She nodded quickly. "What news do you bring?"
"Nothing but good. At least we know no war news yet from Castile. I come from Bolingbroke, from the Duchess Blanche. She sends you greeting."
"Ah -" Katherine's drawn little face softened with pleasure. She had never dared hope that the Lady Blanche would indeed remember her; and during these months at Kettlethorpe the London and Windsor days had gradually faded into fantasy.
"She bids me escort you to Bolingbroke for the Christmas festival, if you'd like to come."
Her indrawn breath and the sudden shining of her shadowed eyes were answer enough, and Piers Roos laughed, seeing that she was even younger than he himself and not the solemn, weary woman she had seemed as he dismounted.
"We'll go tomorrow then, if you wish. The ride'll take but a day."
"I - I cannot go fast," faltered Katherine, suddenly remembering, and blushing. "I - they - think I should not ride at all."
"What folly," said Piers cheerfully, understanding at once. "The Lady Blanche is larger than you and she still rides out daily."
"The Lady Blanche!" Katherine repeated, wondering that she should be amazed, and why the young squire's information came as a small unpleasant shock. "When?"
"Oh, March or April, I believe. I know naught of midwifery." He laughed outright, and Katherine after a minute joined him.
The energy Piers' invitation brought her buoyed Katherine through all difficulties. She ordered Doucette to be curried and groomed and ignored the gloomy disapproval of her household.
The next day her sore throat had disappeared, the fluttering in her belly she did not notice; she smiled and hummed as she crossed the inner court to take leave of Gibbon.
"Ay, mistress," he said sadly, as he stared up at her from his pallet. "You're in a fever to be quit of Kettlethorpe."
"Only till the Twelfth Night," she cried. "Then I'll - I'll be back. And I'll not pine any more, I promise. I'll help you in the manor again."
"God - speed," he said and closed his eyes against the light. Hugh would not like it, and yet even Hugh would not have made Katherine refuse an invitation from the Duchess. I could not stop her from going, thought Gibbon, and sighed. Could not, since he had neither strength nor power, and would not, for she was still such a child, and he knew well how much maturity it took to withstand loneliness and boredom. He did not believe with the villeins that she was wilfully imperilling her baby, but many nameless forebodings came to him in the long night hours, and he wished as heartily as the rest of the village that Hugh had seen fit to marry the noble Darcy widow, of Torksey.
CHAPTER VIII
Bolingbroke lay clear across the county near the eastern coast of Lincolnshire. It was a small fair castle set in meadow - lands and encircled by the protecting wolds. Even in winter the meadows were green beneath their coating of hoar - frost; and the little turrets and high central keep, all beflagged in scarlet and gold, had a gay welcoming look. It was the Lancasters' favourite country castle; there Blanche had spent much of her girlhood, and there she and John had come for seclusion in the first days of their marriage.
It held for her many happy memories, and she had returned to it now, knowing that its homely shelter would help her bear the anxiety of her lord's absence, and the anxiety of awaiting the new baby. This time her prayers and pilgrimage to the Blessed Virgin of Walsingham must be answered. It would be a boy, and it would live, as the other baby boy had not.
From the moment when the Lady Blanche herself met Katherine in the Great Hall and, taking the girl's hand kissed her on the cheek, through the twelve days of Christmas, Katherine managed to forget Kettlethorpe. With the rest of the Duchess' company, Katherine immersed herself in the serene and gracious aura which surrounded Blanche.
The Duchess, thickened by pregnancy, no longer made one think of lilies, yet she was no less beautiful in her ripe golden abundance, and Katherine admired her passionately.
There were few guests, for Blanche smilingly explained that she had enough of company at the Savoy or at court and wished for quiet. The Cromwells from nearby Tattershall Castle rode over on Christmas night, and the. Abbess of Elstow, who was cousin to Blanche, spent the days between St. Stephen's and New Year's, but so intimate was the castle gathering that Katherine wondered much, while she rejoiced, that she had been invited.
She put it down to kindness of heart, and tried to repay the Duchess in every way she could. The Duchess responded with affection and growing interest in the girl. And yet it was a sentence contained in a letter she had received from her husband which had prompted the invitation.
The Duke had written soon after landing in Brittany and assembling his command of four hundred men - at - arms and six hundred archers for the march south to join his brother and the exiled Castilian king at Bordeaux. He wrote in a happy confident mood, telling his tres - chere et bien - aimee compagne many items of news: that the fair Joan, Princess of Wales, was enceinte again and near to term; that King Pedro, God restore him to his rightful throne, had with him at Bordeaux his handsome daughters, and that the desolate plight of these wronged princesses had captured the sympathy of all the English, who would certainly triumph over that baseborn fiend Trastamare, and the lilies and leopards of England would float at last above Castile and fulfil Merlin's age - old prophecy.
Descending into less exalted vein, the Duke had shown his usual consideration for Blanche's comfort, asking if the steward at Bolingbroke had repaired the bridge over the outer moat yet, and how the masons were progressing with the stone portraits of the King and Queen on the refurbished church, for "it is there, dearest lady, that our child will be christened, and I pray I may return in time."
Blanche kissed the parchment when she read this, and sinking to her knees on the prie-dieu beside the great bed had communed with a jewelled image of the Blessed Virgin which stood flanked by candles and holly greens in the niche above.
When she returned to the letter she found in the last paragraph the question: "Have you seen ought of the little Swynford? Her clodpoll knight is here in camp and confides (as though it were a rare and difficult feat) that he has got her with child. It might be kindness to see how she does, alone, on their manor."
Blanche had not wondered that, of all their acquaintance, her lord had mentioned by name only this little bride; neither suspicion nor speculation had ever troubled the purity of her love, and she hastened to obey without question and in generous measure. She was rewarded, for she enjoyed Katherine's visit,
The girl's admiration touched her. Though there were ten years between their ages, besides the greater gulf of Blanche's lineage and experience, she found Katherine companionable. The two women sat together and embroidered through the winter dusks, and Blanche noted how the girl's red chilblained little hands tried to imitate the skill of her own long white fingers: Sometimes Blanche picked up her lute or gittern and they sang - plaintive love songs, or Christmas carols to the Virgin. And at the singing Blanche knew herself surpassed, for her high passionless voice, like a choir - boy's, sometimes went flat, while Katherine hit true and round on every note, and once she had overcome her timidity and learned the songs, they poured like honey from her slender throat.
"Do you make much music at Kettlethorpe?" inquired Blanche idly one evening when they had finished singing Adam de la Halle's rondeau, "Fais mari de vostre amour".
"No, madam," said Katherine after a moment, the pleasure dying from her face. She had, from pride and a desire to forget the place, always evaded the Duchess' few polite questions about her manor.
"Are your minstrels unskilled?" asked the Duchess in some surprise.