Katherine prepared the supper. She intended to get a serving-maid to help her in a day or so, but in the meantime increased leisure for thought would be no boon.
When the vesper bells chimed out from the cathedral, they all listened for a moment and Katherine said to her husband, "Our meal is ready, Hugh - can you relish it? See what fine fruit Ellis has brought us, there's naught like that in England."
"Ay," said Hugh. "I've appetite. Give me the wine, my dear. 'Tis not so good as honest ale, but it serves."
She started to pour for him, then stopped. "Your potion, Hugh," she smiled and shook her head, "first you must have your draught."
She gave him the day cup. He took it grumbling but swallowed nearly all the contents. "Phaw!" he said with a wry face, "filthy stuff. I'll take no more of it."
"Oh, come," she said as she would have said to Blanchette,
"it's not so bad-" She took the cup and gazed into it idly, wondering as women always have, that men who delighted in blood and slaughter should be so finicking in little things. She sniffed it, thinking the smell of camphor not unpleasant, and out of curiosity would have tasted it, but seeing that there was little left and there was no knowing exactly when Brother William would return with more, she put it down, and she and Ellis served their supper.
Shortly after they had blown the candles out and Katherine still lay sleepless on her pallet, she heard Hugh give a heavy groan; then he cried out sharply. She started up and stumbled to him in the darkness. "What is it, Hugh, what's the matter?"
"I had a dream," he muttered in a thick hoarse voice. "I dreamed the pooka hound was baying for me - 'twas at Kettlethorpe - the pooka hound with fire-red eyes, it's baying near Kettlethorpe - I heard it -"
She put her hand on his forehead, which was clammy, and said, "Hugh dear - 'twas naught but bad dream, and the pooka hound does not bay for Swynfords, don't you remember? It was of the old days - -"
He groaned, "Sweet Christ, but I've a fearful pain - the gripes again."
She called to Ellis, and when he woke, told him to fetch a light from the kitchen fire. Hugh writhed and moaned. When Ellis came back and lit a candle, she saw that Hugh's cheeks had gone hollow, there was slime on his lips and his glistening face was greenish. Then he began to vomit and purge. She and Ellis worked frantically trying to ease him.
"What can have happened, lady?" whispered the squire.
"I know not," she whispered back, distracted. "It's the flux again, but worse than I've ever seen it - dear God - Ellis, can you find the Grey Friar?"
The squire stumbled downstairs and ran out through the court. The violent bloody vomiting and purging eased a little, Hugh lay back exhausted. She wiped the sweat from him and murmured gentle sounds while her heart beat fast with fear. Could it be the fruit that had loosened his bowels? Hugh had eaten several of the luscious figs and peaches. Oh Blessed Mother, she thought, I should not have let him eat the fruit.
She put her arm under his head and raised it a little. "Hugh dear - finish Brother William's draught - it must help you - would to God there were more of it." She held the cup to his lips and he swallowed mechanically, then he fell back crying, "Water!" There was a little in the washing pitcher, she mixed it with wine to make it wholesome and gave it to him in the clay cup.
Suddenly he started up and looked at her wildly. "Don't you hear it?" he cried. "It's across the Trent in the forest. Listen! It comes nearer. It scents me now - it scents death."
"Hugh, my dear husband-" She put her arms around him, trying to hold him down, while he twisted and turned, regardless of his injured leg, unknowing of her.
Soon he gave a great cry of pain, and, doubling over with spasm, began again to vomit. When the Grey Friar came running in with Ellis, he stood by the bed and shook his head. "God pity him!" he murmured sadly, feeling Hugh's pulse, which was so feeble and lagging, and the wrist so clammy-cold that the physician knew there was no time to be lost in giving him the last rites.
Katherine knelt in the other room, while the friar's voice intoned the prayer for the dying. She could not pray, she could not think. She was held in a great dazed disbelief.
The friar called her and they stood together by the bedside. Hugh's eyelids fluttered, he said quite clearly, "Tis a bloody struggle, the pooka hound and the bull - the hound has him by the throat." His eyes opened wider and he looked up at Katherine. "A bloody struggle, Katherine-" he said.
"Christ have mercy -"
She bent and kissed the grey forehead. He was quiet for a few more minutes while Ellis kneeling on the other side of the bed wept with dry racking sobs.
Then Hugh gave a long shudder and his breathing stopped. The friar crossed himself, and Katherine followed suit. She felt nothing but the vast disbelief.
CHAPTER XV
Brother William stayed the night in the Swynford lodgings. After summoning the old crones who laid out the corpse, he took pitying charge of Katherine and Ellis. To the former he gave a sleeping draught, but the young squire, who could not stop blubbering and moaning, he kept busy with many necessary tasks.
The Grey Friar was accustomed to the sad procedures attendant upon the death of an English knight abroad. In the morning he started to make arrangements for the Requiem Mass, temporary disposition of the coffin and passage for it on a homebound ship, when the friar bethought him that perhaps the Duke should be notified first. To be sure, His Grace had for some time shown no interest in Sir Hugh's welfare and also was of so impatient and puzzling a humour lately that the friar hesitated to bother him. Still, there was poor Lady Swynford to be considered, and her now undetermined position.
Having left Katherine sleeping under the opiate and Ellis hunched in a corner and drinking himself into oblivion, the friar set out for the palace.
The Duke was in Council. He sat listlessly on the gilded throne of Aquitaine, beneath the embossed lilies and leopards of the blazon. He had none of his usual alertness nor held his long body with the decorum he normally showed to the office his brother had bequeathed him. His legs crossed, his fingers worrying a loose fringe on the crimson velvet arm-rest, he listened moodily to the propositions and wrangles of his councillors.
Sir Guichard d'Angle, reporting on his most recent trip to Bayonne, informed them all wryly that the Castilian court there, sure now of England's eagerness for the marriage, was acting with ridiculous pride and greed. "One would think 'twere the daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor His Grace would wed! They demand yet another jointure settled on the Queen. They demand that she may bring twelve of her ladies with her and as many courtiers. They refuse to let her near Bordeaux until after the ceremony."
The Captal de Buch twirled the cup of wine that stood ever at his elbow and gave a great laugh. "Bluster, mon vieux," he said to Sir Guichard, "nothing but bluster. The Castilians can haggle as well as the Jews, you know."
"Then," broke in de la Pole hotly, "we must use a firm hand."
The Duke leaned forward. "Nay," he said in a tone of angry command. "Give them what they want. And the marriage may take place at Roquefort."
The captal, shrugging, buried his formidable beak in his cup. Sir Guichard bowed to the Duke and, beckoning to the clerks who waited with parchment spread at a smaller table, said, "Then we will draft a letter, my lord."