Richard, watchful, brimful of devilry, beckoned to me. ‘I would be honoured if you would accompany me, Lady Katherine—to give me your opinion of the apartments that I will have refurbished for my little bride. I know your taste in such matters to be beyond question.’

And I moved to walk at his side out of the Painted Chamber, my hand resting in his, which of course opened for me every door in the palace.

‘Are you satisfied?’ Richard whispered, the sibilants loud as we walked so that all must know that he exchanged confidences with me.

‘Yes, Sire.’

‘It gave me inordinate pleasure,’ he chuckled, ‘to stir the waters a little.’

And I nodded. We understood each other very well. He had put himself out to smooth my path, and done so with considerable skill. From that moment, no lady of the court who valued either her position or the King’s goodwill for herself or her husband could afford to brush me aside.

‘Well?’ John asked when it was all done and we could escape to our rooms.

‘Good,’ I said. ‘It was Richard who came to my rescue.’

‘It was your own good sense.’ John was at his most sardonic. ‘And I know you have enough of it not to trust our mischievous king too much. He is guided purely by his own wishes. Today it pleased him to twitch the tails of the tabbies. Tomorrow—who knows?’

I cared not. My acceptance was assured, my role at court for the welcoming of the little queen made plain. I stared into my mirror, admiring the jewelled net that anchored my hair, thoroughly enjoying the prospect of my future role. I would travel to France and welcome the child bride. Joan would accompany me and might find a position in the royal household. John too had taken his rightful place at Richard’s side. None of my fears had been realised.

‘Why are you smiling?’ John asked.

‘Because I have persuaded Richard to take down the Halidon Hill tapestry from the new bride’s chambers.’

‘I always liked that one.’

‘You were never a six-year-old girl. At this moment a pretty scene of a lady with flowers and a hawk on her fist is being hung.’

‘Is that important?’

‘Not to me. It might be to his little wife who would have nightmares if faced nightly with scenes of death and mutilation. But Richard paid attention to me.’

‘Now what?’ For I had laughed.

‘It’s even more important that you pay attention to me.’

‘About what?’

‘This.’ I cast my mirror onto the bed and kissed him. ‘The Duchess of Lancaster demands your attention.’

He gave it willingly. And yet as I lay in his arms in the aftermath of our lovemaking I could not help but agree with the Duke’s assessment. Why did I think that Richard was playing games with us all? And that he had not finished? It might be that he had not even started.

But that was a matter to be pushed aside as I fell into sleep, for John, in his ultimate wisdom, had promised me one final step in eradicating the transgressions of our past and awarding me glorious recognition as the Duchess of Lancaster.

‘What of our children?’ I had asked. ‘Will their legitimacy always be questioned?’

‘Certainly not,’ he had replied.




Chapter Twenty-One

There we stood. John and I and the four children that I had born him out of wedlock, all clad in white and blue. Lancaster colours, for that was what they were, bastards no longer. Fair of colouring, dark of hair, with a red burnishing when lit by the sun, they were without question their father’s children, and never had I see four young people so comfortably at ease with what life had handed them. Bastard or legitimate child, their confidence was a mirror image of John’s. It never failed to astonish me. Perhaps it was the care and love I had lavished on them for their own sakes as well as that of their father. Perhaps it was that they had never had need to question their place in the world. John had been openhandedly generous to them, cherishing them since the day they were born, even when we two were estranged and I could not speak of him without heaping curses on his head. If ever a family had felt loved, here it was, fully legitimised since His Holiness had finally been persuaded to sanction our offspring. I had not asked if John’s purse of gold had been necessary.

Today the final jewel was to be set in their combined diadem.

The official awaiting us at the door cleared his throat loudly. Joan smiled complacently. Young John—with all the dignity and importance of being a knight as well as a new husband to royally connected Margaret Holland—firmed his shoulders. Henry looked for a moment uncomfortable out of clerical garb, before grinning at me with a little shrug. Thomas was simply Thomas, irreverent and still growing into his limbs with all the adolescent grace of an autumn crane fly.

The pride in John’s face echoed mine. He took my hand, bowed and led me forward.

The Lords, fully assembled in the Parliament chamber, were waiting for us, every seat occupied, the whole assembly gleaming with a patchwork of colour beneath the boldness of the arches. Forcing my fingers to lie lightly in John’s hand, I inclined my head left and right, acknowledging the faces I knew. And there Thomas Arundel, the Archbishop of Canterbury, waited to receive us, ushering us into the centre of the chamber where we made our obeisance to the Lords. The silence of solemnity fell on us as four lords approached at a signal from the cleric, one of them holding the folds of a mantle over his arm.

‘We are here this day to perform this heavy and age-old ceremony granting legitimacy to these mantle-children.’

The mantle, of white damask to signal purity, gold fringed and banded with ermine to speak of royal authority, was spread, a corner to be taken by each of the four lords, who lifted it high above our heads on gilded poles, until we were entirely covered by its shadow.

‘Richard by the grace of God, King of England and France to our most dear cousins…’

John was looking at me. The Archbishop, his voice suitably sonorous, was using the words from the King’s own Letter Patent. There would never be any doubting the authority of this ceremony. Our children would be fixed into the legal structure of England for all time.

‘We think it proper and fit that we should enrich you…’

For here was the case. His Holiness’s recognition ultimately in writing, might have removed the taint of bastardy from our Beaufort children, but that was insufficient to give them any position under the laws of inheritance. If they were ever to have the right to inherit land or title, to establish their own families with provision for their own children, they needed this ceremony under the spread of this mantle.

‘We think it proper that we enrich you, our most dear cousins, who are begotten of royal blood, with the strength of our royal prerogative of favour and grace…’

We emerged into the same antechamber we had left only an hour before, newly resplendent with legitimacy. The sapphires stitched on my bodice glimmered as I drew in a breath of sheer delight at the sweeping away of all the shadowy illegalities of the past. My life with John had been given legal sanction and I could ask for nothing more. Unable to express my sense of ultimate fulfilment, I simply smiled at my children.