Katherine walked slowly across the courtyard and the drawbridge to stand by the old mounting block. Her two sons held back nervously in the court, where Joan joined them, saying, "Tamkin came with him. O Blessed Mary, make everything go well!" She crossed herself and lifting her beads began to whisper a rosary. Her brothers drew close to her. The three stood waiting.
The Duke reined in his black stallion when he came to the church. A watchful squire ran up and held the horse. The Duke dismounted. He was not armoured, he wore an enveloping violet-coloured mantle trimmed with ermine; an intricately draped furred hood concealed most of his face. As he advanced towards her across the trodden snow, Katherine curtsied deeply and said, "Welcome to Kettlethorpe, my lord."
He pulled off his jewelled gauntlet and took her bare hand in his. "Am I truly well come, Katrine?" he said in a harsh thick tone.
She raised her eyes to his face. Deep new lines on the forehead, lines from the nostrils of the long nose to the corners of the set, thin-lipped mouth. Grey hairs in the tawny eyebrows above eyes of a quieter blue; sad, questioning eyes. A long white scar ran from left ear to forehead and had puckered the eyelid. Dear God, so much change, she thought. Yet it was still the face she had so greatly loved.
"You are well come, my lord," she repeated evenly, though she felt the touch of his hand like a burn. "Our - the Beauforts await you most eagerly."
He glanced where she did through the gatehouse to the courtyard, where his children were grouped by the Hall door. "Ay," he said, "and I've brought Tamkin. But I should like to see you alone first."
"Why for, my lord?" she said drawing back her hand. "What have we to say alone now?"
"Katrine, I beg you!"
" 'Tis not so easy to be alone at Kettlethorpe," she said with a faint cool smile.
"The church?" he suggested. " 'Twill be empty at this hour?"
She inclined her head and preceded him through the lych-gate. The church had been decorated with holly and evergreens for The New Year; the nave, which was the village hall in winter, was still cluttered with small tables from the "church ale" and fair they had held here yesterday; the rushes were strewn with candle wax, nut-shells, crumbs. Five children stood by a thatched stable which enclosed crudely painted home-made figures of the nativity, and loudly disputed whether the Baby were smiling or not.
The Duke glanced at them, removed his draped headdress and said, "Farther up in the choir - surely 'twill be quieter." He walked around the rood screen.
Candles burned before the statue of the Blessed Virgin, and a wall painting of Saints Peter and Paul, the church's patrons. Four long tapers flickered in a small chapel Katherine had built behind the Swynford choir stall. They shone on a tomb with the brightly tinted effigy of a knight in armour.
The Duke paused by the tomb and looked down at the knight, at the boarhead crest on the helm, the shield with three boars' heads on a chevron, the bearded face, which bore little resemblance to the original since it had been carved in Lincoln from Katherine's description, only a few years ago. Slowly the Duke crossed himself. "May God comfort and keep his soul," he said, and turned to Katherine, who stood at the entrance of the chapel, her hood pulled far over her face.
"Katrine," he said, "is this to stand between us, forever?"
In the moments during which she did not answer, the voices of the children in the nave rose louder until one cried "Hush!" in a frightened voice; there was a scamper of feet and the west door banged, leaving silence.
"There is far more than Hugh that stands between us, my lord," she said into the silence.
He made a gesture, impatient, resigned, letting his hand fall slack. He left the tomb to stand beside her in the aisle. Suddenly he raised his hand and brushed back her hood, staring down at her face, into the wide grey eyes that met his steadily, without bitterness; but neither did they soften under his long gaze, they held detachment, a watchful calmness that daunted him. He reached out his finger to touch the white streaks at her temples. "Age on you has but added swan's wings to your fairness," he said wryly, "while I'm grizzled and hacked like an old badger - -"
"You do yourself injustice, my lord. Badgers are hunched, lumpy creatures, while you are still straight as a lance." She spoke in a light social tone, as he had heard her chatting with knights of his retinue long ago. She replaced her hood, and glanced down the nave towards the door, obviously checked only by the courtesy from suggesting that they leave.
In that instant, John forgot that he was Duke of Lancaster, while his last doubt vanished. From the deepest springs of his being, words bubbled to his lips, so that he stammered like a page-boy. "Katrine - Katrine - you make this so hard - my God, is there nothing left for me at all? We can't be forever thinking of the dead. We're getting old, 'tis true, but we're still alive - and if you feel nothing more for me - if too much has passed since we were together - then think of our children, for them at least it's not too late - -"
He stopped, trembling - his close-shaven cheeks had turned a dull brick-red, he was breathing fast, painfully.
Katherine swallowed, she saw his flushed pleading face through a fog and spoke with remote sad scorn. "Is some bargain still necessary between us, to aid my children's advancement? Has our age, at least, not removed incentive to further shame!"
He gasped, and stared at her. Then he clenched his fist, banging it on the wooden rim of the choir stall. "Christ, Katrine! I'm asking you to marry me!"
The dusky little church, the candlelight, the evergreens spiralled around her.
"It must have occurred to you?" he said with more control, astonished at her dazed face. "Surely when Costanza died - and now when I've summoned all our Beauforts here - Katrine, I could not come sooner - the King sent me to Aquitaine - -" He had entirely forgotten the doubts and uncertainties he had felt, how he had not been entirely sure until he saw her again.
"It did not occur to me," she said in a wooden voice. "After your Duchess died, I hoped for a word from you, then even that desire passed. I received you today for our children's sake.
There's much you can do for them - if you will-" She could not think, there was no feeling but shock, and dislocation.
"What better can I do for them, than have them legitimated?" he said, half smiling. "This, Richard has agreed to in the event of our marriage, and the Pope will confirm it."
"Legitimated," she repeated, "legitimated - I've never heard of that. Jesu - the stain of bastardy cannot be wiped out!"
He nodded slowly. "It can." Legitimation was an unusual procedure. There had in fact never been a precedent entailing circumstances quite like these. But English law permitted it; this he had verified. "With the King decreeing their legitimacy in the temporal realm, and the Pope as Christ's vicar in the spiritual, how can anything in heaven and earth then gainsay their true birth?" he said gently.
Her face crumpled like a child's. She raised her twisted hands to her mouth and walked rapidly down to the nave, seeking to be alone - to integrate herself. This sensation was as shattering as pain, indistinguishable from it.
After a time, he came down and stood beside her. "Katrine," he said touching her shoulder, "it is necessary that we be married first, you know. I trust this is not too great a hindrance. Have you any thought for me - as well as the children?"
"I don't know yet," she said, staring at the rushes. "I can't realise. My lord - the Duke of Lancaster does not wed his paramour, and one of common stock - how could the King countenance this?"
"Well, he has," said John dryly. Richard at present would countenance far more than that to please his eldest uncle and annoy his youngest one.