Katherine

by Anya Seton

  Only a handful were heavy-hearted on that Saturday night and joined John Ball, who fled up towards the Midlands crying that this day’s deeds were not as God had willed it, that the fellowship must go on, that its work was but half completed, crying, “Put not your trust in princes!” Few listened to him.

  Cob left London too that night. He joined a company of homegoing northerners who had not yet their charters, but one of the King’s men explained that there was no cause to wait, soon proclamation would be made throughout the land that serfdom was abolished.

  So Cob and his companions started on the North road to Waltham, and as they marched they sang.

  CHAPTER XXVI

  The fine weather broke during that night while most of the rebels were marching home, and Sunday morning in London dawned in a sticky drizzle. The loft above the fish-shop was dank and grey when Katherine opened her eyes. She lay quietly for a time on the feather bed looking up at the rafters and wondering exactly where she was, aware at first only of hunger and weakness and that there was a sore place on the back of her head. She knew that a long time had passed since she had been fully aware, though she had a confused memory of wandering through streets with Cob o’ Fenton, of lying down up here and waking sometimes to drink water; but mostly she had slept. There had been a confusion of terrible dreams: sinister faces leering like gargoyles - Jack Maudelyn, his jaw jutting out one-sided in a monstrous way, a man with a red beard who, while shattering Avalon’s windowpanes with a pike, counted inanely, “Oon, twa, tree - -” There had been a huge glowering black-jowled man who kept saying, “Who are ye then?” There had been sticky pools of blood with Joli-coeur’s crystal splinters glittering in them.

  Katherine twisted her head from side to side to throw off the clinging haze of horror, but the dream memories persisted. Now she saw Brother William’s pallid doomed face as he cried out, “God in His mercy save you, Katherine!” and heard the dull squashing thud before he fell by the fireplace. She saw Blanchette in a blood-soaked grey chamber robe, smiling a secret smile, curtsying to the man who asked, “Who are ye then?”

  Katherine shuddered and sat up dizzily. Her gaze focused slowly and was caught by the little wooden Calvary that stood on a bracket above a Pessoner clothes coffer. She stared at the cross, which was the size of Brother William’s crucifix and of the same dark wood, she stared until it wavered and grew, until it loomed big as a window and blotted out all light behind it.

  “No,” she whispered, shrinking back on to the bed, “Jesu, NO!” She pushed her hands out in front of her as though she pushed against a falling weight. Her breath came ragged and fast. After a moment she pulled herself off the bed and looked down at her green gown. It was cut short below the knees and spotted with little charred holes. This is the gown I put on Thursday morning in the garderobe when Brother William came to warn us, to warn me and Blanchette. She lifted the skirt and looked at her shift; there were scorches on it, and red burns in the flesh of her thighs.

  “God have mercy on me,” said Katherine aloud, “for those were no dreams.” Her nails dug deep into her sweating palms, she stumbled through the door towards the stairs.

  An hour ago Master Guy had brought Dame Emma back from St. Helen’s priory, the danger being over; and the goodwife was standing by the hearth directing the maids, who were setting the place to rights again.

  Dame Emma started as Katherine wavered down the stairs clinging to the rail. “Sweet Mother Mary!” cried Emma running to her, “Guy said ye were asleep - dear, dear.” She clicked her tongue as she saw Katherine’s gown, the matted tangled hair.

  “Blanchette - -” said Katherine in a faint dead voice.

  “I must find Blanchette. She ran away in the Savoy - what day is it now?”

  ” ‘Tis Sunday,” said Dame Emma. “But ye can’t go anywhere like that, my lady. Sit down!” she cried sharply as Katherine swayed. “God love us, what’s happened?”

  “Happened enough, in truth,” said the fishmonger. Now that the revolt was over, he was expansive with relief. “Poor lass’s been lying up there mizzy-headed for days.”

  At his wife’s shocked exclamation he said defensively, “Old Elias, he looked to her, brought her water.”

  Dame Emma poured forth a stream of anxious inquiry, then checked it for more practical matters. She made Katherine sit on the settle and put a pillow to her head. She fed her wine sip by sip until faint colour came back to the hollow cheeks.

  Katherine did all that she was told and concentrated her mind on regaining strength fast. By noon the swimming feebleness had gone, and she was ready.

  “Have you a horse that I may borrow?” she said to the hovering dame. “I must find Blanchette. God help me that so much time was lost.” She spoke with a steadiness that silenced the good wife’s protests.

  Emma docilely commandeered her husband’s gelding and had a boy saddle it. She dressed Katherine in one of Hawise’s old russet-coloured kittles, but nothing would persuade her to let Katherine go unaccompanied through the streets. The revolt in London had ended but there were still carousing rebels left, and punitive bands of the King’s men riding about and restoring order while they searched for Jack Strawe and one or two of the other leaders who had forfeited the right of amnesty. Master Guy had gone to bed exhausted by the last days’ events, but the Dame decided that she herself would go pillion behind Katherine. She was motivated not only by kindness but by a livery curiosity.

  Secluded as she had been in St. Helen’s during the three days of rebellion, she had heard nothing but the wildest rumours of burnings and beheadings, and she thought them much exaggerated. She sympathised with Katherine’s anxiety over her child, of course, but she thought that that worry would doubtless be soon resolved. The little lass would be found hiding in some safe nook in the Savoy.

  Katherine made no objection to Dame Emma’s company, nor to the presence of the armed prentice that the Dame routed out from the fishhouse. She did not speak as they rode in a grey drizzle through London streets towards Ludgate, and beyond it to the Fleet.

  Dame Emma’s cheerful chatter was soon hushed, her fat comely face fell into dismay and finally to round-eyed horror when they skirted the ruins of the Temple. Ahead of them on the Strand, the Savoy had always loomed in a mass of crenellated walls, of gleaming white turrets and pinnacles with fluttering pennants, and the gold spire on the chapel topping all.

  Now there was nothing. No shape against the empty sky - nothing but a vast expanse of rubble behind a shell of crumbling blackened walls.

  Katherine dismounted, while the prentice held the horse. She began to walk towards the ruins, Dame Emma behind her. A little group of folk stood in the fields where Katherine had lain on Thursday. They were gaping at the remains of the Savoy and muttering to each other. As the women approached, a goggle-eyed man greeted them with the familiarity of shared excitement and cried, “It do be a horrid marvel, don’t it? There was a score o’ rebels trapped in there, they say ye could hear ‘em screaming till Friday eve. Be haunted now for sure, John o’ Gaunt’s Savoy’ll be - I’ll not go down the Strand after sundown, that I won’t.”

  Katherine walked past the group and turned through the blocks of fallen masonry that had been the gatehouse. She clambered over the still warm rubble into what had been the Outer Ward.

  “Lady Katherine,” panted Dame Emma, wheezing and clattering after her, “come back - there’s naught to find in there ye can see, and there’s danger - that bit o’ wall maught fall.”

  Katherine stumbled on, picking her way over charred fragments of beams and blackened stones until she stood near the falcon mew, which was now a heap of wood ashes. She looked up at the roofless segment of Thames-side wall that stood silhouetted black against the horizon, its vacant window-frames showing lancet shapes of the grey sky beyond. She saw, high above, the outline of the fireplace that had been in the Avalon Chamber, but the great rose marble mantel had fallen to the paving below and shattered.

  Up there,
where there was now no floor, they had stood on either side of the fireplace when Brother William was killed - she and Blanchette. On that spot the girl had spoken to the black-jowled leader before she ran from the room towards the stairs. Katherine turned to look for the Great Stairs that had led up to the Privy Suite. From the place where the stairs had been a little cloud of steamy smoke still rose, hissing faintly under the rain.

  “Sweeting,” said Dame Emma, laying her hand on Katherine’s arm, “come away, do. There’s naught here but ruin. The little lass’ll have run to safety somewhere, ye’ll find her.”

  “To safety?” repeated Katherine. “Nay - she did not think of safety when she ran from me crying that I was - was - oh

  God-” she whispered. “Dame Emma, go away. Leave me alone awhile. Leave me - -” She sank to her knees by a block of burned stone and lifted her eyes up to the empty slits that had been the windows of the Avalon Chamber.

  Dame Emma obeyed, so profoundly shocked that she did not heed the blackening of her neat kidskin shoes and the tearing of her fine woolsey gown. She withdrew to the mass of fallen stone at the gatehouse. Heedless even of the rain, she settled herself to wait. She looked back into the distance where she could just see Lady Katherine kneeling, and Dame Emma’s eyes crinkled up like a baby’s, tears spilled from them.

  She shivered as the rain soaked through her mantle and dampened her plump shoulders, and she looked to see if Lady Katherine were not yet ready to leave this dreadful place. Katherine had moved, and was now with bent head walking slowly about the Outer Ward. While Dame Emma watched, she saw the tall russet-clad figure lean over and pick up something, then stand stock-still, holding it to her breast for some moments before coming towards the dame.

  Katherine held out an object on her open palm. “Look,” she said in the heavy far-away tone, “do you see this, Dame Emma?”

  It was a small silvery half-melted mass. The dame asked uncertainly, “Is’t a clasp?”

  “I think so,” said Katherine with stony quiet. “It might be the clasp on Blanchette’s chamber robe.”

  The dame stifled her gasp of dismay and cried heartily, “Nay, ‘tis no clasp, and if it were - it means naught.”

  “It lay in the ashes of the falcon mew,” said Katherine. “She loved birds, perhaps she ran there.” Then had Blanchette run also to the men who caroused drunkenly in the cellars? “I shall be a whore, good sir - mayhap a murdering whore like my mother.” No memory was spared Katherine now of what had taken place on Thursday.

  “Blanchette was touched by madness when she ran from the Avalon Chamber,” said Katherine in the same toneless voice. ” ‘Twas not from the horror of the Grey Friar’s blood upon her, but from the horror of what she had heard him say before that.”

  “Think not o’ horrors, dear,” cried Dame Emma. “Come away - this does no good.”

  “Ah, but I must think on it,” said Katherine. “I can no longer hide from truth. Good dame, my friend, you don’t know what my sin has been. I did not wholly know, but the Grey Friar did, and God in His vengeance has stricken my innocent child as the first means of my punishment.”

  “Nay, nay,” Dame Emma expostulated, pitying the lady’s haggard look, thinking that this morbidness was well explained by all the fearful happenings of the last days, but anxious only to get Katherine back to dryness and comfort.

  Katherine said no more, and came with Dame Emma, un-protesting. She mounted the horse where it waited down the Strand. They rode a little way until they came to the Church of St. Clement Danes, where Katherine pulled up the gelding. “It was here that I married Hugh Swynford,” she said.

  “Oh ay - I’d forgot,” answered the dame, puzzled. ” ‘Twas so long ago.”

  “I thought it was long ago.” Katherine looped the reins on the pommel. “I know now it was but yesterday.” She dismounted. “Dame Emma, I’ve kept you out enough in the rain. Please leave me here and go home. Nay, I’ve no need of protection - Jesu, do you think any danger could matter to me now?”

  “But the services are over - there’s no one there,” protested the dame staring at the empty little church.

  Katherine gave her a faint blind smile. She turned into the church porch as the dame reluctantly rode off.

  Katherine knelt by the altar rail where her Nuptial Mass had been celebrated, and her eyes fixed themselves on the ruby light above the sanctuary. She knelt motionless, forcing herself back into that moment when a man had knelt with her, a man to whom she had given forced unconsidered vows - until at last she reconstructed the presence of that stocky armoured figure beside her. She felt the surliness, the roughness that had revolted her then, but she felt plainly too, as she had not then, the pathos of the clumsy groping love to which she had made no return but endurance and a pitying contempt. That love of Hugh’s had burgeoned again for Blanchette - and had no chance to flower.

  Katherine, inflexibly reliving the moments of her marriage, heard the rustling in the back of the church, the clink of golden spurs - she saw the priest hesitate and stop, the leap of flattered awe in his eyes. She saw herself walk down the aisle into the Duke’s arms, yielding to him her mouth, her body, her allegiance; in the presence of the husband she had sworn herself to - and in the presence of God.

  Here in this church had been the beginning of two long roads, one that ended in a shabby little room in Bordeaux in a death that would not have been except for her; the other road had ended in blood and fire and madness in the Avalon Chamber. Yet were they not the same road after all?

  Above in the tower the bell began to toll for vespers, and Katherine arose and pushed aside a leather curtain. It was the priest himself who hauled the rope, and he stared at her in astonishment.

  “Father,” said Katherine, “was it you who was priest here fifteen years ago, did you once come from Lincolnshire?”

  “Ay, my daughter.” He was a mousy ill-fed man with anxious darting eyes, a sickly rash on his face - and in the sparse grey hair of his tonsure. “What is it?”

  “I wish to make confession to you.”

  Father Oswald was at once flustered. He disliked the unusual, and he tried to put Katherine off by saying that it was

  Sunday, that she was not of his parish, that in any case it was time for vespers.

  She replied that she would wait and looked at him with so tragic an urgency that he became still more confused, until she added in a strange voice, “I am a Swynford, Father - Katherine Swynford, Sir Hugh Swynford’s widow - ay, I see that means something to you.” For he started and the raw scabs on his face blended with its sudden redness. He remembered well the marriage now, it was to Swynford influence that he had owed this living twenty years ago, and he remembered the moment when the great Duke and Duchess of Lancaster had appeared in the back of his church, for he had boasted of it often.

  But after vespers, when he listened through the grille to the woman’s low anguished voice, he was appalled. He could scarce listen to her for fear of the things she told him, dreadful secrets that he did not wish to know. Murder of Sir Hugh, her husband - said the voice - not deliberate but murder in God’s sight, a Grey Friar had said so, Brother William Appleton, who had himself been murdered. Ten years of adultery with the Duke of Lancaster resultant upon this murder. And she spoke of a child, who had been driven mad, who might be dead too.

  “Cease, daughter!” said the priest at last in a trembling voice. “I cannot grant you absolution, no priest could - -“

  “I know,” said Katherine. ” ‘Tis not of my own soul I’m thinking. It is of my child’s. Father, surely a merciful God will accept from me some penance that will save Blanchette, wherever she be.”

  “Penance - ay, what penance?” stammered the little priest, wanting only to be rid of her. Now it came clearer to his panicking mind that this woman was protected by the Duke, the Duke who was all-powerful and might remove a meddlesome priest as easily as he would squash a fly. On the other hand the Duke’s great palace had been burned by the reb
els and he was hated by the common folk whose vengeance also might include a priest.

  “True contrition, give up your evil life, make reparation, mortify your senses - -” he gabbled quickly. “Daughter, I cannot tell you what else - go to your own priest. Go - go - -” and he pulled the shutter over the grille.

  Katherine walked from the church with dragging steps. She went again down Fleet Street through Ludgate. By St. Paul’s Close she stopped and gazed up at the cathedral spire. After a while she entered the huge shadowed nave and walked down it to the chantry by the Lady Chapel, where two candles burned on the little altar and shone on the serene alabaster face and the long white hands that were upraised in perpetual prayer.

  Katherine knelt beside the tomb and reached out to touch one corner of the sculptured robe while she spoke to the Lady Blanche. Dearest lady - if I have wronged you too, forgive, but you know that I never meant wrong towards you, and you knew what it is to love him, as I have loved him. So forgive - and tell me how to save my child who is your namesake.

  The lovely face shimmered in the dimness of the chantry, it floated, high above, pure and cool as a star. A spirit. How should it give comfort to one who had denied the spirit these long years, who had been sufficient unto herself, who had lived for nothing but her own desires?

  Outside the cathedral the grey light waned and the rain blew harder. Along the choir aisles a verger passed from time to time and stared curiously at the woman in simple russet gown and goodwife’s coif who wept beside the Duchess of Lancaster’s tomb. At last when Paul’s bell began to ling for Compline, Katherine raised her head and spoke to Blanche again. Lady, I see now that it was yet one more wickedness that I should ask you to help me. And she struggled up from her cramped knees.

  Then it seemed the candlelight brightened on the alabaster features, and in Katherine’s head she heard the echo of a soft voice that said, “Walsingham,” while she saw the Lady Blanche’s living face as it had been that Christmastide at Bolingbroke, radiant with fruition for that she bore in her womb Henry, the heir of Lancaster; and Katherine remembered what Blanche had said: “Some day you must make pilgrimage to Our Lady of Walsingham, who is especially kind and merciful to mothers-“