Katherine (38 page)

She glanced at the girl, then at Blanchette, who had wandered off with her kitten towards the kitchens; she held her head high and stiff, and said in a thickened voice, "Do you mind, Philippa?"

"Mind what, Lady Katherine?" The mild eyes stared. "Oh, that my father should love you? No. For I have loved you myself, ever since the time at Bolingbroke when you did get shriving for my blessed mother on her death-bed, God keep her soul in peace." She crossed herself and, bending close, took a slow stitch on her embroidery. "And you've been good to us since our father put us in your charge. But-" She moistened her lips, looked unhappily at Katherine, then away.

"But what, Philippa?"

" 'Tis mortal sin you live in - you and my father!" she whispered. "I'm frightened for you. I pray - pray for your souls."

Katherine was silent, then she put out her hand and touched the girl's pale hair gently. She got up from the bench and walked across the courtyard towards the gate that led out to the mere and the pleasaunce where she herself had directed the planting of new flower beds and a boxwood maze. The garden was alight with daffodils, lilies and violets; in moments of disquiet she sought its comfort as instinctively as Philippa sought the chapel. She put her hand on the iron gate latch, then turned with a glad cry. Clear on the spring air there came bugle notes and the rumble of many galloping hooves from the south where the road skirted the mere.

She started to run towards the entrance, wild as any hoydenish girl, but checking herself, walked with a shaking heart to stand quietly, as was proper, next to Philippa on the first step of the Grand Staircase that led up to the Hall.

Lancaster Herald cantered first through the arch and saluted them with a dip of his trumpet and its pendent Lancaster arms. The court filled with jostling, shouting horsemen, with stable-boys and pages, who must be alert to catch dropped bridles and run with mounting blocks.

Thirty or more had accompanied the Duke. In the confusion she noted only the clerics: a tall black-robed priest, vaguely familiar, and the Carmelite, Walter Dysse, sleekly plump as a white tomcat, who made her an. unctuous salute as he dismounted. Again there was no sign of Brother William, the Grey Friar. Though he was still the Duke's chief physician, Katherine knew that Brother William avoided her. The few times that they had met perforce, in the years of her connection with the Duke, the friar had looked at her with sad inscrutable eyes. Once he mentioned Nirac, who had died over there in Bordeaux sometime after she left it, but he had seen how little Nirac interested her now, and after listening to her conventional murmur of regret had hurried away.

The Duke's favourite hounds, Garland and Echo, came gambolling through the arch, they leaped at her in greeting and she patted their narrow grey heads, while she waited.

At last she saw him on Palamon as he paused to call back some instructions to Arnold, his head falconer, who rode on towards the mew bearing the great hooded white gerfalcon, Oriana, on his gauntlet.

Each time that she saw John after deprivation, her body flamed and seemed to melt. She thought him comelier, more princely than ever, and loved him the more for the increasing reserve he showed to the world, because it heightened the rare sweet moments of their intimacy. Though he was now thirty-six, he had grown no heavier - indeed what true Plantagenet could ever be stout? His hair, cut shorter than it used to be, had dulled from gold to sun-bleached sorrel, but it was thick as ever; and while Raulin d'Ypres, the Flemish squire, held the stirrup, John jumped down from Palamon with the easy grace of his youth.

He walked to the stairs, while Katherine and Philippa curtsied. Farther up the steps John Deyncourt, Kenilworth's constable, bowed low and cried, "God's greeting, Your Grace."

The Duke smiled briefly at his daughter, his eyes passed over her dress with a faint frown, then, resting on Katherine, widened in a private signal of greeting. "You look well, my lady," he said softly, and taking her hand, bore it to his lips.

"I am, now that you're here-" she whispered.

"The little lads?" he asked.

Today the Duke had brought his heir with him, the nine-year-old Henry of Bolingbroke, who was a thoughtful, matter-of-fact child, somewhat short for his years but sturdily built so that he did well at knightly sports. His hair and eyes were russet-toned, his snub nose was peppered with freckles. He favoured his grandfather and namesake, the first Duke of Lancaster, rather than his handsome parents, yet from them he had his character, from Blanche, a sweetly courteous dignity, from John, ambition and a lightning temper usually controlled. From them both he had pride, and consciousness of rank.

The Duke mounted the grand outer staircase to the Hall, which he had as yet but partially rebuilt, though it was finished enough to show that in grace of proportion, airiness of tinted windows and carving of stone it deserved its growing reputation as one of the most magnificent rooms in England. Usually upon his arrival at Kenilworth the Duke's first act would be eager inspection of the work done by the master masons since his last visit; but today, though the oriel in the Sainteowe Tower had been completed, and in the Hall a window of stained glass depicting the garden from the Romaunt de la Rose had been installed since he was here, he gave these changes but an abstracted look, and Katherine saw that some matter was disturbing him.

She knew better than to question. In any case they would have no privacy until late that night, when he would come from the great White Chamber, up the hidden stairs to her solar - and her bed. Until then she must wait and do her duty as chatelaine towards all the company he had brought. She must find out whether the chamberlain had readied sleeping quarters for them all, and she was already certain that not enough of the precious spices had been doled out to season food for so many.

John at once retired to the White Chamber with Raulin in attendance. While the guests were occupied with drinking in the Hall, Katherine went upstairs to fetch the keys which unlocked the spice chest. In her solar she found Hawise industriously shaking a rowan branch over the bed and muttering some sort of charm.

"Holy saints, wench!" cried Katherine laughing. "What
are
you doing?" She looked at this dear maid and companion with amused affection. They had been through much together since Hawise had come back into her service before little John was born. Well-paid service now; the days had passed when Katherine must accept her maid's own money to exist. Hawise's present wages were equal to the Pessoners' yearly income from fish, and the fishmonger marvelled at this, proud that his daughter had such good fortune, particularly as her husband, Jack Maudelyn, had returned of sour puzzled temper, neglectful of his looms and prone to traipse off into Kent after the Lollard preachers and come back full of their heretical mouthings against the monks, the bishops, and God's manifest plan of rich and poor, lord and commoner.

Hawise's stout arm continued to weave the branch over the bed, until she concluded the magic words which whistled a little through her gapped teeth before she turned and favoured her mistress with a stern look. "I'm fixing it so ye'll not conceive again now that my Lord Duke's back wi' ye. Two bastards is aplenty for ye to bear, my poppet, and you so bad wi' the milk leg after Harry, I thought I'd lost ye."

"Oh, Hawise-" Katherine laughed, colouring a little.

"I must take what God sends, I suppose." She bent and peered at herself in a silver-backed mirror, rubbed a little more red salve on her lips, frowned at a roughening she thought she saw on her chin.

"Ye needna fret," said Hawise watching. "Breeding's not harmed your looks, I'll grant that, ye've still a waist like a weasel." She spoke tartly because it hurt her to see her beloved mistress frowning at the mirror and reddening her lips like any of the lewd court women, and there were other small changes too in her lady. God blast him, Hawise thought as many times before. Since he couldn't marry her, why didn't he let her be!
She's
too fine for this game, however many play it. It'll kill her if he tires. Though as yet there were no signs of his tiring.

"The Duke is concerned about something, I fear," said Katherine, gesturing for Hawise to bring her the bunch of keys from their hiding cranny beside the chimney. " 'Tis perhaps that the Prince of Wales is worsening and may not live the summer out? Yet that's no new thing."

"Nay, more like 'tis this matter of Parliament next week," said Hawise, who had been down to London to see her husband for Easter, and there heard much angry talk. "The Commons are in savage mood. No doubt His Grace has wind of what they'll ask, and, by cock's bones, they don't see eye to eye, Commons and His Grace!" Indeed she had checked her Jack sharply for the hateful things he repeated of the Duke, but this she did not tell her mistress.

Katherine nodded, vaguely relieved. Inclination as well as good taste kept her from interest in national affairs. She was no Alice Perrers, whose greed for power and money were all but wrecking England, so they said. Katherine's only desire was to live quietly removed from the hurly-burly of the court, to keep herself and her children from public scrutiny and receive John when he came as any lady would her rightful wedded lord who must be often absent on man's business.

This meant ignoring a great part of his life. It also meant ignoring Costanza and that other child of his at Hertford Castle - Catalina - which meant Katherine in English. The Duchess Costanza had wished to name her child for a favourite Spanish saint, not knowing, in the summer of 1372, of Katherine Swynford's existence. John had laughed when he told Katherine of this. It amused him that his wife should name their daughter for his mistress, all unknowing, and part of his unkind laughter had come from his anger with Costanza for producing a girl, and no suitable heir for the throne of Castile. Katherine had felt faint pity for that other woman, all the easier to feel since she had never seen the Duchess.

Costanza had heard of Katherine's existence now, no doubt though Philippa Chaucer said there was no telling
what
the Duchess knew, always jib-jabbing in her own heathenish tongue to those Spaniards, but mum as a clam to her English household.

The Duke had appointed Katherine's sister as one of the English waiting-women to his new Duchess, and granted her a handsome annuity of ten pounds. Philippa had been delighted and looked upon the appointment as heaven's just reward for the dull years of hardship at Kettlethorpe. That she owed this windfall to Katherine's peculiar connection with the Duke, she accepted with brisk realism, though seldom alluding to it. Ever shrewd judge of a bargain, Philippa considered that the manifold benefits now enjoyed by all Katherine's family nicely counterbalanced moral qualms. And she frequently thanked God that Hugh had died so opportunely, "Or you might have been shackled till Doomsday to that grumbling ha'penny husband, Katherine, and we'd all still be pigging it at Kettlethorpe."

Philippa's attitude had hurt Katherine, at first; she had felt her love cheapened by it, and for some time mention of Hugh gave her dull pain, like remorse, oddly mixed with anxiety.

But that was in the beginning, now when she thought of Hugh there was nothing but a blank.

Katherine rose from the dressing-stool and fastening the keys to her girdle, smiled at Hawise. "I must see to our guests. I scarce know who has come with His Grace."

The company assembled in the Great Hall were culled from the Duke's retainers or close friends and mostly men, of course. Katherine was accustomed to that. Still, a couple of the young knights had brought their wives, and Lord Latimer, the King's chamberlain - a sly-eyed man, long-nosed as a fox - had his lady with him up from London. An honour so unusual that Katherine, as she received Lady Latimer's subdued civilities, thought that his lordship must need very special favour from the Duke. And she was increasingly aware of tension beneath the surface of this gathering.

Lord Michael de la Pole was his bluff hearty self and greeted Katherine with the semi-paternal pinch of the cheek he always gave her; but then he drew to the corner by the north fireplace and, scowling, whispered with the huge glowering Lord Neville of Raby. Both barons glanced sideways at Latimer, then with deepened frowns their eyes turned to the tall priest in the black doctoral robes, as though they wondered what he did there.

Katherine wondered too, for the priest was John Wyclif, leader of the heretical Lollards. Wyclif had responded to her greeting with a slight bow and left her at once to stand by himself near the Romaunt de la Rose window, which he examined with apparent interest. Katherine too looked at the new window, admiring the blaze of emerald light surrounding the god of love and the ruby rose.

"Do you understand Love's Garden better now than once you did, little sister?" said a voice in her ear.

She whirled around crying, "Geoffrey!" and caught his hand in pleasure. "I didn't see you or know you were coming. I thought you at Aldgate."

"I was. But since his Grace was so good as to include me in Saint George festivities, I came. I grow dull alone with my sinful books, my scribblings and my wool tallies."

His hazel eyes twinkled as they always had, faintly mocking. In the months since she had seen him, he had grown stouter, and there was grey in his little forked beard. His gown was deeply furred like any prosperous burgher's; he wore a gold chain that had been given him by the King, but there were still ink stains on his fingers and a battered pen-case hung at his neck with the chain.

"Nay, Geoffrey," she said. "You know you're never dull alone, you like it."

They smiled at each other. Though Phillippa sometimes got leave from her duties to the Duchess Costanza and visited her husband in his lodgings over Aldgate, where she cleaned and clucked and harried him out of his easy-going bachelor habits, these visits sprang largely from a sense of obligation, and the Chaucers were both more contented apart. Their little son stayed with his mother, so Geoffrey lived alone.