The Scandalous Duchess (38 page)

The date? How should I? It was three years ago now…

‘No.'

‘Well, you should have. It was the fourteenth day of the month of February.'

‘Of what importance is that?'

‘The feast of St Valentine, my foolish sister. St Valentine's Day, when all the birds of the air rejoice and find their true mate. Or so Geoffrey says in one of his more flowery offerings.'

Diverted, I struggled to recall, since Geoffrey's poetry had been the staple diet in the Lancaster household. In Geoffrey's flamboyantly written
Parliament of Fowls
he had linked St Valentine's Day playfully to romantic love when celebrating the betrothal of King Richard to the young and comely Anne of Bohemia.

‘For this was on St Valentine's Day, When every fowl cometh there to choose his mate
.

‘Or some such,' Philippa recited, flushing as she saw me register her detailed knowledge. ‘Not that Geoffrey would know much about romance outside the pages of a book of
courtly romance. Or not with me. Not on any occasion that I remember.' To my astonishment, her words dried as tears began to well in Philippa's eyes. ‘Sorry,' she gulped, wiping her face on her sleeve. ‘It's Geoffrey…'

‘Well, I thought it would be! But since you are no longer living together I don't understand why…'

For a long moment she simply looked at me, then, expression tortured, told me everything in short bursts, her voice hoarse with the tears she refused to shed.

‘Geoffrey had an affair. He has a son. He was accused of rape and she's called Cecily.'

I simply stared at her, unable to respond. Rape? My image of Geoffrey did not tally with this.

‘Or at least it was a seduction.' Philippa was undeniably honest in the end. ‘She released him from any legal charge against him. The boy's called Lewis. I could never forgive him for that, even though we had agreed to live apart. And now he has another son by that woman.'

Which was rather muddled but I got the drift and understood the turmoil of her emotions.

‘Oh, Philippa. And you didn't tell me?'

‘It hurt too much. And you were swamped in self-pity,' she added bitterly.

‘But I would have understood. Infidelity is not unknown to me, is it? Oh, my dear silly Philippa.'

‘I know you would have understood but I could not bear it. I had lost everything, whereas the Duke cared enough for you to do all he could to save you. To protect you. And you should have had enough faith in him.' She stood, drawing me with her, so that we stood as we rarely did in a sisterly embrace. ‘Think about it. Think about what you know of him. You don't have to be torn apart by anger for the rest of your
life. And there! You were always supposed to be the clever one. I swear he still loves you.'

‘I know,' I admitted at last, to myself as much as to my sister. ‘But I was so angry…'

He had tried to save me. To protect me. Had I not begun to doubt at Pleshey, when the Duke had intimated as much?
Am I really so selfish as to place my own desires before your safety?
he had asked, but I had been too furious to listen.

He had sent the quitclaim on the very day that love was in the air.

Three years I had had now, to weigh and balance, to admit to what my heart had always known.

How could the man you loved, whose children you bore, have been so heartless as to issue the quitclaim simply to be rid of you? This is the man you knew intimately, for whom you turned your life on its head. This is the man who still calls to your soul. How can you believe him capable of such cruelty? You have known for so long that this was not how it was
.

It was time, it was long past time, for me to abjure self-pity and listen to my heart.

I went back to Kettlethorpe, Philippa accompanying me as she planned to journey on to Tutbury. There were letters waiting for my attention in my private chamber: more litigation over the clearing of my stretch of the Fossdyke, a royal licence giving me the power to enclose three hundred acres of land and woods to form a deer park around Kettlethorpe, the notification of a substantial annuity to my son Thomas Swynford from the Duke. I turned them over, discarding them to be addressed later with a cup of wine.

My breath caught, my fingers resting on a final document.

This was no litigation or complaint from neighbours.

I picked it up with my fingertips, balancing it between them as if it would scorch my skin, before sinking onto the edge of my bed where I folded back the creases. This could not wait. Perspiration prickled on my brow, down my spine, as I held this ghost from the past in John's own hand. I recognised it immediately as if was my own. I began to read. Slowly, carefully, absorbing every word.

I was not calm. I was not calm at all. But I read on.

For my comfort and safety. My eye returned to the words. My brain began to work again through the emotion as I read of what had afflicted England three years ago.

He had feared for my life and that of his children. I had been vilified as foreign. As a foreign mistress I would be an easy target. The urge to read on was compelling.

So that was it. He had done all he could to remove the slur from my name, even at the expense of blackening his own, when I had seen only what I had considered to be his self-interest in turning away from me. Had he not promised to protect me? Oh, he had, yet I had been quick to
condemn him when I thought that he had held me up for public denunciation to save himself.
God sheltered you from all harm
, he had said,
I asked Him to
, and I in my blindness had been scathing in my reply. Had the Duke taken God's punishment for our sin on his own shoulders, so that I might be free of it?

I knew that he had. Now my mind understood what my heart had always known.

Guilt that I had raged against him was a two-edged blade.

And I, foolish again, sought and found the quitclaim in my coffer to look again, to reassure myself, smiling at the unexpected indentations of Thomas's teeth along one edge. There it was, the fourteenth day of February of the year 1382.

What a gift he had made me. One of protection, generous and loving protection, restoring to me my independence and freedom from attack and abuse. My property and the gifts were my own and safe from confiscation. No future accusations against me would hold any weight. At last, three years too late, it was as if I could feel the love flowing through the parchment.

Why do you think he sent you away?
Philippa had prompted me.

To put himself right with God
, I had replied curtly.

And so he had, but so much more. I made myself sit and think over all I now knew, all I had gleaned in the last five
minutes. And I forced myself to review the Duke's actions with far more honesty. Less prejudice, Philippa would have said.

I could not have you punished for my sin
.

I grimaced silently, but here it was. The Duke's rejection of me, reassessed in the light of my new knowledge, was to make amends for his sins, to prevent God's retribution in punishing England with defeat abroad and bloody unrest at home. How could I expect a man of chivalry to do any less? The overt hatred of him that drove the rebels to obliterate The Savoy must have inflicted agonising wounds on a man imbued by pride and self-worth from his cradle. I had to accept the demands on the Duke's freedom of choice as he stood in his self-imposed role of counsellor to his nephew, the child-king. England's glory must be pre-eminent. I must acknowledge that he could not put me first.

As for his reconciliation with Constanza, to make a strong stand with her since hers was the blood-claim, it was a necessity to further his dream of winning Castile. It was harder for me to accept this, but he was an ambitious man. This was the man with whom I had fallen in love. There was no future, as there had never been, for his authority in England—he had to look elsewhere.

My thoughts flitted on.

His acknowledged guilt of fornication. My mind flinched from it, but I forced myself to consider. All the months we had been apart during the years of our love. So many of them. What man, what vibrant man, could live with chastity for so long? Weakness of the flesh indeed, but I could not change what had been done. Was my love for him strong enough to resist such knowledge, to set it aside as a
disturbing element of the past but one that need no longer trouble me?

There was more to read.

So I could no longer thrust this decision aside: could I accept his infidelity? I must. What choice had I? This was the man I loved unto death. This was the vigorous, powerful prince who had called to my heart all those years ago, with all his faults and iniquities. Was I without sin? My life was as blemished as his, tainted with temper and intolerance and that greatest of sins that I could not renounce.

Yes, I decided, in my new balanced maturity, I could and must accept in my lover such sins of the flesh. My love was strong enough to forgive.

My tears flowed like a cataract in spate.

And there was his signature. His name, not his title.

John

So there it was. The necessity for the quitclaim. Loving, not vindictive. Caring, not callous. A release, not a rejection. And what had I done at Rochford? I had believed the worst because I had not thought beyond my own pain.

Now my hurt was sharper than ever, and the guilt too, jostling with renewed anguish. He loved me, as he had always loved me, and yet we must of necessity remain apart. Any suspicion that we were not living distantly, and Walsingham would descend on us with sword and fire, like St Michael on the evil power of the dragon.

My isolation was even greater than it had been.

And yet perhaps not, I decided as I dried my tears, for now I knew beyond doubt that the Duke's love for me was a precious thing, far more valuable than gold or silver hanaps, and I brought to mind that moment when he had left Rochford Hall. When he had looked across the room at me. I had thought him ruthless and unfeeling. He was not.
I denied that he had felt any wretchedness comparable to mine. How wrong I had been. His sorrow had been equal to mine, if not greater.

I had thought he had grown weary of me, that he no longer wished to touch me even in a formal farewell. That I was nothing to him. Now I knew. To draw attention to us would be far too dangerous. He had been aware of every potentially prurient eye upon us at Rochford Hall, despite Countess Joan's careful presence. He had had to do it for me, and for himself.