The People's Queen (5 page)

It's not even as if he knows Alice Perrers, especially. She's just one of those people who's always been around, at court, pretty much from the time he first came, at nineteen or twenty; he remembers her as rather younger than him, and not from a grand family, one of the waifs the old Queen used to appoint, on a whim, to be snubbed for the rest of their lives by the real nobility. She's always looked a bit mischievous, though, as if it was never going to get her down that much. He's always liked that in her. There's a spark in her pale blue eyes; something that lifts her looks - rounded little limbs, pale skin, curly black hair that often escapes from its headdress - into occasional beauty. Chaucer remembers a younger Alice sitting next to Jean Froissart in church, and whispering something quiet that made the Queen's boyish chronicler (another of those whimsical royal appointments) curl up and snort and rock with laughter, and then looking utterly composed while poor little Froissart desperately tried to control his shaking curls and heaving sides. That sort of thing was probably what made the Queen take Alice on for a bit when the Duke of Lancaster got one of her established demoiselles pregnant. The Queen, God rest her lovely soul, always loved laughter. And being able to make people laugh probably helped Alice cling on afterwards, Chaucer thinks, even though it was obvious she'd never have the instincts of nobility. She's tough. She survived until the King got a soft spot for her, even though the things Chaucer's Philippa said about her, with her sister, both of them looking at each other with those half-closed eyes, like two cats, full of the utter disdain of the born aristocrat for outsiders, which must have been the same sorts of things that other people were saying, were always so unkind...

Well, Geoffrey Chaucer thinks ruefully to himself, recalling moments when Philippa has given him that cat look too, and, raising her long and beautiful nose, referred to his own family's background in less than flattering terms. Perhaps
that'
s why. 'I was just easing things along,' he tells his wife quietly.

She half closes her eyes. She half smiles. 'Feeling sorry for the whore,' she says, and though there's no obvious cruelty in her voice he feels belittled by the very gentleness of her contempt. She wafts away.

Geoffrey Chaucer goes on standing there, while the courtiers talk around him, louder and louder. He does know, after all, why he intervened. He felt sorry for Alice Perrers, standing all alone with wine dripping down her face and off her hair, and her shoulders shaking, with that bullying old brute glaring at her as if she wished her dead, and a crowd gathered round staring as if they were at the bear-pit, hoping for blood. You could have all the jaunty courage in the world, and still it would do you no good if no one stood up for you.

TWO

Loyalty, Alice thinks, from her chariot, with its burning hot metallic sides. She's turning her head graciously from side to side. She's ignoring the low mutters from the crowd, and the heat. It's almost like the old days, this spring heat, when she was young, before the weather went so cold, with the skies always lowering, the winters piled with snow, the summers passing in fitful grey. Yes, loyalty's what counts. You stand by the people you've got. You help those who help you.

Chaucer's face keeps swimming into her head, mixed up with fleeting pictures of other people to whom she's had debts of gratitude, whom she's seen right. Her last glance back at the hall last night, when she saw Philippa Chaucer stalk up to her husband and start questioning him, and him politely waving her away - clearly refusing an invitation to gossip about Alice - has only confirmed the warmth she feels. She owes him. He won't regret it.

The procession is passing out of Cripplegate to an especially deafening burst of horns, leaving the worst of the crowds behind. Alice has been focusing her mind on something pleasant she can do for someone, because she hasn't enjoyed her ride through the City one bit as much as she'd expected. The crowd of burghers has been as hostile as any crowd might be on seeing one of its own elevated beyond what Londoners think is her rightful place. She's seen the angry eyes, the men being muscled back from around the chariot by the sergeants-at-arms, the gob of wet landing on the side of the carriage, too close for comfort. She's heard the low hissing, the mutters. Her golden sun-chariot is so low that she's even made out some of the words. Not just the usual perfunctory unpleasantness due any rich nobleman's mistress: 'whore' and 'slack-legs'. Today it's all been angrier and more heartfelt. 'Grave-robber', she's heard; and 'spendthrift', and 'Lady of the bleeding Night', and 'robbing the poor old King blind'.

Thank God it's over, she thinks. She won't bother with titles again.

Alice looks ahead to the tussocky ground stretching away towards the hill hamlets of Islington and Sadler's Wells. In front of her is glitter and haze: the draperies, the scaffold for the ladies, the reds and golds, the elegantly dressed crowd of waiting gentry and nobility. Behind her, London: the walls of the Priory and Hospital of St Bartholomew and, further back, behind Cripplegate (where, now the citizens' noise is more distant, she can hear the anxious lowing of the cows, moved for the week from their usual pre-slaughter pasture over here at the flat western end of the field), the two vast grave pits dug during the Mortality. Wherever you are, there's no escaping reminders of the Mortality.

But it doesn't trouble her. She's not going to let anything trouble her. The thought of those grave pits only reminds her of her first conversation with Edward, and makes her smile. It seems so long ago, that day, back when she was a girl, even before the Queen had taken her in, sitting on a stool, pretending to be absorbed in needlework, cautiously eavesdropping on him and William of Windsor talking. She was admiring the calm way that handsome, grizzled William of Windsor addressed the monarch, with no sign his heart must be beating faster and his tongue cleaving to the roof of his mouth out of sheer awe at the presence of God's Anointed. She heard William of Windsor say something about the Mortality, one of those pious commonplaces people uttered all the time while she was growing up: God's retribution on the Race of Adam, a curse on sin, some such.

Before she knew what she was doing, Alice remembers, she found her mouth open and herself piping up, pert as anything: 'Well, it wasn't sent to kill
me.
I was born right in the teeth of it, and I survived,' and she was grinning up at the pair of them, flashing her teeth, all bravado. Then, suddenly realising what she'd done by interrupting the King's conversation, she stopped in terror. Both men were staring curiously at her. She sensed William of Windsor's wide-open eyes were a signal to stop. But she pushed on. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, she told herself. Seize the day. She put the grin back on her face, but she could hear her voice shake a little as she continued, with a smile: '...and I've lived to tell the tale through another bout of it, too...as we all have, with God's grace. Who's afraid of the Mortality?'

She very nearly went on to say the next things old Aunty Alison always used to say whenever she scoffed at the plague, back at Aunty's kiln where Alice grew up. 'It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good,' that hard old voice echoed in her head. 'God's curse for some; God's blessing for others. So many people gone, but we're still here, thank God, and they left it all behind for us, didn't they? Just waiting to be picked up. The streets are paved with gold, if you only know where to look. Fortunes to be made, a king's ransom many times over. All just waiting for anyone with a head on their shoulders to come along and take it.' But fear overcame her again. She gulped and stopped. Then there was a long pause, during which Alice wished the earth would open and swallow her.

She'd always remember the way Edward's eyes, eventually, softened and his great golden mane started to shake as he laughed. 'Then you must be one of the very few of my subjects to be so blessed by God, little miss,' he said, and his great lustrous eyes sparkled at her until she felt warm all over. He added, with a laugh that included her, 'Or by the Devil, of course, who knows?' and the look in his eyes told her she was allowed to laugh too. In the quietness that followed, he leaned forward, saying, very casually, yet with great courtliness, 'Tell me, to whom do I have the honour...?'

She was so lucky in that first conversation with Edward.

At the time, she had no idea that Edward chafed as much as she did at the notion that the Mortality was divine punishment, and that there was nothing to do but lie down and die when it struck. Later she found out that the King of England had lost two children to the sickness himself - in that first bout of it, about when she, Alice, was born. But Edward was so reluctant to stay shut away from the world that, after a fretful winter in the relative safety of Oxford and King's Langley, he came out at the height of the plague. That April, on St George's Day, he forced hundreds of terrified knights to risk their lives coming together at his new castle at Windsor, for the first great meeting, at the giant Round Table he'd had built in homage to King Arthur, of the Order of the Garter. Edward prides himself on defying death. (Later still, once Alice and Edward were close enough for whispering, he laughed ticklishly in her ear with his story about how his ancestor, Count Fulke the Black, had married the daughter of the Devil, and about Countess Melusine shrieking and flying out through a window of the chapel, never to be seen again, when she'd been forced to go to Mass. Alice could see he very nearly believed he was descended from the Devil. It explained so much about his devil-may-care bravery, and about his luck, too. The King's wind, they used to call it, the wind that blew him straight to France, and victory, every time he set sail across the Channel.) Of course he liked her death-defying talk, right from the start.

The chariot's struggling over wooden planks to a platform.

Alice gathers the folds of her robe as the door opens. She can see Edward waiting for her on the dais, smiling in the distance. But Duke John is closer, on horseback, right behind her in the train of noblemen. To her pleasure, it's he who dismounts and, taking the place of the groom, comes to her door to hand her down.

'Jewels,' her new friend says in her ear, with the beginnings of a smile and the beginnings of a compliment. 'Beautiful ones, too.' Then, in a different voice, looking suddenly taken aback: 'Oh...but...isn't that my mother's necklace?'

'Yes...your father got it out for me last night,' Alice replies, feeling slightly apologetic all of a sudden, but trying not to sound it. His mother's jewels - perhaps she should have thought? But it only takes a moment for blessed defiance to come back to her. She's not stealing the jewels, for God's sake, she tells herself. His mother's been dead for years. Why shouldn't she enjoy them? 'And the other rubies. The rings...the bracelets...' She can't stop herself stretching out her right hand as she says the words.

'By way of an apology,' she adds, when the Duke still doesn't say anything.

How anxious Edward looked, at the end of last evening, with the noise of the dance still going on below, when he came to her, with a sleepy scrivener trying to suppress a yawn bobbing respectfully in his wake. 'I regret...' He stumbled over the words, clinging to her hand, as if he feared she might vanish, like the Countess Melusine, leaving him cold and lonely in his last days. 'I very much regret...a spirited woman, Joan. Too spirited at times.' He paused. She waited. No point forgiving too fast. After a second, he thrust the letter at her: an order to Euphemia, another ex-demoiselle and now wife to Sir Walter de Heselarton, Knight, who's lodged somewhere here too, that 'the said Euphemia is to deliver the rubies in her keeping to the said Alice on the receipt of this our command'. Alice looked up, only half believing the words dancing on the page, straight into those pale old eyes fixed on hers, mournful, humble, imploring as a dog's, begging for forgiveness.

She blurted, 'You're giving me the jewels? Really?' This man loves me, Alice Perrers, she thought, with a sunburst of gratitude, trying not to notice the slack skin or lean neck or liver spots. His love has made me what I am.

'Oh, only the rubies,' Edward replied quickly, playful again, smiling with relief, but still not giving too much away. (This is why Edward's been so good at making common ground with the merchants, she knows; because he enjoys haggling as much as they do, as much as she does. He will do till his dying day.) Forgetting the old-man's skin, looking into his laughing, knowing eyes, she put her arms around him. 'Only the rubies, my dear,' he repeated, and kissed her.

That's what she should be teaching this Duke, who hasn't had to have dealings with merchants, who as a younger son has been left for longer in the sunlit playground of chivalry and pageantry in which princes once existed, who hasn't had occasion to think about the realities of modern life. He'll need to now, if he's going to make his play for power. He'll have to learn. Drop the ceremonials. No one owes you everything, just because of your noble blood. Pay your way into alliances, if you need those alliances. Do what you need to do. Learn to see things for what they are.

But he's silent, still; perhaps he's taken some terrible princely offence at humble Alice touching his mother's jewels? Perhaps he's too stiff-necked ever to change?

She tries again. She murmurs, with a hint of a twinkle, 'I think your father chose the rubies for the colour of the wine.'

At last, he seems to decide it's all right. He nods, and smiles straight into her eyes. 'They suit you,' he says after a moment, making her a dignified bow, and, after another pause, as if he's looking for the right phrase, full enough of gentillesse: 'She behaved badly. My father did right. I'd have done the same myself.'

Arm in arm, they begin stepping cautiously towards Edward. There's a warmth inside Alice, and it's not just from the lean warmth of the arm in hers.

'Did you enjoy the ride through London?' she hears him murmur politely at her side. Perhaps he's curious. He must have heard the Londoners muttering, too, from where he was, right behind her in the procession.

She nods, as nobly as she can. Hardly thinking, she replies, 'Of course.' Then she stops. If they're to be allies, she should learn to be as honest with him as she'll expect him to be with her. So she dimples up at him and flutters her free hand. 'Well, no...to tell the truth, I didn't, really,' she admits candidly. 'They didn't like me much as Lady of the Sun, those Londoners, did they?'

He actually shivers. It's not just for her benefit; his revulsion for the common people of London, tramps, pedlars, fishwives, and the richest merchants in the land alike, shudders right through him, something he feels in every inch of his body and doesn't mind her knowing. 'Terrible people,' he says. His voice is tight. 'Howling like that, at a royal procession, the savages. They should be taught a lesson. Brought under control...flogged.'

God be with them all, she thinks, suddenly buoyant again (though she does appreciate the Duke's sympathy). They're right, in a way, those Londoners; she agrees, she shouldn't be out here pretending to be Queen Philippa and Princess Joan rolled into one scarlet silk package. She was asking to be called grave-robber, wearing the Queen's necklace out here. She won't do it again, because she enjoys London. She likes the way the London merchants work: cautiously, by consensus and committee; and purposefully, without the empty showing-off of the court. She shouldn't forget that. She won't next time. She's learned her lesson.

So she shrugs, and grins invitingly, twisting her head sideways like a bird on a bush to include him in her merriment. 'Oh, I don't know,' she differs blithely. 'They're often right, in London. I probably
should
have kept a lower profile. Anyway, they're so good at what they do - making money that can help you. You have to forgive them their outspokenness if only for that, don't you?'

'I can't be doing with them,' he mutters, shaking his head. There's a stubborn look in his eyes, but she now thinks she sees - what, bewilderment? Interest? there too. 'Who do they think they are?'

She murmurs enticingly back: '...though London, and its wealth, could be a great support to you, if you could only learn to accept the way the Londoners are.' He turns his eyes to her. He wants to know, she sees. He just doesn't want to admit it. She whispers, 'I could show you how.'

He's definitely interested now. He stops walking. So does she.

'How?' he says, though he can't keep the scepticism out of his voice. 'They don't like me, any more than I like them.'

The idea comes on her like a flash of lightning; she hears the words drop from her lips even as she's thinking it. 'That's because you need some good men who are loyal to you in the big London jobs,' she replies quickly. 'Londoners spend so much time talking to each other, and so much time listening. You need a talker inside the walls, who can influence them; someone who can quietly show them things from your point of view.'