John was a shrewd judge of those who served him and he knew that Nirac would obey his commands loyally, and he thought too that of the men with him today, Katherine would be safest with this one. Nirac belonged to that type of man who had but tepid interest in the love of women.
John glanced towards the courtyard window where the sun already slanted above the church spire and said, “Yes - I’ll leave you Nirac. He’ll keep your churls in order until Swynford gets home. And, Katherine - - “
She looked up at him and waited.
“Your baby must be christened! - now.”
Katherine gasped and drew the baby closer. “Is there danger for her? The women said she was unharmed - does there seem something wrong to you?”
“No, no - there’s nothing to fear. But we’ll christen the babe at once, because I shall be its godfather.”
“Oh - my sweet lord,” whispered Katherine, flushing with delight. During the vague unreasoning months of her pregnancy she had wondered once or twice who might be found to sponsor the baby if it were actually born.
“It is a very great honour - -” she whispered.
“Yes,” said the Duke, “and will help ensure your safety and the babe’s.” It was for this reason he had suggested it. The spiritual parentage of an infant was no light thing; it linked the sponsor with the real parents in bonds of compaternity, it incurred obligation for the infant’s material as well as religious nurture and if, as in this case, the sponsor were of royal blood and the most powerful noble in the land, it endowed the baby with an exalted aura.
A child so honoured on earth and in heaven would be powerfully protected and even Katherine’s unruly serfs should be intimidated.
The christening took place an hour later at the old Saxon font in the little church across the lane. The nave was crowded, because the Duke had sent his men to summon all the villagers, many of whom had been shaken and slapped from their drunken snorings. Parson’s Molly held the baby and served as godmother since there was obviously no one else in the least suitable on the manor. At the baptismal questions, John took the baby from Molly and made the responses himself, though waiting with barely concealed impatience while the flustered Sir Robert tried to remember the Latin form, could not, and reverted to English.
The baby was christened Blanche Mary as Katherine had asked. And she wailed satisfactorily when the holy water doused her head and the devil flew out of her.
Katherine, lying tense and strained on her bed, heard the glad ringing of the church bell and dissolved into happy tears. My tiny Blanche, she thought, Blanchette, named for the lovely Duchess and the Blessed Queen of Heaven. She would be safe now for ever from the horrors that menaced the un-baptized. And surely all the good fairies had hovered near this christening and brought the baby luck, though there was scarcely need for luck greater than sponsorship by the Duke.
How good he is, she thought, and she felt for him die same gratitude and humble admiration she did for the Lady Blanche, and she felt too that she was purged completely from those other darker feelings towards him which now seemed to her incredible.
When the Duke preceded Molly and the baby back into the solar, Katherine greeted him with a soft little cry and, taking his hand, kissed it in a childlike gesture of homage.
The Duke, receiving it as such, bent over and kissed her quickly on the forehead. “There, Katherine, your babe is now a Christian and you and I have become spiritual brother and sister. So I must leave you. I can scarce reach Bolingbroke tonight as it is.”
She nodded. “I know, my lord. I’m sorry. And when you see Hugh - -“
“Ay,” he broke in with sudden curtness, “I’ll tell him all and send him back. In the meantime, here is Nirac.”
The little Gascon had been hovering in the doorway and skipped in at his master’s call crying “Oc! oc! seigneur -” followed by a further string of liquid syllables which Katherine could not understand. The man was like a blackbird with his bright round eyes, his cocky strut and a cap of hair like glossy blue - black feathers. He wore the Duke’s blue and grey household livery, and the tunic clung like a glove to his spare wiry body.
John laughed and said to Katherine, “Nirac speaks the langue d’oc, but much else as well, some Spanish, the barbarous Basque, French of course.”
“And English, seigneur, also - I am a man of many tongues and many talents.”
“Daily you prove that Gascon bragging shames even the devil,” said John a trifle sternly, “but I’m entrusting you here. You will guard this lady -“
“With my life, seigneur, with my honour, with my soul, I swear by the Virgin of the Pyrenees, by Sant’ Iago de Compostela, by the English Saint Thomas, by -“
“Yes, well, that’s enough, you little jackanapes. I trust you’ll never be forsworn. I’ve told the serfs that I leave you here in my place until their rightful lord comes home. You’ll know how to make them obey?”
The bright beady eyes sobered and gazed intently up at the Duke’s face. “Oui, mon duc.” He nodded once. “Your wish shall be done in every sing - long as Nirac de Bayonne has breat’ in body - -” His narrow brown hand fingered the hilt of his dagger.
“No, said the Duke, glancing at the dagger, “you must be chary of violence. The English have laws on the manor, ‘tis not like your wild mountain country. You must be guided by the Lady Katherine.”
The Gascon’s hand dropped, he looked at the pale girl on the bed, then back into the Duke’s face as though reading something there. He ran to the bedside and knelt. “Votre serviteur,belle dame,” he said. “I shall guard you for the Duke.”
Neither of them gave any deeper meaning to these words or guessed that Nirac had misconstrued the situation. He came of a primitive southern race where emotions were as simple as they were violent. There was love and there was hate, and no nuances between. He loved the Duke; therefore he would love this girl whom he took to be the Duke’s leman, else why should his master waste all this time attending to such trivial matters as baptisms and peasants? Perhaps the baby was the Duke’s - that would explain matters, and explain too why the young mother never spoke of her husband in the days that followed, but spent all her time nursing and petting her baby.
She listened though, when Nirac spoke of the Duke, while a smile, naif - wistful and half - awed, would light her grey eyes. Nirac, eager to please her, sang often of the Duke’s bravery at the battle of Najera. Sir John Chandos’ herald had made up a song after the battle, and it began:
En autre part le noble duc
De Lancastre, plein de vertus
Si noblement se combattait
Que chaqu’un s’en emerveillait… .
She listened and she took pleasure in Nirac’s company. They often spoke French together, he was gay, and of some help to her on the manor by his very presence, though the serfs resented him bitterly. Still, for the next few weeks they gave no further cause for complaint, being thoroughly cowed by the ducal visit. But there were many whispered conferences in the alehouse and on the whole the distrust of Katherine increased, now that she was forever shadowed by this other foreigner whom the terrifying Duke had foisted on them. Singing they were, the lady and that strutting little rooster at all hours in the Hall, in a gibberish no one understood. The manor folk longed for their rightful English lord to return.
Parson’s Molly always defended her mistress when she heard the others reviling her. She pointed out how the lady had shown mercy in many ways and particularly in the matter of the Lady Nichola. She had ordered that the crazed woman be unchained and simply confined to her tower - room behind a locked door, and Lady Katherine herself brought up milk and bread and spoke gently to the woman who had tried to steal her baby. But the Lady Nichola never answered, she crouched now day and night in a corner of her room while floating little pieces of straw in a pan of water, nor even cared about her cat. At Lady Katherine’s orders, they carried Nichola down to the church during Mass and tied her to the rood screen that the evil spirits migh
t be exorcised, and Lady Katherine saw to it that nobody poked or pinched the mad woman at these times, for the little mistress was clement.
And no woman, Molly said, could be a better mother than the Lady Katherine, that was plain for all to see.
“And what of it?” sniffed Milburga. “The ewes and the sows do as much, and she thrives on it herself - the quean.”
Even to the most reluctant eyes. Katherine’s beauty could not be ignored. Her curly dark auburn hair shone with a new lustre, as did her skin, where the healthy rose again stained the cheekbones. All girlish angularity had left her small-boned body. It had regained its supple slenderness, but now her arms were rounded and her breasts, once somewhat undeveloped, had swollen to globes that strained the bodice of her gowns.
When she walked to the church or down the village street, the menfolk eyed her sideways, and there were lip smackings and uneasy jests when she had passed, yet despite this new voluptuousness there was something pure and unawakened in her yet, and even Milburga could find no excuse for accusing Katherine of light conduct.
The hours her mistress spent with the Gascon were always in the Hall or courtyard in full view of everyone, and at night not only was the solar door bolted but Katherine had taken little Betsy, the dairymaid, to sleep with her and help tend the baby.
“This honour should by rights have gone to Milburga, and the slight augmented her ill-will. But it seemed that the lady noticed little of the undercurrents on her manor, her whole thought centred in the baby and even when she talked or sang with the Gascon she held her child in her arms and joyfully suckled it whenever it whimpered.
The twenty-ninth of June would be the feast day of St. Peter and St. Paul, and the important one of the year for Kettlethorpe folk since it celebrated the dedication of their parish church. On this day, after morning Mass, the villagers had always held high carnival with sports and copious drinking, which reached its climax with the lighting of bonfires on Ket’s hill and at the four corners of the parish. This year, they were uneasy about their celebration, having sharply in mind the unfortunate consequences of their May Eve rites and being uncertain of Lady Katherine’s attitude or that of Nirac, the hateful little watchdog the Duke had set over them.
A week before the festival they deputed their reeve to approach Katherine and find out her wishes. On the afternoon when Sim Tanner, the reeve, walked on his wooden clogs from the village to the manor house, it was pouring cold rain from a dun-coloured sky. He presented himself dripping at the door of the Hall, his leather jerkin stained with mud.
Katherine was in the Hall with Nirac and Gibbon, whom she often had carried there so that he might he by the fire and have a change of view. She greeted the reeve courteously, thinking that he came to consult Gibbon on some farm matter, then seated herself again on the low chair and picked up her spindle.
Nirac had been amusing himself by whittling a set of chessmen from an alder slab. When they were finished he hoped to teach Katherine chess, of which game he had learned a smattering from one of the Duke’s squires. Nirac found life at Kettlethorpe exceedingly dull and looked up eagerly at the reeve’s entrance, then, disappointed that it was not some more interesting visitor, returned to his whittling.
Gibbon lay on a pile of deerskins near the central hearth. This was one of his good days when his mind was clear and he fancied that he could feel a faint tingling in his legs. His speech, however, had grown thicker and more halting in the last months and he seldom forced it. His eyelids flickered greeting to the reeve, then his veiled gaze returned to Katherine. Watching her was the last pleasure left him, and he always made the servants deposit him close to her chair.
She was not yet skilled at spinning, but since the baby had come she had forsaken lute-playing and embroidery for more useful arts. She twirled the coarse grey fibres on to her spindle from the distaff and watched the process with a small frown of concentration that Gibbon thought bewitching. The baby lay gurgling in a plaited willow basket at her feet and whenever her eyes left the baulky yarn, which frequently knotted or broke, they strayed downward towards the basket and a light came into them. If she ever looks at a man like that - thought Gibbon, what rapture she would kindle. But it’ll never be Hugh. He sighed, and thought with some pity of his half-brother.
Sim, who had been standing as near the fire as he dared while his jerkin steamed drier, now cleared his throat. “Prithee, m’lady, I come to ask ye summat. I speak for all your villeins.”
“Aie - e!” cried Nirac, cocking his head and instantly alert. “And now what does that meaching canaille want of her?”
The reeve’s slit mouth tightened, his cold haddock eyes flicked to the Gascon then back to Katherine, who laid down her spindle and waited. “Next Tuesday’s our church day, lady,” he continued. “Since the time of our great gaffers and long before, Kettlethorpe folk’ve held the day special for sport and feasting.”
“Pardieu!” Nirac threw down his knife and jumped up to stand by Katherine. ” ‘Tis all they do here, these worthless churls - feasting and sporting. Never do they think of work!” This was manifestly unfair, for the serfs had had no time off since May Eve, but he despised the serfs and considered that anything that thwarted them advanced Katherine’s interests.
“Tell him, madam,” he said, lower, to Katherine, “to take his farouche fishface out of here and return to his tasks.”
“Peace, Nirac!” said Katherine sternly. She didn’t like the reeve, who treated her with the same veiled disrespect Milburga did, but Gibbon said he served the manor well. She glanced down at Gibbon, who was watching her with a faint smile on his bloodless lips. He did not try to answer her unspoken question because he felt that she must learn to handle manor matters herself and, besides, he knew not what advice to give. In strict justice, the villeins deserved their feast day as they had always had it, yet there would be drunkenness and brawling and probably deaths as there had been other years. The manor could ill afford to lose a single strong pair of arms, though the lechery that accompanied their celebration was beneficial to the manor. The more brats that were bred in the fields and haycocks the better, since on each one a cash fine of leyrewite would be due to Hugh. On the other hand, the “custom of the manor” decreed largesse from its lord with free ale and meat provided, and this would seriously tax the manor’s slender larder. Since the serfs were forbidden to hunt game, and Nirac had no experience of lordly sports, there was no one to bring in meat, and Katherine’s resources would be seriously depleted by the slaughter of a sufficient amount of oxen or sheep.
Katherine knew little of these practical considerations and she knew that the reeve’s request was reasonable enough; but his insolent pop-eyes annoyed her and she said coldly, “And if I refuse permission, you might defy me as you did on May Eve?”
Sim’s long face flushed and, before he could answer, Nirac sprang forward like a cat. “They cannot defy you, for they have me to reckon with - me, Nirac le Gascon! My sword is ready. I shall carve the miserable ladrones into mincemeat, I shall slice their ears and fingers-“
“Chut! Nirac-” Katherine cried impatiently. She was used to his extravagances, but the reeve had gone chalk-white and his voice was high and thin like a neighing horse. “And whilst you’re brandishing your sword and dagger, you greasy meacock, what think you we’ll be doing? We’ve pitchforks, and axes, and scythes - we can carve off ears and fingers too, ay, and cods and stones-“
“Sim - Sim-” gasped Gibbon from his pallet. Nobody heard him. Katherine stood frozen, while a dangerous stillness flowed over the Gascon. “You t’reaten me?” he said softly. “Do you forget, miserable serf, that I wear the livery of the Duke of Lancaster?”
The reeve’s face convulsed, his furious breath flattened his nostrils. “He’s not my overlord!” he shouted. “I spit upon your Duke of Lancaster!”
The instant the spittle left his mouth, the reeve was frightened. Nirac gave him no time for repentance, he scooped the whittling knife off the table
and sprang.
“Holy name of God, Nirac!” Katherine screamed, as a spurt of blood jetted against the stone wall. “You’ll kill him! He’s unarmed.” Neither of them heard her. The panting bodies struggled, knocking against the stools and table. Katherine grabbed the baby and ran on to the dais. “Help!” she cried. “For Christ’s sake, help!”
A slow sob rose in Gibbon’s throat and his left hand twitched. The fighting men rolled and stumbled over him as though he were part of the floor, his mantle became drenched with the reeve’s blood.
The kitchen folk heard the noise and their mistress’s cries. They crowded around the wooden screen, peering fearfully.
“Stop them, Will!” cried Katherine. “Hurry!” The cook did not move. He had not yet understood the scene except for a vague hope that the reeve was murdering the hated Gascon.
The men rolled near the corner of the dais and Katherine heard a bubbling liquid groan. Nirac was on top, his knees on the reeve’s chest, his knife hand raised again. She put the baby in the centre of the great table and, jumping from the dais, clenched her teeth and, grabbing a handful of Nirac’s streaming black hair, jerked with all her might. “Halte!” she shouted, “au nom du duc!”
Nirac’s grasp loosened, he shook his head in a dazed way, trying to free his hair. She pulled harder so that his face was forced upwards and he saw hers. “You don’t want that I kill him?” he panted. “Yet you heard what he said!”
“I think you have killed him. Get up!” She hauled him off the inert reeve who lay gasping and bleeding on the flags. She knelt beside the man, and distractedly wiped his face with the hem of her gown. “Milburga, bring water and linen - someone get the priest. Hurry!”
“Bah!” said Nirac, smoothing his hair back and wiping his knife on a handful of rushes, “the salaud won’t need the priest.” He examined his victim with a practised eye. “A few cuts, my knife is short - he’s had no more than a good blood-letting. Had I had my dagger-“