by Anya Seton
Then Isolda jumped from bed, and picking John up in her strong arms, carried him from that room where others were sleeping and down some steps and through passages to the private chapel. She set the startled child down by the altar rail. It was cool in the chapel and dark except for votive lights burning before the statues of St. George and the Blessed Virgin.
“Look, my little lord,” whispered Isolda, “do you see where you are?” He nodded, wondering.
“Then listen and remember always. Pieter most damnably lied. I swear it. Holy Saint Mary and Saint George and the Blessed Body of Christ are my witnesses. You are the King’s son and were born to the Queen in March eight years ago on the eve of Lady Day, and I received you into my own hands as you came from your mother’s womb.”
John looked up, awed, into her shining grey eyes. He understood what she said, but the strangeness of the place and her urgency overpowered all else.
“Pieter wanted to hurt you,” she said, putting her hand on his head. “In years to come there may be many people who try to harm you because of envy, and they will tell lies, many lies. You must be too strong for them, my sweet lordling, and yet you must be merciful, because you’re strong - will you remember? And will you vow it?”
He nodded solemnly. Her white face seemed to shimmer in the dusk and her eyes looked down at him with anxious love. He held his arms up to her as he used to do when he was a baby, and kneeling on the cushioned altar step, she gathered him close.
“But you’ll be with me always,” he had whispered confidently. “You’ll keep them from harming me?”
“I will,” she cried, “I will - I’ll never leave you.”
How long they knelt there by the altar rail together he did not know, but that was the last time he saw Isolda.
She put him back in his own bed with his brothers, and the next day when he looked for her they told him she was ill. When she died three days later, there could be no concealment. Even the smallest children knew that there was plague in the castle; besides Isolda two knights died of it, and five squires and many scullions and maidservants. The stench of burning corpses hung over the castle, and the world was a jangle of church bells, handbells and the beating of tin pans to break up the thick, deadly air.
The royal family was spared, all except the Princess Joan, who died of plague at Bordeaux on the eve of her marriage to the heir of Castile, but the strange hysteria of plague-time so permeated Windsor that John scarcely understood what had happened to Isolda, who had promised never to leave him, nor felt reassurance from that hour with her in the chapel. Both shocks had been too violent for a child to absorb. Fear and loss and a sense of injustice attacked him in nightmares for years. In these dreams it was as though Isolda had betrayed him by her death when he so needed her, and he would see her urgent eyes fixed on him in the darkness until he called to them, when they shut against him and dissolved into the black eye-sockets of a skull.
Palamon stumbled suddenly, and the Duke, jerking up the jewelled reins, made a sound of exasperation, not at the horse but at himself. What was he doing wandering in the forest, when they awaited him at Windsor for the Garter feast? Why had the pleasant mood left by the acclaim at the jousting and the plans for Castile been so stupidly shattered by a memory of childish fears touched off by Piers’ chance word? It’s that de Roet maid, he thought in anger, but on this instinctive anger he now turned a cooler look, having recognised part of the cause. It was not her fault that her grey eyes were like someone whose memory was laced with bitter pain. Nor, doubtless, was it her fault that she was possessed of a troubling beauty. And yet he still disliked the girl.
That clod of a Swynford’s welcome to her, he thought, and turning Palamon he rode out of the forest.
CHAPTER V
Katherine and Hugh were to be married in London, and as soon as possible. Hugh said that as there were no families on either side to be consulted, no jointure or dowries to be arranged, there was no reason to wait. All the more since he was useless for fighting until his broken hand mended, and wished to visit his Lincolnshire manors before he left for Bordeaux with the Duke’s forces. No this was the natural time for a bridal trip.
These practical arguments deceived nobody. Everyone from the page-boys to Katherine herself could see the jealousy that possessed him, and the fever to get the girl alone away from everyone.
Katherine accepted the imminence of her fate without further protest, and had little time to realise it, for the last days in Windsor were filled with the bustlings of departure. The King and his train left immediately for Westminster, where Parliament would sit on May 4, while the Queen decided to return to the healthier air of Woodstock.
Katherine saw no more of the Duke or Duchess of Lancaster. Their great household was on the move, even before the King’s, as they set off for the Savoy Palace, and Blanche had many things to think of besides Katherine. At the Savoy, the Lancasters kept regal state with an establishment of six hundred people: barons, knights, squires and servants, besides the feudatories from all over England who were beginning to assemble in response to the Duke’s call to arms.
Hugh wished to be married at St. Clement Danes, a little church near the Savoy where the priest was a Lincolnshire man, and Katherine’s wishes, of course, were not consulted. Hugh went down to London some days ahead to make arrangements and left Ellis de Thoresby behind at Windsor to guard Katherine and conduct her to London with Philippa.
The Queen was a trifle better. When Philippa applied for leave of absence so that she might accompany her sister and see her married, the Queen, after granting permission, expressed a desire to meet Katherine at last. So on Katherine’s final day at Windsor, Philippa guided her sister to the Queen’s apartments.
From this interview Katherine received an impression of sadness and suffering. The Queen’s room was darkened, quiet. A physician and the two most favoured ladies hovered near the fire while the Queen’s secretary, a young Hainaulter in clerical robes named Froissart, sat at a high desk scratching on parchment by the light of a single candle.
The Queen lay in a huge four-poster bed hung with gold brocade and gaudily painted with her ostrich-feather badges. The coverlet was of blue velvet embroidered with the Queen’s motto, Ich wrude muche. And she had indeed laboured hard all her life, to produce her twelve children and rear the nine who survived infancy; she had laboured to help the King, and for the advancement of her adopted country, but now she could no longer labour at anything except the daily struggle to exist in a prison of bloated aching flesh.
Katherine knelt to kiss the swollen hand extended to her. The fingers were taut and white as veal sausages, and the girl repressed a shudder. She raised her eyes to the mountainous figure under the coverlet, saw the balloon face with its small features nearly hidden by the puffed cheeks. But the sunken brown eyes looked kindly on the girl while the wheezing voice spoke in guttural French.
“So, la petite Katrine de Roet, you’ve already found yourself a husband! A brave knight! Your papa, whom may God absolve, would be very proud.”
“Yes, madam,” Katherine whispered and would have said more but the Queen turned fretfully, beckoning to her physician. “Maitre Jacques, it gives me no relief yet.” The Queen pointed to her belly, where the physician had applied both leeches and hollow needles in an endeavour to drain off the dropsical waters.
“It will, madam, it will in time,” he said gravely, and he held against her nostrils a wad of wool saturated with the brain-soothing juices of lettuce, poppy and henbane. The Queen inhaled, sighed, and closed her eyes. She had forgotten Katherine, and the girl looked at her sister, wondering if they should go, but Philippa shook her head. She knew the wandering habits of the Queen’s mind these days, and she had no intention of letting Katherine leave Windsor without a wedding present if she could help it.
“Madam,” put in Philippa anxiously, seeing that the Queen’s thoughts were beginning to wander again, “Katherine is leaving Windsor tomorrow. She’s to be ma
rried soon, if it please Your Grace.”
“Ah yes,” said the Queen. “She must have a little marriage gift, in memory of her brave father. What would you like, child?”
Philippa sighed with relief. She nudged Katherine. “Ask for a purse,” she whispered, “money.”
But Katherine had yet to learn the importance of money, and besides she still had the silver the Duchess had given her. At this long-awaited audience with the Queen, she thought only of her promise to the prioress, and the moment in the courtyard when the stern mentor of her childhood had looked at her with appeal.
“Your Grace is very kind,” she said quickly, not knowing how to express herself. “Could you, would you help Sheppey? The little convent where Your Grace placed me five years ago. They were good to me and they are in need.”
“You little fool,” hissed Philippa.
The Queen looked startled. “Has Sheppey had no benefices? Did I send nothing for your keep?”
“Not since the day I came there, madam, and I fear I ate a great deal,” said Katherine apologetically. “The convent is very poor.”
The Queen sat up straighter and spoke with something of her old energy. “You show gratitude and loyalty, child. I’m pleased. Froissart, write an order. We will send Sheppey a tun of Gascon wine and” - she hesitated -“a gift of two marks. Also we will send them” - she thought a moment -“the d’Aubricourt girl as novice. She’ll bring a dowry of near a hundred pounds sterling.”
Froissart wrote industriously.
“Oh, dearest madam, thank you!” cried Katherine, thinking of the joy these generous gifts would bring to Sheppey. Gascon wine, when they had never been able to afford anything but home-brewed ale! While with two marks they could repair the dangerous minster steeple, buy cloth for new habits, perhaps enough gilt to freshen all the shabby saints’ statues.
“And for yourself, my dear,” said the Queen, warmed by the girl’s unselfishness, but also mindful of the perennial skimpiness of her privy purse, “you shall have something to wear on your wedding day. Matilda,” she called, “bring me the little coffer.”
Her waiting-woman rose and fetched a small ironbound casket from one of the great oak chests along the wall. In this were kept the Queen’s second-best jewels, chiefly the ones she had brought with her from Hainault. Matilda put the casket on the bed and unlocked it with a key she carried at her belt, then she held a candle down so that the Queen might see. The Queen poked in the casket, turning over buckles and clasps, and little tablets enamelled with pictures of the saints. Several times she fished up a piece of jewellery and hesitated, reluctant to part with any of these souvenirs of her early life, and her interest was ebbing as her bodily discomforts increased. She needed the privacy of the drawn curtains again, and the ministration of her ladies.
“Here then, fillette,” she said hurriedly, plucking out a small silver brooch of crudely wrought leaves and vines entwining a motto. “What does the raison say? I’ve forgotten. Can you read?”
“Yes, madam,” said Katherine proudly. She peered at the lettering. “It says, Foi vainquera, I think.”
“Ah yes,” murmured the Queen, “a good saying. The best. Faith will conquer. Live by it, petite, and take my blessing
Katherine would have kissed the swollen hand once more, but the Queen gave a moan and cried, “Matilda, quick!” The waiting-woman ran to the bed and drew together the heavy brocade curtains.
Once back in their own solar, which was empty for the moment, Philippa began to scold. “Really, Katherine, you might have had a decent present instead of that trumpery little nouche. It isn’t worth ten pence.”
“But I helped Sheppey,” said the girl dispiritedly, “as I promised.”
“Oh, no doubt,” Philippa shrugged. “Very noble, but you might have done both if you’d had any sense. One must know how to deal with great folk. Now the Queen gave me ten marks for my wedding. Geoffrey’ll be delighted.” Philippa, pleased by this thought and having rebuked her feckless sister, now’ turned briskly to her coffer and began to pack it in readiness for the move to London tomorrow.
Katherine watched her sister’s efficient hands folding and stowing linen shifts, veils, hose and towels. She herself had nothing to pack, and her eyes wandered to the window where she could see the tilting field, barren now of gaudy tents and pennants. She sighed. “I wish I were marrying someone like your Geoffrey, or - or, dear God, not marrying at all.”
“What rubbish!” Philippa rolled a pair of scarlet wool stockings and stuffed them in a corner of the chest. “Don’t start all that again! You wanted to get married. That’s why you came to court, instead of taking the veil. And you’ve had the luck of the angels.”
“I suppose so,” said Katherine, gazing at her betrothal ring, “but - but - oh, Philippa - aren’t you - aren’t you ever afraid?” Quick rose stained her skin, and her head bent lower.
“Of what?” Philippa raised her face from the chest to examine her sister. “Oh, you mean the wedding night? They say it isn’t bad. Agnes de Saxilby says she just shut her eyes and thought of something else. One gets used to it quickly.”
It occurred to Philippa then that her convent-bred sister might well be ignorant of certain pertinent facts, though no one at court could be. She got up from her knees and put her arm around Katherine’s shoulders. “You know what happens, of course?” she asked more gently.
Katherine winced. There had been bitches and dogs at the convent, there had been Philo, the manor bull, bellowing in a stockade to which the village cows were brought one by one. And there had been Fat Mab, the convent cook, who swilled ale all day long and loved nothing better than to bawl out hoarse descriptions of the bedsport of her younger years.
So Katherine was not entirely ignorant, though there was much she did not know and found that she did not wish to know. She said “Yes” hastily, and though grateful for her sister’s caress, slid off the bed and made pretence of poking the fire. Philippa did not understand; the unknown held for her no fears that she could not vanquish by common sense. She was handicapped neither by imagination nor a restless yearning for beauty and fulfilment. The image of Hugh’s face rose before Katherine, softened now by distance, but bringing with it the familiar repulsion and a faint tinge of pity. Holy Blessed Mother, help me to be a good wife, she thought, but the words were empty.
Katherine and Philippa set out for London on the last day of April with Ellis de Thoresby as escort, and a pack-horse to carry Philippa’s coffers. Despite occasional showers, the morning was soft and sweet as honey. The roadside bloomed yellow with buttercups and primroses, pale blue with forget-me-nots.
In many of the villages through which they rode the young lads had stolen time from work and were setting up Maypoles for the morrow. In the larger towns where they had a permanent Maypole, the gilded wheel with its streaming coloured ribbons had already been set on top of the stout oak shaft, and children were practising at twining ribbons while they danced and sang May carols.
How beautiful the world is, thought Katherine, forgetting what lay before her. There had been little beauty and no frolic at Sheppey. High on a bleak hill continually swept by the North Sea winds, neither the convent nor its dependent hamlet had had the spirit for merrymaking.
Much of Katherine’s pleasure, too, came from the horse she was riding. It was only a hired one, to be sure, like Philippa’s, but it was a stout little brown mare and the first decent horseflesh she had ever mounted. When they passed through the village of Hammersmith and came up with a band of minstrels bound for Westminster Palace and singing to the tinkle of their gitterns, Katherine began to hum with them until she caught the tune and could not help joining in with her fresh, lovely voice.
The hedges and trees they are so green.
As green as any leek.
Our heavenly father, he watered them
With his heavenly dew so sweet
The sun shines bright, and the stars will give their light
A little b
efore it is day.
So God bless you all, both great and small,
And send you a joyful May.
The gleemen laughed’and waved approval, crying that the maid had a voice as fair as her face. Philippa primmed her lips to say, “Katherine, I cannot understand where you learned to be so forward,” though then she smiled a little and beat time with her feet in the stirrups. Ellis de Thoresby paid no attention except to clear a way through the gleemen for his charges.
When they passed Westminster Palace, the great Abbey bell was tolling for Nones, so it was yet mid-afternoon, and. they had made good time. Katherine, excited at the prospect of seeing London at last, gaped at the royal buildings like any country girl, but thought them small and unimpressive after Windsor. And when a mile farther downstream they came at the bend of the river to the gleaming white walls of the Savoy, Katherine saw that the Lancastrian palace was more magnificent than the King’s. The Savoy was crenallated but not fortified, having been built less than a hundred years ago, and its windows were of good size, and most of them glazed. It was built in a series of quadrangles, turreted at the corners and covering three acres between the Strand and the river. Pennants, imprinted with the red rose, fluttered from the turrets, but from the tall gilt spire of the private chapel there hung a flag with Lancaster’s own arms - France ancient and England quarterly under a label of three points ermine - to show that the Duke himself was in residence.
“Sir Hugh was to meet us here,” muttered Ellis, drawing his horse up by the Savoy’s Strand gate, “but we’re early.”
Katherine, in no hurry to see her betrothed, drew back into the shadow of the great white wall and watched the traffic clatter by on the newly paved Strand.