Katherine (65 page)

The Duke's hand trembled as he held it out: Geoffrey kissed it while he bent his knee, saying with a faint smile, "Your Grace, I've been a long time a-finding you."

"Indeed?" said John, afraid now to ask the question that beat against his lips.

"Ay, my lord. A fortnight ago when you were - ah - detained in Scotland I tried to pass into Northumberland, but was turned back. I waited at Knaresborough until word came that you were at last on your way south."

"Knaresborough," John repeated, and could not hide his bitter disappointment. "To be sure," he said dully. "Your wife is there, I suppose, in the Duchess' train."

"She is, and I've spent some time with Philippa, but 'twas not for that I came north. My lord," said Geoffrey slowly, touching the pouch that hung from his waist, "I bring you a letter from Lady Katherine."

The Duke's indrawn breath was sharp as tearing silk. He grabbed Geoffrey by the shoulders. "She's well then? And unharmed?"

Geoffrey nodded, but looked away because he could not bear the leap of joy and sudden glistening in the blue eyes.

"Thank God!" the Duke whispered. "Thank God! Thank God and the Blessed Saint Catherine!" He seized Geoffrey's hand, "Oh, Chaucer, you shall be well rewarded for this news. Name what you like. Never did I know how dear she was to me till these last days. In fear and suffering I've longed for her - longed-" He broke off. "And where is she now?"

"I don't know, my lord," said Geoffrey, looking down at the leaded tiles. He unbuckled his pouch and drew out a folded parchment. "You would better be alone when you read this," he said quickly. "I'll wait in the little wall chamber in case you should want me."

The happy flush died on the Duke's lean cheeks as Geoffrey disappeared into the tower. He broke the seal on Katherine's letter and read it by the light of the dying sun.

Geoffrey waited in the wall chamber until Newcastle's bells rang out for curfew and the sky through the arrow-slit window showed amethyst. He heard his name called at last and went back up to the tiles.

In the evening light the Duke's face now loomed white as ashes, his voice was thick and halting as he said, "Do you know what's in this letter?"

"Ay, my lord. But no one else does, nor ever shall."

"She cannot mean to give me up like this. She cannot! I don't believe it. She says farewell - that we must never meet again. This coldness, these incredible commands! She who was so warm and soft, who has lain so often in my arms, who has borne my children!" The hollow voice faltered, after a moment went on with a sharper edge. "She speaks of Blanchette. You'd think she had no child but Blanchette!"

"'Tis I think, my lord," Geoffrey ventured, "because of the terror she feels for the little maid, who may be dead. She has not forgot her other children, but they are in no need."

"
I
am in need," cried the Duke. "She thinks not of that!"

Geoffrey, profoundly disliking this whole coil and his unwilling part in it, yet forced himself to go on. "It is because she loves you that she must give you up. Brother William told her this before he was killed. She believes it. And I, my lord, have come to believe it too. The load of sin, and now the knowledge of murder done would crush you both in the end."

John turned away from Geoffrey and looked out over the parapet into the night of shadows. So it was Swynford's murder that the martyred Grey Friar had meant in all those strange allusions through the years. Nirac, poor little rat - a monstrous sneaking crime in truth - poison - the coward weapon. Sickening. And yet - so long ago, and Nirac had been shriven of his crime by the Grey Friar. The little Gascon's soul was not imperilled. It was Katherine's and his souls that were in danger - so Katherine believed.

"By God," he said roughly, crumpling up her letter, "if fate wills it that we are to be damned, then we shall be damned. I'll not give Katherine up. Where is she, Chaucer?"

"Gone on pilgrimage, my lord."

"Ay - but
to where?"

"I don't know, upon my honour. She would not tell. She doesn't wish you to find her."

"Then God help me, she may have set out for Rome - for Jerusalem even!"

Geoffrey was silent. He thought it possible that Katherine had set forth on the longest and harshest pilgrimage of all. He cleared his throat unhappily, for he had not yet discharged all of Katherine's anguished message. "Your Grace - one more thing she bade me tell you. It is not in the letter because she could not bring herself to write it." He stopped, remembering how her control had broken down at last after she had given him the letter to the Duke, how she had covered her face while the tears coursed down between her fingers.

"What is that one more thing?" said the Duke's voice from the shadows.

"She prays you, my lord - by the love you have borne her - to - to ask the Duchess to forgive her. Yes - I know, my lord," said Chaucer quickly as he heard a sharp exclamation, "but this is what she said. Matters have gone badly with you for a long time, and that is the earthly punishment for murder and adultery. The murder cannot be undone but the adultery must cease. She says that you both have wronged the Duchess - who she thinks loves you in her fashion, as truly as Hugh Swynford was wronged who loved Katherine too - as best he could."

"Blessed Jesu! Now I know you lie! Before God, Chaucer, 'tis not for naught you are a spinner of tales!"

Geoffrey stepped back quickly, the Duke had turned on him as though he would strike.

"I've not invented her letter, my lord," Geoffrey cried.

"Her letter!
" The Duke's voice shook with fury, he crushed the parchment between his hands and flung the ball violently away from him over the parapet. "That I should live to see Katherine treat
me
like this! Dismiss me like a thieving scullion, with rantings about morality! She dares send
you
to prate of love that Swynford bore her! By God, 'tis late times to think of that. What has she been doing there in the south when I thought her tending to her child? She found some pretty youth like Robin Beyvill maybe to while the time away. 'Tis because of him she can turn me off so lightly!"

"My lord, my lord," whispered Chaucer, retreating farther along the roof while his palms began to sweat. "You do her terrible wrong."

"Wrong, wrong!" shouted the Duke. "All this babbling of wrong. She vowed she'd never leave me - she has broke it - as did Isolda - lies! She cozened me all these years with lies. It's plain now to see she never loved me. Ah," he said with a laugh like the crackle of burning briars, "Katherine Swynford has no need to hide from me, no need at all, for I shall never forgive this, nor try to find her."

The next morning the Duke and his retinue left Newcastle. Chaucer rode at the end of the line and kept far out of the Duke's way, knowing that it would be long, if ever, before he was pardoned for bringing Katherine's message. Geoffrey bore no ill will. It was natural that a man like Lancaster should convert the blow to his love and pride into rage, but Geoffrey had not expected so dreadful a rage and he pondered on what could lie behind it, and at the reference to Isolda that the Duke had let fall. There was no woman of that name had ever been mentioned in regard to the Duke whose fidelity, indeed, to Katherine had been remarkable. There was no doubt that he deeply loved her, the very violence of his actions proved it. And what a miserable quick-march these two ill-starred lovers had plunged into.

When they had reached central Yorkshire and the Duke's own lands, at last they approached Knaresborough, and saw the castle high on its crag above the river Nidd. While they wound through the limestone gorge with its honeycomb of caves, towards the ford, Chaucer looked up and saw a procession of eight women, amongst whom he recognised the Duchess and his Philippa, slowly wending down the twisting cliffside from the castle. The Duchess was dressed in garnet satin embroidered with flashing gold, and she wore her jewelled coronet above a flowing gold veil.

The Duke and his retinue forded the river and when they all reached the grassy bank, the Duchess came walking slowly forward, a tentative beseeching look in her dark eyes and a faint flush on her ivory face. She waited trembling while the Duke dismounted, but as he came towards her the Duchess threw herself headlong on the grass and began to sob convulsively.

The Duke leaned over and lifted her up, and she seized his hands and covered them with kisses.
"Mi Corazon
- -" she cried and went on in gasping Spanish, "I have been so frightened, and I thought never to see you again!"

A peculiar shuttered expression dimmed the Duke's eyes, a muscle by his mouth quivered. He bent and kissed her on the forehead. "Well, now we are together and all will be well," he answered in Spanish. "Where is our little Catalina?"

"At the castle. I kept her back, my lord. Sometimes you do not wish to see her."

The Duke bent his head, beneath his richly embroidered cote his broad shoulders sagged. "I am eager to see her."

"We may stay here a few days, may we not?" she said timidly. "But indeed where can I go now? Hertford is destroyed - ah, Sant' Iago - it was terrible - you do not know how frightened we were."

"Pobrecita,"
said the Duke. "Poor Costanza - -" He pulled her hand through his arm and they walked off together up the path to the castle.

Chaucer too dismounted and went over to his own wife. "God's greeting, Pica," he said, pinching Philippa on the cheek. "Here I am again. I vow we ne'er saw so much of each other in the south."'

Philippa nodded and gave him a brief preoccupied smile. "Did you give His Grace Katherine's stupid letter?" she asked quickly. Philippa did not of course know what was in the letter except that her sister had gone off on pilgrimage and would tell nobody where.

"Ay. And he was much angered."

"Small wonder," said Philippa twitching. "She's no more sense than a sheep. I've always said it. She'll lose him with this monstrous behaviour and
then
where will we all be! What if she was frightened at the Savoy! Now
that
one" - she jerked her head towards the disappearing figure of the Duchess - "she was frightened too, but it's made her softer, gentler. She's taken pains to please him again. Bathes each morning, has us rub her with scented oils, and put on silk shifts instead of that hair shirt she used to wear. I tell you, Geoffrey, since the Castilian king who murdered her father is dead, she's been changing. She thinks more about the Duke. Katherine had better not play fast and loose or she'll lose out."

"Yes, my Pica, she may," said Geoffrey in the quiet edged tone that always daunted her. "I think you must make up your mind to it. We are all out of favour with the Duke."

On the twenty-third of June, while the Duke was yet in Scotland, Katherine was housed in the pilgrim hostel at Waltham Abbey where she had limped in, sore-footed and deadly tired, two days ago. It was not for the luxury of rest that Katherine lingered these two days, but because Waltham was part of her penance. She spent hours in the abbey praying for the repose of Hugh's soul and asking his forgiveness, while she knelt on the exact spot where his sword had clattered down before the black cross. She went to the inn, The Pelican, where she had passed her wedding night, and forced herself to relive the degradation and the hatred she had felt. Worse than hatred, Katherine thought now - a smouldering secret contempt that had shrivelled in time Hugh's self-respect, and his manhood.

Remorse, guilt and punishment - Katherine steeped herself in these by day, and at night her dreams were of spurting blood.

There were no other pilgrims at the hostel; though June was usually prime month for journeying to shrines throughout the country, the revolt and its consequent dangers had quenched most folks' wish for the open road.

Instead, the hostel housed several of the homeward-bound peasants. In the dingy low-raftered hall where all travellers might buy ale and brown bread for a penny a day, Katherine heard much anxious talk.

A penitential pilgrim in widow's weeds was a common sight along the various Palmers' Ways and drew only respectfully indifferent glances, while she was plunged so deep into her own misery that she noticed nothing. But when after Mass she broke her fast on the Sunday morning when she intended to set forth again towards Walsingham, the loud troubled voices of the men around the trestle tables aroused her attention. She heard them repeatedly mentioning the King. There had been a proclamation. The King was coming here today, to Waltham.

What was he coming for? cried a blacksmith. Why, to hand out the rest of the charters of freedom, of course, answered someone against a chorus of uneasy assent. It was known that in London the King's men had punished some of the rebels: Jack Strawe had been caught, tortured and beheaded - still, that was natural, for they said he had confessed to treason. Jack Strawe's end could not affect the freedom from bondage and general pardon that the King had granted at Mile End.

"Nay," cried the blacksmith in hearty reassurance, "by this Holy Cross of Waltham here, we must ne'er forget how true a friend our little King did prove himself. He gave us his royal word: 'tis as good as Holy God's."

Katherine listened for some time without attending. She had no interest in the rebels now, though she had put to them one question on her arrival here. Had any of them taken part in the burning of the Savoy? They all said "Nay" except one Suffolk lad who proudly said that
he
had, and a rare fine sight it had been, too.

"Did you see anything of a little maid with close-cropped hair, a lass of fourteen in a grey chamber robe?" Katherine asked, as she had asked this so many times already.

But the Suffolk lad said "Nay" again, though there was such a mort of people running about he wouldn't know one from t'other. The maid she asked about would be one of the house carls, no doubt? 'Twas certain they had all fled long before the place was fired.

Katherine had thanked him with weary patience.

Suddenly now, at mention of the King's name, her detachment was pierced by a forlorn hope. Might it be that Richard had heard something of Blanchette? True, he had seen the girl but once, at Leicester Castle, yet there was a chance.

When the band of peasants surged from the hostel towards an open heath in Waltham forest, Katherine followed, as did a crowd of villagers. The open heath was shaded by the close-pressing greenwood with its lofty hornbeams and beeches, and the people had need of shade from the broiling sun, for they waited long, before they heard the royal trumpets and the pound of galloping hooves approaching down the forest road.

But when Richard came at last, there were no more doubts or hopeful self-deceptions as to his purpose. He galloped up like an avenging whirlwind amongst an army of four thousand soldiers. As he saw the group of peasants waiting, he shouted exultantly to his Uncle Thomas, the Earl of Buckingham, "Here's another foul nest of traitors!" And to his men cried, "Seize them! Seize them!"

Men-at-arms swarmed over the heath with spears and battle-axes. The bewildered peasants could not resist. The armoured men - who had already been at this work since dawn - grabbed them, bound their ankles with leather thongs and flung them to their knees on the trampled grass near the King.

The village women and Katherine were not harmed, though they were shoved roughly out of the way, but Katherine, as dumbfounded as the helpless rebels, presently pushed through the milling mass of soldiers, intent on speaking somehow to Richard, when she saw amongst the captives who had been caught earlier that day, the matted flaxen hair and meagre body of Cob o' Fenton. Cob's wrists were tied and he had a rope around his waist that was fastened to some soldier's saddle. He had been dragged behind the horse for several miles, sometimes on his feet, more often on the ground. His jerkin and leather trunks had been torn off him, his dirty little body, bruised and bleeding, was quite naked.

"Cob!" Katherine cried, trying to get closer to him, but one of the armoured men pushed her back and told her to shut up, adding out of deference to her pilgrim habit, "Can't ye see the King is speaking?"

She did not hear what the King had said, but he had pushed his gilded visor up and she could see a cruel half-smile on his girlish pink and white face, and she heard what one of the new captives, the blacksmith, called out from the ground. "But sire, ye gave us all our
freedom
at Mile End! Don't ye remember? Ye promised us we'd all be free. See, here's the charter they gave me!" The man waved a ragged piece of parchment towards Richard, who began to laugh and turning, said something to his Uncle Thomas, who also laughed. Richard backed his horse around, then, standing high in the stirrups, shrilled out, "What fools you be - what dolts - you traitorous ribauds be!" His high voice crowed with triumph. "You thought to frighten your King! You had it all your way for a time, did you not? That time is past!"

Richard spurred his horse and cantered near the bound blacksmith, he leaned over and plucked the charter from the blacksmith's hand. Richard drew his jewelled dagger and sliced through the parchment until he could tear it to a dozen fragments. He flung the fragments over his shoulder. "Now you see what use I make of your charter!" he cried. He touched his horse's flank again and rode up and down along the line of kneeling men. "Serfs you are, and serfs you shall remain till doomsday! Is that through your thick skulls now?" He tossed his head and shouted, "Some of you'll return to your own manors and whatever punishment your lords wish to mete out to you. But those of you who've dared defy me openly shall be brought to trial today - and dealt with - ah -
fittingly,
that I promise."

The King's words rang out into a deathly quiet, but when he finished speaking there came from the bondsmen a long sobbing gasp. Katherine saw Cob put his hands up against his face and slump forward on the rope that held him.

Her heart pounded in her throat, sweat prickled her scalp. She darted around the man-at-arms, who had forgotten her, and ran out into the open space by the King.

"Your Grace!" she cried. "Sire! A boon!"

Richard looked down in amazement at this poorly clad widow with the pilgrim scrip and staff.

"What is it, dame?" His squires drew near fingering their sword hilts.

"Your Grace," said Katherine, "I want that serf that you've got tied to yon rope." She pointed to Cob. "He's mine!"

"By Saint Jude, the woman's crazed," said Buckingham contemptuously, beckoning to his page for wine. "Get rid of her, Richard. 'Tis hot here, and we've much to do."

"You don't know me - Your Grace?" said Katherine very low, looking steadily up at the King. "Yet last Christmastide we shared wassail at Leicester Castle." She saw blank impatience in Richard's eyes. She opened her scrip, fumbled quickly inside and brought out the Duke's sapphire signet ring. "You remember this, my lord?" She held it up so that only he could see the carved Lancastrian crest.

Richard stared at the ring, then into her wide grey eyes.
"Christi!"
he cried, pleased as a child that has found answer to a riddle. " 'Tis Lady Swy - -"

"Your Grace, for the love of God, don't name me!" she whispered frantically, "No one must know - it is for penance."

Richard's capricious fancy was caught. He would have questioned her except that it was forbidden to infringe upon a penitential vow and brought ill luck to the offender, but he leaned down close from the saddle and whispered, "You want that naked churl? Is he truly yours, lady?"

"Ay," Katherine said, "from Kettlethorpe, a fugitive. I would deal with him myself."

"
I
would have drawn and quartered him, and hope you do," said Richard, his eyes sparkling. "When my men caught him back there in the forest, he screamed out all manner of treason. But you shall have him."

"Grand merci
- most Gracious Majesty," whispered Katherine. "Wait my lord, I pray you. I have a daughter, Blanchette, of your own age. Do you remember her at Leicester?"

"I think so," answered Richard, puzzled and losing interest. "She was small with ruddy curls."

"Have you seen aught of her since then?"

"Nay, lady, I have not - how odd a question."

"Forgive me." She curtsied and kissed the boy's gold gauntlet. "Christ's blessings on your generosity, sire."

Richard smiled graciously.

There were murmurs of astonishment and one of sharp protest from Buckingham as the King ordered that the end of Cob's rope be untied from the saddle and given to the pilgrim widow, but Richard, who loved a secret, did not explain except to say that it was part of a penitential vow. Buckingham, who had as little possible to do with his brother of Lancaster, had never seen Katherine close, and, suspected nothing.

No one impeded her as she led her stumbling dazed serf away from the heath, and they were at once forgotten when Richard and his army returned to the congenial punishment of the captured rebels.

She led. Cob out of sight and off the road into the forest, until she saw a rainwater pool in a glade of holly bush and beeches. The pool was fringed by a mossy bank, dappled with golden light that filtered through the rich leaves of a huge sheltering beech. Katherine gently tugged at the now resistant Cob's rope, and pointing to the soft turf, said, "Rest here, Cob."

His pale-lashed eyes stared at her with numb hatred. But he collapsed on the edge of the pool and plunged his swollen purplish-black hands in the water. The leather thong that bound his wrists had bit so deep that the flesh was puffed in ridges. He rested his elbows on the turf and bending his face to the pool lapped up water avidly while the knobs of his little backbone stuck out like walnuts beneath his dirt-caked bleeding skin.

Katherine unclasped her scrip again. In it she carried all that she possessed, the few jewels she had seized that Thursday in the Savoy, the change that remained from the gold nobles, a comb, a coarse towel, a cup and a bone-handled knife.

She took out the knife and kneeling by Cob said, "Keep your arms steady - Sainte Marie, I pray this knife is sharp enough."

Cob jumped back, staring in terror at the knife. He tried to get up on his quivering legs, but the dangling end of his waist rope caught in a holly bush and yanked him down.

"Oh Cob, Cob - poor wight," said Katherine. "How
can
you think I'd harm you? I want to cut that thong for you."

He sucked at his lips, darting at the surrounding forest glances of beastlike wariness; his hands drew up tight against his scrawny chest.

"Look at me, Cob," said Katherine. His eyes shifted slowly and raised to her grave sorrowful face. She smiled at him, took his bound hands in hers and pulled them away from his chest. He held himself quiet, ready to spring. Katherine slid the knife carefully between his jammed arms and working it upwards sawed on the thong. It frayed at last, and she threw it on the turf. "When you can use your hands again," she said, "you must help me get that rope off you too."

Cob swallowed, staring at the cut thong. Then he winced, his teeth began to chatter from the pain that throbbed through his freed hands. "What d'ye mean to do wi' me?" he gasped.

"I'll get away from ye again, I'll - -" He clamped his lips on the threats he had nearly uttered. For sure, she'd not be so calm did she not have men hidden behind the beeches over there, or the King's men might have followed. That was it. What else had she been whispering to the King? God's blood, the clodpolls they'd all been to have believed the King's word. serfs you are and serfs you shall remain. 'Twas clear enough now. Swynford serf.
Her
serf. Just as it had always been. Branded once for running away, and this time there'd be an end to it - a length of rope from the gibbet on Kettlethorpe green, like Sim the reeve. Unless - Cob glanced at the knife Katherine had left lying on the bank by a clump of purple bell flowers, while she soaked her towel in the pool.

He tried to flex his throbbing fingers but they were still useless.

Katherine came to him with the wet towel and began to cleanse the blood and dirt off his little trunk that was sharp-breasted and bony as the carcass of a squab. Cob hunched himself tight. She cleaned as best she could the raw abrasions, the stone-cuts on the taut skin and said at last, "Oh Cob, Cob, have you had naught to eat? We must get you food at Waltham."

"Eat!
" he cried, twisting out from under her hands. "Ay, I've had crusts from the monks and fern fronds i' the forest, and thought me well fed, whilst I still had me freedom!"

She sank back on the turf looking at the matted sweat-darkened tow hair, the naked little body, the F brand on the cheek next to the sullen slufting eyes. Cob chafed his numb hands desperately.

"You
are
free, Cob o' Fenton," said Katherine in a low clear voice. "A freeman from this moment."