The Scandalous Duchess

Chapter Fifteen

I heard of the Duke’s movements, his achievements, even when I would rather not. What a magnificent sacrifice he had made, how superb the outcome for him. I should have rejoiced that his rejection of me had brought about his glorious reinstatement. The Royal Council, once so hostile, received him with honour, praising him when he refused to be avenged against those who destroyed The Savoy. Walsingham smiled on him, praising his determination to undo a past life of debauchery. So did King Richard, who gave the Duke the office of welcoming the new Queen, escorting her through the streets of London.

I was right not to go. I could not have smiled on him.

Duchess Constanza was seen frequently at his side, enjoying their restored relationship. Arrangements were being made for a new campaign to conquer Castile.

The Duke and Duchess of Lancaster had been truly blessed, but in the harvest it was I who was stripped bare of all my bloom.

I took all the jewellery the Duke had given me over the years, every single piece of it, and dropped it into the bottom of a coffer in which I kept garments I no longer wore. I turned two little brooches over in my hand, remembering when he had pinned them to my bodice, less than a year before. A little gold heart set with a diamond. A clasp with two hands interlocked around a ruby. I added them to the hoard in my coffer and turned the key, but not before placing the coral and gold rosary there.

I would never wear them again.

In a week at the beginning of February, when it was possible to travel the roads again because of a hard frost that froze the mire into something passable, a courier beat his way to my door, bright with Lancastrian livery.

‘Now what? Does he plan to win my good graces with ale and venison this week? I swear he will not do it.’

I had no patience with anyone in those dark days after the new year. I took the package with bad grace.

We had been apart a matter of weeks, but to my mind I was living in the depths of a black well. Every day was a struggle to remain calmly courteous to those amongst whom I lived. I accomplished it, because it behoved me to be courteous, by encasing my emotions in cold apathy, like a suit of armour that would let nothing come close and hurt me. I repelled all friendly overtures. I refused to ride the new mare despite her confiding manner and satin hide. The sable-lined cloak I consigned to the coffer along with the jewels. I was a femme sole and would espouse my title as Lady of Kettlethorpe as I had never done in the past.

I carried the packet into the nursery, picking up the baby from the floor as I sat. Thomas was a year old now and sturdy of limb. I hugged his solid little body, my eye on the document. It was very official, surprisingly so. I thought it might be some form of financial security for the children. Yes, that would be it. Setting Thomas squarely on my lap, I ran my hands over the bulk of it. I could feel a seal.

‘Are you going to open it?’ Agnes was hovering, sensing my reluctance, but overcome with curiosity. ‘It won’t improve for being ignored. It can’t harm you, can it? I’ll take the child.’

‘No.’ For some reason I felt the need to keep Thomas close, and smiled at Joan as she came to stand at my knee, dropping a kiss on her forehead where her russet hair had escaped from her little cap.

‘Shall we see what your father has to say to us? Yesterday two barrels of fine Gascon wine. What will it be today?’

Breaking the seal I took off the protective cover, letting Joan take it from me, as I unfolded the two enclosed sheets, one more legal than the other, which took my attention first.

Yes it was formal, a legal document, written in a clerkly hand. I let my eye travel to the bottom, to the impress in the seal. And yes, this was from the Duke. My heart began to trip a little faster. I held Thomas firmly around his middle as he began to squirm. Why would the Duke need to send me so legal a document? It had nothing, on first scan, to do with my annuity or the children.

I started to read, crooning to Thomas.

My crooning stopped abruptly.

Let it be known that we have remised, released and, entirely from ourselves and our heirs, quitclaimed the lady Katherine de Swynford, recently governess of our daughters…

My eye swerved back, to fix on that one word.

Quitclaimed.

I could not prevent a little cry of distress.

I read on again, line after line.

…neither ourselves, our heirs or anyone else through us or in our name, may in future demand or be able to vindicate any claim or right concerning the aforementioned Lady Katherine, but from all actions let us be totally excluded…

What was this?

In testimony of which we affix our private seal to this with the sign of our ring on the reverse.

This was a quitclaim. I knew what a quitclaim was.

I rubbed my cheek softly against Thomas’s hair, as if for the comfort of his warmth, for my heart was as brittle as a shard of ice as I read between the legalistic lines.

This was the Duke of Lancaster, relinquishing all his rights and interests in me, and, what was worse to my mind, mine in him. We were severed, by law. He had no future claim on me, nor I on him. Our relationship was irrevocably at an end, signed and sealed.

If I had ever clutched at a forlorn hope that one day our estrangement might be healed, that one day in some distant point in the future we might once more stand together, this quitclaim had crushed it into dust.

At the end, when the words ran out, I simply sat and stared, unseeing, as humiliation trickled through my body, as honey would drip from a honeycomb.

Did he actually think I would pester him for money? For support for his children? Did he think I would arrive at the door of Hertford or Kenilworth, my children and household packed into travelling wagons, demanding his recognition? His hospitality and his charity?

Pride stoked my temper. I would not, even without this cold legality. But now he had made sure that I could not, as if I were an importunate beggar who needed to be manacled by the law. Neither I nor my children would have any claim on him ever again. He had severed the connection between us as assuredly with this red wax imprint as with a sword.

…from all actions let us be totally excluded…

I sat and looked at it, horror growing strongly through my shame as I acknowledged what it was that the Duke had done. I was legally banished from his life. Was he not satisfied with simply sending me away and denouncing me as an enchantress, with its overtones of witchcraft, so that all the world could point and pry? I would never take advantage of our past, and yet he suspected that I might take an action against him in law to demand my rights. What rights? I had never claimed any rights, except those of love.

Did he know so little of me, after all I had been to him?

Dismay churned in my belly. This legal separation was unnecessary, as was the cruelty in sending it with a courier. The crevasse he had excavated by this deliberate action lay dark and deep between us. How could my love for him survive this?

I let the quitclaim drop to the floor. I could not vindicate him from this despicable act towards me and his children. Nor could I weep over this cruel blow. My desolation was too intense to allow the luxury of tears. Instead, anger burned as I recalled our meeting on the road from Pontefract.

You owe me nothing and I have no claim on you, I had said.

How right I was. We were parted for ever with the weight of the law between us. Perhaps in my most wretched moments I had been hoping for a reprieve. Perhaps I had thought he would not be able to live without me. I had been so wrong.

‘How could you turn the blade in my heart like this?’ I cried out. ‘I despise you for it.’ I bent my head over Thomas, struggling against tears that finally threatened to fall as the emotion grew too great to contain.

‘My lady.’ I felt Agnes’s hand on my shoulder, her voice soft and steady, everything that mine was not. ‘He would not hurt you in this manner.’

‘I know what he has written,’ I cried out in sudden agony. ‘I know what he has had written for him by John Crowe, his clerk. Why would he write it himself when he has a minion to do it for him?’

All I could see was the damning words of the quitclaim, as if they were written in blood.

…from all actions let us be totally excluded…

I was unaware of my sister coming in, until she removed Thomas who had begun to fuss, and leaned to look over Agnes’s shoulder at the quitclaim. She took it from me, out of Thomas’s reach.

‘Ha! Well, there’s a man’s hand in that, for certain. Why do you weep, Kate? What did you expect from him now that he is back in Constanza’s grateful bosom? She probably put him up to it, and since his eye’s on Castile again, with full Papal blessing for all who accompany him, he’ll have no compunction in obeying her. What man puts the woman who has warmed his sheets for a dozen years before his ambitions? None that I know.’

‘He is not Geoffrey,’ I remonstrated, still torn asunder by disbelief. ‘I never doubted his love. I never had cause to. After that day when he faced Constanza and stood as a shield for me, how could I have ever doubted him?’

‘More fool you, then. I learned my lesson, didn’t I? Men have no loyalty where their loins are concerned or their ambitions. You should know better than to cast your honour and your reputation under Lancaster’s heel. But you did it against all my advice because you thought that love would prove stronger than ambition or public disgrace. He had no loyalty to Constanza, and he has none to you. He deserves every criticism. Any reputation for chivalry has been torn to shreds. Men have no chivalry when their own interests are in the balance.’

Her vehemence, against the Duke and men in general, shocked me, although perhaps it should not have. Philippa shrugged, tight-lipped with disapproval as she ran her eye once more over the document. Then gave a harsh bark of a laugh.

‘I see nothing to laugh at.’ I snatched the letter back.

‘That’s because you don’t see what is in front of your nose. That’s because you are still besotted with him.’

It was too much. Gripping the two letters, one still unread, I strode from her, from the nursery, her accusations against me and the Duke still ringing in my ears. He was untrustworthy. Lacking in honour. Not worthy of the epithet chivalrous. Whereas I was blind and wilful and deserved my present heartbreak.

Forget him. Banish him from your thoughts.

Was this the final ending of our love? Destroyed by the Duke himself, not by Walsingham? When Walsingham had called me whore, the Duke had raised me up from the depths of my anguish. Now I was alone to weather the storm.

Had I not known that our love would one day meet some impossible obstacle?

But not like this. Never like this.

I spent the rest of the day supervising the cleaning of the few tapestries of which Kettlethorpe could boast. Then when I was exhausted, cobwebbed and coated with dust, but my thoughts settled to some semblance of steadiness, I retired to my parlour and, with a sigh to see that it was unoccupied for the fire was unlit and the room cold—I unfolded the second sheet that I had not yet read, from where I had kept it in my sleeve. It could hardly be of any great importance compared with the rest and I was weary of official documents. Fortunately it was brief enough to be taken in at a glance, sealed with the Duke’s own seal but in the recognisable script of Sir Thomas Hungerford.

An invitation is issued to Lady Katherine de Swynford and her daughter Joan Beaufort to attend the household of the Countess of Hereford at Rochford Hall in the county of Essex in April of this coming year. It is hoped that Lady de Swynford will apply her skills in attendance on Lady Mary de Bohun, Countess of Derby.

I stared at it for some time, able to feel, despite my own woes, some sympathy for the child bride, Mary de Bohun, barely out of her first decade. Married to Henry of Lancaster, now Earl of Derby, the young couple were both considered too young for the physical demands of matrimony. It had been agreed that they should not live together until Mary was of an age to welcome childbirth.

Who can pronounce on such matters with confidence? The attraction between the two ran deep, Mary was smitten and Henry lacked the willpower to hold back. A sweet girl, here she was at thirteen years and carrying the ducal heir. Such a young child to give birth, younger than I had been when I had carried Blanche. It was no surprise to me that the Countess of Hereford, Mary’s concerned mother, had solicited my aid in this immature pregnancy.

Except that it did surprise me. Barred from the Lancaster household, why would the Countess open her august doors at Rochford Hall to me as she had once accepted me at Pleshey Castle?

Considering, I folded the invitation, sharpening the creases with my thumbnail.

This invitation did not come from the Countess’s lips. Was this not simply another attempt, on the Duke’s part, to cushion his rejection of me? Another attempt to salve his conscience, together with the pension, and the frequent delivery of wine and the venison that would surely arrive any day soon on my doorstep? Why would he burden himself with these futile overtures? Since the quitclaim had made his future path as clear as day, I would have no compunction in refusing an invitation to attend the household of the heir to the dukedom and his child bride. I would not!

I crumpled the sheet in my hand, then in a fit of petulance, I ripped it into little pieces and scattered the whole in the cold hearth. I would not go. I would not go to Rochford Hall in April or at any other time. All connections between me and the Duke of Lancaster were at an end.

As for the quitclaim, I pushed it into my coffer, my fingers brushing against soft fur as I did so. I reacted with a hiss of breath, as if my flesh had been singed, and I dropped the lid closed. I had had quite enough of the Lancaster household for today without the lure of those magnificent sables.

I went to Rochford Hall.

Despite all my proud pronouncements, all my much-vaunted self-sufficiency, life at Kettlethorpe after another month of rain had palled enough to make me see sense.

‘You are right welcome.’

A formal acknowledgement of my arrival. After an initial hesitation—I had become conspicuously sensitive to both real and imagined slights—the Countess of Hereford drew me from entrance hall to private chamber, anxiety stamped on her broad features, her fingers clenched in the furred edge of my sleeve. The heavy damask of my skirts brushed against the painted tiles. How satisfying it was to have the opportunity to wear court finery again, but anxiety at the quality of my reception made me stiff and formal in reply.

‘I am honoured by your invitation, my lady.’

The words sounded cold when addressed to a woman who had stretched out her hand in friendship to the extent of allowing me to give birth under her roof, but that was before I was branded a witch. That was before the Duke had condemned me as the cause of his grievous sin.

Come to a halt in the tapestry-hung luxury of the Countess’s chamber, I waited for the predictably chilly response. It crossed my mind that the well-connected Joan FitzAlan, Countess of Hereford, might have agreed to this invitation under duress. Perhaps I should have stayed with the miseries at Kettlethorpe, with the rain and flooding after all.

Countess Joan released my sleeve, with a little shake of her head as if embarrassed to be discovered clutching it.

‘I was planning to send a courier direct to you if I did not see you this week,’ she announced. ‘We may very well have need of all your knowledge—and more besides—of foolish pregnant wives and babies who arrive before their time.’

My daughter Joan, self-important at being invited to accompany me at the age of five, stood with quaint gravity, but pushed close against my skirts. I had against all my good intentions taken up the shredded invitation because it was a situation that gave me some concern, involving women as close to me now as my own family. I could not turn my back on the Countess in her troubles, or on her daughter, however abrasive our new relationship might turn out to be.

But that did not mean that I would be won over by Lancaster’s apparent wish to keep me connected to his family. I would give my knowledge freely. I would bring my skills to bear for the Countess and for Lady Mary, with the happiest of outcomes if that was possible. And then I would take Joan and return to Kettlethorpe.

And in a spirit of rebellion I had ridden the Duke’s last gift to me. Why waste such generosity and neglect such a pretty mare? Had the labourer not been worthy of her hire? But I would not wear the cloak with its valuable sable. I would never wear it. Somehow to feel it warm against my skin was too personal.

Sometimes the depth of my cynicism startled me.

Standing in the Countess’s parlour, testing the atmosphere, I regarded the Countess who might see me as the vile temptress of John of Lancaster. Once she would have thrown her arms around me and hugged me with a spontaneity that always surprised me, and I would have returned it. I found it impossible to be spontaneous. On my first appearance in exalted company since the Duke’s denunciation, I simply resorted to formal courtly manners.

I curtsied, eyes respectfully lowered.

‘I will do what I can, my lady,’ I said.

The Countess sighed pointedly.

My eyes flew to hers.

There she faced me, fists planted on substantial hips as if she were no better than a fishwife in the marketplace when faced with a beggar who filched from her stall, rather than a lady whose marriage had been attended by her kinsman, King Edward the Third.

She was staring at me, not best pleased.

‘My lady?’ I queried. This could be worse than I thought.

‘Well, the first thing that you can do, Katherine de Swynford, is take that sour expression off your face and call me Joan, as you have done any time over the past decade! Did I not sit at your side when you howled curses down on John’s head for inflicting this little moppet on you?’ She swooped, quick and friendly, to pat her namesake Joan’s head and plant kisses on her cheeks. ‘And you called her Joan for me! I thought we were friends. I’ve enough to worry about without a slighted mistress on my hands.

‘And if you’re thinking the Duke will be here to harass you, well he won’t. Or not that I’ve had any indication of. He’s too busy courting Constanza at Tutbury, trying to put right a decade of neglect on his part and disinterest on hers. Castile is on their joint horizon again and he’s hoping to persuade Parliament to vote the funds. If you have any thoughts of revenge against him for his pinning you in the pillory for all to gawk at, I think you’ll have it in the frosty atmosphere in their bedchamber, where they’re doubtless trying to achieve a male heir for Castile.’ She laughed immoderately, eyes gleaming with the prospect of gossip. ‘If I were you, I wouldn’t give it a minute’s thought that I had stirred Walsingham’s pen to vitriol once again. And whether John meant what he said and did—’

I braced myself against the warmth. If I did not, I would weep at the unexpectedness of it. Instead: ‘Of course he meant it. He told me so,’ I responded, all my ills rejuvenated, with enough ice to smother the heat in a cup of mulled wine.

‘Never believe what a man says when his power is under threat.’ The Countess now patted me as if I were no older than Joan. ‘Enough about the man. Cheer up, Kate, and let’s see what we can do between us for my errant daughter.’

Pointing to a stool, where Joan dutifully sat, the Countess pushed a cup of wine into my hand, nudged me to a cushioned settle where she joined me, drinking deeply as if her cup held the elixir of life.

I was startled. And then I laughed. What a relief it was to hear it all put so bluntly. At least it seemed that I might have one true friend in the world. To believe that I had none had begun to undermine all my self-confidence.

‘Forgive me, Joan.’ I sighed and sat, shocked by the emotion that packed all the spaces in my breast. ‘I’m as miserable as a cat with a cold.’

‘Then drink. It’s the best wine we have. Better than anything you have at Kettlethorpe. Or perhaps not.’ Her eyes, wide and ingenuous, glowed. ‘I wager John still supplies you?’

And I laughed again, enjoying the closeness I had lacked. And drank. ‘Tell me about Mary,’ I invited.

‘Come and see for yourself.’ She was a little brusque, more than a little worried, but not given to condemnation of either of the pair. Just as she had not condemned me. ‘Foolish children,’ she observed. ‘I’d say they should have known better—at least Henry should—but youth will have its day. Perhaps I should have kept a closer eye on Mary, but how would I have guessed? And what’s done now is done so no sense in weeping over a spoilt pail of milk. I am everlastingly grateful to have you here.’

For the first time in months I forgot my anger, my despair, my desolation. I continued to forget my purely self-centred concerns in the demands of the coming weeks.

The child was born in April, to full term, not an easy birth, leaving both young mother and infant weak with the effort. I wrapped the squalling mite in a linen cloth and carried him out to where Henry, covered with mud and sweat from having ridden hard and fast from the jousting in Hereford to be with his wife at the birth, waited in the antechamber.

‘You have a son, my lord.’

I thought he was due some formality on this most auspicious of days, and enjoyed the quick grin in response. A son. I held him out. Small but hopefully with a grip on life.

Henry touched his son’s tiny hand tentatively, with a look of shocked awe that he and Mary had managed between them to create this child.

‘He won’t break,’ I said.

‘I know.’ Whereas I had expected him to be clumsy, more at ease with a sword or bow than a day-old infant, Henry took the child from my arms with surprising competence. ‘Edward. He will be Edward, after my grandfather, the old king.’

‘A good name.’

The years swept back, as they must, showing me a different scene, but not so different in the audience chamber at Hertford. There I was, as now, carrying a newborn infant, but receiving me with desire in his eyes was the Duke. All those years ago, when all was still so bright and new between us. My heart clenched with grief for what I had lost as I watched Henry, unaware of my turbulent feelings, bend his head to kiss his son between the brows. Then laughed a little when the baby wailed and Henry clenched his grip as if he might drop his son.

‘Is Mary well?’ he asked.

‘Yes, my lord. She is tired. But you will see her soon.’

‘And you are very formal, my lady. I recall you stripping me and dropping me in a bath of water when I had managed to fall into the midden at Kenilworth. You had no sympathy and scrubbed me unmercifully. You always used to call me Henry. What has changed?’ He paused, then added solemnly, ‘What is between you and my father does not alter my regard for you, Lady Katherine.’

How easy it was for control to slip away from me at the least show of affection, for the emotion to well up again, but I took the baby from him, moved beyond measure when he leaned to kiss my cheek in formal greeting, with the same elegant grace that his father might once have used towards me.

There was a shadow in the doorway that made Henry lift his head and turn. Henry must have heard the footsteps but, forsooth, I did not. I had no premonition of it, no sense that the Duke had accompanied Henry to Rochford Hall.

How could that be? Once I could touch his mind, at some immeasurable distance, when we were bound in love. It had proved on so many occasions to be a comfort, a strength. Now I could not sense his presence even when on the threshold of the same room. I had lost the ability to call him into my thoughts.

Had I closed my mind to him so effectively? Or had he closed his mind to me? A rank chill ran over my skin. How powerful, his betrayal of me. It was as if an impenetrable thicket of oaks stood between us, and I must accept that it no longer mattered. I no longer had any call on him.

But my loins clenched when the door to the antechamber was pushed wider, and there he was, striding across the room to his son’s side with loose-limbed elegance. The same imposing presence, the same statement of regal authority, and my wits, without time to marshal them, were scattered, my responses adrift. This was the first time we had stood together, sharing the same space, the same air, since his deliberate farewell on the road outside Pontefract. And between then and now rested the horror of the quitclaim. I could not decide what to do, what to say. For want of anything else, I held the baby tighter.

His eyes were on my face, light and calmly assessing, superbly confident in his powers, as if he had gone through some great passage of torment, and emerged on the other side, more certain, more driven, than ever. As I knew he must be. The Duke of Lancaster was once again accepted as a man to be reckoned with, at the right hand of King Richard. His rejection of a life of sin, together with the penance wrung from him, had been a resounding success.

Impressive as he was in that small room, even the youth and energy of his son, rejoicing in the birth of his own first-born, could not compete. It was as if, for the Duke, our parting was complete, the unpleasant reverberations in his life long gone. He had taken his decision to step away from me and was now at ease at its completion. The advantages for him had been momentous after all.

Whereas my heart thudded in my throat and the chill along my spine persisted, he was magnificently composed, but then, he had known I would be here. He had had time to order his initial response to me into strict line. I continued to stand motionless, a figure in a tableau, waiting to see what he would say, all the time wondering if I still had the power to move him. I could see no evidence of it in his clear gaze, his proud stance. There was no suffering here. I must accept that the alienation between us was for him a matter of no further importance.

In equally proud response I schooled my features into polite acknowledgement as I performed a brisk curtsy, the briefest bend of the knee.

‘Monseigneur.’ I was capable of wielding exquisite politeness like a weapon: like a battle axe to the head.

So, of course, was he. The Duke bowed, hand on heart. ‘My lady.’

And that was the sum of our exchange. The Duke turned from me, placed his hand on Henry’s shoulder.

‘A son.’

‘Yes.’

I saw the Duke’s grip tighten. ‘You must wait now, Henry. It is not fair on her.’

Henry understood very well. ‘I know. We will. Lady Katherine says I can see her soon. I need to tell her…’

He shrugged with a sudden blush from chin to hairline. He was a young boy again.

‘Soon,’ I reiterated, my smile for him, not the Duke. I spun on my heel to carry the baby away, managing a few steps before:

‘Madame de Swynford.’

I halted, but did not turn.

‘My thanks. For coming here.’

‘I was invited,’ I replied, addressing the space before me. ‘The Countess of Derby had need of me. I could do no other, my lord.’

‘Is the Countess of Hereford with her daughter?’

‘Yes. I will tell her that you are here.’

It was an agony as I took myself and the baby away from that cold impassivity. I reminded myself that he would be gone within the week. We had no relationship. What need had I to know what he was thinking?

And there was the Countess of Hereford, standing just beyond the doorway, where she had been all along. She nodded as I passed. Did she consider that we had been in need of a chaperone? That we might have fallen into each other’s arms and renewed our illicit affair?

How wrong she was. Henry and the baby had been chaperone enough. If the Duke of Lancaster and I had been alone on a deserted moor, he would not have touched me, nor I him. Neither of us was of a mind to do so. The Duke saw his path to the future at the side of Duchess Constanza, whilst I, unable to either forgive or forget, would walk mine alone.

And yet…

And yet there was one thought that accompanied me to my solitary chamber. I loved him. I loved him still. In spite of everything, I would always love him. I might rant and fume, but when the Duke had walked into that room, it had been impossible to deny that, for me at least, the distance between us had fallen away. The passion that had bound us was not dead.

It should have been a time for rejoicing. A new heir for Lancaster. The beginning of a new generation of Plantagenet princes to become, one day, owner of Kenilworth and all the power that was attached to it. A banquet was planned. A mass was held. Toasts were drunk.

The celebrating was short-lived. The child died after four days of life, succumbing to a virulent fever that refused to respond to any remedy that we knew. All was despair.

Mary wept. Henry was desolate.

And between the Duke and I there existed a yawning distance.

It was his obvious wish to avoid me.

Sometimes, when he behaved with the cold propriety worthy of the Archbishop of Canterbury rather than an erstwhile lover, I felt as if I carried a leper bell.

But then my own response in his company was that of a nun who had foresworn the company of all men.

If anything could have made it clearer to me that our estrangement was absolute, it was printed and illuminated on vellum in those brief days at Rochford Hall. The Countess’s constant and not always subtle presence was an irrelevance. There was nothing to say between us. We did not try.

Sometimes, almost drowning in my loss, regardless of my furious denial of him, I wept at my inability to reach him, or his desire to respond to me. I wished I was not there. I wished the Duke had not accompanied Henry. My only joy was that Thomas Swynford was there, in the retinue of his new liege lord. How proud Hugh would have been of his son.

The Duke gave no acknowledgement of me. It was an icy distancing on both our parts.

Except for that one shocking, inexplicable explosion of temper.

Our paths crossed, as it was impossible for them not to cross, in the rabbit-warren of Rochford Hall’s chambers and antechambers. My thoughts with the grieving Mary, my feet on a return from the stillroom with a bowl of dried herbs guaranteed to impart serenity and ease of heart, I stopped abruptly at the sight of the familiar figure just stepping through the opposite doorway, and immediately made to retreat. I was weary and drained by the excess emotion at Rochford, and was beyond verbal fencing.

The Duke too stopped, mid stride, face blandly indifferent. I might have been a servant, caught out where I should not have been.

‘If you will excuse me, my lord,’ I retreated another step. It would be simple to escape. One more step and I would be free of the room and him. I was becoming adept at it.

‘There is no need to run away,’ he remarked, his voice carrying clearly across the room.

I flushed. It was exactly what I had planned to do.

‘I had no thought of flight, my lord,’ I replied. Then could not resist. How illogical is the female mind? ‘Since you do not seek my company—nor have you for a se’enight—I am merely relieving you of it.’

I took another step in retreat. The door to my escape was close at my side.

‘I would say that you, for your part, have been remarkably invisible, Lady de Swynford.’

His tone was as dry as dust. I ignored it. And, with a surprising spurt of temper, I also ignored the threatening rumble of thunder beneath it.

‘I am surprised that you have noticed, my lord.’

It was like casting a torch onto a stack of timber at the end of a summer drought. His face blazed. So did his words, a blast from the fires of hell. How had I ever thought him to be unmoved by our close confinement? They were delivered with the precise exactitude of an arrow loosed from a bow. The arrow was aimed at me.

‘Do you think I have found it easy to preserve a distance between us, when you are in my line of sight day after day?’ He was approaching me slowly, inexorably, with the graceful step of a hunting cat, and his words cut me to the quick. ‘Do you think it was a matter of no moment for me, to make so public a confession of my sins? Do you think it gave me any satisfaction, having grovelled in the dust of Berwick, to have Walsingham pawing through the grubby corners of my life to extract what he would consider a mortal sin? And then to have him smile on me, on me, a royal prince, and grant me absolution so that England might once again rest in God’s good grace? Do you think these last months have had no impact on my soul? By God, they have, Lady de Swynford! There has been no self-satisfaction in any of this for me.’

I blinked at the sheer glitter of fury in his face. I had seen the Duke in the grip of such passion before but never aimed at me, only at a recalcitrant Parliament, or overambitious courtiers who questioned his right to exert power. Never had I been the object of such rage, and because my patience was a finite thing, I retaliated in kind, deliberately to hurt. As he had hurt me.

‘Oh, no, I’ll never accuse you of self-satisfaction, John,’ deliberately using his name when I had vowed that I never would. ‘How could a man as proud of his Plantagenet blood as you appreciate having to bare your suffering soul before the masses of England? I know that your arrogance has no rival anywhere in England.’

‘Arrogance?’ His nostrils narrowed on a fast intake of breath.

‘I remember your one and only communication to me at Pontefract,’ I reminded him. ‘You must not leave until I can come to you, you said. Not forgive me. Not I have done you a great wrong. Katherine de Swynford is a vile temptress, you said—’

‘I did not say that.’

‘They say you did. A vile temptress, amongst other epithets that I choose not to recall.’ I recalled every one of them, as if engraved on my heart. ‘What I do recall is that I was no enchantress. It was you who demanded that I share your bed.’

‘I did not demand.’

‘You hunted me remorselessly.’

His temper flared again, bright as the sun on a dagger blade at dawn. I think I had hoped that it would. Experiencing far too much of his cold dignity, it would please me to stir him into wrath. A blast of emotion would be no bad thing.

‘Before God, woman!’

‘As I see it, you should be eminently satisfied, John. Restored to the bosom of God’s grace, and Walsingham’s, of course. Reunited in marital happiness with your Duchess. How could you have tolerated me for so long, when all the advantages for you were to deny me and return to the moral fold of legal matrimony? I hear that Castile is once more on your horizon, with Constanza’s blessing. How magnanimous she is in her victory. Was it worth her kneeling in the dust to beg your forgiveness?’

Oh, how my rancour leached out, to coat us both.

His shoulders became rigid, his whole body poised to repel my attack. ‘Cynicism does not become you, Katherine.’

‘I have learned that it becomes me very well.’

‘And you misjudge me.’

‘I think not. I judge what I see and hear. I have heard no regrets from you. Two tuns of wine delivered to my door do not buy you a dispensation. And then, of course, the quitclaim.’ I had to take a breath. Even the thought of it stirred me to immoderate speech. ‘Did you really have to do that? You had already beaten me to my knees. There was no need to batter me about the head with a legal denunciation and formal separation.’

That brought him to a halt.

‘That was never my intention.’

‘No? To issue me with a legal binding that I have no further claim on you or your heirs, nor you on me. Did you expect me to come begging?’ I saw him raise his hand, and spoke to stop him. ‘No, I am not in a forgiving mood. Perhaps God is more forgiving than I. How could you do it? How could you?’

Which failed to quench his anger but instead goaded him once more into action. With three strides he was in front of me, his hands gripping my wrists without mercy. The bowl of potpourri that I had been carrying, that I had been gripping through all this brutal exchange, fell to the floor, shattering, the cloud of dried herbs scattering over my skirts and the floor. Over him too.

‘What would you have me do?’ he demanded. ‘Do I allow England to suffer God’s anger for the sake of my personal happiness? Or yours? Do I? You know as well as I the problems the King faces. Failure to hold onto England’s possessions abroad. Rebellion and unrest at home with peasants raising their hands against Church and State. A young king who has neither the age at fifteen years nor the experience to take it in hand? Richard needs me. England needs me.’ Colour had risen to mantle his cheekbones. ‘Richard needs me, without blame, to be strong for him to offset the influence of men such as Robert de Vere who would seduce him from his duty. He will not listen to me if my soul is black with sin, or if the country turns against me. I had to repent. Would you blame me for that? Would you have Richard fall even further under de Vere’s control, or some other unworthy favourite who will snatch power from his stupidly generous hands?’

Even though my wrists ached with the strength of his fingers banded around them, I considered his impassioned plea. Honesty, reluctant but necessary, coloured my reply, but there was no warmth in it.

‘You have every justification in doing what you did. My own happiness, as you say, is nothing compared with the glory of England. How could I have thought that it might be? I consider it unfortunate that I should be cast in the role of the sacrificial lamb.’

For a moment he looked away from me, towards the far door, where footsteps sounded. Then when they faded, his eyes bored into mine again.

‘Do you think that I do not rail against God? Against the unfairness of it? Do you believe that my love for you was a mere charade? Do you not know that it still burns within me, every minute, every hour? Would you have me do nothing to protect you from those who attack me? Am I really so selfish as to place my own desires before your safety?’

As one question followed another, each driven home with the strength of a sword thrust, I held his gaze, all thought suspended, this new idea intruding like the point of a needle into fine linen, to add another, more complex stitch to overlay the first. Yet still I replied bleakly, holding onto my sense of ill-usage because it was the only familiar emotion in the whole of this morass that threatened to drag me down and suffocate me. ‘I have no idea. I no longer know what you think or do. It is no longer any concern of mine, of course. You are quit of me.’

He looked as if would like to shake me, only to be rejected.

‘No. I regret that you no longer see it as your concern.’ The fires of temper were banked, the chill of frost reappearing. ‘I have constructed a magnificent fortification between us, have I not?’

‘Yes. It is a formidable structure. You should be proud of it.’

‘It serves its purpose. It achieves what it was intended to achieve.’

I did not understand his meaning.

‘You are bruising my wrists, my lord.’

Immediately his hands fell away. ‘Forgive me. I have hurt you too much already.’ His expression was stony, his restraint palpable, and with the briefest of inclinations of his head, the Duke left me to stand alone, but not before I had glimpsed what could only be raw emotion in his eyes.

I watched him go, thoroughly unhappy, thoroughly unsettled, all my resolution to withstand the power of the man I had loved—still loved—undermined. If nothing else was clear to me, this one fact was. The Duke was as unhappy as I.

In pure reflex, to offer comfort, in spite of everything, I stretched out my hand to him, but his back was turned. He did not see me.

‘John!’

Nor did he hear me.

Thus ended our only conversation at Rochford Hall. Angry, accusatory, trenchant in its tone, before retreating into frigid withdrawal. Perhaps I deserved no better. Perhaps it was time I stepped back, away from him, allowing both of us to continue our lives in calmer waters.

Beyond weariness, I knelt to collect the pieces of the dish, which seemed a meaningless task when the floor was strewn with the dried herbs, so I simply sat back on my heels and surveyed the results of our discussion. Why had he been so very angry? He so rarely in my experience allowed emotion to rule to this degree, and yet his temper had bubbled like an untended cauldron, blistering me with its power. Grief at the child’s death? It would have touched him deeply, but not for him to blast me with such venom, and hold me as if he had no sense of the fragility of my flesh within his grip. The marks were faint, but I could see them. I could still feel his power as he had heaped his anger on my head.

How easy it was for him still to hurt me.

For a long time I simply sat, unmoving in that empty room, all our bitter words descending on me to swirl through my mind, to land finally on some that gave me pause.

Would you have me do nothing to protect you from those who attack me? Am I really so selfish as to place my own desires before your safety?

Had I been wrong? Had I misjudged him? Had he in truth been protecting me?

Suddenly my erstwhile certainties that the Duke had betrayed me were as scattered as the potpourri.

I left the pottery shards and the herbs where they were. The sleeves of my gown were long enough that there was no evidence on view to rouse comment.

The Duke left, taking Henry with him. Back to more exhibitions of jousting skills, I surmised in uncharitable spirit, for both of them. It took little to drag a man’s mind from grief. A thorough burst of male energy with sword or lance and all was put to rights, while Mary still wept for her loss, and I raged inwardly at my inability to overcome my grievances as I renewed the bowl of herbs that proved particularly ineffective in restoring either serenity or ease to anyone.

As they departed I stood in the Great Hall with the rest of the household to make our farewells. When the Duke spoke at length with Countess Joan, I turned to go, but at the end looked back over my shoulder. He was standing at the door, head turned. He might be engaged in pulling on his gloves, but he was watching me. Our eyes held, his arrested, but by an expression that I could not interpret. Unless it was a longing that could never be answered, by either of us. I was the first to turn away, thoroughly discomfited, thoroughly unsure.

‘Well, he has gone,’ Countess Joan observed as she caught up with me later in the morning. It was becoming time for me to leave also. ‘Was it very painful?’

‘No,’ I lied. I managed to smile. ‘Your chaperonage was wasted, I fear. Our desire to leap into each other’s arms is a thing of the past. There is no impropriety.’ I touched her hand in thanks. ‘The Duke’s infatuation is dead.’

She tilted her head.

‘Do you say? I saw a man on the edge of control. If you had stayed, you would have seen him spurring his horse away towards London as if the Devil was breathing fire on his heels. Did nothing pass between you?’

‘Nothing. What had I to say to him, or he to me?’ I forced my brows to rise in a magnificent imitation of disbelief at what she might imply. ‘I think the death of the child would light such a fire,’ I responded gravely. ‘He cares very much for Henry—and for Mary. I see no connection with me.’

Countess Joan eyed me for a long moment.

‘It’s not what I see—but perhaps you are right. Who’s to say? And what of your long infatuation, Kate? Is that too dead?’

But that was a question too far. I would not answer.

I could not.

I was no longer certain of anything.