A Burnable Book (29 page)

Chapter xli

Aldgate

O
n the fourth morning after Simon was taken, I crossed London Bridge at first light and walked once more to Aldgate. From the landing before Chaucer’s door I looked far down into the still silence of a London dawn, experiencing the everyday smells and sights—a baker’s wife airing a tray of cakes, a smith assaying his coals—with the kind of acuity that comes only with true clarity of purpose. It was time to confront my darkest suspicions.

Chaucer’s face was always hard to read. That morning it might have been written in the script of the Moors. He greeted me in the front room. Sparse furnishings, dust-filled cloths on the wall, short shelves of tarnished plate and silver placed at irregular intervals around the interior. The room spoke of Philippa’s long absence from the Newgate house. Chaucer had chosen a troubled frown to frame his opening words. “Simon is missing, I understand.”

“Who told you?”

“That hardly matters.” Chaucer pulled a chair around for me. “What matters is his safety, and his return.” His ready knowledge of Simon’s peril only made me more furious, though I was determined to show nothing.

“Did you know this would happen, that Simon would be taken?”

He pushed a second chair beneath him and sat, gesturing for me to do the same. “I worried it might come to this,” he admitted.

“The counterfeiting?”

He shifted on his chair. “Not that. It’s the other matter, I fear.”

“The other matter.” I looked at him blankly.

“Our matter, John.”

I frowned. “Surely you can’t mean—”

“The book.”

“Why? Is there a connection between Simon’s abduction and the prophecies?”

“I suspect so, though I have no proof.”

I took the twin chair, maintaining my composure as this sank in. “I need to know more about the book, Geoffrey. I need to know it now.”

He looked away. In the silence that followed I took Clanvowe’s manuscript from my bag and set it on the octagonal table between us. Chaucer stared at it for a moment, then picked it up and leafed through. He grimaced, set it down. “Clanvowe?”

I nodded.

“I recognized the hand.”

“So did Strode.”

“Though a different hand wrote the book you’ve been seeking.”

“Whose?”

“It’s—complicated, John.”

“So you’ve known all along.”

“Not entirely.”

“You knew the content of the
De Mortibus
down to the last prophecy.”

“Well—”

“I’ll wager you have the thing by rote.”

“Not quite.”

“Yet you sent me chasing after it without bothering to tell me anything.”

“John—”

“And now my son has been taken, probably murdered like Tewburn or poor Symkok. Will they come for me next, Chaucer?”

“Please, John—”

“And all for a small favor, as you called it. A little thing, John. You’ll help me, won’t you, John? Help me avoid all that unpleasantness with Swynford, will you, John? And there sat John, didn’t he, like a schoolboy waiting for the whip. So deeply in your debt that he couldn’t refuse you, not if his life—his
son’s
life—depended on it.”

“Simon was—”

“You think because you saved it once, his life is now yours to throw away?”

“I couldn’t tell you because—”

“Because my ignorance was amusing to you?”

“Because—”

“Because I’m your mouse, a little creature you can tease and claw till it dies?”

“Because—”

“Because you assume that John Gower—”

“
Because I wrote the damn thing, John!
”

At last. I let his words linger. “Say it again.”

He looked at me, eyes watering. “
Liber de Mortibus Regum Anglorum.
The book is as much my invention as the book of Duchess Blanche, or the
Parliament of Fowls
.”

I sat back, a cold rage running through my veins. Then my joints relaxed, my vision starring as I stood and moved away from him. I honestly did not think he would admit it. Now that he had, I realized how keenly I had wanted it not to be true.

“John—”

“Go to hell, Chaucer.”

“John, as your friend—”

“You are no friend. You are a curse.”

“—as your friend, John, I beg you to see all this from my angle.” From behind me I heard him rise, his shoes crackling the rushes. “There are constraints on my position. My wife is Swynford’s sister. To have revealed my hand in the composition of this work . . . it’s difficult to imagine the disaster that might have befallen the duke and his family.”

“And
my
family, Geoff?” I said faintly, still turned away. “Why didn’t you trust me with this information in the first place? Did you think I’d betray you to Westminster? You know me better than that.”

“As well as you know me, John.” I turned. Chaucer almost cringed; there were still things he wasn’t saying.

“What about this Lollius, then? What was his role in writing the prophecies?”

Chaucer lifted a vase from a nearby shelf, wiping at the dusty brass. “Lollius is also my invention. A Latinist of real distinction, and his stories are only now being translated into English. He’s the
auctor
of what will be my own great work someday, a romance of Troilus.”

“Simon is missing, Chaucer,” I spat. “Perhaps you might worry about your precious poetry some other time.”

He set down the vase, looking perplexed by his own narcissism.

“And the Lollius of Horace, the poet I chased through Oxford?”

“No relation,” he said. “Though certainly an inspiration. To blame it all on Horace’s Lollius, an unknown poet from ancient Rome? I couldn’t pass it up.”

“But to write a poem prophesying the death of our king? You can’t be ignorant of the treason statutes, Geoff. How many times have you heard them read aloud on the street? To compass or even
imagine
the death of our king: treason pure and plain. You
know
this. I cannot imagine what might have motivated you to write this sort of thing. And ‘long castle’? You used the same wording in your book for Duchess Blanche. You might as well have signed the damned thing!”

Chaucer was tapping his foot. “But I didn’t—ah, what can I tell you, John, that you won’t discover for yourself soon enough?”

“There’s
more
?”

“I wrote the
De Mortibus
in Tuscany, John. In Hawkwood’s company, during that visit last year. It was a jest, an amusement that took me a few mornings. I never intended it to circulate. But then it went missing.”

“Tuscany.” My skin prickled into gooseflesh. “Simon knew you’d written it, then.”

He nodded.

“Did he read it?”

“Oh, he read it quite carefully, I should think.”

So Simon knew the
De Mortibus,
had known of it all this time. There was something in Chaucer’s tone, though, that bothered me. “Are you suggesting Simon stole it from you, brought the manuscript with him from Italy?”

He looked at his shoes, a gesture I took then as a sign of shame. Despite his newfound forthrightness, he was still deceiving me, protecting me from knowledge he feared would destroy me. “The timing doesn’t work. It’s true that those who took Simon must have made a connection between the book, his service with Hawkwood, and his return to England. But the
De Mortibus
came to London weeks before Simon’s arrival.”

“Suggesting what?”

Chaucer’s eyes clouded. “Suggesting there are other forces at work here, John. Larger forces, with motives far from poetical.”

“Isn’t there a simple solution?” I said. “You wrote the prophecies, after all. You can prove it, for the original manuscript is in your hand. And you have the goodwill of the duke. Why can’t we go to him and lay bare what you’ve done?”

“Impossible.”

“Why?”

“It’s gone too far.”

“How so?”

“Well, for one thing, there are already multiple copies circulating. This one you’ve brought me is in Clanvowe’s hand. I assume there are others. Who would believe I wrote it, even if I
were
to confess?”

“So you’ll let another man be quartered for your own vanity?”

“It’s not so simple.” Chaucer stepped close to me. “The knowledge of this book reaches deep into Richard’s faction. Some of the most powerful men in the realm are arrayed against Lancaster. Warwick, Arundel, Oxford, Buckingham, who knows how many others, all of them convinced that the thirteenth prophecy will shatter the duke’s faction, pull the king away from his uncle. If it’s known that the
De Mortibus
was written by Geoffrey Chaucer, betraying the king’s affinity on the duke’s behalf, why—that would be just the wedge the earls need to drive apart Lancaster and the king, breaking an already fragile truce between Richard and Gaunt. Imagine it: Chaucer and Clanvowe, scribbling seditious prophecies at the behest of the recently deceased John Wycliffe and his chief supporter, the Duke of Lancaster. A scandal of the highest order.”

“So it all comes down to politics? Factions and alliances, title and power, government and gossip.”

Chaucer waved a hand. “Easy for you to say, John. You’re a man without a faction—the one fact about you everyone knows. The reason you were chosen for this task was precisely your neutrality. Your ability to do all your dirty work regardless of faction.”

“I was ‘chosen’? As if the passive voice somehow excuses
your
choice of me as your tool?”

“Oh, you weren’t my choice.”

I froze. “Then whose?”

Chaucer’s eyes closed.

“I am sick of your petty secrets. Who suggested to you that I be sent on this fool’s errand?”

Chaucer puffed his cheeks, looked at the ceiling. “Strode.”

Of course.
“And how long has Ralph known that you wrote the prophecies?”

“Since my return from Italy, the week before our meeting at Monksblood’s. It was Ralph who convinced me I needed to recover the book. He believed it was already too late to confess I wrote it, which I was prepared to do. We needed your help, your skills. But then, when Simon returned, it was felt that you were too compromised. That you were both in danger.”

I thought again of my trip to Oxford, that earnest conversation with Strode about the allure of false propositions. Strode had been tantalizing me, then, with his
own
false proposition, encouraging my trip to Oxford, even going so far as to write a letter to Angervyle’s keeper to help me find a book he knew I would never discover in the bishop’s collection. The only factors he had not controlled were my meeting with Clanvowe and the knight’s copy of the prophecies.

“Strode was protecting you,” said Chaucer. “Getting you out of town when things were at their hottest. He continues to protect you, and me as well.”

“
Protect
me? From what? I don’t need protection, Geoff. My
son
needs protection. He’s the one suffering for my sake, as we stand here jawing about your ridiculous prophecies.” I felt short of breath.

“We all need protection,” Chaucer gently said, risking a hand on my back. Despite myself I did not knock it away. “Don’t you see? The book is an ax at our necks. I wrote it in Italy. Simon read it there, and he’s missing. You are Simon’s father, and you have a copy of the
De Mortibus
yourself. You received it from Clanvowe while dining with Purvey, Wycliffe’s closest disciple. Barely four hundred lines of my doggerel, and they threaten us all.”

“And King Richard.”

“And King Richard,” he agreed.

“Who is behind all this, Chaucer?”

“Hawkwood.” A blood-soaked name. “I believe he’s plotting a return to England. He wants to ensure his legacy, win a greater title for his descendants. Rather than retiring happily to Essex, though, he plans to destabilize the realm by implicating Lancaster in this plot against the king. Hawkwood has Oxford in his pocket, you see. His ties to the de Veres go back two generations, and that’s a family that would do anything to heighten its status. Weldon is the go-between. He’s now Oxford’s man, but for years he served Hawkwood in the White Company. He led the massacre at Cesena, the slaughter of an entire town.”

I thought of the scar on Weldon’s chin, the butchery of which the man had long seemed capable. “And now Weldon is doing everything he can to see the plot to its completion.”

“It’s why Simon was seized, I believe, because he’s associated with Hawkwood and knows his plans.”

“As do you, Geoff.”

“Even Strode isn’t safe,” he continued. “The only thing to do now is to recover my copy, hunt down any others, and hope for the best. Unless—”

I looked at him. “Unless?”

“Unless we can find the cloth.”

“What cloth?”

“An ornate piece of work, embroidered with the livery of Gaunt, the alleged conspirator, raising a sword against King Richard. It traveled with the book from Italy.”

“Who made it?”

He looked away and breathed deeply. “It fits the
De Mortibus
as a glove fits a hand,” he said, ignoring my question. “From Strode’s inquiries we know that the book has been separated from the cloth. Whoever puts the book with the cloth, then—”

“Will destroy the realm.”

“Or save it,” he said. Then he actually smiled. “There’s one final wrinkle.”

“Why am I not surprised?”

“I have it from Strode that the book was brought into the city by maudlyns.”

“
Maudlyns?
” A stir of the absurd.

“Apparently some whore got ahold of it just as I was asking you to find it for me. You’ll remember the girl’s murder, outside the city walls—”

“In the Moorfields,” I said.

“They sold the book, or tried to. Strode doesn’t know who paid them for it. He’s trying even now to find out, asking all kinds of questions. The cloth, on the other hand, has not been seen.”

“So they still have it.”

“Presumably.”

I thought about this. “And I suppose there’s no one more suited, in Strode’s opinion and yours, to extracting this cloth from the maudlyns of our city than one John Gower.”