The People's Queen (32 page)

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 Middlesex. 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 impassive, 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 nobodies 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 passes 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 impassive 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 Northamptonshire. 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 shifting 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 Northamptonshire.' 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 scraps 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 documentation, 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 documentation, 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 Northamptonshire 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 glass and lead, she makes out two shining 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, glass vessels for the collection and analysis of piss 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 reassured, 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 bass 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 glass, 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
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 rushing 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
.' There's muddy water running down poor Friar John's face; a smear of horseshit 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 hell do you think you're doing?'

The visitors don't look abashed. Dragging the friar forward like a shield, 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.

A sound from behind the gates turns Alice's eyes sideways. Suddenly she sees why this man's so brave. She almost stops breathing.

There are more men behind these two, pacing around outside. Men on horseback. Men with glittering points of metal raised. Fifteen, maybe twenty of them. Ready for trouble.

Master Broun's at Alice's side. He hasn't seen the horsemen. He nudges her. There's a question in his eyes. The other land agents are massing: shoulders squaring, fists at the ready. She only has to say the word.

She shakes her head, just a fraction. This mustn't turn into a brawl. Too dangerous. Those men have a troop of horse with them, but that's not the only reason. The point is, they're not footpads. They're here on someone's orders. She has to find out whose.

'By what right?' Alice asks, hands on hips. Shouts, more like. She's comforted enough by the phalanx of solid, disciplined black at her back for that, at least. 'You have no right.'

Gruffly, staring at her with violence in his eyes, the other man says, 'Never you mind.' No 'mistress', no 'my lady'.

'I insist on knowing,' Alice says with the freezing fires of hell in her voice. 'Or I'll have the King himself hound you down to the end of the earth.'

Silence.

Anger takes Alice over; she's hot with it again.

'What are your names?' she grinds out between clenched teeth.

Silence.

The men glance at each other. One - the man holding the friar - nods. The other strides off and mounts his horse. The first man bundles the friar off towards the other horse, and heaves him up over the saddle. The friar's groaning, and moaning, and mumbling prayers now; Alice glimpses his eyes, white all round the edges, fixing imploringly on her as the horse skitters round.