She fled from the garden and through the "Place" to the cathedral. The Mass had just begun; she pushed her way through the people to a confessional where she murmured so rapid and confused an account of temptation and contrition in her northern French that the inattentive priest made little of it and granted quick absolution. Then she ran up to the choir, as near the High Altar as she could get. She knelt on the tiles. She heard no word of the Mass, but when she received the Holy Wafer on her tongue a sad peace came to her and she thought that glimmering around the Crucifix she saw a glow of benignant light.
While Katherine was at Mass, John of Gaunt, the pilgrim in sackcloth, strode with bowed head through the streets of Bordeaux to the palace-abbey, oblivious of interested glances or occasional timid questions, "God speed, Sir Pilgrim, art thou bound for Compostela or for Canterbury? Or mayhap the Holy Land?"
The Bordelais were gay today, the women dressed in scarlet shawls wore flowers and combs in their hair. There was dancing in the streets and festival music spangled the warm air. But John saw and heard nothing.
He entered the abbey, not surreptitiously by the side door as he had slipped out, but through the main gate, flinging his pilgrim hat in the face of the astounded gate-ward, as the man questioned him. "Forgive me, Your Grace," babbled the gate-ward, when he recognised the Duke, "I had not known you -" John strode on and through the Grande Salle, where a dozen varlets were scurrying with gold silk napery, silver saltcellars, mazers, hanaps, spoons, laying the great tables for dinner.
The salle opened on to the cloister garth, where a group were seated under the cool arcades. A Moorish dwarf, scarce two feet high, amused them with tumbling tricks and sly songs piped in such a squeaky voice that the Princess Isabel was rolling with laughter. So convulsed were all the lords and ladies - when the dwarf, who had a chained popinjay and a monkey with him, announced that he would perform a marriage between the two little beasts and, placing them on a miniature bed, forced the monkey into the liveliest imitation of amorous commerce with the squawking popinjay - that nobody saw the Duke until he had passed through the cloister and was mounting the steps that led to his apartments. Then Isabel jumped and said, "Could that be Lancaster? What an extraordinary garb!"
"It was, madam," said Michael de la Pole. "Some private penance maybe."
"Nonsense! He's no more pious than that monkey there. It seems to me he's acting very strange, I thought so yesterday, and to go out now, when Edmund has arrived in his absence - not that one ever considers Edmund much, to be sure-"
The baron, who knew the insistence of the royal lady's discourse and was not interested in her opinions on the personalities of her brothers, asked a hasty permission to withdraw, since he wished to speak to the Duke.
He found the Duke in his solar, being dressed by his squires, while that little Gascon, Nirac, hovered around and clucked over him like a hen. Edmund of Langley, the Earl of Cambridge, lay sprawling on the jewelled coverlet of the State Bed, eating figs and watching his brother with his usual expression of amiable vacuity. Edmund had come overland down from Calais with a large force of his men and arrived an hour ago.
"Greeting, baron," Edmund said to de la Pole, biting into another fat green fig. "God's blood, but it's hot here in the south, I always forget that when I'm in England."
De la Pole bowed, acknowledged the greeting, and said, "My lords, I hope I don't intrude? There are certain arrangements about the wedding, my Lord Duke, that need your immediate attention."
John turned his head, and the baron was startled at the suffering look in his eyes, a look of actual wanhope, or despair, thought the baron, who was not imaginative. Bad news then? But what? Unless Cambridge had brought it. A glance at Edmund dispelled that thought. The earl's sensibilities were none too keen, but he certainly was not the bearer of ill tidings.
Edmund had spent most of his thirty years docilely obeying and admiring all three of his elder brothers, but particularly this one who was so near him in age, and of whom he was a paler, smaller copy, as though fashioned from John's leftover tints which had been insufficient and consequently diluted. Where John's hair was a vigorous ruddy gold, Edmund's was silvery flaxen and sparse; the unmistakable Plantagenet strength of long nose and chin and cheek-bone had in Edmund blurred to softness.
"I'll attend to you presently, baron," said the Duke in a singularly flat voice. "Edmund tells me that His Grace, our father, approves that the Queen of Castile's sister Isabella be given to him."
" 'Struth," said Edmund, swallowing his fig and licking his fingers. "High time I got me some wife, they say the little Infanta Bella is grown quite appetising, fifteen years old and firm as a plum." He giggled happily. "She'll suit my sweet tooth."
"Your marriage to her will make doubly sure our claim to the throne of Castile," said John sternly.
His brother at once drew his face into earnest agreement. "To be sure, to be sure."
"A double wedding then, my lord?" asked de la Pole in some surprise, thinking of the little time that was left - only a month - before the Duke's nuptials, and the multitudinous details which must be settled. There were still indentures and contracts to be signed, some of the exiled Castilian envoys from Bayonne were even now waiting below for audience with the Duke, nor had the final decision been made as to the locale for the ceremony.
"No double wedding," said John, holding his hands out over a silver basin that Nirac might pour rose-water on them. "Edmund can marry the Infanta later. Gentlemen," he glanced at his brother, the squires, Nirac and finally the baron, "before I receive the Castilians, or consult with you, Michael, I wish food - and I've not yet communed. Raulin, where is Brother Walter?"
"He vaits in the chapel, Your Grace," said the Flemish squire, fastening the last buckle on the Duke's gold and sapphire girdle, before adjusting it low on the hips.
The Duke nodded and quitted his solar for the narrow passage that connected it with the private chapel.
Nirac slipped unobtrusively out of the room and followed his master, unheard and unseen. It was he who had procured the pilgrim clothes and he alone, who knew where the Duke had gone this morning,, and though in this last hour there had been no privacy, and thus no way to find out what had happened, Nirac had been more shocked than the baron at the expression of his master's eyes. He intended to find out once and for all the Duke's true inward wishes. And he availed himself of a discovery long since made.
In the days of the monks the private chapel had adjoined their infirmary. A square peephole had been made in the wall to the right of the altar so that the bedridden monks might participate in the Mass. A painted hanging of the Day of Judgement now covered the peephole but through the cloth one could hear all that took place. Nirac flattened himself to the wall behind the arras on the infirmary side and listened.
As he expected, the Duke was confessing to the Carmelite friar, Brother Walter Dysse, who travelled with him everywhere. At first the Duke's voice was low. Nirac could hear little, though in the pauses the plump friar's soothing voice lisped about "sins of the flesh - lustful thoughts - deplorable but human, God would easily forgive - true repentance -"
"But I'm not repentant!" The Duke's voice rose suddenly high and passionate. "I love the woman - she is my life - all my bliss. I care naught what you say, Brother, nor fear God in this -"
"Then, why do you confess to me, my lord," said the unctuous voice reasonably, "since you wish no ghostly counsel? Yet I feel God is not wroth - come, I'll grant you absolution-"