She started to run towards the entrance, wild as any hoydenish girl, but checking herself, walked with a shaking heart to stand quietly, as was proper, next to Philippa on the first step of the Grand Staircase that led up to the Hall.
Lancaster Herald cantered first through the arch and saluted them with a dip of his trumpet and its pendent Lancaster arms. The court filled with jostling, shouting horsemen, with stable-boys and pages, who must be alert to catch dropped bridles and run with mounting blocks.
Thirty or more had accompanied the Duke. In the confusion she noted only the clerics: a tall black-robed priest, vaguely familiar, and the Carmelite, Walter Dysse, sleekly plump as a white tomcat, who made her an. unctuous salute as he dismounted. Again there was no sign of Brother William, the Grey Friar. Though he was still the Duke's chief physician, Katherine knew that Brother William avoided her. The few times that they had met perforce, in the years of her connection with the Duke, the friar had looked at her with sad inscrutable eyes. Once he mentioned Nirac, who had died over there in Bordeaux sometime after she left it, but he had seen how little Nirac interested her now, and after listening to her conventional murmur of regret had hurried away.
The Duke's favourite hounds, Garland and Echo, came gambolling through the arch, they leaped at her in greeting and she patted their narrow grey heads, while she waited.
At last she saw him on Palamon as he paused to call back some instructions to Arnold, his head falconer, who rode on towards the mew bearing the great hooded white gerfalcon, Oriana, on his gauntlet.
Each time that she saw John after deprivation, her body flamed and seemed to melt. She thought him comelier, more princely than ever, and loved him the more for the increasing reserve he showed to the world, because it heightened the rare sweet moments of their intimacy. Though he was now thirty-six, he had grown no heavier - indeed what true Plantagenet could ever be stout? His hair, cut shorter than it used to be, had dulled from gold to sun-bleached sorrel, but it was thick as ever; and while Raulin d'Ypres, the Flemish squire, held the stirrup, John jumped down from Palamon with the easy grace of his youth.
He walked to the stairs, while Katherine and Philippa curtsied. Farther up the steps John Deyncourt, Kenilworth's constable, bowed low and cried, "God's greeting, Your Grace."
The Duke smiled briefly at his daughter, his eyes passed over her dress with a faint frown, then, resting on Katherine, widened in a private signal of greeting. "You look well, my lady," he said softly, and taking her hand, bore it to his lips.
"I am, now that you're here-" she whispered.
"The little lads?" he asked.
"Hearty as puppies. The babe has grown much since you saw him, he speaks ten words." "God's blood! And does he! - Henry!" the Duke, chuckling, called over his shoulder. "I'll vow you never were so forward as your new brother. He speaks as many words as he has months! Come pay your duty to Lady Swynford!"
Today the Duke had brought his heir with him, the nine-year-old Henry of Bolingbroke, who was a thoughtful, matter-of-fact child, somewhat short for his years but sturdily built so that he did well at knightly sports. His hair and eyes were russet-toned, his snub nose was peppered with freckles. He favoured his grandfather and namesake, the first Duke of Lancaster, rather than his handsome parents, yet from them he had his character, from Blanche, a sweetly courteous dignity, from John, ambition and a lightning temper usually controlled. From them both he had pride, and consciousness of rank.
The Duke mounted the grand outer staircase to the Hall, which he had as yet but partially rebuilt, though it was finished enough to show that in grace of proportion, airiness of tinted windows and carving of stone it deserved its growing reputation as one of the most magnificent rooms in England. Usually upon his arrival at Kenilworth the Duke's first act would be eager inspection of the work done by the master masons since his last visit; but today, though the oriel in the Sainteowe Tower had been completed, and in the Hall a window of stained glass depicting the garden from the Romaunt de la Rose had been installed since he was here, he gave these changes but an abstracted look, and Katherine saw that some matter was disturbing him.
She knew better than to question. In any case they would have no privacy until late that night, when he would come from the great White Chamber, up the hidden stairs to her solar - and her bed. Until then she must wait and do her duty as chatelaine towards all the company he had brought. She must find out whether the chamberlain had readied sleeping quarters for them all, and she was already certain that not enough of the precious spices had been doled out to season food for so many.
John at once retired to the White Chamber with Raulin in attendance. While the guests were occupied with drinking in the Hall, Katherine went upstairs to fetch the keys which unlocked the spice chest. In her solar she found Hawise industriously shaking a rowan branch over the bed and muttering some sort of charm.
"Holy saints, wench!" cried Katherine laughing. "What are you doing?" She looked at this dear maid and companion with amused affection. They had been through much together since Hawise had come back into her service before little John was born. Well-paid service now; the days had passed when Katherine must accept her maid's own money to exist. Hawise's present wages were equal to the Pessoners' yearly income from fish, and the fishmonger marvelled at this, proud that his daughter had such good fortune, particularly as her husband, Jack Maudelyn, had returned of sour puzzled temper, neglectful of his looms and prone to traipse off into Kent after the Lollard preachers and come back full of their heretical mouthings against the monks, the bishops, and God's manifest plan of rich and poor, lord and commoner.
Hawise's stout arm continued to weave the branch over the bed, until she concluded the magic words which whistled a little through her gapped teeth before she turned and favoured her mistress with a stern look. "I'm fixing it so ye'll not conceive again now that my Lord Duke's back wi' ye. Two bastards is aplenty for ye to bear, my poppet, and you so bad wi' the milk leg after Harry, I thought I'd lost ye."
"Oh, Hawise-" Katherine laughed, colouring a little.
"I must take what God sends, I suppose." She bent and peered at herself in a silver-backed mirror, rubbed a little more red salve on her lips, frowned at a roughening she thought she saw on her chin.
"Ye needna fret," said Hawise watching. "Breeding's not harmed your looks, I'll grant that, ye've still a waist like a weasel." She spoke tartly because it hurt her to see her beloved mistress frowning at the mirror and reddening her lips like any of the lewd court women, and there were other small changes too in her lady. God blast him, Hawise thought as many times before. Since he couldn't marry her, why didn't he let her be! She's too fine for this game, however many play it. It'll kill her if he tires. Though as yet there were no signs of his tiring.
"The Duke is concerned about something, I fear," said Katherine, gesturing for Hawise to bring her the bunch of keys from their hiding cranny beside the chimney. " 'Tis perhaps that the Prince of Wales is worsening and may not live the summer out? Yet that's no new thing."
"Nay, more like 'tis this matter of Parliament next week," said Hawise, who had been down to London to see her husband for Easter, and there heard much angry talk. "The Commons are in savage mood. No doubt His Grace has wind of what they'll ask, and, by cock's bones, they don't see eye to eye, Commons and His Grace!" Indeed she had checked her Jack sharply for the hateful things he repeated of the Duke, but this she did not tell her mistress.
Katherine nodded, vaguely relieved. Inclination as well as good taste kept her from interest in national affairs. She was no Alice Perrers, whose greed for power and money were all but wrecking England, so they said. Katherine's only desire was to live quietly removed from the hurly-burly of the court, to keep herself and her children from public scrutiny and receive John when he came as any lady would her rightful wedded lord who must be often absent on man's business.