Vanora Bennett

by The People's Queen (v5)

  He sets off away from them, towards the manor house, along the avenue of slim young beeches someone (Alice, he presumes) will have planted for shade in years to come. It’s an incongruously pretty sight that meets his eyes, after everything he’s seen today. There are scented roses and gillyflowers in bloom in the garden, and beans and salad leaves and herbs sprouting in the kitchen garden, and vines tumbling over a barn with a new roof. There’s a new section built on the tilting old house, too, with spacious doors and windows, smelling of fresh wood and straw. He can guess at the high ceilings from outside. And he’s almost soothed by the low crooning of doves, and the buzz of bees in the lavender hedges, and the brightness of the well-tended fields all around. He can guess at the energy she’s brought to the project of renewing this place in her short time here; shaking his head, almost laughing, he wonders how the locals coped with her energy.

  He offers the fidgeting men a last scrap of help over his shoulder. ‘They say the King and his army are heading out of London for Waltham Abbey,’ he says calmly as his feet scrunch, left, right, over the bits of stuff. ‘So don’t go north.’

  There’s a crowd of women at the back of the manor house, when he reaches it. Ladies patching well-made but torn skirts, and quiet, quiet children. They look at him with fear as he comes around the corner. Two middle-aged servants come towards him, trying to look threatening, with big sticks in their hands.

  ‘I’ve come from London to look for Mistress Perrers,’ he says to reassure them.

  ‘London,’ they sigh, calmed by his gentleman’s voice, craning closer.

  ‘It’s over,’ he says, and they sigh again, and their faces relax in well-bred relief.

  Who are these ladies? Chaucer’s wondering, suddenly made uneasy again by their reaction. They’re no rebels. What are they doing here at Alice’s home? He can’t, can he, have been wrong…?

  ‘Mistress Perrers?’ he nudges.

  ‘She’s up at the farmhouse,’ the lady in the far corner with the beaten-up face says, looking curiously at him. ‘Since the sickness started. They’re all there.’

  All? Chaucer thinks, feeling his heart sink. But he shuts his mind to the question of how both those men outside, and these women here in the courtyard, can be connected to Alice. She’ll explain it all when he finds her. Hastily, he sets off in the direction the lady points him towards.

  It’s quiet in the farmhouse. There’s no fire burning on the kitchen hearth. Just embers.

  He looks around, wondering where to go. It’s well appointed downstairs: neat, simple furniture, clean rushes on the floor, silver and pewter in the cupboard.

  But it’s too neat…and so quiet…as if there’s no one left.

  He can hear his own footsteps, heavy as a threat. He can hear his own breathing. But that’s all.

  Chaucer only hears Alice when he opens the inside door: quick breathing, damped behind wool. Sobs, even, maybe. She’ll be scared, too.

  There are two big beds, with their curtains drawn around them.

  ‘Alice,’ he says. ‘Come out. It’s me. Chaucer.’ His voice is soft.

  He isn’t expecting the look on her face when she pokes it out from between the far bedcurtains: the drawn whiteness, the indescribable relief, and the shining, grateful love in those reddened eyes.

  ‘You,’ she whispers, staring at him as if he were God himself.

  He isn’t expecting, either, the next thing he hears, from the other closed bed: a baby’s awakening, experimental whimper; the prelude, he knows from experience, to loud shouts of hunger.

  (‘Alice’s Chaucer? The dad?’ suddenly echoes in his head; dead Wat’s voice.)

  There’s no time for Chaucer to ask about the baby.

  Alice’s face crumples into fretful helplessness at the sound of crying. ‘Oh no…I can’t…not now,’ she mutters, pleating her fingers together, scrunching up the wet rag she’s holding. To Chaucer: ‘Please, will you get the baby?’ Then, as if to herself: ‘No, no…he’ll wait.’

  She gazes at the stunned Chaucer, as if she’s made her mind up to something. And Chaucer, for all his resolve, for all his certainty that this time it’s he who will set the agenda, put his case to her, and insist that she does as he says, finds himself drawn in, as usual, to the world according to Alice. He waits. ‘Please,’ she says, quickly, ‘tell me what you think.’ She puts a finger up to her lips, muttering, ‘Shh.’ And then she pulls him inside the bedcurtains, into the half-dark, and sits him down by the side of the bed.

  There’s a boy under the quilts. A youth, a bit taller and skinnier than Thomas, but then Thomas has always been small, so they might be the same age. This boy has freckles and black hair. Just like Alice’s.

  It takes Chaucer’s eyes a moment to adjust to the dimness; his heart a moment to adjust to the darkness closing in on it.

  It’s Alice’s son. She’s had her children with her here, all along…and if she has them with her, then what good is it that he’s turned up to save her from her solitary fate? He’s misunderstood. He doesn’t know how, yet, but he can see that he’s got it wrong, all wrong…

  Then he sees that Alice’s son’s hair is plastered to his skull, and sweat’s dripping off him, and his skin is whiter than it possibly could be in nature, healthy nature at least, though he’s not dead, because he’s still moaning under his breath.

  In the middle of his private sorrow, Chaucer’s overcome by a father’s tenderness. He leans forward and puts his hand on the lad’s forehead. It’s raging hot. The boy – John; Johnny, Chaucer remembers he’s called; Sir John, now – moans again.

  ‘Thirsty,’ he whispers, in a dry little voice, a child’s voice, though the boy must be well into his teens by now. ‘So thirsty.’

  Chaucer turns to Alice. He can see the fear in her face. He can feel it in his.

  The boatman told him. It’s back in Colchester. He can see Alice already knows it’s the Mortality, even though there are no buboes at his neck, and no blackness where the skin has started rotting around his fingertips.

  ‘Plague?’ he mouths, so the youth with the closed eyes can’t hear. She’ll want him to say what he thinks. Alice has never shied away from knowing the truth.

  From beside him, she nods. She isn’t surprised. Without a word, she bends down and scoops up water from the bucket on the floor. There’s infinite tenderness, and infinite sadness, on her face as she puts the cup to her son’s lips. Johnny swallows. Then he starts to cough. There’s panic on her face as she pulls out the other cloth she’s been pleating, and puts that to his lips. When the spasm’s exhausted him, and he drops it back on the quilt, Chaucer sees, as bright as roses, the blood in the slimy spit.

  Chaucer puts a hand on Alice’s. He can sense the galloping beat of her heart; and sensing it calms him. There’s no reason for him to be here, he can see that now. But he can’t leave her like this. He’ll have to stay and help.

  Just outside, the baby’s cries are getting louder and more fractious.

  ‘Calm,’ he mouths. ‘Be calm. I’ll sit with him for a minute. You feed the baby.’

  She nods, and for a second the terrible weight of love and care lightens, and she manages something like a smile of gratitude. ‘Oh, Chaucer,’ she whispers, ‘thank you,’ and she’s off.

  A familiar kind of bewilderment settles over Chaucer in this unfamiliar place, but there’s a warmth, a softness, too. He’s come here with his certainties, and she’s overturned them in an instant. He can’t believe he’s here, doing this, tending to her son, while she nurses a baby he knows nothing about. He can’t believe he feels so tender towards her.

  He takes a corner of the quilt, and dips it in water, and wipes the boy’s sweating face clean. ‘You’ll be all right, Johnny,’ he whispers. ‘It’s not so bad, this kind. Just hold on. You’ll be all right.’

  He only wishes he could be sure it was true.

  She comes back. The baby’s quiet behind his curtains. Johnny too, on his pillow.

  Befor
e anything else, she checks the boy. She’s got an ear cocked, listening for his breathing. He’s asleep; or passed out. You can’t tell which.

  ‘Do you think he’ll…?’ she begins, bravely. Then she wrinkles up her face. ‘No, don’t answer.’

  So Chaucer says nothing. He puts his hand on hers again. She lets it stay there, on her dry, cool, unresponsive skin.

  ‘I sent the girls away with Aunty,’ she says reflectively. ‘Up north. A week ago, when he began to sicken. When I brought Johnny up here. I didn’t want them to get ill…’

  Helplessly, Chaucer pats her hand. He can’t help admiring her hollowed-out calm. If this were his child, he knows he’d never be this self-possessed.

  ‘Or all those women who’d turned up,’ she goes on. ‘Once all the fighting started. Sewale’s wife; Ewell’s widow. And all the rest of those women at the big house. They’ve had enough misery without this, too.’

  ‘You took them in? Refugees?’ Chaucer says, still not understanding, but lost in admiration. ‘In the middle of all…that? You gave them your home?’

  ‘But,’ she replies, and she doesn’t flinch from what she’s going to say next, ‘I was the one who caused their trouble in the first place, wasn’t I? Because I helped start it, you know,’ she goes on, in the same flat little voice. ‘That. I wanted to scare the Duke.’

  Chaucer looks up. A thousand things fall into place. He’s been right, after all, to think she’s been involved. He says, ‘Oh.’

  ‘But it was never supposed to be like this,’ she says, a bowed head before him. ‘I wish I hadn’t. What happened out there, afterwards – what they did to Mary Sewale’s home – London – it’s not what I meant. Not at all. That’s the world gone mad. Wat gone mad.’

  He keeps his hand on hers. Like her, he clings to that thought. She’s done wrong; but not all wrong. She’s had a change of heart. She’s seen the error of her ways.

  ‘Wat’s dead,’ he says.

  She nods, and her head sinks lower. Is she sad? He can’t tell. ‘He went mad,’ she repeats. Then she adds, ‘But I made him. He’d never have done it if it hadn’t been for me. I only realised that when the women started coming, with their stories; when I saw the way Johnny was looking at me, as if it was all my fault. And it is, Chaucer. It’s all my fault.’

  ‘Your husband’s being called back to England…the Earl of Buckingham too…to suppress the revolt,’ Chaucer says awkwardly. He doesn’t know how to answer her directly, because he’s realising, painfully, how her change of heart has come about – out of love for her son – and the knowledge that Alice now sees the world through her son’s eyes is making him sadder, yet also gladder, than he’s ever felt before. ‘They say both of them will be sent to Essex. The King’s on his way already.’

  Her head droops even further. ‘What can they do that’s worse than this? I’m being punished, even now,’ she says in the unbearable monotone. ‘With this…It’s the worst thing of all – that it should be him who’s paying the price for my wickedness. My stupidity. Johnny.’

  She raises those red eyes to him.

  ‘Do you think God does bargains, Chaucer?’ she asks, and even now, even here, there’s the ghost of a miserable laugh in her eyes. ‘Because I’ve been praying and praying that if only He’ll let Johnny live, I’ll do whatever I have to, for the rest of my days. Have William back, when he gets here; pretend none of this had anything to do with us; it doesn’t matter, anything; as long as Johnny’s here. I’ve been praying like a fool. I’m just not sure He hasn’t given up on me already.’

  She shakes her head. ‘You’ve always known, haven’t you, Chaucer?’ she says, and turns her hand up so it’s holding his. ‘How you love your children?’

  That’s enough to remind Chaucer of the futility of his being here. Wearily, he nods. ‘I just never thought,’ he says miserably, ‘that you’d realise it too.’

  It’s only then that she seems to become truly aware that Chaucer is actually here, in the flesh.

  ‘You haven’t said,’ she asks, soft and defeated against the arm he’s just put around her back, ‘why you came?’

  Chaucer gets up and walks her over to the window at the far end of the solar. It’s almost dark on the ground, but the evening sky is still luminous.

  He needs a moment.

  A thousand thoughts are running through his head.

  ‘I came…’ he says, wondering whether he shouldn’t just go, now his foolish idea of rescue has been superseded by reality. Then he shrugs. There’s nothing left to lose. He might as well explain. At least she’ll know he cared enough to come; at least she’ll know he loves her. ‘I came to ask you to go away with me.’

  Her eyes turn up to him: great dark pools of misery.

  Then she looks back at the bed, where Johnny’s lying so still, and shakes her head.

  They both know.

  But still she says, ‘Where?’

  Chaucer falters; but then gains new strength: ‘That pilgrimage we once talked about. Jerusalem. Antioch. Malta. Or Italy. Rome. Does it matter where? Canterbury would do, if I could save you from yourself there; if it wasn’t in England. Away, that’s the point. That’s what I wanted to offer you.

  ‘I brought money,’ he adds defensively, as if she’s going to chide him for having a poetical flight of fancy. ‘It wasn’t just a thought. I came ready.’

  She smiles; almost smiles. For a moment.

  ‘Thank you,’ she says, ‘for the thought.’ It’s a no, of course; he doesn’t expect anything else. She’s staying here with Johnny, and waiting for William. They both know that. But it’s a recognition, too. She takes his hand and squeezes it very hard; her eyes are wet.

  ‘I never cry,’ she mutters after a while, though Chaucer’s seen her in enough hard places by now to know that isn’t always true; then, with a choked, whispery laugh: ‘But you’re not usually so brave.’

  It’s a few minutes more before she speaks again. Hesitantly, she says, ‘There’s something I should probably tell you. Something else.’

  Chaucer says, almost at the same instant, ‘I think I might know.’

  She’s surprised at that. ‘You can’t,’ she says.

  Chaucer says, ‘Well, something I was going to ask you…when the moment was right.’ He swallows. The moment’s not right. It’s an effort to go on. It’s such a wild leap of the imagination, when she’s got so much else to think about. When this could be anyone’s baby: Wat’s; the maidservant’s; who knows? What if he’s wrong?

  ‘I met Wat, your Wat, in London. It might have been nasty. But he let me go when he heard my name. He said, “Alice’s Chaucer…the dad…’” he stumbles.

  He hardly dares look at her.

  But when he does, she’s nodding. And the look in her eyes is soft.

  ‘You always know everything, Chaucer,’ she whispers. ‘I’ve called him Lewis. I thought you’d like to have a son whose name meant glorious warrior.’

  And then the baby stirs, and starts to cry again. With a helpless, anguished look, Alice ducks away from Chaucer, and vanishes out of sight into the bed-tent. Through the curtains, Chaucer again hears the quick, uncertain breaths that might, just might, be sobs.

  The near-silence goes on for a long time. The curtains stay shut. Chaucer lights the only candle he can see. When the youth on the bed groans, it’s Chaucer who goes back to sit with him; mops timidly at him. The boy might not die, he thinks, clinging to that faint hope. If there’s no blackness; no buboes. If it’s gone on for a week, and he’s still only spitting blood-flecked sputum, not gushing blood from his throat.

  Chaucer thinks: And me, what will I do? It’s dangerous to be around the plague. He should run off back to London; save himself for the children who don’t need him any more, whom he loves. But he’s needed here. He’s lost the power to leave.

  He wakes up with Alice shaking him. The candle’s at its end, sputtering. He must have been asleep.

  ‘Don’t lie with him,’ she whispers.
‘Too dangerous. I will. You take Lewis. Here.’

  He’s too heavy with sleep to argue. He takes the baby, and stumbles away, and lies down on the other bed with the little swaddled form tight against him.

  It’s the first chance he’s had to look at the infant Alice has been nursing. Lewis…he’s heavy with milk and sleep too, Chaucer sees, and feels, as the weight’s transferred to him. He’s got long eyelashes, sweeping his cheek, and fat little hands curled outside his blanket. My son, Chaucer thinks, mine, and warmth spreads through his heart before sleep claims him again.

  When he wakes, Alice’s head is there, sticking in through the bedcurtains, with grey light behind her. She’s transparent with it; she doesn’t seem to have slept.

  ‘He’s no better,’ she whispers of the supine form in the other bed. ‘But he’s no worse either.’

  Chaucer sees she’s trying, desperately not to let hope in. But it’s just possible…

  ‘Sleep,’ he says. ‘I’ll…’

  ‘No,’ she interrupts. ‘You have to go. You and Lewis.’

  He opens his eyes wider. Properly awake now, he stares at her.

  ‘I can’t go,’ he says, knowing it’s true only as he speaks; knowing how desperate he’d feel if Johnny were his daughter, or his son; realising how his heart’s been torn to shreds afresh at this careworn, love-worn new Alice. ‘You can’t stay alone.’

  ‘You must,’ she insists. ‘I’ve been thinking. It’s not safe here. Not just him…Johnny…the sickness…but whatever comes next, here. Or whoever. You shouldn’t be here when that happens. Nor should the baby. Take him away.’

  Her eyes go diamond-shaped with unshed tears. ‘Please,’ she adds wearily; then, with a strange new strength in her voice: ‘You’ll look after him better than I can.’

  Chaucer sits up, putting his hands to his head. His head is whirling.