Upon dismissal the owners of the feet went on to material rewards. On a table by the kitchens stood vats of broken meats and bread, from which the paupers were permitted to fill large sacks, and at the door the Duke's almoner doled out pieces of maundy silver.
When the ceremony was concluded and the gratified paupers had begun to gabble and bicker amongst themselves, the Duke came to Katherine and said, "Shall we visit the mew, sweet heart? Twill smell far better than in here, and we must see how your little merlin does."
Katherine assented gladly. Falconry had become a passion with her, and she was as eager as the Duke for her merlin to be trained, so that they might ride out again to hawk in Moorfields.
Arnold, the Duke's head falconer, met them at the door of the mew with a finger to his lips, and the sad tidings that Oriana had some puzzling ailment. The great white northern falcon had drooped upon her perch for days, she had refused gobbets of raw meat, and even tiny new-born rabbits with which Arnold tempted her.
John, instantly concerned - for his royal gerfalcon had no peer in England, and aside from his affection for her, was worth nearly two hundred marks - had framed a question as to her medication, when he was interrupted by Brother William Appleton.
The Grey Friar on his mule had trotted through the gatehouse into the Outer Ward and on seeing the Duke standing at the door of the mew, dismounted and walked over. "My lord," he said gravely, gazing at the Duke from beneath his pointed black cowl, "it is done. The ship sailed from Pevensey on Monday." He glanced coldly at Katherine.
She saw John draw a long shaking breath while he said very low, "Chained in the galleys?"
"Even so, my lord. He'll not trouble you again."
"And the Benedictine monks?"
"Have been stringently disciplined by their prior."
John sighed once more, and into his eyes there came a vague look, as though he listened to an echo. "Good," he said at length. "You've done well, and I thank you." He clapped his hands together once, then let them drop, and turning to Katherine said, "Wait here, lovedy. I must see Oriana, but 'twill disturb the birds if you come too."
He entered the mew with Arnold, and the Grey Friar made as though to leave, but Katherine cried out, "Brother William, I beg you!"
The friar paused and examined her. She wore a new gown of emerald brocade so lavishly furred with ermine that it befitted royal rank, and the gold fillet that bound her hair was jewelled and scalloped like a noble's coronet. "Lady Mede," he thought angrily. "Pride be painted here and pomp of the world." It was Alice Perrers that Long Will satirised in his Piers Plowman as Mede, the corrupt courtesan - yet here was another such, and worse, by reason of the crime which had exalted her.
"What do you wish, Lady Swynford?" he said with fierce emphasis on her surname.
She felt in his gaze some deeper meaning than the abhorrence of an ascetic friar for the sin of unhallowed love. He frightened her, but she persisted urgently. "This man of whom you spoke to the Duke, the one snipped in the galleys, is it Pieter Neumann? I've a right to know," she added sharply, as his lips tightened, "for my dear lord's sake. Ay, I know you think me worthless and lewd, but by the Holy Blood at Hales my love for him has not harmed him, it may even be that it has helped him at times." She ended on a note of quivering hurt.
The friar, opening his mouth to cry that no good could come from evil, and that she was a fool to think her love had caused no harm, yet did not speak. The candid innocence of her eyes restrained him, and he felt that there was still some good beneath this wicked flaunting beauty. After a moment he said curtly, "It was Pieter Neumann, deported on a ship bound for Cyprus where he'll remain in exile - if he survives the voyage."
"But he was in sanctuary - -"
"And stayed there the allotted forty days," answered the friar seeing that she knew more of this matter than he had supposed. "All was done with due regard for the laws of sanctuary. I myself was present at his hearing, and have just seen that the sentence of banishment was duly executed."
"Bishop Courtenay didn't try to save him?" she asked.
"No," said the friar startled. "Courtenay's now ashamed of his tool, and rightly so."
"Did the Duke not see Pieter?"
The friar hesitated, but again he answered her. "No - I believe he did not trust himself."
"God in his mercy be thanked," said Katherine. "My dear lord is then truly and honestly rid of his fardel."
She spoke with simple fervour and more to herself than the friar, but Brother William was softened. He bent close and spoke in a tone he had not used to her since the night of Hugh's death. "My child," he said earnestly, "Rouse yourself before it's too late. I believe you have the strength!"
"Rouse myself?" Her mobile face hardened and she stepped back from the friar.
"Give up the Duke - and this unclean love of yours! Uncleaner than you know - -" His sunken eyes blazed a warning, then he checked himself.
"Ay, to you all earthly love's unclean," she said bitterly. "You threaten me with hell, I suppose. It may be so - but I don't believe it. I have come," she said looking at him defiantly, "to believe only in myself, and my love."
He shook his head and looked at her with sadness. "You speak foolishly, Lady Swynford. Disaster will come to teach you better. Nor do I mean hell fire - but in this life - disaster!" he repeated on a sharper note and suddenly he clutched his crucifix.
As happened sometimes during his strict Lenten fasts, strange dreams had come to him of late, dreams so vivid that almost, in his pride, he had thought them holy visions. But the dream last night must have come from Satan, so full of senseless horror had it been, of glaring bearded faces gibbering, of the smell of smoke, and blood. When he had said "disaster" now, he remembered that he had seen Katherine's tearful tender face bending over him in his dream; and that she and he had been linked together in fear.
"Christe eleison" he whispered, much disturbed by the memory of this dream and the foreboding that had come with it, disturbed too that he should have dreamed of Katherine, for it was long since the devil had injected a woman's face into his sleep.
"Benedicite" he muttered, abruptly, and walked rapidly away towards the chapel.
Katherine waited by the mew for the Duke to come out and the discomfort Brother William had aroused in her soon melted in the warm spring sunshine. Presently she wandered towards the mossy old bargehouse. Clumps of violets and the yellow celandine had rooted in scanty pockets of earth between the stones, and she touched the little flowers as she passed. Through the water gate she could see an arch-shaped bit of the
Thames glinting sapphire beneath the warm blue sky where rooks cawed and wheeled towards their nests in the elms across the river. She walked down to the landing and breathed softly. The air smelt of new-turned earth and the budding greenwood.
When the Duke, having finished inspecting Oriana, walked up behind her on the pier she had a lapful of violets and like an absorbed child was flinging them into the river to watch the little purple specks go bobbing away over the ripples while she sang in her sweet warm voice, "Oh Lenten is come wi' love to town, sing hi! sing hey!"
He laughed and kissed the top of her bent head. "Moppet," he said, "you've forgotten your weight of years and many children?"
Katherine giggled and rising from the step saw that no one watched except the old bargemaster. She flung her arms around John's neck and kissed him heartily. "Many children, my lord, but not yet a full bevy," she whispered against his ear.