‘Tell the Duchess that I look for her churching and her return, if you will. Tell her I will send a gift.’

He touched the dark curls that escaped the little linen coif, and bent to press his lips to the infant’s forehead.

‘The Duchess wishes her to be called Katherine, my lord,’ I stated carefully, adding: ‘After St Katherine, you understand.’

My words brought a wry twist to his mouth. ‘I will not argue against it, although it would not have been my choice.’

‘The Duchess calls her Katalina.’

‘Which is good. My thanks to you all for the care of my wife.’

The nursery maid curtsied, the chaplain beamed and I continued to stand with my rigidly schooled expression.

Such a multitude of emotions expressed between us, without any evidence on his face or mine, yet his were clear to me. I saw his pleasure, after his initial disappointment, as with any man, that the child was not a male heir for Castile. The tenderness with which he supported the child. His surprise that the babe should be called Katherine. And a thought touched me to awaken all my insecurities and the green glitter of jealousy that sparkled through my blood. I had no history with this man to call on when uncertainty struck. I had no place in this family. The Duke, with only one son to his name, would desire more children with his wife. They would of necessity continue to share a bed and the intimate act of procreation. Which I must accept, however hard it might be.

Unaware of the lurch of dismay that began to build beneath my sleekly buttoned bodice, the Duke said: ‘Tell the Duchess that I send her felicitations on this happy birth of our daughter.’ He glanced up. ‘But she wishes it was a son, of course.’

‘Yes, my lord. She hopes for more children, an heir for Castile.’

He gave the child to the nursery maid, not to me, but it was to me that he spoke. ‘Will you talk to me? About the Duchess? Tell me how she has fared.’

All the time that he was speaking he was unpinning a sapphire from the shoulder cape of his hood, dextrously transferring it to his daughter’s wrappings.

‘Yes, my lord.’

And then the calmly beautiful chamber with its carved hammer-beams and lightly plastered walls was empty, apart from the two of us, and the atmosphere was not calm at all. We simply stood apart, not talking, not touching, the long drawn-out weeks of our separation formidable between us.

It will always be like this, a voice warned in my mind. It will never get better. How could it when you will live most of your lives apart, snatching moments that are tainted with guilt and anticipation of loss?

I waited for him to speak first.

‘Smile at me.’

I smiled. The muscles of my face felt stiff, unused.

‘Speak to me.’

‘You are right welcome, my lord.’

‘Not like that.’ His voice was unexpectedly harsh. He did not smile at me. ‘Speak to me as a beloved to her lover.’

The time and space between us had been too long. It had created a chasm in my mind and I was not able to step easily across it, for ranged on the opposite side, standing closely with the Duke was Constanza with the child in her arms. Our love was too new for me to rest on it. I had no safe harbour, no anchorage that would hold me fast and secure. How could I survive without some continuity of touch, of speech? Of shared kisses and soft endearments? I had nothing. It was as if I felt my way blindly through a maze.

‘I cannot…’ I said, fretfully. ‘Not yet.’

‘It is not easy, is it?’

So he understood. And his understanding was as soothing as a bowl of hot frumenty on a cold morn. ‘No, it is not easy.’

‘Be brave, Katherine.’

‘I am trying.’

‘The child does not stand between us, any more than Constanza does.’

‘But sometimes my heart betrays me and I can see no path for my feet to follow.’

‘Tell me.’

So I did, as we stood in the centre of that sumptuous room. ‘I fear that you will come to love them more than you need me. And that I will be rejected.’

‘Katherine…’

I raised my hand in quick denial. ‘I know you will say that it isn’t so. I know what I must not ask of you…’

‘Because it is not so. Have I not proved to you?’

‘I cannot bear that we are apart for so long.’

‘Yet it must be.’

He took a step and touched me, drawing the back of his forefinger along my throat to where my blood beat heavily. It was the first time that he had touched me, in public or in the privacy of his rooms, since I first shared his bed all those weeks ago at The Savoy.

‘You look tired. And paler than I recall.’

‘We have all suffered from the heat.’

‘How I have missed you…’

‘And I you.’

I thought he might have held me, but approaching footsteps made him look up and draw back. By the time the Chamberlain pushed open the door, we were standing a good distance apart, I by the door, the Duke on the dais.

‘My lord.’ He bowed with the briefest of glances at me. ‘Forgive me. A courier from the Prince at Kennington. He says it is urgent.’

‘I will come. Ensure that the man has ale and food.’

‘Of course, my lord. It has been done.’

The Duke made to follow, but stopped when he drew level with me and, for form’s sake, I curtsied with lowered eyes.

‘Prudence is a heavy burden,’ he said in response.

I looked up, for once not even trying to hide my despair. Did I not know it? It was like balancing on a sword edge suspended over that chasm that I found so difficult to cross. Agonising for the feet to do the walking: fatally agonising to fall into the depths. Yet this was how we must live. I could not show him how gravely I had missed him in all those weeks apart. I could neither speak nor act, but must exist on these crumbs of conversation, when all I wished to do was to announce to the world: ‘This is the man I love.’

‘What is it?’ He searched my face.

‘Nothing,’ I whispered.

‘It is not a sin, Katherine.’ It was as if he had read my concerns.

It is a love greater than I can sometimes bear. But I could not speak of it.

‘Come with me to London.’

‘I cannot.’

‘Yes, you can.’

He left me without explanation. Why did he need to explain? Sometimes his conceit unnerved me.

The Duke’s plan was a simple one. Far simpler than if he was planning a military campaign, I supposed, and put into operation with all the high-handed self-belief I had come to expect. I, as one of the Duchess Constanza’s senior damsels, he decreed, should be given the office of presenting this royal granddaughter to King Edward.

With my court dress and my jewels packed, I was provided with a litter and outriders. A complete household of nurses and servants, so many for so small a person, accompanied the baby Katalina in her own litter, but I travelled in solitary luxury. Nothing was lacking to my comfort, from a welter of cushions to the spiced wine. I knew where the order had originated. On arrival, as Katalina was settled with her entourage into The Savoy nursery, I turned towards the room I had once shared with Philippa.

‘No, my lady.’ Sir Thomas Hungerford was standing at my shoulder.

Perhaps I was expected to remain nearer the child. There was always Alyne’s room.

‘If you will accompany me, my lady.’ The steward had a certain stern disapproval about him, but he gestured expansively towards the ducal apartments. ‘My lord ordered that you should be housed here, in recognition of your service to the Duchess.’

And he pushed open the door into one of the guest chambers.

All I could think of was the contrast. Here all was opulence, luxury, comfort. My manor at Kettlethorpe was a peasant’s hovel in comparison.

And so there I was settled, with two servants of my own to answer to any whim, leaving me with no role other than to enjoy the accommodations, for I was made free of the family rooms. I had no responsibilities except to feed my own pleasure. I could walk in the gardens, sit in the Duke’s library with his collection of books, venture out into the city with an escort, as I awaited the royal summons to take Katalina to the King.

It was not the only summons I looked for. My blood sang with the anticipation, my heart scurrying like the rat in my undercroft at Kettlethorpe, as if I were some lovelorn girl.

Within a day of my arrival, the Duke came.

I had a week with him, seven whole, endless days that stretched before me, a se’enight of such magical sweetness, my heart was suffused with it. I did not think that I had ever known such untrammelled happiness as in those days, for we were still new lovers, still caught up in the glory of it, still untouched by the outside world.

How did we use it, that precious freedom? Were we discreet?

Without exception, for we both knew the importance of that discretion. In public we were never alone. We met in company. We dined in company. No slight was cast on the position of the Duchess, on my own reputation, nor on the Duke’s joy in the birth of a daughter. Any guest who visited in those days was brought to the nursery to admire this child who was heir to the throne of Castile. I curtsied as any good damsel should. The Duke took the child from me as he had done on that first day, to commend her beauty.

‘You will know Lady Katherine de Swynford,’ he introduced me to his brother Thomas, Duke of Gloucester, and his wife who, a valuable ring glittering on every one of her fine-boned fingers, regarded me as some species of upper servant. ‘Her care of my wife is beyond praise.’

‘Lady Katherine.’ Gloucester saluted my hand. ‘I knew of your return to my brother’s household.’

‘And I am honoured, my lord.’