‘Too numerous to count, and always more in line.’ Weldon’s scar was at full jut. Ignoring me, he gave Chaucer a pointed look. ‘I need a word.’
‘You may have a dozen or so,’ said Chaucer. He turned to me. ‘If you will excuse us, John, a customs officer’s duty is to his dutifulness. Oh –’ he stopped, his voice measured as Weldon strolled ahead – ‘and that surely wasn’t Simon I saw just now, having a chat with Ralph Strode?’
‘It was,’ I said, with a hint of defensiveness.
‘I thought so.’ He looked at me strangely, then turned away and strolled with Weldon toward the palace. I watched them recede into the crowd, then went to look for Simon. It took a while to find him, and by the time I did the bell had sounded for the feast.
As the ladies separated for the lesser hall, we retired into the St George’s range, a space of opulent magnificence that seemed to be trying too hard to awe those who entered. There were a few courteous words from the king, a prayer from the archbishop, then the chatter resumed. Simon sat to my left, and to his left was Thomas Pinchbeak, who peppered both of us with news from Westminster and the Inns as we made our way through a roast piglet, the crackled skin slipping easily from the tender flesh. Chaucer was seated at the next table. I felt for the queen and the duchess, the only women remaining in the great chamber. They ate in gloomy silence next to their husbands on the dais. They never spoke to one another as far as I could see.
The extravagance of food and plate was distracting, and it was not until much later, with the serving of cakes, sweet wafers, and a spring pudding as minstrels and players filled the front of the hall, that I thought again of the book. It was Pinchbeak who did it, leaning before Simon to ask me the most peculiar question.
‘And the blood, Gower?’
‘Pardon?’ I said, assuming I had misheard him. Simon was sitting back, trying not to interfere with our exchange.
‘The blood, on the robes.’
I stared into Pinchbeak’s eyes as the words of the coroner’s inquest came back to me: said woman was beaten in the face and struck on the head and bloodied, feloniously murdered by an unknown assailant. ‘What about it?’
‘Your son and I were debating the point. Are they using wine for the blood, do you suppose?’ He nodded toward the front of the hall. I turned my head and realized Pinchbeak was referring to the pageant playing out before the dais. A play of St George and the Dragon, with one boy taking the part of the sacrificial virgin and four others bearing the painted beast on their shoulders. Two robed youths, bloodied, dead, trying not to wriggle, lay sprawled on the floor before the dragon.
My pulse slowed. ‘Beet juice, I’d guess.’ Pinchbeak gave me a vague smile, then turned to the man on his other side with a comment about the cakes.
‘Too dark to be sheep’s blood,’ Simon mused.
It all came back then – the book, the murder, the play at Temple Hall, broken up by Pinchbeak and his fellow serjeants. As I looked around at the babbling guests I wondered how many of them knew of the De Mortibus, of the alleged French spy murdered in the Moorfields, of the king’s prophesied death. The exchange reminded me to visit the coroner’s chambers to have another word with Nicholas Symkok, who had acted so dodgy with me. I wouldn’t have time before my Oxford trip, though it would be at the top of my list upon my return.
After Richard’s departure the crowd started to thin. Lancaster remained on the dais, enjoying the attention, though the duchess excused herself, as did several of her attendants. Swynford entered with a small clutch of other ladies. The doors to the lower stairs were propped open; guests began to drink more seriously, many filtering out to the yards; and a pleasant evening cool descended on the hundreds still remaining.
I wandered among them, speaking to acquaintances, until I came upon Sir John Clanvowe, a knight of Richard’s chamber and a poet of modest accomplishment. He stood with Sir Lewis Clifford, our host for the evening, before the entrance to the Spicery stairs.
‘I understand you’ll be travelling to Oxford?’ Clanvowe asked me. The knight’s loose cotte, dyed a simple grey, bunched around the belt girding his waist. Of my height and age but a wiry stick of a knight, Clanvowe was like an eager bird, his head moving in small, distracting jerks at each phrase. His voice was high and sing-songish, falling at the end of every sentence like a crow’s fading caw.
‘I am, John,’ I said without the honorific, as Clanvowe preferred. ‘I leave at dawn, and Simon will be going back to Southwark.’
‘You know, I will be in Oxford by Wednesday or Thursday,’ Clanvowe said. ‘Travelling with Clifford here, who’s taking up the constableship at Cardigan. I’m on my way back to Hereford for the summer. Perhaps you’ll let me feed you one evening while you’re in town?’
‘I’d be delighted,’ I said, meaning it, for I had always felt a companionable warmth toward Clanvowe, a man of real wisdom who was never his best at court. We parted with a promise of supper the following week in Clanvowe’s rooms at the Queen’s College, and I thanked Sir Lewis again for his hospitality in inviting us to the great occasion.
Growing tired, I started to search out Simon, wandering past a canopy festooned with gay flags and branches of flowered crepe. Beneath it, in the glassy light of four hanging lamps, Katherine Swynford sat at a low marble table, laying out her cards. Her opponent in the game was Sir Stephen Weldon. A crowd had gathered around their table to watch, and there was much murmuring about the beauty of the cards. I recalled the rules of the game Swynford had taught me, though this one was different.
Swynford laid down four cards. I leaned in to see which they were: the Two of Thistles, the Eight of Swords, and the Four and Duke of Hawks. Weldon countered her move with a trump card, the Wheel of Fortune, which Swynford took with the King of Thistles. Weldon’s next play was the Prince of Plums.
I stared at the card, my vision starring.
The Prince of Plums.
I went cold, nearly breathless with the realization. As the game continued lines of verse burned through my mind, the letters searing my memory like a hot coal on skin.
With seven of swords to swing at their will …
At sovereign of swords in death swoon he must …
Seven of Swords. Sovereign of Swords. Three of Thistles. The strange phrases from the prophecies referred not to arcane symbols or figures of allegory, but to the suits of the playing cards of the sort dealt by Katherine Swynford.
The faces of the guests gathered around the card table took on a sinister cast. In the front rank stood Robert de Vere, the earl’s mouth set in a bemused grin at the sight of his knight losing badly to Lancaster’s concubine. Behind him loomed the imposing bulk of Ralph Strode, taking in the game with a slight frown as Thomas Pinchbeak watched over his shoulder, bent forward like a raven at a fresh corpse. Beside him Sir Michael de la Pole, the chancellor, cold in the April evening, arms wrapping his frame. A dozen others surrounded the pair, all transfixed by this unfamiliar game: the cards from Tuscany, the strategies from Lombardy, yet the players wholly English in their allegiances.
I imagined myself watching them from above, these lords, magnates, diverse bearers of the nation’s fortune. Had anyone else with knowledge of the De Mortibus made the association with the cards? Or was this my knowledge alone, shared only with those plotting against the king? And, I now wondered, was Katherine Swynford one of them?
‘Not if I can help it, damn it all to hell, and now with all the rest …’ A familiar voice, raised and angry, had barked from the cluster of shrubs at the range-end before fading into a loud whisper. Heads turned.
Chaucer, his features twisted in anger, strode past me without a look. At the sight of the lofty crowd beneath the canopy he recovered himself and affected a tired smile. He bowed to the assembled company, then without a word shot through the gateyard postern. I turned back to see Simon slinking away from the foot of the range. The light was such that no one else in the vicinity seemed to note my son as the target of Chaucer’
s wrath.
Later, as we left the palace grounds and rode to the mill inn with a small company of other guests, I struggled for words. I suspected I knew the source of the dispute but wanted to make sure.
‘Simon,’ I eventually said, my voice low. At my initiative we were riding last in the group and wouldn’t be overheard.
‘Yes, Father?’
‘You had words with Chaucer.’
‘I did.’
An owl hooted somewhere behind us.
‘We talked about Hawkwood, and my homecoming,’ said Simon. ‘Chaucer had – Chaucer has warm feelings regarding my decision to return to England.’
‘What feelings?’
‘Hawkwood—’ He let out a breath, his head angled skyward. ‘Chaucer feels I haven’t acted in good faith toward the White Company. That I’ve made him look terrible in Hawkwood’s eyes.’
‘Ah,’ I said, my suspicions confirmed.
‘Chaucer said it wasn’t easy to set me up in Hawkwood’s service after – after what happened,’ he said, stumbling. ‘Said he had to call in quite a large favour with Sir John in order to obtain a position for me. And that my unexpected return to England suggests that I haven’t shown the trustworthiness he would expect. That it smacks of youthful indecision, as he put it.’
‘He has a point,’ I said wryly. ‘Rather a strong one.’
‘I suppose he does,’ said Simon. ‘But I was truthful with Hawkwood about the reason for my departure. He told me he would be happy to accept me into his service again if I return.’ He turned to me. ‘Have I acted in bad faith?’
I thought for a moment, pleased by this unexpected request for fatherly wisdom. ‘Not toward Hawkwood, at least. You have given him two years of good service, and he’s invited you to return. But you have acted in bad faith toward Chaucer. The courteous thing would have been to write him in advance, informing him of your decision to return. Seeing you at Windsor while thinking you were still in Italy? That must have been quite a shock.’
He nodded. ‘I see that. But what can I do to make it up to him?’
We had reached the courtyard door and now stood in the road. The other palace guests were handing off their horses to the stabler and his boy. ‘If I know Chaucer, it should be a simple matter. A letter. Doesn’t need to be long. Short and sincere. Once he reads it he’ll forget the whole thing.’
‘Let’s hope so,’ said Simon, holding the heavy door.
Simon slept deeply the first part of that night, snoring on his bolster as I thought back through the Garter feast, wondering what I had missed. It had been an evening of tense encounters and interrupted revelations: Swynford’s peculiar reaction to the name of Simon’s lover, my epiphany about the cards and the prophecies, that ugly spat between Chaucer and Simon. Though I knew more about the prophecies than I had that morning, I felt my ignorance like a bad meal in the stomach. For the first time in my life, it seemed that knowledge, which had always been my privileged coinage, was failing me. There were things I was not being told, knots my mind seemed incapable of unravelling. And always before me the murder on the Moorfields, and the deaths of kings.
It was at some point during the smallest hours when I awoke to the bark of the keeper’s talbot in the courtyard. The dog was quickly silenced, and I realized that Simon was no longer in our bed. I sat up, listening intently, and heard a series of low murmurs from below. One of the voices belonged to Simon. The other was too soft to recognize. I could make out nothing of the conversation. I went to the door and opened it a crack.
The hinges threw an angry squeal across the courtyard. The talk ceased abruptly. I crept back to bed and waited until Simon climbed the stairs, then listened as he pissed, loudly, from the upper landing down into the courtyard. He cleared his throat, spat. He entered our chamber quietly and slipped beneath the covers.
‘Everything all right?’ I whispered.
‘Just a trip to the privy. That onion soup …’
‘Right,’ I said, feeling uneasy.
Hours later I awoke with a start, the sound of Simon’s piss, and his obvious lie, ringing in my ears.
TWENTY-SIX
Rose Alley, Southwark
Eleanor wedged herself between the barrels, her attention back on the Pricking Bishop’s alley door. No sign of Agnes yet, but she’d seen Millicent, airing a blanket out the second-storey window. It was only a matter of time before the sisters would make their move. And when they do, she vowed, I’ll make my own.
Out of a larger house along the bankside stepped a rail-thin woman, a basket of laundry in her arms. She set it down on the street side of the gutter. A boy followed her out. They walked together toward the high street, leaving the basket of clothing for a servant to wash. Eleanor glanced up and down the lane. She stepped across and pulled a few garments from the basket. In the far alley, bouncing on her toes to avoid the filth, she shoved first her left foot, then her right down the stolen breeches. The grey doublet fit snugly.
It was not an hour later when Edgar finally got what he’d been waiting for. The Fonteyn sisters, their hoods cinched tight, left the Pricking Bishop and strode with purpose toward the bridge. Despite the welter of affection and relief he felt at seeing Agnes alive and well, Edgar was also newly furious at her, and he was tempted to jump out and confront her right there, though he remained in place. When they had turned he took a deep breath and walked across Rose Alley.
St Cath sat at her usual place. A loud snore shot from the old woman’s mouth. He waited for another, then stepped around her and slipped inside.
He stood in a small antechamber, dim with no windows. As his eyes adjusted he heard the choir: soft moans from the room to the left, rhythmic thumps from above. He crept through the lower level to the makeshift bakery. A squat oven, where Bess Waller’s crew baked wastel and other breads for illegal sale across the river in London. A cutting block with an upside-down mashing bowl. Two high tables with four stools. The heavy door to the rear yard was bolted shut, though the trapdoor to the undercroft stairs was open. From the space below rose a pale cone of candlelight and two voices.
‘Pickled twenty pots and here it be George’s week with only two on the shelf?’
‘Girls like the leeks and garlic, Bess. Gets the blood up, stiffens the cock.’
‘Tell them to ease off a bit.’
‘Sure.’
‘And you’ll see about the cod? Half a barrel gone to rot, and the Bishop out good coin. As to the cider …’
Edgar stopped listening as he surveyed the room. He made his way carefully along the walls, peering into the shelves past the crockery, the warmth of the oven on his skin. On a shelf above the hearth rested a small array of pious items: a copper candlestick, a small pewter cross, both of which he pocketed; a wood painting of the Magdalene, which he left. He had nearly circled the room when his foot struck a pan, sending it to clatter across the floor.
‘St Cath! That you?’ Bess Waller hollered up the cellar stairs.
Edgar held his breath.
‘Agnes? Mil, that you, girl?’ Bess’s bonnet came into view. ‘Can’t let a damned bawd sort her cellar without a rotting racket, by St Bride.’ She looked up. ‘You!’ she screeched, legs already pumping.
Edgar bent down to lift the edge of the cellar door. Bess ran up the stairs to beat him to it. He took more than a few splinters in his fingers as the trapdoor rose from the floor. When it passed the midway mark he let go of the heavy board.
Whump. The board slammed down on Bess’s hand. A rough scream from the bawd, who slipped her fingers from beneath the weight. Edgar stomped on the board to the pounding of Bess’s shoulders and fists from below. He reached for the cutting block and dragged it until it rested halfway over the trapdoor.
The women’s cries were muffled now. Given the kitchen’s separation from the main house there was little chance those within had heard the commotion. Nor was there a direct street entrance to the cellar, as far as Edgar knew. He had some time. He resumed his look thr
ough the shelves, peering into pots and pans, knocking plate and crockery to the floor with an abandon that gave him more angry satisfaction than he’d felt in weeks, since finding that corpse on the Moorfields.
Four grain barrels occupied the final bit of floor space beneath the shelves. He knocked the first barrel to the floor and reached for the next as the brown dust of wheat flour filled the air. Two more barrels, and now millet and barley dust rose in great clouds. The final barrel, quarter full with rough-cut and mouldy oats. He knocked it down, then stood, panting in the bready air. No dust from the oats, but a lot of mess on the floor, take a full day to—
He saw it. A lump beneath the rancid grain. Pushing his dusted hair aside, he bent to the pile and pushed through a few inches of oats. He felt cloth. He grasped a leather thong and pulled, recovering a thin rectangular bundle, wrapped in embroidery. He felt its width and length, pressed his palms on the flat surfaces.
A book.
He stared down at it, scarcely believing his fortune. The girl in the moor, stripped of her clothing, creatures at her flesh; the beadle of Cripplegate, Richard Bickle, his gold-smelling fingers grasping Eleanor’s cheek; poor James Tewburn, slain in the churchyard with no one about. And this book, a book Edgar couldn’t read to save his soul, yet a treasure worth a lot of killing and coin.
Edgar wiped flour from his eyes. After a last glance around the kitchen, he crept back to the Bishop’s front, squeezed on to Rose Alley, and headed for the bridge, the oldest maudlyn in Southwark still snoring in his wake.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Holbourne
Coming up from the Fleet River the sisters slowed, looking across at the imposing façade of Scroope’s Inn and the armorial bearings on the windows, the tracery spidering from the central medallions. The inn of the serjeants-at-law was a solid block of stone, framed by two gardens and two small houses but with no front courtyard welcoming visitors. It would have to be entered directly from the street, in open view. Two wagons came from the left, a cart and a few riders from the right, though the wide street was relatively deserted on this sunny day. Millicent took Agnes’s arm, crossed to the high door and, no one stopping them or asking a question, pushed against the heavy oaken barrier.
A Burnable Book Page 19
