Duchess Constanza was seen frequently at his side, enjoying their restored relationship. Arrangements were being made for a new campaign to conquer Castile.

The Duke and Duchess of Lancaster had been truly blessed, but in the harvest it was I who was stripped bare of all my bloom.

I took all the jewellery the Duke had given me over the years, every single piece of it, and dropped it into the bottom of a coffer in which I kept garments I no longer wore. I turned two little brooches over in my hand, remembering when he had pinned them to my bodice, less than a year before. A little gold heart set with a diamond. A clasp with two hands interlocked around a ruby. I added them to the hoard in my coffer and turned the key, but not before placing the coral and gold rosary there.

I would never wear them again.

In a week at the beginning of February, when it was possible to travel the roads again because of a hard frost that froze the mire into something passable, a courier beat his way to my door, bright with Lancastrian livery.

‘Now what? Does he plan to win my good graces with ale and venison this week? I swear he will not do it.’

I had no patience with anyone in those dark days after the new year. I took the package with bad grace.

We had been apart a matter of weeks, but to my mind I was living in the depths of a black well. Every day was a struggle to remain calmly courteous to those amongst whom I lived. I accomplished it, because it behoved me to be courteous, by encasing my emotions in cold apathy, like a suit of armour that would let nothing come close and hurt me. I repelled all friendly overtures. I refused to ride the new mare despite her confiding manner and satin hide. The sable-lined cloak I consigned to the coffer along with the jewels. I was a femme sole and would espouse my title as Lady of Kettlethorpe as I had never done in the past.

I carried the packet into the nursery, picking up the baby from the floor as I sat. Thomas was a year old now and sturdy of limb. I hugged his solid little body, my eye on the document. It was very official, surprisingly so. I thought it might be some form of financial security for the children. Yes, that would be it. Setting Thomas squarely on my lap, I ran my hands over the bulk of it. I could feel a seal.

‘Are you going to open it?’ Agnes was hovering, sensing my reluctance, but overcome with curiosity. ‘It won’t improve for being ignored. It can’t harm you, can it? I’ll take the child.’

‘No.’ For some reason I felt the need to keep Thomas close, and smiled at Joan as she came to stand at my knee, dropping a kiss on her forehead where her russet hair had escaped from her little cap.

‘Shall we see what your father has to say to us? Yesterday two barrels of fine Gascon wine. What will it be today?’

Breaking the seal I took off the protective cover, letting Joan take it from me, as I unfolded the two enclosed sheets, one more legal than the other, which took my attention first.

Yes it was formal, a legal document, written in a clerkly hand. I let my eye travel to the bottom, to the impress in the seal. And yes, this was from the Duke. My heart began to trip a little faster. I held Thomas firmly around his middle as he began to squirm. Why would the Duke need to send me so legal a document? It had nothing, on first scan, to do with my annuity or the children.

I started to read, crooning to Thomas.

My crooning stopped abruptly.

Let it be known that we have remised, released and, entirely from ourselves and our heirs, quitclaimed the lady Katherine de Swynford, recently governess of our daughters…

My eye swerved back, to fix on that one word.

Quitclaimed.

I could not prevent a little cry of distress.

I read on again, line after line.

…neither ourselves, our heirs or anyone else through us or in our name, may in future demand or be able to vindicate any claim or right concerning the aforementioned Lady Katherine, but from all actions let us be totally excluded…

What was this?

In testimony of which we affix our private seal to this with the sign of our ring on the reverse.

This was a quitclaim. I knew what a quitclaim was.

I rubbed my cheek softly against Thomas’s hair, as if for the comfort of his warmth, for my heart was as brittle as a shard of ice as I read between the legalistic lines.

This was the Duke of Lancaster, relinquishing all his rights and interests in me, and, what was worse to my mind, mine in him. We were severed, by law. He had no future claim on me, nor I on him. Our relationship was irrevocably at an end, signed and sealed.

If I had ever clutched at a forlorn hope that one day our estrangement might be healed, that one day in some distant point in the future we might once more stand together, this quitclaim had crushed it into dust.

At the end, when the words ran out, I simply sat and stared, unseeing, as humiliation trickled through my body, as honey would drip from a honeycomb.

Did he actually think I would pester him for money? For support for his children? Did he think I would arrive at the door of Hertford or Kenilworth, my children and household packed into travelling wagons, demanding his recognition? His hospitality and his charity?

Pride stoked my temper. I would not, even without this cold legality. But now he had made sure that I could not, as if I were an importunate beggar who needed to be manacled by the law. Neither I nor my children would have any claim on him ever again. He had severed the connection between us as assuredly with this red wax imprint as with a sword.

…from all actions let us be totally excluded…

I sat and looked at it, horror growing strongly through my shame as I acknowledged what it was that the Duke had done. I was legally banished from his life. Was he not satisfied with simply sending me away and denouncing me as an enchantress, with its overtones of witchcraft, so that all the world could point and pry? I would never take advantage of our past, and yet he suspected that I might take an action against him in law to demand my rights. What rights? I had never claimed any rights, except those of love.

Did he know so little of me, after all I had been to him?

Dismay churned in my belly. This legal separation was unnecessary, as was the cruelty in sending it with a courier. The crevasse he had excavated by this deliberate action lay dark and deep between us. How could my love for him survive this?

I let the quitclaim drop to the floor. I could not vindicate him from this despicable act towards me and his children. Nor could I weep over this cruel blow. My desolation was too intense to allow the luxury of tears. Instead, anger burned as I recalled our meeting on the road from Pontefract.

You owe me nothing and I have no claim on you, I had said.

How right I was. We were parted for ever with the weight of the law between us. Perhaps in my most wretched moments I had been hoping for a reprieve. Perhaps I had thought he would not be able to live without me. I had been so wrong.

‘How could you turn the blade in my heart like this?’ I cried out. ‘I despise you for it.’ I bent my head over Thomas, struggling against tears that finally threatened to fall as the emotion grew too great to contain.

‘My lady.’ I felt Agnes’s hand on my shoulder, her voice soft and steady, everything that mine was not. ‘He would not hurt you in this manner.’

‘I know what he has written,’ I cried out in sudden agony. ‘I know what he has had written for him by John Crowe, his clerk. Why would he write it himself when he has a minion to do it for him?’

All I could see was the damning words of the quitclaim, as if they were written in blood.

…from all actions let us be totally excluded…

I was unaware of my sister coming in, until she removed Thomas who had begun to fuss, and leaned to look over Agnes’s shoulder at the quitclaim. She took it from me, out of Thomas’s reach.

‘Ha! Well, there’s a man’s hand in that, for certain. Why do you weep, Kate? What did you expect from him now that he is back in Constanza’s grateful bosom? She probably put him up to it, and since his eye’s on Castile again, with full Papal blessing for all who accompany him, he’ll have no compunction in obeying her. What man puts the woman who has warmed his sheets for a dozen years before his ambitions? None that I know.’

‘He is not Geoffrey,’ I remonstrated, still torn asunder by disbelief. ‘I never doubted his love. I never had cause to. After that day when he faced Constanza and stood as a shield for me, how could I have ever doubted him?’

‘More fool you, then. I learned my lesson, didn’t I? Men have no loyalty where their loins are concerned or their ambitions. You should know better than to cast your honour and your reputation under Lancaster’s heel. But you did it against all my advice because you thought that love would prove stronger than ambition or public disgrace. He had no loyalty to Constanza, and he has none to you. He deserves every criticism. Any reputation for chivalry has been torn to shreds. Men have no chivalry when their own interests are in the balance.’

Her vehemence, against the Duke and men in general, shocked me, although perhaps it should not have. Philippa shrugged, tight-lipped with disapproval as she ran her eye once more over the document. Then gave a harsh bark of a laugh.

‘I see nothing to laugh at.’ I snatched the letter back.

‘That’s because you don’t see what is in front of your nose. That’s because you are still besotted with him.’

It was too much. Gripping the two letters, one still unread, I strode from her, from the nursery, her accusations against me and the Duke still ringing in my ears. He was untrustworthy. Lacking in honour. Not worthy of the epithet chivalrous. Whereas I was blind and wilful and deserved my present heartbreak.

Forget him. Banish him from your thoughts.

Was this the final ending of our love? Destroyed by the Duke himself, not by Walsingham? When Walsingham had called me whore, the Duke had raised me up from the depths of my anguish. Now I was alone to weather the storm.

Had I not known that our love would one day meet some impossible obstacle?

But not like this. Never like this.

I spent the rest of the day supervising the cleaning of the few tapestries of which Kettlethorpe could boast. Then when I was exhausted, cobwebbed and coated with dust, but my thoughts settled to some semblance of steadiness, I retired to my parlour and, with a sigh to see that it was unoccupied for the fire was unlit and the room cold—I unfolded the second sheet that I had not yet read, from where I had kept it in my sleeve. It could hardly be of any great importance compared with the rest and I was weary of official documents. Fortunately it was brief enough to be taken in at a glance, sealed with the Duke’s own seal but in the recognisable script of Sir Thomas Hungerford.

An invitation is issued to Lady Katherine de Swynford and her daughter Joan Beaufort to attend the household of the Countess of Hereford at Rochford Hall in the county of Essex in April of this coming year. It is hoped that Lady de Swynford will apply her skills in attendance on Lady Mary de Bohun, Countess of Derby.

I stared at it for some time, able to feel, despite my own woes, some sympathy for the child bride, Mary de Bohun, barely out of her first decade. Married to Henry of Lancaster, now Earl of Derby, the young couple were both considered too young for the physical demands of matrimony. It had been agreed that they should not live together until Mary was of an age to welcome childbirth.

Who can pronounce on such matters with confidence? The attraction between the two ran deep, Mary was smitten and Henry lacked the willpower to hold back. A sweet girl, here she was at thirteen years and carrying the ducal heir. Such a young child to give birth, younger than I had been when I had carried Blanche. It was no surprise to me that the Countess of Hereford, Mary’s concerned mother, had solicited my aid in this immature pregnancy.

Except that it did surprise me. Barred from the Lancaster household, why would the Countess open her august doors at Rochford Hall to me as she had once accepted me at Pleshey Castle?

Considering, I folded the invitation, sharpening the creases with my thumbnail.

This invitation did not come from the Countess’s lips. Was this not simply another attempt, on the Duke’s part, to cushion his rejection of me? Another attempt to salve his conscience, together with the pension, and the frequent delivery of wine and the venison that would surely arrive any day soon on my doorstep? Why would he burden himself with these futile overtures? Since the quitclaim had made his future path as clear as day, I would have no compunction in refusing an invitation to attend the household of the heir to the dukedom and his child bride. I would not!