Katherine knelt on the prie-dieu which stood beside the bed and gazed up at the jewelled figure of the Blessed Virgin in the niche. No fear for herself entered her mind, nor did She pray that the Duchess would recover, for that would be a miracle worked by God alone. She saw that the plague boils had turned inward, and none that vomited blood ever lived. She prayed only that Ellis would bring the monk in time. She prayed while the candles burned down an inch, and the Duchess shivered and moaned, and once cried out. Suddenly Katherine's wits cleared and she saw that she must go back outside the castle to guide the monk since he would be a stranger, nor did Ellis know of the postern gate.

She knew that it was useless to ask help of those in the anteroom. She slipped down the privy stairway that led to the Duke's wardrobe and out on a corner of the battlements, and down to the bailey.

It was dark outside now except for the glare from the plague fire. The hooded black figures had gone and loose earth covered the ditch. Katherine sped through the bailey and out through the postern door. The fog had blown off into a fine rain, yet at first she could see nobody outside the castle walls. Then she heard the whicker of a horse over by the church and she ran there, calling, "Ellis!"

Her squire and a tall Cistercian monk in white had taken shelter from the rain in the church porch, having indeed been unable to find a way into the castle. Katherine wasted no time on Ellis and, giving the monk a murmur of gratitude, seized the edge of his sleeve. Together they hurried back into the castle and up the privy stair to the Duchess's room.

The Duchess still lived. She stirred as Katherine and the white monk came to her bed, and when she saw the cowled head and the crucifix the monk held out to her as he said "Pax vobiscum, my daughter," she gave a long sigh and her hand fluttered towards him. The monk opened his leather case and laid the sacred parts of the viaticum out on the table, then he motioned to Katherine to leave.

The girl crept down the stairs and turned off the landing into the little room called the Duke's garde-robe, because it was in here that he dressed and that his clothes were kept when he was in residence. It was bare now except for two ironbound coffers, a rack full of lances and an outmoded suit of armour that hung from a perch and shone silver-grey in the darkness. A faint odour of lavender and sandalwood clung to the room and there was here no plague stench.

Katherine sat on the coffer with her head in her hands until the monk called out to her.

The Duchess died next morning at the hour of Prime while a copper-red sun tipped above the eastern wolds against a lead sky. Katherine and the Cistercian monk knelt by the bedside whispering the prayers for the dying, and one other was with them - Simon, the old steward of the castle, who had recovered from his drunkenness and crept in to join them, his head bowed with heavy shame.

A little while before her passing, the Lady Blanche's torments eased, and it seemed that she knew them. She tried to speak to the steward and though the words were not clear, they knew she spoke of her dearest lord, John, and of her children; and Simon breathed something of reassurance while the tears ran down his face. Then Blanche's wandering gaze passed over the monk and rested on Katherine with a look of puzzled recognition. She remembered nothing of the night just gone but she felt the girl's love and saw the anguish in her eyes. She raised her hand and touched Katherine's hair. "Christ have mercy on you, dear child," she whispered, while the gracious charm of this most noble lady showed for a moment in her dimming blue eyes. "Pray for me, Katherine - -" she added so faintly that the girl heard with her heart and not her ears.

Then the great room was quiet again except for the chanting of the monk. Lady Blanche sighed, her fingers closed around the crucifix on her breast. "In manus tuas - Domine -" she said clearly, in a calm, contented voice. And died.

It seemed that the Black Death, having slain the Duchess, had at last slaked its greed. The weather on that September 12 turned sharp and freezing cold, and the evil yellow fog vanished. There were a few more deaths throughout the castle, a scullion and a dairymaid, two of the guards and the head falconer's wife; but these had all been stricken before the Duchess died, and there were no new cases.

Of those who had danced in frenzy by the skull in the anteroom, none died of plague but Audrey, the Duchess's tiring-woman, and she followed her mistress on the next day without ever regaining her sense from the drunken stupor which had finally quietened all the revellers.

On Piers Roos, too, the dread black spots appeared, but God showed him mercy, for the plague boil in his groin swelled fast and burst like a rotten plum; and when the poison drained away, Piers recovered, albeit he lay for months in sweating weakness afterwards.

During those days of heavy sorrow and gradually lightening fear, Katherine remained at the castle. They had sore need of help, and old Simon was distracted by the terrible responsibilities on him. Of those at Bolingbroke, thirty had died. Most of the varlets had run off in panic to the wolds and fens. There were few left to do Simon's bidding, and none to tell him what disposition should be made of the Duchess - until the messenger he had dispatched to the King at Windsor should return.

They sealed away the Lady Blanche in a hastily made coffin and placed it in the private chapel. There the good white monk said Masses for her soul, and many of her household came to pray; and there too, every morning after it seemed sure the plague had passed, Katherine brought the ducal daughters, Philippa and Elizabeth, to light candles and kneel by their mother's black velvet bier.

The children had all been safe in the North Tower throughout the scourge; the Holy Blessed Mother had watched out for them, since their own could not.

The baby, Henry, toddled merrily about the floor in his own apartments playing with his silver ball and a set of ivory knights his father had sent him. When Katherine first went to see him he drew back as children do, and hid distrustfully behind his nurse's skirts, but he soon grew used to her and crowed with glee when she played finger games with him as she did with Blanchette.

The little girls occupied rooms higher up in the tower, and Katherine found them well enough in health, though Philippa was nine now and old enough to understand the terrible things that had befallen them; between the strands of lank flaxen hair, her long sallow face was runnelled with tears, and nothing that Katherine could say lightened the stillness of her bearing. Yet she remembered Katherine and seemed to find some comfort in standing silently beside her.

Elizabeth at five was noisier than ever. She harried the servants and bullied the nurses and her sister, all of whom gave into her rather than provoke a screaming rage. She was a brown little thing, all except her eyes, which were leaf-green and could flash like a cat's. When she was told of her mother's death, she howled loudly for a while because she saw those about her weeping; but in her visits to the bier in the chapel she found a not unpleasing importance. She liked Katherine because she smelled good and told her stories and had a low sweet voice unlike her Yorkshire nurse's, but she cared deeply about nobody.

Katherine longed for her own children and especially when she saw little Henry, who was so near to Blanchette in age and whose baby tricks wrenched at her heart. Almost she resented him because he was not Blanchette.

But her own babies were well at Kettlethorpe and did not miss her. Ellis had ridden home with all the frightful tidings of Bolingbroke, and returned some days later with a message from Philippa, who had made him repeat it so many times that through Ellis's voice Katherine could plainly hear her sister's.

"You're not to come home yet, on any account, lady," Ellis reported stolidly. "They're all well and wish to stay so. Dame Philippa says there's no telling but the plague might be hiding in your clothes waiting to smite those nearest you in revenge that you are safe. She said to tell you that they're singing Masses for the Duchess' soul at Kettlethorpe church, and all is being done seemly there, so you need have no care for anything; but you must not return until all danger from pestilence has passed."

They stood in the chill windswept bailey by the now lowered drawbridge, and Ellis, acting under orders, kept his distance from her.

"And what does Sir Hugh say?" Katherine asked slowly.

Ellis looked uncomfortable. Hugh had said very little beyond expressing shock at the Duchess's death. He had always been a morose man, but lately even Ellis thought him unduly brooding and withdrawn.

"He sends you greeting," said Ellis, "and said you may do as you please."

Katherine nodded. That was like Hugh as he had become in the last year. It was as though he held himself away from her in all things, no longer gave her commands nor yet made clumsy efforts to gain her affection; and she thought that this was because of the thing that had happened to him. But Philippa's advice was sensible and though it pained her it also freed her for a different obligation.

"Do you then, Ellis," she said, "return now to Kettlethorpe and tell them I shall join the funeral cortege that'll escort our dearest Lady Blanche to London, for this is what the King commands. And perhaps I shall remain there to do her the last honours, when she is interred, after the Duke is back from France."

Ellis considered this and decided that it was a fitting course for her to follow and would not displease Sir Hugh.