Philippa and Hawise had tactfully withdrawn, taking Joan with them. The two were alone in the pleasant room where the fitful sunlight glowed on Katherine's plain well-polished furniture, on the fresh sweet-smelling floor rushes. She picked up a tapestry square and began to stitch, thinking that he might prefer not to talk.

He watched her awhile, wondering if she ever thought of the old life and how things went with her here in Lincoln. She had changed, he thought, not her features, but in the atmosphere she emanated. There had used to be an undertone of intensity, of striving about her, now she seemed peaceful: serene and deep as a mountain tarn.

"Lady Swynford," he said suddenly, "do you ever think of the Duke?"

Her needle paused,, quivered, then plopped through the canvas, trailing its load of crimson wool. "It would do no good if I did, would it?"

"Nay - those times are long past, and well passed, I suppose, yet I don't doubt he thinks of you."

She raised her head. In the grey eyes the pupils enlarged slowly. "I'm sure you're wrong, my lord, unless it is with hatred."

"Hatred?" De la Pole was astonished. "Oh, he was very angry for a while up there in the north when you disappeared, 'twas natural enough. But it was not hatred that made him build a chapel to Saint Catherine near Knaresborough."

Katherine put down her tapestry and stood up; her chair scraped on the hearthstone. "Chapel to Saint Catherine?"

"Ay - in fulfilment of a vow he made to her for your safety through the revolt."

She turned to the fire, pressing her fingers on the mantel's rim. "When did he erect this chapel - not after he publicly renounced me - and returned to the Duchess?"

De la Pole frowned. "Why yes, I'm sure it was, quite a while after he was reunited to the Duchess at Knaresborough. But my dear, there was no public renouncement that I know of. I was with him for some months at that time, and I don't believe he ever spoke your name."

"Yet all England gossiped of how he had reviled me - calling me" - she paused, went on steadily - "calling me witch and whore; this I heard that summer in Walsingham."

"And believed it?" cried de la Pole. "By God, lady, didn't you live long enough at court to discount slander? 'Tis the Benedictine chroniclers have been putting out all manner of lies about him - and why? Because of his association with Wyclif, because of the persecution he briefly gave their monasteries after that embroilment in the changeling story, because he has always favoured the friars - Christ only knows the reason for malice - but you should have known him better than that."

"Ay - I should. Perhaps I did. But I have heard no direct word from him - since then."

De la Pole shook his head, and sighed. "Need I tell you of his pride? And more than that, I believe he saw as you did, that it was best you two should part."

Katherine began to walk up and down across the hearth, she bent to poke the fire, she moved an andiron, she poured more wine into the mulling pot. "My lord, I almost wish you hadn't told me this," she said at last: "I do not wish to think of him - too softly."

Ay, perhaps I should not have mentioned him, thought the old earl. Meddle, meddle - 'tis all it seems to me I do nowadays, at least so my enemies think. A lifetime of service to the Duke, to the crown, and at the end nothing but hatred and ingratitude. Gloucester was the real enemy, and Arundel of course. Impeachment, accusations. Michael had suffered both. They said he was nothing but a tradesman, a Hull merchant far too rich to be honest. They said he was a coward because he had influenced Richard towards peace, towards making an end of this senseless, crippling war with France. And now it would soon be exile. No doubt of that. And his one staunch friend, far away in Castile.

"How is it with the Duke?" said Katherine. She had sat down again and picked up her tapestry. She bent her face low over it. "He is gaining at last his long ambition, isn't he? The Castilian throne he so much wanted."

"By the rood, I fear not," answered de la Pole sadly. "At least not as he wanted it. His daughter will sit there, not he."

"Daughter?"

"You've not heard of the marriages?"

She shook her head. "People do not speak to me of him."

"Why, Philippa and Joao I were married last month in Oporto, she is now Queen of Portugal."

How strange, Katherine thought. Philippa the grave, sedate, virginal girl who had longed for the cloister, now wedded at twenty-six, and a queen in a far-off land.

"And little Catalina," said de la Pole, "she is to marry Enrique of Castile, I believe. It is she who will sit on Castile's throne in her parents' stead - and that will mean the end of war at last."

The end of the Castilian dream at last, Katherine thought. Not in failure, but not in glory either. There must be humiliation for John in this denouement. The prize achieved by compromise, by dynastic marriages, but never really his. Always second, she thought, never first. All his life.

"Oh, he still fights," continued de la Pole, who had been following the same thoughts. "He hasn't given up yet. But we hear that his army is fearfully afflicted, there's some disease runs through them and kills. The messenger said that the Duke himself was very ill with-Nay, lady, I talk too much, a tongue-wagging old man," he added quickly, seeing the look in Katherine's eyes. "He'll recover. He has great strength."

She put down the tapestry and said in a choked voice, "My lord, forgive me if I leave you for a time." She walked from the Hall and upstairs to her solar, where for some moments she sat alone.

When she came down again, she found that Master Robert Sutton had arrived to escort her to the banquet. He and de le Pole were standing at the hearth making polite conversation.

The earl came up to her at once and took her hand. "I've trespassed too long upon your kindness, my dear lady, and must hurry back to my duties by the King. Forgive me," he added lower, "for talking so much." He kissed her hand. "It's been good to see you again. God bless you."

He went out, while Robert turned to Katherine with complacence. "It seems my Lord of Suffolk thinks well of you, sweet. Were he not so old, I'd be jealous. You might," he continued, brightening, "through him even be presented to the Queen. He still has influence with Richard. Did you think to ask him? Maybe we should announce our marriage at the banquet after all."

"No," said Katherine slowly. She sat down and indicated the other chair so lately quitted by de la Pole. "Robert, I cannot marry you. Forgive me."

The wool merchant's ruddy cheeks paled, he stared at her. "Katherine, what whim is this! I ne'er thought you a woman for sly tricks and coquestry."

"It is no trick, or coquetry. It is that I was a fool to think I could forget the past-" She hesitated a long time while he looked at her with dismay and dawning anger. "It is this, you see," she said at last. "For me, it's not the past - it's still the present. Call it folly, madness if you like - but it seems I am so made that I can give myself to no other man."

He argued with her, he stormed at her, he pled with her. Tears filled her eyes, finally she wept in contrition, in pity; but she could not accede. During the moments alone in her chamber, the certainty had come to her at last. For her there could be no comfortable fresh start, no easier way permitted in the following of her destiny. The love that she had felt, she would always feel, and in itself it brought dedication, regardless of return. Without de la Pole's revelations she would not have married Sutton, that had been a temporary clouding. But the thought of John suffering, in danger, had hastened the realisation.

When Sutton left at last, furious and acid-tongued, she sat on alone in the Hall, nor did she attend the King's banquet. She sent word that she had been taken ill.

CHAPTER XXXI

The feast of St. Catherine - November 25, 1395. Katherine awoke at Kettlethorpe in an unusual mood of depression and unaccountable loneliness. The old solar was far snugger than it used to be, she had gradually achieved modest comfort in her home. The walls were hung with Lincoln-made tapestries, there were bear-rugs and sheepskins on the plank floor. The wooden shutters had been replaced with casements of leaded glass, and the remodelled fireplace made it possible to warm this room that used to be a vortex of draughts. Nevertheless, Katherine shivered when she awoke and listened to the hissing of sleet on the windows. She found in herself a dismal reluctance to face the day: a holiday for all her manor folk, who had planned profuse festivities in her honour.

There was to be a procession, and a Catherine dance and spinning contest for all the village maidens, and a speech given by Cob, who was a great man in Kettlethorpe now, a sort of unofficial mayor. Her tenants would bring her little gifts; at the end there would be feasting in the Great Hall, while she sat on the dais and was crowned with a prickly wreath of pine and holly that Cob's children had made for her. These ceremonies were heart-warming. They had occurred every year, with increasing elaboration, since her return. It would be ungrateful indeed not to rejoice at the affectionate respect that they evinced.

But on this morning her head ached dully. While she waited for Hawise to come in with the morning ale, she could think only of worries. Two of her best ewes showed signs of murrain, the shepherd had sent to the witch of Harby for a charm to prevent the plague from spreading. That was one worry. Janet was another.

Janet Swynford, Tom's wife, who would soon be here from Coleby with the twins, to do her mother-in-law honour. Born a Crophill of Nottingham, Janet was precisely the right wife for Tom, self-effacing, thrifty and plain as an iron pot, so that there was no danger whatsoever in leaving her at Coleby alone during the lengthy periods that Tom was off serving his Lord Henry of Bolingbroke. But Janet talked interminably in a thin martyred whine, and she bored Katherine. The year-old twins were sweet; Katherine longed to enjoy her only grandchildren, but they were delicate, little Hugh coughed incessantly, Dorothy had a weak stomach.

Katherine, who had borne and raised six healthy children, continually choked off advice that Janet would plaintively resent - and ignore.

Ah well, a familiar enough problem, and not worth fretting over. Joan's unhappiness was far more harrowing. Joan, her baby, was now sixteen, and a widow. Not that Joan had loved the fat shabby old knight to whom last year she had been so briefly married; but she had endured the discomforts gladly in return for the improved standing he gave her and the glimpse of the great outer world that poor Joan so longed for. Sir Robert Ferrers had taken his little bride to Leicester Castle and the gay household of Henry's wife, Mary de Bohun. Joan had had a few weeks of excitement before her own widowhood and Countess Mary's death thrust her back to her mother and Kettlethorpe. Worse than that, during that brief, brighter time the girl had fallen desperately in love - with Ralph Neville of Raby, the handsome young Lord of Westmorland, son to the old warrior who had died soon after his visit to Lincoln with Richard.

An impossible love. The Nevilles of Raby did not marry bastards. Bitter heartache for Joan, to which Katherine applied the standard palliatives as best she could: so young; she'd get over it; some other suitable husband would turn up, and she would certainly forget young Neville when the babies came.

Joan had gazed at her with the round pansy-purple eyes and said quietly, "Did you, Mother? Did you ever forget my father even while you bore the Swynfords?"

The shock of that was still with Katherine, and the fear of the girl's instinctive comparison, which Joan had seen and allayed most painfully. "Nay," she had whispered in a choked voice. "I shall never be Neville's paramour, though he begged it. Do you think I, who know what it is to be baseborn, would inflict that on another human soul? Ah, forgive me, Mother - -"

They had both turned away in tears, nor referred to it again.

This new unhappiness of Joan's had awakened the dormant pain for Blanchette. Fourteen years without word. Requiem Masses were said for her in the church here on June 13, the day she disappeared, and yet Katherine had not quite accepted her death.

It was true that life was harder on women, but why, Katherine wondered, should it be her oldest and youngest children that seemed marked out for special suffering? To this question, as to many others there was no answer.