The People's Queen (26 page)

Chaucer hasn't spotted any criminal reason for these dwindling returns. There's no fraud by the wool-exporting merchants that he's aware of. His only explanation is that landowners must be having such a hard time of it, what with ever-rising costs and labour bills, that they can't afford to keep so many sheep at pasture on so much grassland as before. Still, it worries him. He well remembers Lord Latimer telling him, this time last year, that PS70,000 was the minimum needed to keep England afloat, 'more or less'. He feels disaster in the air.

Even from the City, he's hearing that the royal coffers are, once again, all but empty. Stury says the King is living on the pawn value of his treasures, as well as on the huge loans that Lyons has cheerfully gone on making. But almost all the money his officials get in seems to pour out of the treasury again straight away, as if through holes gnawed by invisible rats in the bottom of the sacks.

These shortfalls must be making things harder for the Duke of Lancaster, who's away at Bruges negotiating war or more truce with the French (though the City's full of hostile mutterings about him, too, and about the amount of borrowed money he's pouring away, over there, on lavish displays of English grandeur that he thinks will impress the enemy).

There'll be nothing for it, soon, but for the King to grit his teeth and call a Parliament. If the government of England is to make ends meet, in these harder times, it will, within a year, have to ask Parliament's permission to tax the citizens of England directly.

And even that desperate solution isn't without its problems. Traditionally, a direct tax on movable property, which a Parliament might occasionally, in times of war, grant a king the right to levy, would cost citizens one-tenth of the value of that property in towns and one-fifteenth in rural areas; a good collection might bring in PS37,000. But the countryside is still relatively empty after the Mortality. There hasn't been a good collection for years. Worse yet, Chaucer knows that the knights of the shires - who are already paying much more than they want for men to till their lands, and receiving much less than they've traditionally expected in rents and services, but will have to bear the burden of any such tax - bitterly resent the prospect of footing the bills of an extravagant King.

Except that the King isn't extravagant any more. He hasn't got the strength. The King sits in his chambers, in his twilight, attended by his doctors. He's too befuddled to enjoy hunts, or dances, or feasts, or golden robes (though there are still hunts, and dances, and feasts, from time to time, and Alice organises them). For the moment, there isn't even a war on which to pour away his money.

So it's anyone's guess where the money is all going, and why England's government is grinding to a halt.

There are so many people quietly taking out their bit from the general wealth. He can hardly bear to look at Scrope the treasurer's pale face these days, as he sits over his books, totting up the figures, chewing at a quill.

But Chaucer's guess is that, whatever she says, Alice is somehow involved.

Chaucer remembers both the City gossip that it's Alice who's behind Lyons' loan to the Crown, and she who arranged the exchange with Italian debt paper and the discount; and the treasury gossip that the Italian paper is, in reality, being exchanged not at the agreed discount, but at full face value, costing the government twice as much as it expected. He sees Alice's hand in that, all right - taking at both ends, probably.

And how many other schemes might there not be, either involving her, or not?

Poor Scrope, trying so hard to look correct, yet unable to keep the fear out of his eyes. There's greed everywhere, and nothing stopping all the mice from playing now the cat's away.

Chaucer should report his suspicion of Alice to officials at court, of course. To Lord Latimer. But he can't imagine how he could ever be disloyal enough to denounce Alice, especially to Latimer, who's her friend. After she's been so good to him. And, especially, now, after...
that.
(And who's to say that Latimer's so perfectly honest and pure, or any other court official, come to that? Everyone is suspect.) So he frets, and prevaricates, and puts it off, and writes more poems about her sloe eyes. It's only a possibility, he tells himself. He has no proof.

His guesswork boils down to this. Alice is the only other person he knows of, apart from himself, who's so at home both at court and in the City. He's almost sure she must in some way be taking advantage of that dual citizenship. He's still almost sure it's the thing he's already asked her about, and she's denied: that she's making a profit from the treasury, and taking a cut from the merchants, too, for recycling that Italian debt.

If she is, she'll be relying on the fact that court and City don't in general overlap; that merchants and courtiers don't mix, or gossip together; and that it's all but impossible for anyone firmly in one world to know what's going on in the other.

Yet, every now and then, there
is
a leak of information between court and City - like the one Chaucer's just heard about from his wife.

Alice is over-confident. It takes a worrier like Chaucer to see the dangers.

Chaucer sits down by the fire and pours himself wine. For a moment, as he watches the thick red liquid gurgle into the cup, he lets himself contemplate just how much worse things could have gone for Alice, if only that court servant had been smart enough to listen to the real City gossip being whispered all around him, not gone gawping at some maudlin drunk.

Philippa could have been sitting here telling him how Alice was bankrupting the Crown, a far more serious - and, unfortunately, plausible - charge than the absurd one that she's been secretly bearing the King's bastards. (Absurd, that idea, because however discreetly the perfectly ladylike Katherine Swynford might be hiding her illegitimate offspring, at least you can see why. She's doing it to protect a lover with a damaged reputation, and a living wife. Whereas if the far more flamboyant Alice had managed to conceive a son with her old, still popular, and safely widowed, King, she would have been waving her baby triumphantly in the faces of every lord at court, and she'd have got the boy at least a dukedom by now, too.)

Remembering the King, Chaucer shakes his head. Yes, it could have been worse. Those ladies-in-waiting could have been enjoyably picking over exactly how many thousands Alice had stolen from the sick old man who loves her.

'Quit, Alice,' Chaucer says earnestly. 'Quit while you're still ahead.'

Or that's what he would be saying, if he could only get half a chance.

It's the next day, and he's woken up so anxious on her behalf that he's taken a boat up to Hammersmith village and beyond, to find her at Pallenswick and warn her. This seems so important that he's even postponed going to see the Benedictines at St Helen's about taking in Elizabeth.

(Or, he wonders uneasily, as he wishes the boatman forward, is he making too much of his fears - and making an excuse to ignore Alice's command to leave things where they were between them - just because he wants to see her?)

But she's not taken the blindest bit of notice of his serious face and his request for an important talk. She's just thrown her arms around him and squealed, 'Chaucer!' and 'My dear old friend!' and 'It's been too long!' with every appearance of delight, and absolutely not a blush or a quiver to suggest she even remembers...
that
, and insisted on having dinner prepared while she's showing him the house, and how she's improved it in just a year.

He's got wet feet from the boat. He doesn't want to be doing this. He loathes discomfort. He's squelching miserably as she walks him round the sheltered gardens, the sapling orchards, the windbreak trees she's planting to protect them better from the river winds, and pointing out the forty acres of arable land and sixty acres of pasture and one-and-a-half acres of meadow. 'And if we come back
this
way,' she prattles on, drawing him towards the cluster of buildings around the great hall, where some sort of building work is about to begin, and a pile of great oak timbers is lying covered in tarpaulins, 'you'll see...' and indeed he does: chapels, kitchens, bakehouses, stables and barns, all repaired and painted, and brand-new gates leading out to the track through the woods behind.

He'll say this for Alice. The serfs look well fed. No sunken faces and bare stick legs and quiet son-of-the-soil anger in eyes here. The fields look well tended, too. And the food that comes out of the kitchen is magnificent.

The main house, though still unfinished, will soon be elegant. There are new hangings, fresh from the workshops, lying on chests on all sides, ready for the walls. 'If only you'd come a month later,' Alice is saying, bright-eyed, 'you'd have seen it finished. But for now, you'll just have to imagine the glorious future.'

Chaucer's forgotten everything except that he's glowing with pleasure at her pleasure. By the time he does, finally, get a chance to talk, over a tender little suckling pig with an apple in its mouth and its side carved neatly off into slices, he's realised how thin an excuse he's got for coming here and what a mountain he's made of a molehill. He doesn't even like to mention the tavern story. It seems so inconsequential now. So he sticks to general tavern worries: about the King's drifting; and the hash the Duke's said to be making a hash of the peace talks, over in Bruges; and that there's so little money...that there might have to be a Parliament...

Alice just laughs. Especially when he finishes: 'And most of all I'm worried for
you
, Alice. I hear such hard things about you. People don't like it that you're doing so well, so obviously, when no one else is. Shouldn't you at least think of...stepping back? Spending less...keeping a lower profile?...Or keeping away from the City?...Or even retiring to be with your family?'

'Oh, I'm not ready to go anywhere yet,' she says blithely. 'You're always fretting over something, Chaucer.'

He feels snubbed. He falls silent.

She piles more food on his platter. She refills his glass. She flashes her teeth at him. She adds, with kindness, 'But I like it that you worry about me.'

And, when he pushes the platter away, she sweeps him excitedly up again. 'If you're sure you've had enough, then come and see. My best hanging's just come.'

Even Chaucer has to put aside his forebodings and laugh when, puffing and dusty, they've finally got the stiff embroidered thing out and flat on the floor.

It's an extraordinary piece of work. It's Alice through and through.

Sampson, asleep on a bed of pearls, has golden hair and a long golden beard. Real gold: great, flowing locks of Cyprus thread that glitter under the dust motes.

Delilah, scissors in hand, is black-haired and blue-eyed and curvy. She has a wicked little grin as she advances on her victim, ready to cut off his hair and steal his strength. She's wearing scarlet. For a Biblical character, her costume looks strangely like that of the Lady of the Sun.

Oh, Alice Perrers, he thinks, lost in admiration, you brave little minx. Against his will, he finds himself hoping that, somehow, she can safely hang on, picking people's pockets and playing them off against each other and plotting and dancing around and laughing and being intoxicating, for as long as she wants. For ever.

She turns and dimples up at him. 'Do you like it?' she says innocently.

He nods, several times. She's standing too close, for someone who told him, months ago, that they shouldn't think again of...
that.
He's got her rose-oil scent in his nostrils. He's on the point of stepping back when she comes closer still, snakes herself round him until he starts to melt and harden against her. Standing on tiptoe, she presses her lips up against his, and says, 'I've missed you, Chaucer.' Again, he finds himself forgetting to breathe.

For a while, Chaucer can't think of anything but what his body's doing. But, as he gets his breath back, and removes his nose and elbows from the prickly gold embroidery and the bobbly seed pearls of Delilah's scarlet skirts, and rushes to lace himself back up, and to pull down Alice's skirts over her legs (because she's just going on lying there, on one elbow, grinning mischievously at him), and to pick up the hat that's fallen on Sampson's fig leaf, he's appalled again, shocked again, at what he's done. Again.

'But I thought you said,' he mutters breathlessly, 'that we shouldn't...'

Her dimples show when she smiles. He wants to kiss them.

She lifts her shoulders, which are still bare and deliciously rosy, in a charmingly helpless shrug. 'Well,' she says, and her gesture forgives them both, 'we just did. And it wasn't so bad, was it? No harm done?'

He can't help smiling back. But he has to ask, all the same: 'So what changed your mind?'

She sits up now, and begins calmly to restore order to her own lacings, humming though her teeth as she does. After a moment, she glances up at him - an outrageously intimate look. She's smiling, though more softly. 'Well...back then, I was surprised it happened...and I thought I couldn't be two men's mistress at once...that really would be immoral, even for me. But now? I don't know. Things just look different. Because, to be honest, I'm not really
his
mistress, not any more, haven't been for a long time...and it's true what I said, Chaucer. I missed you. And anyway, why do we always think we have to choose between things? Why not have it all?'

She stands up. Right next to him. He can see he's supposed to react with joy. And he is joyful, of course he is, but he's alarmed, too, that he's come here to warn her to be more careful, but she's only got more foolhardy. But then, what's he blaming her for, when he was only too eager, a few minutes ago, to rush in...?

He swallows.

'It must have cost a pretty penny,' he says, changing the subject. 'That hanging.'

She gives him that careful, squinty, narrow-eyed look that he's seen from her once or twice before. She's measuring him, he thinks; seeing if she can trust him.

He holds his breath. Whatever it is, he wants to know.