The Scandalous Duchess

by Anne O'Brien

  I watched his expression carefully, trying to read what he was not saying. ‘A prayer for what, exactly?’

  Which he ignored. ‘Come here, my beloved.’

  I knelt at his feet, as I had done so often before, expecting him to take my hands in his as a prelude to our seeking some privacy for the rest of the day, but instead he reached within the breast of his tunic and withdrew a document. I opened the single sheet without a cover as he dropped it into my hand. A letter. Or rather a copy of a letter, since it had no seals, but the signature was John’s own although the script was that of his clerk. Then I saw the superscription…I saw the crucial, particular word. Carefully I folded the sheet closed again, looked up into his face and governed my voice.

  ‘I knew it would happen, of course. I hoped it would not be so soon. I should be pleased for you.’ My smile felt all wrong on my mouth but I fought to keep it in place. ‘You know I will not make a fuss.’ My whole body felt full of unshed tears. It was a request for a papal dispensation to allow a marriage. ‘Richard holds you in a higher regard than you think,’ I continued. ‘Who is she?’

  It would be some puissant lady from Burgundy or Aragon. Perhaps a connection of the powerful Valois family. A princess was not beyond his sights. Even an English lady whose family Richard wished to shackle to the Crown. Who was important enough for John of Lancaster, King’s son, Duke of Aquitaine?

  I considered. No, it was not unexpected, but that did not mean that it did not tear at me with sharp incisors. I held out the request, to return it to him. I should be gratified that he had ridden so far to tell me of it, for of course he could not refuse if Richard insisted.

  Instead of taking it, The Duke leaned forward, surprising me by closing my hand over it, holding my fingers tight closed.

  ‘Katherine, my dearest love.’

  ‘It’s all right, you know. You are too powerful to remain unwed. I have lived as your mistress for more years than I can count. You must know that a new wife will make no difference to my love for you. Has the Pope allowed it?’ If he needed a dispensation, she must be close to him in blood line. I could not think who. I sighed. I had hoped for a little respite from marital upheavals. Jealousy was no respecter of age or experience. ‘Do I know her?’

  ‘Katherine, my dearest love,’ he repeated. ‘My dearest and most obtuse love. It is for you.’

  I searched his face for enlightenment. I did not understand.

  ‘It’s a request for a papal dispensation…’ he explained slowly and solemnly as if I were a want-wit. ‘For us, Katherine. To allow us to marry.’

  ‘For me?’ My voice squeaked. My eyes blurred with tears so that I could barely see the tenderness of his smile. I swallowed and tried again. ‘Why would you wed me?’

  It was all I could think to say since, before God, it made no sense to me.

  ‘I would wed you,’ the Duke stated, choosing the words with care, ‘because I can think of nothing in life I would rather do. I need please no one but myself. Surely I am of an age to follow my own heart.’

  I simply stared at him.

  ‘But why would we need a dispensation? I am no blood of yours.’

  ‘Because we have been more than close for too many years, even before you came to my bed. I’ll give no man the opportunity to claim that our marriage is without legality. Read it if you will.’

  I read what had concerned him: the stages in our lives together that had given him pause for thought in his search for legality, primarily when he had stood godfather to my daughter Blanche, even before he had been in an adulterous union with me when he was still wed to Constanza. There were some who would question the closeness of such a long relationship. The Duke had asked that all such past impediments should be removed and papal permission granted.

  Yet I could barely comprehend it. Permission to marry me, a woman no longer in the full flush of youth? A woman with no status, no standing of any importance? I looked up from the request, beyond words. He held my heart in his hands, as he knew. Why would he see the need to wed me? Princes did not marry their mistresses. Princes did not marry women of such social inequality as ours. Already I could hear the mass of voices at the royal court raised in condemnation of such an outrageously unacceptable step.

  The Duke of Lancaster did not marry his daughters’ governess.

  ‘But you must not,’ I heard myself say.

  ‘Why not? I want to wed you.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ It was all I could manage.

  The Duke huffed a breath as he cupped my face in his hands and planted a kiss on my lips. ‘Now that has to be the most foolish question I have ever heard you ask, Lady de Swynford. Of course I’m not sure. I might change my mind any minute. You’d better hurry up and take me before I renege on any promise.’

  I could not laugh. ‘What did His Holiness say?’

  ‘Yes. He said yes.’

  ‘Show me,’ I said, still sifting through his astonishing statement. A papal dispensation for me to wed the Duke of Lancaster.

  ‘I cannot, faithless one. It was not written, but sent by word of mouth, delivered by papal courier in full regalia and jewels.’

  ‘Is it legal?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Does the King know?’

  ‘Yes. He sanctioned it.’

  ‘He did?’

  ‘He did. A little cool perhaps but I did not have to harangue him.’ With a soft laugh the Duke dropped his hands to mine again and raised my imprisoned fingers to his lips. ‘There is no legal reason for you not to agree. Only your own inclination can dictate your choice. Of course, if you decide that you cannot tolerate me after all these years. Or if you have given your wayward heart to one of my squires…’

  I sat there with the letter on my lap, tears on my cheeks, even as I smiled at last.

  ‘I thought you would wed a lady of foreign consequence.’

  ‘I know you did.’

  ‘If you wed me, there are those who will rail against us. They’ll detest it, as degrading to your lineage.’

  ‘I know that too. Are we not equal to them? Will we let such judgemental minds dictate what we will do with the rest of our lives?’ He lifted me so that we stood together, the damp of his garments spreading to mine. ‘Katherine, my love. Will you wed me? I am no longer a young man—’

  ‘You are not old—’ I interrupted but he silenced me with a brush of his lips against mine.

  ‘I think you could do better for yourself if you want a husband who can spend time with you. And I committed a great wrong against you. My sins are many.’ His smile was sharply self-deprecating. ‘I would put right what has been wrong all these years. Except that it was not wrong at all, was it? It was right. It was always right. It was ordained in some strange corner of the heavens that our lives should be indivisibly entwined. Katherine, my dear and constant companion, will you wed me?’

  So long. So many years. What would it be like to be finally, legitimately, united with him? I could not comprehend the enormity of what the Duke was offering me. Tears welled and fell.

  The Duke’s brows arched predictably. ‘What in heaven’s name have I said to make you weep?’

  ‘That you could love me enough to wed me.’

  ‘Do you love me enough to accept?’ the Duke asked.

  ‘I don’t know what to say to you.’ My mind was still taken up with the shock of being wed to the Duke of Lancaster. How long would it take for me to give him the answer he desired?

  ‘Say yes, Katherine. Say yes. How long are you going to make me wait?’ he demanded, but I read no doubts in his gaze. He knew that I could not refuse.

  ‘Yes, John.’ Tears tracked down my cheeks but I was smiling. ‘Yes I will.’

  This was the day.

  I knelt in the familiar surroundings of Lincoln Cathedral, and I was trembling. I still could not believe that it would actually happen, but the Duke had swept all before him. Now that we had got to this point, he announced, nothing and no one would be allo
wed to stand in the way of our marriage. And thus we were united in the eyes of God under the kindly auspices of the Bishop of Buckingham in Lincoln Cathedral in the rain-swept month of February.

  It was the quietest of ceremonies, with no outward splendour other than the robes of the Bishop who cast us all in the shade. We were astonishingly circumspect still, although this would—as the Duke had also announced, as if challenging the Almighty himself—put all to rights. The bishop inclined his mitred head in agreement.

  Kneeling together before the altar, my hands were joined with his. I made my vows to him, and he to me. The blessings were given. The Duke kissed my cheeks and then my lips.

  There. It was done.

  The Duke raised me, Katherine, Duchess of Lancaster, to my feet.

  ‘Do you realise,’ he murmured as we walked from the church, back to the Chancery with no panoply of trumpets or ringing of church bells, ‘that until Richard remarries, you are the most important woman in England?’

  My heart shivered a little. ‘And that is intended to make me feel more confident?’

  I felt no different. Except—I stopped abruptly at the end of the nave, where one of the Duke’s pages stood ready to open the door for us.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Do you realise,’ I asked, ‘for the first time ever in our lives, I can take your hand and walk from this place for all to see? And even if there is gossip—and there will be—no one can denounce me for immorality.’ I looked at him, splendid in soft browns and russet and sable fur at neck and hem. Perhaps the bishop had outshone me, but he could never outshine this man who was now my husband. ‘Or yours, for that matter.’

  ‘You mean that we have thwarted Walsingham.’

  Lightly, I punched his shoulder so that the links of his jewelled collar shivered. Not even the shadow of our nemesis could spoil my delight. ‘We will not mention his name on this happiest of days.’

  ‘No, we will not. And since we are able to proclaim our legal state, then we will do it with aplomb.’

  He raised my hand to his lips, linked his fingers with mine and led me out into the world beyond the walls of the cathedral, where I laughed with the joy of it, the sheer foolishness of it, for there was no one to see us except for a priest much taken up with the office of the day in his psalter and a pair of chickens scratching in the garth.

  Was this reality?

  But of course it was, for my hand was clasped in the Duke’s and his smile was for me, as was the glow of sheer pride in his eye, whereas I was awash with emotion. How could I have ever believed that the Duke of Lancaster would be proud to make me his Duchess? I had reached my safe-harbour at last. And yet, the strangest of thoughts came to me. Once, in my youth when I had worried and yearned and doubted, this marriage would have been the embodiment of a beautiful dream, as proof of our love. A dream that could never be fulfilled. Now, older, wiser, infinitely more secure, I no longer needed marriage to act as a seal on our love. I knew it to the very marrow in my bones. Through all the partings, through all the fickle reverses and cataclysms, we had emerged with a binding as strong as death. As strong as life. Our vows before a priest could not make it any less steadfast.

  Not that I would refuse my new status, of course.

  I laughed again, causing the Duke to raise his brows.

  ‘I am so very happy to be wed to you,’ I explained.

  ‘Which is fortunate in the circumstances,’ he responded.

  How much I had learned on this journey, which had provided no goose-feather bed of happiness but had allowed me to grow from the blinkered woman who had put love before family, before reputation, before harsh morality on that day when I had given the Duke a winter rose. Had I even realised what love would demand of me in those early, heady days? Now, holding hard to my husband’s hand, I acknowledged how much I had had to learn, of jealousy and compassion for Constanza, of fortitude to withstand bitter taunts, of trust and inner conviction when all around was black and our love would seem to be blighted. Of forgiveness, that I needed to ask from my children, and from John for ever doubting him. I had thought that love was my right. Now I knew that love could not easily be won. It had to be earned, by forging a chain as tensile as the Duke’s glittering collar. A chain that could not be shattered.

  Had we not done it? We had created a love, held fast by our children and by my fingers linked now with the Duke’s on our wedding morning. The Duke and I had earned the right to love each other.

  My mind returned to the present, to the busy priest and the chickens. Now I was a wife again. I was Duchess of Lancaster.

  ‘What do we do now?’ I asked. ‘What does a Duchess do after her wedding when there is no feast or celebration for her to attend?’

  The Duke did not reply, but led me silently through my equally silent house to my own chamber. Only when the door was closed against the world that seemed in no way interested in us:

  ‘We will celebrate alone. This is the first time in all the years that we have legitimately shared the sheets.’

  Holy and sanctified we enjoyed the legal luxury of unclothing each other.

  ‘I have to be grateful to the setter of fashion.’

  ‘Why is that?’ I asked on a breath as his fingers smoothed over my ribs from breast to thigh.

  ‘A sleeve without buttons is a miraculous gift.’ He groaned as I traced a similar path to his own with the nails of my right hand. ‘But perhaps I would have just torn them off. A husband’s rights after all.’

  ‘Because you would then, as my husband, have to purchase a new gown for me.’

  ‘I’ll buy you a dozen.’

  His gift to me that day was beyond price, a glorious affirmation. The physical expression of our love was as powerful now as when we were young.

  ‘What will we do?’ I asked again, when I rose the following morning, a married woman, and broke my fast with my household, still agog with the events of the previous day. ‘Beard the court?’

  I thought he might ask my wishes, but he did not. He never had. I doubted he would start now.

  ‘Eventually. First we go to my own lands. I wish to introduce my new Duchess to my people at Pontefract.’

  ‘I have no good memories of Pontefract.’

  All I recalled of Pontefract were the days of fear and then increasing isolation. Of divided loyalties. My conscience still reminded me that I had refused admittance to Constanza when she was in dire need. The accusations that I had thrown at the Duke’s head in that dusty chamber still haunted me.

  ‘I’ll make your memories there better for you,’ he promised as he summoned one of the squires, to issue a stream of succinct orders that would take us to Pontefract where I would begin my life as Duchess of Lancaster.

  Chapter Twenty

  How astonishing the difference a marriage vow, to impose respectability, could make for me. The towering bulk of Pontefract Castle became a different world from the one I recalled when I was under duress.

  ‘You know the lady well,’ the Duke had advised his steward and Constable when we had first dismounted.

  ‘Yes, my lord.’ Sir William Fincheden, the steward—my steward now—bowed, the Captain likewise. They knew me very well.

  ‘Lady Katherine is now my Duchess.’ I had to admire the Duke’s not beating about the bush.

  There was the briefest of hesitations.

  ‘Allow me to offer my good wishes, my lady.’ Sir William’s face had been impressively wooden. Why was it that stewards, in their officialdom, had difficulty in accepting my status, whether scandalous or superbly legal?

  The Constable had bowed without hesitation. ‘You are right welcome, my lady.’

  The Duke took my arm to lead me into the hall and nodded. ‘You will serve her, as you would serve me.’

  It was in manner of a warning, of course, lightly given. It was all that was needed.

  ‘If my lady would accept the grace cup?’ The steward presented it to me, in my superior position on the dais, befo
re the dishes were served at dinner.

  ‘Perhaps my lady would try the venison?’ The Duke’s carver was keen to show his skill.

  ‘Would my lady wish to cleanse her fingers?’ The newest of John’s squires knelt at my side with a finger bowl and pristine napkin.

  I acquired a page, Guyon, to scurry at my heels and pick up anything I might drop. Doors opened for me as I approached.

  ‘If it is your will, my lady…’

  ‘And your head will be as big as a cabbage!’ Agnes opined as the poulterer visited me to offer a choice pair of geese for supper. I seemed to have acquired my own personal poulterer as well as a master of game and Stephen of the Saucery who was intent on proving his prowess with a wooden spoon.

  I sat at the Duke’s side on the dais. I knelt beside him in the chapel. His chaplain beamed on us indiscriminately. I was able to make confession with a glad heart.

  ‘Would my lady wish to take the merlin or the tercel this morning?’

  I had a falconer too. And a groom to hold my stirrup when I mounted. I never had to shiver in the cold until my horse was readied for me.

  I was the Duchess of Lancaster, in the home of the Duke. My wishes were of supreme importance. The Duke saw nothing noteworthy in any of this, but I did, after a lifetime of monumental discretion and subtle insolence.

  I did not need it for my happiness, but it proved that my new status was no dream.

  The Duke was John now in my mind as well as in my speech. I could think of him as John when he was my husband, in spite of the habits of a lifetime that still clung to me, as a cobweb clings to the hem of a gown. John grew stronger away from court and its network of cunning intrigues. His languor vanished with good food and no pettish demands from Richard. The hunting was good. Yet in all those days of comfort, when my mind should have been put at ease, I was restlessly anxious.

  ‘Are you worried about going to court?’ John asked with an insouciance to which I should have grown accustomed but still had the power to disconcert me.