by Anya Seton
He did not know himself why he yearned to take her to the wildness and grandeur of the Pyrenees. Perhaps it was that he wished to be alone with her in lands which did not owe him suzerainty and where no one could know him. Perhaps it was the more primitive instinct of seeking the most beautiful of natural frames for their love.
And on the second day as they crossed Les Landes, when they saw the Pyrenees, ragged crests of purple shadows tinged with silver, sharp-etched against the southern sky, Katherine caught her breath. Tears came to her eyes. She shared at once with him the mystic exaltation that called out to them like a great chord of music from these mountains, and as they penetrated through the strange Basque lands into Navarre, climbing ever upward amongst rushing streams, rock cliffs and the darkness of pines, their love deepened. No longer frenzied in its physical hunger but sustained and quietened by a spirit higher than themselves.
One day they reached Roncevalles at the top of the pass near the Pas de Roland where Charlemagne’s great paladin had been killed six hundred years before. Here there was a large abbey built for the accommodation of travellers and pilgrims between Spain and France. But they avoided the abbey with its curious priests and summer load of wayfarers and pushed on some miles to a tiny mountain inn.
This inn was a rendezvous for smugglers and accustomed to receiving all manner of guests. The black-eyed landlady asked no questions, responded with a shrug to John’s halting Basque, bit the silver coin he gave her, and allotted them a small clean chamber over the storage room, while the captal’s two servitors were quartered in one of the many caves hollowed out of the cliff.
The days that John and Katherine spent at the inn were a timeless enchantment. They slept on a pile of sweet-smelling hay. They drank the strong heady wine that was poured from goatskins, and ate trout and ecrevisses and hot tasty dishes brewed with the red peppers that dangled like strings of great rubies along the creamy inn walls. They wandered off amongst the mountains and found a small pastured valley by a waterfall where-Katherine picked wild flowers: the tiny lemon-coloured saxifrages, violet ramondia, white spiky asphodel, and alpen-rose. She wove them into garlands while John lay on the velvet greensward beside her, pelting her lazily with the flowers, or content to watch her. Sometimes they sang together, and he often recited to her poems and ballads he had learned in his youth.
In this bright secret valley which they had made their own, there was a ruined chapel, abandoned long ago by the mountaineers, who thought it haunted by the wild mountain spirits. Two of the chapel walls had fallen into rubble, but against a portion of the east wall the rough square altar still stood. It was carved with odd runic scrolls and supported a stone crucifix.
When nearly a week had passed there came a night that Katherine felt a change. New dark urgency and restlessness were on her lover, he embraced her with more violent, even brutal, passion. Several times he started to speak to her but checked himself, and she was afraid.
She fell at last into heavy, miserable sleep. When she awoke the first rays of the sun came through the window. She started up with a cry, for he was not beside her. She waited and called, but there was no answer. She dressed with clumsy shaking fingers, ran down through the deserted inn and outside into the cool sunrise.
Palamon was in the stable. He whickered gently as she spoke to him, so she guessed where John had gone, and ran up the stony hills and through the beech and pine copses until she reached their valley. At first she could not find him,, then she looked upward and saw a tall solitary figure standing on top of a little peak that guarded the valley to the south.
She slowed her pace and climbed up to him silently. He did not move as she joined him on the summit; she thought he had not heard her. His head was lifted, his tawny hair stirred in the wind, while he gazed with fixed sombre intensity over distant plains that lay spread out far below them to the dim horizon.
Her heart beat hard and painfully, seeing that he had indeed gone from her, and there was no welcome.
Yet as she turned to go he spoke, without looking at her, his gaze still fastened on the horizon. “That is Castile, far yonder where the gold light falls on the hills.”
Castile. The word hissed like an adder. “I hate it, hate it!” she cried. The hoarse shaking voice was not her own, she tried to stop it and could not. “I hate it, and I hate her, the Castilian woman! Tell me, my Lord Duke-who-would-be-king, when will the Castilian wench become a bride?”
His nostrils flared, he jerked around on her with a violence to match her own, “You dare to speak to me like that! You forget, Katrine - -“
“Forget! Can I ever forget that this is pretence! Can I ever forget your royal birth or your royal hopes? Yet I do dare to say I hate them. I am no duchess, no queen, but I have been your equal in love, for this I dare to tell you how I feel.”
Anger died from his eyes. He bent his head and stepped towards her. “Dear heart, we are equal in love. You’ve no cause for hatred, for you shall never leave me. I’ve been thinking, and have decided what’s to be done. You shall go back to England at once and wait for me at the Savoy-“
“And I’m to be your leman for all the world to see, like Alice Perrers to the King? And what of your new Duchess, the Queen Costanza? How will she like this arrangement?”
He stiffened and said coldly, “You have little knowledge of courts. It is a common arrangement. Be reasonable. After all, we have been lovers this past fortnight without scruples.”
“This past fortnight, my lord, we have hurt or dishonoured no one. We are both - still - free.” Her voice broke. She looked at him with anguish and fled down the hillside, stumbling and tripping on the rough ground until she reached the valley, where moved by blind impulse she ran into the little ruined chapel and flung herself down to her knees with her hands clasped on the altar.
She felt him kneel down beside her and then, after a moment, a touch on her arm. He said very low, “Look at me.”
She raised her head slowly and obeyed. Tears stood in his eyes, and his arrogant mouth quivered. He took her right hand in his and spoke solemnly, “Here on consecrated ground, I, John, do plight thee, Katrine, my love and in token do give thee this ring, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” He drew from his finger the sapphire seal ring that Blanche had given him and slipped it on Katherine’s middle finger. She stared down at it and a sob tore up from her chest.
They both turned to the blunted little stone crucifix, and through the roofless chapel their prayers floated out to mingle with the murmur of the waterfall.
On September 18, three days before the Feast of Saint Matthew, Katherine sat alone in a guest chamber of the Benedictine nunnery at Bordeaux. Her travelling chest had been brought here to her, and she was again dressed in her black mourning robes, her braided hair bound into black velvet cauls and covered with a thin veil. A breeze pungent with the tang of fresh-trampled grapes from a hundred villages carried the distant shouts of the peasants working in the vineyards. Katherine sat quietly by the window looking out over the harbour where a cluster of masts dipped and swung with the ripples of the Garonne. Her face was white and still. Though her eyes were swollen from nights of stifled weeping, now she had no more tears.
She waited for the summons she knew would come, and wondered without interest on which of those ships out there she was to sail on the morrow.
A little nun knocked on the door, entered, flustered and blushing, to say that madame had a most important caller - the Duke’s own physician, the Franciscan, Brother William. He was awaiting her in the parlour.
Katherine smiled thanks and rose. The little nun peered up at her admiringly. If the prioress knew anything about this beautiful widow who seemed so unhappy and gave no information about herself, she was the only one at the convent who did.
Cause enough to be unhappy, said the cellaress acidly, with the poor lady’s husband dead and she so far from home. Yet the nuns were not satisfied, there was some mystery about Lady Swynford and
a glamour that intrigued them. They whispered about her as they sat at work or walked in the cloisters and found her nearly as interesting as the topic that excited all Bordeaux. The royal wedding in three days. When the Duke and new Duchess returned from the marriage at Roquefort there would be a procession right down the street past the convent; by hanging out of the windows they would see the handsome Duke, golden as the sun, strong as a lion, people said, and see his Castilian bride - a queen, for all she was but seventeen.
” ‘Tis such a pity, madam, that you do not stay for the wedding,” said the little nun, as she accompanied Katherine down to the parlour. “It will be so gay with fifty trumpeters, they say, and jongleurs from Provence!”
Lady Swynford did not answer.
Brother William had been chatting with the portress, he turned as Katherine entered and bowed. Beneath his black cowl his eyes were severe, he did not smile at her as he used to do.
He glanced at the portress and the nun, who vanished. Katherine sank down on a stool, clasping her hands tight on a fold of her skirt, but she raised her face to the friar and waited with mute dignity for him to speak.
His gaze softened only a trifle as he stared down at her and saw the shadows beneath her wide grey eyes and the lines of suffering that pulled at her mouth. Then he shook his head. “I had never thought to come to such a woman as you, with the sort of message I bring. The Duke awaits you in his presence chamber. He cannot receive you except as one of the many who are filing through for audience, because at present great discretion is required.” Brother William stopped, frowning.
“I know,” she said. Dull red flowed up her cheeks. Her gaze rested on the knotted scourge that girded the friar’s grey habit, then dropped to his dusty bare feet.
“It would be wise,” continued the Brother with chill distaste, “for you to remove that ring you wear. It would be as familiar to many at the palace as it is to myself.”
She took off the sapphire seal ring and slipped it in her bosom.
“The Duke will manage that you have a few minutes alone together, but the time must necessarily be brief so as not to arouse suspicion. I am therefore directed to repeat the arrangements His Grace had made for you and to which he commands and also implores your final consent.”
Katherine swallowed and said dully, “I am sailing tomorrow on whatever ship he has selected.”
“Ay, and when you land you proceed to the Savoy bearing official letters which will grant you fifty marks at once and appoint you Resident Governess to His Grace’s two little daughters, the Ladies Philippa and Elizabeth. You may send for your sister, Mistress Chaucer, and your own two children from Lincolnshire to join you at the Savoy, where they also will be provided for. You will remain at the Savoy until the Duke returns.” The friar paused, before adding with biting emphasis, “When, I gather, further intimacies will continue to be suitably rewarded.”
“Brother William!” Katherine jumped to her feet. “You’ve no right to speak to “me like that! I’ve already refused these arrangements. I did refuse them, though now - now-” She bit her lips until the blood surged back into them purple. “You’ve no right to judge! What can you know of love, or of a woman’s heart? Do you think I don’t suffer?”
The friar drew a long sigh. “Peace, child,” he said, “peace! I don’t judge you, that is for God to do. He knows what’s in your secret heart. I see only a guilty love. Guilty,” he repeated half to himself and gazed at her intently with his keen physician’s eyes. “Nirac de Bayonne is ill,” he said.
“Nirac - -” she cried in an amazement that the watchful friar knew was” innocent and unfeigned. “Why do you speak of him, now? Oh, I’m sorry he’s ill, poor little scamp. He’ll cure soon enough if the Duke is kind to him, I warrant.”
So, I believe that I am quite wrong, thought the friar with deep relief. This girl at least knew nothing, if there were truly anything to know. Nirac had had two attacks like fits of madness, in which the Grey Friar had been called to tend him and soon discovered that these fits came from the taking of drugs obtained from some disreputable alchemist in the Basque quarter of town. During these fits Nirac had shouted out strange words and vague sinister allusions, coupled with Katherine and Hugh Swynford’s names but actually nothing more than what an excited brain might invent. The friar was ashamed of the dreadful suspicions that had come to him.
He spoke more kindly to Katherine as they hurried towards the palace together.
To reach the Presence Chamber they had to traverse the palace cloisters. In the central garth a crowd of lords and ladies amused themselves, some tossing a gilded leather ball, some wagering piles of silver coins on the roll of ivory jewel-studded dice. The Princess Isabel sat on a blue velvet chair in the shade of a mulberry tree, munching candied rose petals and gossiping with Lady Roos of Hamlake. Her brother, Edmund of Langley, lounged beside her chair while he tickled the sensitive nose of Isabel’s spaniel with an ostrich feather.
The Princess’ sharp eyes missed very little. She spied Katherine’s black-robed figure as the girl approached the Great Stairs and called out peremptorily, “My Lady Swynford!”
The girl started and glanced at the Grey Friar in distress. He said, “You must go to her,” with some sympathy, for he did not like the Duke’s sister.
Katherine moved slowly across the turf and curtsied to the Princess, who said, “I’ve heard some rumour that your knight has died, God rest his soul. I see,” she glanced at Katherine’s gown, “that it is so. A pity. Was it not some time ago?”
“A month, madam,” said Katherine faintly. Edmund having made the spaniel sneeze looked up, his mouth fell open as he stared at Katherine. He scrambled to his feet and waving the ostrich feather cried, “And where have you been since, my lovely burde? So fair a widow should not go unconsoled.” He leered at her with mawkish gallantry, and Katherine looked away, stricken by the caricatured resemblance to his brother in this weak, foolish face.
“Quiet, Edmund,” said the Princess as though she addressed the spaniel. “Where are you bound now?” she pursued to Katherine, her instinctive resentment sharpening her voice, though in truth she had forgotten Lady Swynford since she saw her on the boat and had no motive but curiosity.
“To crave leave of departure from my Lord Duke, madam. It - it has been arranged that I sail home tomorrow.”
“Ah,” said Isabel satisfied, “back to that North Country whence you came? Some village with a silly name, a kettle in it, what was it?”
“Kettlethorpe, madam,” said Katherine, and stood waiting while Isabel chortled and Edmund giggled amiably and continued to eye the girl with warmth. “Have I your leave to depart now, madam?”
Isabel nodded and crammed another fistful of sugared comfits into her mouth. Katherine curtsied again and rejoined Brother William, who had been watching the way she bore herself and thinking that she was hard to condemn as wholeheartedly as his conscience bade him do for this scandalous intrigue she had plunged into while her husband lay but four days dead. As she stood before those two Plantagenets in the garden, she had seemed more royal than they and fashioned of a finer metal. Yet she was weak, debased by the sins of the flesh, and he must guard himself from excusing her because of the beauty of her flesh: a lure devised by the ever-guileful Devil.
They entered the crowded anteroom past the yeoman-on-guard, and Brother William introduced her to the chamberlain, who said that my Lady Swynford would be received in her due turn. Katherine sat on a bench between one of the Castilian envoys and a Florentine goldsmith who held on his lap a casket of jewelled trinkets which he hoped to sell to the Duke as gifts for the bride.
The Grey Friar bowed to Katherine gravely and said, “I’ll leave you now, my child, and shall pray that Christ and His Holy Mother strengthen you. Benedicite.”
She bowed her head.
Her head remained bowed while those ahead of her filed into the Presence Chamber: an abbess from Perigueux, a distressed knight and his lady from the Dordogne
, the Castilian, the goldsmith, a messenger with letters from Flanders. At last the chamberlain spoke her name and a page resplendent in dazzling blue and grey livery came to usher her. An unknown squire received her at the door of the Presence Chamber and opened it for her to enter.
The Duke sat in a gilded canopied chair that was raised on a low dais. On his head he wore a coronet studded with cabochons, rough lumps of emeralds, balas rubies. His surcote of crimson velvet was furred with ermine and above the gold Lancastrian SS collar his face was tired and bleak.
They looked at each other, then looked away while the Duke said in his voice of chill command, “I will see this lady alone.” The squire and a clerk who had been seated at a table silently withdrew.
She stood where she was in the middle of the floor, until he reached out his hand and said, “Come to me, Katrine.”
She went over to the dais and kissed his hand. He drew her slowly up against him and kissed her on the lips.
“Brother William gave you my message?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“You’ll not refuse again, my dear one. I must know that you’ll be there, waiting for me.”
“I cannot refuse again,” she said in a strangled voice, “for I believe I bear your child.”
“Jesu!” he cried, his eyes blazed with light. “My child! My son! You will give me a son, Katrine. Another royal Plantagenet!”
“A bastard,” she said, turning her head.
“But my son. He shall never suffer from it. Katrine, now you cannot leave me! I’ll give you the world and all that’s in it, I’ll cherish you, care for you, you’ll never know a hardship or a worry! You shall see what it is to be loved by the Duke of Lancaster!”