The People's Queen (54 page)

Chaucer puts a hand on Alice's. He can sense the galloping beat of her heart; and sensing it calms him. There's no reason for him to be here, he can see that now. But he can't leave her like this. He'll have to stay and help.

Just outside, the baby's cries are getting louder and more fractious.

'Calm,' he mouths. 'Be calm. I'll sit with him for a minute. You feed the baby.'

She nods, and for a second the terrible weight of love and care lightens, and she manages something like a smile of gratitude. 'Oh, Chaucer,' she whispers, 'thank you,' and she's off.

A familiar kind of bewilderment settles over Chaucer in this unfamiliar place, but there's a warmth, a softness, too. He's come here with his certainties, and she's overturned them in an instant. He can't believe he's here, doing this, tending to her son, while she nurses a baby he knows nothing about. He can't believe he feels so tender towards her.

He takes a corner of the quilt, and dips it in water, and wipes the boy's sweating face clean. 'You'll be all right, Johnny,' he whispers. 'It's not so bad, this kind. Just hold on. You'll be all right.'

He only wishes he could be sure it was true.

She comes back. The baby's quiet behind his curtains. Johnny too, on his pillow.

Before anything else, she checks the boy. She's got an ear cocked, listening for his breathing. He's asleep; or passed out. You can't tell which.

'Do you think he'll...?' she begins, bravely. Then she wrinkles up her face. 'No, don't answer.'

So Chaucer says nothing. He puts his hand on hers again. She lets it stay there, on her dry, cool, unresponsive skin.

'I sent the girls away with Aunty,' she says reflectively. 'Up north. A week ago, when he began to sicken. When I brought Johnny up here. I didn't want them to get ill...'

Helplessly, Chaucer pats her hand. He can't help admiring her hollowed-out calm. If this were his child, he knows he'd never be this self-possessed.

'Or all those women who'd turned up,' she goes on. 'Once all the fighting started. Sewale's wife; Ewell's widow. And all the rest of those women at the big house. They've had enough misery without this, too.'

'You took them in? Refugees?' Chaucer says, still not understanding, but lost in admiration. 'In the middle of all...that? You gave them your home?'

'But,' she replies, and she doesn't flinch from what she's going to say next, 'I was the one who caused their trouble in the first place, wasn't I? Because I helped start it, you know,' she goes on, in the same flat little voice. '
That.
I wanted to scare the Duke.'

Chaucer looks up. A thousand things fall into place. He's been right, after all, to think she's been involved. He says, 'Oh.'

'But it was never supposed to be like this,' she says, a bowed head before him. 'I wish I hadn't. What happened out there, afterwards - what they did to Mary Sewale's home - London - it's not what I meant. Not at all. That's the world gone mad. Wat gone mad.'

He keeps his hand on hers. Like her, he clings to that thought. She's done wrong; but not all wrong. She's had a change of heart. She's seen the error of her ways.

'Wat's dead,' he says.

She nods, and her head sinks lower. Is she sad? He can't tell. 'He went mad,' she repeats. Then she adds, 'But I made him. He'd never have done it if it hadn't been for me. I only realised that when the women started coming, with their stories; when I saw the way Johnny was looking at me, as if it was all my fault. And it is, Chaucer. It's all my fault.'

'Your husband's being called back to England...the Earl of Buckingham too...to suppress the revolt,' Chaucer says awkwardly. He doesn't know how to answer her directly, because he's realising, painfully, how her change of heart has come about - out of love for her son - and the knowledge that Alice now sees the world through her son's eyes is making him sadder, yet also gladder, than he's ever felt before. 'They say both of them will be sent to Essex. The King's on his way already.'

Her head droops even further. 'What can they do that's worse than this? I'm being punished, even now,' she says in the unbearable monotone. 'With this...It's the worst thing of all - that it should be
him
who's paying the price for my wickedness. My stupidity. Johnny.'

She raises those red eyes to him.

'Do you think God does bargains, Chaucer?' she asks, and even now, even here, there's the ghost of a miserable laugh in her eyes. 'Because I've been praying and praying that if only He'll let Johnny live, I'll do whatever I have to, for the rest of my days. Have William back, when he gets here; pretend none of this had anything to do with us; it doesn't matter, anything; as long as Johnny's here. I've been praying like a fool. I'm just not sure He hasn't given up on me already.'

She shakes her head. 'You've always known, haven't you, Chaucer?' she says, and turns her hand up so it's holding his. 'How you love your children?'

That's enough to remind Chaucer of the futility of his being here. Wearily, he nods. 'I just never thought,' he says miserably, 'that you'd realise it too.'

It's only then that she seems to become truly aware that Chaucer is actually here, in the flesh.

'You haven't said,' she asks, soft and defeated against the arm he's just put around her back, 'why you came?'

Chaucer gets up and walks her over to the window at the far end of the solar. It's almost dark on the ground, but the evening sky is still luminous.

He needs a moment.

A thousand thoughts are running through his head.

'I came...' he says, wondering whether he shouldn't just go, now his foolish idea of rescue has been superseded by reality. Then he shrugs. There's nothing left to lose. He might as well explain. At least she'll know he cared enough to come; at least she'll know he loves her. 'I came to ask you to go away with me.'

Her eyes turn up to him: great dark pools of misery.

Then she looks back at the bed, where Johnny's lying so still, and shakes her head.

They both know.

But still she says, 'Where?'

Chaucer falters; but then gains new strength: 'That pilgrimage we once talked about. Jerusalem. Antioch. Malta. Or Italy. Rome. Does it matter where? Canterbury would do, if I could save you from yourself there; if it wasn't in England. Away, that's the point. That's what I wanted to offer you.

'I brought money,' he adds defensively, as if she's going to chide him for having a poetical flight of fancy. 'It wasn't just a thought. I came ready.'

She smiles; almost smiles. For a moment.

'Thank you,' she says, 'for the thought.' It's a no, of course; he doesn't expect anything else. She's staying here with Johnny, and waiting for William. They both know that. But it's a recognition, too. She takes his hand and squeezes it very hard; her eyes are wet.

'I never cry,' she mutters after a while, though Chaucer's seen her in enough hard places by now to know that isn't always true; then, with a choked, whispery laugh: 'But you're not usually so brave.'

It's a few minutes more before she speaks again. Hesitantly, she says, 'There's something I should probably tell you. Something else.'

Chaucer says, almost at the same instant, 'I think I might know.'

She's surprised at that. 'You can't,' she says.

Chaucer says, 'Well, something I was going to ask you...when the moment was right.' He swallows. The moment's not right. It's an effort to go on. It's such a wild leap of the imagination, when she's got so much else to think about. When this could be anyone's baby: Wat's; the maidservant's; who knows? What if he's wrong?

'I met Wat, your Wat, in London. It might have been nasty. But he let me go when he heard my name. He said, "Alice's Chaucer...the dad...'" he stumbles.

He hardly dares look at her.

But when he does, she's nodding. And the look in her eyes is soft.

'You always know everything, Chaucer,' she whispers. 'I've called him Lewis. I thought you'd like to have a son whose name meant glorious warrior.'

And then the baby stirs, and starts to cry again. With a helpless, anguished look, Alice ducks away from Chaucer, and vanishes out of sight into the bed-tent. Through the curtains, Chaucer again hears the quick, uncertain breaths that might, just might, be sobs.

The near-silence goes on for a long time. The curtains stay shut. Chaucer lights the only candle he can see. When the youth on the bed groans, it's Chaucer who goes back to sit with him; mops timidly at him. The boy might not die, he thinks, clinging to that faint hope. If there's no blackness; no buboes. If it's gone on for a week, and he's still only spitting blood-flecked sputum, not gushing blood from his throat.

Chaucer thinks: And me, what will I do? It's dangerous to be around the plague. He should run off back to London; save himself for the children who don't need him any more, whom he loves. But he's needed here. He's lost the power to leave.

He wakes up with Alice shaking him. The candle's at its end, sputtering. He must have been asleep.

'Don't lie with him,' she whispers. 'Too dangerous. I will. You take Lewis. Here.'

He's too heavy with sleep to argue. He takes the baby, and stumbles away, and lies down on the other bed with the little swaddled form tight against him.

It's the first chance he's had to look at the infant Alice has been nursing. Lewis...he's heavy with milk and sleep too, Chaucer sees, and feels, as the weight's transferred to him. He's got long eyelashes, sweeping his cheek, and fat little hands curled outside his blanket. My son, Chaucer thinks, mine, and warmth spreads through his heart before sleep claims him again.

When he wakes, Alice's head is there, sticking in through the bedcurtains, with grey light behind her. She's transparent with it; she doesn't seem to have slept.

'He's no better,' she whispers of the supine form in the other bed. 'But he's no worse either.'

Chaucer sees she's trying, desperately not to let hope in. But it's just possible...

'Sleep,' he says. 'I'll...'

'No,' she interrupts. 'You have to go. You and Lewis.'

He opens his eyes wider. Properly awake now, he stares at her.

'I can't go,' he says, knowing it's true only as he speaks; knowing how desperate he'd feel if Johnny were his daughter, or his son; realising how his heart's been torn to shreds afresh at this careworn, love-worn new Alice. 'You can't stay alone.'

'You must,' she insists. 'I've been thinking. It's not safe here. Not just him...Johnny...the sickness...but whatever comes next, here. Or whoever. You shouldn't be here when that happens. Nor should the baby. Take him away.'

Her eyes go diamond-shaped with unshed tears. 'Please,' she adds wearily; then, with a strange new strength in her voice: 'You'll look after him better than I can.'

Chaucer sits up, putting his hands to his head. His head is whirling.

He has no idea what to do. Even if he could leave Alice, the baby he's had sleeping up against his chest is a stranger to him. He still hasn't taken off the swaddling bands on the infant; examined him, inch by inch, for points of similarity, for his father's eyes, or nose, or leg shape, to celebrate his being. It's in Chaucer's nature to be moved by the child's very existence in all this: for, in among the ruins, there's a new beginning. He just doesn't know what to do with him.

But before he can do that, or anything else, she's talking again, too fast. 'There's no point in your staying,' she's gabbling. 'You know that. There's no future for you here. This is my battle, and Johnny's. I'll cope. I always cope. You know that. Just keep the baby. I know you'll love him, bring him up right, keep him safe. And I can't. You must see that. You say William's coming. If they don't get me for...
that...
if they never associate me with any of it...if he just moves back in and takes me back while they do whatever they're planning to do' - Chaucer sees that Alice is, even now, making plans and contingency plans - 'well, I'll do whatever I have to...for Johnny, for the girls. I'll have him back. He's my husband. But how would I explain a baby?'

You can't just give your baby away like that, without a second thought, Chaucer reproaches her in his mind. But a moment later, he's already realising, she's right. What else can she do?

He nods. 'If I do,' he muses aloud, peering into a future for Alice that might, yet, not be as dark as he's feared, 'things just might work out for you. Mightn't they?' He adds, 'God willing, for Johnny too...' and crosses himself. She does the same. She sits down beside him.

'There'll be a dozen women around, when William gets here, who'll say you took them in and looked after them in their hour of need,' he says, drawing comfort from the thought. 'That will stand you in good stead. And there'll be no one left to connect you to what went before, either. The men will be long gone. I saw the last of them making off into the woods yesterday.'

'There's still Aunty,' Alice mutters. Then, stricken: 'And Johnny...'

Chaucer shakes his head. 'She'll keep quiet,' he says, with conviction. 'She loves the kids.'

That's true enough.

Leaning forward, taking her hands in his, he adds, 'And Johnny will keep quiet too.' She looks expressionlessly up at him. Chaucer says, 'Because he loves you.'

After a moment, Alice nods.

'And then,' she says. Not quite a question. 'The rest of my life.'

Chaucer has tears smarting in his eyes. It's killing him to think any of this, after the wild hopes he came here with.

But he goes on, stoutly enough: 'You already know what you'll do, don't you?'

Because, even in the sadness of farewell, he can see she does. She's changed. She's steadier, more stable, than he's ever known her. She has her brood to care for; she wants what's best for her son. She knows her mind.

'You'll do what we talked about once...what you were already doing, before
this
happened,' he says. 'You've built up Gaines; now you're going to make it better still, for your children. There's never been anyone like you for organising and planning, Alice. You just needed to know what - who - it was for. Now you do.'

Her eyes shift sideways to the other bed, where Johnny's lying. She crosses herself again. Then, almost guiltily, she looks back at Chaucer, without forcing the softness she feels for her son off her face.