by M. J. Trow
‘And,’ the knight placed a gentle fist on his son’s smooth chin, ‘old greybeard, what did you learn?’
‘Nothing,’ the squire had to confess.
‘Ah!’
‘I eased the conversation round to His Grace and to John Hawkwood and he didn’t bite. I tried the Lady Violante, you know, wishing I’d had a big sister like her, that sort of thing. I even said how sorry I felt for him that he had lost his father and asked him outright who he thought might be responsible for that.’
‘And?’ Chaucer said.
‘Nothing, again. By this time, of course, he was crying like a baby.’
‘Romonye will do that,’ Glanville nodded, looking at Chaucer with a reminiscent smile which the comptroller chose to ignore.
‘So will guilt,’ Chaucer commented. ‘So, the upshot is, we don’t know what Giovanni’s attitude to Lionel was.’
The squire shrugged.
‘Don’t blame yourself, Hugh,’ the comptroller said. ‘In my experience, a murderer only confesses to two people – his priest and his torturer. And I don’t suppose we’re any of us in a position to use the red-hot pincers?’
The others shook their heads.
‘As for the priest,’ Chaucer sighed, ‘is that why Clement had to die? For what he knew? For what Giovanni, in a moment of guilt, had told him?’
‘Does he have any knowledge of poisons, though?’ Glanville asked. He and Chaucer looked at Hugh.
‘We didn’t get on to that,’ the squire said. ‘Drunk or not, it’s not an easy subject to bring up.’ He looked thoughtful. ‘Particularly when you’re drinking, come to think of it.’
‘It’s not usual,’ the comptroller was thinking aloud. ‘Members of the nobility aren’t often, in my experience, of the Scientia persuasion. And with the best will in the world, you can’t accuse the lad of having any brain.’
‘But he is Italian,’ Hugh ventured.
‘True.’ Chaucer nodded.
‘Stilettos,’ the knight muttered. ‘Your Italian uses stilettos, poignards sharper than ours. Remember, Geoffrey, the smiler with the knife.’
‘How could I forget?’ the comptroller said. In his heart of hearts, the poet in him was pleased that his phrases were known and remembered the length and breadth of Suffolk, but this phrase was different. It implied that he, Geoffrey Chaucer, could get results. And so far, he had precisely nothing. ‘We’ll have to watch him,’ he said at last. ‘I can’t get this Hawkwood story out of my head. The boy heard him tell Violante that Lionel had killed his father. There’s a code, isn’t there? In Italy, I mean? Some family thing.’
‘Blood’s thicker than water,’ Glanville shrugged.
‘Yes, but there’s more to it than that. It’s a blood-feud thing. We used to have it in this country before the Conquest. Ethelnoth kills Eadwald. Egbert kills Ethelnoth. Eosterwine kills—’
‘You’re making this up,’ the knight grumbled.
‘I most certainly am not,’ Chaucer told him. ‘My grasp of Old English is second only to my grasp of Middle English. I have written poetry, you know!’
There was a silence. It wasn’t often the comptroller got on his high horse about literature, but woe betide his audience when he did. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Just making a point.’
There was another silence.
‘So, what do we do?’ Glanville asked. ‘Follow Giovanni?’
‘For a while, yes,’ Chaucer said. ‘Unless and until anything else breaks. We’ve had two deaths as it is – three, if you include the oaf John Hawkwood dispatched. Can we risk another?’
‘I think you can best answer that, Geoff,’ Glanville said.
‘Me? Why?’
‘It must be common knowledge by now why you’re here,’ the knight said quietly, checking the crenellations for eavesdroppers. ‘And can I remind you about the Lion Tower incident?’
‘I’d very much rather you didn’t, Richard,’ Chaucer said, but he took the knight’s point absolutely. All those locked doors and roped-off stairways. Was that someone’s way of telling Geoffrey Chaucer to keep his nose out of somebody else’s business? Or was it someone’s attempt to kill him?
TWELVE
The priest of St Peter and St Paul was of the old school. A man of certain years, he had watched, as his tonsure greyed and his rheumatism get worse, the world around him fall apart. In his youth, as he took his vows, the Lord had sent the Pestilence, to vent His wrath and purge the world of its undesirables. Miserable, wild and violent, the worst people alone had survived to bear witness. Had something gone wrong with the Lord’s plan? It was not the priest’s place even to raise the question. He would leave that sort of thing to the heretic Wycliffe and his Lollards. And they, assuredly, were not the work of the Lord. Lollardy was the creation of Satan and he walked the earth. The priest had seen him once, all fire and cloven hoofs, striding through the churchyard in search of souls to torment. The man of God had confronted him, holding the crucifix to his face, but the Devil had laughed at him and had run away, unafraid, unashamed. What was the world coming to?
So, yet again, as he did every year, the priest of St Peter and St Paul dipped his quill into his ink and wrote his annual letter. This time, it could not be to His Grace Lionel of Antwerp, the Duke of Clarence, because the Lord had taken him to His bosom. So he wrote to the Lady Violante instead.
The Lady Violante broke the priest’s seal and unrolled the parchment. She clicked her tongue and shook her head. ‘You’d really think,’ she said, ‘that this year, of all years, the man would give his rants a rest.’
She passed the letter to Richard Glanville, standing next to her in the great hall at Clare. Now that Lionel of Antwerp was no more, his widow, still in her black weeds, was carrying out as much business of the estate as she could. Dealing with turbulent priests was just a small part of it. Glanville was about to tear it up, but Violante stopped him.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Show it to Master Chaucer; he might find it amusing.’
Glanville did as he was told and the comptroller ran his eyes down the page.
‘Read it out, Master Chaucer,’ Violante said. ‘I’d welcome your views.’
‘“April Fool’s Day is bad enough”,’ Chaucer read, ‘“with the world turned upside down. Did you know, my lady, that in French universities, the scholars teach the Fellows on that day? The young rule the old. The lowest riff-raff is served at table before his betters. Those who can write, do so backwards, to be read in mirrors. Even, and I blush to think of it, some priests say the Holy Mass backwards.”’ He paused.
‘Well, Master Chaucer?’ There was a smile on Violante’s lovely face.
‘I know priests who cannot say it forwards, my lady,’ he said, ‘and as for writing backwards, I really must try that.’
‘Read on,’ Violante said.
Chaucer cleared his throat. ‘“May I remind you, my lady, that the first pageant this year is to celebrate the feasts of St Philip and St James. It happens to fall on May Day, as always, but I hope we will not see, as we did last year, a maypole erected on Clare Green” …’
‘Butterfield?’ Violante turned to her English seneschal.
‘Already erected, my lady,’ he said. ‘In the coloured ribbons of His Grace, as per usual.’
Violante nodded and Chaucer went on. ‘“As the maypole is” …’ his voice tailed away.
Violante burst out laughing despite her black robes. ‘Say on, Master Chaucer. I have heard all this before.’
Chaucer cleared his throat again. ‘“As the maypole is the member of the Devil and those who dance around it are fornicators and adulterers.”’
‘Quite,’ Violante chuckled. ‘Butterfield, are the nuns of the priory to dance this year?’
‘They are, my lady,’ Butterfield beamed. The seneschal was not a man of many amusements, but seeing the priest’s face as the sisters pulled on their ribbons was one that he particularly looked forward to.
‘Master Chaucer,’ Violante nodded and
the comptroller read on.
‘“There must be no green boughs on doors, for green is the colour of evil.”’
Violante turned to Ferrante, her Italian seneschal. ‘Is that true?’ she asked him.
‘Black in Italia, donna bella,’ he told her.
‘I thought so.’ She waved Chaucer to continue.
‘“No one should be eating those disgusting biscuits called Jack-in-the-Greens.”’
Violante turned to Ferrante again.
‘Not in my kitchen, donna bella,’ he assured her.
‘They shall be in mine!’ Butterfield bellowed, and the two men glared at each other over Violante’s head.
‘“Running races,”’ the priest, via Chaucer, ranted on, ‘“hurtling to Hell with bare feet. Rolling hoops, the circles of Hell” …’
Violante held up her hand. ‘Thank you, Master Chaucer. We’ve heard enough.’ She stood up and moved to the supplicants in the hall, who rose with her. ‘We’ll hear the rest after dinner,’ she said. Then, in a loud voice, ‘The feasts of St Philip and St James,’ she announced proudly, ‘will merge with the Clare pageant. There will be the mystery plays and the mummings, the guisings, music and dancing.’ Her voice dropped a little. ‘We have need of that.’ She half-turned in the doorway below the dais. ‘And of course,’ she said, ‘we’ll have the maypole. And I’ll race everybody to it.’
Cheers and laughter filled the hall.
The bells. Why did everything have to begin with bells? Having lived over the Aldgate for ever, Chaucer should have been used to them, but it hadn’t happened yet. Some men, men like Chaucer, of the poetic persuasion, rejoiced in the sound of birdsong in the morning, as the sun warmed the earth and the search for worms and grubs began. But Chaucer himself was oblivious to that; the London cocksparrows were made mute by the cacophony of brass. On such a morning, the whole air seemed alive with joy and it seemed wrong that two men lay dead by the hand of another. Perhaps, before May Day became merely another spring day, they would have laid that other by the heels.
The priory of Clare clanged first, then the peal of St Peter and St Paul, followed by the other half-dozen churches in the town. It was, after all, the Feast of St Philip and St James and the Church held priority over all that. But the cities of God were not going to have it all their own way. As Chaucer took up his position on the crenellations of the Auditor’s Tower, he could hear the boatmen on the Stour calling to each other and he could see the bunting and the banners being stretched from prow to prow. He heard the thump of the dancing drums and the whinny of horses, mingling now with the deep lowing of the oxen; heavy, melancholy beasts whose shaggy heads were plaited this morning with flowers and garlands.
From somewhere in the tiny tangle of streets, a solitary rattle hissed about the thatch of the roofs and a single voice sang out: ‘Oh, it is the First of May, oh, it is the First of May. Remember, Lords and Ladies, it is the First of May.’
The lords and ladies were not abroad as early as this. The mist had not yet left the river and the sun had yet to clear the great elms that stood sentinel along the Stour.
Chaucer turned at the arrival of Richard Glanville. ‘Any sign?’ he asked.
The knight was dressed for a feast day, without his telltale heraldry, so that he could blend with the crowd. His liripipe was scarlet and his tired old houppelande had been replaced by a dashing doublet of silk and taffeta which had clearly been made for a much younger man. Chaucer was impressed.
‘Giovanni’s still breaking his fast,’ Glanville said, and caught the look on his old friend’s face. ‘Don’t say it, Geoffrey; I am not in the mood.’
‘I was going to say how very fetching you look, Rich. Been taking a few tips from the boy, eh?’
Glanville pulled himself up, looking slightly down to the poet’s hairline. ‘The day Hugh Glanville can show me how to dress is the day I’ll hang up my sword … Talking of which …’ He adjusted his fluttering sleeve so that his poignard hilt remained within easy reach. Whatever happened today, it was the start of the Clare pageant. There’d be laughter and merry-making, for sure, but there’d be drinking too and one man’s light-hearted quip was another’s deathly insult.
‘Hello,’ Chaucer was looking down to the Nethergate where the castle’s guard was surrounded by a knot of ladies from the town, more than one of them wearing the yellow hoods of their calling; well, it saved the embarrassment of accosting the wrong girl and meant that deals could be struck straight away. ‘Looks as though breakfast’s over.’
Sauntering out of the gate, and being pestered immediately by the yellow ladies, Giovanni Visconti was making his way down the hill towards the action in the marketplace and along Callis Street. By the time he had jostled past them, he had flowers sticking out of his hair and his tunic and codpiece were both unlaced.
Chaucer shook his head. ‘You know, Rich, the more I look at him, the less sure I am that he’s our man.’
‘I’ll let you know,’ the knight said, slapping his friend’s arm. ‘See you at the Cockatrice at midday – and don’t be late. I’ll have had shawms ringing in my ears for five bloody hours by then and I’ll be ready to kill somebody myself.’
The problem for the relay of men following Giovanni Visconti was that it was important they should not be seen. That was why Glanville had helped himself to his son’s less-than-cutting-edge finery and why he hung back by the Nethergate until the boy had all but disappeared into the crowd.
‘Hello, dearie,’ a gap-toothed hag pawed Hugh’s satin as Glanville brushed past her. ‘Got a kiss for a lady on this bright May Day morning?’
‘Unhand me, madam.’ Glanville brushed her off.
The old girl pulled up with a jolt. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said. ‘How can I have been so rude, forgetting myself like that? Let me try that again.’ She cleared her throat. ‘Hello, Sir Richard; got a kiss for a lady on this bright May Day morning?’
She puckered up and closed her eyes, but the knight who had fought in France and Italy and Latvia and Prussia, was already retreating down the hill.
Once Glanville had gone, Chaucer went to his room to put on his costume. He had not brought anything with him, but he had taken part in pageants before and he always wore the same thing – as behove his role as Comptroller of the King’s Woollens – a shepherd’s simple garb, with a lamb in his arms. He had sought out one of Lady Violante’s seamstresses and with much giggling on her part and misunderstanding on his – why, he had wondered often in the conversation, was Italian not more like Latin? – they had come up with something of which they could both be proud. It took some donning, but the seamstress had clever fingers and it was both comfortable to wear and eye-catching, to Chaucer’s mind the most important elements of any costume a man must wear all day. He tested his laces and found they were easily accessible, for a man must still piss, no matter how important the day. He hitched up his lamb and set out for a wander around the castle, until such time as Richard Glanville returned or sent word that it was Chaucer’s turn to keep watch on Giovanni Visconti.
He found a quiet spot in the inner bailey and sat down, his lamb in his lap. Although he knew it was made of lambskin with a sewn-on leather nose and glass beads for eyes, he was becoming quite fond of it. His stay at Clare had not been the most restful he had ever spent and he sat back, letting the spring sun warm his face and fancying he could feel his lamb breathing gently on his lap.
‘Geoff?’
His eyes flew open and he looked around, trying to get his bearings from his light doze. A figure was between him and the sun and he squinted up to see who it was.
The figure stepped aside and plumped down beside him, stroking his lamb. ‘I love May Day,’ she said. ‘I can talk to you without fear. What a wonderful day. And, if I may make so bold, that is a wonderful lamb. It looks real from a little way away.’
Chaucer focused. ‘Joyce,’ he said with a smile. ‘You like him, do you? I had him made yesterday. I like to join in.’
&nb
sp; ‘Clare’s Pageant is for everyone,’ Joyce said. ‘It’s quite famous hereabouts. We have a float, you know, we ladies of the laundry and table. I’m not dressed for it yet, but you’ll like it, I feel sure. But’ – she patted Chaucer’s lamb again, snuggling up to his chest, encircled by his arms – ‘aren’t you going to get a bit tired, carrying that around all day? What’s it stuffed with?’
‘Straw,’ Chaucer said. ‘It does look lifelike, doesn’t it? I am the shepherd who went after the one sheep that strayed.’ He smiled. ‘I’ve done it for years. Pippa has always said it suits me.’
Joyce patted his arm. ‘And she’s right,’ she said. She stopped, looking puzzled. ‘Is that …? What is that? Oh!’ She gave a sudden shriek. ‘And what was that?’
‘To take your questions in turn,’ Chaucer said, ‘the first, that is stuffing in my sleeve, sewn around the lamb with stuffed gloves attached at the ends. The second, that was me, giving you a pinch.’
She looked down to see his hand, waggling its fingers out of the side of his smock, through an undone seam. ‘That’s so clever,’ she said, pulling at the sewing to see how it was done. ‘No wonder the lamb isn’t heavy.’
‘Not at all,’ Chaucer said. ‘It’s hung round my body on a harness. It doesn’t really weigh me down at all. It’s a bit of a swine to put on and I may need to be cut out of it at the end of the day, but it has to be securely stitched and I think that Moderata has done me proud.’
Joyce’s nose went up in the air. ‘Moderata? Oh, her! What a name for a woman who doesn’t know the meaning of the word moderation.’ She leaned forward to check under the lamb. ‘I suppose she insisted on arranging your lacings, too.’
‘To be honest, Joyce,’ Chaucer said, ‘I have little idea what she was insisting on. Her Italian was far too fleet for my Latin to recognize more than the odd word. So, who knows what she had in mind? But she was sorely disappointed, I can tell you that. She made the lamb and stuffed the arms to my drawings, made from the memories of many a pageant in London. My lamb never fails to amuse. Little Richard loves it and always asks for it.’
