He’s probably got nothing left to lose himself, anyway, by now. He’s probably about to be as much an outcast from everything he loves as Alice has become.
But Chaucer’s full of resolution. He’s not going to act out of hate, or malice, or pettiness, any more. He’s going to do his bit in the service of love. He’s going to try to be true to his better self. He wants to become the man his father would have wanted him to be.
Once Chaucer has seen Alice, and once he has his task to perform for her, he becomes determined as any knight-errant to fulfil his quest to the best of his ability. He’s confident, too. He doesn’t see the need to run around the court bureaucrats at the Tower, or anywhere else, asking for papers they won’t want to part with, because he already knows just the man to help Alice.
The man is John Beverley, who was a personal attendant in King Edward’s retinue, and who, since the King’s death, has retired to London to live with his widowed daughter. He drinks in the Dancing Bear. He’s already told Chaucer Alice Perrers wasn’t half as bad as they’re painting her. She always tipped him, anyway. No one in London likes the Duke. And Beverley’s a sweet old man, as straightforward and honest as the day is long. Surely he will help.
Chaucer finds him nursing his ale, with pale, cloudy eyes lost in the past, trying to tell the landlord some story about the way he folded the King’s clothes, with rosemary inside them to help his lordship remember better. It’s a story that the busy landlord doesn’t really have time to listen to; he’s just muttering, ‘Well I never,’ and, ‘Amazing what a few herbs can do,’ whenever he passes.
The old man’s face lights up at the idea of a moment in the Parliament’s courtroom.
‘The important thing,’ Chaucer says, buying him another drink, ‘is to say you never heard Mistress Perrers and the Duke discuss a pardon for Richard Lyons. And that you were there all the time, and would have heard.’
The old man scratches his head. There’s nothing wrong with his mind. He’s just puzzled. ‘But’, he says simply, ‘I did. They talked about it for weeks.’ His eyes brighten. ‘It was his idea, though. The Duke’s, I mean. It was him wanted it.’
Impatiently, Chaucer shakes his own head. ‘Too complicated,’ he says firmly. ‘Keep it simple. We want the Parliament to understand that the Duke was acting on his own initiative. We want them to realise he never even tried to get the King’s approval. We want them to see Alice wasn’t involved. So just say, “It was never discussed.” Can you do that?’
The old man shakes his head. But, looking confused as he does it, he says yes.
Chaucer only begins to understand that he should have listened more carefully to the old man when John Beverley is already sworn in, with proud eyes shining, and has started to talk to the Parliament.
The Duke, still with that sick, raging look of a man bent on vengeance, turns his dark lanterns of eyes balefully towards the serving man as soon as he begins to speak.
Alice, meanwhile, keeps her gaze down at her feet, in her corner.
John Beverley quavers that he was in constant attendance on the King because of his lord’s infirmities. ‘Never out of the room,’ he adds, a little boastfully. The Duke’s eyes glow. Uneasily, Beverley begins to eye him, rather than the crowd of parliamentarians, as he speaks.
‘…and I never heard the King and Mistress Perrers discuss the question of a pardon for Master Lyons,’ the servant says, bravely enough.
He listens to the hubbub calmly enough. He’s a little excited, though he’s keeping his face still, to be saying something that causes this much talk.
But the Duke’s eyes are still on him. And the old man goes quiet when he becomes aware of the intensity of that gaze. Chaucer’s heart sinks as Beverley asks permission to sit, then squirms on his bench, and asks for water. Beverley knows he’s told a lie. Beverley’s watching the Duke’s face carefully now; and Chaucer can see he’s thinking some new, shamed thought.
Neither of them has fully thought this out. Is Beverley brave enough to withstand that angry-lion look?
Beverley could leave now. He’s said his piece.
But the Duke growls dangerously, ‘Have you anything to add to your statement, Master Beverley?’
And the servant gives him a sick, anxious look, before rising to his feet again, and giving a kind of military salute, and saying, in an old man’s near-shout, ‘Yes.’
Chaucer closes his eyes. He can’t stop the frail old voice, or the frail old man, who’s clearly remembering nothing now but the fact that he’s served the royal family all his life, and wants nothing more than to serve the senior surviving member of it still.
‘In my conscience,’ Beverley shouts suddenly, tipping over his water in his agitation, but not noticing, ‘I believe Mistress Perrers must have been the prime mover in getting Master Lyons released. And’ – he adds with reluctance – ‘I suppose I wasn’t always in the room with them. Often, but not always. Naturally there were times when I was dismissed, but Mistress Perrers stayed…’ He pauses here. He’s a man made for respect. He’s bewildered by the hoots and catcalls and lewd arm gestures.
‘Naturally,’ the Duke replies, smooth as silk, putting out a hand to calm the shouting. ‘Thank you, Master Beverley.’ He inclines his head towards the old man. He almost smiles.
Chaucer looks up as the old man is led out. Master Beverley averts his eyes and shuffles past. He knows he’s messed it up. He’ll squirm over what he’s said, later.
Alice is completely still, staring at the floor.
Chaucer is utterly crushed. He can’t believe how sick he feels.
The committee trying Alice withdraws to deliberate, walking behind the Duke. But the verdict is a foregone conclusion. They return from the antechamber no more than three minutes later.
It’s the Duke, as head of the committee, who pronounces her guilty.
In ringing tones, he announces that all her lands and possessions, which have been obtained by fraud (the assumption that all her lands have been obtained by fraud is strong enough, by now, that he doesn’t ask for, or provide, any proofs of deceit or dishonesty), will be forfeited. To show he means business, he announces that the rich manor of Wendover will be among those reverting to the King.
It’s only as the other members of the committee come back to their seats, and Chaucer sidles up to the nearest triumphantlooking knight for a whispered consultation, that he understands more about what will happen to Alice’s property. ‘The Duke wants her house in London for himself – and all her rental property along the Ropery,’ the man mutters with a smug look. ‘He says it’s compensation for being so wickedly maligned. But he’s promised to give us the first year’s rent from the Ropery properties as a reward for our service here.’
Chaucer sighs, feeling sicker than ever and hopeless at the knowledge of so much human frailty. How cheap it is to buy people, he thinks in disgust; how shabby this gathering of men of supposed honour and principle.
He doesn’t understand why the Duke would want to be so cruel to Alice. The Duke was once a better man, surely? A man with his heart in the right place. There must have been some terrible falling-out that he can’t imagine.
Unless the Duke’s enemies have been right all along…
The Duke is still talking. There’s more.
‘Having confirmed her guilt, the committee therefore also confirms the original sentence of banishment on Mistress Perrers,’ he adds, and his voice carries effortlessly over the buzz.
The final words silence the buzz.
There’s a moment’s puzzled silence. Even the other committee members look surprised.
Eighteen months ago, Alice was sentenced to banishment from the King’s presence. They all remember that. But it’s impossible to reconfirm that sentence now, surely? Now the King’s dead, Chaucer’s wondering, and from the intentness of the silence many others must be wondering at the same time, where, exactly, will Alice be banished from, or to?
The war makes the whole notion o
f banishment unworkable – a vague but inevitable death sentence – for where can an exile be sent that isn’t at war with England? What hope could an English person have, in France, of anything except murder at the hands of the French?
It’s pure spite. The Duke’s own, unnecessary, personal cruelty. In wonder, Chaucer looks at that handsome dark face, with its hard little smile, with the kind of automatic revulsion he normally feels only for the kind of animal you exterminate without thinking: spiders, or rats, or stoats (and, at present, for his own wife). Chaucer wonders: Whatever has become of him? And: How can he?
As the talk begins, as the implications sink in, as the volume rises, he turns his gaze to Alice. She still won’t look up. But Chaucer sees her downturned face has gone paler, until it seems so grey and full of dread that it looks dead already.
THIRTY-THREE
She’s being led away, down a corridor, and he’s following her again, through the crowds.
She’s so quiet he has to follow the determined movements of the guards, not the bobbing top of her head. Her head must be bowed. He can’t see it.
They put her back in an antechamber, away from the fuss. Chaucer’s still behind.
He hardly knows what he’s thinking. All he knows is that the fear that has always been his constant companion, the fear that makes his gut churn and heave, and sweat break out on brow and palms and armpits, is absent. Instead, there’s a welcome quiet in his body; a tautness. He’s walking on air. The world he’s passing through seems to be moving more slowly than usual, or perhaps it’s his mind that’s working faster. He can’t tell, for what’s bubbling up inside his head is taking shapes he doesn’t even recognise. He doesn’t care, either.
Alice is so quiet the men start playing cards outside as soon as they’ve shut the door on her. They don’t bother locking it, Chaucer sees.
No one knows what to do next, it seems. Everyone’s still too surprised to have thought of the next step to fulfil the Duke’s order.
Except Chaucer, that is. Chaucer, with the wind in his nose, and the blue of the sky outside in his eyes; Chaucer, who for some unaccountable reason has the phrase ‘it’s now or never’ singing inside him; Chaucer, who’s wondering if the heady feeling in his heart is courage.
Chaucer gives Alice’s guards fifteen minutes to relax, while the chaos of men leaving the chamber below and eddying around is at its worst.
It’s not his cautious mind that’s organising his behaviour any more. If you stopped him now, he wouldn’t be able to tell you what he was doing. But the mysterious new impulse governing him prompts him to go quickly and purposefully to the stables, to fetch his saddlebag. It still has Elizabeth’s two habits in it.
Then he goes back upstairs to the watchmen, and tells them, as if he’s known all along he would say this: ‘There’s food in the kitchen – a celebration meal, with ale – someone go down and fetch it.’
He hears with surprise that his voice is steady. Calm. Confident. Cheerful, even, as if for some reason he, the Comptroller of Customs for the Port of London, were the natural person to be deputed to bring this news to the guards; as if he might also be enjoying tucking into this dinner for guards in a few minutes. From far away, the usual Chaucer, the careful one, thinks, approvingly: Well, of course they’ll trust me. Why wouldn’t they? I couldn’t sound more trustworthy.
He’s guessed right. They hardly even look at him, they’re so pleased to have something to do. And they all pour off down the stairs, every last one of them, with expectant faces. No one wants to be the one left behind while the rest take the best of the pickings.
Chaucer opens the door.
Alice is sitting by the window, with her back to the room.
He says, ‘Now.’ There’s no time for talk.
He’s got the habit out by the time she looks round. He’s holding it open.
She understands at once. He can see that from the light that comes back into her eyes. Alice isn’t one to miss a trick, or waste time philosophising. It’s no time at all before she’s in the habit, doing up the top fastening, with the hood over her head, and they’re out of the door and trotting along the corridor, very fast, feeling a couple of inches above the flagstones, almost before they’ve had time to breathe.
It’s only when she’s on his horse, and he’s holding the bridle, with his belly full of fire, and they’ve silently negotiated the gate out of Westminster, and the fields and river and London town are visible ahead, that she seems to breathe out; that she whispers, ‘We’re away…’ and then, looking at Chaucer with something like wonder, ‘…are we? Is that really it? You’ve got me out, just like that?’
It’s a moment more before she grins – the old Alice, resurfacing, he thinks with relief – as if she’s just heard the best joke she could possibly imagine. She shakes her head. A little louder, though still hoarsely, because after all she still isn’t used to talking freely, she adds, ‘I’d never have guessed you had it in you, Chaucer.’
Chaucer doesn’t explain the nun in his apartment to the servants. She sits quietly by the fire, with her hands clasped and her hood up. There seems no need. Nor does Chaucer feel any need for thanks. He’s hardly realised until he’s done it that he was planning this wild moment of rebellion.
If he’d had a moment’s conscious thought, he might have explained that he thinks the Parliament has gone so far in its wild burst of malice, sanctioned, encouraged even, by the Duke, that it’s surprised itself. The lawmakers have no more idea than he or Alice how to implement the sentence they’ve just passed. They may soon be slightly embarrassed by their own vindictiveness; and, even if they aren’t, they won’t make any great effort to actually pursue the woman they’ve punished. They’ve had their spectacle; made their kill. They’ll probably be quietly relieved that Alice has made off without forcing them to face the consequences of their action. They’re more than likely just to let the whole thing drop. And now Chaucer’s full of joy, and, unexpectedly, of fun, that he’s managed to get Alice out so easily. He’s full of fellow-feeling for her, too; full of the idea ‘we’re two of a kind, so we have to look after each other’. He’s racing.
When the servants have gone, leaving dishes of meat and bread, and cups of wine, he says briskly: ‘What we need to work out now is where can you go? To be safe?’
What property Alice might still own is unclear. So it is also unclear where she can go and take quiet refuge.
She shakes her head. She still can’t bring herself to speak, or eat. She’s grateful, so grateful, but all she wants to do, in practice, is look at the fire, and not have to think. But she doesn’t mind Chaucer thinking for her.
Chaucer’s fizzing with purpose. ‘Not Wendover, obviously. Not Pallenswick. And not London. But what about…?’ He starts to list the manors he remembers her having acquired without the King’s help, in the past few years: Hitchin, Plumpton End, Moor End, Lillington Dansey, Frome Valeys, Brampford Speke, Southcote, Powerstock, Litton Cheney, Knole, Stoke Mandeville, Morton Pinkney, Sutton Veny…but every time she just shakes her head.
‘Why?’ he asks, with this brisk new energy that fills him with light. She mumbles something. He waits, until he understands that she let go rights to all but a clump of property-holdings, ten in all, before the first Parliament she was called to. She wanted to rid herself of any possessions more than a day or two’s ride from London. Those ten were restored to her, later; and she’s managed to move most of the cash from most of the other sales down to Gaines, too. The deeds of these properties are firmly in her name; there’s nothing fraudulent about her title to them. It’s all as rock solid as Chaucer told her to make it. But now, after the latest Parliament moves against her, and after seeing the Duke’s open malice, she suspects that the lawmakers will make it their business to inspect every last one of the properties she’s still listed as owning, and will almost certainly requisition them and everything in them – especially now she’s run away. And she doesn’t want a repeat of what she saw hap
pening at Pallenswick, when the government inspectors came calling.
‘Then there’s nothing else for it,’ he says in the end. She hasn’t suggested it herself, so he can see she’s reluctant. ‘I’ll see what I can do about finding out the status of those properties. But meanwhile, you’ll have to go home, to Essex. To Gaines.’
She shakes her head again.
Misunderstanding why, he persists: ‘But I remember. You made the manor there over to your son, when he was knighted. At least you were going to. Didn’t you?’
That isn’t why she was shaking her head, but it’s a novel thought, so she stops and considers for a minute. It’s true. She did do that. And that means that, technically at least, Gaines can’t be confiscated (though there’s no predicting whether that will hold good if the Duke decides he wants to take it from her).
Chaucer thinks he’s won the argument, she can see.
If only he understood that her children don’t mean to her what his must mean to him; that they are strangers to her now, the left-over human relics of a love that’s long gone too. They’re more Aunty’s children, really. If only he understood that, to her, accepting a future at Gaines means accepting she’s lost everything. She’s not ready to accept that.
If only she could not think about any of it.
He’s leaning persuasively forward, saying, ‘You must be worried that by being there you’d endanger your children…but if you don’t actually own it any more, and the Duke and his men have got the best of your property for themselves, it’s remote enough that no one’s going to bother looking there. Don’t you see?’
She shakes her head. But she feels so dazed that she’s not surprised he’s ignoring her preference.
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