Vanora Bennett

by The People's Queen (v5)

  People who have heard Wyclif often find themselves enthusiastically converted to, and preaching and repreaching his passionately expressed belief: that there are too many ecclesiastical foundations, on every street corner, in every field, and each of them rich as Croesus already, yet always with their hands out asking for more. He says it’s time the Church gave up these ill-gotten gains, and rediscovered God.

  There’s a lot of that kind of talk already doing the rounds in London, a city whose walls are lined with monasteries and abbeys, and whose citizens are constantly having to put their hands in their pockets for whitefriars, blackfriars, greyfriars, pinkfriars, anyfriars. But for now, their resentful fundamentalism is quiet talk in the privacy of homes. The baleful glares of the big three victuallers – especially Walworth, who wants to keep civic and religious life pretty much as it is, doesn’t like any kind of dissent, and appears at every ceremony beside William Courtenay, the Bishop of London – stop too much anti-clerical grumbling being heard in public.

  Wyclif frightens Alice a bit. She thinks all that humourless magnetism dangerous.

  But, as soon as she heard Chaucer say the prelate’s name, she liked the inspired idea of having the Duke take Wyclif up and champion him. She liked it partly for the serious reason that Wyclif might indeed show the way to get the Crown a windfall of Church money, if he gave the Crown a template – a bit of memorable phrasing, a form of reasoning that everyone in the land would agree with – to justify merging some failing monasteries, confiscating some land and gold plate, and enjoying the profits. But Alice liked the idea most of all for its unserious side, because of the mischievous fun she also saw in it: the Duke and Wyclif collecting in money, the war coffers filling from the sale of Church property, Londoners praising the Duke’s policy, while Walworth and his tame Bishop, guardians of the status quo, would have to stand crossly by with their noses well and truly out of joint. It was childish, Alice knew, but the idea of annoying them made her splutter with laughter.

  She thought at once: Yes, I’ll suggest that to the Duke. She knew at once, too, that she wasn’t going to credit Chaucer with having had the idea.

  Duke John knows it’s a good idea too, as soon as she says the word ‘Wyclif’.

  Now the gratitude’s there, all right. His eyes fix on her: rapt attention as he considers the idea; then nods; then, as the smartness of it sinks in, admiring nods. Head to one side, mouth relaxing and broadening into a smile.

  He takes her arm. His headache is forgotten. Again, he gives her that warm, surprised, look, that look of intimacy, of – almost – love. It seems to Alice to say, ‘You could be my future.’

  But all he says is one word. ‘How?’ he asks.

  ‘Oh, any number of ways,’ she replies glibly. She ticks some off on her fingers. ‘Have him at your side. Give him a job. At the end of the year, take him with you to the next peace talks…to Bruges.’

  Duke John murmurs, ‘Take him with me…have Wyclif at the talks,’ as if nothing could give him greater pleasure. He mutters, ‘Yes.’ She sees colour stealing back into his cheeks.

  How strange, she thinks, confused, that he should be so unenthusiastic about one apparently perfect idea, which is actually being put into practice, then so overwhelmed by the next, which is so much vaguer.

  It’s wrong-footed her, this topsy-turvy reaction. She wants to understand him. And this…well, she doesn’t understand it, quite.

  But after a moment’s suspended breath, she lets her worry go. She tells herself it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that he’s pleased about one of her ideas. He understands how useful she and her ideas could be in guiding his policy. Looking at his surprise and appreciation now – for she can see he hasn’t really expected her to come back with anything this good – she’s surprised, too, at the warmth inside herself, the great deep breath she draws into herself and then joyously lets go.

  This is just the beginning.

  She bows. She knows the rules of flirtation, and, even if this relationship is more about advancement and self-advancement than love, the rules are the same. She’ll go now, while he wants more. She says, ‘I won’t hold you up any longer,’ throws him a last smile, and makes off towards the palace, almost dancing through the little gaggle of secretaries hiding behind their bush.

  She can feel his eyes, warm on her back. She’s not looking, but she knows he’s smiling.

  There is a rustle from the river side of the walkway.

  John of Gaunt looks around.

  A tall blonde female form is waiting, motionless, under an archway. There are roses trailing past her shoulders. Katherine Swynford has the gift of quiet. She doesn’t smile. There is a happiness inside her that needs no external expression to shine out.

  ‘Were you here all along?’ he asks as he reaches her, bending his body towards and around hers. She shakes her head. She has the neck of a swan, he thinks.

  She raises an eyebrow towards Alice Perrers’ departing back. It is all part of the blessed peace of her that she doesn’t ask unnecessary questions. ‘A detail,’ he explains, and his happiness grows when she nods, as if that’s the end of it.

  If there is one skill he does believe he is at last beginning to master, it’s chivalry. He lost himself, long ago, in the long blonde loveliness of Blanche, his first wife; he’d have obeyed any order she gave, gone on any quest. He was young, then, and everything seemed simple and beautiful. But then she died. And, after that, everything else went wrong for years; there was so much more loss. His mother, gone, years ago now, while he was away in France; his father, so strange and absent-minded in age; his brother Edward, ill, and Joan, whom he used to adore, become cold and hardened by their family pain. Their tight-lipped little boy, Richard, his nephew, who hardly speaks. His own second wife, Constanza, locking herself away with the hard-eyed Castilian ladies and sallow little Catalina. Dust, ashes, ashes…

  And then, one day, two years ago, with the needling Castilian in the background, a door opened, and there she was, in a shaft of sunlight: dear, familiar Katherine, who’s always been underfoot, somewhere around at court, a good bit younger than him, a child. Whose loveliness suddenly looked so breathtakingly strange.

  In that moment, John of Gaunt understood he’d found the meaning of his life. France, the war…everything else, in these past two years, has become distraction.

  He can’t be with her all the time, although in his secret heart of hearts a picture has begun to form of the two of them in a rose bower, at peace…

  The reality of his life is that it hasn’t been easy to be quietly together, even for a few days here and there, in the years since they found each other. She has her responsibilities, he has his. It’s not just his wife, and France, that come between them. She’s a war widow with four children being raised in Lincolnshire. They’ve taken what precious secret time together they can. It’s never been enough.

  He was away in France, eighteen months ago, when she gave birth to his son, christened John Beaufort, in secret, from the court at least, at her manor house in Lincolnshire. But they were both back at the Savoy in the spring. She came to London as soon as she was churched – just six weeks after being brought to bed. ‘I wanted to see you,’ she said simply. And everything was transformed when she was back: the very air brighter. She looked as young and slender as ever; unchanged by childbirth. How he wanted to see the child – his son. But he couldn’t, of course. The baby was with a wet nurse at Kettlethorpe.

  All he could do to show his love was to free Katherine from the deceit and embarrassment of her job serving his wife Constance. He gave her a separate duty, making her magistra to the daughters of his first marriage, giving the two little girls their own household, semi-detached from the rest of his court.

  That would be a way to make it easier for him to see Katherine more, or so he thought. How wrong he was about that. By summer, he was off back to France, rushed on by the demands of the Crown, for more duty, more war, and more humiliation – nearly a
year of it. By the time he finally took little John in his arms, the child was already walking; almost talking.

  John’s heard people make up ugly, despicable, whispered motivations for his loss of zeal for France. There’s even a ludicrous rumour that he’s loitering here in England, making truces with the French, because he’s waiting for Edward to die, so he’ll be at hand and can seize the moment to steal the throne of England from little Richard, his nephew. His lips thin at that memory. How people – merchants, those non-fighting fools of men, who have wormed their way into his father’s trust with their money-bags and their sly eyes and their fat, comfortable, lives – can let filth like this into their minds, he doesn’t know. How anyone who has ever talked to him could believe such a thing of him is beyond him. No, this is the real reason for his private weariness of the business of war: the armies, the expeditions, the sea passages. Not the softness of age, not the slyness of treachery. She is. Love is.

  So John is grateful, in a remote way, for hints and tips and nods and policy ideas and bits of advice from these bright-eyed, busy, clever, adviser types pushing themselves forward: the Perrerses, the Latimers. They offer glimpses of possibilities which his father has never dreamed of. They have to be heard out.

  But all he really wants is to be allowed this rare moment away from duty, alone with his lady, in peace, under a blue sky and a drift of roses, with only the doves breaking the silence, letting her smooth away his headache with her long white fingers.

  A part of him is still thinking bits of ordinary, everyday, not unkind thoughts – ‘I know a lot of people don’t like Madame Perrers…pushy…common…but…clever too…don’t see the harm in her myself’ – when Katherine puts her mouth up close to his ear (she’s as aware as he is of the secretaries behind the hedge) and whispers, ‘Can you believe? We’re going to have a baby…another baby…’

  After that, he sees nothing, nothing, but the blue of Katherine Swynford’s eyes.

  A month later, when the Duke is already at Leicester (or perhaps, secretly, at Kettlethorpe with his lady) and Alice Perrers on her summer circuit between Sheen, or Havering, or Eltham, or Westminster, she is quietly pleased to hear, through her friend Lord Latimer, that John Wyclif has been given the Crown living of Lutterworth in Leicestershire, and has also been invited to accompany the Duke of Lancaster to Bruges next January, for the negotiations over the French truce and the threatened papal taxes.

  That idea may bear more fruit later. Meanwhile, for the rest of that summer and autumn, Alice will be busy. Like Wyclif, she’s been taking on new property. In 1374, so far, she has personally taken possession of the manor of Pallenswick, west of the riverside village of Hammersmith, and the nearby manor of Gunnersbury. Her business associates, the land agents whose work she directs from her City home, have acquired on her behalf the manors of Culworth in Northamptonshire, Fillyngley in Nottinghamshire, Farndon in Northamptonshire, and Kingham, near Oxford. The papers aren’t through yet, but Edward has also promised to grant her several small Crown estates that have come free: the manors of Wantage in Berkshire, Bentham in Salop, Whittington in Salop, Stanton Fitzwarren in Wiltshire, and Crofton in Wiltshire, all from the Fitz Waryn lands. There’ll be work to be done on all these properties, sprucing them up for rental.

  Mostly, though, Alice is enjoying the first fruits of her other money-raising idea: redeeming the Italian loans from the royal exchequer and taking her cut. She spends the first instalment of cash she receives from Lord Latimer on ordering a very expensive hanging for the great hall at Pallenswick. It is to show Delilah, sneaking up on Sampson, snipping off his hair. She asks for extra gold thread to be worked through everything.

  NINE

  ‘I think I’m drunk,’ says a surprised Chaucer. ‘A littlebitdrunk.’

  Alice laughs comfortably. She refills his cup.

  How Alice darts around you. She’s here, there and everywhere, fetching this, signalling to servants there, showing you one thing or another, affectionately ruffling the top of your head as she passes. There’s no stopping her. She must have had his cup filled far more often than he’s realised. She’s been making him dizzy for a while, all that dashing about. Bewildering. Especially since the walls started waving and wobbling too.

  She’s been showing him her new manor, at Pallenswick near Hammersmith, which she isn’t going to leave her men to manage, but will use herself as a retreat from London and Sheen. The house, unused since the Mortality, is old and decaying, with holes in the roof and buckets on the floor and the mournful smell of damp everywhere. She’s going to knock down most of it, and rebuild. But the park behind is full of trees with gold-green leaves, and the river sparkles through the windows ahead. And, even inside, she’s already made pockets of portable luxury: a corner of the great hall, where the roof’s sound, screened off with thick, lovely, colourful, draught-proof hangings, where she’s sitting with Chaucer at a table, feeding and watering him with the gold cups and jewelled knives she’s brought here.

  These objects, so at odds with the dinge-spotted walls, make Chaucer uneasy. He’s been uncomfortable since before the walls started behaving so strangely.

  She shouldn’t have so much gold on show, he thinks. He knows why, most of the time. It’s just now, when he wants to tell her, that the reason escapes him.

  She sits down again; there’s mischief in her gleaming eyes as she grins up at him. ‘Wrong to be drunk, Chaucer,’ she’s teasing. ‘Sinful. Look what drink did to poor old Lot. Drunk as a drowned mouse, lying next two his two daughters, and, before any of them knew where they were…’ She moves her fingers lewdly, thrusting one through two others, giving him a knowing look. ‘So you take care.’

  He doesn’t care about Lot. Dirty old man. He cares about…‘Too mush gold,’ he slurs uncertainly. He never manages to tell her this thing, the thing that’s always on his mind, except that now he’s got her attention he’s gone and forgotten it. But he’s been trying for weeks now. ‘Too mush…’

  ‘Too much wine, I’d say,’ Alice snips back. ‘But never mind…I like you even when you’re a bit cranberry-eyed.’

  She’s very pretty, wavering over there. Lovely smile. Lovely shoulders. He stares vaguely in the direction of her breasts.

  ‘Drunk,’ he says disconsolately. ‘Never should have. Abominable stuff, drink. Sour breath. Foul to embrace. Can’t keep secrets. ‘Sgusting. Your throat a privy.’ Then he says, ‘So tired…do you mind if I lie down?’ He knows she won’t. She’s his friend. Dearest friend in the world. Wonderful woman, Alice. She’s laughing softly as she leads him off to an antechamber with cushions.

  Alice leaves him there till morning. No point in sending him up the river after dark. He’d only fall in and drown, or be caught by the guard after curfew.

  When she comes to wake him, at dawn, with her candle still lit, he’s already hunched on the bench, with the cushions on the floor, energetically writing.

  He’s unshaven and pallid. He looks shamefaced. He grimaces comically. ‘I know,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry. My punishment: my head aches.’

  She laughs very gently. ‘You were so lucid,’ she replies. ‘Even drunk.’ She comes a little closer. Aware that he must stink, Chaucer edges shyly back. ‘What are you writing there?’ she murmurs, craning her neck, peeping.

  He tweaks the paper away.

  ‘Oh, let me see,’ she pleads playfully. ‘Please.’

  He gives her a careful look. ‘You’ll be disappointed,’ he says. ‘It’s not the kind of poetry you probably expect. Not…courtly. Chivalrous. Just me.’

  ‘Go on,’ she says. ‘I don’t care.’ Her eyes are so inviting. She sits down next to him on the bench and waits.

  So he clears his throat. He sits up straighter. He starts to read the words out, in a thin, suffering, self-parodying voice:

  ‘O wombe! O bely! O stynkyng cod, Fulfilled of dong and of corrupcioun! At either ende of thee foul is the soun…’

  He gets no farther. Their eyes meet. They�
�re already both soundlessly laughing.

  But even as he’s laughing he remembers that he came to see Alice with a purpose in mind, beyond friendship, beyond this half-flirtation. He was going to tell her some home truths.

  He came intending to tell Alice she’s not playing her politics as well as she believes.

  For a start, he wants her to know that Walworth is angry. Several months into his job, in the autumn of 1374, Chaucer now knows a lot about how Walworth feels. The Mayor may have complained a little, back in the spring, about the need to lend money to the King that he’d probably never see returned, but that was the established tradition for a mayor: lending a lot, and moaning a little. Chaucer knows that Walworth hasn’t been happy, since then, to discover Richard Lyons will be making the royal loan instead, and a bigger loan than he was to have made. Chaucer knows because he saw Walworth come back from his much-discussed meeting with Chamberlain Latimer, just before Walworth became Mayor in July, with bright pink splotches in the middle of long pale cheeks, and a tight, closed-off look in his eyes; and, when Chaucer enquired, across the Customs House desk, whether the loan amount suggested by the Crown had been especially onerous this year, Walworth made a ghastly attempt at a smile, and said, tightly, ‘Quite the contrary, dear boy. As it turns out, I am to be released from that obligation this year. It appears that my lord the King would prefer to take his loan from’ – and here Walworth did that fastidious face-wrinkling thing he’s so expressive at – ‘Master Lyons.’