Blanche kissed the parchment when she read this, and sinking to her knees on the prie-dieu beside the great bed had communed with a jewelled image of the Blessed Virgin which stood flanked by candles and holly greens in the niche above.

When she returned to the letter she found in the last paragraph the question: "Have you seen ought of the little Swynford? Her clodpoll knight is here in camp and confides (as though it were a rare and difficult feat) that he has got her with child. It might be kindness to see how she does, alone, on their manor."

Blanche had not wondered that, of all their acquaintance, her lord had mentioned by name only this little bride; neither suspicion nor speculation had ever troubled the purity of her love, and she hastened to obey without question and in generous measure. She was rewarded, for she enjoyed Katherine's visit,

The girl's admiration touched her. Though there were ten years between their ages, besides the greater gulf of Blanche's lineage and experience, she found Katherine companionable. The two women sat together and embroidered through the winter dusks, and Blanche noted how the girl's red chilblained little hands tried to imitate the skill of her own long white fingers: Sometimes Blanche picked up her lute or gittern and they sang - plaintive love songs, or Christmas carols to the Virgin. And at the singing Blanche knew herself surpassed, for her high passionless voice, like a choir - boy's, sometimes went flat, while Katherine hit true and round on every note, and once she had overcome her timidity and learned the songs, they poured like honey from her slender throat.

"Do you make much music at Kettlethorpe?" inquired Blanche idly one evening when they had finished singing Adam de la Halle's rondeau, "Fais mari de vostre amour".

"No, madam," said Katherine after a moment, the pleasure dying from her face. She had, from pride and a desire to forget the place, always evaded the Duchess' few polite questions about her manor.

"Are your minstrels unskilled?" asked the Duchess in some surprise.

Katherine thought of her Hall, which was barer and meaner than the cow - byres here, and could not help laughing. "We have no minstrels, madam. It's not," she added quickly, "a manor quite like any you have known."

The Duchess raised her pale arched brows, and seeing Katherine's unwillingness, said no more. Bred to unlimited wealth, reared in a succession of castles of which this one was the simplest, it was true that she could not imagine a manor such as Kettlethorpe. She was familiar with the hovels of the poor where she dispensed lavish charity, but that a landed knight's home might be almost as meagre and uncomfortable had never occurred to her. Nor did it now, but her sky - blue gaze focused and she noted for the first time the shabbiness of Katherine's clothes, though she was far from recognising or remembering the let - out and altered green dress she had given Katherine at Windsor. But she determined to make the girl some presents on New Year's Day and, dismissing the matter, she turned smiling, as her two little girls ran into the Ladies' Bower to announce that a new batch of mummers from Lincoln had arrived and had playfully chased the children around the courtyard. Elizabeth, the baby, was squealing with excitement.

"Dragon, Mama! All fire!" she shrieked, dancing on her little red shoes and pointing to the window. "Big dragon! He'll eat us up!"

"It's not a real dragon, Mother," explained Philippa earnestly. "It's only a man in disguise. You mustn't be frightened."

Katherine, watching, thought how like the good little Philippa that was. At six and a half, she was already a blurred copy of Blanche, well - mannered and considerate. She never had tantrums, never disobeyed. She was as blonde as her mother too, though she gave no promise of Blanche's beauty. Her flaxen hair hung in lank strands either side of her narrow Plantagenet face, and her skin, owing, no doubt, to her recurrent bilious attacks, had a sallow greenish tinge.

She was a devout child and had already made her first communion; she could read the psalter very well, and when she played, it was always a solemn re - enactment of one of the saint's lives.

Elizabeth, who was not yet three, outshone her elder sister on all counts. She was wilful, demanding and extremely spoiled, for she had charm. She had red cheeks and a mop of russet curls which would one day darken to brown. She was said to resemble her sinister great - grandmother. Queen Isabella of France, and certainly she was not like her fair - haired parents.

Elizabeth soon gave up trying to pull her mother off to meet the dragon. Blanche, who had seen quantities of mummers, merely smiled her lovely calm smile and said, "Presently, my poppet" - not stirring from her carved armchair. She was larger with this pregnancy than she had ever been, and more indolent.

So the baby danced over to Katherine singing, "Dragon, dragon, come see 'Lisbet's dragon!"

Katherine was more than willing. She looked to the Duchess for permission, then she took the children's hands. Elizabeth tugged and tumbled ahead of her down the winding stone stairs, but Philippa followed sedately, clutching Katherine's hand in a damp, careful clasp.

When they reached the courtyard, it was full of retainers and villagers who had come to see the fun. The mummers let out a shout of greeting to the ducal children and cavorted around the trio, singing "Wassail, wassail!" hoarsely through their masks. There were a score of them, each disguised as an animal - goats, rabbits, stags, dogs and bulls - except their leader, the Lord of Misrule, who wore a fool's costume tipped with jingling bells and whose face was splotched with blobs of red and blue.

The dragon was indeed a wonderful object, he writhed realistically on the stones and, opening and shutting his painted canvas jaws, emitted clouds of evil - smelling brimstone. When the dragon seized the small rabbit - headed figure in his mouth and pretended to eat him up while the capering fool emitted falsetto screams and beat at the dragon with a peacock feather, Katherine laughed as heartily as all the others in the courtyard and even little Philippa gave a round - eyed, nervous smile.

But then the mummers' play grew bawdy. The fool shouted that since the dragon was on fire, good Christians all must sprinkle water on him, and began to do so in the most natural manner. Katherine, though she could not help laughing, gathered up the wildly protesting Elizabeth and shepherded Philippa back to their mother.

By the time they reached Blanche's fire - lit bower, Katherine had silenced the baby with a firm command and then the crooning of a little French nursery song from her own childhood; and when she went to put her down beside her mother, Elizabeth clung fast to Katherine's neck.

"You're truly good with the children, my Katherine," said the Duchess, seeing this, and also that Philippa clung trustingly to the girl's skirts. "But you should not carry that heavy child in your condition - Elizabeth, let my Lady Swynford go!"

"Won't," cried the child, clinging harder to Katherine, and as she saw her mother's face darken with a rare frown, she shrieked, "I like her best, I like her best!"

It was only a piece of baby naughtiness; it ruffled the Duchess not at all, who merely raised her voice and called Elizabeth's nurse from the ante - room, yet it gave Katherine a strange guilt as though she had somehow stolen from the Duchess, and unwittingly hurt this lady who had been her kindest friend.

She thrust Elizabeth at the nurse, who vanished with her howling charge, and while Philippa still remained and gave her mother a solemn account of the mummers, Katherine picked up her embroidery and went to the far corner of the bower, out of sight, while she fought off the unease that had come upon her.

It passed, of course. She reasoned it away, telling herself that women in her state were given to fancies and that it was a piece of presumption for her to think she might affect the Duchess in any way at all, just as her cheeks grew hot with shame when she remembered what a ridiculous dither she had been in at the Duke's perfunctory kiss in the church.

Here in his castle with his wife and children, she saw her folly in its true light, and in some way allied to this, she began to think more kindly of Hugh and her duties at Kettlethorpe.

In this the Duchess unconsciously helped, by assuming that Katherine must be pining for her husband, even as she was for her own lord. And by stressing quite without intent the remarkable good fortune which had transformed Katherine from a charity orphan into a lady of quality. "The Blessed Saint Catherine must have you under special protection, my dear."

"Yes, madam," said Katherine humbly.

"Some day," continued Blanche, "you should make the pilgrimage to Our Lady of Walsingham in Norfolk, she gives great sanctity, and is especially kind and merciful to mothers." She paused, and a misty light shone in her eyes. "I went to Her in June - from Her bounteous grace She has rewarded me." She glanced towards her lap and added very low, "And I know She'll give me a healthy son."

"Ah, dearest lady," cried the girl. She took the Duchess' hand and laid it to her cheek, looking up at the fair white face, the high placid brow and the ropes of golden hair entwined with tiny pearls. "You who are like the Queen of Heaven Herself, of course She has rewarded you!"

"Hush, child," Blanche turned her hand and put it gently over Katherine's mouth. "You mustn't say foolish things. But indeed I love you well, too - we must see each other after our babes are born. It saddens me to part with you."

Katherine sighed agreement, for the parting was on the morrow, Epiphany Day. And the hope Katherine had briefly held, that the Duchess would ask her to stay on a while, had long ago vanished. Blanche thought the girl eager to get back to the manor for which she was now responsible, and the Swynford heir, of course, must be born on its own lands. This was the code, and as the Duchess herself never hesitated to put duty before inclination, so it never entered her mind that a girl of Katherine's obvious worth could do so.