Katherine dutifully waved good - bye until the two trotting horses faded from sight down the avenue of wych-elms that led to the Lincoln road. The villeins noted that she had shown decorum throughout the speeding, and they drew back respectfully now, that she might rush into the house and let loose her grief in private. But Katherine felt neither grief nor the slightest doubt that Hugh would return. Her certainty of his safety beyond the seas in Aquitaine arose not so much from her ignorance of war as from a blind unrecognised trust in the overlord he would serve. Because the Duke of Lancaster was invulnerable, lofty and beyond the touch of mischance, so would his men be. Hugh would certainly return, and in the meantime she had respite.
"The day grows warm, lady," said the priest, mopping his shining red face with a corner of his claret - coloured gown. He moistened his thick lips and glanced towards the manor house. "'Twill soon be Prime."
Katherine took the hint. "Come in and break your fast with me, Sir Robert. I believe there's still some mead left over from the feast."
On the last day of October, All Hallows' Eve, Katherine, having supped alone as usual at the High Table in the dark dreary Hall, sat idly watching Ajax, the mastiff, nosing for bones in the littered rushes below the dais. The house carls had fastened hazel branches across the doors and the windows to keep out the witches and bogles which infested this particular night, and from across the moat she could hear the chanting of the villagers who were circling their homes with lighted candles for the same purpose. The servants, having flung her food on the table, had early sneaked off to the village for apple - bobbing and fortune - telling.
Katherine's despondency reached a point where she felt that she would have welcomed goblins or any other weird visitant which might break the monotony and isolation of Kettlethorpe, when Ajax suddenly abandoned his bones, stiffened and growled.
She crossed herself, staring fearfully at the protecting hazel withes, then she heard the halloo of a human male voice and Old Toby's quavering answer, while Ajax precipitated himself against the door, barking and growling.
She spoke to the dog, held him by his collar and opened the door waiting eagerly. No visitors had come to Kettlethorpe since a wandering friar after Michaelmas. But it was only Sir Robert, who had just returned from amusing himself in Lincoln for three days.
Katherine was so disappointed that tears spilled down her cheeks, a display she knew to be revoltingly childish. "The smoke - " she said." 'Tis so smoky in here." As indeed it was.
A goblin wind had blown up and puffed all the fire smoke back into the Hall through the open roof hole.
"Ay, a wuthering night," said the priest, brushing twigs and mud off his robes. He shuddered. "I mislike Hallow E'en, there's things abroad - best not thought on. I'd not of come back today but for the Feast of All Saints tomorrow. There be some in the will want Mass said."
"I should certainly hope so - I know I do," said Katherine shortly. Father Robert's idea of his parochial duties was exceedingly flexible. Which pleased Hugh well enough.
"I was calling at the George 'n' Dragon, in the town, ye know where it is? The big tavern near the castle uphill from what folks used to call the Jewry, not in our time, nor our gaffers' time either though - "
"Yes," murmured Katherine. There was never any hurrying the priest's thick ramblings, especially when he was bursting with ale like an overripe plum. She glanced wearily at the roof over the dais, where the thatcher had not properly repaired the leak. It must have started to rain, for the usual trickle plink - plonked on the table.
"Tavernkeeper - Hambo o' Louth he's called, he knows I drop in from time to time - he told me, Hambo did, there was a pedlar come through Lincoln, three days back, on his way to Grimsby. Pedlar what carries mostly ribbons, threads, gewgaws for the women. Seems he'd started in London and bore a letter. He left it with Hambo, for when someone from here'd drop by."
"Letter!" Katherine jumped up. "Letter for Kettlethorpe! Jesu. Father, give it to me!"
The priest's fat fingers fumbled with maddening slowness at the buckle of his pouch. Finally he held out a sealed piece of parchment. "Is it sent to you?" he asked, having puzzled for some time over the looks of the inscription, and this being the first letter he had ever seen close.
"Yes, yes," she said, tearing at the seal. "Why, it's from Geoffrey!"
She read rapidly, while her mouth trembled, and her eyes darkened. "No bad news about Sir Hugh?" cried the priest.
"No," Katherine said slowly. " 'Tis not bad news. It's from a King's squire called Geoffrey Chaucer; he and my sister were married in Lammastide. They're living in London, in the Vintry, until my sister returns to service with the Queen."
Father Robert was impressed. So glib she talked about the King and Queen. He pursed his thick lips and looked at her with new respect.
"London," said Katherine, on a long sigh, gazing around the dark bare Hall, "seems very far away."
"Well and it is" said the priest, rising reluctantly, for she was staring at the letter and obviously not going to offer him anything to drink for his pains.
When he had gone, she re - read her letter, and one sentence especially. Geoffrey had written, "Philippa bids you not grow overworldly in the luxury and High Estate which you now enjoy - but I dare add I hope you amuse yourself right well, my little Sister."
Katherine smiled bitterly when she read that and put the letter at the bottom of her coffer.
More and more during the autumn months as her pregnancy advanced, lethargy came over Katherine, and she drew into herself. Her mind felt as though it grew thick as pottage, and she was continually benumbed by cold. Her initial interest in the manor waned, she scarce found the energy for talks with Gibbon any more, and he, seeing this, did not trouble her, having established a fair working relationship with the reeve.
After the leaves fell and the freezing November rains began, Katherine stayed almost entirely in her room, either shivering by the smoking fire or huddled in the great bed beneath the bearskin, trying to shut her ears to the howling wolves in the forest. Sometimes she aroused herself and plied a listless needle to make swaddling clothes for her baby. But the baby still seemed imaginary. Even though her belly and her breasts had swollen and grown hard, she had no sense of its presence within her.
"It'll be different when you quicken, lady," said Milburga. This was the servant Katherine had chosen as personal waiting - maid, because she was cleaner and less stupid than the others. But Milburga was old, being over thirty and a widow, and she treated Katherine with a blend of oily deference and petty bullying that the girl found annoying.
On St. Catherine's Day, November 25, Katherine awoke to find that she had been crying in her sleep, and knew that she had dreamed of her childhood. In the dream she had been little "Cat'rine" again, crowned with gilded laurel leaves and perched on cushions in the middle of her grandparents' kitchen table at the farm in Picardy. There were laughing faces around her, and hands stretched out towards her with gifts - straw dolls and shining stones and apples - while many voices sang, "Salut, salut la p'tite Cat'rine, on salut ton jour de fete!"
Then in the dream her big handsome father lifted her from the cushions and kissed her while she snuggled in his arms, and he pressed a little gingerbread figure of St. Catherine into her mouth. She tasted the heavenly sweetness of it until someone wrenched her jaws apart and snatched the sweetmeat away. And she awoke weeping.