Poor Master Walworth. For all his desperate dignity, he must already know what they’d make of it in the taverns, and even in the kitchens of his own house. Since then, as Chaucer’s gone on making quiet signs of sympathy, the Mayor has let other small answering remarks drop; ones that suggest that he’s trusting Chaucer more and more to be the merchant’s son he seems, and not the Duke’s proxy; ones that go on making it clear that of course he feels humiliated to have been passed over, and for a foreigner too. Walworth believes that Alice is to blame for the substitution. (‘Dear boy, she’s as thick as thieves with Lyons, and how else would the man have made the contact with the court?’ he’s told Chaucer more than once; ‘and that idea of swapping back the Italian debt paper – devilish clever – far too clever for that Fleming to have come up with it. It’s got her fingers all over it.’) Chaucer suspects he’s right, because he can see it all began with that conversation he happened to overhear at his own table.
And then there’s the other thing. Which, if true, makes it all worse still. But he’d better not start with that. He’d better start gently.
He begins, a little hesitantly, to mumble something along the lines of, ‘You know, after all, I’ve been finding Walworth and his friends very honest business partners; it’s Master Lyons whom people talk about with more suspicion…and his associates…and I’ve even heard your name come up in that regard…’
But Alice isn’t in a mood to take advice. She just giggles and lets her eyes twinkle up into his. ‘You’re sounding far too independent-minded for my taste, Chaucer,’ she says. ‘And there was me thinking you were coming to the City to be my supporter. Shouldn’t I be giving you some food, now, to mop up the wine?’
Chaucer looks disbelievingly at her. Has she really put him in this powerful job, and asked him to keep her informed of how things are in the City, just to laugh at him when he does?
‘Look here,’ he says, feeling the blood rush to his already throbbing head, as if anger is going straight to his body without passing through his mind, ‘you should listen carefully to this. It’s no joke. Do you realise how seriously people in this city worry about money – who’s spending it, who’s making it, who’s stealing it? And do you even begin to realise how much there is to worry about?’
She looks back at him, wide-eyed. He takes it as an invitation. He talks on.
‘This is the real debt situation in England. Since the war started again five years ago, did you know that more than half a million pounds has gone on it, truce or no truce? With not a penny back? And there’s no money left to spend?’
She widens her eyes more, looking extra innocent. She’s playing with him, he thinks furiously. She thinks him funny. She knows, and she doesn’t care.
Hotly he goes on: ‘We still like to think it’s just possible that if we actually had enough money to deploy our armies, they might come back richer than they set out, just because they used to, once, when the King was young and still had the luck of the Devil. Because back then it seemed there was enough plate and jewellery and coin in every town and every monastery in France to make every Englishman rich. But there’s nothing left any more, or if there is we don’t have the kind of armies that can find it. We’ve emptied France of everything it’s going to give us. And we’re broke.’
She says, in a butter-wouldn’t-melt way, ‘Dear Chaucer, why are you telling me all this? I know…you know…and you know I know…’
Exasperated, Chaucer barks: ‘Because when entire armies of unpaid soldiers come home half-dead to their half-starved families, they don’t want to hear that you spent hundreds of pounds on robes for a royal tournament, that’s why!’
But it’s not just the price of her robes for tournaments that means trouble for her. There’s the other thing. All the other things. He takes another breath, almost angry enough to find the resolve to mention them, too.
But not quite. And that one moment of hesitation gives her the advantage again.
She smiles wider. She leans towards him and touches his hand. Can her eyes get any wider? ‘But, Chaucer…court festivities don’t even come out of the government budget,’ she coos. How condescending she sounds. ‘The King decides on them. And pays.’
Chaucer slumps back on to his bench. She knows, really. He knows she knows. She’s just refusing to engage. Stubbornly, he persists: ‘But they love the King. They’re in awe of him. Even if everyone knows he’s extravagant, no one wants to blame him. They want to blame someone else. And you’re the obvious person. You’re the one they all see in the fine robes, wearing the jewels, after all. You’re the symbol of the extravagance; and you could be the scapegoat for the anger. It’s easy enough to call you loose, and a thief, and a wicked whore, and—’ He feels his face flushing from the words, and pulls himself back. ‘Well, you can imagine the rest. Because you’re an outsider. You’re not of the City. You’re not of the court. You’re no one’s responsibility, and no one’s wife, and no one’s kin. You’d be the easiest person to pin the blame on for every penny spent by the King, or stolen from the King, for all these years. Even if it wasn’t you. Surely you see that?’
As he pauses for breath, he’s pleased with that speech. He thinks it successfully conveys to her that she could be at risk, without going so far as to insult her by suggesting she might in any way be stealing money herself.
Alice drops the cooing and flirting. There’s a hint of sullenness about her mouth, now, and defiance coming into her eyes. But Chaucer likes that better. At least she’s being more honest.
‘I’ve got nothing to reproach myself with,’ she says truculently. ‘The question doesn’t arise.’
Oh, Alice Perrers, Chaucer thinks, exasperated. Oh, Alice Perrers.
‘But you have,’ he says. ‘You make enemies, and you don’t seem to care. You’ve angered the most powerful man in the City, for a start. Walworth’s furious he’s been passed over for that loan. And for Lyons, too – a man he despises.’
Alice pauses. That’s surprised her. She looks hard at Chaucer, with assessing eyes. ‘Oh,’ she says carefully. ‘You know about Lyons, do you?’
He nods. ‘Of course. Everyone’s talking about it. There are no secrets in the City.’ He holds her gaze. ‘Twenty thousand, they say. Being repaid with discounted Italian debt paper. Right?’ She nods again, without expression. He doesn’t think she’s masking fear, or guilt. He has a nasty feeling she just might grin impishly at him if he lets her, so he rushes on: ‘You see? You thought you’d kept that quiet, but it came out anyway. And you must see that you won’t get Walworth standing up and defending you, after that, will you?’
She thinks for a minute, then shrugs, as if she really doesn’t care. She says, ‘Oh, Chaucer. I don’t need to worry too much about poor old Walworth’s hurt feelings, do I?’ and here she does grin, infuriatingly. ‘And there’ll be no call for him to defend me anyway. That loan is the King’s business, not mine. What’s it got to do with me?’
Chaucer sighs. She’s refusing to have the discussion he wants to force.
‘Alice, listen,’ he says sadly. ‘I went to Westminster to collect my pension from the palace yesterday. And I think you should know that over there, at court, all the courtiers are whispering a whole different lot of rumours.’ He puts his head on one side, looking at her, wondering if she’ll blush.
She doesn’t. She just gazes back, and says, ‘You look like a bird in a hedgerow, Chaucer: sitting there like that with your head on one side, all beady-eyed.’
‘Do you know what they’re saying?’ Chaucer persists.
She puts her hands on her hips and goes on meeting his eye. ‘Tell me, then,’ she says, refusing to look abashed. ‘If it’s so interesting.’
‘Well,’ he says. ‘My good friend in the treasury said they were short of coin at the moment because a lot of Italian debt paper had suddenly been presented. And been paid off. Not at the discounted rate. At its full face value. Twice as much.’
He’s aware he must look ri
diculous, but he can’t stop his head tilting over a bit more as he examines her face for signs of guilt.
‘It cleaned them right out of ready money,’ he said. ‘They were hard pressed to find my ten pounds.’
Alice shakes her head, with a little smile of mock-pity twitching at the corners of her lips. ‘Oh dear,’ she says. ‘Poor Chaucer.’
‘I asked my friend the treasury clerk who presented the paper. He didn’t know. He only knew it wasn’t Lyons. No big ginger Fleming’s ever set foot in the treasury office, he said.’
Alice raises her eyebrows. Coolly, she says, ‘Hm. A mystery, then.’
Chaucer’s heart is beating like an insane drum. ‘I’ve got to ask you,’ he says in a rush of breath, desperate to get it out and have it over with. ‘It wasn’t you, was it? Because if you were to start playing a game like that, it would be exactly the kind of thing I’m warning you about. They’d get you. The City and the court aren’t as separate as you think. They all hear each other’s rumours in the end. And if you were involved in some sort of bent business, and someone put two and two together…they’d all be down on you like a pile of bricks in no time, City, court, wherrymen, the lot.’
‘Me?’ Alice Perrers says, and now she does grin, openly, with flaring nostrils and wide-open eyes, as if she’s invigorated by the cut and thrust of Chaucer’s argument. ‘But I haven’t been near Westminster for days, Chaucer.’
She raises her eyebrows higher and spreads empty hands as if to show Chaucer there’s no Italian debt paper in them. She’s trying to look innocent. But she just looks absurdly pleased with herself.
‘So,’ Chaucer says, slowly, ‘you’re saying it really wasn’t you? And you know nothing about it?’ He doesn’t believe her. But he can’t help laughing at the mock-affront on her face now.
‘Anyone but you who suggested such a thing, you know what I’d say?’ she replies robustly. ‘I’d say, “That’s what you say, you old barrel-full of lies. Now prove your slander.” And I’d be safe enough. They never would.’
Baffled, Chaucer nods. Of course he notices she hasn’t replied directly to his question. But she’s so self-assured that she’s beginning to make him feel a blunderer, rushing in with his homespun advice. He thinks: Oh, who knows? Her confidence is catching. Perhaps he’s just misunderstood everything. There’s so much he doesn’t understand about Alice.
So, tentatively, he goes in a new direction. ‘Still…you lay yourself open to all these accusations…because you are so interested in money, and so clever about making it. More than other women. More than most men. You are, aren’t you?’
She begins another easy don’t-bother-me shrug, then, somewhere in the middle of it, pauses. Her shoulders stay up. Her hands are still spread. But above them, her eyes are quietly on him, and the defensiveness in them has gone.
‘I suppose I am,’ she says, in a different, more honest voice. ‘Interested. More interested.’
‘Why?’ he asks.
She goes on looking at him, as if she’s surprised by the simplicity of that question – as if she’s wondering herself. Chaucer can almost hear her think.
In the end, she says quietly, ‘I could tell you about where I started from. Because I didn’t start rich, you know; I had to use my wits to get on. And that would be a kind of answer. But…’
He waits.
She’s in her thoughts, half smiling a couple of times as she remembers things.
‘…it wouldn’t be the real answer,’ she says after a while. Quieter still. Looking as if she trusts him. Almost. ‘Not any more.’
‘Not now you’re so rich,’ Chaucer prompts in a near-whisper. There’s no need to do more than whisper, now they’re standing so close.
She nods, acknowledging her present wealth. But absentmindedly. She’s still thinking out her answer, the real answer.
‘Other women marry…devote themselves to their children…?’ he prompts.
But she scarcely seems to hear that. ‘Oh, I’ve had husbands,’ she says vaguely. Her brow furrows. ‘But they’re…fixed, men, they all have their station in life. Marry a merchant, and you’re a merchant’s wife for ever. Marry a country knight, and you get a lifetime overseeing dairymaids. No one moves. There aren’t many men who could change their lives as much as you just have, Chaucer – court to City, without a quiver. Most people are too scared. But what if it’s the movement itself that you’ve found you enjoy? The freedom to keep trying something new?’
‘Freedom…’ Chaucer repeats, trying the unfamiliar word on his lips, hearing its sound, heady as a rush of fresh wind, inside his mind. He likes the bravery of it – that she isn’t frightened to live without the male protection most women seek. He’s flattered at the way she seems to be describing him as one of the brave, too. She’s right, he finds himself thinking. People don’t like change, on the whole. They fear it. My wife doesn’t like my having changed my life, even this much.
‘Because that’s what I’ve found. I’m good at moving…thinking on my feet,’ she’s confiding. ‘It’s not the point, that I’ve got enough money (whatever enough is). If I just sat smugly back for the rest of my days, counting my blessings, getting fat – well, what would I do? I’d be bored. It’s not the money that counts, not in itself. It’s the thinking. The truth is, I like living on my wits.’
They’re practically touching. Nose to nose. ‘And I suppose that’s always going to annoy the people who are scared,’ she adds philosophically; pityingly, almost. ‘Poor things.’
Chaucer’s so transfixed by her candidness, or just by her proximity, that he almost takes that last step forward to kiss her. Catching himself just in time, he steps back instead. And she looks up at him, as if remembering herself too. She grins – her old sharp mocking grin. ‘You’d like to be living on something more solid than your wits, right now, I can see,’ she says in her bright, everyday voice. ‘Food.’
An hour later, after meat pie and laughter and an enjoyable recitation of some more of his hangover verse (‘O dronke man, disfigured is thy face! Sour is thy breeth, foul artow to embrace,’ and so on), Chaucer’s on the boat home.
Thinking. Because now, with his stomach full and his hangover muffled by pastry, and the river wind blowing his headache away, he’s less pleased than he was, back there, about how the conversation with Alice has gone.
Whatever she says, Alice must have a hand in perverting the debt exchange, he’s sure. She must be lying to him. There’s no point in his hiding the truth from himself, too. For one thing, she’s the only person Chaucer can think of (except perhaps Latimer, or himself) who has enough acquaintances both at court and in the City to have been able to work it. And the only one with the wit to think of it.
And if she is involved, he thinks, trying to focus on the disapproval he knows it’s right to feel, then she’s as much a glutton for money as, well, as he’s been with her wine. Even if she’s just piling it up, as she told him, to prove to herself that she can – in the end, what’s it for, all that money? It’s not as if she can take it with her to meet her Maker. Or as if she has children to leave it to.
But his disapproval won’t quite stay. The hilarity that’s always near the surface when Alice is in his mind keeps surfacing instead. Chaucer tries, though not very hard, to turn his thoughts from the cheerfully lewd imaginings that now crowd in, unbidden, about how she’s remained childless despite all those husbands and lovers. Perhaps she’s chosen it – chosen to keep the girlishness of her face and figure, which are her fortune. Perhaps she’s more knowing than other women about sponges and vinegar, about counting days and calculating the cycles of the moon; or perhaps, who can say, she makes the King wear a pig’s bladder while he makes love to her. He can’t help chuckling to himself at the thought. You can’t rule anything out with Alice Perrers.
Or perhaps her barrenness is the private tragedy in her life. Perhaps that’s what set her off in the first place on her multiple marriages, and relentless self-enrichment, and general
self-willed good-natured entertaining infamy.
Poor Alice Perrers, Chaucer thinks (knowing, at the same time, that he’s trying to find excuses for Alice, so he can go on enjoying this friendship; knowing that he needs a bit of compassion, nice, oily, sentimental compassion, to help the bitter pill of her suspected dishonesty go down more easily).
He lets his own two children come to his mind. Whatever the problems that have started to beset his family, he welcomes the tide of tenderness that sweeps through him now at the knowledge of them, the near-drowning intensity of it. Being the father of Thomas and Lizzie is his great pride and consolation in life – more overwhelming than any love for a woman, or advancement at court, or even than the poetry he so enjoys writing.
He’s happy not to be a courtier whenever he remembers that lords send their children away at seven, to be trained in the ways of chivalry and courtesy in other men’s households. He can think of nothing better than to be of humble merchant stock, where, if all goes well, you keep your beloved children near you, teaching them all you know, until, in their teens, your son marries and brings a wife and, God willing, more children into your home.
If all Alice Perrers’ manors and money-bags are only a substitute for the joys of motherhood, he tells himself, half relishing the mawkish twisting of his heart, then they’re a poor second best.
After that he lets himself stop thinking. He leans back on the bench, and just enjoys the receding of his headache, and the wind rushing through his hair. Freedom, he’s thinking, as he looks up at the circling birds, imagining what their extra dimension of movement must feel like; wishing he knew for sure.
TEN
Vanora Bennett Page 17