"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.

Part Two (1369)

"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)

CHAPTER IX

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.