by Anya Seton
“It’ll be different when you quicken, lady,” said Milburga. This was the servant Katherine had chosen as personal waiting - maid, because she was cleaner and less stupid than the others. But Milburga was old, being over thirty and a widow, and she treated Katherine with a blend of oily deference and petty bullying that the girl found annoying.
On St. Catherine’s Day, November 25, Katherine awoke to find that she had been crying in her sleep, and knew that she had dreamed of her childhood. In the dream she had been little “Cat’rine” again, crowned with gilded laurel leaves and perched on cushions in the middle of her grandparents’ kitchen table at the farm in Picardy. There were laughing faces around her, and hands stretched out towards her with gifts - straw dolls and shining stones and apples - while many voices sang, “Salut, salut la p’tite Cat’rine, on salut ton jour de fete!”
Then in the dream her big handsome father lifted her from the cushions and kissed her while she snuggled in his arms, and he pressed a little gingerbread figure of St. Catherine into her mouth. She tasted the heavenly sweetness of it until someone wrenched her jaws apart and snatched the sweetmeat away. And she awoke weeping.
There had been light snow in the night, the wind had blown a fine drift through the loosened shutter and there was a ridge of white along the bare stone floor beneath the iron perch where her cloak hung.
The fire had died to ashes. Katherine looked at the cold grey ashes and her tears changed to a loud and passionate sobbing. When Milburga bustled in from the outside stairs with the morning ale, die maid exclaimed, “Mistress, what ails ye?”
As the girl merely hid her face in her arms and continued to sob, the woman drew back the covers and made a quick examination.
“Have you pains, here or here?” she demanded. Katherine shook her head. “Leave me be. Go away,” and she sobbed more violently.
Milburga’s sallow face tightened. “Stop that rampaging at once, lady! Ye’ll harm the child.”
“Oh, a murrain on the child!” cried Katherine wildly, rearing herself on the bed.
“Saint Mary protect us!” gasped Milburga, backing away. Her pale mouth and pale eyes were round with horror. She receded to the door and stood gaping at her mistress.
The wild angry grief fell off Katherine like a mantle, leaving her afraid. “I didn’t mean it - ” She put her hands on her belly, as if to reassure the dark outraged little entity inside. “Send for Sir Robert. Tell him he must celebrate a Mass - this is my saint’s day - my sixteenth - that’s why - why - “
But of what use to explain to that tight shocked face that she had been sobbing for her own childhood, for the dear lost days of special cherishing and festival. Even at Sheppey, where she had been the only Katherine, the nuns had made a little atmosphere of fete and congratulation for her on this saint’s day. Here there was nobody to either cherish her or care.
Milburga, bound on her errand to the rectory, paused in the kitchen below to regale the other servants with their mistress’ shocking behaviour. They clustered around exclaiming, the cook, and the servitor and the dairymaid. All work stopped at once, except that little Cob o’ Fenton, the towheaded spit - boy, crouched in his niche in the great fireplace, automatically turning the handle with his toes while he longed to be out in the raw misty air fishing in the Trent. They were roasting a lean old ewe, and her scanty grease smelt rancid as it hissed into the fire. In truth the manor food was poor, and slackly prepared, for there was no one at the High Table now that Lady Katherine kept to her room so much and was growing as strange and solitary as the Lady Nichola.
” ‘Tis the curse, no doubt, creeping on them both,” said Milburga, shaking her head with gloomy relish. “Soon we’ll hear the pooka hound a-baying in the marshes.”
“Jesus save us!” squealed Betsy, the dairymaid, her child - mouth quivering. They all crossed themselves.
“Nay,” said the cook sourly, shaking his knobby grey head. “I believe ‘tis no Swynford curse, though well they deserve it. The demon hound was sent by the devil to haunt the de la Croys for their grievous sins. That’s why they sold us and the manor to Swynfords.” He eased his rheumatic joints on to a bench.
The others listened respectfully. Will Cooke was over fifty and well remembered the old days under the de la Croys. He and his fathers before him had always been manor cooks, yet he had no liking for the lords or his work.
During the years of Hugh’s absence he had moved into his daughter - in - law’s cot in the vill and taken happily to wood - carving.
He had been the most defiant of the serfs when at the manor court Hugh had ordered him back to his hereditary duties, and had flogged him so hard that his shoulders oozed blood for days. Will would have run off to hide in Sherwood forest, had he been younger, but his stiffened knees hampered him, as did the dead weight of custom. Kettlethorpe lords had always been so. Sir Hugh was no worse than the de la Croys who had thrown his father into the tower dungeon for the inadvertent scorching of a spiced capon.
“If ye’re to call the parson,” he said, scowling at Milburga, ” ‘twill mean that fat ox’ll feed here after, and our fine young lady be down for once, God damn her finicking foreign ways.” He picked up his sharpest knife and on the worn chopping block began to slice the old sheep’s entrails for a mortrewe.
The initial good will Katherine had aroused in the manor by reason of her beauty, youth and the promptness with which she had done her duty in conceiving an heir had soon died down. After all, she was a foreigner, not only alien to Lincolnshire, but actually born in the country which they held to be their hereditary enemy. She spoke an English they had trouble in understanding. “Norman English,” said Will Cooke contemptuously. And yet she was neither nobly born nor rich. She was no lady they could boast of to the serfs on nearby manors, at Torksey or Stow. And, moreover, she was a nuisance. Were it not for her, the house carls might all have returned to their village cots and own pursuits,, as they had before Sir Hugh’s brief visit. Defying the nearly helpless Gibbon and the reeve, they might well have mutinied against her, even braving Hugh’s displeasure later. But they were deterred by the usage of generations. Satan grinning from his hellish flames waited eagerly to pounce upon the serf who disobeyed his feudal lord, and while Katherine might be unpopular, she yet carried within her the Swynford heir to whom they would all someday do homage.
Katherine, sunk in sickliness and torpor, knew that they gave her grudging service, but had not the spirit to care. The chill dampness which crept upward from the moat seemed to have got in her bones. She shivered often and coughed; of nights her throat grew so sore that it awakened her to swallow.
On the fourth Sunday in Advent the December day was clear and bright for a change. Katherine dragged herself up and feeling a trifle better, crossed over to the church for Mass. She sat alone in the lord’s high boxed pew by the chancel and leaning her heavy head against a carved oaken boss, vaguely watched the priest lurch and gabble through the service. She could not see the villagers in the choir, but she heard their responses, and heard, too, the chaffering and giggles and gossiping that went on in the nave below. The dark little church grew steamy with the peasant smell of sour sweat, leeks and manure. She tried to fix her thoughts upon the Elevation of the Host, yet all she could think of were the rolls of pink fat on the priest’s neck and the quivering of oily curls around his tonsure.
It was at that moment that she felt the baby quicken, and was frightened. This tapping and fluttering in her belly seemed to her monstrous. Suddenly she thought of a tale she had heard at Sheppey of a boy who had swallowed a serpent’s egg, the egg had hatched inside him and the snake, frantic to escape, gnawed -
Katherine stifled a cry and rushed from the pew through the side door of the church into the open. She sank on the coffin bench beneath the lych - gate and drew great lungfuls of the cold sparkling air. Two of Margery Brewster’s children were sliding on an iced puddle beside the church path and they stopped to stare at her in wonderment. Her terr
or receded and she grew ashamed. She must go back in church and apologise to the Blessed Body of Jesus for her irreverence. She got slowly to her feet, then turned round in amazement, for a horse came galloping down the frozen road beneath the wych - elms.
The children turned from gaping at her and gaped at the horseman. He reined his mount before the drawbridge to the manor, and Katherine with a great leap at her heart saw that he wore on his tunic the Lancaster badge.
She ran across the court and greeted him fearingly. “Whence do you come? Is there news of the war?”
The lad was Piers Roos, the Duke’s erstwhile body squire, who had been left at home to serve the Duchess. He had a fresh freckled face and a merry eye. He pulled off his brown velvet cap to disclose a mass of tow curls, and grinning at Katherine said with some uncertainty, “My Lady Swynford?”
She nodded quickly. “What news do you bring?”
“Nothing but good. At least we know no war news yet from Castile. I come from Bolingbroke, from the Duchess Blanche. She sends you greeting.”
“Ah -” Katherine’s drawn little face softened with pleasure. She had never dared hope that the Lady Blanche would indeed remember her; and during these months at Kettlethorpe the London and Windsor days had gradually faded into fantasy.
“She bids me escort you to Bolingbroke for the Christmas festival, if you’d like to come.”
Her indrawn breath and the sudden shining of her shadowed eyes were answer enough, and Piers Roos laughed, seeing that she was even younger than he himself and not the solemn, weary woman she had seemed as he dismounted.
“We’ll go tomorrow then, if you wish. The ride’ll take but a day.”
“I - I cannot go fast,” faltered Katherine, suddenly remembering, and blushing. “I - they - think I should not ride at all.”
“What folly,” said Piers cheerfully, understanding at once. “The Lady Blanche is larger than you and she still rides out daily.”
“The Lady Blanche!” Katherine repeated, wondering that she should be amazed, and why the young squire’s information came as a small unpleasant shock. “When?”
“Oh, March or April, I believe. I know naught of midwifery.” He laughed outright, and Katherine after a minute joined him.
The energy Piers’ invitation brought her buoyed Katherine through all difficulties. She ordered Doucette to be curried and groomed and ignored the gloomy disapproval of her household.
The next day her sore throat had disappeared, the fluttering in her belly she did not notice; she smiled and hummed as she crossed the inner court to take leave of Gibbon.
“Ay, mistress,” he said sadly, as he stared up at her from his pallet. “You’re in a fever to be quit of Kettlethorpe.”
“Only till the Twelfth Night,” she cried. “Then I’ll - I’ll be back. And I’ll not pine any more, I promise. I’ll help you in the manor again.”
“God - speed,” he said and closed his eyes against the light. Hugh would not like it, and yet even Hugh would not have made Katherine refuse an invitation from the Duchess. I could not stop her from going, thought Gibbon, and sighed. Could not, since he had neither strength nor power, and would not, for she was still such a child, and he knew well how much maturity it took to withstand loneliness and boredom. He did not believe with the villeins that she was wilfully imperilling her baby, but many nameless forebodings came to him in the long night hours, and he wished as heartily as the rest of the village that Hugh had seen fit to marry the noble Darcy widow, of Torksey.
CHAPTER VIII
Bolingbroke lay clear across the county near the eastern coast of Lincolnshire. It was a small fair castle set in meadow - lands and encircled by the protecting wolds. Even in winter the meadows were green beneath their coating of hoar - frost; and the little turrets and high central keep, all beflagged in scarlet and gold, had a gay welcoming look. It was the Lancasters’ favourite country castle; there Blanche had spent much of her girlhood, and there she and John had come for seclusion in the first days of their marriage.
It held for her many happy memories, and she had returned to it now, knowing that its homely shelter would help her bear the anxiety of her lord’s absence, and the anxiety of awaiting the new baby. This time her prayers and pilgrimage to the Blessed Virgin of Walsingham must be answered. It would be a boy, and it would live, as the other baby boy had not.
From the moment when the Lady Blanche herself met Katherine in the Great Hall and, taking the girl’s hand kissed her on the cheek, through the twelve days of Christmas, Katherine managed to forget Kettlethorpe. With the rest of the Duchess’ company, Katherine immersed herself in the serene and gracious aura which surrounded Blanche.
The Duchess, thickened by pregnancy, no longer made one think of lilies, yet she was no less beautiful in her ripe golden abundance, and Katherine admired her passionately.
There were few guests, for Blanche smilingly explained that she had enough of company at the Savoy or at court and wished for quiet. The Cromwells from nearby Tattershall Castle rode over on Christmas night, and the. Abbess of Elstow, who was cousin to Blanche, spent the days between St. Stephen’s and New Year’s, but so intimate was the castle gathering that Katherine wondered much, while she rejoiced, that she had been invited.
She put it down to kindness of heart, and tried to repay the Duchess in every way she could. The Duchess responded with affection and growing interest in the girl. And yet it was a sentence contained in a letter she had received from her husband which had prompted the invitation.
The Duke had written soon after landing in Brittany and assembling his command of four hundred men - at - arms and six hundred archers for the march south to join his brother and the exiled Castilian king at Bordeaux. He wrote in a happy confident mood, telling his tres - chere et bien - aimee compagne many items of news: that the fair Joan, Princess of Wales, was enceinte again and near to term; that King Pedro, God restore him to his rightful throne, had with him at Bordeaux his handsome daughters, and that the desolate plight of these wronged princesses had captured the sympathy of all the English, who would certainly triumph over that baseborn fiend Trastamare, and the lilies and leopards of England would float at last above Castile and fulfil Merlin’s age - old prophecy.
Descending into less exalted vein, the Duke had shown his usual consideration for Blanche’s comfort, asking if the steward at Bolingbroke had repaired the bridge over the outer moat yet, and how the masons were progressing with the stone portraits of the King and Queen on the refurbished church, for “it is there, dearest lady, that our child will be christened, and I pray I may return in time.”
Blanche kissed the parchment when she read this, and sinking to her knees on the prie-dieu beside the great bed had communed with a jewelled image of the Blessed Virgin which stood flanked by candles and holly greens in the niche above.
When she returned to the letter she found in the last paragraph the question: “Have you seen ought of the little Swynford? Her clodpoll knight is here in camp and confides (as though it were a rare and difficult feat) that he has got her with child. It might be kindness to see how she does, alone, on their manor.”
Blanche had not wondered that, of all their acquaintance, her lord had mentioned by name only this little bride; neither suspicion nor speculation had ever troubled the purity of her love, and she hastened to obey without question and in generous measure. She was rewarded, for she enjoyed Katherine’s visit,
The girl’s admiration touched her. Though there were ten years between their ages, besides the greater gulf of Blanche’s lineage and experience, she found Katherine companionable. The two women sat together and embroidered through the winter dusks, and Blanche noted how the girl’s red chilblained little hands tried to imitate the skill of her own long white fingers: Sometimes Blanche picked up her lute or gittern and they sang - plaintive love songs, or Christmas carols to the Virgin. And at the singing Blanche knew herself surpassed, for her high passionless voice, like a choir - boy’s, somet
imes went flat, while Katherine hit true and round on every note, and once she had overcome her timidity and learned the songs, they poured like honey from her slender throat.
“Do you make much music at Kettlethorpe?” inquired Blanche idly one evening when they had finished singing Adam de la Halle’s rondeau, “Fais mari de vostre amour”.
“No, madam,” said Katherine after a moment, the pleasure dying from her face. She had, from pride and a desire to forget the place, always evaded the Duchess’ few polite questions about her manor.
“Are your minstrels unskilled?” asked the Duchess in some surprise.
Katherine thought of her Hall, which was barer and meaner than the cow - byres here, and could not help laughing. “We have no minstrels, madam. It’s not,” she added quickly, “a manor quite like any you have known.”
The Duchess raised her pale arched brows, and seeing Katherine’s unwillingness, said no more. Bred to unlimited wealth, reared in a succession of castles of which this one was the simplest, it was true that she could not imagine a manor such as Kettlethorpe. She was familiar with the hovels of the poor where she dispensed lavish charity, but that a landed knight’s home might be almost as meagre and uncomfortable had never occurred to her. Nor did it now, but her sky - blue gaze focused and she noted for the first time the shabbiness of Katherine’s clothes, though she was far from recognising or remembering the let - out and altered green dress she had given Katherine at Windsor. But she determined to make the girl some presents on New Year’s Day and, dismissing the matter, she turned smiling, as her two little girls ran into the Ladies’ Bower to announce that a new batch of mummers from Lincoln had arrived and had playfully chased the children around the courtyard. Elizabeth, the baby, was squealing with excitement.