by K. M. Grant
“For the love of God!” Master Chaucer was outraged. He stood up in his stirrups. “STOP IT AT ONCE! I order it! It’s unseemly, with my wife not yet cold.”
This did have some effect. Both Walter and Luke scrambled to their feet. Walter’s jerkin was torn. Luke’s glasses had been knocked off. It was Walter who retrieved them. Luke snatched them from him. To need glasses was bad enough. To have them handed back by Walter was doubly humiliating.
“There, that’s better,” said the Master, though he could see from Luke’s face that it really wasn’t. “Get back into the saddle, both of you, and for goodness’ sake, remember that we’re on a pilgrimage. Sir Knight! You tell them.” But Sir Knight just caught Arondel and returned him to Walter. The Master raised exasperated hands. “Listen to me then. You two boys are going to ride with Belle at the front of our party, and you’re going to ride like that until you can be trusted not to turn into a twist of ferrets whenever one says something the other doesn’t like.” Luke opened his mouth to object. The Master shook his head. “No argument. Just get on with each other. That’s what pilgrims do.”
Luke and Walter converged on me, each determined to help me mount Dulcie. Luke growled. “Master Wagoner!” called the Master sharply. “You help Mistress Belle to mount.”
Luke turned away and vaulted on to Picardy. Not to be outdone, Walter vaulted onto Arondel. We gained the front, with me in the middle. Behind us, the whole cavalcade began to rumble. I touched my cheek. “Have we hurt you?” Both Walter and Luke spoke together.
“I’ve still got all my teeth,” I said.
Five uncomfortable minutes passed. Walter snapped off a hazel switch and pretended it was a lance. “Shall I tell a story?” When he got no response, he started anyway. “There once was a noble king who had two sons and a daughter too beautiful for me to describe because I’m not a poet. Are you a poet, Luke?”
Luke’s hackles rose. “If you want to make fun of me, don’t be a coward. Do it where we can finish what we’ve started.”
“Please, Luke,” I begged.
“No, Belle,” Walter said. “Men should stand up for themselves.” He leaned across. “If I do want to make fun of you, I’ll do just as you propose. But I’m not making fun of you.”
Luke didn’t look convinced, but Walter’s expression was so guileless that he had to soften a little.
“It was the Ides of March.” Walter settled back into his saddle. “Mars was in Aries and the birds were singing, and the sun was shining quite strongly for the time of year. Actually, it was altogether—”
“Never mind about the weather,” I interrupted.
“Oh, don’t you want to know about that?” Walter asked.
“Best to get to the meat of the thing.”
“You’re so wise. So then, the daughter, who looked much like you—”
“Really?” I gave Luke a sidelong look, inviting him to return it. He nearly did.
“The daughter who, as I say, looked much like you,” Walter shook his curls, “was called Canace …”
I’ll not repeat the story. Suffice to say that it was rather long. Eventually we got to a bit about a horse.
“What did this horse look like?” I interrupted again. “Was it a golden-winged Pegasus or a pretty peach like Dulcie?”
Walter pursed his lips. “The best I can say is that it was a very horsely horse. Never was there a more horsely horse. It was, indeed, the horseliest of all horses.”
Luke began to shift. I glanced at him, concerned. What now? Then, quite suddenly, Luke threw back his head and laughed. How my father would have loved that laugh. It was a glory of bells, all tumbling melody, perfectly pitched.
Walter, appreciating the bells, tried to remain serious. “I think horses can be horsely,” he said, his own lips twitching, “just as herons can be heronly and”—we passed villagers rolling thick oak logs—“fences fencely—”
“And grass grassly and trees treely—” Luke could hardly get the words out.
“And you yoully and me meely!” I began to dissolve.
“That’s it!” cried Walter. “We’ve cracked the great mystery of words!”
It was a miracle how Walter’s flowery good nature softened everything between us. Indeed, as we pressed Walter to finish his implausible tale, Luke, his hackles not completely flat but no longer bristling, both interrupted and egged Walter on as much as I did until, finally, we were all talking as easily as if we’d been friends for years. And as I rode and chattered, I realized something very strange. For once, I didn’t wish to be someone else or somewhere else. I was still conscious of my father’s suffering, still conscious of my guilt, could still smell the summoner and was more than aware of Master Chaucer’s troubles. Yet far from diminishing my happiness, these troubles rendered it more precious, probably because I knew it couldn’t last. Extraordinary how rare it is to be happy in the here and now.
We rode long into the dusk, and though Walter kept on with his story, Luke and I were laughing so much we never learned much more about the horsely horse than I’ve just told you. Dinner, taken at a heavily fortified roadside inn of very few creature comforts, was eaten quickly. We were all tired. The Master ate nothing and sat quietly by himself. Everybody remarked that his wife’s death weighed heavily. Just before bed, Walter was asked to sing.
“What a squirely squire he is,” I whispered to Luke as Walter obediently stood on the table we had set by the fire. To mention Walter like this to Luke was still a risk, but we’d had such a happy time I thought Luke wouldn’t be cross. Whether he was or not, he nudged my shoulder. I liked that.
Then a curious thing happened. Instead of the jolly tune we were expecting, Walter sang of a little bird who pressed her breast against a thorn to turn a white rose red. He sang softly, except for the part when the thorn pierced the bird’s heart. At that moment his voice throbbed just like the bird’s, and when he climbed off the table, he had an expression on his face I’d never seen before on anybody. Long after I was tucked up in bed with Poppet I could still see it. Try as I might, I couldn’t understand what it meant.
6
He knew their secrets, they did what he said.
I rose to a murky dawn. The weather had changed. That itself should have warned me, I suppose. Despite my compulsions, sometimes I’m slow to see signs.
This inn had no inside sanitation, only a pump in the makeshift yard, and as I didn’t want to wash in public, I watched from a window until the servants had done their early chores and gone to the kitchen for bread and ale. Only then did I go outside, hitch up my skirts, take off Walter’s trousers and inspect my scabs. The salve was working. Since it was also four days since I’d pumiced, the rest of my scars had dulled into gray dents ridged with skin every shade of purple. “Hideous,” I told the chickens who had congregated around me, hopeful of grain. I heard the inn’s front door open and, for fear of the summoner, hid myself under the wall.
It was not the summoner: it was the Master, unslept, unkempt, unhappy, towel slung over his shoulder, his writing box tucked under his arm. He wandered to the pump and placed the box on the ground. When the chickens scuttled up to it, he snatched it up and placed it on the side of the well. I tutted like a chicken myself. What was he thinking? One nudge and it would tumble. He laid down his towel, cranked the well’s handle, clanked the bucket onto a bench, and doused his head. Eyes tight shut, he reached for the towel. One soggy sleeve caught the box’s protruding corner. I sprang forward. To stop the box from falling down the well, I had to smack it sharply. It pitched, then crashed onto the ground, spilling all its contents.
The chickens converged. “Psh! Psh! Get out! Get away!” I flapped my arms before snatching up plummets and cuttlefish, inkpots and oak galls, bottles and quills and all manner of enviable writing paraphernalia. “I’m sorry,” I began to say, when something very bright caught the beady eye of the cockerel. He stretched his neck. “No!” I cried, and dived. Master Chaucer, all caught up in his towel, dived too. I got there
first. “Here!” I held up my trophy. It was a thick gold ring, quite obviously a signet ring. Before handing it back, I inspected the engraving, hoping to make some clever remark about the Master’s seal. But it wasn’t a writer’s seal. It was a much grander seal. The grandest seal possible. My mouth opened. “You lied!” At once, I wanted to eat my words, for surely I was mistaken. I inspected the ring again. I had made no mistake. Engraved quite clearly into the oval plate was the image of King Richard, crowned and holding orb and scepter, seated on a covered throne balanced on an angel’s back. If that wasn’t convincing enough, “Ricardus Dei Gracia Rex Francie et Anglie et Dux Hibernie” was inscribed in bold letters around the outside of the ring. I wasn’t sure what some of the words meant, but even the village dunce knew the word rex. The ring was a king’s ring, our king’s ring to be exact. What was more, such a ring could have only been handed over by the king himself, and he would only hand it over for a purpose.
I held the ring as though it might bite me. The Master didn’t even try to snatch it back. He just stared at it too. “I didn’t lie,” he said flatly. “I said I carried no document or letter and I don’t. I never mentioned anything else.”
The cockerel backed away, lifting his legs fastidiously high.
“Yet you’ve got this,” I said. The Master fiddled with his sleeves as I worked out the rest for myself. “Luke. His memory. He said you gave him puzzles and he wasn’t to write them down. Of course you’re not carrying anything. He’s going to France. He’s going to take this ring and deliver a message in code.” The Master began to wring drops of water from the hem of his tunic. I waited. Nothing. “Does he know?”
With false bravado, the Master shook out a few more drops, then gave up and slumped down. “Of course not.”
“Shouldn’t he know?”
“What he doesn’t know he can’t tell.”
“You don’t trust him?” I could hardly believe this either.
“My dear Belle, of course I trust him. I’d trust him with my life. I also care for him. He will be completely innocent if—” He didn’t want to go on.
“If he’s caught.”
He flushed. “The likelihood is very small.”
“But it could happen.”
“Yes, it could happen.” He leaned against the well. I held out the ring. What else was there to do? I certainly didn’t want it. He took it and we both watched the cockerel tip all the ground pigment out of a leather wallet from the writing box. “Why?” I asked. “Why are you doing this?”
His voice was very low. “Weren’t you listening when I said I was a trimmer?”
“Yes, but the king doesn’t own you, you said that too. And that he was far from perfect.”
A long and sorrowful sigh came from deep within. “He’s so young,” the Master said softly, “just twenty at the Epiphany, and so vulnerable. I know what I should have said when he asked for my help. But if you’d seen him, well …” He sighed again. “He’s the same age as my eldest son, and so loaded down with cares. It’s a terrible thing to be king.”
“We all have cares,” I said rather primly.
“But we don’t have a kingdom.”
I couldn’t think of a suitable retort. After all, what did I actually know about kingship?
The Master perched on the side of the well and began to speak, and this time I didn’t even try to stop him. Although I didn’t want to know, I did want to understand. I didn’t want to think him a bad man. “You guessed right,” he said. “Luke will deliver the ring together with the puzzles he’s memorized to the abbot of St. Denys. The abbot already knows the code and he’ll do the rest. At least Luke’s part will be quickly over and without him even being aware of it.” If he wanted praise for this, I didn’t offer any. “I did the same for Richard’s grandfather,” the Master continued, crushing the ring between his palms. “Not the same message, of course, and usually the message is written and delivered without the need of a code and the king’s seal. But that won’t do now, with England so divided. If King Charles is to help Richard, he’ll need to prove that his help was sought, otherwise he’ll be condemned as an invader, and he doesn’t want that. The king’s seal will be proof enough.”
I jolted. “Once French troops have set Richard back on his throne, will they go home again?”
The Master swallowed hard. “We have to hope so, because if they don’t, I’ll be responsible for something terrible.” He crossed himself and his tone became so fearful that my skin prickled. “The loss of England to France and a war on English soil that will last for generations,” he whispered. “You’ve already seen the ditches and fences being erected in every village? Even this inn has barricades. At the moment, they’re in case the king and the commission come to blows. It’s always the ordinary people who suffer when our rulers can’t get on. But if French troops come, it will be a different kind of war, a war against a conqueror such as we haven’t seen since the days of William the Bastard.”
I folded my arms tight. Composing himself, the Master unfolded my arms and took my hands in his. “But don’t you see, Belle? I can’t, can’t have the deposition and death of God’s anointed king—oh, what am I saying?” He started again. “I can’t have the destruction of a mere boy on my conscience, not one who trusts me enough to give me his ring and embraces me in a way my sons have never done.”
I broke away. Despite the gloomy dawn, the ring glittered on the Master’s palm. There were footsteps, heavy and purposeful. A chicken squawked, booted none too gently out of the way. I didn’t have to look to know who was approaching. The Master’s eyes strained wide. The ring shone like a fiery stain. “Oh my Lord!” He could hardly breathe. I couldn’t bear it. “On your finger,” I hissed.
“What?”
“Stick the ring on your marriage finger. Didn’t you ever play hunt the thimble when you were little? The best way to hide something is to hide it in plain sight.”
Blindly, he obeyed. We both bent to pick up the remaining scattered writing tools.
The summoner flicked his watery eyes from the Master to me and finally to the writing box. “Well now,” he said, hacking up early morning phlegm and scratching his boils, “what have we here? A little conspiracy?”
The Master cleared his throat. “Conspiracy’s a long word to use before breakfast.”
“Conspirators get up early.” The summoner wiped away a gob of saliva. “I’ve been told that the contents of a writer’s box reveal everything—everything—about the writer. All his foibles. Everything he’d prefer to conceal. Cherrywood, this one, isn’t it?” He moved closer and stroked the box the way I once saw an old bargeman stroke the flesh of a drowned girl.
“Walnut,” said the Master. I wished he didn’t look so frightened.
“Walnut!” sneered the summoner. “Well, well. Show me all its—its secrets, Master Chaucer. Will you do that?”
The Master could have refused. Instead, he fiddled about, his fingers trembling round a ring that seemed determined to glow with all its might. I began to hand him the things I’d collected and he named each item as he put it in its appointed place. “Gall, er, pricket, stylus, er, er, miniver brush, swan—no—goose feather”—his voice was at least five tones higher than usual, particularly when the ring snagged on bristles or feathers or a fold of parchment. Several times the summoner frowned. He knew we were hiding something, but my hunch was right: he took no more notice of the Master’s ring than he did of his own. Naturally, though, the refilling of the box took too long for his liking, so he pushed the Master aside and ran sweaty fingers round the inkwells and bottles, pressing the box here and there as though something might spring out of the wood itself. Finally, he picked the whole box up and, with a low-life smile, casually dropped it. Surprisingly, it didn’t splinter, but just as he hoped, a drawer sprang out, a flat drawer with no lock or mark, a drawer whose presence was clearly supposed to be known only to the box’s owner.
“Ah!” said the summoner, licking his lips.
“Aaaaaah!” From the drawer he removed a fold of the thinnest Italian paper. I tried to still my breathing. The summoner wasn’t interested in me. He gazed long and hard at the Master before unfolding the paper and inspecting it minutely, even wetting his forefinger and rubbing spittle over the surface. The Master didn’t move. The summoner held the paper to the light. Though he turned it over half a dozen times, it remained steadfastly blank. When, finally, he had to admit that there was no message, he scrunched the paper up and tossed it down the well. There was no sound as it hit the water.
The Master, leaning heavily on the bench, tried not to hide his hands in his sleeves. “Writing boxes are not really very fascinating,” he said, and I was relieved that his voice was less shaky than his legs. “I’d say they’re usually not as fascinating as people think—or hope.” He crouched to pick up tools scattered for the second time that morning and I crouched once again to help. The summoner crouched too. All our hands were together. We could see the summoner’s thick gold bands biting into his flesh. The thumb ring was streaked with tarnish. He leaned right over so that the Master’s left hand was right under his nose. A bead of sweat dropped from the Master’s brow as he paused, his hand hovering over a small glass paperweight with a flat bottom and some kind of dice in the middle. He didn’t dare move his hand away.
The summoner, alerted by the pause, placed his hand directly over the Master’s. Though the king’s ring was now hidden from view, the summoner was actually touching it. Not only that, he curled his own fat fingers around the Master’s and moved the Master’s hand for him. He actually moved it. I thought I might faint. The Master, ashen faced, prepared for his hand to be drawn upward and held aloft. But after a moment or two’s indecision, the summoner did precisely the opposite. He looked underneath and gave a low, crowing whistle. “Ah,” he said, and let go of the Master’s hand. Master Chaucer moved not a muscle. There was no hesitation from the summoner now. He grasped the paperweight and his knees creaked as he straightened up, grinning broadly and rolling his prize from palm to palm.
