Katherine frowned and turned to Hawise, who looked troubled. Hawise reminded herself that she did not know the ways of court folk, but a blind mole could see something out of the way in this. "Shall I call Father to rid you of him?" she whispered in Katherine's ear.

Katherine looked back at the stolid squire. He met her gaze and stared down pointedly at the Red Rose embroidered on his breast. How strange, she thought, what could that mean? Most of the men in the palace below knight's rank wore that badge. "Well, come over here," she said, stepping into the empty dairy-room, and as the squire followed, she added, "What is this coil?"

"His grace vants you to come to him, my lady," said Raulin very low.

She lifted her head, the pupils of her eyes dilated until the greyness turned as black as her gown. "The Duke?" Raulin bowed.

"Why does he send for me in secret?" She pressed her hands tight against her breast to still the jumping of her heart, but she stood very quiet leaning against the milk table.

"Because since the funeral he has seen nobody but me, nor does he vish to, my lady, except now - you."

The colour ebbed slowly back into her face and still her great eyes stared at the squire in question, in disbelief, until he said brusquely, "But lady, hasten. It is already long since I vas sent to find you."

Katherine moved then, she walked back into the Hall and reached up to the perch where Hawise had hung her wet cloak. "I - I must go," she said to the anxious Pessoners. "But I'll see you very soon."

"Not bad news-" cried Hawise, quickly crossing herself.

"Lady, ye look so strange!"

"Not bad news," Katherine took a quick breath, smiled at Dame Emma and kissed Hawise, but it seemed as though she did not really see them. When the door had closed behind Katherine and the squire, Hawise turned frowning to her mother. "She was happy here afore wi' us. What can that gobble-tongued outlander've said to throw her into such a maze? 'Twas like she wandered in a fearing dream and yet feared more to wake."

"Fie, daughter," said Dame Emma, adding cinnamon and nutmeg to the hare she seethed over the fire. "Ye make too much o' naught. Do ye get on wi' the churning."

Hawise obeyed, but as she pounded slowly in the churn, her cheerful face was downcast and she sang a plaintive little song that she had heard on London streets.

Blow, northern wind, fend off from my sweeting.

Blow, northern wind, blow.

Ho! the wind and the rain they blow green pain,

Blow, blow, blow!

CHAPTER XII

Katherine and Raulin rode back to the Savoy in silence until they had passed beneath the great Strand portcullis into the Outer Ward, and dismounted at the stables. Then Raulin said, "This vay, my lady," and led her towards the river-side, nearly to the boat landing. In the west corner of the court, between the barge-house and the massive wing which housed the ducal children's apartments, there was a low wooden building surmounted by a carving of a large flying hawk. This building contained the falcon mew, and one of the falconers stood always on guard to prevent strangers from entering, or any sudden happening which might upset his high-strung and immensely valuable charges.

Raulin nodded to the falconer, skirted the mew and plunged suddenly into a dark passage that lay hidden between it and a stone water-cistern. Here was a small wooden door which he unlocked. "But the privy apartments are in the Inner Ward," protested Katherine nervously as he motioned her up narrow stone steps that were hollowed from the thickness of the wall.

"This leads to them," said Raulin patiently. "His Grace does not vish that people see you. It vould make talk."

Katherine swallowed, and mounted the steps. They ended on the next floor in a narrow passage that ran along the inside wall of consecutive chambers and ended in another wooden door. This door was concealed by a painted cloth-hanging. Raulin pushed it aside and they emerged into the Duchess' garde-robe, a small oblong chamber.

Behind another painted hanging they entered the darkened solar; narrow chinks of light around the edges of the closed shutters showed that the vast bed had been draped with a black pall. They went through another chamber where the Duchess' ladies had used to sit and two more rooms until they turned a corner towards the river into a square tower. Here was the Avalon Chamber.

Raulin knocked on the carved oak door and gave his name. A voice said, "Enter!" Raulin held the door, then shut it after Katherine, and went away.

Katherine walked in quietly, her head lifted high, her cloak clutched around her. The Duke was sitting on a gold-cushioned window-seat gazing over the river towards the rocks and stunted trees of Lambethmoor. He did not move at once, and she stood on the woven silk rug that covered the tiles and waited.

He was clothed in plain black saye, without girdle or mantle, the tight-fitting cote and long hose moulded his lean muscular body and were unrelieved by trimming. He wore no jewels except the sapphire seal-ring that Blanche had given him. His thick tawny hair was cut short below his ears, and he was cleanshaven. This startled her, for it made him seem younger, and when he slowly turned his head towards her, she saw that his chin was square and had a cleft like her own.

"You summoned me, my lord?" she said, for he did not speak but stared at her with a remote brooding look. His skin had lost the sunbronze that it had shown when he came to Kettlethorpe, and it was stretched taut across the sharp Plantagenet cheek-bones, the narrow cheeks and long high-bridged nose. His mouth, wide-curved and passionate, was drawn thin at the corners like his father's, and his heavy eyelids seemed as though they would never wholly lift again to disclose the vivid blue beneath.

She knelt, as was seemly, and taking his hand, kissed it in homage. While she knelt, her cloak loosened and her hood fell back. He touched her curling rain-dampened hair. " 'Tis the colour of carnelians," he said, "the gem that heals anger. Would that it might heal sorrow -" He spoke as though to himself, in a low faltering voice. His hand fell back on to his thigh, and she raised her head, wondering. Through every fibre in her body she had felt that light touch on her hair.

His gaze slid slowly over her face, then rested on the cream and umber tiles which floored the chamber. "I sent for you, Katherine, that I might thank you. Old Simon of Bolingbroke told me what you did for - for her. You shall know my gratitude."

Her cheeks stung with heat. She jumped up from her knees and pulled the cloak around her. "My lord, I told you that I loved her. I want no reward - no payment!"

"Hush! Leave be, Katherine. I know you're not venal. I've thought of you much these last days, thought of how you were with her at the end - while I - on the day she died- - " He broke off and, getting up, walked to the fireplace.

The day she died, he thought, September twelfth, the day when the French had tricked and fooled him, drawn him into battle formation and then sneaked off into the night laughing at the gullible blundering English. A bootless costly mockery had been the whole campaign, and through no fault of his; but he guessed well what they said of his generalship here at home. Blanche would have known how to soften the humiliation.

"Katherine," he said abruptly, "I cannot rid me of my grief. Each day it worsens, and yet I must rid me of it and take up my heavy duties."

She looked at him mutely. She could find no words of comfort, she did not know what he wanted of her; but she felt a closeness between them that had never been before.

"Put off your cloak and sit down," he said, smiling faintly. "You stand there like a hart that scents the hunter. I think you need not fear me."

She flushed. "I know, my lord." She walked across the room and hung her cloak on a silver perch that projected from the inner wall. It was a room of beauty and luxury such as she had never imagined. Two of the plaster walls were powdered with a pattern of gold stars and tiny flowerets like forget-me-nots. The hooded fireplace was of green marble deeply carved into medallions and foliage. The elaborate gilded furniture had been made by master craftsmen in Italy, the canopied bed was hung with ruby velvet embroidered with seed pearls, and ruby glowed again with amber and azure in the blazons of the leaded window-panes. On the east wall hung the great Avalon tapestry in dark and mysterious greens. Deep in the woven forest, the Blessed Isle of Avalon rose palely, shining through a mist, and the figures of King Arthur and his queen lay bathed in a moony light. Tall and fateful in his druid's robes the wizard Merlin stood below the royal dead and pointed to far-distant hills on which there was a fairy castle floating.

"Ay-that tapestry pleases me much," John said, following her gaze. "Merlin's castle puts me in mind of one I saw in Spain, after our victory at Najera." His sombre look lightened for an instant. Always at the thought of Castile he heard the shouts of triumph and rejoicing from his men and saw the face of the messenger who had brought him news of his son's birth to augment the thrill of victory.

"You were happy in Castile?" Katherine ventured. "You and the Prince of Wales righted the great wrong done the Castilian king."

"But, God's wounds, it didn't last!" he cried with sudden anger. "Don't you know what happened at Montiel last March? King Pedro foully murdered by his brother the bastard, who sits again upon the throne he had no right to!"

"Who has right then, since the poor king is dead?" she asked after a minute, thinking that it might be anger was better for him than brooding grief and that this coil about far-off kings could not touch him too nearly.

"The heiress is the king's daughter, the Infanta Costanza," he answered more quietly." 'Tis she who is the true Queen of Castile." He thought of the times he had seen the exiled princesses at Bordeaux. Costanza was a skinny black-haired wench who must be about fifteen now: two years ago he had been amused at the haughtiness of her bearing and the vehemence of her Spanish as she had thanked him for the aid given to her father. "Pedro was often a cruel and crooked man," John said. "His promises were writ on water, but what matters that, for he was also the true-born anointed king - King of Castile."

He spoke the last three words with a solemnity that puzzled Katherine, as though they were a charm or incantation, and yet she thought he scarcely realised this himself or that for a moment he had forgotten his grief. He sighed and turned from the tapestry. "Merlin had many prophecies about my house," he said listlessly. "They've come down by word of mouth throughout the centuries - Blanche cared naught for such things - she cared only for the things that came from Holy Writ." He flung himself down in a chair by the fire and leaned his forehead on his hand.

"My lord," said Katherine softly, "do you remember how she looked on the day of the Great Tournament at Windsor three years ago - so golden fair and laughing when you rode up to the loge? For sure, she will look thus in heaven while she waits for you."

He raised his head and said, "Ah, Katherine, you know how to comfort! So few know that I long to talk of her that's gone. Instead they start and look away and speak of foolish things to distract me - yet here is one other that understands."

He got up and went to the table, which was littered with vellum books and official missives which he had not glanced at. He picked up a folded parchment on which the seal and cords had been broken and opened the letter. "Listen," he said, and read very slowly:

"I have of sorrow so great wound

That joy get I never none,

Now that I see my lady bright,

That I have loved with all my might,

Is from me dead, and is agone.

"Alas, Death, what aileth thee

That thou should'st not have taken me,

When thou took my lady sweet,

That was so fair, so fresh, so free.

So good, that men may well say

Of all goodness she had no meet.

"Right on this same, as I have said

Was wholly all my love laid

For certes she was, that sweet wife,

My suffisaunce, my lust, my life,

Mine hap, mine health and all my bless,

My world's welfare and my goddess,

And I wholly hers, and everydel."