The Scandalous Duchess

by Anne O'Brien

  ‘Shall I tell Henry?’ I asked.

  Proof, at last, of the depth of my despair. It was the first time that either of us had spoken of the absence of John’s heir, or alluded to his own creeping death. Now we could turn our thoughts from it no longer.

  But: ‘It will do no good. Why worry him for no reason?’ John replied. ‘Read to me.’ With his free hand he pushed the open Book of Hours across the bed towards me. ‘Read to me from the psalm…’

  It was Psalm 38, not one that came easily to my mind. I began.

  ‘“O lord, rebuke me not in thy wrath, neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure. For thine arrows stick fast in me and thy hand presseth me sore. There is no soundness in my flesh because of thy anger. Neither is there any rest in my bones because of my sin…”’

  I stopped, aghast.

  ‘John…no!’

  ‘Go on. I have to face my death. I know why I am suffering. My physician says it is God’s judgement for my breaking of holy law. I need God’s forgiveness.’

  So I read on, hating it, but it was what he wanted.

  ‘“I am feeble and sore broken. My heart panteth, my strength faileth me. As for the light of my eyes, it is also gone from me…”’

  I could read no more. For the first time in his presence in these weeks I could not prevent tears gathering, falling. As I closed the book and laid it down beside me, we exchanged a long look, which spoke of everything we could not say.

  ‘Not so,’ he said at last, his smile a blessing. ‘The light of my eyes is not gone from me. You are the light of my eyes. You are the bright sun in my firmament. You are with me always.’

  ‘And I will be until the end,’ I acknowledged.

  We sat quietly together. Our minds were in tune. And so I abandoned the physical despair of the psalmist and sang instead of love and hope and an assurance for our future together:

  ‘Your love and my love keep each other company—

  That is why I am so joyful.

  That your heart is constant in its love for mine

  Is a solace beyond compare.

  Yours in the clasp that hold my loyalty,

  You dismiss all my heart’s sorrow.

  And yours is a devotion that does not bend or alter—

  Your love and my love shall be steadfast in their loyalty

  And never drift apart.’

  All would be well, I assured myself. Henry would return from exile. John’s body would mend and become as strong as his mind. I would not release him. I would not give him leave to go from me. This was what I had wanted all my life, the right to be with him. I refused to accept our parting.

  I held tight to his hand. I would not give him up. I would not.

  His mind was as astute as ever, his will as firm. How could death claim him?

  On the second day of the new month of February I entered John’s room, knowing that his physician and body servant had left, only to discover that there was a clerk with him, and John was dictating, steadily, while the clerk wrote.

  John acknowledged me with a glance, but did not stop his instructions. When he raised his hand to summon me closer, I saw that he could barely lift it. I stood beside him until he was finished, my eyes fixed on his face throughout, absorbing every nuance.

  ‘What’s all this?’ I asked at last, for as I sank to the edge of his bed I realised that I was sharing it with an array of uncomfortable bullion. I shuffled, after sitting awkwardly on a girdle set with cabochon rubies, and made to clear it away.

  ‘No. Leave it for a moment. It will be packed it into a coffer. I have bequeathed it all to Richard.’

  I looked at the treasure, startled into a laugh when I saw the gold cup I had given to John at the New Year gift-giving. Next to it a great jewel set as a pin to hold a cloak. A gold dish, engraved with the garter motif, its cover flamboyant with a dove, its wings spread wide.

  ‘My cup?’ I could still smile. ‘You’ve only had it a month!’

  ‘But it’s the best I have.’

  ‘To persuade Richard to be lenient.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can he be persuaded?’

  It was a beautiful cup. I begrudged it holding pride of place in Richard’s treasury, but I would not deny John’s right to give it.

  ‘The gold means nothing to me,’ he murmured. ‘How strange that once I saw its value and collected such items with joy. Now, dearest Katherine, you are my treasure. A pearl beyond price.’ He took my hand and raised it to his lips as he used to do in the days of love’s glory. ‘To you, I give you the gift I can give to no one else. I give you the most precious thing I have. Myself, firm in faith and love, steady in desire, never changeable. No matter how close death comes with silent feet.’

  I sat with him, not speaking. I had no words to say.

  I was warned. Had I not known it? Had I not seen death stalking us, no matter how often I would deny it? My careful dosing with black mustard or wild valerian could be efficacious, but it could not prolong life beyond its allotted span. The dying of the year had pre-empted the final days of a great prince.

  Now his strength was fading fast. We both knew it. We did not speak of it but let the events unfold as they would.

  My lord, my lover, slipped into death, at the end as gently as into sleep, while I sat at his side and watched his beloved face. He had asked me in his final breaths to play the lute for him. His soul departed as the plangent chords filled the spaces in the room. Without struggle. Without pain in the end. It was as if his flesh recognised the appointed hour and allowed his soul to depart without contest.

  I sat for a long time in that room, sumptuously appointed as for the living, my hand hard on the lute strings to silence any vibration. So my lord, my love, was still and silent. But whereas I could make the lute speak softly again, or sing out in fervent joy, as the mood took me, my love would never more speak to me. The majestic polyphony of our lives together was dead.

  I too was lost and alone and silent.

  The depth of my anguish could not be expressed.

  Epilogue

  February 1399: Leicester Castle

  I kneel in the chapel, beside the bier where my lord, my lover, my husband, lies cold in death. I keep vigil, as a good wife should, and as my heart dictates, but tomorrow we will begin the slow journey south from Leicester to London. And there, in London, I will lose him for ever.

  The February day is short; already the night encroaches so that the pillars and arches fade from my sight. In my widow’s weeds I am barely a shadow amongst so many others.

  I work my way through the beads of my rosary—the first gift he ever gave me when I was still determinedly withstanding his impossible glamour—lips moving soundlessly, offering up prayers for John’s soul, for my own strength to withstand the coming ordeal. My mind is quite clear but my heart is as uncompromisingly bleak as a Lenten fast. As coldly unresponsive as his, even though mine still beats, and his is still for ever. I cannot contemplate my life as it must now be.

  I sit back on my heels, lips still but a little pursed, my stare decidedly judgemental.

  ‘Behold me in full widow’s weeds again,’ I say. ‘You don’t like them, but you leave me with no choice in the matter, unless you wish me to become an object of gossip again.’ I force myself to imagine life without him after all. ‘I will have to keep a cage of singing birds for company. Do you recall how Margaret loved them? I remember you throwing a cover over them to shut them up. Now there will be no one to complain.’

  His magnificence outshines me, even now, making me a shabby crow in contrast to a showy peacock. He had always loved me, as his Duchess, to wear jewel-colours. Emerald and sapphire blue, blood-red crimson or rich vermilion, all overlaid with cloth-of-gold.

  ‘You might have condemned me to this for the rest of my days, but look.’ I turn back the heavy folds of black cloth, to reveal a shift of red silk, the hem worked with gold thread in the golden wheels of St Katherine. ‘I will not forgo my heraldic magnif
icence. I know you will approve.’

  Pleating the black silk to my knees so that the red and gold continues to blaze in defiance, I reach up and smooth my fingers over the intricate stitching on John’s tunic. As I outline one of the fleur-de-lis in silver on blue, stroking the svelte back of a golden Plantagenet leopard, there is complaint in my voice.

  ‘I see you’ve demanded to be buried beside Blanche in St Paul’s.’ My voice echoes strangely amongst the dislocated arches that I can no longer see. Briefly I glance over my shoulder to ensure I have no priestly audience. But then, why should a wife not converse with her husband? ‘Why could you not be buried in Lincoln, so that I might join you when my time comes?’

  A petty complaint, but understandable, I think. I sigh, and reach out my fingertips again to touch the gleamingly embroidered silks. It is so cold, the heavy fabric as slick as ice.

  ‘I never doubt your love for me, John, even if you leave me your two second best brooches, deeming the King more worthy of your best one. Although you did give me the gold chalice that Richard gave you. A shame that it has more ostentation than beauty.’

  For a moment I lean my forehead against the edge of the bier, then despite the cold and the dust, and because my knees complain at my long cold kneeling, I sink down onto the floor beside him, disposing my skirts to my comfort, and draw towards me the little cypress casket he has left me. He has given me so much, his superb generosity slapping at my senses. As well as the gold chalices and brooches, there are ermine mantles, a circlet and collar that he loved to wear. I am a wealthy widow. I can afford to sit on the floor in the dust in black silk and spend my time with idle hands.

  ‘I will never have to beg for my next meal,’ I say. ‘I will never have to kneel before some noble lord to petition for his charity, as I did to you. I was terrified that you would refuse me a place in your household and send me back to Kettlethorpe empty-handed.’ My face lights momentarily with the memory. ‘And then I ran away after all, so that you had to summon me back.’

  I take the key, which he always kept in his purse at his belt, and work it into the casket’s lock, smiling as I do so. John has left me our bed complete with all its sumptuous furnishings. Not only that but the whole collection of his travelling beds.

  ‘Where will I be travelling, now that I am alone?’ I ask him. I laugh a little, a genuine if watery smile. ‘How like you, to leave me the beds.’

  If his intent is to draw attention to the physical desire that brought us together and kept us so for more years than I can count, then he has achieved it superbly.

  My laughter dies as I ponder his gifts to me. The air is still around me.

  ‘I wonder if I was worth the two thousand pounds you have left me.’

  It is a vast sum. Yet I would give it all away, together with every bed, every jewel, every chalice. I would sleep on these cold stones and drink water from a pottery cup for the rest of my days to have him back with me.

  I cover my face with my hands.

  It will never be.

  With my sleeve I wipe away the tears and turn the key, lifting the lid. I have not had time to investigate this little treasury. Perhaps it does not seem important against the enormity of John’s death, even though I know the casket was very personal to him. Now I stare at the contents.

  ‘Oh, John. My love, my love…’ The tears fall faster, leaving dark patches on the black silk.

  So personal, so intimate a collection, this jumble of contents provides no less than a map of our life together. I stir them with my finger. These precious items mean more to me than the land or Richard’s cup or the second best brooches.

  Mistress Saxby’s pinchbeck pilgrim’s badge that I had pinned to John’s tunic in Lincoln, dull now with age, barely glimmers amongst the jewels. I rub it on my sleeve, remembering how I had pinned it lightly, so not to arouse the sleeping dragon of John’s desire. When we had been together again, yet not together.

  ‘I did not know you had kept this.’

  I replace it, to take up a silver funerary badge from the Prince’s burial, when John had mourned the loss of his much-loved brother.

  ‘I was not allowed to stand with you that day. We were still very discreet, were we not?’

  There is a diamond and ruby brooch that I recognise: from John’s mother, Queen Philippa. I hold it up to allow what little glow there is from the candles to light fires in its depths.

  ‘I thought you would have given this to Henry, your heir—perhaps I will give it for you. He should have it—to pin to the bodice of his new wife when he remarries. It might be all the inheritance he gets now that Richard has his avaricious hands on the rest.’

  For Richard has fulfilled all our fears. The Lancaster inheritance is securely in royal hands.

  And there at the bottom, beneath all the rest is a piece of parchment, folded close. Carefully—for it is brittle—I smooth out the folds to discover a mass of dry flakes, which crumble even further into dust as I open them to the air.

  ‘What is this?’ I poke at it.

  And I know. It is the remains of the rose I picked at The Savoy when I stepped across the line from dutiful widow to scandalous mistress. After my night of contemplation with the Roman de la Rose.

  ‘You kept it. You kept it all these years.’

  Suddenly it is too painful. My heart is awash with tears, and I close the lid.

  ‘Not today,’ I say. ‘Today my heart is too sore for this.’

  Some other time when I am stronger and can see the past with pleasure rather than grief, I will open it again and pick apart the memories. Cradling the little box I sit and look blindly at the altar where the silver crucifix glimmers with heavy mystery.

  There is a movement, making me hold my breath, but it is just a pigeon flying blindly, trying to find some means of escape.

  Regrets?

  I have some now, in my loneliness. The years—too many of them—when I was no better than a harlot in the eyes of the court and I resented the judgement even though it was an honest one. The years that we were apart, through hurt and bitterness that John had forsaken me for God and returned to Constanza, a woman he did not love, and who did not love him.

  Life is too transitory. I would undo those years in the wilderness, defying Walsingham and all he stood for, if I could.

  ‘Forgive me,’ I whisper. ‘Forgive me for the times I wounded you.’

  The pigeon’s wings seem to reply.

  I do. I do. I know I wounded you too.

  Yes, he had, but only to restore my dignity and my reputation at the end. How strong love can be, to bind us fast through all vicissitudes.

  The pigeon flutters: I love you. Death will not destroy what was ours. Such love will outlive the years. The echo of my devotion will remain a constant presence in your thoughts. I swear it.

  ‘I know,’ I reply. ‘I will remain true until my death and beyond.’ Words he had once said to me, and I had never forgotten. ‘I know now that love outlives death.’

  At last I stand, my limbs stiff, and reorder my mourning black. My vigil is at an end and the pigeon seems to have found an escape or settled to roost. I touch John’s hand, cold with that strange quality of dead flesh. I kiss his cheek one last time and then his lips. The embalming has restored his beauty in some strange manner, leaving his face severe and fine-boned, the elements of the final suffering obliterated.

  He is the finest man I have ever known. The most beautiful.

  ‘Will you remarry?’ someone had asked. My son Henry, I think, who has come now to escort me to London. He is not insensitive, merely practical.

  ‘Never,’ I say. ‘Never. How can I find a better man than my lord of Lancaster?’

  But nor will I sink into lethargy. It is not in my nature and John would not want such a barren life for me. I will go back to Lincoln, and there I will try to pick up some of the pieces of friends and associates. And there are our children, and their children, to demand my affection.

  ‘My love.
My dearest love. Walk with me, you used to say.’ My words are anguished as I close my hand over his for the final time.

  Walk with me, the echo comes back to me from wall and pillar. Walk with me for ever.

  I lift my head, as if waiting, but now here is Henry come to find me.

  I close the latch of the little coffer, on our life together, turn the key and let tears run unchecked down my cheeks. As I walk from the chapel towards my waiting son who is pretending that he has not seen the inappropriate glory of my shift, now suitably hidden, I feel a flutter of awareness around me, moths’ wings, doves’ wings.

  Walk with me…

  I swear he is with me still.

  AUTHOR NOTE

  Katherine Swynford is a name known to every reader of historical fiction as the mistress of John, Duke of Lancaster, known to history as John of Gaunt. Other than that, historically, we know very little about her or their life together. We have no portraits, no descriptions of Katherine. She left no letters or useful diary records. Although the Duke recorded the gifts he made to members of his household in his detailed registers, Katherine’s name rarely appears.

  So what do we know about her?

  History provides us with a skeleton of Katherine’s life. Katherine de Roet, a young woman in the household of Blanche of Lancaster, was married to Sir Hugh Swynford and was widowed when Hugh died in Aquitaine. Katherine became mistress of John of Lancaster for twenty-five years, before he married her and made her Duchess of Lancaster. She had children with both her husbands. Her sister Philippa was wife to Geoffrey Chaucer. Katherine died in 1403 in Lincoln.

  Other than that, the detail of Katherine’s life is sketchy, even the exact year in which she was born is open to debate, as is the year in which she began her liaison with the Duke. We know that she was magistra to the Lancaster children and as such must have spent considerable time in the ducal household, but her movements during her years as John’s mistress are not always clear. It is not even on record where Katherine took refuge during the terrible months of the Peasants Revolt; all we know is that she disappeared from the turbulent scene for a short time. We cannot even pinpoint the year in which the couple renewed their relationship after the issue of the quitclaim.