"Ah - -" said Katherine again. "Far off as we are here, we've not followed court policies, or the King's whims. The Duke of Gloucester, that was Buckingham when I knew him, I thought to be in favour."

"Well, he's not now, and I think the King's afraid of him. That's why he wants Father's help. Mother," said John unbuttoning his surcote and pulling a parchment from his breast, "don't you want your letter? I'm in a fever to know what's in it!"

"And I," whispered Joan, putting her hand on Katherine's arm. Katherine took the letter and looked at the superscription: Lady Kateryn de Swynforth, Kettle thorp, County of Nicole," in John's own decisive heavily stroked black writing. It is fourteen and a half years since I have seen this writing, she thought. But it looked quite unchanged. She turned the letter over and examined the crimson imprint of his privy seal. In this there was change. The royal arms of Castile and Leon no longer occupied the dexter half. So he admitted at last the extinction of the great Castilian myth. Yet his daughter Catalina sat on the throne. He and Costanza had accomplished that much.

"Lady mother," said her son beseechingly, "for the love of Christ, read it! He told me nothing of what he wrote, and my father's grace is not a man one can question - yet he seemed pleased with me. He watched me joust and seemed very pleased."

Katherine smiled faintly. "You shall know soon what's in the letter." She rose. Under the disappointed looks of her children, she retrieved her mantle from the perch and went out into the snow, up the outside stairs into her solar. She bolted the door and put the parchment on a table while she replenished the fire. When the flames burned well, she went to her prie-dieu and knelt for some time. Then she lit a candle at the fire and placed it carefully on its iron pricket. After a while she picked up the letter and sat on a stool by the hearth. Her fingers were cold as the icicles that hung from the thatched eaves when she at length broke the crimson seal.

There was no greeting. It began abruptly, in French, as he had always written to her.

Recently I visited Chateau la Teste in Les Landes. Poignant memories were aroused of a time long ago. I am weary of many things, each day my life becomes more irksome to me, and in the light of this weariness I view some bygone actions differently from what I used to. I shall be back in England at Christmas time, and I wish to see you again. I beg of you to forget all past bitterness, to look courteously across the great chasm that opened between us, and to grant my request. I also wish to see Joan, who is with you, I understand. Harry, I have summoned from Germany and should be on his way home. Our Thomas I shall visit at Oxford before I come to Lincolnshire. John, who has brought you this letter, will remain with you until I arrive, about the first of the year. He is a son to be proud of. You have done well with him, and with the others too.

God and His Blessed Mother have you in their keeping.

John, Duke of Lancaster

Bordeaux, November 5,1395

"So - -" said Katherine aloud, putting down the letter. She repeated a sentence slowly: "Je vous emprie d'oublier toute l'amertume du passe - -" Yes, bitterness should be forgotten. She no longer felt bitterness, but there was a sharp reluctance. It's too late, much too late for us to meet again. Middle-aged people - almost old. John was fifty-five. She could not hinder the children, since their father was at last taking an open interest in them. But as for me, she thought - far better if I'm not here when he comes. She could go to Janet at Coleby. Ah, let me alone - she said to the letter, looking at the words "Chateau la Teste dans les Landes . . . des souvenirs poignants": the round room in the donjon tower, the sea air, the mewing of gulls - and ecstasy that can come but once.

She had made a new life; usually there was content. She had learned the pleasure of little things: the glint of May sunlight on a cluster of bluebells, the smell of white bread she had herself baked, quiet companionable talk with some of the village wives, whose pungent humour she had learned to appreciate.

Had she not earned freedom from turmoil? From fear and pain? The letter brought both. Fear not only of emotional upheaval, but of practical troubles. She had gradually become acceptable to Lincolnshire, time had somewhat regularised her position. The old buzzings and scandals would inevitably start up again upon the Duke's visit. Worse than that was the fear of anticlimax. Far better to keep the memory of a great love - as it had once been - than have it cheapened for ever by disillusionment. Indigne - she thought in the French word - unseemly, even perhaps ridiculous. No, she would not meet the Duke.

She persisted in her decision until the arrival of Harry on Christmas Eve. He had been studying at Aachen when his father's summons reached him, had hurriedly embarked from Holland and just landed at Boston. He arrived in a state of bright-eyed excitement. "What does this mean, Mother? Before God, I can't understand it, but surely it can't be for ill tidings he's summoned us!"

A large forceful young man of twenty, Harry had become; sleek as a pigeon in his plum-coloured cleric's robes. He had a hearty laugh, a fine resonant voice obviously made for the pulpit and a quick legal mind. In time he dissuaded Katherine from her flight, saying that she had no right to anger or baulk their father in any way, since it might prejudice him against the children. John and Joan, who were inclined to humour their mother, had not used this argument, but Katherine saw the truth of it.

When Janet eventually went back to Coleby without her, Katherine had achieved resignation much strengthened by inner certainty that she was doing right. Glimpses of the light returned to her during that Christmastide, the channel of communication which had seemed blocked ran clear again and gave her serenity.

She noticed that her three children often gathered in corners whispering, and looking at her with excited speculative eyes, but the whispers stilled at once when she came near, and no hint of their purport reached Katherine. She had no idea that, led by Harry, her Beauforts were allowing themselves an incredible hope. One so preposterous that they were ashamed of it, even while they could not help referring to it in broken phrases: "If - -"; "Could it be?" "But Blessed Christ, it's impossible - -"; "Nay, his letter was cold, there was nothing to build on. He means nothing like that." Katherine, to quiet their clamorous questions, had shown them the letter.

When a herald came on New Year's Day to announce the Duke's arrival on the morrow, Katherine was far calmer than her children. She looked at the Lancastrian arms on the herald's tabard, at the blue and grey of his trunks, at the falcon badge embroidered on his blue cap - the familiar panoply of Lancaster - and thought how long it was since she had seen it. Once she had been borne along on a raging current that all those symbols stood for, and she vowed that she would not permit that turbulent river to submerge her again.

The next morning, she was touched and a trifle exasperated by Joan's hovering anxiety. "Mother, let me do your hair, Hawise is clumsy at it! Mother, please wear the gold brooch Sir Robert left me, it looks far better than that silver thing. Oh Jesu, if you only had a new gown, he'll think you so old-fashioned in that sideless surcote, and shoes are far more pointed now in London - at least," she added slowly, "they were when I was there nineteen months ago." She sighed.

Katherine looked at the pretty dark head, the charming face that was bleak with longing, and said gently, "You shall make me as splendid as possible, darling, but truly it's of no consequence, one way or the other."

Joan picked up a vial of lavender water, fiddled with the lead stopper, and said, "It is because of his love for you, and yours for him, that we exist at all - isn't it?"

Katherine was startled and confused. "That was a very long time ago, Joan," she answered with some difficulty. "Human love dies. You must face that, dear - -" She bit her lips, for she saw that Joan was crying, quietly, proudly, big tears slipping down her pink cheeks.

Long before the court dogs began to bark, they heard the winding flourish from Lancaster Herald's trumpet as the Duke's cavalcade turned off the highway on to the manor road. At the well-remembered sound, Katherine's heart at last took up a hard-measured pounding, while Joan ran up to the tower-roof to watch the approach over the sparkling white-gold snow, down the avenue of bare-branched wychelms.

Katherine walked slowly across the courtyard and the drawbridge to stand by the old mounting block. Her two sons held back nervously in the court, where Joan joined them, saying, "Tamkin came with him. O Blessed Mary, make everything go well!" She crossed herself and lifting her beads began to whisper a rosary. Her brothers drew close to her. The three stood waiting.

The Duke reined in his black stallion when he came to the church. A watchful squire ran up and held the horse. The Duke dismounted. He was not armoured, he wore an enveloping violet-coloured mantle trimmed with ermine; an intricately draped furred hood concealed most of his face. As he advanced towards her across the trodden snow, Katherine curtsied deeply and said, "Welcome to Kettlethorpe, my lord."

He pulled off his jewelled gauntlet and took her bare hand in his. "Am I truly well come, Katrine?" he said in a harsh thick tone.

She raised her eyes to his face. Deep new lines on the forehead, lines from the nostrils of the long nose to the corners of the set, thin-lipped mouth. Grey hairs in the tawny eyebrows above eyes of a quieter blue; sad, questioning eyes. A long white scar ran from left ear to forehead and had puckered the eyelid. Dear God, so much change, she thought. Yet it was still the face she had so greatly loved.

"You are well come, my lord," she repeated evenly, though she felt the touch of his hand like a burn. "Our - the Beauforts await you most eagerly."

He glanced where she did through the gatehouse to the courtyard, where his children were grouped by the Hall door. "Ay," he said, "and I've brought Tamkin. But I should like to see you alone first."

"Why for, my lord?" she said drawing back her hand. "What have we to say alone now?"

"Katrine, I beg you!"

" 'Tis not so easy to be alone at Kettlethorpe," she said with a faint cool smile.

"The church?" he suggested. " 'Twill be empty at this hour?"

She inclined her head and preceded him through the lych-gate. The church had been decorated with holly and evergreens for The New Year; the nave, which was the village hall in winter, was still cluttered with small tables from the "church ale" and fair they had held here yesterday; the rushes were strewn with candle wax, nut-shells, crumbs. Five children stood by a thatched stable which enclosed crudely painted home-made figures of the nativity, and loudly disputed whether the Baby were smiling or not.

The Duke glanced at them, removed his draped headdress and said, "Farther up in the choir - surely 'twill be quieter." He walked around the rood screen.

Candles burned before the statue of the Blessed Virgin, and a wall painting of Saints Peter and Paul, the church's patrons. Four long tapers flickered in a small chapel Katherine had built behind the Swynford choir stall. They shone on a tomb with the brightly tinted effigy of a knight in armour.

The Duke paused by the tomb and looked down at the knight, at the boarhead crest on the helm, the shield with three boars' heads on a chevron, the bearded face, which bore little resemblance to the original since it had been carved in Lincoln from Katherine's description, only a few years ago. Slowly the Duke crossed himself. "May God comfort and keep his soul," he said, and turned to Katherine, who stood at the entrance of the chapel, her hood pulled far over her face.

"Katrine," he said, "is this to stand between us, forever?"

In the moments during which she did not answer, the voices of the children in the nave rose louder until one cried "Hush!" in a frightened voice; there was a scamper of feet and the west door banged, leaving silence.

"There is far more than Hugh that stands between us, my lord," she said into the silence.

He made a gesture, impatient, resigned, letting his hand fall slack. He left the tomb to stand beside her in the aisle. Suddenly he raised his hand and brushed back her hood, staring down at her face, into the wide grey eyes that met his steadily, without bitterness; but neither did they soften under his long gaze, they held detachment, a watchful calmness that daunted him. He reached out his finger to touch the white streaks at her temples. "Age on you has but added swan's wings to your fairness," he said wryly, "while I'm grizzled and hacked like an old badger - -"