Gibbon had faded slowly out of life, and last Christmas Eve had died in a manner as quiet and unassuming as the Lady Nichola's leave-taking had been frenzied. Katherine had mourned deeply for Gibbon, and Hugh had too. They had made a special trip into Lincoln to the cathedral to buy Masses for his soul, but Katherine had had no leisure for much mourning. Besides the care of little Blanche, there was the new baby, Thomas, there was the manor work, and there was Hugh.
On a searing hot afternoon in late August, Katherine sat on a heap of straw with the babies in the portion of her courtyard that was shaded by the gatehouse and listened to the tolling of their church bell from across the moat. It would toll for three hours in memory of yet another death, and though Katherine's tears did not flow as they had for Gibbon or even for Lady Nichola, she felt a poignant sadness, and she sat with folded hands and murmured, "Requiescat in pace."
On Lady Day, August 15, the good Queen Philippa had died at Windsor, when the labouring heart had no longer been able to struggle on beneath its burden of dropsical flesh. Sim, the reeve, had heard the news in Lincoln where he had gone to try and buy seed corn to replace the ruined crops. He brought back the doleful tidings about the Queen and also a letter from Geoffrey Chaucer which confirmed them and added more. Geoffrey wrote that there was plague in London and the south, an outbreak more virulent than any in eight years. Geoffrey was worried about his own Philippa, who was apparently pregnant at last, and much distraught over the Queen's death. After the funeral ceremonies and the Queen's interment in Westminster Abbey, Geoffrey thought to bring Philippa to Katherine in Lincolnshire, far from the dangerous London air, and leave her there, for he himself was ordered to France, on a mission for the King.
It had been over three years since the sisters had met, and this prospect helped temper Katherine's sadness. She looked down at the Queen's little brooch, with which today she had fastened the neck of her gown. Foi vainquera, she thought, touching the motto, and wondered if the Queen's faith had truly sustained her through these last years. Even at Kettlethorpe, one heard of the shameless Alice Perrers and the bejewelled splendour with which she openly flaunted her position as the King's mistress and adviser.
"Non, non, Blanchette!" cried Katherine, recalled from her abstraction by the straying of her eldest towards the stables. "Come back to Mama!" The baby giggled naughtily, her fat little legs ran faster. She was of an enterprising turn of mind, and she loved the stables and Doucette, her mother's palfrey; but there was danger from Hugh's stallion. Katherine flew across the courtyard and swooped the baby up in her arms, administering a gentle spank on the wriggling behind. "Mechante!" she whispered, burying her face in the plump little neck. Sometimes she talked French to the babies, though Hugh didn't like it. Blanchette pouted, then decided to nestle close to her mother. Katherine sat down again with the child on her lap. Blanchette was a vital, lively little thing, with a mop of marigold curls and round smoky grey eyes like her mother's, but darker. She was continually getting into mischief and Katherine adored her, as she had from the hour of her birth.
With little Tom it was different. Katherine looked down at the withe cradle where her son slept. He had been born in September on St. Matthew's Day nearly a year ago. He had given no trouble then, and he gave none now. He was a stolid child who seldom smiled and never gurgled or shrieked as Blanchette did. He had hemp-coloured crinkled hair and was in fact remarkably like his father.
Katherine sighed when she thought of Hugh. This morning when he rose at dawn to hunt the red deer in the forest, his bowels had griped and run with bloody flux again, and he had been so weakened after an hour at the privy pit behind the dovecote that even with Ellis's help he had scarce been able to mount his horse. This dysentery that Hugh had brought back from Castile often seemed cured and yet each time returned, despite Katherine's nursing and all the remedies suggested by Parson's Molly. They had tried garlic and ram's gall clysters, they had bled Hugh regularly, sprinkled his belly with holy water, and even called in the leech monk from St. Leonard's priory in Torksey. This monk fed Hugh a potion made of powdered toadstone, bade the ailment begone in the name of the Trinity and gave him a paper to wear above his navel on which was written, "Emmanuel, Veronica," but still the seizures and the flux came back at intervals, and Hugh suffered grimly.
The mourning bell, after a pause, clanged out again the first of fifty-six long tollings, one for each year of the Queen's life. Katherine recited a prayer, then settled herself more comfortably on the straw and leaned her head against the gatehouse wall. Blanchette had gone to sleep and Katherine eased the child down beside her. Flies buzzed lazily over the stinking dung pile near the cow-byre, where several chickens scratched for seed, but otherwise the courtyard was quiet, its usual activities suspended out of deference to the Queen. The afternoon grew warmer and Katherine longed for a drink, but she feared to disturb Blanchette and in any case was too drowsy to walk across the court to the well, and she would not tap the keg of ale they kept in the undercroft beneath the solar, for they must eke out the little they had left. God alone knew when they could brew more, since the flood had ruined the barley crop, and the scanty replacement had been sown so late and under the wrong aspects of the moon.
Katherine sighed again. She had been up since daybreak, caring for the babies and trying to help poor Hugh before attending the Queen's memorial Mass. She pulled Tom's cradle close to Blanchette and, curling around her sleeping children, nestled into the straw.
It was thus that the Chaucers found her a half-hour later. They had dismounted by the church, tied their horses to the lych-gate and walked across the drawbridge to inquire, because Philippa, on seeing the manor house, had been quite sure that there was some mistake. She was accustomed to royal castles and the palatial homes of noblemen, and nothing through the years of their separation had arisen to shake her conviction that her sister's enviable marriage to a landed knight presupposed baronial grandeur.
"I'll take oath this can't be Kettlethorpe Manor," she said to her husband as they entered the courtyard. "It must be the bailiff's home." Her high insistent voice penetrated Katherine's dreams, and the girl stirred and slowly raised her head. The movement caught Philippa's incredulous eye, and she turned.
"Blessed Saint Mary - 'tis Katherine! God's love, sister, do you sleep on straw, like a beast, here?" The shock momentarily outweighed Philippa's affection and she spoke in sharp dismay.
Since the day was so hot, Katherine had after church laid off her linen coif and bundled her masses of ruddy hair into a coarse hemp net - like a byre-maid, thought Philippa. Bits of straw were stuck amongst the damp curls that clung to the girl's cheeks. Her gown was of blue sendal but looked much like a peasant's kirtle, since Katherine had not covered it with the sideless furred surcote which befitted her rank; and worse than that, she had looped the long skirt up beneath her girdle so that it was plain to see that she wore no hose. Bare white ankles showed above the scuffed soft-leather shoes. Philippa was appalled.