I balked.

He dismounted, to stand looking up into my face. His might have been engraved in stone.

‘If it please you, my lady.’

He took my bridle from his herald’s hand, his fingers clamped around the leather, and I read in his eyes that if it did not please me he would drag me from my mare. Clutching the document—I would not drop it again—I dismounted in cold dignity.

A snap of his fingers and his squire approached. Without any word being needed from the Duke, the young man took the document from my nerveless fingers, unfastened the brooch that pinned my cloak—a fine cloak, I had thought—and with a flamboyant swing of costly material, replaced it around my shoulders with one of fine woven wool lined with sable. The riding horse was led up and the squire tucked the document into one of the panniers, my old cloak folded away into the other.

Throughout the whole procedure, the Duke stood in silence. Within the travelling litter, Agnes looked on with a mix of astonishment and baffled amusement. I was furiously compliant.

‘I do not need a new cloak,’ I informed the squire who was neatly fastening the pin that gleamed with gold and the splash of blood-red. So I was to be bought off with sables and jewels, was I?

‘It is my lord’s wish,’ the squire said with a bow.

‘I have a horse.’

‘And now you have a better one, my lady,’ the Duke remarked, with more than a hint of warning. He would not be gainsaid. ‘The packhorses carry meat and wine. The escort will accompany you to Kettlethorpe. For your peace of mind.’ His eyes were direct. ‘And mine.’

So I was to travel in full ducal splendour as well. What level of recognition was this from the Duke of Lancaster, for all to see and comment on?

‘Why are you doing this?’

Without replying, the Duke walked to the litter where, leaning an arm on the support, he stooped to peer in. For the first time since he had drawn rein, his features softened a little. He ruffled John’s hair, restored a little armed knight to Henry after lifting him back onto the cushions, spoke softly to Joan and straightened her bonnet, and touched the cheek of Thomas.

I could not look. I could not watch without my heart being torn in two. They were as much his as mine. Did he not care? He was abandoning them too. I would not look.

But I did. The children said not a word, in awe of him in this gleaming splendour. And then John grabbed his sleeve.

‘Do you come with us, sir?’

‘No. Not today.’ His smile was forced, his reply ragged. ‘But my men will keep you safe. You will ride with an escort, as a young prince should. What do you think?’

‘I think I will be a knight one day,’ John replied.

‘So do I think it. You will be a great knight.’

He turned and again nodded an unspoken instruction to the squire who, with a polite request, took my arm and helped me into my new saddle. The Duke remounted too, and bowed, hat in hand.

‘I commend you and your children to God’s care, Lady de Swynford. To his forgiveness for what has been between us. I will make restitution for the wrong I have done to you. You will want for nothing.’ His authority, in the centre of a road in the depths of the country, was formidable, his diction pitched for all to hear. ‘I accept your reluctance to receive anything from my hand, but I hope that time will heal, and that you will not refuse my gifts. My sons and daughter should not be allowed to suffer.’

While through it all I sat angry and silent and hard-eyed. Did he think I would let pride stand in the way of his support for the children? Did he truly think I would let my humiliation guide my future decisions for their well-being? I would not!

‘I will know that you have reached Kettlethorpe safely.’

‘My thanks, my lord.’ It was all I could say.

‘If you are ever in need, my lady, in any danger, you will send word.’

It was not a request. I did not respond.

‘I will keep you in my thoughts, Katherine.’

I turned away. I made no reply. I rode away from him, cloaked, caparisoned, as superbly mounted as if I were of royal blood. Dry-eyed and stern faced, I vowed to fulfil my promise to the Virgin to clothe the altar at Kettlethorpe in gold. The Duke was safe, alive. It behoved me to do what I had vowed before the altar, even though he had broken my heart.

Well, everyone in our joint retinues now knew the truth about us. And the need to gossip being what it was, it would spread like an unpleasant rash.

I did not know what to make of it. It stunned me, such overt recognition of me and what I had been to him, for all to hear. Another public confession, in effect. An admission of guilt and responsibility, risking the wrath of God one more time, risking the wrath of the Church in the nasty guise of Walsingham if he got to hear of it. As he would.

And yet this had been a very intimate recognition of my place in his life, and of his children.

Why had he done it? Was it to win my forgiveness? Was it to assuage his own guilt that had made him follow and award me such astonishing recognition?

Well, if that’s so, he’s failed.

I would not forgive him. He had pilloried me just as harshly as Walsingham had, so plainly that I was known to every man and woman in England as Lancaster’s whore who had dragged him into a life of sin.

I rode away from him, with no inclination to look back. I would not. I rode on a new horse with a new cloak and all the ducal panoply around me, and a gift of great value in my pannier, the confirmation of my pension almost burning a hole through the leather. Two hundred marks a year: a vast sum, which, for the sake of our four children, I could not refuse.

But in my chest was a hole large enough to encompass the heavens.

It would be better when I had returned to Kettlethorpe, I assured myself. There I could forget and set my feet firmly on a different path.

The magnificent cloak proved to be far too heavy for the clement weather but in sheer defiance I wore it all the way home.

It was not better. It was not better at all. Why would this love not let me go? Why did it continue to yearn, hopelessly, helplessly for reconciliation?

There was no hope, yet it would not let me be.

I wished my love for him dead, but it would not die.

Kettlethorpe became a place of sorrow to me. Since I was no longer part of his life and his household, what right did the Duke have to prowl through my thoughts and dreams, reminding me at every turn of what I had lost? I could not accept, I could not sufficiently grasp all that had happened, all we had been to each other, now destroyed. My heart shivered in its desolation, its absolute aloneness.

In its total bafflement.

Were we still not held captive in that grand passion that allowed us no freedom to exist apart from each other, like silver carp from my fishpond trapped in a net? Even when I hated him I longed to see him ride through the arch of my newly constructed gateway into the courtyard as he had done so many times. How could we deny all that we had said and done together? All those words of love and honour, torn up and scattered.

The silver carp might wish to escape the net; in my heart of hearts, I had no such desire.

The empty space in my chest continued to grow until it all but swallowed me.

Nor were my thoughts stirred into liveliness when my sister Philippa appeared in my hall, informing me with infuriating lack of feeling that she considered me in need of her advice. The Duchess Constanza, in her reinvigorated marriage, could manage without her for a week or two.

‘Look at you, malingering and wasting away,’ she announced.

‘I am neither malingering nor wasting,’ I replied briskly, drawing her into my parlour, another new addition to my home. Even if I was, I would not exhibit such weakness to Philippa.

My sister, with narrowed eyes, taking in the evidence of my unfortunate pallor and the loose neckline of my gown, was not to be deflected.

‘If he means so much to you, are you going to accept this estrangement? If your love is as strong as you say it is, go to Kenilworth. Tell him that you will not accept your banishment from his life. Tell him that—’

‘How can I? How can I fight against England and God?’

‘I did not think that would stop you!’

It made me laugh. But without much humour.

‘He has hurt me. He has hurt me too much.’

‘You should remarry,’ my sister remarked when we sat together at the end of the day, her eye to my flushed cheeks as we stitched.

‘And why do you say that?’ I asked, smiling brightly to hide my dismay. Was this to be the pattern of my days, those who knew me encouraging me to bury my disillusionment under some new relationship?

‘It will take your mind off Lancaster.’

Philippa, never less than forthright; Agnes, sitting comfortably at her side, nodding her agreement.

‘And who of status would be interested in taking on a woman with my notoriety?’ I asked. I resented their matrimonial dabbling.

‘I can think of any number who would take on a woman with a guarantee of income from Lancaster.’

‘And four bastard Beaufort children?’

‘Why not? They will be well provided for.’ Philippa shrugged as she stabbed with her needle. ‘Lancaster will not leave you bereft, even with a new husband.’

I bent my head over my sewing, noting that the stitches were awkwardly uneven but was not of a mind to unpick them. Marry again? Could I see myself, ensconced in a different manor house, or enjoying a town house in Lincoln? With another unknown man to share bed and board. To share thoughts and ideas at the end of a long day. To carry another child for.

‘I will not,’ I said.