The People's Queen (50 page)

But there are so many other people also running at full pelt through the streets that he can't choose his route. This lot aren't running away, like him. They're great oxen of men. Not Kentishmen: London men, but the rough kind, all with sticks and knives. Horribly excited. They keep banging into him, bashing him with their lowered heads. And they're all heading west, and at full pelt. He tries to cut across Thames Street, and continue north, but he can't. He's swept west. He tries to cut north across Tower Street. The same thing happens. There are so many of them. Soon there's no way he can do anything but hang on to his hat and join them, streaming along Cheapside towards Ludgate, running like lunatics for London's western exit. He knows where they're heading because of what they're panting at each other, and even more because of the look in their eye. The Duke's palace on the Strand: the Savoy. It's a magnet for hate, and the London mobsters want to beat the foreigners to it. They want to be the first to destroy the Duke.

A kind of wonder takes Chaucer over as he pants up Fleet Street and past the walled orchards and gardens of this lovely riverside suburb for princes of kingdom and Church.

This isn't mob action, not really, even if there were men back there shouting that they were off to break into Newgate Jail and set the prisoners free.

It's something else. Something he's never seen, or imagined.

These men don't loot. They aren't trying to get rich, or even just get fed. They're not remotely interested in picking up a few unconsidered trifles from the palaces they're passing, however lovely the houses are, however manicured the gardens.

They're here to destroy. And they know their targets.

They ignore the Bishop of Salisbury's palace, with all its rich treasures, as if it didn't exist. They ignore the Whitefriars convent. But a huge detachment of men charges yelling into the next great enclosure, the Temple, where the lawyers of London have their chambers and their libraries. Cautiously, Chaucer follows them down Middle Temple Lane and watches, from a safeish distance, from behind a tree. There are men rushing in and out of every building he can see, busy and systematic as ants. They're bringing out book after book of legal documents. They're building them up into a giant bonfire outside the old round church - which is a copy, as Chaucer knows, and perhaps they do too, of the temple on the site of Christ's Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and considered as sacred as the Jerusalem Sepulchre itself - and these men are not in the least bothered that this bonfire that some are setting light to now, and others are cheering on, is almost certainly sacrilege and will have them burning in Hell for ever. Chaucer retreats, carefully, back up to Fleet Street.

He's missed the worst of the crowd pounding down to the Savoy, ignoring the Bishop of Exeter's inn, and the Bishop of Bath's, and the Bishop of Llandaff's, and the Bishop of Coventry's, and the Bishop of Worcester's, too. It's calmer now on the road. And there's no point in hurrying. He already knows what he'll see.

He can smell the smoke.

The Savoy is no longer white.

It is black, and red, and crackling, and there are guards in bloodied uniforms slumped ominously unmoving at the gates, with dark stains under their prone forms.

The same ant-men are inside, surging and scurrying around, thousands of them. There's a crowd of them right in front of Chaucer, just inside the gates, with a beautifully embroidered quilted body-protector stuck up on a pole. They're drawing arrows at it, like archery practice, yelling, after every thwang of the bowstring, as uproariously as if they were drunk (but they're not), 'We will have no king named John!' It must be the Duke's, Chaucer sees; they must have got into the treasury. He should feel sad to be a witness to this festival of hate; but he doesn't feel anything, even fear, even these men's excitement. He's just eyes, for now; just stunned, stunned eyes.

Hesitantly, Chaucer moves on in through the gardens. He doesn't think anyone will notice him. He feels invisible. They aren't interested in him.

Yes, they've got to the treasury. There are dozens of them dragging out gold and silver plate on to the terrace that overlooks the river. It's like a mad workshop out here, in the battering afternoon sun. Men sweating as they swing axes to bash and dent the finest work in Christendom with hideous metallic screeches. Men stuffing jewels into mortars and trying to grind them into knobbly paste. Men jumping on glittering necklaces, trying to smash them to bits with their boots (if they have boots, which many of them don't). Men ripping tapestries and cushions and napery and hangings with their rippling blacksmiths' or ploughmen's arms. Men chopping up furniture, or pulling it apart in obscene games of tug-of-war. There are even two men who've put their hands through the sleeves of robes of cloth of gold, far too small for them, and are mincing about like great hairy ladies, yelling, 'Will you dance, sweet madame?' and tearing at each other's bodices to reach for imaginary breasts, and thrusting their lanky pelvises at each other in quick, rhythmic snuffles of mirth.

Everywhere is the same. Men laughing insanely. Men shouting. Men sweating. Men grabbing at bits of shattered stuff and hurling it into the Thames.

There are rumblings and crashings from below, too: shouts, and the smash of metal on wood. They'll have got into the wine cellars. They'll be breaking open the barrels.

There are two directions the men go in, Chaucer sees, as the logic of the scene shifts and settles in his mind. There's one stream of them throwing the unburnable valuables - what's left of the jewels and metals when the axemen have finished with them - out over the terrace into the Thames. And there's another stream of them carrying account books and papers, great piles of them, from buildings all over the compound into the oak-panelled great hall, where the shredded textiles are also heading.

The great hall is also where the smoke is coming from, and the crackling.

Chaucer's not the only gawper lurking near the terrace, not by any manner of means. They're all around, the other shadows and starers, like ghosts: shaking their heads, mouths hanging open. Mostly, no one notices any of them; they don't even seem to notice each other. Not always, though. 'Be you coming 'long of us?' one of the wreckers yells at one of his audience, cheerfully, without threat, and he's rushed by before the man he's addressed has a chance to fade back, or tremble, or faint with terror, which, Chaucer sees afterwards, were the only options on the watcher's mind. It takes Chaucer another moment to realise, from that dialect, that the Kentishmen have got here too.

But, because he still feels invisible, Chaucer keeps moving on, as if in a trance. And when he comes upon one higgledy-piggledy heap of the Duke's accounts that he recognises - in which his own pension, and those of Philippa, and probably (who knows?) the Duke's various gifts to Katherine, are entered - lying on the terrace, abandoned, perhaps because they're not sealed with green wax, he's even bold enough to lean down and open his bag and stuff the rolls inside, before making a few vague steps in the direction of the men making the paper bonfire, as if to suggest he's on his way there too. There's not much he can save. But this is a God-given chance to do something, at least. It's only after a few more moments, when he's reassured himself that no one is looking at him, that he corrects his course again and goes on gliding inside.

How Alice would rejoice, he's thinking, allowing his mind to consider her for the first time in a long time, because in that strange suspended state his mind is in right now there's no pain. This is almost exactly what she said she wanted to see, the last time they spoke, isn't it? He can almost hear her voice again, now; almost see that bleak look on her face. 'I'd like to burn down the Savoy, with the Duke right in the middle of the bonfire...and his smug mistress, and your smug wife and my husband, too, if only I could think how...'

He smiles. He misses Alice's energy. He even misses her vindictiveness.

He wishes she could see this for herself.

He hopes she's been safe, out in Essex, where they say it's been worst of everywhere, but there's nothing he can do to protect her now.

Then, because nothing seems quite real right now except what's going on before his eyes, and even that doesn't seem very real at all, Chaucer forgets Alice and moves on. Tranquil. Light on his toes.

He's actually in the hall with more of the intent, dancing, whirling maniacs, with his eyes stinging from the flames licking up over the giant bonfire, with his hands up to protect his face from the heat, wondering if there isn't anything else lying about that he can stuff in his bag and save, when, through the spit and fury of the fire, he hears a scuffle behind him.

He turns. A group of the men hauling barrels towards the fire (wine barrels, he thinks) have dropped them and turned on one of their fellows. They're pummelling the man, pulling at his tunic, grabbing his bag. The victim's screaming like a stuck pig, digging his heels in, clinging on to whatever he can, but they're lifting him up, whacking him as they go, shouting confused, furious words at him. There's a moment of near-quiet - just the crackle, and the man's enormous eyes. Then someone hisses, 'That'll larn you to go a-stealing,' and someone else shouts, 'We told you and told you, we do not do nothing of that like, right?' and a bit of something glittery is thrown into the fire. 'We are not thieves! We are the True Commons: zealots for truth and justice!' yells another voice, a London voice. Then they throw the man in the fire too. A rush of flame and smoke envelops them all.

As the screaming gets louder, Chaucer fades out of the hall, ashen-faced. The bag on his back, crackling with its secret load, feels like a hot coal.

His legs are suddenly moving very fast. If they're going to turn nasty, it's time he got out of here.

It's only as he whisks down a green alleyway outside, making for the Strand and hopefully home, that he hears two more voices, behind the hedge, out of sight. They're breathless voices, busy, but surprised out of the trance-like destruction, for a moment, at least: 'Tom? That's never Tom Piper of Henney?' Then, in a deeper voice, the reply: 'Whoo-oop, Janny, bin heyah since the start, boy,' and a clapping of flesh on cloth.

If they're saying, 'Whoo-oop,' then those are Essex men.

The Essex men must have got in too. Through Aldgate.

Chaucer breaks into a sweat; he's running.

He's still running when he gets up the hill to the cathedral. He doesn't even stop when, far behind him, there's an almighty explosion.

Well, he does, of course. Just for a moment. Though he shouldn't. But a man wouldn't be human without a bit of curiosity. Anyway, everyone else on the crowded hill street has stopped too. They're all craning their necks and shaking their heads. There's awe on every face. There are giant flames and vast black clouds gushing out of the Savoy; as he gazes back, more pops and more vast flying chunks of masonry. 'Gunpowder,' he hears from some know-all.

The greatest palace in Europe, gone in one almighty flash. The Duke of Lancaster's permanent presence in London, obliterated.

Those barrels, he thinks. The ones I was going to watch them chuck on the fire. Thank God he got out in time. Thank God. But there's no time to waste. He turns, heaves in breath, and staggers on east, against the human tide.

It's not just to put as much distance as possible between himself and that scene from Hell, back there.

It's this. If the Essex men are here, they've entered through Aldgate. So what's happened to his home?

Aldgate is open. He can see St Botolph's beyond, and the houses of the eastern villages, and the fields. There are still rustics pouring in from the Essex encampment at Mile End, shouting and spitting and charging down the road.

But there are no gate guards that Chaucer can see. No dead men on the ground. No prisoners. No ugly scenes. There's no smoke, either, and no torn masonry. The staircase to Chaucer's apartment is intact.

He wriggles through the crowd and up the stairs. There's danger everywhere outside. All he can do now is bar his door and sit tight. Wait it out, as his daughter's doing. After a while, Chaucer's heart stops thudding and the sweat on his skin dries and cools. He's not exactly sitting tight. He's still pacing around, wild-eyed and wild-haired, revisiting in his mind his most frightening moments out there.

When he's recovered himself a little, he gets the rolls out of his leather bag and spreads them on his table. It's only two years' worth of household accounts, though even that's better than nothing: a splinter of defence against the onslaught of the darkness these...
others...
are bringing into London. Chaucer's a little cheered by that thought. He even summons up enough ordinary inquisitiveness to go through the rolls he's grabbed and saved quite carefully - for what else is he going to do, here, today? He sees his own name twice a year (and that of his wife, rather more often, including as the recipient of a silver-gilt cup at Christmas that sly Philippa never mentioned to
him
she'd been given, which is listed here as being worth PS5 2s. 1d., or half the entire value of Chaucer's ducal pension for the year). He also sees some of the large amounts of money that the Duke seems to spend on fripperies for Katherine, on top of her already lavish allowances. Katherine has received, this spring alone, two tablets of silver and enamel for 7 marks, a silver belt costing more than 40 shillings, a three-legged silver chafing pan worth 33 shillings, a gold brooch in the form of a heart set with a diamond, and a gold brooch set with a ruby and fashioned in the form of two hands.

It seems nothing's too good for the Duke's women, Chaucer thinks sourly. But then he catches himself on that ungenerous thought, and imagines Katherine hiding wherever she is, with her secret children, and the fear they must feel now, with the peasants gone wild and out for blood, and finds that all he feels for her, really, is pity. Gold brooches won't help her now, poor creature. He wouldn't be in her shoes, if a mob of madmen like the ones he's seen today is after her, too. He hopes she's found a refuge.