"Ay, I'd best warn Parson's Molly," repeated the woman as though Katherine had not spoken, "or she might be off at sundown to light the fires and launch Ket's boat on the river."
Katherine bit her lips. Her palm itched to slap the smug sallow face. Milburga well knew that Katherine had forbidden the outlandish ritual performed by her tenants on this St. Walburga's Eve. Gibbon had warned her of it, and described it as a brutish heathen festival which had come down from Druid times and had to do with sacrifice to some dark goddess they called Ket, though some said it was in honour of the Dane, Ketel. No matter which, the proceeding seemed outrageous to Katherine.
The serfs, it seemed, always lit fires in a small circle of ancient stones on a hill near the Trent and after an orgy of dancing, guzzling and worse, they then launched a coracle on the river. The coracle would contain three new - born slaughtered lambs - slaughtered, with wild cries and leapings, on a stone they called an altar. The whole ceremony was called the "Launching of Ket's Ark," Gibbon told her, and his objection to the function sprang not so much from moral indignation at this pagan folderol but from the wanton waste of the lambs and waste of two days' work, one of preparation, and one of recovery from the drinking throughout the night.
But Katherine had been shocked and rushed at once to the priest demanding that he stop the preparations. "Oh, I cannot, lady," said Sir Robert, astonished. "They've always done so here. 'Tis custom. I've often gone myself to launch Ket's ark." "But it's heathen!"
The priest shrugged and looked honestly bewildered.
Then Katherine, calling all her housefolk together and the reeve, had issued a command forbidding them to hold Ket's rite this May Eve. They had said nothing, merely listened to her and dispersed silently. But she had heard the reeve's mocking laugh and Milburga's high - pitched whinny in the courtyard.
"I told you, Milburga, that I forbid this thing tonight," said Katherine, trying to speak with dignity. "I expect to be obeyed."
The maid's lips twitched. "To be sure, lady. So I needn't warn Molly?"
"Certainly not!"
Thus it was that night, an hour after sundown, that Katherine felt her first pains and found herself alone, deserted by all the housefolk. They had fed her her supper, and Katherine, not dreaming that they would defy her and being still in a restless mood, had gone up to the solar and sitting by the window with her lute, strummed random chords while she tried to remember a song she had sung at Bolingbroke.
She took pleasure in her music, and though mostly self - taught, had become a fair player, so that at first she did not notice the growing sharpness of an ache in her back. But the pain grew more insistent, and she stood up, thinking to ease the cramp. Sure enough, it ebbed. She leaned out of the window, gazing idling into the dark forest beyond the moat and thinking of Hugh. She had had no news of him except that given her by the Duchess in January of his arrival overseas, but she had expected none. Even if he had found someone to write a letter for him, whom could he have sent to deliver it? Yet he had hoped to be home in May and perhaps he might be. It seemed to her that if he came she would be neither sorry nor glad, though she would feign gladness.
She sighed, then tensed, holding on to the rough stone of the embrasure and hearing her own startled breathing. The ache in her legs and back had returned more strongly, and this time before ebbing sent a stab of pain up through her loins.
She ran to the door and down the stairs calling "Milburga!" There was no answer; no lights in Hall or empty kitchen, where the embers had been raked under the curfew for the night. She went out into the quiet court and clenched her hands while another pain came and went. "Toby!" she shouted underneath the gatehouse windows. Though the bridge was down the keeper was not there.
She stumbled to Gibbon's hut, and flung the door open.
"God's wounds, what is it?" cried the man's slow voice in the darkness. "Is it you, my lady? Open the shutter." After a moment she obeyed, and he saw her in the gloaming light. She was crouching, her arms laced tight across her belly.
"Jesu - " whispered the sick man. "Poor creature, so your time has come - but lady, go up to bed, send for the midwife. Oh ay - I'd forgot - God blast them all - they've gone to Ket's hill." A spasm twisted his yellow face. "Is no one here?"
"No - one," she gasped, "and I dare not try to reach the village."
" 'Twould do no good, there'd be nobody there. I heard them go - they were laughing, shouting drunken songs." The veins corded on his forehead. "Devil take this stinking useless body of mine - "
"What shall I do, Gibbon?" she asked dully.
"Go to your bed." He spoke briskly to hearten her. "It can't be long before they come back. I'll listen and shout, send someone to you. Be brave for a little while, it won't be long." Though he knew well that last year they had stayed the night through at their wicked rites.
"Ay," she said, "I'll go to bed. That would be best." She could not think for herself, and Gibbon's words brought her relief. "The pains're not so bad," she added, trying to smile. "Not near so dreadful as I'd heard."
Not yet, poor lady, he thought, turning his head from her innocent face. She groped her way through the door. She crept up to the solar and throwing off her gown lay on the sheet in her shift. The night was warm, but had it not been, she would have needed no covering, for soon the sweat began to pour off her heaving body.
Towards midnight Gibbon, lying in the hut, heard the first scream shrill down across the courtyard, and slow tears oozed from beneath his shut lids. In her tower - room, the Lady Nichola too heard the scream, and raised her head, wondering. She had been dripping water from a flagon into a clay pot and carefully greeting the drops as they fell.
This mater for self, this water for elf,
Nixie, pixie, kelpie, sylph.
She was about her own May Eve rites. The cat, a full - grown tabby now, lay curled on the bed, purring lazily.
When Nichola heard the strange sound again, she put the flagon down on the hearth and spoke to the cat. "Are they calling me, sweeting, d'you think? Is it She Who Lives in the Holy Well?"
Then she shook her head; into her staring dark eyes there came a look of anxiety, for dimly through the floating mists she felt the hard stab of human urgency. She smoothed down her rumpled widow's weeds and bound her greying hair into a must - stained coif. She picked up a twisted rush and lit it at the fire. "I must see what they want," she said, stroking the cat. "I'll not be long - - "
She wandered down the stone steps in the tower and across the guard - room to the outside stairs, when she heard the sound again. She knew it came from the solar and was puzzled. She pushed the door slowly open and stood holding the rush dip high, gazing into the dark room.
The sounds came from something on the bed where she had once slept herself with her lord. What was it on the bed that writhed and tossed, and ever and again gave forth a wailing cry?
She moved nearer and saw a mass of tangled hair and two wild eyes in a glistening face.
"Hugh's bride?" she whispered, unbelieving. She blinked, leaned over the bed and seeing red stains, cried, "What has been done to you, Hugh's bride?"
"For the love of God, lady!" cried Katherine, " 'tis my baby that will not be born." She grabbed at Nichola's hand, clenching it until the bones cracked, and with the pain from that desperate grip the shadows receded in Nichola's mind.
She had borne no child herself but she had seen birth once long ago on her father's manor. She sat on the bed and held Katherine's hands, nor winced when the girl pulled on them frantically; and between the pains she murmured soothing words and wiped the sweat - drenched face with a corner of the sheet.