There is a wave of wise nodding and grunting.
Meanwhile, the numbness in Chaucer’s heart is darkening into something like physical pain.
It’s not that he wants crime to go unpunished, exactly. He’s just frightened of the pent-up rage he can see spilling out, everywhere he looks, and whom it will end up being unleashed on.
He hardly dares ask, but at last he gets it out.
‘And Alice Perrers?’
It’s a fletcher, long and thin as the arrows he makes, who answers, with a smile – an unlovely smile, showing off his black stumps of teeth. He draws in a great gout of unclean tavern air, enjoying the revelation to come.
‘The witch, mate?’ he says cheerfully. ‘Well, I’d say her goose is well and truly cooked. Her flesh might be getting a cooking soon too, from what I hear, though we won’t know the worst of it till tomorrow. They’ve got her doctor, see…some filthy little friar. De la Mare’s brother went after him. Found him down Hammersmith way. He was spilling his guts before they even started roughing him up, that’s what they’re saying. Magic rings, spells and potions, God knows what. No wonder we’re in the state we’re in today, with her getting up to all that right under our noses for all these years. They say the friar will be the first up for questioning before the Duke tomorrow.’
Chaucer doesn’t often go out of his way to pray. But he does now. He tips his hat to the drunks and goes out of the tavern, through the rain, round the corner to All Hallows church, where he sinks to his knees under the rose window.
His prayer for Alice is without words. He can only hope God will pardon his incoherence and see his sincerity.
This is what he’s feared. Worse. This is the plunge into the abyss.
Chaucer sits nailed to his desk from dawn to dusk the next day, hardly daring to look up; every moment an eternity.
By the next evening, however, as he walks home, head down, he realises that the hopes of the City haters that Alice Perrers would be burned for witchcraft have faded out.
He doesn’t even have to go to the tavern to find out, they’re all shouting so loud about it in the street. His ears prick up; then his head perks up; then his feet go faster. By the time he reaches the first drinking spot, despite all his earlier good resolutions, he’s got nothing on his mind more pressing than diving inside again.
The old friar who’s been tortured has indeed brought to Parliament his pathetic tales of Alice practising black arts to bewitch the King into unlawful love. But no one could believe the obviously made-up confession. Even the knights felt sorry for the friar. When the Duke cut short the hearing by ordering the Archbishop of Canterbury to take the old man back, and keep him out of harm’s way in a friary, the Prince’s men, even Peter de la Mare, didn’t object.
Chaucer has something else on his mind. He’s buying the fat tanner a drink, trying to keep the relief off his own face. He’s thinking: It’s the Duke’s wisdom today that’s saved Alice. (Chaucer wouldn’t have expected such wise restraint from my lord, to be honest. There’ve been outbursts of nobleman’s fury, more often.) My lord got it so right; cooperate with the Commons and let their anger dissipate. There’ll be plenty more false accusations and climb-downs. He must just sit tight. Because what can a bunch of country squires hope to know, really, about the high finance of the realm?
But it’s Chaucer’s quiet euphoria, rather than the tanner’s good cheer, that dissipates as the evening wears on – as it becomes obvious to him that the crowds in the taverns haven’t understood the latest hearing quite as he has.
Chaucer hunches miserably over his tankard, listening helplessly to the wolf-whistles and the cat-calls. He wishes he knew where Alice was, or that he dare send a messenger, or, at least, that there might be something hopeful to send a message about. But not this. ‘Witch!’ halloo the skinners and fletchers and ropemakers. ‘Bitch!’ roar the caulkers and the hoopers in response, punching meaty fists into the beery air.
Hating her is making them happier than they’ve been for years. Even now the charge has been shown to be absurd; even though she’s not going to burn, they’re still as ecstatic thinking of it as if they’d got Alice chained to a stake, right here, right now, choking in the smoke from the flames devouring her, and were laughing in her dying face. It’s as if all the diffuse anger at the state of things that they’ve felt for so long has been focused, channelled, narrowed; directed at one small target. Chaucer stares at the froth on his ale, wailing, inside his head, at them all, ‘But why her? She’s only ever done what you’ve done, had the same fun you’ve had, helped herself here and there – just like you, only on a bigger scale, because she could. But she’s no worse than anyone else. So why pick on her?’
But he knows, deep down. The penny has dropped. They’re enjoying howling about Alice because they’ve been shown, by today’s events, that she’s the weakest of the high-placed people they blame for their troubles. Vulnerable. Flour on her face; scared eyes in the white. She might not be a witch and therefore easily burnable, but she’s still the one Fortune’s about to bring down. The victim. Her time at the top is over. Of course it’s her blood they’re after.
PART TWO
Regnavi
I used to reign
TWENTY-TWO
All through the opening steps of the Parliament, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, has paced in a thin fury of impotence, glaring out at the crowd in the chamber through the headache pulsing behind his eyes. This afternoon is no different. With every hour that passes, his moments of rage are getting more intense.
The stink of wet wool and greasy leather that these men give off turns his stomach. The figures of the forty-odd shire knights and coming up to a hundred burgesses swim and sway before him, and none of them with the grace to acknowledge their humbleness and the Duke’s God-given might. Who do they think they are?
Ever since Chancellor Knyvett read out the Crown’s first request for money, and the Commons, with the low cowardice that must be expected of such men, first drew in barons and bishops to hide behind, then pushed forward one of their number to say no on behalf of them all, and then to smear the Duke’s real or imagined placemen, starting with Alice Perrers, of imaginary crimes, his rage has simmered and bubbled. Perhaps these people have been stealing; on balance, it’s even probable. But that’s just what people like that do, because they’re merchants, officials; sneaky paper people. It’s in their nature. This isn’t an attack on corruption; not really. It’s an attack on him.
What made him smart first was the way that the Commons simply ignored his wish when, on the first morning, he ordered them to delegate a few members to come in and hang about at the back of the White Chamber, preserve of the Lords already standing in groups or lying on rugs on the floor, to say whatever they had to say to their betters. That beakynosed brute, de la Mare, refused to speak unless all 130 of them came with him. And they just poured in. The impossible self-assurance of it infuriated him, but it rattled him too. He’s never before encountered such insouciant insubordination. And they’ve just stood there ever since, these nobodies, staring insolently round at the Lords, scratching themselves and shaking their heads, while the debate goes on, as if just being free men, as if just having money, gives them rights that the Duke could tell them they never have had, and never will have, either. Their sheer belief that they can has silenced him, until now. He doesn’t know how to counter them; how to send them scuttling in terror back to their hills and fields.
There’s nothing he can see that he can do. He knows the thought at the back of every mind in this chamber. They all believe he wants to steal the throne, because his brother is dying and his brother’s son is a helpless child. If he punishes their impudence – if he gives in to the desire to shake their Forespeaker like the dog he is, or throw over the furniture and draw his sword and declare their wretched gathering null and void and beat them out into the mud and rain outside – it will only confirm in them the belief that he is out for power. He has to tread c
arefully.
Behind him, on a litter piled high with cushions, lies the unthinkable, skeletal, gurgling, periodically stinking thing his brother Edward has become. The Prince of England, whose good fortune in war has inspired deep dread in all nations, both Christian and pagan, as if he were a second Hector, and in no one more dread and admiration than in his younger brother John, appears to have resolved to defy death for a little longer and be carried in here to watch the proceedings. But John is uncomfortably aware that his brother is really only here to watch him. He can feel Edward’s baleful eyes boring into him from behind. That unseen gaze sends shivers down his spine.
He can see that this is a battle between brothers, and all these…creatures…are speaking the mind of Edward. Edward must have orchestrated this attack on him, and his people, for his brother must also believe he wants to seize power.
The shocking injustice of it is a knife in his side. He wants to rush to Edward, to throw himself on his knees before him, to seek through the wasted flesh and lines of pain and humiliation the face he’s always revered, to tell his brother that no, he doesn’t want the crown that’s intended for little Richard’s head; never has, never will; that he isn’t the man they’ve taken him for.
But not in front of these swine, these scum, who have no place at Westminster; who have forgotten their rightful place in God’s great plan.
He doesn’t want Edward to believe this of him. He’s always been loyal…loving. He hero-worships Edward. The very thought of Edward’s suspicion agonises him.
But in John of Gaunt’s head, at the same time, another thought co-exists, one that doesn’t agonise him, because he doesn’t let it out from the quiet, shameful place he’s locked it up in, deep inside, in an entirely separate part of him. It lurks there, whispering and hissing, clanking its chains. It is this. If Edward were not here, today, or at all, if Edward had departed this life, and if the fate of England boiled down to a choice between himself – a grown man, a prince, a soldier, a statesman, experienced in the bearing of arms and the exercise of power, with years of knowledge behind him and royal blood coursing through his veins; in short, with all the attributes of a warrior prince that will be needed to save a land in the mortal danger England finds herself today – and that spoiled, capricious little boy, his nephew Richard…
No wonder his head aches, and he hates the trouble-makers of the Commons.
But at least he’s persuaded Stury to ask Chaucer to attend today and stay tonight. Chaucer’s bright; he knows the ways of diplomacy and argument. And he knows how to explain the ways of the sneaky paper people so a man can understand. Still, can even Chaucer…?
John sighs, and focuses his eyes again on the hated figure of the Forespeaker.
When the session ends, the Duke watches his brother the Prince leave on his litter, without so much as a nod of farewell; with his eyes shut. Then he calls his own advisers together in an antechamber. They’re as shocked as he is. They crowd around, trembling, waiting to hear his will.
For a few minutes, Duke John can barely speak. His legs carry him here and there. Two paces to the left. Two to the right. A caged lion, pacing.
‘What do these degenerates…knights of candle-wax…What do they think they’re up to?’ he bursts out in the end. He’s beyond strategy. He just wants to voice the howl of rage in his soul. ‘Do they take themselves for kings or princes? Where does their pride and arrogance come from?’
The advisers murmur. He sees Stury, taller than most, standing at the back, quietly shaking his head. As if Stury’s warning him.
That only makes him angrier.
He shouts, ‘I will appear before them tomorrow in so glorious a manner – and raise up such a great force among them – and terrify them with such severity – that neither they nor anybody like them will dare again to provoke my majesty.’
They crowd closer still, at that. There’s alarm on every face. Hands start patting the air down, as if the atmosphere itself needs calming. Someone mutters, ‘Sssh’. And he sees fearful glances over shoulders, as if they’re wondering whether the Herefordshire man’s got his ear to the door.
What’s got into them all? Has their noble blood been turned to milk?
Furiously, he continues pacing. He won’t be silenced. But he does, distractedly, listen when Chaucer’s voice, oozing tact, murmurs, ‘Lord, don’t let your magnificence hide from you how strongly these knights are supported – and by whom. They have the backing of the Lords and, more important still, of Prince Edward your brother.’
At that, the Duke sees Edward’s face in his mind again. Eyes shut. Heart shut too.
He stops. He looks down at the smaller man staring so beseechingly at him with his usual surprised respect. Chaucer doesn’t look impressive; but, as so often, there’s sense in what the man says. Chaucer’s gone straight to the nub of things. No one’s dared mention Edward’s part in this yet, except Chaucer. John pleats his fingers together. He turns, reluctantly, to face his men. Every pair of eyes has the same imploring look that he sees in Chaucer. Be calm, the eyes are all saying. Be mild. Don’t give fight.
He turns his face down in a moment of irresolution. He doesn’t want to show enmity to Edward, after all…He wants Edward to know he bears him no malice. But if he doesn’t retaliate against the knights Edward seems to have set on him, then how is he to respond? He’s a nobleman. A man of the sword, not the word.
Someone else is speaking now. The Duke raises his tormented eyes again. Stury, from the shadows. Stury, who sleeps in London when the court’s at Westminster. Stury, who knows what Londoners are saying, who can distil an evening of wild tavern talk into a single careful sentence. And what he’s saying now, with a persuasive gleam in his eyes, is: ‘…Neither the Londoners or the common people will let the knights be overwhelmed with insults, or molested with injury, however slight. If these knights are insulted, they’ll be driven to undertake all the most extreme steps against your person and your friends…’
Duke John thinks, incredulously: He’s not saying I should be afraid? Instinctively, his fingers tighten on his sword. But he relaxes, just a little when Chaucer finishes the other man’s thought, as if they’re agreed (which, since they’re friends, they probably are): ‘Whereas, if you let them be, they’ll most likely do very little.’
Chaucer watches the red on the Duke’s thin cheeks. Every diplomatic nerve in Chaucer’s knowledgeable body is begging the Duke: Be flexible, be courteous, let calm return, let their anger burn out. He feels this volatile atmosphere is dangerous, but temporary – unless someone fans the flames. But he knows, too, that the Duke, like his royal brother, is prone to occasional, fantastical displays of anger. In this atmosphere, one of those could be the spark that sets the whole bonfire ablaze.
He only realises he hasn’t been breathing (can such a thing be?) when the Duke lets the pent-up breath out of his own body. With his sigh, the Duke seems to sag. Weakly, defeatedly, Duke John nods his head and stops pacing. He sits down. With what little dignity he can still muster, he says, ‘Very well.’
TWENTY-THREE
When the Duke returns to the chamber to face Parliament the next morning, he seems a different man: smiling, affable, willing to please. There’s a murmur of surprise at the gracious, modest, encouraging look on his face, even before he starts to talk to the knights of the Commons.
‘I know well how honourable your desires are, as you labour to improve the conditions of the realm,’ he says. ‘Whatever you think ought to be corrected, you should set forth, and I will apply the remedy you choose.’
Peter de la Mare glances around, drawing his strength from the men at his back. It’s clear from their faces that his knights and burgesses are no less grimly suspicious that a portion of all the money stolen from the state by the various miscreants they intend to try has, perhaps, quietly found its way into John of Gaunt’s own private purse (for, as de la Mare himself has told them, why else would the Duke have condoned this state of affairs so long?)
. Like them, he’s impressed by the Duke’s speech, but not impressed enough. He soldiers on. Today is the day he’s been waiting for.
Standing up, he offers the Duke thanks on behalf of the knights. But he doesn’t refrain from inviting his fellow-parliamentarians, one by one, to step forward and lay the charges they have prepared.
He goes first. A good commander leads from the front. The words come sonorously to his lips as he voices his ringing accusation against Latimer, the King’s chamberlain: ‘That he is useless to the King and to the kingdom…has often deceived the King and been false – let me not say traitorous – to him. Therefore we most urgently petition that he should be deprived of his office.’
One by one, members of the Commons, speaking in turn at a lectern in the centre of the chamber, add their own charges and complaints. In this quieter but still tense atmosphere, more than sixty charges are laid against Lord Latimer and the vintner Richard Lyons. Alice Perrers’ name is often, venomously, mentioned; but charges against her, on these counts, are not formalised.
De la Mare knows they won’t be. There never has been much proof, one way or another, when it comes to Alice Perrers, and now his fool of a brother has muddied the waters with that witchcraft business. He doesn’t care. She’s only a woman. It’s Latimer and Lyons he’s after: the embodiment of corruption.
The two men are accused of making the King a loan of £20,000 at an exorbitant and unnecessary rate of interest, and of profiting from discounted debt paper.
He can see the Duke looking sceptical, as if he’s thinking: Well, anyone can make an accusation. Murmuring to advisers. They’re all patting at the air around him, calming him down; no doubt telling him to sit quietly and wait for the parliamentarians to run out of steam; saying, what proof can these rustic nobodies have of anything? It’s all just hot air; let the poor fools talk themselves out. De la Mare, who knows better, bides his time. Among the Duke’s advisers he recognises smug Sir Richard Stury. There’s another one, too, in the shadows, who looks rather like the Customs man…Chaucer. Can’t be, though. Look at them: shaking their heads. Pitying him, for the fool he’s about to make of himself.
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