The People's Queen (6 page)

This
is how to repay the debt of honour she incurred last night. She's breathless with the cleverness of it. She's thinking of the vacant job checking that Londoners aren't skimping on their payments of wool tax, England's biggest export. It's the most important government job in the City, requiring diplomacy, financial know-how and intimate knowledge of both merchant and court life.

'For instance,' she goes on, startling even herself, 'You need a man you can trust in the wool comptroller's post.' She tightens her grip on the Duke's arm. 'And I know who.'

THREE

Master Geoffrey Chaucer, newly appointed Comptroller of the Customs and Subsidy on Wool, Sheepskins and Leather for the Port of London, can tell from the stillness and the shimmer on the water that it's going to be another hot June day.

He's early. It's not yet properly light. But then he's nervous.

Any minute now he'll be joined on the jetty at Westminster by his companions for his first day in his new job - an old friend and a new. Meanwhile, all he can do is wait and listen to the bells ring for Lauds behind him in the royal village.

Soon, he knows, there'll be pandemonium at the palace. All the servants will be up, running around, sweeping, carrying pails and boxes and bags and piles in and out of every imaginable gate and doorway, feeding horses or killing fowl for the table, smelling the bread smells rising from the ovens. The King's court is to move to Sheen in a day or two, now that the mystery plays and celebrations of Corpus Christi are over. By St John's Eve, not a fortnight hence, it'll be off again, having eaten its many-headed way through the local food supplies, for a midsummer interlude at Havering-atte-Bower. Chaucer's always liked the peace of Havering. He pulls his robe around his shoulders and steps on to the jetty, wishing he could feel more whole-heartedly happy to be leaving behind that brightly coloured wandering life.

It seems no time at all since Alice Perrers materialised beside him at one of the masques she so energetically organised for her week of spring festivities (one in which the players on the Passion wagon were re-enacting a Crusade, with piercing cries and dramatically flowing crimson blood and a real fire engulfing the mock-castle as Saladin dropped writhing to his death. An incongruous background for conversation, he remembers thinking). She slipped a confiding arm through his, and whispered, with her eyes all persuasively lit up, that the King was minded to give him high Crown office in the City, if he was minded to accept...?

He couldn't believe it at first. This is what Philippa most chides him for - failing to seek out preferment - and here it was coming at him without his even trying, in the person of the King's favourite, this chirpy little barrel of fire, who was holding on to his arm and grinning slyly up at him as if they were old friends sharing some tremendous joke.

But going back to the City - even to do this responsible job, which will certainly earn him the King's favour if he's successful - seems in so many ways like a step back into his past that it's thrown him into inner turmoil. This turmoil has gone with him through every one of the meetings with government officials that Alice Perrers has been whisking him through in the past few weeks. Every imagining he has of a future waking up to the cries of the City's streets, and walking through those too-familiar lanes to a job among men he knew as a child, is accompanied by a prickly cloud of difficult memories of the other life he's become accustomed to, these past twenty years.

He might see more of Philippa if he's to be in London all the time - and Alice Perrers has made plain he will be expected to be at his desk at the Customs House every day, checking the merchants' accounts. Philippa's Castilian mistress, the wife of the Duke of Lancaster, likes her long stays at the Savoy (and who wouldn't? Chaucer thinks, as the memories of those bright avenues and splendid halls fill his mind - another soft little knife in his side, another bittersweet sigh). The Lancastrian palace on the Strand, where Philippa spends so much of her time working as demoiselle to the Duchess, is only a boat ride away. Now, seeing Philippa is a mixed blessing at the best of times, but what most concerns Chaucer is that he might also have more time with his children, if he's always in London, than he has while he's been attached to the King's court, as one of thirty esquires kept at my lord's side to be quietly useful, plunging up and down the land on that endless crusade of cushions and silver-gilt cups, not necessarily going the same way, at the same time, as the Duke and Duchess of Lancaster's court, or seeing nearly enough of little Thomas and Elizabeth.

That's a good part of what's made his eyes glitter at the prospect of this new job. What has made Philippa's eyes glitter is learning of the extra pension he'll be getting now for the Customs post, added to the ones the Duke of Lancaster (a better master by far than the tricky old King when it comes to payment) has already secured for both of them for their service to various members of the royal family. Between them, their income will now add up to nearly sixty pounds a year. For the first time, they'll be comfortable by anyone's reckoning. Philippa knows, of course, that she'll be expected to do a little visible wifely duty in return - attending City dinners with him, from time to time, that sort of thing. But he knows her, and her suspicion of merchant ways, too well to expect that she'll do more than the bare minimum. Still, he must be grateful. She's told him, gently enough, that although she won't live with him in the City (he couldn't expect her to give up her life at court for merchants, after all) and she won't hear of Thomas being taken away from court where he does lessons with the Duke of Lancaster's daughters, and being sent instead to St Paul's almonry school in the shadow of the cathedral, to mix with the sons of merchants, (which is where Geoffrey Chaucer got
his
book-learning), she and the children will, at least, spend holidays with him in London. At least sometimes. He's almost sure she'll keep her word. At least, she will if she isn't in a mood, as she too often is, to whisper to the children that their maternal de Roet blood is nobler than their father's, and to have her own coat of arms, not his, embroidered on their clothes.

Geoffrey Chaucer sighs. There's no point in false optimism. He knows that really. She's turned the children against him. More and more, he can see she has. All his absences, all his eager plans to win rewards from the King for his subtle negotiating, have left the children alone with their mother for too long, and Chaucer has come to realise he can't trust her to represent him fairly to them while he's gone. 'You're only nine,' he said to Thomas, when he first noticed that the boy had displayed on his thin chest the three golden Catherine wheels on a red background which Philippa and her sister wear. 'Too young to make decisions like this.' Then he became aware of the plaintive whininess of his voice. Too late, he saw the boy's eyes glaze over with watchful distance and the beginning of boredom. Trying to make a joke of it, Chaucer added, with a miserable attempt at a smile, 'After all, you'll have to get all your clothes reworked if they make me a baron and you start wanting my arms. Think of the expense.'

The boy only blinked his wise blue eyes and said, more dispassionately than Chaucer would have liked, 'Well, let's worry about that if it happens.' Chaucer winces when he remembers the unbearable kindness in the touch of the boy's hand on his arm.

Still, the City's close to the Savoy. That's something to remember. And he's on the path to favour, as it seems he hasn't been till now, despite all those foreign missions for the King that haven't got him anywhere near the state of worldly glory Philippa craves for him. He has to cling to the hope that this will turn out well, and that he might, in the end, make his children proud of their father.

Footsteps. At last.

He turns round with his most gracious smile. He bows, low, as his new friend, Baron Latimer, would expect of a fellow-courtier. It's a practised gesture, but also a sincere one. He's grateful to Latimer, and wants to do him honour. Latimer - the King's chamberlain, an important man, with a glorious war record in France and fingers in every government pie - must have much else on his mind, apart from the well-being of one Master Geoffrey Chaucer,
valettus.
Yet the leathery-faced old baron is making this transition of Chaucer's back to City life so painless that it often seems to the dazzled Chaucer that this is not the case. Latimer's shown no impatience, however many times Alice Perrers has dragged Chaucer in for another briefing. He's sat Chaucer down with him. He's shown him documents. He's explained the intricacies of wool taxation. He's performed introductions. And every act has been performed with exquisite courtesy; charm enough to make Chaucer nearly weep with gratitude.

So Chaucer's glad Latimer's coming today, to introduce him to the merchants in power in the City and settle him into his new role. He's also glad, in a different way, that his old friend Stury has promised to come along. Sir Richard Stury, a knight of the King's household, has been Chaucer's friend since they were youths, boys, almost, and were both taken prisoner near Reims. Their friendship began in earnest in that week they were waiting for the ransom payments to come through. It's never flagged. They're two of a kind. Stury's tall and thin and loves riding and swordplay and dancing and arguing about religion, all unlike Chaucer. But, more importantly, Stury's a thoughtful, intelligent man, who spends most of his spare time nowadays writing poetry, as Chaucer does. They have other things in common. Chaucer and Stury are both part of the circle of young men around the King who also owe allegiance to his younger son, the Duke of Lancaster - for it is the Duke who has stepped in and spoken glowingly of them to his absent-minded royal father, who's reminded the King to arrange pensions for them in return for their services to the Crown, who's suggested marriages for them, and provided this favour or that, and generally smoothed out all the small difficulties that can beset a man making his way at court if he does not have a protector. Chaucer's latest appointment is going to give them one more thing to share. They're about to be neighbours, too. Stury has a house in the City: a riverside mansion in Vintry Ward, which he uses whenever the court's at Westminster. He'll often be in the City with Chaucer. They'll read to each other, sit together of an evening, drinking and talking and looking out over the Thames, side by side.

There are moments when Chaucer feels he's truly going to enjoy what is to come. There are moments when he feels this step back into London is going to connect him more closely to the court than he's ever been connected before. At this moment, overcome by that feeling, he sweeps down into the deepest bow he can manage.

It's only as he rises that he sees it isn't Latimer, or Stury, standing in front of him.

Incomprehensibly, it's Alice Perrers. She's alone. She's dressed in a simple tan travelling robe. The strong sun is casting strong shadows across her face. The breeze has tugged away her flapping veil. She's laughing at the look of utter confusion on his face.

'Well, it's early, and I suppose none of us looks our best at this hour...but really, Master Chaucer, it's not gallant to goggle at me like that, as if I were the Grim Reaper come to snatch you away,' she says archly. 'Is it now?'

Feeling foolish, though relieved she seems to find his bewilderment amusing, Chaucer bows again, not sure if he's making things better or worse. As he rises, he stammers, 'Madame Perrers...it's just...I wouldn't have expected...of course, I'm honoured.'

He can see now that she's come purely to see him off - to wish him well, him, Geoffrey Chaucer. And why not? She's been as warm, for all these weeks, as if he were her oldest friend. Still, surely it's natural for him to be flustered at her suddenly appearing here now, with the old boatman he's ordered for far too early spitting and coughing down there and giving him killer looks, with the two men who were supposed to be travelling to London with him still not here, and with him cutting a not very dashing figure hitching up his robes and helplessly waiting and even more helplessly gawping at her as if she were the Grim Reaper, as she says. Too late, he realises that was funny, and his mouth starts to twitch upwards. He still can't believe she's found the time, with all the royal household to run, that she's thought to leave the King's chamber for him.

She nods as the smile gains ground on his face, as if she's pleased he's still got a sense of humour. 'I had to be up early anyway. I'm supervising the packing today,' she says by way of casual explanation. 'And it only takes a minute to run down here.'

Dumbly, he nods, overcome once more.

Before he can mumble, 'I'm honoured,' again, she adds, more seriously, as if it were the question closest to her heart, 'And I had a question for before you go. I wanted to be sure you've ordered a good dinner for your guests today.' She gives him a piercing look, her head on one side, like a plump little bird, and waits.

Chaucer feels his mouth open and close as he stumbles towards the best reply. All his vague but tumultuous hopes for his new life have vanished as soon as he hears that question. He just feels sick. He wonders if she knows how difficult he's finding it, or if she's just hit by chance on his worst fear for the day.

The plan is this. After being shown his desk at the Customs House this morning, he's to play host at dinner in his new home to the Mayor and all the greatest merchants of London.

Geoffrey hopes Philippa understands how elaborate this meal should be, how London citizens are as grand as Florentine merchant princes in their habits and expectations, and how lavish they'll expect the hospitality of the man who will dare to check their books to be.

But he's miserably aware that there was something too dismissive about his wife's shrug when, at their last meeting three days before, as she set off to move their cushions and tapestries and silverware into the new City apartment, he asked for a list of dishes.

'It's all in hand,' Philippa said, refusing to be drawn. When he started to say something more, she just flapped her hands at him. 'It's going to be a Friday,' she added, too calmly. 'Fish. Yes?' And she wafted off.

Unhappily, he thinks: I can influence most people. If only I could my wife. He lifts hangdog eyes to Alice Perrers' face, and sees she understands the whole family drama he isn't going to tell her.

'They'll expect the best,' is all she says. Then she pats his arm, comfortingly, though the gesture reminds him, uncomfortably, of Thomas's similar one during that other conversation. 'But of course you know that, don't you?'