The Scandalous Duchess (32 page)

‘Is that what you believe?'

‘It is what I am told.'

Every muscle in his face was still. The jewels gleamed flatly, without movement. It was as if all his Plantagenet pride was under restraint. I had never seen it so. I could only attribute it to guilt.

‘And is it true that you labelled me a she-devil?' My voice
broke on the word. ‘An enchantress, who lured you into breaking your marital vows? Am I a snare of the Devil, to entice men into sin?'

I saw him take a breath.

‘They were not my words.'

‘No? Well, thank God for that!'

‘But you believe it of me.'

And there I heard a note of self-loathing, which I ignored. ‘I expect you implied them since they were well reported. Or you did not make too much haste to deny them. It would not be in your interest to do so, would it? What pleasure Walsingham must have had in putting such venom into your mouth. I expect he fell to his oh-so-pious knees before God and gave thanks for such a confession from the mighty Duke of Lancaster, the would-be King of Castile.'

His title shimmered into the silence as I drew breath at last. I was beyond remorse. He might have accepted for himself the vile charge of adultery, but he had coated me with the filth of witchcraft. What manner of attack would this lay me open to? I could not comprehend the horrors of my being brought to book for witchcraft.

‘Have you nothing to say?' I demanded. ‘I accuse you, but you do not defend yourself. Is there no defence? Are you guilty as charged?'

For the briefest moment he studied his hands, then he looked at me, and I saw what I had not seen before. His eyes were tired. Hard and grim. The eyes of John, my love, they were not. They were those of the Duke of Lancaster, putative King of Castile. Here was a different creature, not the man I had thought I knew.

How easy had it been for him to stop loving me?

‘I did not put the blame on you, Katherine,' he stated.

‘Ha!'

‘But yes, I said that we must part.'

‘Oh, I know you did. For the good of your immortal soul. Was I nothing more than a court concubine? Is that all I was to you, through nigh on ten years of sharing your bed and the travail of four children?' My hands were clenched hard in my skirts. ‘I have given up everything for you. I was a respectable widow when you issued your invitation. Did I lure you into that? I don't think so, my lord. As I recall the impetus was all yours. And yet you call me an enchantress, using witchcraft to undermine your strength of moral will.'

‘I have said…' How quiet his voice, how undemonstrative, but now the engraved lines that bracketed his mouth were deep. ‘The words were not mine.'

‘Yet you have repulsed me. You have destroyed all we meant to each other, stripping it of all that was good, stamping it into the earth as the grossest of sins.'

As his nose narrowed on an intake of breath, I thought he would react but he did not, except to say: ‘It was a sin, our being together. We both knew it.'

‘Yes, we did. Both of us. And we were prepared to live with it. And yet you reject me now. I gave you my good name. I gave you my unconditional love, my body, my conscience. I put them into your safe-keeping.'

‘Perhaps you should not have done that.'

Which took my breath. I could not answer so monstrous an assertion, that I had been wrong to trust him with my life, my happiness. My soul.

‘And our children?' I whispered against the grinding agony in my chest. ‘Are they also a sin?'

‘No, they are not.' His hands now unclasped, he flung them out at his sides. ‘Katherine, the sin is mine.'

‘Forgive me. But a greater part of it seems to be mine.' The edge that crept back into my reply could have sliced through a haunch of venison like Hugh the cook's cleaver. ‘I am despised by all, but Constanza has emerged in glory, in blinding-white robes. Oh, I know I cannot defend myself in helping you to commit adultery, in undermining Constanza's position in your life and household. I am not proud of my flaunting our love before her, or of stepping into the place she should have had at your side and in your bed. But she did not want you. I will not take all the blame.'

A pale fleeting emotion that I could not read touched his face.

‘There is no reasoning with you, is there?'

‘No. None.'

‘What more can I say?'

‘Did you weep, as they say you did, when you bared your soul in public?' I could not imagine his weeping in public penance. I could not. It was the most ludicrous of all the rumours.

The Duke did not reply. The austerity was hammered flat with intense weariness under my relentless assault. Instead, starkly, brusquely: ‘You must understand the new threat. There are French plans to invade England. The most effective way for us to prevent it is to make an alliance with Portugal. Between us we can invade and crush Castile, France's ally.' I could see that his mind was already taken up with the planning. ‘If I am to invade Castile I need to be reunited with Constanza. Enrique is dead, but his son Juan reigns in his stead. I need Constanza's authority behind
me if I am to oust King Juan and reclaim Castile. As it has always been…'

Another dart in my flesh, upon which I pounced with cruel delight, ignoring the high demands of English foreign policy. ‘And you put your authority in Castile before me? Of course you do. I would expect no other. Have you not always done so?'

He inclined his head in due acceptance, yet still, to my mind, twisted the blade.

‘I am a man of ambition. You knew that. You have always known that.'

There was no denying it. Unable to face him any longer, my limbs trembling with damp and too-fervent emotion, I stalked to the side of the room, and, spreading my skirts, I sat on one of the stools. It was not seemly for me to berate him like a fishwife. I would return to reason.

‘So you have done with me at last, my lord. I suppose that ten years is a fair record for a mistress.' I was proud of my light pronouncement. ‘I am banished to Kettlethorpe, with my children. I have no further place in your life.' I stared down at my interwoven fingers. I was suddenly so weary of it all and beyond anger.

‘There is more fault to tell, Katherine…'

‘Over and above the rest? What more can you possibly have done to hurt me?'

I heard his heavy inhalation. ‘I have not kept faith with you. When I repented…I renounced all the other women I had taken to my bed.'

‘All?' I exhaled slowly.

‘You were not the only one with whom I sinned.'

‘There were others?' And without allowing him to reply:
‘Before God, John! And are you going to argue weakness of the flesh? Opportunity? Availability?'

He stiffened, with a flare of temper burning through the control like fire through a field of dry grass. ‘I am a man with a man's appetites. But I have no excuses.'

I could not comprehend. I felt lost, everything I had believed in laid waste as if by the fire and sword of an avenging force. There had been other women in the ducal bed. When I had thought his love was mine alone, his body had betrayed me with other women. I could not contemplate how many, how often…

‘How many? One? Two?' I stood abruptly. I could not sit, but swept to the door. I could stay here with all the hurt and humiliation no longer. ‘Am I the last to know? Does Constanza know?' I could not bear the degradation of my lover handling my heart with such contempt.

‘Not as many as the rumours say,' he said, as if that would make a difference. It lit my wrath again.

‘Does that make it any better?'

‘No. My penitence can never make it better for you. My heart was yours, but sometimes—'

‘Sometimes you needed to indulge your physical needs,' I broke in. ‘And any woman would do.'

‘I cannot defend myself, Katherine. I have known times when the demands of my body overcome the loyalty of my soul.'

‘On campaign?'

‘Yes.'

‘Here in England?'

‘Yes.'

I simply stared. If I had been hurt before, I was now
devastated. Fleetingly I recalled standing on the wall-walk here at Pontefract, with at least some hope still alive, even as I acknowledged my hurt. I had not known the half of it. There was no hope, none at all.

‘In the bed I have shared with you?' I asked trenchantly.

‘No. Never that. Katherine.'

He took a step towards me. I took one back until the door stopped me, as a sudden unadorned thought struck me.

‘Not my sister! Please God, not that.'

‘No!' The planes of his face were set with anguish. But so, I thought were mine. ‘Not your sister. I would not do that to you. Would you believe that of me?'

I could not think, not knowing what to believe, what to say, except, in infinite desolation:

‘You have wounded me unto death, John.'

Without answering, he walked to look out from the same window that had taken my attention. I saw his face reflected, shimmering, pale as a ghost. Then he swung round to face me and for the first time in all that exchange, he retaliated against me, the jewels leaping into life.

‘I must turn away God's wrath, Katherine. I must live by His dictates. How can we deny God's anger when we are faced with such rebellion and destruction in England as we have seen these past months? If I am the cause, if my manner of living has drawn down God's punishment on this nation, then I must of necessity repent and make reparation.'

All spoken with an awful, calm, precise, relentless certainty.

But I in my dismay refused to listen.

‘Then I hope you sit in heaven at God's right hand on the strength of it.' And then, a cry from the heart that I could
not prevent. ‘Have you grown tired of me? If that is so, then I wish you had told me—'

‘I could never grow tired of you. You know that.'

‘But I don't know it. I am struggling to understand any of this.'

I saw no reason for his denial of me. I had been swept behind the tapestry as if our love had been a sin. A crime. Was that all I had ever been to him, a convenient whore? My mind came back to that one point again and again until it sickened me. I could never forgive him for that.

‘I am well-served, am I not? I remember the day when you proclaimed your love for me before your wife and your damsels. You cannot imagine the depth of happiness you gave me. Now you have disclaimed your love before every man and woman in England. You have broken my heart.'

I put my hand on the door-latch, hoping against all possibility that he might say something profound and ameliorating, to sweep away the anguish of the last minutes. I looked back, over my shoulder, at the fine-drawn handsome features, the braced shoulders, the motionless control that was back in place.

‘You have wounded me, John. You have destroyed all my happiness,' I informed him.

His reply was severe. Deliberate and unhurried.

‘I cannot heal the wounds for you, Katherine. Nor my own. Perhaps we don't deserve happiness. Perhaps, by seizing our own desires, we have caused too much damage, to too many people. And now we are called on to pay the price of our wilful carelessness.'

It was as harsh a blow as any man could possibly deliver,
to chastise the senses. A slap of a hand. A deluge of freezing rain. The fear engendered by a bolt of lightning striking a tree in the forest. Our happiness, recklessly, selfishly pursued, had undoubtedly hurt others, forcing on them difficult choices. Who knew what compromises Philippa and Elizabeth had been called on to make, out of their love for their father? Constanza had had to make the greatest.

It was not an argument that I could ignore, as he well knew.

And I resented it, resented his forcing me to see the obliteration of my moral bearings. I had not expected my lover to stab me in the back quite so effectively.

I opened the door, looking back for the final time. An empty room, stripped of all past glory, except for its owner with the spangle of rain still in his hair and marking his velvet and armour. What a fitting place to end a love that I had thought would last for all time. What a fitting place to utter the words I never thought I would, and immediately wished I had not.

‘Do you not love me anymore?'

In horror and shame, for such a question could only bring down humiliation on both of us, I pressed my fingers against my lips, dismayed that they had so betrayed me. The Duke, eyes stark, skin lacking all colour, simply looked as if I had driven home a knife into his flesh.

He made no reply. I walked from the room. He did not try to stop me.

We had not touched, not once.

And the thought came to me as I walked rapidly to my chamber, how little he had said, to explain or to justify.
Merely that he must turn God's wrath away from England. But then, there was nothing to explain, was there? It was the first time that we had met since the earliest days when there was not even a smile exchanged between us. But then, there was nothing to smile about either.

If our love had been hacked and laid low by Walsingham's cruel blows, even more had it been dealt its death wound by the Duke's despicable sense of duty.

I gave no thought to the dust in the chamber, as any good housekeeper should. I did not care if I could inscribe my name in it, on the top of the coffer. By choice, I would never enter that room again.

I was done with Pontefract Castle. I was done with the Duke of Lancaster, with the world he inhabited, his newly awakened sanctity. I was done with it all and for ever. The decisions made through one sleepless night, dry-eyed and wrathful, were not difficult. I could not stay here.

I hugged my beloved Philippa as I oversaw the preparations for my departure, but was fit to say little to her beyond farewell.

‘Write to me,' she whispered against my hood.

‘I will. And you to me.' I dredged up some suitable thoughts from the well of my own self-pity, managing a grimace that might pass for a smile. ‘Tell me when you have a husband. Tell me of Elizabeth.' I did not think Elizabeth would write to me.