The People's Queen (28 page)

Peter de la Mare has spent so many years thanking God for his own lucky escape from genteel poverty - in the shape of Matilda's blue eyes and lavish marriage portion - that he's only recently realised, as his own son grows up, how much worse things are getting for the country gentry of today.

His class is the backbone of England, he's always known. He's always been proud of that fact, and deeply aware of his duty. But it's only in his middle years that he's understood what this now means to the officials who rule the land in the King's name: that his is the class on whom England's tax burden must fall.

Since Peter de la Mare was a boy, in King Edward's early years, the national tax burden has trebled. The officials at Westminster now expect to be kept afloat by impoverished gentlemen such as the ones from Herefordshire - even men who can only pay the tax if they sell their land, and lose their status, and, with tears in their eyes, put their sons back to till the soil.

'If it's for the good of England...' de la Mare always used to say to Verney (trying not to see the mute plea in Verney's eyes, but wouldn't my Roger and your little Janey, so pretty, so prosperous, be a good match?), 'then, however hard it seems, we have to pay the King his tax, and keep hope in our hearts.'

But that naive acceptance was before his eyes were opened...

...which they were, three years ago, during his annual visit to St Albans, to his elder brother Thomas, the Abbot there. Thomas, whose obsessive following of the affairs of the nation stems, probably, from his futile lifelong rebellion against their father's decision to take him out of the world and settle him in the Church. Ambitious Thomas, now almost a prince of the Church, whose frequent court cases and elaborate financial arrangements on his wealthy abbey's behalf have given him an insider's view of what's going on in London, and at court. Well-connected Thomas, whose long-standing friendship with the Prince means his opinions have often been tested against the greatest in the land. If anyone understands what's going on at the heart of England, Peter knows, it's Thomas.

'You think it's all for the good of England?' Thomas said, with that hard look that twists his face into ugliness. 'All the sufferings of good, honest men like John Verney?'

And, without another word, he took Peter off to the scriptorium, to look at the abbey's chronicle of current events, kept by the young brother with the fat pink cheeks by whom he seems to set so much store.

What Peter read there changed his life for ever. The chronicle's account, down in plain black and white for anyone to see, talked of the carryings-on at court, the senile King, the grasping Devil's-spawn whore, and the cabal of courtiers stealing every penny of his own and John Verney's money that has gone into the royal coffers for years, to spend it on their own ill-deserved comforts and misbegotten brats. As he read it, Peter felt his heart beat faster, and his blood throb in his temples, out of sheer fury at the injustice, the outrageous wrongness, of it.

He went straight back to Hereford and got himself elected to represent the Commons of England - the esquires, the gentlemen, the minor nobility, and the City rich - at the next Parliament.

It's been his one ambition, ever since, to stop the criminals in their tracks, and make the honest folk of England safe again from that greed.

Not that he can have much realistic hope that the voice of the Commons will make much difference to the future of England; the Commons are usually told, without excess formality, to know their place and keep to it. Still...Peter draws his hope from this. He knows the King's a good king, led astray, not the kind to take it amiss if the best and truest of his people step forward to guide him back to the path. Peter's dream - private at first - has been that, if the knights and burgesses of the Parliament were led by a man of integrity, who'd found out the whole ugliness of the canker attacking the state, who could put the details to them and tell them exactly how to stop the rot, the King would pay heed. Peter wants to be the man who can do that. And his dream seems to have come closer to reality ever since the Princess sought him out.

He's grateful to Thomas - who, for all his flinty appearance, is a good man deep down, and wants virtue to triumph over evil in this world - for putting him in touch with the Princess Joan. The Princess, with her husband, has been funding his research into government corruption for the past year.

Of course, the Princess has her own ideas about the cause of the corruption. She and her husband believe it's sponsored by the Duke of Lancaster, who, they think, wants to steal not only money but the very throne of England from their son.

Peter de la Mare is inclined to suspect that the Prince's fears on that score are no more than the night terrors of a terminally ill man, who knows he won't be around to protect his child into adulthood. Of course the Prince fears for his little boy, just as Sir John Verney fears for his son, but, in de la Mare's mind, it's Sir John Verney who has more reason to fear. Privately, he doubts that there's much real link between the corruption of the court and the activities of the Duke of Lancaster. But, since it's the Prince of England who's paying for him to root out the corruption, he's willing - more than willing - to keep an open mind.

If only he could find something definite, quickly.

If only he could get home to Yatton. The corn will be ripening by now. He wants to sleep with his wife, confess to his priest, and ride out around his lands with his own boy Roger and with Roger Verney, who, of course, he
has
, in the end, reluctantly agreed can marry Janey, once she turns fourteen. He wants to look into honest country eyes, blue as a clear sky, and breathe pure air.

Even once Sir Peter's inside, stalking along the stone corridors to report to the Princess, London clings to him, the creeping putrefaction that the city trails. He can't get its stink out of his nostrils. Whether the root of the evil lies in the City with the merchants, or at marshy Westminster with the government officials, he can't be sure. But they're clever, all of them, so damnably clever, with their elaborate deceptions and their paper trails that peter out into nothingness...

Princess Joan's face is alive with a question.

He spreads his hands. 'Nothing.'

The Princess is stony-faced. 'Sir Peter,' she says. 'It's midsummer. They say a deal is imminent at Bruges. A disgraceful deal. Another shameful truce. We're going to give in to the Pope, too, and pay him money England doesn't owe. A Parliament is more and more likely to follow. My lord the King will need money. You must have a case to put. You must hurry.'

De la Mare suddenly hears his brother John's voice. 'I told you,' John's saying truculently, 'it would be far easier just to get Perrers for witchcraft.'

Peter's head is pounding. Perhaps John was right all along. Perhaps it's not the means that matters; the triumph of good over evil, through virtue. Perhaps you do just have to squash the evil, hard, fast, however you can...

Quietly, he puts a hand up to his temple and begins to massage his skin. He says, in a monotone, to his own wrist, 'It's a matter of principle. If this is to be done, it must be done right.' He looks up, into the Princess's eyes. 'Trust me,' he says. 'I'll find what we need.'

SIXTEEN

'I told you nothing would happen,' Alice says. 'And here I still am. Safe.'

Besides her, Chaucer stirs. He sees that she's sitting up, hands clasped round her knees, thinking, shivering every now and then as the blankets move. Even inside the bedcurtains, at dawn, in this freezing spring of 1376, it's cold enough for her breath to be rising in a white plume from her mouth. It started to snow last night, to mark the quarter-day. And the servants don't come and stoke up the fire in the mornings, out of embarrassment, when Alice makes her occasional visits. It must have gone out.

Enjoying the warmth of his cosy space under the quilts, Chaucer thinks: Well, perhaps she's right.

Duke John certainly doesn't seem to have checked the finances. He doesn't seem to have cared, either, that Alice's pick of negotiator, John Wyclif, turned out to be no good; he just lost his temper, walked out of the talks at Bruges, and came home. That didn't stop the Duke trusting Alice again. He took her next bit of advice with alacrity: that he should travel with his pregnant wife to Bruges for the next instalment of talks, to show off to the world the bulge that might be the next King of Castile. After the ducal delegation left the Savoy for the coast, Alice rushed straight round to Chaucer's apartment. She had roses in her cheeks. Her first words were about poor Katherine, the left-behind mistress. 'I bet', she said cheerfully, 'that it's mighty cold and lonely up there in Kettlethorpe.'

Chaucer's getting used to the idea that he scarcely sees Philippa any more, only for the occasional tight-lipped encounter on the rare occasions she and the Duchess are at the Savoy; because a truce has developed. He doesn't ask her about Katherine's family circumstances (though he's heard, from Alice, that his sister-in-law called the second ducal baby Henry). In what he sees as a tacit trade-off, Philippa has agreed that Elizabeth can become a novice, next year, at St Helen's, where Chaucer will be able to visit her once a month.

To Chaucer's great sorrow, Thomas hasn't come once to the City in the past year. Philippa just says he's too taken up with his riding and his studies. But Elizabeth - a tall, thin, silent, downcast-eyed, tongue-tied version of the giggling, tumbling child he loves - has been to visit, with her mother, three times. Chaucer is quietly hopeful that, once he starts getting to meet her on her own next year, he'll be able to rekindle some of the old affection he used to see in his daughter's eyes.

Meanwhile, there's Alice. She comes, quite often. He never knows when she will.

He pulls her down, lays her head on his chest. 'Well, maybe you were right,' he concedes sleepily. 'But who am I to say? I'm only a poet in love.'

'Ahhh, poetry,' she says indulgently. 'Saps the common sense.' Alice has no time for fancy. But she looks pleased that, for once, he doesn't sound worried.

In his heart, Chaucer doesn't share Alice's conviction that no one will find her out, however triumphant she's taken to sounding, however right she seems to be.

He certainly feels guilty enough on her behalf. And his instinct is to whisper through these winter days, avoiding all but the most cursory conversation with anyone, bar clerks, servants and family.

It may just be his uneasy conscience, but Chaucer smells threat in the air.

He's relieved, at least, that the mystery knight from Herefordshire, who for months has been in and out of London, and in and out of Westminster, asking nosy questions of everyone about the public finances (he says at the behest of the Prince, though no one's quite sure whether that story's true, or just a front to hide the identity of some other powerful enquirer), seems to have left town again.

No one's been visited by the knight, that Chaucer knows of, for the past two days.

Peter de la Mare's been to the Wool Wharf and checked the merchants' books, and Chaucer's Counter-Roll too, so Chaucer's had a better chance to inspect the knight from close up. He's a great gaunt skeleton of a man, who you'd think might be frightening in anger, though he turned out to be quiet and straightforward enough as he went through Chaucer's work in weary, but thorough, style.

Chaucer even rather liked it when Peter de la Mare looked up from the Counter-Roll, after an hour or so, and gave him a quizzical sort of look. Raised eyebrows, head cocked on one side; as if he were waiting. 'Sir?' Chaucer said deferentially. 'Can I help you with something?' His heart was racing. Had the man found some terrible error he'd made?

Sir Peter began to smile, as if to himself. 'I don't know...Don't you have anything to tell me, Master Chaucer?' he replied, and at Chaucer's bewildered headshake, he almost smiled. 'I don't mean to alarm you,' the knight went on. 'But to tell you the truth I do feel there's something missing. Not that it's your fault; good God, no. Nothing you need worry about. It's just that with almost everyone else I've talked to, down in London, there's always been a moment, about an hour in, when they've started telling me, as if it's sheer coincidence they've just thought of it, some story suggesting that their own business rival is the most dishonest man ever to walk God's earth, and needs to be investigated. But you've just been sitting there, silent as a lamb.' There was a glint in his eye that, if he'd seen it on the face of someone less tall and less serious, Chaucer might have taken for the beginning of laughter.

'No enemies, sir,' Chaucer replied smartly, feeling relieved at this hint of humour. 'At least, I try not to have.'

But he breathed more easily, all the same, after the knight made his formal, gracious, countrified farewells and went off to sniff at Walworth, or Lyons, or at Westminster instead.

Everyone's rattled. Perhaps that's because no one is quite sure who stands behind the spectral knight with his silver hair, and what the purpose of these inquiries really is. (There's a story that he's just preparing himself, in case there is a Parliament, and in case, if there is, he ends up spokesman for the Commons, though that's obviously nonsense, because the Commons never get much of a chance to say anything at Parliament, they just get lumped into a corner of the chamber, behind the Lords, and told to hurry up with their speeches and complaints and let the important people get on with the real business; and, besides, what country knight could possibly afford to wander around London for all these months on such a fool's errand?) Still, people are rattled, because everyone feels guilty about something. Whose conscience is clear?

Only Alice knows no fear. In fact, she's behaving more outrageously than ever.

She's come to Chaucer, this time, after a Mayor's Lady Day banquet yesterday at the Guildhall. Chaucer went to it, expecting good food but dull company - chit-chat with merchants' wives, uneasy talk among the men about how long the King can hold out without calling a parliament - without knowing she'd be there. He certainly didn't expect to get there and find her on Richard Lyons' arm, as the divorced Fleming's guest, with every eye in the room on them. Lyons was in vintners' livery, though his own colouring, the pink and the orange of him, took all attention from his muted claretcoloured furred robes. Loose though the robes were, the sheer muscly well-fleshed size of him made his long tunic seem to strain and heave at arm and shoulder seams. Alice was equally ostentatious in fluttering pea-green silks, with silver worked through her veil and emeralds at her throat. Chaucer tried all through the afternoon not to feel jealous of Lyons' flesh against hers. With Alice, what would be the point of that? But he couldn't help but cringe for Alice at the expression in most of those watching eyes. She was smiling, flirting, working the crowd; apparently unaware of the hateful glances behind her back.

Chaucer doesn't know if she was even aware of him listening in while she talked to Walworth. He kept his back turned the whole time (though of course every fibre of him was straining to catch her teasing words, and Walworth's prickly, pompous replies).

A
LICE
. They say the government inspector has now visited everyone who's anyone, and left. The knight from Herefordshire, I mean. De la Mare. Has he been to you, at all, Master Walworth?

W
ALWORTH
. Mistress Perrers. He has indeed. Many times.

A
LICE
. Well, then, Master Walworth, you're uniquely honoured, for I've heard of no one else he's been to more than twice. [
Bright laughter.
]

W
ALWORTH
. You will have your little joke, Mistress Perrers. Very amusing. Though in reality I found him charming. Very eager to know more about government business in London. I was able to help him on that, I think. You'll have spent time with him too, I've no doubt.

A
LICE
. Well, no. None, actually. Should I feel slighted, do you think? [
Bright laughter.
]

W
ALWORTH
[
after a pause
]. Well, they say he's looking for wrong-doing in high places.

A
LICE
. Then I can't say I'm surprised a mere woman such as myself hasn't come to his attention. Let alone [
bright laughter
]
many times
, like you, Master

Walworth. He sounds far too serious to be interested in female foolishness.

Stop, Alice, Chaucer was pleading inwardly, imagining Walworth's strained, angry face, and Alice's cheerfully mocking eyes. Please stop. Let him be.

But she didn't move away.

When Chaucer couldn't bear it any more, another second later, he turned around and let his eyes light up, first, prudently, at the sight of Master Walworth, then at the sight of Alice. 'Why, Master Walworth! Why, Mistress Perrers! What a great pleasure!' he heard himself flute in his peacemaker's voice.

To his relief, Walworth bowed gratefully towards him, as if to a liberator, and said, with what good grace he could muster, 'Do excuse me, Master Chaucer, I must see my wife is all right. I sent her off dancing with Master Lyons a while ago. Who knows what's become of them?' and made off, at a goodish speed, through the crowd.

'Alice,' Chaucer warned, in an agonised whisper. But she just grinned.

She said, 'But I was enjoying myself.' And she wafted away.

When, a little later, he came across Walworth back at the table, putting himself outside a cream pudding with angry intensity, Chaucer said, sympathetically, almost apologetically, 'Mistress Perrers being tricky, was she?' He's friendly enough with Walworth, these days, to be that honest, at least.

'That Woman,' Walworth said, swallowing the last mouthful as if biting something's head off. 'had the nerve to suggest that the Herefordshire knight, the one who's been...well, you know the one, Master Chaucer...that he was
investigating
me. Just because I've been helping him with his work.'

He paused. He scraped at his empty dish. Chaucer wondered, rather enviously, how he stayed so thin. Chaucer also wondered what Walworth had insinuated, an hour into his conversation with the knight, if that was what everyone but Chaucer himself had been doing; whom Walworth had casually implicated. Alice Perrers herself, probably; that must be why he was so angry now.

'Ah, well, we all know you've got nothing to worry about,' Chaucer said comfortingly, trying not to think the uncomfortable thought that Walworth might just possibly have been dropping some casual slander about
him
into a conversation with the knight; and that
he
might have missed his turn in the dance of the investigation to counter-implicate Walworth.

Guilt: an ugly emotion, Chaucer thought. We're all behaving badly. All guilty.

He was surprised when, much later, after dark, just as the curfew bells were ringing, Alice turned up at his door. She knew exactly when his servants left. She lifted carefully plucked eyebrows at him across the threshold, mocking his nightcap, and said, 'If the auditor's not with you, is there any room at the inn?'

The illusion of comfort Chaucer managed to sustain through a sleepy moment at dawn while covered in a warm quilt, with Alice confident at his side, is chilled off him again by the time he's broken the ice on the water jug and splashed his face and under his arms and between his legs, and towelled himself dry, and pulled on yesterday's linen. It doesn't take much.

Because by this time he's remembered everything else that's been on his mind recently, and he's as worried as he was before she got here last night. She's scared too, he realises. All her jokes about the knight and his mission: they're a way of dealing with fear. She's just pretending everything's all right.

He goes to the fireplace, shivering as he picks up the tinderbox lying ready by the bucket of leaves and twigs. Just one spark, he tells himself, as his stiff fingers push at the flint. Then the whole thing goes up.

'Look,' he says as the fire blossoms, colouring the cold grey room with gold and copper. He hears her stir behind him. 'Mmm,' he hears. 'Lovely.' But Chaucer isn't seeing loveliness. He's seeing hot light, licking along defenceless fingers and limbs of wood, devouring them as it devours the darkness. The way of the world.

Carefully he places a log on top of the little blaze, and another one across it. Then, as the flames rise, he goes back to the bed, where Alice is lying, watching. She looks so small. She must see from his face that he's serious. After one glance, she seems to shrink even further into herself.

He says, without preamble, 'There's no point in deceiving ourselves.'

Her eyes are all he can see of her above the sheet. Her dark eyes are big and round. She keeps very quiet.

'It doesn't matter that you haven't actually been caught cheating yet,' he says, staring back down into her owl-eyes. 'Even if it's not the knight from Herefordshire, someone, sooner or later, will get you. You have to stop.'

He goes on: 'It doesn't even matter whether or not the knight's here for some serious purpose. His being here is just reminding us of what we already know. We can't go on like this for ever - the court and the City, drinking Gascon wine like there's no tomorrow, stuffing our faces on larks' tongues and posset, while the war never gets anywhere, or ends, either, and the poor stand howling outside the windows, in limbo. Wondering how to pay for our appetites. Even that knight. He's one of the ones who's being asked to pay.'