"What is it, Gibbon?" she asked, steadily enough.
"I know not. It began two years ago with a weakness in my legs. They trembled much. The trembling crept from limb to limb, but now they do not even tremble."
"You've had a leech?"
"A barber from Torksey. He bled me often. It does no good. While I yet could get about I burned candles at Saint Hugh's shrine in Lincoln Minster. That did no good, either, nor will it - this is punishment for the sin of my begetting."
"Does no one tend you, Gibbon?"
"Oh, ay - when they remember. Old Toby at times, big Margery Brewster from the vill, the parson when he's not chaffering in Lincoln for fine meats and wines to fill his fat belly."
Katherine frowned and lifted her chin. "There must be many changes on the manor!" she cried. "I'll see that you're tended, properly - a serf to care for you night and day. Then you'll get better."
He looked at her then with some attention. A feeble smile narrowed his sunken lids. "You're full young to be so resolute," he said. Young and very fair, he thought. Shining with indignation, burning to set wrongs right, and certain that it could be done. Like Saint Michael with the sword and scales. Ay, he thought, and shut his eyes again - once I would not have compared so female a creature to Saint Michael. He felt the weight of his dead body that hung to his neck like a sack of stones. Soon the neck too would be dead, and then the head.
"Is there much pain?" she said softly. There was a flagon of ale on the floor and a piece of bread. She poured ale into a wooden cup and held it to his lips. Almost she felt courage to pull back his mantle and cleanse him, but yet she could not. She had seen no man naked save Hugh, and at him she had not looked.
He shook his head to the ale. "Margery was here this morning, I was fed. No, there's no pain." He added in a stronger voice, "Where's Hugh gone? I heard the horses in the courtyard."
"Hunting in the forest. We need meat." She said it lightly, that he might not think it a reproach to his stewardship. She had meant to ask him many questions about the manor, but now she felt she could not disturb so ill a man with her ignorance. She would like, too, to question him about himself; his turn of speech astonished her. Here was no peasant twang or clumsy grammar; he spoke as well as any knight at Windsor court, better, in fact, than Hugh. What then, did he as bailiff here?
Gibbon had become intuitive during these months when nothing seemed to live in him but his brain. He felt her thoughts. "Hugh told you naught about me, did he?" He looked up at her with the faint smile. It had been long since anyone had lingered to talk to him.
"No," she said, "he spoke never of you, nor of his manors."
"Ay, it was always that way. Hugh has little interest in his lands, but I had. I fended for him, and I ruled his villeins. I collected his rents and fines and though I paid out each Michaelmas the twenty pounds service fee Kettlethorpe owes the Bishop of Lincoln and the fees due from Coleby, yet we were prospering. Soon here we might have furnished and made the manor, worthy of Swynfords. I had even thought to build a pleasure garden, between the tower and the moat, in case Hugh got him a bride." His lips twisted from his teeth. "Now there is a bride - but no pleasure garden, no handsome furnishings to greet her. And the manor - I can guess what condition it's in."
"I've wondered," she said, hesitating, "why there are no furnishings here, except the rudest."
"Hugh sold them all at his father's death. He had to pay relief and heriots to his feudal lords, of course, before he could claim his inheritance. You must know that," he added in surprise.
She shook her head. "I know nothing."
"Hugh should find a new bailiff at once, and you will need help to administer your dowry."
"I bring no dowry," said Katherine quietly. "Hugh would have me, none the less."
Gibbon fell silent. This seemed to him very bad news. Since he had known of Hugh's return home with a wife he had passed some of the interminable black hours in wondering what dowry she brought, and how it could be best expended for the rehabilitation of the manor which had to him been wife, family and salvation for years. That the girl was fair and intelligent he saw, that she had some tenuous connection with the court he had heard from Ellis, but none of this offset the lack of dowry. In fact, he had hoped that Hugh when he finally returned home, might see the wisdom of wooing the Lady Matilda, sister to Philip Darcy, the lord of Torksey. True, Matilda was a widow, and something brown and shrivelled in looks, having lost most of her teeth, but she had borne children and was not yet past the age to bear others. Besides, Hugh had never seemed the man to be finicky about the women he bedded. The Torksey lands were rich and adjoined Kettlethorpe on the north; the marriage would have restored the Swynford fortunes.
"It irks you that I bring no property," said Katherine, flushing. His silence hurt her so that she forgot his illness and added sharply, "Is it the custom in Lincolnshire for the hired bailiff to concern himself so deeply in his master's affairs as this?"
Gibbon turned his eyes back to her. "Ah, but you see, madam. I too am a Swynford, and debarred by birth from owning land myself. I yet make shift to serve my house - or did."
The hot stain faded from Katherine's forehead, she looked down at him amazed. "You are a Swynford, Gibbon?" "Ay. Hugh and I are half - brothers." "But I don't understand - "
He made a derisive sound in his throat. "Simple enough, for I'm a bastard."
She could not prevent a shocked sound. Bastardy had always seemed to her the most pitiable of states!
Gibbon's sardonic voice went on. "Ay - our most dear father, Sir Thomas, strewed others like me from Grimsby to Grantham, though his only true - born son was Hugh. Yet was I a special case, for my mother was a nun at the Fosse Priory, not two miles from here."
Katherine swallowed. "Sweet Jesu," she whispered.
"Two days after she bore me, she drowned herself in the Trent, but this I did not know until my father died. He had me reared by the Gilbertines at Sempringham, and not knowing then I was a bastard I once thought to join their order. When my father made full confession on his death - bed, the gentle Gilbertines were scandalised. They prayed for my mother's lost soul, and my father's black one, but they turned me out."
The muscles of his throat ached from so much talking, and he sighed. "What then, Gibbon?" Katherine whispered, putting her hand on his inert arm.
"Why, then Hugh was the heir, and he summoned me to aid him on the land, swearing that none here should taunt me with the infamy of my birth. It was generously done, and I was grateful."
"Ay, it was generously done," Katherine murmured, turning this new aspect of her husband over in her mind. Generous yet expedient, too; Hugh had needed someone he could trust to run the manor.
"Gibbon," she said, "will you help me when you can, tell me what must be done here?"
His lips moved in assent, then fell slack.
She went quickly out of the hut into the sunny courtyard and shut the door. Dear God, this is now my home, she thought. Soon Hugh and Ellis will go to Aquitaine and I shall be here alone with a crazed woman, a dying man and a pack of rebellious serfs. Of a sudden she thought of Hawise with a desperate longing, the tough, shrewd, bouncing girl with the merry tongue and the warm heart. If I had her here to help me, to laugh with me as we did on May Day.
Hawise had said as she kissed Katherine good - bye outside the church porch, "Remember I'd do anything for ye, my lady. Ye've but to let me know." Katherine had neither listened nor responded, had mounted Doucette in a daze - bemused, drunken - because of the Duke of Lancaster's contemptuous kiss.
"You little fool," said Katherine aloud to the deserted courtyard. "Ah, I hate him. He meant to make a fool of me."
Then from the forest she heard a wild hallooing like a battle - cry, and the fainter winding of a horn. At least, she thought, there would be meat for dinner.