The People's Queen (36 page)

But it comes out wrong. It sounds...cheap, that defiance; it sounds like just the kind of wilful tricksiness that these men are trying to eradicate. And, by saying it, she's admitted that at least a form of marriage took place, and that she is, as alleged, an adulterer. He can see that from the small smile de la Mare can't keep from his face. And he can hear it's gone down badly from the sudden hubbub in the room, the excited murmurings and quick movements of triumphant eyes.

He shuts his eyes. He leans back, covering his face with his hands. He doesn't want to have to see Alice's face, as she realises her sally's only made things worse for her. He's heard enough.

On the boat, the boatman gloats: 'If you ask me, they
won't
have mercy. I've heard they're going to call in the Bishop of London tomorrow.'

Chaucer stares fiercely at the ripples, trying to ignore the wrenchings of his gut. He hasn't thought, until now, that anything could make him feel worse. But now he does. If gentle Archbishop Sudbury is being passed over in Alice's case, and William Walworth's pocket churchman coming to judge her instead, then...

'Adultery is a crime against God,' he hears the boatman saying from very far away. 'So she'll hang. Bishop Courtenay will tie the noose himself.'

But something else happens, before the trial of Alice Perrers goes veering off in this altogether more threatening and sinister direction - something that utterly overshadows, and briefly halts, Peter de la Mare's puppet show at Westminster.

TWENTY-FIVE

Muttering, fiddling with his rheumatic fingers, and with tears streaming down his face and into his beard, tears which are not altogether the work of the unkind wind, King Edward has himself rowed across the river from the session at Westminster to the palace at Kennington.

De la Mare, following in a hired boat, watches that frail figure with pity colouring his usual awe. De la Mare feels sorry that he's had to distress his monarch by asking the questions he's had to ask today; but that England needed to have the immorality of the Perrers woman publicly aired he has no doubt, since her dishonest dealings with money, which are proving so hard to pin down, are surely along the same lines as her years of dishonest behaviour with men. Now, he thinks, the King will take comfort with his son; and the rightness of that mixes in his mind with his own dutifully suppressed desire to be home watching his own boy mount a horse and gallop along the riverbank, all freckles and spontaneity, shouting with happiness. De la Mare reveres everything about the King, and now, on this boat, nothing more than the love the old man bears his eldest son. He can well imagine the thoughts chasing through the King's confused head: My son will understand. My son will explain what's going on.

But there is to be no comfort for the King across the water. What awaits the newcomers at Kennington Palace, coming from the darkened bedchamber of the Prince, is the sound of screaming.

The bouts of coma that the Prince has been suffering in recent days are now interspersed with waking periods of agony. Looking up the great stairwell, at the bent old back labouring up those steps towards his daughter-in-law, Sir Peter can see that Princess Joan's face is twisted with anguish. The doctors' faces are twisted with terror.

Edward hastens on, and vanishes with Joan into the noise. The door shuts.

Sir Peter is left in the hall downstairs, ignored by the scurrying servants, alone with his thoughts.

He knows the King has buried four grown-up children in his time; he's lost two boys himself. He can well imagine that the King, too, must feel the continuing pain of each of their deaths like an amputation. But this must be different. Worse. This is King Edward's most beloved child; his treasure, his consolation.

The screaming upstairs stops after a while. But the frantic running-around downstairs persists. Men rushing upstairs with new slops buckets, water, wine, blankets, linen, and braziers to cut the stink; and others rushing downstairs with used articles, which no one wants to look at.

Sir Peter is still there, overwhelmed by pity that's becoming almost unbearable, when a litter bearing the now silent Prince makes its unsteady way down the stairs, followed by King, Princess, little boy, doctors, knights of the body, attendants, and more servants carrying boxes and bags. The King's head is bowed. He makes no attempt to hide the tears pouring down his face.

Sir Peter can see the howling emptiness in the old man's soul as he watches the litter being manoeuvred on to the boat, and the King, with a strange return to majesty, handing Princess Joan down into it after her husband. The King is taking them back to Westminster with him. Sir Peter understands, or thinks he does. This is the end, and the King wants only what every good father would, when what is about to happen is something no good father can bear to contemplate. At least, at the last, he wants his family to be together.

So there is no Parliament at Westminster in the days that follow. There are just the screams, which set everyone's teeth on edge, and the silences, which set everyone's teeth on edge worse. And in between there are the busy moments of consciousness, when the Prince sits up and calls the trembling lawyers to his side to dictate that after his death this war-horse will go to that knight, and his bed-furniture embroidered with the deeds of Saladin to his son, and this silver cup to that servant; when he calls the quiet little boy trying not to move next to Princess Joan and asks him to keep on all his retainers; when his long will is finally read over, on 7 June, and more changes and additions made, and his executors named. He is to be buried in Canterbury Cathedral, in the undercroft beneath the shrine of St Thomas the Martyr, with his shield, helmet, sword and surcoat above his grave. He wants a French poem inscribed on his tomb, and also the badge of three ostrich feathers and the Flemish motto
Ich Dien
, which he used at Crecy, his greatest victory. There's a moment when he assembles his family - the Princess, and the scared boy by her side, and the King, and John, Duke of Lancaster, and his two younger brothers - and orders the men of his blood to swear on the Bible to protect his son. He watches his brother, mylordofLancaster, through fierce, narrowed eyes, as John takes the Bible; he's aware of Joan doing the same from her corner. It is important to him to die well, with all his worldly affairs settled.

Only after the will is completed does he order the doors opened. For that evening, and through the night, and through the next morning, and into the next afternoon, the gatemen at the palace entrance allow anyone in who wants to say goodbye. The members of his family are on stools behind the bed, all of them (except the child, who doesn't know what to do, and frets and fidgets) immobile: wet-faced and dead-eyed. The household files through. Then the rest. The Prince's agony is all but over. Only the fear for his little boy's future, which he experiences as a rage against his brother as intense as any of the pains that have racked him, is still there. Mostly he lies quietly, as people move through the chamber, though sometimes he opens his eyes, and once he stirs and shouts, though it's not clear to whom, 'I recommend to you my son, who is still very young and small. I pray that as you have served me so from your heart you will serve him.'

But, even now, there is no meekness in this prince's passing. He will leave this life as superbly and as pridefully as he has lived it. It is generally considered important, when preparing for the flight of the soul from its bodily prison, for a man to ask forgiveness of God and of all those whom he has injured during his life on this earth. But not this man. For hours on end, the Prince of England ignores the requests of the bishops fluttering around him, trying to administer extreme unction, to actually say the words 'I pray pardon of God and man'. The best he can manage is a curt nod. Then a grunt. The bishops eye each other and shake their heads. Between visitors, in moments of quiet, they glide back to him and try again to make him ask for pardon for his sins. 'You must say the words yourself,' they plead. But there's no fear of his Maker in the Prince. He hasn't yet abandoned this life, and the anger that has kept him alive for so long. He purses his lips, and clenches his fists as if to beat the confessors off, and shuts his eyes.

He is almost dead when, at dawn, Sir Richard Stury comes in, wet from the river, or the rain, shrugging off the russet travelling cloak of a poor man. The sight of Stury, whom he's always treated with honour, as a friend and fellow-knight, but whose loyalty he fears lies with mylordofLancaster, skulking in the shadows there, briefly rouses him - but only to new anger. He snarls at the glistening shape before him, the shape of the man who's tried to incite the King of England to dismiss the Parliament intended to destroy mylordofLancaster, the very shape of treachery, who must be here only to gloat at the passing of the Prince he's betrayed. Bitterly, he says, 'Come, Richard, come and look on what you have long desired to see.' He ignores the horrified hushes and the whispered I-have-always-loved-you protests. He shouts, with hatred, 'God pay you according to your deserts. Leave me and let me see your face no more.'

Stury is not there when next he opens his eyes. Just the confessors, buzzing in his ear, begging him, again, to repent, and forgive.

Forgive? He shakes his head. He looks at mylordofLancaster's set wet face. It's not in him. It's only when he sees his father's tormented face beside the clerk's - the red eyes, the white beard drizzled with the tears that flow unnoticed from them - that he feels the softness, and gives in. He still won't say the words. But he does, through gritted teeth, reply, 'I will do it.'

After the death, hours afterwards, after sunset even, the King, who's lapsed into vague torpor, ignoring every whispered request to be allowed to bring him food or drink, asks his servants to call Alice.

But the servants don't call Alice. They whisper among themselves, and vanish.

And, the next morning, the merciless Parliament reconvenes.

TWENTY-SIX

It is dusk, or would be if it wasn't raining - slanting spears and arrows of cold dark water. Over the river the Prince is dying. Over here, creeping down a back alley off deserted, splashy Thames Street, ignoring the City's curfew bells like a bedraggled footpad, is Geoffrey Chaucer.

He knows there are soldiers at the front of Alice's house. He's seen them - half a dozen men at the gatehouse, playing cards. That must mean she's been brought here to wait out the break in the Parliament.

But there's no one at the kitchen-garden gate. Perhaps the soldiers don't know it's there.

He slips up the main path towards the house, with the river gurgling and roaring at his back. He's blinking water out of his eyes. In front of the windows is a big old apple tree, whose blossom has been dashed off it by the harsh weather - a white scatter on the ground. As he approaches, the shutters at the house's downstairs windows are closed by unseen hands, and the garden goes dark.

He doesn't mind. There's one window left unshuttered, upstairs: a square of yellow. Alice must be in her room.

He waits. There's wet seeping through to his bones. Then he climbs the glistening tree, toehold by slippery toehold.

You're always safe if you're holding on in three places.
His father's voice comes into his head as he hoists himself carefully up.
Two feet and a hand. Two hands and a foot.
But Chaucer doesn't want to hear that kindly voice now. His problem isn't being safe enough. It's not being brave enough.

Chaucer's never been brave enough. When the merchants tell him, 'Your father would be proud of you,' he knows it's not true. John Chaucer spent his life doggedly following the King around the wars, building up wealth and knowledge of the court, of course, but really just hoping that his son would benefit from lifelong proximity to nobility; what he always wanted was for Geoffrey to bear arms - maybe to become a knight himself. He didn't understand when his son lost his nerve. Even today, Geoffrey Chaucer doesn't like remembering how proudly his father presented him with the sword and buckler he took to France that one time...or the bewilderment in John's eyes when Geoffrey, after not even one battle - just one ambush, and one brush with captivity - refused point blank to go back to the war, and left Lionel of Ulster's service rather than be asked. John Chaucer couldn't hope to understand the dread. He was a pure-bred merchant, not a courtly mongrel like his son. He'd never had to try to fight. Not that there were any reproaches. All the older Chaucer said, with a wistful shake of the head, was, 'Well, if it doesn't happen, it doesn't happen,' and within a few months he was letting himself be consoled by the offer of marriage to well-born Philippa. Another route to knightliness, Master Chaucer must have thought. If only, Geoffrey Chaucer sometimes thinks today, his father had realised - or
he'd
realised - how Philippa would always despise his lack of knightly skills, and how his children, almost courtiers themselves, would shy from being associated by blood with a man in a long gown, his only weapon a quill.

But he's trying to prove himself now, at least. He's trying to win his spurs. He's going to tell Alice he's going to save her.

When he's got high enough to be able to peer in at the first-floor window, through the thin upper branches that crack and sway with his weight, he sees with a rush of indescribable relief that there's a small head silhouetted behind those glowing panes of glass. Alice, looking out, through the torrent, at the dark.

'Alice,' he calls, in a low voice, so the soldiers won't hear. 'Alice.'

After a moment, the head rises. Her body comes into view.

He sees her looking out at him: eyes in the rain. Her quiet gaze meets his. He thinks she recognises him.

But there is no answering smile on her face. She closes the shutters.

In the morning, people are saying Stury has been arrested leaving the Prince's palace at Kennington. By then, the passingbells have started to clang, and they also know the Prince is dead.

Every prudent bone in Chaucer's body tells him to go straight home from the Customs House. There's no point in anything else. What good can he do? He's got a cold. He's shivery. He's chilled inside and out. He hasn't slept. His cloak is still damp. His boots, too.

But instead he goes out and pays a boatman to take him to Westminster.

Honour demands it. He has to try.

They find an empty room somewhere in the warren of corridors and spaces behind the abbey. It's not usually this quiet. But most of the Commons are out on the street, milling about, talking in hushed voices about the Prince's passing.

Chaucer, too, has muttered 'a tragic day' and 'God rest his soul', while introducing himself as a man who, while a courtier, knows the mood of London. He's been rewarded with a single austere phrase, 'I know your work, Master Chaucer.'

From a perch in the window, de la Mare is now gazing down at him like an eagle contemplating its prey. He wastes no words. But he's listening.

Chaucer does his best to keep his breathing light and shallow. He's thought out very carefully what will impress the Forespeaker. He's not going to mess this up.

'This tragedy changes everything, including the work your men will do when Parliament reconvenes,' he begins oratorically. 'What was uppermost in the minds of the Commons, before, will count for less after today...'

After a silence, de la Mare nods.

'...while England's leading men will have new burdens to shoulder,' Chaucer pursues, encouraged.

De la Mare nods again, with the minimum possible movement of the head. He's coiled tight as a spring, Chaucer sees: white at nostril and knuckle, preparing himself for battle. The death of the Commons' royal sponsor lays the Forespeaker and his men open to attack. They must be expecting reprisals from the Duke of Lancaster. De la Mare will be terrified, yet elated, that the moment has come when John of Gaunt may even, as evil tongues have been whispering for so long, try to seize the throne. He'll have no time for anything except the showdown he feels is coming. He'll want to tie up the loose ends of Parliament.

Chaucer's praying this will mean he's lost interest in Alice.

'I speak for many in London who admire your achievements,' Chaucer goes on. 'You've swept the government clean. You've stopped the rot.'

De la Mare permits himself the smallest of smiles.

'Many in London would say your task is already completed,' Chaucer now ventures, hardly daring to breathe. 'There's only Alice Perrers left to deal with. And, with this new weight of grief and sorrow on all of us, the City may grow impatient if a trial into possible long-ago marriages is dragged out at length...'

He gasps in air. '...a trial that may now seem frivolous,' he finishes.

Silence. De la Mare raises an eyebrow.

Chaucer wishes he could tell what the man is thinking.

But he persists: 'You and I both know that it's not Mistress Perrers who's to blame for all the bad government in the land. She's only a symbol of the corruption you've - so successfully - cut out. It would be merciful - and wise, in today's sadder circumstances - to make her punishment symbolic too.'

What Chaucer dreads is that de la Mare, who only last week locked Neville up for defending Latimer, will turn to him with cold fire in his eyes and say, 'Who are you to defend the whore? Isn't it time we investigated
you
?'

But if the Forespeaker is not a kind man, he's a just one. When, at last, he speaks, he only says, in a faraway voice, 'What did you have in mind, Master Chaucer?'

Chaucer might not know about swords, but he knows the moment to make a deal. Promptly, he replies, 'Make her agree to leave court and the King. Confiscate the properties the King has given her. Then drop the other charges - and let her go.'

Alice will have her children, at least, he thinks, hopefully. And she'll have properties stashed away, rainy-day money. She'll get by. She'll have the life she might otherwise have lived.

With growing confidence, he waits for the thoughts chasing through the other man's mind to come clear.

He can't begin to imagine the painful, sombre compassion that has been in de la Mare since he saw the King with his son in that litter. He can't imagine that de la Mare would now do almost anything to save the King further distress. That de la Mare simply needs to convince himself that his own strong instinct to heed Chaucer and spare the King's whore is not just the softness of grief: mercy untempered by reason, an emotion he has never allowed himself.

The silence seems to last for ever. But, eventually, the eaglehead nods. De la Mare says, 'Leave it with me.'