The Scandalous Duchess (15 page)

‘Amen.'

‘I pray—'

‘By the Blessed Virgin, Katherine,' now the Duke murmured, ‘do we pray for the whole of our acquaintance?'

But I continued. ‘I pray for the clarity of mind of the
King. And for your mercy on Prince Edward in his great suffering.'

‘Amen.'

I took a breath.

‘I pray for the health of my unborn child. The child of this man who kneels with me to join with me in this petition. We pray for this child who will need the compassion of the Blessed Virgin.'

The atmosphere in the chapel bore down on us, drenched with the remnants of old incense and a multitude of unconfessed sins. The Duke's hands gripped harder than ever. So did mine.

Until: ‘Amen. Amen indeed,' he whispered on a soft exhalation.

I was carrying John of Lancaster's child.

Why had I, with all my much-vaunted experience, not been more cognisant of the dangers? Were there not methods to prevent such eventualities, known to wise women and any wife with a care for preserving her own health? Or known to a mistress intent on preventing a debacle such as this? In the final weeks of Constanza's pregnancy, I was, unknowingly, embarking on the first weeks of my own.

The realisation had travelled with me on the journey from London back to Hertford. I had been a little weary, lacking in energy, but, foolishly, I had never considered that I would fall for a child from that first expression of our love at The Savoy. My reaction was one of wonder. I had spread my fingers over my belly and marvelled at the fact that I carried the child of the man I loved more than I could ever express.

But then, when Constanza had smiled down into the face
of her baby, all my marvelling was undone. There we stood in my mind's eye. A deadly triangle of husband, wife and lover. This child born out of wedlock might blemish the Duke's reputation. It would assuredly destroy mine. Could it destroy our love?

What now? What do I do now?

The question had echoed again and again in my mind, without any sensible reply forthcoming. Instead, the repercussions struck home with the force of a lance in the hands of a master at the tourney, transmuting my delight to base dismay. How could I continue to exist in that household? How could I continue to live, a secret mistress to a wife untouched by knowledge, and I bearing a child, my belly growing under her interested gaze.

I did not have the presumption to do that.

Whilst on a practical level, how would I explain away my burgeoning state, with no husband?

Even more unnerving—and I confessed to not knowing the answer—what would the Duke say to my predicament? Would he banish me to some distant castle until after nine months my shame was dealt with and my figure restored? Or would he brazen it out at Hertford, and claim the child as his own, with Constanza destroyed by the humiliation?

I tried to see myself through the Duke's eyes, and I could not, my thoughts awry. Hypocrisy, as I well knew, was a bitter herb. Subterfuge at this despicable level was intolerable. There was only one course of action for me. I must leave before there was even the hint of suspicion about the width of my girdle. I could no longer be damsel to Duchess Constanza, knowing all the time that I was carrying her husband's child.

We would exercise discretion, we had agreed.

Before God, there was no discretion here.

And so I had come to Kettlethorpe as if I were some wild animal going to ground. Never had I felt such shame. Shame for me. Sorrow and shame for Constanza. I had looked at Constanza and her child, at the two Lancaster girls, Philippa and Elizabeth, at young innocent Henry, and it humbled me. How was I fit to give them guidance? We had taken a step beyond decency and rightness—and we were faced with the consequences.

Now I had to face them in the Duke's unpredictable reaction.

‘Amen,' I echoed.

I made the sign of the cross.

‘Not here,' he said as I stood to face him. Gripping my hand, he pulled me after him from the main body of the chapel into a little side alcove where an old altar had once stood, now bare and dusty, no longer dressed for worship. ‘I feel better that we speak of this away from the Virgin's immediate presence.'

‘Does it make it any less of a catastrophe where we speak of it?' My confidence was waning fast.

‘Katherine…'

I could not read what was in his face. Anger or joy? Acceptance or repudiation? For the first time I acknowledged the depths of my fear, for this should never have happened. Was I some irresponsible kitchen maid, enjoying the pleasures of the flesh in her first taste of sexual satisfaction? I knew the dangers. I knew what must not happen
between such lovers as we were, for ever in the public eye. There were any number of old wives' methods that were not unknown to me.

How to stimulate the menses to achieve bleeding from the womb
.
Take the root of the red willow…

My belly clenched, my hands flattening themselves on my embroidered belt. I would not. One sin was enough for the day. I would bear this child.

I bent my head in sudden despair, until I felt the Duke's fingers, as cold as mine yet light against my face, lifting my chin so that I must bear the weight of his judgement. Except that his eyes were gentle, the corners of his lips relaxed as they were when I kissed them. All the anger, all the impatience, had gone.

‘What were you thinking, to run away from me? What are you thinking now?' He wiped a stray tear—one I had been unaware of—from my cheek with the back of his hand.

‘I am thinking that I do not know what you are thinking.' I shook my head at how muddled it sounded.

‘Very erudite.' He smiled at little. ‘Is that all?'

‘I am thinking that I will carry this child to full term.'

His hand, smoothing softly against my neck as if I were a restive mare, paused. ‘Did you think I would advise otherwise?'

‘No. I know you would not. But it would be a way out for some women.'

‘But not for you.'

‘No, not for me.'

‘Nor for me. Why did you not tell me?'

‘I did not know what you would say. I thought you might condemn me.'

Hands now firmly on my shoulders, he drew me close so that his chin could rest against my confined hair. Although his eyes were closed I sensed a depth of emotion that shuddered through his veins.

‘Why would I be? The child is of both our making.'

‘But a child born without legitimacy can pose a problem,' I whispered. ‘It would not be the first time that a powerful man has chosen to rid himself of a mistress who has inconveniently found herself compromised.'

He raised his head, eyes wide and undoubtedly stern. ‘So you thought I would dispatch you and the child to the depths of the country.'

‘You might. For Constanza's sake as well as your own.'

‘And you pre-empted it by coming here.'

‘I had to.'

‘Because you could not face me? Or was it that you could not face Constanza, day after day?' he asked with brutal intuition, and did not even wait for my acquiescence. ‘It is my guilt too. We will bear it together. Did you think I would abandon you?'

The Duke kissed me thoroughly.

‘I thought I must remove a complication…'

‘I do not see you as a complication. Nor this child.'

‘But you must regret what we have done.' He thought about this, rubbing his fingers over my knuckles. ‘John…?'

‘No. It is God's will. The child is a consequence of our union, and so we will nurture it. Is that not so?'

‘Yes.'

There was no other reply I could make as we stood together
in the dusty atmosphere, fingers enmeshed. Until he spread his palm against my waist, and I covered it with mine.

‘How far on are you?' he asked, surprising me.

‘Three months.'

I could see him calculating. ‘You conceived the first time we lay together at The Savoy.' The rich tones of his laughter lifted to the roof-beams. ‘How amazingly effective our unplatonic, un-divine coming together proved to be. Perhaps it was the effect of that poor specimen of a rose after all.' Then sliding his arm around my waist he began to lead me to the door. ‘Will you stay here?'

‘Yes.'

‘I'll send you timber to stop the drips in the roof.'

And I laughed with him, in relief and in recognition of a little flame of joy that his acceptance had ignited in me. ‘It will be welcome.'

And then we were outside, where the rain had stopped and the low sun had begun to shine, coating every surface in diamond drops, and his arm fell away for form's sake. We walked slowly back, at arm's length, towards the hall, as if discussing the state of the local highways.

‘I'll come when I can,' he said as he drew back to allow me to enter before him, managing to brush his hand down the length of my arm, to brush his fingers against mine. ‘You know I'm committed to my father's naval campaign against France.'

‘I will look for you when you can come.' I must not be selfish.

And then, when we were standing alone in my private chamber, I became thoroughly selfish as the Duke's reassurances,
murmured against my temple as he loosed the pins from my hair, held all the power of an oath before the Blessed Virgin.

‘Although I may be far away, I will have my people watch over you. You will be constantly in my thoughts. This child will be as precious to me as any child that Constanza bears, even those of Blanche. Even my heir. You will be brave and steadfast. There is a fire in you that astonishes me.'

If I had lacked fire in those insecure days before his arrival, the Duke set it ablaze with a conviction that I loved him enough to face the stigma and the consequences. He spent the night with me in my marital bed, which proved too short for his long limbs, but no detriment to his ardour or his imagination, and then he snatched a second day to spend it riding with me and my steward around the nearer acres of the estate.

Parting was difficult.

‘Keep in good health,' I said, with an arm's length between us. ‘I will pray for you.'

‘And I for you. God keep you, dearest Katherine.'

The Duke in his ineffable wisdom understood that I could not bear an emotional parting. He was going to Aquitaine. His life would be in danger, so there was always that lurking fear beneath my heart: would death on a distant battlefield take him from me? But we would not part in sorrow. After he had kissed my lips and my brow, abjuring me that our child, which would undoubtedly be a son, should be given the name John, making me laugh with his cool certainty about the matter, I set myself to endure the loneliness with fortitude.

I screamed in agony.

‘Holy Virgin,' I panted when I could. ‘I don't remember such travail as this!'

‘You never do, once the pain is past and the child born,' Agnes observed as she pressed a damp cloth to my forehead.

My pains started in January, on a day of winter cold and frost, the usual ripple of discomfort that deepened and lengthened fast becoming a claw of agony. I drank the wine mixed with Agnes's tried-and-tested potion and looked for completion within the day, but this child was different, when nothing seemed to progress except a monstrous pain that gripped my body and held it in thrall. I lost count of the hours, barely noting the change from light to dark beyond my window, conscious of nothing but what seemed to be the tearing apart of my flesh and bone for the sake of this creature that refused to be born.

‘I was worried about this,' Agnes muttered as she allowed me to grip her hands, nails digging deep.

‘Well, now you're proved right!' I groaned as the appalling clenching ebbed.

As if she had some premonition of my birthing difficulties, Agnes had been careful of me in recent weeks, insisting on a diet of eggs and fowl, broths of fish. She had rubbed my belly with hot goose-grease. All to no avail.

Was this punishment for my sin? For our sin?

‘Will I lose this child?' I cried out in another fleeting lull. ‘Is this God's will?'

‘It may be.' Even in my extremity I heard the worry in her voice. ‘But we'll fight for him.'

She pulled me from my bed.

‘I cannot walk…' The muscles in my legs would hardly carry me.

‘You will, my lady, if you wish to see this child alive. But slowly…'

She led me up and down my hall, up and down the stairs. And then such tortures as Agnes inflicted on me. Frankincense wafted under my nose to make me sneeze again and again. A bitter tincture of mint and wormwood forced on me, even though I resisted.

Finally she looped the coral beads of my rosary round my neck.

‘Fetch the snakeskin from my coffer,' Agnes growled at my diary maid. ‘We'll need it if this child is born dead.'

‘No!' I resisted such a thought, my hand fastening like a claw on Agnes's wrist.

That must not be. The child—living and breathing—might cut my reputation to shreds and beyond all mending, but I would not see it dead.

I struggled to my feet and began to walk again, using the bed hangings, the tapestries, anything for support, as well as Agnes's stalwart shoulder. Conscious only of pain and exhaustion, the cloying fumes that filled the chamber, I wept in my terror. Surely no child could withstand such a process of birth.

What was it that tipped the balance? When all seemed lost, when I could walk no more, when I could withstand no more hurt, the child, my son, was eased from my body by Agnes, her hands slick with linseed and fenugreek. She picked him up and wrapped him in linen as if he were a fine prince, not some small, wizened creature, mewling like a weak kitten.

Then silence.

I looked at her face, from where I had sunk down on the floor beside my bed.

‘Agnes…?' Her features were tight.

‘Rest awhile…'

‘I wish to see him.'

And as she pushed the matted tendrils of hair back from my face, I reached up to take my child in my arms. Here was no fine prince. His face was suffused, eyes screwed tight, lips flaccid and scant black hair plastered to his skull. It seemed that he gasped for air. Despite the sweat and blood that covered both of us, I held him close to my breast.