‘Is that what happened?’ I asked.

‘Yes.’

A flat affirmation, all I needed, all I dreaded. It was what I had feared more than any other. I turned my back on him because I could not look at him without weeping, and marched to the window, the thick glass grown opaque with rain and gloom, where I smacked my knuckles hard against the stone surround.

‘Oh, they relished telling me the detail of that little event,’ I announced to the view I could not see. ‘What pleasure to give all the details to the whore, of the triumphant victory of the ill-used wife.’ I looked back over my shoulder as I fought to control my voice. ‘They told me how you met on the road at Northallerton. How the distraught Duchess fell on her knees in the dust at your feet and begged your forgiveness for her lack of affection towards you. Three times she prostrated herself, so they told me. Three times, with tears and wailing, until you lifted her up and reassured her that all would be well between you. Is that how it went?’

I saw my lips curl again with wry appreciation, a grey reflection in the glass, but there was no humour in it. Poor Constanza. Had she accepted at last that she had had a part in causing the rift between them? Did the attack on her precious Hertford stir enough terror in her heart that she saw the need to humble herself and beg her husband’s protection? In my own loss I had no sympathy for her. I turned my face away, so that he would not note the gleam of moisture on my cheeks, to watch him in the reflection.

‘Did you? Did you lift her into your arms?’

‘Yes.’

I nodded as if in agreement. ‘Of course you did. That is exactly what you would do. And then you escorted her to the safe luxury of the Bishop of Durham’s house where you marked the occasion of your joyful reunion. Until daylight, I understand, with great merriment and celebrations. You asked pardon for your misdeeds and she willingly forgave you.’ I looked up, stretching my neck, noting the carving of a cat stalking some misbegotten creature in the stonework above my head. I had never spoken to him in this manner before, but I did not care. I did not care if it roused the fire of his temper. ‘Before God, John, I was not invited to the safety of the Bishop’s lodging, was I! No place for me. No place for the whore.’

‘No.’

Again that cold affirmation of my accusations, that flat acceptance, when my soul longed for his denial.

‘No,’ I repeated. ‘There could be no place for me, could there?’

In my mind I saw our two disparate reunions with the Duke, Constanza and I placed side by side, one dramatic and emotional, a true reconciliation for the Duchess, with intimate kisses and promises for the future. The other, as we stood here now, the width of the room between us, bitter and redolent of raw grief, a portcullis of iron lowered between us.

And as that vision filled my mind, without warning all control vanished. I swung round, pressing my back against the stone. ‘You rejected me. You denounced me. An evil life, you said, that you had led with me. A life of lechery.’ I all but spat the word. ‘Was our love lechery? You stated it, for all to hear. I’m amazed that you did not get your herald to announce it with a blast of a trumpet. You will drive me from your household, you said. Banish me. That’s what you said, isn’t it?’

‘Is that what you believe?’

‘It is what I am told.’

Every muscle in his face was still. The jewels gleamed flatly, without movement. It was as if all his Plantagenet pride was under restraint. I had never seen it so. I could only attribute it to guilt.

‘And is it true that you labelled me a she-devil?’ My voice broke on the word. ‘An enchantress, who lured you into breaking your marital vows? Am I a snare of the Devil, to entice men into sin?’

I saw him take a breath.

‘They were not my words.’

‘No? Well, thank God for that!’

‘But you believe it of me.’

And there I heard a note of self-loathing, which I ignored. ‘I expect you implied them since they were well reported. Or you did not make too much haste to deny them. It would not be in your interest to do so, would it? What pleasure Walsingham must have had in putting such venom into your mouth. I expect he fell to his oh-so-pious knees before God and gave thanks for such a confession from the mighty Duke of Lancaster, the would-be King of Castile.’

His title shimmered into the silence as I drew breath at last. I was beyond remorse. He might have accepted for himself the vile charge of adultery, but he had coated me with the filth of witchcraft. What manner of attack would this lay me open to? I could not comprehend the horrors of my being brought to book for witchcraft.

‘Have you nothing to say?’ I demanded. ‘I accuse you, but you do not defend yourself. Is there no defence? Are you guilty as charged?’

For the briefest moment he studied his hands, then he looked at me, and I saw what I had not seen before. His eyes were tired. Hard and grim. The eyes of John, my love, they were not. They were those of the Duke of Lancaster, putative King of Castile. Here was a different creature, not the man I had thought I knew.

How easy had it been for him to stop loving me?

‘I did not put the blame on you, Katherine,’ he stated.

‘Ha!’

‘But yes, I said that we must part.’

‘Oh, I know you did. For the good of your immortal soul. Was I nothing more than a court concubine? Is that all I was to you, through nigh on ten years of sharing your bed and the travail of four children?’ My hands were clenched hard in my skirts. ‘I have given up everything for you. I was a respectable widow when you issued your invitation. Did I lure you into that? I don’t think so, my lord. As I recall the impetus was all yours. And yet you call me an enchantress, using witchcraft to undermine your strength of moral will.’

‘I have said…’ How quiet his voice, how undemonstrative, but now the engraved lines that bracketed his mouth were deep. ‘The words were not mine.’

‘Yet you have repulsed me. You have destroyed all we meant to each other, stripping it of all that was good, stamping it into the earth as the grossest of sins.’

As his nose narrowed on an intake of breath, I thought he would react but he did not, except to say: ‘It was a sin, our being together. We both knew it.’

‘Yes, we did. Both of us. And we were prepared to live with it. And yet you reject me now. I gave you my good name. I gave you my unconditional love, my body, my conscience. I put them into your safe-keeping.’

‘Perhaps you should not have done that.’

Which took my breath. I could not answer so monstrous an assertion, that I had been wrong to trust him with my life, my happiness. My soul.

‘And our children?’ I whispered against the grinding agony in my chest. ‘Are they also a sin?’

‘No, they are not.’ His hands now unclasped, he flung them out at his sides. ‘Katherine, the sin is mine.’

‘Forgive me. But a greater part of it seems to be mine.’ The edge that crept back into my reply could have sliced through a haunch of venison like Hugh the cook’s cleaver. ‘I am despised by all, but Constanza has emerged in glory, in blinding-white robes. Oh, I know I cannot defend myself in helping you to commit adultery, in undermining Constanza’s position in your life and household. I am not proud of my flaunting our love before her, or of stepping into the place she should have had at your side and in your bed. But she did not want you. I will not take all the blame.’

A pale fleeting emotion that I could not read touched his face.

‘There is no reasoning with you, is there?’

‘No. None.’

‘What more can I say?’

‘Did you weep, as they say you did, when you bared your soul in public?’ I could not imagine his weeping in public penance. I could not. It was the most ludicrous of all the rumours.

The Duke did not reply. The austerity was hammered flat with intense weariness under my relentless assault. Instead, starkly, brusquely: ‘You must understand the new threat. There are French plans to invade England. The most effective way for us to prevent it is to make an alliance with Portugal. Between us we can invade and crush Castile, France’s ally.’ I could see that his mind was already taken up with the planning. ‘If I am to invade Castile I need to be reunited with Constanza. Enrique is dead, but his son Juan reigns in his stead. I need Constanza’s authority behind me if I am to oust King Juan and reclaim Castile. As it has always been…’

Another dart in my flesh, upon which I pounced with cruel delight, ignoring the high demands of English foreign policy. ‘And you put your authority in Castile before me? Of course you do. I would expect no other. Have you not always done so?’

He inclined his head in due acceptance, yet still, to my mind, twisted the blade.

‘I am a man of ambition. You knew that. You have always known that.’

There was no denying it. Unable to face him any longer, my limbs trembling with damp and too-fervent emotion, I stalked to the side of the room, and, spreading my skirts, I sat on one of the stools. It was not seemly for me to berate him like a fishwife. I would return to reason.

‘So you have done with me at last, my lord. I suppose that ten years is a fair record for a mistress.’ I was proud of my light pronouncement. ‘I am banished to Kettlethorpe, with my children. I have no further place in your life.’ I stared down at my interwoven fingers. I was suddenly so weary of it all and beyond anger.

‘There is more fault to tell, Katherine…’

‘Over and above the rest? What more can you possibly have done to hurt me?’

I heard his heavy inhalation. ‘I have not kept faith with you. When I repented…I renounced all the other women I had taken to my bed.’