‘That is still nothing but speculation on your part,’ de Beaufort said accusingly.
‘But it is intelligent speculation,’ I responded. ‘I know Gloucester of old, and I understand how his mind works. Besides, the very fact that you are here proves I am right, does it not?’
‘Perhaps,’ Sir Stephen said cautiously.
‘But having once determined to seize power, how could the Duke justify such a move?’ I asked. ‘The only course open to him was to claim that he was doing so not for any selfish motive, but only for the good of the kingdom. He would be forced to take control, he could say, for no other reason than that Richard had lost it. And how could he clearly demonstrate that King Richard was no longer able to govern? Why, by stirring up revolt amongst the people!’
‘You must admit that Master Chaucer has been very clever, Thomas,’ Lady Elizabeth said.
‘I admit nothing,’ de Beaufort said.
‘How should the Duke stir up this discontent?’ I continued. ‘He would have to send his agents out into the country. But such an action carried with it considerable risk. Men do not travel around England without a purpose, yet this particular purpose was not one which the agents could admit to when questioned by the local authorities. Therefore, unless the plot were to be uncovered before the time was right, those agents would need another excuse for leaving the comfort of their homes.’
‘Will this take all day?’ de Beaufort demanded. ‘For, in truth, I am already as bored with this as I was with your tale of Sir Topaz.’
‘Merchants have a reason for travelling the country,’ I said, ‘and perhaps, for a while, the Duke considered using some of them as his agents. But merchants are freemen. Their first loyalty is not to any lord, but to their guild and their town corporation. They might eventually, perhaps, be persuaded that joining a revolt was to their advantage, but they certainly could not be trusted to instigate it.’
‘This ‘poet’ excels in telling us what is not,’ de Beaufort said to his companions. ‘Will he ever find the time to tell us what is?’
‘It was then that Gloucester had his wonderful idea,’ I said. ‘He could send out his agents disguised as pilgrims! And what better pilgrimage for them to undertake than the one to Canterbury? For did it not pass through Dartford, where the Peasants’ Revolt began? And then through Rochester, where there is a castle which stands as a symbol of the revolt against King John - as a powerful reminder that no king is invulnerable?’
‘And let us not forget Canterbury itself,’ Sir Stephen said, now falling in with my explanation. ‘For it was here that Henry the Second submitted to the humiliation of a ritual beating after the death of Becket.’
‘Gloucester’s choice of agents was inspired,’ I said. ‘First there was the miller, whose job it was to stir up the rougher elements – the sort of men who had followed Wat Tyler to London. Then there was the prioress, who was charged with contacting the discontented elements within the church. That was why she visited the priory in Dartford, wasn’t it – because she wanted to see Princess Bridget?’
‘Yes,’ Lady Elizabeth agreed. ‘For Bridget is not only a nun but also the daughter of a king whose greatness dwarfs whatever petty achievements his grandson can lay claim to.’
‘And then there was the friar,’ I said. ‘A man with a golden tongue, who could not only talk his way into the beds of the merchants’ wives, but could also persuade the merchants themselves that it would be in their interest to support the revolt. Yes, they were indeed a formidable team. When did John of Gaunt first learn of this scheme?’
A sudden chill filled the room, as if all the winds of the frozen north had conspired to envelop us.
‘No one here has said that John of Gaunt ever learned of the scheme,’ Lady Elizabeth said.
I cursed myself for the idiot I had just shown myself to be. Of course John of Gaunt had never learned of the scheme – at least not officially – for it would not do to have the king’s uncle associated with murders – even if those murders were necessary to foil Gloucester’s plans.
‘Of course Gaunt knew nothing of it,’ I said hastily. ‘I should have realised that immediately. But can I at least assume that someone else did,’ I continued, choosing my words carefully, ‘and that this someone, if not an actual supporter of the Gaunt, was at least sympathetic to him?’
‘Yes, I think you may assume that,’ Sir Stephen said.
‘And that this same person decided that England would be a far less favourable place for both Gaunt and his followers were his brother, the Duke of Gloucester, to be on the throne?’
‘John of Gaunt has never put his own interests above those of England,’ de Beaufort said angrily. ‘If he had thought that the Duke of Gloucester would have made a good king, he would have readily accepted…’
‘Master Chaucer is not talking of John of Gaunt,’ said Lady Elizabeth, reminding de Beaufort of the rules of the game. ‘He is referring only to the man who alerted us to the plot – a man whom, he readily accepts – has no connection with the Duke of Lancaster. Is that not so, Master Chaucer?’
‘Of course,’ I agreed eagerly. ‘But in order to avoid future confusion, we must give a name to this man who is not John of Gaunt. May we call him St George, in honour of our patron saint, a man who himself slew dragons to protect the kingdom?’
‘Yes, I think that would be wise,’ Lady Elizabeth agreed.
‘So, St George learns of the plan, and determines to thwart it,’ I said. ‘But how? The obvious way to do so would be by killing Gloucester’s agents. Yet that creates new problems, because Gloucester - and those around him - would see the murders for exactly what they were, and would be bound to suspect that his brother was behind them.’
‘I told you Gaunt had nothing to do with this!’ said de Beaufort, who, without his disguise to aid him, was really a very bad liar.
‘You are missing the point,’ I told him. ‘We are not talking of how things are, but only of how they appear. If it appeared that John of Gaunt was behind the murders of his agents, then Gloucester would have no choice, if he were to defend his own reputation and position, but to go to war with his brother the moment Gaunt returned from Spain.’
‘No choice at all,’ Sir Stephen agreed.
‘If, on the other hand, the murders could be contrived in such a way that it was reasonable for Gloucester to seem to believe that his brother had nothing to do with them – whatever he really knew deep inside himself – then honour could be satisfied without the need to shed blood. Hence, all the games you were forced to play and false trails you needed to lay.’
‘You are right, of course,’ Sir Stephen agreed. ‘The honour of the mighty can sometimes make life very complicated for us lesser mortals.’
‘There is one point, however, that I do not understand,’ I said.
‘Does the great poet truly admit that there is something he does not know?’ de Beaufort asked. ‘Then the age of miracles has arrived.’
‘What is it that puzzles you?’ Sir Stephen asked.
‘I do not see why you did not arrange for the friar, the prioress and the miller to have ‘accidents’ before they even got as far as Southwark.’
‘Because, you imbecile, though our spies had told us that the Duke’s agents would be on the pilgrimage, they could not tell us the identities of those agents,’ de Beaufort said contemptuously.
‘So it was necessary to watch all the pilgrims, until some of them gave themselves away by their actions,’ I said, seeing it all now. ‘And since you could not do that if they set off in small groups, you bribed Harry Bailey to persuade them all to travel together.’
‘And a fine job he made of it,’ Sir Stephen.
‘Now I understand why you slept with the squire,’ I said to Lady Elizabeth. ‘It was so you could learn whether or not his father played a part in Gloucester’s plot.’
‘Indeed,’ Lady Elizabeth agreed. ‘If the knight had been one of the conspirators, his son would have spilled it o
ut – as he spilled out much else – between the sheets.’
‘Have you any other questions to ask us - or perhaps more revelations to astound us with?’ de Beaufort asked.
‘I can think of none, my lord,’ I admitted.
‘And so we come to the end of our tale, and with it, the end of your life,’ de Beaufort said, drawing his dagger.
I glanced quickly at Sir Stephen, with whom I felt I had established some rapport, and felt my stomach churn anew as I saw that he too had drawn his dagger. Even the Lady Elizabeth, whom I had almost come to regard as a friend, looked merely regretful at what was about to occur.
‘There is no need to kill me,’ I said, doing all I could to ignore the thumping of my heart and the pounding in my temples. ‘I have been John of Gaunt’s loyal follower for over twenty years. I would not betray him now.’
‘Perhaps you would not,’ said Sir Stephen. ‘But to let you live would be a risk. And whilst it is true we have taken many risks during the last few days, they were unavoidable. Taking such a risk with you is not.’
I felt my hand reach for the handle of my dagger.
‘You have no chance against Stephen and Thomas, Master Chaucer,’ Lady Elizabeth said, with a touch of sadness in her voice. ‘Better, far better, to submit and get the whole bloody business over as quickly as possible.’
A man finding himself in my situation should stay in the centre of the chamber, where he has room to manoeuvre. I knew that myself, but my legs – apparently – did not, for with three brisk steps they had backed me into a corner.
‘It is pointless to resist,’ Sir Stephen cooed. ‘Far better to tell yourself that you are dying for the good of England, that – in a way – you will be undergoing a hero’s death.’
I looked from Sir Stephen to Lord de Beaufort, and then quickly turned back again to Sir Stephen. I could not watch them both at once, and it would only take the flicker of eye for one of them to rush forward and stab me. I needed to produce some argument which would save my life, I told myself – and I needed to produce it quickly.
‘The story of King Edward and his son, the Black Prince, will go down in history,’ I said to de Beaufort. ‘Centuries from now, people will read of their heroic deeds and thrill at their courage. You, on the other hand, who have shown no less bravery and played no less a part in the future of England, will be forgotten the moment you are lowered into your tomb. Do you not regret that?’
‘Of course I regret it,’ de Beaufort said, angry both at me (for pointing it out), and at circumstances (for making it so).
‘Yet that need not necessarily be the case,’ I said.
‘Need it not?’ de Beaufort asked, puzzled and intrigued.
‘No. I admit that, given the nature of your deeds, there is no way you can be famous while you live - yet fame could still be yours once we have all passed on.’
De Beaufort frowned. ‘How is that possible?’
‘Let us suppose that someone were to write a chronicle of your deeds and seal it in a vault, with strict instructions that the vault was not to be opened for a hundred years. Is a century too long to wait for immortality?’
‘No, not too long,’ de Beaufort said thoughtfully. ‘But who would write this chronicle? You?’
‘Who better?’ I asked. ‘I have skill with words, as my previous writings show. And since I am well known to be John of Gaunt’s man, you have more reason to trust me than you have to trust anyone else you might choose to employ.’
From the corner of my eye, I detected a slight movement which told me that Sir Stephen was moving in for the kill.
‘So what is it to be, my lord?’ I said desperately. Obscurity – or posthumous fame?’
De Beaufort’s eyes were fixed on his dagger, but it was not the naked blade he could see – it was the future.
‘Posthumous fame,’ he said as, much to my relief, he sheathed his weapon.
*
This work you are reading now is not, I should explain, the panegyric which I promised to Lord de Beaufort. In fact, I never wrote the particular piece of flattering obsequiousness he would no doubt have demanded. There was no need to, for three weeks after our meeting in Canterbury, he and Sir Stephen were both killed in a tragic hunting accident in the New Forest – an accident which would suggest that he should have spent less time wondering whom he could trust, and more time worrying about who trusted him!
EPILOGUE
I have found none of my other works half so difficult to write as this manuscript, and now that it is finished – now my muse is finally mollified – my dearest wish is to show the result of my labours to my friends. Yet I dare not. For Gaunt still lives, as do Gloucester and Richard, and I have no right to re-open old sores and perhaps even change the course of history. Thus, until I and all the others are dead, any judgement on the book must be made by me, and me alone.
So what can I say? That I have truly invented a new form of expression, and that the who-hath-done-it will first be imitated and then improved on, so that hundreds of years from now The Pilgrimage of Death will both be revered as the cornerstone of a new form and mocked as the crudest example of it?
Yes, that it is possible.
Yet it is equally possible that it will be viewed as no more than the last sad ramblings of a writer whose age has robbed him of his judgement –the shrivelled offerings of a fruit which had been left too long on the vine.
I do not know. I cannot guess which of these possibilities will prove to come true. As with all else in life, the fate and reputation of this manuscript rests in the hands of Almighty God.
Amen.
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