"I've not invented her letter, my lord," Geoffrey cried.

"Her letter!" The Duke's voice shook with fury, he crushed the parchment between his hands and flung the ball violently away from him over the parapet. "That I should live to see Katherine treat me like this! Dismiss me like a thieving scullion, with rantings about morality! She dares send you to prate of love that Swynford bore her! By God, 'tis late times to think of that. What has she been doing there in the south when I thought her tending to her child? She found some pretty youth like Robin Beyvill maybe to while the time away. 'Tis because of him she can turn me off so lightly!"

"My lord, my lord," whispered Chaucer, retreating farther along the roof while his palms began to sweat. "You do her terrible wrong."

"Wrong, wrong!" shouted the Duke. "All this babbling of wrong. She vowed she'd never leave me - she has broke it - as did Isolda - lies! She cozened me all these years with lies. It's plain now to see she never loved me. Ah," he said with a laugh like the crackle of burning briars, "Katherine Swynford has no need to hide from me, no need at all, for I shall never forgive this, nor try to find her."

The next morning the Duke and his retinue left Newcastle. Chaucer rode at the end of the line and kept far out of the Duke's way, knowing that it would be long, if ever, before he was pardoned for bringing Katherine's message. Geoffrey bore no ill will. It was natural that a man like Lancaster should convert the blow to his love and pride into rage, but Geoffrey had not expected so dreadful a rage and he pondered on what could lie behind it, and at the reference to Isolda that the Duke had let fall. There was no woman of that name had ever been mentioned in regard to the Duke whose fidelity, indeed, to Katherine had been remarkable. There was no doubt that he deeply loved her, the very violence of his actions proved it. And what a miserable quick-march these two ill-starred lovers had plunged into.

When they had reached central Yorkshire and the Duke's own lands, at last they approached Knaresborough, and saw the castle high on its crag above the river Nidd. While they wound through the limestone gorge with its honeycomb of caves, towards the ford, Chaucer looked up and saw a procession of eight women, amongst whom he recognised the Duchess and his Philippa, slowly wending down the twisting cliffside from the castle. The Duchess was dressed in garnet satin embroidered with flashing gold, and she wore her jewelled coronet above a flowing gold veil.

The Duke and his retinue forded the river and when they all reached the grassy bank, the Duchess came walking slowly forward, a tentative beseeching look in her dark eyes and a faint flush on her ivory face. She waited trembling while the Duke dismounted, but as he came towards her the Duchess threw herself headlong on the grass and began to sob convulsively.

The Duke leaned over and lifted her up, and she seized his hands and covered them with kisses. "Mi Corazon - -" she cried and went on in gasping Spanish, "I have been so frightened, and I thought never to see you again!"

A peculiar shuttered expression dimmed the Duke's eyes, a muscle by his mouth quivered. He bent and kissed her on the forehead. "Well, now we are together and all will be well," he answered in Spanish. "Where is our little Catalina?"

"At the castle. I kept her back, my lord. Sometimes you do not wish to see her."

The Duke bent his head, beneath his richly embroidered cote his broad shoulders sagged. "I am eager to see her."

"We may stay here a few days, may we not?" she said timidly. "But indeed where can I go now? Hertford is destroyed - ah, Sant' Iago - it was terrible - you do not know how frightened we were."

"Pobrecita," said the Duke. "Poor Costanza - -" He pulled her hand through his arm and they walked off together up the path to the castle.

Chaucer too dismounted and went over to his own wife. "God's greeting, Pica," he said, pinching Philippa on the cheek. "Here I am again. I vow we ne'er saw so much of each other in the south."'

Philippa nodded and gave him a brief preoccupied smile. "Did you give His Grace Katherine's stupid letter?" she asked quickly. Philippa did not of course know what was in the letter except that her sister had gone off on pilgrimage and would tell nobody where.

"Ay. And he was much angered."

"Small wonder," said Philippa twitching. "She's no more sense than a sheep. I've always said it. She'll lose him with this monstrous behaviour and then where will we all be! What if she was frightened at the Savoy! Now that one" - she jerked her head towards the disappearing figure of the Duchess - "she was frightened too, but it's made her softer, gentler. She's taken pains to please him again. Bathes each morning, has us rub her with scented oils, and put on silk shifts instead of that hair shirt she used to wear. I tell you, Geoffrey, since the Castilian king who murdered her father is dead, she's been changing. She thinks more about the Duke. Katherine had better not play fast and loose or she'll lose out."

"Yes, my Pica, she may," said Geoffrey in the quiet edged tone that always daunted her. "I think you must make up your mind to it. We are all out of favour with the Duke."

CHAPTER XXVIII

On the twenty-third of June, while the Duke was yet in Scotland, Katherine was housed in the pilgrim hostel at Waltham Abbey where she had limped in, sore-footed and deadly tired, two days ago. It was not for the luxury of rest that Katherine lingered these two days, but because Waltham was part of her penance. She spent hours in the abbey praying for the repose of Hugh's soul and asking his forgiveness, while she knelt on the exact spot where his sword had clattered down before the black cross. She went to the inn, The Pelican, where she had passed her wedding night, and forced herself to relive the degradation and the hatred she had felt. Worse than hatred, Katherine thought now - a smouldering secret contempt that had shrivelled in time Hugh's self-respect, and his manhood.

Remorse, guilt and punishment - Katherine steeped herself in these by day, and at night her dreams were of spurting blood.

There were no other pilgrims at the hostel; though June was usually prime month for journeying to shrines throughout the country, the revolt and its consequent dangers had quenched most folks' wish for the open road.

Instead, the hostel housed several of the homeward-bound peasants. In the dingy low-raftered hall where all travellers might buy ale and brown bread for a penny a day, Katherine heard much anxious talk.

A penitential pilgrim in widow's weeds was a common sight along the various Palmers' Ways and drew only respectfully indifferent glances, while she was plunged so deep into her own misery that she noticed nothing. But when after Mass she broke her fast on the Sunday morning when she intended to set forth again towards Walsingham, the loud troubled voices of the men around the trestle tables aroused her attention. She heard them repeatedly mentioning the King. There had been a proclamation. The King was coming here today, to Waltham.

What was he coming for? cried a blacksmith. Why, to hand out the rest of the charters of freedom, of course, answered someone against a chorus of uneasy assent. It was known that in London the King's men had punished some of the rebels: Jack Strawe had been caught, tortured and beheaded - still, that was natural, for they said he had confessed to treason. Jack Strawe's end could not affect the freedom from bondage and general pardon that the King had granted at Mile End.

"Nay," cried the blacksmith in hearty reassurance, "by this Holy Cross of Waltham here, we must ne'er forget how true a friend our little King did prove himself. He gave us his royal word: 'tis as good as Holy God's."

Katherine listened for some time without attending. She had no interest in the rebels now, though she had put to them one question on her arrival here. Had any of them taken part in the burning of the Savoy? They all said "Nay" except one Suffolk lad who proudly said that he had, and a rare fine sight it had been, too.

"Did you see anything of a little maid with close-cropped hair, a lass of fourteen in a grey chamber robe?" Katherine asked, as she had asked this so many times already.

But the Suffolk lad said "Nay" again, though there was such a mort of people running about he wouldn't know one from t'other. The maid she asked about would be one of the house carls, no doubt? 'Twas certain they had all fled long before the place was fired.

Katherine had thanked him with weary patience.

Suddenly now, at mention of the King's name, her detachment was pierced by a forlorn hope. Might it be that Richard had heard something of Blanchette? True, he had seen the girl but once, at Leicester Castle, yet there was a chance.

When the band of peasants surged from the hostel towards an open heath in Waltham forest, Katherine followed, as did a crowd of villagers. The open heath was shaded by the close-pressing greenwood with its lofty hornbeams and beeches, and the people had need of shade from the broiling sun, for they waited long, before they heard the royal trumpets and the pound of galloping hooves approaching down the forest road.

But when Richard came at last, there were no more doubts or hopeful self-deceptions as to his purpose. He galloped up like an avenging whirlwind amongst an army of four thousand soldiers. As he saw the group of peasants waiting, he shouted exultantly to his Uncle Thomas, the Earl of Buckingham, "Here's another foul nest of traitors!" And to his men cried, "Seize them! Seize them!"