The People's Queen (49 page)

If anyone in this yard is reassured by anything, in this bleak moment, it's the knowledge that at least they're not serfs. It will be even worse for the serfs, who pay even more, out of even less, to the lords who own them.

It's cold comfort, though.

'What, that little Sudbury asked for all that?' Aunty scoffs disbelievingly.

No one wants the job of Chancellor of England these days; it's too thankless. So they've forced it on the quiet old Archbishop of Canterbury, the Duke's man, with his gentle Suffolk burr and his unquestioning obedience. Sudbury's a joke. He'll do anything the Duke tells him. Everyone knows that.

But surely, Alice thinks, even the Duke can't really believe he'll get that much? Even he can't be that cruel? Or stupid? He'd have to march an army across England to force all those thousands out of its people. Even he must realise that.

Then she hears Aunty's cracked, chirpy old voice. 'Well then, if they're really going to rob us like that, there'll be no harm in our cheating them a bit in return, will there? We'll just have to tell them our families have got smaller. We'll say our grannies have all died since last time the lawyers came for our money, and our granddads, maybe, and our children too if need be, so we're only going to pay a quarter as much this time.'

Aunty looks expectantly round. She likes an audience. She likes playing the clown. She likes applause, too. But this crowd's too stunned.

'What goes around comes around. Never meet stupidity halfway, that's what I say,' Aunty prods, doing all she can to encourage them to take the news lightly. At last, there's a first, hesitant ripple of laughter.

When Alice looks down at her page, ready to go on writing, she finds she's been writing, all along. The parchment is scored with heavy black lines. And all of them read the same thing.

Now is the tyme.

Now is the tyme.

Now is the tyme.

She's forgotten all about trying to be philosophical about her fate. She's been forgetting it ever since she found out the baby was coming; and this news is the last straw. The picture of fire, and John Duke of Lancaster's burning head, is so vivid in her mind that it's almost hurting her. It
is
hurting her. Or something is. A deep, dark ache is tightening through her gut. She clamps down on herself, crouching on her stool, arms wrapped round her knees.

'Aunty,' she calls quietly, as soon as the pain eases a bit. She knows what it is now. 'Aunty. The baby's coming.'

THIRTY-EIGHT

It's mid-morning, and Chaucer's at his window looking down at the little bands of men in ragged russet and black outside, who are looking back up at him: the peasant rebels' advance guard. They've been slying up since yesterday, from Mile End Meadow, to have a gawp at the City walls. They look in rude good humour, these Essex men. One of them even waves. 'Hey, you!' the man mouths cheekily up. 'Go downstairs and let us in!'

Chaucer steps back, feeling uneasy.

No one knows where the peasant rioting came from, but the whole of Essex and Kent have been up in arms for the past fortnight. And now they've come together, converged around London in two great armies, ready to invade the City itself.

Chaucer's waiting until he knows the outcome of the King's negotiations with the Kentishmen before he goes to Mass at St Helen's. He'll go at Sext if he misses Terce. He wants to have something reassuring to tell Elizabeth when he sees her afterwards. He doesn't like to think of all those poor girls cooped up in there, so scared, waiting; with no way of getting out.

They say it all started at Brentwood Assizes a fortnight ago. They say the tax collectors tested the virginity of a village headman's daughter to see whether she could be counted as a woman and forced to pay. Chaucer can imagine the casual brutality of
that
, the guffawing knights, the terror of the poor girl. They say that was the last straw.

But outrage doesn't explain how coolly intelligent the rioters have been. There hasn't been mass murder, even though thousands of men, armed only with sticks and their anger, have joined the riots and marched all over both counties, seizing towns and castles, even capturing Canterbury and Chelmsford, the county towns. There have only been carefully targeted attacks on the half-dozen men who run each of the counties: the MPs, the poll-tax collectors. Those few knights have been locked away, or murdered, or taken hostage. Their houses have been burned. But no one else has been touched. It's almost as if these unlettered peasants know instinctively whom to attack to decapitate government and stop the authorities in their tracks. Yet their leaders are only supposed to be village men, with rustic names: Jack Straw, Tom Baker, Wat Tyler. So how can they know? It's eerie.

It's also almost miraculous good luck, or organisation, that there are no armies to stop them, either. There's just the small garrison at the Tower of London, a couple of hundred men, and they're not venturing out; they're needed to protect the King. The Duke is away in the North, extending the peace agreement with the Scots. And the main body of the soldiers of the South is far away at in the south-west, at Plymouth, pursuing what is just emerging as the Duke's secret agenda: embarking to spend England's tax money, which was supposed to go on the French war, on another attempt to conquer Castile.

More uncanny still, the two peasant armies seem to be communicating. Just before both of them turned towards London, they held two great public bonfires on the same day, one in Canterbury, the other in Chelmsford, on which they threw every scrap of documentation sealed with green wax - the mark of financial papers - that they'd found in every public official's workplace. So there's no proof, any more, of who's paid, or not paid, their tax.

And now the wild men are all here, just beyond the City walls, again in tandem, howling that they're the true servants of the King, who's being betrayed by his lords and tax collectors, and demanding that he come to meet them and follow their advice. The Kentishmen from the South are over the river, camped beyond Greenwich, and the Essex men Chaucer keeps seeing are sleeping at Mile End Meadow, just a mile or so up the road from Chaucer's home at Aldgate.

The King's rowing out along the river this morning - now, probably - to meet the Kentishmen. Chaucer can only hope that seeing the King with their own eyes satisfies them, and that they go home.

If it doesn't, well, the danger could easily spread inside London too. It's Corpus Christi today, the holiday Thursday in June when no work is done and everyone is out holding summer pageants, in which the poor are allowed to dress up as kings and bishops, and ape their betters for the day - which means, in practice, that the streets of the City will be thronged all day with the poorer sorts of city folk, who are no less disgruntled than the country rioters, and they'll be idle, and probably drunk, and up for mischief.

So far, with no certain news, everything Chaucer sees is disquieting in the extreme. The streets downstairs, inside the City, are already full of crowds. If he crosses the room again, and looks down at the windows giving on to London, he'll see them. He chooses not to. He's been pacing from one side to the other all morning, biting his nails and staring. Some people in those holiday crowds have been in and out of town all week, or so people say, telling the wild men with sticks out there that they'll be welcome in the City when they get here. And the mood of the street people inside is scarcely less threatening than that of the lurking peasants outside.

Chaucer shivers. He's glad of the extra guard Mayor Walworth's put on Aldgate.

An hour later, he gives up on reassuring news of the King's meeting with the rebels and heads up Bishopsgate to St Helen's anyway.

On the way, he hears that the King was so scared of the rebels' yelling from the riverbank at Rotherhithe - or his advisers were, because the rebels wanted most of the advisers killed - that the royal boat was rowed away without even trying to parlay.

That's torn it, Chaucer thinks, uneasily, as he scrabbles through the rowdy crowds crammed into Aldgate, pushing against burly shoulders, elbowing people in the gut if they won't get out of the way, remembering some of the unsettling stories doing the rounds. He's never liked crowds. When the peasants took Rochester Castle, he's thinking, they say they only had to shout, and the walls came tumbling down, like Jericho. So, that's torn it. If the King won't talk to them, it's obvious: they'll charge in anyway. Who's going to stop them? Didn't anyone tell him to try?

There are people caterwauling outside, right through Mass. In rough voices, they're chanting, 'When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?'

'Are you safe?' he asks Elizabeth as soon as he's shown into the visitor's cell with her. He doesn't care if she knows he's panicking. He's panicking for her.

She nods, but she doesn't look sure. 'They're shuttering up all the windows. Barring them, and the doors,' she says. Babbling. 'Great thick planks. Just in case. I was even thinking I should try and ask them to let
you
join us. It's more secure here than over Aldgate, and you probably don't have enough bread to last you a day, do you? Whereas we have food and water, enough for weeks. There's even firewood.' She laughs, or tries to. It's so hot, and there's damp on her brow. She's trying to be brave. But she looks so young, with that baby face, that peachy skin. So vulnerable. A child. What if those savages get in?

He can spot her straight away, as soon as he enters the church, however dark it is, however identical all the girls' black robes. She's the smallest of the novices by two inches. And today she has bitten nails, just like him.

But, perhaps precisely because of her size, Elizabeth's always made great efforts to be self-possessed. 'At least I'm not at Barking,' she says with another miserable little titter, because even she, shut away inside these big walls, knows that they've been all over Essex for days now, these wild men. Barking's not safe.

He's grateful for that remark; for the grace in it. So he lets her will for calm lead him. She's a wise girl, he thinks, and he tries to lighten his own breathing, and take comfort in what he can.

'Thank God for that, at least, eh?' he answers in as everyday a voice as he can manage, and he raises an eyebrow at her. She used to love it that he could move his eyebrows separately. She nods encouragingly. He thinks she's grateful in her turn. 'And thank God Thomas and your mother are safely at Hertford Castle. They're well out of all this. It's all quiet up there.'

'For now, at least,' Elizabeth says. She sounds suddenly sombre. 'It's them I'm worried about, to be honest, Papa,' she says, and her fingers go up towards her mouth; but she remembers herself in time, and starts fidgeting with her rosary instead. 'More than about myself. Because all these people shouting outside, well, I can't help hearing what they're shouting...and it's all bad things about my lord of Lancaster. They hate him, don't they? Really hate him. And I've been thinking, Aunt Katherine was with him for at least part of the ride north. She was going to leave his train at Leicester and go home...but you know how she is...'

Chaucer shakes his head in genuine ignorance. No one ever tells him about Katherine and the Duke.

'Well, sometimes she doesn't go,' Elizabeth says, as if this is common knowledge and her father's being a bit dense. 'So she might still be with him. And I'm not sure that's safe. Because what if there's more of
this...
up
there
?'

Chaucer doesn't care about Katherine; not as he does about this wise, beautiful child. But he doesn't want to look unfeeling. He even senses his voice might be too glib as he says, 'Oh, you mustn't worry about them. If she's with him at the border, there's an army with him too, after all. And if she's not...well, then, she's safe enough.'

Elizabeth looks doubtful. He feels doubtful too, in private. If a ravening mob wanted revenge on the Duke, why wouldn't they descend on the man's mistress, at Kettlethorpe?

But there's more on his daughter's careful mind. She's wrinkling her lovely forehead. He wants to kiss away her worries.

She blurts it out. 'If Mama and Thomas are with my lady of Lancaster - even if the Duke's nowhere near - how safe are they going to be, really?' Suddenly all her grown-up poise has gone. She's got damp eyes and fingers twisted into her mouth.

He takes her in his arms and cradles her. 'Don't worry,' he soothes, so swollen with tenderness he thinks he might burst, 'don't worry, Lizbet. It will all be over in a day or two. They'll be safe. We'll all be right as rain.'

It's years since she's shown him her heart like this. It makes everything worthwhile. His closed-down life; the goodbyes; Alice. For a frivolous moment, he's almost grateful to the rebels.

They let him out through the little door in the gate.

He almost walks under the hoofs of Mayor Walworth, parading down the street through the threatening-looking low-lifes as if he can't see them. The Mayor's at the head of a newly mustered guard of property-owning worthies, who are mostly sat like sacks on their horses, looking uncomfortable in their little-used armour, giving the street people scared little looks from under their metal caps.

'Master Chaucer,' Walworth says, taking off his hat. He doesn't look like an angel today. He looks taut and tight and stern. Walworth's always been an excellent organiser. He's the most successful of this whole generation of men who've made the English merchant's calling a glorious one, almost the equal of the powerful merchant princes of Italy; men who've made friends, and supplicants, of kings. But suddenly Chaucer also sees that, if he'd been born of noble blood, Walworth might have made an excellent soldier, too. He's got a good commanding seat on a horse. He doesn't look as though he'll be afraid to cut down a few wild men. Might enjoy it, judging from that gleam in his usually cautious eye. Walworth might even be a better soldier, and a better general, than the military leaders England has had in recent years. Chaucer almost laughs: Walworth could hardly be a worse commander than most of the lords who've done the job, after all.

Walworth's saying: 'Customs House secured, I hope. Locked, barred, shuttered?'

A slightly intimidated Chaucer nods to cover himself, while making a private note to go and double-check now.

'Then we have to arm,' Walworth continues. For a moment, his war face relaxes, and he laughs, a little shyly, as if he's embarrassed by the aptitude he's showing for flexing his warrior muscles. 'The Mayor's duty, you know.' He leans down, straight-backed. He's far nobler today, Chaucer thinks, than most of those harum-scarum knights you see in the lists at tournaments. He gives Chaucer an eagle's glare. 'You're a man of property, Chaucer. One of us. And a man of duty. So will you ride out with us? Protect London?'

'Oh, I'm not a man of arms,' Chaucer says hastily, aware that he's lowering the high chivalric tone. 'I'd be more of a hindrance than a help.'

Walworth just looks coldly impatient. He thinks Chaucer will find his courage in a minute, and say yes. They both know this is Chaucer's duty. But Chaucer also knows that nothing on God's earth would ever persuade him out into even a possible battle again, not even the thought of Elizabeth's admiration, if it was safely behind him and he could go back in there and tell her about it, pretending to be modest. So he ducks his head awkwardly towards the Mayor, without quite meeting his eye, feeling ashamed, but also relieved to have made his decision, and scurries on. Another friend lost, Chaucer thinks; someone else who thinks less of me. He doesn't much care.

Chaucer doesn't make it home. He's only just finished supervising the full barring of the Customs House, and sent away the two clerks he's called in to help him for an hour, despite the holiday. He's standing on the dock, leaning against the crane, looking out towards Southwark and the bridge, trying not to be too frightened that there's a crowd he's never seen the like of over there, and hearing, with a chill, that they're yelling something that, perhaps distorted as it comes over the water, sounds like, '--ill!--ill!--ill!' when the shouts suddenly change, turning to raucous hoots and hurrahs.

He sees why at once. The drawbridge in the middle of Bridge Ward is going down. Walworth must have given up. They're letting the Kentishmen in. Chaucer turns and starts running up Water Lane as fast as his feet will carry him. If he's quick, if he dodges round the back of the Tower, and through the lanes, he might still make it home before they get here.