Katherine (16 page)

"Hunting in the forest. We need meat." She said it lightly, that he might not think it a reproach to his stewardship. She had meant to ask him many questions about the manor, but now she felt she could not disturb so ill a man with her ignorance. She would like, too, to question him about himself; his turn of speech astonished her. Here was no peasant twang or clumsy grammar; he spoke as well as any knight at Windsor court, better, in fact, than Hugh. What then, did he as bailiff here?

Gibbon had become intuitive during these months when nothing seemed to live in him but his brain. He felt her thoughts. "Hugh told you naught about me, did he?" He looked up at her with the faint smile. It had been long since anyone had lingered to talk to him.

"No," she said, "he spoke never of you, nor of his manors."

"Ay, it was always that way. Hugh has little interest in his lands, but I had. I fended for him, and I ruled his villeins. I collected his rents and fines and though I paid out each Michaelmas the twenty pounds service fee Kettlethorpe owes the Bishop of Lincoln and the fees due from Coleby, yet we were prospering. Soon here we might have furnished and made the manor, worthy of Swynfords. I had even thought to build a pleasure garden, between the tower and the moat, in case Hugh got him a bride." His lips twisted from his teeth. "Now there is a bride - but no pleasure garden, no handsome furnishings to greet her. And the manor - I can guess what condition it's in."

"I've wondered," she said, hesitating, "why there are no furnishings here, except the rudest."

"Hugh sold them all at his father's death. He had to pay relief and heriots to
his
feudal lords, of course, before he could claim his inheritance. You must know that," he added in surprise.

She shook her head. "I know nothing."

"Hugh should find a new bailiff at once, and you will need help to administer your dowry."

"I bring no dowry," said Katherine quietly. "Hugh
would
have me, none the less."

Gibbon fell silent. This seemed to him very bad news. Since he had known of Hugh's return home with a wife he had passed some of the interminable black hours in wondering what dowry she brought, and how it could be best expended for the rehabilitation of the manor which had to him been wife, family and salvation for years. That the girl was fair and intelligent he saw, that she had some tenuous connection with the court he had heard from Ellis, but none of this offset the lack of dowry. In fact, he had hoped that Hugh when he finally returned home, might see the wisdom of wooing the Lady Matilda, sister to Philip Darcy, the lord of Torksey. True, Matilda was a widow, and something brown and shrivelled in looks, having lost most of her teeth, but she had borne children and was not yet past the age to bear others. Besides, Hugh had never seemed the man to be finicky about the women he bedded. The Torksey lands were rich and adjoined Kettlethorpe on the north; the marriage would have restored the Swynford fortunes.

"It irks you that I bring no property," said Katherine, flushing. His silence hurt her so that she forgot his illness and added sharply, "Is it the custom in Lincolnshire for the hired bailiff to concern himself so deeply in his master's affairs as this?"

Gibbon turned his eyes back to her. "Ah, but you see, madam. I too am a Swynford, and debarred by birth from owning land myself. I yet make shift to serve my house - or did."

The hot stain faded from Katherine's forehead, she looked down at him amazed.
"You
are a Swynford, Gibbon?" "Ay. Hugh and I are half - brothers." "But I don't understand - "

He made a derisive sound in his throat. "Simple enough, for I'm a bastard."

She could not prevent a shocked sound. Bastardy had always seemed to her the most pitiable of states!

Gibbon's sardonic voice went on. "Ay - our most dear father, Sir Thomas, strewed others like me from Grimsby to Grantham, though his only true - born son was Hugh. Yet was I a special case, for my mother was a nun at the Fosse Priory, not two miles from here."

Katherine swallowed. "Sweet Jesu," she whispered.

"Two days after she bore me, she drowned herself in the Trent, but this I did not know until my father died. He had me reared by the Gilbertines at Sempringham, and not knowing then I was a bastard I once thought to join their order. When my father made full confession on his death - bed, the gentle Gilbertines were scandalised. They prayed for my mother's lost soul, and my father's black one, but they turned me out."

The muscles of his throat ached from so much talking, and he sighed. "What then, Gibbon?" Katherine whispered, putting her hand on his inert arm.

"Why, then Hugh was the heir, and he summoned me to aid him on the land, swearing that none here should taunt me with the infamy of my birth. It was generously done, and I was grateful."

"Ay, it was generously done," Katherine murmured, turning this new aspect of her husband over in her mind. Generous yet expedient, too; Hugh had needed someone he could trust to run the manor.

"Gibbon," she said, "will you help me when you can, tell me what must be done here?"

His lips moved in assent, then fell slack.

She went quickly out of the hut into the sunny courtyard and shut the door. Dear God, this is now my
home,
she thought. Soon Hugh and Ellis will go to Aquitaine and I shall be here alone with a crazed woman, a dying man and a pack of rebellious serfs. Of a sudden she thought of Hawise with a desperate longing, the tough, shrewd, bouncing girl with the merry tongue and the warm heart. If I had her here to help me, to laugh with me as we did on May Day.

Hawise had said as she kissed Katherine good - bye outside the church porch, "Remember I'd do anything for ye, my lady. Ye've but to let me know." Katherine had neither listened nor responded, had mounted Doucette in a daze - bemused, drunken - because of the Duke of Lancaster's contemptuous kiss.

"You little fool," said Katherine aloud to the deserted courtyard. "Ah, I hate him. He meant to make a fool of me."

Then from the forest she heard a wild hallooing like a battle - cry, and the fainter winding of a horn. At least, she thought, there would be meat for dinner.

According to the Duke's instructions, Hugh left Kettlethorpe for Southampton in the middle of August, on the day after the Feast of the Assumption. They had managed to celebrate this feast with some of the traditional lavishness, thanks to Hugh's and Ellis's skill at hunting. There had been venison enough for all the village, and a wild boar that Hugh had slain across the Trent in Sherwood Forest.

The sun shone, there had been dancing on the Green, while to the little church for blessing the people had brought their samples from the harvest: oats, barley, peas, beans and flax plants, in woven baskets.

It was at Gibbon's suggestion that the Swynfords made special effort to celebrate the feast day for their tenants. Hugh, intent on his departure, would never have thought of it.

In June the manor court had been held in the great Hall, and Hugh had dealt out irritable punishment to his serfs, saying that as all had grown lax there was no use inquiring into the merits of each case. He exacted immediate payment of the overdue rents and fines and clapped those who asked for time into the stocks, besides personally flogging others. He decreed boon - work at once on his home fields and would have withdrawn every able - bodied man, woman and child from necessary work on their own plots, had not Gibbon intervened, pointing out that total failure of the tenants' crops would hardly benefit the manor.

Katherine had had a litter made for Gibbon, and he had been carried into the Hall to attend the court, and when he found the strength to give advice, Hugh, after the first impatient objections, usually heeded.

So now in August, the administration of the manor had improved. New officers had been appointed from amongst the villeins, a hayward to guard the fields and pastures, and a reeve, Sim the tanner, the shrewdest man in the village. Sim was cold - eyed and slippery as a mackerel, but he was proficient at figuring on the abacus and would brook no lame excuses from the villeins it was now his duty to oversee. From having been a leader of the malcontents, and adept at petty swindling from the lord's possessions, Sim now reversed himself to guard Hugh's interests, being mightily pleased with his position and the small wage that went with it.

Gibbon had foreseen this, too, and suggested that the tanner be chosen. No life had returned to the bailiff's useless limbs, but, cared for now by a husky lad and often consulted by Katherine and the reeve, his mind had lightened and a trace of colour come into his bone - pale skin.

No new bailiff had been found, and in truth Hugh would not have known how to look for one, or spare the money for his wages. And there was another reason, scarce acknowledged to himself, why Hugh sought no new bailiff, who might be a lusty man and would inevitably see much of Katherine.

On the night of the feast, when Hugh and Katherine went to bed, he, being hot with ale and suddenly aware of how sorely he would miss her, pulled her roughly towards him and began to fumble with her breasts.

"Let me be, Hugh," she said sharply, pushing him away. "I'm queasy and tired."

His anger flared at the reminder that always she submitted to him in tense endurance, making no sound except a sigh of relief when he quitted her. But she had never before denied him outright. "By God's blood!" he shouted. "How dare you shove me from you!" And as she stiffened, turning her head from his drink - soured breath, he struck her, though not hard, across the cheek.

"Ay," she said with biting contempt, sitting up in bed and pulling her long hair around her nakedness, "like father like son. But
you
will not need to beat
me
with a blackthorn stick for that I'm barren."

"And why should I not! Why should not
he
have beat that mewling rag of a - " Then he caught her meaning. His clenched fists fell open and he, too, sat up, trying to see her face in the darkness. "Are you with child, Katherine?"

"So I believe," she said coldly. She had had no one to consult, and her knowledge of the signs was sparse, yet the lewd talk of Fat Mab, the Sheppey cook, had been enlightening.

"When think you it'll be born?" Hugh's voice cracked with gladness. He had hoped for this, not so much that it would provide him with an heir as that breeding would make her unattractive to other men, and surely it would change her indifference to himself.

"In May, I suppose," she answered him in the same chill tone. It seemed to her impossible, even ridiculous, that a new life had started growing in her belly, especially one in which Hugh had a share, for she felt herself as alone and untouched as ever; but she could not ignore the changes in her healthy young body, or the new exhaustion and distaste for food.

"In May?" said Hugh eagerly. "No doubt I'll be back with you. It won't take us long to beat the Castilian bastard's rabble." He flexed his broken hand to try it, as he did many times a day. It had healed well and was strong as ever.

"I hope you'll be back, Hugh." She spoke more gently, though in truth she could not imagine how it would be in May, and longed to have him go. It seemed to her that it would be bliss to be alone in bed, and freed from the importunities of this hairy, naked man.

The next morning, before the dew was off the grass, the church bell rang and all the villagers assembled to God - speed their manor lord. They gathered in the outer court beyond the moat, and Katherine stood amongst them holding the stirrup cup of strong ale.

Hugh was dressed in gleaming armour, from which Ellis had polished every trace of rust or stain. Katherine herself had mended the linen jupon which covered his hauberk of chain mail like a tight - fitting shirt. The jupon's embroidered blazon proclaimed Hugh's identity as did his silvered shield with black chevron and three gold boars' heads painted on the leather. His fighting helmet was of iron, shaped like a beehive, yet far lighter than the great ceremonial heaume he had worn at the tournament.

Ellis followed him, dressed in Lincoln green with his master's badge sewn on his arm. Wat, the stableboy, led the two great destriers, their harnesses a - jingle with tiny brass bells.

As Hugh came through the gatehouse and crossed the drawbridge, his serfs gave a polite cheer; there were a few invocations to St. George and the Blessed Mother for Sir Hugh's safe return from the wars. Though there was no special enthusiasm, and their well - wishing came rather in response to immemorial feudal custom than to any personal interest in Hugh, the little demonstration nevertheless proved that the feast yesterday had mollified them; at least they were no longer openly rebellious.

They made way for the parish priest, who lumbered through the lych-gate to give final blessing. Hugh and Ellis knelt on the ground to receive it. The priest asperged them with holy water.

Hugh arose and clambered into the saddle from the mounting block, then he sat stiff and high to look down at Katherine. "Farewell, lady," he said below his breath, and into his small truculent eyes there came a look, as though he would say more, but could not. He was at his best on horseback, where one saw neither his bandy legs nor his chunkiness. His ram's - wool hair, trimmed by Ellis, lay neat and close to his head as war - time fashion demanded, and when Katherine, smiling, proffered him the stirrup cup, he took it from her and drank with a sober grace. "God keep you, my Katherine," he said, very low.

"And you, my lord and husband," she returned. "Guard him well, Ellis," she added, her dazzling smile moving to Hugh's squire. That stolid young man started and bowed. He had never had personal interest in his master's lady, seeing her simply as one of Sir Hugh's possessions, like his horses and his manor. He had not even wondered at Hugh's choice of a dowerless maiden, for it was not his way to wonder. But now, as Katherine's smile rested on him, several impressions penetrated his slow wits. One was the astonished recognition of her beauty. Tall and slender like a young queen, she stood there in her shabby green fur - trimmed robes. Her cleft chin was held high, her great eyes shone like crystals between the thick black lashes. And her smile was brilliant and gracious as an April morning. But should there have been a smile, however gracious? This girl, so young and untried, upon being left alone by her war - bound lord, should she not have wept?

Katherine dutifully waved good - bye until the two trotting horses faded from sight down the avenue of wych-elms that led to the Lincoln road. The villeins noted that she had shown decorum throughout the speeding, and they drew back respectfully now, that she might rush into the house and let loose her grief in private. But Katherine felt neither grief nor the slightest doubt that Hugh would return. Her certainty of his safety beyond the seas in Aquitaine arose not so much from her ignorance of war as from a blind unrecognised trust in the overlord he would serve. Because the Duke of Lancaster was invulnerable, lofty and beyond the touch of mischance, so would his men be. Hugh would certainly return, and in the meantime she had respite.

"The day grows warm, lady," said the priest, mopping his shining red face with a corner of his claret - coloured gown. He moistened his thick lips and glanced towards the manor house. "'Twill soon be Prime."

Katherine took the hint. "Come in and break your fast with me, Sir Robert. I believe there's still some mead left over from the feast."

On the last day of October, All Hallows' Eve, Katherine, having supped alone as usual at the High Table in the dark dreary Hall, sat idly watching Ajax, the mastiff, nosing for bones in the littered rushes below the dais. The house carls had fastened hazel branches across the doors and the windows to keep out the witches and bogles which infested this particular night, and from across the moat she could hear the chanting of the villagers who were circling their homes with lighted candles for the same purpose. The servants, having flung her food on the table, had early sneaked off to the village for apple - bobbing and fortune - telling.

Katherine's despondency reached a point where she felt that she would have welcomed goblins or any other weird visitant which might break the monotony and isolation of Kettlethorpe, when Ajax suddenly abandoned his bones, stiffened and growled.

She crossed herself, staring fearfully at the protecting hazel withes, then she heard the halloo of a human male voice and Old Toby's quavering answer, while Ajax precipitated himself against the door, barking and growling.

She spoke to the dog, held him by his collar and opened the door waiting eagerly. No visitors had come to Kettlethorpe since a wandering friar after Michaelmas. But it was only Sir Robert, who had just returned from amusing himself in Lincoln for three days.

Katherine was so disappointed that tears spilled down her cheeks, a display she knew to be revoltingly childish. "The smoke - " she said." 'Tis so smoky in here." As indeed it was.

A goblin wind had blown up and puffed all the fire smoke back into the Hall through the open roof hole.

"Ay, a wuthering night," said the priest, brushing twigs and mud off his robes. He shuddered. "I mislike Hallow E'en, there's things abroad - best not thought on. I'd not of come back today but for the Feast of All Saints tomorrow. There be some in the will want Mass said."

"I should certainly hope so - I know I do," said Katherine shortly. Father Robert's idea of his parochial duties was exceedingly flexible. Which pleased Hugh well enough.

"I was calling at the George 'n' Dragon, in the town, ye know where it is? The big tavern near the castle uphill from what folks used to call the Jewry, not in our time, nor our gaffers' time either though - "

"Yes," murmured Katherine. There was never any hurrying the priest's thick ramblings, especially when he was bursting with ale like an overripe plum. She glanced wearily at the roof over the dais, where the thatcher had not properly repaired the leak. It must have started to rain, for the usual trickle plink - plonked on the table.

"Tavernkeeper - Hambo o' Louth he's called, he knows I drop in from time to time - he told me, Hambo did, there was a pedlar come through Lincoln, three days back, on his way to Grimsby. Pedlar what carries mostly ribbons, threads, gewgaws for the women. Seems he'd started in London and bore a letter. He left it with Hambo, for when someone from here'd drop by."

"Letter!" Katherine jumped up. "Letter for Kettlethorpe! Jesu. Father, give it to me!"

The priest's fat fingers fumbled with maddening slowness at the buckle of his pouch. Finally he held out a sealed piece of parchment. "Is it sent to
you?
" he asked, having puzzled for some time over the looks of the inscription, and this being the first letter he had ever seen close.

"Yes, yes," she said, tearing at the seal. "Why, it's from Geoffrey!"

She read rapidly, while her mouth trembled, and her eyes darkened. "No bad news about Sir Hugh?" cried the priest.

"No," Katherine said slowly. " 'Tis not bad news. It's from a King's squire called Geoffrey Chaucer; he and my sister were married in Lammastide. They're living in London, in the Vintry, until my sister returns to service with the Queen."

Father Robert was impressed. So glib she talked about the King and Queen. He pursed his thick lips and looked at her with new respect.

"London," said Katherine, on a long sigh, gazing around the dark bare Hall, "seems very far away."

"Well and it
is"
said the priest, rising reluctantly, for she was staring at the letter and obviously not going to offer him anything to drink for his pains.

When he had gone, she re - read her letter, and one sentence especially. Geoffrey had written, "Philippa bids you not grow overworldly in the luxury and High Estate which you now enjoy - but I dare add I hope you amuse yourself right well, my little Sister."

Katherine smiled bitterly when she read that and put the letter at the bottom of her coffer.

More and more during the autumn months as her pregnancy advanced, lethargy came over Katherine, and she drew into herself. Her mind felt as though it grew thick as pottage, and she was continually benumbed by cold. Her initial interest in the manor waned, she scarce found the energy for talks with Gibbon any more, and he, seeing this, did not trouble her, having established a fair working relationship with the reeve.