The Knight's Tale

by M. J. Trow

  ‘Did I?’ Joyce appeared to think back. ‘Yes, I suppose I did. What I meant was that there was no meal, no plate of food, no goblet with drink in it. All there was was a crust on the table by the window and the bottle of wine with a dry goblet. Ankarette’s dish was empty.’

  Chaucer was not angry. No, that was wrong. He was angry. But he knew it wouldn’t do any good if he showed it. He smiled as best he could. ‘Do you have the bottle still, Joyce? Did you give all the wine to Ankarette?’

  ‘Yes. There was only a drop. About half a cup full, if that. I put it in her water. Why?’ The tears started to flow again. ‘Was there something the matter with the wine? Had it gone bad? I don’t know about wine. I thought it would keep.’ She dropped her basket and held her apron to her eyes. ‘I killed her,’ she wailed. ‘I killed Ankarette!’

  Butterfield was suddenly at their side. Chaucer had never known a man walk so silently. ‘Is there trouble here, Master Chaucer? Joyce?’ He had known Joyce have propositions made – God above knew, he had made some himself – but she usually took them with more equanimity than this. He glanced at Chaucer. He wasn’t in peak condition, but Joyce had known worse, he was sure.

  ‘Ankarette’s dead, Master Butterfield,’ Joyce sobbed. ‘The wine was bad.’

  Butterfield put his arm around her and hoisted the basket onto his own hip. ‘Let’s get you to the kitchen,’ he said. People were beginning to stare. ‘Master Chaucer, my apologies.’

  ‘Nothing to apologize for,’ Chaucer said, hurriedly. ‘I do want to ask Joyce some …’

  Butterfield looked him up and down. Had the man no shame? ‘Perhaps another time, Master Chaucer,’ he said. ‘For now, I’ll just get Joyce back to the kitchen for a rest. She’s overwrought.’ The mention of wine had worried him. Joyce had her habits, he knew; he just didn’t know one of them was drink.

  As Butterfield made his way to the kitchen stair, Chaucer looked around for Richard Glanville. He was marshalling guests out of the main door but turned at Chaucer’s whistle. Chaucer motioned him over and the knight bent to speak to an underling who stepped into his place, beaming with pride at his elevation.

  ‘How can I help you, Geoff?’ the knight said, affably. Apart from the fatal knifing, the day had not gone too badly at all.

  ‘I need to find a bottle,’ Chaucer told him. ‘Lionel of Antwerp, Duke of Clarence, was poisoned.’

  FIVE

  Sir Richard Glanville didn’t really want to dampen his friend’s enthusiasm. But looking for a bottle at Clare Castle was like looking for a needle in a pack of needles. The kitchen was full of them. As was the buttery. The cellar was packed to the gunwales. And that didn’t allow for all the bottles secretly removed by servants who didn’t mind dregs if they were of the best. A plan was what they needed.

  ‘What we need is a plan, Geoff,’ he hissed as they met that night in the shadow of the Maiden Tower.

  ‘What good is a plan?’ Chaucer asked, quite reasonably. ‘Butterfield carted Joyce off for a lie-down before I could find out any details. She obviously didn’t give the dog her fatal treat in the middle of the hubbub of the kitchen or anywhere else like that. She would have done it somewhere quiet, probably on the pretext of taking her for a walk. And she wouldn’t have left the bottle in plain sight. Someone would have asked where it came from and who took it, and then she would have been in the potage up to her knees. No, what we need as a plan, if it is a plan at all, which I doubt, is to have no plan at all.’

  Glanville looked at him, eyebrow invisibly raised in the gloom. Some said this man had one of the finest minds in the country. He, Sir Richard Glanville, at that moment would beg to differ. ‘No plan at all is the best plan?’

  ‘Yes, you have it in a nutshell. With no logic behind Joyce’s actions, the bottle could be anywhere. So we will search anywhere. Do you see?’

  Glanville shook his head.

  ‘Excellent.’ Chaucer had been unable to see which way the head had moved and chose to believe it was a nod. ‘I knew you would see my logic. So,’ he gestured up to the bulk of stone looming between them and the moon. ‘We may as well start here.’

  Chaucer couldn’t remember quite why they called this the Maiden Tower. And, as a boy here, struggling with his Tacitus and Juvenal, scurrying around Lionel of Antwerp’s table trying to carve his meat and serve his wine, he barely gave the names of the parts of the castle a second thought. It was just like all the others, octagonal, arrow-slitted, spiral-staircased. Chaucer understood the need for spiral stairs, tucked into the cylinder of towers. He understood the curve so that a man on the attack could present his shield to his opponent. What he did not understand was how such a man was supposed to cope with the damned things when they reached middle age and when, yes, it must be faced, such a man had put on a few pounds. As a naughty and nimble page, he had bounded up and down spirals two steps at a time; now, he climbed slowly, watching the patterns of the brazier-flames dapple the rough stone.

  He entered the solar where a solitary candle glowed near the hearth. A dragon curled around one side of the mantel shelf; St George guarded the other. It was officially spring now, so Butterfield had closed the fireplaces down, told his people to sweep the soot and scrape away the dog shit. There was a long table at one end of the room, set with wooden trenchers and a many-branched candlestick that somebody in Clarence’s household had brought back from the Holy Land as a memento years ago.

  Glanville signalled that he was going to search the cupboards at the far end. Chaucer opted for the coffer-chest, bound with cold iron. Then, they both heard a sound. It was a thud, followed by a hissed curse, on the stairway they had just come up. Instinctively, Glanville blew out the candle to his right, not thinking that the newcomer would see the light vanish. Chaucer moved as silently as his shoes would let him on the rushes, stepping over them and praying he wouldn’t slip. He tucked himself away as best he could behind the arras, that expensive one that Clarence had haggled for in … well, Arras, actually. To his horror, he realized that his feet were sticking out from the bottom, but it couldn’t be helped. He held his breath.

  A black figure glided into the room, looking this way and that. A man, certainly, and in a cloak. He crept past the long table and reached the hearth. Briefly, he paused, bent forward and thrust an arm up the broad flue. Chaucer and Glanville heard the patter of soot hit the stonework; clearly, Butterfield’s people had been less than thorough. Then the figure turned, silhouetted briefly against the oriel window, the full moon forming an unlikely halo around his hood. Shit! Chaucer realized that the man was making for the chest, only feet from him. There was no need to look down to check; the comptroller knew he had left his poignard in his room. He tried to remember the wrestling moves he had learned in this very castle all those years before and remembered anew that wrestling had not been his strongest suit. He only won one bout because he’d cracked an earthenware pot over his opponent’s head. He winced as he remembered the whipping he had got for that.

  The figure bent almost double over the chest, fumbling for the locks. He found them and braced himself to lift the domed lid. Now was Chaucer’s time; the rogue had both hands full and there would be no chance like it. Chaucer leapt out from the curtain and threw his arms around the man who let out a squawk. Richard Glanville had come better prepared. In an instant, he was at Chaucer’s elbow, spinning the man around and holding his poignard point against his throat.

  ‘Geoff,’ he said quietly. ‘The candle.’

  Chaucer let his quarry go and stumbled across to the flint, striking a spark and holding it to the wick, blowing gently to make it catch. He held it up to the man’s face, Glanville’s blade glinting wickedly below the ties of his hood.

  ‘Would you do the honours, Geoff?’ the knight asked.

  Chaucer flicked back the hood and a rather sheepish guildsman stood there.

  ‘Master Fawcett!’ Chaucer blinked.

  The tapicer looked ever more shamefaced. Then he did his best to l
ook Richard Glanville in the eye. ‘If you please, Sir Richard,’ he swallowed hard, ‘could you remove the knife?’

  ‘I can remove the windpipe just as fast,’ Glanville said. ‘I’d thank you to remember that.’ And he let the blade fall. ‘Now, explain yourself. What are you doing here at this hour?’

  Freed from the threat of instant and agonizing death, Fawcett relaxed a little. He even became a little indignant. ‘I just came for what’s rightfully mine,’ he said. He sounded like Peter Vickers.

  ‘And what’s that?’ Chaucer asked, keeping the flame burning uncomfortably near Fawcett’s beard.

  The tapicer sighed. He’d been caught out and couldn’t see how to brazen his way out of this. ‘We’re all in on it,’ he confessed, blaming the mob mentality.

  ‘All of you?’ Chaucer frowned. ‘Who are you talking of?’

  ‘My fellow guildsmen and I,’ Fawcett said. ‘Ifaywer, Straits and the rest. We were all duped by His Grace.’

  ‘You’d better explain that,’ Glanville demanded. He still had his dagger in his hand.

  ‘The duke owed us money,’ the guildsman explained. ‘We didn’t ask why he wanted it – it wasn’t our place. But between you and me’ – and all three of them leaned closer as it became confidential – ‘the Lady Violante was spending it like water. Yes, I know there are various feudal dues and the odd escheat, but not even Lionel of Antwerp can manufacture his own coin. So, for whatever reason, His Grace was in need. He turned to us, as – and I blush to say it – men of some standing in this community. We were happy to oblige, of course, with the usual interest rates …’

  ‘Usury, you mean?’ Glanville snapped.

  Fawcett looked outraged. ‘Please, Sir Richard,’ he pulled himself up to his full height. ‘We are not Jews.’

  ‘Understood,’ Chaucer nodded. ‘And I assume the duke reneged.’

  Glanville shot the man a disapproving glance.

  ‘He did. This arrangement was made four years ago and, to date, we haven’t seen so much as a groat. I was looking for paperwork, a will, a codicil, something that could prove the deal we struck.’

  ‘Don’t you have such paperwork?’ Glanville asked.

  ‘Of course,’ Fawcett said, ‘but without His Grace’s indenture, it’s meaningless.’

  ‘He’s right,’ Chaucer said. ‘Tell me, Fawcett, are the others here too?’

  ‘Yes,’ the tapicer said. ‘We’re all here. What with the castle being so big and so full of people at the moment, we thought we’d take a tower each; Straits has got the great hall. We’re due to meet up at the Corpus Christi headquarters.’

  ‘Callis Street?’ Glanville checked.

  ‘The same,’ Fawcett nodded.

  ‘Well, then.’ The knight spun the dagger in his hand and slid it away into its sheath. ‘Let’s not keep them waiting, then.’

  Callis Street was shrouded in darkness and silence except for the soft pad of footsteps of the three men walking along it. The merchant’s houses here were large, respectable and solid, like the men who owned them, tall chimneys probing the night sky. Here and there, a stork’s nest in its springtime rudimentary stages gave the look of mad hair sticking out willy-nilly around a stack, and a questioning beak leaned over the side to watch the men pass.

  A single candle burned in the leaded window of the guild-house of Corpus Christi. Fawcett had been dreading this moment, but it was here and now and it had to be faced. He rapped the brass knocker, the one with the devil’s face leering in the moonlight, and the door creaked open.

  ‘Simon,’ a voice said. ‘Thank God. We thought …’ and the voice tailed away as Glanville virtually threw the tapicer into the hall. There were other lights suddenly, coming from the rooms that led off beyond the shadows.

  ‘Sir Richard …’ somebody said and, after that, there didn’t seem much else to say.

  ‘What is the meaning of this?’

  ‘Shut up, Whitlow,’ Fawcett snapped. ‘It’s all up for us. They caught me.’

  ‘I suggest, gentlemen,’ Chaucer said, ‘that we all sit down calmly and place our cards on the table. Unless, Master Ifaywer, you’d prefer a game of queck?’ The carpenter’s face lit up in the candle flame.

  ‘Well …’ The man was clearly interested. Cards were new and foreign; only Londoners played with them.

  ‘Give it a rest, David,’ the other guildsmen chorused. Fawcett led the way into a parlour and all candles were placed on the oak table in the centre.

  ‘Well?’ Chaucer chaired the proceedings. ‘Did anybody find anything?’

  The guildsmen looked at each other. And silence reigned.

  It was broken by Fawcett. ‘God’s teeth, they know!’ He slammed the flat of his hand down on the table. ‘They caught me, bang to rights in the Maiden Tower.’

  ‘And you told them?’ Straits couldn’t believe his ears.

  ‘It’s amazing the effect a knife point to the throat has on some people,’ Glanville said, straight-faced. He let his hand drop to his poignard-hilt, in case anyone was at all confused over the matter.

  ‘I repeat,’ Chaucer said. ‘Did anybody find anything?’

  ‘I was interrupted,’ Trumpington admitted, ‘in the Constable Tower, by that foreigner, the seneschal.’

  ‘Ferrante?’ Chaucer checked.

  ‘That’s him,’ Trumpington nodded. ‘Creeps about the place like a cat.’

  ‘Nicholas?’ Fawcett half-turned to Straits.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘No documents at all in Oxenford. I couldn’t break into one chest, however, so it’s possible …’

  ‘Master Whitlow?’ Chaucer looked the man in the eye.

  ‘Deeds,’ he muttered. ‘Inspeximi. Nothing about the debt.’

  ‘We’ll have to go to law,’ Ifaywer said.

  ‘Go to law?’ Glanville snapped. ‘Tell them, Geoffrey.’

  The comptroller leaned back in his chair. ‘Before you can do that, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘there is the little matter of trespass in the castle of Clare – with intent to steal. And no doubt, a certain amount of damage to property.’

  ‘We only want what’s ours,’ Fawcett said. He had been saying that, on and off, for the last hour.

  Chaucer shrugged. ‘Paperwork, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘Like it or not, this is the fourteenth century. We’re drowning in the stuff and I predict it will only get worse. Without the Duke of Clarence’s half of the indentures, your pieces of paper are worthless.’

  There were rumblings all round, if only because the collective guildsmen knew that Chaucer was right.

  ‘I think a word with the sheriff is in order,’ Glanville said. ‘Old Gower is not only a stickler for punishment – as painful and prolonged as he can make it – he owes me a favour or two. It’ll be the stocks at least.’ He made his fingers into scissors and snipped the air. ‘And a bit of clipping too, if I know my Master Gower.’

  ‘You wouldn’t dare!’ Fawcett snarled, feeling the power of the corporations at his back.

  ‘Oh, but I would, rug-maker,’ Glanville said. ‘If I had my way, all of you would be dangling from Clare’s battlements come morning.’ He scraped his chair back. ‘Don’t imagine you’ve heard the last of this,’ he said. ‘Geoffrey?’

  Chaucer got up too. He paused at the door. ‘Another time, Master Ifaywer,’ he said, ‘for a round of queck. I’ll wait until the feeling comes back to your feet after a day and a night in the stocks.’

  And they left.

  ‘We let them off too lightly, Geoff,’ Glanville said as they padded back along Callis Street.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Chaucer said, ‘but two things occurred to me as a result of our little chat with them.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘First, how is it that five tradesmen are so familiar with the internal arrangements of Clare? And second … and you’ll have to help me here, Rich … where are Ferrante’s quarters?’

  ‘Um … the Auditor’s Tower, floor below you. Why?’

  ‘That’s what I tho
ught,’ Chaucer nodded. ‘So what, in the early hours of the morning, was he doing on the other side of the building, in the Constable Tower?’

  Glanville put his hands behind his back and walked on, looking down at the ground in front of his feet. It was a habit he had had from boyhood and Chaucer knew it well. It was pointless trying to interrupt his train of thought now, so all he could do was wait.

  They were nearly at the wicket gate in the great door of Clare before Glanville spoke. They slipped in past the sleeping guard and Glanville made himself a mental note to speak to the captain in the morning.

  ‘I have no idea,’ he said, in answer to Chaucer’s question of at least ten minutes ago. ‘I think we’ll have to ask around a bit to find that out. One of the servants will know. They know everything.’ A thought occurred to him. ‘Ask Joyce. You seem to have … rekindled a little something there, am I right?’

  The knight nudged the comptroller painfully in the ribs and Chaucer staggered, catching himself a nasty one on a low sconce on the wall.

  ‘No,’ he snapped. ‘And even if we had, if you keep injuring me, I won’t be able to do anything about it. Joyce was taken off to the kitchens, if you recall, in a bad way after the death of the dog. And that is, after all, why we’re here.’

  Glanville looked contrite. ‘I’m sorry, Geoff. Thrill of the chase, all that kind of thing. I quite miss being on campaign, days and nights in the saddle. Sleeping under the stars. You know.’

  Chaucer had been on campaign, it was true. But he had no memory of days and nights in the saddle and had never slept under a star in his life. His memory was of lavish food, tents with full-size beds in and every possible convenience. True, he had been briefly kidnapped, but in the most gentlemanly of circumstances, and he had been kept in the lap of luxury until Lionel of Antwerp had bailed him out. Also true, but something he preferred not to dwell on, was that it could have ended with his head flying through the air from a swipe of a razor-sharp blade, but it hadn’t come to that, so why worry? For now, he wanted to find the bottle and, with a sudden flash, he knew where it was likely to be.