"Hark!" said Hawise suddenly, pulling a wry mouth. "There's my Lady Janet with the twins." They both listened to the familiar clatter of hooves in the courtyard, and heard the peevish howling of babies.
"Yes," said Katherine rising and reaching for her mantle. "The day's festivities most merrily commence."
That's not like her, Hawise thought gloomily, while she continued to straighten the solar, that dry bitter inflexion from one who had shown of late years a nearly constant sweetness and courage. Hawise paused by the prie-dieu and picking up her mistress' beads said a rosary for her. Still dissatisfied, she hunted through Katherine's dressing coffer until she found a little brass pin which she threw into the fire with a wish, and felt better. "Cry before breakfast, sing before supper," she quoted from Dame Emma's collection of comforting lore.
Hawise's prayer and wish were granted, though not before supper and by nothing as simple as cheerful song.
The villagers had finished their feasting, the boards had been cleared, and stacked with the trestles in the corner of the Hall. Cob had made his speech. He had sent hot colour to Katherine's cheeks, mist to her eyes with his eulogies, and her tenants had cheered her exuberantly. Two ne'er-do-wells from Laughterton had even brought her some back rent that she had despaired of getting, and there had been copious donations of apples, and little cakes baked by the village wives.
Now Katherine sat on in the hour before bed strumming her lute, while Joan sang and Janet listened vaguely. The twins were asleep in their cradle by the hearth. Hawise sat by the kitchen screen mending sheets. The house carls had all gone off to the village tavern to wind up the day. The forty-five big candles still burned, and shed unusual brilliance in the old Hall.
"I wonder where my brothers all are tonight?" said Joan in a pause between songs. "Lord, I wish I was a man."
Her mother's heart tightened. So dreary for the child here in this middle-aged woman's household, such tame distractions to offset the cankering hidden love.
"Well," said Katherine lightly, "we know Harry's studying in Germany and Tamkin is supposed to be at Oxford, though I wouldn't count on it." She smiled. Tamkin was no scholar like Harry, who had already risen further in the Church than had ever seemed possible. There could be no doubt that their father's secret influence had helped them all. This had often comforted her. Young John had achieved at last his great ambition and been knighted, after he travelled with Lord Henry to the Barbary Coast. A lovable fellow Johnnie was and had made his way as a soldier of fortune, despite the hindrance of his birth. Even Richard liked him - so far anyway - and had taken him with the army to Ireland last year.
"I don't know where Thomas is," said Janet suddenly in her plaintive whine. "I hope he gets home for Christmas; he never lets me know anything."
"Poor Janet." Katherine put down the lute and sighed. "Waiting is woman's lot. I don't suppose I'll see my Johnnie for many a long day, either."
Janet's small pale eyes sent her mother-in-law a resentful look. A blind mole could see that Lady Katherine preferred her baseborn sons to her legitimate one, and Janet considered this shameful. Her discontented gaze roamed around the Hall, which was larger and better furnished than Coleby's. She indulged in a familiar calculation as to how long it would be before Tom inherited. But Lady Katherine seemed healthy enough and looked, most infuriatingly, ten years younger than she was, a manifestly unfair reward for a wicked life.
"I think I'll go to bed," said Joan yawning. "With you, I suppose, Mother?"
Katherine nodded. The arrival of guests always meant switch of sleeping quarters. Janet, nurse and twins would occupy Joan's usual tower chamber - that had once been Nichola's.
Hawise put down her mending and began to blow out the candles. There were still twenty to go when the dogs started to bark outside. The blooded hound, Erro, that Sutton had given young John over eight years ago had been lying by the fire with his head on his paws. A dignified aristocrat, Erro, who did not consider himself a watchdog, and usually ignored the noisy antics of his inferiors. It was therefore astonishing to have him raise his head and whine, then leap up with one powerful bound and precipitate himself uproariously against the door.
"Strange," said Katherine running to hold his collar. "There's only one - Sainte Marie, could it be?" she added joyously.
And it was. Young John Beaufort came into the Hall on a swirl of soft snow. He caught his mother in his arms, kissed her heartily. "God's greeting, my lady! Sure your saint might have sent better weather to a son who's been hurrying to you these many days!"
He kissed his sister, Hawise, and, less enthusiastically, Janet, before quieting the ecstatic Erro, who barked fit to raise the dead in the churchyard across the road. John stood by the fire while the women fluttered around him removing his mantle, brushing snow from his curling yellow hair, unfastening his sword, and the gold knight's spurs of which he was so proud, heating ale for him in the long-handled iron pot over the fire.
"Oh dearling," Katherine cried, quivering with pride - surely there was no comelier young man in England - ''and you remembered your old mother's feast day! Johnnie, this is the pleasantest surprise, the goodliest thing that's happened to me in an age. I thought you abroad!"
"Well, I was." He sank into a chair with a grunt, held his steaming red-leather shoes towards the fire. "Until three weeks ago. In Bordeaux. Mother-" He turned and looked directly into her face. "I was not the only one there who remembered your saint's day."
Katherine's look of contented pride slowly dissolved, to be replaced by tenseness. She said slowly, "What were you doing at Bordeaux, Johnnie?"
Hawise's hands, which had been rubbing lard into John's wet shoe-leather, suddenly stilled. Janet ceased jiggling the twin's cradle and raised her head, not understanding the odd tone in her mother-in-law's voice. Joan looked from her mother to her brother and began to breathe fast.
"I was summoned by my father!"cried John triumphantly. "I spent a week with him and have brought you a letter from him. He wanted it to reach you today."
In Katherine's head there was a rumble like far-off thunder, while she felt a peculiar coolness as though the snow outside were melting through her veins.
"So you have met the Duke again," she said speaking from the depths of the coolness. "How does he seem?"
John's surprise that she did not at once ask for her letter was shared by Joan and Janet, but Hawise understood. She returned grimly to the shoe-leather and thought, Now what does that accursed Duke want?
"He's very tired, I think," said John, "and lean as - as Erro here, anxious to be back. His work is finished in Aquitaine, and Richard has summoned him home, much to Gloucester's fury, I believe."
"Ah - -" said Katherine.
"By God," said John eagerly, "of course, that stinking Thomas of Woodstock wants our father's grace kept out of the country, so he can have free hand with Richard and the foul plottings and warmongerings that Father holds in check. Richard's fed up for the time and is pro-Lancaster now."
"Ah - -" said Katherine again. "Far off as we are here, we've not followed court policies, or the King's whims. The Duke of Gloucester, that was Buckingham when I knew him, I thought to be in favour."
"Well, he's not now, and I think the King's afraid of him. That's why he wants Father's help. Mother," said John unbuttoning his surcote and pulling a parchment from his breast, "don't you want your letter? I'm in a fever to know what's in it!"