Then the great room was quiet again except for the chanting of the monk. Lady Blanche sighed, her fingers closed around the crucifix on her breast. "In manus tuas - Domine -" she said clearly, in a calm, contented voice. And died.
It seemed that the Black Death, having slain the Duchess, had at last slaked its greed. The weather on that September 12 turned sharp and freezing cold, and the evil yellow fog vanished. There were a few more deaths throughout the castle, a scullion and a dairymaid, two of the guards and the head falconer's wife; but these had all been stricken before the Duchess died, and there were no new cases.
Of those who had danced in frenzy by the skull in the anteroom, none died of plague but Audrey, the Duchess's tiring-woman, and she followed her mistress on the next day without ever regaining her sense from the drunken stupor which had finally quietened all the revellers.
On Piers Roos, too, the dread black spots appeared, but God showed him mercy, for the plague boil in his groin swelled fast and burst like a rotten plum; and when the poison drained away, Piers recovered, albeit he lay for months in sweating weakness afterwards.
During those days of heavy sorrow and gradually lightening fear, Katherine remained at the castle. They had sore need of help, and old Simon was distracted by the terrible responsibilities on him. Of those at Bolingbroke, thirty had died. Most of the varlets had run off in panic to the wolds and fens. There were few left to do Simon's bidding, and none to tell him what disposition should be made of the Duchess - until the messenger he had dispatched to the King at Windsor should return.
They sealed away the Lady Blanche in a hastily made coffin and placed it in the private chapel. There the good white monk said Masses for her soul, and many of her household came to pray; and there too, every morning after it seemed sure the plague had passed, Katherine brought the ducal daughters, Philippa and Elizabeth, to light candles and kneel by their mother's black velvet bier.
The children had all been safe in the North Tower throughout the scourge; the Holy Blessed Mother had watched out for them, since their own could not.
The baby, Henry, toddled merrily about the floor in his own apartments playing with his silver ball and a set of ivory knights his father had sent him. When Katherine first went to see him he drew back as children do, and hid distrustfully behind his nurse's skirts, but he soon grew used to her and crowed with glee when she played finger games with him as she did with Blanchette.
The little girls occupied rooms higher up in the tower, and Katherine found them well enough in health, though Philippa was nine now and old enough to understand the terrible things that had befallen them; between the strands of lank flaxen hair, her long sallow face was runnelled with tears, and nothing that Katherine could say lightened the stillness of her bearing. Yet she remembered Katherine and seemed to find some comfort in standing silently beside her.
Elizabeth at five was noisier than ever. She harried the servants and bullied the nurses and her sister, all of whom gave into her rather than provoke a screaming rage. She was a brown little thing, all except her eyes, which were leaf-green and could flash like a cat's. When she was told of her mother's death, she howled loudly for a while because she saw those about her weeping; but in her visits to the bier in the chapel she found a not unpleasing importance. She liked Katherine because she smelled good and told her stories and had a low sweet voice unlike her Yorkshire nurse's, but she cared deeply about nobody.
Katherine longed for her own children and especially when she saw little Henry, who was so near to Blanchette in age and whose baby tricks wrenched at her heart. Almost she resented him because he was not Blanchette.
But her own babies were well at Kettlethorpe and did not miss her. Ellis had ridden home with all the frightful tidings of Bolingbroke, and returned some days later with a message from Philippa, who had made him repeat it so many times that through Ellis's voice Katherine could plainly hear her sister's.
"You're not to come home yet, on any account, lady," Ellis reported stolidly. "They're all well and wish to stay so. Dame Philippa says there's no telling but the plague might be hiding in your clothes waiting to smite those nearest you in revenge that you are safe. She said to tell you that they're singing Masses for the Duchess' soul at Kettlethorpe church, and all is being done seemly there, so you need have no care for anything; but you must not return until all danger from pestilence has passed."
They stood in the chill windswept bailey by the now lowered drawbridge, and Ellis, acting under orders, kept his distance from her.
"And what does Sir Hugh say?" Katherine asked slowly.
Ellis looked uncomfortable. Hugh had said very little beyond expressing shock at the Duchess's death. He had always been a morose man, but lately even Ellis thought him unduly brooding and withdrawn.
"He sends you greeting," said Ellis, "and said you may do as you please."
Katherine nodded. That was like Hugh as he had become in the last year. It was as though he held himself away from her in all things, no longer gave her commands nor yet made clumsy efforts to gain her affection; and she thought that this was because of the thing that had happened to him. But Philippa's advice was sensible and though it pained her it also freed her for a different obligation.
"Do you then, Ellis," she said, "return now to Kettlethorpe and tell them I shall join the funeral cortege that'll escort our dearest Lady Blanche to London, for this is what the King commands. And perhaps I shall remain there to do her the last honours, when she is interred, after the Duke is back from France."
Ellis considered this and decided that it was a fitting course for her to follow and would not displease Sir Hugh.
"When will the Duke come back to England, do y'know, lady?"
She shook her head. "They say he may not yet have heard the dreadful tidings since he fights deep in Picardy. I daren't think how it'll be with him, when he does," she said, remembering the look in the Duke's eyes as he had gazed up at his wife at the tournament. "In one month he has lost both mother and wife," she added as though to herself. The Queen perhaps he would not miss much, since they had seen so little of each other in years, but - -
" 'Tis God's will," said Ellis briskly, having delivered his message and being anxious to be off. " 'Tis in nature that a mother dies; as for a wife, she can be soon replaced."
Ellis's chance and sensible words were like a spark to a hidden mine and Katherine was seized with sudden stabbing anger. "You fool, you heartless dolt!" she cried, her grey eyes blazing. "How dare you speak so? The Lady Blanche can never be replaced, nor would he want to!"
Ellis's jaw dropped. "I meant no harm, I simply thought that -"
"God's blood! Then stop thinking since it leads you into lunacy!"
He stood there gaping at her, and the scarlet faded from her cheekbones. "Never mind, Ellis," she said, "no doubt I spoke too sharp. How should you who hardly knew her understand - adieu then, give them my love at home, I'll contrive to send a message soon."
She watched him mount his horse and cross the drawbridge, when he turned left for the village and the road across the wolds towards Kettlethorpe.
She walked slowly
Katherine buried her face in her hands on the rail and wept as she had not wept during all her time at Bolingbroke.
CHAPTER XI
The Lady Blanche of Lancaster's funeral cortege wound its solemn way down England all through the first days of November. For the greater part of the journey her bier rested at night in the abbeys and cathedrals which had sheltered the remains of another much mourned and beloved lady some eighty years before - Eleanor of Castile, the chere reine to whose memory the first Edward had erected stone crosses at each stage of the sorrowful progress.