"Have you a horse that I may borrow?" she said to the hovering dame. "I must find Blanchette. God help me that so much time was lost." She spoke with a steadiness that silenced the good wife's protests.
Emma docilely commandeered her husband's gelding and had a boy saddle it. She dressed Katherine in one of Hawise's old russet-coloured kittles, but nothing would persuade her to let Katherine go unaccompanied through the streets. The revolt in London had ended but there were still carousing rebels left, and punitive bands of the King's men riding about and restoring order while they searched for Jack Strawe and one or two of the other leaders who had forfeited the right of amnesty. Master Guy had gone to bed exhausted by the last days' events, but the Dame decided that she herself would go pillion behind Katherine. She was motivated not only by kindness but by a livery curiosity.
Secluded as she had been in St. Helen's during the three days of rebellion, she had heard nothing but the wildest rumours of burnings and beheadings, and she thought them much exaggerated. She sympathised with Katherine's anxiety over her child, of course, but she thought that that worry would doubtless be soon resolved. The little lass would be found hiding in some safe nook in the Savoy.
Katherine made no objection to Dame Emma's company, nor to the presence of the armed prentice that the Dame routed out from the fishhouse. She did not speak as they rode in a grey drizzle through London streets towards Ludgate, and beyond it to the Fleet.
Dame Emma's cheerful chatter was soon hushed, her fat comely face fell into dismay and finally to round-eyed horror when they skirted the ruins of the Temple. Ahead of them on the Strand, the Savoy had always loomed in a mass of crenellated walls, of gleaming white turrets and pinnacles with fluttering pennants, and the gold spire on the chapel topping all.
Now there was nothing. No shape against the empty sky - nothing but a vast expanse of rubble behind a shell of crumbling blackened walls.
Katherine dismounted, while the prentice held the horse. She began to walk towards the ruins, Dame Emma behind her. A little group of folk stood in the fields where Katherine had lain on Thursday. They were gaping at the remains of the Savoy and muttering to each other. As the women approached, a goggle-eyed man greeted them with the familiarity of shared excitement and cried, "It do be a horrid marvel, don't it? There was a score o' rebels trapped in there, they say ye could hear 'em screaming till Friday eve. Be haunted now for sure, John o' Gaunt's Savoy'll be - I'll not go down the Strand after sundown, that I won't."
Katherine walked past the group and turned through the blocks of fallen masonry that had been the gatehouse. She clambered over the still warm rubble into what had been the Outer Ward.
"Lady Katherine," panted Dame Emma, wheezing and clattering after her, "come back - there's naught to find in there ye can see, and there's danger - that bit o' wall maught fall."
Katherine stumbled on, picking her way over charred fragments of beams and blackened stones until she stood near the falcon mew, which was now a heap of wood ashes. She looked up at the roofless segment of Thames-side wall that stood silhouetted black against the horizon, its vacant window-frames showing lancet shapes of the grey sky beyond. She saw, high above, the outline of the fireplace that had been in the Avalon Chamber, but the great rose marble mantel had fallen to the paving below and shattered.
Up there, where there was now no floor, they had stood on either side of the fireplace when Brother William was killed - she and Blanchette. On that spot the girl had spoken to the black-jowled leader before she ran from the room towards the stairs. Katherine turned to look for the Great Stairs that had led up to the Privy Suite. From the place where the stairs had been a little cloud of steamy smoke still rose, hissing faintly under the rain.
"Sweeting," said Dame Emma, laying her hand on Katherine's arm, "come away, do. There's naught here but ruin. The little lass'll have run to safety somewhere, ye'll find her."
"To safety?" repeated Katherine. "Nay - she did not think of safety when she ran from me crying that I was - was - oh
God-" she whispered. "Dame Emma, go away. Leave me alone awhile. Leave me - -" She sank to her knees by a block of burned stone and lifted her eyes up to the empty slits that had been the windows of the Avalon Chamber.
Dame Emma obeyed, so profoundly shocked that she did not heed the blackening of her neat kidskin shoes and the tearing of her fine woolsey gown. She withdrew to the mass of fallen stone at the gatehouse. Heedless even of the rain, she settled herself to wait. She looked back into the distance where she could just see Lady Katherine kneeling, and Dame Emma's eyes crinkled up like a baby's, tears spilled from them.
She shivered as the rain soaked through her mantle and dampened her plump shoulders, and she looked to see if Lady Katherine were not yet ready to leave this dreadful place. Katherine had moved, and was now with bent head walking slowly about the Outer Ward. While Dame Emma watched, she saw the tall russet-clad figure lean over and pick up something, then stand stock-still, holding it to her breast for some moments before coming towards the dame.
Katherine held out an object on her open palm. "Look," she said in the heavy far-away tone, "do you see this, Dame Emma?"
It was a small silvery half-melted mass. The dame asked uncertainly, "Is't a clasp?"
"I think so," said Katherine with stony quiet. "It might be the clasp on Blanchette's chamber robe."
The dame stifled her gasp of dismay and cried heartily, "Nay, 'tis no clasp, and if it were - it means naught."
"It lay in the ashes of the falcon mew," said Katherine. "She loved birds, perhaps she ran there." Then had Blanchette run also to the men who caroused drunkenly in the cellars? "I shall be a whore, good sir - mayhap a murdering whore like my mother." No memory was spared Katherine now of what had taken place on Thursday.
"Blanchette was touched by madness when she ran from the Avalon Chamber," said Katherine in the same toneless voice. " 'Twas not from the horror of the Grey Friar's blood upon her, but from the horror of what she had heard him say before that."
"Think not o' horrors, dear," cried Dame Emma. "Come away - this does no good."
"Ah, but I must think on it," said Katherine. "I can no longer hide from truth. Good dame, my friend, you don't know what my sin has been. I did not wholly know, but the Grey Friar did, and God in His vengeance has stricken my innocent child as the first means of my punishment."
"Nay, nay," Dame Emma expostulated, pitying the lady's haggard look, thinking that this morbidness was well explained by all the fearful happenings of the last days, but anxious only to get Katherine back to dryness and comfort.
Katherine said no more, and came with Dame Emma, un-protesting. She mounted the horse where it waited down the Strand. They rode a little way until they came to the Church of St. Clement Danes, where Katherine pulled up the gelding. "It was here that I married Hugh Swynford," she said.
"Oh ay - I'd forgot," answered the dame, puzzled. " 'Twas so long ago."
"I thought it was long ago." Katherine looped the reins on the pommel. "I know now it was but yesterday." She dismounted. "Dame Emma, I've kept you out enough in the rain. Please leave me here and go home. Nay, I've no need of protection - Jesu, do you think any danger could matter to me now?"
"But the services are over - there's no one there," protested the dame staring at the empty little church.
Katherine gave her a faint blind smile. She turned into the church porch as the dame reluctantly rode off.
Katherine knelt by the altar rail where her Nuptial Mass had been celebrated, and her eyes fixed themselves on the ruby light above the sanctuary. She knelt motionless, forcing herself back into that moment when a man had knelt with her, a man to whom she had given forced unconsidered vows - until at last she reconstructed the presence of that stocky armoured figure beside her. She felt the surliness, the roughness that had revolted her then, but she felt plainly too, as she had not then, the pathos of the clumsy groping love to which she had made no return but endurance and a pitying contempt. That love of Hugh's had burgeoned again for Blanchette - and had no chance to flower.