Katherine (64 page)

"Why not? I'm sick of restraint and battling with shadows! I long to come to grips with a worthy foe. God's blood, you know what I've endured from slander, from whispering lies - 'twould not have been so in my father's heyday. Ah, but times are sadly changed."

" 'Tis so," said the baron thoughtfully. "Times are changed. I've been seeing the evidence with my own eyes. That the commons should have
dared
to commit the outrages that they did - -" He shook his head.

The eager light died from John's eyes. He sighed. "Ay, tell me, Michael. Your squire when he came to me in Edinburgh much relieved my mind when he said Katherine and her children were safe at Kenilworth."

The baron gulped and John, reading his face, said sharply "What is it? Out with it!"

"I was misinformed in Yorkshire," answered the baron slowly. "Oh, your little Beauforts are safe enough at Kenilworth, for I saw them. But Lady Swynford was never there."

"Where is she then?" John's voice was strident,

"Nobody knows, my lord. I asked at court, I asked your Lancastrian children, Henry, the Ladies Philippa and Elizabeth
- they
are all safe and well, though you've no idea of the times of danger they passed through unscathed, thanks be to all-merciful God."

"Ay - ay - I know they're safe, this I've heard already - but my God, where then is Katherine? I left her at the Savoy, but she must have been warned as the others were - -" John stopped. "In what condition
is
the Savoy, Michael?" he said carefully.

The baron bowed his head and plucked with a blunt finger at a loosened thong on his greave. "There is nothing left, my lord, nothing. It was entirely gutted by the fire the rebels set."

John shut his eyes and rising walked away from the baron.
" Tonnerre de dimanche est tonnerre du diable."
He saw Katherine's piteous frightened face the morning that he had left her for Scotland. He felt the clinging arms that he had loosed from his neck and the touch of her beseeching lips on his. He thought of the foreboding he had had before the walls of Berwick and which had been set at rest by the baron's mistaken message. Lovedy, he thought, my Katrine - nay! He checked the rising fear.

" 'Tis ridiculous to speak as though she might have been in danger!" he shouted angrily. "There were plenty of men-at-arms to guard her, Roger Leach - the best sergeant in England, there were all the house carls, and above all there was Brother William, who would never let her, or anything belonging to me, come to harm!"

The baron flushed and plucked harder at the leather thong. They knew well enough in London what had happened to the Savoy's men-at-arms, and he himself had seen Brother William's head stuck to a spike on London bridge. "Ay, to be sure," he said quickly. "No use to worry about her. No doubt at all she got away in time. The Savoy is the only gross destruction, my lord," he said forcing a light cheerful tone. "Some damage at Hertford but easily repaired. Your people on all the other manors remained loyal."

"Except the craven steward at Pontefract," said John lifelessly. "I'll soon deal with him when I get there, he shall regret refusing to admit the Duchess."

The baron lifted his head and gave John's shut face a thoughtful look. News of the Duchess Costanza had been the one entirely certain bit of information he had been able to send to the Duke by his squire, for Michael had seen the Duchess himself in Yorkshire on the way south. The poor lady had had a terrifying time of it, fleeing first from Hertford with the rebels actually at her heels and then, upon arrival at the Duke's great stronghold of Pontefract, being denied shelter by a frightened addle-pated steward, fleeing again through the night to Knaresborough Castle.

"The Duchess awaits you most anxiously at Knaresborough, my lord," said the baron. "She is praying night and day for your safety."

"I suppose so," said the Duke in the same dull tone. "Costanza is very skilled at prayer."

"My lord," the baron ventured, "the poor Duchess was much shaken by her harrowing experience, she was actually stoned by the rebels. 'Tis a miracle that neither she nor your little Catalina was hurt."

John frowned and nodded. "Thanks be to Sant' Iago de Composela." But he spoke without feeling. Even this little girl of his he did not care for deeply, the baron thought, though he was fond of all his other children, and the bastards most of all.

They sat in silence for some minutes until the baron with his Duke's good at heart tried once again. "My lord, when you see the Duchess in a few days' time, will you not receive her warmly and comfort her, that is your much-tried wife?"

John's head jerked around. "By God, de la Pole, if this came from anyone but you-Do you suggest that I'm deficient in respect towards the Queen of Castile? Do you dare to criticise my bearing?"

"No, my lord," said the baron imperturbably. "Your bearing is always correct. I but suggest that she is perhaps more worthy of your affection than your preoccupation elsewhere has permitted you to realise."

Even the baron flinched before the look in the Duke's eyes, and nobody but the baron - and Katherine - would have so braved the ferocious Plantagenet temper, but before the Duke could answer, both men started and listened. Clearly in the distance they heard the blare of an approaching herald's trumpet.

"Percy, at last!" cried the Duke, his thunderous face clearing. He snouted, and two of his squires darted into the tent and began to accoutre their lord in his engraved-steel tilting armour, while another tested yet again the lance's point; and in the field the black stallion Morel, already in full battle harness, was led rearing and snorting towards the tent.

The baron went out and, shading his eyes against the westering sun, watched the approach of Northumberland's herald and four armoured men who escorted a figure in a helm crested with the blue Percy lion. De la Pole frowned and blinked his far-sighted eyes, as Lord Neville walked up to join him.

Both men stared at the advancing Northumbrians, until Neville said, sourly, "Has the devil shrunk Percy of a sudden? Yon figure seems small indeed to me."

"Ay," answered the baron, "so I am thinking."

They turned and silently mounted their waiting chargers when the Duke came out of the tent. Neville and de la Pole, though not so heavily armoured as their leader, yet had needed help from their squires, but John still kept the lean muscular strength of his youth and he mounted into the gold and velvet saddle unassisted. He spurred Morel, who bounded forward, then checked him to a decorous gait and rode down the field towards the new-comers. His barons and knights followed.

"So, Percy," cried the Duke as he rode up to the stiff short figure in the blue lion jupon, "come forth to do battle for the insults you've offered me!" He struck sharply once with the side of his lance against the other's armplate. Whereupon the Percy lifted his visor and disclosed the small red truculent face, not of his sire, the Earl of Northumberland, but of little Hotspur.

"By God and Saint John!" cried the Duke staring. "What does this mean, lad? Where's your father?"

The boy had hot yellowish eyes like a boar's, and they shifted uncomfortably. "My father cannot accept your challenge, my Lord Duke," he said sullenly. "A painful malady has struck his right shoulder, he cannot move it, he can hold neither sword nor lance."

There was an instant's silence while the Duke's men craned to hear, then they let out a roar of derision. "It seems," said Lord Neville loudly in his grating voice, "that the Earl of Northumberland is lily-livered; this, at least, I had not guessed!"

"No," screamed Hotspur. " 'Tis not true!"

John sat still in his saddle gazing at the flushed boy. "D'you mean that you've brought the earl's full apology for his dishonourable treatment of my person?"

"No!" cried Hotspur again. "He makes no apology. He will meet you next month before the King to see then who is in the right. I've come to take up the challenge now, I shall fight you in his stead!"

"God's wounds," whispered the Duke. Discouragement dragged him down like a millstone tied to his feet. "I cannot do battle with an undergrown boy of sixteen," he said wearily, pulling on Morel's bridle and turning the horse.

De la Pole glanced at his Duke with sharp sympathy. It must be writ in his stars, thought the baron, naught else could explain the checks and bitter disappointments that constantly assailed poor Lancaster.

But young Percy would not leave it so. He furiously spurred his horse and galloped up the Duke. "But I will fight, I
will!"
he shouted. "I demand my right to do battle in my father's stead. 'Tis the law of chivalry."

"And what do Percys know of chivalry, young cockerel?" said Lord Neville with a contemptuous laugh.

"Ay, but he
has
the right," said the Duke slowly, reining in his horse. He shrugged beneath his steel epaulettes. "Be it so. To your end of the field, Percy - -"

Lancaster and Northumberland heralds ran out to the open space and blowing on their trumpets announced the contest. The Duke waited listlessly until he saw the white batons raised and dropped, heard the heralds call
"Laissez-aller - -!"

With lances braced and horizontal the two horses pounded down the field from opposite directions. As they crossed each other the Duke negligently parried the boy's wild thrust and on this first course forbore to take advantage of Hotspur's unguarded left flank. But on the second course he shattered the boy's spear and, though his own lance point was broken off by the shock, he swerved Morel and, coolly slanting the butt of his lance into the boy's armpit-beneath the breastplate, lifted him from the saddle and deposited him on the ground.

A wild cheer went up from the Duke's men, but John raised his visor and shook his head frowning. "Have done!" he cried sternly. "There's naught to cheer in this shameful contest."

He dismounted and walked over to Hotspur, whose squire was unbuckling his helmet. When it was off, the boyish face was seen to be wet with angry tears.

"You acquitted yourself bravely, young Percy," said the Duke. "You may tell your father so. Now get back to him, and tell him too that since he skulks and runs from me here I shall certainly confront him later in the presence of the King - unless of course some apt malady of limb should prevent the earl from travelling!"

Hotspur screamed out a trembling defiance, but John turned on his heel and did not listen. He strode back to his tent, while Percy's disgruntled men rode silently away beside their little chieftain.

The Duke and his meinie started south that night and on the sixteenth of July they reached Newcastle-upon-Tyne. A fair prosperous town was Newcastle, albeit a smoky one, for folk here burned the coals they laboriously dug from the surrounding hillsides. The Duke rode at the head of his men to the old Norman Castle that overlooked the Tyne. He entered by the Black Gate and pausing in his chamber in the keep only long enough to remove his armour and cleanse himself, walked down the twisting stone stairs to the beautiful little chapel.

Here he lit a candle to the Virgin and knelt down to pray, hoping as he had each day since Berwick to lift thereby the oppression in his heart. He would whisper the
Ave
over and over like an incantation and often found comfort in it, but the painted wooden features of this Virgin had in them something of Katherine in the demure lowered lids, the faintly cleft chin, the high rounded forehead, and he turned away from Her in sharp pain.

There was no image of St. Catherine in this chapel so he could not properly renew the vow he had already made, but he repeated it at the end of his prayers. "If I find my Katrine safe and unharmed, I vow to build a chapel to Saint Catherine on any place in my lands that the Blessed Saint shall designate." He kissed the crucifix on his beads and rose.

He went restlessly upstairs to the Hall, where his knights had gathered, some drinking, some dicing, while de la Pole and Neville were engaged in an acrimonious game of chess. The Hall was fetid and smoky from the old-fashioned fire over which the varlets were roasting a bullock; John, glancing in, changed his mind and continued up the stairs to the leaded roof of the keep. The watch, a burly man-at-arms with pike and longbow, was circling it slowly, but John dismissed him. He wanted to be alone.

He leaned his elbows on the parapet in one of the square towers, breathed deeply of the fresh summer air and let his disconsolate gaze wander from the golden furze-covered moors to the north, to the shipping below in the harbour, and on down the pewter-coloured ribbon of the Tyne as it wound into distance towards the sea. He turned slowly to the west where he could see the straight grassy ditch, the mounds and scattered stones of the Roman wall, and he thought of the ages that had streamed by since it was built, and wondered with drear melancholy what had become of the men who built it. Where were their plans and hopes now, what difference had their joys or sufferings made to England? He thought of those of his own blood who had gazed at this ancient wall, his father - all the Plantagenets, and far back to the days of King Arthur himself. In Arthur's reign there had been love-longing and wanhope too and there had been evil to be conquered. But the old tales told of glorious battle against these evils, for there were dragons and giants to be fought in those days, not creeping little jealousies and darting slanders that scurried like spiders into cover when one tried to confront them. He thought with great bitterness of the humiliating, ludicrous outcome of his challenge to Percy, and there rose in him a loathing of Fate that constantly blocked him and denied his deepest wishes.

The sun turned red as blood above the Roman wall and sank down towards the wild desolate moors behind, leaving a sudden chill that struck through John. He turned away and looked down into the castle ward, where his eye was caught by something familiar in a figure that was mounting the long flight of outstairs into the keep beneath. He leaned over the parapet and stared again, then shouted in amazement, "Ho there! You in the brown hood and cloak, look up!"

The man paused on a step, stared around to find the voice until finally, raising his head, he saw the Duke and waved. It was indeed Geoffrey Chaucer, and John's heart beat faster. "Come up here to me!" he called. Geoffrey nodded and disappeared into the keep, and presently came out on to the tiles through a tower door.