Katherine (23 page)

For this trowe I, and say for me,
That dreams signifiaunce be
Of good and harm to many wights,
That dreamen in their sleep a-nights
Full marry things covertly,
That fallen after openly."

Yes, that's true thought Katherine. Many things fell out as she had dreamed them. Some nights ago she had dreamed of a coffin and a great horde of weeping mourners garbed in black - and lo, the Queen was dead. But the poem was about love not death, and Katherine listened intently to the excerpts that Geoffrey read. With the dreamer of the story, she met Dame Idleness, Sir Mirth, the Lady Courtesy. She wandered in an enchanted garden so fair "that there is no place in paradise, so good in for to dwell or be, as in that garden." The God of Love, Lord of this garden, he was crowned with roses, and he had a young knight to serve him that was called "Sweet-looking". This young knight held two bows with which to shoot Love's arrows. There were five fair arrows and five foul arrows, and as Geoffrey read how the arrows were named, Katherine listened yet more eagerly, for it seemed to her that she might learn a little about this romantic love and its meanings.

The five golden arrows were called Beauty, Simplicity, Frankness, Companionship and Fair-semblance. Did these indeed make the blissful wounds of love? Katherine wondered, disappointed. She could not picture those arrows ever wounding her heart, nor yet the five black ones that were shot from a crooked bow - Pride, Villainy and Shame, Wanhope and Inconstancy. To none of these did she feel herself vulnerable either.

So I don't understand this sort of love, and never will, she thought, sighing, and how foolish to think that it existed, since The Romance of the Rose was only a dream; Geoffrey had said so in the beginning. Real life was here in this Hall and imbued with quite different qualities - such as duty and endurance. The poem was like the jewel-toned tapestries of fairy beasts and misty glades that she had seen at Windsor, while life was like the rough grey yarn Philippa spun from the distaff. Yet - she thought suddenly, caught by a fleeting glimpse she could not quite perceive - the tapestry,
too,
exists. I saw it.

"You frown, Katherine!" said Geoffrey laughing, and folding up his parchments, "The Romaunt wearies you?"

"Nay, Geoffrey - it pleased me - but I think it sad that I can never find such a beautiful garden, or hope to pluck the one red rose the dreamer yearned for."

"It may be you will yet, Katherine," said Geoffrey softly.

"Katherine will what?" Philippa had been mentally rearranging the Hall, stacking the .trestles on the south wall instead of the north, putting up a more convenient torch bracket. "What red rose? Oh, I see - the poem - Geoffrey, in truth I think it sounded better in French, more elegant. The Queen's minstrel, Pierre de Cambrai, used to recite it to us - English is no tongue for
poetry."

"I expect you're right, my dear," Geoffrey said. He fastened the clasp on his pouch and stood up, stretching his legs. "Rhyme in English has much scarcity, and I am but an indifferent maker."

Katherine started to protest, out of courtesy, and because she had enjoyed the poem; but she saw that her opinion would touch him no more deeply than had Philippa's. For all his merriness and kindness, she felt in him an encircling wall behind which his true self dwelt alone, little affected by the outside world which it viewed with smiling detachment. And she admired this trait which was like the self-sufficiency she had fostered in her own heart. There was but one thing that could threaten hers, she thought. She glanced at little Tom and then down at the curly head against her arm. If I have these safe, she thought, what need of more?

It was the eleventh of September before Katherine set out on her journey to Bolingbroke. She had been unwilling to go until Tom was properly weaned. Then Blanchette had had some brief childish complaint that required her anxious nursing, but soon the little girl was hale as ever, so that Katherine left her to Philippa without anxiety, though with many a pang.

Hugh, too, was better, his bowel gripes and flux lessened, though the other weakness that troubled him so bitterly had not improved. Katherine thought of this matter as she rode with Ellis along the Lincoln road to Bolingbroke.

Since the birth of little Tom, and for some months before that, Hugh had not been able to claim a husband's rights, and she felt guilt that a circumstance which disturbed him so profoundly should be to her a heartfelt relief. Freed from his clumsy, hurried importunities, she could minister to his other needs with far more tolerance. It was otherwise with him: he scarcely spoke to her unless he must, and in the rare times when she had caught him looking at her, he turned his head quickly away, but not before she had seen his bewildered anger and humiliation.

But today she need think of no troublesome things, it was joyous to be going on a journey, the wind blew in her face and she hummed as she spurred Doucette into a gallop, while the disapproving Ellis pounded along at the requisite three paces behind her. "My lady, slacken!" he called finally, "there's a party up ahead!" She pulled in Doucette. This narrow road through Bardney to Bolingbroke was not much frequented and they had met nobody but a tinker and two journeymen woodcarvers who were bound for Lincoln Cathedral to seek work on the new choir stalls.

The road ahead was blocked by a plodding procession of heavy carts piled high with wool-sacks and drawn by oxen. An oxherd ran back and forth with his goad between each pair of carts, and despite Ellis's shouts to make way, neither the oxen nor the herds budged an inch.

Three well-dressed horsemen rode ahead of the carts and one of them, hearing Ellis's shouts and seeing a young woman, called a command to the nearest oxherd, who stolidly passed it back. In due time the oxen hauled the carts to one side. "I could have ridden through the field around them," said Katherine to Ellis as she edged past the carts.

"Oh, no, lady," Ellis was shocked, "not seemly to give the road to peasants. You must remember your rank."

Ay, thought Katherine, I suppose I must, for I'm out in the world again. She arched her neck, patted her hair and replaced her blown riding-hood as she came up to the three horsemen.

The elder was a merchant and obviously a man of consequence. His surcote was a garnet velvet, parti-coloured with saffron. He wore a high-crowned glossy beaver hat, a jewelled dagger at his belt, and his iron-grey beard was neatly forked. "God's greeting, lady," he said in gloomy tones. "We regret we have impeded your way." He turned from her. Flicking his horse's reins, he resumed his slow amble.

Katherine was so accustomed to startled interest in men's eyes that her courteous disclaimer faltered. She glanced at the other two riders, and the youngest, having just taken a good look at her, checked his horse and guided it beside Doucette. "Are you travelling far, fair lady?" he asked, and the warmth in his tone restored her assurance. He too was finely dressed in velvet and a beaver hat, but his forked beard was chestnut brown.

"We go to Bolingbroke," said Ellis crowding up repressively, "and must be on our way, good sir."

"Why, we go there too!" cried the second merchant. "Best that you stay with us, there are outlaws in the forests on the wold."

"I've heard of none," said Ellis stiffly, "and I know well enough how to protect my lady. Allow us to pass."

"Wait, Ellis, we'll ride with them a little." Katherine had talked to no one outside of Kettlethorpe for so long, and Ellis was so dull a companion that she longed for novelty. "Do you also go to see the Duchess, sir?" she asked.

"Ay," he nodded and his smooth pink face grew as gloomy as the other merchant's had, "to ask her help, though we're bound later," he said with sudden force, "for that thrice-cursed town of Boston, may the foul fiend snatch it!"

"And what has Boston done?" said Katherine, trying not to laugh. She glanced at the third horseman, who was dressed in cleric's robes; his face sunk beneath his black and purple twisted hood, was dismal and long-mouthed as were his fellow travellers'.

"But we are Lincoln men! We are the Suttons, lady," cried the young merchant, "so you need not ask what Boston has done."

"Indeed, sir, forgive me, but I do not know."

"Why, they've stolen our staple! The stinking whoresons, vilely wheedling and lying, they've persuaded the King - or more like they've bribed that infamous concubine of his - to wrest the staple from Lincoln and set it up for themselves."

"Ah, to be sure," said Katherine. Hugh had indeed mentioned that the King had moved the staple from Lincoln to Boston and that it meant grave loss for Lincoln. No longer would all the wool and hides and tin of the country pass through Lincoln for export, no longer could she be the premier cloth town of the north-east, nor its commercial centre. By royal command, she had been debased. Katherine, knowing that this year at Kettlethorpe they would have trouble enough to support themselves and no surplus whatsoever to sell, had thought little of the news. But she looked sympathetically at the three gloomy men and said, "Do you think the Duchess can help you, sir?"

The young merchant hunched his shoulders. "We can but try. The Duke is our friend, we know him well. We hold manors under him near Norfolk and he has often dined at our house outside Lincoln."

Katherine considered this with interest. Mention of the Duke ever gave her a warm and trustful feeling since the day of Blanchette's birth, though he seemed to her incalculably remote. It was a little like the way one felt about God, a being all-powerful, stern but merciful (if one could catch his ear), yet naturally so engaged in vast enterprises that one would never dare to intrude one's self.

The Suttons were wealthy burgesses and one of Lincoln's most prominent families. Master John, the older one, was the father, these the two sons, Robert, and Thomas the clerk. Master John had been Mayor of Lincoln last year and now held a seat in Parliament. They belonged to a class she had never met, landholders, civic dignitaries and prosperous merchants, entirely pleased with themselves and their station, and yet neither noble nor knighted. They did homage and paid fees for the lands they held under the Duchy of Lancaster but otherwise they were toughly independent, awed by nothing, and Katherine was startled by the way Master Robert spoke of the King. "Taxes, taxes, taxes so the old dotard may satisfy his leman, or satisfy his itch to rule in France, as though we hadn't enough to do at home. First, it's a tax
in
wool, and then it's a tax
on
wool, and who's to pay the piper but us woolmen? Though never fear, we're not so dull as not to get round that a bit - eh, father?" He nudged master John, who grunted morosely.

"How may that be?" asked Katherine;

Robert Sutton was delighted with so attentive and pretty a listener. He winked at her and chuckled. "Why, pass the tax on, as it were. Lower the price we
pay
for the wool. Our tax goes up? Then the price we pay the peasants goes down and down and down."

"Yes, I see," said Katherine thoughtfully, "but couldn't they refuse to sell to you?"

"No other way
to
sell! We woolmen stick together, and with the staple, all wool must come to Lincoln - but we've lost the staple, curse it, unless the gracious Duchess can change the King's mind. Why
do you
go to Bolingbroke, lady?"

For the same reason you do, I suppose, to get something from the Duchess, Katherine thought with sudden shame. And yet that was not wholly true.

"I go to pay my loving homage," she said slowly. "Sir Hugh Swynford, my husband, is the Duke's man."

"Oh ay?" said Master Robert, "Swynford - of Coleby and Kettlethorpe? Have you much pasture? I don't seem to remember any lots of your wool."

"We seldom have surplus, and this year none at all. Most of our sheep were drowned in the flood. Nor had we many."

It was scarcely past midday and the sun had been glowing fitfully from behind dark-massing clouds. Now wisps and curls of mist began to float by and lie white in the hollows. On the wooded upland of the wolds the tree-tops reared above a bank of lemon-grey vapour.

"Yon's an uncanny light ahead," said the young cleric, speaking for the first time. "Fog looks yellow as saffron, and I ne'er saw fog at midday so far inland." He pulled his silver beads tip from his girdle and fingered them uneasily.

"Nay, Thomas!" cried his elder brother, laughing. "For you've seen little of the world at all.
All
things amaze you. My brother," he said to Katherine, "is but just come home from Oxford where I'll vow he never stuck his long nose outside Merton close, so bookish is he."

Katherine smiled but she too felt a mounting discomfort. The air was thick and still as though it held thunder, and when they reached the wolds and began to climb through heavy yellow mist, they heard the long-drawn hooting of an owl in the unseen forest.

"What can that be that hoots by day, except a soul in purgatory?" said Thomas, and he crossed himself. One by one the others followed suit, but Robert said, " 'Tis only that the fog has fooled the bird to thinking it is night."

They walked the horses along in silence after that, all of them watching the rutted way, for they could see ahead but a few feet. They mounted higher and the mist cleared, though they saw that it lay thick as tawny wool below them across the fens to the south-east and in the cup where Bolingbroke must lie.

When they began the descent, at once they plunged back into the fog. The shouts of the oxherds behind them grew muffled and distorted and seemed to come from all directions. Otherwise there was an eerie stillness until Master John broke it. "I smell smoke," he said. He drew off his embroidered gauntlets and nervously chafed his gouty fingers.

They all sniffed the thick unmoving air. Yes, there was smoke, but in the faint pungency Katherine caught a trace of another odour, a fetid sickening fume that touched in her some uneasy memory.

"I smell nothing but the fog - Christ's maledictions on it," said Robert. " 'Twill be luck an' we can keep the road."

They plodded on in the still, yellow half-world - trees loomed up of a sudden on either side of them and as suddenly disappeared. It grew warmer and the strange stench grew stronger until they all felt it sting their nostrils. Then through the fog appeared an orange glow and they heard the crackle and hiss of flames and came upon a bonfire in the centre of the road. The fire burned off some of the fog. They could see no one about, but small houses and an alestake showed that they had entered Bolingbroke village. The fumes came from the fire; its oily suffocating smoke writhed upward and drifted through the air.

"It smells of brimstone," cried John button, pulling up his horse and coughing. "Why do they build this here! God's body, but this stink may harm my wool."

"There's another fire down over there," said Katherine, "by the castle wall, I think." She too coughed, her eyes watered. The horses snorted and, tossing their heads, began to trot, trying to rid themselves of the discomfort. No other living thing moved in the village street and, held by dazed uncertainty, they let the horses have their will. The road led around the castle walls and the dry moat. They reached the barbican and saw the great wooden drawbridge was raised flat against the portcullis. The air was clearer here, the horses stopped, and their riders stood staring up at the looming mass of wall when suddenly the mist lifted.

"Jesu, look!" cried Ellis hoarsely. He pointed with his whip.

"God shield us," whispered Katherine. On the bottom of the drawbridge was painted a red cross four feet high. And now she knew that she had smelled a smoke stench like this eight years ago in Picardy.

"There's plague in the castle!" cried John Sutton, his voice quavering. "We must turn the wool-carts - Robert, hasten, stop them - don't let them come nigh here!"

His son gave a cry and galloped down the street into the fog.

"We must get 'round the village away from this contagion," muttered Master John. "Lady, d'you know of another road - do you, young squire?" He turned distractedly to Ellis. "Oh weylawey, there's naught but misfortune and disaster for me lately. Thomas pray to Saint Roch - to all the saints - for sure you have the Latin they can understand."

The young clerk started and dragged his eyes from the plague cross that glistened red as blood through the mist, his trembling fingers reached for his beads.

"Come, Lady Katherine, come," whispered Ellis. He snatched at Doucette's bridle. A shutter opened in the guardroom of the gatehouse and a man's helmeted head showed at the window.

"Now who be ye what gabble and jangle out there?" the guard called out. "For sure ye see that we've no welcome to give ye at Bolingbroke except the kiss of the Black Death."

"Blessed Virgin, what has
happened?'
cried Katherine, clasping her hands tight on the pommel.

"Sixteen of us are dead, that I know of - God shrive them, for a priest has not! The chaplain died a-first, five nights gone, the friar after him."

"Unshriven!" She heard the wail from the two Suttons behind her, and the sudden panic clop of hooves as their horses were spurred.

Ellis grabbed her arm, and she shook it off. "The village priest!" she cried to to the window. "Get him!"

"How may we? Since he's run off to hiding like the rest of the vill!"

"What of the Duchess and her babes?"

"I know not, mistress, for since yestere'en I've not quit the guardroom and I've barred the door." The voice in the window cracked into high-pitched laughter. "I've barred the door 'gainst the plague maiden and her red scarf and her broom.
She'll
not get in, to bed wi' me."

"Come away, lady - come--" Again Ellis seized Katherine's arm, his face had grown yellow as the smoke.