And its lord, as he cantered along the country road through the village of Charing Cross, suddenly reined in his stallion and looked back to gaze at the fair white palace which was more completely home to him than any of his country castles. It sparkled in the after-storm sunshine. He smiled tenderly at Katherine's dismalness, and thought that the Savoy set off her beauty like a great ivory frame. He jerked the tasselled bridle and spurred his stallion, which bounded northward. No premonition told the Duke that he had looked his last on the Savoy.
Throughout the rest of May and the first week of June, Katherine lived in a seclusion as complete as though she were on an island. She moved into the Monmouth Wing, and for the days of Blanchette's danger slept in the chamber with her child. She saw no one but Mab, who shared the nursing, the varlets who brought food, and Brother William, who came daily to examine the patient.
Blanchette improved gradually, the rash faded, her body no longer burned with raging heat; but a succession of complications bedevilled her. For some days her throat was so swollen that she could not swallow, and when this abated she suffered from excruciating ear-aches until the drums burst and prurient matter ran out on her pillow.
During this time the girl reverted to her childhood and looked to her mother for everything, weeping and fretting if Katherine left the room, and calling for her constantly. The conflict between them was as though it had never been, and Katherine poured out a remorseful love. It was nothing but coincidence that Blanchette had come down with her illness on the day of her betrothal, and yet Katherine could not quite rid herself of guilt, and she thought now that Blanchette's outrageous insolence on the day before had stemmed from the beginning of the fever, too, and was sorry that it had made her so angry.
As the girl finally improved, Katherine knew that all her strong love for this child was now augmented by the crisis they had passed through together. Blanchette had gained the added preciousness of something nearly lost which one has oneself saved from destruction.
On the ninth of June, a month after the onset of her illness, Brother William pronounced Blanchette definitely on the mend.
It was in the long golden dusk that the Franciscan friar came to visit his patient and found the girl sitting propped up in the windowseat with Katherine beside her. Blanchette's head rested against her mother's shoulder, her little face was pinched and white, and she seemed shockingly diminished because the lovely hair had begun to fall out in handfuls, and Katherine had resolutely cut it short to strengthen the new growth.
Huddled up in her dressing-robe, cuddling against her mother, and with the little shorn head, she might have been a child of five, and the Grey Friar upon entering felt an unwelcome softness. As a humane physician he had answered Lady Swynford's frenzied plea for his services. Indeed he could not have refused, since he was retained by the Duke, but he had had to conquer a deep reluctance.
He had entirely avoided Katherine since the day in the courtyard by the falcon mew, and pleading his own ill health, had spent more and more time in his cell at Greyfriars in town, leaving the routine care of the Duke's meinie to two secular leeches. He had been, troubled with no more wicked dreams of Katherine since the one in which she had been linked with disaster, and he wished to forget her and her continuing relationship with the Duke. He had done his duty by Blanchette and treated Katherine with rigid impersonality during the girl's illness, but he had been forced to admire the mother's devotion. Tonight he saw that Katherine was as pale and listless as her daughter and while he looked at Blanchette's tongue and felt the slow pulse in her neck, he spoke in a warmer voice than usual.
"Lady Swynford, we shall have you ailing too, if you don't take care. I'll brew you some parsley water, and," he glanced around Blanchette's chamber, "this place holds unhealthful miasmas. Now the lass is better, I think you should move."
Katherine looked up, pleased by his kindly tone, and said eagerly, "To Kenilworth? But sure she's not well enough yet for that?"
"No," said the friar frowning. "I meant that you might move to another chamber, one with more air and light."
Katherine nodded thoughtfully and after a moment said, "Then we'll move to the Privy Suite. Those apartments are by far the most comfortable." And I, she thought, will sleep in the Avalon Chamber again. In the ruby velvet bed where she had passed so many ecstatic nights, and where John would seem nearer to her.
She was aware at once of the friar's withdrawal. He said stiffly, "There are many other rooms at the Savoy."
Blanchette, too, stirred and said in her weak little voice, "Oh Mama - don't let's leave here."
"Sweet heart, 'twill do you good," said Katherine briskly. "There are beautiful tapestries for you to look at, I'll tell you stories about them and you can watch the boats on the Thames, and there's the Duke's collection of little ivory saints - you'll like to play with them."
Blanchette drew her breath in, and Katherine realised that it was the first time the Duke's name had been mentioned since the girl's illness, yet surely all that resentment had been dissolved in the renewed love her child gave her. She was reassured when Blanchette murmured, "As you will, Mama."
Brother William frowned, but there was nothing he could say. The Duke's suite was certainly the most comfortable accommodation in the palace.
"Please sit down and sup with us," said Katherine gently. "You seem wan yourself, good Brother. There's no fresh sickness about, I hope."
"No more than usual," said the Grey Friar. "No new fevers at any rate. Ay, I am a-wearied." He sat down abruptly. "I'll take some wine." For months now there had been a gnawing in his stomach, but he did not bother to give himself remedies, he simply fasted more stringently and ignored it.
Katherine's ring of the hind-bell was answered somewhat tardily by a servant she had never seen before, a pimply gat-toothed youth with scabs on his scalp. The points of his hose were untied and his blue and white livery was stained with grease.
"Where's Piers?" she said surveying the uncouth servant with disapproval.
"Piers be took wi' a colic," answered the lad, staring at the ceiling. "So I come in his stead. I be called Perkin. What's your wish m'lady?"
Katherine was slightly disturbed. Lately, since Blanchette no longer required her every thought, she had noticed a subtle unrest amongst the varlets, nothing so crude as insolence, but slight deviations from the smooth level of service she was accustomed to. The Savoy, had been left with a skeleton staff, since the vast army of servants required to wait on the Duke and his retainers naturally moved with them from castle to castle. Katherine's own servants had travelled to Kenilworth with Hawise and the little Beauforts, and none of the family remained at the Savoy.
Elizabeth had gone to visit her mother-in-law, the Countess of Pembroke; the Lady Philippa was spending three months of retreat with the nuns at Barking Abbey; Henry divided his time between his little wife's ancestral de Bohun castle and the King's court at Windsor; and her own Tom Swynford was now formally attached to Henry's retinue.
She gave the scab-headed Perkin the order for meat and wine and determined to question the chamberlain about the servants, when Brother William, who had been examining the lad intently, said, "Since I'm here, I'll have a look at this Piers' colic. Where does he lodge?"
Perkin's eyes shifted to the Grey Friar and he said, "No need of that, Sir Friar, 'tis but the common gripes."
"Where is he now?" repeated the friar, fixing his stern gaze on the reddening face.
"How should I know, sir?" said the lad sullenly. "He maught be lying in t'kitchen passage or he maught've ta'en his pallet to the cellars, or he maught - -"
"Have left the Savoy altogether on some errand of his own?" said the friar with chill emphasis.