The Scandalous Duchess

Chapter Fourteen

The Duke of Lancaster rode with his retinue into the courtyard at Pontefract.

‘You waited until I came.’

‘As you see.’

It was not an opening that boded well for what was to follow. The courtyard was grey and glistening with the earlier heavy rain that still pattered on my head and shoulders as if in a final lingering defiance. Much like my own frame of mind. I would not take shelter until he had dismounted, even though it was to my discomfort. I would wait as he had instructed. I would be calm, obedient, open to his persuasion. I forced myself to stand and observe with commendable dispassion as he swung down from the saddle and gave his reins to his squire. Throughout all his movements his eyes had not left my face.

It had crossed my mind that I should stay in my chamber. That I should keep him waiting. But that, I decided, would be a sign of immaturity. I would acknowledge his arrival, as I had so many times before. I would listen to what he had to say.

The Duke signalled for his retinue to dismount and take shelter.

‘I note the castle is well garrisoned.’

As well he might. It was bristling with military.

‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘We received your orders.’

Apart from my one line of instruction, it had been the only direct communication between the Duke and Pontefract throughout all those difficult weeks. His gaze continued to hold mine as I allowed the silence between us to lengthen. Even in the courtyard with all the noise and bustle of the Duke’s dispersing entourage, I felt the power of his regard. It made me shiver. Not from pleasure, as once it might. I kept the contact, every muscle in my body braced against what was to come.

I had expected him to look weary, from travel, from the shock of such vehement hatred flung at him by the rebels. From the loss of his most beloved possession, The Savoy. Even from the acknowledgement that his life had actually been in danger at the hands of Englishmen. In the blackest corner of my damaged heart I hoped that he would look at least careworn. If I felt older than my thirty-two years, why should not he, at a decade older? I resented the little lines that had become ingrained between my brows, the smudge of shadows beneath my eyes from lack of sleep. My mirror was no longer my friend. As I stood there in that inhospitable courtyard, growing wetter by the minute, I studied his face, a very female resentment building as my gown clung in sodden folds.

Why did I not have the sense to go inside?

Because I had anticipated this meeting for so long. I had longed for it as much as I had feared it. I knew that what had been between me and the Duke of Lancaster, the overwhelming emotion that had encompassed us in the face of all tenets of morality and good judgement, would never be the same again. I could not retreat from it.

And so I took in every inch of him as he stood a good arm’s length from me, remarking that there was no inordinate sign of strain in his visage, and his movements were as elegantly controlled as I had ever seen them. If the lines between nose and mouth were well marked, I had seen such an effect when he was faced with a problem of moving troops or supplying a garrison. A cup of warm ale would soon smooth away the tension. No, there was no hint here of the man who had begged God’s forgiveness on his knees in public, with tears staining his cheeks.

The man who had in so cursory and public a manner rejected his lover of nine years, before informing her of his decision.

I bit down on the little surge of wrath.

‘I see you are in health and good spirits, Lady Katherine,’ he remarked.

Good spirits!

The flapping of my veil, wetly against my neck, was the final straw. I raised my chin. Without courtesy or any acknowledgement that he had addressed me, I turned on my heel. He would follow if he needed to speak with me. Was I in health? It was the least of my concerns. As for my spirits…I strode on, up the staircase, aware of his footsteps behind me, relieved that he followed me, and yet anger burned through any relief. I flung back the door into one of the chambers used by the family for celebrations, empty now except for a chest and a pair of backless stools, an empty dais at one end. The walls, usually hung with magnificent tapestries, as were the rooms of all the Duke’s accommodations, were bare and grim. In a corner there was a stash of boxes and trestles, on one resting the folded tapestries.

A bleak place for a bleak reconciliation.

There would be no reconciliation here.

I walked to the centre of the chamber, where I turned.

‘We will speak in here. Where there is no one to eavesdrop and pass comment on my shame—or yours.’

The Duke inclined his head, before closing the door quietly at his back, then casting gloves onto the chest, dislodging a swirl of dust as he did so. Something I must take in hand, I thought inconsequentially. The room had not been used of late, nor would be, for we were in no mood for celebrations. What emotion would it witness now? The Duke made no further move to approach me, but stood, hands clasped lightly around his sword belt, the dim light glinting on the breastplate of his half-armour.

‘Well?’ When my voice sounded annoyingly shrill to my own ears, I tempered it. ‘I have remained here as ordered. What would you say to me, my lord?’

The pause was infinitesimal, but I noted it. ‘You will have heard by now.’

‘Yes. I think I have been the recipient of every piece of rumour about the pair of us that has run the length and breadth of the country.’

I would not make this easy for him.

‘They have destroyed The Savoy,’ he said.

I raised my brows. Did not all the world know of that? I would not respond.

A muscle in his jaw leaped beneath the fine skin, but so it often did when he might struggle with a document from a difficult petitioner. I folded my hands, one on the other, over the clasp of my girdle. I had had many days to consider all that I knew, almost as many days in which the developments had festered like an ill-tended wound. It would astonish him how much I had gleaned from the gossip of passing travellers. I tilted my chin, as if I might be mildly interested in what he had to say.

I stopped my fingers before they could clench into fists. I would hold fast to composure. I would be reasonable. Understanding. I would, by the Virgin!

‘Why have you come?’ I asked.

‘I had to know for myself that you were safe.’

‘Safe,’ I repeated unhelpfully.

‘But I knew you were. God sheltered you from all harm. I asked Him to.’

My brows remained beautifully arched. ‘I am flattered. Or I suppose I am.’

‘And I had to come and tell you myself.’

He took a step forward as if testing the water, as if there might be an unseen pit below the surface, into which he would haplessly fall and drown.

My lips thinned and curled minutely. ‘So you said.’

His spine was as straight as an ash sapling, his voice raw, but that might be thirst after a long journey. I offered him no refreshment. It was his castle. He could summon his own steward if he so wished.

‘It would be discourteous,’ he continued in the same limpid but impassive tone, ‘for you to be the subject of gossip and not know why I did…why I did what I did. I have come to try to explain…So that you would not remain ignorant…’

Not once had he moved, his breathing as level as if he were purchasing a horse.

‘Explain?’ I would be understanding, would I? My fingers clenched anyway, nails digging deep into my palms. I kept my voice low, yet even though, raised as I was to impeccable good manners, I knew it was unforgivably venomous, I chose every word with precise care.

‘Explain? And I should thank you for that? I have, of course, to be thankful that you have considered my situation to any degree. In the circumstance of my being—what was it you said?—an agent of Satan? But then, you have always considered the welfare of all your servants, have you not, my lord? How charitable of you to dismiss them from your service in Scotland, so that they need not suffer with you in your painful exile there, far away from friends and family. If I had been with you in Edinburgh, doubtless you would have done the same for me. Would you have wept over me, as I am told you did over them? For it seems I am no better than a servant to you.’

My tongue hissed on the word servant. I had not realised the true depths of my bitterness.

‘That is not so.’ His lips barely moved.

‘Ah…Were the rumours then false? I did not think so, but I am willing to be persuaded. Answer me one question, my gracious, chivalrous lord. Are you sending me away?’

The silence in the room was as taut as a bowstring before the release of the deadly arrow.

‘Yes.’ He took a breath as if he would have said more. Then repeated: ‘Yes. I am sending you away.’

My anger bubbled dangerously, too dangerously, near the surface.

‘I don’t think I can ever forgive you,’ I said between clenched teeth, ‘for the manner in which you did it.’

‘What have you heard?’

‘You would not believe what I have heard. I did not, at first. Until each repetition came as a slap in the face.’

‘And now you believe what is said? You hold it to be the truth without hearing me? To know why I took the decisions that I did?’ His hands remained clenched at his belt. ‘Do I not at least deserve a hearing from you, of all people? If you love me, you will hear me out.’

For a moment I closed my eyes against the pain of that thrust. But only for a moment.

‘Oh, I will give you a hearing, my lord. I will listen,’ I said. ‘But it is difficult to give you the benefit of the doubt, is it not? When Constanza rode past my door, intent on an emotional and intimate reunion with you.’

He had not expected that from me. His eyes widened a little.

‘Is that what happened?’ I asked.

‘Yes.’

A flat affirmation, all I needed, all I dreaded. It was what I had feared more than any other. I turned my back on him because I could not look at him without weeping, and marched to the window, the thick glass grown opaque with rain and gloom, where I smacked my knuckles hard against the stone surround.

‘Oh, they relished telling me the detail of that little event,’ I announced to the view I could not see. ‘What pleasure to give all the details to the whore, of the triumphant victory of the ill-used wife.’ I looked back over my shoulder as I fought to control my voice. ‘They told me how you met on the road at Northallerton. How the distraught Duchess fell on her knees in the dust at your feet and begged your forgiveness for her lack of affection towards you. Three times she prostrated herself, so they told me. Three times, with tears and wailing, until you lifted her up and reassured her that all would be well between you. Is that how it went?’

I saw my lips curl again with wry appreciation, a grey reflection in the glass, but there was no humour in it. Poor Constanza. Had she accepted at last that she had had a part in causing the rift between them? Did the attack on her precious Hertford stir enough terror in her heart that she saw the need to humble herself and beg her husband’s protection? In my own loss I had no sympathy for her. I turned my face away, so that he would not note the gleam of moisture on my cheeks, to watch him in the reflection.

‘Did you? Did you lift her into your arms?’

‘Yes.’

I nodded as if in agreement. ‘Of course you did. That is exactly what you would do. And then you escorted her to the safe luxury of the Bishop of Durham’s house where you marked the occasion of your joyful reunion. Until daylight, I understand, with great merriment and celebrations. You asked pardon for your misdeeds and she willingly forgave you.’ I looked up, stretching my neck, noting the carving of a cat stalking some misbegotten creature in the stonework above my head. I had never spoken to him in this manner before, but I did not care. I did not care if it roused the fire of his temper. ‘Before God, John, I was not invited to the safety of the Bishop’s lodging, was I! No place for me. No place for the whore.’

‘No.’

Again that cold affirmation of my accusations, that flat acceptance, when my soul longed for his denial.

‘No,’ I repeated. ‘There could be no place for me, could there?’

In my mind I saw our two disparate reunions with the Duke, Constanza and I placed side by side, one dramatic and emotional, a true reconciliation for the Duchess, with intimate kisses and promises for the future. The other, as we stood here now, the width of the room between us, bitter and redolent of raw grief, a portcullis of iron lowered between us.

And as that vision filled my mind, without warning all control vanished. I swung round, pressing my back against the stone. ‘You rejected me. You denounced me. An evil life, you said, that you had led with me. A life of lechery.’ I all but spat the word. ‘Was our love lechery? You stated it, for all to hear. I’m amazed that you did not get your herald to announce it with a blast of a trumpet. You will drive me from your household, you said. Banish me. That’s what you said, isn’t it?’

‘Is that what you believe?’

‘It is what I am told.’

Every muscle in his face was still. The jewels gleamed flatly, without movement. It was as if all his Plantagenet pride was under restraint. I had never seen it so. I could only attribute it to guilt.

‘And is it true that you labelled me a she-devil?’ My voice broke on the word. ‘An enchantress, who lured you into breaking your marital vows? Am I a snare of the Devil, to entice men into sin?’

I saw him take a breath.

‘They were not my words.’

‘No? Well, thank God for that!’

‘But you believe it of me.’

And there I heard a note of self-loathing, which I ignored. ‘I expect you implied them since they were well reported. Or you did not make too much haste to deny them. It would not be in your interest to do so, would it? What pleasure Walsingham must have had in putting such venom into your mouth. I expect he fell to his oh-so-pious knees before God and gave thanks for such a confession from the mighty Duke of Lancaster, the would-be King of Castile.’

His title shimmered into the silence as I drew breath at last. I was beyond remorse. He might have accepted for himself the vile charge of adultery, but he had coated me with the filth of witchcraft. What manner of attack would this lay me open to? I could not comprehend the horrors of my being brought to book for witchcraft.

‘Have you nothing to say?’ I demanded. ‘I accuse you, but you do not defend yourself. Is there no defence? Are you guilty as charged?’

For the briefest moment he studied his hands, then he looked at me, and I saw what I had not seen before. His eyes were tired. Hard and grim. The eyes of John, my love, they were not. They were those of the Duke of Lancaster, putative King of Castile. Here was a different creature, not the man I had thought I knew.

How easy had it been for him to stop loving me?

‘I did not put the blame on you, Katherine,’ he stated.

‘Ha!’

‘But yes, I said that we must part.’

‘Oh, I know you did. For the good of your immortal soul. Was I nothing more than a court concubine? Is that all I was to you, through nigh on ten years of sharing your bed and the travail of four children?’ My hands were clenched hard in my skirts. ‘I have given up everything for you. I was a respectable widow when you issued your invitation. Did I lure you into that? I don’t think so, my lord. As I recall the impetus was all yours. And yet you call me an enchantress, using witchcraft to undermine your strength of moral will.’

‘I have said…’ How quiet his voice, how undemonstrative, but now the engraved lines that bracketed his mouth were deep. ‘The words were not mine.’

‘Yet you have repulsed me. You have destroyed all we meant to each other, stripping it of all that was good, stamping it into the earth as the grossest of sins.’

As his nose narrowed on an intake of breath, I thought he would react but he did not, except to say: ‘It was a sin, our being together. We both knew it.’

‘Yes, we did. Both of us. And we were prepared to live with it. And yet you reject me now. I gave you my good name. I gave you my unconditional love, my body, my conscience. I put them into your safe-keeping.’

‘Perhaps you should not have done that.’

Which took my breath. I could not answer so monstrous an assertion, that I had been wrong to trust him with my life, my happiness. My soul.

‘And our children?’ I whispered against the grinding agony in my chest. ‘Are they also a sin?’

‘No, they are not.’ His hands now unclasped, he flung them out at his sides. ‘Katherine, the sin is mine.’

‘Forgive me. But a greater part of it seems to be mine.’ The edge that crept back into my reply could have sliced through a haunch of venison like Hugh the cook’s cleaver. ‘I am despised by all, but Constanza has emerged in glory, in blinding-white robes. Oh, I know I cannot defend myself in helping you to commit adultery, in undermining Constanza’s position in your life and household. I am not proud of my flaunting our love before her, or of stepping into the place she should have had at your side and in your bed. But she did not want you. I will not take all the blame.’

A pale fleeting emotion that I could not read touched his face.

‘There is no reasoning with you, is there?’

‘No. None.’

‘What more can I say?’

‘Did you weep, as they say you did, when you bared your soul in public?’ I could not imagine his weeping in public penance. I could not. It was the most ludicrous of all the rumours.

The Duke did not reply. The austerity was hammered flat with intense weariness under my relentless assault. Instead, starkly, brusquely: ‘You must understand the new threat. There are French plans to invade England. The most effective way for us to prevent it is to make an alliance with Portugal. Between us we can invade and crush Castile, France’s ally.’ I could see that his mind was already taken up with the planning. ‘If I am to invade Castile I need to be reunited with Constanza. Enrique is dead, but his son Juan reigns in his stead. I need Constanza’s authority behind me if I am to oust King Juan and reclaim Castile. As it has always been…’

Another dart in my flesh, upon which I pounced with cruel delight, ignoring the high demands of English foreign policy. ‘And you put your authority in Castile before me? Of course you do. I would expect no other. Have you not always done so?’

He inclined his head in due acceptance, yet still, to my mind, twisted the blade.

‘I am a man of ambition. You knew that. You have always known that.’

There was no denying it. Unable to face him any longer, my limbs trembling with damp and too-fervent emotion, I stalked to the side of the room, and, spreading my skirts, I sat on one of the stools. It was not seemly for me to berate him like a fishwife. I would return to reason.

‘So you have done with me at last, my lord. I suppose that ten years is a fair record for a mistress.’ I was proud of my light pronouncement. ‘I am banished to Kettlethorpe, with my children. I have no further place in your life.’ I stared down at my interwoven fingers. I was suddenly so weary of it all and beyond anger.

‘There is more fault to tell, Katherine…’

‘Over and above the rest? What more can you possibly have done to hurt me?’

I heard his heavy inhalation. ‘I have not kept faith with you. When I repented…I renounced all the other women I had taken to my bed.’

‘All?’ I exhaled slowly.

‘You were not the only one with whom I sinned.’

‘There were others?’ And without allowing him to reply: ‘Before God, John! And are you going to argue weakness of the flesh? Opportunity? Availability?’

He stiffened, with a flare of temper burning through the control like fire through a field of dry grass. ‘I am a man with a man’s appetites. But I have no excuses.’

I could not comprehend. I felt lost, everything I had believed in laid waste as if by the fire and sword of an avenging force. There had been other women in the ducal bed. When I had thought his love was mine alone, his body had betrayed me with other women. I could not contemplate how many, how often…

‘How many? One? Two?’ I stood abruptly. I could not sit, but swept to the door. I could stay here with all the hurt and humiliation no longer. ‘Am I the last to know? Does Constanza know?’ I could not bear the degradation of my lover handling my heart with such contempt.

‘Not as many as the rumours say,’ he said, as if that would make a difference. It lit my wrath again.

‘Does that make it any better?’

‘No. My penitence can never make it better for you. My heart was yours, but sometimes—’

‘Sometimes you needed to indulge your physical needs,’ I broke in. ‘And any woman would do.’

‘I cannot defend myself, Katherine. I have known times when the demands of my body overcome the loyalty of my soul.’

‘On campaign?’

‘Yes.’

‘Here in England?’

‘Yes.’

I simply stared. If I had been hurt before, I was now devastated. Fleetingly I recalled standing on the wall-walk here at Pontefract, with at least some hope still alive, even as I acknowledged my hurt. I had not known the half of it. There was no hope, none at all.

‘In the bed I have shared with you?’ I asked trenchantly.

‘No. Never that. Katherine.’

He took a step towards me. I took one back until the door stopped me, as a sudden unadorned thought struck me.

‘Not my sister! Please God, not that.’

‘No!’ The planes of his face were set with anguish. But so, I thought were mine. ‘Not your sister. I would not do that to you. Would you believe that of me?’

I could not think, not knowing what to believe, what to say, except, in infinite desolation:

‘You have wounded me unto death, John.’

Without answering, he walked to look out from the same window that had taken my attention. I saw his face reflected, shimmering, pale as a ghost. Then he swung round to face me and for the first time in all that exchange, he retaliated against me, the jewels leaping into life.

‘I must turn away God’s wrath, Katherine. I must live by His dictates. How can we deny God’s anger when we are faced with such rebellion and destruction in England as we have seen these past months? If I am the cause, if my manner of living has drawn down God’s punishment on this nation, then I must of necessity repent and make reparation.’

All spoken with an awful, calm, precise, relentless certainty.

But I in my dismay refused to listen.

‘Then I hope you sit in heaven at God’s right hand on the strength of it.’ And then, a cry from the heart that I could not prevent. ‘Have you grown tired of me? If that is so, then I wish you had told me—’

‘I could never grow tired of you. You know that.’

‘But I don’t know it. I am struggling to understand any of this.’

I saw no reason for his denial of me. I had been swept behind the tapestry as if our love had been a sin. A crime. Was that all I had ever been to him, a convenient whore? My mind came back to that one point again and again until it sickened me. I could never forgive him for that.

‘I am well-served, am I not? I remember the day when you proclaimed your love for me before your wife and your damsels. You cannot imagine the depth of happiness you gave me. Now you have disclaimed your love before every man and woman in England. You have broken my heart.’

I put my hand on the door-latch, hoping against all possibility that he might say something profound and ameliorating, to sweep away the anguish of the last minutes. I looked back, over my shoulder, at the fine-drawn handsome features, the braced shoulders, the motionless control that was back in place.

‘You have wounded me, John. You have destroyed all my happiness,’ I informed him.

His reply was severe. Deliberate and unhurried.

‘I cannot heal the wounds for you, Katherine. Nor my own. Perhaps we don’t deserve happiness. Perhaps, by seizing our own desires, we have caused too much damage, to too many people. And now we are called on to pay the price of our wilful carelessness.’

It was as harsh a blow as any man could possibly deliver, to chastise the senses. A slap of a hand. A deluge of freezing rain. The fear engendered by a bolt of lightning striking a tree in the forest. Our happiness, recklessly, selfishly pursued, had undoubtedly hurt others, forcing on them difficult choices. Who knew what compromises Philippa and Elizabeth had been called on to make, out of their love for their father? Constanza had had to make the greatest.

It was not an argument that I could ignore, as he well knew.

And I resented it, resented his forcing me to see the obliteration of my moral bearings. I had not expected my lover to stab me in the back quite so effectively.

I opened the door, looking back for the final time. An empty room, stripped of all past glory, except for its owner with the spangle of rain still in his hair and marking his velvet and armour. What a fitting place to end a love that I had thought would last for all time. What a fitting place to utter the words I never thought I would, and immediately wished I had not.

‘Do you not love me anymore?’

In horror and shame, for such a question could only bring down humiliation on both of us, I pressed my fingers against my lips, dismayed that they had so betrayed me. The Duke, eyes stark, skin lacking all colour, simply looked as if I had driven home a knife into his flesh.

He made no reply. I walked from the room. He did not try to stop me.

We had not touched, not once.

And the thought came to me as I walked rapidly to my chamber, how little he had said, to explain or to justify. Merely that he must turn God’s wrath away from England. But then, there was nothing to explain, was there? It was the first time that we had met since the earliest days when there was not even a smile exchanged between us. But then, there was nothing to smile about either.

If our love had been hacked and laid low by Walsingham’s cruel blows, even more had it been dealt its death wound by the Duke’s despicable sense of duty.

I gave no thought to the dust in the chamber, as any good housekeeper should. I did not care if I could inscribe my name in it, on the top of the coffer. By choice, I would never enter that room again.

I was done with Pontefract Castle. I was done with the Duke of Lancaster, with the world he inhabited, his newly awakened sanctity. I was done with it all and for ever. The decisions made through one sleepless night, dry-eyed and wrathful, were not difficult. I could not stay here.

I hugged my beloved Philippa as I oversaw the preparations for my departure, but was fit to say little to her beyond farewell.

‘Write to me,’ she whispered against my hood.

‘I will. And you to me.’ I dredged up some suitable thoughts from the well of my own self-pity, managing a grimace that might pass for a smile. ‘Tell me when you have a husband. Tell me of Elizabeth.’ I did not think Elizabeth would write to me.

Her eyes glistened with anxiety. I gave up on the smile.

‘Where is he?’ I could not call him by name. The castle buzzed with gossip, mostly accurate, except that I had not drawn a blade against him. I had behaved with perfect propriety, principally because there had not been a dagger to hand in my chamber of choice. The sharp blades had only been those stitched in the folded tapestries.

Now I would leave with the same cold composure that had governed my every public action since I had heard what he had done.

I did not wish to meet him. Not again, while my heart was so sore. And after what had passed between us, it would be best if it were never again. I slammed the door closed on all my unsettled emotions, turning my thoughts to the practicalities of packing my belongings into the wagons, settling the children into the vast horse-drawn litter. All the necessities for my return to Kettlethorpe. How had we managed to acquire so much since our flight to Pontefract, reassured that the Duke held my safety close in his heart? No matter. I belonged to the house of Lancaster no longer.

‘I don’t know where my father is.’ Philippa cast a glance at the windows of his apartments above our heads. There was no sign of movement there.

I took a breath to swallow what might have been a twinge of regret if I had allowed it. We had slept apart in cold, lonely beds. He had not come to break his fast with me. He had not come to bid me adieu.

He does not know you are leaving, honesty murmured in my ear.

Well, he should know. He should have known that I would not stay. And unless he is deaf he will have heard the racket of departure…

The lively voices of John and Henry, the chatter of Joan and the cries of Thomas, could hardly be ignored.

I mounted and rode out through the gateway. I would never return to one of Lancaster’s castles.

The moisture on my cheeks was, of course, caused by the brisk wind.

I rode in silence for the first half-hour beside the sergeant-at-arms, aware of nothing around me, not even the clamour of children’s voices and Agnes’s occasional sharp rejoinder, as my emotions swung wilfully into a well-worn track. I would live alone. I would take a vow of chastity and, although not shunning society, I would order my days with piety and seemliness, wrapping myself in the ordered emotions of a nun, as many grieving widows were drawn to do. I would beg God’s forgiveness for my life of unspeakable sin. All the fire in me that the Duke had once admired would be quenched. Cold ash, grey and insubstantial, would replace bright flame. I would devote myself to being Lady of Kettlethorpe, supremely gracious. Completely unresponsive to excess of feeling.

John of Lancaster would hold no part in my life, in my thoughts. Not even in my dreams. Now that all his perfidy was laid bare, beyond question, it would be a simple matter to close and lock the lid on this coffer of memories. What’s more, I would drop the key into the well at Kettlethorpe.

Surreptitiously I blotted the persistent tears.

And meanwhile I would draw on my reserves and converse with the sergeant as any sensible well-mannered woman would do.

I asked about the villages through which we were passing.

‘Quiet enough,’ he said, showing the direction of his thoughts. ‘They’re my lord’s own lands, of course. It’s only the bloody Percys who’ve turned traitor.’

‘What of the Percys?’ I asked, momentarily distracted. I knew the Percy family, the powerful Earls of Northumberland who ruled their territory in the north as autocratically as any prince.

‘They only snubbed him, didn’t they? A bloody insult. And all my lord could say was that he understood their divided loyalties. I’d have ordered a sharp punitive attack against one of their bloody castles, but of course, my lord would have none of it.’

‘Tell me,’ I said.

‘When we were coming south from Berwick. My lord would have stopped off at Bamborough. The big fortress on the coast, you know? So what did Harry Percy do? Only send a message that my lord would receive no welcome there. He closed the gates. And Harry Percy supposed to be an ally. Lancaster was not welcome to stay in any of his castles, he said, until King Richard informed him—personally, mind—that the Duke could be trusted. A bloody insult, I say.’

He had not told me of that. That the Duke of Lancaster, the most powerful and experienced of all English nobles, had been treated as if he were an outcast.

The fire was not quenched, not quenched at all, nor were the memories locked away in their box. The flames danced and flickered as the lid on my memories flew open, and tears for the humiliation he must have faced slipped silently down my cheeks. I wiped them away with the back of my glove and raised my chin. I would not be swayed by tales of his suffering.

If I was to live alone for the rest of my life I would need fortitude, and best start now.

‘Halt!’

At the sudden command from the sergeant, startling me into tightening my hands on the reins, my mount tossed her head as our little entourage came to a ragged halt, the litter swaying on its supports.

‘What is it?’

I could see no problem. Was one of the horses lame? We had travelled no distance, since we made slow progress with the cumbersome litter.

‘Horses approaching…Behind us.’

As the sergeant gestured to his three men to draw arms and move to the rear, so shielding us from any direct assault, I picked up the faint beat of hooves. It did not do to be complacent even in the Duke’s lands, not as matters stood, despite the sergeant’s confidence. We were approaching the crossroads where I would turn east for Lincoln, a spot with a bad reputation for ambush and bloodshed. Fear mounting with every second, I drew my mare to the side of the litter where John and Henry had pulled back the leather curtain to investigate, unaware of any danger. I said nothing as I loosed the dagger I kept in my sleeve when I travelled.

The sergeant rode to my side.

‘Is it robbers?’ I asked.

‘No. Too many. Too well organised.’

The beat of hooves grew louder to echo the thud of my heart. They were travelling fast, a sizeable body.

‘Perhaps some knight and his retinue, my lady,’ the sergeant said, yet I saw the apprehension in his grip on his sword, which he had drawn from its scabbard. Then his face cleared and he grunted. ‘Nothing to concern you, lady.’ He nodded to the body of horsemen that had emerged through the trees on the bend in the road. ‘It’s my lord.’

I momentarily closed my eyes, for in that moment of foolish embarrassment I thought I might truly have preferred a rabble of cutpurses and footpads. On top of all my ungovernable feelings, beyond all reason, fury filled me to the brim, that he had given me cause for such fear.

How close I was to anger in those days.

Decidedly unfriendly, I sat and watched as they approached at a smart canter, the splash of colour on tabard and banner so vivid that I absorbed every detail of it, as if I were not involved. Here was no effort to hide incriminating livery. The Duke was travelling in full glory of red and gold and blue, royal colours, splashed with emblems of Lancaster and Castile, sun glinting on the half-armour, his gauntlets, on the blood-red jewels in his cap. Beside him his herald rode with tabard, staff and horn. Behind him an escort of a dozen men emblazoned with the quarters of Lancaster and Plantagenet, two of them leading pack horses.

Oh, it was a magnificent impression, deliberately made by a man who knew how to squeeze every drop of splendour from personal appearance, as I well knew. The sun blazed on the profusion of gold thread and costly jewels. This was not the Duke of Lancaster, penitent and downcast at the enormity of his sin. This was a royal Plantagenet in full fettle.

But why? Was it pure coincidence that the demands on his time would bring him on this road, at this exact moment? It might, of course. Even their slackening of speed proved nothing. He could hardly ride on past me as if he had no knowledge of me when everyone in his company and mine knew that we had shared a bed, frequently and scandalously.

I watched as he drew his horse into a sedate walk towards where my mount still stood. What if he had come to reclaim me, to take me home? Was it possible that he had, after all our vicissitudes, made the choice, of me as his mistress, his love, over the demands of a vengeful God and a neglected wife? Had he come to put all right?

No. That could never be.

They drew rein in a jingle of horse-harness and a stamp of hooves on the road. The Duke swept off his splendidly glittering hat and bowed low.

I sat and stared.

What are you doing? Why have you followed me? To heighten the pain of my grief?

‘I am here to mark your departure, Lady de Swynford, since you left Pontefract betimes.’

‘There is no need, my lord,’ I replied quickly, hoping to bring this to a fast end, my throat as arid as a summer riverbed. I did not want this mark of consideration. I hoped that my tears had dried without incriminating marks. I was in no mood to retract any of the things I had said the previous night. ‘We said all that needed to be said yesterday.’

‘Do you say?’ he responded. ‘I think not. There are things that need to be done before any man or woman leaves my service.’

Face stern, voice laconic, words clipped, he was enjoying this as little as I, as I could tell by his gloved hands planted one on top of the other on the pommel and the manner in which he addressed me, as if I were a troublesome petitioner for his charity. He saw this as a duty, unpleasant, tedious even, but one that could not, in his cold and chivalrous heart, be ignored.

‘What are you going to do, my lord? Offer me another pretty silver chafing dish? Or should I return the one I already have to you. Constanza would value it. I have it here with me.’

His lack of reaction was commendable under such a jibe, but I knew I had hurt him when he inclined his head, acknowledging the hit. His manners were better than mine.

‘I can do better than that, my lady.’

‘I need nothing from you, my lord.’ My features felt stiff, frozen in my desire to rebuff. I found it difficult to choose the words I wanted, but I did so and they were not kind. ‘You owe me nothing and I have no claim on you.’

Ignoring my lack of grace, the Duke gestured to the herald who urged his mount to my side to present me with a folded document, which I took it with my gloved finger tips, but did not open it.

‘This is my recognition of your service, principally to my two daughters, but also my son, my lady.’ How formal he was, unperturbed by my lack of decorum. ‘I could not have chosen better. My daughters will for ever be in your debt. It is a pension of two hundred marks a year for the term of your life for your exemplary attention to their education and happiness.’

‘No!’ The ignominy of being paid for my services. I let the folded sheet with its seal fall to the floor.

‘Have you not earned it?’ he continued. ‘Would you decry the benefit of your care for my daughters? Shame on you, Lady de Swynford, to deny me the opportunity to reward your service in my household.’

I felt my face heat with embarrassment. How clever he was at making me see the unworthiness of my response. When the herald patiently dismounted and retrieved the smeared document, I took it, as if it had been dropped by a moment’s carelessness.

‘I am unable to express my thanks, my lord. I ask pardon for my unwarrantable demeanour.’ There were still no fair words in my acceptance, but I had been shown the error of my ways. Pray God that that was the end of it, that I would be free to continue my journey. Pray God that this arrogant man would make no more claim on me. I gathered up my reins, but was stilled by the herald, still standing at my horse’s withers. He took hold of my bridle, even when I frowned down at him.

Touching his horse with his heel, the Duke rode closer.

‘It is not to be permitted that you leave my employ and my household without my marking the occasion. It is not fitting that you flee like a thief in the night.’ He raised his hand to summon the little group of servants from the rear of his escort. They rode forward, leading two horses laden with luggage and a richly caparisoned riding horse. ‘If you will honour me by dismounting, Lady de Swynford…’

I balked.

He dismounted, to stand looking up into my face. His might have been engraved in stone.

‘If it please you, my lady.’

He took my bridle from his herald’s hand, his fingers clamped around the leather, and I read in his eyes that if it did not please me he would drag me from my mare. Clutching the document—I would not drop it again—I dismounted in cold dignity.

A snap of his fingers and his squire approached. Without any word being needed from the Duke, the young man took the document from my nerveless fingers, unfastened the brooch that pinned my cloak—a fine cloak, I had thought—and with a flamboyant swing of costly material, replaced it around my shoulders with one of fine woven wool lined with sable. The riding horse was led up and the squire tucked the document into one of the panniers, my old cloak folded away into the other.

Throughout the whole procedure, the Duke stood in silence. Within the travelling litter, Agnes looked on with a mix of astonishment and baffled amusement. I was furiously compliant.

‘I do not need a new cloak,’ I informed the squire who was neatly fastening the pin that gleamed with gold and the splash of blood-red. So I was to be bought off with sables and jewels, was I?

‘It is my lord’s wish,’ the squire said with a bow.

‘I have a horse.’

‘And now you have a better one, my lady,’ the Duke remarked, with more than a hint of warning. He would not be gainsaid. ‘The packhorses carry meat and wine. The escort will accompany you to Kettlethorpe. For your peace of mind.’ His eyes were direct. ‘And mine.’

So I was to travel in full ducal splendour as well. What level of recognition was this from the Duke of Lancaster, for all to see and comment on?

‘Why are you doing this?’

Without replying, the Duke walked to the litter where, leaning an arm on the support, he stooped to peer in. For the first time since he had drawn rein, his features softened a little. He ruffled John’s hair, restored a little armed knight to Henry after lifting him back onto the cushions, spoke softly to Joan and straightened her bonnet, and touched the cheek of Thomas.

I could not look. I could not watch without my heart being torn in two. They were as much his as mine. Did he not care? He was abandoning them too. I would not look.

But I did. The children said not a word, in awe of him in this gleaming splendour. And then John grabbed his sleeve.

‘Do you come with us, sir?’

‘No. Not today.’ His smile was forced, his reply ragged. ‘But my men will keep you safe. You will ride with an escort, as a young prince should. What do you think?’

‘I think I will be a knight one day,’ John replied.

‘So do I think it. You will be a great knight.’

He turned and again nodded an unspoken instruction to the squire who, with a polite request, took my arm and helped me into my new saddle. The Duke remounted too, and bowed, hat in hand.

‘I commend you and your children to God’s care, Lady de Swynford. To his forgiveness for what has been between us. I will make restitution for the wrong I have done to you. You will want for nothing.’ His authority, in the centre of a road in the depths of the country, was formidable, his diction pitched for all to hear. ‘I accept your reluctance to receive anything from my hand, but I hope that time will heal, and that you will not refuse my gifts. My sons and daughter should not be allowed to suffer.’

While through it all I sat angry and silent and hard-eyed. Did he think I would let pride stand in the way of his support for the children? Did he truly think I would let my humiliation guide my future decisions for their well-being? I would not!

‘I will know that you have reached Kettlethorpe safely.’

‘My thanks, my lord.’ It was all I could say.

‘If you are ever in need, my lady, in any danger, you will send word.’

It was not a request. I did not respond.

‘I will keep you in my thoughts, Katherine.’

I turned away. I made no reply. I rode away from him, cloaked, caparisoned, as superbly mounted as if I were of royal blood. Dry-eyed and stern faced, I vowed to fulfil my promise to the Virgin to clothe the altar at Kettlethorpe in gold. The Duke was safe, alive. It behoved me to do what I had vowed before the altar, even though he had broken my heart.

Well, everyone in our joint retinues now knew the truth about us. And the need to gossip being what it was, it would spread like an unpleasant rash.

I did not know what to make of it. It stunned me, such overt recognition of me and what I had been to him, for all to hear. Another public confession, in effect. An admission of guilt and responsibility, risking the wrath of God one more time, risking the wrath of the Church in the nasty guise of Walsingham if he got to hear of it. As he would.

And yet this had been a very intimate recognition of my place in his life, and of his children.

Why had he done it? Was it to win my forgiveness? Was it to assuage his own guilt that had made him follow and award me such astonishing recognition?

Well, if that’s so, he’s failed.

I would not forgive him. He had pilloried me just as harshly as Walsingham had, so plainly that I was known to every man and woman in England as Lancaster’s whore who had dragged him into a life of sin.

I rode away from him, with no inclination to look back. I would not. I rode on a new horse with a new cloak and all the ducal panoply around me, and a gift of great value in my pannier, the confirmation of my pension almost burning a hole through the leather. Two hundred marks a year: a vast sum, which, for the sake of our four children, I could not refuse.

But in my chest was a hole large enough to encompass the heavens.

It would be better when I had returned to Kettlethorpe, I assured myself. There I could forget and set my feet firmly on a different path.

The magnificent cloak proved to be far too heavy for the clement weather but in sheer defiance I wore it all the way home.

It was not better. It was not better at all. Why would this love not let me go? Why did it continue to yearn, hopelessly, helplessly for reconciliation?

There was no hope, yet it would not let me be.

I wished my love for him dead, but it would not die.

Kettlethorpe became a place of sorrow to me. Since I was no longer part of his life and his household, what right did the Duke have to prowl through my thoughts and dreams, reminding me at every turn of what I had lost? I could not accept, I could not sufficiently grasp all that had happened, all we had been to each other, now destroyed. My heart shivered in its desolation, its absolute aloneness.

In its total bafflement.

Were we still not held captive in that grand passion that allowed us no freedom to exist apart from each other, like silver carp from my fishpond trapped in a net? Even when I hated him I longed to see him ride through the arch of my newly constructed gateway into the courtyard as he had done so many times. How could we deny all that we had said and done together? All those words of love and honour, torn up and scattered.

The silver carp might wish to escape the net; in my heart of hearts, I had no such desire.

The empty space in my chest continued to grow until it all but swallowed me.

Nor were my thoughts stirred into liveliness when my sister Philippa appeared in my hall, informing me with infuriating lack of feeling that she considered me in need of her advice. The Duchess Constanza, in her reinvigorated marriage, could manage without her for a week or two.

‘Look at you, malingering and wasting away,’ she announced.

‘I am neither malingering nor wasting,’ I replied briskly, drawing her into my parlour, another new addition to my home. Even if I was, I would not exhibit such weakness to Philippa.

My sister, with narrowed eyes, taking in the evidence of my unfortunate pallor and the loose neckline of my gown, was not to be deflected.

‘If he means so much to you, are you going to accept this estrangement? If your love is as strong as you say it is, go to Kenilworth. Tell him that you will not accept your banishment from his life. Tell him that—’

‘How can I? How can I fight against England and God?’

‘I did not think that would stop you!’

It made me laugh. But without much humour.

‘He has hurt me. He has hurt me too much.’

‘You should remarry,’ my sister remarked when we sat together at the end of the day, her eye to my flushed cheeks as we stitched.

‘And why do you say that?’ I asked, smiling brightly to hide my dismay. Was this to be the pattern of my days, those who knew me encouraging me to bury my disillusionment under some new relationship?

‘It will take your mind off Lancaster.’

Philippa, never less than forthright; Agnes, sitting comfortably at her side, nodding her agreement.

‘And who of status would be interested in taking on a woman with my notoriety?’ I asked. I resented their matrimonial dabbling.

‘I can think of any number who would take on a woman with a guarantee of income from Lancaster.’

‘And four bastard Beaufort children?’

‘Why not? They will be well provided for.’ Philippa shrugged as she stabbed with her needle. ‘Lancaster will not leave you bereft, even with a new husband.’

I bent my head over my sewing, noting that the stitches were awkwardly uneven but was not of a mind to unpick them. Marry again? Could I see myself, ensconced in a different manor house, or enjoying a town house in Lincoln? With another unknown man to share bed and board. To share thoughts and ideas at the end of a long day. To carry another child for.

‘I will not,’ I said.

‘So it’s to be a vow of chastity, is it? To live as a nun, without the cloister.’ Philippa slapped her hand down on her lap. ‘In God’s name, Kate, you are still young enough to have your own life. Will you flounder in misery because one man had turned his back on you?’

‘I am not floundering.’

‘I say you are. There is no reason why you should not visit friends. Even go to Court. The King has always had a high regard for you, and with the prospect of a new young wife, he would welcome you. And yet you shut yourself away here as if you have nothing to look forward to but death.’

I stared at the pair of them, rejecting their advice out of hand. The young King might welcome me to his new court with his beautiful young wife, Anne of Bohemia, but the Duke of Lancaster would also be there. And so would Constanza.

‘No, I will not go to Court. And it is not true—I have not shut myself away. I have merely taken up my duties to Kettlethorpe and Coleby for my son. I am content. I will not visit friends. I will not go to Court, even if King Richard invites me. I will not remarry. We will just have to survive here together, three abandoned females, without a man to add disruption to our lives.’

My smile had long since vanished.

Philippa, equally with no hope of a reconciliation with her much-travelled husband, cast her stitching onto the floor. ‘I can think of a better way of life.’

So could I, but I would not admit it. ‘Then if that is so you must return to the Duchess,’ was all I would say. In my present mood, I wished that she would, whilst I lived like the nun the Duke had made me.