The People's Queen (44 page)

If only she had, she thinks with painful nostalgia for him, and for the busy cheerfulness of those days rushing between court, and London, and Westminster, and Chaucer's rumpled bed. She's trying to make a kind of bargain with a God who she's pretty sure isn't listening: she should have thanked him...and she still could, if only, even just one more time, even for a moment, she could come out of this strange dull afterlife, this punishment for flying too high; if only she could see Chaucer again.

THIRTY-FOUR

It will be nearly two years before Alice's wish to see Chaucer again, and thank him, comes true.

Meanwhile, Chaucer's advice to lie low and let the dust settle proves sound. The wheel keeps turning, bringing if not a return to Fortune's embrace at least another summer, and a harvest of sorts, and then, in the next bleak wintertime, when the only fruit on the skeletal trees is the crows with their melancholy cawing, black as ink blots, dropping like ghostly pears to swoop through the grey air, a new Parliament at Westminster.

Until she finds out what will be discussed at the Parliament, until she understands William's preoccupation, and the reason for his exchanges of messengers and letters with London, Alice doesn't feel the momentum of change. She's aware only of what stays the same. She knows, for instance, that Aunty still misses the children, who are still up north, because Aunty talks about them so often, and so softly. These aren't the stories Alice might have expected, either. There's never a word about training the kids up to be thieves, as Aunty once trained her: slipping in and out of windows, sliding through openings in sheds and barn, picking up unconsidered trifles and slipping them into poachers' bags. Instead, Alice has learned that stubborn little Joan has nightmares, but that when she wakes up from them, trembling and clinging to you in the bed, she's stoical enough to pretend they never happened. That Jane is a natural-born tree-climber, and kind-hearted enough with servants to save food to share with Hamo the ploughman's daughter, who's the same age as her. That Jane and her friend had to be stopped, when they were toddlers, from eating earthworms. That Joan's as light and wiry to hold as a ratting dog, while Jane's body has always been warm and barrel-shaped. That Johnny's freckles started to appear on his face soon after his sixth birthday, and that he's embarrassed by them. That the little boy has the pure voice of an angel. That he can ride like the wind. That he had a wooden whistle made for him by Hamo, and that the girls liked dancing to the tunes he plays on it by the bonfires they lit in the autumn. And that Jane once leapt right through a bonfire, so high she didn't catch fire.

'They're better where they are,' Will grunts whenever Aunty asks, meekly enough, when the children will be back.

So Aunty's keeping herself busy with her hedge-priests instead. Not John Ball, at the moment; he's been clapped into Maidstone jail after an outing to Kent. But there's always someone floating through Essex on the tide of angry human flotsam and jetsam sweeping the roads of England, who's got a rousing sermon in him. Aunty takes food to them all in her basket. Alice has also seen her going to Will's little bag of money and filching coins from him, sometimes right under his nose, with a grin on her face. She knows the coins go to the hedge-priests too. Alice never stops Aunty. She just pretends not to see.

It's through Aunty and her friends that Alice hears her news these days - all the latest vicious stories about the Duke of Lancaster, who's the man everyone in the land, more than ever, loves to hate, as things get worse. These are stories she doesn't comment on, neither with Aunty nor Will. She won't let herself be drawn into conspiracy with Aunty; and with Will she's found that the sharp tongue and quick wit that once earned her her fortune just aren't there any more. He silences and intimidates her; he doesn't mean to, perhaps, but she can't talk easily to him, any more than his stern face seems able to soften when he addresses a rare comment to her. There's nothing between them. He's out supervising the farming, or he rides into Colchester to spend his days with his friends at the garrison there. He eats with her at the same table once every couple of days. They make quick, wordless love once a week. So when she hears the stories about the Duke, the last person she's going to share her feelings with is her husband. She just smiles with grim private satisfaction, and thinks: The Duke's made his bed, and now let him lie on it. He can't blame me for any of
this.

The Duke has put aside all shame of man and fear of God, she hears; he sleeps with an unspeakable concubine named Swynford, a witch as well as a whore. He's so under her spell, or so cowardly, or both, that he's failed to sail for France...

The Duke sent his knight, Sir Ralph Ferrers, bursting into Westminster Abbey during Mass to violate sanctuary and murder a squire who was seeking refuge after escaping from the Tower of London, where the Duke had had him wrongfully imprisoned. The abbey has had to be closed, and reconsecrated. But the Duke's making no bones about defending Ferrers...

God's against the Duke, who's lost another siege, and another king's ransom in Englishmen's money, now he's finally set sail for Saint-Malo to fight the French...

The Duke's still out for revenge on Londoners for scaring him silly by trying to burn down his great big bloody palace. The latest: he's trying to destroy angel-face Walworth, the fishmonger. He's scrapped the fishmongers' trade monopolies. He's kicked Walworth out of his government job as war treasurer, too...

They say the Duke hates Londoners, and this really proves it. He's also kicked John Philpot, the most powerful of the grocers, out of his government job. John Philpot, to whom he should be grateful; John Philpot, who's paid, out of his own pocket, for a private fleet of warships to protect the coast from pirates...

You'll never guess what. The Duke's plotting with the Genoese to destroy the London merchants. He's always with the ambassador, Janus Imperial (and what kind of two-faced foreign name is that?); they say they're about to announce that England's trade centre will be moved, permanently, from London to Southampton...

Alice listens to the next story, too, with only her usual dark dream-like pleasure, right up to the incomprehensible punchline. For what seems an eternity, she doesn't even begin to understand the amazed, expectant look in Aunty's eyes.

How about this, then? They're so fed up with the Duke that the next Parliament's going to reconsider one of his cases. It's your case, Alice. Will's bringing an appeal.

'It's your case, Alice,' Aunty repeats. 'Will's bringing an appeal.'

As the moments pass, as the room spins, Alice realises Aunty's still staring at her, half-excited, but half-hurt, too, at having been kept out of the secret.

'Did you know?' Aunty asks.

'Didn't he tell you?' Aunty asks a little later, reading Alice's face more accurately. But Alice has picked up her heels and fled in search of Will.

'That's right,' Will says, shortly. 'Appeal in January. I'll be leaving for Westminster right after Christmas.' He looks as square and military and phlegmatic as ever; she can't see even a flicker of excitement in his eyes.

'But...why didn't you
tell
me?' Alice asks. She hears her voice, soft and trembling. She's had no idea. He's been doing something useful all this time, after all. He's been thinking about her. He's known how to make her case, in the right places. She's misjudged him. 'How...? When...?' she mutters, humbly.

He stands up. 'Men's business,' he says, even more shortly. 'I wrote in. I said I was your husband. They agreed at once to an appeal.'

Alice becomes aware of a little golden glow inside her chest.

After all these years, he's publicly acknowledged that he's my husband, she's thinking. There was something that touched him, after all, about our putting our hands together at the church door, in the dawn of time. Something he remembered. He's taken the children on...and now this, too. How little I've understood.

She tries to look into his eyes. She'd like to lose herself in them, as she once did; to enjoy feeling truly loved, and protected, and cherished, as she now thinks she may have been all along. She'd like to throw herself into his arms and surrender herself to his knowledge and wisdom, as utterly as she had all those years ago.

But Will's clearing papers, making things into orderly piles with big hands. He's not looking at her. He doesn't see the need for a loving moment. Now he's started, he's going to complete his staccato explanation.

He says, 'I told them they'd made a mistake to try you as a single woman. I told them they'd made a second mistake, arising out of the first. They were wrong to confiscate your property. As my wife, what you own rightfully belongs to me. And I've done nothing wrong, so they shouldn't have been punishing
me.
So I've asked them to return your estates to me.'

Slowly, the rosy-gold feeling fades inside Alice. 'Oh,' she says flatly. Is that it? No exoneration for her, no vindication, no head held high? He's been far cleverer than she expected to get the case reheard at all. But, after all, has he really only wanted one thing all along: to make sure he gets the money she's earned him?

He has, hasn't he?

'They will, I think,' Will finishes. He nods, as if she should now be satisfied with his explanation; as if dismissing her from the environs of his business table. 'Don't worry your head about it. It's a formality. I'm dealing with it.'

Alice doesn't go. 'But,' she stammers. 'What about...?' Her voice trails away.

He looks impatient. 'What?'

She wrestles with the words. If only she could talk to this man she lives with, and is married to, who's such a stranger to her. The phrase 'a pardon' sticks in her throat. She wants to go triumphantly back to court, of course; she wants to be presented to the new King as my lady Alice of Greyrigg, a respectable matron who's been wronged. Why can't he see for himself?

'...
ME
?' she says in the end: an undignified sound, a kind of strangulated squeak, half-pain, half-fury.

He moves towards the door. 'This
is
about you,' he says, with no great interest or affection, from the doorway. 'I'm cleaning up your mess. I'm saving you from yourself.'

The door shuts. But he was already gone, Alice thinks, long before he left the room. If, that is, you could ever really say he'd been there with her at all.

Just to show she's actually there, just to give vent to her suppressed anger, she starts ruffling through the piles of documents he's been putting in order, messing up the neat military squares, making them human again.

Which is how she sees Chaucer's writing: a letter, and another, and another; a whole correspondence. She picks one up. A phrase leaps out. 'With feeling turning so sharply away from the Duke, now might be a good moment to request an appeal,' she reads. She drops it. She picks up another. At once, she sees: 'As far as recovering property is concerned, I would suggest you argue that they made a first mistake in trying your wife as a single woman, while knowing her to be married, and a second mistake in punishing her by confiscating her property, when doing so in fact constituted punishing you, an innocent man.'

So that's it. Chaucer's been writing to her husband. Chaucer's been framing the arguments Will's going to use. Naturally, Will hasn't mentioned he's had help. That's not in his nature. But this explains how her husband suddenly sounds so well informed. This is how he got the appeal lodged.

Dear Chaucer...

Thoughtfully, she picks up another page. She's looking for some other clue in that small, neat, speedy writing: some message, some hint, some flicker of affection, just for her. She reads:

I suggest your primary request should be for the Parliament to reverse all previous judgements, and give Alice a full pardon. You could make the following two arguments. Alice should have been heard by the King's Bench in a case involving public funds, rather than by Parliament. Secondly, she wasn't given enough time to prepare a case, or locate witnesses.

'..."give Alice a full pardon,"' she repeats in a whisper. Chaucer understands what she wants. But then, he always has. The soft golden glow steals back into her (though it's not for the stranger she's married to, this time); as well as a not unpleasant breathlessness, and that dangerous dampness around the eyes that she's hardly ever felt, except in exceptional circumstances...except around Chaucer.

Aunty tells Alice the Parliament's decision, long before Will gets back from Westminster. It's a non-answer, though a fairly hopeful one.

'They say they need a year to decide,' she says, breaking the news gently.

They're going to collect another poll tax first. The war has eaten up all the money from the first tax. Or rather, the Duke's eaten it up.

But the Parliament hasn't left Will, or Alice, quite empty-handed. Aunty says the little King's formally commanded Alice's husband to accept the post of Governor of Cherbourg while the legislators deliberate - a lucrative sinecure. 'They'll want you to go too,' Aunty says with an encouraging grin. 'Out of sight, out of mind, I suppose. But what do you care? You'll be able to gad about in your silks and satins again for a year, ruling the roost. Nice work if you can get it, that's what I say. And at the end of that, they're hardly going to clap the Lady of Cherbourg in irons, are they?'

Alice shakes her head. She can't imagine anything worse than being locked up in some fortified French town, listening to the waves breaking on the walls and the gulls keening, with no one for company but her husband and a few hundred soldiers. She'd far rather spend the rest of her days in Essex, alone with Aunty. Firmly, she says, 'I'm not going anywhere.'

She's aware of the bright flicker in Aunty's eyes. But Aunty keeps quiet.

She says the same thing again to Will, when he breaks the news of the posting on his return a week later. Politely, she thanks him for his efforts, and his success, and says she'd prefer to stay in these safe, familiar, surroundings while the Parliament's deliberating. Once her pardon is through, of course, she'll come and join him.

Will doesn't ask more. 'Very well,' he says, equally formally. 'I'll go alone.' She thinks he's relieved. He's started preparing for his departure before nightfall. She hears him whistling on the stairs. He sounds as happy as she feels, to be about to be free of him.

'We'll have fun, with him gone,' Aunty says, hopefully, as they watch Will jog off with his men. The crows are cawing. There's a wild freshness in the wind. 'We could get the kids back.'