The Knight's Tale

by M. J. Trow

  Joyce’s eyes grew wide. ‘I only saw him just this afternoon!’ she said. ‘He does confession, special, for us servants, of a Thursday. I don’t go every week. Takes a while and I haven’t the time, no more than he has.’ She shook her head, looking solemn. ‘Dead. Well.’ She looked up suddenly, her eyes narrow. ‘How do you know he’s been poisoned?’

  ‘The smell,’ Chaucer said. ‘Mice.’

  ‘Ah,’ Joyce said. ‘Hemlock. Plenty of that round here. Not the season, really, though it will be starting to sprout, where it grows. But I suppose somebody could have saved some …’

  Chaucer felt a little smug. He wished Glanville were here – all the women would know about hemlock.

  Joyce reached behind her and undid her apron, reaching for her rough sacking one which she used in dirtier tasks. ‘I suppose, then, that you’re here to ask me to clean up?’

  ‘Joyce,’ Chaucer said, reaching for her hand. ‘You are a gem among women.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I’ll take … how many, do you think? Is it very messy?’

  He grimaced. ‘Vomit … quite a bit of that. And the body is a bit …’

  ‘I’ve never seen a hemlock death,’ she said, ‘but I know it isn’t pretty. Clenched teeth, clawed hands when they try to snatch a last breath, or so I’ve heard. I’ll take three. If you could send some lads along as well, they can carry poor Father Clement to his room.’ She shook her head again, tutting. ‘What an end for the poor man. Tell me,’ she leaned in, ‘do you think he … did it himself?’

  Chaucer had not actually considered that. He hadn’t known the priest well, but he hadn’t struck him as the kind of man who would take himself out of this vale of tears. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and say no.’

  Joyce was as quick as lightning. ‘So, the same person killed him as killed His Grace? That’s why Ankarette died.’ She went over to Chaucer and buried her head in his shoulder. ‘When will it end, Geoff?’ she murmured.

  Chaucer got the definite impression that she was sadder about the dog than the people, but let it go. He patted her back awkwardly and after a moment she let go, wiping her eyes on her apron.

  ‘This won’t get the priest laid out, will it?’ she sniffed. ‘Don’t forget to send me those lads. Leave the rest to me,’ and she sailed out into the laundry, calling as she went. ‘Dorcas! Eleanor! Margaret! Come with me and bring some pails and clothes. We have a job to do!’

  A disembodied voice from amid the steam answered. ‘Don’t tell me that mad old bugger from the stables has done it again! I told you, next time he …’

  ‘No, it’s not Jack up to his tricks,’ Joyce said, then dropped her voice and Chaucer didn’t hear the rest.

  ‘Holy Mother of God!’ another voice said.

  ‘Something like that,’ Joyce said, and led her women off to do what the women of Clare did best; clean up the mess left behind by the men.

  NINE

  Chaucer didn’t know what to expect when he tapped on the door of the Lady Violante’s room. He knew she was attached to her confessor, but didn’t know whether she liked him – the two were completely different things. He had heard that she had defended him when Lionel of Antwerp had wanted to get rid of him, but that really told him nothing. The woman was an enigma.

  One of her women let him in. She was older than Violante and dressed in a sober gown. Her butterfly wimple was fitted tightly across her forehead and the eyes beneath it were expressionless.

  ‘May I see Lady Violante?’ Chaucer asked, waiting to be invited in.

  ‘Perché no? E’ venuto uno venire tutto, se me lo chiedete.’

  As always, Chaucer was frustrated by Italian. It was so like Latin and yet somehow … not. He got the definite impression that she wasn’t that happy to see him but went inside anyway.

  Violante was sitting in the window seat, her back against an embroidered cushion to stave off the cold of the stone. The late afternoon sunshine gilded her hair and outlined the curve of her cheek. She was looking down on Sir Richard Glanville, who knelt at her feet and was holding one hand in a gentle caress. Chaucer was glad to see that her faint smile did seem to have some love in it; though he could never see them as a happy couple wandering off into the sunset, he didn’t want his old friend’s heart to be broken.

  The lady looked up and, seeing Chaucer, disentangled her hand from the knight’s grasp and held it out to him. She and Chaucer both tactfully looked away as Glanville regained his feet; it wasn’t as quick and lissom a task as it once had been.

  ‘Master Chaucer. Thank you for coming. Sir Richard has just been telling me what … what you found. It must have been most unpleasant for you both.’

  ‘But far more unpleasant for Father Clement,’ Chaucer pointed out. ‘We’re sorry to bring such grim news.’ He looked at Glanville, who had now taken the other end of the seat and was surreptitiously massaging his knees. ‘I must tell you both, I have had it suggested to me that he may have taken his own life.’

  Violante was immediate in her protestations. ‘Father Clement! He simply wouldn’t do anything so wicked. He was the most devout man I have ever known, and, don’t forget, I have spent many years in Rome, surrounded every day by the most senior men of the Church.’

  Chaucer was not impressed. In his experience, the more senior, the less devout, but he let her make her point.

  ‘He was absolutely,’ she stabbed at the cushion with a finger, ‘but absolutely set against anything which was not in the teaching of the Church. He was …’ she dropped her eyes for a moment, to collect herself. ‘He was so angry with Lionel when he took up with Blanche. He argued with him all the time. Lionel was going to be rid of him, I could tell. I had used all my wiles to protect him, but’ – she threw out her arms in a very Italian gesture – ‘I don’t think, in the end, I could have prevailed.’

  Chaucer jumped in quickly, to try and clear up something which had puzzled him all along. ‘Did you not mind about Blanche?’ he asked, keeping his voice flat and inflection-free. He didn’t want to seem to be in one camp or another.

  She smiled at him and reached out again to briefly hold his hand. ‘Master Chaucer, you are kind to be so gentle in your question. Many people have been far more blunt, my brother among them. No, I did not mind. Blanche – whatever she and her vile father thought – was a passing fancy of an old man. Lionel was not what he was, Master Chaucer. His … shall we call them glory days … were behind him by many a year. But now and again, he wanted to relive them and, to that end, Blanche served her purpose. He didn’t want to fail with me. But to fail with some girl he plucked from relative obscurity – that he didn’t mind. She should be grateful, he told me, to be chosen at all.’

  ‘So Blanche’s stories of—’

  Violante laughed aloud. ‘Are stories, yes. Perhaps, once in a while, Lionel would have pawed her for a bit before he slept, full of wine. But for the rest, he was just happy to have the stories of beautiful girls creeping into his room go round. If he could still do that, then he could still do everything. Vedete? Do you see?’

  ‘Did Blanche know that? That she was his … I don’t know what to call her.’ Chaucer, man of many words, was stumped.

  ‘I don’t know and, Master Chaucer, I am bound to say I don’t care. As Sir Richard will attest, there have been many women in my husband’s life. I myself, before we were married, was invited to his bed.’ She smiled. ‘There is no need to look shy, Master Chaucer. Of course I said yes. My husband was, and remained, a very attractive and persuasive man.’ She looked at Glanville particularly. She knew that of all the people on earth, next to her, he knew Lionel of Antwerp best.

  ‘How did we get on to this?’ Glanville barked. ‘We’re here because the priest is dead.’

  ‘True,’ Chaucer said. He pulled up a stool and sat down, so he could see the others better. Standing and looking down he had felt like a schoolboy again, called to the dominus’s room for a thrashing. ‘So,
if felo de se is not a consideration, we must think of who may have done the deed.’

  ‘Could it have been accidental?’ Violante said.

  ‘Hardly,’ Chaucer said. ‘Unless … did Father Clement ever prepare his own food?’

  Violante chuckled. ‘Dear me, no. Father Clement was many things, but I don’t think you could call him humble. He loved to be waited on.’

  ‘So he never ate food made for him alone?’

  ‘No, just what we all ate. Well, not necessarily me. I sometimes prefer something other than is eaten at table. He would join me then, sometimes. But if he wasn’t sharing with everyone, he was sharing with me.’

  ‘So …’ Glanville said. ‘We can sum it up like this. He didn’t do it himself. It wasn’t an accident. So … it had to be …’ He looked at Chaucer, not wanting to say the word himself.

  Chaucer had no such qualms. ‘Murder,’ he said.

  After that, there seemed little to add. Someone, someone enjoying the comforts of Clare, was killing people and, clearly, that had to stop. As always, when two or three are gathered together, there were five options of how to proceed. Chaucer bowed to local knowledge. There was only one thing for it, Richard Glanville said. The Lady Violante concurred. Hugh was brought in to add the freshness of youth and they all said the same thing. If Chaucer was right about this poison business, it had to be Alban the apothecary. Left off Callis Street, up the hill to where the old gibbet had stood and left again. Alban had an appropriate sign swaying in the least breeze over his shop, a glass phial filled with golden liquid which he refilled from time to time. You couldn’t miss it. But better leave it until tomorrow, was everybody’s advice. Although Alban was, of course, very respectable, perhaps his shop was not in what might be called the best part of the town.

  Actually, Chaucer could miss it. And did. Twice. Friday was market day in the town of Clare and half Suffolk seemed to be there. The comptroller turned down the domain bread, tempting though it was, and remained unmoved by the country ale. He did nibble the cheese and patted the head of the little lad hawking fish outside the guildhall. Briefly he caught sight of Nicholas Straits, the dyer, looking terribly important in his civic robes and hobnobbing with the great and good.

  Alban’s premises were squeezed between a butcher’s and a spice shop, so the smells that hit Chaucer’s nostrils wrestled with each other before he even opened the door. An unshaven lad was sitting to the comptroller’s right, cross-legged on a joint-stool. He was pounding away with a pestle, grinding something unspeakable into the mortar.

  ‘Alban the apothecary?’ Chaucer asked breezily. After all, he needed a favour from this man and he knew from experience that apothecaries and favours went together like chalk and cheese.

  The lad stopped pestling and scowled up at him. Then he jerked his thumb towards a counter that ran the length of the shop. A head popped up, long-haired and beaver-hatted; business must be looking up.

  ‘Alban the apothecary?’ Chaucer tried again.

  ‘The very same, sir,’ the man said. ‘Roll up your sleeve, would you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your sleeve,’ Alban blinked. Surely, this man had to have been to an apothecary before; he had to be the wrong side of sixty. ‘You are here to be bled?’

  Chaucer felt himself turn pale. ‘Good God, no,’ he said, keeping his sleeve firmly down around his wrists. ‘I came for some advice.’

  ‘Ah,’ Alban smiled and tapped the side of his nose. ‘Cupid’s measles, eh?’ he winked. ‘Quicksilver’ll do the trick. Mind you, it’s not cheap.’ He was scanning the shelves of phials, pots and containers behind him. ‘Roger, where’s the quicksilver?’

  ‘Out,’ the pestler informed him with all the grace and finesse of a sledgehammer.

  ‘Till when?’ Alban asked.

  ‘Week next Thursday,’ Roger told him. ‘It don’t grow on trees, you know.’

  Chaucer was impressed; clearly, the apprentice was learning fast.

  ‘Sorry, sir.’ Alban spread his arms. ‘Had a bit of a run on that particular product. Lent, you see.’

  Chaucer had always assumed that Lent was a time of forbearance, in all things, so that should make quicksilver less in demand, surely, not more.

  ‘However,’ Alban was not a man to be deterred, ‘if you’d care to leave a deposit, I’ll put your name down and if you come back week Thursday …’

  ‘No, my good man.’ Even a Comptroller of Woollens has an end to his tether. ‘I did not come to let blood or to be cured of an ailment I do not have …’ He was touching the apothecary’s wood as he spoke. ‘I came for a consultation.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ From the look on Alban’s face, this was not a frequent request. ‘Well, then … what seems to be the trouble?’

  ‘In private, if you please,’ Chaucer jerked his head in the direction of Roger, whose ears were decidedly pricked.

  ‘Very well.’ Alban ushered his client into a back room, behind a curtain embroidered with signs of the zodiac. The walls here were covered in rows of shelves. There were more phials of garish liquids, with Latin and Greek names painted on them and ancient tomes bound in long-dead calfskin. Alban ushered Chaucer to a seat and took his place behind a low table on which an astrolabe, chased in gilt and silver, had pride of place. It caught Chaucer’s eye at once.

  ‘I see you’ve spotted my little piece of nonsense,’ Alban beamed. ‘It’s a conversation piece, nothing more.’

  ‘An astrolabe,’ Chaucer nodded. ‘I haven’t seen one outside the port of Deptford. No, I tell a lie, I saw one once in Plymouth. Fascinating.’

  ‘How so?’ the apothecary asked.

  ‘Well,’ Chaucer wondered if this was some sort of test. ‘It takes altitudes,’ he said, ‘marks positions and movements of the sun, moon and stars.’

  Alban burst out laughing. ‘Oh, come now, sir. You can’t believe that nonsense.’

  Chaucer was flabbergasted. ‘Well, the Greeks and Arabs …’

  ‘The Greeks,’ Alban told him patiently, ‘were rather a long time ago, you’ll agree.’

  ‘I …’

  ‘As for the Arabs, you do know about the crusades, do you? You know, holy war for hundreds of years? No, we can’t learn anything from them. I keep this here as a reminder of man’s folly.’

  ‘Then, I fear we have wasted each other’s time,’ Chaucer was on his feet. ‘Good morning, sir.’

  ‘You were born in the sign of the Ram,’ Alban suddenly said, pointing at Chaucer.

  ‘Er …’

  ‘The Heavens are better aligned than you know.’ The apothecary stood up too. ‘Give me your hand,’ he said.

  Despite himself, the comptroller held it out. Alban took it, noting its firmness and the bruises still on the knuckles. ‘Smooth,’ he said, ‘plain and without hair.’ He peered at Chaucer’s beard and moustache. ‘Short,’ he concluded, ‘fat …’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Large, then,’ Alban said quickly. ‘Yes, large is a more accurate word. Your dullness of countenance is balanced by phlegm. Take care with that – it can affect the heart. Tell me, do you fall over a lot?’

  ‘Hardly ever,’ Chaucer said.

  ‘Good, good.’ Alban had relaxed his grip. ‘Phlegm and blood. That’s probably the best combination. A mix of cold and hot humours, but definitely moist. The moon and Venus contend for your soul, sir.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for it,’ Chaucer said.

  ‘Oh, not mine,’ Alban said and reached a dusty volume down from a shelf. ‘Bartolomeus Anglicus.’ He slapped the leather cover. ‘It’s all in here. Hot off the quill.’

  ‘Fascinating.’ Chaucer was nearly at the door.

  ‘You came to find out what killed His Grace the Duke of Clarence,’ Alban said.

  Chaucer spun to face him. ‘How did you know that?’

  Alban chuckled. ‘I’d be a fine apothecary if I didn’t, Master Chaucer.’

  The comptroller sat down again, his mouth open, his gr
ey eyes fixed on Alban. ‘Assume I have,’ he said, ‘and that I am Chaucer. Can you help?’

  Alban looked to right and left. ‘I was at the funeral, of course,’ he said, ‘but more importantly, I came to pay my respects the day after His Grace died.’

  Chaucer rattled through the days in his head. Hugh Glanville had been on his way to find him at the Aldgate then; Alban had seen a fresher corpse than the comptroller had.

  ‘He looked peaceful,’ the apothecary remembered. ‘Of course, I am not a doctor of physick,’ he almost apologized.

  ‘I wouldn’t be here if you were,’ Chaucer said. ‘Overrated as a profession, in my opinion.’

  ‘Amen to that, brother,’ Alban said. ‘In London, of course, I could be earning six pounds a year.’ He was glancing in an interested way at Chaucer’s purse.

  ‘Make that four pounds,’ the comptroller corrected him, ‘And Clare isn’t London.’

  ‘Even so,’ Alban was unfazed, ‘a man has to live. Then there’s my lad, Roger …’

  Chaucer fished out a coin that glinted in the light of Alban’s candles.

  Alban received it gratefully. ‘I did smell mice, of course.’

  ‘Mice?’ Chaucer could play the ingénu until the cows came home.

  ‘Oh, I know what you’re thinking,’ the apothecary said, which Chaucer seriously doubted. ‘Mice and chapels go hand in glove, don’t they? As indeed do mice and most buildings. But this isn’t just pure mouse. To trained nostrils such as mine, there’s something else.’

  ‘There is?’ Chaucer knew exactly where this was going.

  ‘It’s hemlock,’ the apothecary said. ‘Some call it poison parsley. Technically, it’s Conium maculatum. Pretty plant. You’ll find it in Lady Violante’s garden up at the castle. Not in bloom as yet, I wouldn’t think, though it has been unseasonably warm. You’ll also find it in several groves in the countryside about. The roots look like horseradish – that’s how I know His Grace was of the choleric humour; leeks, garlic, radishes – anything like that is fatal.’