Katherine (15 page)

The demands of nature were answered in an open corner of the courtyard behind the dovecote.

It was a more primitive dwelling than any Katherine had ever known; even the convent at Sheppey and her grandparents' great farmhouse had been more luxurious, while the Pessoner house in London, and of course the great castle at Windsor, had shown her entirely different standards of comfort.

And the furnishings at Kettlethorpe she deemed shockingly plain and scanty for a knight's home. The planks and trestles and benches in the Hall were barren of carving and as roughly hewn as those in a rustic's cot, while the solar was furnished only with a square box frame heaped with a mouldering goose-feather bed and a flea-infested bearskin for a coverlet. It surprised her much that they should drink the small ale Hugh had commandeered from the village out of coarse wooden mazers and that there should be no object of the slightest value to be seen, not even a saint's statue, or a tapestry to keep out the constant draughts. She longed for explanation of this singular poverty, but did not dare ask Hugh, seeing that he felt shame at the condition of his estate and tried to hide it by loud rantings against his stepmother. All the more she could not ask him because she had brought him no dowry, nor had he reproached her with its lack. In justice, she owed him all her help to straighten out his affairs.

As she ascended the outside flight of wooden steps into the tower, her heart beat fast, for she heard the Lady Nichola's high murmuring float out on to. the still air. The dairymaid said that the Lady Nichola had water-elf sickness, a fearsome spell; and none of the servants would go near her. Katherine paused to gather courage and looked across the courtyard wall and the moat, towards the cross on the church spire. She had not yet been over to the church, and there was no Mass except on Sundays. The parson, grown slack, as everyone eke on this manor, was not even at home, but had gone some days ago to Lincoln on business of his own.

She mounted the stairs and entered the tower's ancient guardroom. Many generations had passed since it had heard the clash of steel and the oaths of men-at-arms, and its slit windows, sunk seven feet deep into the walls, had never heard the whir of defending arrows. No other baron had coveted this isolated manor. The first lord had built the tower and dug the moat because it was the fashion of building in his day, and he had used Kettlethorpe chiefly as a hunting lodge. Katherine, glancing quickly about, saw that the room contained only two ironbound chests. In the centre of the stone floor there was a rusty grille over the only airshaft to the donjon beneath. In the time of Hugh's father, Sir Thomas, this donjon had been used occasionally for the detention of serfs awaiting trial, but now it had long been empty of all but the rats who tunnelled upward from the surrounding moat. Katherine saw that dust lay thick as her hand on the chests and that a drift of dead leaves had blown into the corners.

She climbed the narrow stone steps that were built in the thickness of the wall and came to the top room. A mangy deer-hide barred the doorway. The murmuring had stopped, there was a listening silence within.

Katherine cleared her throat and called softly, "My lady Swynford! It's Katherine, Hugh's bride. May I enter?"

She heard a. scuffling noise as though something were being quickly hidden, and a tiny stifled sound, sharp and high. Her heart beat faster, but she called again. Still there was no answer, but she heard the rasp of frightened breathing.

She pushed the deer-hide and entered. "Ah no!" she cried when she saw the little black figure. "My poor lady, you mustn't be afraid of me!"

The Lady Nichola, her arms clasped tight across a lumped cloth on her breast, was cowering behind her bed. Her dark eyes were fixed on Katherine with dumb terror. When Katherine drew nearer, she flattened her shoulder blades against the wall as though she would break through its stones. From the lumpy cloth she strained to her chest there came again the stifled sound.

"Dear lady, I won't hurt you. I've come up to do you honour, as is right. See, I'll come no nearer. I won't move from here." Katherine's voice, low and soft as a viol, thrilled with pity.

Nichola, who had heard no kindness since she had come to Kettlethorpe ten years ago, stared unbelieving. "You'd take her away from me-" she whispered. "Don't take her away - she does no harm."

The girl shook her head and tried to smile reassurance. Though the Lady Nichola was over forty and her scant dark hair was streaked with grey, yet her little face, twisted by fear, was somehow child-like.

Katherine stood stock-still as she had promised and saw the clutch of the claw hands slowly relax on the bundle they protected. The cloth heaved and squirmed.

"What have you there, my lady?" said Katherine very gently. "I swear by Saint Mary and her Blessed Son that I'll not touch it, nor do anything you don't wish."

"But Hugh would - he'd take her away from me and beat me as his father did. Beat me because I'm barren."

Katherine stiffened. "No," she said, her jaw tight. "No one shall beat you."

The Lady Nichola crept forward to the bed, her wide-straining eyes fixed on Katherine's face. She put the bundle down on the coarse hemp coverlet. The girl waited quietly, though the flesh on her back tingled. The cloth heaved and from underneath there walked out a small bedraggled kitten. It was striped in pale buff and it wore a collar made of woven grass from which dangled a leash of plaited scarlet wool.

Almost Katherine laughed, for she had expected some shocking thing, a baby perhaps - crazed women did steal babies - or sign of witchcraft like a serpent. But pity quenched her smile as Lady Nichola snatched up the kitten and covered it with kisses, while it mewed feebly.

"Dear my lady," said Katherine, " 'tis no sin for you to keep a kitten. No need to be so fearful."

Suddenly the unseeing stare left Nichola's red-rimmed eyes, and the young wild look left her face. Now wrinkles dented around her drooping mouth and between her brows. "So there's a new Lady of Kettlethorpe," she said in a much lower voice. "How did you come to be here?" She sat down quietly on the bed.

Katherine was startled at the change. She saw that the madness had ebbed suddenly to disclose a dead weariness of spirit beneath. Now for a few minutes while there was sanity in Nichola's questions, Katherine told her something of her life and how she came to marry. Nichola nodded from time to time and listened sadly. "I too came from the south," she said, "to this most dismal place. But I was always afraid. He would not have hated me so, had I not been afraid. Even though I bore no children. He broke my arm once - see-"

She pulled up her black sleeve to show a crooked lump of bone beneath the mottled skin. "But I was ugly - like a monkey, my lord said." She twisted her head and looked up at Katherine.
"You're
beautiful, fair as
they
are that I see in the water when the other life is on me. Yet you will moulder here, even as I, and grow ugly and afraid unless - unless-" She jumped up, her voice soared to its high chanting note and she cried, "I'll weave a spell for you, Hugh's bride. I have the herbs; the hazel and the bloodwort and the secret ones. I have water here from the Holy Well in Rough wood. I'll make a potion that'll save you - -"

She ran to the iron pot which hung on a tripod against the smoke - blackened wall, she blew the smouldering charcoal embers in the pan beneath and catching up a fistful of dried herbs began to cast them in the pot.

"Nay, lady," said Katherine gently, "I want no potion." But she saw that it was useless. The moment of reason had passed. Nichola did not hear her. The wild yet happier look came back into her face. She picked the kitten from the floor and, carefully untying its wool leash, held it to her breast and began to croon softly, "Ah my pretty one - my poppet, my sweeting, you too shall stir the potion - " And she held the kitten's paw on the ladle.

Katherine turned away and lifting the deer - hide, slipped from the tower - room. She felt no fear now of the Lady Nichola, but she was heavy of heart. She descended the steps to the courtyard and let the sun stream on her uplifted face while trying to recapture the hopeful energy she had felt earlier. Ajax, the great mastiff, walked over to her stiff - legged from his kennel, sniffed her gown, then stalked away towards the stables. She followed him and entering went straight to Doucette's stall. The little mare greeted her with a whinny, and she threw her arms around its neck. Then her arms fell slack. "One Lady of Kettlethorpe has nothing to love but a kitten and I - " She looked at her horse and sudden anger possessed her.

She spied a stable - boy's bare legs protruding from a mound of straw in the next stall. "Wake up, you lazy churl!" she cried sharp and loud. "Get up!" The lad jumped to his feet, knuckling sleep out of his eyes.

"What's your name?" Katherine surveyed him with disgust - his filthy hair, dangling red hands and torn dung - spattered smock.

"Wat - that be Walter - Wat's son, m' - lady," he stammered, not very sure who this tall angry maiden might be. He had heard that the new Lady of Kettlethorpe was but a soft child who had laid abed all yesterday.

"Well, Wat Watson!" cried Katherine. "Why have you not curried my palfrey? Why is the hayrick empty?"

Wat swallowed and ignoring the first question, said that the hayrick was empty because there was no hay.

"There's green grass in the meadow beyond the moat," she snapped. "Go pull enough to fill the manger, then curry Doucette, water and saddle her. I will ride her later." "Aye, m'lady," said Wat.

"And," added Katherine, "when you've finished that, clean out this foul stable. By God's sweet dignity, you should be shamed!"

Buoyed on the wave of her anger, Katherine quitted the stables, picked her way through ancient refuse past the empty granary set high on posts for safety against vermin, past the mammoth bake - oven where the serfs should have been bringing their, loaves and paying the manor levy on each baking. The iron oven door was missing from the wrenched hinges. No doubt someone had found use for it, she thought grimly, and use for the iron locks which had plainly been prised from the doors of other buildings.

She came to the low daub - and - wattle hut where she knew the bailiff lay and tapped upon the door. A man's harsh voice said, "Who's there?" and she answered with firmness, "Katherine Swynford, the new Lady of Kettlethorpe."

"Enter then!"

The stench inside the hut near knocked her over, and she stood blinking in the darkness and retching uncontrollably while red fear smote her. Was this perhaps the stink of plague? Her nostrils still remembered the vileness of the night in Picardy when her grandparents died. But this man had laid here for months and plague victims did not linger. But there was worse than plague! She gasped and stepped back into the courtyard.

"Is he
unclean?"
she whispered, not knowing that she spoke.

"Nay, lady," said the bitter voice in the darkness, "I'm no leper. Would that I were, for in the lazaretto I'd be with others of my kind and tended by the brothers. I'd not be lying here alone in my own .ordure."

Katherine's stomach heaved again, she put her hand tight against her mouth and came back within the door.

"Open the shutter, lady," said the voice, half sneering. " 'Twill sweeten the air for squeamish noses."

Katherine flung back the little window shutter. The cool spring breeze blew from the forest across the room and out of the door. She looked down at the man who lay on a straw pallet on the floor. A russet mantle such as men had worn in the early days of Edward's reign covered all his body; she could see but his arms. On the sharp bones and knobbed joints the flesh hung slack as a bag. And in his ivory skull - head the eyes were sunk so that she scarce could see that they were blue. Only the long curling brown hair of his head and his matted beard showed that he had been a comely man. His lips drew back from his strong white teeth, and he shut his eyes, for light made them ache.

"Behold Gibbon, your steward, my lady," he said. "I can move nothing but my head, and these fingers - see! He clenched his jaw, veins stood out on his forehead and his left hand jerked on the mantle.

"What is it, Gibbon?" she asked, steadily enough.

"I know not. It began two years ago with a weakness in my legs. They trembled much. The trembling crept from limb to limb, but now they do not even tremble."

"You've had a leech?"

"A barber from Torksey. He bled me often. It does no good. While I yet could get about I burned candles at Saint Hugh's shrine in Lincoln Minster. That did no good, either, nor will it - this is punishment for the sin of my begetting."

"Does no one tend you, Gibbon?"

"Oh, ay - when they remember. Old Toby at times, big Margery Brewster from the vill, the parson when he's not chaffering in Lincoln for fine meats and wines to fill his fat belly."

Katherine frowned and lifted her chin. "There must be many changes on the manor!" she cried.
"I'll
see that you're tended, properly - a serf to care for you night and day. Then you'll get better."

He looked at her then with some attention. A feeble smile narrowed his sunken lids. "You're full young to be so resolute," he said. Young and very fair, he thought. Shining with indignation, burning to set wrongs right, and certain that it could be done. Like Saint Michael with the sword and scales. Ay, he thought, and shut his eyes again - once I would not have compared so female a creature to Saint Michael. He felt the weight of his dead body that hung to his neck like a sack of stones. Soon the neck too would be dead, and then the head.

"Is there much pain?" she said softly. There was a flagon of ale on the floor and a piece of bread. She poured ale into a wooden cup and held it to his lips. Almost she felt courage to pull back his mantle and cleanse him, but yet she could not. She had seen no man naked save Hugh, and at him she had not looked.

He shook his head to the ale. "Margery was here this morning, I was fed. No, there's no pain." He added in a stronger voice, "Where's Hugh gone? I heard the horses in the courtyard."