Vanora Bennett

by The People's Queen (v5)

  ‘It’s hard for me to believe he’s getting old, Madame Perrers,’ the Duke said wistfully. ‘When he’s always been so…’ He paused. He looked helpless. He spread his hands. He’s a sincere man, the Duke, open and generous in his emotions, but not one for elegant phrases.

  ‘Glorious…’ Alice prompted, finding him a word and agreeing with him all at once. Gratefully, he nodded.

  She took her cue. It wouldn’t do to mention Edward’s success in France – such a painful subject for the King’s son – but she could dwell a little on other glories.

  ‘Do you remember his fiftieth birthday?’ she reminisced, as if they could share the memory. She didn’t remember it, as it happened; the jubilee, with its feasting, the special Parliament, and the law making English the language of the law, was before Alice’s time. But John wasn’t a man for detail. She didn’t think he’d notice.

  He sighed nostalgically. Alice could see he was proud to remember himself and his brothers, back on that day, being called into Parliament to have the great new titles Edward was creating conferred on them. The new dukedom of Clarence for Lionel, still alive back then; little Edward made Earl of Cambridge; and, of course, John himself elevated from Earl to Duke of Lancaster. A solemn oath, a pass of the sword: Edward’s reflected glory.

  ‘And the years when there were jousts every month…’ the Duke added in the hushed, respectful voice of a hero-worshipping boy: ‘…which he always won…?’

  ‘And his hunting…’ Alice breathed, spinning out the magic thread of narrative a little further for him. Long after Edward stopped being able to win a joust, he went on enjoying his hunting. It’s only recently that the King’s spending on dogs and his dozens of birds of prey – gerfalcons, goshawks, tiercels, lannerets, you name it – has dipped below £600 a year, as much as the average baron’s annual income from rents. He always did look magnificent with a bird on his arm.

  Duke John sighed. After a silence, he began to smile. Tenderly, though. He went on: ‘And the food…’

  Alice grinned back. Edward didn’t believe servants should eat more than two dishes a day – modesty in everything, he liked to say; don’t want them eating me out of house and home. But when it came to his own requirements, well, that was a different matter. Piles of food were required to fuel the jousting, hunting monarch: entire hillocks of beef, and pigeon, and carp. Edward liked eight dishes set before him at every meal, five before the lords eating with him, three before his gentlemen, and two before his grooms. It was a miracle he’d never got fat.

  ‘That’s changed now,’ she said, bringing them back down to earth. ‘He pecks at his food…he’s been losing weight.’

  The Duke shook his head. But he’d got the tempo of the conversation now. ‘It’s a comfort to know he has you at his side, at least,’ he went warmly on, turning his face sideways to meet her eyes, giving her such an affectionate look that she gave his arm a grateful squeeze with the freezing hand she’d slipped through it. ‘I’m very aware of your devotion to him. I know I can be sure that you’ll always give him the best possible care.’

  Modestly, Alice looked down. Freezing hands or no, there was warmth going right through her at this.

  ‘You must let me know what I can do to help…But…So much going on…There’s Bruges coming up; I’ll have to leave right after Christmas, as you know…unless you think…’ The Duke paused again, unwilling to voice the next difficult thought. ‘…that the talks should be delayed?’

  Alice could see he meant, but couldn’t bear to say, ‘Unless you think the old man’s about to die any day?’

  She didn’t think he’d want to be overseas when that happened.

  Reassuringly, she shook her head. ‘No, no,’ she said, finding herself imitating the Duke’s awkward style of speech, ‘he’s changeable, quite well some days, and, well, wandering, on others, but he’s not…not yet…Well, you’ll see for yourself.’ She squeezed his arm again. ‘He’s happy you’re off to Bruges,’ she added stoutly. ‘He’ll know everything will be done properly with you in charge. He trusts you, absolutely.’

  She glanced up at him again, sideways. Brightly, she went on: ‘You’re taking Master Wyclif with you, I hear.’

  She was thinking: It never does any harm to remind people you’ve come up with an idea to help them, after all.

  She caught him glancing sideways at her. They both smiled. ‘A good man,’ the Duke said warmly. ‘And a wise one. I’m grateful to you for suggesting that.’

  Make yourself indispensible, Alice told herself. Make yourself needed.

  Alice could already almost see a future in which a slightly older version of herself (quietly, maybe; without titles and pretensions, almost certainly; but with all her present influence and wealth maintained intact) whispered into the ear of a slightly silvered version of this man, to whom she’d long become indispensible as an adviser…a future in which her ideas, as if by magic, then became reality. A future in which she was not cut off from power by Edward’s death, whenever it came, but brought still closer to it.

  By the time they went back inside, so the Duke, now forewarned, could pay his respects to his father, Alice was so full of confidence that Christmastide would make her and Duke John firm friends that she’d almost forgotten about Katherine Swynford.

  But, only an hour later, La Swynford appeared.

  When she walked unannounced into the great hall, Duke John – who’d been standing by his father near the fireplace, looking at the old man with anxious affection as he described his journey, clearly wondering just how strange, or sick, the King was likely to be in the next few days – flicked himself round on his heels, saw the newcomer, and let his face soften into an expression of obvious devotion that Alice found embarrassing in a hard-faced man in his thirties. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, nodding to Alice and his father without looking at either of them, and he made off across the hall towards Katherine.

  Alice raised pointedly astonished eyebrows at Edward. She was hoping, at least, to share a moment of mockery with him at the incongruity of it. Duke John, in love with a nursery companion – someone he’d seen when she was a snotty-nosed little girl with tangly hair and dirty face. But Edward was clearly enjoying his son’s display of emotion, and, to Alice’s worsening disappointment, applauding his choice. He raised puckish eyebrows back, but all he said was, ‘Good, excellent,’ and then: ‘Pretty girl, Katherine.’

  There was no respite after that. There were no more quiet walks in the gardens with the Duke, no sense of almost-family deepening. Katherine Swynford stayed to the bitter end, till 2 January. She didn’t go out to the big public parties, but she attended every private family event, hanging on John of Gaunt’s arm like a limpet. She didn’t go out of her way to make Alice feel uncomfortable, either, by being rude, or critical, or mocking. It just happened that, in her presence, Alice was all fingers and thumbs, spilling things or letting them slip or stumbling over them, feeling badly turned out and lumpish, unable to think of charming things to say to keep the conversation turning. Nor was it because Katherine Swynford was unimpressed by Alice’s arrangements that she ate next to nothing, she assured everyone. ‘An indisposition,’ she said faintly, waving away an offer of food in her rooms, ‘it’s nothing.’ When, after the handing-out of family gifts and before she left, she passed out and had to be revived with vinegar, Edward eagerly pressed the sour rag to her nose and said, with blind affection, ‘There, you see, my dear, you should have been eating more!’

  That was the moment the Duke picked to walk back in, in his cloak, ready to take Alice out for the long-awaited walk in the bare garden that she’d asked for so often. (‘I’d like to know your impressions of my lord’s state of mind,’ she’d murmured persuasively, ‘now you’ve had a chance to talk with him.’) One look at the scene sent the Duke, again, running towards Katherine Swynford with concern all over his face. Alice could see at once that there was no blindness about him. He knew why she’d fainted, all right. With blackness in
her heart, Alice turned towards the window, to look at the white on white of outside.

  When the Duke left, alone again but for his retinue, she stood on the steps with them all listening and formally wished him success at Bruges. He, in turn, thanked her formally for welcoming him at Christmas. He didn’t seem to be aware that she’d hoped for much more, or that she might be disappointed. He even smiled quite affectionately at her, then stepped forward, and, speaking quietly so they couldn’t all hear, said, ‘My father seems…’ and paused, searching for a word. He looked relieved.

  ‘A little better?’ she supplied, carefully filleting the impatience she felt out of her voice.

  He nodded. ‘Please,’ he went on, ‘send word, as soon as…if anything…changes.’

  That was positive, at least. It just wasn’t nearly positive enough.

  She let them all leave, even Edward, before setting off herself. She said there were a lot of things at Eltham for her to sort out. She said she’d need a few days in London.

  One of the things she did, before leaving, was to seek out Duke John’s steward for a private chat and, part-bullyingly, part-cajolingly, part-pretending to know more than she did, extracted the information from him that Madame Swynford, that goddess of beauty and deceit and fertility, was not just bringing up her own four Swynford children in Lincolnshire but had also quietly gone off and given birth, early the previous year, to an earlier son by the Duke of Lancaster. John, the baby was called; John Beaufort. ‘Ah, yes,’ she said, when the steward finally spat out the name. She managed a mischievous, knowing smile. It felt as though it was cracking her face. ‘That’s it. Of course. John. I’d half remembered Edward.’

  It’s not jealousy, exactly, she tells herself firmly as she heads through the trees. It’s not passionate love she’s felt for her patron-to-be, so why would it be jealousy she’s so tormented by now?

  But if Duke John’s in love with Katherine Swynford – if his heart’s one desire is to gaze at Katherine Swynford, and show her off to the court, and make the whole court stare up at the lady he loves with eyes as dazzled as if they’re staring at the sun – then he’ll never have the time or the inclination for the useful, easy, friendly, flirtatious relationship with Alice that she’s seen developing, until now.

  (The kind of friendship, she thinks, with a little stab of surprise, that has come about between herself and Chaucer. The kind of friendship where you can talk about everything and nothing, and feel at ease. She’s missed that, these past couple of weeks.)

  Alice knows she’ll never be able to make a friendship with Katherine Swynford, either. The other woman’s not exactly an enemy any more, but that’s the best light you can cast on their relationship. Katherine Swynford hardly sees Alice; her lovely eyes just don’t seem to be made for that. So Alice can forget about getting Katherine Swynford to murmur in her lover’s ear that, yes, Alice is right on this, and why not do what Alice suggests about that?

  Alice tries to keep her disappointment in check. It’s a setback, she tells herself, but it’s no worse than that. He still respects me; he’s growing fond of me. And he’s grateful for my advice.

  But she can’t stop the spiteful little voice in her head, replying: He’s a lot fonder of her. He hardly noticed you, however hard you tried. You thought you had it all sewn up. But if he’s got her, if he loves her, she’ll be offering her own advice in between popping out the babies; and who’s to say he’ll want to support you at all? It’s not going to be as easy as you thought, is it?

  The thoughts that keep coming back to Alice, as she trails through the woods with her personal servants behind her, are all unpleasant, one way or another.

  One thought is personal. She is coming to the end of her twenties, and it’s not only her prospects fading. It’s her looks. This morning, before setting off, she looked at herself in the mirror and identified wrinkles at eye and mouth that she’d never noticed before.

  The other is financial. Until now, she has kept her two plans for the future in careful balance. She wants the profits from the Italian debt, of course, as her insurance against a future in poverty, and taking that profit involves taking money out of the Crown coffers. But she also wants her friendship with the Duke, which might save her from having that future in poverty in the first place. And the Duke is going to need money in the Crown coffers while he’s at the peace talks; he’ll want to be able to cow the French into offering better terms by threatening to go expensively back to war. She wants him to sit in Bruges, feeling pleased that he has more money than before to play with, and remembering that it’s all thanks to Alice Perrers. She’d lose the Duke’s friendship in a flash if he ever found out that while she’s helping get money in, she’s also helping part of it disappear into her own pocket. Knowing that hasn’t stopped her, exactly, but it’s slowed her down. She’s been holding Latimer back from cashing in too much of the Italian debt too fast. Slowly is safely, she’s been telling the chamberlain; little and often. Let’s not be too greedy.

  But what if, when Edward dies, the Duke’s friendship fails to materialise? This is the first time Alice has been forced to think of this as a real possibility.

  If that were to happen, and she hadn’t maximised her gains from the Italian debt, she’s thinking as the horses plod along, wouldn’t she look a fool?

  Perhaps she should rely less on the prospect of friendship with the Duke?

  Perhaps she and Latimer and Lyons should, after all, start taking more?

  She wraps the wet hood more tightly around her head, shaking off the snow melting against cheeks and hair. It’s bitterly cold today, and, even with the servants’ harness chinking and the horses blowing up those great white clouds of air, the loneliness of these grey woods feels eerie.

  Her future might feel like this: a howling wilderness.

  She knows her thoughts are racing foolishly. She knows she’s panicking. Trying to get a grip, she tells herself there’s no need to rush into decisions now, in the snow, while she’s cold and miserable. That’s a question for tomorrow.

  Today all she needs is comfort, and a roaring fire.

  And a friend.

  Out there, in the nowhere country somewhere between Greenwich and Rotherhithe, Alice Perrers suddenly has the first cheering thought of her day. She knows exactly where she can go for all those immediate things. She can take her disappointment, and her wounded pride, and her fears, to the City. She can take them straight to the apartment over Aldgate, where Chaucer, chained to his desk making his daily reckonings of wool taxes like a dog in its kennel, will have spent the holiday lonely and fretful, unaccompanied by his children, resenting his absent Roët-sister wife. Not that Alice can hope to ask Chaucer whether he thinks she should hang on and risk all in the hope of lasting patronage from the Duke or steal more from the treasury. There are limits to the frankness that’s possible, even with your dearest friend. Even with Chaucer. But if she sticks to describing her resentment of the Roët sister she’s been forced to spend this humiliating Christmas with, why, that’s another matter. He’ll certainly be in a mood to sympathise with that. He’ll listen. He’ll lap it up.

  THIRTEEN

  There’s a snowstorm blowing through Aldgate. The fierce scurries of hard white on grey have sent most of the traders trying to get back to work after New Year in off the street again, though a few, mostly women, are still sheltering in doorways near their stalls. The snow gives Chaucer’s chamber a greyish, unearthly, moonlight glow, even at midday. There is almost no traffic through the gate below as Chaucer and his wife, side by side on the cushioned bench drawn up to the fire, stare into the flames lighting the dark room and say hard things to each other that they wouldn’t dare to if forced to meet each other’s eyes.

  The room is a mess. The table is scattered with quills with blackened ends carelessly laid down, staining the wood. It’s piled high with papers, every sheet closely lined with small black squiggles whose uniformity of size suggests they’ve been written fast, in a f
renzy of excitement, by someone who’s forgotten the world outside as he works, or at least by someone who’s been trying to. There are papers falling off one end of the table that have landed in a parchment snowfall of their own on the floor. There’s a bowl of cold stew forgotten under another heap at the other end. There’s a piece of bread sticking out from underneath, somewhere in the middle. There’ll be mice soon, if no one gets to grips with the chaos. Fastidiously, Philippa Chaucer arranges her very clean white hands on her dove-grey silks. She’s not here for long enough to start trying to organise Geoffrey’s servants. It would be a waste of effort anyway. The mess will just start building up again as soon as she goes. So she’s trying not to look.

  On the floor, between them, are the New Year gifts she has brought Geoffrey from the children, who are not with her. Two silver-gilt cups, which she has ordered on their behalf, and, from her, a prettily worked ink-holder. In a bag, ready to go away with her, are the gifts Geoffrey has bought the children – gifts he thought, until she got here alone, that he’d be seeing them open.

  The offended silence that followed her solitary entrance into the room has been broken, but the initial skirmishes – ‘You’ve had no luck instilling any filial duty into Thomas and Elizabeth yet, I see; I can imagine how hard you tried’ and ‘I see you’ve been writing more poetry’ – have been inconclusive. Seasonal greetings have been exchanged through gritted teeth, with averted eyes; the couple’s embrace has left three fingers of empty air between their bodies. Chaucer has spent the past few minutes savagely prodding the fire with the poker, glowering.