Katherine (25 page)

On Piers Roos, too, the dread black spots appeared, but God showed him mercy, for the plague boil in his groin swelled fast and burst like a rotten plum; and when the poison drained away, Piers recovered, albeit he lay for months in sweating weakness afterwards.

During those days of heavy sorrow and gradually lightening fear, Katherine remained at the castle. They had sore need of help, and old Simon was distracted by the terrible responsibilities on him. Of those at Bolingbroke, thirty had died. Most of the varlets had run off in panic to the wolds and fens. There were few left to do Simon's bidding, and none to tell him what disposition should be made of the Duchess - until the messenger he had dispatched to the King at Windsor should return.

They sealed away the Lady Blanche in a hastily made coffin and placed it in the private chapel. There the good white monk said Masses for her soul, and many of her household came to pray; and there too, every morning after it seemed sure the plague had passed, Katherine brought the ducal daughters, Philippa and Elizabeth, to light candles and kneel by their mother's black velvet bier.

The children had all been safe in the North Tower throughout the scourge; the Holy Blessed Mother had watched out for them, since their own could not.

The baby, Henry, toddled merrily about the floor in his own apartments playing with his silver ball and a set of ivory knights his father had sent him. When Katherine first went to see him he drew back as children do, and hid distrustfully behind his nurse's skirts, but he soon grew used to her and crowed with glee when she played finger games with him as she did with Blanchette.

The little girls occupied rooms higher up in the tower, and Katherine found them well enough in health, though Philippa was nine now and old enough to understand the terrible things that had befallen them; between the strands of lank flaxen hair, her long sallow face was runnelled with tears, and nothing that Katherine could say lightened the stillness of her bearing. Yet she remembered Katherine and seemed to find some comfort in standing silently beside her.

Elizabeth at five was noisier than ever. She harried the servants and bullied the nurses and her sister, all of whom gave into her rather than provoke a screaming rage. She was a brown little thing, all except her eyes, which were leaf-green and could flash like a cat's. When she was told of her mother's death, she howled loudly for a while because she saw those about her weeping; but in her visits to the bier in the chapel she found a not unpleasing importance. She liked Katherine because she smelled good and told her stories and had a low sweet voice unlike her Yorkshire nurse's, but she cared deeply about nobody.

Katherine longed for her own children and especially when she saw little Henry, who was so near to Blanchette in age and whose baby tricks wrenched at her heart. Almost she resented him because he was not Blanchette.

But her own babies were well at Kettlethorpe and did not miss her. Ellis had ridden home with all the frightful tidings of Bolingbroke, and returned some days later with a message from Philippa, who had made him repeat it so many times that through Ellis's voice Katherine could plainly hear her sister's.

"You're not to come home yet, on any account, lady," Ellis reported stolidly. "They're all well and wish to stay so. Dame Philippa says there's no telling but the plague might be hiding in your clothes waiting to smite those nearest you in revenge that
you
are safe. She said to tell you that they're singing Masses for the Duchess' soul at Kettlethorpe church, and all is being done seemly there, so you need have no care for anything; but you must
not
return until all danger from pestilence has passed."

They stood in the chill windswept bailey by the now lowered drawbridge, and Ellis, acting under orders, kept his distance from her.

"And what does Sir Hugh say?" Katherine asked slowly.

Ellis looked uncomfortable. Hugh had said very little beyond expressing shock at the Duchess's death. He had always been a morose man, but lately even Ellis thought him unduly brooding and withdrawn.

"He sends you greeting," said Ellis, "and said you may do as you please."

Katherine nodded. That was like Hugh as he had become in the last year. It was as though he held himself away from her in all things, no longer gave her commands nor yet made clumsy efforts to gain her affection; and she thought that this was because of the thing that had happened to him. But Philippa's advice was sensible and though it pained her it also freed her for a different obligation.

"Do you then, Ellis," she said, "return now to Kettlethorpe and tell them I shall join the funeral cortege that'll escort our dearest Lady Blanche to London, for this is what the King commands. And perhaps I shall remain there to do her the last honours, when she is interred, after the Duke is back from France."

Ellis considered this and decided that it was a fitting course for her to follow and would not displease Sir Hugh.

"When will the Duke come back to England, do y'know, lady?"

She shook her head. "They say he may not yet have heard the dreadful tidings since he fights deep in Picardy. I daren't think how it'll be with him, when he does," she said, remembering the look in the Duke's eyes as he had gazed up at his wife at the tournament. "In one month he has lost both mother and wife," she added as though to herself. The Queen perhaps he would not miss much, since they had seen so little of each other in years, but - -

" 'Tis God's will," said Ellis briskly, having delivered his message and being anxious to be off. " 'Tis in nature that a mother dies; as for a wife, she can be soon replaced."

Ellis's chance and sensible words were like a spark to a hidden mine and Katherine was seized with sudden stabbing anger. "You fool, you heartless dolt!" she cried, her grey eyes blazing. "How dare you speak so? The Lady Blanche can
never
be replaced, nor would he want to!"

Ellis's jaw dropped. "I meant no harm, I simply thought that -"

"God's blood! Then stop thinking since it leads you into lunacy!"

He stood there gaping at her, and the scarlet faded from her cheekbones. "Never mind, Ellis," she said, "no doubt I spoke too sharp. How should you who hardly knew her understand - adieu then, give them my love at home, I'll contrive to send a message soon."

She watched him mount his horse and cross the drawbridge, when he turned left for the village and the road across the wolds towards Kettlethorpe.

She walked slowly

Katherine buried her face in her hands on the rail and wept as she had not wept during all her time at Bolingbroke.

The Lady Blanche of Lancaster's funeral cortege wound its solemn way down England all through the first days of November. For the greater part of the journey her bier rested at night in the abbeys and cathedrals which had sheltered the remains of another much mourned and beloved lady some eighty years before - Eleanor of Castile, the
chere reine
to whose memory the first Edward had erected stone crosses at each stage of the sorrowful progress.

By this November of the Lady Blanche's last journey, the plague had passed on. Some said that it had flown to Scotland in search of fresh victims, some that it lurked still in the wild secret mountains beyond the Welsh border, but it no longer smote England. The people gathered everywhere by the roadside to watch the Duchess's hearse, sable-draped, and drawn by six black horses in silver harness, with nodding black ostrich plumes fastened to their heads. Folk fell to their knees and wept for this disaster which had robbed them of the second lady in the land so soon after their Queen, yet from the magnificence of the black-garbed procession with its lords and ladies, chanting monks and humble varlets, many folk drew a personal solace. During the time of terror and hideous death there had been no dignity of mourning, and now in the honours done the Duchess they could weep quietly for their own dead, too.

Behind the hearse rode the King's youngest son, Thomas of Woodstock, a dark thick-set lad of fourteen whose haughty look and sulky mouth disguised his complacence at having been assigned to his first princely duty. Since Lionel was dead, and his other three brothers were fighting in France, there had been no one else of fitting rank for the King to send.

Katherine had a place in the middle of the procession behind the members of the great Lancastrian administration - the chancellor, the chief of council, and the Duke's receiver-general, all of whom had hurried to Bolingbroke after summons by messenger.

She lived much within herself during those days of the Duchess's procession. There was little to occupy her mind except the interest of the journey. She had no close contact with anyone she knew; rigorous etiquette ruled every phase of the progress and was enforced by the Duke's officers. She no longer saw the ducal children except at a distance, for they rode in a chariot with the nurses behind their young uncle Thomas and far ahead of Katherine's place in the cavalcade.

On the last night the procession stopped at Waltham, where the Duchess' coffin rested below the shrine of the black cross, but Katherine had no wish to pay her reverence to the cross this time and did not enter the church.

On the next afternoon when the procession had turned right through Islington and nearly reached the charterhouse, there was a flourish of trumpets and a long muffled roll of tabors on the road ahead. The horses were halted and word ran back along the line that the King had come out to meet them. They all dismounted and continued on foot to the Savoy.

Katherine could see little of what went on, and it was not until the Duchess had been borne into her home chapel at the Savoy and the procession was broken up at last that she saw the King. He wore a plain silver mourning crown and beneath it his lank hair shone silver too, though in his scanty drooping beard there were still some yellow traces. His lean face was deeply furrowed, his faded blue eyes were red-rimmed; as he walked with dragging steps into the chapel, no one could doubt that he felt grief, as he had felt it for his Queen so short a time ago. And yet, not six paces behind him, taking precedence of all the lords and ladies, came Alice Perrers, her head respectfully bowed, but a faint smile on her thin red lips. Her mourning robe was stiff with seed pearls, the gauzy veil on her elaborately coiffed black hair was powdered with brilliants, while the odour of musk that she exuded overlay the scent of incense from within the chapel.

Katherine watched with disgust and wondered that the courtiers seemed to take so calmly this woman's flaunting presence there.

Many things shocked her that first night at the Savoy Palace. The King and his company remained for supper and Katherine from her seat at the side of the Great Hall observed the High Table with little of the wide-eyed admiration she had felt for royalty three years before.

The supper began on a solemn enough note, the King's confessor offered a prayer in Latin, added, extempore, some remarks about the great lady they were mourning, and ended with admonitions for all to think of the state of their own souls since mortal life was fleeting. When he had finished, the Lancaster and King's heralds blew long dirge-like wails and the minstrels in the gallery above began a soft slow tune. But this seemly quiet lasted only until the first cups of rich Vernage wine had been drained. Then Alice Perrers, who sat next to the King, leaned towards him and whispered in his ear, whereupon his melancholy mouth curved in a smile. She leaned over and picked up a fluffy yellow dog which wore a gold and ruby collar. She danced the dog on the table and crowned it with a ruffle of bread, and a feather pulled from the roasted swan a kneeling squire presented to her. The King laughed outright and put his arm around Alice's naked shoulders.

At once the watchful minstrels changed to a merry tune, and a wave of ribaldry flowed unchecked along the High Table. One of the lords shouted out a lewd riddle, and all the company tried to guess it, each capping the other's sally with a yet coarser one. Katherine could not hear all the words, but she could see the laxness of their bodies as they lolled on the cushioned benches; and she could see the King and Alice drinking together from one cup, and that Prince Thomas teased the young Countess of Pembroke by dabbling wine between her breasts and tickling her plump arms with a leering precocity.

The interminable meal dragged on, and each course ended in a subtlety: triumphs of the confectioner's art cunningly contrived to fit the occasion. The first one represented the Black Death with his scythe standing above the body of a saffron-haired maiden. Death's figure was fashioned from sugar coloured black with licorice. Katherine thought it marvellous and horrible; but at the High Table they scarcely looked at the subtlety except that Alice Perrers absently broke off a piece of Death's licorice robe and sucked it as she talked to the King.

Katherine's head began to ache, her stomach revolted against the highly spiced and ornamented dishes. At last she murmured an excuse and slipped out into the cold dark night. So vast was the Savoy, such a honeycomb of buildings, alleys and courtyards that she could not remember her way back to the small dorter the chamberlain had assigned to her.

Except for the noise in the Great Hall and the bustle of servants running to it from the kitchens, the Savoy was now a sleeping city, dimly lit by a few bracketed wall torches. Katherine wandered through wrong turnings and into several dark courts before she saw anyone from whom she could ask directions. Then from a small gabled house near the state apartments she saw a tall friar emerge and knew him for a Franciscan by the grey of his habit and the long knotted scourge that dangled from his waist beside his crucifix. His cowled head was bent over a black bag. He was buckling the straps and did not see Katherine in the shadowy court until she went up to him.

"God's greetings, good Brother," she said. "I regret to trouble you, but do you know the palace?" She feared that he might beg alms 'of her as all friars did, and she had not three groats left in her pouch from the half-noble which Hugh had given her for pocket-money at Bolingbroke over two months ago. But her weariness had increased while she wandered about and she ached for rest.

The friar looked at her keenly but could see little beneath her hood. He contented himself with saying, "Yes, mistress, I know the Savoy well." Brother William Appleton was a master physician, and a savant, though he was still but thirty, and he stood high in the Duke's favour by reason of his discretion, as well as his skill with the probe and lancet.

"I've lost my way, Sir Friar," said Katherine with an apologetic smile. "I'm to lodge in the Beaufort Tower, but I cannot find it."

"Ah," said the friar, "mayhap you came from Bolingbroke today with the funeral train?"

Katherine bowed her head. Suddenly tears stung her eyes and her journey seemed to her both foolish and futile. Here she had no friends and no true place, nor could she forget the horror of those days at Bolingbroke and plunge into revelry as the others had. And the Lady Blanche had no further need of naive prayers, now that she rested in her own chapel in the home of her ancestors, while six monks prayed for the repose of her soul.

"You're weary, mistress," said the monk in a kinder tone. "I'll guide you to the Beaufort Tower."

He led her through an arch and down some steps into the vaulted tunnel that ran along outside the ducal wine cellars, then up again towards the river into a court called the Red Rose, because in summer it was filled with roses of Provence.

"Yonder's your tower," said the friar, pointing to a massive round tourelle on which were blazoned, six feet high in gold and gules, the arms of Beaufort and Artois, for Blanche's grandmother. " 'Tis the oldest part of the palace and has not yet been renovated and embellished by my Lord Duke as have the buildings around the Inner Ward. Did you notice there the carvings and the traceried windows and that all of them are glazed?" He spoke at unaccustomed length because his trained eye noted the droop of Katherine's head, he had heard the choke in her voice, and he wished to examine her a moment by the torchlight. Though the plague seemed to be over, one knew how violently it had raged at Bolingbroke, and it was his duty as physician to be watchful.

"Yes, Sir Friar," she said, turning her face up to him in the light as he had hoped, "all here is wondrous fair."

Wondrous fair indeed! he thought, startled, gazing at the pure oval of her face, the wide eyes and the sharp chiselled line of forehead and nose. Her hair glowed dark copper against the black hood. She had the lovely face of a pagan Psyche that he had seen on his pilgrimage to Rome, and though he was an austere man, and none of your concupiscent degenerate friars who had sprung up of late to disgrace the barefoot orders, yet he was a man, and had not quite subdued a sensitivity to beauty.

"You are not feverish, my sister?" asked the friar, suddenly recollecting why he had wanted to examine her face, and he touched her forehead with his cool bony fingers.

"Nay, brother - I'm well enough - in body. 'Tis my heart that's heavy. Have you heard when our Lord Duke will come?"

"Why, very soon! For he had landed at Plymouth. A dark and bitter thing 'twill be for him, his meeting with his poor lady, God absolve her soul."

"I think He has no need to," said Katherine very low, "she was without sin.
Grand merci
for your guidance, Sir Friar." She gave him a faint smile and turned to the door of the Beaufort Tower, where a sleepy porter answered to her knock.

Brother William murmured
Benedicite
and walked thoughtfully back through the courtyard, his horny naked soles making no sound on the chill flagstones.

Tired as she was, Katherine could not sleep that night. She shared a bed with some Derbyshire knight's fat sister, and Katherine lay on her back listening to the lady's snores; to the gurgle of the Thames from below their window; to the periodic clang of church bells wafted upstream from London town a mile away. Here at the Savoy they had a great painted Flemish clock fixed to a tower in the Outer Ward. It struck the hours by means of little dwarfs with hammers on a gong, and she heard each hour's end pass by.

At four o'clock she rose and dressed herself quietly. A maidservant slept on a pile of straw in the passage but she took care not to waken her. It seemed to Katherine that, if she could be alone in the chapel with the Lady Blanche, she might be eased of her heavy heart and she might understand why she felt grief and horror now far stronger than while she had actually lived through the dreadful day of plague.

She lit a candle at the embers of their dorter fire, went down the stone steps and let herself out into the Red Rose Court. The torches had been extinguished. It was not yet dawn and the bleak November sky twinkled with frosty stars. She walked slowly, peering with her candle, and found her way through the main court entrance into an alley, where a dog barked at her and was hushed by a sleepy voice. She went under another arch between the chancery buildings and the turreted ducal apartments and so into the Outer Ward. Beyond the barracks and the stables, the chapel lights flickered through its stain-glass windows and spread patches of blue and green and ruby on the stones outside.

She pushed the chapel door and entered. The nave was empty. The monks who were on duty chanted their prayers far in the depths of the chancel behind the gilded rood-screen. Katherine crept up to the chancel step and knelt there, gazing from the black bier in front to the silver image of the Blessed Virgin in a niche to her right.

As she looked back from the coffin her ear was caught by a sound from the chancel floor in the shadow of the bier. She looked more closely and gasped.

A man in black lay prone on the tiles, his arms outstretched towards the coffin. She saw the convulsive heaving of his shoulders and heard the sound again. Between his outstretched arms his hair gleamed gold against the shadowed tiles.

She clenched her hands on the pillar of the rood-screen trying to raise herself and run from witnessing this that she had no right to see, but her muscles had begun to tremble and she stumbled on the edge of her skirt. At once the man raised his head and his swollen bloodshot eyes flashed with fury. "Who are you that dares come in here now? How dare you gape at me - you graceless bitch -" He stopped and rising to his feet walked down beneath the rood-screen. "Katherine?" he said in a tone of wonder.

Still on her knees she stared up at him mutely. Slow tears gathered in her eyes and ran down her face. The monks' voices chanted louder in the Miserere, then died away.

"Katherine," said the Duke. "What do you here?"