kettlethorpe, and been in a frenzy to get away again.

But now she remembered that Blanchette had not. The girl had visited all the haunts of her childhood, the Broom hills, the mill, the river ford and a little pool where she had once played with village children. As though some inner sluice gate had been raised, Blanchette had asked a spate of eager, shy questions about her father. Was it here in the Hall that his armour had hung? What had been his favourite horse's name? And she had said, "How old was I, Mama, when Father kissed me good-bye here on the mounting b-block, the last d-day I ever saw him when he left for Aquitaine?"

Katherine had answered that Blanchette must have been about three and it was a wonder she remembered.

"I d-do remember," said Blanchette with a sad yet excited little smile. "God rest my dear brave father's soul."

Katherine, light-headed with her own illness and profoundly discomfited by all these sights and memories, had paid little attention. She realised that both children thought Hugh had died of wounds sustained in glorious battle, since no details had been given them. But it was true enough the dysentery had been a kind of battle wound. There was no falsehood in that.

"Ay - I remember now," said Katherine, finishing her thoughts aloud to Hawise, "that Blanchette wept when we left that odious place. But I feel 'tis morbid. She has everything to make her happy now in this new life the Duke has given her. I'll certainly take a firmer hand, as he wishes."

Katherine's face cleared and she waved away the huge gauzy gold-horned headdress that Hawise lifted up. "Let be, for now," she said, smiling. "One would think I'd no other children but that naughty little wench. I'll not frighten the babies with that foolish thing, and I'm off to the nurseries. How are Joan's gums, poor mite?"

"Sore as boils, I'll warrant, from the uproar she do make," answered Hawise dryly. "She yells louder'n any o' her brothers did."

Katherine laughed, and the two women walked down the passages to the nursery wing. John and Harry had long since gone out to play in the snow with other castle children, but her two latest-born were sitting on a bearskin rug by the fire.

Thomas, so christened because he had been born on St. Thomas a Becket's Day, but called Tamkin to differentiate him from his half-brother, Tom Swynford, was engaged in playing some private game with a set of silver chessmen the Duke had given him. Joan was solemnly chewing on a bone teething-ring. Both children squealed with delight when they saw their mother. Tamkin jumped up, and the baby held out her arms.

If anything should happen to John, what would become of the - Beaufort bastards? She crossed herself and sat staring into the fire, while the baby gurgled drowsily on her lap, Hawise and the nurses came and went at their tasks, and Tamkin, tiring of his game, ran off to find his greyhound puppies.

Even with the Duke's protection, what future did they have? The boys might be knighted in due course by their father, and make their own way as best they could with the appointments he could give them, but they might not aspire to honours. And the baby Joan - -

It would take a stupendous amount of dowry to get her married properly. Few worthy noblemen would overlook the stain of bastardy.

But if it should happen somehow - in terror, her mind veered from facing the actual thought again - that John could not see to their future, who would protect them then? Not the childish, self-centred Richard, nor the Princess. Certainly not the Earl of Buckingham. Edmund might make a feeble gesture, but when did Edmund's vacillating impulses ever persist for long? It was a treacherous marshy ground over which she had so blithely walked, thinking it firm as granite.

She looked at the baby in her lap, at Tamkin, who was trying to teach one of his puppies to beg. She thought of her two handsome gently bred older boys, who were being reared like young princes. But they were not. They had no legal name, no certain inheritance of any kind, and no sure future but herself. Blessed Mary, she thought, and what could I do for them, alone?

She stilled her panic and forced her mind to a practicality that was repugnant to it. Deliberately she scrutinised the total of her few possessions. The Duke from time to time had given her property, which she had accepted with reluctance, disliking the idea of payment for her love. The private income that these brought her she had scarcely heeded, it was but an insignificant trickle of pocket-money compared to the lavishness in which she lived.

She had the meagre Swynford inheritance, of course, though it was distasteful to her. Besides, it would belong eventually to Tom. She had a yearly hundred marks as governess's recompense, but that would shortly stop, since Elizabeth was married and Philippa beyond the age. She owned houses in Boston, which brought in a small rent. She had two wardships, including the Deyncourt one for Blanchette, some perquisites from the Duke's Nottingham manors, and that was all, except her jewels.

We could never live on that, thought Katherine, frightened. We'd have less than yeoman status. And she determined at least to accept the new wardship and "marriage of the heir" John had semi-humorously offered her.

" 'Twill be appropriate, Katrine. A neat turnabout for the insolence he showed you."

Ellis de Thoresby, Hugh's erstwhile squire, had been killed in a drunken brawl three months ago, leaving a two-year-old son. It was the fat annual fee for guardianship of this son that John offered her, and she refused sharply. She had neither seen nor heard of Ellis since he spat at her in the streets at Lincoln. She wanted no reminder of him.

Ah, but I must be practical, thought Katherine. I've been a soft fool. It was not mercenary to try and protect her children's future, and when the right moment came she would talk to John about it. The moment must be chosen, for though he was generous, he preferred to think of such things himself, and she knew that he might be angered that she should seem to question the provision he intended some day to make for all his children. And he would be right, she thought with sudden revulsion. She could not appear to grasp and scheme as though she had forebodings for him. There was no danger that could threaten them when she had the certainty of his love. She would go on as she had been, nor worry about the future.

Katherine picked up the baby and put her in the cradle, then looking around to find the source of an exceptionally wintry draught, saw that Tamkin had opened the leaded window and was hanging half-way out.

"Tam," she called, "what are you doing! Shut the window!"

The boy did not hear her, for there was much noise outside. The nursery windows looked down on Castle Street, where a cluster of rustics and townfolk had gathered, while a man in a long russet gown stood on a keg and harangued them.

" 'Tis only some Christmas mumming," said Katherine impatiently, shutting the window.

"Nay," said Hawise peering over the little boy's shoulder, " 'tis that Lollard preacher, John Ball, just come to Leicester, I hear. He's been jabbering and havering since Prime. I don't much like the look o' it."

"Why ever not?" said Katherine in surprise. "No harm in preaching."

"They keep singing something, Mama," said Tamkin, "over 'n' over, 'n' shaking their fists."

"They do," said Hawise grimly. "D'ye know what they sing?"

Katherine looked out again more curiously. She saw that the preacher had a fiery red face between a black beard and a crop of black hair on a round head, that he waved his arms violently and sometimes struck his russet-clad breast, pointing up to the sky, and then at the castle. Now and again he would stop with both arms wide outflung, when all the crowd of folk would stamp their feet and chant something that sounded like the rhythmic pound of a hammer on a smith's anvil.

"What do they sing?" Katherine said and opened the window wide. The hoarse pounding shouts gradually clarified themselves into words:

When Adam delved and Eva span,

Who was then the gentleman!

"What nonsense!" began Katherine - and checked herself. "What do they mean by that?"

"They mean trouble," said Hawise. "This last poll tax has really roiled 'em, and John Ball's doing his best to keep 'em roiled - throughout the land."

"Oh," said Katherine shrugging as she turned from the window. "The poll tax is hard on folk, no doubt, but wars must be paid for, Hawise. Why must they show so much hatred?"

" 'Tis easy to hate, lady dear, when you be poor and starving."

"But they're not!" cried Katherine, her eyes flashing. "Nobody starves in Leicester, or any of the Duke's domains. The kitchens often feed three hundred a day."

" 'Tis not everyone wants to be beggars, sweeting," said Hawise, chuckling. "And there's mighty few who like to be unfree."

"The Duke has freed many of his serfs when they deserve it," retorted Katherine hotly. "The eve of Christmas he freed ten in honour of Lord Henry's marriage."

" 'Tis true," said Hawise. "But there be ten thousand more in bondage. Ye needna look so fierce - 'tis not my thoughts I'm giving - 'tis what that John Ball yammers out there."

"But what can they do?" said Katherine, frowning towards the window, where again the doggerel pounded its inane rhythm.

"Oh, they'll not do anything," Hawise shrugged. " 'Tis naught but talk. England be a great place for windy grumbles. 'Twill all die down like stale ale."

CHAPTER XXIII

The Lancastrian household held their May revels at the Savoy. The early spring had been stormy but by the end of April days of warm sun and nights of gentle showers enamelled the countryside with green lustre. The Savoy servants trundled in barrowfuls of primroses and violets from the meadows near Tyburn, and made garlands to hang in each of the hundred rooms. They cut thick dewy branches of the rose-budded may and fastened them to torch brackets and above doorways. The kitchens and Great Hall were strewn with new rushes and fragrant herbs. Every nook was spring-cleaned. The myriad window-panes sparkled like diamonds set in lead; the cream and beige tile floors were polished smooth as eggs, and the silk carpets and the tapestries of the State Chambers were scrubbed and flailed to their pristine glow. Gilt, vermilion and azure were brushed on the stone chimney carvings, while new-painted fleur-de-lis powdered the vaulted ceilings between polished timbers. The offices of the chancery, the Great Treasure Chamber, the smithies, the barracks, the armourer's shops, the falcon mew, even the cellars and the empty dungeon received new coats of whitewash and were decorated with greenery.

A gilded Maypole had been set up in the river gardens on a square of turf which was enclosed by the famous Provencal rose bushes, already tipped with coral buds. Each afternoon of May week, there was dancing around the great shaft, while the multi-coloured ribbons wove up and down against a drift of pear blossoms.

There were May Day games - the younger lords and ladies played at Hide-and-Seek in the maze, or at Hoodman Blind, and Hot Cockles. At night there were bonfires built along the river-bank, and the Duke's barges, festooned with streamers and lit by torches, raced across the river when wagers were placed on each contestant.

No one could be melancholy during these days of Maytime brightness, and the Duke shut his mind to impending problems and enjoyed himself wholeheartedly with Katherine.

On May 12, he was to set forth for Scotland again. The King's Council, much pleased with his handling of earlier Scottish- disorders, had commissioned him to ride north and negotiate for a prolongation of the truce and cessation of the new hostilities. Percy's touchy sensibilities would have to be soothed. The Lord of Northumberland felt that Border matters were his own exclusive concern, and passionately resented interference from Westminster. But a combination of tact, flattery, and sternness would doubtless pacify the Border lord as they had before.

Everything contributed to the optimism born of Nature's own gaiety.

Parliament had finally voted an appropriation, and the poll tax was being raised, albeit there had been some trouble. The first collectors, through laziness or venality, had failed miserably to hand over the average shilling a head that was required. In March the system had been tightened and a fresh staff of collectors commissioned. The chancellor, who was now old Sudbury, Archbishop of Canterbury, had been scolded for his slackness; and a new treasurer, Robert Hales, Prior of St. John's, put in charge of the dilatory revenues.

The common folk might grumble - to be sure, taxes always caused grumbling - but a democratic effort had been made to distribute this tax fairly, "with the strong to help the weak." It was true that the levy of a shilling might wreak some hardship amongst labourers and servants since their wages seldom reached fourteen shillings a year; but on the other hand, the glorious prospects of eventual victory in France and Castile should certainly move the people to patriotic sacrifice. Besides, this new tax, for the first time, spared no one over fifteen years of age, even a baron or a bishop was assessed at a pound a head.

What could be fairer than that thought the Peers, while the Royal Council and Parliament agreed.

Katherine had been a trifle uneasy since she had heard John Ball preaching at Leicester, until the Duke told her that Ball had been imprisoned in Kent by Archbishop Sudbury.

"No need to fret, lovedy," said the Duke gaily. "With that ranting little firebrand quenched in jail, the people'll quiet down. They've no real cause for grievance, anyway."

Katherine was reassured. Yet she did say hesitatingly, "But the villeins aren't reasonable. My steward writes that at Kettlethorpe Cob o' Fenton has run off again! Though I freed him from the stocks and gave him back his land."

John shrugged. "No doubt they'll catch him, Katrine. Tis always hard to judge when leniency be wise. Some serfs would have shown you greater gratitude."

She had accepted this and ceased to think of it. Each lovely day must be enjoyed to the full especially as she and John would so soon be separated. Yet she had little fear for him on this march to Scotland which he anticipated with pleasure, nor should it take more than a month or so. She was to await him at Kenilworth with their children, and Kenilworth was a happy summer-time castle.

On Sunday she would leave the Savoy with the Duke, who would drop her and her household off at Kenilworth while he continued north. But before they left there was a small private matter to be attended to.

Sir Ralph Hastings would accompany his lord to Scotland, and Blanchette's betrothal should be solemnised. It had been delayed after Katherine's decision at Leicester because Sir Ralph had been at Pontefract, but now he had arrived at the Savoy, eager to claim the girl.

This was on Wednesday, the 8th of May. The Duke and Katherine were sitting in the rose garden watching a troupe of Cornish tumblers and gleemaidens who were cavorting on the lawn.

Sir Ralph strode through the garlanded archway into the garden, and walking to the Duke's chair knelt and kissed his hand. "God's greeting, my lord," he said, and bowed to Katherine. "I'm here a day before I thought to be, but love is a sharp spur, by Peter!" He chuckled and swaggered in his violet brocaded cote-hardie. A well-made man was Sir Ralph, and had spared no expense in clothing himself as finely as any young dandy at Richard's court. Blanchette's aversion to him he had assured himself sprang from charming modesty, being quite certain of his attraction. He was thirty-five and looked younger. He was an excellent horseman and jouster, and had been forbearing to the old wife he had been married to for twelve barren years until her lung complaint released him.

Blanchette had no excuse whatsoever for her behaviour, thought Katherine, smiling at Sir Ralph, who was asking after the girl.

"I'll get her," said Katherine rising. "In truth, Sir Ralph, you must have patience with her. Woo her gently. I confess she's sometimes of a heavy spirit."

The knight frowned a trifle but he spoke confidently. "Oh I'll soon gentle the little burde, once she's mine. 'Tis natural she should be shy."

''Natural, maybe," said the Duke smiling. "But she's played the coy long enough. We'll have the betrothal tomorrow, a merry climax to May revelry. Here in the arbour - and some jousting to follow. Blanchette shall be May Queen for the day."

Katherine bestowed a loving glance on John as she hurried from the gardens in search of Blanchette.

The girl lodged in a chamber in the Monmouth Wing, and could seldom be persuaded to leave it. Here she carried on many little occupations of her own. She had wooden puppets that she dressed in scraps of silk and velvet and played some secret game with, though she was well past the age for such toys. She strummed her lute and sang melodies of her own devising that were hushed at once if anyone came to the door.

And there were her birds. Almost daily Blanchette sent the page who waited on her to the market. He fetched her singing birds - linnets, thrushes, skylarks and sometimes nightingales that had been netted by fowlers and were offered for sale. She had a ritual with these. She left them in their cages only one night; while she talked to them softly as though they were Christian souls. At the dawning she would free them through her window and God-speed them as they winged out of sight.

A harmless enough pastime, but while Katherine stood at the girl's door she heard the low voice inside singing a plaintive tune, and the twittering of a bird. As she put her hand on the latch, Katherine's throat constricted while a memory assailed her - of the Lady Nichola in the tower-room at Kettlethorpe. Nay, but the child is in nothing like Nichola, Katherine thought with vehemence. She pushed the door and found it locked.

"Let me in!" she called sharply." 'Tis your mother." After a moment the door opened slowly and Blanchette stood as though to bar the way, her hands clenched together between her breasts. Her copper-gold hair cascaded in loose ringlets down her back. She wore a dove-grey chamber robe, unadorned. Never would she willingly wear any of the costly trinkets that the Duke or Katherine gave her. She was still shorter than her mother but her slight body showed the curves of womanhood, though her face had not lost its baby roundness and a few freckles still peppered her nose.

"Come, child," said Katherine more gently, "why must you always act as though I'd harm you? I love you, and wish you nothing but good. It hurts me when you act like this."

The girl stood motionless on the tiles, her sombre eyes fixed on Katherine.

A tiny green linnet hopped and twittered in a wooden cage though the cage door had been opened. The lute lay on the window-seat next to a quill pen, wet with ink, and a piece of parchment on which there were some straggling characters. Katherine moved to examine them, thinking to please Blanchette with praise for practising her writing. She read the childish letters at a glance.

I sigh when I sing

For sorrow that I see

Robin is gone

And thinks naught of me.

Blanchette with a muffled cry rushed over and swooped up the parchment. She crumpled it in her shaking hand, while fury flashed in her eyes. She turned on her mother and gasped, "What d-do you w-want of me, my lady?"

Katherine sat down on the window-seat and shook her head. "You mustn't blame me, darling, for things I can't help," she said quietly. "You must believe that all sorrows pass, and what you feel today you won't in a year. And you must believe that I know what's best for you."

The girl said nothing. Her eyes moved from her mother's pleading face to the green linnet, her mouth set in an ugly line. Her fingers clenched the crumpled ball of parchment, and she flung it on the tiles.

She that was the sweetest and the gentlest of children - Katherine thought - dear Lord, why is she like this now? Ay, it must be I've spoiled her. She sighed, then spoke with decision. "Blanchette, Sir Ralph has come. He's in the garden with my lord. Your betrothal shall take place tomorrow."

Blanchette raised her eyes. "I'll n-not," she said through her teeth. "I'll - run away. You'll n-never find me - -" Her voice shrilled and the stammer left her speech. "I'll not do what he says, ever - I swear it by my father's soul!" She crossed herself and her face went white as clay.

"This is wicked folly!" cried Katherine. " 'Tis not what the Duke says, 'tis what I say - -"

She gasped, for Blanchette flung out her arms and shouted, "You lie! And I hate you! You are naught but his creature, you and the scurvy pack of bastards that you bear him!" She turned wildly and stumbling across the room flung herself on her bed.

"Jesu," whispered Katherine. She sat rigid on the window-seat. A black wave submerged her and at length retreated, leaving behind a jutting rock of anger as refuge. She rose and stood by the bed. Blanchette's face was buried in her arms, her shoulders shook but she made no sound.

"This Blanchette, is too much!" Katherine said in a voice of icy control. "God knows if I can ever find it in my heart to forgive you."

Blanchette quivered. She twisted her face slowly around and stared up at her mother, and seeing there anger for the first time in her life, she gave a frightened moan. "Mama," she whispered.

Katherine moved away. Ay, she thought, my patience is at an end. I've put up with her humours, with the hatred she shows to John and me, and her jealousies of my babies. She blames me too that Robin did not love her, and now she speaks to me like that.

"Since you are lost to decency and make wicked threats, Blanchette," she said, "I shall see that you are strictly guarded night and day. One of my serving-maids shall stay here with you, and a man-at-arms remain outside the door. Tomorrow at noon there will be your betrothal to Sir Ralph, and after that I'll send you to a convent until your marriage. You may be thankful that I don't beat you as you deserve." She picked up the hand-bell and rang.

"Mama - -" whispered Blanchette again. She slid off the bed. Her eyes were dark with fear. "I d-didn't m-mean - -"

Katherine answered frigidly, "Think not to wheedle me into softness as you have so often. I've been soft with you too long."

Blanchette drew back a step. She turned her head from side to side, her eyes moved from the green linnet to the window, then back to her mother's face. But Katherine did not look at her.

One by one Katherine took the measures for Blanchette's imprisonment. She summoned a serving-wench, a taciturn Lancashire lass called Mab, and told her not to leave the girl alone a moment. She stationed a man-at-arms outside the door, telling him to enter if the servant should call. She herself bolted the door on the outside as she left. Then she went back to the gardens and told Sir Ralph that he would see Blanchette on the morrow at the betrothal, but that the girl was indisposed at present. The knight was not pleased.

In the Avalon Chamber Katherine tossed and turned that night until John anxiously asked her what ailed her and suggested that a warm sleeping posset be sent for. She reassured him and kissed him. But she did not tell him of what had passed with Blanchette, for never did she disquiet him if she could help it. He held her close in his arms and after a while she slept, soothed by the familiar comfort of his love; but her sleep was filled with confused bitterness.

Blanchette acted throughout the morning of her betrothal like one of the jointed puppets that she played with in her chamber. She let the Lancashire wench and Hawise array her in a gown of myrtle-green satin and embellish her with jewels, her own and Katherine's. She raised her arms and lowered them when they told her to. They twined flowers in her flowing hair and garlanded her with lilies. She never spoke at all or seemed to know what they were doing, but once, when Hawise stood back admiringly and said, "God's blood, my poppet, I vow you're near as fair as your mother was on her bridal day!"

Then a strange look came into Blanchette's eyes - of pain, of fear, of revulsion, Hawise could not tell, but it was a relief to see some awareness there, for the girl seemed as thick-witted as though she had been drugged with poppy juice, for all that her eyes glittered glassy bright and her cheeks were crimson.

When Blanchette was dressed, Hawise went to fetch Katherine who had stayed inflexibly away from her daughter.

"She's ready, my lady," said Hawise, "but I fear she's sickening with something. Her skin's hot as fire to touch, and she do seem strange even for Blanchette."

"Bah!" said Katherine, "there's no more wrong with her than ill temper that she's being made to obey at last. 'Tis not the first time she's acted illness when she wanted her own way."

Hawise knew that this was true, but still she was uneasy and she said hesitatingly, "I hear there's some sickness in t'Outer Ward."

Katherine, who was examining her face in the mirror, preparatory to descending to the garden for the betrothal ceremony, looked up and caught her breath. "Not plague!" she whispered sharply.

"Nay, nay," Hawise crossed herself. "Saint Roch protect us! Some pink-spotted fever 'mongst the children."

"Oh, measles, no doubt," said Katherine returning to the mirror. "I think Blanchette had them long ago, nor has she seen anyone to catch them from. Hawise, you croak like an old raven today."

" 'Tis the toothache," said Hawise gloomily, exploring a jumping molar with her tongue. "I've said all the charms, I prayed to Saint Apollonia, but 'twon't stop. The barber'll have to pull it, like the others, God help me." An agonising prospect sufficient to cause Hawise's general apprehensions, but she had not told Katherine all that she knew of the sickness. It might be measles, but not like cases she had nursed. A little spit-boy had died in the night, screaming with head pain and scarlet as a boiled crawfish, and the page who waited on Blanchette was said to have come down with the fever this morning.

The chapel bell began to ring, in the Outer Ward the clock manikins clanged out the first of twelve strokes.

Katherine jumped up and hurried to the Monmouth Wing.

Blanchette was waiting. She looked once at her mother and then at the window, while Katherine said "Come" sternly and took the girl's hand, which was certainly dry and hot as a hearth-stone.

They walked through the courtyards and the archway to the gardens. Amongst assembled lords and ladies, Sir Ralph and the Carmelite, Walter Dysse, waited by a portable altar in the rose arbour. The Duke stood resplendent beside them, dressed in his gold-and-pearl embroidered tunic, wearing the chain of Castile and the Order of the Garter.

Jesu, how handsome he is, Katherine thought as she advanced gravely, holding Blanchette by the hand. The girl moved like a sleepwalker, but suddenly, as Katherine started to place the little hand in the outstretched one of Sir Ralph, Blanchette gave a strangled cry and sprang back, releasing herself. She clutched up her myrde-green skirts and ran frantically away through the archway.

"By God, what's this!" cried the Duke, while Sir Ralph flushed crimson, staring after Blanchette.

"She shall be beaten for it," cried Katherine, herself trembling with anger. "Nay, my lord," she said to John, "I beg you let me deal with her." Angry as she was, she must still protect Blanchette from the expression she saw in both men's eyes.

The Duke hesitated before he shrugged. He gestured to the minstrels and said with formal courtesy to Sir Ralph, "I've a troupe of gleemen may divert you from this shameful behaviour."

The knight bowed silently, biting his lips, while Katherine hurried back through the archway, and saw Blanchette at once, behind a yew tree, on the inner side of the wall. The girl was doubled up on the ground and had been vomiting.

Katherine stared, and her anger became fear.

"Oh, my poor child," she cried running to her.

Blanchette gazed at her mother without recognition. "Hurts - -" she muttered hoarsely, putting her hand to her head.

Her fingers touched the garland of lilies and she pulled it off. "White swans," she said, wrenching at the lilies and throwing them up into the air. "I must let them fly away home like the others."

Dear God, thought Katherine, with a stab of terror. But as she touched Blanchette, trying to raise her, she knew that this was the madness of fever, not lunacy. The girl's body gave off heat like an oven, her face and neck, even her chest, were scarlet, and her teeth began to chatter in a convulsive chill.

Katherine called out repeatedly for help. In the garden they did not hear her, the minstrels were playing and the company were dancing. But the Savoy's sergeant-at-arms, Roger Leach, was berating the lazy porter at the Beaufort Tower and he heard her, and came running. In response to Katherine's gesture he picked up the girl and carried her to the Monmouth Wing.

" 'Tis what they call the scarlet sickness, my lady," said the burly soldier pityingly as he put the moaning, struggling Blanchette down on her bed. One of his own babes had had it a fortnight past. "They mostly goes out o' their heads wi' ut for a while."

Katherine threw her head-dress on the window-seat and twisted up her long silver sleeves. She dipped a napkin in a flagon of water and held it as best she could to Blanchette's tossing forehead. "Get me Hawise, quick!" she cried to the sergeant. "Then fetch Brother William Appleton - nay, I don't know where he is - at Greyfriars perhaps. But get him!"

The sergeant bowed and hurried away. Katherine sat on the bed and tried to quiet her delirious child.

On Sunday when the Duke departed for Scotland, Blanchette was better. The fever persisted but now she did not cry out and toss so much. Her body was covered with a mesh of tiny scarlet dots, and she seemed to feel less pain. Brother William had bled her and had her rolled in cold cloths. He had given her febrifuges and opiates. He said that now, though she was still in danger, he had great hopes of her recovery.

Katherine could not leave Blanchette alone so Hawise and the Beaufort babies were to travel up to Kenilworth without her.

The Grey Friar would not allow Katherine to say farewell to her smaller children. This disease lived in the breath, Brother William said, and breath was so subtle an element that there was no telling what it might permeate. So he had a brimstone candle burned in Blanchette's chamber. But there was little danger for older people, their breaths were strong and could fight off the evil miasma.

The Sunday morning when Katherine said good-bye to the Duke there was a storm as they came out of the chapel after Mass. The sky grew purple, lightning forked through black clouds and thunder rocked the palace. Rain fell in torrents and drenched the waiting cavalcade. The knights and men-at-arms were already mounted in the Ward; the baggage wagons and the chariot with Hawise and the Beauforts crammed in were lined up for the start.

Katherine spoke apologetic words to Sir Ralph, who received them courteously, but it was evident his ardour had cooled when he remarked that no doubt he would see Blanchette again sometime, after his return from Scotland. Katherine sadly gave him the stirrup cup, and turned to wave to her children in the chariot. The little boys waved back and Hawise held Joan up and made her kiss her hand to her mother. Katherine tried to smile. She went away quickly to follow John into a little anteroom below the Avalon Chamber.

He was dressed in full armour, the squire outside held his latten battle helmet in readiness. Katherine raised her arms to him, gazing at him piteously. Tears ran down her cheeks.

"Lovedy," he cried kissing her, "you mustn't weep. Blanchette will soon be well, and you'll come to Kenilworth and meet me later, as we planned." He smiled down at her.

"Ay," she said, but another crash of thunder rattled the window panes and she jumped and shivered." 'Tis evil omen," she whispered. "Sunday thunder. 'Tonnerre de dimanche est tonnerre de diable!'" She crossed herself. "John, there's danger - I feel it. A blackness in my heart black like the sky out there. John, must we be parted now?"

He crossed himself too, but impatiently. He was eager to be off, and he had scant faith in omens when they did not accord with his wishes. "The storm'll soon be over, Katrine. Already 'tis lifting. It must be strain from nursing that coddled, vexing child that gives you dark whimsies. Come, smile, lovedy - -I'd not take the memory of a dismal face to Scotland!"

She tried to obey him but she could not. She saw that he had already gone from her in his thoughts, and knew that it was natural. His men were waiting in the court for word to start, days of hard riding were ahead and already the storm had delayed them.

He bent to kiss her again and with finality, but the oppression in her breast sharpened to panic. "John," she cried, "I'm afraid. Something threatens our love. I know it!" She threw her arms around his neck, pressing her face to the harsh steel links of his gorget.

He had never seen her so excited and unreasonable. He stroked her head as she clung to him sobbing, and said tenderly, "Hush - hush," mastering his impatience because he loved her. But as she continued to weep he took her hands and pulled them down from his neck. "Farewell, my love. God keep you." He strode out of the ante-room before she could stop him.

She watched from the window while his squires held his stallion and he mounted. The rain had stopped. Brightness flowed into the sky above the Lancaster pennant on the pinnacle of the Monmouth Tower, his brass helmet glinted as he turned and waved good-bye.

She leaned from the window and slowly waved her silver scarf.

He spurred his horse, which leaped ahead through the gateway to the Strand. The cavalcade formed after him and clattered two by two through the arch. The chariot and baggage train filed after.

Katherine watched until the stable-boys returned to their tasks and the great Outer Ward was empty. Even the yapping dogs had slunk back towards the kitchens. Quiet fell on the whole great Savoy Palace, three-quarters emptied now. The subdued drowsing state that it would show until its lord returned to it again.

And its lord, as he cantered along the country road through the village of Charing Cross, suddenly reined in his stallion and looked back to gaze at the fair white palace which was more completely home to him than any of his country castles. It sparkled in the after-storm sunshine. He smiled tenderly at Katherine's dismalness, and thought that the Savoy set off her beauty like a great ivory frame. He jerked the tasselled bridle and spurred his stallion, which bounded northward. No premonition told the Duke that he had looked his last on the Savoy.

Throughout the rest of May and the first week of June, Katherine lived in a seclusion as complete as though she were on an island. She moved into the Monmouth Wing, and for the days of Blanchette's danger slept in the chamber with her child. She saw no one but Mab, who shared the nursing, the varlets who brought food, and Brother William, who came daily to examine the patient.

Blanchette improved gradually, the rash faded, her body no longer burned with raging heat; but a succession of complications bedevilled her. For some days her throat was so swollen that she could not swallow, and when this abated she suffered from excruciating ear-aches until the drums burst and prurient matter ran out on her pillow.

During this time the girl reverted to her childhood and looked to her mother for everything, weeping and fretting if Katherine left the room, and calling for her constantly. The conflict between them was as though it had never been, and Katherine poured out a remorseful love. It was nothing but coincidence that Blanchette had come down with her illness on the day of her betrothal, and yet Katherine could not quite rid herself of guilt, and she thought now that Blanchette's outrageous insolence on the day before had stemmed from the beginning of the fever, too, and was sorry that it had made her so angry.

As the girl finally improved, Katherine knew that all her strong love for this child was now augmented by the crisis they had passed through together. Blanchette had gained the added preciousness of something nearly lost which one has oneself saved from destruction.

On the ninth of June, a month after the onset of her illness, Brother William pronounced Blanchette definitely on the mend.

It was in the long golden dusk that the Franciscan friar came to visit his patient and found the girl sitting propped up in the windowseat with Katherine beside her. Blanchette's head rested against her mother's shoulder, her little face was pinched and white, and she seemed shockingly diminished because the lovely hair had begun to fall out in handfuls, and Katherine had resolutely cut it short to strengthen the new growth.

Huddled up in her dressing-robe, cuddling against her mother, and with the little shorn head, she might have been a child of five, and the Grey Friar upon entering felt an unwelcome softness. As a humane physician he had answered Lady Swynford's frenzied plea for his services. Indeed he could not have refused, since he was retained by the Duke, but he had had to conquer a deep reluctance.

He had entirely avoided Katherine since the day in the courtyard by the falcon mew, and pleading his own ill health, had spent more and more time in his cell at Greyfriars in town, leaving the routine care of the Duke's meinie to two secular leeches. He had been, troubled with no more wicked dreams of Katherine since the one in which she had been linked with disaster, and he wished to forget her and her continuing relationship with the Duke. He had done his duty by Blanchette and treated Katherine with rigid impersonality during the girl's illness, but he had been forced to admire the mother's devotion. Tonight he saw that Katherine was as pale and listless as her daughter and while he looked at Blanchette's tongue and felt the slow pulse in her neck, he spoke in a warmer voice than usual.

"Lady Swynford, we shall have you ailing too, if you don't take care. I'll brew you some parsley water, and," he glanced around Blanchette's chamber, "this place holds unhealthful miasmas. Now the lass is better, I think you should move."

Katherine looked up, pleased by his kindly tone, and said eagerly, "To Kenilworth? But sure she's not well enough yet for that?"

"No," said the friar frowning. "I meant that you might move to another chamber, one with more air and light."

Katherine nodded thoughtfully and after a moment said, "Then we'll move to the Privy Suite. Those apartments are by far the most comfortable." And I, she thought, will sleep in the Avalon Chamber again. In the ruby velvet bed where she had passed so many ecstatic nights, and where John would seem nearer to her.

She was aware at once of the friar's withdrawal. He said stiffly, "There are many other rooms at the Savoy."

Blanchette, too, stirred and said in her weak little voice, "Oh Mama - don't let's leave here."

"Sweet heart, 'twill do you good," said Katherine briskly. "There are beautiful tapestries for you to look at, I'll tell you stories about them and you can watch the boats on the Thames, and there's the Duke's collection of little ivory saints - you'll like to play with them."

Blanchette drew her breath in, and Katherine realised that it was the first time the Duke's name had been mentioned since the girl's illness, yet surely all that resentment had been dissolved in the renewed love her child gave her. She was reassured when Blanchette murmured, "As you will, Mama."

Brother William frowned, but there was nothing he could say. The Duke's suite was certainly the most comfortable accommodation in the palace.

"Please sit down and sup with us," said Katherine gently. "You seem wan yourself, good Brother. There's no fresh sickness about, I hope."

"No more than usual," said the Grey Friar. "No new fevers at any rate. Ay, I am a-wearied." He sat down abruptly. "I'll take some wine." For months now there had been a gnawing in his stomach, but he did not bother to give himself remedies, he simply fasted more stringently and ignored it.

Katherine's ring of the hind-bell was answered somewhat tardily by a servant she had never seen before, a pimply gat-toothed youth with scabs on his scalp. The points of his hose were untied and his blue and white livery was stained with grease.

"Where's Piers?" she said surveying the uncouth servant with disapproval.

"Piers be took wi' a colic," answered the lad, staring at the ceiling. "So I come in his stead. I be called Perkin. What's your wish m'lady?"

Katherine was slightly disturbed. Lately, since Blanchette no longer required her every thought, she had noticed a subtle unrest amongst the varlets, nothing so crude as insolence, but slight deviations from the smooth level of service she was accustomed to. The Savoy, had been left with a skeleton staff, since the vast army of servants required to wait on the Duke and his retainers naturally moved with them from castle to castle. Katherine's own servants had travelled to Kenilworth with Hawise and the little Beauforts, and none of the family remained at the Savoy.

Elizabeth had gone to visit her mother-in-law, the Countess of Pembroke; the Lady Philippa was spending three months of retreat with the nuns at Barking Abbey; Henry divided his time between his little wife's ancestral de Bohun castle and the King's court at Windsor; and her own Tom Swynford was now formally attached to Henry's retinue.

She gave the scab-headed Perkin the order for meat and wine and determined to question the chamberlain about the servants, when Brother William, who had been examining the lad intently, said, "Since I'm here, I'll have a look at this Piers' colic. Where does he lodge?"

Perkin's eyes shifted to the Grey Friar and he said, "No need of that, Sir Friar, 'tis but the common gripes."

"Where is he now?" repeated the friar, fixing his stern gaze on the reddening face.

"How should I know, sir?" said the lad sullenly. "He maught be lying in t'kitchen passage or he maught've ta'en his pallet to the cellars, or he maught - -"

"Have left the Savoy altogether on some errand of his own?" said the friar with chill emphasis.

The lad thrust out his underlip and did not answer, then, seeing that there were to be no more questions, disappeared quickly. "What did you mean by that?" asked Katherine frowning. "The varlets can't leave the castle wards without permission."

"There's a deal being done just now without permission," said the friar dryly. "There's rioting in Kent."

"What sort of riots?" asked Katherine after a moment. "Is it the poll tax again?"

"That and other grievances, all most ably dinned into the peasants by a priest called John Ball."

"But he's in jail!" she cried. "My lord told me so and said the commons were quieting down."

The friar crossed his lean shanks, and resting his gaunt tonsured head against the chair back said with patience, "He was in jail, but the Kentishmen have released him. There's been violence down in Kent, and Essex too, I hear."

Katherine thought of the russet-clad preacher she had seen at Leicester and the pounding ridiculous couplet the mob had chanted, and felt again a vague apprehension, though not of any personal danger, for rioting in Kent seemed nearly as remote as fighting in France. And it was not, thank God, like that black night in 'seventy-six when the people of London had gone mad with rage against Percy and the Duke. This seemed to her a matter of diffused and wearisome theory, and she had learned by now that there were always malcontents about.

"But what is it that the commons want?" she said impatiently. "Or rather," she amended, for well she knew the impossible things that the human heart could want, "what is it, in sanity, that they can hope to get by their riots?"

The friar raised his lids and looked at her. He smiled faintly "They want the equality of man. They want freedom. You speak truth when you say that they cannot, in sanity, hope to get it - and especially by violence."

"Then they are mad!"

"Nay - not mad. Ignorant and desperate and oppressed. They're tired of paying for unsuccessful wars, they're tired of surfdom or unfair wages for their labour. They're tired of eating black bread while the manor lords, baron and abbot alike, eat venison and fat capons. It's natural, and a change will come in time, I believe."

Already there had been changes, the friar thought, since the Black Death in 'forty-nine had halved the population and thereby made a scarcity of labour. The old feudal system was crumbling gradually of its own weight without the explosions that were designed to hasten its destruction. Yet Wyclif's reforms had done good, up to the point where the devil had got hold of him and forced him into blasphemy. Even this fanatical hedge-priest, John Ball, spoke truth in many of his rantings, though hatred and class war were dangerous double-edged weapons.

Katherine had been considering the friar's remarks with more attention than she had ever given to this problem of bondage and privation and need of change, and she struggled to express a feeling that the arguments he had given for the commons' side were not entirely just.

"But Brother William," she said at last, "is it not also true that in most cases the villeins are better off on the manors where they were born and their forebears too?" She paused, feeling some unease as to her own administration of Kettlethorpe, yet there they were handicapped in many ways and the steward did the best he could. And the Duke's manors were notably well run.

"A good manor lord cares for his serfs," she continued. "He gives them ale feasts, and alms. In time of trouble he protects them, feeds them, and he administers justice for them that they have not the understanding to do for themselves. They're like his children."

The friar gave his rare chuckle. "You voice the arguments for slavery that are old as Babylon and have satisfied many. There are however others who prefer freedom to any benefits - I don't know," he added half to himself, "what is God's law."

He picked up his wooden crucifix and stared down at it. "I only know that our Blessed Lord was a carpenter, and that He said it was easier for a camel to go through the needle's eye than for a rich man to get into heaven, and that the Holy Saint Francis enjoined upon us poverty - which vow I've tried to follow."

He sighed. It was true he had never broken his vows. He kept none of the annuities the Duke gave him, but expended them on charity or returned them to his order. And yet, was he perhaps as much a parasite of the great Lancastrian feudality as that fat Carmelite, Walter Dysse? Or as the hundreds of retainers who battened off the Duke, or as-He raised his eyes and looked at Katherine. If God would but show me the way to save her, he thought in confusion. And the Duke too, of course, from certain damnation; but the Duke's fate did not touch him so nearly. Why not? Domine libera nos a malo - it surely could not be because of her cursed female beauty that he thought first of her - -

Brother William's chair grated on the tiles. He shook himself to his feet. "The food is long in coming. I cannot wait. I'll be back in a day or so. Send if you have sooner need. Benedicite." And he stalked out.

Katherine was used to his abruptness and did not try to stop him though it was lonely now at the Savoy, and she had been glad to talk to him. She had long ago accepted his disapproval, but she had as perfect trust in him and his leechcraft, as she had had at Hugh's bedside in Bordeaux.

Blanchette had spoken of her father while the fever clouded her wits. It seemed that she relived the moment when she had bade him good-bye at Kettlethorpe, repeating as Hugh must have said it to her, "Be a good little maid till I return and I'll bring you back a gift from France." It had sent tears to Katherine's eyes to listen to Blanchette's high excited voice as she quoted her father, and had made her think more gently of Hugh then she ever had. It was true that he had shown a shamefaced warmth for his little daughter, though Katherine had scarcely noticed it at the time, so eaten up with miserable love had she been for John.

She summoned Mab to help her to get Blanchette back to bed, and while she washed the girl with cool rose-water she thought with joy of the letter she had received yesterday. It had been sent from Knaresborough last week. John said that he was leaving at once for the Border, that Hawise and the babies had been duly dropped off at Kenilworth and were well. He missed her and expected to be back with her in a month or so. She carried the letter in her bodice next to her heart.

In thinking of it and in singing to Blanchette, who quickly fell asleep, she forgot for some time the extraordinary dilatoriness of the varlet she had sent for food, until hunger reminded her and brought sharp annoyance.

Katherine jangled the bell and after a while a sleepy little page appeared. "Fetch me the chamberlain at once!" she commanded. The boy bowed and scurried off. He returned in a few minutes not with the chamberlain but with Roger Leach, the sergeant-at-arms.

Katherine raised her eyebrows and the big soldier explained. "Chamberlain's gone to Outer Ward, m'lady. He'll come to ye directly, but there's a party o' roving gleemen come into the castle for night's lodging."

"Since when does the chamberlain concern himself personally with the vagabonds who take shelter here and give them precedence over my summons?"

The sergeant looked uncomfortable. He pushed back his helm and scratched his head where the leather caused it to sweat. "Well, 'tis this m'lady, chamberlain thought he best hear what's going on. Some o' the varlets packed theirsel's round the gleemen, seeming so 'tranced wi' their songs, no work's being done."

"No work's being done anyway," said Katherine. "I ordered wine and meat two hours back, nor has it come yet. Have the varlets turned unruly, sergeant?"

"Nay, nay, m'lady!" Leach was shocked and his pride hurt. Though he was directly responsible only for the men-at-arms left at the Savoy, a dozen or so at present, he also aided the old chamberlain and the butler and the master cook in keeping a disciplinary eye on the servants. " 'Tis but midsummer giddiness 'mongst the young folk. A few switchings'll straighten 'em out."

Katherine looked at him thoughtfully. "I think I'll go down and listen to these gleemen's songs."

"Then I'll go wi' ye, m'lady," said the sergeant, adjusting his helm and squaring his shoulders under his padded leather hauberk. "These gleemen shouldn' been let in, 'twas that niddering gate-ward done it."

From this Katherine gathered that the sergeant was a trifle uneasy despite his denial. Travellers of all sorts, from beggars to bishops, frequently came to request a night's lodging and the gate-ward could hardly be blamed for admitting a troupe of gleemen.

She left Mab in charge of Blanchette and walked downstairs to the Outer Ward, where some thirty of the servants were gathered in the angle between the chapel and the stables. They were very quiet, listening intently to five gleemen with harps and bagpipes who were grouped around a well and singing. One of the men stood on the well kerb and seemed to be the leader. Katherine stared at him searchingly, half expecting that it might be the rebel preacher John Ball; but it most certainly was not. This was a pretty lad in a loose blue and scarlet minstrel's jerkin, and the song he sang had nothing to do with Adam and Eve. It sounded rather like a nursery rhyme.

The gleemen sang in a clear flutelike voice and his fellows hummed the melody, which was plaintive and charming:

Jack Milner asketh help to turn his mill aright.

For he hath grounden small, small, small,

The King's son of heaven he payeth for all.

With might and with right, with skill and with will

Right before might, then turns our mill aright

But if might goes before right then is the mill misadight.

" 'Tis gibberish," said the sergeant contemptuously. "No sense to ut."

As he spoke the intent crowd became aware of Katherine. There was a murmuring as heads were turned. She saw Piers, her usual servitor, the scab-headed Perkin and others. They looked at her from the corners of their eyes, and one by one began to melt away towards the kitchens and the stables.

The young glee leader on the well kerb made Katherine a little bow, and called out in a pleasant voice, "Shall we sing for you, fair lady? We know many a dainty love tune. Or shall we juggle for you? By the rood, there's no gleemen in England can do more jolly tricks than we."

"Nay, not tonight, I thank you," she answered. He was a comely youth, and she could not believe that his miller's song had any sinister meaning. Minstrels sang on many topics, and if that jingle had some political reference that escaped her, still a song could do no harm.

She found that the chamberlain agreed with her. He had been listening too from the shadow of the bargehouse and he hastened to join Katherine and the sergeant.

She spoke sternly to the chamberlain about the neglectful servants, and he stammered and begged her forgiveness while tugging unhappily at his sparse grey beard.

Katherine returned to Blanchette and at once Piers came to the chamber with her belated supper. He apologised for his attack of colic and for the stupidity of Perkin, who had come in his stead. He waited on her with his usual smooth efficiency, and Katherine felt that she had been unduly nervous. She did however summon the sergeant once more.

"Can you find out about those gleemen?" she said to him.

"I have, m'lady," answered the sergeant complacently. He had shared a mazer of ale with the young leader and found him a courteous merry-hearted youth who was even now entertaining the varlets' hall with a series of good old-fashioned bawdy songs that everyone knew, and could understand.

"They be good lads," said the sergeant with confidence. "No harm in 'em at all. They've come from Canterbury, where they played for the Princess Joan who was on pilgrimage, and they're bound for Norfolk to play at some lord's bridal feast."

"Yet I hear there's rioting in Kent, sergeant," said Katherine, uncertainly.

"Ay, m'lady, so I've heard too," he said soothingly. "But what o' that? There's no danger here at the Savoy wi' me an' me men to guard it. Them churls down Kent way'll never come to Lunnon, an' if they did they'd not come here - why should they?"

"Very well," she said with a smile. "I know I couldn't ask for a better protector. His Grace has often told me of your courage."

The sergeant flushed with gratification. A simple man was the sergeant, and passionately loyal to the Duke, under whom he had served in battles as far back as Najera. He thrust out his chest and said beaming, "Thanks, m'lady. And how's the little maid now?" He glanced at the bed where Blanchette was sleeping.

"Much better. We'll leave here for Kenilworth next week, I hope."

"Ay - ye'll be longing to see your other little ones. 'Tis a good mother ye are, m'lady, I was saying that to me old wife only yestere'en - -" The sergeant gulped and stopped, remembering his wife's pithy retort which had to do with the highly irregular status of Lady Swynford's motherhood. "I'll be off to me duties, if you please."

Katherine sat on for a few minutes in the window-seat. The chamber was cool and dark, the long June twilight had at last faded and only the watch candle burned in its silver sconce by the bed.

Blanchette stirred and murmured something, her fingers plucked restlessly at the sheet. Katherine lay down beside her and the girl sighed and grew quiet. Katherine drew her against her breast, Blanchette nestled as she had used to do long ago, the whole of her slight body lax and trusting in her mother's arms. A warm blissful tenderness flowed over Katherine and she rested her cheek softly against the clustering curls.

Suddenly Blanchette started and giving a moan, sat up and opened her eyes.

"What is it, darling?" Katherine cried. The girl's eyes were dazed, and Katherine repeated her question. Since the bursting of her eardrums, Blanchette did not hear keenly.

Blanchette licked her pale fever-chapped lips, and gave a frightened little laugh. "Dream," she said, "horrible dream - -I was drowning and you - -" She stared at her mother's anxious face and stiffened, drawing away. "By Sainte Marie, how silly to be frightened by a dream," Blanchette said in a strange tight voice. She crossed herself, then as though the familiar protective gesture had suddenly developed meaning, she said, "Mother, do you ever pray anymore?"

"Why, darling, of course I do," said Katherine much startled. "I've prayed for your recovery, I went to Mass this morning - -"

"But not the way you used to. I remember when I was little, at Kettlethorpe - it was different. And you're right: prayers do no good. I don't believe Christ or His Mother or the saints care what happens to us - if indeed any of them really exists."

"Blanchette!" cried Katherine, much shocked to have the child voice the wicked doubts that she had felt herself. "These are sick fancies - -"

She went on for some time to speak of God's omnipotence and the efficacy of the saints, giving arguments and reassurance that sounded hollow to her own ears, and saw with dismay that the shut-in look of before her illness had come back to Blanchette's face. But at last the girl spoke gently. "Ay, Mama, I know." She sighed and pulled herself to the far side of the bed. "I'm so tired - I cannot listen anymore."

CHAPTER XXIV

The next day, Monday, June 10, Katherine and Blanchette moved over to the Privy Suite. Blanchette had never before been in the ducal apartments, and despite her scruples the girl could not withhold wondering admiration when Katherine helped her to walk into the Avalon Chamber. It had been a lovely tower-room to start with, but each year the Duke improved it, spending lavish sums on its enhancement. The mantel of rose Carrara marble, brought by galley from Genoa, had been placed last month, and a master mason had taken two years to carve it with a frieze of falcons, roses, castles and ostrich feathers to embrace all the Duke's emblems.

The window on the Thames had been enlarged, and deepened to an oriel. Along the top half of its three lights ran exquisite tinted scenes of the life of St. Ursula with her eleven thousand virgins, though, below, the panes had been left clear to show the river view. The prie-dieu in a corner niche was of ivory and gold, cushioned with white satin, and it had come from Castile. The red velvet bed was unchanged except that its curtains and tester had been freshened with new embroidery: the Duke had ordered that a sprinkling of her tiny gold Catherine wheels be cunningly inserted amongst the seed pearl foliage, and this had pleased Katherine mightily.

And still beside the bed hung the great Avalon tapestry, with the dark mysterious greens of the enchanted forest and the luminous figures of Arthur, Guenevere and the wizard Merlin.

Katherine never saw the tapestry without remembering what John had said of Merlin's castle when she first came to this room twelve years ago, "It reminds me of one I saw in Castile."

Little had she known then of how much that meant to him.

In seeking to divert Blanchette, Katherine told her a little about the tapestry, but the girl was not much interested, she preferred to sit in the window and watch the river flow by, and as Katherine had hoped, she was delighted with the finger-high ivory figurines of the saints. St. Agnes with her lamb, St. Cecilia with her dulcimer, St. Bartholomew with his flayed skin draped gracefully over his arm - all were carved with an amusing fidelity to life and were, like the little faces on the corbels of churches, obviously portraits of people that the artist had known. The figure of St. Apollonia, holding pincers and a large tooth as symbols of her martyrdom, was so realistic in its swollen jaw and twisted mouth that Blanchette laughed outright.

"Ah, poppet," said Katherine smiling, "you'd not laugh if you'd ever had toothache; it seems 'tis no laughing matter."

"Have you, Mama?" said the girl, putting down Apollonia.

"Nay, I've been lucky, I've all my teeth yet. Though the Duke - -" She hesitated. But with Blanchette now, God be thanked, one no longer had to tread gingerly and avoid mention of everything that had once disturbed her. "The Duke has suffered cruelly with toothache at times, and Hawise, too - as you know."

"Poor souls," said Blanchette absently. She had picked up the figure of the North Country saint, Columba, who held a dove. She touched the dove's tiny head and looked up at her mother. "What happened to my green linnet?"