The Duchess swept her skirts. ‘Sire. The Queen wishes to know. Have you ever given a lady not your wife a lacs d’amour? A love knot?’

My heart bumped a little against my ribs. I was wearing one. A simple interlacing of silver threads to form a knot in the shape of a heart. Little more than a simple fairing bought from a pedlar, a mere trifle lacking any fervent inscription, but it was a gift from John on my recent return, chosen because it was innocuous. I deliberately smoothed the girdle I was stitching beneath my fingers.

‘Indeed I have, Lady.’ John’s laughter was supremely confident as he set himself to entertain the group. ‘I must have given a score or more in my lifetime. And some here present. To Mistress Chaucer and Lady de Swynford. For services to my late Duchess.’

‘Indeed?’ Constanza’s gaze roved over me and Philippa with sharpened interest.

‘Yes, my lady.’ I touched my fingers to the little badge.

‘And I think Lady Alice might have one in her treasure coffer amongst all the other gems she has amassed over the years at my grateful hand.’

‘I think I have three…’ Lady Alice smiled despite her misgivings at the whole tenor of the conversation.

‘So many…’ John expressed admirable surprise. ‘How did you manage that?’

‘I’ve been in your household many years, John.’

‘I have never had a lover’s knot,’ proclaimed Elizabeth.

‘You are too young for such fripperies,’ I said gently, ‘but perhaps for your next New Year’s gift someone might buy you one.’

‘And I suppose that might be me,’ the Duke said. ‘So to answer your question, as you see, Lady, I have given far too many, and will doubtless give more.’

‘The Queen seems to have been neglected!’ Constanza raised an arch brow.

‘Then it is shame on me. The King will remedy it instantly. But you asked if the King had so awarded a love knot to a lady not his wife,’ he reproved.

Constanza flushed but continued with a distinct toss of her head.

‘Sire. The Queen wishes to know. Have you ever taken a lady as your mistress?’

The echo of the question hung in the room, like dust motes suspended in a sunbeam. I swallowed silently, mouth dry. There was no denying the direction of this line of questioning. I could only presume that the gossip had finally reached Constanza’s ears and she was intent on retribution. But would she blatantly hold her husband up for public condemnation? My flesh shivered a little.

The Duke’s brows had risen marginally, but he replied readily enough, and with enough circumspection. ‘Yes. With regret, the King must admit that he has.’

‘Then he must tell!’ Constanza was avid for detail, her eyes glowing with an unpleasant species of triumph.

‘The King was unwise in his youth,’ the Duke responded without hesitation. ‘The lady was young and beautiful, and I was young and wilful and drawn by the sins of the flesh.’

‘Oh!’ Constanza appeared shocked. Then more so when she realised that there was no outcry at such a statement.

Lady Alice on my left was nodding. ‘Marie. I remember her. She was a lovely girl and you were but seventeen.’

‘And I remember you made due recompense, my lord,’ the priest added.

It was no surprise to any one of the English adults present. If it had been a ruse to unnerve the Duke and me, it had failed utterly. We all knew of Marie, one of Queen Philippa’s damsels when John had been a young prince and had taken her to his enthusiastic bed.

Constanza looked askance. ‘My lord appears to have no remorse.’

‘Oh, he has. But he was granted absolution and he has tried to make amends. My lord granted a pension,’ William de Burgh explained. ‘The lady lacks for nothing and is treated with great respect.’

Constanza, drawing herself tall as if addressing the Royal Council, immediately directed another question.

‘I wish to know, Sire. Have you ever fathered a child outside of marriage?’

Now here was a far less innocent question, no longer addressed to the King of the game by the Queen, but to the Duke himself. The frivolity of the courtly silliness had been abandoned, yet the Duke’s face did not change from its amiable, well-mannered courtesy, although I could sense his anger at such an impertinent question. Lady Alice clicked her tongue against her teeth. The chaplain grunted over his wine.

‘That also is true,’ John replied, parrying with skill what was an obvious attack. ‘And the King will answer it since the Queen sees fit to ask.’ A clever return to the structure of the game. ‘It is not a matter for comment or scandal. There is no secrecy here. Yes, the King has a daughter. Her name is Blanche. The King will support her and will arrange a good marriage for her. She is Marie’s daughter.’

‘How old is she now?’ Lady Alice asked, pursuing her own role in softening the charged atmosphere.

‘Old enough to be married.’ He smiled at some memory. ‘And she is as lovely and gifted as her mother.’

The moment had passed, any tension subsumed under reminiscences of Marie and her daughter. If Constanza had hoped to embarrass the Duke, and draw me into an unpleasant situation, she had failed. I glanced across at her. There was no disappointment on her sharp features, and seeing this I realised that she had not yet reached the core of her planning. My muscled tensed again. What would she ask next? I thought I knew. I deliberately set another row of stitches that were woefully uneven.

Constanza smiled. ‘Sire. The Queen wishes to know. Does the King keep a mistress now?’

‘No,’ said Lady Alice, closing her book with a snap.

‘But yes,’ said Constanza. ‘The Queen desires to hear the truth.’

Silence fell on the room, like a woollen blanket, hot and stifling.

My breath backed up in my lungs. I looked at no one and stitched on, and then decided that such disinterest in itself would stir suspicion. I dropped my stitching to my lap and waited for the answer. The truth? Would the Duke tell the truth? The truth would damn us both in public.

He did not hesitate. With deliberation, every action controlled, his demeanour the epitome of chivalrous rectitude, the Duke knelt on one knee and took both Constanza’s slender hands in his, saluting one then the other.

‘Are you so uncertain of my loyalty to you and your cause? You are bound to me by the rite of Holy Mother Church, Constanza. You are my wife and mistress in the eye of God and Man. That cannot be changed. Your supremacy as Duchess of Lancaster and as Queen of Castile is under no threat from anyone here present. There is no need for such games. Your place at my side is sacrosanct.’

Constanza flushed. ‘Do you promise that?’ she whispered.

I felt cold and pale as the Duke’s affirmation sank in.

‘You will always be my wife, treated with every respect. We will have a son, if it is God’s will. I commit myself to restoring you to Castile. I promised that when I first wed you. I will not break that promise, made in God’s presence as we were wed. You must trust me. You must tell me that you trust me.’

‘Do you speak the truth?’ she asked, a lustrous softness in her face, all her earlier temper smoothed over.

‘There is no guile in my promises.’

‘Then I believe you.’

She smiled as the Duke leaned to salute her cheeks.

For a moment my heart fluttered with relief. He had done it. Clever, ambiguous, saving everyone’s face, the Duke had stated the plain legality of Constanza’s position, without putting me in danger. I dared not look at him, and throughout the whole of that masterly performance to comfort Constanza, he had drawn no attention to me. I knew him to have a reputation at the negotiation table for clever dealings. Tonight I had seen his skills in full flow, to rescue us all from rabid scandal.

But then, as I exhaled, the knowledge bit with sharp teeth. In spite of all the Duke’s professed need for me to return to his household, reality struck hard, as it had once before, in that one question:

Who is of greater importance to the Duke? You, Katherine de Swynford, or the Castilian Queen?

There was only one answer in my mind. Unworthy it might be, thoroughly selfish, but there before me was the evidence of the Duke kneeling at Constanza’s feet, his lips saluting her cheeks, then her lips.

There was no doubting the reply.

Had the Duke’s skilful exoneration been to draw attention from me or had it been to put Constanza’s jealousies to rest? She was everything to his ambitions, to his hopes, to the lasting inheritance of his family. What could I give him in comparison? She could give him all, and I nothing. The Duke was not protecting me but Constanza because she was central to his life.

My blood cold, all my hopes foundering under this blast of bleak truth, I turned my face away from both of them in that private little tableau. I had thought that my lover had leaped to my defence, but he had assuredly protected his wife, far more effectively than he had protected me.

The Duke had risen now, taking control of the situation simply by his stance, beckoning to the page who came to kneel at the Duchess’s feet as any smitten troubadour, launching into a rendering of a fashionable love-ballad that was lively but far less dangerous than Constanza’s spiteful intrigue. Keen to see her reaction, I looked across to find her eye on me, and in its gleam I detected what could only be a challenge. I held it for a moment, then calmly folded my stitching as if there were nothing amiss. The Duke had made it impossible for her to say more, nor would she wish to. The Duchess had emerged triumphant.

I, the mistress, had been put firmly in my place.

For she knew. Constanza knew. She had won this battle for his attention, whereas I had been cast adrift in the chilly margins of this relationship, my only consolation that I had not been held up to public disapprobation. My reputation was safe for a little while, but as Lady Alice and I took charge of the children she tilted her head in my direction to murmur: