The Knight's Tale

by M. J. Trow

  ‘Do all the guilds take part?’

  ‘They do,’ the carpenter said, ‘each according to their calling. The castle comes alive then, with torches and flames, drums and tabours. Clare sees nothing like it from one year to the next.’

  ‘And Master Whitlow?’ Chaucer leaned back, smiling. ‘What part of the Bible story does a haberdasher play?’

  Ifaywer sniggered. ‘With all that swish and tit up at the castle on Pageant Nights, rest assured that Bob Whitlow’ll have his hands full, all right, even if Susanna doesn’t come across.’

  And that went almost without saying.

  TEN

  Chaucer had never been comfortable even staying with friends. He always felt that it wasn’t polite to open a drawer or a press, in case he found something untoward which would make things awkward the next time he saw his host. He had actually once found something in a guest room in Bodiam which could make him blush to this very day. But someone had to look through the room of the late chantry priest, and when he had raised this with Glanville, Violante and Hugh, somehow, they all had more important things to do. The women of the laundry had wrapped the body in the cleanest linen they could produce, with rosemary between each layer, and it had been sent off, tied to a board, in the family’s coach, drawn by a matched pair of black horses, back to the house he had been born in, to parents who never thought they would have to bury their son.

  So, here Chaucer was. As he had expected, the priest’s room was simplicity itself. There were none of the rich hangings with which the rest of the castle was furnished, and the floor was swept clean, with no rushes or even straw. There was a stool by the bed, which held a candle stub, stuck to it by the ghostly wax of its predecessors. One spare habit hung on a hook behind the door, complete with hair shirt lining, a pair of sandals beneath it as though waiting for an owner they would never see again. The walls were plain whitewash, a wooden crucifix above the bed. Even this was as plain as it could be, with no ivory Christ adorning its stark lines.

  It was hard to see in this spartan place where anything could be hidden. Chaucer stood in the middle of the floor and turned by degrees so he had scanned everything from as big a distance as was possible in that tiny space. He was never more than six feet away from anything and even his shortening sight was comfortable with that. He tentatively felt all down the robe and there was nothing, not even a thickened seam or hem that could hide a note or coins. The sandals were worn almost through, so there was no room in the thickness of the sole for anything untoward. The underside of the stool was innocent of any paper stuck there and, when Chaucer bent down with some effort to look under the bed, there was nothing between the mattress and the stringing.

  The comptroller sighed. He and Glanville had hoped that he would find something that might give a clue, however slight, to whoever had killed him and thus, hopefully, to whoever had killed Lionel of Antwerp. Chaucer was worried about the violence of Clement’s death. Why, when hemlock was not usually known to cause anything other than a peaceful but permanent sleep, could that have happened? But until they found the murderer, unless he – or, at a pinch, she – talked, that would remain a mystery for ever.

  With a sigh, Chaucer plumped himself down on the bed. The first thing that surprised him was that it wasn’t a straw pallet as expected, but soft goose down. So the Father was not quite the ascetic he tried to appear. The second thing was that it crackled. Goose down, apart from its heavenly softness, was known to give a silent night’s rest. Straw rustled and crackled all night long; Chaucer was not a rich man by Lionel’s standards, but it was goose down for him or nothing. And he had never heard it sound like this before.

  He got up and felt carefully along the length of the mattress. About a third of the way up from the foot, the crackle was most pronounced, and he stripped off the simple coverlet. Nothing there. He probed more carefully and found a cleverly concealed pocket and, in it, a sheaf of papers, wrapped around a simple vest. Taking the papers over to the window he began to read. Clement’s writing was clear; too clear, in Chaucer’s opinion, after he had read the first few lines. Blanche’s guess that he had … Chaucer decided to call it ‘feelings’ … for one of the serving boys was spelled out in intimate detail; all in Church Latin, of course. Chaucer was a married man, indeed, a married man of the world, but even so, he blushed to read what Clement had written. Apparently, the folded vest belonged to the lad and Clement kept it by him for …

  Chaucer folded the papers up and thrust them into his purse. He would have to share this with Richard Glanville, though he didn’t want to. His old friend had a heart as big as the great outdoors, he would defend the weak and defenceless till he had no strength left in his body, but he had little knowledge of the sins to which a man could sink. It seemed odd to call a man who had lopped off heads without a qualm innocent, but it was the only word for Richard Glanville. Chaucer sighed. Sometimes, even he, a Londoner, who saw things out of his very window which would make a strong man blanch, was overwhelmed by what his kind could do. The only slight ray of light in the whole dark business was a small, scrawled note from the lad, who seemed to return Clement’s love. But that was still no excuse and it was clear that, even as he stood in the bare little cell, Clement was burning many miles below his feet in the hottest fire Hell had to offer.

  Chaucer remade the bed and opened the door carefully, looking right and left before he slipped out, closing it silently behind him. He leaned against the wall for a moment, regaining such composure as he could. He tried to hear the jingling bridles, the birdsong and the merry chatter of pilgrims on the road to Canterbury; his happy place. But it was drowned out by the sound of the blood pounding in his ears, the sound of dark deeds done in broad daylight.

  And it was still broad daylight when Richard Glanville flagged the comptroller down. He beckoned Chaucer into the stables. No one tended to his horses but Glanville himself and here he was, in leather apron and shirt sleeves, sponging the nostrils of his chargers.

  ‘Well?’ the knight asked, kneeling now to trim the hair around the bay’s feet. ‘Anything?’

  ‘Sorry?’ Chaucer was scanning the stable for any sign of lads. Grooms were believed by many of the nobility and gentry to be deaf and dumb, but Chaucer knew differently.

  Glanville stood up, closing to his friend, bringing wafts of horse liniment with him. ‘The priest, man,’ he hissed out of the corner of his mouth. ‘Father Clement’s chamber.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ For a man of words, Chaucer was infuriatingly reticent.

  Glanville’s face said it all. ‘You don’t know, Geoff?’ He blinked. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘I mean, I do know, but I need time to weigh it all up. By the way, did you know that John Hawkwood was here last Christmas?’

  ‘Hawkwood?’ Glanville was looking for his curry comb. ‘Christmas?’

  Chaucer nodded.

  ‘No.’ Glanville was certain. ‘I’d have seen him.’

  ‘Not if he didn’t want to be seen.’

  ‘Let’s ask him.’ The knight was already undoing his apron strings.

  ‘No,’ Chaucer said. ‘No offence, Richard, but this is one I think I’ll do alone.’

  Of all the nights for John Hawkwood not to be at dinner, this was the most annoying. The man had been out and about in darkest Suffolk looking for his likely lads, but his horse was back in the stables by that Friday, so he couldn’t be far away.

  So the Oxenford Tower it had to be. All the way up the stairs, Chaucer kept telling himself that this was pointless. So what if John Hawkwood had stayed at Clare at Christmas; what had that to do with the deaths of Lionel of Antwerp and his confessor? The mercenary was hardly the garrulous type; he wasn’t likely to have said, ‘Didn’t I mention, Chaucer, that I was here at Yuletide?’ Chaucer was mimicking the man in his head, but even in that enclosed space, it wasn’t very convincing.

  There was a pearly glaze in the night sky as the days had lengthened and a pale glow filte
red through the arrow slits onto the spiralled stones. Hawkwood’s door was at the far end of a long passageway and Chaucer half-expected him to have a couple of guards flanking the oak. Instead, the door was open just a crack, and candlelight shone through onto the flagstones. The sound of a lute came through and Chaucer found himself smiling. Who knew that a man so handy with a knife, a man who butchered people for a living, was also a soft tunesmith? It was a melody Chaucer knew, too, a love song which had been one of his Pippa’s favourites, back in the day.

  He knocked on the door. There was no response. The lute played on regardless. Perhaps Hawkwood had not heard, lost in some reverie to the music. Chaucer tried again, louder this time. Nothing. So the comptroller pushed the door open. The lute stopped, suddenly and with a jarring screech, and there was a hiss and a thud. A crossbow bolt had pinned Chaucer’s houppelande sleeve to the open door and had taken the comptroller with it. However hard he tried, Chaucer couldn’t pull it out.

  ‘Mother of God!’ he screamed at Hawkwood. ‘You nearly killed me!’

  The mercenary crossed the room in what seemed like a single stride and looked at the bolt embedded in the oak. ‘It missed your arm by three … no, four inches, Chaucer. Even had it been closer, the most you’d have got would be a scratch. You’d have been very unlucky to have died from that.’ He yanked the bolt free with one hand and pushed Chaucer into the middle of the room. ‘What can I do for you?’ he asked.

  The comptroller stood quaking, not sure whether he could control his voice. Managing his bowels had just about exhausted him for now. ‘I heard a lute,’ he croaked.

  Hawkwood chuckled. It sounded like pebbles thrown onto a coffin. ‘Not exactly,’ he said and pointed to a frame in the corner of the room. It looked like an upright loom, but its warp threads were at once the strings of a lute and the cord of a bow, its crosspiece still quivering slightly with the slam of the shot. ‘I can’t play a note myself,’ Hawkwood went on, replacing the bolt in its groove, ‘but the man who made this for me can. Or could,’ he looked levelly at Chaucer. ‘He’s dead now.’

  ‘What is it?’ Chaucer approached as close as he dared, keeping out of the arrow’s line.

  ‘A companion of a mile,’ Hawkwood told him. ‘I picked it up in Italy. Clever fellows, the Italians, eh, Chaucer? You’ll have noticed that on your mission to Milan.’

  Chaucer stared blankly back. Playing the idiot was probably the best defence with this man. Then, he cracked. ‘About that,’ he said.

  ‘You didn’t go, did you?’ Hawkwood looked at him through knowing eyes. ‘I’m guessing you didn’t get much further east than Deptford.’

  ‘I’ll have you know I got to Thanet,’ Chaucer countered. A Comptroller of Woollens has his pride, after all. ‘There were tidal issues and the inn they put us up in was very comfortable. So …’

  ‘So you lied to John of Gaunt,’ Hawkwood finished the sentence for him.

  ‘Well, I …’

  Hawkwood shook his head, a glimmer of a smile on his lips. ‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘I didn’t go either. Now, about my gadget – you wind this turnkey,’ Hawkwood suited his actions to his words, ‘and lo …’ little wooden fingers clicked into place, flicking the warp of the frame. ‘It only plays one tune,’ he said, ‘but it works. It lulled you, didn’t it? You thought I was sitting, engrossed in my music, perhaps even with my back to the door. Instead of which,’ Hawkwood moved Chaucer aside and flicked a switch. There was the screech again and the bowstring jerked back to send the bolt hissing across the room to bite into the door again. Chaucer jumped.

  ‘See,’ Hawkwood retrieved the arrow once more. ‘I’d adjusted it that time.’ He tapped the hole the iron bolt had made. ‘That would have been your head. Now,’ he put the bolt back again, ‘enough of this tomfoolery. I can’t go on making holes in Lionel of Antwerp’s woodwork. What do you want?’

  ‘To know how His Grace died,’ Chaucer said.

  Hawkwood poured some wine into two goblets and ushered his nervous guest to a chair. When he hesitated, Hawkwood put the goblets down. ‘I have no more murderous devices, Master Chaucer,’ he said. ‘There is no sudden poignard that will split your arse when you sit down.’ He took a sip from both goblets. ‘And there is no poison in the wine.’

  Chaucer was grateful to hear all that, but even so, he sat down gingerly. ‘You were here at Christmas,’ he said, accepting Hawkwood’s cup.

  ‘Was I?’ the mercenary asked. ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Butterfield.’ Chaucer saw no need to implicate the guildsman at this stage.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. When you arrived for His Grace’s funeral, it was clear that you and he knew each other. Although no one else seemed to have seen you here before.’

  Hawkwood was secretly impressed. ‘Very perspicacious, Master Chaucer,’ he said, sitting opposite his man. ‘But one other saw me. He was in disguise as the Lord of Misrule at the time, but I believe he is a carpenter called Ifaywer. That’s the only way you would know it was specifically Yuletide.’ He sipped his drink and looked at Chaucer over the rim of his cup. ‘You don’t have to worry,’ he said. ‘I won’t hurt him.’ He smiled his usual basilisk smile and Chaucer was none the wiser whether he meant that or not.

  Chaucer’s mouth hung open. In his heart of hearts, he had always considered himself the cleverest man he knew, but John Hawkwood could leave him standing. And he knew how to kill people. ‘Do you deny you were here?’ the comptroller asked.

  ‘Of course not,’ Hawkwood shrugged. ‘Why would I?’

  ‘Why were you here?’ Chaucer asked him. ‘And why keep your visit so secret?’

  ‘That’s my business,’ Hawkwood snapped.

  ‘Not if it involves the murder of Lionel of Antwerp,’ the comptroller snapped back.

  ‘You think it’s murder?’ The mercenary put down his goblet.

  ‘Don’t you?’

  Hawkwood shrugged. ‘I’m not so sure,’ he said. ‘The priest, now … yes, that was murder all right. But then, the priest had a murkiness about him – nothing would surprise me there.’

  ‘Why did you come to Clare at Christmas?’ Chaucer persisted. He had lost count of the ways that Hawkwood could kill him if he chose, but, be that as it may, he had to know the truth.

  Hawkwood sighed. This plump little quill-pusher was like a leech, refusing to be shaken off. ‘Christmas had nothing to do with it. In fact, ever since the Pope excommunicated me and my entire company, I don’t even pay lip service to holy days any more.’

  Chaucer toyed with crossing himself but thought better of it; the mercenary had nearly killed him moments ago – what would he do if his blood was up?

  ‘All right,’ Hawkwood said, taking up his goblet again, ‘I’ll tell you. It hardly matters now anyway. You fought alongside Lionel, didn’t you? Back in the day?’

  ‘Under, rather than alongside,’ Chaucer chuckled. ‘And that was twenty years ago. I was a child.’

  ‘Well, I fought alongside him last year. And I was a man. I won’t bore you with my war stories, Chaucer, but let’s say I had a bit of bad luck. You’ve only had your sleeve torn by one of those.’ He pointed to the crossbow bolt. ‘I had my shoulder drilled.’

  Chaucer winced at the prospect.

  ‘Usual thing,’ Hawkwood went on. ‘Dirty bandages, gangrene. I went down with the mother of all infections and I had to leave my company under Lionel’s command. This was in Tuscany, arse end of 1378. The stupid bastard got himself cut off, somewhere near San Gimignano. Half the Company were wiped out. I blamed Lionel.’

  ‘So you came to have it out with him?’

  ‘I did,’ Hawkwood said. ‘I tried to find him in Italy, but by the time I was well enough to travel, he’d already gone home. So by the time I got here, I was spitting feathers, I can tell you.’ Hawkwood looked at Chaucer. ‘And you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry,’ he said. ‘That arsehole Butterfield told me His Grace was indisposed. Actually, of course, he wa
s making the beast with two backs with that little trollop Blanche. It wasn’t my finest hour, Chaucer, but I went to Violante – well, she is my sister-in-law, albeit on the wrong side of the blanket. I told her just what I thought of her bloody husband – and I threw in the fact that he’d killed her father, just for good measure.’

  Chaucer was pulled up sharp. ‘He had?’

  ‘No, as it happened. A misunderstanding, but at the time I didn’t know that.’

  ‘How did she take it?’ Chaucer asked.

  ‘Like an Italian woman – and I should know, I married one. She threw furniture around and smashed windows. All very predictable, really. The brother just stood there, like a rabbit with a stoat; he had never seen her so angry before. She spoils him – he’ll never amount to anything. Too much like his father. It didn’t take a man like Lionel of Antwerp to put the old bastard away – and he was so dishonest, it could have been any man in the town. I was wrong to tell her something I wasn’t sure about, but I was angry.’ He spread his hands as if that explained it all.

  ‘And did you find Lionel?’

  ‘The next day, yes. That idiot carpenter bumped into me on my way to his quarters and, by this time, I’d cooled down. Revenge, they say, is a dish best served cold. I barged into the old man’s room and kicked him out of bed. Then I put my poignard to his throat and we had a frank exchange of views.’

  ‘And Blanche?’

  ‘Gone by that time,’ Hawkwood said. ‘I understand she was rather good at creeping around the castle in the wee small hours; goes with the territory, I suppose, of being a mistress, I mean. I wouldn’t know. Never been one. Never had one, though don’t tell anyone; I have my reputation to consider.’

  ‘What did Lionel say?’ Chaucer was all ears.

  Hawkwood sighed. ‘He told me what I believe was the truth. It was all down to an ally of ours – Marco Blanco, Count of Perugia. He sold us out to the enemy and Lionel was lucky to escape with his life.’