"Oh please!" cried Katherine. She gathered up Blanchette who had grown tired of playing with a blackamoor puppet the Chaucers had brought her, and settled the child comfortably in her arms.
Philippa sniffed, and seeing no help for it, picked up Katherine's neglected spindle and began to twirl yarn from the distaff.
Hugh gave a grunt of dissent, and saying that he wished to find Ellis, got up and went out of the Hall.
Geoffrey drew close-written parchments from his pouch and pulled his stool near the window light. "It begins by telling of dreams," he said to Katherine, "like this -
For this trowe I, and say for me,
That dreams signifiaunce be
Of good and harm to many wights,
That dreamen in their sleep a-nights
Full marry things covertly,
That fallen after openly."
Yes, that's true thought Katherine. Many things fell out as she had dreamed them. Some nights ago she had dreamed of a coffin and a great horde of weeping mourners garbed in black - and lo, the Queen was dead. But the poem was about love not death, and Katherine listened intently to the excerpts that Geoffrey read. With the dreamer of the story, she met Dame Idleness, Sir Mirth, the Lady Courtesy. She wandered in an enchanted garden so fair "that there is no place in paradise, so good in for to dwell or be, as in that garden." The God of Love, Lord of this garden, he was crowned with roses, and he had a young knight to serve him that was called "Sweet-looking". This young knight held two bows with which to shoot Love's arrows. There were five fair arrows and five foul arrows, and as Geoffrey read how the arrows were named, Katherine listened yet more eagerly, for it seemed to her that she might learn a little about this romantic love and its meanings.
The five golden arrows were called Beauty, Simplicity, Frankness, Companionship and Fair-semblance. Did these indeed make the blissful wounds of love? Katherine wondered, disappointed. She could not picture those arrows ever wounding her heart, nor yet the five black ones that were shot from a crooked bow - Pride, Villainy and Shame, Wanhope and Inconstancy. To none of these did she feel herself vulnerable either.
So I don't understand this sort of love, and never will, she thought, sighing, and how foolish to think that it existed, since The Romance of the Rose was only a dream; Geoffrey had said so in the beginning. Real life was here in this Hall and imbued with quite different qualities - such as duty and endurance. The poem was like the jewel-toned tapestries of fairy beasts and misty glades that she had seen at Windsor, while life was like the rough grey yarn Philippa spun from the distaff. Yet - she thought suddenly, caught by a fleeting glimpse she could not quite perceive - the tapestry, too, exists. I saw it.
"You frown, Katherine!" said Geoffrey laughing, and folding up his parchments, "The Romaunt wearies you?"
"Nay, Geoffrey - it pleased me - but I think it sad that I can never find such a beautiful garden, or hope to pluck the one red rose the dreamer yearned for."
"It may be you will yet, Katherine," said Geoffrey softly.
"Katherine will what?" Philippa had been mentally rearranging the Hall, stacking the .trestles on the south wall instead of the north, putting up a more convenient torch bracket. "What red rose? Oh, I see - the poem - Geoffrey, in truth I think it sounded better in French, more elegant. The Queen's minstrel, Pierre de Cambrai, used to recite it to us - English is no tongue for poetry."
"I expect you're right, my dear," Geoffrey said. He fastened the clasp on his pouch and stood up, stretching his legs. "Rhyme in English has much scarcity, and I am but an indifferent maker."
Katherine started to protest, out of courtesy, and because she had enjoyed the poem; but she saw that her opinion would touch him no more deeply than had Philippa's. For all his merriness and kindness, she felt in him an encircling wall behind which his true self dwelt alone, little affected by the outside world which it viewed with smiling detachment. And she admired this trait which was like the self-sufficiency she had fostered in her own heart. There was but one thing that could threaten hers, she thought. She glanced at little Tom and then down at the curly head against her arm. If I have these safe, she thought, what need of more?
CHAPTER X
It was the eleventh of September before Katherine set out on her journey to Bolingbroke. She had been unwilling to go until Tom was properly weaned. Then Blanchette had had some brief childish complaint that required her anxious nursing, but soon the little girl was hale as ever, so that Katherine left her to Philippa without anxiety, though with many a pang.
Hugh, too, was better, his bowel gripes and flux lessened, though the other weakness that troubled him so bitterly had not improved. Katherine thought of this matter as she rode with Ellis along the Lincoln road to Bolingbroke.
Since the birth of little Tom, and for some months before that, Hugh had not been able to claim a husband's rights, and she felt guilt that a circumstance which disturbed him so profoundly should be to her a heartfelt relief. Freed from his clumsy, hurried importunities, she could minister to his other needs with far more tolerance. It was otherwise with him: he scarcely spoke to her unless he must, and in the rare times when she had caught him looking at her, he turned his head quickly away, but not before she had seen his bewildered anger and humiliation.
But today she need think of no troublesome things, it was joyous to be going on a journey, the wind blew in her face and she hummed as she spurred Doucette into a gallop, while the disapproving Ellis pounded along at the requisite three paces behind her. "My lady, slacken!" he called finally, "there's a party up ahead!" She pulled in Doucette. This narrow road through Bardney to Bolingbroke was not much frequented and they had met nobody but a tinker and two journeymen woodcarvers who were bound for Lincoln Cathedral to seek work on the new choir stalls.
The road ahead was blocked by a plodding procession of heavy carts piled high with wool-sacks and drawn by oxen. An oxherd ran back and forth with his goad between each pair of carts, and despite Ellis's shouts to make way, neither the oxen nor the herds budged an inch.
Three well-dressed horsemen rode ahead of the carts and one of them, hearing Ellis's shouts and seeing a young woman, called a command to the nearest oxherd, who stolidly passed it back. In due time the oxen hauled the carts to one side. "I could have ridden through the field around them," said Katherine to Ellis as she edged past the carts.
"Oh, no, lady," Ellis was shocked, "not seemly to give the road to peasants. You must remember your rank."
Ay, thought Katherine, I suppose I must, for I'm out in the world again. She arched her neck, patted her hair and replaced her blown riding-hood as she came up to the three horsemen.
The elder was a merchant and obviously a man of consequence. His surcote was a garnet velvet, parti-coloured with saffron. He wore a high-crowned glossy beaver hat, a jewelled dagger at his belt, and his iron-grey beard was neatly forked. "God's greeting, lady," he said in gloomy tones. "We regret we have impeded your way." He turned from her. Flicking his horse's reins, he resumed his slow amble.
Katherine was so accustomed to startled interest in men's eyes that her courteous disclaimer faltered. She glanced at the other two riders, and the youngest, having just taken a good look at her, checked his horse and guided it beside Doucette. "Are you travelling far, fair lady?" he asked, and the warmth in his tone restored her assurance. He too was finely dressed in velvet and a beaver hat, but his forked beard was chestnut brown.