The People's Queen Part 38

'Your husband's being called back to England...the Earl of Buckingham too...to suppress the revolt,' Chaucer says awkwardly. He doesn't know how to answer her directly, because he's realising, painfully, how her change of heart has come about - out of love for her son - and the knowledge that Alice now sees the world through her son's eyes is making him sadder, yet also gladder, than he's ever felt before. 'They say both of them will be sent to Ess.e.x. The King's on his way already.'

Her head droops even further. 'What can they do that's worse than this? I'm being punished, even now,' she says in the unbearable monotone. 'With this...It's the worst thing of all - that it should be him him who's paying the price for my wickedness. My stupidity. Johnny.' who's paying the price for my wickedness. My stupidity. Johnny.'

She raises those red eyes to him.

'Do you think G.o.d does bargains, Chaucer?' she asks, and even now, even here, there's the ghost of a miserable laugh in her eyes. 'Because I've been praying and praying that if only He'll let Johnny live, I'll do whatever I have to, for the rest of my days. Have William back, when he gets here; pretend none of this had anything to do with us; it doesn't matter, anything; as long as Johnny's here. I've been praying like a fool. I'm just not sure He hasn't given up on me already.'

She shakes her head. 'You've always known, haven't you, Chaucer?' she says, and turns her hand up so it's holding his. 'How you love your children?'

That's enough to remind Chaucer of the futility of his being here. Wearily, he nods. 'I just never thought,' he says miserably, 'that you'd realise it too.'

It's only then that she seems to become truly aware that Chaucer is actually here, in the flesh.

'You haven't said,' she asks, soft and defeated against the arm he's just put around her back, 'why you came?'

Chaucer gets up and walks her over to the window at the far end of the solar. It's almost dark on the ground, but the evening sky is still luminous.

He needs a moment.

A thousand thoughts are running through his head.

'I came...' he says, wondering whether he shouldn't just go, now his foolish idea of rescue has been superseded by reality. Then he shrugs. There's nothing left to lose. He might as well explain. At least she'll know he cared enough to come; at least she'll know he loves her. 'I came to ask you to go away with me.'

Her eyes turn up to him: great dark pools of misery.

Then she looks back at the bed, where Johnny's lying so still, and shakes her head.

They both know.

But still she says, 'Where?'

Chaucer falters; but then gains new strength: 'That pilgrimage we once talked about. Jerusalem. Antioch. Malta. Or Italy. Rome. Does it matter where? Canterbury would do, if I could save you from yourself there; if it wasn't in England. Away, that's the point. That's what I wanted to offer you.

'I brought money,' he adds defensively, as if she's going to chide him for having a poetical flight of fancy. 'It wasn't just a thought. I came ready.'

She smiles; almost smiles. For a moment.

'Thank you,' she says, 'for the thought.' It's a no, of course; he doesn't expect anything else. She's staying here with Johnny, and waiting for William. They both know that. But it's a recognition, too. She takes his hand and squeezes it very hard; her eyes are wet.

'I never cry,' she mutters after a while, though Chaucer's seen her in enough hard places by now to know that isn't always true; then, with a choked, whispery laugh: 'But you're not usually so brave.'

It's a few minutes more before she speaks again. Hesitantly, she says, 'There's something I should probably tell you. Something else.'

Chaucer says, almost at the same instant, 'I think I might know.'

She's surprised at that. 'You can't,' she says.

Chaucer says, 'Well, something I was going to ask you...when the moment was right.' He swallows. The moment's not right. It's an effort to go on. It's such a wild leap of the imagination, when she's got so much else to think about. When this could be anyone's baby: Wat's; the maidservant's; who knows? What if he's wrong?

'I met Wat, your Wat, in London. It might have been nasty. But he let me go when he heard my name. He said, "Alice's Chaucer...the dad...'" he stumbles.

He hardly dares look at her.

But when he does, she's nodding. And the look in her eyes is soft.

'You always know everything, Chaucer,' she whispers. 'I've called him Lewis. I thought you'd like to have a son whose name meant glorious warrior.'

And then the baby stirs, and starts to cry again. With a helpless, anguished look, Alice ducks away from Chaucer, and vanishes out of sight into the bed-tent. Through the curtains, Chaucer again hears the quick, uncertain breaths that might, just might, be sobs.

The near-silence goes on for a long time. The curtains stay shut. Chaucer lights the only candle he can see. When the youth on the bed groans, it's Chaucer who goes back to sit with him; mops timidly at him. The boy might not die, he thinks, clinging to that faint hope. If there's no blackness; no buboes. If it's gone on for a week, and he's still only spitting blood-flecked sputum, not gus.h.i.+ng blood from his throat.

Chaucer thinks: And me, what will I do? It's dangerous to be around the plague. He should run off back to London; save himself for the children who don't need him any more, whom he loves. But he's needed here. He's lost the power to leave.

He wakes up with Alice shaking him. The candle's at its end, sputtering. He must have been asleep.

'Don't lie with him,' she whispers. 'Too dangerous. I will. You take Lewis. Here.'

He's too heavy with sleep to argue. He takes the baby, and stumbles away, and lies down on the other bed with the little swaddled form tight against him.

It's the first chance he's had to look at the infant Alice has been nursing. Lewis...he's heavy with milk and sleep too, Chaucer sees, and feels, as the weight's transferred to him. He's got long eyelashes, sweeping his cheek, and fat little hands curled outside his blanket. My son, Chaucer thinks, mine, and warmth spreads through his heart before sleep claims him again.

When he wakes, Alice's head is there, sticking in through the bedcurtains, with grey light behind her. She's transparent with it; she doesn't seem to have slept.

'He's no better,' she whispers of the supine form in the other bed. 'But he's no worse either.'

Chaucer sees she's trying, desperately not to let hope in. But it's just possible...

'Sleep,' he says. 'I'll...'

'No,' she interrupts. 'You have to go. You and Lewis.'

He opens his eyes wider. Properly awake now, he stares at her.

'I can't go,' he says, knowing it's true only as he speaks; knowing how desperate he'd feel if Johnny were his daughter, or his son; realising how his heart's been torn to shreds afresh at this careworn, love-worn new Alice. 'You can't stay alone.'

'You must,' she insists. 'I've been thinking. It's not safe here. Not just him...Johnny...the sickness...but whatever comes next, here. Or whoever. You shouldn't be here when that happens. Nor should the baby. Take him away.'

Her eyes go diamond-shaped with unshed tears. 'Please,' she adds wearily; then, with a strange new strength in her voice: 'You'll look after him better than I can.'

Chaucer sits up, putting his hands to his head. His head is whirling.

He has no idea what to do. Even if he could leave Alice, the baby he's had sleeping up against his chest is a stranger to him. He still hasn't taken off the swaddling bands on the infant; examined him, inch by inch, for points of similarity, for his father's eyes, or nose, or leg shape, to celebrate his being. It's in Chaucer's nature to be moved by the child's very existence in all this: for, in among the ruins, there's a new beginning. He just doesn't know what to do with him.

But before he can do that, or anything else, she's talking again, too fast. 'There's no point in your staying,' she's gabbling. 'You know that. There's no future for you here. This is my battle, and Johnny's. I'll cope. I always cope. You know that. Just keep the baby. I know you'll love him, bring him up right, keep him safe. And I can't. You must see that. You say William's coming. If they don't get me for...that...if they never a.s.sociate me with any of it...if he just moves back in and takes me back while they do whatever they're planning to do' - Chaucer sees that Alice is, even now, making plans and contingency plans - 'well, I'll do whatever I have to...for Johnny, for the girls. I'll have him back. He's my husband. But how would I explain a baby?'

You can't just give your baby away like that, without a second thought, Chaucer reproaches her in his mind. But a moment later, he's already realising, she's right. What else can she do?

He nods. 'If I do,' he muses aloud, peering into a future for Alice that might, yet, not be as dark as he's feared, 'things just might work out for you. Mightn't they?' He adds, 'G.o.d willing, for Johnny too...' and crosses himself. She does the same. She sits down beside him.

'There'll be a dozen women around, when William gets here, who'll say you took them in and looked after them in their hour of need,' he says, drawing comfort from the thought. 'That will stand you in good stead. And there'll be no one left to connect you to what went before, either. The men will be long gone. I saw the last of them making off into the woods yesterday.'

'There's still Aunty,' Alice mutters. Then, stricken: 'And Johnny...'

Chaucer shakes his head. 'She'll keep quiet,' he says, with conviction. 'She loves the kids.'

That's true enough.

Leaning forward, taking her hands in his, he adds, 'And Johnny will keep quiet too.' She looks expressionlessly up at him. Chaucer says, 'Because he loves you.'

After a moment, Alice nods.

'And then,' she says. Not quite a question. 'The rest of my life.'

Chaucer has tears smarting in his eyes. It's killing him to think any of this, after the wild hopes he came here with.

But he goes on, stoutly enough: 'You already know what you'll do, don't you?'

Because, even in the sadness of farewell, he can see she does. She's changed. She's steadier, more stable, than he's ever known her. She has her brood to care for; she wants what's best for her son. She knows her mind.

'You'll do what we talked about once...what you were already doing, before this this happened,' he says. 'You've built up Gaines; now you're going to make it better still, for your children. There's never been anyone like you for organising and planning, Alice. You just needed to know what - who - it was for. Now you do.' happened,' he says. 'You've built up Gaines; now you're going to make it better still, for your children. There's never been anyone like you for organising and planning, Alice. You just needed to know what - who - it was for. Now you do.'

Her eyes s.h.i.+ft sideways to the other bed, where Johnny's lying. She crosses herself again. Then, almost guiltily, she looks back at Chaucer, without forcing the softness she feels for her son off her face.

'You know,' she confides, a little unsteadily, trying to smile, 'it's madness, I suppose, but before he got sick, there were two days when we were fetching and carrying for those poor women all day long; and Johnny was so kind to the Ewell girl...She, her husband, killed; she...' Alice chokes on whatever it was that was done to the Ewell girl. After a moment, she goes on: '...that I couldn't help imagining: that girl's only a year older than Johnny; one day soon, after her mourning's over, they might...'

Chaucer's heart wrenches. There's no place for him in these dreams. But it's right for him to encourage Alice in them, for this is where her future must lie.

'You see?' he says, as heartily as he can. 'You're already beginning to imagine it. Why wouldn't they marry? You've earned the lifelong grat.i.tude of those women out there. You've saved them. You'll be a pillar of Ess.e.x society before you know it, with that lad a strapping young courtier, in the pink of health, with t.i.tle to half of Ess.e.x, and the Ewell widow his bride, and your girls married to the finest young lords of the county after him.' He manages a watery smile.

'And a pack of grandchildren at my knees,' she replies, and she's almost smiling too, doing her best to enter into the spirit of the thing, just as he is, though her voice is as shaky as his. 'Each with an estate half the size of France, and a golden gown...'

She makes a little noise: a kind of sobbing laugh.

'And you, what will you be doing?' she asks, in that same trembling tone, stealing a glance at him that he's aware of, but can't bear to return. He knows what she's doing. She's memorising him, for all the tomorrows.

He swallows. 'Me,' he says. 'I'm going to try to teach this boy the most important thing his mother taught me.' He can't get rid of the lump in his throat.

'Finance,' she prompts, almost playfully.

He shakes his head. No, he won't be doing any more accounts. He already knows he'll never sit miserably at a desk adding up other people's numbers again. 'Courage,' he corrects her, and the word hangs in the air, opening new possibilities before it that he's not even thought, until now, that he might consider. Life's too short for all the cautious career-building he's gone in for until now; and where's it got him, anyway? He'll leave London; get away from what he saw in Walworth's eyes. He'll take the child out to some fresh air, and spend the money he's raised on the house giving his new son a braver and more honest life. It's time to follow his heart and devote himself to his child, just as Alice is going to do. And he thinks it will make him happy to sit in the sun writing his poetry and watching this little Lewis grow.

She deflects the compliment with a blink. 'Just don't make a poet of him,' she says, trying for brightness.

'One day,' he replies, almost to himself, 'I'll write a poem about you.'

She shakes her head, but gently. 'Let's just hope it's not a tragedy, then,' she whispers back, still trying to be pert; still failing. 'We've had enough of those.'

There's nothing more to say after that.

And when Chaucer stops talking, and she reaches down, and picks up the baby, and holds him for a long moment, rocking him, just a little, before kissing the top of his milky head and pa.s.sing him to the still seated Chaucer, and says, very quickly, 'Now go; and G.o.d speed,' in a choked voice, and turns away, vanis.h.i.+ng back behind the curtains where her older son is lying, Chaucer finds that there is no reproach left in his heart, and no regret, and no fear; all he feels is love.

He stands up with the baby, looking, for another moment, at the spot where Alice has just been standing. While he's there, he's still suspended between two worlds, half thinking he'll ignore all this and go after her and see if Johnny's better or worse, half wondering, dully, whether if he walks down to Rainham Creek, he'll find a boat before the baby gets hungry and starts to cry, and whether the baby will be satisfied for a few hours by damped-down bread crusts, or whether he'd be better heading for a village, and chancing his luck that there's a functioning inn somewhere near, or at least someone to give him milk.

And then he makes up his mind, and takes his first step towards the door before the pain of parting begins; and says, over his shoulder, as he moves away from her, the only blessing that his stunned mind can think to make: 'I wish you well.'

EPILOGUE.

A World Begins There's constant noise outside: men's heavy feet, tramping in and out of the barn where the soldiers are being billeted, and the kitchens, where the big cauldron is boiling with some greasy, stinking army stew, and the shouting of orders, and the jingle of harness.

But it's faded into the background. Alice doesn't notice it any more.

She's hovering around the bed, whose curtains are open to let some air circulate in the heat of midday.

She's watching her sleeping son. She's watching the dust motes dance around his face.

His coughing and sneezing and spluttering stopped yesterday. His fingers and toes never went black; no buboes ever developed. His fever seems to have pa.s.sed, too. She changed the top sheet two hours ago, and it's still crisp and fresh. He's pale, but he's breathing regularly.

It doesn't hurt to hope. Or it shouldn't.

She gets up, tiptoes around to the bucket of water, dips the cup and puts it, full, by the bed. She's been piling up the drenched sheets in a corner for the whole of the past two days to keep out of the way of Will's soldiers. She still doesn't want to go downstairs, except in the quiet of the night. But she does want to get the odours of sickness out of here. So she picks up the whole armful, and takes it just outside the door, and drops it, quietly, at the top of the stairs.

When she comes back into the room, Johnny's eyes are open.

He's looking around, not moving his head. Just those quiet blue-green eyes. He looks puzzled, as if he doesn't understand something. He's still not quite a man. But illness has made him a child again.

'Mam,' he whispers when he sees her, and his face is transformed by the dawning trust in that small smile, which is all he can manage.

She goes to the bed; sits down on the edge of it. As she sinks down, she suddenly feels her legs might not support her any more, she's trembling so much. She leans down and burrows her arms around the weakened body on the cus.h.i.+ons, burying her face in his neck.

'Mam,' he whispers, 'you're crying.'

'Oh,' she mutters, smelling his skin, 'it's nothing.'

It will take a lot of explaining before Johnny understands how much everything has changed since he fell ill; understands what he's allowed to remember from the recent past and what he'd be better off forgetting. Alice will have to school Aunty and the girls, too, once they're back, to forget anything they ever knew about the rebellion Will's returned to crush. Just as she's schooling herself.