Now I knelt in Westminster Abbey with the royal court, for Queen Anne was dead from the plague, which took no account of her rank or her mere twenty-eight years. Richard, unhinged almost to madness, had ordered the rooms of the palace at Sheen where she had breathed her last to be razed to the ground.

I allowed my eyes to rest on the rigid shoulder-blades of the Duke. Straight backed, the Duke was suffering from grief too, and not only for the passing of Duchess Constanza. The wound of desperate loss was made so much worse for him for Mary, dear, sweet Mary, Henry’s child bride, was dead at Hertford with her seventh child—a daughter, Philippa—in her arms. I was there with her, and heartbroken. Henry was inconsolable. Had he not sent her a basket of delicate fish which she loved to help her through the pregnancy? And now she was dead.

What a crippling homecoming for the Duke, to bury Constanza and Mary at Leicester, within a day of each other.

The ceremony was drawing to a close. Ahead, Richard stood, looking distracted. Was he already drawing up new marriage contracts for himself and for the Duke? All I knew of high policy was that Richard had confirmed my lord as Duke of Aquitaine and that the Duke was already preparing to sail to enforce his authority there. What if he came back with a wife, some Aquitainian beauty, as he had once returned with Constanza?

There were rumours. There were always rumours.

Be sensible, I abjured myself. Rumours can be false as often as they are true.

My abjuration had no noticeable effect.

‘Do you intend to remarry? Will you return with a new bride?’

My demands were made as soon as I stepped across the threshold of the Duke’s record chamber at Leicester on this eve of departure. I had barely taken time to greet my son John whom I had passed between stable and Great Hall.

The Duke looked up but did not stir from where he sat. Demands—other than mine—lay heavily on him, as I could see. He was harassed.

‘And a good day to you, Lady de Swynford,’ he growled.

I strode up to stand before the long trestle table that habitually occupied the centre of the room. It was covered with documents from one end to the other.

‘I hear that Richard has a new marriage arranged for you. Has he?’

‘And who would be the fortunate lady?’ The pen was thrown aside. Elbows planted on the table, the Duke rested his chin on his hands and looked me in the eye.

‘I have no idea. Would you not know before me?’

‘I expect I would. Why would I want a wife when I have you to hound me?’

‘I am allowed to hound you. I am your love.’ I smiled with deceptive sweetness. ‘I am told that you intend to wed again. For an alliance.’

‘I intend to go to Aquitaine. If I can ever manage to get the fleet together and the forces to accompany me. And Richard has his mind set on his own new wife rather than on mine.’

I was almost intrigued enough to ask who she might be, but would not be distracted. He was short on temper, but then so was I. Short on patience too. I saw documents, lists and tallies under his hand. In the circumstances he might wish I wasn’t there. I hunched a shoulder as I moved to occupy one of the stools set along the wall, as if I were a clerk waiting instructions.

‘When will you return?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know. I have to get there first.’

‘When do you go?’

‘Next week. From Plymouth if I’m allowed to get on with it.’

I breathed out, no better at bearing the looming absence than I had twenty years before, for that was at the heart of my ill-humour. I would be alone, without knowledge of him, for as many months as it would take. There were plenty who would try their hand again, to rid the world of the new Duke of Aquitaine, with a cup of poison. Or a hidden dagger.

The Duke stacked the documents into a pile, then the endless lists with brisk irritability, before tunnelling his fingers through his hair. The sun highlighted more silver than I had recalled. And I sighed.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, quite as irritable as he. It did not sound like an apology.

For what?’

‘For disturbing you when you might wish to be left alone. But I had to come.’

He stared at me. I knew he would wait until I had confessed all.

‘And for thinking that you would marry again without telling me.’ I scowled a little. ‘I still think you might.’

The Duke thrust aside the papers, stood and stepped round the table and in one fluid movement, lifting me to my feet, took me in his arms. He could still move fast enough to take me by surprise. Especially when I did not try very hard to escape.

‘If I take a wife, you will be the first to know.’ He kissed me gently. Then more fiercely, after which I smoothed the line between his eyes with my finger. ‘Does that settle your ill-temper?’

‘A little.’ I was almost won over.

‘Where will you go?’ he asked.

‘To Lincoln. It suits me very well. Send word to me when you can.’

‘You know that I will.’ He kissed me again. Then, ‘Pray for me,’ he said suddenly.

‘When do I ever not?’ His urgency had surprised me.

‘Pray that Richard isn’t swayed into seeing me as his enemy who has an eye to royal power. Pray for me and for Richard, Katherine. He’s not to be trusted in where he takes his advice. Who will advise him to have that good sense when I am away?’

There was no answer to the question. ‘I will pray.’

‘And pray that Henry can keep his head and not provoke Richard to something outrageous, from which there is no way back.’

‘I will.’

For a long moment he rested his cheek against mine so that we stood, breathing slowly together, his arms holding me firmly against him, and I allowed myself to hold fast to what would be a precious memory in the coming months.

‘I feel set about with worries for this kingdom,’ he said at last.

‘Then I will pray all the harder.’ I smiled in an attempt to lift the burden by whatever small amount I could manage. ‘If you kiss me. And at least pretend for the next few hours that you have time for me.’

He did. He did both.

Yet next morning when I left him to his arrangements, his embrace was perfunctory and abstracted. I would also pray that he did not return with a new bride of European importance. I could withstand it. But I would not like it.

It was January with snow on the ground yet the Duke, new returned from Aquitaine, had braved the roads to come to Lincoln with an impressive retinue. This no longer stirred any surprise in me, although his choice of travelling weather did. So what was afoot? I surveyed his arrival most deliberately from the vantage point of my parlour in the Chancery. There was the Duke, of course, swathed in heavily furred cloak and hat. A tight knot of soldiers and a sergeant-at-arms. A clerk, his confessor, a master of horse and sundry others of squires and pages.

My heart was thundering beneath the heavy volume of my houppelande.

And then my heart steadied. There was no female figure. He did not have a new wife with him. He was alone and here with me at last, filling my vision completely, and I was smiling when I drew him into my parlour, all the niggling worries of my days smoothed out like a new wool cloth. Once alone, he duly kissed my cheeks and lips in formal acknowledgement, and sank into the chair I pushed him towards. I did not bother him with personal questions or demands. It always took a little time for us to step across the divide that the months apart had created. The moments of intimacy would present themselves eventually, and would be sweeter for the delay

‘Katherine.’

That was all he said. It was all he needed to say to restore the bond that held us after a full year of separation. His eyes, full of light, full of love, rested on my face.

‘John,’ I replied in kind, pressing my palm against his shoulder, then moving quietly to pour ale. He drank deeply from the cup, before placing it on the hearth, stretching out his legs to cross his ankles before the fire. His boots steamed, so did his travelling clothes, filling the room with the pungency of horse and leather and wet wool.

‘It’s good to be still for more than two minutes together.’

I sank to a cushion on the settle opposite, prepared to wait.

Briefly his eyes closed, his face such a mask of weariness that my hands clenched hard around my own cup. It was easy to forget how the years passed and added to our tally of age, but that was all forgotten when he opened his eyes and smiled at me. They were keen and bright, not weary at all. The austere lines of his face softened into the handsome man I knew so well.

‘Well?’ I asked in response to his smile, returning it. I had missed him so very much. Everything in my world tilted back to normality.

John leaned forward, arms braced on his thighs, looking across to me. ‘Do you know what I most admire in you?’

‘My intelligence?’ I responded promptly. My hands relaxed in my lap. This was certainly the man I knew.

‘Your intelligence is unsurpassed—but no, not that.’

‘My hair.’

‘Not that either. Nor can I see it since it’s covered with that little padded creation that I understand has become the rage. I like the beads. You look like a Twelfth Night gift.’ Those eyes gleamed as they had done in the past, dispelling for ever the image of age and death. ‘I’ll take pleasure in winding your hair round my wrist later and show you how much I admire it.’

I remained suitably stern. ‘Then it must be that you admire my way with land drainage and poor crops and tenant squabbles.’

He laughed. ‘Never! You’ll never solve the drainage problems.’

‘Then you’ll have to tell me.’

‘It is your ineffable patience. And your generosity of spirit.’

I tilted my head against the high back of the settle. If only he knew. How often had I run to my window, drawn by the sound of hooves? How often had I buried myself in a frenzy of paperwork to drive him from my mind when he could not be with me?

‘I’ve been back a month and could not come to you. You never complain.’

‘Agnes would not agree with you,’ I remarked drily.

‘Which makes your even temper even more marvellous. I was summoned to present myself at court by our illustrious King.’

‘What now?’

‘Ruffled feathers all round. Richard wanted my support.’ The taut line of his jaw suggested that there was something else, apart from Richard’s obtuse refusal to see the dangers that surrounded him. ‘He wants a French alliance,’ he continued. ‘A French bride perhaps.’

‘And what do you think?’

‘I think that what I think no longer matters. My brother Gloucester abhors any such suggestion. Richard hopes I can persuade him, or at least hold the balance between the pair of them. They were at each other’s throats like rabid alaunts when I got there.’

‘Will he listen to you?’

‘Richard or Gloucester? Who’s to say? We all parted amicably enough, but I think my days of holding any influence over Richard are well and truly numbered. And then I went to Canterbury. A prayer before St Thomas never goes amiss.’

I watched his expression carefully, trying to read what he was not saying. ‘A prayer for what, exactly?’

Which he ignored. ‘Come here, my beloved.’

I knelt at his feet, as I had done so often before, expecting him to take my hands in his as a prelude to our seeking some privacy for the rest of the day, but instead he reached within the breast of his tunic and withdrew a document. I opened the single sheet without a cover as he dropped it into my hand. A letter. Or rather a copy of a letter, since it had no seals, but the signature was John’s own although the script was that of his clerk. Then I saw the superscription…I saw the crucial, particular word. Carefully I folded the sheet closed again, looked up into his face and governed my voice.

‘I knew it would happen, of course. I hoped it would not be so soon. I should be pleased for you.’ My smile felt all wrong on my mouth but I fought to keep it in place. ‘You know I will not make a fuss.’ My whole body felt full of unshed tears. It was a request for a papal dispensation to allow a marriage. ‘Richard holds you in a higher regard than you think,’ I continued. ‘Who is she?’

It would be some puissant lady from Burgundy or Aragon. Perhaps a connection of the powerful Valois family. A princess was not beyond his sights. Even an English lady whose family Richard wished to shackle to the Crown. Who was important enough for John of Lancaster, King’s son, Duke of Aquitaine?

I considered. No, it was not unexpected, but that did not mean that it did not tear at me with sharp incisors. I held out the request, to return it to him. I should be gratified that he had ridden so far to tell me of it, for of course he could not refuse if Richard insisted.