She bowed her head.

Her head remained bowed while those ahead of her filed into the Presence Chamber: an abbess from Perigueux, a distressed knight and his lady from the Dordogne, the Castilian, the goldsmith, a messenger with letters from Flanders. At last the chamberlain spoke her name and a page resplendent in dazzling blue and grey livery came to usher her. An unknown squire received her at the door of the Presence Chamber and opened it for her to enter.

The Duke sat in a gilded canopied chair that was raised on a low dais. On his head he wore a coronet studded with cabochons, rough lumps of emeralds, balas rubies. His surcote of crimson velvet was furred with ermine and above the gold Lancastrian SS collar his face was tired and bleak.

They looked at each other, then looked away while the Duke said in his voice of chill command, "I will see this lady alone." The squire and a clerk who had been seated at a table silently withdrew.

She stood where she was in the middle of the floor, until he reached out his hand and said, "Come to me, Katrine."

She went over to the dais and kissed his hand. He drew her slowly up against him and kissed her on the lips.

"Brother William gave you my message?"

"Yes, my lord."

"You'll not refuse again, my dear one. I must know that you'll be there, waiting for me."

"I cannot refuse again," she said in a strangled voice, "for I believe I bear your child."

"Jesu!" he cried, his eyes blazed with light. "My child! My son! You will give me a son, Katrine. Another royal Plantagenet!"

"A bastard," she said, turning her head.

"But my son. He shall never suffer from it. Katrine, now you cannot leave me! I'll give you the world and all that's in it, I'll cherish you, care for you, you'll never know a hardship or a worry! You shall see what it is to be loved by the Duke of Lancaster!"

"And in return, my lord, I give you my good name - -"

"Nay, darling, it need not be. No one need know. I'll do all to protect your good name. 'Tis fitting enough that you should be appointed Governess to my daughters, they're fond of you. And everyone knows I care for my people, that your husband died in my service and that you were" - he paused - "were beloved of the Duchess Blanche."

She looked at him sadly, thinking that men saw only what they wished to see, and that it would be no easy thing to conceal their love or the fruit of it. In truth he did not realise how they would shrink from the furtive, from a prolonged course of lies and subterfuges. In that they were alike, both imbued with reckless pride.

"I cannot see far ahead, my dear lord," she said sighing, "but I'll do as you say until you return, and I'll do my best for your children.'' And mine, she added silently, for in these last days that she had been alone in Bordeaux she had thought much with painful yearning of her true-born babies, as though to reassure them that her love for them was untouched by this other all-compelling love that had come to her, nor changed by the new baby that she carried in her womb.

A nourish of trumpets sounded from outside the window. They both started.

"The heralds practise for your wedding march," she said, the words dropping like stones on a wooden dish. "Adieu, my lord."

"Katrine," he cried. He pulled her close against him. "You must be careful* you will be safe on this journey. 'Tis the best master we have, the staunchest ship. I'll have two priests pray for your safety night and day in the cathedral. Oh my Katrine, do you love me?"

The bitterness left her eyes, she put her arms around his neck, and met his hot demanding lips with a gentle kiss. "Ay, my lord, I love you," she said with a laugh that was half a sob. "I think you need not ask."

Part Four (1376-1377)

There saw I first the dark deceptions

Of Felony; and all the counterplots,

Cruel anger, red as any coal

Pickpockets, and eke the pale Dread ...

(The Knight's Tale)

CHAPTER XVI

On the afternoon before St. George's Day, 1376, April bloomed in Warwickshire. The young lambs bleated from the pastures beyond the mere, while a hazy gold light turned the sandstone of the battlements to the colour of a robin's breast. All Kenilworth Castle, cleansed and garlanded for the festivities, waited for the Duke to come again.

Katherine sat on a sunny stone bench in the Inner Court near the old keep, lending an indulgent ear to the happy shouts of the children as they romped through the courtyards. From this bench she could watch the entrance to the castle at Mortimer's Tower and be ready when the trumpet sounded and the first member of the Duke's company should gallop through from the causeway. This time she had not seen him for two months.

She was dressed in the gown he preferred to most of the others he had ordered for her: an amber tunic beneath a clinging sideless surcote of apricot velvet, furred with ermine. Her golden girdle was inlaid with enamel plaques blazoning her own arms - the three Catherine wheels or, on a gules field. A thin topaz-studded fillet encircled her high arched forehead, her eyebrows were plucked, her lips lightly reddened with cochineal paste as the Duke liked to see them. Her dark auburn hair was perfumed with costly ambergris, imported from Arabia, that he had appropriated for her in some hastily abandoned castle on his Great March through France, three years ago.

That march had been a foolhardy deed of courage. He had forced his weakening and finally starving army through enemy territory the length of France, from the north to Bordeaux. He had exposed his own person to danger time and again, and suffered with his men. Even the French thought this chevanchee a triumphant feat, spectacular as any his brother the Black Prince had ever achieved, and yet in the end there was loss, not gain. The lands through which he marched had bowed under the trampling feet like long grass, and sprung up again when he had passed.

When John had returned to England, embittered, his dream of conquering all France and then Castile once more postponed, he had found himself the target of an angry, puzzled England. For there was unrest everywhere and dissatisfaction with conditions. The people clamoured for another Crecy, another Poitiers, but times had changed. A new and wilier king sat on the French throne, and the once great English king was senile, his policies unstable, blowing now hot now cold, obedient to the greedy whims of Alice Perrers, and caring only to please her.

Yet now there was a truce with France, a precarious amnesty negotiated by the Duke at Bruges last year. The thought of John's months at Bruges brought sharp pain to Katherine, though it was a pain to which she was well accustomed.

John had taken his Duchess with him to Flanders and there at Ghent, his own birthplace, Costanza had been delivered of a son - at last.

But the baby did not live! Katherine crossed herself as she sat on the bench in Kenilworth courtyard and thought, Mea Culpa, as she had when she first heard the news that the baby had died - for shame of the fierce joy she had felt.

My sons live, thought Katherine. She glanced up to the windows of the Nursery Chamber in the South Wing. A shadow passed behind the clear tiny panes, and Katherine smiled. That would be Hawise, or one of the nurses, tending the infant Harry in his cradle, or perhaps fetching some toy to distract little John as he ate his supper - for he was a fussy eater and prone to dawdle. Healthy rosy boys, both of them, golden as buttercups, with their father's intense blue eyes.

A high jeering singsong shattered the peace of the courtyard. "Scaredy cats! Scaredy cats! Cowardy cowardy custard, go get thyself some mustard! - Ye dursn't do what I do - -"

That was Elizabeth, of course. Katherine jumped up prepared for trouble and hurried through the arch to the Base Court. Though the Duke's younger daughter was twelve years old and near to womanhood, Elizabeth's reckless enterprises still had to be restrained before they led herself and the younger children into actual danger.

This time Elizabeth was hopping on one foot upon the slate roof of the ducal stable and clinging to the weather-vane. Tom, Blanchette and the three little Deyncourts were all cramped into various stressful positions on the slippery slates as they tried to climb up to the taunting figure above them. Blanchette, her mother saw at once, was crying while she teetered on a window-ledge, and fumbled for fingerholds in the stone gutter.

"Elizabeth!" called Katherine sharply, to the stable roof. "Come down at once!" She ran to rescue Blanchette by climbing on a mounting block and holding her arms up to the child, who dropped thankfully into them. "Little simpleton," scolded Katherine, kissing her. "When will you learn you cannot and must not do all Lady Elizabeth says?" She ran on from Blanchette and pulled down the Deyncourt children. But her own Thomas wanted no help. He turned a sulky face to his mother and said, "Let me be, lady. I shan't go to the roof, but I shall get down as I please," which was as typical of Tom at eight as it had been all his life. Never openly disobedient, but a headstrong sulky boy who reminded her often of his father, Hugh.

"Well, Bess," called Katherine to the culprit on the roof, "I told you to come down - -"

"Can't," quavered the child. Her swarthy little face had paled, she clung so hard to the weather-vane that its veering cock shook as in a high wind.

"Then be brave a few more minutes and hold tight," called Katherine more gently. She clapped her hands crying, "Groom! Here!" A stablerboy ran out, brought a ladder and soon had Elizabeth safe on the ground - safe and defiant. "I wasn't scared, I was just gammoning you, my lady."