Katherine (21 page)

Katherine knew little of these practical considerations and she knew that the reeve's request was reasonable enough; but his insolent pop-eyes annoyed her and she said coldly, "And if I refuse permission, you might defy me as you did on May Eve?"

Sim's long face flushed and, before he could answer, Nirac sprang forward like a cat. "They cannot defy you, for they have
me
to reckon with - me, Nirac le Gascon! My sword is ready. I shall carve the miserable ladrones into mincemeat, I shall slice their ears and fingers-"

"Chut! Nirac-" Katherine cried impatiently. She was used to his extravagances, but the reeve had gone chalk-white and his voice was high and thin like a neighing horse. "And whilst you're brandishing your sword and dagger, you greasy meacock, what think you
we'll
be doing? We've pitchforks, and axes, and scythes - we can carve off ears and fingers too, ay, and cods and stones-"

"Sim - Sim-" gasped Gibbon from his pallet. Nobody heard him. Katherine stood frozen, while a dangerous stillness flowed over the Gascon. "You t'reaten me?" he said softly. "Do you forget, miserable serf, that I wear the livery of the Duke of Lancaster?"

The reeve's face convulsed, his furious breath flattened his nostrils. "He's not my overlord!" he shouted. "I spit upon your Duke of Lancaster!"

The instant the spittle left his mouth, the reeve was frightened. Nirac gave him no time for repentance, he scooped the whittling knife off the table and sprang.

"Holy name of God, Nirac!" Katherine screamed, as a spurt of blood jetted against the stone wall. "You'll kill him! He's unarmed." Neither of them heard her. The panting bodies struggled, knocking against the stools and table. Katherine grabbed the baby and ran on to the dais. "Help!" she cried. "For Christ's sake, help!"

A slow sob rose in Gibbon's throat and his left hand twitched. The fighting men rolled and stumbled over him as though he were part of the floor, his mantle became drenched with the reeve's blood.

The kitchen folk heard the noise and their mistress's cries. They crowded around the wooden screen, peering fearfully.

"Stop them, Will!" cried Katherine. "Hurry!" The cook did not move. He had not yet understood the scene except for a vague hope that the reeve was murdering the hated Gascon.

The men rolled near the corner of the dais and Katherine heard a bubbling liquid groan. Nirac was on top, his knees on the reeve's chest, his knife hand raised again. She put the baby in the centre of the great table and, jumping from the dais, clenched her teeth and, grabbing a handful of Nirac's streaming black hair, jerked with all her might.
"Halte!"
she shouted,
"au nom du duc!"

Nirac's grasp loosened, he shook his head in a dazed way, trying to free his hair. She pulled harder so that his face was forced upwards and he saw hers. "You don't want that I kill him?" he panted. "Yet you heard what he said!"

"I think you
have
killed him. Get up!" She hauled him off the inert reeve who lay gasping and bleeding on the flags. She knelt beside the man, and distractedly wiped his face with the hem of her gown. "Milburga, bring water and linen - someone get the priest. Hurry!"

"Bah!" said Nirac, smoothing his hair back and wiping his knife on a handful of rushes, "the
salaud
won't need the priest." He examined his victim with a practised eye. "A few cuts, my knife is short - he's had no more than a good blood-letting. Had I had my dagger-"

Nirac was right, it appeared, for by the time Sir Robert and his Molly came puffing into the Hall, Sim was recovering. There was no need for the priest nor even need of Molly's leechcraft. The cuts and stabs had hit no vital spot except for the artery in the arm and that stopped spurting when Katherine tied the liripipe of the reeve's own hood tight above the wound.

The manor folk clustered around, glancing sideways at Katherine, who had rushed back to the dais to soothe her crying baby and remove it from the table. They did not look at Nirac, who had nonchalantly returned to his stool and was whittling. Will Cooke and old Toby helped the reeve to his feet and supported him out of the door and back to his cot in the village. The reeve had not said a word or raised his bloodshot eyes as he tottered away.

"Lord shield us, lady, but what took place here?" asked the priest, settling himself into a chair and toasting his wet shoes at the fire. "What has Sim Tanner done?"

"He insult
me!
" said Nirac, carving a flourish on the Rook-piece, "and he insult
mon seigneur le duc -
" He shrugged and quirked his mouth in a contemptuous smile.

"Ah?" said Sir Robert, thoughtfully, and seeing that Katherine was suckling her baby and not likely to offer him anything, he helped himself to the remains of a cup of ale which Milburga had brought in for the reeve. Nirac's explanation satisfied him, and after all no great harm had been done.

The rain beat harder on the tile roof. Little Cob o' Fenton came in with candles. He stoked the fire with applewood and began to fling knives and wooden trenchers on the High Table in readiness for supper. Ah, that Nirac! thought Katherine. His notions of serving her and his lord made him a dangerous nuisance, and yet she had grown quite fond of him.

Her gaze passed from Nirac to the priest, who sat dozing while he waited for food. His claret-coloured robes overflowed his chair and from them rose a pungent odour of hound dog. Her eyes dropped to the last of the three men, and Gibbon was looking up at her, though as always she could see little of the expression beneath the sunken lids. She smiled at him, and thought sadly that he had failed in these last months and with compunction that she must tell Cob to cleanse him from the reeve's bloodstains and renew the fouled padding of hay beneath his hips. She had half risen, when her sharp ears heard unusual sounds through the beating rain.

"Hark!" she said. "What can that be?"

Ajax from his kennel let out his warning bay, and now they all heard the clack of horse-hooves on the drawbridge. The Duke is back, Katherine thought,' and a wild sweet joy exploded like a shower in her breast, then vanished so fast she never knew she had felt it, for as she ran to the door she heard a voice in the courtyard.

"It's Hugh come home!" she cried to those within the Hall, her cry trembling with what passed for gladness. She flung wide the door.

Thanks be to God in His mercy, thought Gibbon, now at least she will be safe.

"To Danger came I all ashamed,
The which afore me hadde blamed,
Desiring for to appease my woe;
But over hedge durst I not go,
For he forbade me the passage
I found him cruel in his rage
And in his hand a great burdoun."

(Romaunt de la Rose)

The year of 1369 was one of disaster for England. John Wyclif's wandering Lollard preachers were not slow to point out that the corruption and wickedness of the clergy - and the court - had attracted God's wrathful eye. The four dread horsemen of the Apocalypse were let loose across the land to scourge it again with famine, war, pestilence and death. There had been all manner of sinister omens. A remarkable comet had flashed across the sky, its fiery tail pointing unmistakably towards France. In the south the earth had quaked and shuddered a warning, in Northumbria a woodman hacked into an oak that shrieked and shed human blood. And soon all England heard of the first disaster. The young Duke Lionel of Clarence, the King's second Son, the great golden giant who had laughed and drunk and jousted his way into the hearts of the people, he was dead in Italy. He had died on his wedding trip after marrying the Milanese heiress, Violante, and there were some who spoke of poison.

The period of mourning for Lionel was scarcely over before the people heard disquieting news which affected their lives more nearly. There was rebellion in Aquitaine. The treacherous and disloyal English subjects of Guienne and Gascony had refused to pay the hearth tax that the Prince of Wales had levied, though it was obvious that only by thus raising money from them could their own soldiery be paid for fighting the Castilian campaign. Worse than that, Charles the Fifth, the sly mealy-mouthed king of France, had dared to meddle in these English affairs, and suddenly find flaws in the execution of the treaty of Bretigny. The Prince of Wales, and later King Edward himself, responded with hot counter-charges. In April of 1369, after nine years of uneasy peace, war with France was declared again.

For a time in that catastrophic summer these national affairs scarcely affected Kettlethorpe, but the Swynfords shared more immediate troubles with the rest of England's rural population. .

It had been a winter of vicious cold, and when a late spring unlocked the deep-frozen earth it brought with it weeks of unremitting rain. Day after day the sullen skies lowered, and no sun showed. In June at the moon tide, an eagre thundered up the swollen Trent and burst the dikes as far as Newton, then the swirling waters rushed over the sodden land, drowning and devastating as they advanced.

At Kettlethorpe, one of Sir Robert's and Molly's little boys had been drowned, as he fished by the river; but the other villagers had taken refuge in the church, which was built on higher ground.

Around the manor house the moat merged with the flood waters until the building seemed to stand in the margin of a vast lake and the forest trees to the south pierced this lake like monstrous reeds. In the manor hall and courtyard, water had lain a foot deep for two days and the manor folk had huddled in the solar or the tower guardroom, in chill and hungry fear, until the flood at last subsided to leave behind a coating of viscous black mud, drowned sheep, and ruined crops.

Besides the drowning of the priest's boy and the devastation of the land, the flood brought Kettlethorpe another tragedy. The sound of rushing waters so near to her had roused the Lady Nichola from the mindless stupor into which she had fallen after little Blanche's birth. She had become greatly excited and, cramming her wasted body into the embrasure of her window, called out words of wild greeting to the river sprites. The waters rose higher until from her window she could see nothing but a shining sea, and this had provoked her to spine-chilling laughter. For months afterwards Katherine heard the echo of that laughter and felt remorse that she had not gone to try and calm the poor lady but instead had stopped her ears and stayed in the solar soothing her two babies and thinking of nothing but their safety.

Somehow, with the cunning and uncanny strength of madness, the Lady Nichola had loosened the bolt on her door. She had clambered up the stones to the roof of the tower and with one long triumphant cry had flung herself down into the waters below. It was many days before they found her body and brought it back to the little church for a Requiem Mass which the priest was reluctant to celebrate. Katherine overrode him fiercely, saying that it was the water elves that had bewitched the poor lady and driven her to suicide, and that therefore her soul could not be damned. Sir Robert, by no means certain of this theological point, finally gave in, and the Lady Nichola was laid to rest beneath the aisle slabs near the church altar - next to Gibbon.

Gibbon had faded slowly out of life, and last Christmas Eve had died in a manner as quiet and unassuming as the Lady Nichola's leave-taking had been frenzied. Katherine had mourned deeply for Gibbon, and Hugh had too. They had made a special trip into Lincoln to the cathedral to buy Masses for his soul, but Katherine had had no leisure for much mourning. Besides the care of little Blanche, there was the new baby, Thomas, there was the manor work, and there was Hugh.

On a searing hot afternoon in late August, Katherine sat on a heap of straw with the babies in the portion of her courtyard that was shaded by the gatehouse and listened to the tolling of their church bell from across the moat. It would toll for three hours in memory of yet another death, and though Katherine's tears did not flow as they had for Gibbon or even for Lady Nichola, she felt a poignant sadness, and she sat with folded hands and murmured,
"Requiescat in pace."

On Lady Day, August 15, the good Queen Philippa had died at Windsor, when the labouring heart had no longer been able to struggle on beneath its burden of dropsical flesh. Sim, the reeve, had heard the news in Lincoln where he had gone to try and buy seed corn to replace the ruined crops. He brought back the doleful tidings about the Queen and also a letter from Geoffrey Chaucer which confirmed them and added more. Geoffrey wrote that there was plague in London and the south, an outbreak more virulent than any in eight years. Geoffrey was worried about his own Philippa, who was apparently pregnant at last, and much distraught over the Queen's death. After the funeral ceremonies and the Queen's interment in Westminster Abbey, Geoffrey thought to bring Philippa to Katherine in Lincolnshire, far from the dangerous London air, and leave her there, for he himself was ordered to France, on a mission for the King.

It had been over three years since the sisters had met, and this prospect helped temper Katherine's sadness. She looked down at the Queen's little brooch, with which today she had fastened the neck of her gown.
Foi vainquera,
she thought, touching the motto, and wondered if the Queen's faith had truly sustained her through these last years. Even at Kettlethorpe, one heard of the shameless Alice Perrers and the bejewelled splendour with which she openly flaunted her position as the King's mistress and adviser.

"Non, non, Blanchette!
" cried Katherine, recalled from her abstraction by the straying of her eldest towards the stables. "Come back to Mama!" The baby giggled naughtily, her fat little legs ran faster. She was of an enterprising turn of mind, and she loved the stables and Doucette, her mother's palfrey; but there was danger from Hugh's stallion. Katherine flew across the courtyard and swooped the baby up in her arms, administering a gentle spank on the wriggling behind.
"Mechante!"
she whispered, burying her face in the plump little neck. Sometimes she talked French to the babies, though Hugh didn't like it. Blanchette pouted, then decided to nestle close to her mother. Katherine sat down again with the child on her lap. Blanchette was a vital, lively little thing, with a mop of marigold curls and round smoky grey eyes like her mother's, but darker. She was continually getting into mischief and Katherine adored her, as she had from the hour of her birth.

With little Tom it was different. Katherine looked down at the withe cradle where her son slept. He had been born in September on St. Matthew's Day nearly a year ago. He had given no trouble then, and he gave none now. He was a stolid child who seldom smiled and never gurgled or shrieked as Blanchette did. He had hemp-coloured crinkled hair and was in fact remarkably like his father.

Katherine sighed when she thought of Hugh. This morning when he rose at dawn to hunt the red deer in the forest, his bowels had griped and run with bloody flux again, and he had been so weakened after an hour at the privy pit behind the dovecote that even with Ellis's help he had scarce been able to mount his horse. This dysentery that Hugh had brought back from Castile often seemed cured and yet each time returned, despite Katherine's nursing and all the remedies suggested by Parson's Molly. They had tried garlic and ram's gall clysters, they had bled Hugh regularly, sprinkled his belly with holy water, and even called in the leech monk from St. Leonard's priory in Torksey. This monk fed Hugh a potion made of powdered toadstone, bade the ailment begone in the name of the Trinity and gave him a paper to wear above his navel on which was written, "Emmanuel, Veronica," but still the seizures and the flux came back at intervals, and Hugh suffered grimly.

The mourning bell, after a pause, clanged out again the first of fifty-six long tollings, one for each year of the Queen's life. Katherine recited a prayer, then settled herself more comfortably on the straw and leaned her head against the gatehouse wall. Blanchette had gone to sleep and Katherine eased the child down beside her. Flies buzzed lazily over the stinking dung pile near the cow-byre, where several chickens scratched for seed, but otherwise the courtyard was quiet, its usual activities suspended out of deference to the Queen. The afternoon grew warmer and Katherine longed for a drink, but she feared to disturb Blanchette and in any case was too drowsy to walk across the court to the well, and she would not tap the keg of ale they kept in the undercroft beneath the solar, for they must eke out the little they had left. God alone knew when they could brew more, since the flood had ruined the barley crop, and the scanty replacement had been sown so late and under the wrong aspects of the moon.

Katherine sighed again. She had been up since daybreak, caring for the babies and trying to help poor Hugh before attending the Queen's memorial Mass. She pulled Tom's cradle close to Blanchette and, curling around her sleeping children, nestled into the straw.

It was thus that the Chaucers found her a half-hour later. They had dismounted by the church, tied their horses to the lych-gate and walked across the drawbridge to inquire, because Philippa, on seeing the manor house, had been quite sure that there was some mistake. She was accustomed to royal castles and the palatial homes of noblemen, and nothing through the years of their separation had arisen to shake her conviction that her sister's enviable marriage to a landed knight presupposed baronial grandeur.

"I'll take oath this can't be Kettlethorpe Manor," she said to her husband as they entered the courtyard. "It must be the bailiff's home." Her high insistent voice penetrated Katherine's dreams, and the girl stirred and slowly raised her head. The movement caught Philippa's incredulous eye, and she turned.

"Blessed Saint Mary - 'tis Katherine! God's love, sister, do you sleep on straw, like a
beast,
here?" The shock momentarily outweighed Philippa's affection and she spoke in sharp dismay.

Since the day was so hot, Katherine had after church laid off her linen coif and bundled her masses of ruddy hair into a coarse hemp net - like a byre-maid, thought Philippa. Bits of straw were stuck amongst the damp curls that clung to the girl's cheeks. Her gown was of blue sendal but looked much like a peasant's kirtle, since Katherine had not covered it with the sideless furred surcote which befitted her rank; and worse than that, she had looped the long skirt up beneath her girdle so that it was plain to see that she wore no hose. Bare white ankles showed above the scuffed soft-leather shoes. Philippa was appalled.

Katherine blinked, still thinking that these two whom she had not seen for so long were part of her dream - a short plump young couple, both dressed in black, both gazing at her with, surprise - then she scrambled to her feet with a glad cry and rushing to her sister threw her arms around her neck. Philippa returned the kiss, but Geoffrey, who knew the signs, saw what his wife's next words would be like, and, himself kissing Katherine on each cheek, said quickly, "By God's mercy, my dear - you're fairer than ever - and these are the babes?
La petite Blanche,
wake up, poppet! Your uncle has brought you trinkets from London! And
there's
a fine fat boy! We'll have one just like him, eh, Pica?" and he pinched his wife's round cheek.

"With Christ's grace," said Philippa glancing at the babies, but not to be diverted. "Katherine, is this the way you keep your state as lady of the manor - what example do you give your servants? And-" She glanced frowning around the littered courtyard and at the small building and one low tower; her sharp eyes noted the crumblings between the aged stones, the mouldering thatch on the roof, the general air of dilapidation, and she finished more feebly," 'Tis not what I thought."

Katherine smiled at her sister, even welcoming the old atmosphere of reproof and admonition which took her back to childhood. "Kettlethorpe is small," she said temperately, "but we did well enough until this summer. We had a fearful flood and all our crops washed away. Our flocks too. Were it not for produce from our holdings at Coleby, which is on higher ground, I don't know where we'd turn. Hugh is hunting in the forest, but game is hard to find, the wild things were all driven out by the waters."

"Ah, yes," said Geoffrey sadly, "throughout England there's the smell of doom. We saw as we came north fires, famine - but here at least you've no plague - -"

Katherine glanced in sudden fear at her babies. Tom slept on, but Blanchette hid behind her mother and peered round at the strangers. "I've heard of none," she said, and crossed herself. "Is it so bad in the south - you - you haven't lost -"

She faltered, glancing at their mourning clothes which were of rich sable wool trimmed with velvet and strips of black fox. Philippa's tightly coiled dark braids were bound with an onyx and silver fillet, and beneath it her earnest face was round and neat as a penny.