The Knight's Tale
Page 25
Hugh looked out of the window, fighting tears. He knew Chaucer was right, but that didn’t mean he had to go along with it. After a few moments, he spoke. ‘Did you think it was Ferrante?’ he asked. ‘I didn’t have a clue.’
Chaucer was thoughtful. He didn’t like to admit he was wrong at the best of times, but when he had been called in to solve a mystery, it was more difficult still. ‘At first,’ he said, ‘I suspected literally everyone. There was hardly a soul in the castle who didn’t have a motive, however slight.’
‘My money was on Joyce,’ Hugh reminded him.
‘Yes, I know. Let’s just say, once and for all, that Joyce is just a very pleasant woman who means harm to no one and let that be the end of it.’
‘Yes, I know, but she and Lionel …’
Chaucer looked at him, his lips set.
‘Sorry.’ Hugh smiled and folded his hands in his lap and adopted an attitude of listening intently.
‘You, for instance, had had your light o’ love stolen by him, but it wasn’t hard to find motives elsewhere. Your father, for example, clearly loved Violante.’
‘I know!’ Hugh’s eyes were enormous. ‘What about that? Will they get married? Will I have brothers and sisters?’
‘You’re not a child!’ Chaucer snapped. ‘Be quiet and listen. Clement was under pain of dismissal. But then, when he died, things were different. For a while – for a long while, as you know – I suspected Giovanni, but even before he died last night, I was becoming very doubtful. He just didn’t behave like a murderer and, whilst not wishing to speak ill of the dead, he didn’t have the brains. Then, I saw the look on Ferrante’s face when Violante kissed your father.’ He paused and looked up, waiting for another outburst, but Hugh simply looked back at him, blandly. ‘And I realized that anyone who went near Violante would die. I would have been next after your father. Then Hawkwood. Then you … he would never have been able to stop. He was mad for love. Looking back, I suppose I should have seen the signs. He was found at least once in the wrong part of the castle at dead of night – I expect he was spending all his hours pacing, checking, making sure no one went near his Lady. At the time, it just didn’t occur to me. He was so … passionate about things. I didn’t know how passionate, that was the trouble.’
Hugh looked down at his entwined hands, then looked up. ‘That’s an Italian for you, I suppose,’ he said. ‘They …’
But before he finished, they both heard it. From across the passageway, a faint ‘Hoo!’
‘The houppelande,’ she spread her arms across the three robes spread on the bed. ‘I thought the lime green, for the journey. Remind you of the spring when you get near to that old London. There was a darn under the armpit there, not very well done, but I unpicked it and did it again and you’d never know …’
Chaucer turned from his packing and went over to the woman standing beside the bed. He took her hands and kissed her, softly, on the lips.
‘Joyce,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t matter a jot what I wear on my journey. I am just going back to my life, my normal life, my old life. No one will notice when I get back and hardly anyone will have noticed I have been away. My table will be groaning with papers, sealed with seals as big as my hand but, at the end of the day, for all that paper and wax and ink, there will be nothing. Just some fleeces and some flagons and some bribes.’
Her eyebrows went up. That didn’t sound like her Geoff.
‘I don’t say I take them, Joyce. I simply say there will be bribes. And I will take off my lime-green liripipe and will light my candle and add up and subtract and … well, I will be Comptroller of the King’s Woollens again.’ He gave her another kiss. ‘Now, where’s that lad of yours? Are you sure you want him to go to London? It’s a long way from home.’
She shook her head. ‘Of course I’m not sure, Geoff. But it was all I could do to stop him going with that White Company and I know at least in London you’ll be there to stop him doing anything foolish.’
Chaucer wasn’t so sure of that. He had done many foolish things in his life but tried to let them damage only himself. Once or twice … but he didn’t need to burden Joyce with that. He smiled. ‘Just one thing, Joyce …’
She tapped his nose. ‘Another, Geoff?’
He shook his head. ‘No, not that. I’m too old for another, these days, don’t forget. No. I just need to know. Is the lad …?’
‘Yours? Lord love you, Geoff. Of course he isn’t yours. With that nose?’
Chaucer wasn’t sure whether he was glad or sorry.
‘I reckon he might be the blacksmith’s lad’s, but …’ she laughed. ‘I am what I am, Geoff, never forget that. Now, be off with you.’ She gave his houppelande a final pat and brushed a stray hair from his shoulder. She leaned in and whispered, ‘Even London’s pretty at this time of year, I hear. Goodbye.’
The castle watched with its many eyes as the bright green dot disappeared into the trees. The mare tripped lightly; her rider was a little too portly to be totally comfortable in the saddle and there were many miles still to go. But he had company and that comforted the watchers. They didn’t want to think of him, all by himself, with that long journey ahead. If the castle walls had ears as well as eyes, they would hear a voice on the breeze, dying as the trees engulfed the speaker.
‘A knyght ther was, and that a worthy man, that fro the tyme that he first bigan to riden out, he loved chivalrie, trouthe and honour, fredom and curteisie …’