Audrey, the Duchess's chief tiring-woman moved silently about her duties, perfuming water in a hand-basin and carrying clothes from sundry chests in the solar to the hanging brackets in the garderobe which served as antechamber to the latrine.

The room was bright from twenty wax candles and jewelled with colour. The lights glowed on the crimson and olive of the wall tapestries and twinkled off the bed hangings of silver brocade.

When the Duke strode in with Katherine, the little girls ceased playing and stared round-eyed at their father. The minstrel hushed his harp and pulled his stool into a corner, waiting for dismissal or command to continue.

The Lady Blanche rose with slow grace and smiled at her husband. "I did not expect you so soon, my lord." Her serene blue gaze rested on him tenderly. "I thought you were with the messenger from Bordeaux."

"I was," said John, "and bad news it is, too - but then I summoned some gleemen to sing for me in the garden and banish care for a while. I was disturbed-" He shrugged and indicated Katherine who curtsied nervously, conscious of the curious stares of the tiring-woman and the two little girls.

"Disturbed?" repeated Blanche. "By this child?" She put out her slender white hand to Katherine, smiling kindly, then she leaned forward. "But what's happened? Her gown is torn and there's blood on it. Audrey, fetch warm water and some wine. You're hurt, maiden?"

"Not much, Your Grace," said Katherine, very low. "My Lord Duke did save me."

"From what?" exclaimed Blanche, putting her arm around the girl.

"From rough love-making," said John, laughing suddenly. "But honourable it seems, in the end. Sir Hugh Swynford, you know the Lincolnshire knight they call the Saxon Ram, wishes to wed this young lady - an interesting idea."

"Oh, no," cried Katherine, sending the Duke a look of piteous bewilderment. "I'm sure he didn't mean it - and I couldn't, you must see I couldn't!"

"Hush, child," said the Lady Blanche, surprised that anyone should dare gainsay the Duke, whom she saw to be uncomfortable and wishful of escape. Indeed the girl, now brightly illuminated by the candles, had suddenly made an unpleasant impression on John, though he did not know why. True, many might call her beautiful, but to his taste she seemed overcoloured and earthy next to the exquisite Blanche. He disliked the flaunting profusion of bronze hair, the redness of her bruised mouth, the black abundance of her lashes, and particularly her eyes that stared at him with urgent pleading. They were too large and grey and gleamed with golden flecks in the candlelight. Her eyes disturbed him, evoking an unreasoned confusion of far-off anger and pain. For an instant he knew that someone else had stared at him like that long ago, and there had been betrayal, then the impression vanished, leaving only sharp resentment.

He turned his back on Katherine and said to Blanche, "I'll see you later, lady." He touched his little daughters' curls and strode out of the room, banging the heavy oak door behind him.

"My lord is hasty sometimes," said Blanche, noting the girl's dismay. "And he has grave matters to worry him." She was well used to John's impulsive acts, as to his occasional dark moods, and knew how to temper them, or bide her time until they passed. She hastened now to minister to the unhappy maiden he had brought her and motioned to Audrey to bring the basin and a towel Then she lifted the torn strip of violet cloth and the strands of hair from Katherine's shoulder and found rows of tiny bleeding cuts on the breast beneath. "Tell me about it, my dear," she said quietly, bathing the cuts and salving them with marigold balm.

Hugh sat in his tent on the field near the lists while Ellis his squire removed his armour, but Hugh was unaware of Ellis or his surroundings. His blood ran thick as hot lead in his veins and he suffered desire, shame, and confused torment that nothing in his life had prepared him for.

Hugh Swynford was of pure Saxon blood except for one Danish ancestor, the fierce invading Ketel who sailed up the Trent in 870, pillaging and ravishing as he went. A Swynford girl was amongst those ravished, but she must have inspired some affection in her Dane since she lured him from his thorpe in Lincolnshire to her own home at the swine's ford in southern Leicestershire, where he settled for some years and adopted her family's name.

The Swynfords were all fighters. Hugh's forefathers had resisted the Norman invasion until the grown males of their clan had been exterminated and even now, three hundred years later, Hugh stubbornly rejected any tinge of Norman graces or romanticism. He went to Mass occasionally as a matter of course, but at heart he was pagan as the savages who had once danced around Beltane's fire on May Night, who worshipped the ancient oaks and painted themselves with blue woad - a plant indeed which still grew on Hugh's manor in Lincolnshire.

He was an ungraceful knight, impatient of chivalric rules, but in real battle he was a shrewd and terrifying fighter.

Hugh's branch of the Swynford family had long ago left Leicestershire and returned to Lincolnshire beside the river Trent south of Gainsborough; and when Hugh was a child, his father, Sir Thomas, had fulfilled a long-time ambition and bought the manor of Kettlethorpe where Ketel the Dane had first settled. For this purchase he used proceeds from the sale of his second wife Nichola's estates in Bedfordshire, at which the poor lady wept and lamented woefully, for she was afraid of the towering forests around Kettlethorpe, and of the marshes and the great river Trent with its stealthy death-dealing floods. The Lady Nichola was also afraid of the dark stone manor house, which was said to be haunted by a demon dog, the pooka hound. Most of all she was afraid of her husband who beat her cruelly and constantly reproached her for her barrenness. So her wailings and laments were done in secret.

Hugh thought little about Kettlethorpe one way or the other, beyond accepting it as his home and heritage, and he was a restless youth. At fifteen he struck out into the world. He joined the army under the King, when Edward invaded Scotland, and there met John of Gaunt, who was then only the Earl of Richmond. The two boys were of the same age and Hugh conceived for the young Prince, whose charm and elegance of manner were so unlike his own, a grudging admiration.

At sixteen, Hugh, thirsting for more battle, had fought under the Prince of Wales at Poitiers. Hugh had killed four Frenchmen with his battle-axe, and shared later in the hysterical rejoicing at the capture of King Jean of France.

Hugh won his spurs after that and returned to Kettlethorpe to find that his father had suffered an apoplectic stroke in his absence. Hugh stayed home until Sir Thomas finally died and Hugh became lord of the manor. But as soon as his father had been laid in a granite tomb near the altar of the little Church of SS. Peter and Paul at Kettlethorpe, Hugh made new plans for departure.

He detested his stepmother the Lady Nichola, whom he considered a whining rag of a woman overgiven to fits and the seeing of melancholy visions, so he left her and his lands in charge of a bailiff. He fitted himself out with his father's best armour and favourite stallion, then engaged as squire young Ellis de Thoresby, the son of a neighbouring knight from Nottinghamshire across the Trent.

Thus properly accoutred, Hugh rode down to London, to the Savoy Palace. He owed knight's service to the Duke of Lancaster by reason of Hugh's manor at Coleby, which belonged to the Duke's honour of Richmond, but he had not the money for the fee, and in any case much preferred to become the Duke's retainer, well pleased that his feudal lord should also be the youth he had campaigned with in Scotland.

Though the intervening years had made many changes in John of Gaunt's personal life, for he had married the Lady Blanche and thereby become the wealthiest man in the land, Hugh's own interests remained unchanged. He fought when there was war, and when there was not he pursued various private quarrels, and hunted. Hawking bored him with its elaborate ritual of falconry, for he liked direct combat and a dangerous opponent. The wild stag and the wild boar were the quarries he liked best to pursue through the dense forests. He was skilled at throwing the spear and could handle the longbow as well as any of the King's yeomen, but in close fighting he was supreme.

It was said of him that he had strangled a wolf with his bare hands in the wilds of Yorkshire, and that it was the wolf's fangs which had laid open his cheek and puckered it into the jagged scar, but nobody knew for certain. The Duke's retinue now numbered over two hundred barons, knights and squires, and a man so morose and uncourtly as Hugh excited little curiosity amongst his fellows. They disliked him and let him alone.

But when his extraordinary wish to marry the little de Roet became known, he inspired universal interest at last.

Katherine's frantic protests and tears were of no avail against Hugh's determination and everyone else's insistence that she had stumbled into unbelievable luck.

The Queen's ladies said it, even Alice Perrers said it, and Philippa scolded morning, noon and night.

"God's nails, you little dolt," Philippa cried, "you should be down on your knees thanking the Blessed Virgin and Saint Catherine, instead of mewling and cowering like a frightened rabbit. My God, you'll be Lady Katherine with your own manor and serfs, and a husband who seems to dote on you as well!"

"I can't, I can't. I loathe him," Katherine wailed.

"Fiddle-faddle!" snapped Philippa, whose natural envy increased her anger. "You'll get over it. Besides he won't be around to bother you much. He'll soon be off with the Duke fighting in Castile."