The Scandalous Duchess

Chapter Twenty-Two

October 1398: Leicester Castle

‘What are you doing?’

What I had seen when I stepped into the Great Hall and manoeuvred around the haphazard piles of baggage and equipment appropriate for a long journey had chilled my blood. There in the middle of it all was one of the great travelling beds.

No! He could not!

I had turned on my heel to run him to ground in the steward’s room, where I became coated with ice from head to foot that for a moment robbed me of what would have been hot words. How weary he looked, his eyelids dark and fine drawn. His skin almost translucent, his nose as fine as a blade. But there was nothing amiss with his spirit or his temper.

‘I am, as you see, organising a journey.’ There was the old undercurrent of impatience that I recognised.

‘Is it imminent?’

He sighed. ‘Not so imminent that I cannot give you a moment of my time.’

He gestured for the steward to leave us. The steward beat a fast retreat, sped on his way by the expression on my face.

‘And is this a good idea?’ At least I tempered my tone.

‘Probably not.’

The slant of light delineated the increasingly sharp line of his cheekbones, yet it was not caused by the unseasonal cold, the days of cloud and rain. To my mind the culprit was Richard. His banishing of Henry had drained the blood from John’s heart but although grief and loss held him prisoner, still our marriage held. Our love was as strong as it had ever been. As we had vowed, not even Richard could shake that.

Musing lightly as I poured a cup of wine from the engraved silver vessel at his left hand, I held to the belief that John would rally as he had before, if Richard allowed him to rest. John had found a need to retire to Lilleshall Abbey with me, at the end of the Shrewsbury Parliament in September, but had not his spirits been restored there? Had not prayer and a period of calm dispersed the fever that shook his limbs and bathed his face with perspiration, however cool the day?

But was he indeed restored? Cold reality on some days forced its way into my thoughts, making me acknowledge the inevitable. This was one of those days.

‘Why are you doing this?’ I asked, pushing the cup towards him, attempting to preserve an outward calm when fear of what was clearly a major expedition gripped me, and all I wished to do was shriek at him that he must not go. He was in no fit state to go on any journey. I suspected Richard’s hand again.

‘Because I am to go to Scotland, in October, at the request of the King.’

I knew it had been mooted. A diplomatic mission to which John was most suited. If anyone could talk the Scots into an alliance, it was he. And perhaps Richard saw an opportunity not to be missed to remove his uncle from the centre of government. It was in both our minds, but the King’s will was the King’s will.

I said no more, letting John return to his lists. We knew it would never come to fruition. The mighty Duke of Lancaster no longer had the energy to pursue such a venture. The following week the piles of baggage were removed and unpacked, the bed restored to storage. I ordered it and John, in a state of extreme lassitude, was unable to stand against me. Some days it took all his strength to raise his knife to his meat, a cup to his lips.

‘God’s Blood! It’s a poor way to celebrate the Coming of the Christ Child!’ he announced as the days of the celebration drew near and his listlessness, aggravated by poor appetite, failed to respond to the tincture of sorrel I pressed on him.

‘We will still celebrate. We do not have to dance,’ I said.

His eyes gleamed. ‘I can still dance with you in my mind, my dear love.’

‘Then that is what we will do.’

I would not let it become a house of mourning. Not yet.

These were the days of respite when we sat together, sharing a cup of wine. Memories were allowed to return, but only the good ones we might enjoy together. This was not the time to stray into the far reaches of bitterness and recrimination, and indeed there were no such memories to catch us out. Time and suffering had brought us closer, even when the limit of our intimacy might be hands enclasped, lips soft and gentle in chaste salute. The days of our physical coupling were long gone but my body accepted it. Had I not had many years to practice abstinence? It stood me in good stead. Instead, as John held me in his arms I relished the closeness of spirit.

‘Shall I tell Henry?’ I asked.

Proof, at last, of the depth of my despair. It was the first time that either of us had spoken of the absence of John’s heir, or alluded to his own creeping death. Now we could turn our thoughts from it no longer.

But: ‘It will do no good. Why worry him for no reason?’ John replied. ‘Read to me.’ With his free hand he pushed the open Book of Hours across the bed towards me. ‘Read to me from the psalm…’

It was Psalm 38, not one that came easily to my mind. I began.

‘“O lord, rebuke me not in thy wrath, neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure. For thine arrows stick fast in me and thy hand presseth me sore. There is no soundness in my flesh because of thy anger. Neither is there any rest in my bones because of my sin…”’

I stopped, aghast.

‘John…no!’

‘Go on. I have to face my death. I know why I am suffering. My physician says it is God’s judgement for my breaking of holy law. I need God’s forgiveness.’

So I read on, hating it, but it was what he wanted.

‘“I am feeble and sore broken. My heart panteth, my strength faileth me. As for the light of my eyes, it is also gone from me…”’

I could read no more. For the first time in his presence in these weeks I could not prevent tears gathering, falling. As I closed the book and laid it down beside me, we exchanged a long look, which spoke of everything we could not say.

‘Not so,’ he said at last, his smile a blessing. ‘The light of my eyes is not gone from me. You are the light of my eyes. You are the bright sun in my firmament. You are with me always.’

‘And I will be until the end,’ I acknowledged.

We sat quietly together. Our minds were in tune. And so I abandoned the physical despair of the psalmist and sang instead of love and hope and an assurance for our future together:

‘Your love and my love keep each other company—

That is why I am so joyful.

That your heart is constant in its love for mine

Is a solace beyond compare.

Yours in the clasp that hold my loyalty,

You dismiss all my heart’s sorrow.

And yours is a devotion that does not bend or alter—

Your love and my love shall be steadfast in their loyalty

And never drift apart.’

All would be well, I assured myself. Henry would return from exile. John’s body would mend and become as strong as his mind. I would not release him. I would not give him leave to go from me. This was what I had wanted all my life, the right to be with him. I refused to accept our parting.

I held tight to his hand. I would not give him up. I would not.

His mind was as astute as ever, his will as firm. How could death claim him?

On the second day of the new month of February I entered John’s room, knowing that his physician and body servant had left, only to discover that there was a clerk with him, and John was dictating, steadily, while the clerk wrote.

John acknowledged me with a glance, but did not stop his instructions. When he raised his hand to summon me closer, I saw that he could barely lift it. I stood beside him until he was finished, my eyes fixed on his face throughout, absorbing every nuance.

‘What’s all this?’ I asked at last, for as I sank to the edge of his bed I realised that I was sharing it with an array of uncomfortable bullion. I shuffled, after sitting awkwardly on a girdle set with cabochon rubies, and made to clear it away.

‘No. Leave it for a moment. It will be packed it into a coffer. I have bequeathed it all to Richard.’

I looked at the treasure, startled into a laugh when I saw the gold cup I had given to John at the New Year gift-giving. Next to it a great jewel set as a pin to hold a cloak. A gold dish, engraved with the garter motif, its cover flamboyant with a dove, its wings spread wide.

‘My cup?’ I could still smile. ‘You’ve only had it a month!’

‘But it’s the best I have.’

‘To persuade Richard to be lenient.’

‘Yes.’

‘Can he be persuaded?’

It was a beautiful cup. I begrudged it holding pride of place in Richard’s treasury, but I would not deny John’s right to give it.

‘The gold means nothing to me,’ he murmured. ‘How strange that once I saw its value and collected such items with joy. Now, dearest Katherine, you are my treasure. A pearl beyond price.’ He took my hand and raised it to his lips as he used to do in the days of love’s glory. ‘To you, I give you the gift I can give to no one else. I give you the most precious thing I have. Myself, firm in faith and love, steady in desire, never changeable. No matter how close death comes with silent feet.’

I sat with him, not speaking. I had no words to say.

I was warned. Had I not known it? Had I not seen death stalking us, no matter how often I would deny it? My careful dosing with black mustard or wild valerian could be efficacious, but it could not prolong life beyond its allotted span. The dying of the year had pre-empted the final days of a great prince.

Now his strength was fading fast. We both knew it. We did not speak of it but let the events unfold as they would.

My lord, my lover, slipped into death, at the end as gently as into sleep, while I sat at his side and watched his beloved face. He had asked me in his final breaths to play the lute for him. His soul departed as the plangent chords filled the spaces in the room. Without struggle. Without pain in the end. It was as if his flesh recognised the appointed hour and allowed his soul to depart without contest.

I sat for a long time in that room, sumptuously appointed as for the living, my hand hard on the lute strings to silence any vibration. So my lord, my love, was still and silent. But whereas I could make the lute speak softly again, or sing out in fervent joy, as the mood took me, my love would never more speak to me. The majestic polyphony of our lives together was dead.

I too was lost and alone and silent.

The depth of my anguish could not be expressed.