Katherine

by Anya Seton

  The mother and daughter could not speak much for a long time. They wept together quietly and after a while they prayed on Katherine’s prie-dieu. It was only bit by bit that Katherine comprehended her daughter’s story. Blanchette was unaccustomed to talking, and her deafness, result of the scarlet fever, had increased her withdrawal into an interior world which satisfied her.

  She made this clear: the convent life contented her, she wished for no other, there was no doubt that she had a true vocation. She was grateful to the nuns, who had sheltered the wild half-demented child who had come to them fifteen years ago, and who had accepted her as a novice later, though she had no dowry and pretended that she did not know her name. “I never told anything about myself,” said Blanchette. “I couldn’t. My soul was eaten up with fear, fear and hate.

  Mother,” she took a sharp breath and looked deep into Katherine’s eyes, “did I hear wrong that day in the Avalon Chamber?”

  It was as Katherine had suspected all these years, the added pain that had lain at the core of her anguished bereavement. Blanchette had misinterpreted the Grey Friar’s accusation and had believed that her mother had deliberately poisoned her father.

  Speaking distinctly, her lips slowly forming each word, Katherine effaced this horror for Blanchette at last. And the grave twenty-nine-year-old nun received the truth and understood, as the frightened child could never have.

  It was the news of the marriage which had stirred Blanchette from her long self-containment. She had begun to remember her mother’s love for her, to see Katherine as a woman who could never commit the hideous crime that the child had believed in. “And - I thought, I felt, that you could not have married the Duke if it were true.”

  Later Blanchette, speaking with even greater effort, told of how she had escaped from the Savoy; though that time was for her now a dim fantastic memory. From the Avalon Chamber she had run to hide in the falcon mew. “How long I don’t know, the hawks in there frightened me; I had forgotten you, forgotten what was happening to the Savoy. I thought only of my green linnet in its cage upstairs.”

  She had gone back up the secret stairs to the Privy Suite to find her bird. The suite was filled with smoke and the roar of approaching fire. The bird lay dead on the bottom of its cage which the rebels had tossed in a corner of the Duchess’ garderobe. As Blanchette picked up the cage, the passageway burst into flames behind her, and she jumped from the window into the Thames. The wooden cage had held her up until a boat came by. It was rowed by a Fleming, who was flying from the massacre of his people that was taking place in London. He hauled Blanchette on board with him and rowed on desperately up the river.

  “I don’t know where he put me ashore, “said Blanchette,” or where I wandered for some days - but I think I was trying to get here to Kenilworth, to you as you used to be. One of the Pinley serfs found me lying exhausted in a field, he brought me to the convent. They thought me daft for a long time, I would not talk and could hear but little, while in my heart was - oh Blessed Christ - -” She turned from her mother and clasping her long delicate hands on the white wool of her habit stared out through the window to the placid mere.

  “Ay,” she said after a while, “it was He and His love that held me, when all other love was twisted into hate.” She got up and kneeling down by Katherine looked up into her face. “Mother, I shall be an anchoress. Ay - I’ve thought much about it, but I had to be free of hatred first. A cell dedicated to God where I shall never more see the outer world.”

  “No, darling, no!” Katherine cried below her breath. “I can’t give you up again.” She had been thinking of what might still be done for Blanchette to make up to her for the youth she had missed. Of how, by special dispensation, Blanchette might visit Kenilworth from time to time, that she might even travel to Kettlethorpe as she had once longed to do.

  Blanchette did not hear the protest, but she saw her mother’s recoil. “It’s right for me to become a recluse,” she said gravely. “God has stopped up my ears, so that I may better hear His voice. By His grace, my prayers will be stronger help to others than aught else I can do. You must not doubt this, Mother, for I know it is so.”

  I know it is so. What dear-bought treasured certainty that was. It seemed to Katherine that above Blanchette’s halting voice she heard the Lady Julian speak. “I saw full surely that it needs be that we should be in longing and in penance until the time that we be led so deep into God that we truly know our own soul.”

  This had happened to Blanchette, she could not doubt it. For this child of hers, the sanctified life of a recluse was right, as it would have been wrong for Katherine, who had so desperately wished to renounce the world during the time of rebellion and anguish in Norfolk.

  Katherine leaned down and kissed her daughter’s forehead, while she thought with humble gratitude of the guidance that had sent her back to the long years of struggle and humiliation. Of the grace that had been shown in the end to help her children to their birthright, to ease the lot of her manor folk at Kettlethorpe - to give of herself to John.

  The women spoke but little more together, nor had need to. They went to vespers together in Kenilworth’s chapel, and afterwards kissed each other a long tender farewell. They would meet once more at the convent when Katherine came back from France, before Blanchette’s final enclosure.

  The prioress had watched all these extraordinary happenings with popping eyes, and was told the truth before the two nuns set forth with their servant back to Pinley. She was also told to keep silence on Dame Ursula’s identity, a promise which she gave the more readily when she realised the advantages resultant upon the Duchess of Lancaster’s new interest in the little priory. Blanchette’s original Deyncourt dowry should be paid them at once and there would be other rewards for the Christian kindness they had shown the girl.

  The Duke stood beside Katherine in the courtyard, while they watched the two white figures disappear through the Mortimer Gate. He looked down at his wife’s face and said softly, “I believe this has given you more happiness than I have ever done. I think I’m jealous of that look in your eyes.”

  “Ah, my dear love,” she said, turning to him, “don’t you see that it’s more than thanksgiving for the safety of the child I so deeply wronged? It’s that this means forgiveness, at last - we are forgiven all that we’ve done to harm others. I feel it.”

  He could not share her certainty, though during the months that they had been together again he had often been touched by the quiet fearless faith, which she had never used to have.

  This day he had received sinister news. A rumour that his brother of Gloucester had been overheard making bloody threats against the King. Whom I shall protect as always, God help me, John thought bitterly. He had pity for his unhappy, confused nephew, and certainly Richard had no one else, left who could protect him now.

  Yet during the past night, John had had a frightful dream of Richard. In the dream the King’s plump girlish body had been clothed in a leopard’s hide, and the cruel yellow eyes had been covertly watching Henry, John’s firstborn and heir. Treachery. The word had been on John’s lips when he finally awoke this morning. The dream-fear faded soon,-but it merged into a haze of sadness and foreboding. He had lain in bed for some time, thinking of the failures in his life, the injustices and stupidities, and of the clouded threatening future.

  He had meant to tell Katherine, the voicing of his thoughts to her would bring relief, but now he could not damp the great joy that had come to her.

  When the two nuns had gone, she had moved instinctively towards the pleasaunce gate and he followed her silently. They walked into the evening quiet of the privy garden. Bees hummed still over the white Persian lilies and the clove gillyflowers, whose fragrance had deepened in the summer dusk. Against the warm brick wall espaliered apricot and pear trees held up green hands studded with golden fruit. The crystal waters of the fountain splashed softly into a mossy marble basin, near the carved oak bench where Katherine and John-s
at down together and gazed out across the mere. Swans glided by with their cygnets, the fringing rushes quivered under the evening breeze.

  The sweetness of the garden had begun to lull John into Katherine’s mood of deep unexpectant peace, when suddenly from the castle ward behind them there erupted the shrill fanfare of a trumpet; dogs barked, and there were shouts of greeting.

  Katherine stirred, rousing herself reluctantly. “Now who could that be arriving?”

  John’s far-sighted eyes had seen a galloping horseman streak by along the causeway. ” ‘Tis a King’s herald,” he said in a down-dragging voice. “Richard will have some new idea for the French envoys, or. discovered some new conspiracy - or worse - I don’t know - Katrine; I have a foreboding - there’s danger ahead.”

  She turned to him on the bench, seeing the tight lines of his mouth, the discouragement in his eyes.

  “It may be so, darling,” she said slowly. “It may be that there is danger - -” She paused and said more softly still, “There was no promise, that we should not be tempested and travailed - but there was a promise.” She smiled and did not go on as she saw that he was not really listening. She put her hand over his, and waited until his clenched fingers relaxed and clasped hers. Handfasted they sat looking out across the darkening lake into the forest beyond.

  Presently comfort came to him, and he thought that she had always given him of her strength though he had never quite realised it until now.

  Glory had passed him by; fame too perhaps would not endure; it might well be that the incalculable goddess would decree ill fame as his due. Perhaps there might not be included in his epitaph the one tribute to his knighthood that he knew he deserved:”II fut toujour bon et loyal chevalier.”

  But whatever the shadowed years might bring, as long as life should last, he knew that he had here at his side one sure recompense and one abiding loyalty.

  AFTERWORD

  T

  he following year, 1397, Richard effected the murder of his Uncle Thomas, Duke of Gloucester, at Calais, while Lord Arundel was beheaded for treason. Shortly thereafter, Richard cruelly and inexplicably exiled Henry of Bolingbroke.

  John, Duke of Lancaster, died a natural death on February 3, 1399, at Leicester Castle, with Katherine by his side. They had been married three years. Upon the Duke’s death, Richard wantonly confiscated all the Lancastrian estates and heritage, and Henry soon returned to England to fight for his rights.

  By popular acclaim, Richard was forced to abdicate in favour of his much-wronged cousin, who thereupon became King Henry the Fourth of England, while Richard was imprisoned in Pontefract Castle, where he soon died. Katherine’s son Thomas Swynford was at that time constable of Pontefract and it was said that by starvation he murdered Richard.

  After her Duke’s death Katherine returned to Lincolnshire, where she lived quietly four years and died on May 10, 1403. She was buried by the High Altar in Lincoln Cathedral, where her son Henry Beaufort, later cardinal and chancellor had duly become bishop. Katherine’s tomb is there now, with that of her Joan.

  From the Beauforts, the royal line of England is descended. Through John Beaufort (Earl of Somerset, Marquis of Dorset), who married Richard’s half-niece, Katherine became the ancestress of Henry the Seventh, and the Tudor line, also of the royal Stuart line of Scotland. Through Joan and Ralph Neville of Raby (Earl of Westmorland), Katherine was great-grandmother to Edward the Fourth, and Richard the Third.

  Surely John of Gaunt and Katherine de Roet, the herald’s daughter, fulfilled the ancient prophecy, “Thou shalt get kings though thou be none.”

  About the author

  Anya Seton was born in New York City and grew up on her father’s large estate in Cos Cob and Greenwich, Connecticut, where visiting Native Americans taught her traditional dancing and woodcraft. One Sioux chief called her Anutika, which means ‘cloud grey eyes’, a name which the family shortened to Anya. She was educated by governesses, and then travelled abroad, first to England, then to France where she hoped to become a doctor. She studied for a while at the Hotel Dieu hospital in Paris before marrying at eighteen and having three children. She began writing in 1938 with a short story sold to a newspaper syndicate and the first of her ten novels, My Theodosia, was published in 1941. Her other novels include Green Darkness, The Winthrop Woman