forth as though to rid it of a weight, and stumbled a few steps.
Katherine ran to him and flung her arms around him. "Here, dear love, you must rest."
He stumbled again and by wedging her shoulder beneath his armpit she got him to the bed. He fell prone on to the black coverlet amongst the embroidered argent ostrich feathers.
As she brought a candle to the bedstead and herself climbed up beside him, pulling her furred cape over them both, he rolled over on to his back, and he began to speak in thick disconnected sentences.
She leaned over him and listened while her heart pounded with her desperate effort to understand what he would tell her. At first she thought he did not know that she was there and that these were only drunken ramblings, but his eyes opened, and he looked at her with recognition, though his speech was so slow and heavy that she could scarcely follow the words.
Vows in the Chapel of St. George at Windsor, broken vows. He said it over and over. Isolda had betrayed him.
"How, darling?" Katherine whispered at last. "How did she betray you?" and thought she should not have spoken for he grew silent, and turned his head away, gazing vaguely at the black folds of the bed curtains.
But after a while he spoke. "She went away that night, though she vowed she'd never leave me. She died," he added in a fainter voice. "She died of plague."
Katherine waited tensely. This was no moment for reason, for saying that Isolda could not help her death.
"She lied in that," said John. Suddenly he struggled up on to his elbow and staring into Katherine's white face he said with a remote and terrible quietness, "So perhaps she lied when she denied what Pieter said at Windsor."
"What Pieter said-" repeated Katherine. "What Pieter said?"
"Changeling," he muttered. His lips drew away from his teeth and he fell back onto the pillow. "Jesu," she whispered. "Jesu - now I can see-"
She twisted up on to her knees and crouching over him she cried, "And you believed it then, that you were naught but a butcher's son? Part of you believes it now! It is this that you must prove to England - to yourself - John, look at me!"
She took him by the shoulders and shook him. "Wake up and listen! It's the foolish frightened child in you that believes this. As your son believes that a playful calf is a werewolf!"
He gazed up bewildered at her grey eyes shining in the candlelight. They were desperate in her desire to reach him. The fog cleared a little in his mind.
"Isolda told you the truth!" she cried. "Oh, John - you who are most like the King of all his sons, so like that men say you are twin to what he was when young. How could you doubt your birth?"
He moistened his lips and gave a curt harsh laugh. "I did not know that I doubted it - until tonight." His hand moved gropingly and caught a fold of her skirt, and his eyes closed.
She stretched herself beside him and took his head against her breast. He did not know it, though he moved as though seeking the position in which they had so often lain together. His breaths grew quiet and even.
The Duke slept nearly the clock around, and for many hours without stirring.
When the palace bells rang for morning Mass, there was a knock on the door of the State Chamber. Katherine, slipping her arm carefully from beneath John's head, hurried from the bed.
She opened the door and held her fingers to her lips.
The Princess stood in the passage round-eyed and anxious. "Is all well?" she whispered, noting Katherine's dishevelment: the grey gown twisted and wrinkled, the great coils of bronze hair that had tumbled on her shoulders, the white tiredness of the girl's drawn face.
Katherine stepped out in the passage. "I hope so, madam," she said gravely. "He sleeps."
The Princess, enfolding Katherine in a smother of soft-scented flesh, kissed her impulsively. "Ah my dear, if you have by any means brought him out of these fits of mad revenge, God will bless you as I do." She went down the passage towards the chapel thinking that all the rumours she had heard about John's leman were false, and that it was a sorry shame that Katherine could not have been born Queen of Castile instead of that cold dark foreigner at Hertford Castle.
All that day, while the outer world hummed and messages went back and forth to the Savoy, Katherine stayed in the State Chamber watching over John as he slept. Robin brought food and drink to the door, and she took a little. Sometimes she rested, far on the outer edge of the bed so as not to disturb him. And she thought long and hard about this secret thing that had so deeply troubled him. She saw on what two-fold foundation the whole structure of his early life had been built: Isolda's love and the sacred privilege of royal birth. And that when to the child's view these two had dropped away from under him together, a part of him had shattered as truly as though a mine had exploded at his feet.
Yet he was strong and tough as had been his father, and most of the royal Norman line; while from his mother he had staunch Flemish common sense. So time had passed and he had built his world up again, and forgotten this shock that had frightened him once - until the placard brought it back, hideously grown because now the whole of England witnessed it. Since then this buried dread had gripped him and he had fought back as a child does with blind fury. And yet because he was not a child but a man, composed by now of as many colours and shapes as a painted glass window, there had been deep-seated struggle in his soul. For he was merciful, by nature, never had he killed senselessly or maimed even in war, as his brothers had done, and of all Edward's sons he was the most sensitive.
Katherine thought this and much else throughout the long day. She thought of the fearful power of a lie, of all evil - and she thought of her own children, and how she had believed herself capable of guiding their lives rightfully, of easily salving their hurts, and that by providing for their mind and body nurture she had fended off all harm.
Now she was uncertain, and dismayed. Little John's misconception about the calf was minor enough, and would pass in time; but what other concealed demons might not be preying on a child?
And with a painful twisting at the heart she saw Blanchette's stricken eyes as she had looked up from her embroidery the last day at Kenilworth. It was useless to deny that her firstborn and dearest child had lost her old happy confidence and was drawing away into some -bitter, jealous little climate of her own.
But what can I do? Katherine thought despairingly. She glanced towards John as he lay sleeping still. Her love for him had grown tenfold since he had trusted her last night with a glimpse of his naked soul. Yet yesterday she had been swamped with a resentful pride, even with the hatred that seemed welded, like the obverse of a shield, to love. What then was certain? What was there that would not shift and veer at the mercy of the winds of feeling?
Sanctity, the clergy said. Prayer. The practice of religion. The benevolence of the holy saints. The Grace of God.
Katherine rose and walked to the Prince of Wales' prie-dieu in the corner beyond the armour. A gilt, elaborately enamelled triptych hung above the prayer desk. The centre panel depicted Calvary, the side ones snowed various tortures of the damned. These were intricately detailed: naked bodies writhed in orange flames, and from severed limbs and seared eyes dripped ruby gouts of blood. The Christ's face on the Cross expressed only contorted agony and above the panels was written, "Repent Ye!"
She gazed at the triptych with repulsion. Here was no message of steadfastness. Here naught but warning and more fear. Her rebellion grew, and she wondered, What guidance do we truly get from the saints or even from the Blessed Mother and Her Son? Why did not they, or St. John, protect my lord from harm?