by Anya Seton
The garden walls melted. A rushing wind lifted and hurled Katherine into a void, a wind - no, a river of fire. An agonising painful joy in the whirling and rushing of this river of fire -
He threw himself down on the bench and seized her cold hands, looking up at her white face. “My dear love,” he said softly, humbly, “can you not speak to me?”
“What can I say, my lord?” Her eyes fastened themselves on the blue flower of a borage plant near his foot; she stared at the little blue star while the fiery river throbbed and scorched in her breast.
“That you love me, Katherine - you told me so once.”
“Aye,” she said slowly, at last, “nothing has changed since then. Nothing. And I am still Hugh’s wife - however much I - I love you.”
He gave a sharp gasp and bending his head covered her hands with kisses. “Sweetheart!” he cried exultantly, and put his hands on her waist to pull her down to him. She stiffened and shook her head. “Nay, but there is one thing changed since we two were in the Avalon Chamber - then you mourned a wife but lately gone, and now you are betrothed to one who will soon be yours.”
“There’s no love in that, it has naught to do with us. You know that I must marry again, for England - for Castile.”
“Yes,” she said tonelessly, “I know.”
She raised her eyes and tears slid quietly down her cheeks. “I cannot be your leman, my lord. Even if for love of you I could so shamefully dishonour Hugh, yet I cannot, for I have made a sacred vow.”
“A vow?” he repeated. His hands dropped from her waist. “What vow, Katherine?”
“On the ship,” Katherine said, each word dragging forth with pain. “Saint Catherine saved my life, for that I made the vow-” She stopped and swallowed, looking past him at the sunny wall. She went on in a whisper, “To be true wife, in thought, in deed, to my husband who is the father of my babies.”
Outside the garden, the cathedral bells began again to clang for the commencement of another Mass, while nearer from the “Place” a burst of horns and clarions heralded the beginning of the mystery play, and nearer yet inside the inn there was a shout of drunken laughter. At last John said gently, reasonably, “My foolish Katherine - and do you think the whole ship was saved because you made this vow?”
“I don’t know,” she answered in the same muted voice. “I only know that I made it and will keep it unto death.”
Unto death. The words rang irrevocably in his ears, even while a hundred persuasions sped through his mind. Arguments that might move her, perhaps the contentions of John Wyclif, how that saints and miracles and vows were but ignorant superstitions invented by venal popes and hypocritical monks to gull the simple folk. But he loved her, so these things he could not say, for he did not quite believe these heresies ‘ and there was a commandment in the Bible - one the Blessed Jesus too had affirmed - and he knew well that even John Wyclif would never condone adultery. And stronger far than the new logic of the Lollards were the teachings of his childhood. Grinning fiends, devils and the obscene tortures, damnation eternal, awaited those who sinned. For himself he did not care, but her he could not endanger. He turned his head away and did not speak.
“Now you will hate me again!” she cried on a sobbing breath. She could no longer maintain the frozen stillness of her body; though she had renounced him, she could not bear that he should never look at her again with passion - and the new tenderness. “Dear my Lord, my heart will break if you hate me, and the last time too we parted in anger-“
He shook his head. “I love you, Katherine - and while you’re near me, I feel that your wish is mine.” He stopped, thinking that this had never been true of him before. There had been no such testing with Blanche, nor need for conscience. “Yet I know myself -” he cried with sudden violence. “I shall not stay so tame, so conquerable-” He took a quick step towards her, then halted. “Go, Katherine - go,” he said, and hot tears sprang into his eyes.
She fled from the garden and through the “Place” to the cathedral. The Mass had just begun; she pushed her way through the people to a confessional where she murmured so rapid and confused an account of temptation and contrition in her northern French that the inattentive priest made little of it and granted quick absolution. Then she ran up to the choir, as near the High Altar as she could get. She knelt on the tiles. She heard no word of the Mass, but when she received the Holy Wafer on her tongue a sad peace came to her and she thought that glimmering around the Crucifix she saw a glow of benignant light.
While Katherine was at Mass, John of Gaunt, the pilgrim in sackcloth, strode with bowed head through the streets of Bordeaux to the palace-abbey, oblivious of interested glances or occasional timid questions, “God speed, Sir Pilgrim, art thou bound for Compostela or for Canterbury? Or mayhap the Holy Land?”
The Bordelais were gay today, the women dressed in scarlet shawls wore flowers and combs in their hair. There was dancing in the streets and festival music spangled the warm air. But John saw and heard nothing.
He entered the abbey, not surreptitiously by the side door as he had slipped out, but through the main gate, flinging his pilgrim hat in the face of the astounded gate-ward, as the man questioned him. “Forgive me, Your Grace,” babbled the gate-ward, when he recognised the Duke, “I had not known you -” John strode on and through the Grande Salle, where a dozen varlets were scurrying with gold silk napery, silver saltcellars, mazers, hanaps, spoons, laying the great tables for dinner.
The salle opened on to the cloister garth, where a group were seated under the cool arcades. A Moorish dwarf, scarce two feet high, amused them with tumbling tricks and sly songs piped in such a squeaky voice that the Princess Isabel was rolling with laughter. So convulsed were all the lords and ladies - when the dwarf, who had a chained popinjay and a monkey with him, announced that he would perform a marriage between the two little beasts and, placing them on a miniature bed, forced the monkey into the liveliest imitation of amorous commerce with the squawking popinjay - that nobody saw the Duke until he had passed through the cloister and was mounting the steps that led to his apartments. Then Isabel jumped and said, “Could that be Lancaster? What an extraordinary garb!”
“It was, madam,” said Michael de la Pole. “Some private penance maybe.”
“Nonsense! He’s no more pious than that monkey there. It seems to me he’s acting very strange, I thought so yesterday, and to go out now, when Edmund has arrived in his absence - not that one ever considers Edmund much, to be sure-“
The baron, who knew the insistence of the royal lady’s discourse and was not interested in her opinions on the personalities of her brothers, asked a hasty permission to withdraw, since he wished to speak to the Duke.
He found the Duke in his solar, being dressed by his squires, while that little Gascon, Nirac, hovered around and clucked over him like a hen. Edmund of Langley, the Earl of Cambridge, lay sprawling on the jewelled coverlet of the State Bed, eating figs and watching his brother with his usual expression of amiable vacuity. Edmund had come overland down from Calais with a large force of his men and arrived an hour ago.
“Greeting, baron,” Edmund said to de la Pole, biting into another fat green fig. “God’s blood, but it’s hot here in the south, I always forget that when I’m in England.”
De la Pole bowed, acknowledged the greeting, and said, “My lords, I hope I don’t intrude? There are certain arrangements about the wedding, my Lord Duke, that need your immediate attention.”
John turned his head, and the baron was startled at the suffering look in his eyes, a look of actual wanhope, or despair, thought the baron, who was not imaginative. Bad news then? But what? Unless Cambridge had brought it. A glance at Edmund dispelled that thought. The earl’s sensibilities were none too keen, but he certainly was not the bearer of ill tidings.
Edmund had spent most of his thirty years docilely obeying and admiring all three of his elder brothers, but particularly this one who was so near him in age, and of whom he w
as a paler, smaller copy, as though fashioned from John’s leftover tints which had been insufficient and consequently diluted. Where John’s hair was a vigorous ruddy gold, Edmund’s was silvery flaxen and sparse; the unmistakable Plantagenet strength of long nose and chin and cheekbone had in Edmund blurred to softness.
“I’ll attend to you presently, baron,” said the Duke in a singularly flat voice. “Edmund tells me that His Grace, our father, approves that the Queen of Castile’s sister Isabella be given to him.”
” ‘Struth,” said Edmund, swallowing his fig and licking his fingers. “High time I got me some wife, they say the little Infanta Bella is grown quite appetising, fifteen years old and firm as a plum.” He giggled happily. “She’ll suit my sweet tooth.”
“Your marriage to her will make doubly sure our claim to the throne of Castile,” said John sternly.
His brother at once drew his face into earnest agreement. “To be sure, to be sure.”
“A double wedding then, my lord?” asked de la Pole in some surprise, thinking of the little time that was left - only a month - before the Duke’s nuptials, and the multitudinous details which must be settled. There were still indentures and contracts to be signed, some of the exiled Castilian envoys from Bayonne were even now waiting below for audience with the Duke, nor had the final decision been made as to the locale for the ceremony.
“No double wedding,” said John, holding his hands out over a silver basin that Nirac might pour rosewater on them. “Edmund can marry the Infanta later. Gentlemen,” he glanced at his brother, the squires, Nirac and finally the baron, “before I receive the Castilians, or consult with you, Michael, I wish food - and I’ve not yet communed. Raulin, where is Brother Walter?”
“He vaits in the chapel, Your Grace,” said the Flemish squire, fastening the last buckle on the Duke’s gold and sapphire girdle, before adjusting it low on the hips.
The Duke nodded and quitted his solar for the narrow passage that connected it with the private chapel.
Nirac slipped unobtrusively out of the room and followed his master, unheard and unseen. It was he who had procured the pilgrim clothes and he alone, who knew where the Duke had gone this morning,, and though in this last hour there had been no privacy, and thus no way to find out what had happened, Nirac had been more shocked than the baron at the expression of his master’s eyes. He intended to find out once and for all the Duke’s true inward wishes. And he availed himself of a discovery long since made.
In the days of the monks the private chapel had adjoined their infirmary. A square peephole had been made in the wall to the right of the altar so that the bedridden monks might participate in the Mass. A painted hanging of the Day of Judgement now covered the peephole but through the cloth one could hear all that took place. Nirac flattened himself to the wall behind the arras on the infirmary side and listened.
As he expected, the Duke was confessing to the Carmelite friar, Brother Walter Dysse, who travelled with him everywhere. At first the Duke’s voice was low. Nirac could hear little, though in the pauses the plump friar’s soothing voice lisped about “sins of the flesh - lustful thoughts - deplorable but human, God would easily forgive - true repentance -“
“But I’m not repentant!” The Duke’s voice rose suddenly high and passionate. “I love the woman - she is my life - all my bliss. I care naught what you say, Brother, nor fear God in this -“
“Then, why do you confess to me, my lord,” said the unctuous voice reasonably, “since you wish no ghostly counsel? Yet I feel God is not wroth - come, I’ll grant you absolution-“
“Ay, you’re a man of the world, good friar, ‘tis no doubt for your comfortable nature I keep you for confessor.” The Duke’s voice had a bitter mocking edge. “Were I to tell you I had abducted, ravished this woman, had forced her to adultery, what would you say then?”
There was a pause, Nirac could hear the rustling of garments as though the friar had shifted on his seat, and he pictured how the plump white hands would smooth each other, and how Brother Walter’s little mouth had pursed as he heard the soft voice answer. “With a few penances - my lord - contrition, of course-“
” - and if I told you I had murder in my heart - murder for the stupid clod that stands in my way - what then? Still a few penances, still absolution?”
There was a longer pause. Nirac, straining at the hole, clenched the edges of the wall with his little brown hands, for the Duke went on harshly, “Nay, I cannot do it! You need not rack your conscience for a compromise. The husband is my liege man and feal to me, and he is sickly - wounded - hating him as I do, yet I’ve helped him heal of his wounds, but my God, why does he not die?”
Nirac silently withdrew from behind the arras. Alone in the disused infirmary, he laughed softly from pure joy. “O Sainte Vierge, je te remercie de ta grande bonte!” he whispered and made a reverent sign of the cross.
In the mid-afternoon, while the Duke dined in the Grande Salle with the English, Aquitainian and Castilian nobles, Nirac set forth for the alley behind the cathedral. The little Moorish dwarf trotted beside him swinging the popinjay in its cage, while the chained monkey scampered along the ground.
Everywhere they passed, the people crowded around laughing at the monkey, poking and feeling of the dwarf and urging that he do tricks, but Nirac. would not let his charges pause until they came into the courtyard below the Swynford lodgings. There, Nirac told the dwarf to wait, while he clambered up the stone steps to the first floor.
Katherine opened to Nirac’s knock. Her pale strained face lightened when she saw him perky and grinning on the threshold.
“Morbleu, but ‘tis dark and morne in ‘ere!” cried Nirac bowing to Hugh who was up, sitting on a chair beside a table littered with the remnants of dinner, his injured leg propped on a stool. Ellis had gone out to make them some small purchases at the fair. “One should be gay on this jour de fete” continued Nirac, noting Ellis’s absence with satisfaction. “I’ve brought you somesing to amuse you, pour vous distraire.”
“That was kind of you, Nirac,” said Katherine smiling. “It’s a bit dismal in here, but Hugh is so much better, I believe he’ll soon be out.”
“Ah bon !” Nirac looked now neither at Hugh nor Katherine, his quick eyes ran around the rooms, resting on the flagon of wine, then on the clay cup of medicine by the bedside. “The good Brother William prescribes fine drugs for you, hein?” he said. “They make you well, Sir Knight?”
Hugh grunted quite amiably. He didn’t like Nirac, but he realised how dull it must be for Katherine cooped up here, and if the little jackanapes amused her-. Also he was free from
pain in the leg or gripes in the belly for the first time in weeks. “To be sure, the Grey Friar knows his craft,” he agreed, “and my lady sees that I take his swill.” He glanced at the clay cup which contained the black camphorated poppy juice. Nirac nodded, then turning quickly said to Katherine, “But are you not curious to know what I ‘ave brought you?”
“A new song?” she smiled, knowing Nirac’s many gifts, “or maybe a comic figure you’ve carved?”
“Nenni - belle dame ! Those would not make you laugh so much. Come to the window.”
Their only window gave on to the courtyard and Katherine leaning out cried, “Oh, what is it? A manikin! Is he real? And the green bird, and a little beast jumping on the ground - oh, Hugh, you never saw so droll a sight!”
“But ‘e may see it, madame. See, we’ll ‘elp ‘im to the window, ‘e can sit there and watch.”
Hugh was himself curious, and while Katherine supported his leg Nirac shoved the chair over so Hugh might see out, then Nirac said, “But you, madame - you must see them close and ‘ear the dwarf’s so foolish jokes. Do you go down and I’ll stay with Sir Hugh.”
She hesitated, but Hugh said, “Go along Katherine, tell him to do a trick. I saw a monkey once in Castile could juggle nuts like a Christian. Ask him can his monkey juggle.”
Katherine ran downstairs into the
courtyard, where already a small crowd had gathered around the dwarf, who began to tumble across the courtyard like a leather bouncing ball.
Hugh leaned far over the sill to see and hear what he could, and when the monkey strutted and stamped its feet and slapped its tiny hands on its backside in imitation of the dwarf, Hugh let out a hoarse guffaw.
Nirac’s business took only a minute. The Gascon murmured excuse, to which Hugh paid no attention, and walked into the bedroom to relieve himself into the slop jar, then with a lightning motion he snatched a leaden phial from within his tunic, and emptied grey-white powder into the clay cup which was still half filled with Brother William’s drug. The alchemist had said the powder was antimoine, as is monk’s-bane, but would answer Nirac’s specifications even though the recipient be no monk. Nirac did not touch the cup, but with one eye on Hugh’s back, he stirred hard with a little stick he had brought. The powder swirled and disappeared into the black mixture. He slipped the stick and empty phial into his tunic and walked back to the window, crying over Hugh’s shoulder, “Ah, but ‘ow droll - mordieu! The monkey and the popinjay they marry - see! Tis that trick make the Princess Isabel scream with mirth.” Nirac’s voice trembled, a sudden brief fit of shaking seized on him and passed. Hugh noticed nothing.
When the dwarf had run through all his repertoire, Katherine came back, her face flushed with laughter, and cried, “Ah, Nirac, how good of you it was to give us such a treat!”
Hugh nodded, still smiling a little. “Ay, gramerci,” he said. ” ‘Twas courteously done. Here’s silver for the dwarf” - he fumbled in his purse and held out some pennies.
Nirac hesitated only a moment before he took the money. “I must return to ‘is Grace,” he said, looking at Katherine. ” ‘Is Grace cannot do without Nirac Always ‘e look for me, depend on me.”
“To be sure,” she said indulgently, but the happy flush faded and the gnawing pain she had forgotten for a few minutes returned.