Yet as she turned to go he spoke, without looking at her, his gaze still fastened on the horizon. "That is Castile, far yonder where the gold light falls on the hills."
Castile. The word hissed like an adder. "I hate it, hate it!" she cried. The hoarse shaking voice was not her own, she tried to stop it and could not. "I hate it, and I hate her, the Castilian woman! Tell me, my Lord Duke-who-would-be-king, when will the Castilian wench become a bride?"
His nostrils flared, he jerked around on her with a violence to match her own, "You dare to speak to me like that! You forget, Katrine - -"
"Forget! Can I ever forget that this is pretence! Can I ever forget your royal birth or your royal hopes? Yet I do dare to say I hate them. I am no duchess, no queen, but I have been your equal in love, for this I dare to tell you how I feel."
Anger died from his eyes. He bent his head and stepped towards her. "Dear heart, we are equal in love. You've no cause for hatred, for you shall never leave me. I've been thinking, and have decided what's to be done. You shall go back to England at once and wait for me at the Savoy-"
"And I'm to be your leman for all the world to see, like Alice Perrers to the King? And what of your new Duchess, the Queen Costanza? How will she like this arrangement?"
He stiffened and said coldly, "You have little knowledge of courts. It is a common arrangement. Be reasonable. After all, we have been lovers this past fortnight without scruples."
"This past fortnight, my lord, we have hurt or dishonoured no one. We are both - still - free." Her voice broke. She looked at him with anguish and fled down the hillside, stumbling and tripping on the rough ground until she reached the valley, where moved by blind impulse she ran into the little ruined chapel and flung herself down to her knees with her hands clasped on the altar.
She felt him kneel down beside her and then, after a moment, a touch on her arm. He said very low, "Look at me."
She raised her head slowly and obeyed. Tears stood in his eyes, and his arrogant mouth quivered. He took her right hand in his and spoke solemnly, "Here on consecrated ground, I, John, do plight thee, Katrine, my love and in token do give thee this ring, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." He drew from his finger the sapphire seal ring that Blanche had given him and slipped it on Katherine's middle finger. She stared down at it and a sob tore up from her chest.
They both turned to the blunted little stone crucifix, and through the roofless chapel their prayers floated out to mingle with the murmur of the waterfall.
On September 18, three days before the Feast of Saint Matthew, Katherine sat alone in a guest chamber of the Benedictine nunnery at Bordeaux. Her travelling chest had been brought here to her, and she was again dressed in her black mourning robes, her braided hair bound into black velvet cauls and covered with a thin veil. A breeze pungent with the tang of fresh-trampled grapes from a hundred villages carried the distant shouts of the peasants working in the vineyards. Katherine sat quietly by the window looking out over the harbour where a cluster of masts dipped and swung with the ripples of the Garonne. Her face was white and still. Though her eyes were swollen from nights of stifled weeping, now she had no more tears.
She waited for the summons she knew would come, and wondered without interest on which of those ships out there she was to sail on the morrow.
A little nun knocked on the door, entered, flustered and blushing, to say that madame had a most important caller - the Duke's own physician, the Franciscan, Brother William. He was awaiting her in the parlour.
Katherine smiled thanks and rose. The little nun peered up at her admiringly. If the prioress knew anything about this beautiful widow who seemed so unhappy and gave no information about herself, she was the only one at the convent who did.
Cause enough to be unhappy, said the cellaress acidly, with the poor lady's husband dead and she so far from home. Yet the nuns were not satisfied, there was some mystery about Lady Swynford and a glamour that intrigued them. They whispered about her as they sat at work or walked in the cloisters and found her nearly as interesting as the topic that excited all Bordeaux. The royal wedding in three days. When the Duke and new Duchess returned from the marriage at Roquefort there would be a procession right down the street past the convent; by hanging out of the windows they would see the handsome Duke, golden as the sun, strong as a lion, people said, and see his Castilian bride - a queen, for all she was but seventeen.
" 'Tis such a pity, madam, that you do not stay for the wedding," said the little nun, as she accompanied Katherine down to the parlour. "It will be so gay with fifty trumpeters, they say, and jongleurs from Provence!"
Lady Swynford did not answer.
Brother William had been chatting with the portress, he turned as Katherine entered and bowed. Beneath his black cowl his eyes were severe, he did not smile at her as he used to do.
He glanced at the portress and the nun, who vanished. Katherine sank down on a stool, clasping her hands tight on a fold of her skirt, but she raised her face to the friar and waited with mute dignity for him to speak.
His gaze softened only a trifle as he stared down at her and saw the shadows beneath her wide grey eyes and the lines of suffering that pulled at her mouth. Then he shook his head. "I had never thought to come to such a woman as you, with the sort of message I bring. The Duke awaits you in his presence chamber. He cannot receive you except as one of the many who are filing through for audience, because at present great discretion is required." Brother William stopped, frowning.
"I know," she said. Dull red flowed up her cheeks. Her gaze rested on the knotted scourge that girded the friar's grey habit, then dropped to his dusty bare feet.
"It would be wise," continued the Brother with chill distaste, "for you to remove that ring you wear. It would be as familiar to many at the palace as it is to myself."
She took off the sapphire seal ring and slipped it in her bosom.
"The Duke will manage that you have a few minutes alone together, but the time must necessarily be brief so as not to arouse suspicion. I am therefore directed to repeat the arrangements His Grace had made for you and to which he commands and also implores your final consent."
Katherine swallowed and said dully, "I am sailing tomorrow on whatever ship he has selected."
"Ay, and when you land you proceed to the Savoy bearing official letters which will grant you fifty marks at once and appoint you Resident Governess to His Grace's two little daughters, the Ladies Philippa and Elizabeth. You may send for your sister, Mistress Chaucer, and your own two children from Lincolnshire to join you at the Savoy, where they also will be provided for. You will remain at the Savoy until the Duke returns." The friar paused, before adding with biting emphasis, "When, I gather, further intimacies will continue to be suitably rewarded."
"Brother William!" Katherine jumped to her feet. "You've no right to speak to "me like that! I've already refused these arrangements. I did refuse them, though now - now-" She bit her lips until the blood surged back into them purple. "You've no right to judge! What can you know of love, or of a woman's heart? Do you think I don't suffer?"
The friar drew a long sigh. "Peace, child," he said, "peace! I don't judge you, that is for God to do. He knows what's in your secret heart. I see only a guilty love. Guilty," he repeated half to himself and gazed at her intently with his keen physician's eyes. "Nirac de Bayonne is ill," he said.
"Nirac - -" she cried in an amazement that the watchful friar knew was" innocent and unfeigned. "Why do you speak of him, now? Oh, I'm sorry he's ill, poor little scamp. He'll cure soon enough if the Duke is kind to him, I warrant."
So, I believe that I am quite wrong, thought the friar with deep relief. This girl at least knew nothing, if there were truly anything to know. Nirac had had two attacks like fits of madness, in which the Grey Friar had been called to tend him and soon discovered that these fits came from the taking of drugs obtained from some disreputable alchemist in the Basque quarter of town. During these fits Nirac had shouted out strange words and vague sinister allusions, coupled with Katherine and Hugh Swynford's names but actually nothing more than what an excited brain might invent. The friar was ashamed of the dreadful suspicions that had come to him.