11 The Scandalous Duchess by Anne O'Brien

Author:Anne O'Brien
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781488710100
Publisher: Harlequin Enterprises, Australia Pty Ltd
Published: 2014-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

June 1381: The Manor of Kettlethorpe, Lincolnshire

‘It’s bloody insurrection, m’lady,’ Jonas, my blacksmith, informed me with lugubrious self-importance before going about his business.

‘No it’s not,’ I replied firmly to his back.

Jonas regarded me over his shoulder, scratching his nose with a black-nailed finger.

‘You mark my words, m’lady. Bloody insurrection!’

‘Well, don’t tell the diary maids,’ I called after him. ‘They’ve enough to gossip about without this. Cheese is the last thing on their minds as it is.’

The foundations of the world I knew had begun to shake.

My sister Philippa had ultimately left me to return to Duchess Constanza’s service, with some relief on both sides. Constanza had decided that she approved Philippa’s companionship more than she detested her as the sister of the ducal whore. I wished Philippa well. She would be far happier at Tutbury or Hertford—or anywhere the Duchess chose to live apart from the Duke—than at Kettlethorpe. Their estrangement continued, meeting only for ceremonial and family purposes.

Yet I was not lonely for female companionship, for I had the other Philippa, the Duke’s lovely daughter now grown to adulthood, for company. Usually a confident young woman, self-possessed behind the facade of her striking features, she had decided to put distance between herself and her sister Elizabeth, who although the younger daughter, had recently engaged in a dynastic marriage with the youthful Earl of Pembroke. It had made Philippa restless for her own future.

And then the rumours began to reach us. At least they took our collective mind off Elizabeth’s crowing, Philippa’s disappointment and the loud demands of my new son, Thomas, born in the depths of a wintry January with a voice fit to raise the dead.

At first we listened in disbelief, strengthening into sheer denial.

Surely the stories were mere fabrications, magnifying out of all proportion a spark of disgruntled opposition over a tax demand that would be quickly stamped on by local magistrates. I would not give the rumours credence.

Yet the news continued to be carried by every group of travellers passing our door, of trouble-making peasants massing in Kent and Essex. I listened and worried but in a mild way. Kent was far from us in Lincolnshire, where the days passed in unrelenting monotony with no unrest other than a squabble over the slaughter of chickens by an unleashed hound. What had this uprising to do with me? What damage could they do to us? We were safe, isolated and unnoticed, as we always were. No need for us to jump at every shadow.

Besides which, I informed my household, the defences of London were strong enough to stop a parcel of peasants even if their complaints sounded horribly familiar. Had they not been voiced at any time over the past dozen years? Hatred of the poll tax, failure to win battles in France, restrictions on wages when labour was in demand after the Pestilence. What was so different now?

My reassurances had their effect, leaving my mind free to follow the Duke. It was a month since I had parted from him at Leicester.

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