"Yes," said Geoffrey soberly, "and I'd no idea of any of this until I heard your street-crier today and questioned him."
Geoffrey had returned from a trip on the night before the revolt and had been snugly ensconced in his rooms over Aldgate when Jack Strawe and his Essex men had streamed and bellowed through the gate beneath him. And there he had stayed unmolested, reading and writing during the three days of the violence, being a peaceable man and temperamentally indifferent to political factions. But on his emergence he had been shocked by the extent of the destruction, and now more shocked to find that Katherine and Blanchette had been at the Savoy.
"Where is Lady Swynford? I'd like to see her," he said.
"Ye'll find her sadly changed." Dame Emma came bustling up with a dish of her saffron buns. "She's shaved off her hair, and fasts like an anchorite. Seems like she blames herself for the loss of her child - and for the Grey Friar's death too." The dame slammed the plate on the table and her eyes snapped. "But 'twas that cursed Jack Maudelyn really killed the Grey Friar, I got that much out of .her. The devil's own spawn is Jack, but Beelzebub'll soon get him, I hear, and a good thing too."
"Wife, wife," said Master Guy shaking his head. " 'Tis Hawise's wedded husband, ye shouldna wish him damned, no matter what." He turned to answer Chaucer's exclamation. "Jack, he run around for all the days o' the hurling time with his jaw broke and now his head's swollen up like a melon and he can't breathe but what the good monks at St. Bart's hospital stick a straw down his gullet, and they say he won't last the day out."
"I'll buy no Masses for his soul," snorted the dame." 'Twas he gave Lady Katherine the blow on her head too."
"By the rood, but these are fearful matters!" cried Geoffrey, horrified. "I dread to think what this'll mean to the Duke when he hears. Why hasn't Katherine gone north to meet him then?"
Dame Emma shook her head. "I believe that is no part of her plan. I tell ye, she's much changed. More happened to her than we know on last cursed Thursday, She goes off tomorrow on pilgrimage but where to she won't tell."
Geoffrey's concern increased at each thing he heard, and when Katherine finally came into the kitchen he could not repress an exclamation. She was dressed in a coarse rusty black gown of woven hemp such as the humblest widows wore. Her slender white feet were bare and dusty; around her neck there was a wooden rosary, and on her forehead a great smudge of ashes. Her shaven head was tightly bound with a square of the black cloth. She had beauty still, the thinness of her flesh but exposed the grace of her bones and sinews, but the great brooding eyes were circled by umber shadows and the thick black lashes seemed too heavy for the weary lids.
"Katherine, before God, what does this mean, my dear?" Geoffrey cried, kissing her on the cheek.
"Geoffrey," she said with a faint smile. "I'm glad to see you, and I know that you'll help me."
"Ay, for sure, little sister, but - -" He hesitated, at a loss for words. Religious-minded Katherine had never been. These past years with the Duke she had been a warmly vibrant creature of dancing and laughter, with an aura of hot sensual love about her; and in matters of devout observance he had deemed her of a most indifferent turn of thought. This strict penitential garb and talk of pilgrimage were surely some passing derangement, and if he could not change her mind, the Duke most certainly would.
"How can I help you?" he said as she waited, looking at him soberly.
Katherine read some of his disapproval in his face and made an effort to understand it. So dense and high a barrier reared up between this Katherine and the old one that she could barely perceive how strange she must seem to him.
"Come outside with me, Geoffrey," she said, "I must talk to you alone, and show you something."
They went out to Thames Street into a golden June evening, and Katherine turned towards the Bridge.
"Your sister has been in danger too during the revolt," said Geoffrey with a hint of reproach as he walked beside her and she did not speak. "On that Wednesday when the trouble began Philippa was at Hertford with the Duchess but they were warned and fled in time to the north. Only today I got word that after a perilous journey they were safe in Yorkshire. During this time of the 'Grande Rumoer' it seems that all belonging to him are included in this senseless unjust hatred of the Duke."
"Senseless?" said Katherine pausing and staring at the street, "Unjust? I thought so once. But now I know it's all God's punishment for our great sin."
"By Christ's holy wounds, Katherine, this is sickly talk! Your fleshly sin was not so great as that of many of the monkish fellows who accuse you of it, and yours is redeemed by a true love."
She gave him a dark sad look and walked on, guiding him up the wooden step on to London Bridge. They passed along the Bridge between the clustering overhanging houses until they came to a small tower with spikes set up around it and vultures wheeling and screaming around the many decaying heads upon the spikes.
Geoffrey's steps faltered; he tried to protest, but Katherine pulled him on until they stood below an eyeless skull on which the drying maggoty flesh hung in ribbons. A skull whose bleaching brainpan had been cleft nearly in two. A piece of parchment had been tied to the spike below this head, and Katherine, seeing Geoffrey's look of shocked incomprehension, said, "Read."
He bent and peered at the parchment, then drew back sharply, crossing himself. "Brother William!" he whispered. "Ah - may God rest his poor soul."
"Yes," said Katherine, "Brother William! He died because he came to the Savoy to protect me, and he died trying to save my soul."
Geoffrey swallowed while a prickle ran down his back. He turned from the rotting head to lean against a stone balustrade and stare down into the swirling yellow water below. A; length he said, "But Katherine, you can buy Masses for him. 'Twas not your fault - -"
She drew her breath in harshly and answered in a voice that jangled like an iron bell, "I can buy Masses for him, and for Blanchette - and I can buy Masses for my husband Hugh - who was murdered. Ay - murdered, Geoffrey. You may well whiten and shrink from me! Now do you still think the sin in which the Duke and I have lived so light a one?"
"Hush - for the love of God, Katherine," Geoffrey cried, staring at her. He glanced quickly at the people who passed by on the Bridge. "Come over here, where we'll not be overheard." He drew her to an angle made by the tower buttress, and gazed with incredulous pity into her haunted eyes. "Now tell me," he said quietly.
In the morning when Katherine set out on foot for the north road that led to Walsingham, Geoffrey too left London, bearing a letter from Katherine to the Duke - wherever he might be. An unwilling messenger was Geoffrey, none of the hundred missions he had fulfilled on King's service had been as difficult as this. He knew what Katherine had written, and he suspected that not even the destruction of the Savoy and Hertford castles nor any as yet unreported catastrophe would shock the Duke as this letter would.
Katherine's revelations and her agony of penitence had startled him into shame. He felt that he had himself been drifting into light-minded worldliness. He thought with remorse of the pagan delight, the immorality, he had written into his Troilus and Criseyde. They had read this love story at court, Richard had been charmed with it, the frivolous Duchess of York had wept over it, Katherine herself had heard portions of it, never suspecting in how many tender ways she had been Criseyde's model.
On this trip to the north, while bearing Katherine's despairing letter, conscience rode with Geoffrey. He knew very well that his writings were enjoyed by and influenced many who were bored by the moral Gower's homilies or Langland's fierce indictments, and in his light-minded treatment of carnal love he had most certainly ignored the Church's teachings. He had not pointed out that the devil's hand with the five fingers of lechery gripped a man by the loins, to throw him into the furnace of hell.