This meant ignoring a great part of his life. It also meant ignoring Costanza and that other child of his at Hertford Castle - Catalina - which meant Katherine in English. The Duchess Costanza had wished to name her child for a favourite Spanish saint, not knowing, in the summer of 1372, of Katherine Swynford's existence. John had laughed when he told Katherine of this. It amused him that his wife should name their daughter for his mistress, all unknowing, and part of his unkind laughter had come from his anger with Costanza for producing a girl, and no suitable heir for the throne of Castile. Katherine had felt faint pity for that other woman, all the easier to feel since she had never seen the Duchess.
Costanza had heard of Katherine's existence now, no doubt though Philippa Chaucer said there was no telling what the Duchess knew, always jib-jabbing in her own heathenish tongue to those Spaniards, but mum as a clam to her English household.
The Duke had appointed Katherine's sister as one of the English waiting-women to his new Duchess, and granted her a handsome annuity of ten pounds. Philippa had been delighted and looked upon the appointment as heaven's just reward for the dull years of hardship at Kettlethorpe. That she owed this windfall to Katherine's peculiar connection with the Duke, she accepted with brisk realism, though seldom alluding to it. Ever shrewd judge of a bargain, Philippa considered that the manifold benefits now enjoyed by all Katherine's family nicely counterbalanced moral qualms. And she frequently thanked God that Hugh had died so opportunely, "Or you might have been shackled till Doomsday to that grumbling ha'penny husband, Katherine, and we'd all still be pigging it at Kettlethorpe."
Philippa's attitude had hurt Katherine, at first; she had felt her love cheapened by it, and for some time mention of Hugh gave her dull pain, like remorse, oddly mixed with anxiety.
But that was in the beginning, now when she thought of Hugh there was nothing but a blank.
Katherine rose from the dressing-stool and fastening the keys to her girdle, smiled at Hawise. "I must see to our guests. I scarce know who has come with His Grace."
The company assembled in the Great Hall were culled from the Duke's retainers or close friends and mostly men, of course. Katherine was accustomed to that. Still, a couple of the young knights had brought their wives, and Lord Latimer, the King's chamberlain - a sly-eyed man, long-nosed as a fox - had his lady with him up from London. An honour so unusual that Katherine, as she received Lady Latimer's subdued civilities, thought that his lordship must need very special favour from the Duke. And she was increasingly aware of tension beneath the surface of this gathering.
Lord Michael de la Pole was his bluff hearty self and greeted Katherine with the semi-paternal pinch of the cheek he always gave her; but then he drew to the corner by the north fireplace and, scowling, whispered with the huge glowering Lord Neville of Raby. Both barons glanced sideways at Latimer, then with deepened frowns their eyes turned to the tall priest in the black doctoral robes, as though they wondered what he did there.
Katherine wondered too, for the priest was John Wyclif, leader of the heretical Lollards. Wyclif had responded to her greeting with a slight bow and left her at once to stand by himself near the Romaunt de la Rose window, which he examined with apparent interest. Katherine too looked at the new window, admiring the blaze of emerald light surrounding the god of love and the ruby rose.
"Do you understand Love's Garden better now than once you did, little sister?" said a voice in her ear.
She whirled around crying, "Geoffrey!" and caught his hand in pleasure. "I didn't see you or know you were coming. I thought you at Aldgate."
"I was. But since his Grace was so good as to include me in Saint George festivities, I came. I grow dull alone with my sinful books, my scribblings and my wool tallies."
His hazel eyes twinkled as they always had, faintly mocking. In the months since she had seen him, he had grown stouter, and there was grey in his little forked beard. His gown was deeply furred like any prosperous burgher's; he wore a gold chain that had been given him by the King, but there were still ink stains on his fingers and a battered pen-case hung at his neck with the chain.
"Nay, Geoffrey," she said. "You know you're never dull alone, you like it."
They smiled at each other. Though Phillippa sometimes got leave from her duties to the Duchess Costanza and visited her husband in his lodgings over Aldgate, where she cleaned and clucked and harried him out of his easy-going bachelor habits, these visits sprang largely from a sense of obligation, and the Chaucers were both more contented apart. Their little son stayed with his mother, so Geoffrey lived alone.
"How goes your work at the Custom House?" Katherine asked. "Somehow I never thought to see you smothered in wool."
"Don't sneer at wool, my dear," he said lightly, " 'Tis the English crown's chief jewel. God bless those glittering fleeces that pour through the port of London out to a wool-hungry world. I value them high as ever Jason did. Our kingdom'd be bankrupt without them. If," he added, frowning suddenly, and glancing at Latimer, "it isn't so already."
"What is it with Lord Latimer?" she asked in a low voice. "I sense unease here today, and my Lord Duke seems heavy of mind."
Well he may, thought Chaucer. There was trouble seething over a perilous fire. No telling how far the Commons were prepared to go in attacking the crown party, in this first Parliament called in three years; but they would not tamely grant the new subsidy which would be demanded by the King. That no one who had come from London could ever doubt. They would not dare attack the old King directly, nor yet perhaps the Duke, unpopular as he had grown. But they might conceivably fly for game as high as Latimer, who was King's chamberlain, keeper of his privy purse and the Duke's associate as well. Doubtless Latimer was an unscrupulous opportunist who had been feathering his own nest at crown expense like many another; but they said worse of him, far worse than that.
"Why, Latimer is the butt of many rumours. What man in high place is not?" said Geoffrey to Katherine, shrugging as though the matter were of no consequence. He understood the Duke enough to know that he preferred that Katherine should be kept apart from the turmoil of his public life. In truth, Geoffrey thought that the protective tenderness his patron showed to Katherine was one of the most admirable traits in a complex character.
A rustle of attention by the Sainteowe door to the Hall, and the glimpse of a coroneted head, showed that the Duke had entered. Katherine, her eyes clearing at once from the frown with which she had asked of Latimer, hurried down the Hall to meet him.
Geoffrey settled himself inconspicuously on a cushioned window seat and surveyed the company. He looked at the radiant Katherine as she sat near the Duke, in her velvet and ermine and new jewels. So he had been right when he saw her first at Windsor and thought her destined to rise high in life by reason of her rare beauty. The drabness of her years at Kettlethorpe had after all been but a transient step. Yet this relation with Lancaster was not the role he had vaguely imagined for her either. This was too frank, too crude in its flouting of the chivalric code which demanded above all a delicate secrecy in the pursuance of illicit love. More fitting far if they had managed to conduct their love like that of Troilus and Criseyde, unsuspected by the censorious world. His thoughts played with the story of Criseyde, and almost he could see Katherine as the lovely Trojan widow.