Katherine (50 page)

Over Richard's bare head, the barons of the Cinque Ports, by ancient right, upheld a cloth-of-gold baldaquin supported by four silver poles. After them came old Sudbury, the Archbishop of Canterbury, his wrinkled face working with emotion, his blue-veined hands trembling on his crosier - and after him the bishops and the abbots and priors and monks.

As they entered the Abbey and Richard was placed on a platform half-way between the choir and the High Altar, the clergy burst forth in a great anthem, "Firmetur Manus Tua."

Katherine's eyes filled, the people around her wept as the glorious singing mingled with the exultant organ and the Abbey was awash with beauty of sound, enclosed by the beauty of stone.

She could see very little of what took place, but in the suddenly tense, quiet church she heard a quavering boy's voice repeat the coronation oath and when the archbishop turned to the people and asked if they would have and hold Prince Richard for their King, she cried joyously with the thousand other voices, "Ay, we will have him!'' while her spine tingled.

The ceremony progressed: the Veni Creator, the Litany, the Collects. Then the King was anointed with the holy oil and invested with all the ceremonial robes and the regalia. Finally he was crowned and installed upon his throne. The archbishop commenced the Enthronement Mass, and first of all Richard's subjects, the Duke of Lancaster knelt before the child to do him homage.

Richard's reign started with bright promise. Only the most superstitious thought ill-omened two small occurrences.

The little boy drooped and had gone very pale when the Mass and homage were at last over and he walked down the transept to quit the Abbey. He swayed giddily as he stepped into the North Porch. His old tutor, Sir Simon Burley, was watching. He swooped the child up in his arms and ran with him towards the Hall, where Richard still must endure the banquet. When Burley lifted him, one of the King's red-velvet consecrated slippers flew off and must have been seized by some knave in the watching crowd, for it was never seen again.

So soon had Richard lost a part of his kinghood.

And at the banquet in Westminster Hall, the child complained that his head ached dreadfully from the weight of the crown. His cousin Henry sat opposite him in his father's place, since the Duke and other lords were riding their horses up and down the Great Hall, keeping order.

"Feel the thing, Henry," said Richard, pushing at his crown. " 'Tis heavier than an iron helm."

Henry curiously reached his stubby little hands across the board to try the crown's weight, but the Earl of March intervened violently and snatched the crown from Richard. "
I
will hold it for Your Grace," said the Earl, "so that you may eat in comfort."

Henry shrugged and returned to his roast peacock, of which he was very fond. This pother about the crown seemed to him silly, and Richard was always whining about something, anyway. Henry wondered if he could get Tom Mowbray off in a corner for a wrestling match pretty soon, and then remembered that he couldn't.

Richard was going to make Tom Earl of Nottingham after the banquet, and make a lot of other new earls too. Lord Percy would turn into Northumberland, Uncle Thomas of Woodstock was finally going to get a title of his own and turn into Buckingham. The old King hadn't cared much for his youngest son and had done mighty little for him, not even a title. But small wonder, thought Henry, Uncle Tom's a mump.

In a tapestry-hung gallery at the far end of the Great Hall, the Princess Joan ate with the royal ladies and a few selected peeresses. She had soon given up making conversation with the Castilian Duchess, who responded in polite monosyllables while pecking at her food and sipping her wine with what the Princess, who adored eating, considered maddening affectation.

Joan was therefore thunderstruck when the Duchess lifted her head and, turning her huge black eyes, said sombrely, "LaSweenford, es vero que - zat she is wiz child again?"

Joan for all her experience did not know how to take this, and her instinct was to protect Katherine. She answered, "Why - I know nothing about it, Duchess." Though she did.

Costanza gave the Princess a shrewd stare from under her thick white fids. Beneath the ermine cape her thin shoulders sketched a shrug. "I do not inquietarme about hees - bastardos," she said, "except - -" She stopped, obviously searching for words, and the Princess, embarrassed but curious, suggested that French might be easier.

Costanza's eyes flashed. It was the perfidious French who had been supporting the usurper Trastamare on the throne. She never spoke French.

She continued frigidly, "La Sweenford she make heem - el duque -
soft.
He forget - Castile!"

And a very good thing too, thought the Princess, who began to get the drift of this, as Costanza's dark glance moved down the Hall and rested on Richard's little golden head. Joan had no intention of using her new influence to take up the cudgels for Castile. The French depredations in Sussex were quite enough worry. So she ignored Costanza's real meaning and said with her charming sunny smile, "Oh, I don't believe the Duke has grown soft, in any way. On the contrary, I think he's showing great wisdom lately. We must straighten out the tangles in our own land first, don't you think?"

Costanza understood enough to realise that here was not the ally she had hoped for; a curious blankness like a mist obscured her brilliant eyes. Her lips quivered, and she muttered passionately in Spanish, "Why will not God let me bear a son?" She clutched at the reliquary on her chest.

Joan was not introspective, or given to moral judgements, and her own youth had contained a decidedly questionable love escapade. But it did occur to her that whether Costanza really minded or not, she was being increasingly wronged by this flagrant affair of John's with Katherine, and that probably the Duchess suffered more than her colossal pride would let her admit. Joan's facile fondness for Katherine slipped a little.

Spurred by her ever-alert watchfulness for Richard's safety, she viewed John's liaison with sudden alarm. Look how the old King's prestige had waned because of Alice Perrers, how the Commons had almost lost reverence for royalty and actually rebelled against the crown.

In truth it would be wiser for John to be more discreet in regard to Lady Swynford. Not cast her off, of course, no need for that. He could send her to one of his northern castles, Knaresborough, Pickering, or better yet, to Dunstanburgh on the Scottish border. There people would forget her and he could visit her in secret.

Joan decided to take up this matter tactfully in a day or so when she had no doubt that John would soon see the wisdom of her advice.

She was destined to be completely disappointed.

"Forth, pilgrim, forth! Forth beast out of thy stall!
Know thy country, look up, thank God for all;
Hold the highway, and let thy soul thee lead;
And truth thee shall deliver, it is no dread."

(Ballade de Bon Conseil)

It snowed softly in Leicester on Christmas Day of the year 1380, and to the hundreds of guests sheltered at the castle and the Abbey of St. Mary-in-the-Meadows, and in other foundations and lodgings throughout the town, the pure white drifts were good omen for young Henry of Bolingbroke's wedding to little Mary de Bohun.

Of all the Duke's country castles since he had abandoned Bolingbroke, Kenilworth and Leicester were his favourites, and the latter was the more fitting for the marriage of the Lancastrian heir.

The Duchess Blanche had been born here and her father, the noble Duke Henry, was buried here in the beautiful Church of the Newarke which he himself had built to enshrine his most treasured relic, a thorn from Christ's crown of martyrdom.

This joint celebration of Christmastide and a wedding had tuned Leicester to feverish pitch. Each night mummers came to the castle dressed as bears and devils and green men, to scamper on their hobby-horses through the Great Hall. And each night a fresh boar's head was borne in to the feasting and greeted by its own carol, "Caput Apri Defero."

And this Christmastide was a feast of light and music. Scented yule candles burned all night, while the streets of Leicester were extravagantly lit by torches that cast their rosy flames on the snow. The waits sang "Here We Come a-Wassailing" in the courtyards, the monks chanted "Veni Emmanuel" in the churches, and in the castle gallery the Duke's minstrels played carols without ceasing.

On the night of the wedding there was a riotous banquet in the castle hall. Katherine's sides ached from laughing at the Lord of Misrule, who was dressed in a fool's costume, a-jingle with tiny bells, and wore a tinsel crown on his head to show that he was king and must be obeyed. The Lord of Misrule had been chosen by lot, and happened to be Robin Beyyill, though one soon forgot that, because he was masked. Robin's nimble brain thought of many a comical jape, and he won laughter even from the frightened little bride when he seized a peacock feather in lieu of sword and solemnly knighted Jupiter, the Duke's oldest hound.

Katherine sat beside the Duke, but they were not in their usual seats of honour, for those were given to the bride and groom - and Richard.

The King and many of his meinie, including his beloved Robert de Vere, had come to Leicester for his cousin's wedding, though not his mother, the Princess Joan. Joan sent polite messages to Katherine occasionally but they had not met since the coronation. To this wedding invitation Joan had answered that her aching joints and swollen leg veins confined her to Westminster. This avoidance had hurt Katherine for a while, and then she accepted it, with a certain defiance. The Duke had told her of the Princess' request that he hide Katherine away in one of the northern castles and of his indignant repudiation of the idea, adding with tenderness, "It seems Joan has forgot what love is, sweet heart, or she couldn't suggest such a thing.''

In fact, Joan's intervention had but increased his ardour, and far from hiding Katherine during these three and a half years, he had taken her with him on all his journeys throughout England. The constables of his Yorkshire castles, Pickering, Knaresborough and the gloomy Pontefract, of the High Peak in Derbyshire, of Newcastle-under-Lyme and Tutbury in Staffordshire, as well as of Kenilworth and Leicester, had grown accustomed to receiving Lady Swynford in the Duchess' place.

Nor during that time did these constables ever see the Castilian Duchess. She remained at Hertford in retirement. Rumour said that she was sickly, a little crazed. Certain it was that she bore no more children - which could not be said of Lady Swynford. There were four Beaufort bastards now, the last, a year-old girl, christened Joan for her father. The Duke appeared to dote on all these babies as wholeheartedly as though they had been fair-born.

The three little Beaufort boys, John, Harry and Thomas, squatted now on stools by their parents' knees, gaping at the antics of their elders, while the Duke caressed the curly yellow head of his namesake and asked Katherine some laughing question with all the fond domesticity of a contented husband.

No one else took much notice of the Duke and Katherine, all eyes were turned on the Lord of Misrule, the bridal couple and the King; but Geoffrey Chaucer watched his sister-in-law with sharp interest.

By the rood, thought Geoffrey, settling back in slightly tipsy contentment, little Katherine had thoroughly tamed that fierce Plantagenet leopard! It must be nine years that she had enthralled him, and to judge by the Duke's attitude now, his passion for her was strong as ever. That was a long time for the sweet fire to burn so bright, Geoffrey thought with a touch of envy, yet he had always deemed Katherine an exceptional woman. She had borne six children, she must be about thirty, but her beauty was undimmed, though it had acquired assurance and lost the touching wistfulness. The new quality was not brazenness, certainly; Katherine could never be that. Yet there were changes. Her gown was low-cut as that of Edmund's promiscuous Isabella, and Katherine leaned openly against the Duke's shoulder as she had never used to. Still, her grey eyes were clear as crystal, her high white brow smooth as a girl's and the new-fashioned Bohemian headdress gave to her a look of shining delicacy. Though on many women the balanced crescent moon above their faces unfortunately suggested a horned cow. It was so with his Philippa.

It was a year of weddings and matchmaking. The Duke, singlehearted in all that he did, having turned his mind to domestic matters, had now married off two of his children in ways most advantageous to their prosperity if not their happiness. However, nobody expected happiness from marriage and least of all the Duke, though he had achieved it once. Even now, though Geoffrey was fat and forty, his staid heart felt a springtime thrill at the memory of the Duchess Blanche.

The Duke had procured for his Henry another great English heiress, such as Blanche had been, but the marriage of these two children promised no such felicity. Henry was thirteen and his bride twelve. Up there at the High Table, in her glittering finery, one could see the child trembling like a little white leveret. But she would return to her mother's care tomorrow. The Duke had no intention of prematurely taxing the breeding powers that would eventually produce the next Lancastrian heir, though some less wise fathers threw the children into bed together at any age and accepted whatever consequences might arise.

"She's an ill-tempered vixen," asserted Philippa suddenly, enunciating with great care. "She's scowling at me."

"Who?" asked Geoffrey, looking around.

Philippa raised her spoon and pointed at the hawk-nosed Countess of Buckingham. "Her. Bride's sister."

Geoffrey said, "Nonsense!" soothingly. " 'Tis simply that she dislikes this wedding, scowls at everyone."

Though it was true that Eleanor de Bohun's angry eyes rested on Philippa's dishevelment with disgust, her fish mouth was set in continual disapproval anyway. Thomas of Woodstock's wife vehemently agreed with her husband, and resented the Duke's perfidy in snatching her little sister from the convent where they had sent her to be a nun. Mary's return to secular life and marriage to Henry reinstated her as coheiress to the vast Bohun fortune and correspondingly halved Eleanor's share.

Only an uneasy desire to keep an eye on the proceedings, lest worse befall, had brought Eleanor to the wedding at all, and she made no effort to be civil.

"She glares at
me,
" retorted Philippa belligerently, "because she dares not be rude to Katherine. Oh, I
heard
her in the garde-robe, squawking to her ladies that I'd no right to be seated above the salt. She called me a pantry wench married to naught but a scribbling wool-counter."

Geoffrey recrossed his legs and considered with amusement the Lady Eleanor's contempt. Scribbling wool-counter no doubt he was, but a much travelled one on the King's secret service. Peace negotiations, royal marriage negotiations, in France, in Flanders, in Italy, he had acquitted himself well in these. Though general recognition might be pleasant, its absence was not upsetting.

"I wot myself best how I stand
For what I dree, or what I think
I will mysehen all it drink...."

He had written that in his poem on the unreliability of Fame, verses he had started at Kenilworth and never quite finished. He had abandoned it before the end since the royal "love tidings" he had meant to celebrate had not materialised. The little Princess Marie of France had died before she could be betrothed to Richard.

There were love tidings a-plenty now to celebrate. He glanced again at the new-wed couple. Henry, chunky and serious in his white velvet suit, was politely trying to entertain his pop-eyed bride by carving a horse out of bread. And Geoffrey looked at the King, whose betrothal to Anne of Bohemia, sister of the Holy Roman Emperor, would soon be public.

Richard at barely fourteen still resembled a golden meadow full of pink and white daisies. His German bride-to-be, a year older, was reputed to be lumpish and brown as a nut. It was hard to fit either the flowery conceits of courtly love, or the forthright pleasures of mature mating to these dynastic marriages of children.

Geoffrey's eyes veered to the Lady Elizabeth, the Duke's younger daughter. Her marriage yielded even less inspiration. At Kenilworth last summer when Elizabeth was sixteen she had become the Countess of Pembroke by means of an eight-year-old husband, John Hastings, who had promptly suffered an attack of measles and returned to his mama for nursing.

There was grave doubt that Elizabeth would wait until the years should bring virility to her little husband. At this moment her cheeks were flushed, her dark eyes bright with wine, or lechery, as she lolled against John Holland and teased him with pouting lips. The King's half-brother was no Joseph, and his repute for wenching was great. It was a wonder that the Duke did not curb his wild young hoyden, but the dallying pair were hidden from his sight behind a festoon of hanging bay-leaves, and none so easily hoodwinked as a fond father - except a husband.

There remained the Lady Philippa. Decorous as always, she sat smiling quietly at some quip made by her Uncle Edmund. Her pale hair was braided in the old manner at either side of her cheeks. She had much of her mother's gentle dignity, but never Blanche's beauty.

Of Philippa there had been many, abortive, love tidings. Scarcely a prince in Europe but had been mentioned for her husband, but none found to be suitable. So Philippa at twenty-one was as yet unwed, and happy that she was still virgin, Katherine had said.

Geoffrey's eyelids drooped as he thought with sudden impatience that though poetical eulogies of royal matings often produced pleasing rewards, he no longer felt the requisite chivalric fervour to do them justice. St. Valentine concerned himself with common folk as well as courtly ones, and the saint's influence on all folk was humorous enough to the onlooker. Yet it was no saint, nor Venus or Cupid, who moderated the affairs of love. No one but Dame Nature. And a gathering of amorous birds would serve to show various kinds of love as well as any gallant knights and languishing ladies. The turtle-dove, the falcon, the goose, the cuckoo and the eagle - he thought, much entertained with his idea - fowls of every kind, a parliament of fowls.

He started as a wand of jingling bells thumped him on the shoulder.

The Lord of Misrule stood on the inside of the board grinning down at him beneath a red-spotted half mask.

"Ho, Dan Chaucer!" shouted Robin. " 'Tis crime to doze when all make merry! In punishment we decree that you give us a rhyme. Come tell of love, my master! Tell us of love!"

Geoffrey laughed and rose. His loosened girdle fell off with a clatter of sword, another button popped off his surcote. "I am undone, Your Majesty," he twinkled to Robin. "Your pardon."

"Ay - granted - -ay," cried the young squire, shaking his fool's sceptre threateningly. "But sing to us of love!"

The young people on the dais ceased chattering as the King stood up, hushed the minstrels and watched expectantly. Richard had an eager appreciation of poetry as of all the arts, and though he preferred French, had read one or two of Master Geoffrey's English translations with pleasure.

Katherine rose too, and seeing that it was Geoffrey that Robin teased, walked a few steps down the Hall and smiled at him encouragingly.

Geoffrey bowed, lifted his arm in solemn invocation, and declaimed,

"Since I from Love escaped am so fat
I think no more to be in prison lean
Since I am free, I count him not a bean..."

He sat down.

There was a startled roar of indignation. "For shame, for shame," called Richard on a trill of his high childish laughter. "My Lord of Misrule, you cannot pass so ungentle an offence! What penance will you give him?"

Robin waved his sceptre as he considered. "By Saint Venus, I command that he shall kiss his wife!"

Philippa bridled at the shouts that greeted this, but Geoffrey promptly rose again and, seizing her by the chin, kissed her heartily on the lips. " 'Tis naught so great a penance," he cried, and her indignant splutterings died away.

Then Robin's usually level head forsook him. This brief time of power had made him drunker than the wassail. By all the rules of Christmas, no man could gainsay him, and he shouted exultantly,
"Now
shall each man kiss the lady of his heart!"

He whirled, and before she had the faintest conception of what he would do, Robin had covered the few steps between them and, grabbing Katherine around the waist, pressed his eager young mouth passionately to hers.

Few people saw it, because Robin's command was being obeyed, in a whirl of fumblings and giggles and coquettish screams.

Katherine was so astounded that for a moment she could not move. She had continued to treat Robin as a boy and had come scarcely to notice the adoring looks he gave her, but this was no boyish peck. It was a man's kiss, hot with desire, and when she finally jerked her head away, he whispered, "Three years I've waited for this, my heart's life. I shall die if you be not kind to me!" and he kissed her again.