Katherine

"It's well, I've fed it myself. We'll send for it so you can hang it in your room."

The girl's grey eyes grew thoughtful, and she said, "I left the cage door open, didn't I - the day I sickened? Didn't it fly away?"

"No," Katherine smiled. "But I've shut the door now. So you may free the bird yourself, as you love to do."

"Perhaps it's happy in its cage, after all," said Blanchette slowly. She looked out of the window towards the line of trees across the river where the rooks were circling. "Perhaps it would be frightened out there."

"It might be," said Katherine. Her heart swelled with gladness. Blanchette was better in every way, not only recovering from the illness, but from all the strange dark rebellions that had preceded it for so long. At last, the girl gave voice to some of her thoughts, and the stammer in her speech had almost disappeared. Soon, Katherine decided she might speak frankly about Robin Beyvill and Sir Ralph, find out what the girl really felt, and help her to understand herself.

Blanchette's pale face flushed suddenly, she looked down at the window-seat and busied herself with standing the saints carefully in a row while she said, "You've been good to me, dearest Mama."

Katherine caught her breath while her arms ached to hug and shelter, but she knew that she must not force this new delicate balance. She contented herself with a quick kiss. "And why not, mouse?" she said lightly.

Tuesday and Wednesday they had a. happy time together. With windows wide open to the soft June air they passed the hours in songs and games. Blanchette played her lute, and Katherine a gittern. Katherine taught her the gay old tune, "He dame de Vaillance!" and they sang it in rondo. They played at Merelles and at "Tables," the backgammoning game, with silver counters on a mother-of-pearl board. They asked each other riddles and tried to invent new ones. Katherine, in persuading her child to light-heartedness, found gaiety herself, dimmed only by a secret worry over Blanchette's hearing.

Piers brought them up delicious food, Mab waited on them methodically, the chamberlain reported that all was running smoothly with the servants, and they saw nobody else. Each found rich reward in this companionship and forgot the painful disagreements that had chafed them before.

Blanchette visibly gained much strength. She could walk about their chambers without help, she was eating well, and some colour had returned to her thin cheeks. Next week they could certainly leave for Kenilworth, Katherine thought joyously - and not very long after that she might begin to look for John's return.

On Wednesday evening the courtyard clock beat out seven strokes as they finished their supper in the Avalon Chamber. Blanchette munched on marchpane doucettes, especially made for her by the head pastry-cook, while Katherine sipped the last drops of the rich amber wine that remained in her hanap. These goblets that they were using were their own, and exceedingly beautiful.

Blanchette's hanap of silver gilt with her cipher was the one given her so long ago as a christening present by the Duke, and Katherine's was a recent New Year's gift from him, a hollow crystal banded with purest gold. This hanap was called Joli-coeur, because a garnet heart was inlaid in its gold cover, and Katherine thought that the goblet always gave to its contents a savour as delicate as its name.

"Brother William hasn't been here since Sunday," said Katherine idly. "Maybe he'll come tonight - though you scarcely need his skill any more, God be thanked."

"I hope he does," said Blanchette reaching for another doucette. "I like him. He looks ugly and grim, yet his hands're gentle. He was like a kind father while I was ill. 'Tis pity he mayn't have children of his own, isn't it?"

Katherine assented, faintly amused at the thought of the friar in a fatherly role. Certain it was that Brother William never had been a secret father, whatever irregular paternity might be indulged in by the rest of the clergy. "He's an exceeding righteous man," she said with some dryness. There was a knock on the door, and she called "Enter!" thinking that it might be the friar come now.

It was a page who announced that there was a tradesman below in the antechamber who wished to see Lady Swynford. A Guy le Pessoner.

"Master Guy!" exclaimed. Katherine. "Show him up, to be sure," and to Blanchette said, " 'Tis Hawise's father."

The fishmonger came in puffing and mopped his glistening moon face on his brown wool sleeve. He bowed to Katherine, glanced at Blanchette and wheezed, "Whew! 'Tis warm for one o' my port to be a-hurrying."

Katherine smiled and indicated a chair. "A pleasure to see you,"

Master Guy's great belly gradually ceased to heave. He put his thick red hands on his knees. "Where's Hawise, m'lady?" he said abruptly.

"At Kenilworth with my little Beauforts. She left a month ago when the Duke went north."

"Ah!" said the fishmonger. " 'Twas what I be telling Emma, but she made me come anyhow."

"Why?" asked Katherine. "Is anything wrong?"

"Nay - not what ye might call wrong" he shrugged. " 'Tis more that me dame's a dithering old 'oman." Master Guy stuck his thumbs in the armholes of his jerkin and frowned.

These last two days there was no doubt that the rebellion had become more serious. The Kentish mob had advanced as close as Blackheath across the river, while Essex men neared

London from the north. Dame Emma had kept badgering him to go and make sure that Hawise was out of possible danger. She had heard a rumour that Lady Swynford remained at the Savoy, though the Duke had left.

"What does Dame Emma dither about then?" asked Katherine anxiously.

"She thinks if them ribauds over on Blackheath should cross the river into Lunnon, there maught be a bad time. I tell her 'tis folly. The King'll calm 'em down. All they want is to set their grievances afore the King. Besides they can't get into town. The drawbridge's up, and the gates all closed." He paused. True, the gates were closed and the drawbridge up now, but there were aldermen who sympathised with the rebels. John Horn. And Walter Sibley, a fellow fishmonger who was responsible for holding London bridge. You couldn't trust either of 'em far as you'd throw a cat.

"I know nothing of all this, Master Guy," said Katherine slowly, "except that there were riots in Kent. I thought the King was at Windsor."

"He's in the Tower now - wi' the Princess Joan and a mort o' the lords and Mayor Walworth. They've got t' old archbishop with 'em and Hales, the treasurer, too, which be canny, or the rebels'd've strung them two makers of the stinking poll tax up to the nearest trees."

Katherine considered this with astonishment but no particular fear. So the King was in the Tower of London, the strongest fortress in England. Was this from prudence, or because it was easier from there to negotiate with the peasants?

"Has the King talked to the rebels yet?" she asked.

"Nay, he went down-river by barge this morn from the Tower to Rotherhithe, but he didn't land. They scuttered back to the Tower again. 'Tis said some o' his lords turned poltroon when they saw the great mob that was awaiting on the bank."

"The poor lad," said Katherine, thinking of the sensitive delicate boy she had seen last Christmas at Leicester. "He's over-young to make decisions."

She rose and poured ale from a silver flagon into a mazer and handed it to Master Guy, saying, "Forgive me that I did not offer this sooner, but I forgot in the interest of your news. How's Hawise's Jack, by the by?"

The fishmonger drained his ale and cried, "Spleen! God's wounds, but there ne'er was such a churl for grudges'n spleen. I've had me bellyfull o' him. He's still hot against the Duke, o' course, but 'tis the Flemings he chiefly cries out 'gainst now.

The Flemish weavers've cut into his trade. I warrant he'd slice all their throats an he could. A bloodthirsty knave is Jack, I begin to think Hawise well shed o' him.'' He lumbered up out of his chair, belched heartily and said, "Well, m'lady, I'll be off. Twill not be easy even for me to get back through Ludgate if I linger."

He hesitated, knowing that he had not given the full urgency of Dame Emma's message. "If Hawise be there or Lady Swynford, tell 'em to hasten north while they yet may." But he deemed his wife overfearful, and actually, if rumour were true, no roads were safe that led to London. There were stealthy uprisings all about. Besides, commons didn't war on women and these two were better off here in this great walled palace than anywhere, come trouble. He salved a prick of conscience by saying, "Warn your men-at-arms to be on guard and make sure the water gates're lowered, then ye needna have a care. I'll warrant anyhow t'will all blow over."

Katherine thanked him for coming and sent her love to Dame Emma. When the fishmonger had gone, she summoned Sergeant Leach and repeated Master Guy's advice.

"Have no fear, m'lady," said the sergeant, brightening. The possibility of a little action pleased him, though he had scant hope of gratification now. What could a handful of farmers do, armed as he had heard with picks and staves and scythes, and led by an unfrocked priest and some tiler called Wat?

He went off happily to alert his men-at-arms, to order the great crossbarred portcullis lowered at the Strand, and to check on the security of the water gates. He issued extra arms from the well-stocked armoury - maces, battle axes, swords, breastplates and shields - and instructed the assembled varlets in their use in case his bowmen should need reinforcement.

There were three barrels of gunpowder stored near the armoury and there was a small brass cannon mounted on the gatehouse, but the sergeant had no faith in either. Firearms were unreliable and in his opinion worthless. No newfangled weapon could equal an English bowman, and his men were skilled veterans of the French wars.

When dusk fell, the sergeant threw himself down to sleep in the guard-room with a mind as quiet as the evening air.

Katherine too felt secure after re-examining Master Guy's scanty information. Blackheath was seven miles away in Kent, and by morning no doubt the King and his advisers, the Archbishop Sudbury or the mayor, would certainly have decided on some course of action, and appease or quell the rioters.

She knelt on the seat cushion and looked out of the window, up and down the river, but she could see no sign of disturbance anywhere. Water lapped softly on the stone wall below; the sundown sky above Westminster was stained with cool after-tints of lavender and saffron. Through the angled right-hand light of the oriel she could see a corner of the gardens, where fireflies shone their fitful little lamps against a bank of Provencal roses. The rose fragrance drifted up to Katherine on a lazy breeze. She inhaled deeply and turning with a smile to Blanchette quoted from the "Romaunt."

Me thinketh I feel it in my nose

The sweet savour of the rose!

Blanchette sat up, her eyes bright and responsive. She thought a moment, then proudly added another quotation, for reading of romances had been her chiefest pleasure during the last lonely year.

Always be merry if thou may;

But waste not thy good alway,

Have hat of flowers as fresh as May

Chaplet of roses of Whitsunday!

They looked at each other and burst out laughing.

"Ah, we're a couple of giddy queans!" cried Katherine, shaking her head. " 'Tis wrong of me. I should be giving you moral precepts, as the good Chevalier de la Tour Landry does to his daughters. Fie upon me!"

"Ay - Mama," said Blanchette with the new, charming glint of pert humour that delighted Katherine." 'Tis naughty indeed that you don't."

"Well, at any rate, it's time for bed, poppet," said Katherine, pinching her cheek. "You're sleepy and so'm I. You know, I believe 'twill be fair tomorrow. We might dare your strength as far as the gardens."

"Ay, that I'd love," said Blanchette eagerly.

When Katherine helped the girl to bed and smoothed down the sheet, they kissed each other a warm, happy good night.

Down and across the river at Blackheath, the rebel mob had grown larger hour by hour until ten thousand desperate hungry men surged back and forth across the trampled gorse and heather. They quieted only when John Ball clambered on a tree stump and shouted to them. By daylight and then by torchlight they could see his lank figure in the russet robes, his arms upraised as he called on God to help them; and many could see the wild crusading light in his eyes.

He told them that their hour had struck at last. "John Ball hath y-rung the bell!" he cried in a great exultant voice.

All over England they were ready. The members of the "fellowship" had been travelling for weeks, they had whispered in the manors, they had sung "Jack Milner" in the Halls and village greens, and all who were in sympathy would understand.

John Ball preached his great sermon to them there on Blackheath, telling them how God had created all men equal in the days of Adam and Eve, and how there were then no rich lords or bishops - and there were no slaves.

Like the pounding of ocean surf, the couplet he had given them roared out from the thousands of throats: "When Adam delved and Eva span, who was then a gentleman?"

He waited until they finished, stilled them with a gesture. "My poor friends," he cried in a voice that was hoarse and cracking from strain, "things cannot go right in England, nor ever will until everything shall be in common. And there shall be no more lords and vassals! How ill they've used us! Ragged starvelings that we be, we swink in wind and rain that they may loll in furred velvet, warm in their snug manors, glutting their bellies. Ay, by the Holy Rood, my poor friends, we shall change that now!"

They had heard all this many times before, but never with the growing frenzied hope. Now as the fierce preacher's voice trembled and failed him, their leader Wat, the tiler from Maidstone, climbed up on the stump and rehearsed to them their last instructions.

They had sent to the King a list of the men who must be delivered to them for vengeance - the traitors who were deluding and defrauding their little King.

They had demanded the heads of Simon of Sudbury, the archbishop-chancellor who had instigated the poll tax and who had imprisoned John Ball; of Robert Hales, Treasurer of England and prior of the hatred Templars of St. John, where sly money-grabbing lawyers were bred. They demanded the death of twelve others whom they had cause to hate - and the head of John o' Gaunt. They all greatly feared the wicked Duke who was so bloated with lands and power, and yet who traitorously craved to be king - as everyone knew. A monster of villainy, they thought him. Like the first John who had plotted against another royal Richard and ground all England into misery.

Wat shouted out the list of heads that they had demanded from the King, and at each name the crowd roared until the doors rattled in the rustic cots along the heath. They stamped until dust rose in clouds as thick as the smoke of their bonfires and torches.

But when he named John o' Gaunt, sharp cries mingled with their uproar. " 'Tis sooth, by God, we'll have no king called John!" "Never more a king called John on English soil! We shall slay that traitor first and pull his castle down about his ears!"

When they simmered down and listened again, Wat went on to remind them yet once more of the corner-stone that supported all their purpose. Soon, he said, there would be an answer from King Richard, who would surely meet them for a parley this time. Here they groaned. They had been sorely disappointed when the King's barge turned and put back to the Tower without greeting them this morning.

"Yet all must be seemly done in our revenge!" cried Wat. "No plundering, no ravishing! Commons be not thieves, remember! Commons be honest men who right a fearful wrong as surely as ever a knight went on crusade!"

They stamped and bellowed and waved their St. George pennants. Wat reached over from the stump and seized the King's standard; he raised it high into the sky until all could see the royal lilies and leopards. "And commons be loyal!" he shouted. "Our little anointed King'll be our true liege leader like his blessed princely father was. God rest his soul!"

Wat put the standard down and cupping his hands around his mouth, he roared out, "With whom holdes you?"

In one mighty voice they answered with the watchword.

"With King Richard and the true commons!"

Wat nodded heavily and got down off the stump. He glanced at the preacher, whose face was upturned to the pale new stars, and saw that John Ball was praying, open-eyed, while slow tears ran down his cheeks.

"Christ's mercy, but I hope them aldermen'll soon open the Bridge," Wat murmured.

Even as Wat spoke, a voice cried out, "To the Marshalsea, men!" and another called, "Yea! Burn the Marshalsea and on to Lambeth! When they city cravens see what we'll do on this shore, they'll not tarry in coming to terms!"

The rabble shifted and wavered, a dozen broke away and began to run towards the western road. Others followed brandishing torches, some armed with rusty old swords, with picks and hoes and cudgels; here and there a bowman, but the bows were warped and aged, the arrows nearly featherless.

The crowd grew dense that thundered off towards Southwark, and Wat watched uneasily. "An' they do more harm'n we meant," he growled, biting his lips, " 'twill mayhap hurt our cause."

John Ball started. Hearing the tiler's words, he lowered his head and looked to see what was happening.

"Not so," he whispered hoarsely. "Naught can harm our cause, for it is God's. They'll but root out the noxious weeds that choke our crops - mind ye, tiler, what the Blessed Christ has said! 'I came not to send peace, but a sword.' He will guide us aright."

Wat's misgivings were silenced, and he thrilled to the confidence that John Ball inspired, but Wat was a man of action, and his mind darted to practical matters. "What of Jack Strawe, Sir Priest?" he asked anxiously. "Think ye his men've entered the city yet by Aldgate?"

This was their plan, long a-growing and ripe at last, that the men who had rallied in Essex should broach London by her eastern gate, while the southern army crossed over on the Bridge.

"If they have not, they soon will," answered the preacher with calm certainty. "We shall succeed in all our aims!"

Katherine awoke suddenly and for no reason in the dawn hour of that Thursday, June 13, which was the Feast of Corpus Christi. She listened drowsily for some time to the sound of distant bells and thought that the church processions were starting early in honour of the Blessed Sacrament, and that this day she would certainly go to Mass. She had been lax too long.

Gradually it seemed to her that the rhythm of the bells was somewhat violent and clamorous to be the usual summons to Matins, or yet to signalise the start of a procession. She sat up in bed and pulled the velvet curtains back. Already the brief June hours of darkness had faded; grey light sharpened the forms of the furniture, the gilt carved tables and chairs, the ivory prie-dieu. She glanced towards the window and was mildly surprised to see the sky flushed with redness. It must be later than she had thought if this were sunrise.

She started to ring for Mab, who slept on a pallet in the passage, but instead she slipped out of bed, and flinging her chamber robe around her, padded on naked feet across the tiles and peered curiously out of the window. She blinked and stared again.

Down-river, in the neighbourhood of Southwark, the sky was lurid, and dense smoke billowed up against pale lemon coloured streaks of dawn. While nearer, in a different place to the south past Lambethmoor, she saw high leaping tongues of flame.

"Jesu - -" she whispered. "The Surrey bank's afire!" She flung open the leaded window and thrust her head and shoulders out. Still too dazed by sleep and astonishment to comprehend, she thought, Can it be Lambeth Palace burning, or Kennington? Nothing else to the south could cause so great a fire. She looked again down-river and saw a shower of sparks wing up into a brick-red sky.

She shut the window and turned uncertainly back, staring into the familiar, beautiful room. Her bare feet were cold on the tiles and she shivered, then walked to the bedside, where her brocaded slippers lay. Thank God the fires're safely across the river, she thought. I must send some of our men over to help.

She jumped as there came a banging on her door. It flew back and Brother William stalked in.

Katherine's chamber robe dropped open as she whirled around; the friar averted his eyes from the glimpse of white nakedness, and said, "Dress yourself quickly, Lady Swynford - and the child - there's danger."

She clutched her robe around her. "What's happened?" she whispered. "There's fire out there."

The friar glanced towards the window's ruddy light and said grimly, "There's a deal more than fire. The peasant army's pouring into London. Hasten - don't waste time in chatter!"

She stared into his eyes, saw that his haggard face was as grey as his habit, yet that he breathed fast as though he had been running. She obeyed him blindly, forcing her hands to quietness as she dressed herself in the garde-robe. Where's Mab? she thought, and forgot the woman. She put on a linen shift, and by instinct pulled down from the perch the plainest of her gowns, an old loose one of dark green wool in which she had nursed Blanchette during the worst of the illness.

"Hasten!" called Brother William fiercely as she was plaiting her hair. Her heart jumped and she bundled all the loose bronze mass into a net and bound a white coif over it. She clasped on a woven girdle and attached her blazoned purse, then she ran to arouse Blanchette.

"I know, sweet," she answered as quietly as she could to the girl's sleepy protest. "But Brother William's come. He says we must get dressed."

While Katherine was gone, the friar stood by the rose marble mantel staring down at the hearth, listening for the first sounds that should announce that the London mob had arrived at the Savoy gate. He knew that he had not outdistanced them by long.

He had seen the London prentices and rebels begin to rally. Aldgate had been opened and the Essex men already overran the streets and joined their partisans inside the walls. In the milling throng and darkness no one had noticed the hurrying Grey Friar, while they dragged some wretched screaming Fleming from his bed and butchered him with howls of glee, and the friar had heard other shouts on the fringes of the crowd. "The Savoy first - ay - 'tis Lunnon's right to get there first afore them Kentishmen can do it."

The friar had kicked and pounded his nag to get here in time.

In a few minutes Katherine came back with Blanchette. The girl was dressed in her dove-grey chamber robe, since her daytime clothes had been packed away during her illness. Both women were pale, but the friar saw in one sharp appraising glance how much his little patient had improved: she walked unaided, albeit slowly.

"Good," said the friar. They were both well shod in leather shoes, their wool gowns were practical enough. "Take hooded mantles," he said to Katherine. "Put your jewels in your purse, and have you any money?"

"Two or three nobles," she answered steadily. "Brother William, what is it - what's happening?"

He raised his hand. "Hark!"

From far off on the Strand by the Outer Ward they heard confused noises, a medley of shouts and a dull roaring. As they listened, the sound swelled and rose.

Down Katherine's back ice flowed. She had heard that roaring before as she stood on the step of the Pessoner home five years ago.

"Sweet Christ," she whispered, "what can we do?"

"The sergeant and his men'll hold the gate," said the friar. For a goodish while at least, he thought. But he had seen that the sergeant had had no inkling of the numbers or temper of the rebels. "We've plenty of time to get you away by barge - up-stream to safety, past Westminster. No cause to fear," he said to Blanchette, who gazed at him dumbly.

"The privy stairs," cried Katherine, her mind working fast, " 'tis quicker."

She scooped some jewels at random from her casket and seized two mantles for herself and Blanchette. The friar put his arm around the trembling girl and they went along the passage to the Duchess Blanche's old garde-robe and through the door behind the arras, down the steps to the hidden door that opened behind the empty falcon mew. They stepped into the Outer Ward near the barge-house, and stopped aghast.

The great portcullis of the gatehouse slowly lifted as they stood staring into the court. Roger Leach had ranged himself with his men-at-arms on the inside of the gatehouse. He gave a loud cry of astonished rage as the portcullis lifted and sprang forward with his sword upraised. His bowmen had their arrows notched ready in the thongs, drawn back for shooting. But they had not time to take aim. The mob poured through the gate in a cataract and were on top of them.

The bowmen flung down their useless bows and fought hand to hand with mace and sword.

The sergeant shouted with what breath he had, while he laid on desperately right and left, but this vanguard of the horde were armed Londoners, not starveling peasants. He shouted for help from the Savoy varlets, but only a handful rushed up in answer, and they were soon overwhelmed.

The other servants stayed in their hall, crouching, waiting, some laughing hysterically as they heard the battle rage outside. Like the gate-ward and his helpers who had raised the portcullis, they gibbered with triumphant excitement and chanted, "Jack Milner is grinding small, small, small - John Ball hath now y-rung the bell!"

The Grey Friar and his two charges stood flattened, petrified, across the sunlit court against the plaster wall of the falcon mew. The mob did not notice them. Leaping and shouting, it pounded past the chapel towards the Inner Ward, and above their head the tall friar saw a fountain-spurt of blood spray the buttress of the gatehouse. He saw the sword knocked from the sergeant's hand and another flash of steel as Leach's helmet, was sent spinning from his head. He saw the sergeant's body spitted high in the air on a spear, and twirling before it fell to the paving-stones, where it was trampled by the insurging rabble.

Three of the men-at-arms fought on against some of the London prentices, but the mob - now near a thousand strong - streamed past them indifferently to plunge into the Great Hall, into the chancery, to batter on the Treasure Chamber.

"Christus!" cried the friar, grabbing the two women's arms. "Back! We must get back upstairs!" No hope now of escape by barge. The water gates were closed and there was none to help. He thrust the women behind him towards the little hidden door, and as they stumbled panting into the arch, a sandy shock-haired man in leather helm and breastplate veered away from the main stream of the mob.

It was Jack Maudelyn who had special knowledge of the Savoy and greater personal hate than any of the rebels. His sharp questing eyes had seen the friar and recognised him. Jack charged down the courtyard, flourishing his pike. "Ho!" he shouted, his yellow teeth bared in a wolf grin, his freckled face twisted like a devil mask. "Oh, 'tis the puling friar what sucks gold from the paps o' Lancaster and licks the arses o' the rich! But I'll mend your ways for ye!" He raised his pike.

The unarmed friar stood rigid, barring the archway, where behind him Katherine gasped, fumbling frantically at the door-latch.

"What's that!" cried Jack, catching the shadow of movement behind Brother William. The weaver shoved the friar violently aside and, peering into the archway, cried, "By God, 'tis John o' Gaunt's whore! Here men - -" he yelled, whirling back into the courtyard. "Here's merry sport. Here, here to me!" His cry ended in a grunt.

The friar's great bony fist had shot out and landed full centre of the weaver's face. Jack staggered and lunged forward with his pike. The lance-shaped point slashed down across the friar's chest, it tore through his habit and pierced deep beside the breastbone. The friar's fist hammered out again and caught the weaver on the left corner of his jaw. Jack reeled, spitting out a tooth, and fell down. Bunching his habit with one hand against the welling blood from his torn chest, the friar picked up Jack's pike.

Still the Londoners and Essex men rampaged through the gate following the others. None had heard Jack's cry. The friar turned and ran into the archway, where Katherine had got the door opened at last. They shut and locked it behind them, and stumbled up the privy stairs back to the Avalon Chamber. It was Katherine who from instinct led them back there where she felt safest. The friar and Blanchette followed.

Brother William helped Katherine shoot the great iron bars through the hasps on the oaken door that led to the Presence Chamber. They locked the small door to the Duchess's bower where Blanchette had slept, and pushed the massive table up against it.

"Now we're secure. They can't get in here," whispered Katherine foolishly. She knew not what she said, nor understood quite what had happened. From the shadow of the arch she had seen what a multitude had thundered through the wards.

Blanchette sank down into a chair, dazed and shivering. Katherine poured ale from the silver flagon and gave her some, then turning to the friar she started and cried, "Jesu, Brother - you're hurt!"

The friar swallowed. He stood hunched and doubled over, holding his hands to his breast, while scarlet oozed down the grey habit. "Ay," he said in a far-off voice, "ay."

She ran to him and pulled him to the bed. He lay down without resistance. "Staunch it," he said. "A clean cloth." There were towels in the garde-robe but that was barred from her now. She pulled a corner of the sheet from under the friar and wadded it into the gaping wound, pressing it down as he told her.

" 'Twill serve a while," he said. His cavernous eyes opened wide. He looked up at her as she bent over him. He saw the lovely, pitying, frightened face of his dream.

A moment he gazed upward before he turned his head and shut his eyes. "Disaster," he whispered. "The ill-starred day has come that I saw long ago. I shall die," he said with dull certainty. "No matter."

Beneath the torn cassock and the bloody wad of sheet, his emaciated chest heaved painfully; he struggled to his elbow and looked at her again. "But first you shall hear the truth at last!"

"Brother - good Brother - I beg you to lie quiet," said Katherine, pushing him gently down on to the bed. "You won't die. For sure 'tis not so deep a wound as that."

He lay quiet again beneath her soft hand, his lips moved in the Miserere, though he scarcely knew it.

Katherine started up crying. "Blessed Jesu!" For suddenly the tumult outside grew louder, though yet distant. There were shouts and shrieks and a muffled sinister thumping. "Oh, that my dear lord were here!" she cried. "My dearest love - to protect us-" She clenched her hands staring into the Avalon tapestry, as though it might channel the force of her desperation and summon him.

The friar made a sharp motion with his arm. Strength flowed into him. He shoved her aside and rose from the bed. He clutched at his crucifix and cried to Katherine fiercely, "So now, graceless woman, you call out for your paramour! Fool, fool - don't you yet see that it is because of your sin - and his - that this disaster comes?"

"Nay, Brother," she murmured wearily. Surely in this time of danger she might be spared castigations.

"Do you know what they write of you in the abbeys?" he cried. "That you have bewitched the Duke to sodden lechery with your enchantments! And 'tis for this he suffers the hate of all men."

"That is false!" She coloured hot, and anger choked her. She forgot, as he had, the shoutings of the mob. She forgot Blanchette, who stiffened in her chair. "How dare you speak to me like that! I've never done him harm. I love him."

The friar drew a rasping breath while red froth bubbled in the corners of his mouth, yet he went on inflexibly, as though she had not spoken.

"Ay - they write of your lechery, these Benedictine monks. They little know that they might also write of murder!"

A convulsive shiver shook his lean body. He raised the crucifix and stared down into the woman's white uncomprehending face.

"Katherine Swynford, your husband was murdered. Ay - and in God's sight, you and the Duke murdered Hugh Swynford in Bordeaux as truly as though you had yourselves procured the poison that killed him."

"You're mad," she whispered, gazing at him in horror. "Brother William, your wound has made you mad."

From behind them in the chair there came a stifled sound. They did not hear it.

"Nay, not mad but dying," the friar said solemnly. "May God forgive me that I break the vow of the confessional - but I'll not die with the vile secret on my soul, nor shall you lack chance for repentance."

Katherine drew back from him, slowly, until her shoulders pressed against the gilded bedpost. "I don't understand," she whispered. "Hugh died of dysentery. You were there."

"Ay - fool that I was. T'was Nirac de Bayonne who put the poison in Sir Hugh's cup, this he confessed to me on his deathbed, but 'twas you gave your husband the draught to drink."

"The cup- -" she said. Her mind swam in a heavy blackness. She looked down at her hand and saw in it the shape of the little clay cup of medicine that she had held to Hugh's mouth. She dragged her eyes up to the friar. "But I didn't know! Before God, I didn't know!"

"You didn't know! Nor did the Duke, who cast his poor tool aside when it had blindly committed the foulest of all crimes for him. But can you take this crucifix and kiss it, while swearing that you did not long for your husband's death? Nor rejoicing in your secret heart when it had happened? Can you'"

She did not move.

The friar's body blotted out a burst of sunlight through the window behind. He held the crucifix towards her with a shaking hand. Dark and terrible as a wall painting of God's judgment wrath he stood over her, then another shudder seized him. The crucifix rattled down the length of its beads beside the knotted scourge.

He slumped forward and stumbled to the ivory prie-dieu. He knelt on the white satin cushion which crimsoned with a spreading stain. He clasped his hands together, and raising his face to the golden images of Christ and St. John the Baptist in the niche above, he began to chant, "Ostende nobis, Domine, misericordiam tuam - -"

Katherine sank slowly to her knees beside the bedpost. Her wide straining eyes fixed themselves on the round white disc of the friar's tonsure; her lips moved in mindless echo of his prayers.

Blanchette was huddled in the chair, her face sunk on her breast. She did not stir, she made no sound, but deep in her brain a voice cried on two notes senselessly like the cuckoo. It said, "Murder - murder - murder," and sometimes it changed its cry and said, "She gave poison to your father - father - father."

Below in the Outer Ward the Kentish rebels had arrived with Wat the tiler at their head, though the exhausted priest John Ball remained behind in a friendly alderman's house to regain his forces. Wat saw by the raised portcullis and the swarming figures near the chancery building and the Great Hall that his men had been forestalled. '

But he cared little for that, the more there were to help, the quicker would be the act of vengeance and destruction. He knew by now that the Duke had escaped them, but they would wreak what vengeance they could on his possessions, as they had on those of other traitors.

Already on the way here they had torn open the Fleet prison. And they had fired the Temple, burning the legal roles and records on which the cursed ink strokes gave leave to strangle all the rights of common man. A detachment of Wat's force remained there now to watch the razing of the Inns of Court, to see that no vestige remained of that Temple of Iniquity.

Here at the Savoy, Wat saw that his predecessors had achieved but little yet. The Essex peasants had broken into the famous cellars and broached the vintage tons and vats. They gulped and sloshed the wine, wandering stupidly and singing, bemused by the feel of this rich liquid in their gullets that had never known anything but small ale.

Wat took command at once. Some of the Londoners still pounded at the iron-bound Treasure Chamber door. Wat and his men added their strength to the timber battering-ram, until the hinges burst, and they were free of Lancaster's treasure. They dragged out coffers full of gold and silver and piled them unopened in the Great Hall. They took the coronets, the jewelled chains, the diamond-crusted scabbards and broke them up in the courtyard, then ground the jewels to powder beneath great paving-stones.

"We be not thieves!" roared Wat, as he spied a lad who stuffed a silver goblet in his jerkin. He killed the lad with a thrust of his sword and threw the goblet on the mangled pile that grew in the centre of the Great Hall. Some of them, as the frenzy grew, ran into the gardens trampling on the flowers, uprooting the rose bushes. The place was accursed, no part of it should remain.

When Wat seized a torch and set fire to the Hall, they roared with joy. It burned but slowly at first, and they threw in the records of the chancery and pieces of furniture that they brought from more distant rooms. They scattered to the outer buildings. Someone fired the Monmouth Wing, another threw his flaming torch into the Beaufort Tower.

They turned to the Duke's privy suite. They had left it to the last for it was nearer to the Outer Ward and gate where they must leave in safety themselves. The fires smouldered behind them, licking at the massive timbers of the floors and vaultings, daunted for a while by thickness of stone wall and coldness of tile.

Wat stayed by the Great Hall to see to the burning of its massed treasure.

It was a slobbering whey-faced Londoner who led a band up the great State Staircase. A weaver by the badge of trade on his arm, his nose was smashed, his jaw had been knocked awry and stuck out comically beneath his left ear, so that they could understand little of his furious gabbling; but they followed him gladly for he seemed to know the way.

A short and meagre little man in tattered leather jerkin went in this band too, his flaxen poll was matted thick with sweat and dirt. A branded F was on his cheek, half-hidden by grime. He was one of the outlaws who had crept down from the north and joined the Essex men.

They swarmed up to the Presence Chamber, hacked at the furnishings, flung silver sconces and candlesticks out of the window. They found the Duke's garde-robe where some of his surcotes hung from the perches. Jack Maudelyn grabbed one down, a cloth-of-gold cote, emblazoned with the Duke's arms. They stuffed it out with folded cloths, they set it on the Duke's throne in the Presence Chamber, and put a silver basin, on its head for a crown. They fired arrows at it, they spat on it. They shouted that here was a fine king called John. The weaver danced and jibbered round the effigy, and the little outlaw from the north emitted a burst of shrill excited laughter.

Tiring of that, they slashed the surcote into shreds and stuffed the tatters down the open hole of the latrine, where they fell into the Thames below.

And still Jack urged them on with gestures. They swarmed down a passage past a shut door to a suite of empty rooms where they destroyed the furnishings, but the weaver was not satisfied, he pointed back and made them see that they must get inside the shut door they had passed.

They began to batter at the door, but they had scant room to exert leverage in the passage and the door held firm. The weaver beckoned again and they ran into the Duchess' bower and heaved against the small door with the massive headboard of the bed.

Inside the Avalon Chamber, the friar prayed on, through the pounding and the shouts outside the doors, but Katherine rose from her knees, pulling herself up by the bed curtains. She saw the little door begin to give and that the table that was shoved against it, quivered.

She walked to Blanchette and put her arm around the huddled shoulders. "Don't be afraid, darling," she whispered. Blanchette started and recoiled. She twisted out from under her mother's arm and sprang back, in her eyes there was a look that caused Katherine to cry out in anguish.

The table rocked and slid. The small door burst open and a huge red-bearded Kentish peasant stepped in first, brandishing a sickle, which he lowered in confusion when he saw the two women and a praying friar. "Cock's bones," he muttered, but the other men shoved past him, Jack and the outlaw and twenty more.

The friar heaved himself to his feet, and grabbing the pike he had taken from the weaver, he backed tottering against the fireplace.

"Kill! Kill!" Jack screamed in a voice they all understood. He rushed forward with his sword. The friar parried the thrust feebly with the pike, which dropped from his hand. Jack raised his sword again, and the friar stood motionless. He looked past the weaver.

"God in his mercy help you Katherine!" he cried.

The sword swished like the spitting of a cat, came down with a dull thud. Blood and brains spurted high, then spattered on the marble and on Blanchette's skirt. The friar gasped once, fell down upon the tiles, and was still.

Again Jack lifted his sword; this Lancastrian friar's head would be carried on a pike to London Bridge with those of the other traitors. The men had held back watching silently, but now the outlaw ran forward and held Jack's arm. "Not in here," he said, "not afore them" He jerked his chin towards Katherine and Blanchette, who stood transfixed against the wall on either side of the fireplace.

Jack furiously shrugged off the restraining hand, but the huge red-bearded peasant seized the friar's feet, the outlaw shot back the bolts on the big door, and they dragged Brother William's body out into the passage.

Katherine did not look at what they dragged, she gazed at the flaxen-polled little outlaw. 'Tis Cob o' Fenton, she thought, my runaway serf. Soon he'll kill us too if Jack Maudelyn does not first. It seemed to her strange that Cob should be there, when she had last seen him in the village stocks at Kettlethorpe. It seemed to her almost ludicrous - cause for gigantic laughter. She felt the laughter swelling, choking in her chest. It rose into her mouth and she leaned over and vomited.

The men cast sideways glances at the two women but did not molest them. They set to work, running around the room, flinging open the hutches and cupboards, following the system which they had used in all the other buildings. They found the saints' figurines, and the lute and the gittern and game boards, and cast them into the river. They found the two hanaps,

Blanchette's and Joli-coeur. They shattered them with axes. Joli-coeur's crystal splinters gleamed like diamonds in the pool of jellied blood on the hearth, its garnet heart rolled loose into a comer.

Some chopped up the sandalwood chairs, some the gilded table. The ivory prie-dieu gave them more trouble, but they wrenched it apart and piled it in the centre of the floor with the rugs and the ruby velvet bed hangings and the wooden portions of the bed. They pulled down the Avalon tapestry and hacked it into strips for easier burning.

Soon the bearded Kentish peasant came back into the room with Cob, leaving Jack in the passage to finish with Brother William's body, The man from Kent seized the pike the friar had tried to use and amused himself with shattering each of the tinted windowpanes, one after the other, proudly counting as he did so, "Oon, twa, tree, four - -" He had learned no higher than ten, so he started over again.

He had still two panes left when they heard the shouts of their leader from the passage and Wat Tyler strode into the chamber crying "Come, lads, come. Get on wi' it. What's keeping ye so long?" The acrid smell of smoke came with him, charred grey flakes had floated from the fires and settled on his sweat-stained jerkin.

Jack Maudelyn slithered in behind the tiler, mumbling something through his broken jaw. He pointed to Katherine.

"Women?" said the tiler scowling. "What do they here? Who are they?" Not servants by their clothes, he thought, nor noble ladies neither.

Jack's uncouth noises rose to frenzy as he tried to tell who they were. "Kill - -" he gobbled again and he raised his sword.

"Nay, weaver - by the rood - ye've gone daft!" Wat gave him a great shove that sent him spinning. "I carina get a word this broke-jaw says."

"Who are ye then?" He turned impatiently to Katherine. The fires were catching fast in the buildings behind them, they must finish this business up, then on to Westminster, and after, hurry back to their camp by the Tower, where surely there would be word from the King.

Katherine could not answer. Her tongue was swollen thick in her mouth. The tiler's form blocked out the sunlight as the friar's had an hour ago. She stared down at the pile of broken furniture on the floor, the strips of the Avalon tapestry, the bed hangings, no redder than the blood pools on the tiles.

Cob will tell him who we are, she thought. And that will be the end. But the little flaxen-headed outlaw did not speak. He cast a slanting look at Katherine, and busied himself with chopping off the carved emblems on the mantel.

"You then!" The tiler rounded on Blanchette, and drew back startled. Almost he made the sign of the cross, the crop-haired girl had so strange a look.

She had lifted a fold of her skirt and dabbled with her fingers in the stains made by the friar's blood, and she was smiling. Smiling as one who knows a sly secret that will confuse the hearer.

"Who are ye, child?" shouted Wat, but more gently.

Blanchette raised her head and gazed behind the tiler towards the shattered window, where drifts of smoke and flying sparks blew past.

"Who am I?" she said in a high, sweet, questioning tone. "Nay, that, good sir, I must not tell you."

Her eyes moved unseeing over the faces of the other men, who had turned to watch. "But I can tell you who I'll be" She nodded three times slowly, and she laughed low in her throat.

Wat swallowed. The men behind did not stir, their mouths dropped open and a shivering unease held them.

"Why, I shall be a whore - good sir," cried Blanchette in a loud voice, "like my mother. A murdering whore - mayhap too - like my mother!"

She gathered up her skirts in either hand as though she would make them all a curtsy. The men gaped at her. Like quicksilver she whirled and ran out of the chamber. She stumbled on the friar's dismembered headless body in the passage, then sped on swift as light to the Great Stairs.

"Stop her!" screamed Katherine, dashing forward with her arms outstretched. "Blanchette!"

Jack Maudelyn snatched out his hand and grabbed Katherine by the flying end of her coif. He jerked her back so violently that she fell. Her head hit the tiles. A thousand lights exploded behind her eyes; then there was darkness.

The tiler stared down at the woman who lay crumpled, barely breathing, on the tiles. He stared at the door through which the girl had fled. He looked at the weaver's wry-jawed face. And he shrugged.

"By the rood, I vow they've all gone mad here in this accursed place," he said. "Well - come, lads. Get on wi' it. Where's a torch? Someone carry the woman out. Who'er she be, I'll not leave her here to be roasted."

CHAPTER XXV

Across the Strand from the Savoy's gatehouse, there lay an open field that was part of the convent garden belonging to Westminster Abbey. Two of Wat Tyler's men carried Katherine there and dumped her on a grassy bank near a little brook, before dashing off to join their fellows who were streaming out of the burning Savoy, some heading for Westminster, where they would break open the Abbey prison, and many back towards the City.

Cob o' Fenton had followed the men who bore Katherine out of the Savoy and watched from afar as they laid her down. After they ran off, he stood irresolute by the roadside, tugging on his lank tow-coloured forelock. He glanced to his left where Katherine's skirt showed as a splotch of darker green against the grass; his eyes shifted to the disappearing bands of rebels.

The Lady of Kettlethorpe was mayhap dying there in the field. Well, let her then! Cob thought with sudden vigour.

What if it was her negligent order that had freed him from the stocks and given him back his croft? What good was that when her steward still exacted the heriot fine overdue from Cob's father's death? - the one ox he owned, and was fond of; company for him that ox had been, since his wife had died in childbed. Then there were the other fines - no end to them: no merchet, leyrewite; tithes to the church, "love-work" - and now the poll tax.

"Phuah!" said Cob and spat. He fingered the branded F on his cheek - fugitive, runaway serf, outlaw. Ay, and if he could escape recapture by his own manor lord for a year, he would be legally free. But she could still catch him. Cob glanced again towards Katherine. She could have him dragged back to the manor, and the punishment this time would be far worse than stocks and branding. Cob's watery, white-lashed eyes stared down at the Strand paving-stones, he gnawed at an itching fleabite on his finger, when suddenly he jumped and gasped, jerking his head up to look at the Savoy.

An explosion had thundered off behind the walls. A sheet of flame shot up as high as the spire on the Monmouth Tower, where the Duke's pennant still fluttered. The Outer Ward was not yet all afire.

Cob ran back off the road and clapped his hands to his ears, while another explosion rocked the Savoy, and another. A zigzag crack shot down the Monmouth Tower like black lightning. The tower wavered, seeming to dance and sway like a sapling in the wind, it buckled in the middle, and fell with the rumble of an earthquake, in great white clouds of dust and flying stone. Half of the Savoy Strand wall caved in beneath the fallen tower, and the gap filled in at once with raging fire.

Cob ran farther back into the field and, stumbling, fell to his knees. Above the roar and crackle of the fire he heard muffled shrieks, demon-like wails for help, different from the screaming whinnies of the terrified horses in the stables.

It was some thirty of the Essex men who shrieked. They had escaped Wat's eye and returned to the cellars and the wine casks, having found a tunnel to the Outer Ward and being sure that they had time to reach it before the fires got too hot. But Wat's men had flung into the Great Hall the three barrels of gunpowder, and the falling of the tower had trapped the rioters in the cellars beneath. It would take long before the fire ate downward to them through the stone roofing of the cellars, but there was now no way out.

"God's passion," whispered Cob, crossing himself as a deluge of flying sparks fell on him. He scrambled up and took to his heels across the field. He had quite forgotten Katherine, but she lay across his path.

He stopped, and seeing that sparks had fallen on her wool gown and were charring round smoking holes, he reached down and brushed them off. She lay on her back, her face like the marble effigies he had seen in Lincoln Cathedral. But she breathed. He saw her breasts move up and down.

And Cob, pinching out a spark that still smouldered, saw at her girdle the purse with her blazon. Through Cob's uncertain heart there struck a strange feeling. He stared down at the Swynford arms - three yellow boars' heads on the black chevron. These arms meant home. They were fastened on the manor gate, they swung on the alehouse sign. They meant the fealty that his father had loyally given to Sir Hugh Swynford, and to Sir Thomas before that. They meant the warm smell of earth and ox in his little hut, they meant the mists off the Trent, the candles in the church on holy days. They meant the companionable grumbles of his fellow villeins in the alehouse on the green, and they meant the old stone manor where he himself had done homage to Swynfords - homage to this very woman who lay flat and helpless on the grass.

"Lady!" Cob cried, slapping at her cheeks and shaking Katherine. "Lady, for the love o' God, awake!"

Still she lay limp, and her head fell back when he released her. She was tall, and he undersized and puny. He could not carry her. He took her by the feet and dragged her towards the brook, then, cupping his hands, dashed her face with water, crying, "Lady, wake, wake!" pleading with her. "Lady, I must leave ye here an ye not wake soon. For sure ye must know that? Ye'd hardly think I'd cause to burn up wi' ye, now would ye? Tis far from Kettlethorpe we are, lady, and I've all but won my freedom. Ye must know that don't ye?"

She did not move. Cob in desperation pulled at her until she rolled into the little brook. He held her head just above the water, and nearly sobbed with relief as she opened her eyes and shuddered. "'Tis cold," she whispered. "What's so cold?" She moved her hands in the flowing water, lifted them and stared at their wetness.

"Get up, lady! Up! We must hasten or I vow 'tis not cold ye'll be." He hoisted her by the armpits and Katherine slowly rose, dripping, from the brook and stood on the bank, swaying, while Cob held her. She looked down at his matted flaxen hair and the F brand on his cheek, but she did not quite remember him - someone from Kettlethorpe. She turned and stared at the immense roaring furnace across the Strand. A puzzling sight.

"Come! Can't ye walk?" cried Cob impatiently, propelling her along the field. She moved her feet forward, leaning on him heavily. Cob saw that her wet robe clung to her legs and impeded her. He drew his knife from its sheath and cut her skirt off just below the knee. She watched him in vague surprise, then, bothered by her wet hair that flowed loose, she wrung the water out of it and started to braid it.

"No time for that!" cried Cob. "Hurry!"

The flames now licked through the gatehouse; the lower prongs of the raised portcullis began to smoulder. The wind blew towards them and bore charring embers with the smoke.

"Where are we going?" Katherine said, while obediently she tried to hurry. The sick giddiness behind her eyes was passing, though her head ached.

"Into town," said Cob, though he didn't know what he was going to do with her. As soon as he had got her beyond the reach of the fire, he could dump her on some convent, of course, but he knew little about London.

"Oh," said Katherine. "I've good friends in town. The Pessoners in Billingsgate. Master Guy came yesterday to tell me about the rebels. Are we going to the Pessoners?"

"Might as well," said Cob, relieved.

He dragged her along until they came to St. Clement Danes. The Temple was burning on the Strand ahead of them. He had forgotten that. "Have to go up there, I think." He pointed up the hill towards Holborn, and turned up the footpath through Fickett's field. "Road's blocked here."

"More fire?" she said, looking at the smoking Temple. "How strange!" The sunny green fields, the fires, the little church were all to her like scenes woven upon a tapestry.

Cob slackened pace, rubbed his sweating face on his sleeve and looked up at her curiously. "Ye don't remember nothing o' this morning, do ye?"

"Why yes," she said courteously. "When I got up and looked out of the window, there were fires on the Surrey bank. I was quite frightened. That was at dawn." She stopped and, frowning, glanced back at the sun. Through the smoke haze it shone high above and a little towards the west. But it's afternoon now, she thought in confusion. What happened to the morning? She tried to pierce through the blankness, and gave it up. "Is the peasant army still at Blackheath waiting for the King?" she said.

Cob shrugged and did not answer. A head blow often wiped out memory of all that had gone before it - for a time. And just as well, poor lady. He wondered what had happened to the Damoiselle Blanchette. A fearful thing the little wench had cried out about her mother, but then the lass had gone mad from horror when the Grey Friar's blood spattered on her and knew not what she said. There had been no sign of her when they carried Lady Swynford out, though Cob had looked. It seemed likely that in her madness the girl had been trapped somewhere back in the Savoy, like those whose screams he had heard. God rest her soul, he thought - she had been a fair sweet little maid once, some ten years ago, at Kettlethorpe.

He and Katherine plodded north through the field and reached Holborn street, where a hundred of the rebels came marching four abreast and singing "Jack Milner."

A fellow outlaw whom Cob had known in the Essex camp spied him and called out, "By God's belly - ye little Lincoln cock! What be ye doing wi' a woman? 'Tis no time for sport!"

"Nay - true," Cob shouted back, grinning. " 'Tis a poor affrighted country serving-wench has got lost, I but take her to the City; Then I'll join ye. Where are ye bound?"

Several of the rebels answered him at once. They were off to burn all Robert Hales' property, his priory at Clerkenwell, his manor at Highbury. Though the base treasurer himself still lurked in the Tower, protected by the King.

The rebels veered off to the left on the lane for Clerkenwell, and Katherine started walking again when Cob did. They entered the City at Newgate, which was open and unguarded. They walked down the shambles past the slaughterhouse with their stench of offal, and on West Chepe came to the edge of a tremendous crowd who were watching what took place on a block in the centre of the crossways.

Some forty Flemings had been rounded up along with two richer prizes, the detested merchant Richard Lyons, who had escaped the justice of the Good Parliament, and a sneaking informer that the mob had dragged from sanctuary in St. Martin's. They were all tied arm to arm in a line that had reached way down the Chepe, but was now diminished as one after the other was dragged forward and flung to his knees beside the block. A man stood there with an axe, and he worked fast. Already a dozen heads had rolled into the central gutter, which ran crimson. Vultures and kites perched high above on the house gables, watching as intently as the crowd did.

Cob shrank. "We must get out o' here," he whispered, grabbing Katherine's arm. He shoved her down an alley until they reached Watling Street, which was near deserted. Peaceable citizens were all at home behind barred doors.

"Lady," cried Cob, "where is this Billingsgate to which ye'd go?"

Katherine stopped and stared about her. Those crosskeys on a tavern sign, that bakeshop on the corner of Bread Street, the small squeezed-in Church of All Hallows, all were familiar to her. She had passed through here before, running with someone, running from something, from a great roaring mob. Riots in St. Paul's - the Duke in danger. Danger. That day long past slid into now. The two states intermingled, shifting.

"Where's Billingsgate?" repeated Cob, and now his urgency touched her with fear.

"There!" she cried, pointing towards the river. "There's rioting again. That crowd on the Chepe. Warn the Duke! We must warn him - run to the Pessoners', Dame Emma'll help!" She seized Cob's hand as once she had seized Robin's, and began to run - around the corner and down Bread Street, beneath the dark overhanging gables.

As they passed through the Vintry they saw three hacked and still-bleeding corpses on the steps of St. Martin's. "Sweet Jesus," Katherine gasped, "why does the whole world smell of blood and fire? Why?"

Cob said nothing. He hurried her on. They were not molested again. In Billingsgate she saw near St. Magnus' church the half-timbered house and the gilded fish that flapped from a pole over the shop. " 'Tis here," she said with a deep sigh of relief and pulled the door-knocker. There was no answer.

Katherine leaned against the oaken door-jamb, and pressed her hand to her head. Cob reached up and banged the knocker again.

The wooden peephole opened and a wrinkle-lidded frightened eye looked out. "What is't?" quavered an old man's creaking voice. "There's no one here. Go 'way."

"Dame Emma!" cried Katherine. "Where's Dame Emma? Tell her Lady Swynford's here, and I've need of her."

"The mistress's not here - no more the master," said the voice. "Be off wi' ye!" The shutter began to slide across the peephole.

"Stop!" Cob rammed his knife between the shutter and its frame. "Nay, don't squeal like that in there, I'll not harm ye. But ye must open the door and let us in!"

"I'll not, nor can ye force me to - the door's iron-barred," the old voice rose high and shrill.

Cob cursed roundly while he thought. His lady looked near to fainting, but that was by no means his chief concern. In this prosperous house there would be far better fare than at the rebel camp they had all been told to rejoin in its new position near the Tower. No doubt tomorrow his lust for revenge and rioting would revive, but for now, he'd had his bellyful of wandering the bloody streets.

Then an idea struck him. "Wait, old gaffer!" he cried as he heard shuffling footsteps retreating. "Wait!" He grabbed Katherine's purse, yanking it from her girdle, and opening it breathed "Holy saints!" as he saw jewels and gold. He fished out a gold noble and waved it through the peephole, snatching it back as a hand reached for it.

" 'Tis yours an ye let us in!" Cob shouted. "I'll get it again for ye later," he whispered to Katherine.

"No," she said faintly, "it doesn't matter."

The door opened. Cob shoved it wider, and palling Katherine with him walked in. Cob shut and barred the door. "Here ye are then," he said roughly, dropping the noble in the old man's shaking outstretched bind.'

The old man was called Elias, and usually he worked around the fishhouse as night-watch. He had been left here alone this afternoon to guard the house, for Master Guy had gone to an emergency meeting in Fishmongers' Hall called by Walworth the mayor, who was also a fishmonger and who had hurried from the King in the Tower to confer with his fellows on the rebel crisis which was getting more serious each moment.

"Where's Dame Emma?" said Katherine sinking down on the settle. The kitchen fire was unlighted, the low-raftered room that had always shown a homely cheer was now empty and gloomy behind its drawn shutters.

The old man bit the gold noble between his wobbly remaining teeth before slipping it in some hidden cranny of his stained and fishy tunic. "She's gone," he said, eyeing the two intruders with bleak suspicion.

Master Guy, alarmed at last, had packed Dame Emma and the maids off to St. Helen's priory for safety when at dawn the Kentish rebels had poured over the Bridge, but no need to tell this strange tousled wench that - or anything. Elias folded his arms around his shrunken chest and mumbled with feeble malevolence, as Cob who had been rummaging came back with his finds.

"Ye best eat, lady," said Cob breaking a juicy hunk off a meat pie and holding it out to her. As Katherine shook her head, he thrust out his mug of ale. "Drink then!"

She lowered her lips and swallowed thirstily. Cob held the mug and suddenly chuckled. "Here's something warms me cockles," he said, "to see the Lady o' Kettlethorpe a-drinking from the same mug as her serf - ay, there's a sight would dumbfounder 'em back home!"

Katherine raised her head from the mug. "Cob," she whispered, looking at him wonderingly. Cob, the runaway from Kettlethorpe - -she knew him now. It was no squire had guided her this day, had told puzzling lies for her. It was her own rebellious serf. Yet not long ago she had dreamed that he was going to kill her. She had dreamed that she saw him chopping the emblems from the marble mantel in the Avalon Chamber. He had given her a strange sideways glance when a question had been asked. What question? "Who are you then?" Had someone asked that? There were others there in the dream: men - and Blanchette. But Blanchette was sleeping in the Duchess' bower - nay, in the! Monmouth Wing.

"Cob?" she said. "Do you know where is Blanchette?"

"Nay, lady," replied the little outlaw quickly, and crossed himself. "For sure now ye must rest. Old gaffer." He prodded Elias who was crouching on a stool by the dead fireplace. "Where can the lady rest?"

The old man hunched himself. "On the floor, forsooth."

"I know where to go," said Katherine, not hearing him. Why did Cob cross himself? she thought. Behind a flimsy wall a sea of horror surged and pounded, but the wall still held.

"The chamber above the fish-shop," she said to Cob. 'Tis where I've always gone. Ay - I must lie down a while." Her head spun as she rose, and she dragged herself towards the stairs.

"Ye can't go up there, woman!" squealed Elias, jumping up and shaking his fist as he hobbled after Katherine.

Cob gave him a negligent shove and gestured with his knife. "Me whistle's still dry. Where's more ale? Ye've not earned your noble yet, not by a long shot." He grinned and pricked Elias on his skinny shank. "I'll have that flitch o' bacon too, what's hanging from the rafter, and I dare say ye know where white bread be stored. I've a fancy to taste white bread at last."

While Cob made himself comfortable in the kitchen, Katherine found her way to the chamber loft. The two great beds and the sliding truckle were all neatly made and covered with down quilts. She lay down on the bed which she had once shared with Hawise. Always when she lay down to rest her longing prayers turned to the Duke. Now for a moment she saw his face but it was far away, tiny; then a hand holding a threatening crucifix thrust up as barrier before John's face, blocking it off. Her head throbbed agonizingly. She moaned a little, and closed her eyes.

When Master Guy returned home, it was near to sundown and the grave issues of the rebellion so perturbed him that he gave scant attention to the presence of a ragged little knave in his kitchen, or to old Elias' stammered excuses.

When he understood from Cob that Lady Swynford was sleeping upstairs, having taken refuge here after the burning of the Savoy, Master Guy banged his pudgy hand on the table in exasperation, crying, "By God - why must she come here!" But when Cob had tried to go on and tell him of the gruesome happenings in the Savoy and the dangers they had run in London streets to get here, Master Guy interrupted, shaking his fat jowls impatiently. "Ay - ay, I know there's been hideous deeds everywhere this day. Well - let her be - let her be - but I canna concern mesel' wi' her, one way or t'other. Nor ye neither," he said to Cob. "Ye can rest a bit, then out ye go. I want none o' the rebels in here."

Today at the distress meeting in Fishmongers' Hall, first, Mayor Walworth had come to tell his fellow fishmongers that all loyal citizens were to be alerted - here he had glanced frowning at the empty chairs of the aldermen who had opened the Bridge and joined the rebels - that since Wat Tyler's early promises of good behaviour and no violence had not been kept, and since the rebels were now most threateningly encamped around the Tower and besieging the King, a fierce and sudden counter-attack was being planned.

The King's regiment within the Tower would be joined by Sir Robert Knolles' huge force of retainers who were quartered in his inn this side of Tower Hill, while all the Londoners who wished to rid their city of the insurrectionists must arm and strike at the same time. It had seemed a good plan to the anxious fishmongers and they had started to organise the runners who would alert the other guilds and burghers while Walworth returned to the Tower.

But no sooner started than the whole scheme had been countermanded. A panting King's messenger arrived at Fishmongers' Hall bearing an official missive. There was to be no attack made on the rebels after all, conciliation was to be tried first. The messenger had been present at the King's Council and amplified his document. He told the fishmongers that the King had ordered the rebel army to meet him at seven in the morning for conference at Mile End, a meadow two miles to the east of town. This would give opportunity for the archbishop and treasurer to escape by boat while the savage mob who howled for their blood were drawn off to parley with the King.

Master Guy lumbered up to look to the fastenings of his house before going to bed, and was reminded of Cob, who lay curled up snoring on a bench. "Out wi' ye - now," he cried, shaking him.

Cob did not protest, for the huge fishmonger was fully armed; besides Cob was rested now and full of food, and not ungrateful. "Ay - I'll be off, thank 'e, sir." He yawned and bowed and docilely went out upon Thames Street while Master Guy barred his door behind him.

Cob finished out his sleep on a stone bench in St. Magnus' church porch and awakened when its bells rang out for Prime. This Friday, June 14, was another fair warm day, and Cob felt revived interest in the great cause which had brought him into London. He munched on the delicious white bread and bacon with which he had prudently stuffed his pockets, and glanced towards the fishmonger's house where Lady Swynford slept, devoutly glad that he was rid of her and wondering that he had taken so much pains to care for her yesterday. Her and her purse full of jewels and gold! A murrain on her and all her kind, thought Cob, bitterly regretting that he had not taken opportunity to steal upstairs and relieve her of that purse before Master Guy came home.

"When Adam delved and Eva span, who had gold and jewels then?" Cob chanted, raking his fingers through his hair and squashing a louse that ran out of it. He trotted off down the street towards the Tower and the rebel camp beyond it on St. Catherine's Hill.

Here Cob was swept up by the wild excitement. Their leaders Wat Tyler, Jack Strawe and the priest John Ball, were all a-horseback, galloping amongst their forces, which numbered by now nearly eighty thousand men. "Mile End! Mile End!" they shouted. The King was to meet them at Mile End and listen to their plans in person. "Onward march to Mile End to meet the King!"

Cob surged forward with a great multitude of them, swarming and trampling over the fields until they reached the meadow where the little King awaited them.

Richard sat pale and stiff upon his brightly caparisoned white horse. His crown was no more golden than his long curls, and in Cob's eyes and those of his fellows Richard's royal beauty shone round him like a halo. "God bless our King!" they cried. "We want no King but thee, O Richard!" All bowed their heads, and many genuflected humbly.

The King smiled at them uncertainly and waved his hand in response, as Wat Tyler rode up to him for parley.

A dozen nobles were gathered behind the King - those who had been with him in the Tower: the Lords Warwick and Salisbury and Sir Robert Knolles, grim fighters all three and of proven courage in war, but this aggression from a mob of despicable serfs and peasants was so alien to their experience that they had floundered this way and that, quarrelling amongst themselves.

The King's beloved Robert de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, had drawn apart from the others and watched from beneath raised eyebrows, which were finely plucked as a woman's. With delicate fingernail he flicked a tiny blob of mud off his rose-velvet cote, and as Wat Tyler approached them, de Vere sniffed ostentatiously at a scented spice ball that dangled from his wrist.

The King's uncle, Thomas, Earl of Buckingham, was there too, his truculent black eyes flashing, his swarthy face suffused with impotent rage, but even he had sense enough to hold his tongue and stay his sword arm until they saw what might be accomplished first by guile - and by a further measure which was even now in progress back in the Tower.

Sudbury's and Hales' attempted escape by boat had gone awry earlier, ill timed and clumsily executed. The archbishop had been recognised by rebel guards on St. Catherine's Hill and had regained the safety of the Tower just in time. But not for long. As the King left for Mile End, Buckingham had issued certain orders, not mentioning them to Richard, who was often oversqueamish. Buckingham had decided that the safety of England and the crown should no longer be jeopardised by two cumbersome superfluous old men.

The little King gave no sign of fear as he nodded graciously to Wat and, after listening a while, readily gave the verbal agreement his advisers had told him to. The abolition of serfdom and a general pardon for all the rebels - these were what the tiler demanded first, and "Ay - it shall be done!" cried Richard in his high, pretty, childish voice. "The charters shall be prepared, ye shall have them on the morrow."

This was not all that John Ball and Wat had drawn up as their requirements. It did not answer their demands for the abolition of private courts, for freedom of contract, disendowment of the clergy, land at fourpence an acre rent, but Wat thought it better not to press for too much at once. These other matters could wait, since the greater part of their glorious goal had been so comfortably achieved.

He seized Richard's hand and kissed it vehemently. Then he jumped on his horse and standing in the stirrups shouted to the silent straining mob, "The King has agreed there's to be no more bondage!"

"Free?" whispered Cob, swallowing. A shiver ran down his back. No more hiding in the forests or the City. No more heriot fine, no fines, no boon-work. He could go back to Kettlethorpe and do as he pleased on his own croft. He could keep his ox and earn money for his labour. A freeman.

"I didn't rightly believe 'twould ever happen," he whispered. He put his knuckles to his eyes, and a sob rose in his throat. All around him men were leaping, laughing, crying, so that it was hard to hear what else Wat said, but the tall ploughman passed it on.

" 'Twill take a little time to get our charters, the parchment what'll prove we're free. Wat says we'd best wait on St. Catherine's Hill."

Cob nodded, for he could not speak

He and many others took their time about wandering back to the City. The sun shone on them, the earth of the road was brown and warm beneath their feet, and the brooks gurgled joyfully through the meadows. The leaping wild excitement died down and they smiled at each other quietly, their eyes shining. Some sprawled upon the grass apart, thinking with fast-beating hearts of the manors they had left, the anxious waiting wives and children, and how it would be when they got home, free and safe. The King had said so.

Cob heard the martial beat of music as he reached their camp at last and crowded up to watch. A procession came through the postern gate from Tower Hill. John Ball led it on his mule, Wat Tyler and Jack Strawe followed on their horses, and behind them came seven proudly grinning members of the fellowship, each bearing a dripping head set on a pole. They marched triumphantly to the blithe rhythm of the pipes and tabors, and they held the heads high so all could see.

Cob wormed his way up to the front and gaped with the others. The first head that went by had belonged to Sudbury, the Archbishop of Canterbury. You could tell that, for they had jammed his jewelled mitre down over the grey tonsure, and fastened it to the skull with a long nail.

"How'd they get him?" Cob cried startled; several of the new-comers echoed him.

A Kentishman behind answered them: "We got the old rat in the Tower chapel - when we broke in an hour back. And there's Hales too."

The treasurer's head was mangled and still bled profusely. "That cursed prior sold his life dear," said the Kentishman, "we'd trouble with him."

Four other heads passed by, then Cob stiffened and squinted. "Ah, I know that one," he said pointing to the seventh. " 'Tis from yesterday at the Savoy."

"Ay," said the Kentishman, laughing. "They say 'twas John o' Gaunt's own Grey Friar and leech. Some daft broke-jawed weaver had it, and wouldn't give it up, but Wat recognised it and said since we didna get the Duke, we must show off his friar instead."

The rebel camp that Friday night was happy one. A few charters of freedom began to be delivered from the King, and most of those who received them set off at once for home.

John Ball spent the night on his knees before the cross that was placed on St. Catherine's Hill, thanking God for the victories they had won.

The King too and his meinie spent most of the night in prayer, but it was no prayer of thanksgiving.

Richard had cried out in horror when he found what had happened at the Tower in his absence at Mile End, he had wept for the gentle old archbishop and been frightened for his mother, whom the rebels had bespoken roughly but not hurt. She had fled to the royal wardrobe in Carter Lane near St. Paul's and here Richard and his nobles joined her, in gloomiest pessimism.

True it was that some of the rebels had gone home as they received their charters, but not nearly enough of them. Thousands still roamed the London streets looting and butchering according to their whims. And a messenger from Wat Tyler made it clear that there were still many points to be discussed, and new concessions to be granted.

On the next morning, Saturday, Richard and his party hurriedly breakfasted in the wardrobe's small congested Hall while they held yet another worried conference.

"Your Grace will have to meet these accursed ribauds again, I fear," said Lord Salisbury gravely. "We'll never rid the City of them else. We must still play for time."

The Princess Joan threw down her wine cup and set up a wail, clasping Richard feverishly to her dishevelled bosom. "I'll not let him go out to those fiends again. How dare you ask it, my lord? See how white he is and how he trembles. Jesu, would you kill your King?"

"Nay, Mother," said Richard wanly, struggling out from her smothering embrace. "I'm weary, of course, and sick at heart, but there's no cause to fear them. They love me," he said with a faint proud smile.

"God's passion!" cried Thomas of Woodstock, clenching his hairy hand on his sword. "That we were strong enough to wipe them all out now, and have done with them!"

Richard gazed distastefully at his uncle, whom he loathed, and thought that if his eldest uncle, John, were here, matters might not have gone so badly for them as they had. But that it was equally fortunate that Edmund had sailed for Portugal before the uprising, for Edmund was a muddle-headed ass.

"We might risk open fight," said Sir Robert Knolles, knitting his jutting grey brows, "but 'twould be safer to put it off a day or two until we can raise more men. This has come to us so fast-" He shook his head.

"Blessed Virgin, but how fast!" cried the Princess, beginning to weep again. "Only two days of this terror and it seems - dear God, I can scarce remember when it started."

She wrung her hands, remembering the first moment that she had felt fear, Thursday morning, when she had looked from her turret window in the Tower and seen the Savoy on fire, and then fires everywhere - in Southwark, in Clerken-well, in Highbury.

"Ay, Your Grace," said Salisbury decisively to the King. "You must meet the rebels again, this afternoon. We'll tell them to come to Smithfield this time, 'tis nearer."

That afternoon Wat led his men towards the new rendezvous at Smithfield. He had been temperate these past days when he knew so much depended on clear thinking, but now, with complete victory all but won, he had been lustily celebrating, drinking mug after mug out of a cask of rich vernage that some of his men had taken from a Lombard's cellar.

It had been impossible to continue enforcing the prohibition against all thievery, or to keep a watchful eye on so many men. Besides, the Lombards like the Flemings didn't count. They were lucky if they kept their heads, let alone their wine.

Wat had made himself fine for this second interview with the King. He had donned a fashionable red-and-blue-striped tunic that had belonged to one of the decapitated merchants and a golden velvet cap furred with ermine, such as only lords were allowed to wear; and he carried in a jewelled sheath at his girdle a nobleman's dagger. For now that all men were to be free and equal, a tiler could dress as he pleased to do honour to his King, and his own leadership.

Wat and John Ball rode from the rebel camp at the head of their forces, but Jack Strawe lay sodden in a tavern and did not appear. Wat traversed the blood-soaked pavement of the

Chepe and turned up towards Aldersgate and Smithfield. The sun beat down hot, and his face dripped beneath the velvet cap, but the wine bubbled pleasingly in his veins and he began to sing:

The mill is now alight!

It turneth full o' might

Wi' will and wi' skill

We swinked at our mill

Till it goeth right, right, right!

"Good times be a-coming for all, m'dear," cried Wat exuberantly, turning his flushed face on John Ball, who rode silently beside him.

"Ay, as God hath willed it," said the priest solemnly. "Wat, ye're something drunk. Have a care now how ye handle yourself with the King."

Wat grinned. "King and me's good friends. We understand each other. Mayhap King'll dub me a lord this day. Lord Wat I'll be. Lord Walter o' Maidstone." He chuckled happily.

The priest shook his head and said nothing.

They rode on into Smithfield, where horse markets and tournaments were usually held, and the peasant forces poured in after them to line up in rows along the western side.

Cob was in the vanguard. He shinned up a little apple tree that stood on the edge of the great parade ground, for he was determined to see all that took place this time, and have a good look at the King. That would be something to tell them in the alehouse at Kettlethorpe. With luck he'd be the first one home with the glorious news. "You're free, men, all o' ye, and I saw the King twice when he said so!" To be sure, nobody from the northern counties had got any charters yet, but Cob didn't see the need of writing to confirm the King's word. He had almost started for home last night, but had waited to see the meeting today when Wat was going to get for them a lot more liberties. Game and forest laws were to be abolished, so everyone could hunt where he pleased; all outlaws were to be pardoned, and a lot more wonderful things that a man had never dared to dream of.

Richard had sixty men with him today, knights and lords in flashing armour, and as he rode to the east side of the field near St. Bartholomew's walls, his heralds' trumpets sounded with a flourish. Then the King, wasting no time, rode out to the centre of the field, accompanied by Mayor Walworth and a squire. The mayor beckoned to Wat, who trotted up blithely and, dismounting, bobbed his knee to Richard, before seizing the boy's hand in his great hairy workman's paw and shaking it vigorously.

On the edge of the field the watching lords stiffened at this effrontery, and the mayor tightened his grasp on his sharp three-edged cutlass.

"Brother," cried Wat, beaming up at the King, "be o' good cheer, lad, here's near forty thousand commons I've brought to ye, for we be staunch comrades, you and me."

Richard withdrew his pale small hand from the tiler's sweating clasp and said with childish earnestness, "Why won't you all go home to your own places?"

Wat drew back and swaggering a little said, "By God's skin and bones, how can we go home till we all get our charters? For sure ye see that, King, don't ye? And there's more grants we must have too!"

"What are they?" asked Richard quietly.

The tiler drew himself up and ticking each off on his stumpy fingers rehearsed all the demands that he and John Ball had been discussing for weeks.

When he had finished, Richard inclined his small, crowned head and said quickly. "You shall have all this. 'Tis granted."

Wat drew a great exulting breath, yet uneasiness penetrated his fuddled wits. The King's young face was unsmiling, the bright blue Plantagenet eyes were narrowed, and not as friendly as Wat had thought them.

"Now I command that you shall all go home," said Richard sternly.

"Sure, sure we will," said Wat, but he was dismayed. The comradeship, the equality had somehow disappeared, and he tried to recapture them. He mounted his horse, so that he should be on a level with the King. "Me throat's dry as a bone, King," he cried. "How about a spot o' wine, how say ye? Shall we share a drink to seal the pact?"

Over Richard's delicate face hot colour flowed. He gestured to his squire, who ran and dipped water from a well near the priory and bringing the dipperful back to Wat, held it out to him with sneering insolence.

"Water? Phaw!" cried the discomfited tiler, seeing that the King had drawn away from him. Wat glared at the squire, slobbered up a great mouthful and with a vulgar noise squirted it out again on to the dust.

"By God!" cried the young squire. "This greatest knave and robber in all Kent, look at the respect he shows the King's Grace!"

Wat started and his hand flew to his dagger. "What was that ye called me?"

"Knave and robber!" shouted the squire.

Wat pulled his dagger, and kicking his horse, charged - not at the King as it might seem - but past him towards the squire, who ran.

The mayor had been waiting for a chance. He spurred his horse, crying, "So, ribaud, you'd draw steel against your King!" and with his cutlass slashed sideways down at Wat, carving deep into his shoulder. The tiler staggered, plunging his dagger blindly at the mayor but it glanced off the coat of mail.

Richard's horse reared and snorted, and the boy pulled him in and away from Wat, who lay thrashing on the ground, while Walworth and the squire hacked at him with furious blows of sword and cutlass.

"What's happening?" cried voices from the rebel side. "Wat's down, what is't?" And someone else, seeing a sword flash, cried, "The King is knighting Wat!"

Cob from his tree saw differently. Soon they all saw - Wat's terrified horse galloped across the field dragging the tiler's dying, bleeding body by the stirrup.

"Christe, Christe!" cried John Ball in a voice of agony. "They've killed Wat!"

The rebel army stood gaping, paralysed. The lords across Smithfield drew back white-faced and murmuring. Richard sat his horse stiffly in the centre of the field. Then there was a ripple of movement down the rebel line. Here and there a bowman unslung his bow uncertainly and drew arrow from his quiver. No one else moved. They waited for some signal, but none came.

Richard looked at the bow-tips that twinkled in the sun, the arrows being slowly notched and pointing down the field at him. He flung his head back and dug the golden spurs of knighthood into his horse's flanks. He galloped straight towards the rebel lines and shouted, "So now I shall be your leader, as you wished me to!"

The bowstrings slackened. The rebels looked at one another, at Wat's body and up at the shining crowned youth who beckoned to them.

"Ay!" they cried. "Our little King is leader! Richard! Richard! We hold wi' you, Richard!"

A bondsman from Essex ran out from the crowd, cast himself to his knees and kissed Richard's foot. The King looked down at him and smiled.

The mayor had galloped up behind and pulling his horse near said in a low voice, "Lead them to Clerkenwell, Your Grace, and keep them there, I'll soon be up with reinforcements." He spurred his horse and headed into town.

"Follow me, good people!" Richard called. "Follow now your King!"

The peasant army gazed up at him with confiding trust. Had he not given them their freedom? Had he not shown himself their friend? Richard wheeled his horse and started off up along the Fleet towards the open farmlands, past the smoking ruins of the treasurer's priory that they had fired.

When Walworth and Sir Robert Knolles arrived later with troops and the hastily summoned citizenry, the mayor also bore with him Wat the tiler's head mounted on a pike. The rebels stared at Wat's head in terror and turning again to the King begged for mercy, which he sweetly granted, looking like the young St. George himself as he smiled at them all and accepted their homage.

The peasants' great revolt was ended.

They dispersed fast and were permitted to leave, most of them exceeding joyful, for they had their charters and the King's word that they were free; and when they understood that Wat had drawn a traitor's dagger against the King, they conceded that his death had been inevitable. Nor did those who lingered deem it unfitting when they looked back and saw that the King was knighting Mayor William Walworth.

Only a handful were heavy-hearted on that Saturday night and joined John Ball, who fled up towards the Midlands crying that this day's deeds were not as God had willed it, that the fellowship must go on, that its work was but half completed, crying, "Put not your trust in princes!" Few listened to him.

Cob left London too that night. He joined a company of homegoing northerners who had not yet their charters, but one of the King's men explained that there was no cause to wait, soon proclamation would be made throughout the land that serfdom was abolished.

So Cob and his companions started on the North road to Waltham, and as they marched they sang.

CHAPTER XXVI

The fine weather broke during that night while most of the rebels were marching home, and Sunday morning in London dawned in a sticky drizzle. The loft above the fish-shop was dank and grey when Katherine opened her eyes. She lay quietly for a time on the feather bed looking up at the rafters and wondering exactly where she was, aware at first only of hunger and weakness and that there was a sore place on the back of her head. She knew that a long time had passed since she had been fully aware, though she had a confused memory of wandering through streets with Cob o' Fenton, of lying down up here and waking sometimes to drink water; but mostly she had slept. There had been a confusion of terrible dreams: sinister faces leering like gargoyles - Jack Maudelyn, his jaw jutting out one-sided in a monstrous way, a man with a red beard who, while shattering Avalon's window-panes with a pike, counted inanely, "Oon, twa, tree - -" There had been a huge glowering black-jowled man who kept saying, "Who are ye then?" There had been sticky pools of blood with Joli-coeur's crystal splinters glittering in them.

Katherine twisted her head from side to side to throw off the clinging haze of horror, but the dream memories persisted. Now she saw Brother William's pallid doomed face as he cried out, "God in His mercy save you, Katherine!" and heard the dull squashing thud before he fell by the fireplace. She saw Blanchette in a blood-soaked grey chamber robe, smiling a secret smile, curtsying to the man who asked, "Who are ye then?"

Katherine shuddered and sat up dizzily. Her gaze focused slowly and was caught by the little wooden Calvary that stood on a bracket above a Pessoner clothes coffer. She stared at the cross, which was the size of Brother William's crucifix and of the same dark wood, she stared until it wavered and grew, until it loomed big as a window and blotted out all light behind it.

"No," she whispered, shrinking back on to the bed, "Jesu, NO!" She pushed her hands out in front of her as though she pushed against a falling weight. Her breath came ragged and fast. After a moment she pulled herself off the bed and looked down at her green gown. It was cut short below the knees and spotted with little charred holes. This is the gown I put on Thursday morning in the garde-robe when Brother William came to warn us, to warn me and Blanchette. She lifted the skirt and looked at her shift; there were scorches on it, and red burns in the flesh of her thighs.

"God have mercy on me," said Katherine aloud, "for those were no dreams." Her nails dug deep into her sweating palms, she stumbled through the door towards the stairs.

An hour ago Master Guy had brought Dame Emma back from St. Helen's priory, the danger being over; and the good-wife was standing by the hearth directing the maids, who were setting the place to rights again.

Dame Emma started as Katherine wavered down the stairs clinging to the rail. "Sweet Mother Mary!" cried Emma running to her, "Guy said ye were asleep - dear, dear." She clicked her tongue as she saw Katherine's gown, the matted tangled hair.

"Blanchette - -" said Katherine in a faint dead voice.

"I must find Blanchette. She ran away in the Savoy - what day is it now?"

" 'Tis Sunday," said Dame Emma. "But ye can't go anywhere like that, my lady. Sit down!" she cried sharply as Katherine swayed. "God love us, what's happened?"

"Happened enough, in truth," said the fishmonger. Now that the revolt was over, he was expansive with relief. "Poor lass's been lying up there mizzy-headed for days."

At his wife's shocked exclamation he said defensively, "Old Elias, he looked to her, brought her water."

Dame Emma poured forth a stream of anxious inquiry, then checked it for more practical matters. She made Katherine sit on the settle and put a pillow to her head. She fed her wine sip by sip until faint colour came back to the hollow cheeks.

Katherine did all that she was told and concentrated her mind on regaining strength fast. By noon the swimming feebleness had gone, and she was ready.

"Have you a horse that I may borrow?" she said to the hovering dame. "I must find Blanchette. God help me that so much time was lost." She spoke with a steadiness that silenced the good wife's protests.

Emma docilely commandeered her husband's gelding and had a boy saddle it. She dressed Katherine in one of Hawise's old russet-coloured kittles, but nothing would persuade her to let Katherine go unaccompanied through the streets. The revolt in London had ended but there were still carousing rebels left, and punitive bands of the King's men riding about and restoring order while they searched for Jack Strawe and one or two of the other leaders who had forfeited the right of amnesty. Master Guy had gone to bed exhausted by the last days' events, but the Dame decided that she herself would go pillion behind Katherine. She was motivated not only by kindness but by a livery curiosity.

Secluded as she had been in St. Helen's during the three days of rebellion, she had heard nothing but the wildest rumours of burnings and beheadings, and she thought them much exaggerated. She sympathised with Katherine's anxiety over her child, of course, but she thought that that worry would doubtless be soon resolved. The little lass would be found hiding in some safe nook in the Savoy.

Katherine made no objection to Dame Emma's company, nor to the presence of the armed prentice that the Dame routed out from the fishhouse. She did not speak as they rode in a grey drizzle through London streets towards Ludgate, and beyond it to the Fleet.

Dame Emma's cheerful chatter was soon hushed, her fat comely face fell into dismay and finally to round-eyed horror when they skirted the ruins of the Temple. Ahead of them on the Strand, the Savoy had always loomed in a mass of crenellated walls, of gleaming white turrets and pinnacles with fluttering pennants, and the gold spire on the chapel topping all.

Now there was nothing. No shape against the empty sky - nothing but a vast expanse of rubble behind a shell of crumbling blackened walls.

Katherine dismounted, while the prentice held the horse. She began to walk towards the ruins, Dame Emma behind her. A little group of folk stood in the fields where Katherine had lain on Thursday. They were gaping at the remains of the Savoy and muttering to each other. As the women approached, a goggle-eyed man greeted them with the familiarity of shared excitement and cried, "It do be a horrid marvel, don't it? There was a score o' rebels trapped in there, they say ye could hear 'em screaming till Friday eve. Be haunted now for sure, John o' Gaunt's Savoy'll be - I'll not go down the Strand after sundown, that I won't."

Katherine walked past the group and turned through the blocks of fallen masonry that had been the gatehouse. She clambered over the still warm rubble into what had been the Outer Ward.

"Lady Katherine," panted Dame Emma, wheezing and clattering after her, "come back - there's naught to find in there ye can see, and there's danger - that bit o' wall maught fall."

Katherine stumbled on, picking her way over charred fragments of beams and blackened stones until she stood near the falcon mew, which was now a heap of wood ashes. She looked up at the roofless segment of Thames-side wall that stood silhouetted black against the horizon, its vacant window-frames showing lancet shapes of the grey sky beyond. She saw, high above, the outline of the fireplace that had been in the Avalon Chamber, but the great rose marble mantel had fallen to the paving below and shattered.

Up there, where there was now no floor, they had stood on either side of the fireplace when Brother William was killed - she and Blanchette. On that spot the girl had spoken to the black-jowled leader before she ran from the room towards the stairs. Katherine turned to look for the Great Stairs that had led up to the Privy Suite. From the place where the stairs had been a little cloud of steamy smoke still rose, hissing faintly under the rain.

"Sweeting," said Dame Emma, laying her hand on Katherine's arm, "come away, do. There's naught here but ruin. The little lass'll have run to safety somewhere, ye'll find her."

"To safety?" repeated Katherine. "Nay - she did not think of safety when she ran from me crying that I was - was - oh

God-" she whispered. "Dame Emma, go away. Leave me alone awhile. Leave me - -" She sank to her knees by a block of burned stone and lifted her eyes up to the empty slits that had been the windows of the Avalon Chamber.

Dame Emma obeyed, so profoundly shocked that she did not heed the blackening of her neat kidskin shoes and the tearing of her fine woolsey gown. She withdrew to the mass of fallen stone at the gatehouse. Heedless even of the rain, she settled herself to wait. She looked back into the distance where she could just see Lady Katherine kneeling, and Dame Emma's eyes crinkled up like a baby's, tears spilled from them.

She shivered as the rain soaked through her mantle and dampened her plump shoulders, and she looked to see if Lady Katherine were not yet ready to leave this dreadful place. Katherine had moved, and was now with bent head walking slowly about the Outer Ward. While Dame Emma watched, she saw the tall russet-clad figure lean over and pick up something, then stand stock-still, holding it to her breast for some moments before coming towards the dame.

Katherine held out an object on her open palm. "Look," she said in the heavy far-away tone, "do you see this, Dame Emma?"

It was a small silvery half-melted mass. The dame asked uncertainly, "Is't a clasp?"

"I think so," said Katherine with stony quiet. "It might be the clasp on Blanchette's chamber robe."

The dame stifled her gasp of dismay and cried heartily, "Nay, 'tis no clasp, and if it were - it means naught."

"It lay in the ashes of the falcon mew," said Katherine. "She loved birds, perhaps she ran there." Then had Blanchette run also to the men who caroused drunkenly in the cellars? "I shall be a whore, good sir - mayhap a murdering whore like my mother." No memory was spared Katherine now of what had taken place on Thursday.

"Blanchette was touched by madness when she ran from the Avalon Chamber," said Katherine in the same toneless voice. " 'Twas not from the horror of the Grey Friar's blood upon her, but from the horror of what she had heard him say before that."

"Think not o' horrors, dear," cried Dame Emma. "Come away - this does no good."

"Ah, but I must think on it," said Katherine. "I can no longer hide from truth. Good dame, my friend, you don't know what my sin has been. I did not wholly know, but the Grey Friar did, and God in His vengeance has stricken my innocent child as the first means of my punishment."

"Nay, nay," Dame Emma expostulated, pitying the lady's haggard look, thinking that this morbidness was well explained by all the fearful happenings of the last days, but anxious only to get Katherine back to dryness and comfort.

Katherine said no more, and came with Dame Emma, un-protesting. She mounted the horse where it waited down the Strand. They rode a little way until they came to the Church of St. Clement Danes, where Katherine pulled up the gelding. "It was here that I married Hugh Swynford," she said.

"Oh ay - I'd forgot," answered the dame, puzzled. " 'Twas so long ago."

"I thought it was long ago." Katherine looped the reins on the pommel. "I know now it was but yesterday." She dismounted. "Dame Emma, I've kept you out enough in the rain. Please leave me here and go home. Nay, I've no need of protection - Jesu, do you think any danger could matter to me now?"

"But the services are over - there's no one there," protested the dame staring at the empty little church.

Katherine gave her a faint blind smile. She turned into the church porch as the dame reluctantly rode off.

Katherine knelt by the altar rail where her Nuptial Mass had been celebrated, and her eyes fixed themselves on the ruby light above the sanctuary. She knelt motionless, forcing herself back into that moment when a man had knelt with her, a man to whom she had given forced unconsidered vows - until at last she reconstructed the presence of that stocky armoured figure beside her. She felt the surliness, the roughness that had revolted her then, but she felt plainly too, as she had not then, the pathos of the clumsy groping love to which she had made no return but endurance and a pitying contempt. That love of Hugh's had burgeoned again for Blanchette - and had no chance to flower.

Katherine, inflexibly reliving the moments of her marriage, heard the rustling in the back of the church, the clink of golden spurs - she saw the priest hesitate and stop, the leap of flattered awe in his eyes. She saw herself walk down the aisle into the Duke's arms, yielding to him her mouth, her body, her allegiance; in the presence of the husband she had sworn herself to - and in the presence of God.

Here in this church had been the beginning of two long roads, one that ended in a shabby little room in Bordeaux in a death that would not have been except for her; the other road had ended in blood and fire and madness in the Avalon Chamber. Yet were they not the same road after all?

Above in the tower the bell began to toll for vespers, and Katherine arose and pushed aside a leather curtain. It was the priest himself who hauled the rope, and he stared at her in astonishment.

"Father," said Katherine, "was it you who was priest here fifteen years ago, did you once come from Lincolnshire?"

"Ay, my daughter." He was a mousy ill-fed man with anxious darting eyes, a sickly rash on his face - and in the sparse grey hair of his tonsure. "What is it?"

"I wish to make confession to you."

Father Oswald was at once flustered. He disliked the unusual, and he tried to put Katherine off by saying that it was

Sunday, that she was not of his parish, that in any case it was time for vespers.

She replied that she would wait and looked at him with so tragic an urgency that he became still more confused, until she added in a strange voice, "I am a Swynford, Father - Katherine Swynford, Sir Hugh Swynford's widow - ay, I see that means something to you." For he started and the raw scabs on his face blended with its sudden redness. He remembered well the marriage now, it was to Swynford influence that he had owed this living twenty years ago, and he remembered the moment when the great Duke and Duchess of Lancaster had appeared in the back of his church, for he had boasted of it often.

But after vespers, when he listened through the grille to the woman's low anguished voice, he was appalled. He could scarce listen to her for fear of the things she told him, dreadful secrets that he did not wish to know. Murder of Sir Hugh, her husband - said the voice - not deliberate but murder in God's sight, a Grey Friar had said so, Brother William Appleton, who had himself been murdered. Ten years of adultery with the Duke of Lancaster resultant upon this murder. And she spoke of a child, who had been driven mad, who might be dead too.

"Cease, daughter!" said the priest at last in a trembling voice. "I cannot grant you absolution, no priest could - -"

"I know," said Katherine. " 'Tis not of my own soul I'm thinking. It is of my child's. Father, surely a merciful God will accept from me some penance that will save Blanchette, wherever she be."

"Penance - ay, what penance?" stammered the little priest, wanting only to be rid of her. Now it came clearer to his panicking mind that this woman was protected by the Duke, the Duke who was all-powerful and might remove a meddlesome priest as easily as he would squash a fly. On the other hand the Duke's great palace had been burned by the rebels and he was hated by the common folk whose vengeance also might include a priest.

"True contrition, give up your evil life, make reparation, mortify your senses - -" he gabbled quickly. "Daughter, I cannot tell you what else - go to your own priest. Go - go - -" and he pulled the shutter over the grille.

Katherine walked from the church with dragging steps. She went again down Fleet Street through Ludgate. By St. Paul's Close she stopped and gazed up at the cathedral spire. After a while she entered the huge shadowed nave and walked down it to the chantry by the Lady Chapel, where two candles burned on the little altar and shone on the serene alabaster face and the long white hands that were upraised in perpetual prayer.

Katherine knelt beside the tomb and reached out to touch one corner of the sculptured robe while she spoke to the Lady Blanche. Dearest lady - if I have wronged you too, forgive, but you know that I never meant wrong towards you, and you knew what it is to love him, as I have loved him. So forgive - and tell me how to save my child who is your namesake.

The lovely face shimmered in the dimness of the chantry, it floated, high above, pure and cool as a star. A spirit. How should it give comfort to one who had denied the spirit these long years, who had been sufficient unto herself, who had lived for nothing but her own desires?

Outside the cathedral the grey light waned and the rain blew harder. Along the choir aisles a verger passed from time to time and stared curiously at the woman in simple russet gown and goodwife's coif who wept beside the Duchess of Lancaster's tomb. At last when Paul's bell began to ling for Compline, Katherine raised her head and spoke to Blanche again. Lady, I see now that it was yet one more wickedness that I should ask you to help me. And she struggled up from her cramped knees.

Then it seemed the candlelight brightened on the alabaster features, and in Katherine's head she heard the echo of a soft voice that said, "Walsingham," while she saw the Lady Blanche's living face as it had been that Christmastide at Bolingbroke, radiant with fruition for that she bore in her womb Henry, the heir of Lancaster; and Katherine remembered what Blanche had said: "Some day you must make pilgrimage to Our Lady of Walsingham, who is especially kind and merciful to mothers-"

It was Blanchette that Katherine had borne within her as she had heard those words long years ago - and surely it was for Blanchette's sake that the Lady Blanche had given Katherine some answer at last.

Katherine remained until the following Saturday with the Pessoners, and each day searched for Blanchette. Master Guy sent forth two of his prentices to cry through the streets that there would be a reward for any information respecting a little maid of fourteen with copper-toned hair, and dark grey eyes, whose Christian name was Blanche; while Katherine herself visited the convents where the child might have taken shelter.

They went all through London and over to Southwark and as far as Westminster, but no one had seen the girl. Steeling herself and telling no one of her purpose, Katherine made yet other visits - to the stews along Bankside, where the whoremongers received this pale grave woman kindly enough when they understood that it was a mother searching for a crazed girl, but nobody knew anything of Blanchette.

On the Friday evening before Katherine's departure on pilgrimage to Walsingham, the Pessoners had an unexpected visitor.

Katherine was upstairs in the chamber above the fish-shop when Dame Emma opened the door to a knock and greeted with pleased surprise a plump little man with a forked brown beard. "Why master Geoffrey, welcome! Guy," she called over her shoulder, " 'tis Master Geoffrey Chaucer come to see us!"

Geoffrey came in with appropriate greetings, accepted a mug of ale, then said in a tone of anxious wonder, "Is it really true that Lady Swynford is here?"

"That she is, poor thing," said the fishmonger, settling down with his own ale, and preparing for a pleasant chat with the Controller of the Customs, who was an important man in London and one Master Guy respected. "Ay, Lady Katherine's here, and a fearful time she had o' it last week in the revolt. Burned out o' the Savoy she was - and her lass gone daft - or," said the fishmonger shaking his head, "dead more like. We begin to think, Emma and me, the child never got out o' the Savoy, certain 'tis there's no trace o' her. And if she did, crazed as she was and not rightly well from scarlet fever, there's little chance either. Cock's bones!" - he broke off as he saw Chaucer's change of expression - "I clean forgot the little maid was your niece."

"Yes," said Geoffrey soberly, "and I'd no idea of any of this until I heard your street-crier today and questioned him."

Geoffrey had returned from a trip on the night before the revolt and had been snugly ensconced in his rooms over Aldgate when Jack Strawe and his Essex men had streamed and bellowed through the gate beneath him. And there he had stayed unmolested, reading and writing during the three days of the violence, being a peaceable man and temperamentally indifferent to political factions. But on his emergence he had been shocked by the extent of the destruction, and now more shocked to find that Katherine and Blanchette had been at the Savoy.

"Where is Lady Swynford? I'd like to see her," he said.

"Ye'll find her sadly changed." Dame Emma came bustling up with a dish of her saffron buns. "She's shaved off her hair, and fasts like an anchorite. Seems like she blames herself for the loss of her child - and for the Grey Friar's death too." The dame slammed the plate on the table and her eyes snapped. "But 'twas that cursed Jack Maudelyn really killed the Grey Friar, I got that much out of .her. The devil's own spawn is Jack, but Beelzebub'll soon get him, I hear, and a good thing too."

"Wife, wife," said Master Guy shaking his head. " 'Tis Hawise's wedded husband, ye shouldna wish him damned, no matter what." He turned to answer Chaucer's exclamation. "Jack, he run around for all the days o' the hurling time with his jaw broke and now his head's swollen up like a melon and he can't breathe but what the good monks at St. Bart's hospital stick a straw down his gullet, and they say he won't last the day out."

"I'll buy no Masses for his soul," snorted the dame." 'Twas he gave Lady Katherine the blow on her head too."

"By the rood, but these are fearful matters!" cried Geoffrey, horrified. "I dread to think what this'll mean to the Duke when he hears. Why hasn't Katherine gone north to meet him then?"

Dame Emma shook her head. "I believe that is no part of her plan. I tell ye, she's much changed. More happened to her than we know on last cursed Thursday, She goes off tomorrow on pilgrimage but where to she won't tell."

Geoffrey's concern increased at each thing he heard, and when Katherine finally came into the kitchen he could not repress an exclamation. She was dressed in a coarse rusty black gown of woven hemp such as the humblest widows wore. Her slender white feet were bare and dusty; around her neck there was a wooden rosary, and on her forehead a great smudge of ashes. Her shaven head was tightly bound with a square of the black cloth. She had beauty still, the thinness of her flesh but exposed the grace of her bones and sinews, but the great brooding eyes were circled by umber shadows and the thick black lashes seemed too heavy for the weary lids.

"Katherine, before God, what does this mean, my dear?" Geoffrey cried, kissing her on the cheek.

"Geoffrey," she said with a faint smile. "I'm glad to see you, and I know that you'll help me."

"Ay, for sure, little sister, but - -" He hesitated, at a loss for words. Religious-minded Katherine had never been. These past years with the Duke she had been a warmly vibrant creature of dancing and laughter, with an aura of hot sensual love about her; and in matters of devout observance he had deemed her of a most indifferent turn of thought. This strict penitential garb and talk of pilgrimage were surely some passing derangement, and if he could not change her mind, the Duke most certainly would.

"How can I help you?" he said as she waited, looking at him soberly.

Katherine read some of his disapproval in his face and made an effort to understand it. So dense and high a barrier reared up between this Katherine and the old one that she could barely perceive how strange she must seem to him.

"Come outside with me, Geoffrey," she said, "I must talk to you alone, and show you something."

They went out to Thames Street into a golden June evening, and Katherine turned towards the Bridge.

"Your sister has been in danger too during the revolt," said Geoffrey with a hint of reproach as he walked beside her and she did not speak. "On that Wednesday when the trouble began Philippa was at Hertford with the Duchess but they were warned and fled in time to the north. Only today I got word that after a perilous journey they were safe in Yorkshire. During this time of the 'Grande Rumoer' it seems that all belonging to him are included in this senseless unjust hatred of the Duke."

"Senseless?" said Katherine pausing and staring at the street, "Unjust? I thought so once. But now I know it's all God's punishment for our great sin."

"By Christ's holy wounds, Katherine, this is sickly talk! Your fleshly sin was not so great as that of many of the monkish fellows who accuse you of it, and yours is redeemed by a true love."

She gave him a dark sad look and walked on, guiding him up the wooden step on to London Bridge. They passed along the Bridge between the clustering overhanging houses until they came to a small tower with spikes set up around it and vultures wheeling and screaming around the many decaying heads upon the spikes.

Geoffrey's steps faltered; he tried to protest, but Katherine pulled him on until they stood below an eyeless skull on which the drying maggoty flesh hung in ribbons. A skull whose bleaching brainpan had been cleft nearly in two. A piece of parchment had been tied to the spike below this head, and Katherine, seeing Geoffrey's look of shocked incomprehension, said, "Read."

He bent and peered at the parchment, then drew back sharply, crossing himself. "Brother William!" he whispered. "Ah - may God rest his poor soul."

"Yes," said Katherine, "Brother William! He died because he came to the Savoy to protect me, and he died trying to save my soul."

Geoffrey swallowed while a prickle ran down his back. He turned from the rotting head to lean against a stone balustrade and stare down into the swirling yellow water below. A; length he said, "But Katherine, you can buy Masses for him. 'Twas not your fault - -"

She drew her breath in harshly and answered in a voice that jangled like an iron bell, "I can buy Masses for him, and for Blanchette - and I can buy Masses for my husband Hugh - who was murdered. Ay - murdered, Geoffrey. You may well whiten and shrink from me! Now do you still think the sin in which the Duke and I have lived so light a one?"

"Hush - for the love of God, Katherine," Geoffrey cried, staring at her. He glanced quickly at the people who passed by on the Bridge. "Come over here, where we'll not be overheard." He drew her to an angle made by the tower buttress, and gazed with incredulous pity into her haunted eyes. "Now tell me," he said quietly.

In the morning when Katherine set out on foot for the north road that led to Walsingham, Geoffrey too left London, bearing a letter from Katherine to the Duke - wherever he might be. An unwilling messenger was Geoffrey, none of the hundred missions he had fulfilled on King's service had been as difficult as this. He knew what Katherine had written, and he suspected that not even the destruction of the Savoy and Hertford castles nor any as yet unreported catastrophe would shock the Duke as this letter would.

Katherine's revelations and her agony of penitence had startled him into shame. He felt that he had himself been drifting into light-minded worldliness. He thought with remorse of the pagan delight, the immorality, he had written into his Troilus and Criseyde. They had read this love story at court, Richard had been charmed with it, the frivolous Duchess of York had wept over it, Katherine herself had heard portions of it, never suspecting in how many tender ways she had been Criseyde's model.

On this trip to the north, while bearing Katherine's despairing letter, conscience rode with Geoffrey. He knew very well that his writings were enjoyed by and influenced many who were bored by the moral Gower's homilies or Langland's fierce indictments, and in his light-minded treatment of carnal love he had most certainly ignored the Church's teachings. He had not pointed out that the devil's hand with the five fingers of lechery gripped a man by the loins, to throw him into the furnace of hell.

Instead of writing of penitence and punishment he had dallied with lewd levity. Was it, Geoffrey thought, because tragedy had never touched him personally before, and because his whole nature shamefully recoiled from grimness and heavy accusations?

The Troilus should be abandoned for the present and later, if he worked on it again, he would make it clear that he had written only of "Pagan's cursed old rites," and he would warn young folks to cast their visage up to God. And he felt how he had wronged Katherine in thinking of her in terms of his compliant and fickle little Criseyde.

CHAPTER XXVII

On the Saturday night on June 20 that Katherine set out on pilgrimage to Walsingham and Geoffrey left for the north, the Duke was impounded on the Scottish side of the Border outside the walls of Berwick-upon-Tweed.

While he furiously paced the rough ground beneath a hastily erected tent, two of his most devoted knights, Lord Michael de la Pole and Sir Walter Ursewyk, watched him anxiously, but neither of them dared speak. The two knights had withdrawn to a far side of the tent and, seasoned worldly-wise men though they were, they found incredible this new humiliation that had come upon their Duke.

"I can't believe it," whispered Ursewyk to de la Pole. "Denied entry back into his own country, and at this time. That even Percy should have so villainous a heart!"

"May God strike Percy dead for this!" growled the baron, clenching his gnarled fists. "Could I but lay hands on the whoreson-" Angry breaths whistled through the gaps in his teeth, his great bearded jaw knotted.

Three hours ago, the Duke and his men had marched here from Scotland heading with all possible speed for home, frantic to find out what had actually happened during the revolt, of which the most hideous rumours had reached the Duke while he treated with the Scottish envoys. The frightened messenger who bore the secret news said that he believed all England was in rebellion against the Duke, that he had heard all of his castles had fallen into the peasants' hands, that the fate of his family was uncertain. The messenger had further added that the King - hiding in the Tower - had been forced to repudiate his uncle, had denounced him as a traitor and was thought to side entirely with the peasants.

De la Pole had never so much admired his Duke as he had then. The Scottish truce negotiations had been at the most delicate concluding point when John privily heard this news of total disaster, but no trace of fear of the torturing uncertainty had shown on his handsome face. He had given the Scots no inkling that now in this hour of England's civil war had come Scotland's golden moment to strike, and overrun the weakened torn south. He had suppressed all his personal concern until the Scots had signed an advantageous three-year truce, then he turned and hurried back towards England.

And England would not receive him. At least Percy, the Lord of Northumberland, would not permit him to cross the Border. The gates of Berwick were closed. Percy's forces were massed along the Tweed and planted throughout the Cheviot Hills and he had sent word by Sir Matthew Redmayne, Warden of Berwick, that this outrage was done in obedience to the King's orders.

Here in a tent outside the city walls they had been confined these last hours while the cold rain hissed on the painted canvas, and while the Duke paced up and down like a chained bear. Suddenly he turned on his heel and confronted his friends. "Michael," he cried to de la Pole, "how many of my men are left here now?"

De la Pole gnawed his grizzled moustache and said with weary despair, "Not a hundred, my lord - not now." Many of the Duke's small band had melted away when Northumberland's position had become known. "We cannot fight, my lord," said the old campaigner bitterly. "Percy has a hundred thousand knaves to back him." And our luggage train as well, he added to himself. The Duke's main supplies had been trustingly left in Percy's charge at Bamborough before the Duke entered Scotland.

"Why do the hundred stay?" said the Duke through his teeth. "Why do you stay with me, de la Pole - and you, Ursewyk? Twill profit you nothing to cling to a ruined leader, an exile whom all the English wish to kill, whose King has turned against him. Go join Percy like the others - -"

"My lord John - -" said de la Pole softly. He rose and taking the Duke's cold hand kissed it. "We are not weather-vanes, Ursewyk and I, nor Marmion neither, not Le Scrope and many another that you well know. Nor, my lord, do I believe that the King has given this order. I think it's entirely Percy's malignant invention. You know well he's jealous of your power."

"By God - it seems he has no need to be. Betrayed by my countrymen, sacrificed by my King - and Jesu - what has been happening to my family - to Katrine-" he added beneath his breath.

John threw himself down on a folding campstool, and leaning his elbows on the rough plank table bowed his head against his clenched fists.

His two friends glanced at each other. They both racked their brains for an answer to this stunning new reversal, but it was the wise de la Pole who found it first.

"Write to the King, my lord," he said after a moment. "Ask him his true intention. 'Tis the only way to deal with this."

John lifted his head and said grimly, "And are you fool enough to think Percy'll let my herald safely through? Has Percy shown allegiance to any honour?"

"Nay, I'd not count on it," answered the baron, "But I think Percy'll not dare to stop me, my lord, for he knows the King has trust in me."

The Duke looked startled. "Ay, mayhap you're right, 'tis worth a chance. I should have thought of it; though in truth, I'm loath to have you leave me, Michael." He looked with deep affection at the older man who had been his friend and counsellor for so many years, and the baron's bluff weather-beaten face flushed with an answering emotion.

John called for pen, ink and parchment, wrote his letter. He handed it silently to de la Pole for reading. The old warrior's eyes misted as he laboriously spelled out the sense of the brief message. The Duke had written that if it were indeed his King's wish that he should remain in dishonoured exile, he would obey, albeit with a heart so heavy that he would care no more for life. Or if the King had need of him, yet had been incontinently brought by wicked counsels to fear his uncle, then would John return alone with no one but a squire to attend him. But that he most piteously prayed his King and lord, no matter the decision, to have mercy on all those in England who were dear to Lancaster.

The baron handed the letter back with an embarrassed approving grunt. Surely even that highly strung and unpredictable young King would recognise here the authentic note of much-tried loyalty, though it was doubtful that Richard would have the wisdom to see how sorely tried that loyalty was, not if his other uncle, Thomas of Buckingham, were pouring poison in his ears. But, thought de la Pole, the Duke had at his hand a measure that would right all the wrongs he had suffered, that would take him in triumph back into his own country and might Very well lead him to the throne itself, if he were so minded.

"Your Grace," said the baron, leaning near the Duke and speaking very low, "the Scots love you; they respected your kingly father but they love you for yourself. You've but to speak the word and the Earls of Carrick and Douglas would back you with an army of their Scots, you've but to lead them south through England to London itself. There's no need to grovel before your capricious nephew."

The Duke pressed his signet ring slowly into the hot wax, and raising his head, stared into his old friend's watchful eyes. "Do you suggest that, because I'm so often called traitor, I should now become one, Michael?" he said at last with a weary smile. "Ay - I see that you were jesting, or testing, and I should be angry that you dare. But I've no belly now for games, or anger either." John sighed and gazed down at his humble letter to the King. " 'Tis true the Scots are my friends - and I shall have to prove their friendship now since I'm not permitted to leave their land. But need I tell you, Michael, that I've never yet broken oath or vow? Twice I've sworn fealty to Richard, once by his father's death-bed, again at the coronation, and I'll do my best to serve him 'til I die."

"Ay - I know," said the baron gruffly. "But I wanted to hear you say it, for the devil has sent you a temptation now that would shatter any common man." His voice shook, and he reached hastily for a mug of wine and drained it. "My lord," he went on in a different tone, "my squire's a canny lad. Once we're in Yorkshire, at Pontefract or Knaresborough, I shall know more of what's really happened, and'll send him back to you with news. He can worm his way somehow through Cumberland border out of Percy's reach."

John nodded while a quiver passed over his haggard face. " 'Twill be bitter waiting," he said. He rose and walked to the tent door to push back the flap and gaze out into the black teeming night. After a moment he beckoned to the baron who came close to him. "I have a foreboding," murmured the Duke, "a heavy foreboding." He twitched his hand on the tent flap.

"Not your children!" cried the baron quickly.

"Nay, not of my children, dear as they are to me, but about someone who - God forgive me - is dearer yet."

The baron was still. He could think of no easy words of comfort, nor doubt whom the Duke meant, though it seemed to him very strange that at such a time, when his whole life might well be ruined, the Duke should waste thought for a woman, and one who was not even his Duchess. This one aspect of the Duke, Michael had never understood.

"I'll not neglect to make immediate inquiry for Lady Swynford when I get south, my lord," he said quietly.

De la Pole was successful on his mission. He found Richard, who shed impulsive tears over his favourite uncle's letter, and cried out, as the baron had suspected, that the closing of the Border had been entirely Percy's doing and without the slightest royal sanction. It was clear that Percy, infuriated that the Duke had been given a commission over him to treat of Scottish matters, had hopefully exaggerated all the rumours and guessed wrong as to the King's intent.

The fleetest royal messengers were accordingly dispatched at once to the north bearing the King's writs, and de la Pole followed after.

The Duke had spent the anxious days of waiting in Edinburgh with his Scottish hosts, who treated him with chivalrous courtesy. And the Scottish earls cheered generously when the royal messenger arrived from Richard and made it plain that all the Duke's embarrassment had been caused by Percy alone, whom they loathed. The Earl of Douglas gleefully offered the Duke eight hundred men-at-arms to aid in the immediate punishment of Percy, and the Duke accepted them as a guard of honour, but only as far as the Border.

"Once in England, my good friend,' he said to the Scottish earl, "I'll need no help in dealing with the scurvy Lord of Northumberland, now that I know my King's true intentions." The Duke's voice was at its harshest, his eyes their coldest, and the admiring Earl of Douglas applauded this knightly conduct, even while he regretted giving up so good an excuse for fighting.

The city gates of Berwick were not closed when the Duke arrived there this time, in fact he was met at them by his own retainer, the old Lord Neville of Raby with his entire Westmorland force of men, and by the trembling warden, Sir Matthew Redmayne, who had refused to admit him earlier.

The moment after the Duke had ridden through the gates into English territory, he lifted the visor on his brass battle helm and looked down at Percy's tool, the cringing, bowing warden. "Where is your master?" he cried, cutting across Sir Matthew's flow of apology.

"At B-Bamborough Castle, Your Grace," stammered the warden. "He waits to make you welcome, he prepares great feastings for you."

"How gracious of him!" said the Duke. "You, Redmayne, hasten now to Northumberland, and tell him to come here to me at once. Tell him I'll meet him across the river in the Tweed bank field. I would - speak with him."

Sir Matthew gulped and changed colour. "But - Your Grace - -"

The Duke's full mouth curled into a faint smile, while his eyes sharpened until the warden felt them like two piercing daggers. "In case," said the Duke through his smiling lips, "that message is not sufficiently clear, take him this too!" He drew his heavy leather gauntlet from his right hand and flung it on the muddy street at Sir Matthew's feet. It fell with the Duke's embroidered arms upward, the royal arms of England and of Castile.

The unhappy warden, who knew very well that he himself would be made-to suffer for bearing so unwelcome a message, stammered something and picked the gauntlet up between two fingers; gloomily mounting his horse, he rode away down the street towards the road to Bamborough.

Neville of Raby slapped his thigh and burst into an excited guffaw. "Oh, well done, my lord! Well done!" he wheezed. "God's wounds, but this'll be a rich sight. Percy has as much skill at knightly combat as a goaded bull. Twill be rare sport to see him slashing and stomping against the best jouster in the land!"

The Duke did not answer; he spurred Morel, his powerful new black stallion, and galloped through the town, across the bridge to Tweed bank field while his retinue streamed after him. Once arrived there, his squires set about erecting his tent and bringing him food while he settled down to wait for Percy to come from Bamborough near twenty miles away.

It was here that Michael de la Pole found his duke that afternoon, when there had been as yet no sign of Percy.

The baron had delayed his return trip north. Knowing that the royal messenger bore documents that would relieve the Duke's immediate crisis, de la Pole had taken time to find out the exact state of Lancaster's personal affairs.

When he saw the Lancaster banner flying over a striped red-and-blue tent near the Tweed bridge, he had ridden into camp and heard at once from the excited retainers of the Duke's challenge. The baron walked to the painted tent and announced his presence to a hovering young squire, whereupon the Duke called out in a glad voice, "Welcome, de la Pole! Come in!"

The Duke had been reading in a favourite volume of Ovid's Metamorphoses when the baron walked into his tent. He flung the book on the table crying, "By the Virgin - but I'm glad to see you, Michael, and deeply grateful too at the way you accomplished your mission!" He shook his friend's hand warmly, smiling. "The only person I would rather see is Percy, whom I await right eagerly."

"Ay - so I hear," said the baron with some dryness, sitting down on a camp stool and gazing ruefully at his duke. "You seem in uncommon good spirits for a man who has challenged another to mortal combat."

"Why not? I'm sick of restraint and battling with shadows! I long to come to grips with a worthy foe. God's blood, you know what I've endured from slander, from whispering lies - 'twould not have been so in my father's heyday. Ah, but times are sadly changed."

" 'Tis so," said the baron thoughtfully. "Times are changed. I've been seeing the evidence with my own eyes. That the commons should have dared to commit the outrages that they did - -" He shook his head.

The eager light died from John's eyes. He sighed. "Ay, tell me, Michael. Your squire when he came to me in Edinburgh much relieved my mind when he said Katherine and her children were safe at Kenilworth."

The baron gulped and John, reading his face, said sharply "What is it? Out with it!"

"I was misinformed in Yorkshire," answered the baron slowly. "Oh, your little Beauforts are safe enough at Kenilworth, for I saw them. But Lady Swynford was never there."

"Where is she then?" John's voice was strident,

"Nobody knows, my lord. I asked at court, I asked your Lancastrian children, Henry, the Ladies Philippa and Elizabeth - they are all safe and well, though you've no idea of the times of danger they passed through unscathed, thanks be to all-merciful God."

"Ay - ay - I know they're safe, this I've heard already - but my God, where then is Katherine? I left her at the Savoy, but she must have been warned as the others were - -" John stopped. "In what condition is the Savoy, Michael?" he said carefully.

The baron bowed his head and plucked with a blunt finger at a loosened thong on his greave. "There is nothing left, my lord, nothing. It was entirely gutted by the fire the rebels set."

John shut his eyes and rising walked away from the baron. " Tonnerre de dimanche est tonnerre du diable." He saw Katherine's piteous frightened face the morning that he had left her for Scotland. He felt the clinging arms that he had loosed from his neck and the touch of her beseeching lips on his. He thought of the foreboding he had had before the walls of Berwick and which had been set at rest by the baron's mistaken message. Lovedy, he thought, my Katrine - nay! He checked the rising fear.

" 'Tis ridiculous to speak as though she might have been in danger!" he shouted angrily. "There were plenty of men-at-arms to guard her, Roger Leach - the best sergeant in England, there were all the house carls, and above all there was Brother William, who would never let her, or anything belonging to me, come to harm!"

The baron flushed and plucked harder at the leather thong. They knew well enough in London what had happened to the Savoy's men-at-arms, and he himself had seen Brother William's head stuck to a spike on London bridge. "Ay, to be sure," he said quickly. "No use to worry about her. No doubt at all she got away in time. The Savoy is the only gross destruction, my lord," he said forcing a light cheerful tone. "Some damage at Hertford but easily repaired. Your people on all the other manors remained loyal."

"Except the craven steward at Pontefract," said John lifelessly. "I'll soon deal with him when I get there, he shall regret refusing to admit the Duchess."

The baron lifted his head and gave John's shut face a thoughtful look. News of the Duchess Costanza had been the one entirely certain bit of information he had been able to send to the Duke by his squire, for Michael had seen the Duchess himself in Yorkshire on the way south. The poor lady had had a terrifying time of it, fleeing first from Hertford with the rebels actually at her heels and then, upon arrival at the Duke's great stronghold of Pontefract, being denied shelter by a frightened addle-pated steward, fleeing again through the night to Knaresborough Castle.

"The Duchess awaits you most anxiously at Knaresborough, my lord," said the baron. "She is praying night and day for your safety."

"I suppose so," said the Duke in the same dull tone. "Costanza is very skilled at prayer."

"My lord," the baron ventured, "the poor Duchess was much shaken by her harrowing experience, she was actually stoned by the rebels. 'Tis a miracle that neither she nor your little Catalina was hurt."

John frowned and nodded. "Thanks be to Sant' Iago de Composela." But he spoke without feeling. Even this little girl of his he did not care for deeply, the baron thought, though he was fond of all his other children, and the bastards most of all.

They sat in silence for some minutes until the baron with his Duke's good at heart tried once again. "My lord, when you see the Duchess in a few days' time, will you not receive her warmly and comfort her, that is your much-tried wife?"

John's head jerked around. "By God, de la Pole, if this came from anyone but you-Do you suggest that I'm deficient in respect towards the Queen of Castile? Do you dare to criticise my bearing?"

"No, my lord," said the baron imperturbably. "Your bearing is always correct. I but suggest that she is perhaps more worthy of your affection than your preoccupation elsewhere has permitted you to realise."

Even the baron flinched before the look in the Duke's eyes, and nobody but the baron - and Katherine - would have so braved the ferocious Plantagenet temper, but before the Duke could answer, both men started and listened. Clearly in the distance they heard the blare of an approaching herald's trumpet.

"Percy, at last!" cried the Duke, his thunderous face clearing. He snouted, and two of his squires darted into the tent and began to accoutre their lord in his engraved-steel tilting armour, while another tested yet again the lance's point; and in the field the black stallion Morel, already in full battle harness, was led rearing and snorting towards the tent.

The baron went out and, shading his eyes against the westering sun, watched the approach of Northumberland's herald and four armoured men who escorted a figure in a helm crested with the blue Percy lion. De la Pole frowned and blinked his far-sighted eyes, as Lord Neville walked up to join him.

Both men stared at the advancing Northumbrians, until Neville said, sourly, "Has the devil shrunk Percy of a sudden? Yon figure seems small indeed to me."

"Ay," answered the baron, "so I am thinking."

They turned and silently mounted their waiting chargers when the Duke came out of the tent. Neville and de la Pole, though not so heavily armoured as their leader, yet had needed help from their squires, but John still kept the lean muscular strength of his youth and he mounted into the gold and velvet saddle unassisted. He spurred Morel, who bounded forward, then checked him to a decorous gait and rode down the field towards the new-comers. His barons and knights followed.

"So, Percy," cried the Duke as he rode up to the stiff short figure in the blue lion jupon, "come forth to do battle for the insults you've offered me!" He struck sharply once with the side of his lance against the other's armplate. Whereupon the Percy lifted his visor and disclosed the small red truculent face, not of his sire, the Earl of Northumberland, but of little Hotspur.

"By God and Saint John!" cried the Duke staring. "What does this mean, lad? Where's your father?"

The boy had hot yellowish eyes like a boar's, and they shifted uncomfortably. "My father cannot accept your challenge, my Lord Duke," he said sullenly. "A painful malady has struck his right shoulder, he cannot move it, he can hold neither sword nor lance."

There was an instant's silence while the Duke's men craned to hear, then they let out a roar of derision. "It seems," said Lord Neville loudly in his grating voice, "that the Earl of Northumberland is lily-livered; this, at least, I had not guessed!"

"No," screamed Hotspur. " 'Tis not true!"

John sat still in his saddle gazing at the flushed boy. "D'you mean that you've brought the earl's full apology for his dishonourable treatment of my person?"

"No!" cried Hotspur again. "He makes no apology. He will meet you next month before the King to see then who is in the right. I've come to take up the challenge now, I shall fight you in his stead!"

"God's wounds," whispered the Duke. Discouragement dragged him down like a millstone tied to his feet. "I cannot do battle with an undergrown boy of sixteen," he said wearily, pulling on Morel's bridle and turning the horse.

De la Pole glanced at his Duke with sharp sympathy. It must be writ in his stars, thought the baron, naught else could explain the checks and bitter disappointments that constantly assailed poor Lancaster.

But young Percy would not leave it so. He furiously spurred his horse and galloped up the Duke. "But I will fight, I will!" he shouted. "I demand my right to do battle in my father's stead. 'Tis the law of chivalry."

"And what do Percys know of chivalry, young cockerel?" said Lord Neville with a contemptuous laugh.

"Ay, but he has the right," said the Duke slowly, reining in his horse. He shrugged beneath his steel epaulettes. "Be it so. To your end of the field, Percy - -"

Lancaster and Northumberland heralds ran out to the open space and blowing on their trumpets announced the contest. The Duke waited listlessly until he saw the white batons raised and dropped, heard the heralds call "Laissez-aller - -!"

With lances braced and horizontal the two horses pounded down the field from opposite directions. As they crossed each other the Duke negligently parried the boy's wild thrust and on this first course forbore to take advantage of Hotspur's unguarded left flank. But on the second course he shattered the boy's spear and, though his own lance point was broken off by the shock, he swerved Morel and, coolly slanting the butt of his lance into the boy's armpit-beneath the breastplate, lifted him from the saddle and deposited him on the ground.

A wild cheer went up from the Duke's men, but John raised his visor and shook his head frowning. "Have done!" he cried sternly. "There's naught to cheer in this shameful contest."

He dismounted and walked over to Hotspur, whose squire was unbuckling his helmet. When it was off, the boyish face was seen to be wet with angry tears.

"You acquitted yourself bravely, young Percy," said the Duke. "You may tell your father so. Now get back to him, and tell him too that since he skulks and runs from me here I shall certainly confront him later in the presence of the King - unless of course some apt malady of limb should prevent the earl from travelling!"

Hotspur screamed out a trembling defiance, but John turned on his heel and did not listen. He strode back to his tent, while Percy's disgruntled men rode silently away beside their little chieftain.

The Duke and his meinie started south that night and on the sixteenth of July they reached Newcastle-upon-Tyne. A fair prosperous town was Newcastle, albeit a smoky one, for folk here burned the coals they laboriously dug from the surrounding hillsides. The Duke rode at the head of his men to the old Norman Castle that overlooked the Tyne. He entered by the Black Gate and pausing in his chamber in the keep only long enough to remove his armour and cleanse himself, walked down the twisting stone stairs to the beautiful little chapel.

Here he lit a candle to the Virgin and knelt down to pray, hoping as he had each day since Berwick to lift thereby the oppression in his heart. He would whisper the Ave over and over like an incantation and often found comfort in it, but the painted wooden features of this Virgin had in them something of Katherine in the demure lowered lids, the faintly cleft chin, the high rounded forehead, and he turned away from Her in sharp pain.

There was no image of St. Catherine in this chapel so he could not properly renew the vow he had already made, but he repeated it at the end of his prayers. "If I find my Katrine safe and unharmed, I vow to build a chapel to Saint Catherine on any place in my lands that the Blessed Saint shall designate." He kissed the crucifix on his beads and rose.

He went restlessly upstairs to the Hall, where his knights had gathered, some drinking, some dicing, while de la Pole and Neville were engaged in an acrimonious game of chess. The Hall was fetid and smoky from the old-fashioned fire over which the varlets were roasting a bullock; John, glancing in, changed his mind and continued up the stairs to the leaded roof of the keep. The watch, a burly man-at-arms with pike and longbow, was circling it slowly, but John dismissed him. He wanted to be alone.

He leaned his elbows on the parapet in one of the square towers, breathed deeply of the fresh summer air and let his disconsolate gaze wander from the golden furze-covered moors to the north, to the shipping below in the harbour, and on down the pewter-coloured ribbon of the Tyne as it wound into distance towards the sea. He turned slowly to the west where he could see the straight grassy ditch, the mounds and scattered stones of the Roman wall, and he thought of the ages that had streamed by since it was built, and wondered with drear melancholy what had become of the men who built it. Where were their plans and hopes now, what difference had their joys or sufferings made to England? He thought of those of his own blood who had gazed at this ancient wall, his father - all the Plantagenets, and far back to the days of King Arthur himself. In Arthur's reign there had been love-longing and wanhope too and there had been evil to be conquered. But the old tales told of glorious battle against these evils, for there were dragons and giants to be fought in those days, not creeping little jealousies and darting slanders that scurried like spiders into cover when one tried to confront them. He thought with great bitterness of the humiliating, ludicrous outcome of his challenge to Percy, and there rose in him a loathing of Fate that constantly blocked him and denied his deepest wishes.

The sun turned red as blood above the Roman wall and sank down towards the wild desolate moors behind, leaving a sudden chill that struck through John. He turned away and looked down into the castle ward, where his eye was caught by something familiar in a figure that was mounting the long flight of outstairs into the keep beneath. He leaned over the parapet and stared again, then shouted in amazement, "Ho there! You in the brown hood and cloak, look up!"

The man paused on a step, stared around to find the voice until finally, raising his head, he saw the Duke and waved. It was indeed Geoffrey Chaucer, and John's heart beat faster. "Come up here to me!" he called. Geoffrey nodded and disappeared into the keep, and presently came out on to the tiles through a tower door.

The Duke's hand trembled as he held it out: Geoffrey kissed it while he bent his knee, saying with a faint smile, "Your Grace, I've been a long time a-finding you."

"Indeed?" said John, afraid now to ask the question that beat against his lips.

"Ay, my lord. A fortnight ago when you were - ah - detained in Scotland I tried to pass into Northumberland, but was turned back. I waited at Knaresborough until word came that you were at last on your way south."

"Knaresborough," John repeated, and could not hide his bitter disappointment. "To be sure," he said dully. "Your wife is there, I suppose, in the Duchess' train."

"She is, and I've spent some time with Philippa, but 'twas not for that I came north. My lord," said Geoffrey slowly, touching the pouch that hung from his waist, "I bring you a letter from Lady Katherine."

The Duke's indrawn breath was sharp as tearing silk. He grabbed Geoffrey by the shoulders. "She's well then? And unharmed?"

Geoffrey nodded, but looked away because he could not bear the leap of joy and sudden glistening in the blue eyes.

"Thank God!" the Duke whispered. "Thank God! Thank God and the Blessed Saint Catherine!" He seized Geoffrey's hand, "Oh, Chaucer, you shall be well rewarded for this news. Name what you like. Never did I know how dear she was to me till these last days. In fear and suffering I've longed for her - longed-" He broke off. "And where is she now?"

"I don't know, my lord," said Geoffrey, looking down at the leaded tiles. He unbuckled his pouch and drew out a folded parchment. "You would better be alone when you read this," he said quickly. "I'll wait in the little wall chamber in case you should want me."

The happy flush died on the Duke's lean cheeks as Geoffrey disappeared into the tower. He broke the seal on Katherine's letter and read it by the light of the dying sun.

Geoffrey waited in the wall chamber until Newcastle's bells rang out for curfew and the sky through the arrow-slit window showed amethyst. He heard his name called at last and went back up to the tiles.

In the evening light the Duke's face now loomed white as ashes, his voice was thick and halting as he said, "Do you know what's in this letter?"

"Ay, my lord. But no one else does, nor ever shall."

"She cannot mean to give me up like this. She cannot! I don't believe it. She says farewell - that we must never meet again. This coldness, these incredible commands! She who was so warm and soft, who has lain so often in my arms, who has borne my children!" The hollow voice faltered, after a moment went on with a sharper edge. "She speaks of Blanchette. You'd think she had no child but Blanchette!"

"'Tis I think, my lord," Geoffrey ventured, "because of the terror she feels for the little maid, who may be dead. She has not forgot her other children, but they are in no need."

"I am in need," cried the Duke. "She thinks not of that!"

Geoffrey, profoundly disliking this whole coil and his unwilling part in it, yet forced himself to go on. "It is because she loves you that she must give you up. Brother William told her this before he was killed. She believes it. And I, my lord, have come to believe it too. The load of sin, and now the knowledge of murder done would crush you both in the end."

John turned away from Geoffrey and looked out over the parapet into the night of shadows. So it was Swynford's murder that the martyred Grey Friar had meant in all those strange allusions through the years. Nirac, poor little rat - a monstrous sneaking crime in truth - poison - the coward weapon. Sickening. And yet - so long ago, and Nirac had been shriven of his crime by the Grey Friar. The little Gascon's soul was not imperilled. It was Katherine's and his souls that were in danger - so Katherine believed.

"By God," he said roughly, crumpling up her letter, "if fate wills it that we are to be damned, then we shall be damned. I'll not give Katherine up. Where is she, Chaucer?"

"Gone on pilgrimage, my lord."

"Ay - but to where?"

"I don't know, upon my honour. She would not tell. She doesn't wish you to find her."

"Then God help me, she may have set out for Rome - for Jerusalem even!"

Geoffrey was silent. He thought it possible that Katherine had set forth on the longest and harshest pilgrimage of all. He cleared his throat unhappily, for he had not yet discharged all of Katherine's anguished message. "Your Grace - one more thing she bade me tell you. It is not in the letter because she could not bring herself to write it." He stopped, remembering how her control had broken down at last after she had given him the letter to the Duke, how she had covered her face while the tears coursed down between her fingers.

"What is that one more thing?" said the Duke's voice from the shadows.

"She prays you, my lord - by the love you have borne her - to - to ask the Duchess to forgive her. Yes - I know, my lord," said Chaucer quickly as he heard a sharp exclamation, "but this is what she said. Matters have gone badly with you for a long time, and that is the earthly punishment for murder and adultery. The murder cannot be undone but the adultery must cease. She says that you both have wronged the Duchess - who she thinks loves you in her fashion, as truly as Hugh Swynford was wronged who loved Katherine too - as best he could."

"Blessed Jesu! Now I know you lie! Before God, Chaucer, 'tis not for naught you are a spinner of tales!"

Geoffrey stepped back quickly, the Duke had turned on him as though he would strike.

"I've not invented her letter, my lord," Geoffrey cried.

"Her letter!" The Duke's voice shook with fury, he crushed the parchment between his hands and flung the ball violently away from him over the parapet. "That I should live to see Katherine treat me like this! Dismiss me like a thieving scullion, with rantings about morality! She dares send you to prate of love that Swynford bore her! By God, 'tis late times to think of that. What has she been doing there in the south when I thought her tending to her child? She found some pretty youth like Robin Beyvill maybe to while the time away. 'Tis because of him she can turn me off so lightly!"

"My lord, my lord," whispered Chaucer, retreating farther along the roof while his palms began to sweat. "You do her terrible wrong."

"Wrong, wrong!" shouted the Duke. "All this babbling of wrong. She vowed she'd never leave me - she has broke it - as did Isolda - lies! She cozened me all these years with lies. It's plain now to see she never loved me. Ah," he said with a laugh like the crackle of burning briars, "Katherine Swynford has no need to hide from me, no need at all, for I shall never forgive this, nor try to find her."

The next morning the Duke and his retinue left Newcastle. Chaucer rode at the end of the line and kept far out of the Duke's way, knowing that it would be long, if ever, before he was pardoned for bringing Katherine's message. Geoffrey bore no ill will. It was natural that a man like Lancaster should convert the blow to his love and pride into rage, but Geoffrey had not expected so dreadful a rage and he pondered on what could lie behind it, and at the reference to Isolda that the Duke had let fall. There was no woman of that name had ever been mentioned in regard to the Duke whose fidelity, indeed, to Katherine had been remarkable. There was no doubt that he deeply loved her, the very violence of his actions proved it. And what a miserable quick-march these two ill-starred lovers had plunged into.

When they had reached central Yorkshire and the Duke's own lands, at last they approached Knaresborough, and saw the castle high on its crag above the river Nidd. While they wound through the limestone gorge with its honeycomb of caves, towards the ford, Chaucer looked up and saw a procession of eight women, amongst whom he recognised the Duchess and his Philippa, slowly wending down the twisting cliffside from the castle. The Duchess was dressed in garnet satin embroidered with flashing gold, and she wore her jewelled coronet above a flowing gold veil.

The Duke and his retinue forded the river and when they all reached the grassy bank, the Duchess came walking slowly forward, a tentative beseeching look in her dark eyes and a faint flush on her ivory face. She waited trembling while the Duke dismounted, but as he came towards her the Duchess threw herself headlong on the grass and began to sob convulsively.

The Duke leaned over and lifted her up, and she seized his hands and covered them with kisses. "Mi Corazon - -" she cried and went on in gasping Spanish, "I have been so frightened, and I thought never to see you again!"

A peculiar shuttered expression dimmed the Duke's eyes, a muscle by his mouth quivered. He bent and kissed her on the forehead. "Well, now we are together and all will be well," he answered in Spanish. "Where is our little Catalina?"

"At the castle. I kept her back, my lord. Sometimes you do not wish to see her."

The Duke bent his head, beneath his richly embroidered cote his broad shoulders sagged. "I am eager to see her."

"We may stay here a few days, may we not?" she said timidly. "But indeed where can I go now? Hertford is destroyed - ah, Sant' Iago - it was terrible - you do not know how frightened we were."

"Pobrecita," said the Duke. "Poor Costanza - -" He pulled her hand through his arm and they walked off together up the path to the castle.

Chaucer too dismounted and went over to his own wife. "God's greeting, Pica," he said, pinching Philippa on the cheek. "Here I am again. I vow we ne'er saw so much of each other in the south."'

Philippa nodded and gave him a brief preoccupied smile. "Did you give His Grace Katherine's stupid letter?" she asked quickly. Philippa did not of course know what was in the letter except that her sister had gone off on pilgrimage and would tell nobody where.

"Ay. And he was much angered."

"Small wonder," said Philippa twitching. "She's no more sense than a sheep. I've always said it. She'll lose him with this monstrous behaviour and then where will we all be! What if she was frightened at the Savoy! Now that one" - she jerked her head towards the disappearing figure of the Duchess - "she was frightened too, but it's made her softer, gentler. She's taken pains to please him again. Bathes each morning, has us rub her with scented oils, and put on silk shifts instead of that hair shirt she used to wear. I tell you, Geoffrey, since the Castilian king who murdered her father is dead, she's been changing. She thinks more about the Duke. Katherine had better not play fast and loose or she'll lose out."

"Yes, my Pica, she may," said Geoffrey in the quiet edged tone that always daunted her. "I think you must make up your mind to it. We are all out of favour with the Duke."

CHAPTER XXVIII

On the twenty-third of June, while the Duke was yet in Scotland, Katherine was housed in the pilgrim hostel at Waltham Abbey where she had limped in, sore-footed and deadly tired, two days ago. It was not for the luxury of rest that Katherine lingered these two days, but because Waltham was part of her penance. She spent hours in the abbey praying for the repose of Hugh's soul and asking his forgiveness, while she knelt on the exact spot where his sword had clattered down before the black cross. She went to the inn, The Pelican, where she had passed her wedding night, and forced herself to relive the degradation and the hatred she had felt. Worse than hatred, Katherine thought now - a smouldering secret contempt that had shrivelled in time Hugh's self-respect, and his manhood.

Remorse, guilt and punishment - Katherine steeped herself in these by day, and at night her dreams were of spurting blood.

There were no other pilgrims at the hostel; though June was usually prime month for journeying to shrines throughout the country, the revolt and its consequent dangers had quenched most folks' wish for the open road.

Instead, the hostel housed several of the homeward-bound peasants. In the dingy low-raftered hall where all travellers might buy ale and brown bread for a penny a day, Katherine heard much anxious talk.

A penitential pilgrim in widow's weeds was a common sight along the various Palmers' Ways and drew only respectfully indifferent glances, while she was plunged so deep into her own misery that she noticed nothing. But when after Mass she broke her fast on the Sunday morning when she intended to set forth again towards Walsingham, the loud troubled voices of the men around the trestle tables aroused her attention. She heard them repeatedly mentioning the King. There had been a proclamation. The King was coming here today, to Waltham.

What was he coming for? cried a blacksmith. Why, to hand out the rest of the charters of freedom, of course, answered someone against a chorus of uneasy assent. It was known that in London the King's men had punished some of the rebels: Jack Strawe had been caught, tortured and beheaded - still, that was natural, for they said he had confessed to treason. Jack Strawe's end could not affect the freedom from bondage and general pardon that the King had granted at Mile End.

"Nay," cried the blacksmith in hearty reassurance, "by this Holy Cross of Waltham here, we must ne'er forget how true a friend our little King did prove himself. He gave us his royal word: 'tis as good as Holy God's."

Katherine listened for some time without attending. She had no interest in the rebels now, though she had put to them one question on her arrival here. Had any of them taken part in the burning of the Savoy? They all said "Nay" except one Suffolk lad who proudly said that he had, and a rare fine sight it had been, too.

"Did you see anything of a little maid with close-cropped hair, a lass of fourteen in a grey chamber robe?" Katherine asked, as she had asked this so many times already.

But the Suffolk lad said "Nay" again, though there was such a mort of people running about he wouldn't know one from t'other. The maid she asked about would be one of the house carls, no doubt? 'Twas certain they had all fled long before the place was fired.

Katherine had thanked him with weary patience.

Suddenly now, at mention of the King's name, her detachment was pierced by a forlorn hope. Might it be that Richard had heard something of Blanchette? True, he had seen the girl but once, at Leicester Castle, yet there was a chance.

When the band of peasants surged from the hostel towards an open heath in Waltham forest, Katherine followed, as did a crowd of villagers. The open heath was shaded by the close-pressing greenwood with its lofty hornbeams and beeches, and the people had need of shade from the broiling sun, for they waited long, before they heard the royal trumpets and the pound of galloping hooves approaching down the forest road.

But when Richard came at last, there were no more doubts or hopeful self-deceptions as to his purpose. He galloped up like an avenging whirlwind amongst an army of four thousand soldiers. As he saw the group of peasants waiting, he shouted exultantly to his Uncle Thomas, the Earl of Buckingham, "Here's another foul nest of traitors!" And to his men cried, "Seize them! Seize them!"

Men-at-arms swarmed over the heath with spears and battle-axes. The bewildered peasants could not resist. The armoured men - who had already been at this work since dawn - grabbed them, bound their ankles with leather thongs and flung them to their knees on the trampled grass near the King.

The village women and Katherine were not harmed, though they were shoved roughly out of the way, but Katherine, as dumbfounded as the helpless rebels, presently pushed through the milling mass of soldiers, intent on speaking somehow to Richard, when she saw amongst the captives who had been caught earlier that day, the matted flaxen hair and meagre body of Cob o' Fenton. Cob's wrists were tied and he had a rope around his waist that was fastened to some soldier's saddle. He had been dragged behind the horse for several miles, sometimes on his feet, more often on the ground. His jerkin and leather trunks had been torn off him, his dirty little body, bruised and bleeding, was quite naked.

"Cob!" Katherine cried, trying to get closer to him, but one of the armoured men pushed her back and told her to shut up, adding out of deference to her pilgrim habit, "Can't ye see the King is speaking?"

She did not hear what the King had said, but he had pushed his gilded visor up and she could see a cruel half-smile on his girlish pink and white face, and she heard what one of the new captives, the blacksmith, called out from the ground. "But sire, ye gave us all our freedom at Mile End! Don't ye remember? Ye promised us we'd all be free. See, here's the charter they gave me!" The man waved a ragged piece of parchment towards Richard, who began to laugh and turning, said something to his Uncle Thomas, who also laughed. Richard backed his horse around, then, standing high in the stirrups, shrilled out, "What fools you be - what dolts - you traitorous ribauds be!" His high voice crowed with triumph. "You thought to frighten your King! You had it all your way for a time, did you not? That time is past!"

Richard spurred his horse and cantered near the bound blacksmith, he leaned over and plucked the charter from the blacksmith's hand. Richard drew his jewelled dagger and sliced through the parchment until he could tear it to a dozen fragments. He flung the fragments over his shoulder. "Now you see what use I make of your charter!" he cried. He touched his horse's flank again and rode up and down along the line of kneeling men. "Serfs you are, and serfs you shall remain till doomsday! Is that through your thick skulls now?" He tossed his head and shouted, "Some of you'll return to your own manors and whatever punishment your lords wish to mete out to you. But those of you who've dared defy me openly shall be brought to trial today - and dealt with - ah - fittingly, that I promise."

The King's words rang out into a deathly quiet, but when he finished speaking there came from the bondsmen a long sobbing gasp. Katherine saw Cob put his hands up against his face and slump forward on the rope that held him.

Her heart pounded in her throat, sweat prickled her scalp. She darted around the man-at-arms, who had forgotten her, and ran out into the open space by the King.

"Your Grace!" she cried. "Sire! A boon!"

Richard looked down in amazement at this poorly clad widow with the pilgrim scrip and staff.

"What is it, dame?" His squires drew near fingering their sword hilts.

"Your Grace," said Katherine, "I want that serf that you've got tied to yon rope." She pointed to Cob. "He's mine!"

"By Saint Jude, the woman's crazed," said Buckingham contemptuously, beckoning to his page for wine. "Get rid of her, Richard. 'Tis hot here, and we've much to do."

"You don't know me - Your Grace?" said Katherine very low, looking steadily up at the King. "Yet last Christmastide we shared wassail at Leicester Castle." She saw blank impatience in Richard's eyes. She opened her scrip, fumbled quickly inside and brought out the Duke's sapphire signet ring. "You remember this, my lord?" She held it up so that only he could see the carved Lancastrian crest.

Richard stared at the ring, then into her wide grey eyes. "Christi!" he cried, pleased as a child that has found answer to a riddle. " 'Tis Lady Swy - -"

"Your Grace, for the love of God, don't name me!" she whispered frantically, "No one must know - it is for penance."

Richard's capricious fancy was caught. He would have questioned her except that it was forbidden to infringe upon a penitential vow and brought ill luck to the offender, but he leaned down close from the saddle and whispered, "You want that naked churl? Is he truly yours, lady?"

"Ay," Katherine said, "from Kettlethorpe, a fugitive. I would deal with him myself."

"I would have drawn and quartered him, and hope you do," said Richard, his eyes sparkling. "When my men caught him back there in the forest, he screamed out all manner of treason. But you shall have him."

"Grand merci - most Gracious Majesty," whispered Katherine. "Wait my lord, I pray you. I have a daughter, Blanchette, of your own age. Do you remember her at Leicester?"

"I think so," answered Richard, puzzled and losing interest. "She was small with ruddy curls."

"Have you seen aught of her since then?"

"Nay, lady, I have not - how odd a question."

"Forgive me." She curtsied and kissed the boy's gold gauntlet. "Christ's blessings on your generosity, sire."

Richard smiled graciously.

There were murmurs of astonishment and one of sharp protest from Buckingham as the King ordered that the end of Cob's rope be untied from the saddle and given to the pilgrim widow, but Richard, who loved a secret, did not explain except to say that it was part of a penitential vow. Buckingham, who had as little possible to do with his brother of Lancaster, had never seen Katherine close, and, suspected nothing.

No one impeded her as she led her stumbling dazed serf away from the heath, and they were at once forgotten when Richard and his army returned to the congenial punishment of the captured rebels.

She led. Cob out of sight and off the road into the forest, until she saw a rainwater pool in a glade of holly bush and beeches. The pool was fringed by a mossy bank, dappled with golden light that filtered through the rich leaves of a huge sheltering beech. Katherine gently tugged at the now resistant Cob's rope, and pointing to the soft turf, said, "Rest here, Cob."

His pale-lashed eyes stared at her with numb hatred. But he collapsed on the edge of the pool and plunged his swollen purplish-black hands in the water. The leather thong that bound his wrists had bit so deep that the flesh was puffed in ridges. He rested his elbows on the turf and bending his face to the pool lapped up water avidly while the knobs of his little backbone stuck out like walnuts beneath his dirt-caked bleeding skin.

Katherine unclasped her scrip again. In it she carried all that she possessed, the few jewels she had seized that Thursday in the Savoy, the change that remained from the gold nobles, a comb, a coarse towel, a cup and a bone-handled knife.

She took out the knife and kneeling by Cob said, "Keep your arms steady - Sainte Marie, I pray this knife is sharp enough."

Cob jumped back, staring in terror at the knife. He tried to get up on his quivering legs, but the dangling end of his waist rope caught in a holly bush and yanked him down.

"Oh Cob, Cob - poor wight," said Katherine. "How can you think I'd harm you? I want to cut that thong for you."

He sucked at his lips, darting at the surrounding forest glances of beastlike wariness; his hands drew up tight against his scrawny chest.

"Look at me, Cob," said Katherine. His eyes shifted slowly and raised to her grave sorrowful face. She smiled at him, took his bound hands in hers and pulled them away from his chest. He held himself quiet, ready to spring. Katherine slid the knife carefully between his jammed arms and working it upwards sawed on the thong. It frayed at last, and she threw it on the turf. "When you can use your hands again," she said, "you must help me get that rope off you too."

Cob swallowed, staring at the cut thong. Then he winced, his teeth began to chatter from the pain that throbbed through his freed hands. "What d'ye mean to do wi' me?" he gasped.

"I'll get away from ye again, I'll - -" He clamped his lips on the threats he had nearly uttered. For sure, she'd not be so calm did she not have men hidden behind the beeches over there, or the King's men might have followed. That was it. What else had she been whispering to the King? God's blood, the clodpolls they'd all been to have believed the King's word. serfs you are and serfs you shall remain. 'Twas clear enough now. Swynford serf. Her serf. Just as it had always been. Branded once for running away, and this time there'd be an end to it - a length of rope from the gibbet on Kettlethorpe green, like Sim the reeve. Unless - Cob glanced at the knife Katherine had left lying on the bank by a clump of purple bell flowers, while she soaked her towel in the pool.

He tried to flex his throbbing fingers but they were still useless.

Katherine came to him with the wet towel and began to cleanse the blood and dirt off his little trunk that was sharp-breasted and bony as the carcass of a squab. Cob hunched himself tight. She cleaned as best she could the raw abrasions, the stone-cuts on the taut skin and said at last, "Oh Cob, Cob, have you had naught to eat? We must get you food at Waltham."

"Eat!" he cried, twisting out from under her hands. "Ay, I've had crusts from the monks and fern fronds i' the forest, and thought me well fed, whilst I still had me freedom!"

She sank back on the turf looking at the matted sweat-darkened tow hair, the naked little body, the F brand on the cheek next to the sullen slufting eyes. Cob chafed his numb hands desperately.

"You are free, Cob o' Fenton," said Katherine in a low clear voice. "A freeman from this moment."

Cob's muscles jerked. His hands ceased moving. He peered into her face, then quickly down the shadowy glades between the beeches. In the silence, wood doves cooed, and crackling in a thicket told of a red deer that stared at them, and scampered off as Cob cried, "Ye think to diddle me, lady, wi' yet another trick! 'Tis sport for ye belike. Ay - shout ye now for King's men, sure they be near - string me up at once, and ha' done with it. See, here's the noose - all ready." He pounded his fists on the rope about his waist.

"Small wonder that you'll not believe me," said Katherine sadly. "Yet, Cob, could you think me so ungrateful for what you did that day the Savoy burned that I would so cruelly fool you? I've longed to thank you, was glad you had your freedom from the King. Since it seems that you have not, I give it to you, Cob."

"And if 'twere true," he cried in a shaking voice, "who'd believe it? Think ye I could go home - to Kettlethorpe, in peace, to your steward - d'ye know what he'd do to me?"

"Yes," said Katherine sighing and rising, "I know. You shall have a writ of manumission under my seal, and this the steward will obey."

"Another charter-" Cob whispered. "And if it prove false as the King's - -"

" 'Twill not prove false, Cob. I swear it on the cross." She kissed the small rough crucifix that hung from her hempen girdle.

It was many hours before Cob believed, though he came with her back to Waltham under cover of her cloak; though she bought him food, ale and a long woollen smock to cover his nakedness. She inquired from the hostelkeeper where she might find some man of law, and was directed to a learned clerk who lived by the bridge on the river Lea.

The clerk was at home, standing at his desk and copying out a land grant when Katherine and Cob were ushered in. When the clerk understood that the widow had money for a fee, he pulled out a fresh parchment from a pile and shoved a Bible towards Katherine. "Do you kiss the Book and truly swear that this serf is your property? Yours to dispose of as you will?"

"I do," said Katherine while Cob shrank into the shadow behind her.

"And what disposition would you make of him?"

"I wish to free him."

The clerk lifted his scraggy eyebrows. "Is't one of the rebels? Has he been intimidating you? There's no need to fear them now the King is enforcing law and order."

"I know," said Katherine. "I wish to free him."

"For what reason? It must go on the deed of enfranchisement."

"For the brave and loyal service he has rendered me, beyond his bondage duty," she said softly.

The clerk shrugged and scribbled rapidly, asking at the proper place for names. Katherine gave hers with reluctance, but the clerk had never heard of her. He sanded the writing, watched Katherine sign her name, heated red wax and waited. She pressed the sapphire signet ring into the seal, praying that he would not recognise the Lancaster crest, though this crest made it certain that her steward would honour the writ.

But the clerk was incurious, and busy. He stamped his own notary seal beside hers, demanded his fee and thrust the parchment out to Cob, saying briskly, in the traditional phrase, "By the grace of God and your manor lord - serf, native, villein, bondsman, this you are no more. Hail, freeman of England!" The clerk pulled over the land grant and began to write on it again.

Cob, making a hoarse sound in his throat, stood rooted to the floor. Katherine put her arm around his shoulders and led him out of the house. "Here, here," she said smiling, "Cob - you dolt, you've dropped your writ of freedom, sure that's no way to treat it!" She picked it up and starting back cried, "Ah no - don't-" for the little man had thrown himself on the road and was kissing her muddy bare feet.

"My lady, my lady," he sobbed, "I'll serve ye till I die, I'll never leave ye. And to think I meant to kill ye, and I nearly robbed ye back there in London - and 'tis from that very money that ye paid the clerk for my freedom. Oh my lady - what can I do for ye-" He raised his stained wet face, looking up at her with worship.

"Pray for me, Cob," said Katherine, " 'Tis all that you can do for me."

Cob and Katherine parted that afternoon at the fork where the North road branched off the Palmers' Way to Walsingham. Cob begged to go with her but she would not let him: the penance must be suffered alone, and, too, she saw how much Cob longed for home. He spoke constantly of Kettlethorpe, of his ox and his little cot, and of a lass in Newton, a freeman's daughter that now he might wed. There was no happier man in England that day than Cob in his new smock and shoes and scarlet hood, with the fine hunting knife Katherine had given him, pennies in his pocket for the journey, and his writ of manumission sewed to his smock against his skin.

His joy could not help but lighten Katherine's heavy heart for a time, but when they had parted and she took up her pilgrimage again, night fell on her spirit as inexorably as it fell on the darkening ridges of the Essex hills. She had listened to Cob's talk of Kettlethorpe with the old shrinking distaste, a revulsion that had spread to include all the scenes of her past life. The taint of corruption had spoiled every memory from the day that she left Sheppey's convent and set out for Windsor. Self-loathing filled her, of the fleshly beauty she had fostered, of the sinful thoughts that she had refused to recognise. The past was evil, the future blank and menacing.

She had no goal but Walsingham and the miracle, when the All-Merciful Lady there would tell her how to find Blanchette, how to make reparation.

As she limped toward the hospice where she would spend the night, fresh pain tormented her. It was Midsummer Eve, the Vigil of Saint John, and through the dusk on every hill the boon fires flared against the sky as they had done on this night since the time when England was young, to placate the fairy folk and elves, in honour too perhaps of some fearsome Druid sun god who had once exacted sacrifice.

Last year this night she had been at the Savoy with John.

From the Avalon Tower they had watched together the boon fires twinkling around London, when a wild enchanted mood had come to them, born of the magic of the rose-scented June dusk and of the wine they had drunk in celebration of this eve of John's own saint's day. They had called for horses and galloped off into the country, until they came suddenly upon a hidden patch of greensward beside a brook, and a grove of silver birches.

They had dismounted, laughing, amorous, and Katherine on finding a fairy ring of mushrooms in the grove had cried that by means of this enchantment on Midsummer Eve she would bind her love to her forever, so that he might never once leave her side.

Nor had he left her that night, though a great company awaited the Duke at the Savoy. They had lain together, hot with passion, under the birches while a belated nightingale sang to them from a thicket.

Katherine stumbled on the road to Walsingham while her remembering body betrayed her with an agony of longing. My dear dear love, I cannot bear it. At once answer came, in Brother William's voice, "Dignum et justum est." It is meet and just that you bear it.

Katherine clenching her hand on her staff went forward along the road. "It is meet indeed and just - -" the preface to the reception of the Holy Sacrament from which she was debarred by sins so loathsome that there was no absolution. Sin that had been ever compounded and augmenting. On that carnal pagan night beneath the willow tree she had thought of nothing but her adulterous love. She had indeed kept John with her, and the next day too, though the Duchess awaited him at Hertford Castle for the solemn celebration of his saint's day which he had always spent with her in ceremonious observance.

Katherine had laughed with Hawise at this slight put upon the Duchess. God forgive me, Katherine thought, for still she was glad that he had not gone to Costanza. She stumbled on a rock that jutted up from the road, and welcomed the sharp pain that shot through her wrenched ankle.

The days and nights merged into a long grey plodding. The ankle swelled, Katherine's feet festered until she could not walk, and she lay over at a convent where the nuns were good to her. After some time her feet and ankle healed, she gave the nuns her last jewel, an emerald-studded buckle, in gratitude, and they sent her on her way again, begging that she would remember them in her prayers at Walsingham.

It was on a searing hot day that Katherine at last reached Houghton-in-the-Dale, a mile south of the shrine, and stopped as did all pilgrims at the little stone slipper chapel. Here she encountered a noisy party of mounted men and women who had left London but a few days ago, though Katherine had been weeks on the road. They were a gaily clad group of young merchants and their wives, and it was apparent from the ribald tune that one of the men played on his bagpipes, from the flask of wine that they passed from hand to hand, and from their noisy laughter, that this pilgrimage was but pious excuse for a summer junket.

Even the casual pilgrim however was required to leave his shoes at the slipper chapel and walk the last mile barefoot. Many were the little shrieks of pain, and giggles, as one by one the London wives filed into the chapel, and came out treading like cats on hot bricks.

Katherine, who had no shoes to remove, drew apart, waiting on the brink of the little river Stiffkey until she might go in and say a prayer in peace. So near at last to journey's end that she could not believe it, she dared not let herself think of the Holy Sight which lay ahead of her, nor of the miracle that she was certain would take place.

They glanced at her incuriously as they passed her by, the Londoners all bright as popinjays in their scarlets and blues and greens, and one of the men - a grocer it would seem by the scales embroidered on his shoulder badge - said crossly in a loud voice to the others, "You shall see what mummery all this'll prove to be. Hurry on, Alison, and let's be done with the bowing and scraping. By God, 'tis not the Virgin's milk I long for, 'tis good brown Norfolk ale!"

"Hush, Andrew!" cried his wife angrily. "Here's no place for your wicked Lollard talk!"

Andrew grumbled and walked on.

Katherine heard, and something in her cringed: a doubt, a fear, darted and was gone. She prayed in the chapel and was filled with exalted hope. Her lassitude and headache vanished, she sped along the sacred mile beside the river. Her skin no longer reddened under the fierce sun-rays, the soles of her feet were as tough and calloused as a friar's. She did not feel the torturing fleabites nor the sweat that bathed her body under the hair shirt and the heavy black robe, nor the sore pains in her gums and loosened teeth, pain that had lately made so difficult chewing of the coarse bread, which was all she had allowed herself to eat since starting on pilgrimage. Foul-smelling little sores had broken out on her legs but she had made no effort to poultice them. These afflictions were all sent by God to prove her true contrition, and would ensure the Blessed Lady's favour.

As she neared Wajsingham, other penitential pilgrims joined her on the road, clad in sackcloth, wearing the wide palmer's hat, with ashes on their brows. These kept their eyes fixed on the ground as Katherine did; they did not glance at the little booths which began to line the way, though the owners of these stalls cried their wares incessantly in hoarse pleading voices.

"Come, buy my Walsingham medals - all personally blessed by Our Lady!" Or rosaries, or souvenirs, or gingerbread images of the Virgin, or tin replicas of the vial that held Her Holy Milk.

The town itself was crammed with pilgrim hostels, cook-shops and taverns; by the time Katherine reached the abbey gate she was one of a great throng, amongst them many cripples, and sick folk borne on litters by their relatives. Voices hummed around her speaking in a score of accents, not only the strange dialects of remoter parts of England but in the French tongue, and Flemish, and others that she did not recognise.

Beneath a miraculous copper image of a knight, there was a small postern in the abbey gate, and one by one they filed through under the watchful eye of an Austin canon from the priory which had charge of the shrine.

Katherine's heart beat fast, she wanted to hold back, to think and pray again before entering the sacred enclosure, but she could not. Canons ranged on either side the pilgrim path hurried the folk along, while behind her new pilgrims kept pressing through the gate. They were herded first through a little chapel, where they knelt and kissed a bone, big as the shank of an ox. It was the fingerbone of St. Peter, the attendant canon told them, watching while the pilgrims put pennies in a box.

They left the chapel and went through a covered way into a shed thatched with reeds and garnished with flowers. Here on the ground there were two holy wells, side by side. The monk in charge waved the people back, for a child had been laid in the little space between the twin wells.

The child was a boy of about four, but his head was big as that of a grown man, his tongue lolled from his slack spittle-dribbling mouth, his dull- swollen eyes were mindless as a dead lamb's. The mother knelt beside him, to pull his arms apart so that one little hand should touch each pool. Her lips moved in desperate prayer while the monk made the sign of the cross over the child. The pilgrims watched, holding their breath.

The child struggled, trying to jerk his hands from the water, then let out a long sobbing animal wail.

The mother gave a great cry and gathered the child up in her arms. "A miracle!" she cried rocking the child. "For sure, it is a miracle! He has made no sound in months. Our Blessed Lady has cured him!"

While the people gasped and fell to their knees, the monk smiled, laying his hand on the boy's head. Tears ran down Katherine's cheeks, she turned away and could not look at the mother's wild hopeful face. When her own time came to kneel between the holy wells and plunge her hands in each, she could form no proper prayer. She saw nothing but Blanchette's trusting, adoring eyes, as they had been long ago.

Our Lady of Walsingham's shrine adjoined the church. It was a small chapel without windows, nor needed any, for its hundred votive candles glittered on walls lined with gold and silver offerings, while the Blessed Image, larger than a woman, was crusted so thick with diamonds, rubies, pearls and other precious stones that the eye was blinded.

Katherine had waited long outside the shrine for her turn - though most pilgrims went through in groups, those who wished might worship alone - but before she finally knelt by the dazzling image a priest in white chasuble came up to her to ask what offering she would make to the Queen of Heaven.

She opened her scrip and taking out the Duke's betrothal ring held it up, whispering, "This, Father."

He took the ring, glanced sharply at the gold and sapphire. "It will be acceptable to Our Gracious Lady, my daughter."

He drew aside while Katherine kissed the statue's golden beringed foot, staring up through clouds of blue incense at the smooth painted wooden face beneath a diamond crown.

In the moments that she knelt there, Katherine prayed with the pent-up violence she had not dared to feel before, she prayed in desperation, she supplicated, she commanded. "Give me back my child! Show me the way to forgiveness. Lady, Lady, you who are all-merciful, tell me how Hugh's murder may be forgiven. Tell me where is my child!"

And there was no answer. The white and red painted face, the round upward-staring eyes remained as before, bland, wooden, indifferent.

Still she knelt, until the priest touched her on the shoulder. "There are many waiting to come in here, daughter."

She gave him so frantic and despairing a look that he said, "Come, come, would you gaze on the precious relic? It works more miracles than any other in Christendom!"

She bowed her head, and he waited, glancing at her scrip. "I've but a few pence left, Father," she said in a strangled voice. "And this - -" She held out four silver pennies and the tarnished silver brooch the Queen had given her at Windsor.

"Ah?" said the priest in a flatter tone. "Well, since you have already donated - -" He took the pennies, and ignored the tawdry brooch. He unlocked a small diamond-studded door beneath the Virgin's feet, exposing a crystal vial mounted in the centre of a gold and ivory crucifix. The vial seemed to contain a whitish powder.

Katherine gazed at the vial. It was said that when the Virgin was inclined to answer a pilgrim's prayer, the Holy Milk would leap and quiver within the crystal. She strained her eyes until they blurred with pain, her body pounded, but there was no sign from the relic.

The priest closed the reliquary and locked it, he hurried to the exit door on the other side of the shrine; held it wide open for Katherine to leave.

She went out along another covered way and through a gate into the brilliant sunshine of the street. Something pricked her hand and she looked down at the Queen's brooch which she still clasped. "Foi vainquera" was the motto on that brooch - a lie. Faith had conquered nothing. Our Lady had neither heard nor answered. There were no miracles. Her hand dropped slack. The brooch fell into the filth of the gutter.

A man passing behind Katherine on the street saw the brooch drop, picked it up and lumbered after her, as she wandered blindly along the outside of the abbey walls.

"Good pilgrim dame," said the man, "you dropped this nouche."

"Let it be," she said in a muffled voice, not turning. "I do not want it."

The man looked up into her dead-still face, then peered closer and read the tiny letters. Because he had suffered very greatly himself, and because his heart was filled with tenderness, he guessed something of what must have happened to this widowed penitent at the shrine. He put the brooch in his pouch and followed Katherine at a distance. People crossed themselves as he walked by them, but some reached out and touched him for luck. He was a hunchback.

Katherine walked until she came to the market square where there were benches along the garden hedge of the Black Lion Tavern, which was jammed with pilgrims who had already visited the shrine, and were now celebrating. Serving-maids ran out from the tavern with strong ale and meat pasties. The party of London merchants, each now wearing the Walsingham medal, were clustered at a table by the hedge, talking at the top of their voices.

Katherine's throat was parched with thirst, her stomach gnawed. To gain favour from the Miraculous Lady of Walsingham, nothing at all had passed her lips since vespers yesterday. I shall have to beg for my bread now, she thought. She looked at the food the Londoners were guzzling, and was sickened. Pain throbbed in her sore mouth, in her head. Black swimming weakness crushed her. She slumped down on a bench and shut her eyes.

The man with the humped back paused by the market cross some way off, and watched Katherine with compassion.

The voices behind the hedge rose higher. They were shouting London gossip in answer to eager questions from provincial pilgrims. They were recounting with relish the horrors of the revolt in London two months ago, while a Norfolk man insisted that they had had a worse time of it up here than any Londoner could know.

"But 'tis over now for good, that's certain," cried the grocer called Andrew, "since John Ball was caught at Coventry."

"Ay," agreed a self-important voice, "and I was there. With my own two eyes I saw it when the King's men gelded him and gutted him, and he watched his own guts burn - afterwards they quartered him so cannily, he took a rare long time a-dying."

There was laughter until Andrew cried, "Stale news, that is, my friend - but have ye heard the latest of the Duke o' Lancaster?"