“With pleasure, Sir John.” Chaucer was off, and over the next quarter hour spun a complex and ingenious tale involving Lord Scrope’s entanglement with a grocer, a maudlyn, a tinker, and an apprentice, all unfolding on the lanes of Retters and ending with a sober homily by the baron himself on the origin and meaning of his family’s venerable arms.
Chaucer could pull stories from his mind like groats from a purse, and as I looked around the refectory I could see the tale’s balming effect on these roiled gentles. If I dealt in coins and cunning, Chaucer dealt in words and figures, which he mingled, cooked, and distilled with the adept mastery of an alchemist. Nor was such invention a ritual of idleness or waste. Every knight in the room would remember the story told that morning, delight in its twists and perversions as he recounted it for his wife, his consort, his men, his lord. Yes yes, it was Chaucer himself who told it to me—no, not one of his poetical fancies, mind, but a true and real account of the baron himself, so Chaucer said; well, the fellow was under sworn oath to the very earl marshal’s Court of Chivalry, so who’s to doubt the truth of it?
Even Derwentwater sat as if tarred to his chair, his finger at rest on his cheek, his gaze fixed on the face of our yarning bard. When Chaucer had finished, the knight stirred and glanced over at his clerk. “No need to transcribe that last part, Roger.”
“Aye, sire,” mumbled the clerk, who hadn’t bothered, and thus another of Chaucer’s numberless tales faded to oblivion.
The deposition resumed with a turn to the other party in the dispute. “Have you ever witnessed or heard of any claim or other such interruption made by one Sir Robert Grosvenor or his ancestors, or by someone else acting in his name, against Sir Richard or any of his rightful ancestors?”
“I did not. Though—well, not so much a claim as an affront, as I would call it.”
“Go on,” said Derwentwater.
Chaucer cleared his throat. “Last year, on a Tuesday in September it was, I found myself walking about on Friday Street, minding my affairs, when I saw the arms in question on a new sign, hanging fresh-painted from a hall. ‘Why, Sir Richard Scrope is within,’ I thought to myself. So I asked a fellow standing there, ‘What inn is this, that’s taken to hanging out the Scrope arms? Has Lord Scrope purchased a new house in London?’ The fellow looked at me with the most peculiar frown. ‘Why, those aren’t Scrope’s arms put out there, my good fellow, nor Scrope’s arms painted on that sign. Those, my good fellow, are the arms of a great knight of Chester, name of Sir Robert Grosvenor.’ I must admit, Sir John, that this was the first time in my life that I had ever heard mention of the name Sir Robert Grosvenor, or his ancestors, let alone his family’s ancestral right to azure a bend or. And those, I believe, are all my relevant memories on the matter.”
Chaucer was dismissed, and that day’s hearing shortly neared its predictable end. Derwentwater was just speaking the obligatory formulas of closing when the refectory doors burst open and the Duke of Gloucester strode into the chamber with two pages in his wake. All the seated knights rose and bowed as Gloucester went over to Derwentwater and whispered something in his ear.
“Yes, Your Grace,” we heard Derwentwater say. Woodstock walked to the clerk’s desk and took up a position behind the quivering man, clearly unused to the disquieting thrill of a duke inspecting his scribal work. From my angle I could see the transcript, a loose sheaf of double-sheet parchment on which he would record a rough copy of the proceedings before inscribing them for permanent record on the court’s official rolls. The duke leaned over the clerk’s bent back, tracing a finger along the transcripts of the day’s depositions, murmuring in the clerk’s ear.
“Very good,” Gloucester said, and stood to his full height. His gaze swept the refectory. “You have all performed according to your duty. I am glad to see that the peerage has been supporting the Baron Scrope’s rightful claims to the arms. Who is our next deponent, Sir John?”
Derwentwater looked at the clerk, who consulted his list. “Our next deponent, sire, is to be . . . Sir Nicholas Brembre, knight and lord mayor of—”
“Knight,” Woodstock scoffed. “Sir Nick the Stick is no more a knight than my left buttock.” He clutched at the muscle in question, and a ripple of flattering laughter swept the refectory.
“He is arrived, my lord,” said Derwentwater, a warning in his voice.
The laughter died quickly as all heads turned to the refectory’s north doorway, which the mayor now filled. He looked at each face in turn, not a mote humiliated or angered by the duke’s childish pronouncement, and most of the knights visibly flinched beneath his gaze. Though hardly a peer, Brembre commanded enormous respect among the lords of the realm. He was the richest merchant of London and a close confidante of King Richard’s, with an unrivaled power over the life and well-being of any man who set foot within the city’s walls.
“My lord,” he said to Woodstock, and gave the duke a proper bow.
“Lord Mayor.” Woodstock looked over at the knights with a knowing smile.
Brembre’s face was set as he stepped fully into the chamber and addressed Derwentwater. “I am summoned, Sir John?”
Derwentwater looked nervously from mayor to duke. “Sire?” he said to Gloucester.
The duke tilted his head just slightly back toward the door. “Your deposition is no longer required in this court, Lord Mayor.”
Brembre paced slowly along the first row of knights—away from the door—his eyes fixed on the duke’s. “I received a summons from the earl marshal, and under his seal. It was delivered to me not three days ago.”
“The summons did not come from me,” said Gloucester. “Nor is Nottingham the lord high constable.”
“Is he in Westminster today?”
“I have no idea.”
“Is he aware that Your Grace is sifting deponents in his court?”
“His court?” Woodstock sniffed. “Chivalry is the lord high constable’s jurisdiction, and only secondarily the earl marshal’s.”
“An interesting perspective, your lordship. One I won’t hesitate to share with Mowbray when I see him next.”
“Do so at your pleasure, Brembre,” said the duke. “What you won’t be sharing is your testimony in the case of Scrope and Grosvenor.”
The two men were now mere feet from each other, of the same height and compact build, the small space between them crackling with hostility. I feared the confrontation would come to blows even there, in the abbey’s refectory.
“You would forestall my testimony in the face of the earl marshal’s direct request?” said Brembre.
“I would.”
“You are countermanding his summons, then.”
“I am.”
“Yet I have pertinent information to share with this court.”
“Perhaps you might share it with your wife,” said the duke softly. “Though impertinent information seems more her strength, wouldn’t you agree?”
The mayor flinched, and suddenly the air seemed to go out of him. His jaw loosened, his arms dropped, his spine visibly sagged. “There is no call to bring Lady Idonia into this, Your Grace.”
“No?” said the duke, enjoying himself now. “Yet Lady Idonia brings herself into everything she can. Who are we to deny her own wishes and inclinations, Lord Mayor?”
Brembre, recovering his composure, straightened his back and raised his chin at the duke. “You will regret this, Woodstock.”
Murmurs from the knights, for addressing such words to a duke.
“Ah, regret,” said Gloucester, unruffled. “The sentiment of the loser and the fool. It’s not an emotion I am accustomed to.”
“That can change, your lordship.”
“Perhaps,” said Woodstock, with a little nod. “Though not today, I’m afraid.”
Brembre, deciding not to push nor to threaten further, bowed shallowly and turned for the door, striding with confidence from the refectory.
The proceedings were shortly to conclude, though Chaucer di
screetly excused himself, and I followed him from the refectory through the door to a side passage and out of the abbey.
“I must ask you for something, Geoffrey,” I said in a low voice.
“And I you.” He gave me a dark look. “Westminster has many ears. Let’s cross over the yard to the market.”
We left the abbey grounds, traversed the great yard before Westminster Palace, and entered the Parliament market through the close at Lords Way. When we had a decent amount of space between ourselves and any potential eavesdroppers I took his arm in mine, slowed our steps, and said, “I need you to get me Pinkhurst’s ear.”
“Master Adam?” he said with amusement. “What could you want with our pied scribe, John?”
I switched to French. “You spoke with Brembre several days ago. That afternoon along the river.”
“Yes.”
“How did you find him?”
He looked to the side. “Honestly, John, I’ve never seen him more distracted or distressed. He put on a brave face for you and Ralph, but once we were alone he could scarcely put his words together.”
“He is being threatened over the Walbrook killings.”
“Threatened?”
“By Gloucester,” I said softly as we passed the booths of the cheese sellers. “The duke has pressed Brembre into thwarting an investigation in his own city. The mayor won’t move against him, despite evidence that points to his involvement.”
“Whyever not?”
“I will not tell you, Geoffrey. The thing is unmentionable.”
He gave me a sidelong frown.
“Believe me, mon ami, it is better that you don’t know,” I said. “For Brembre’s sake, and your own.”
Only our years of friendship and mutual trust could have persuaded him not to press me for more. “How is Pinkhurst involved?”
“There was a proceeding. Adam was the scrivener.”
Chaucer nodded. “I will send him a letter with instructions once I’m back in Greenwich. Pinkhurst will give you all you ask.”
“Why not walk with me now to the Guildhall and speak with him together? The matter is urgent.”
“He is with Exton’s retinue above Oxford, scribing about fish, and won’t be back for some days.” The incoming mayor, a powerful fishmonger, was known to be fiercely protective of the city’s fishing rights along the Thames, always a subject of dispute between London and Oxford. “Besides, John, your matter cannot be more urgent than my own. Though the two are closely related, I believe.”
“Tell me.”
“You are aware of my current office in Greenwich?”
“You are justice of the peace.”
“For the most part I pursue minor delinquents and scofflaws,” he said. “Trespassers, regraters, extorters—I help track them down, haul them into our various gaols, keep them safely in check until delivery to the eyre or the manor courts, depending on the level of the offense. Not the sort of work I’m suited for.”
“I should think not.” I tried to imagine Chaucer arresting a hardened thief.
“I don’t mind it, though,” he mused. “After so many years in the customhouse, at the king’s and the mayor’s cough and call, I suppose I needed a calmer sort of criminality, and a more restful place to write. The country air uniquely cultivates a man’s figures and rhymes. Though it’s just as murderous a place as the city.”
Poetry, murder: my friend always possessed the capacity to skim from light to dark, from salvation to sin and back again, and without a flicker of self-doubt. It was a trait I loathed and envied at the same time.
“At least twice a week I am forced to throw someone in one of the Kentish gaols,” he continued. “We have perhaps two dozen of them. I have come to know nearly all of them quite intimately, even in these short months in office.”
“How does this concern the Walbrook killings?”
We had reached the market barns, where Chaucer stabled his horse while in Westminster. He spoke to the boy, then turned back to me. “You must come to Greenwich, John, and see for yourself,” he said, now in English. “Otherwise you won’t credit it.”
“What have you found out?”
He coughed and said in a low and regretful voice, “I know where they died, John.”
I blinked.
“And I believe I am close to discovering who they were,” he said.
“When shall I come down?”
“Tomorrow. I will make the arrangements myself.”
“That is short notice, Geoffrey.”
“Short notice, short ride.”
“I will be there before noon,” I said. Jack Norris was still missing, and given what I had just learned of Adam Pinkhurst’s role in the discord between Gloucester and Brembre I was loath to leave the city. Yet the Walbrook murders had too sharp a hook in me already to ignore the fresh bait Chaucer was dangling at my mouth.
“Good, then,” he said. “Ask for me at the Thistle across the green from St. Alfege. They’ll know where I am when you arrive. You will stay the night.” He hesitated. “And it is your turn, I believe.”
It was. I had come prepared. From my hanging bag I removed a small quire of parchment, which I had stitched roughly before leaving the priory for the Scrope-Grosvenor hearing. Chaucer took the booklet from me and fanned the pages. “What is John Gower feeding me today?”
“You will find it quite topical,” I said. “Some lines on Wrath and Hate, two brothers who have been much in my thoughts.”
“Very well,” he said, stuffing my quire in a bag suspended from his saddle. “Until tomorrow, John,” he said, and then Chaucer mounted and was gone, swallowed by the parliamentary rabble.
Chapter 23
THE VILLAGE OF GREENWICH lies roughly four miles from Southwark, a short enough distance that I was tempted to take the long ferry and go by water, though the day’s crisp, dry air prompted me to make the journey on horseback instead. I departed St. Mary Overey that morning under high and blowing clouds that dappled the road in swift shadows as I rode along. Watling Street leaves Southwark at the far end of the high street to curve gently through the country parishes. The road was busy with herders, workers, and retailers hurrying themselves and their wares into the city. Flocks of sheep for the Southwark butchers and the autumn slaughter, loads of Kentish lumber, a parade of carts, wagons, and laden mules groaning for space on a crowded byway. It seemed that every commodity unable to reach London by water reached it by Watling Street, traveling up and into the bowels of the city through Southwark and the bridge. In the other direction flowed an equally varied chain of conveyances: carts returning to their rural origins laden with foodstuffs, a lady’s wardrobe, a suit of plate armor bound in oiled cloth.
A mile after leaving behind the Southwark high street I fell in with a company of monks making for the priory of St. Martin, a long journey nearing its end. The monks themselves were a sullen lot, unwilling to make idle talk with a stranger, so I slowed my horse to edge alongside their lay servant, a young man who looked perhaps twenty years old and, I guessed, eager for worldly conversation.
“What news, young fellow?” I asked, slipping him a few groats. Travelers were always one of the richest sources of information, and though their accounts could very often be discounted as unreliable hearsay, they invariably afforded new perspectives on the wider world, ever welcome to a city dweller like me.
The company of Benedictines had left Dover in early July, he told me, their charge to deliver the news of their prior’s death to as many houses in their order as practicable, and gather prayers and Masses in return. He reached back to pat one of his bags, a cylindrical packet of boiled leather strapped firmly to the saddle. The heavy parchment roll had been inscribed by some thirty Benedictine abbots, abbesses, and priors from Plymouth to York, he said, and the monks were just now completing the brutal circle begun twelve weeks before. Prior to their arrival in London the company had been traveling along the coast road from Norwich, stopping by several houses at the sea edge
of England.
“Talk’s all of Burgundy and King Charles,” said the young man. “Extra garrisons at the ports, looking out over the channel to Sluys, ’specially after rumors a those Genoese cogs captured down at Sandwich. King’s men have hired whole flocks of men, women, even little boys and girls to watch up and down the coast, sound the alarm at first sight of the French fleet. They’ve bought up half the fishermen on the coast, pressed their old boats into service. And on land you got plowmen sharpening their scythes, herdsmen seeking new pasture inland, scared mothers stitchin’ their daughters’ queynts shut against all the rapin’ to come.”
He laughed gruffly, prompting a craned neck and a glare from one of the monks up ahead.
“Nothing remarkable, then?”
“Well now . . .” He thought about it. “There was one odd thing, little twig that’s been nubbin’ at my mind. Forgot about it once we left the coast, but now we’re in Kent it comes to me again.” He looked up and around at the landscape.
“And what’s that?” I said.
He slowed his horse a step, keeping an eye on the monks. “My recollection’s stuck, it seems.”
I handed over another coin. He sat up in his saddle, took a long draft from his skin, wiped an arm across his mouth.
“Not a week ago, this was,” he said. “We was in Chelmsford, two days up and out from London. Market day, all the usual crowds, and the sheriff’s criers were on the corners, shouting the king’s messages. One of them pricked up quite a few ears.”
“Oh?”
“A prison escape, it was, with some killings involved. Would have been the regular sort of hue and cry, the sheriffs seeking out the usual highwaymen and so on, calling on the help and aid of the commons in bringin’ them all to the bench. What plucked me, though, was that one of the fliers is a woman. Gentlewoman, in fact, of Dartford, escaped from Portbridge gaol. Killed a guard, or so it was cried.”
“A gentlewoman? That is rather unusual.” Though even as I said this I recalled the city crier outside Guildhall Yard, who had undoubtedly been spreading warnings about the same fugitives and asking for help from Londoners in their apprehension. Normally such shouted proclamations would go straight through my skull without stopping, and I had heard nothing in the shouted list of official business worthy of my attention that day.
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