"Jesu, look!" cried Ellis hoarsely. He pointed with his whip.
"God shield us," whispered Katherine. On the bottom of the drawbridge was painted a red cross four feet high. And now she knew that she had smelled a smoke stench like this eight years ago in Picardy.
"There's plague in the castle!" cried John Sutton, his voice quavering. "We must turn the wool-carts - Robert, hasten, stop them - don't let them come nigh here!"
His son gave a cry and galloped down the street into the fog.
"We must get 'round the village away from this contagion," muttered Master John. "Lady, d'you know of another road - do you, young squire?" He turned distractedly to Ellis. "Oh weylawey, there's naught but misfortune and disaster for me lately. Thomas pray to Saint Roch - to all the saints - for sure you have the Latin they can understand."
The young clerk started and dragged his eyes from the plague cross that glistened red as blood through the mist, his trembling fingers reached for his beads.
"Come, Lady Katherine, come," whispered Ellis. He snatched at Doucette's bridle. A shutter opened in the guardroom of the gatehouse and a man's helmeted head showed at the window.
"Now who be ye what gabble and jangle out there?" the guard called out. "For sure ye see that we've no welcome to give ye at Bolingbroke except the kiss of the Black Death."
"Blessed Virgin, what has happened?' cried Katherine, clasping her hands tight on the pommel.
"Sixteen of us are dead, that I know of - God shrive them, for a priest has not! The chaplain died a-first, five nights gone, the friar after him."
"Unshriven!" She heard the wail from the two Suttons behind her, and the sudden panic clop of hooves as their horses were spurred.
Ellis grabbed her arm, and she shook it off. "The village priest!" she cried to to the window. "Get him!"
"How may we? Since he's run off to hiding like the rest of the vill!"
"What of the Duchess and her babes?"
"I know not, mistress, for since yestere'en I've not quit the guardroom and I've barred the door." The voice in the window cracked into high-pitched laughter. "I've barred the door 'gainst the plague maiden and her red scarf and her broom. She'll not get in, to bed wi' me."
"Come away, lady - come--" Again Ellis seized Katherine's arm, his face had grown yellow as the smoke.
"No," she said, though her heart beat slow and heavy. "I cannot. I'm going in. Belike I'm safe from the contagion, Philippa said so, but whether or no, I must go in to the Duchess."
"You're mad, lady - Sir Hugh would kill me if I let you go -
She saw that he meant to drag her off by force, his hand clenched on her arm so she near overbalanced in the saddle. Deliberately she called on anger.
"How dare you touch me, knave!" she said, low and clear. "How dare you disobey me?" And with her free hand she slapped him hard across the face.
Ellis gasped. His hand fell off her arm. His mind floundered in a coil of fear and uncertainty.
She saw this and in the same clear voice said, "You need not enter the castle with me, I release you from your duty, but this you must do. Ride fast to the abbey at Revesby, it's the nearest as I remember. Bring back a monk, at once! In the name of the Trinity, Ellis - -go!" Such force did she put in her voice, such command in the look she gave him, that he bowed his head. "The road to Revesby lies that way," she said pointing, "then to the west." He tautened the reins and spurred his horse.
"Guard! Ho, guard!" Katherine called turning to the castle. The helmet showed again in the window. "Lower the bridge and let me in!"
"Not I, mistress," again the man let loose a gust of laughter. "I'll not budge." His tone changed as he pushed closer to the window. "What, little maid, and do you lust to join our sports in here? By God's bones, the Black Death holds merry dances! The postern gate is open since 'tis through there the castle varlets fled." He leered down at her.
Katherine guided Doucette along the dry moat past the south tower to a footbridge that led across to the postern. She dismounted and tied the mare loosely to a hazel bush that it might graze. She unbuckled her saddle pack and hoisting it in her arms crossed the footbridge. Between the batterns on the low oak door another red cross was painted and beneath it in straggling letters, "Lord have mercy on us."
She went through the unlocked door into the bailey. On the flagstones near the well another plague fire burned. An old man in soot-tarnished blue and grey livery threw handfuls of yellow sulphur on the smouldering logs. He raised his shaggy head and looked at her dully. Two other figures moved in the bailey. They were hooded and masked in black cloth and they held shovels in their hands. The flagstones had been lifted from a section of the western court near the barracks and she saw that a long ditch had been dug into the earth. Beside the ditch there stood a high-mounded bumpy pile covered by bloodstained canvas, and the stench from this pile mingled with the fumes from the fire.
Katherine tried to turn her eyes away from the mounded pile but she could not. One man seized a little hand-bell and, jingling it, muttered behind his mask. He put the bell on the ground, and the two hooded figures silently dragged a limp thing with long black hair from out the pile and heaved it into the ditch, where one blue-spotted wrist and hand protruded for a moment like a monstrous eagle's claw, then slowly sank from sight.
Katherine dropped the bag she carried. She ran stumbling towards the private rooms at the far end of the bailey. She reached the foot of the stone staircase that led up to the Duchess's apartments. Here it was that she had stood laughing at the mummers' antics with the two little girls in that Christmastime three years ago. She looked back into the smoke-filled silent courtyard and saw the hooded figures fumble again beneath the canvas on the mound.
Her stomach heaved, while bitter fluid gushed up into her mouth. She spat it out and, turning, began to mount the worn stone steps. As she rounded the first spiral the hush that held the castle was broken by the sudden tolling of a bell. Muffled though it was by the stone walls around her, she knew it for the great chapel bell and she clung to the embroidered velvet handrail while she counted the slow strokes. Twelve of them before the pause - a child then, this time - somewhere in the castle and dimly through the knell she heard a long far-off wailing.
At once much nearer sounds broke out from above her, a wild cacophony of voices and the shrilling of a bagpipe. She listened amazed; in the discordant sounds she recognised the tune of a ribald song, "Pourquoi me bat mon mart?" that Nirac had taught her, and many voices were bawling it out to the squealing of the pipes and the clashing of cymbals.
As Katherine mounted slowly the noise grew more raucous, for it came from the large anteroom outside the Duchess's solar, and the door was ajar. There were a dozen half-naked people in the room, all of them in frantic motion, dancing. Nobody noticed Katherine, who stood transfixed in the doorway. Despite the fog heat, a fire was blazing on the hearth and the painted wall-hangings were illuminated by a score of candles. On the table, which had been pushed to the wall, there was the carcass of a roast peacock, a haunch of venison and a huge cask of wine with the cock but half shut; a purple stream splashed down on the floor rushes which had been strewn with thyme, lavender and wilting roses. To the falcon-perch beside the fireplace, a human skull had been tied so that it dangled from the eye-sockets and twisted slowly from side to side as though it watched the company who danced around and around upon the rushes. They jerked their arms and kicked their legs. When the minstrel who held the cymbals clashed them together, a man and a woman would grab each other convulsively and, kissing, work their bodies back and forth while the rest jigged and whirled and called out obscene taunts.