They both turned to the blunted little stone crucifix, and through the roofless chapel their prayers floated out to mingle with the murmur of the waterfall.

On September 18, three days before the Feast of Saint Matthew, Katherine sat alone in a guest chamber of the Benedictine nunnery at Bordeaux. Her travelling chest had been brought here to her, and she was again dressed in her black mourning robes, her braided hair bound into black velvet cauls and covered with a thin veil. A breeze pungent with the tang of fresh-trampled grapes from a hundred villages carried the distant shouts of the peasants working in the vineyards. Katherine sat quietly by the window looking out over the harbour where a cluster of masts dipped and swung with the ripples of the Garonne. Her face was white and still. Though her eyes were swollen from nights of stifled weeping, now she had no more tears.

She waited for the summons she knew would come, and wondered without interest on which of those ships out there she was to sail on the morrow.

A little nun knocked on the door, entered, flustered and blushing, to say that madame had a most important caller - the Duke's own physician, the Franciscan, Brother William. He was awaiting her in the parlour.

Katherine smiled thanks and rose. The little nun peered up at her admiringly. If the prioress knew anything about this beautiful widow who seemed so unhappy and gave no information about herself, she was the only one at the convent who did.

Cause enough to be unhappy, said the cellaress acidly, with the poor lady's husband dead and she so far from home. Yet the nuns were not satisfied, there was some mystery about Lady Swynford and a glamour that intrigued them. They whispered about her as they sat at work or walked in the cloisters and found her nearly as interesting as the topic that excited all Bordeaux. The royal wedding in three days. When the Duke and new Duchess returned from the marriage at Roquefort there would be a procession right down the street past the convent; by hanging out of the windows they would see the handsome Duke, golden as the sun, strong as a lion, people said, and see his Castilian bride - a queen, for all she was but seventeen.

" 'Tis such a pity, madam, that you do not stay for the wedding," said the little nun, as she accompanied Katherine down to the parlour. "It will be so gay with fifty trumpeters, they say, and jongleurs from Provence!"

Lady Swynford did not answer.

Brother William had been chatting with the portress, he turned as Katherine entered and bowed. Beneath his black cowl his eyes were severe, he did not smile at her as he used to do.

He glanced at the portress and the nun, who vanished. Katherine sank down on a stool, clasping her hands tight on a fold of her skirt, but she raised her face to the friar and waited with mute dignity for him to speak.

His gaze softened only a trifle as he stared down at her and saw the shadows beneath her wide grey eyes and the lines of suffering that pulled at her mouth. Then he shook his head. "I had never thought to come to such a woman as you, with the sort of message I bring. The Duke awaits you in his presence chamber. He cannot receive you except as one of the many who are filing through for audience, because at present great discretion is required." Brother William stopped, frowning.

"I know," she said. Dull red flowed up her cheeks. Her gaze rested on the knotted scourge that girded the friar's grey habit, then dropped to his dusty bare feet.

"It would be wise," continued the Brother with chill distaste, "for you to remove that ring you wear. It would be as familiar to many at the palace as it is to myself."

She took off the sapphire seal ring and slipped it in her bosom.

"The Duke will manage that you have a few minutes alone together, but the time must necessarily be brief so as not to arouse suspicion. I am therefore directed to repeat the arrangements His Grace had made for you and to which he commands and also implores your final consent."

Katherine swallowed and said dully, "I am sailing tomorrow on whatever ship he has selected."

"Ay, and when you land you proceed to the Savoy bearing official letters which will grant you fifty marks at once and appoint you Resident Governess to His Grace's two little daughters, the Ladies Philippa and Elizabeth. You may send for your sister, Mistress Chaucer, and your own two children from Lincolnshire to join you at the Savoy, where they also will be provided for. You will remain at the Savoy until the Duke returns." The friar paused, before adding with biting emphasis, "When, I gather, further intimacies will continue to be suitably rewarded."

"Brother William!" Katherine jumped to her feet. "You've no right to speak to "me like that! I've already refused these arrangements. I did refuse them, though now - now-" She bit her lips until the blood surged back into them purple. "You've no right to judge! What can you know of love, or of a woman's heart? Do you think I don't suffer?"

The friar drew a long sigh. "Peace, child," he said, "peace! I don't judge you, that is for God to do. He knows what's in your secret heart. I see only a guilty love. Guilty," he repeated half to himself and gazed at her intently with his keen physician's eyes. "Nirac de Bayonne is ill," he said.

"Nirac - -" she cried in an amazement that the watchful friar knew was" innocent and unfeigned. "Why do you speak of him, now? Oh, I'm sorry he's ill, poor little scamp. He'll cure soon enough if the Duke is kind to him, I warrant."

So, I believe that I am quite wrong, thought the friar with deep relief. This girl at least knew nothing, if there were truly anything to know. Nirac had had two attacks like fits of madness, in which the Grey Friar had been called to tend him and soon discovered that these fits came from the taking of drugs obtained from some disreputable alchemist in the Basque quarter of town. During these fits Nirac had shouted out strange words and vague sinister allusions, coupled with Katherine and Hugh Swynford's names but actually nothing more than what an excited brain might invent. The friar was ashamed of the dreadful suspicions that had come to him.

He spoke more kindly to Katherine as they hurried towards the palace together.

To reach the Presence Chamber they had to traverse the palace cloisters. In the central garth a crowd of lords and ladies amused themselves, some tossing a gilded leather ball, some wagering piles of silver coins on the roll of ivory jewel-studded dice. The Princess Isabel sat on a blue velvet chair in the shade of a mulberry tree, munching candied rose petals and gossiping with Lady Roos of Hamlake. Her brother, Edmund of Langley, lounged beside her chair while he tickled the sensitive nose of Isabel's spaniel with an ostrich feather.

The Princess' sharp eyes missed very little. She spied Katherine's black-robed figure as the girl approached the Great Stairs and called out peremptorily, "My Lady Swynford!"

The girl started and glanced at the Grey Friar in distress. He said, "You must go to her," with some sympathy, for he did not like the Duke's sister.

Katherine moved slowly across the turf and curtsied to the Princess, who said, "I've heard some rumour that your knight has died, God rest his soul. I see," she glanced at Katherine's gown, "that it is so. A pity. Was it not some time ago?"

"A month, madam," said Katherine faintly. Edmund having made the spaniel sneeze looked up, his mouth fell open as he stared at Katherine. He scrambled to his feet and waving the ostrich feather cried, "And where have you been since, my lovely burde? So fair a widow should not go unconsoled." He leered at her with mawkish gallantry, and Katherine looked away, stricken by the caricatured resemblance to his brother in this weak, foolish face.

"Quiet, Edmund," said the Princess as though she addressed the spaniel. "Where are you bound now?" she pursued to Katherine, her instinctive resentment sharpening her voice, though in truth she had forgotten Lady Swynford since she saw her on the boat and had no motive but curiosity.

"To crave leave of departure from my Lord Duke, madam. It - it has been arranged that I sail home tomorrow."

"Ah," said Isabel satisfied, "back to that North Country whence you came? Some village with a silly name, a kettle in it, what was it?"

"Kettlethorpe, madam," said Katherine, and stood waiting while Isabel chortled and Edmund giggled amiably and continued to eye the girl with warmth. "Have I your leave to depart now, madam?"

Isabel nodded and crammed another fistful of sugared comfits into her mouth. Katherine curtsied again and rejoined Brother William, who had been watching the way she bore herself and thinking that she was hard to condemn as wholeheartedly as his conscience bade him do for this scandalous intrigue she had plunged into while her husband lay but four days dead. As she stood before those two Plantagenets in the garden, she had seemed more royal than they and fashioned of a finer metal. Yet she was weak, debased by the sins of the flesh, and he must guard himself from excusing her because of the beauty of her flesh: a lure devised by the ever-guileful Devil.

They entered the crowded anteroom past the yeoman-on-guard, and Brother William introduced her to the chamberlain, who said that my Lady Swynford would be received in her due turn. Katherine sat on a bench between one of the Castilian envoys and a Florentine goldsmith who held on his lap a casket of jewelled trinkets which he hoped to sell to the Duke as gifts for the bride.

The Grey Friar bowed to Katherine gravely and said, "I'll leave you now, my child, and shall pray that Christ and His Holy Mother strengthen you. Benedicite."