The Good Wife of Bath

by Karen Brooks

  ‘That men from Bath Abbey lands have joined the rebels.’

  ‘Joined who?’ I couldn’t imagine Simon wanting any male company in the boudoir.

  ‘I told you about this,’ said Alyson. ‘See, Geoffrey, you can’t get through to her anymore. She’s dwelling on another plane. That man will be the death of her.’

  Moving his seat closer, Geoffrey gathered my hands in his. ‘Listen carefully, Eleanor, lest what is happening beyond your walls starts to impact upon you.’

  I made the effort to sit up and focus. ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘The commons are rising against parliament. Against the poll tax and other duties. It’s more than they can tolerate. In Fobbing, there was an attempt to kill a steward when he tried to collect his lord’s dues. He escaped, but three of his clerks were beheaded. The men rioted, carting the heads about to impede anyone who tried to stop them.’

  I stared at him in disbelief. ‘The commons are rebelling? But … they’ll be arrested and put to death.’

  ‘It’s no deterrent,’ said Geoffrey. ‘The numbers joining the cause are growing. There’ve been riots in Kent, Gravesend, Maidstone and around London. In the north of the country too. Men have picked up their tools and joined the rebellion – including men from here: the Abbey, lands owned by the Gerrish family –’

  I gasped.

  ‘And many more besides. They’re refusing to pay any more taxes.’

  ‘You can’t blame them for that,’ I said. The heavy taxes had long been an unfair burden, and not only on the poor. ‘The demands made by our lords, the King, have always been too much.’

  ‘And with the wars in France and Scotland, they’re set to increase as his Grace looks to fund more battles.’ Geoffrey dragged his fingers through his hair.

  I shook my head. ‘King Richard is only a boy – it’s not him seeking war, but his advisors.’

  ‘That’s true – especially Simon Sudbury, who is now both Archbishop of Canterbury and Chancellor. He sees this as his opportunity to make his mark.’

  I looked through the open window and, for the first time in weeks, actually saw what was out there. The streets were bustling with activity. There were carts laden with fruit, vegetables and fish; men and women shouted to draw customers; mules and horses meandered in an orderly fashion down the middle of the street, and close behind them strolled elegantly dressed women, who paused to examine the vendors’ produce. Shop fronts were open and inviting, their smiling owners beckoning people inside. Two milkmaids balanced yokes on their slender necks, stopping to fill a jug here, a beaker there. Urchins dashed between hooves and skirts, whether to pick pockets or beg coin, or even chase a stray dog for sport, I could not tell. A group of nuns scurried through the crowd, heads bowed, hands hidden in voluminous sleeves. A lone monk, his hood flung back to enjoy the weak sun, laughed uproariously with the owner of The Corbie’s Feet, who was standing on his stoop. Funny that all this went on outside while I not only sat indoors, but inside my own head, brooding. Papa would be ashamed. But no more than I was myself. I’d let life go on while I stopped.

  No man was worth this … Not even a husband.

  I sat up properly.

  ‘What do you think will happen, Geoffrey? With the rebels. Are we in danger?’

  Geoffrey sighed. ‘Have you lost any workers yet?’

  Much to my embarrassment, I didn’t know. Me, who’d always prided myself on caring about my workers’ wellbeing.

  Alyson levelled a look of such compassion, it made me feel worse. ‘Young Damyan didn’t show for work yesterday or today. I heard his father didn’t go to the mill either. Other than that,’ she shrugged, ‘everyone else is accounted for.’

  Geoffrey grunted. ‘Confirms what I suspected. You’ve not only been generous to your servants, workers and tenants, Eleanor, but in their minds, you’re one of them.’

  I raised a brow.

  ‘Common.’

  Aye, well, I was.

  ‘Common-born doesn’t mean common of mind or heart.’ I thought of Jankin and Alyson. Milda, Arnold, Drew, Wy, Oriel and Sweteman too.

  Geoffrey nodded. ‘John Ball, a priest from Essex, would agree. He’s part of the rebellion and has everyone chanting lines from that song you hear in every inn and alehouse, When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?’

  ‘There’s great truth in that,’ said Alyson. ‘God didn’t differentiate when he made us. Adam was born of the earth, and Eve of his body. He didn’t bestow titles or riches upon them and deny those who followed. That’s something we did. Something the church enforces as well.’

  ‘Hush, Alyson,’ I said. ‘Enough of your Lollardy, even if I happen to agree.’ I turned back to Geoffrey. ‘What do you think is the purpose of this uprising? Apart from abolishing taxes? It’s unprecedented.’

  ‘In England, aye. But it’s no accident it’s started when the King’s armies are fighting on different fronts, when London and his Grace are without defences.’

  ‘You think the commons will overthrow the King?’ My heart began to pound.

  ‘The rebels keep saying they’re for King Richard.’

  ‘But don’t they understand that the King represents the nobles and his court too?’

  Geoffrey didn’t answer at first. ‘The rebel leader, an archer who fought in the French War, I believe, has the commons persuaded that if they can just parley with the King, he’ll come around to their way of thinking.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘To abolish villeins, reduce taxes; allow men to rent land, to work it of their own free will, not in boon to a lord. To treat all men as equal.’

  ‘But,’ I stared at Geoffrey in disbelief, ‘that’s impossible. We’re not all equal. As Alyson said, we haven’t been since we were expelled from Paradise.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean we can’t be again,’ said Alyson hotly. ‘At least by giving men free will – to work, to pray – they have a kind of equality; the equality of choice.’

  ‘You’re sounding like one of these rebels yourself, Alyson,’ said Geoffrey, not unkindly.

  The fight left her. ‘Nay, I’m no rebel, but as a woman, I can sympathise with them.’

  So could I. ‘We’ve no choice except those men give us.’ Choice should be a right, not a privilege one was born to or granted because one was in possession of a prick. ‘What do you suggest we do, Geoffrey? What are you going to do? Are we safe here in town?’

  ‘I think you should continue as you have, just be aware, be cautious. As for me, I’m going to return to London and pray that through some miracle this ends well. Only, I fear …’ He stopped.

  ‘What do you fear?’

  ‘I fear it’s only just begun and won’t finish until blood is shed.’

  Over the next few weeks, as more and more workers and servants left the outlying farms and Abbey lands, slipping away in the early morning, London-bound, news of the rebellion and the numbers involved grew. It was all anyone was talking about – some nervously, some with an unbecoming boldness that saw them being rude to the monks, to Lord and Lady Frondwyn, the wealthier merchants and shopkeepers, Father Elias and the other priests; all those they saw as their oppressors.

  Even Simon ceased his nocturnal roaming, returning home still reeking of perfume and other scents, but keen to discover what we’d heard. He knew Geoffrey wrote and that Father Elias had connections that meant the news wasn’t very old by the time it reached us. I confess I enjoyed those evenings sitting in the solar, deep in discussion with my husband, Alyson, Milda, Oriel, Master Sweteman, Drew, Arnold, and Jankin, too, when he came up from Oxford.

  On the ides of June, the young King sought to parley with the rebels, travelling by barge to Greenwich. Instead of landing and talking, he remained on board and returned to the Tower. From all over the countryside, men marched towards London, the greatest number pouring in from Kent. Upon reaching Southwark, they attacked a bathhouse run by Flemish women. When the mayor of London tried to prevent the now bl
oodthirsty crowd crossing the bridge, the mob, joined by men from all over Southwark, defied him and ordered the bridgekeepers to let them cross or be killed. They were admitted.

  In fear of his life as Comptroller of Customs, Geoffrey locked himself in his Aldgate apartment, bearing witness to the hordes marching beneath him. When it was all over and he came to see us, he described the moment these angry, tired and desperate men – among them farmers, lesser merchants, priests, soldiers and landowners – swarmed through the gate.

  ‘The building shook as they marched. The noise of their fury, their shouts and chants, the smell, was like the bowels of hell had opened. They swarmed through, uncaring of any in their path, and if they met someone of Flemish or alien origins, they slaughtered them then and there.’

  Once news of the attacks on aliens reached Bath, the few Flemings and Italians in town – mostly merchants there for wool and cloth – hid indoors lest they too be punished for something our King and parliament had instigated.

  Then, unexpectedly, news reached us the rebellion was over. Just as swiftly as it erupted, it was finished. Wat Tyler, the leader, was dead. Only later did we learn there’d been two meetings between the King and the rebels. At the first, the King ceded to Tyler’s demands. He promised to end serfdom and for justice to prevail. While this was happening, a group of rebels broke into the Tower and murdered Archbishop Sudbury and another monk. Whether that was the reason the King revoked his word, I don’t know. Upon the second meeting, the King was accompanied by the Lord Mayor of London, William Walworth. The mayor smote Wat Tyler with a dagger, grievously wounding him, and later cut off his head and mounted it on a pole. The King, sensing the rebels were about to retaliate, rode out to meet them at Smithfield and ordered his soldiers to do them no harm. He promised them everything again; even had it written down and sealed in a document.

  The rebels, believing their sovereign, went home. We heard the story from those who returned to Bath, how the fourteen-year-old King was so brave, so bold. How bloody war nearly broke out between the commons and the King’s men on English soil. The returned rebels were full of praise for our ruler, excited by what he had promised and, most of all, about the future.

  For a few weeks, so was I. What did this portend for our country? For relations between the nobility, gentry and commons? Dear God, were we about to witness the impossible?

  As with anything impossible, it didn’t happen. The King’s charter of equality and the general amnesty for the rebels were revoked and, come winter, parliament announced that the rebels were to be fined. Those who weren’t granted a royal pardon, among them the leaders, were put to death.

  In the quiet of our home, we’d oft discuss what happened that day at Smithfield, when a rebel leader was killed and the King prevented a war by appeasing an angry mob. Was he lying when he agreed to their terms? Was he merely biding his time before he wrought vengeance? Or was he the puppet of his advisors? Not even Geoffrey had the answers.

  In the meantime, as the rebellion reached its ugly conclusion, and Geoffrey continued to be estranged from his wife and children, my marriage was making me increasingly unhappy. Taking a leaf out of King Richard’s book, I made plans of my own.

  Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.

  So does Eleanor de la Pole.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Bath

  The Years of Our Lord 1382 to 1384

  In the fifth to seventh years of the reign of Richard II

  I wish I could blame someone else for what unfolded, for the person I became. Above all, I wish I could blame Simon bloody de la bloody Pole. But if I did, that would be taking the easy path and, as Alyson oft noted, that wasn’t in my bloody nature.

  You’d think the rebellion led by Jack Straw, Wat Tyler, whatever his real name was (may God assoil him) would have knocked some sense into me, led me to conclude that no matter what happens, your birth dictates whether you’re a commoner or not. But the way I saw it, I was a commoner who’d had good fortune thrust upon me. Unlike so many in servitude to cruel lords, the men I’d married had allowed me mastery, which meant I’d a better chance at succeeding than most. If I now had a husband with a roving prick, then at least I had one and that, for better and worse, gave me a kind of respectability.

  But I was also a woman and that put me at the greatest of disadvantages. Did folk look askance at Simon and think less of him because he continued to explore other female flesh? Nay. It was my fault he made the beast with two backs with whomever he fancied. I’d become a laughing stock, fodder for the gossips, and while I was furious with Simon and desperately hurt, I was angrier with myself that I’d allowed someone who could have stepped out of one of Geoffrey’s tales to turn my head.

  Judas’s balls. I wasn’t twelve anymore.

  In order to quench the rage burning inside me, I sought ways to make my philandering groom’s life as miserable as mine had become. What I failed to understand was that misery begets misery. In acting like a shrew, I became one.

  I would point out faults in Simon’s dress, business dealings, manner, and announce them, regardless of who was present. I’d fire shot after shot, convinced I was weakening the Simon stronghold. My husband, curse his white teeth, would laugh as if it were all in jest, lifting my hand and dropping a kiss upon it. He would call for more wine, encourage me to think of more insults. The worse I behaved, the more charming he became. I could see guests casting horrified looks in my direction and pitying ones at him. More than once I heard people whispering that Mistress de la Pole was a right witch and the only reason poor Simon remained was because I’d cast a terrible spell. No wonder he strayed when being with me was so unpleasant.

  Not so unpleasant he didn’t continue to enjoy my wealth.

  Sometimes, when the mood took me, I would put aside my scolding and be coy and loving, coaxing him to the bedroom. I would wait until I’d secured him behind a closed door and let fly. I would throw things, shout, pummel his chest, accuse him of all manner of crimes, and not just because he sarded anything with a queynte.

  He would clutch my wrists, cock his head and say, ‘I was warned women are duplicitous by nature and that they hide their faults until such time as the ring is upon the finger. I’d believed you different, my love. How you dismay me.’

  Lost for words, driving my nails into my palms so I didn’t reach for the poker and strike him, I would stammer and stutter. He would take my confusion, my fury, as an opportunity to disappear, blowing me a kiss from the doorway.

  ‘Go to your Viola, then,’ I’d scream. ‘And may her queynte be filled with disease and shrivel your prick!’

  One night, I told him that though I couldn’t stop him being free with my goods, he could no longer have my body. He laughed uproariously and left. Afterwards, through a veil of tears, I flung open the chest in which his clothes were kept and cut up every single piece.

  He bought more. With my coin.

  I sold his favourite horse: for a groat.

  He bought another: for a pound.

  I sent a parcel of cow shit to his whore.

  She sent it back – flung against my door.

  When I saw Oriel supervising two of the maids as they cleaned it, I felt ashamed. I sent them away and did it myself, earning strange looks and some laughs from passersby.

  Oh, my arguments with Simon provided the best sport for the good folk of Bath.

  All the while, Simon continued to flatter, cajole and charm every single person he encountered. I began to repel them. Rumours started that my previous husbands had been fortunate to die and escape being hitched to a scold. Invitations dwindled. Visitors, apart from those Simon encouraged, all but ceased.

  The only person I was hurting was myself.

  In the meantime, life continued. I vaguely remember hearing that the King married a girl named Anne of Bohemia. (Did that place have any worthwhile shrines to visit?) Geoffrey and I corresponded regularly, his letters filled with news about the fine new customs house built at Wo
olwharf, replete with a weighing machine and an accounting room. What most excited him was the fact there was also a privy installed, so he didn’t have to piss in a corner or shit in a jordan. Bemused he would think I cared about such trivialities, I was nonetheless grateful he shared them. I needed distractions.

  When Geoffrey’s mother died, I sent my sympathies. Alyson grew all excited when, the next time Geoffrey visited, he told us that John Wycliffe, the Lollard priest, had translated the Bible into English (I confess, I was quite thrilled to learn that too, but expressing it didn’t suit the version of myself I had become at that time). At some stage, Geoffrey’s daughter became a fully-fledged nun at Barking Abbey in London. He didn’t tell me, a merchant did. Wasn’t Geoffrey proud of his children’s accomplishments? (If you could call becoming a nun an accomplishment.) Or was it something else? The Abbey had a reputation for late-night parties and many, many visitors of the male variety. Mayhap, taking the veil wasn’t such a bad option?

  To make matters worse, whenever Geoffrey stayed with us, Simon made sure to ply him with the finest wines and ordered delicacies from the kitchen. He would take Geoffrey on a tour of our pastures, bring him into the hall where the weavers and spinners sat working, as if he was responsible for the fine fleeces and the quality of the cloth. I watched as Geoffrey laughed and chatted and retired with my husband to his office in the evening. Over nuncheon one day, I even had to endure Simon being critical of women who had multiple husbands. Whereas once I would have sat quietly and fumed, I drew upon the reading I’d done to at least offer up some examples of much-wed men.

  ‘What of Lamech, who took two wives?’ I said smugly.

  Geoffrey buried his chin in his cup, hiding a smile. My husband gave one of his infuriating nods.

  ‘Ah, I see you’ve been heeding the words of Father Elias, Eleanor. My wife, you’ll note, Master Geoffrey, is excellent at parroting the words of her betters, even if it’s to defend the indefensible.’