As he had hoped, it cleared his head. "What are you doing at Kennington?" he said scowling. "Why didn't you wait at the Savoy to see me?"
Katherine considered quickly. Robin and the server were gone and she was preparing a plate of food. She had never lied to him, nor would she, but she knew that she must choose all her words with care.
"It is not always so easy to see you at the Savoy, my lord," she said, pulling a corner of the table over so that he might eat in comfort, "nor for me to see you at all - of late." She smiled, with no hint of reproach, and sat down close to him on a stool. "You look very tired, won't you eat, please? Alas that 'tis only Lenten fare, but these oysters are well roasted."
He started to protest hotly, to say that if she had forced him to delay his start simply to babble of oysters, he would be gone this instant, but instead, and to his astonishment, he said a very different thing.
"Why don't you wear the ring I gave you, Katrine?" She had dropped it back into her purse as they left the courtyard.
She was startled too, but she answered evenly, "Because I thought that it had lost its meaning."
A quick dull flush mounted his thin cheeks. "Nay, how could you think that, lovedy?" The little pet name which he had so often called her slipped out as unawares as had his question, yet he felt aggrieved. Whether he saw her or not, he had known her ever there in the background - waiting, like his jewelled Order of the Garter, seldom worn, yet the possession of this most special badge of knighthood was of steady importance to his life. "I have had matters to think of," he said roughly, "but these matters had nothing to do with women."
"Yes," she said, filling his cup, "I believe that now, my lord."
She brushed against his shoulder as she put the flagon back on the table, and he smelled the warm fragrance of her skin. His arm lifted of its own accord to slip around her waist and pull her closer to him, but she moved away before he touched her and sat down again.
His arm dropped. He drank, and spooned up the oysters, eating fast, for he found that he was famished and this the first food in weeks that had had savour for him. While he ate, he felt another new factor, a quality of rest and lessening of strain. He resented the thought that this easing came somehow from Katherine, who sat beside him quietly, gazing into the fire. He had forgotten too how beautiful she was, nor did he wish to think of it now.
He picked up the gold-handled table knife and cut himself a slice from the bread loaf, while pulling his mind back towards his purpose. They were massing at the Savoy, men-at-arms from his nearby castles at Hertford and Hatfield. They'd be there by now since he had sent messengers off at dawn, and the King's guard from Sheen too. It would take a month to gather all his forces from the whole of England, but already' he had sufficient fighters to back the first move that he would make.
Pieter Neumann - he threw down the bread and his fingers gripped the hilt of the knife. This time he would kill Pieter with his own hand - no mercy.
Katherine had turned to look at him as he threw down the bread and gripped the knife and she forced a long steady breath to master her dismay. She saw that he had lost awareness of her, his skin had turned the colour of mould, he swallowed hard and painfully, and in his eyes as they stared at the knife the pupils had swollen so that there was no blue.
Katherine felt a shock of recognition. Somewhere there had been a child who looked like that, an uncomprehending terrified child. She searched hard for the memory, and when it came it seemed to her so incongruous that she rejected it. The reminder was of her little John. Last summer he had wandered into the cow-byre at Kenilworth, and a playful calf had galloped at him, knocking him down. The child had believed the calf to be a werewolf, fitting it somehow into a horrible tale a serving-maid had told him.
Katherine had reasoned with her boy, had made him pet the calf, and got him to laugh at his terror, yet a month afterwards the child had had a nightmare from which he awoke to scream that the calf was after him with the slobbering fangs and blood-red eyes of a werewolf, and still when he saw a calf he trembled and grew white.
It were folly indeed to make a comparison between the thirty-six-year-old Duke of Lancaster and a four-year-old child, and yet - in both she had seen the same intrinsic shape of fear.
The Duke stirred and put down the knife, he wiped his lips on the damask napkin. "I must go," he said in a voice that wavered. He stood up and glanced towards his armour.
Katherine rose too, and took his hand in hers. "Why must you go, John?" She looked up solemnly into his resistant face. "Is it to kill the man who is in sanctuary at Saint Paul's? Is it to do sacrilegious murder, that you must go?"
He snatched his hand from hers. "How do you know that? And if it were, what right have you to question me? Katrine, you've never before - get out of my way!" For she had backed so that she barred the way to the armour, and the door.
Her wide grey eyes fixed on him with compassion, but her tone was cool and searching as when she rebuked her children; "Of what, my dear lord, are you so afraid?"
He gasped and raised his hand as though to strike her.
"No, dear," she said. "To hit me'll do no good. All these last months have you not been striking out, and has it eased you? You know that it hasn't. I believe that to speak out might ease you. I love you, John, trust me."
He listened, looking at her and then away. "No man or woman has ever thought me a coward," he whispered. "And now you, who say you love me - -''
"Holy Christ, my dearest, you're no coward. I know well how you lead your men in battle, and how you've risked your life a thousand times, and yet there is something that you fear."
The angry force drained from him. His big shoulders sagged, and he said in a listless voice. "Witchcraft - witchcraft - the man must die this night, for he has cast on me a monstrous spell." He made the sign of the cross and turning, walked to the cushioned banquette beneath the window, sat down and rested his head in his hands.
"You are the strongest, the most powerful man in England, my dear lord, so can you not be merciful?"
His head twisted around and he looked at her strangely. "Isolda said that! When we vowed in the chapel. But she did not keep her vow"
Blessed Virgin, he's drunk, she thought, trying to check her terror that this might be worse than drunkenness. "Isolda?" she questioned, as steadily as she could.
"Isolda Neumann - my foster mother." And having said it, he sighed and added in a tone of wonder, "In all these years I've never spoken her name." He reached over for the flagon and his crystal cup, poured until the rich golden wine splashed on the table and drank.
Katherine was amazed. She guessed that she was circling nearer to the answer, but what was this of his milk-nurse, and vows in a chapel, and why had he never spoken the woman's name? She dared not question too much, fearful of rupturing this quieter mood.
She glanced frowning at the State Bed, where the Prince had died - still hung with gloomy sable mourning velvet - when John spoke again.
"The man you asked me of, the one I shall kill, is Pieter Neumann, who was Isolda's son."
"Ah," Katherine breathed, still more startled and trying to understand this revelation. She ventured on what seemed at first sight to be likely. "And he injured his mother in some way? And you, loving her very much perhaps, have not forgiven?" She stopped, for as she spoke this sounded too weak, too pat.
Yet John said, "Yes," with a peculiar quickness. "Yes, that was it." He glanced off from the truth, she knew. What was it the Princess had said of the man in sanctuary? "Some knave that wrote placards about the Duke." The placard on Paul's door - the ridiculous changeling slander.
He stood up suddenly, swayed and caught at the table. "Late," he said thickly, "must go. Don't like your eyes - Ka-Katrine - grey eyes that lie - break vows - she said she'd never leave me but she did - she vowed something else - else - vowed Pieter had lied-" He rolled his head back and