A pale fleeting emotion that I could not read touched his face.

‘There is no reasoning with you, is there?’

‘No. None.’

‘What more can I say?’

‘Did you weep, as they say you did, when you bared your soul in public?’ I could not imagine his weeping in public penance. I could not. It was the most ludicrous of all the rumours.

The Duke did not reply. The austerity was hammered flat with intense weariness under my relentless assault. Instead, starkly, brusquely: ‘You must understand the new threat. There are French plans to invade England. The most effective way for us to prevent it is to make an alliance with Portugal. Between us we can invade and crush Castile, France’s ally.’ I could see that his mind was already taken up with the planning. ‘If I am to invade Castile I need to be reunited with Constanza. Enrique is dead, but his son Juan reigns in his stead. I need Constanza’s authority behind me if I am to oust King Juan and reclaim Castile. As it has always been…’

Another dart in my flesh, upon which I pounced with cruel delight, ignoring the high demands of English foreign policy. ‘And you put your authority in Castile before me? Of course you do. I would expect no other. Have you not always done so?’

He inclined his head in due acceptance, yet still, to my mind, twisted the blade.

‘I am a man of ambition. You knew that. You have always known that.’

There was no denying it. Unable to face him any longer, my limbs trembling with damp and too-fervent emotion, I stalked to the side of the room, and, spreading my skirts, I sat on one of the stools. It was not seemly for me to berate him like a fishwife. I would return to reason.

‘So you have done with me at last, my lord. I suppose that ten years is a fair record for a mistress.’ I was proud of my light pronouncement. ‘I am banished to Kettlethorpe, with my children. I have no further place in your life.’ I stared down at my interwoven fingers. I was suddenly so weary of it all and beyond anger.

‘There is more fault to tell, Katherine…’

‘Over and above the rest? What more can you possibly have done to hurt me?’

I heard his heavy inhalation. ‘I have not kept faith with you. When I repented…I renounced all the other women I had taken to my bed.’

‘All?’ I exhaled slowly.

‘You were not the only one with whom I sinned.’

‘There were others?’ And without allowing him to reply: ‘Before God, John! And are you going to argue weakness of the flesh? Opportunity? Availability?’

He stiffened, with a flare of temper burning through the control like fire through a field of dry grass. ‘I am a man with a man’s appetites. But I have no excuses.’

I could not comprehend. I felt lost, everything I had believed in laid waste as if by the fire and sword of an avenging force. There had been other women in the ducal bed. When I had thought his love was mine alone, his body had betrayed me with other women. I could not contemplate how many, how often…

‘How many? One? Two?’ I stood abruptly. I could not sit, but swept to the door. I could stay here with all the hurt and humiliation no longer. ‘Am I the last to know? Does Constanza know?’ I could not bear the degradation of my lover handling my heart with such contempt.

‘Not as many as the rumours say,’ he said, as if that would make a difference. It lit my wrath again.

‘Does that make it any better?’

‘No. My penitence can never make it better for you. My heart was yours, but sometimes—’

‘Sometimes you needed to indulge your physical needs,’ I broke in. ‘And any woman would do.’

‘I cannot defend myself, Katherine. I have known times when the demands of my body overcome the loyalty of my soul.’

‘On campaign?’

‘Yes.’

‘Here in England?’

‘Yes.’

I simply stared. If I had been hurt before, I was now devastated. Fleetingly I recalled standing on the wall-walk here at Pontefract, with at least some hope still alive, even as I acknowledged my hurt. I had not known the half of it. There was no hope, none at all.

‘In the bed I have shared with you?’ I asked trenchantly.

‘No. Never that. Katherine.’

He took a step towards me. I took one back until the door stopped me, as a sudden unadorned thought struck me.

‘Not my sister! Please God, not that.’

‘No!’ The planes of his face were set with anguish. But so, I thought were mine. ‘Not your sister. I would not do that to you. Would you believe that of me?’

I could not think, not knowing what to believe, what to say, except, in infinite desolation:

‘You have wounded me unto death, John.’

Without answering, he walked to look out from the same window that had taken my attention. I saw his face reflected, shimmering, pale as a ghost. Then he swung round to face me and for the first time in all that exchange, he retaliated against me, the jewels leaping into life.

‘I must turn away God’s wrath, Katherine. I must live by His dictates. How can we deny God’s anger when we are faced with such rebellion and destruction in England as we have seen these past months? If I am the cause, if my manner of living has drawn down God’s punishment on this nation, then I must of necessity repent and make reparation.’

All spoken with an awful, calm, precise, relentless certainty.

But I in my dismay refused to listen.

‘Then I hope you sit in heaven at God’s right hand on the strength of it.’ And then, a cry from the heart that I could not prevent. ‘Have you grown tired of me? If that is so, then I wish you had told me—’

‘I could never grow tired of you. You know that.’

‘But I don’t know it. I am struggling to understand any of this.’

I saw no reason for his denial of me. I had been swept behind the tapestry as if our love had been a sin. A crime. Was that all I had ever been to him, a convenient whore? My mind came back to that one point again and again until it sickened me. I could never forgive him for that.

‘I am well-served, am I not? I remember the day when you proclaimed your love for me before your wife and your damsels. You cannot imagine the depth of happiness you gave me. Now you have disclaimed your love before every man and woman in England. You have broken my heart.’

I put my hand on the door-latch, hoping against all possibility that he might say something profound and ameliorating, to sweep away the anguish of the last minutes. I looked back, over my shoulder, at the fine-drawn handsome features, the braced shoulders, the motionless control that was back in place.

‘You have wounded me, John. You have destroyed all my happiness,’ I informed him.

His reply was severe. Deliberate and unhurried.

‘I cannot heal the wounds for you, Katherine. Nor my own. Perhaps we don’t deserve happiness. Perhaps, by seizing our own desires, we have caused too much damage, to too many people. And now we are called on to pay the price of our wilful carelessness.’

It was as harsh a blow as any man could possibly deliver, to chastise the senses. A slap of a hand. A deluge of freezing rain. The fear engendered by a bolt of lightning striking a tree in the forest. Our happiness, recklessly, selfishly pursued, had undoubtedly hurt others, forcing on them difficult choices. Who knew what compromises Philippa and Elizabeth had been called on to make, out of their love for their father? Constanza had had to make the greatest.

It was not an argument that I could ignore, as he well knew.

And I resented it, resented his forcing me to see the obliteration of my moral bearings. I had not expected my lover to stab me in the back quite so effectively.

I opened the door, looking back for the final time. An empty room, stripped of all past glory, except for its owner with the spangle of rain still in his hair and marking his velvet and armour. What a fitting place to end a love that I had thought would last for all time. What a fitting place to utter the words I never thought I would, and immediately wished I had not.

‘Do you not love me anymore?’

In horror and shame, for such a question could only bring down humiliation on both of us, I pressed my fingers against my lips, dismayed that they had so betrayed me. The Duke, eyes stark, skin lacking all colour, simply looked as if I had driven home a knife into his flesh.

He made no reply. I walked from the room. He did not try to stop me.

We had not touched, not once.

And the thought came to me as I walked rapidly to my chamber, how little he had said, to explain or to justify. Merely that he must turn God’s wrath away from England. But then, there was nothing to explain, was there? It was the first time that we had met since the earliest days when there was not even a smile exchanged between us. But then, there was nothing to smile about either.

If our love had been hacked and laid low by Walsingham’s cruel blows, even more had it been dealt its death wound by the Duke’s despicable sense of duty.

I gave no thought to the dust in the chamber, as any good housekeeper should. I did not care if I could inscribe my name in it, on the top of the coffer. By choice, I would never enter that room again.

I was done with Pontefract Castle. I was done with the Duke of Lancaster, with the world he inhabited, his newly awakened sanctity. I was done with it all and for ever. The decisions made through one sleepless night, dry-eyed and wrathful, were not difficult. I could not stay here.

I hugged my beloved Philippa as I oversaw the preparations for my departure, but was fit to say little to her beyond farewell.

‘Write to me,’ she whispered against my hood.

‘I will. And you to me.’ I dredged up some suitable thoughts from the well of my own self-pity, managing a grimace that might pass for a smile. ‘Tell me when you have a husband. Tell me of Elizabeth.’ I did not think Elizabeth would write to me.

Her eyes glistened with anxiety. I gave up on the smile.

‘Where is he?’ I could not call him by name. The castle buzzed with gossip, mostly accurate, except that I had not drawn a blade against him. I had behaved with perfect propriety, principally because there had not been a dagger to hand in my chamber of choice. The sharp blades had only been those stitched in the folded tapestries.

Now I would leave with the same cold composure that had governed my every public action since I had heard what he had done.

I did not wish to meet him. Not again, while my heart was so sore. And after what had passed between us, it would be best if it were never again. I slammed the door closed on all my unsettled emotions, turning my thoughts to the practicalities of packing my belongings into the wagons, settling the children into the vast horse-drawn litter. All the necessities for my return to Kettlethorpe. How had we managed to acquire so much since our flight to Pontefract, reassured that the Duke held my safety close in his heart? No matter. I belonged to the house of Lancaster no longer.

‘I don’t know where my father is.’ Philippa cast a glance at the windows of his apartments above our heads. There was no sign of movement there.

I took a breath to swallow what might have been a twinge of regret if I had allowed it. We had slept apart in cold, lonely beds. He had not come to break his fast with me. He had not come to bid me adieu.

He does not know you are leaving, honesty murmured in my ear.

Well, he should know. He should have known that I would not stay. And unless he is deaf he will have heard the racket of departure…

The lively voices of John and Henry, the chatter of Joan and the cries of Thomas, could hardly be ignored.

I mounted and rode out through the gateway. I would never return to one of Lancaster’s castles.

The moisture on my cheeks was, of course, caused by the brisk wind.

I rode in silence for the first half-hour beside the sergeant-at-arms, aware of nothing around me, not even the clamour of children’s voices and Agnes’s occasional sharp rejoinder, as my emotions swung wilfully into a well-worn track. I would live alone. I would take a vow of chastity and, although not shunning society, I would order my days with piety and seemliness, wrapping myself in the ordered emotions of a nun, as many grieving widows were drawn to do. I would beg God’s forgiveness for my life of unspeakable sin. All the fire in me that the Duke had once admired would be quenched. Cold ash, grey and insubstantial, would replace bright flame. I would devote myself to being Lady of Kettlethorpe, supremely gracious. Completely unresponsive to excess of feeling.

John of Lancaster would hold no part in my life, in my thoughts. Not even in my dreams. Now that all his perfidy was laid bare, beyond question, it would be a simple matter to close and lock the lid on this coffer of memories. What’s more, I would drop the key into the well at Kettlethorpe.