The Scandalous Duchess (46 page)

‘The Duchess of Gloucester,' I announced, ‘says that for them to acknowledge me as Duchess of Lancaster would dishonour them.'

My nails dug into John's hand. I was only aware of it when he flinched and changed his grip. The thought of
the revenge they were planning, and such a particular one, had me in its maw.

‘They say they'll never enter a room or attend a ceremony where I am present. They will turn their bejewelled shoulders against me. Can I tolerate that? They will refuse to sully their feet by walking on the same paving, refusing to consort with me, of so base a birth. And'—I took another breath—‘they say that our marriage is not even sanctioned, that the word from the papal mouth does not grant a full dispensation. He has to actually write it down in sanctified ink to achieve that. And until it happens we are still living in a sinful union!'

There were tears on my cheeks, from anger more than grief that they had discovered the power to undermine my contentment. With legitimacy and respectability I had hoped for acceptance. The papal dispensation, which now apparently did not even exist, had been the bedrock of my position. But my marriage was not papally blessed. I was still a whore. I would be
persona non grata
for ever.

I scrubbed at the persistent tears with my sleeve.

Throughout which performance, John remained irritatingly undisturbed, as if this final dart aimed at our happiness was not news to him.

‘This is what will happen, my dear love. We will approach His Holiness again, with a dozen purses of gold if we have to, and he will use his sanctified ink to our pleasure.' He leaned across the divide between our mounts to kiss my cheek. ‘Richard will welcome you to court, where he will present you with garter robes. Which of the hencoop will dare raise a voice against you when the King sees fit to acknowledge you?'

I would not be soothed. I did not want to be the centre of everyone's hatred. I recalled having to stand against Constanza, living in her household when she despised every breath I took. I did not want to go through all that again, under the eye of every meddlesome, gossiping, blue-blooded court cat at Windsor or Westminster.

‘I think I am too old to face this,' I said, not liking the despair I heard in my voice.

John wisely, but infuriatingly, decided to tread on safer ground by adopting an authoritative tone. He snapped his fingers to alert the falconer.

‘You are my wife and my Duchess, Katherine, with all the authority that is mine now invested in you. No one will humiliate you. Your position in my household and at court is beyond question or debate. That's the end of the matter as far as I am concerned. There is nothing to stir up the surface of the placid waters of your life.' He stretched out his wrist on which sat a juvenile merlin, looking as ruffled as I had been instructed not to be. ‘Now take this raptor and let's see how well she flies. Imagine every coney to be the Duchess of Gloucester, if you will.'

No, I did not doubt him, and because I loved him and regretted laying my troubles at his feet, I managed a smile to please him and put his heart at rest, as lovers will, even those of long standing. Particularly those of long standing. The merlin settled her feathers and flew well. Perhaps the coneys did have a look of the Duchess of Gloucester with her furred collars.

But when I slept that night I dreamed that I was standing alone in my striking garter robes, all blue and gold with the heraldic motif pre-eminent on my shoulder, in the centre
of a vast room. Around the perimeter, little groups smiled and nodded. There was not one face I knew. And then as the edge of my vision faded, there were no faces at all.

‘John!' I called out in my dreaming.

But he did not hear me. He was not there either.

‘I am nobody,' I informed him, my desolation keen, as we broke our fast.

‘You are everything to me,' he replied.

We had been staying briefly at John's lodge at Rothwell to the west of Pontefract, a more intimate establishment where the hunting was good, but now I was late for our departure. They were waiting for me, to begin the journey to Windsor. I hurried through the hall, down the steps where I knew that one of my pages would be holding the mare John had selected for me to ride on this first of many long stages—and I stopped, so abruptly that another page, closely shadowing me, trod on my hem.

‘Forgive me, my lady.' He bent to pick up the cloak he had dropped, hastily brushing dust from its folds.

I barely noticed. My attention was completely snared, and I blinked.

John was there in the courtyard, clapping his squire on the shoulder, walking slowly towards me as I stood statuelike on the step, coming to a halt at the foot of the stair. He turned to take in the scene that had made my eyes widen in astonishment.

‘By God, it's eye-catching,' he observed with a grin. ‘I wager this won't leave you cold…'

I was speechless. I stood and looked. And looked.

‘I've rarely known you with nothing to say.'

‘Have you done this?'

‘Of course. Who else? For your pleasure, my lady.' He took my unresponsive hand and led me forward. ‘You are not no one, Katherine. How would I choose a woman who had no merit? You never were. You never will be. Here is your own heraldic achievement to proclaim to the world that Katherine, Duchess of Lancaster, is a woman in her own right.'

The whole courtyard was a blaze of red and gold, from the curtains of my litter, if I chose to use it for some portion of the journey, to the bridle and saddle cloth of my riding horse. The pennons carried by my escort displayed the same emblem, the ostlers who rode the heavy horses that pulled my litter were encased in red and gold tabards. John's blue and white was totally eclipsed.

‘I don't know what to say.'

Continuing to grip my hand as if I needed to be steadied in the face of such startling opulence, John led me to my horse. The ostlers were grinning too.

‘Do you approve?'

‘You have done this? For me?' It was all I could seem to say.

‘Well, you were not satisfied with my poor heraldic achievements of Lancaster and Aquitaine, now you have your own.'

And a warmth, as if emanating from the sumptuous red and gold, closed round my heart, dispelling in that moment so many of my fears.

‘You wanted your own identity,' John went on to explain. ‘I thought you would find St Katherine more than appropriate…?'

That was the gold that filled my vision. The three golden wheels of St Katherine, glittering on a red background, to create my own coat of arms. My very own, not quartered with John's or Hugh's. My own, Katherine de Roet, Katherine de Swynford, proclaiming my own identity even if I was also Duchess of Lancaster. And he had chosen my own saint whom I honoured more than any other, the virgin martyr St Katherine of Alexandria, who refused to allow her Christian faith to be broken on the cruelty of the spiked wheel.

And I laughed as I realised.

‘What is it?'

‘It is like the Roet wheels,' I said. My own father's emblem.

‘As it should be,' John agreed. ‘Transmuted into gold for a daughter of Roet and a bride of Lancaster named Katherine.'

I thought about John's choice of St Katherine for me: virtuous, erudite, devout, nobly born. I could not have chosen better for my own emblem. Bold and courageous too when her principles were challenged. And now her emblem was mine. This was truly a moment for rejoicing.

‘I am honoured,' I managed when I had marshalled my thoughts again.

How could he have read my mind so well? And I knew the answer: he loved me. John loved me and would go to the ends of the earth to ensure my happiness.

Before helping me to mount: ‘One moment.'

Opening the purse at his belt he extracted two livery badges. One he pinned to my collar, a gleaming golden Katherine wheel enamelled with red, while the other he
attached to the grey fur that formed the upturned brim of his hat.

So he too would proclaim my livery.

His fingers were gentle against my jaw as he adjusted my collar, his countenance lit with his smile that was beautifully forbearing. ‘So let us be gone and startle the populace from here to Windsor with our glory. They'll think it a papal visitation and ring the church bells.'

What reassurance that blaze of colour and gilded wheels gave me. Foolish? Undoubtedly. But I rode to Windsor with confidence and St Katherine's courage high in my heart and her wheels bright in my armorial for all to see.

John had done this for me.

I vowed that whatever was waiting for me, I would prove an entirely suitable Duchess for him.

We were expected, of course, so the chamber was thronged, and there were the women of the court who had vowed not to sully their feet on the same ground that I occupied. Well, here I was, for better or worse.

Let us see what they would do. Let us see who would win this bout. I was ripe for battle.

John took my hand and led me forward. And as the Duke smiled at me, I returned it with no need for pretence, for Queen Philippa's training from all those years ago was surging strongly beneath my embroidered girdle with its golden wheels as I walked slowly, smoothly forward, the skirts of my houppelande brushing against the floor with a soft elegance, my hair caught up in a sapphire-jewelled caul. I would not be hurried. I allowed my lips to curve into a faint smile as if certain of my worth as Duchess of
Lancaster. Whatever happened here today would not hang on my incompetence or clumsiness in a formal situation. Court procedure ran in my blood, and where I might be unsure I could mimic insouciance to perfection.

Did I not have the master of such court ceremonial at my side?

I was sufficiently at ease to take in my surroundings. The Rose Chamber was as extravagant as I recalled, and much to the King's taste, where the decorations in blue, green and vermilion paint together with a quantity of gold leaf, defied any attempt to choose a gown that did not clash horribly. Notwithstanding I wore figured damask, glorious in blue with rioting leaves and flowers.

Ahead, seated on the dais, King Richard awaited us.

‘There, you see. They have not cast you out,' John murmured, lips barely moving as we made our way between the ranks of courtiers.

I allowed my smile to widen. John might be pre-eminent but I knew which of us claimed every eye today. I had felt the weight of them, from the moment we were announced by Richard's emblazoned official. The high blood of England might be here, breathing the same air, but that did not mean they had any intention of enfolding me to their collective bosom.

‘But they hate me, you know. Look at them,' I murmured back. ‘They are sharpening their daggers already.'

John shook his head, with no time to answer for he was turning to bow to his brother Edmund of Langley, Duke of York, who bowed briefly in reply, even more briefly to me. At least he had not cut me dead. My expression schooled immaculately to one of cool pleasure at being returned to
court, I surveyed the throng as we approached the King, registering all, giving no acknowledgement to any.

‘You are magnificent.' John's final encouragement before we reached the dais.

‘I know.'

But my heart quaked a little.

I knew who was there at the King's side. John's brother, Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, together with his Duchess who had vowed to have nothing to do with me. And there was the Countess of Arundel on my left, a Mortimer descendent of King Edward the Third, the royal blood in her veins heartily dosed with venom. The Countess of Hereford, once my friend, whose presence here smacked of bitter treachery. Others too.

I encompassed them all in a gaze of serene affability.

Then I was curtsying to Richard, gracefully sweeping the skirts of my court finery. All would hang on this reception. If he proved cold towards me, if he mocked me or showed any disdain for my antecedents, he would point the way for every one of his court to follow suit. I rose to my full height and lifted my chin a little.

But Richard was looking at John. ‘You have returned at last, my lord uncle.' At twenty-nine years of age, he had all the Plantagenet arrogance, and was smiling, smoothly welcoming. The gleam in his eye reminded me of a cat perusing a tasty mouse. ‘I have been in great need of your advice of late.' Suddenly he was frowning. ‘And you were not here to give it.'

‘I am here to give it now, Sire.' John's expression was a study in benign regret, ignoring the royal frown as he had probably done for the last decade. ‘I know you will understand
my absence, and excuse it, when I present my wife to you.'

‘Your
wife!
And who is this fortunate lady?'

Which Richard knew very well. His bright gaze moved slowly and fastened on my face with spritely mockery. They were too bright, too full of mischief, as was the brilliance of surprise in his voice.

‘My lady of Lancaster. We welcome you.'

‘My thanks, Sire.'

His hair as darkly gold as the gilding around him, Richard was now of an age to make an impressive figure. The houppelande he wore, so they said, was worth all of thirty thousand marks. Swamping his slight figure in its heavy folds, the encrusted gems blinded in their quantity and brilliance. Fair and smiling, he was the epitome of a young king intent on making his mark on his realm and on European events. But what was his intent? How soon before the unmistakable air of mischief would turn to malice? Richard sparkled with it, wearing a false smile as easily as he wore his robes.

‘We are pleased that you have joined our august circle, at last. After so many years of flirting on the periphery.'

‘Yes, Sire.' The little barb did not quite glance off my skin, and I felt a flush creep past my embroidered collar, but I smiled as if it were wholly a compliment. ‘I too am honoured to be received here at court as Duchess of Lancaster.'

His eyes flashed for a moment. Then gleamed. Had I earned myself a royal reprimand? But no.