Belle's Song

by K. M. Grant

  “You’ll never persuade them it wasn’t a miracle,” I said, and only then told him about Luke and the cloud. My father supped his ale. “Luke, not Walter,” he commented.

  I blushed. “He’s gone.”

  “That’s hard.”

  I nodded.

  Master Host was, as usual, full of gossip, and a casual inquiry elicited a torrent. “Didn’t want to say, with your father just on his feet and that, but I’ve been to the fish market this morning and the place is awash with rumors. They say the king’s returning to take his rightful place at Westminster. He’s less than ten miles away. He could be here tomorrow.”

  “What kind of welcome will he get?” I poked the fire, trying to keep my voice light.

  “Who knows!” Master Host said. “The fishmen couldn’t decide if they wanted him back or not, nor the butchers neither.”

  “What about the guildsmen?” I asked.

  Master Host laughed. “Your pilgrimage whetted your appetite for a career in the city, eh?”

  I tried to toss my head in my old style. “Why not? Or even at court. Powerful men make things up. I make things up. Where’s the difference?”

  This delighted him. “Belle for Lord Chancellor! What do you think of that, John Bellfounder?”

  “I’ll ring her in myself,” my father said.

  “You’re going to reopen the business?”

  “I am.”

  “With Belle as partner?”

  “I thought you said she was going to be Lord Chancellor.”

  Master Host guffawed. “Drinks on the house! Whatever London decides tomorrow, we’ll celebrate tonight.”

  It was late when we got home. After the widow and I had helped my father to bed, I paced my room until a gray dawn broke. When I got downstairs, the widow had already lit the fires and gone to buy milk. My father, too, was up. He was sitting with a drawing board on his knees, his legs neatly bent today and the caliper prongs sticking through his trousers like small horns. “It’s a good thing I sat in the dark at the trial,” he said, “or they’d have seen at once how the ‘miracle’ worked. I’m going to get Peter to make a higher table.”

  I nodded and crouched by the hearth. We waited, my father drawing and me staring into the flames. I don’t know how long it was before the widow burst in, gesticulating backward. She’d left the front door wide open. And then we heard them, the bells: “St. Martin Vintry, St. Jude’s, St. Mary’s on the Wharf, St. James Garlickhythe, St. Michael at Paternoster, White Friars, St. Mary Overie.” It was my father who did the reciting. “Where’s—”

  A huge peal burst like a thunderclap. “St. Paul’s,” my father said, and he began to rise. “St. Paul’s!”

  The bells were wild. “Who are they pealing for?” I cried. “The king or the commission?”

  The widow didn’t know.

  “Can I go, Father? Please? I’ve got to know!”

  He hugged me. His eyes were alight. “My bells,” he said, “my bells, welcoming me back to their world. Yes, go, Belle. But be careful.”

  I rushed passed the widow and down the street. Everybody was outside, pulling on shawls and boots against the clammy dew. The sun was struggling in vain through the clouds. I never felt the cold. I just ran. I counted madly. Four pigeons, seven gaping children, two old men with red hats, eight barrels—surely there’d be a ninth? There wasn’t. I counted one knife-grinder, seven chickens, five goats. I tried to divide my steps but kept losing my place. I didn’t know where I was going. I didn’t know what I had counted. I ran in a circle and found myself near the oculist’s shop, and there were three people standing there. I paused, midstep, and counted them carefully. One, two, three. They turned at my cry. Luke, Walter, and Master Chaucer. And they were shouting the words that everybody was shouting: “God save the King!”

  We stood, strangely awkward, while the city erupted around us. Walter, as always, tried to make things easy. “You see, Belle, those who didn’t see the summoner’s book destroyed were reluctant to believe it really had been and, in the end, the momentum we created couldn’t be stopped. So, dear Belle, we did deliver London for the king.” His eyes glittered rather than twinkled. He was edgy, not joyful. He couldn’t look Luke in the eye, nor Luke him. Neither was sorry that Master Chaucer stood between them, his writing box under his arm.

  “Dulcie’s well. I retrieved both the horses, and Granada and Dobs are back from St. Denys,” Walter said.

  “I’m glad,” I said.

  Somebody in the crowd began to dance.

  “Come home with me,” I said, because I couldn’t think of anything else.

  “We’d be delighted,” Master Chaucer said at once. “Now, we can’t walk four abreast in this crowd, and Luke and I’ve been together so long that Luke needs new company. You walk with me, Walter, and would you mind carrying my box?” Walter took the box. “We know the way, Belle,” the Master said. “You’re just next to the Tabard. Isn’t that right? On you go.” As Walter brushed past, he cast a pleading glance. He didn’t have to remind me. I knew what he didn’t want me to say to Luke. I wouldn’t break that promise.

  Luke and I walked behind. There was so much to say. I could say almost nothing. “Your bruises are healing,” I said at last.

  “Yes.”

  “What exactly happened?”

  “The monks found a song and teased me with it. I fought them. I was expelled.”

  “Luke, please look at me.”

  He turned slowly. I didn’t know what he was reading in my face, but behind his glasses those gray eyes melted from steel into cloud. “I’m sorry, Belle. It was just a shock, in the courtroom. I knew you’d marry Walter. I just didn’t expect … didn’t expect”—he crunched his heel hard into the mud—“I didn’t expect to find him in your bed so soon.”

  Without breaking Walter’s confidence, I could have said that I’d lied. But that would lead to more questions, and, in the end, Luke would inevitably draw the right conclusion. I couldn’t allow that. I felt every bit of happiness drain away. We walked in silence. The Master and Walter disappeared.

  At the top of our street I stopped. “I’d forgive you,” I said.

  He frowned and took his glasses off. His hair, cut by the monks, was growing back, but he still looked shorn and very far from my Helmetless Knight. I didn’t care about that. I wanted to touch his hair, to smooth it down, to feel his scalp again.

  “You’d really forgive me?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  He fiddled with the arm of his spectacles. “Then you can’t love me very much.”

  We reached our front door. I opened it. Luke stepped inside.

  Master Chaucer was in the back with my father. Walter was with the widow, who, thrilled, was extolling my virtues to him. Had Luke not been there, it would have been very comic. As it was, it was insupportable. I cut in. Crestfallen, the widow went back to the hearth but was soon humming into her pot.

  We heard laughter. “Come and see my father’s workshop,” I said. We went through.

  My father was showing the Master how his calipers worked. The Master was stroking his chin. His foxy look was quite returned and he filled his clothes again. “Genius,” he said, “the hinges especially.” He tapped them. “Joiners are of much more use than writers.” He inspected Luke and me closely. “Be that as it may, I’ve some little presents, and I think now’s the time to give them out. Would you mind, John?” My father shook his head. “Well then.” He reached inside his jacket and brought out several sheaves of parchment, all cut to the size of a schoolbook.

  “I’ve written a story for you,” he said, handing them to Luke. “I know it’s not quite traditional with presents, but I wonder if, before you take the story away, you could make a fair copy? You’ll recognize the beginning. It’s a story we began on our journey.” He gestured to my father’s table. “There’s space enough there for the writing box. Set it down, Walter.”

  Walter did so. Luke, mute, opened the box, cleaned his spe
ctacles, prepared a quill, and began.

  “Now to you, Belle,” the Master said. He seemed slightly less sure. “Your present involves asking a favor.” He coughed. “I’ve got such an idea, but some of it comes from you and I want to use it as my own. I want to write about our pilgrimage.” My eyes widened with alarm. He continued quickly, raising his hand. “Just a collection of pilgrims telling stories to each other on their way to Canterbury—a way of passing the time. Each story will be different. Some may have little morals. Others will just be stories that I already know and adapt for my pilgrims to tell.” He paused to look at Luke, who was no longer writing, only reading.

  “Where’s the favor in that?” I asked, puzzled.

  “Remember the anecdotes you wove?”

  I remembered very well. “Some of them were unkind,” I said, “and yet the same people were kind to me.”

  “That’s true,” the Master said. “Luckily, few people recognize themselves in books.” He glanced at Luke again. He was still absorbed. “I’d dedicate the whole work to you, naturally, in gratitude for your inspiration and for other things”—he gave me a very meaningful stare—“and it’ll take me some time to write. In principle though, do I have your permission?”

  “Of course you do,” I said.

  “You weren’t thinking of writing such a work yourself?”

  “No,” I said. “Not a work like that.” I hesitated. “The story I write will be a love story.”

  Master Chaucer held my gaze. “Yes,” he said. “That’s what great writers write.”

  “It’ll be a tragedy,” I said.

  His smile was quizzical. “Always difficult to tell how a tale is going to finish before you get to the end.”

  There was a movement from the table. “Ah,” said the Master. “What did you think of that, Luke?”

  “It’s a good story,” said Luke slowly. “I hope I’ve understood it.”

  “What’s it about?” my father asked.

  Luke didn’t look at my father. He looked at me. “It’s about a girl who’s almost unfaithful to the man she loves.” He paused. Nobody spoke. “It’s about forgiveness,” he said, and in front of everybody, without any hesitation at all, he kissed me like a knight who, after a long journey, is claiming what is rightfully his.

  18

  And thus with every bliss and melody

  Palamon was espoused to Emily,

  And God that all this wide, wide world has wrought,

  Send them his love, for it was dearly bought …

  Adventures would be much more enjoyable if you knew that everything was going to turn out well in the end. As it is, I don’t think you enjoy them at all except in retrospect, and even then you have to be careful. Once Luke and I were married and he began to help my father in his business, it would have been easy to turn the pilgrimage into something greater than it was, and to depict ourselves as heroes and heroines, with everybody against us as villains and crooks.

  I hope I haven’t done that. Just as the summoner was not completely a crook, so the Master, Walter, and I were not heroes. Only Luke, perhaps, deserved that epithet because he was the only one of us who didn’t lie. And my father, of course. And the widow.

  I kept Walter’s secret; at least I didn’t tell Luke in so many words. I know he guessed part of it on our wedding night. You’ll know how. Not that he said anything directly. It was just that when Walter came a few weeks later to tell us he was going on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, Luke embraced him very warmly. I saw Walter close his eyes as Luke held him, and I knew just what he was feeling.

  He brought Dulcie for me. His sister, he told us, had never returned, but he hoped the visit to Jerusalem might help. One bit of good news, he said brightly. His father had lined up a girl for him to marry when he got back. I knew, at that moment, that Walter would never come back. He was not capable of perpetrating such a deceit. Before he left, we had an afternoon alone together, just talking and remembering, and I cut a lock of his hair. I thought my heart would break when he rode off and Luke never reproached me for my torrent of tears. I still think of him every day. Sometimes, when I walk, I pretend he’s beside me. You see, I didn’t really lie about that in the courtroom. Walter’s my other love, and the only person, apart from you, my reader, who knows everything that happened.

  The king’s story, of course, is well known. His triumphant entry into London was a momentary flicker that came to nothing. In the end, just as Master Chaucer feared, he was deposed and probably starved to death. I sometimes remember him in my prayers. Like most of us, he was a mixture of good and bad, but if you’re king, that’s not what counts. Richard wasn’t canny. That was his downfall.

  For a few years, there was an annual pilgrimage reunion party at the Tabard, instigated by Dame Alison. Sometimes those reunions prosper, sometimes not. Ours didn’t. Memories of that courtroom killed it. After a while I heard news of the pilgrims only occasionally; a death usually, or a faint scandal.

  Master Chaucer was a firm and faithful friend. He came to Southwark regularly until he was made clerk of the king’s works and became too busy. Though I missed him, the appointment pleased me. It showed that he still had the king’s favor. Sadly, he never completed his tales, and when, about a year after King Richard was deposed, the Master died and his son Thomas, acting as executor, offered them to me to finish, I declined. I had my own memories of the pilgrimage and didn’t want to muddy them. However, the Master’s death did spur me to make this record, although now I’ve finished it, I’m nervous. To this day, just as I’ve never told Luke the whole truth about Walter, so I’ve never told him the whole truth about the Master. Even though he understands and forgives all my faults, and I doubt he’d hold an unwilling conspiracy against the man who brought us together, I think the revelation would disappoint him. Perhaps I’ll let him read this, perhaps not.

  You may want to know what happened to the summoner. I’ve no idea. Nothing, I expect. Only in stories do the wicked get their just deserts.

  There’s nothing left to say now except that I love Luke with all my soul, and he loves me, and that the more I think about it, the more our love seems the miracle of this tale. That I, with all my imperfections and compulsions, should find my best peace in the gray eyes of a boy I only met properly because he spoke before I’d counted to three, needs more than luck. Perhaps God was at work. Perhaps St. Thomas. I don’t know. Sometimes I feel I should care. Other times, I just sit with the lock of Walter’s hair around my neck, counting my blessings in the litany of the bells. Luke remembers all their names, together with their weights and volumes. He laughs now when he thinks of the time he wanted to be a writer, though he never thinks it was a waste. “It brought me to you,” he says when we’re lying together, and the way he says it almost stops my heart.

  I live an ordinary life these days, with no more life-in-the-head. I don’t need it. My love makes the ordinary extraordinary, and, as Walter might say, that’s the loveliest kind of love. Dear Walter. Dearer than dear. As I lay down my quill, I hope that wherever you are, either in heaven or on earth, you’re happy.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  In the English-speaking world, we are taught that Chaucer (c. 1342–1400) is the father of English literature. His Canterbury Tales are staples of the school curriculum. But let’s be honest: many readers’ hearts sink a little as they contemplate even the beautifully bawdy “Miller’s Tale” in the original Middle English. Somehow, having to look up every other word in a glossary strips Chaucer’s stories of all the pleasure we’re assured we’ll find in them. Even so, at my convent school I remember being entranced by an erudite and very serious-minded nun reading “The Franklin’s Tale” aloud and with unexpected feeling. As we, like Dorigen, contemplated those “grisly rokkes blake,” the barrier of the language evaporated. But more than that, I suddenly realized it’s not Chaucer who’s dull, it’s certain ways of teaching him.

  If you really want to enjoy Chaucer, remember four things: first, you�
�re allowed to laugh—he’s very naughty and very sly; second, if he were alive today, he’d be writing for comic soap operas, some to be shown only when children are in bed; third, the way he pokes fun at clerics and pompous officials means he’s not just the father of English literature, but also the father of stand-up comedians; and fourth, father of English literature or not, he led a rowdy life that outdoes anything he actually wrote.

  It was, indeed, more his life than his tales that inspired Belle’s Song. All Chaucer biographies will tell you he was an author, poet (I quote some of his poetry in my story), philosopher, bureaucrat, deputy forester, member of Parliament, comptroller of customs, clerk of the king’s works, courtier, and diplomat. Not all will tell you that he was a spy—euphemistically referred to as “working for the king”—and possibly a criminal too—in 1380 he was cited in an “incident” against a woman. Gloomy scholars seem to want the father of English literature to be a saintly man with an unblemished reputation, not a real man of his time, with a wart or two to his name.

  Yet hurrah for the warts because they turn Chaucer from an author of stories into a character in Belle’s Song, and when you add to Chaucer’s own warts the grisliness of the fourteenth century with the plague, England’s peasants revolting, and King Richard II not being able to cut the mustard, as we British say, I felt the same kind of stirring as Chaucer himself must have felt as he prepared his vellum for his magnum opus. There are, of course, many differences between Chaucer and myself, but my favorite is that I finished my book and he never finished his …

  SELECTED TIMELINE

  1342

  Geoffrey Chaucer born

  1367

  Richard Plantagenet (later Richard II) born

  1368

  Chaucer sent on a mission to France by King Edward III

  Among other literary works, Chaucer writes a fragment of The Romance of the Rose