Katherine (62 page)

But after vespers, when he listened through the grille to the woman's low anguished voice, he was appalled. He could scarce listen to her for fear of the things she told him, dreadful secrets that he did not wish to know. Murder of Sir Hugh, her husband - said the voice - not deliberate but murder in God's sight, a Grey Friar had said so, Brother William Appleton, who had himself been murdered. Ten years of adultery with the Duke of Lancaster resultant upon this murder. And she spoke of a child, who had been driven mad, who might be dead too.

"Cease, daughter!" said the priest at last in a trembling voice. "I cannot grant you absolution, no priest could - -"

"I know," said Katherine. " 'Tis not of my own soul I'm thinking. It is of my child's. Father, surely a merciful God will accept from me some penance that will save Blanchette, wherever she be."

"Penance - ay, what penance?" stammered the little priest, wanting only to be rid of her. Now it came clearer to his panicking mind that this woman was protected by the Duke, the Duke who was all-powerful and might remove a meddlesome priest as easily as he would squash a fly. On the other hand the Duke's great palace had been burned by the rebels and he was hated by the common folk whose vengeance also might include a priest.

"True contrition, give up your evil life, make reparation, mortify your senses - -" he gabbled quickly. "Daughter, I cannot tell you what else - go to your own priest. Go - go - -" and he pulled the shutter over the grille.

Katherine walked from the church with dragging steps. She went again down Fleet Street through Ludgate. By St. Paul's Close she stopped and gazed up at the cathedral spire. After a while she entered the huge shadowed nave and walked down it to the chantry by the Lady Chapel, where two candles burned on the little altar and shone on the serene alabaster face and the long white hands that were upraised in perpetual prayer.

Katherine knelt beside the tomb and reached out to touch one corner of the sculptured robe while she spoke to the Lady Blanche. Dearest lady - if I have wronged you too, forgive, but you know that I never meant wrong towards
you,
and you knew what it is to love him, as I have loved him. So forgive - and tell me how to save my child who is your namesake.

The lovely face shimmered in the dimness of the chantry, it floated, high above, pure and cool as a star. A spirit. How should it give comfort to one who had denied the spirit these long years, who had been sufficient unto herself, who had lived for nothing but her own desires?

Outside the cathedral the grey light waned and the rain blew harder. Along the choir aisles a verger passed from time to time and stared curiously at the woman in simple russet gown and goodwife's coif who wept beside the Duchess of Lancaster's tomb. At last when Paul's bell began to ling for Compline, Katherine raised her head and spoke to Blanche again. Lady, I see now that it was yet one more wickedness that I should ask you to help me. And she struggled up from her cramped knees.

Then it seemed the candlelight brightened on the alabaster features, and in Katherine's head she heard the echo of a soft voice that said, "Walsingham," while she saw the Lady Blanche's living face as it had been that Christmastide at Bolingbroke, radiant with fruition for that she bore in her womb Henry, the heir of Lancaster; and Katherine remembered what Blanche had said: "Some day you must make pilgrimage to Our Lady of Walsingham, who is especially kind and merciful to mothers-"

It was Blanchette that Katherine had borne within her as she had heard those words long years ago - and surely it was for Blanchette's sake that the Lady Blanche had given Katherine some answer at last.

Katherine remained until the following Saturday with the Pessoners, and each day searched for Blanchette. Master Guy sent forth two of his prentices to cry through the streets that there would be a reward for any information respecting a little maid of fourteen with copper-toned hair, and dark grey eyes, whose Christian name was Blanche; while Katherine herself visited the convents where the child might have taken shelter.

They went all through London and over to Southwark and as far as Westminster, but no one had seen the girl. Steeling herself and telling no one of her purpose, Katherine made yet other visits - to the stews along Bankside, where the whoremongers received this pale grave woman kindly enough when they understood that it was a mother searching for a crazed girl, but nobody knew anything of Blanchette.

On the Friday evening before Katherine's departure on pilgrimage to Walsingham, the Pessoners had an unexpected visitor.

Katherine was upstairs in the chamber above the fish-shop when Dame Emma opened the door to a knock and greeted with pleased surprise a plump little man with a forked brown beard. "Why master Geoffrey, welcome! Guy," she called over her shoulder, " 'tis Master Geoffrey Chaucer come to see us!"

Geoffrey came in with appropriate greetings, accepted a mug of ale, then said in a tone of anxious wonder, "Is it really true that Lady Swynford is here?"

"That she is, poor thing," said the fishmonger, settling down with his own ale, and preparing for a pleasant chat with the Controller of the Customs, who was an important man in London and one Master Guy respected. "Ay, Lady Katherine's here, and a fearful time she had o' it last week in the revolt. Burned out o' the Savoy she was - and her lass gone daft - or," said the fishmonger shaking his head, "dead more like. We begin to think, Emma and me, the child never got out o' the Savoy, certain 'tis there's no trace o' her. And if she did, crazed as she was and not rightly well from scarlet fever, there's little chance either. Cock's bones!" - he broke off as he saw Chaucer's change of expression - "I clean forgot the little maid was your niece."

"Yes," said Geoffrey soberly, "and I'd no idea of any of this until I heard your street-crier today and questioned him."

Geoffrey had returned from a trip on the night before the revolt and had been snugly ensconced in his rooms over Aldgate when Jack Strawe and his Essex men had streamed and bellowed through the gate beneath him. And there he had stayed unmolested, reading and writing during the three days of the violence, being a peaceable man and temperamentally indifferent to political factions. But on his emergence he had been shocked by the extent of the destruction, and now more shocked to find that Katherine and Blanchette had been at the Savoy.

"Where is Lady Swynford? I'd like to see her," he said.

"Ye'll find her sadly changed." Dame Emma came bustling up with a dish of her saffron buns. "She's shaved off her hair, and fasts like an anchorite. Seems like she blames herself for the loss of her child - and for the Grey Friar's death too." The dame slammed the plate on the table and her eyes snapped. "But 'twas that cursed Jack Maudelyn really killed the Grey Friar, I got that much out of .her. The devil's own spawn is Jack, but Beelzebub'll soon get him, I hear, and a good thing too."

"Wife, wife," said Master Guy shaking his head. " 'Tis Hawise's wedded husband, ye shouldna wish him damned, no matter what." He turned to answer Chaucer's exclamation. "Jack, he run around for all the days o' the hurling time with his jaw broke and now his head's swollen up like a melon and he can't breathe but what the good monks at St. Bart's hospital stick a straw down his gullet, and they say he won't last the day out."

"I'll buy no Masses for
his
soul," snorted the dame." 'Twas he gave Lady Katherine the blow on her head too."

"By the rood, but these are fearful matters!" cried Geoffrey, horrified. "I dread to think what this'll mean to the Duke when he hears. Why hasn't Katherine gone north to meet him then?"

Dame Emma shook her head. "I believe that is no part of her plan. I tell ye, she's much changed. More happened to her than we know on last cursed Thursday, She goes off tomorrow on pilgrimage but where to she won't tell."

Geoffrey's concern increased at each thing he heard, and when Katherine finally came into the kitchen he could not repress an exclamation. She was dressed in a coarse rusty black gown of woven hemp such as the humblest widows wore. Her slender white feet were bare and dusty; around her neck there was a wooden rosary, and on her forehead a great smudge of ashes. Her shaven head was tightly bound with a square of the black cloth. She had beauty still, the thinness of her flesh but exposed the grace of her bones and sinews, but the great brooding eyes were circled by umber shadows and the thick black lashes seemed too heavy for the weary lids.

"Katherine, before God, what does this mean, my dear?" Geoffrey cried, kissing her on the cheek.

"Geoffrey," she said with a faint smile. "I'm glad to see you, and I know that you'll help me."

"Ay, for sure, little sister, but - -" He hesitated, at a loss for words. Religious-minded Katherine had never been. These past years with the Duke she had been a warmly vibrant creature of dancing and laughter, with an aura of hot sensual love about her; and in matters of devout observance he had deemed her of a most indifferent turn of thought. This strict penitential garb and talk of pilgrimage were surely some passing derangement, and if he could not change her mind, the Duke most certainly would.

"How can I help you?" he said as she waited, looking at him soberly.

Katherine read some of his disapproval in his face and made an effort to understand it. So dense and high a barrier reared up between this Katherine and the old one that she could barely perceive how strange she must seem to him.

"Come outside with me, Geoffrey," she said, "I must talk to you alone, and show you something."

They went out to Thames Street into a golden June evening, and Katherine turned towards the Bridge.

"Your sister has been in danger too during the revolt," said Geoffrey with a hint of reproach as he walked beside her and she did not speak. "On that Wednesday when the trouble began Philippa was at Hertford with the Duchess but they were warned and fled in time to the north. Only today I got word that after a perilous journey they were safe in Yorkshire. During this time of the
'Grande Rumoer'
it seems that all belonging to him are included in this senseless unjust hatred of the Duke."

"Senseless?" said Katherine pausing and staring at the street, "Unjust? I thought so once. But now I know it's all God's punishment for our great sin."

"By Christ's holy wounds, Katherine, this is sickly talk! Your fleshly sin was not so great as that of many of the monkish fellows who accuse you of it, and
yours
is redeemed by a true love."

She gave him a dark sad look and walked on, guiding him up the wooden step on to London Bridge. They passed along the Bridge between the clustering overhanging houses until they came to a small tower with spikes set up around it and vultures wheeling and screaming around the many decaying heads upon the spikes.

Geoffrey's steps faltered; he tried to protest, but Katherine pulled him on until they stood below an eyeless skull on which the drying maggoty flesh hung in ribbons. A skull whose bleaching brainpan had been cleft nearly in two. A piece of parchment had been tied to the spike below this head, and Katherine, seeing Geoffrey's look of shocked incomprehension, said, "Read."

He bent and peered at the parchment, then drew back sharply, crossing himself. "Brother William!" he whispered. "Ah - may God rest his poor soul."

"Yes," said Katherine, "Brother William! He died because he came to the Savoy to protect me, and he died trying to save
my
soul."

Geoffrey swallowed while a prickle ran down his back. He turned from the rotting head to lean against a stone balustrade and stare down into the swirling yellow water below. A; length he said, "But Katherine, you can buy Masses for him. 'Twas not your fault - -"

She drew her breath in harshly and answered in a voice that jangled like an iron bell, "I can buy Masses for him, and for Blanchette - and I can buy Masses for my husband Hugh - who was murdered. Ay -
murdered,
Geoffrey. You may well whiten and shrink from me! Now do you still think the sin in which the Duke and I have lived so light a one?"

"Hush - for the love of God, Katherine," Geoffrey cried, staring at her. He glanced quickly at the people who passed by on the Bridge. "Come over here, where we'll not be overheard." He drew her to an angle made by the tower buttress, and gazed with incredulous pity into her haunted eyes. "Now tell me," he said quietly.

In the morning when Katherine set out on foot for the north road that led to Walsingham, Geoffrey too left London, bearing a letter from Katherine to the Duke - wherever he might be. An unwilling messenger was Geoffrey, none of the hundred missions he had fulfilled on King's service had been as difficult as this. He knew what Katherine had written, and he suspected that not even the destruction of the Savoy and Hertford castles nor any as yet unreported catastrophe would shock the Duke as this letter would.

Katherine's revelations and her agony of penitence had startled him into shame. He felt that he had himself been drifting into light-minded worldliness. He thought with remorse of the pagan delight, the immorality, he had written into his
Troilus and Criseyde.
They had read this love story at court, Richard had been charmed with it, the frivolous Duchess of York had wept over it, Katherine herself had heard portions of it, never suspecting in how many tender ways she had been Criseyde's model.

On this trip to the north, while bearing Katherine's despairing letter, conscience rode with Geoffrey. He knew very well that his writings were enjoyed by and influenced many who were bored by the moral Gower's homilies or Langland's fierce indictments, and in his light-minded treatment of carnal love he had most certainly ignored the Church's teachings. He had not pointed out that the devil's hand with the five fingers of lechery gripped a man by the loins, to throw him into the furnace of hell.

Instead of writing of penitence and punishment he had dallied with lewd levity. Was it, Geoffrey thought, because tragedy had never touched him personally before, and because his whole nature shamefully recoiled from grimness and heavy accusations?