The Scandalous Duchess

by Anne O'Brien

  Sliding smoothly, so that my heart quivered with it, the Duke’s hands stroked slowly down the length of my arms to take possession of my hands, and I clung to them as he said all the words I had yearned to hear, savouring every nuance of this breathtaking proclamation of his love for me.

  The Duke bared his soul to me that night.

  ‘What shall I say to you? What troubadour’s fripperies would you like to hear?’

  ‘“I love you, Katherine,” would be a good place to begin.’

  And at last his face was illumined with laughter. ‘I love you, Katherine.’

  The fewest words. The simplest, most beautiful words. What a magnificent assertion it was, to fill all the cavities of my mind and heart with inexpressible delight. This was the value of his love, the fortune in gold coin he was returning to me. Joy unfurled its wings within my breast and took flight.

  When he held out his hand in invitation, when, without hesitation, I placed mine there, with a little bow he led my towards my bed where the covers had already been drawn back, as if to celebrate a bridal. Turning me again, he began to unbraid my hair, then to untie the laces of my court dress.

  ‘Would you have refused to let me go?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  It was unequivocal.

  ‘I am not your legal wife.’

  Still I felt the need to say it, to force him to acknowledge in cold reasoning rather than haughty pride what we were doing. Constanza had never intruded so forcefully into our lives as she had that night. Every servant, every official, every member of the household at Kenilworth would know by the morning in whose bed the Duke of Lancaster had spent the night hours.

  ‘But I will make it as if you were. This night. This moment.’

  Laying aside my precious sleeves, folding the weight of my skirts, he proceeded to lavish kisses on my shoulders, my throat, a prelude to the delights that were to follow. Legality was not in my mind, nor the whisperings within the walls of Kenilworth. I had chosen to be with the man I loved beyond all things when I made that decision in the library at The Savoy, with all its promise of present passion but ultimate heartbreak. Now I had made that choice again, with pride, with calm acceptance and clear-sightedness.

  ‘I will never leave you. Nor will you leave me,’ the Duke said as the light of morning touched the sky.

  ‘I will not. I will never leave you,’ I repeated.

  ‘Do you suppose love outlives death?’ he asked.

  ‘We will prove that it does.’

  How love illuminates, so that we shine like the angels in heaven. My love for the Duke was strong enough to carry me through that day and all that followed. His for me, superbly, had been flung down like a gauntlet, and I rejoiced.

  We would be together in happiness for as long as fate allowed.

  Chapter Eleven

  My dreams were full of blood, of vicious wounds and death, so drenched in it that I awoke with my heart pounding. My days were full of the darkness of loss. The Duke was campaigning, the silence between us heavy with terrible portent in this, my first real experience of the separation of war. Why had terror not struck me to the same measure when I had lived apart from Hugh? This was a grinding, gnawing fear, day after day. My whole existence seemed to be centred on every new rumour that reached us.

  ‘What is happening in France? Is Castile invaded yet?’

  If the Duchess demanded an answer once, she demanded it a dozen times a week.

  And we had no reply to give. Not even I. I could have asked it myself, but that was not my way and I hugged my worries close. If I had posed the question, I would have asked: ‘How does the Duke of Lancaster fare? Does he live?’

  Yet I knew he lived as I wore out the steps to the turret and wall-walk at Tutbury, as I had once done at Kettlethorpe when the storms kept him pinned in the Channel. The open skies made it seem as if I could reach him if I allowed my mind the freedom to span the distance, for now he was much further away from me. The embarkation had gone according to plan, that much we knew. The Duke, as Captain-General, was in France, marching south with an army of six thousand men. How hard it was to live with any degree of equanimity in those months of not knowing. I longed for news, yet when we were alerted to the approach of a courier, I found myself tempted to hide in the cellars or take refuge with the kitchen maids where they stirred and ladled under the eye of Stephen of the Saucery.

  Which would be worse, I pondered, as the weather continued to bless us and the countryside donned summer dress, to know or not know? That was the only thought that lived with me. Hope was better than despair. What would I do, if I were to hear a courier pronounce in heartless exactitude that the Duke was dead, struck down by some stray arrow or caught up in a fatal charge of cavalry?

  Commanders were not exempt from death.

  ‘Don’t leave me,’ I had said at the last moment of his departure when my courage fled.

  Stern, severe, wholly the King’s son, seemingly without compassion, his response put me in my place. ‘I must go. You must not ask that of me.’ Even in his newfound love for me he could be harsh when any obstacle appeared in his path, even one presented by me. ‘You must know that you cannot always command my presence.’

  He softened the reprimand with a smile and a brief salute: nevertheless it was a lesson I learned quickly, as I had learned so many, that a royal mistress must have the strength to live her own life separate from her lover. I never asked again. It would demean both of us.

  But now, with the rumours not good, I found the distance hard to stomach. I did not see the blossoming trees or hear the love-struck birds.

  And then the couriers began to arrive, outstripping the rumours. They must, of course, be heard, their news dissected and assessed with due formality and detailed accounting in Constanza’s audience chamber. How far were they from Castile; how long would it take to reach that Holy Grail? Was her despicable uncle Enrique of Trastamara still alive, still claiming her crown?

  Only then could I take the hard-travelled rider aside into any quiet space I could find, to badger him with question after question as he consumed bread and ale before his return.

  I cared little for the progress of the war, for the destructive march of the grande chevauchée, with its plunder, looting and killing. It mattered not to me how far the Duke might be from Castile, or whether Enrique could be driven out of his ill-gotten gains. England’s victory might touch momentarily on my conscience and my interest, but it was the Duke who consumed my thoughts for I received no personal communication from him. How could I? I could not be his primary interest. I did not expect it. All I wanted was to see his return.

  Not so the Duchess.

  ‘That is good,’ stated Constanza to every description of the march south by the English army and its final arrival at Bordeaux. ‘Nothing will stop him now. He will destroy Enrique before the end of the year.’ A smile lit her face. The Duchess did not often smile. I noticed how pale and thin she grew.

  I did not smile at all.

  ‘Is the Duke in good health?’ I asked as the courier gulped his ale and crammed bread into his mouth. ‘And the army. Does the winter affect them? Do they suffer?’ Because if the army suffered, so would the Duke.

  His face set as he finished chewing. Constanza had not even asked.

  ‘Badly, mistress.’ He wiped the crumbs from his chin with his sleeve. ‘Half the army dead for one reason or another. Floods and cold and ambush. They’re starving…The Duke tries to remain in good heart. He’ll not be in Castile this side of the grave,’ he growled. ‘She’ll not see it—but so it is if you want my opinion.’

  ‘And the Duke?’

  ‘As hard-ridden as the next man. He’s not eating either. Looks as if his belly’s clapped to his spine.’

  Which only served to double my fears. I gave him coin for his trouble.

  ‘She’s not bothered, is she?’ he grunted as he rescued his gloves and satchel.

  ‘She has other concerns,’ I tried t
o make the excuse.

  Nine months of separation. I lived through those days without him, anxiety treading in my footsteps, while Constanza bloomed at the prospect of her beloved Castile being restored to her. She closed her mind to the rumours that were increasingly hard to bear.

  I did not.

  Until the day that the Duke returned to England.

  ‘Un desastre! All he promised me. All lost in futility.’

  Constanza stormed from one end of the audience chamber to the other, cheeks no longer pale but flushed with heat. ‘Why did he not engage in battle? What of England’s reputation now? Trampled in the mire of failure!’ She glared at the carrier of bad news. ‘I do not wish to see your face. Leave me!’

  I stood silently. The courier—a different one, a young man but with features imprinted with a similar brand of near-exhaustion—bowed himself discreetly out. I sensed that an eruption was imminent. Constanza could no longer pretend that the rumours of English failure were anything but the truth. So preoccupied was she that she failed to notice me, but I supposed eventually that she would. I wished I could join the suffering courier in the kitchen.

  ‘He promised me he would force Enrique to surrender and hand over Castile. He promised me!’ She tore the document—was it a letter from the Duke?—into two pieces. ‘And what has he achieved? Nothing. An English army on its knees, begging for its bread. And now he has abandoned them.’

  ‘Not abandoned, my lady.’ Lady Alice attempted to distract with wise words.

  ‘He is not there to lead them on, is he? Should he not be planning a new campaign? The days are lengthening.’ It was April into the new year. ‘Soon it will be May when the days are long and the campaigning is good. That I know. And where is he now? Come home to England to lick his wounds while I mourn the loss of my true inheritance.’

  Tears streaked Constanza’s cheeks as she turned on me, eyes fierce.

  ‘Where is he?’ she demanded.

  ‘I do not know, my lady.’ I had not even known that he was back in England. The letter passed to me by the young courier lay flattened against my skirts, still unread.

  ‘I suppose it matters not to you whether he wins Castile or not.’

  Constanza, unconscious of all dignity in her frustrated grief, fell to her knees, arms clutched around her belly as if struck down with intense pain. Her howl of nothing less than agony echoed from the walls. Surely her slight figure could not support such excess of humours. We leaped to her, to lift her, to comfort her, but Lady Alice waved me aside.

  ‘Go,’ she ordered. ‘You’ll do no good here. She’ll not listen to reason. She will never listen to reason when Castile is the issue, and you won’t help matters.’

  I retreated, my relief at the Duke’s return heady, only to be replaced by another, different grief. In the quiet of the schoolroom, where Philippa and Elizabeth, having read their catechism now wallowed in the romance of Lancelot and Guinevere, murmuring to each other, I unfolded the letter from the Duke with care as if the contents might snap and bite.

  I am at The Savoy and have no plans as yet to travel further. Come here to me. I find I have need of you. The knowledge of your love has sustained me through some of the worst weeks of my life.

  The words caught at my heart, brief as they were. Brief and—despairing? Was that it? Although I tried to fathom the quality of his mind, despair was the only word that came to me from that bleak request. I could not imagine his being so low in spirits, his pride so smeared by the defeat. I had never seen desolation lie so heavily on him, unless it was after Blanche’s death when black mourning had stalked him.

  I think England will not forgive me this setback. The King will not. I have undone all that he had achieved in his glorious lifetime. And yet what more was there to be done?

  I will talk to you when you come.

  I sat and stared at it, with only one thought in my head. I must go. As I had known I must since the courier’s news, if the Duke asked me to go to him, because he had a need of me, then I must obey, for his sake as well as mine. How scathing must the criticism be, to hack away at the Duke’s self-worth in this manner?

  I must go to The Savoy.

  ‘Is the letter from my father?’ Philippa of Lancaster asked, her eyes, abandoning the tragic romance of Lancelot, now fixed on me with a degree of speculation.

  I returned her regard. At fourteen years she was almost a woman, grown and aware that her own days as an unmarried girl were numbered. I should have known, from my own experience, how fast girls grew up at court.

  ‘What does he say?’ Elizabeth immediately asked, pushing aside the book and standing. ‘Does he ask about us?’

  ‘No,’ I said as calmly as I could. ‘Your father is at The Savoy. His thoughts are involved with matters of war.’

  ‘Then why does he write to you, Lady Katherine?’ Elizabeth’s fair brows creased.

  ‘He wants you to go to him, doesn’t he?’ Philippa said.

  A statement that took me aback, and I found myself seeking wildly for a suitable reply, a reply that would cast neither their magistra nor their father into a contentious light. But before I could, Philippa was standing, curtsying, for there was Duchess Constanza in the doorway. She walked regally across the room, ignoring me, to see what it was that they were reading.

  I waited, hands folded. I knew right well that the Duchess was not here to interest herself in the education of her stepdaughters.

  ‘Read me that,’ the Duchess commanded, as if needing proof that they were learning anything of value under my care.

  After a few lines, when both girls read with their usual fluency, she stopped it with a sharp gesture of her hand.

  ‘Have you said your prayers today?’

  ‘Yes, my lady,’ Philippa replied, raising her eyes from her book with confidence.

  ‘And studied your catechism?’

  ‘Yes, my lady.’

  ‘And you too?’

  The Duchess directed her question at Elizabeth, but without waiting for an answer, spun round to face me. The tears were dried, her earlier fury contained, her features composed as if she had come to a hard-won decision. She pointed at the open letter that I had carelessly left to lie for all to see on the desk.

  ‘Is that from him?’

  ‘Yes, my lady.’ It came to me that to prevent further recrimination I should have disguised it, but I replied without dissimulation because all I could recall was that throughout her intense disappointment, Constanza had not once asked after the Duke’s well-being. I could not forgive her that.

  ‘Where is he?’ she demanded.

  ‘At The Savoy.’

  ‘For how long?’

  What did she wish me to say? Was she concerned for him despite her condemnation of his lack of achievement? And then beneath the anger I saw the torment in her face and could only pity her. In spite of everything between us, this woman retained the power to rouse my compassion. All she had ever dreamed of was lost to her, all her plans destroyed: my conscience was touched.

  ‘If you go to him at The Savoy,’ I found myself saying, ‘my lord will be able to explain what he intends to do.’

  ‘Go to him? I? And why should I do that?’

  ‘So that when my lord explains that the campaign will be renewed, your mind could be put at rest.’

  Any compassion she had stirred in me was violently rejected. ‘Explain? How can he say more than the facts prove? I will not go.’ Irritably she kicked her skirts aside. ‘You go to him,’ she snapped with excruciating bitterness. ‘Help him to lick his wounds. That’s what he wants, isn’t it? That’s why he wrote to you.’

  I hesitated.

  ‘He wants you with him, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, my lady.’ It was an unequivocal response to an unequivocal question, and I expected an eruption of her fury against me.

  ‘He wants you, not me!’

  The Duchess halted an arm’s length from me. When she stretched out her hand I almost flinched, recal
ling the affair of the salt cellar, but it was only to pick up the letter, which she allowed to fall before she had read more than one line of it. Her regard had the hardness of flint within it. I expected her refusal, and she knew it.

  ‘If I refuse to give you permission,’ her voice grated, ‘would you defy me?’

  Which cast the decision fairly into my lap. To defy the Duchess so openly would fling her lack of authority over me in her face, and yet I did not hesitate. If Constanza had planned to forbid me, to exhibit my lack of power as the Duke’s mistress compared with her own as his wife, she had failed. I knew where my life lay and I had within me the strength to stand before her without the degradation she had envisaged.

  ‘Yes, my lady. I would defy you.’

  I held her gaze as the air drew taut with tension between us, the girls sitting motionless as if they too were aware of the critical balance of power here. Here was a new layer in our relationship, wife and mistress, and, now certain of the Duke’s love, I would not retreat.

  ‘Can I stop you?’ Constanza demanded, eyes wide and fathomless, fingers slowly clenching into fists at her side.

  ‘No, my lady,’ I said softly, my defiance coming readily to my lips. ‘Not unless you resort to chains and a dungeon.’

  Her laughter was brief and hard, lacking any humour.

  ‘So what do I say?’ She swung away from me, then back again, the motion of her skirts wafting the letter from table to floor. She paused, her tongue skimming over her lips. ‘Go to him.’

  So this was the decision she had come to. I could barely believe it, my body still tensed against her expected rebuttal.

  ‘Do you not hear me?’ she repeated. ‘Go to him.’

  There was the outcome I had hoped for, and relief swept aside every other emotion, but here was no time for triumph. I knew what it must have cost the Duchess to give me the victory. She had my compassion, even thought she would have despised it, but the only thought in my mind was that I need never fear the extent of her authority again.