The Scandalous Duchess

Chapter Twenty

How astonishing the difference a marriage vow, to impose respectability, could make for me. The towering bulk of Pontefract Castle became a different world from the one I recalled when I was under duress.

‘You know the lady well,’ the Duke had advised his steward and Constable when we had first dismounted.

‘Yes, my lord.’ Sir William Fincheden, the steward—my steward now—bowed, the Captain likewise. They knew me very well.

‘Lady Katherine is now my Duchess.’ I had to admire the Duke’s not beating about the bush.

There was the briefest of hesitations.

‘Allow me to offer my good wishes, my lady.’ Sir William’s face had been impressively wooden. Why was it that stewards, in their officialdom, had difficulty in accepting my status, whether scandalous or superbly legal?

The Constable had bowed without hesitation. ‘You are right welcome, my lady.’

The Duke took my arm to lead me into the hall and nodded. ‘You will serve her, as you would serve me.’

It was in manner of a warning, of course, lightly given. It was all that was needed.

‘If my lady would accept the grace cup?’ The steward presented it to me, in my superior position on the dais, before the dishes were served at dinner.

‘Perhaps my lady would try the venison?’ The Duke’s carver was keen to show his skill.

‘Would my lady wish to cleanse her fingers?’ The newest of John’s squires knelt at my side with a finger bowl and pristine napkin.

I acquired a page, Guyon, to scurry at my heels and pick up anything I might drop. Doors opened for me as I approached.

‘If it is your will, my lady…’

‘And your head will be as big as a cabbage!’ Agnes opined as the poulterer visited me to offer a choice pair of geese for supper. I seemed to have acquired my own personal poulterer as well as a master of game and Stephen of the Saucery who was intent on proving his prowess with a wooden spoon.

I sat at the Duke’s side on the dais. I knelt beside him in the chapel. His chaplain beamed on us indiscriminately. I was able to make confession with a glad heart.

‘Would my lady wish to take the merlin or the tercel this morning?’

I had a falconer too. And a groom to hold my stirrup when I mounted. I never had to shiver in the cold until my horse was readied for me.

I was the Duchess of Lancaster, in the home of the Duke. My wishes were of supreme importance. The Duke saw nothing noteworthy in any of this, but I did, after a lifetime of monumental discretion and subtle insolence.

I did not need it for my happiness, but it proved that my new status was no dream.

The Duke was John now in my mind as well as in my speech. I could think of him as John when he was my husband, in spite of the habits of a lifetime that still clung to me, as a cobweb clings to the hem of a gown. John grew stronger away from court and its network of cunning intrigues. His languor vanished with good food and no pettish demands from Richard. The hunting was good. Yet in all those days of comfort, when my mind should have been put at ease, I was restlessly anxious.

‘Are you worried about going to court?’ John asked with an insouciance to which I should have grown accustomed but still had the power to disconcert me.

‘Yes.’

No point in dissembling. I had thought about it often, even if John had not. But it seemed that he had.

‘I will smooth your path. It will not be so very bad. Richard has never been hostile to you.’

I knew he meant it, but how would it be possible? It did not take more than a woman’s instinct to know that there were many who would resent my startling promotion. It was not Richard I feared.

‘They will be astonished. It will be no more than a seven-day wonder,’ John announced, turning his mind to the greater importance of ruffling the ears of one of his hounds.

Thus John brushed my megrims aside as a matter of inconsequence compared with a good run after a deer. How typical of a man not to see it. The inhabitants of the aristocratic hencoop would have much to say about my marriage, if I knew anything about them. They would be quick to put me in, as they saw it, my inferior place.

My daughter knew the same.

Arriving at Pontefract, Joan curtsied to me as if to the Queen of England herself before falling into my arms. The twinkle in her eye belied her stern expression as she stepped back and took stock. Married and newly widowed with two little daughters, she had lost none of her calm outlook on life.

‘So you are Duchess now,’ she observed, tucking her hand in my arm as we turned to walk indoors, out of a brisk wind that promised snow.

‘So it seems.’

‘And are you growing into your new dignities?’

‘You know your mother.’ John had arrived to kiss his daughter. ‘She still feels an urge to supervise.’

I could not deny it when he saluted my cheek, despite the audience of grooms and soldiery and a smirking huntsman, and assured me that he would return before dusk. He always had a thought for my peace of mind.

‘Go and gossip with your daughter,’ he added.

‘He looks happier than I have ever seen him, I think,’ Joan said as we watched him ride out.

‘Yes.’ My eye followed him until the cavalcade disappeared into the grey of the winter’s day. He did. The lines that had seemed ingrained on his return from Aquitaine had smoothed out. He was restored to all his old spirit. It pleased me that it might in some small measure rest on our happiness together.

‘You look happy too,’ Joan added, as if she saw the direction of my thoughts.

‘Happy? The word does not express half of what I am.’ There was nothing more to say.

Joan slid me a glance. ‘You have thought about what they will say at court, haven’t you?’

I had thought about nothing else.

‘What’s wrong, Katherine?’

Joan had returned to her own household with a new marriage on her horizon, and I had ridden out with the Duke, hawks on our fists, the hounds milling round our horses’ hooves. It was an exhilarating spring day and the rabbits were good prey. John’s face was bright with the whip of the wind, and I rode beside him, trying to match his enthusiasm, until he handed over his hawk and mine to the falconers, and pulled my mount into a little space.

I raised my brows with superlative skill. ‘Nothing. What should be wrong?’

Without replying he removed my gloves, tucked them into the breast of his tunic and proceeded to rub my cold hands between his. ‘How long have we been together?’ he asked with apparent inconsequence.

‘Twenty-four years, I think.’

‘There! And I thought you would know, to the exact date and time.’ I heard the smile in his voice as he rescued my gloves and drew them back on. Then, having completed the task, the Duke instructed firmly: ‘Then let us try that again. What troubles you, my love?’

For a moment I turned my face away so that he would be unable to see how much I had been distressed, for I now knew considerably more about the reception waiting for me in London. You are being ridiculous, I told myself. You have faced far worse than this. Are you not capable of conducting yourself with perfect propriety and seemliness at court?

But despite all good sense, my belly would not tolerate food and sleep was a fitful thing with difficult dreams. I tried to hide it beneath a facade of smooth conversation and a loving spirit. I thought I was successful. The royal court could hold no terrors for me. If I could play the mummer through John’s public rejection of me and the ignominy as a whore at Walsingham’s hands, I could preserve a smiling equanimity as the wedded and bedded Duchess of Lancaster. Well, I thought I could.

But now my reply to my husband was stark enough because the truth was unpalatable.

‘I have it on official authority that I am a mean, lowborn woman, not fit to fill the shoes of the sainted Blanche or the courageous Constanza. Sorry,’ as he frowned, ‘I did not mean it to sound quite like that.’

‘I know you didn’t. And who says that of you?’

‘The royal and courtly hen-roost.’

He grunted, his hand closing warmly around mine again, undoubtedly in comfort. ‘And who specifically?’

‘The Duchess of Gloucester, the Countess of Arundel. Others—anyone with an ounce of royal or aristocratic blood from as far back as…’ My teeth snapped shut. I was having difficulty in keeping my temper. ‘They are women I did not see as enemies. Once the Countess of Arundel and I exchanged experiences on how to dose a sickly child. She was pleased enough to accept my help then, with a dose of boiled tansy roots to dispel worms.’

‘Worms?’

The Duke had a tendency to laugh at inappropriate moments. I grimaced at the banality of my attack. ‘But now the Countess of Arundel and her like are sharpening their tongues and their talons. Perhaps they are not hens at all but hawks.’ I looked over to where my new merlin hunched on her perch with her fellow raptors. They were all prettier than the Duchess of Gloucester. ‘Or bitches!’ I added. ‘Even the Countess of Hereford has joined their ranks, so I am informed.’

And that wounded me more than all the rest. I had thought her to be my friend, my daughter named for her. How could we share the suffering at Mary’s deathbed, as well as the joy at the birth of Mary’s sons, and then she disown me?

John laughed. ‘It’s the marriage then. As we thought.’

‘No need for you to laugh. You are denounced too.’ Oh, the gossip, carefully expurgated by Joan, I had no doubt, had been detailed enough and Agnes had been bullied into repeating it for me. ‘You are guilty of defying convention, putting me above every woman in the realm, when I am not fit…’

I took a breath, entirely ruffled, angry with their ability to make me feel unworthy. Of course they would hate me. John had made me pre-eminent over every last one of them. But I ought to have the presence to withstand their hostility. That was the problem, of course. I had not expected quite such a degree of virulence from women I knew well and who knew me.

‘It does not matter.’ His fingers were smooth as they stroked the soft leather over my wrist where my blood thundered.

‘It might.’ I worried at it, like a loose thread on a sleeve. ‘Men of power and title do not marry their mistresses. Oh, John—we should have foreseen this. Now I am condemned as an upstart while you are castigated as a fool…’

‘I am?’ I could just make out the little lines of a frown, not masked by the shadow of the velvet folds of his fringed and elegant chaperon. He never took kindly to criticism, but I might as well warn him.

‘You are a fool, they say, because you could have made a grand marriage for profit or alliance.’ I would not tell him that the epithet fool had come from the lips of his own brother of York. ‘But don’t despair. They’ll forgive you, with your high blood and noble rank. Whereas I will always be a woman of questionable morals and tainted blood, from a family of low degree. My reputation is tarnished beyond repair. You are a fool, but I am and always will be little better than a whore who has been raised beyond her station.’

I watched as John’s brows registered astonishment at my bitterness and at the vicious detail of my informant.

‘Where did you get all of this?’

‘From those who write and gossip. It’s too good a scandal not to spread, isn’t it? I seem to have been causing a scandal for most of my life.’ My voice, caught on an excess of emotion, was whipped away by the stiff wind. ‘I’m sorry. I know you’ll say it’s not worth such a fuss—and yet it hurts me.’

‘I presume it’s Walsingham?’

‘Who else? He gossips worse than a woman. And to more effect, unfortunately.’

‘His words cannot hurt you now. You are my wife.’

I was not soothed at all. ‘And because I am your wife, the Countess of Gloucester and her coterie will take their revenge, to prove to me that I am not superior. Do you know what angers them most? Well, you did warn me of it, didn’t you? That until the King weds again, you have made me the most pre-eminent woman in the land. The court women of my acquaintance are preparing to take a stand against me, to show me how inferior I am.’

‘Which is not so. Your family is entirely respectable.’

‘But not sufficiently noble for you!’

‘You can withstand that. What can they do to undermine your confidence? You know to an inch how to go on at court. What Queen Philippa did not know about court etiquette could be written on one of your very pretty fingernails. You cannot be tricked or undermined. You cannot be humiliated, or your behaviour made to appear inappropriate.’

Which only repeated what I had told myself. And yet:

‘Do you know what they are saying?’ His compassion for my situation I thought to be waning, as would any man’s after such a deluge of hopeless misery from a woman who claimed to have superior intelligence. So I would shock him into seeing the fear that lived with me.

‘The Duchess of Gloucester,’ I announced, ‘says that for them to acknowledge me as Duchess of Lancaster would dishonour them.’

My nails dug into John’s hand. I was only aware of it when he flinched and changed his grip. The thought of the revenge they were planning, and such a particular one, had me in its maw.

‘They say they’ll never enter a room or attend a ceremony where I am present. They will turn their bejewelled shoulders against me. Can I tolerate that? They will refuse to sully their feet by walking on the same paving, refusing to consort with me, of so base a birth. And’—I took another breath—‘they say that our marriage is not even sanctioned, that the word from the papal mouth does not grant a full dispensation. He has to actually write it down in sanctified ink to achieve that. And until it happens we are still living in a sinful union!’

There were tears on my cheeks, from anger more than grief that they had discovered the power to undermine my contentment. With legitimacy and respectability I had hoped for acceptance. The papal dispensation, which now apparently did not even exist, had been the bedrock of my position. But my marriage was not papally blessed. I was still a whore. I would be persona non grata for ever.

I scrubbed at the persistent tears with my sleeve.

Throughout which performance, John remained irritatingly undisturbed, as if this final dart aimed at our happiness was not news to him.

‘This is what will happen, my dear love. We will approach His Holiness again, with a dozen purses of gold if we have to, and he will use his sanctified ink to our pleasure.’ He leaned across the divide between our mounts to kiss my cheek. ‘Richard will welcome you to court, where he will present you with garter robes. Which of the hencoop will dare raise a voice against you when the King sees fit to acknowledge you?’

I would not be soothed. I did not want to be the centre of everyone’s hatred. I recalled having to stand against Constanza, living in her household when she despised every breath I took. I did not want to go through all that again, under the eye of every meddlesome, gossiping, blue-blooded court cat at Windsor or Westminster.

‘I think I am too old to face this,’ I said, not liking the despair I heard in my voice.

John wisely, but infuriatingly, decided to tread on safer ground by adopting an authoritative tone. He snapped his fingers to alert the falconer.

‘You are my wife and my Duchess, Katherine, with all the authority that is mine now invested in you. No one will humiliate you. Your position in my household and at court is beyond question or debate. That’s the end of the matter as far as I am concerned. There is nothing to stir up the surface of the placid waters of your life.’ He stretched out his wrist on which sat a juvenile merlin, looking as ruffled as I had been instructed not to be. ‘Now take this raptor and let’s see how well she flies. Imagine every coney to be the Duchess of Gloucester, if you will.’

No, I did not doubt him, and because I loved him and regretted laying my troubles at his feet, I managed a smile to please him and put his heart at rest, as lovers will, even those of long standing. Particularly those of long standing. The merlin settled her feathers and flew well. Perhaps the coneys did have a look of the Duchess of Gloucester with her furred collars.

But when I slept that night I dreamed that I was standing alone in my striking garter robes, all blue and gold with the heraldic motif pre-eminent on my shoulder, in the centre of a vast room. Around the perimeter, little groups smiled and nodded. There was not one face I knew. And then as the edge of my vision faded, there were no faces at all.

‘John!’ I called out in my dreaming.

But he did not hear me. He was not there either.

‘I am nobody,’ I informed him, my desolation keen, as we broke our fast.

‘You are everything to me,’ he replied.

We had been staying briefly at John’s lodge at Rothwell to the west of Pontefract, a more intimate establishment where the hunting was good, but now I was late for our departure. They were waiting for me, to begin the journey to Windsor. I hurried through the hall, down the steps where I knew that one of my pages would be holding the mare John had selected for me to ride on this first of many long stages—and I stopped, so abruptly that another page, closely shadowing me, trod on my hem.

‘Forgive me, my lady.’ He bent to pick up the cloak he had dropped, hastily brushing dust from its folds.

I barely noticed. My attention was completely snared, and I blinked.

John was there in the courtyard, clapping his squire on the shoulder, walking slowly towards me as I stood statuelike on the step, coming to a halt at the foot of the stair. He turned to take in the scene that had made my eyes widen in astonishment.

‘By God, it’s eye-catching,’ he observed with a grin. ‘I wager this won’t leave you cold…’

I was speechless. I stood and looked. And looked.

‘I’ve rarely known you with nothing to say.’

‘Have you done this?’

‘Of course. Who else? For your pleasure, my lady.’ He took my unresponsive hand and led me forward. ‘You are not no one, Katherine. How would I choose a woman who had no merit? You never were. You never will be. Here is your own heraldic achievement to proclaim to the world that Katherine, Duchess of Lancaster, is a woman in her own right.’

The whole courtyard was a blaze of red and gold, from the curtains of my litter, if I chose to use it for some portion of the journey, to the bridle and saddle cloth of my riding horse. The pennons carried by my escort displayed the same emblem, the ostlers who rode the heavy horses that pulled my litter were encased in red and gold tabards. John’s blue and white was totally eclipsed.

‘I don’t know what to say.’

Continuing to grip my hand as if I needed to be steadied in the face of such startling opulence, John led me to my horse. The ostlers were grinning too.

‘Do you approve?’

‘You have done this? For me?’ It was all I could seem to say.

‘Well, you were not satisfied with my poor heraldic achievements of Lancaster and Aquitaine, now you have your own.’

And a warmth, as if emanating from the sumptuous red and gold, closed round my heart, dispelling in that moment so many of my fears.

‘You wanted your own identity,’ John went on to explain. ‘I thought you would find St Katherine more than appropriate…?’

That was the gold that filled my vision. The three golden wheels of St Katherine, glittering on a red background, to create my own coat of arms. My very own, not quartered with John’s or Hugh’s. My own, Katherine de Roet, Katherine de Swynford, proclaiming my own identity even if I was also Duchess of Lancaster. And he had chosen my own saint whom I honoured more than any other, the virgin martyr St Katherine of Alexandria, who refused to allow her Christian faith to be broken on the cruelty of the spiked wheel.

And I laughed as I realised.

‘What is it?’

‘It is like the Roet wheels,’ I said. My own father’s emblem.

‘As it should be,’ John agreed. ‘Transmuted into gold for a daughter of Roet and a bride of Lancaster named Katherine.’

I thought about John’s choice of St Katherine for me: virtuous, erudite, devout, nobly born. I could not have chosen better for my own emblem. Bold and courageous too when her principles were challenged. And now her emblem was mine. This was truly a moment for rejoicing.

‘I am honoured,’ I managed when I had marshalled my thoughts again.

How could he have read my mind so well? And I knew the answer: he loved me. John loved me and would go to the ends of the earth to ensure my happiness.

Before helping me to mount: ‘One moment.’

Opening the purse at his belt he extracted two livery badges. One he pinned to my collar, a gleaming golden Katherine wheel enamelled with red, while the other he attached to the grey fur that formed the upturned brim of his hat.

So he too would proclaim my livery.

His fingers were gentle against my jaw as he adjusted my collar, his countenance lit with his smile that was beautifully forbearing. ‘So let us be gone and startle the populace from here to Windsor with our glory. They’ll think it a papal visitation and ring the church bells.’

What reassurance that blaze of colour and gilded wheels gave me. Foolish? Undoubtedly. But I rode to Windsor with confidence and St Katherine’s courage high in my heart and her wheels bright in my armorial for all to see.

John had done this for me.

I vowed that whatever was waiting for me, I would prove an entirely suitable Duchess for him.

We were expected, of course, so the chamber was thronged, and there were the women of the court who had vowed not to sully their feet on the same ground that I occupied. Well, here I was, for better or worse.

Let us see what they would do. Let us see who would win this bout. I was ripe for battle.

John took my hand and led me forward. And as the Duke smiled at me, I returned it with no need for pretence, for Queen Philippa’s training from all those years ago was surging strongly beneath my embroidered girdle with its golden wheels as I walked slowly, smoothly forward, the skirts of my houppelande brushing against the floor with a soft elegance, my hair caught up in a sapphire-jewelled caul. I would not be hurried. I allowed my lips to curve into a faint smile as if certain of my worth as Duchess of Lancaster. Whatever happened here today would not hang on my incompetence or clumsiness in a formal situation. Court procedure ran in my blood, and where I might be unsure I could mimic insouciance to perfection.

Did I not have the master of such court ceremonial at my side?

I was sufficiently at ease to take in my surroundings. The Rose Chamber was as extravagant as I recalled, and much to the King’s taste, where the decorations in blue, green and vermilion paint together with a quantity of gold leaf, defied any attempt to choose a gown that did not clash horribly. Notwithstanding I wore figured damask, glorious in blue with rioting leaves and flowers.

Ahead, seated on the dais, King Richard awaited us.

‘There, you see. They have not cast you out,’ John murmured, lips barely moving as we made our way between the ranks of courtiers.

I allowed my smile to widen. John might be pre-eminent but I knew which of us claimed every eye today. I had felt the weight of them, from the moment we were announced by Richard’s emblazoned official. The high blood of England might be here, breathing the same air, but that did not mean they had any intention of enfolding me to their collective bosom.

‘But they hate me, you know. Look at them,’ I murmured back. ‘They are sharpening their daggers already.’

John shook his head, with no time to answer for he was turning to bow to his brother Edmund of Langley, Duke of York, who bowed briefly in reply, even more briefly to me. At least he had not cut me dead. My expression schooled immaculately to one of cool pleasure at being returned to court, I surveyed the throng as we approached the King, registering all, giving no acknowledgement to any.

‘You are magnificent.’ John’s final encouragement before we reached the dais.

‘I know.’

But my heart quaked a little.

I knew who was there at the King’s side. John’s brother, Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, together with his Duchess who had vowed to have nothing to do with me. And there was the Countess of Arundel on my left, a Mortimer descendent of King Edward the Third, the royal blood in her veins heartily dosed with venom. The Countess of Hereford, once my friend, whose presence here smacked of bitter treachery. Others too.

I encompassed them all in a gaze of serene affability.

Then I was curtsying to Richard, gracefully sweeping the skirts of my court finery. All would hang on this reception. If he proved cold towards me, if he mocked me or showed any disdain for my antecedents, he would point the way for every one of his court to follow suit. I rose to my full height and lifted my chin a little.

But Richard was looking at John. ‘You have returned at last, my lord uncle.’ At twenty-nine years of age, he had all the Plantagenet arrogance, and was smiling, smoothly welcoming. The gleam in his eye reminded me of a cat perusing a tasty mouse. ‘I have been in great need of your advice of late.’ Suddenly he was frowning. ‘And you were not here to give it.’

‘I am here to give it now, Sire.’ John’s expression was a study in benign regret, ignoring the royal frown as he had probably done for the last decade. ‘I know you will understand my absence, and excuse it, when I present my wife to you.’

‘Your wife! And who is this fortunate lady?’

Which Richard knew very well. His bright gaze moved slowly and fastened on my face with spritely mockery. They were too bright, too full of mischief, as was the brilliance of surprise in his voice.

‘My lady of Lancaster. We welcome you.’

‘My thanks, Sire.’

His hair as darkly gold as the gilding around him, Richard was now of an age to make an impressive figure. The houppelande he wore, so they said, was worth all of thirty thousand marks. Swamping his slight figure in its heavy folds, the encrusted gems blinded in their quantity and brilliance. Fair and smiling, he was the epitome of a young king intent on making his mark on his realm and on European events. But what was his intent? How soon before the unmistakable air of mischief would turn to malice? Richard sparkled with it, wearing a false smile as easily as he wore his robes.

‘We are pleased that you have joined our august circle, at last. After so many years of flirting on the periphery.’

‘Yes, Sire.’ The little barb did not quite glance off my skin, and I felt a flush creep past my embroidered collar, but I smiled as if it were wholly a compliment. ‘I too am honoured to be received here at court as Duchess of Lancaster.’

His eyes flashed for a moment. Then gleamed. Had I earned myself a royal reprimand? But no.

‘I think you know everyone here present? You ought to do.’

‘Yes, Sire.’

‘Good, good.’ He rubbed his hands together with a flash of jewels. ‘You arrival is most timely. I have ordered garter robes to be made for you for the ceremony next week.’

I had forgotten. Or not given it a thought. Now I felt my face flush, knowing exactly why Richard had mentioned it. The royal kitten, full grown into a stately cat, was flexing its claws. He allowed his glance to pass over those who stood as audience around us, inviting them to respond to his magnanimity towards me. Then, when faced with a tense silence that spoke volumes, he raised his hand in a wide gesture.

‘I have need to speak with my lord uncle of Lancaster about the French truce. And my proposed marriage to the Valois lady.’ His glance at Gloucester and York, neither of whom supported the proposal, was supremely innocent. ‘And you too my uncles of Gloucester and York. Perhaps Lancaster can persuade you of the value of this union.’ Then to me: ‘I will leave you, my lady, to renew your acquaintance with the ladies of my court.’ Richard stood and bowed to me, before snatching up my hand to bring it to his lips, murmuring wickedly: ‘They have all come here to meet you with you, you know.’

As I knew only too well. As John walked away in Richard’s wake, I faced the little cluster of court women, Richard’s playful malice a hard knot in my belly. And waited. Etiquette demanded that they curtsy to me. What a strange turning of the world on its head, where I could command their respect. But would they honour my new status? I looked directly at the Duchess of Gloucester, every one of her fine-boned fingers heavy with precious rings, knowing that her response would be watched by all. Boldly I kept my gaze—level and cool—on her face.

Eleanor de Bohun returned it, all expression governed, her lips a slash of anger.

I raised my chin infinitesimally. But it was enough.

Her curtsy was made, as an essay in brevity, but she bent the knee.

I shifted my regard to the Countess of Arundel, who copied the welcome to an inch but had the grace to say in the tightest of tones: ‘My lady.’

Well, that was a step forward.

And then the Countess of Hereford, whose disaffection had given me sorrow. It took much on my part to anticipate the rejection in her taut stance. After all we had lived through together, at Mary’s bedside in childbirth, at her tragic death.

‘You are right welcome, my lady,’ she said softly.

And after the briefest of obeisances, she stepped neatly across the floor and folded me into her arms.

For a moment I stood rigid in incomprehension, and then I knew what she had done, and allowed her to pull me a little distance away from the rest, where I gripped her hands, relief sweeping through me.

‘We have been looking for you for the last month, Katherine. I have missed you. And such a shock when we heard.’ I saw the loss of her daughter in her face, but nothing would silence her obvious delight. ‘You look happy. I don’t need to ask…although how you can be so, surrounded by this sour flock of vultures. As for the King’s mischief, who knows what he’s at these days?’ And then, as emotion robbed me of speech: ‘Have you nothing to say? Or has your marriage robbed you of your tongue—and your sense of the ridiculous?’

And at last I laughed. ‘Are you sure you should do this?’

‘What?’

‘Welcome the black sheep into the pure white of the royal fold?’

‘Why ever would I not?’

‘I was under the strongest impression that I would be taught a sharp lesson.’ I looked back over my shoulder, at the expressions of those who intended to do exactly that. ‘I was told that you were one of them…’ I admitted.

‘And you believed it? Nonsense, Katherine! My name was attached where it should not have been.’

‘And I am grateful. I have missed you too.’

‘Good. We will talk later.’

For Richard, his discussion apparently at an end, was at my side, beaming indiscriminately on all.

‘It is my intention to travel to France, to complete the negotiations for my new wife, the French Princess Isabella.’ He continued to smile. ‘I would invite you, my lady of Lancaster, and your daughter Joan, to accompany me. I can think of no one more fitting.’

My surprise masked, my courtly graces back in play, I curtsied my thanks. ‘I am honoured, Sire.’

‘My intended bride is very young—no more than six years. She will value your knowledge of life at the English court, and your friendship. I will wed her in Calais,’ he was continuing, despite knowing that most of his audience were listening to his plans with strong disapproval. ‘I know that as her primary lady in waiting for the ceremony—with my lady of Gloucester, of course,’—he bowed to the stiff-backed Duchess—‘my wife will be made most welcome.’

‘Thank you, Sire,’ I murmured. ‘I will do all in my power.’

‘I know you will. I rely on you.’

And then with a bow he had walked on, while I took advantage of this situation deliberately created by Richard.

‘So we work together to welcome our new queen,’ I observed to the Duchess.

She managed a bleak curve of the lips. ‘So it seems, my lady.’

‘We will meet after supper,’ I said, matching John’s effortless supremacy.

‘Of course, my lady.’

The Duchess of Gloucester would never call me sister. I saw no softening in her face, but it had been made as clear as day that it would be unwise for her to shut me out of the hen-roost. As I turned away I caught John’s stare from where he conversed with his brother of Gloucester. It was full of pride for me, and of satisfaction which matched my own, yet there was no smile on his face, which conveyed a stark warning. Richard’s games were obvious, even risible, but infinitely dangerous. I must never allow myself to be seduced.

Richard, watchful, brimful of devilry, beckoned to me. ‘I would be honoured if you would accompany me, Lady Katherine—to give me your opinion of the apartments that I will have refurbished for my little bride. I know your taste in such matters to be beyond question.’

And I moved to walk at his side out of the Painted Chamber, my hand resting in his, which of course opened for me every door in the palace.

‘Are you satisfied?’ Richard whispered, the sibilants loud as we walked so that all must know that he exchanged confidences with me.

‘Yes, Sire.’

‘It gave me inordinate pleasure,’ he chuckled, ‘to stir the waters a little.’

And I nodded. We understood each other very well. He had put himself out to smooth my path, and done so with considerable skill. From that moment, no lady of the court who valued either her position or the King’s goodwill for herself or her husband could afford to brush me aside.

‘Well?’ John asked when it was all done and we could escape to our rooms.

‘Good,’ I said. ‘It was Richard who came to my rescue.’

‘It was your own good sense.’ John was at his most sardonic. ‘And I know you have enough of it not to trust our mischievous king too much. He is guided purely by his own wishes. Today it pleased him to twitch the tails of the tabbies. Tomorrow—who knows?’

I cared not. My acceptance was assured, my role at court for the welcoming of the little queen made plain. I stared into my mirror, admiring the jewelled net that anchored my hair, thoroughly enjoying the prospect of my future role. I would travel to France and welcome the child bride. Joan would accompany me and might find a position in the royal household. John too had taken his rightful place at Richard’s side. None of my fears had been realised.

‘Why are you smiling?’ John asked.

‘Because I have persuaded Richard to take down the Halidon Hill tapestry from the new bride’s chambers.’

‘I always liked that one.’

‘You were never a six-year-old girl. At this moment a pretty scene of a lady with flowers and a hawk on her fist is being hung.’

‘Is that important?’

‘Not to me. It might be to his little wife who would have nightmares if faced nightly with scenes of death and mutilation. But Richard paid attention to me.’

‘Now what?’ For I had laughed.

‘It’s even more important that you pay attention to me.’

‘About what?’

‘This.’ I cast my mirror onto the bed and kissed him. ‘The Duchess of Lancaster demands your attention.’

He gave it willingly. And yet as I lay in his arms in the aftermath of our lovemaking I could not help but agree with the Duke’s assessment. Why did I think that Richard was playing games with us all? And that he had not finished? It might be that he had not even started.

But that was a matter to be pushed aside as I fell into sleep, for John, in his ultimate wisdom, had promised me one final step in eradicating the transgressions of our past and awarding me glorious recognition as the Duchess of Lancaster.

‘What of our children?’ I had asked. ‘Will their legitimacy always be questioned?’

‘Certainly not,’ he had replied.