The girl shook her head and tried to smile reassurance. Though the Lady Nichola was over forty and her scant dark hair was streaked with grey, yet her little face, twisted by fear, was somehow child-like.
Katherine stood stock-still as she had promised and saw the clutch of the claw hands slowly relax on the bundle they protected. The cloth heaved and squirmed.
"What have you there, my lady?" said Katherine very gently. "I swear by Saint Mary and her Blessed Son that I'll not touch it, nor do anything you don't wish."
"But Hugh would - he'd take her away from me and beat me as his father did. Beat me because I'm barren."
Katherine stiffened. "No," she said, her jaw tight. "No one shall beat you."
The Lady Nichola crept forward to the bed, her wide-straining eyes fixed on Katherine's face. She put the bundle down on the coarse hemp coverlet. The girl waited quietly, though the flesh on her back tingled. The cloth heaved and from underneath there walked out a small bedraggled kitten. It was striped in pale buff and it wore a collar made of woven grass from which dangled a leash of plaited scarlet wool.
Almost Katherine laughed, for she had expected some shocking thing, a baby perhaps - crazed women did steal babies - or sign of witchcraft like a serpent. But pity quenched her smile as Lady Nichola snatched up the kitten and covered it with kisses, while it mewed feebly.
"Dear my lady," said Katherine, " 'tis no sin for you to keep a kitten. No need to be so fearful."
Suddenly the unseeing stare left Nichola's red-rimmed eyes, and the young wild look left her face. Now wrinkles dented around her drooping mouth and between her brows. "So there's a new Lady of Kettlethorpe," she said in a much lower voice. "How did you come to be here?" She sat down quietly on the bed.
Katherine was startled at the change. She saw that the madness had ebbed suddenly to disclose a dead weariness of spirit beneath. Now for a few minutes while there was sanity in Nichola's questions, Katherine told her something of her life and how she came to marry. Nichola nodded from time to time and listened sadly. "I too came from the south," she said, "to this most dismal place. But I was always afraid. He would not have hated me so, had I not been afraid. Even though I bore no children. He broke my arm once - see-"
She pulled up her black sleeve to show a crooked lump of bone beneath the mottled skin. "But I was ugly - like a monkey, my lord said." She twisted her head and looked up at Katherine. "You're beautiful, fair as they are that I see in the water when the other life is on me. Yet you will moulder here, even as I, and grow ugly and afraid unless - unless-" She jumped up, her voice soared to its high chanting note and she cried, "I'll weave a spell for you, Hugh's bride. I have the herbs; the hazel and the bloodwort and the secret ones. I have water here from the Holy Well in Rough wood. I'll make a potion that'll save you - -"
She ran to the iron pot which hung on a tripod against the smoke - blackened wall, she blew the smouldering charcoal embers in the pan beneath and catching up a fistful of dried herbs began to cast them in the pot.
"Nay, lady," said Katherine gently, "I want no potion." But she saw that it was useless. The moment of reason had passed. Nichola did not hear her. The wild yet happier look came back into her face. She picked the kitten from the floor and, carefully untying its wool leash, held it to her breast and began to croon softly, "Ah my pretty one - my poppet, my sweeting, you too shall stir the potion - " And she held the kitten's paw on the ladle.
Katherine turned away and lifting the deer - hide, slipped from the tower - room. She felt no fear now of the Lady Nichola, but she was heavy of heart. She descended the steps to the courtyard and let the sun stream on her uplifted face while trying to recapture the hopeful energy she had felt earlier. Ajax, the great mastiff, walked over to her stiff - legged from his kennel, sniffed her gown, then stalked away towards the stables. She followed him and entering went straight to Doucette's stall. The little mare greeted her with a whinny, and she threw her arms around its neck. Then her arms fell slack. "One Lady of Kettlethorpe has nothing to love but a kitten and I - " She looked at her horse and sudden anger possessed her.
She spied a stable - boy's bare legs protruding from a mound of straw in the next stall. "Wake up, you lazy churl!" she cried sharp and loud. "Get up!" The lad jumped to his feet, knuckling sleep out of his eyes.
"What's your name?" Katherine surveyed him with disgust - his filthy hair, dangling red hands and torn dung - spattered smock.
"Wat - that be Walter - Wat's son, m' - lady," he stammered, not very sure who this tall angry maiden might be. He had heard that the new Lady of Kettlethorpe was but a soft child who had laid abed all yesterday.
"Well, Wat Watson!" cried Katherine. "Why have you not curried my palfrey? Why is the hayrick empty?"
Wat swallowed and ignoring the first question, said that the hayrick was empty because there was no hay.
"There's green grass in the meadow beyond the moat," she snapped. "Go pull enough to fill the manger, then curry Doucette, water and saddle her. I will ride her later." "Aye, m'lady," said Wat.
"And," added Katherine, "when you've finished that, clean out this foul stable. By God's sweet dignity, you should be shamed!"
Buoyed on the wave of her anger, Katherine quitted the stables, picked her way through ancient refuse past the empty granary set high on posts for safety against vermin, past the mammoth bake - oven where the serfs should have been bringing their, loaves and paying the manor levy on each baking. The iron oven door was missing from the wrenched hinges. No doubt someone had found use for it, she thought grimly, and use for the iron locks which had plainly been prised from the doors of other buildings.
She came to the low daub - and - wattle hut where she knew the bailiff lay and tapped upon the door. A man's harsh voice said, "Who's there?" and she answered with firmness, "Katherine Swynford, the new Lady of Kettlethorpe."
"Enter then!"
The stench inside the hut near knocked her over, and she stood blinking in the darkness and retching uncontrollably while red fear smote her. Was this perhaps the stink of plague? Her nostrils still remembered the vileness of the night in Picardy when her grandparents died. But this man had laid here for months and plague victims did not linger. But there was worse than plague! She gasped and stepped back into the courtyard.
"Is he unclean?" she whispered, not knowing that she spoke.
"Nay, lady," said the bitter voice in the darkness, "I'm no leper. Would that I were, for in the lazaretto I'd be with others of my kind and tended by the brothers. I'd not be lying here alone in my own .ordure."
Katherine's stomach heaved again, she put her hand tight against her mouth and came back within the door.
"Open the shutter, lady," said the voice, half sneering. " 'Twill sweeten the air for squeamish noses."
Katherine flung back the little window shutter. The cool spring breeze blew from the forest across the room and out of the door. She looked down at the man who lay on a straw pallet on the floor. A russet mantle such as men had worn in the early days of Edward's reign covered all his body; she could see but his arms. On the sharp bones and knobbed joints the flesh hung slack as a bag. And in his ivory skull - head the eyes were sunk so that she scarce could see that they were blue. Only the long curling brown hair of his head and his matted beard showed that he had been a comely man. His lips drew back from his strong white teeth, and he shut his eyes, for light made them ache.
"Behold Gibbon, your steward, my lady," he said. "I can move nothing but my head, and these fingers - see! He clenched his jaw, veins stood out on his forehead and his left hand jerked on the mantle.