The People's Queen (40 page)

She can't speak. She stares back with her mouth open, hardly aware that she must be cutting a ridiculous figure. He holds her gaze.

When, in a helplessness that comes close to despair, she drops her eyes at last, she senses his head move: a small, hostile, triumphant shake.

Even amid her fear, she's getting a first glimmering of why he might be so full of fury. It's not as if he hasn't thought that thought himself; she's seen it in his eyes too often to be in doubt. But can it be, now, that he's transferring all the blame on to her for having thought it himself privately - so privately that they've never spoken it out loud, even between themselves? For having imagined that boy's deathbed, and his own life afterwards, and the crown on his head, and for having sought her out so she could strengthen him in that desire, encourage him to take all those oblique moves towards making his wish come true? It can...it must be. There's no other explanation.

He's had a change of heart since; must have done. Or lost his nerve, which comes to the same thing. He doesn't want the future she's been trying to shape for him. Not any more.

Perhaps she's been pushing him further and faster, all along, than he wanted to go? But, if so, why didn't he just say so? Say, stop. Enough. Peace. Perhaps...She pauses as this astonishing possibility occurs to her, because it surely can't be, since he's a prince with the blood royal running in his veins and a dove of divine grace hovering over his head, the closest man comes to God, but what other explanation can there be? Perhaps he's kept quiet and done what she suggested (until this explosion, in any case) because he is, or has been...scared? A little bit scared...
of her
?

The fool, she thinks, and she opens her mouth to try and justify herself, or talk him down from this unjustified rage, at least; but he interrupts her.

'I won't hear another word from you,' he hisses. 'Get out of my sight. And stay away. Do you hear? You're on your own now. On your own.'

But it's the Duke who stalks off on his own, on thin legs, in a dark wind of his own creation, leaving Alice standing completely still, staring after him.

For the first time in her life, as she feels the mantle of borrowed power she's worn for so long slip from her shoulders, she knows she's gone too far.

THIRTY

Alice Perrers is not invited to the burial of the King.

They say she nailed the old man upright in his chair every time he had visitors, in a cocoon of cloth of gold, so that, despite his empty eyes and drooling mouth, he could go on receiving guests till he dropped. She hammered in the nails herself.

They say she refused to let the confessors see the King, and went on bewitching her speechless victim with sinful talk of hunting and feasting to the end.

They say she stripped the rings off her lover's fingers before she finally fled from Sheen, leaving Edward to die alone.

Alice might have a different story to tell. But she's disappeared.

This is just what Geoffrey Chaucer hears after he rides unhappily back into London in June 1377, on the day after the King's death, on the day the truce he's tried to turn into a peace turns, instead, back into war. Knowing he's failed.

His team, which includes the Chancellor of England, has only just managed to sail into Southampton in time. The ports are now closed, in an attempt to prevent the French finding out about the King's death. From today, ships are to be turned away. Citizen guards are hastily polishing up their rusty weapons, while their wives stockpile food. Everyone is afraid of the invasion to come.

So now Chaucer's horse is carrying him forward at its own ambling pace, and, slumped atop it like a bag of lead, Chaucer's trying to quell the near-nausea he feels as the too-familiar streets and buildings come into view. He doesn't want to go to his apartment. He doesn't want to go to the Customs House. He doesn't even want to hear what the scurrying crowds of Londoners, weighed down with their bags and boxes of emergency provisions, checking bolts and bars on their shutters, are talking about. He can guess: there'll be weeping for the old King; fears about the new boy-King; malice about my lord of Lancaster; more malice about Alice; panicking over tomorrow; and recriminations over all the wasted yesterdays. Including the ones he's wasted. Guiltily, Chaucer bows his head.

When he clicks his horse on, it's to go to Guildhall. Drearily, he thinks he might as well start by paying his respects to the Mayor. The Duke, whom he knows is now hated as the enemy of the City's freedoms, forced the last Mayor out of office to punish him for the riots in February. But that City coup has done the Duke no good. The new Mayor is Nicholas Brembre, the grocer, an altogether more powerful man, and he hates the Duke's oppressive busybodying even more than his predecessor did. Brembre has publicly opposed the Duke's plan this spring to abolish the Mayor's office and replace the Mayor with a puppet leader, with the pompous Latin name of Custos, answerable directly to the Duke himself and the Marshal of England. And Brembre's won. So there is no punishment for anyone disrespecting the Duke's name in the taverns or in the streets. And there are many acts of disrespect.

'You know what they say, dear boy,' Brembre says, looking exaggeratedly relaxed, putting his feet up on a stool and an elbow on his enormous table. (He's been affability itself about the inglorious peace talks; he's complimented Chaucer on his energy and finesse; he's said, 'You did the best possible job in impossible circumstances.' He's even said, with more warmth than Chaucer could possibly have expected, 'And of course we're the winners, here in the City, because we've got you back at your desk at last.') But it's only now, talking about the Duke, that his big mouth curves into an enormous, self-satisfied smile. 'While the cat's away, the mice will play.'

Not, Brembre adds, sounding almost pained at having to mention it, that the Duke has actually put a foot wrong since his father's death. In fact, he's gone out of his way to be amenable. He's let Peter de la Mare out of jail, and he's neither protested at not being named Regent nor disputed the composition of the Grand Council that will rule England until the little King is grown up. It's a neutral council, too. The Duke's friends are in it, including Lord Latimer (
he
's done all right, then, Chaucer thinks sourly). But so are the Duke's enemies: the Earl of March, now back from Ireland, and Bishop Courtenay of London. 'People
say
', Brembre drawls casually, though Chaucer is aware of the sharp glance the merchant is directing at him as he speaks, 'that his most dangerous time was when he was closest to Mistress Perrers, last year. They say he's lost his claws, now
she
's gone.' He laughs, and his eyes flash with malice.

'Where
has
Mistress Perrers gone?' Chaucer asks, equally casually. Newer worries have overlaid his guilt on her account; a part of him is relieved she's left, and that, this time at least, it's not his fault. Yet part of him wants to see her, still; to make amends, if he can. He's never been a hero, never will be; but having seen the courage that goes right through Alice has, at least, made him recognise this failing in himself and, sometimes, yearn to be a different, better man. He'd like to be able to dream of becoming that man now, he thinks; it would make this unheroic homecoming less sad.

Brembre only shrugs. His enemy's enemy is not, in this case, his friend. 'Who knows, dear boy, who knows?' he says. 'And, frankly, who cares? She's yesterday's news.'

Alice Perrers does indeed seem like yesterday's news. There are so many more urgent worries once the truce expires.

Every piece of news from the south coast is another stab of guilt in Chaucer's heart. Just five days after the end of the truce, on 29 June, French warships land at Rye. For a day and a night, there's savagery - exactly the same kind of savagery the English have inflicted for so long on the towns of France. Houses go up in flames and are looted. Men are killed, women raped before being killed, and screaming, bloody-mouthed, ripped-up girls carried off in ships. The French admiral, Jean de Vienne, then takes his fleet down the coast to savage Folkestone, Lewes, Portsmouth, Weymouth, Dartmouth, and Plymouth, and, later, the Isle of Wight.

There is no organised defence; no counter-attack. The lords and knights of England let the towns of the south burn. Nothing has been organised. And they're not overly worried about townsfolk anyway. They're busy.

John, Duke of Lancaster, for instance, is busy with his father's funeral and his nephew's coronation and the new Council of England.

And once he's through with all of that, by late July, and has left little King Richard to perform various sweetly unimportant duties, including nominating Elizabeth Chaucer to St Helen's Priory in Bishopsgate and her cousin Margaret Swynford to Barking Abbey, the Duke retires to his own territories in the Midlands for the summer. He spends three months at Kenilworth Castle, busying himself hunting around Leicestershire and assessing the defences of his castles. He has Katherine Swynford with him. He plays with his new girlbaby, Joan. He goes out dancing with merry peasants in a meadow at Rathby.

Well,
he
's all right, Chaucer thinks bleakly.

They are less happy in Kent and Sussex, perhaps, rebuilding their houses, or trying to, holding masses in roofless churches for their dead. But how would the Duke know about them?

Chaucer next hears of Alice Perrers only in the autumn of 1377, when a new Parliament opens.

'By the way, have you got any credit notes from La Perrers?' Walworth grins, between rolls of accounts, when he comes to the office for the annual autumn reckoning. It's Walworth who gets to do it this year, now Brembre is Mayor. 'Loans outstanding...trinkets missing?'

Chaucer looks up from his own roll of figures. He raises an eyebrow. Non-committally, he asks, 'Why?'

'Only because,' Walworth drawls, 'if you have, this is your chance to get your money back. Parliament's offering to take on any debt cases against her, and fight her creditors' actions for them. They'll pay costs. It wouldn't cost you a penny.'

Chaucer's eyebrows rise higher. There's real spite in that. Cautiously, clerkishly, he says, '
In
-teresting.' Then, more boldly: 'She's not quite yesterday's news, after all, is she? If there are still people who want to destroy her that much?'

Walworth's watching him. Loyalty is key, now that London is against the Duke of Lancaster. However low-profile Chaucer has kept himself, there's still the faintest of question marks over him. Chaucer's been the Duke's man, in his time, or as good as. Chaucer can see Walworth's not sure of his loyalty to the City oligarchs, but would like to be. This is a test.

Chaucer is wondering: whom
does
he feel loyal to, in his heart?

Not to Philippa, certainly, with whom he's had unpleasantly frank whispered words during their last meeting, in July, as they watched Elizabeth going into St Helen's.

Not to the Duke, at least privately. He's disillusioned with his patron, or former patron (there might still be the pensions, but Chaucer knows those are thanks to Philippa's service to the Duke's family, really; and there have been no invitations to read poems to the court for years). Chaucer tells himself his growing distaste for the Duke is because the Duke left Kent to be burned by the French this summer. But maybe, too, it's because the Duke doesn't seem to have made the effort he might have to protect Alice (who always did her best for him) when she needed him. And, just possibly, the most honest reason of all is because the Duke loves Philippa's sister.

And Alice? He feels desperately sorry for Alice, especially with this latest confirmation that she's still being hunted, wherever it is that she's gone to ground. He feels guilty about Alice, too - of course he does - but he doesn't even know where she is. She's not part of his life any more. She doesn't need him.

In which case, in these dangerous and uncertain times, Chaucer may have no one to feel loyal to except the City men. That thought doesn't fill him with joy, either.

Lightly, neutrally, Walworth says, 'We heard in the session yesterday that they've confiscated all the moveable property she had at Pallenswick.'

'Was there much?' Chaucer asks, equally lightly and neutrally.

It's hearing that question, in his own non-committal voice, that tells him for sure that he's not going to stick his neck out to defend Alice Perrers. Once again, he's not going to be brave.

Walworth shakes his head and bulges his eyes, projecting disbelief. There's a pleased little smile on his face. He knows, too. Chaucer's a sound man, after all.

'Unbelievable,' he says sanctimoniously, as if everyone didn't have something on his conscience, as if his own life, and Chaucer's too, were one long white sweep of irreproachable virtue. He smacks his lips. 'The amounts. Thousands of pounds' worth. All stolen, of course. An immoral woman, through and through.'

Chaucer's hot with shame inside, but he feels himself smirking knowledgeably as he answers, 'Well, I suppose it will do the treasury some good if the Crown's got extra things to pawn.' It's the latest scandal in the City - that the King's new Council is so short of cash that it's begging the City to advance it money against Crown jewellery and the old King's embroidered cloaks and jackets. The councillors have asked for PS5000 worth of royal possessions to be pledged for credit so far, or at least that's the rumour. Walworth, who surely knows, doesn't deny the rumour. Chaucer notes the older man's matching smirk. All at once, he can't bear either Walworth or himself. He turns his head back down to the figures under his hands.

He can't help himself. Talking to the roll, not Walworth, he says, not exactly to the point, 'Though it's a bit absurd to take such a high moral tone about Mistress Perrers...taking money, fornicating, or whatever they want to pin on her now...when what's so moral about any of us, when it comes to it?' As he speaks, he becomes uncomfortably aware of Walworth drawing back. He realises he's speaking out of turn; it's not what Walworth wants to hear. So, hating himself more than ever, he does what he can to recoup. He can't stop feeling negative; but he can, at least, choose a target Walworth will want to be hit. 'The Duke himself, for instance, nothing so moral about him, either,' he says; and the merchant leans a little closer again. Chaucer goes on: 'We never hear any carping about his three bastards with Katherine Swynford, do we?'

It's not the first time Chaucer's mentioned this fact, privately, like this, one on one, in quiet conversations around London. It's part of his reluctant realignment with the City merchants, as his distaste for the Duke's behaviour, and the people in the Duke's camp, grows. It's what he's started to do, without really thinking why, whenever he's most tormented by his memories, and irritated by the disloyalties and lack of courage of others. Or himself. Perhaps mostly himself. It's only the foolish false bravery of spite; but, for a moment or two, whenever he does it, it makes him feel less of a coward.

He's pleased when, from under his eyelashes, he sees Walworth's eyebrows rise.

That night, alone in his rooms, Chaucer can't concentrate on the poem he's started writing. It sprang, in a playful moment, from his mischievous thought, long ago, that the merchants gliding about the Thames were as sleek and self-satisfied and smooth as geese, and as greedy when it comes to fighting off smaller birds and grabbing the last crust on the water. It's about a parliament of birds, each smaller and sillier than the last, making a raucous, crazy hash of a decision about the marriage of the beautiful noble eagle. He's been enjoying it until now, in a bleak sort of way; it's his own private protest against the foolish insanity of Parliaments. But tonight all he can do is scribble, 'Kek kek!' 'Cuckoo!' 'Quack quack!' and then, crossly, cross out the words.

He puts his head in his hands. He puts down the quill. He goes very quiet.

The candle is getting low, and it's dark outside, before he nods, and, suddenly decisive again, pulls a blank piece of parchment towards him, and starts, very quickly, to write. 'To the estimable Sir William of Windsor, Baron, of Greyrigg, Westmoreland, greetings,' he begins.

Someone needs to help Alice, and Chaucer knows he won't be brave enough. But what about this man?