Katherine by Anya Seton Page A

slender hips and bound her hair into two silver-filleted cauls on either side of her face, much as Alice Perrers wore hers, Katherine looked in the hand-mirror and was startled, not by her beauty, which still seemed to her negligible, but by her air of sophistication. Her high white forehead and the delicate arched eyebrows looked exactly like those of all the noble ladies. If she pursed her mouth it became the two crimson cherry-halves so much admired. She could see that the miniver-trimmed surcote disclosed half-moons of bosom and clung to her long waist without a wrinkle. Even the Duchess had not so sinuous a line. I look like one of them, she thought proudly, a court lady. Except for her hands. They were yet reddened from the winter's chilblains, and the nails ragged and short, for she still sometimes bit them.
    Alice Perrers had pomades and unguents as well as face paints in her chest beneath the window. Katherine brazenly rummaged in the chest until she found a rose-water cream which she rubbed into her hands, so as not to shame the betrothal ring.
    Honesty compelled her to admit that it was to Hugh she owed the extent of her transformation from the shabby little girl at Sheppey, and when the page he had sent for her tapped on the door, she followed him down to the lists with eager anticipation.

CHAPTER IV

    When Katherine and her guide arrived at the lists it was in the intermission before the final melee. Outside the stockades, the common folk who had not been fortunate or agile enough to find perches on top of the barrier were milling about, gulping winkles and pasties and jostling for position near the cracks between the boards where they might see something of the jousting when it recommenced.
    The page led Katherine through a gilded gate and up wooden steps to the huge Lancastrian loge, as Hugh had bidden him, and he found for her a space on a red-cushioned bench far off to one side and .directly under the brightly painted canopy that sheltered the loge.
    The bench to which the page led Katherine was already fulsomely occupied by two ladies connected with the Lancastrian retinue: Lady de Houghton, and Dame Pernelle, sister of Sir Robert Swyllington, who was the Duke's chamberlain at Pontefract Castle.
    Both these ladies were women of mature years with a nice appreciation of their own consequence. As Katherine squeezed herself down beside them they received her flustered apologies with cold astonishment.
    "Who in the world-" said Lady de Houghton to her friend, not bothering to lower her voice. Dame Pernelle shrugged, and both stout ladies, breathing heavily, for it was warm under the canopy, looked down their noses at Katherine and waited.
    "Katherine de Roet, sister to Philippa la Picarde, Queen's panterer. I've - I've just come to court, my ladies," said Katherine nervously, trying to shrink into the smallest possible bulk.
    "Ah-" said Dame Pernelle in a tone of enlightenment.
    "The Guienne Herald's daughter, ah yes - one has heard something." She raised her eyebrows significantly and glanced down towards the dais where the Duchess sat in a carved gold armchair.
    Katherine, quite aware of the disparaging emphasis on "Herald", said quickly, "My father was knighted on the field at Bretigny, my lady. Shall I move to the end of the bench - it won't crowd you so?"
    Suddenly she was rescued, and in a way that silenced the ladies, though in no way decreasing their resentment. The Duchess, turning her chair to accept a cup of wine from a page, caught sight of Katherine, smiled at the girl and, seeing that she looked uncomfortable, raised her pale, bejewelled hand and beckoned.
    Katherine, blushing hotly, for those on all the nearest benches craned round to see, most thankfully obeyed the summons and, clambering past the ample knees beside her, ran down the steps to the velvet-coloured platform at the front of the loge.
    "Your first tournament, my dear, isn't it?" asked Blanche gently. "Sit here where you can see well."