It angered him to suspect that she should disobey his summons - though rightly so, no doubt, considering what had passed between them - if he tried to bring her here solely under guise of serving his new Duchess. Swynford's authority must be invoked as well. By humiliating subterfuge, Hugh must be made to summon Katherine himself, his wound would serve as excuse. But there'd be no trouble managing Hugh, thought John, he'd be pleased enough at the honour done his wife in the appointment to lady-in-waiting and pleased enough to see her too, God rot him.

And when Katherine came - what then?

John turned and slammed the shutter on the window so hard that Nirac, who had been watching him anxiously, jumped.

Well, when Katherine came and he saw her again, he would be cured. No woman on earth had the beauty and the appeal he had gradually endowed her with since she ran from him in the Avalon Chamber. Doubtless by now she had grown fat or scrawny, her peasant blood would tell as she grew older, the earthy vitality which had first offended him at Windsor would do so again, as crudeness always had offended him. He would see the blemishes - her rough chilblained hands, the black mole on her cheek-bone, the breathless headlong way she sometimes talked, even the sudden quiet dignity that came to her in stress could be seen as a ridiculous pretension - in short, he would be cured.

"I'll give you complete instructions tomorrow," he said to Nirac and walked out of the garde-robe to the chamber where his fidgeting retinue was waiting.

On the tenth of August the Grace a Dieu, four days out of Plymouth, ran into heavy seas past Finistere in Brittany, and the tricksy Biscayan winds hurled themselves at the little ship and threatened to blow her back to England. The master had been through worse weather on his many voyages between the home ports and Bordeaux, and after a few hearty curses he ordered the sail lowered and the sea anchor put out. He checked on the steersmen at the rudder, then retired to the castled poop with a keg of strong ale, prepared to ride out the storm until the Blessed Virgin should send them a north or westerly wind to blow them again in the right direction.

Though it might well be that St. James would take as much interest as the Blessed Mother in this voyage, since besides the party bound for Bordeaux at the Duke of Lancaster's orders, there were ten pilgrims for the holy shrine of St. James of Compostela in Spain. These pilgrims had been stuffed in the hold with the freight and were constantly and abominably seasick, but their fares represented extra profit on the voyage and the Duke's receiver at Bordeaux would be pleased.

In the wainscoted, tapestried cabin below the castled poop, the women were seasick too. The Princess Isabel de Coucy lay in the largest bunk and groaned, occasionally raising a saffron face to vomit into a silver basin held for her by one of her sniffling, retching women. Lady Scrope and Lady Roos of Hamlake lay together in another bunk and each time the Grace a Dieu wallowed and slid over a wave Lady Scrope clutched her companion and whispered wildly, "Blessed Jesus, save us, we shall all be drowned!" Lady Scrope was Lord de la Pole's sister, but she was a timorous little wisp of a woman, quite unlike her brother.

For Katherine there was no bunk at all, she and a squire's lady were assigned two pallets on the broad-beamed floor. Katherine was a little frightened by the storm, though it exhilarated her too, and she longed to be out on deck away from the stench of vomit and other odours resultant upon the day and night confinement of eight women in so small a room, but the captain had barred the door so that his valuable passengers might come to no harm by running about the heaving deck or tumbling overboard.

There being no help for it, Katherine lay as quietly as possible on her pallet. Her head was turned away from the unpleasant sights and sounds behind her and she braced herself as best she might against the ship's rolling pitch. She had not been seasick in these days since leaving Plymouth, and she was not so now. This small superiority over the Princess Isabel gave her satisfaction. The Princess had been unremittingly patronising from the moment of their meeting at Plymouth Hoe, before they ascended the gang-plank into the Grace a Dieu.

The King's daughter had been a spoiled beauty in her youth, famous for her caprices and wanton extravagance. Now at forty she was no longer a beauty, though she considered herself one. She was fat and moustached and dark, for she took after her mother Queen Philippa's people. Isabel's hair, though sedulously dyed with walnut juice and vinegar, had turned a streaky grizzled brown. And her cheeks, though rouged with cochineal, were mottled with liver spots. Katherine's pity might well have been aroused had the Princess' manner been pleasanter, for it was known to all on the ship that Isabel had seized avidly upon this opportunity to cross the sea so that she might try once again to find her runaway husband, the Lord Enguerrand of Coucy, who was many years her junior.

Isabel had twice before this tried to find him, in Flanders, and in Holland; but her elusive lord had always fled before she came. Now it was rumoured that he lived in Florence, and Isabel, in talking to Lady Roos in the cabin, was frank enough about her intentions. "Since I'm suffering this frightful voyage to please my brother of Lancaster and attend his wedding, I shall demand that he give me escort and safe conduct on my way to Italy later." Though she spoke to Lady Roos, no one in the cabin could ever escape that loud penetrating voice, except now - thought Katherine gratefully - when it was diminished into groans.

An enormous wave hit the ship, which mounted, shivered and plunged with a shock that knocked Katherine against the bulwark. Lady Scrope screamed again, crying on St. Christopher, St. Botolph and the Blessed Virgin to save them, for the ship would surely sink.

Katherine thought it quite probable. She clutched her beads tight against her breast and tried to stem growing panic with Aves and Paternosters, while her thoughts beneath ran in confused images of home, especially of the day Nirac came with the puzzling letter from Hugh, dictated to a scrivener and summoning her to Bordeaux, "at the Duke's command". Her first feeling had been of anguished shock at the news of the Duke's intended marriage. The violence of this feeling had distressed her deeply, for gradually throughout the placid days at Kettlethorpe, alone with her babies and Philippa, she had almost trained herself not to think of the Duke except as her feudal overlord whose bounty had much eased their life. The day after receipt of Hugh's letter she had reasoned herself from that first anguish into resignation and relief. For now that the Duke was marrying the Queen of Castile, there could be nothing more between them, ever, and she need not fear that seeing him again might upset her hard-won equilibrium. Her second thoughts were of conscience-stricken concern for Hugh. Nirac was extremely uncommunicative about the extent of Hugh's wounds or indeed on any matter pertaining to Bordeaux, so that she knew little beyond the sparsely worded letter.

But there was no question of her refusing to go. Philippa settled that at once. Dual command from husband and Duke must be obeyed. Philippa had her own baby now, also a little Tom, and had been at Kettlethorpe so long that she felt she owned it. Chaucer, still coming and going on official business, was glad enough to leave her there.

So Katherine had set forth on her journey with Nirac, stopping two days in London with Hawise, whose Jack had returned from France and claimed her. The affection between the two women was even stronger than it had been before the months Hawise had spent at Ketdethorpe, and Hawise had shed many hearty tears at parting from Katherine. "Ay, my sweeting, God shield ye on this voyage - I'll keep a candle burning to Saint Catherine for ye, night and day - I had a dream last night - nay, I'll not say it - -would I could come wi' ye, my dear lady."

But here Jack Maudelyn had frowned very black and said his wife had had enough of strampaging about and must abide in London at her own hearthfire, and he muttered something more beneath his breath about the scurvy whims of lords and ladies. Jack was not the merry hobbledehoy he'd been five years ago on May Day. His years in the army had changed him, he had become rough-tongued and brutal, a malcontent, disinclined for steady work. Though he was a master weaver now, he had scant interest in his loom, but much in his guild privileges and he spoke often of the City's rights, making angry allusions to "royal rogues and tyrants" who must be taught better if they dared to infringe on these rights.

Again the little ship quivered and plunged. The wind blew harder. The master abandoned his keg of ale and lost his fortitude, when he glimpsed through the driving rain squalls a dark mass of rock and tiny specks of moving light around its base. If that were the Isle d' Ouessant and they were blown upon its shores, the bloodthirsty wreckers waiting on the beach would dispatch whatever souls the waves spared. And even if they escaped the island, the Grace a Dieu could not long survive this pounding. Her seams were parting, and the naked sweating men in the hold had shouted that the pump no longer kept down the rising water.

The master crossed himself and touched the wooden image of the Virgin that was carved on the mast, then, lurching and floundering through green water on the deck amidships, he unbarred the cabin door and stumbled in on a great blast of howling wind and rain. The women raised their heads, staring at him in terror, while the candles in the swaying horn lamps guttered, then flared up.