The People's Queen Part 19

They all nod, and twinkle. But it's Walworth who makes the offer.

'In fact,' he says merrily, 'we think it's time we offered you a reward for all your unremitting labour and diligence.'

The others nod again. Chaucer's hardly breathing.

'So we've decided. We're going to make over the value of this confiscated property to you,' Walworth finishes.

Chaucer can't believe it. Seventy-one pounds! It's more than seven times his year's pay - more than enough to pay Elizabeth's bride-price to the Church, if she does go to St Helen's, without having to dip into his savings. His heart expands in his chest until it feels he might burst.

'Thank you,' he stammers. 'Thank you.'

He senses, rightly, that there's more to come.

He wants to believe that this isn't a bribe. He doesn't think of himself as buyable. He once told Alice he'd never taken a bribe. He wants to believe they really are just thanking him for his exceptionally good work. Only he isn't sure it has been so exceptional.

So he thinks there will be more, because, if they are buying him, they'll have to explain why.

'You're a loyal man, Chaucer,' Walworth adds warmly, after giving him a moment for his piece of good fortune to sink in. 'Always have been. We didn't quite know what to expect when you came back from court, in all your glory...'

Chaucer translates in his head: 'As the protege of Alice Perrers and the Duke.' Suddenly watchful, he stands a little straighter.

'But you've done us proud. Your father would be proud of you.'

For a moment, the mention of his father's pride brings grateful tears p.r.i.c.kling into Chaucer's eyes. But then he realises they knew that would happen. And it makes him more watchful still. He smiles, a sentimental smile, to show how he appreciates the compliment. But inside, he's on his guard.

'You understand better than most that sometimes it pays to keep your head down and your mouth closed, and just get on with the job,' Walworth finishes. He leans closer, gazing hypnotically into Chaucer's eyes, as if willing him to nod along with Walworth's own beautiful head, which is already going up and down.

'Whatever else is going on outside,' Chaucer agrees tactfully. 'Yes indeed.'

'Now,' Brembre says briskly. 'There'll be a lot of commotion for the next few months, what with the Parliament and everything else. People's eyes wandering; work left undone; who knows what trickery being swept into corners.'

Is that that it? They're bribing me to keep quiet during the Parliament? But why, when I wouldn't have anything to do with Parliament anyway? Chaucer's puzzled. He's heard the rumours. Everyone in town is suddenly talking about how the City aldermen are about to go after the Italians over the debt scandal - and, if they can, drag Lyons and Alice and their friends at court into admitting complicity, too. He can see that these three might easily want him to keep clear of Alice while that's going on. They know Alice is his benefactor. They wouldn't want Chaucer coming up with clever defences for her. it? They're bribing me to keep quiet during the Parliament? But why, when I wouldn't have anything to do with Parliament anyway? Chaucer's puzzled. He's heard the rumours. Everyone in town is suddenly talking about how the City aldermen are about to go after the Italians over the debt scandal - and, if they can, drag Lyons and Alice and their friends at court into admitting complicity, too. He can see that these three might easily want him to keep clear of Alice while that's going on. They know Alice is his benefactor. They wouldn't want Chaucer coming up with clever defences for her.

He could understand they'd try to buy him to keep his nose out of the aldermen's courtroom at Guildhall. But why Parliament?

'You want me to keep my head down and keep concentrating on my work,' he says, and he makes his voice extra docile. 'During the Parliament.' He needs to be sure it is actually the Parliament he's being told to keep his nose out of.

Walworth laughs cosily and claps him on the back. 'Yes indeed,' he replies, all bonhomie and charm. 'Though you must do as I say, not as I do, of course, because I'll be at Parliament myself, as you know. One of the two men for London. Forgetting my normal work. Sweeping things under the carpet. You'll have to keep an eye on me me!'

The future parliamentary representative for London laughs. They all laugh. They all clap Chaucer on the back. They leave together.

After they've gone, and he's alone with the clerks, Chaucer sighs.

He knows they're out to get Alice. He just can't quite yet see how Walworth plans to drag the case to Parliament.

It pains him, the rank injustice of it. He knows (who better than he?) that Alice is, or has been, greedy, and venal, and out for herself. But it also seems clear to him that Alice is just a symptom of all the troubles England's gripped by, not the cause they're going to make her out to be. Greed is in the air. Who doesn't take a little, or a lot, if there's no one to say no? If it's so easy that saying no seems madness? He can't think of anyone in the land who hasn't, these last years...even he, now...

If only she'd take his advice and go away. Lie low in the country. But she won't. And perhaps it's already too late. Chaucer can sense that the hungry, eager look on Walworth's features doesn't bode well for her. He doesn't want her to be the sacrificial lamb, the offering of repentance for everyone else's gluttony and avarice. He's so...fond, he tells himself, cautiously...of her. But he's frightened, too. He can't help thinking: what if she goes down, and he's dragged with her? He's done nothing he can be reproached with; he's taken no bribes (not counting this gift he's just been made by Walworth) and covered up no truths, but what if he's weeded out of the City job she got him, and is then too tainted by a.s.sociation with her to get a place back at court?

He knows that, if he were a proper knight-errant, the most honourable thing to do, in his present circ.u.mstances, would be to graciously thank the merchants and turn down their money, and then defend his lady in whatever way he could against whatever charges were laid against her. But, even if he were brave enough to defend her, whatever could he do to ward off the enemies ma.s.sing on every side?

Anyway, he can't. He's a merchant's son, among merchants, in a greedy world. He needs the money, for Lizzie. And who, in this greedy world, ever takes the chivalrous course? He says to himself, out loud, trying out the words, and the thought, for size: 'I've never been a particularly brave man; why draw attention to myself now?' Then: 'What's more, how she'd laugh at my naivety if I did.'

That evening Chaucer goes to Vintry Ward and knocks at the house of Sir Richard Stury, his old friend from the wars. It's been months. Too long.

By happy coincidence, Sir Richard is in London. He's delighted to see Chaucer. He flings a long arm over Chaucer's shoulder and guides him in for supper, knightly style.

Over the first pitcher of Rhenish wine ('Can't get Gascon for less than an arm and a leg these days,' Sir Richard apologises), the knight tries to interest Chaucer in the religious theorising he's gone in for recently - a pa.s.sionate support for Lollardy. 'You should come and hear Wyclif preach one day,' he says, wild-eyed and fervent. 'He talks about freeing ourselves from the tyranny of Rome, and with such eloquence...I can't begin to convey it...but you'd understand as soon as you heard him.' But when he sees Chaucer sigh and, very faintly, yawn (a gesture Chaucer realises, as he performs it, that he's borrowed from Alice Perrers) he lets that subject drop.

Over the second pitcher of wine, they talk poetry. Sir Richard fetches out the beautifully illuminated, and expensive, copy he's just bought of The Romance of the Rose The Romance of the Rose, and, after they've oohed and ahed over it, and read a few pa.s.sages, he asks Chaucer searching, intelligent questions about the verse he's been writing.

The friendly atmosphere, the refinement of the conversation, and the quality of the wine bring a not unpleasing melancholy to Chaucer's heart.

It's drizzling. It only stopped snowing a month ago, and there's been non-stop rain ever since. It's a monotonous, miserable sound, water beating on windows. 'Do you remember', Chaucer says, 'when we were young, how spring always seemed to come earlier?' And Stury laughs, as wistfully as Chaucer, and says, 'And summer seemed to last for ever? Of course I do...but what can you expect, my friend? We live in evil days.' For a few minutes, the pair of them sit, nodding gently, perfectly satisfied with the nostalgia they're sharing, nursing their wine.

After an hour or so more, as they broach the third pitcher and start to indulge in reminiscences about their days shut up together as hostages in the same castle tower all those years ago, sharing one cup of wine and half a loaf of bread, utterly cast down at the prospect of indefinite imprisonment, and then about various old friends in the King's service, and then about the fine times they've had on one trip on the King's business or another, Chaucer also finds the courage to broach the other subject on his mind.

'Old man,' he says tentatively, 'it's not that I'm unhappy with my work at the Customs House, but sometimes I have to confess I miss the old diplomatic days in the King's service, too...' He sighs nostalgically. 'Italy...'

He's thinking of the wide, smooth streets and great domes and portals of Genoa. He's thinking of the double belt of stone walls encircling Florence, and the loveliness of the great, dim, mysterious baptistry of St John, within those walls: the white and green marble; the glowing mosaics of the cupola.

He's been thinking thoughts like this, thoughts of escape, all day. He's uncomfortable with the sense of foreboding he's carrying in him through the winding streets and wooden houses of London. He'd like it to go away; but if it won't, he'd like to take to heart, for himself, the advice Alice won't hear, and go away from it. It wouldn't be ideal, of course, going back to the King's service now, when the King is so infirm, and perhaps not long for this world...but it would feel safer than sitting here waiting for whatever it is that's brewing up in the stormclouds. Putting some distance between himself and this trouble would ease his mind.

Stury laughs. 'I've been wondering how long you'd be able to bear the wool sacks, day in, day out. I won't say I'm not sympathetic. Do you really have to go in there every day?' he answers lightly, filling Chaucer's cup. 'Would you like me to put a few feelers out? See if you can't be excused from the accounts and sent back to work at the King's service?'

Carefully, Chaucer picks up the cup. He examines the wine, rolls the cup in his hands, and sniffs the rich bouquet, as his father taught him. 'A well-made wine,' he says diplomatically, before adding, with a slow nod, knowing his casualness won't fool Stury for a second, 'Well, dear fellow, of course there's no hurry...but if something came up, I'd certainly be interested in knowing.'

TWENTY.

It is the last day before Parliament convenes at Westminster, 27 April, 1376. The City, glistening with chilly rain long after spring should have come, is crowded with incomers. Every inn is packed.

The King is nowhere near. He's exhausted after the Garter ceremonies. He's gone back to Havering, out in the east, to rest. The Duke has announced publicly that he'll attend Parliament on his father's behalf.

Alice is neither in the tumult of London or safely with Edward at Havering.

She's gone where no one will look for her. She's at her estate at Hammersmith, west of London, upriver even from Westminster, in the gentle flatlands of Middles.e.x. She wants peace and quiet, for the last hasty task she's set herself before the Parliament: bringing her account books to order.

There are six men seated at the table, watching Alice.

Solid-looking men, all of them, in plain black clothes, with impa.s.sive, indeterminate faces; a twisted nose here, a thickened ear there, but nothing to make them stand out in a crowd.

Alice has chosen her people carefully over the years, from the tide of defrocked priests and ambitious n.o.bodies that has swept the land. John Bernes, William Mulsho, John Freford, Robert Broun, John Vyncent and Hugh Cotyngham: skilled mercenaries of the pen, one and all (and not bad, either, at a bit of sheer physical intimidation). She pays accordingly. They've done very well from their work.

They're loyal to her from necessity, maybe, but they are utterly loyal. They have no families that they're willing to acknowledge, and no homes they want to return to. They live on the move. They don't put down roots. Because this, for them, is what pa.s.ses for home - wherever their fellows are, wherever she is, where the ideas come from which they spend their days implementing. It's their work for Alice that gives meaning to their lives; brings a sly chuckle to their lips.

So, even if they aren't saying a word, just contemplating her, inspecting her own impa.s.sive business face, waiting to hear what she has to tell them, she can sense the confusion in their minds.

It's a big change since last time they met, after New Year, in their usual place at her house in London, when she was so full of plans for them. She's looking at Mulsho and Freford, in particular, with their monkish whey-faces and bruisers' knuckles, who've spent the later part of the winter following up her ideas for new land-buying in Northamptons.h.i.+re. They must have been thinking, for all those months, that she'd be pleased that they've managed to get their hands on every last one of the manors she wanted to buy. Hitchin. Plumpton End. Moor End Castle. Lillington Dansey. They must already have been wondering, pleasurably, how big their bonuses would be.

The rest of them, too, working to improve the other recently acquired places in Dorset, or Devon. Ironing out problems caused by reluctant sellers or litigious lords. Ensuring good reductions in the price of raw materials for building. Getting workers and seed to the land. By fair means or foul, without differentiating; because, as Alice always tells them, with her flat, frightening business voice, 'I'm not interested in excuses. I'm interested in results.'

And then they got her last letters. Stop. Liquidate. Sell.

No explanations.

They may even be scared at the speed of the change.

But they're too well trained to mutter among themselves, or betray any curiosity or unease. At least in front of her. There's not a raised eyebrow among them. Not a shaking head. They're just sitting there, hands in their laps, waiting for her clarification.

She can't bring herself to explain, even now. They're intelligent enough to know that her position must have become insecure. They can't not know of the Parliament convening tomorrow. They'll have put two and two together.

And anyway, she can't quite bear to admit that this great adventure they've all been having is over, even though, at the same time, she's almost itching with the desire to have today's settling of accounts done. But...all the hopes she's had...they've all had...the price they got for all those Somerset lands last year...She bites her lip.

'Thank you for carrying out your new instructions so promptly,' is all she says. 'The first thing I have to tell you today is that you will all receive the rewards I'd been planning for implementing the earlier programme.'

She's aware of the slight s.h.i.+fting of shoulders, the lowering of tension.

Broun lets out his breath, and then turns that lapse of discipline into a cough.

Tersely, she says, 'Let's start, then. With Northamptons.h.i.+re.' She opens the big ledger on the table in front of her, and picks up her pen. 'Master Mulsho, Master Freford...'

They stand, and come up to her, and start taking out the small bags of money at their belts, or sewn into their hems, or secreted in their boots - all kept separate for safety's sake on the roads - as well as the lists on the sc.r.a.ps of parchment in their accounts.

'Twenty pounds intended to buy oaks to extend the hall at Lillington Dancey,' Mulsho says in a thin monotone. 'Returned.' She counts the money and crosses the item off her list. 'Five marks spent on paying the seneschal at Lillington Dancey to alter doc.u.mentation, as discussed,' he goes on. She marks item two. 'Fifteen marks spent on paying the bailiff at Lillington Dancey to agree to the alteration of doc.u.mentation, as discussed.' She makes another mark.

Alice's idea is to rid herself of any possessions more than a day or two's ride from London. She wants a neat, manageable set of landholdings, ten estates in all. The other forty-six, in the North Country, in the West Country, are going. She's going to give one small manor each to these lieutenants, near the places she's keeping. She'll set all her men up, buying their continued loyalty; they'll go on minding her business. But...quietly, and on a small scale.

It's midday and several pages of the ledger have been filled before the intricacies of the latest aborted Northampton project have been fully unravelled, and all the money accounted for; before the sale or transfer of her many other Northamptons.h.i.+re properties has been reported, or set in motion.

They stop for bread and cheese.

At three or four of the clock, when moneys have been exchanged for the sale of the West Country estates that have already gone, they hear the clap of hoofs in the courtyard, coming in from the farm road, behind the river. A moment later, there are voices from down there, calling up to the windows.

'Where's the friar? The one who can do physic?' she hears. A cultured man's voice; knightly tones of command; but pitiful, too.

Alice goes to the window. Through the rivulets running down the gla.s.s and lead, she makes out two s.h.i.+ning forms down below, with spurs on their heels, and the grey horses with their heads in the trough behind both wet to blackness.

Knights don't often come calling in these parts, and if they do they come by river.

It's only when Alice sees the urinals they're both carrying, gla.s.s vessels for the collection and a.n.a.lysis of p.i.s.s by physicians, like her Friar John, who can cure all ills by looking into the human body's waste water, that she understands, and feels rea.s.sured, and goes back to her seat to pay attention again to Master Broun's detailed disquisition on the messuages at Lower Chicksgrove.

But she keeps half an ear on the much louder and livelier conversation outside, all the same.

The shouting goes on. The yardman tries to hush the knights. She hears him tell them, 'Not so much noise, now, my lords, hush now,' but weakly. Naturally they ignore him, as (she can imagine them believing) is their lordly right.

Finally there's the thin, reluctant bleat of Friar John's voice from his window, in the solar one floor up.

'I'm the physician, travellers...What do you want from me?'

Dear old Friar John. He's old and not well - touches of gout, touches of rheumatism. He feels the cold terribly, and the wet. But a good, kind man, and a learned physician. She's told him a good week ago that he's to go to Gaines to teach three children there, without explaining that these are her own children. (She hasn't found the courage, or the words, for that. Not yet.) She hasn't altogether given up the idea of getting a knighthood for Johnny, just because the Duke was hostile, as long as the boy can be taught a few gentlemanly ways; she's just too frantic doing what she's doing with her land agents, for now; she's going to think again about how to make it happen once she's hurried all this property business out of the way. Perhaps Edward will come to enough to take his own decisions; or perhaps she can just slip Johnny's name on to a list; or perhaps (though she's reluctant to do this) she could take the risk of confiding her secret in Latimer? Still, because the Johnny business will need finessing, and Father John's so frail, she hasn't hurried him off. She's been hoping the weather will change, and the spring arrive, at least, before she has to send him off. He'll suffer in the damp, before the sun comes.

'A remedy, Father, just a few herbs...we're all aches and pains, and they say you're good at healing the sick,' one of the voices yells back in a strong ba.s.s voice. For a sick man, he certainly has a good pair of lungs on him, that one, Alice thinks, laughing a bit to herself. The voice wheedles: 'Come down and look us over, eh?'

There's a silence.

The friar's probably making his painful way downstairs already. But the men don't understand where he's gone, because they carry on yelling and cajoling.

'We'll pay good money...make it worth your while,' shouts one.

'Oh, the agony,' groans the other.

Broun's now summarising work on the London inn near the Thames and the houses adjoining the great gate, all in the parish of All Hallows the Less, that Alice has been having built. That will have to go, too, Alice thinks, unable to avoid regret. In a minute, she'll tell him to sell. Discreetly.

Outside, a door creaks open, and shut. Alice hears the tentative, shuffling footfall of the old man, making his way across the courtyard; hears him say, in his gentle way, 'So, what's all this about then, my lords?'

She doesn't understand what she hears next: a couple of soft thuds, the sound of breaking gla.s.s, harsh breath. It's only when Friar John begins to howl, a thin, agonised, outraged and fearful sound - 'You're hurting me, what are you doing, you're hurting hurting me!' - that she and all her colleagues drop their papers, knock back their benches, and rush to the window. me!' - that she and all her colleagues drop their papers, knock back their benches, and rush to the window.

What they see: the urinals have been dropped and smashed. They've served their purpose, clearly. They were only ever a trick. And one of the men has the gasping, squealing friar on the ground, face down in the wet, in an armlock. The other is rus.h.i.+ng to his horse for the bit of rope hooked round the saddle pommel.

'Stop!' Alice yells, but they're not listening.

She rushes downstairs, holding up her skirts as she runs. Her men come thundering behind her.

The wetness of the air startles her.

The strangers are by now heaving the trussed-up friar roughly to his feet, grunting and snorting as they go, but grinning at each too, with a nasty gleam in their eyes. 'Get moving, you old fraud,' one of them snarls, turning to the friar, working himself up into a bully's rage against his victim. 'Come on. Time someone got the truth out of you you.' There's muddy water running down poor Friar John's face; a smear of horses.h.i.+t on his gleaming tonsure; his front is soaking. And there's a look of utter misery on his face, a misery beyond fear.

The sound of the creaking door startles them. They all turn round to face Alice, with the six men in black behind her. She's aware of faces - eyes, breath - at every window; of the terrified yardman behind the men, stepping very quietly backwards, one foot after the other, ready to fade into the background.

In Alice's head, Aunty's unemotional voice is saying: 'Whatever you do, dear, never show fear.'

'Let go of my friar!' Alice yells. 'What the h.e.l.l do you think you're doing?'

The visitors don't look abashed. Dragging the friar forward like a s.h.i.+eld, the bigger of them says, truculently, 'Taking him off to ask him a few questions.' He gives the friar a bit of a shake, until the old man starts to groan and breathe heavily, and all the while the knight's looking her up and down with naked insolence and grinning in a see-what-we-can-do kind of way.