The People's Queen (18 page)

But all he really wants is to be allowed this rare moment away from duty, alone with his lady, in peace, under a blue sky and a drift of roses, with only the doves breaking the silence, letting her smooth away his headache with her long white fingers.

A part of him is still thinking bits of ordinary, everyday, not unkind thoughts - 'I know a lot of people don't like Madame Perrers...pushy...common...but...clever too...don't see the harm in her myself' - when Katherine puts her mouth up close to his ear (she's as aware as he is of the secretaries behind the hedge) and whispers, 'Can you believe? We're going to have a baby...another baby...'

After that, he sees nothing, nothing, but the blue of Katherine Swynford's eyes.

A month later, when the Duke is already at Leicester (or perhaps, secretly, at Kettlethorpe with his lady) and Alice Perrers on her summer circuit between Sheen, or Havering, or Eltham, or Westminster, she is quietly pleased to hear, through her friend Lord Latimer, that John Wyclif has been given the Crown living of Lutterworth in Leicestershire, and has also been invited to accompany the Duke of Lancaster to Bruges next January, for the negotiations over the French truce and the threatened papal taxes.

That idea may bear more fruit later. Meanwhile, for the rest of that summer and autumn, Alice will be busy. Like Wyclif, she's been taking on new property. In 1374, so far, she has personally taken possession of the manor of Pallenswick, west of the riverside village of Hammersmith, and the nearby manor of Gunnersbury. Her business associates, the land agents whose work she directs from her City home, have acquired on her behalf the manors of Culworth in Northamptonshire, Fillyngley in Nottinghamshire, Farndon in Northamptonshire, and Kingham, near Oxford. The papers aren't through yet, but Edward has also promised to grant her several small Crown estates that have come free: the manors of Wantage in Berkshire, Bentham in Salop, Whittington in Salop, Stanton Fitzwarren in Wiltshire, and Crofton in Wiltshire, all from the Fitz Waryn lands. There'll be work to be done on all these properties, sprucing them up for rental.

Mostly, though, Alice is enjoying the first fruits of her other money-raising idea: redeeming the Italian loans from the royal exchequer and taking her cut. She spends the first instalment of cash she receives from Lord Latimer on ordering a very expensive hanging for the great hall at Pallenswick. It is to show Delilah, sneaking up on Sampson, snipping off his hair. She asks for extra gold thread to be worked through everything.

NINE

'I think I'm drunk,' says a surprised Chaucer. 'A littlebitdrunk.'

Alice laughs comfortably. She refills his cup.

How Alice darts around you. She's here, there and everywhere, fetching this, signalling to servants there, showing you one thing or another, affectionately ruffling the top of your head as she passes. There's no stopping her. She must have had his cup filled far more often than he's realised. She's been making him dizzy for a while, all that dashing about. Bewildering. Especially since the walls started waving and wobbling too.

She's been showing him her new manor, at Pallenswick near Hammersmith, which she isn't going to leave her men to manage, but will use herself as a retreat from London and Sheen. The house, unused since the Mortality, is old and decaying, with holes in the roof and buckets on the floor and the mournful smell of damp everywhere. She's going to knock down most of it, and rebuild. But the park behind is full of trees with gold-green leaves, and the river sparkles through the windows ahead. And, even inside, she's already made pockets of portable luxury: a corner of the great hall, where the roof's sound, screened off with thick, lovely, colourful, draught-proof hangings, where she's sitting with Chaucer at a table, feeding and watering him with the gold cups and jewelled knives she's brought here.

These objects, so at odds with the dinge-spotted walls, make Chaucer uneasy. He's been uncomfortable since before the walls started behaving so strangely.

She shouldn't have so much gold on show, he thinks. He knows why, most of the time. It's just now, when he wants to tell her, that the reason escapes him.

She sits down again; there's mischief in her gleaming eyes as she grins up at him. 'Wrong to be drunk, Chaucer,' she's teasing. 'Sinful. Look what drink did to poor old Lot. Drunk as a drowned mouse, lying next two his two daughters, and, before any of them knew where they were...' She moves her fingers lewdly, thrusting one through two others, giving him a knowing look. 'So you take care.'

He doesn't care about Lot. Dirty old man. He cares about...'Too mush gold,' he slurs uncertainly. He never manages to tell her this thing, the thing that's always on his mind, except that now he's got her attention he's gone and forgotten it. But he's been trying for weeks now. 'Too mush...'

'Too much wine, I'd say,' Alice snips back. 'But never mind...I like you even when you're a bit cranberry-eyed.'

She's very pretty, wavering over there. Lovely smile. Lovely shoulders. He stares vaguely in the direction of her breasts.

'Drunk,' he says disconsolately. 'Never should have. Abominable stuff, drink. Sour breath. Foul to embrace. Can't keep secrets. 'Sgusting. Your throat a privy.' Then he says, 'So tired...do you mind if I lie down?' He knows she won't. She's his friend. Dearest friend in the world. Wonderful woman, Alice. She's laughing softly as she leads him off to an antechamber with cushions.

Alice leaves him there till morning. No point in sending him up the river after dark. He'd only fall in and drown, or be caught by the guard after curfew.

When she comes to wake him, at dawn, with her candle still lit, he's already hunched on the bench, with the cushions on the floor, energetically writing.

He's unshaven and pallid. He looks shamefaced. He grimaces comically. 'I know,' he says. 'I'm sorry. My punishment: my head aches.'

She laughs very gently. 'You were so lucid,' she replies. 'Even drunk.' She comes a little closer. Aware that he must stink, Chaucer edges shyly back. 'What are you writing there?' she murmurs, craning her neck, peeping.

He tweaks the paper away.

'Oh, let me see,' she pleads playfully. 'Please.'

He gives her a careful look. 'You'll be disappointed,' he says. 'It's not the kind of poetry you probably expect. Not...courtly. Chivalrous. Just me.'

'Go on,' she says. 'I don't care.' Her eyes are so inviting. She sits down next to him on the bench and waits.

So he clears his throat. He sits up straighter. He starts to read the words out, in a thin, suffering, self-parodying voice:

'O wombe! O bely! O stynkyng cod, Fulfilled of dong and of corrupcioun! At either ende of thee foul is the soun...'

He gets no farther. Their eyes meet. They're already both soundlessly laughing.

But even as he's laughing he remembers that he came to see Alice with a purpose in mind, beyond friendship, beyond this half-flirtation. He was going to tell her some home truths.

He came intending to tell Alice she's not playing her politics as well as she believes.

For a start, he wants her to know that Walworth is angry. Several months into his job, in the autumn of 1374, Chaucer now knows a lot about how Walworth feels. The Mayor may have complained a little, back in the spring, about the need to lend money to the King that he'd probably never see returned, but that was the established tradition for a mayor: lending a lot, and moaning a little. Chaucer knows that Walworth hasn't been happy, since then, to discover Richard Lyons will be making the royal loan instead, and a bigger loan than he was to have made. Chaucer knows because he saw Walworth come back from his much-discussed meeting with Chamberlain Latimer, just before Walworth became Mayor in July, with bright pink splotches in the middle of long pale cheeks, and a tight, closed-off look in his eyes; and, when Chaucer enquired, across the Customs House desk, whether the loan amount suggested by the Crown had been especially onerous this year, Walworth made a ghastly attempt at a smile, and said, tightly, 'Quite the contrary, dear boy. As it turns out, I am to be released from that obligation this year. It appears that my lord the King would prefer to take his loan from' - and here Walworth did that fastidious face-wrinkling thing he's so expressive at - 'Master Lyons.'

Poor Master Walworth. For all his desperate dignity, he must already know what they'd make of it in the taverns, and even in the kitchens of his own house. Since then, as Chaucer's gone on making quiet signs of sympathy, the Mayor has let other small answering remarks drop; ones that suggest that he's trusting Chaucer more and more to be the merchant's son he seems, and not the Duke's proxy; ones that go on making it clear that of course he feels humiliated to have been passed over, and for a foreigner too. Walworth believes that Alice is to blame for the substitution. ('Dear boy, she's as thick as thieves with Lyons, and how else would the man have made the contact with the court?' he's told Chaucer more than once; 'and that idea of swapping back the Italian debt paper - devilish clever - far too clever for that Fleming to have come up with it. It's got her fingers all over it.') Chaucer suspects he's right, because he can see it all began with that conversation he happened to overhear at his own table.

And then there's the other thing. Which, if true, makes it all worse still. But he'd better not start with that. He'd better start gently.

He begins, a little hesitantly, to mumble something along the lines of, 'You know, after all, I've been finding Walworth and his friends very honest business partners; it's Master Lyons whom people talk about with more suspicion...and his associates...and I've even heard your name come up in that regard...'

But Alice isn't in a mood to take advice. She just giggles and lets her eyes twinkle up into his. 'You're sounding far too independent-minded for my taste, Chaucer,' she says. 'And there was me thinking you were coming to the City to be my supporter. Shouldn't I be giving you some food, now, to mop up the wine?'

Chaucer looks disbelievingly at her. Has she really put him in this powerful job, and asked him to keep her informed of how things are in the City, just to laugh at him when he does?

'Look here,' he says, feeling the blood rush to his already throbbing head, as if anger is going straight to his body without passing through his mind, 'you should listen carefully to this. It's no joke. Do you realise how seriously people in this city worry about money - who's spending it, who's making it, who's stealing it? And do you even begin to realise how much there is to worry about?'

She looks back at him, wide-eyed. He takes it as an invitation. He talks on.

'This is the real debt situation in England. Since the war started again five years ago, did you know that more than
half a million pounds
has gone on it, truce or no truce? With not a penny back? And there's no money left to spend?'

She widens her eyes more, looking extra innocent. She's playing with him, he thinks furiously. She thinks him funny. She knows, and she doesn't care.

Hotly he goes on: 'We still like to think it's just possible that if we actually had enough money to deploy our armies, they might come back richer than they set out, just because they used to, once, when the King was young and still had the luck of the Devil. Because back then it seemed there was enough plate and jewellery and coin in every town and every monastery in France to make every Englishman rich. But there's nothing left any more, or if there is we don't have the kind of armies that can find it. We've emptied France of everything it's going to give us. And we're broke.'

She says, in a butter-wouldn't-melt way, 'Dear Chaucer, why are you telling me all this? I know...you know...and you know I know...'

Exasperated, Chaucer barks: 'Because when entire armies of unpaid soldiers come home half-dead to their half-starved families, they don't want to hear that you spent hundreds of pounds on robes for a royal tournament, that's why!'

But it's not just the price of her robes for tournaments that means trouble for her. There's the other thing. All the other things. He takes another breath, almost angry enough to find the resolve to mention them, too.

But not quite. And that one moment of hesitation gives her the advantage again.

She smiles wider. She leans towards him and touches his hand. Can her eyes get any wider? 'But, Chaucer...court festivities don't even come out of the government budget,' she coos. How condescending she sounds. 'The King decides on them. And pays.'

Chaucer slumps back on to his bench. She knows, really. He knows she knows. She's just refusing to engage. Stubbornly, he persists: 'But they love the King. They're in awe of him. Even if everyone knows he's extravagant, no one
wants
to blame him. They want to blame someone else. And you're the obvious person. You're the one they all see in the fine robes, wearing the jewels, after all. You're the symbol of the extravagance; and you could be the scapegoat for the anger. It's easy enough to call you loose, and a thief, and a wicked whore, and--' He feels his face flushing from the words, and pulls himself back. 'Well, you can imagine the rest. Because you're an outsider. You're not of the City. You're not of the court. You're no one's responsibility, and no one's wife, and no one's kin. You'd be the easiest person to pin the blame on for every penny spent by the King, or stolen from the King, for all these years. Even if it wasn't you. Surely you see that?'

As he pauses for breath, he's pleased with that speech. He thinks it successfully conveys to her that she could be at risk, without going so far as to insult her by suggesting she might in any way be stealing money herself.

Alice drops the cooing and flirting. There's a hint of sullenness about her mouth, now, and defiance coming into her eyes. But Chaucer likes that better. At least she's being more honest.

'I've got nothing to reproach myself with,' she says truculently. 'The question doesn't arise.'

Oh, Alice Perrers, Chaucer thinks, exasperated. Oh, Alice Perrers.

'But you have,' he says. 'You make enemies, and you don't seem to care. You've angered the most powerful man in the City, for a start. Walworth's furious he's been passed over for that loan. And for Lyons, too - a man he despises.'

Alice pauses. That's surprised her. She looks hard at Chaucer, with assessing eyes. 'Oh,' she says carefully. 'You know about Lyons, do you?'

He nods. 'Of course. Everyone's talking about it. There are no secrets in the City.' He holds her gaze. 'Twenty thousand, they say. Being repaid with discounted Italian debt paper. Right?' She nods again, without expression. He doesn't think she's masking fear, or guilt. He has a nasty feeling she just might grin impishly at him if he lets her, so he rushes on: 'You see? You thought you'd kept that quiet, but it came out anyway. And you must see that you won't get Walworth standing up and defending you, after that, will you?'

She thinks for a minute, then shrugs, as if she really doesn't care. She says, 'Oh, Chaucer. I don't need to worry too much about poor old Walworth's hurt feelings, do I?' and here she does grin, infuriatingly. 'And there'll be no call for him to defend me anyway. That loan is the King's business, not mine. What's it got to do with me?'

Chaucer sighs. She's refusing to have the discussion he wants to force.

'Alice, listen,' he says sadly. 'I went to Westminster to collect my pension from the palace yesterday. And I think you should know that over there, at court, all the courtiers are whispering a whole different lot of rumours.' He puts his head on one side, looking at her, wondering if she'll blush.

She doesn't. She just gazes back, and says, 'You look like a bird in a hedgerow, Chaucer: sitting there like that with your head on one side, all beady-eyed.'

'Do you know what
they're
saying?' Chaucer persists.

She puts her hands on her hips and goes on meeting his eye. 'Tell me, then,' she says, refusing to look abashed. 'If it's so interesting.'

'Well,' he says. 'My good friend in the treasury said they were short of coin at the moment because a lot of Italian debt paper had suddenly been presented. And been paid off. Not at the discounted rate. At its full face value. Twice as much.'

He's aware he must look ridiculous, but he can't stop his head tilting over a bit more as he examines her face for signs of guilt.

'It cleaned them right out of ready money,' he said. 'They were hard pressed to find my ten pounds.'

Alice shakes her head, with a little smile of mock-pity twitching at the corners of her lips. 'Oh dear,' she says. 'Poor Chaucer.'