De la Pole watching from the window could not hold back a chuckle at the little earl's expression. March got off the chair and drew himself as high as he could. "D'you mean to tell me it took all this time to produce this insolent message!" he shrilled at the squire, who closed his lips and stared stolidly towards the wall. It had taken no time at all for the Duke to give that message, the time had been taken by another matter which caused Raulin much hidden amazement.
"Well, my lord," cried de la Pole cheerfully, "you've had your answer!" His own discontent with Lancaster had melted into pride. The Duke was afraid of nothing, not even his father's famous Plantagenet temper, and de la Pole gave thanks that he owed his homage to the Duke instead of to this pimpled bantling, or any other overlord.
One by one they departed until the Presence Chamber was emptied of all but the squire. Raulin waited until there was no one on the stairs, then sped out into the courtyard and, obeying the Duke's orders, made for the Beaufort Tower.
The porter told him that Lady Swynford was not within. Her mare had been saddled and brought, and she had left some time ago.
"Did you hear naught of vere she might've gone?" pursued Raulin who knew nothing about the woman he was seeking and whose competent Flemish brain was mystified by the dark urgency his master had shown.
"I might of," the porter paused and picked his nose thoughtfully, "were't to my interest."
Raulin opened his purse and held out a quarter-noble. The porter bit it and said, "My Lady Swynford did ask the way to Billingsgate, summat abaht fishmongers it were - fishmongers wi' a fishery French name - Poissoner - Pechoner - she wanted to see."
Raulin, finding that the porter could give no other information, set off for the City on what seemed an unlikely quest. But the Duke had forbidden him to return without this Lady Swynford. He rode to town and down Thames Street towards the Bridge and began to make dogged inquiry.
Katherine had spent the last days in growing dejection. Her grief and horror had worn themselves out at last and she had stood amongst the hordes of mourners in St. Paul's and felt only sadness. Since then, she had been planning how to get home, but there were material difficulties. She had not enough money for the journey, nor did she dare set off without escort. The wisest thing would be to get a message to Hugh that he might send Ellis for her. But that would take time. In that vast Savoy Palace she felt as lost and forgotten as in a wilderness. The ducal children had been taken with their household to the country air of Hertford Castle, and most of the Bolingbroke people had dispersed after the funeral.
The decision to go to Billingsgate and seek Hawise had been impulsive, and once she had thought of it, she lost no time and set off in a chill and windy drizzle.
In three and a half years the Pessoners had changed very little except to grow rounder and noisier. An herb-strewn fire roared on the hearth, where some of the children played at rolling apples. Master Guy was not to be seen for he was counting cod in his warehouse next door. The low-raftered Hall smelt of fragrant smoke and fish. Hawise was standing at the dairy-room door vigorously pounding the dasher in a large butter churn when one of the young Pessoners let Katherine in.
Hawise gawked for a moment, her bare freckled arms dropped from the churn, then a wide happy gap-toothed grin spread over her big face. "God's beard!" she cried, " 'tis Kath - m'lady Swyhford!" She rushed across the Hall and folding Katherine in her arms kissed her heartily on the mouth. "Sit down, sweeting, sit down - I'm that joyed to see ye! Be'eht we, Mother? When I dropped the porridge ladle this morning I knew we'd have a lucky caller, but I never dreamed of you, love!" She pulled Katherine down beside her on a settle and beamed at her with so much affection that Katherine felt a pricking of gladness behind her lids.
Dame Emma bustled over with a pewter platter of honey cakes and sugared ginger. "Welcome, welcome, eat hearty o' these, lady while I mull some ale for us. We'll have crabs too," added Dame Emma comfortably, "a bobbin' o' their little pink cheeks in the ale."
Katherine laughed, basking in the warm kindly atmosphere and the goodwife's conviction that food was life's most important matter. She turned to Hawise with girlish eagerness and cried, 'Tell all! How has it been with you, this long time?"
"Ay, but first of you," said the older girl, sobering to glance at Katherine's black gown. " 'Tis worn for the Duchess - nothing else, I pray?"
"Nay. We're all well at Kettlethorpe. I've two babies, Hawise!"
"And I one" - Hawise let out a snort of laughter and ran to the court calling. "Jackie, Jackie - come hither, imp - for ever playing wi' the old sow, he is - 'tis that he's but a piglet himself-" She hauled her offspring into the Hall and cuffed him gently on the ear, then wiped him off before presenting him proudly to Katherine.
Jackie was two years old and a true Pessoner, being fat, cheerful and sandy-haired. He grabbed a fistful of honey cakes and plumped himself on the rushes to enjoy them while his grandmother bent down to add a sugar bun to his hoard.
"Ay, he's Jack Maudelyn's right enough," said Hawise, seeing that Katherine did not like to ask, "and he was born in wedlock too, though only just. Father held out stubborn long, the dear old goat."
"Is Jack still weaver's prentice?"
"No prentice now, nor yet weaver neither. He went for a soldier to make us a fortune in booty, we hope. He's a fine archer, is Jack, and he joined the free companies under Sir Hugh Calverly. They fight for England now that we're at war again, to be sure."
"To be sure," said Katherine smiling. "So your man is gone, and you've come back home to wait like many another."
"Is't the same with you, lady dear - your knight abroad too?"
"Not now," said Katherine, turning her face away. But feeling that her curtness rebuffed Hawise, she made an effort and while they drank their hot pungent ale and sat close together on the settle, she told a little of what had passed with her since Hawise had waved tearful good-byes beneath the porch of St. Clement Danes on the wedding day.
In truth, there seemed not much to tell, nothing momentous at all except the recent time of plague at Bolingbroke and that Katherine slid over quickly. Yet during tile bare recital of her years at Kettlethorpe, she noted that Hawise looked at her with shrewd sympathy, and when Katherine had done, Hawise said, "Have ye no woman there wi' you save those North Country hinds?" The London-born Hawise spoke as though Lincolnshire folk might be horned and tailed.
"Well, now for a while there's Philippa too, you know," said Katherine laughing.
"In truth." Hawise gave a sceptical twinkling glance but from politeness said no more. She had seen something of Dame Philippa while Master Geoffrey still lived in London with the Chaucers, and Hawise thought that Philippa was not a woman to give over the mastery of any household she was in and wondered how it would be when Katherine went home. Again as she had when they had first met, the girl aroused in Hawise a tender feeling. Having no beauty herself she felt no envy, but only a desire to serve it, and she recognised as had no other person except Geoffrey a bitter loneliness in Katherine that muted her shining fairness as dust films a silver chalice.
She could see that Katherine had had enough of living in splendour at the Savoy, and being intuitive as well as practical, she guessed that there was some embarrassment about getting back to Kettlethorpe. She was turning the matter over in her mind when there came another rap on the door.
" 'Tis doubtless the master o' that herring ship to see Father," she said to Dame Emma as she hastened to open it.
Raulin d'Ypres stood upon the doorstep and asked in his guttural voice, "Does anyone here know uff a Lady Swynford?"