Vanora Bennett

by The People's Queen (v5)

  She raises her eyes to his – a glance of disbelief. He holds her gaze, willing her to believe it. If she does, he’ll begin to believe it himself.

  ‘No one will touch you,’ he says more firmly. ‘Take a horse from my stables. Go to Wendover – it’s near my lands at Weston Turville and Chalfont St Peter, so you can always get word to me if need be. And wait.’

  She’s still looking at him, as if she doesn’t know whether to believe him.

  ‘Don’t be afraid,’ he adds stoutly. ‘I’m going to sort all this out.’

  She shakes her head. She manages a quick grin. ‘Me,’ she says, ‘I’m never afraid.’

  Then she bows her head, low, so he can’t see her eyes any more. He has an uncomfortable feeling she might be hiding tears. There’s a shakiness in her voice when she mutters, ‘Thank you.’ There’s a shakiness in her gait when, brushing past him, breaching every possible kind of etiquette but without causing him any offence, she backs away to the door.

  The Duke emerges from the antechamber feeling marginally better.

  Not that grief isn’t lashing at him with its monstrous tail; not that he’s not feeling crushed by misfortune. So many misfortunes.

  John’s lost a beloved brother. He still can’t believe that he won’t see Edward again; that the dark mist that came down between them, for reasons he doesn’t understand, will now never be dispelled. He may also have lost his sister-in-law for ever, he realises, for Joan, who’s locked herself away at Kennington until now with Edward’s body and her son, did accompany the child today to Westminster, but only stared, red-eyed, at her feet when she came across John in the corridor, and refused to say anything but, ‘You will excuse me; I am a widow in grief,’ before sweeping off. He stared after her. There was nothing he could say.

  John’s all but lost his father too, at a time when all he wants is loving guidance from the man he most reveres. John hasn’t known what to do when that old man with his father’s face stares at him with those stranger’s eyes, and mumbles, and dribbles down his chin. He’s embraced him; he’s wiped the tears, very gently, from the withered cheeks. But he can’t grieve with his father. He’s almost relieved that the King has gone to Eltham with his sorrows; for the King’s sorrows are all sorrows, past and present, folded into today’s grief, and John can’t bear to follow him back through time to so much other buried misery. Edward of England is ordering masses and wildly expensive cloths of gold almost every day, to dress churches in memory of his dead mother, and his dead wife, and his dead son. He’s ordered fifty-seven of them for any church that is marking the Prince’s obsequies. And every day he asks for Alice. Sometimes he seems to understand that she’s not coming back, though not for long. Sometimes he even seems to understand she was (perhaps) married to another man. He has ordered William of Windsor back from Ireland. He’s also ordered a small carved chest, in which he’s locked the Parliament’s accusations against his former Lieutenant in Ireland. Mostly he doesn’t seem to understand anything. He just cries, until his beard’s wet.

  John was born to want to offer his services to England. And now, in this dark hour, of course he wants to be of use, to push himself into a whirl of public-spirited activity in which his grief can find an outlet. He’s the only adult left standing with the experience to preserve his family’s honour and reputation. He wants to guide the child in the ways of government. He wants to take some of the cares off his father’s shoulders. There’s so much he could do…

  But those dogs, those bumpkins in the chamber there, have deprived him even of that. The unconscionable arrogance of them deprives him of speech; their misguided hatred; their suspicions he’s out to murder Richard and take power, which only betray the squalid darkness in their own minds. They’ve prevented him from becoming Regent; they’ve substituted their own chaotic alternative, that council of his enemies they’ve dreamed up, for the role that God and nature intended for him. They’re shutting him out, as surely as they’re shutting out that poor woman, the mistress; exiling him from the birthright that should have been his…

  Duke John feels cornered, paralysed, by events.

  The only action he’s successfully managed to plan and carry out for weeks has been this small act of mercy to the disgraced mistress.

  It’s not much. But it’s given him, at least, a moment of hope; a breathing-space. The energy to make his own plans.

  When this Parliament is over, when the dogs are back in their kennels, he tells himself as he strides back towards the chamber, he’ll take himself north. At least they can’t interfere with his summer procession through his own lands, where he’ll recover his poise; where he’ll plan his next moves; and where Katherine, with her blessedly calm gaze and cool hands massaging away the pains in his head and heart, will understand.

  It’s July. The Parliament is over. The country is being run by the nine-man council that the lawmakers appointed. But the King still hasn’t got the money he wanted for war. Even after the corruption trials, de la Mare still said no.

  The King will have to call another Parliament soon, and do better at winning it over. There are only nine months left until the truce with France expires, and, unless some miracle can avert it, war resumes.

  Westminster and London seem strangely empty now the parliamentarians are gone. Walworth holds a banquet for the great and good of the City; in all but name, it’s a celebration of his triumph against his enemies. Geoffrey Chaucer’s place stays empty; he sends word that he has an upset stomach and can’t leave his bed. For weeks, Chaucer wanders miserably between home to work and back again, not meeting the smugly satisfied eyes of the merchants or their clerks, hating them, despising himself. Alice has gone; no one knows where. He waited a day outside Westminster Palace, hoping for a glimpse of her leaving, and maybe a final word. Nothing. Lyons and Latimer and Stury, and the rest of the victims of the Commons, are in prison of one sort or another. The Duke of Lancaster is about to set off from the Savoy for a quiet summer at Pontefract, hunting and licking his wounds, spending his evenings with his daughters, and his nights with their pretty governess. The Duchess of Lancaster, Philippa Chaucer’s mistress, has not yet returned to London, as she was supposed to. She is still grieving for her baby son. So Philippa Chaucer and the Chaucer children are staying at Hertford with her. Geoffrey Chaucer is relieved at his wife’s absence, at least. He’s too angry with Philippa, and himself, to trust himself to speak to her.

  If only he’d managed to see Alice. If only she knew that, at least, he’d done something to right the wrong he’d done her.

  If only he didn’t have to live with the knowledge of his own contemptible cowardice. If only there was something he could do to redeem himself, in his own eyes, at least, and perhaps in those of his children.

  If only he wasn’t left behind, having lost everyone, in this miserable clerkly city.

  It’s only when he hears that a delegation is to leave London for France, to keep open the channels for peace talks, that he realises what he might do.

  ‘Send me too,’ he begs the Duke. ‘Send me to France.’

  The Duke doesn’t want to hear. He’s watching the cavalcade assemble in the stable courtyards of the Savoy for his trip north. Chaucer can see Duke John can hardly bear to be here in London any more; the man’s desperate to be away.

  ‘Why?’ he says.

  Chaucer’s full of inspiration, suddenly: intoxicated by the notion of single-handedly saving England from its enemies; by the picture that presents itself to him of Thomas and Elizabeth gazing wide-eyed at him as he modestly lists his successes. He says, ‘The Commons would have no power if you didn’t need money from them for war. And there’s nine months before the truce expires.’

  The Duke says, with his eyes elsewhere, ‘The French don’t want peace. I’ve tried.’

  ‘Your admirable efforts have not been well enough understood, or appreciated,’ Chaucer says, rushing over that difficult truth. ‘Blessed are the peacemakers.’ He takes a deep brea
th. ‘But things have changed now,’ he persists. ‘What if they were offered a marriage with the new Crown Prince of England?’

  The Duke looks round. For the first time, he actually seems to see Chaucer.

  A week later, Chaucer too is leaving London.

  It’s only as he steps on board the ship at Southampton that the vague sense of consolation that bustling around organising his departure and settling in his deputy at the Customs House has brought him finally evaporates. Miserably he realises that he hasn’t been brave enough after all. Deep down, he knows he won’t singlehandedly make peace with France. He can’t do anything to make amends to Alice, or peace with Philippa, or to impress his children. He’s just running away from his problems.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  It is the end of September before John of Gaunt rides back south from Pontefract, in good time for his brother Edward’s funeral at Canterbury on 5 October. He’s calmer after two months of peace under big skies, in the perfect joy of the blue eyes and the soft Flemish tones of his love, watching her belly swell again, loving the way their two children, John, already talking, Henry, already walking, have his straight nose and long fingers and her straight blondness: living, breathing, fleshly proof of the innocence and loveliness of their private union. ‘Joan will find her own peace soon,’ Katherine has murmured to him, over and over again, stroking his hair, smoothing his brow. ‘Joan knows she has always loved you, just as Edward always loved you. It was only the sickness in him that hated you. She shared that passion because she was a loyal wife. But it will pass, as all things pass, as her grief softens…as she sees you taking care of her son…putting Richard on the throne. You have nothing to fear. And nothing to regret.’

  Katherine believes in love. That’s the beauty of her.

  As John rides south, through the turning leaves and the crisp harvest sunlight, it all seems so clear. He loves his father. He loved his brother. He will be the strong uncle to little Richard that his family would want. He will find the boy a French princess and save the land from war, or, failing that, he will die a hero’s death on the battlefield.

  But that’s before news reaches John that his father is dying. The King’s running a fever, the abscess on his ankle has turned poisonous, the bone’s showing through skin too thin to heal, the stink is unbearable, gangrene may set in at any moment, the doctors are in despair, the lawyers have been called in to make wills, and the priests are waiting behind the tapestries, and he’s considered unlikely to last more than days, perhaps no longer than the Prince’s burial.

  At that news, unbidden, the other, darker thoughts chained up in John’s mind stir and clank again.

  He’s at Leicester. He leaves Katherine there to return to Kettlethorpe. A thoughtful day or two later, on the road south from Northampton, he sends the train on without him, towards London and the Savoy, and rides off almost alone on a detour. He’s going to Wendover to see Alice.

  He tells himself this: Whatever vows Alice Perrers has been forced to make to Parliament, surely they can be suspended if his father’s really dying? There is nothing that would comfort the old man more, in his last days, than the woman he loves. And who could begrudge a beloved king that final happiness?

  He doesn’t quite admit to himself that Alice, with her devious mind and eye for the main chance, might understand his darker thoughts about the future better than anyone; better even than Katherine, who sees everything about him as noble, and whose only thoughts are of reconciliation.

  He doesn’t exactly tell himself: Alice Perrers will understand, and approve, and nudge me on, and help me plan it, if my father’s illness forces me to take a more active part in government now, and if I use my power to get vengeance on the people who have humiliated me…us. But he does half think it. He knows Alice Perrers will want him to plan revenge against his enemies, because his desires to mete out punishment to his enemies will coincide so precisely with her desires, and their enemies are the same enemies.

  But Duke John certainly doesn’t tell himself, or even think: Or if it ever came to pass that I were compelled to sit on the throne of England…For that idea is far too tightly locked up even to be thought consciously (though it’s there all right, in its dungeon, flexing its muscles, clanking its chains).

  ‘They should have let me stay with him,’ Madame Perrers says. She’s become so thin that she’s pointy: elbows and knees and cheekbones and nose, all angles and hollow planes. It suits her, John thinks. He prefers his women unthreatening. But she’s still full of energy. Flushed and pink-cheeked and eager, rushing him to basins and cushions and refreshments. ‘I know the poultices; it never bothered him before, that abscess. Doctors are fools. I could have kept it in check.’

  John doesn’t want to talk about poultices. Perhaps she is a witch, after all, as they said, he reflects. He’s not altogether sure he likes her, even now they are allies, but he smiles sympathetically at her fluttering, busy, practical concern. It’s right that she should worry for his father.

  She sighs. She pours him more wine. He fears she’s about to make demands.

  But she doesn’t.

  ‘England needs a strong man at the helm,’ she says unexpectedly, looking admiringly at him out of eyes that in her shrunken face seem bigger than before. More vulnerable. ‘In these times of danger. How glad I am that you’re back.’

  She hasn’t quite said, ‘Not a boy of nine.’ But John feels himself swell protectively. He thinks: Alice Perrers has a head on her shoulders.

  ‘I’m going to him now,’ he tells her. ‘I’ll take charge.’

  He means, or thinks he means, ‘of my father’s care’.

  But he leaves that unsaid, and the unasked question of what he will take charge of unanswered. They are both happy with the vagueness.

  ‘Good,’ she says. There’s a new hardness in her voice. ‘Seize the moment. There are men out there whose insolence should not go unpunished.’

  John’s eyes narrow. It’s as if she can read his mind. He’s been going over their names himself. He’s thinking: de la Mare, the Earl of March, William of Wykeham…

  She nods. She has the same list in her head, clearly. There’s no need for words.

  Before he leaves, John tells her: ‘My father deserves some last wishes. And what he wants is to be with you.’ He looks at her shabby clothes, her neglected air. ‘Be ready,’ he adds decisively. ‘I’ll send word.’

  Eltham in persistent drizzle: the King propped up in bed, looking closer to a hundred than sixty-four, with a hutch of sorts over his suppurating leg. John tries not to be aware of it, but he’s sitting on the bed holding his father’s hand, and, every time he moves, it jogs the mattress and his father winces. The seven doctors in the background fuss and fidget.

  ‘I’ve called the Council for after the funeral,’ he says. He wishes his father’s eyes had shown more pleasure at the sight of him. King Edward’s eyes are vague. He’s an old man, all taken up with his own pain. ‘Your Council, I mean, not the one the Parliament chose,’ he continues firmly. ‘I’m going to dismiss that council.’

  His father’s not so ill. The old eyes wrinkle and focus, struggling to join him. There’s a flash of panic in them, or perhaps it’s King Edward’s lifelong glee at a fight. It will do him good, John thinks, to give him something new to think about.

  John explains: ‘Last spring’s Parliament’s work is null and void. We can’t tolerate insubordination. We’ll call another one. We need money, for the war.’

  He’s worried that his father, weak though he is, might object. But when, after a pause, the old man responds, it’s only to let a cunning, wheedling expression steal over his face, and, from his mouth, the words: ‘If I let you, will I get Alice back?’

  A bargain, John thinks, relieved. There’s life, and devilment, in the old man yet.

  He presses his father’s hands tighter. He says, ‘Of course.’

  It is 22 October by the time Alice comes to Eltham, and what the wags are calling the ro
ut of the rats by the cat of court is well under way. The spring Parliament’s decisions have been cancelled. The Parliament’s council has been disbanded. Latimer and Stury and Neville are free again (the imprisoned merchants aren’t yet, but their time will come). William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, has been stripped of his secular estates and banished from court.

  John tells her all this on the walk from the stableyard along the echoing stone corridors to the King’s bedchamber. Alice nods. She has a small leather box in her hands, which she insists on carrying herself. From time to time, Alice stops listening to nod at a servant here or a guard there. She’s trying to look serious, but there’s a little smile that keeps coming to her lips. He sees she can hardly believe she’s back.

  I brought this about, he thinks proudly. I’ve done it.

  Alice stops an equerry. She seems to know the man’s name. Murmuring something polite to the Duke, she breaks off. She tells the man, with composure: ‘Prepare a bath for my lord the King.’

  Turning back to the Duke, who’s paused to wait for her – as he would for any lady – she looks admiringly up at him. ‘I had no idea,’ she says, and her eyes are glowing, ‘that anyone could right so many wrongs so fast.’

  Edward is asleep in his chair. The hutch is over his leg, on its stool. His mouth is open. He seems utterly still. For a moment, John’s heart leaps, with that fearful anticipation he doesn’t altogether understand. It always does this, at this sight. There’s always the moment of wondering, is the old man dead? But, as John realises his father’s chest is, after all, still rising and falling under the blanket, Edward lets out a little snore. With the familiar mixture of relief and regret that always follows this realisation, John turns to Alice.

  But Alice has forgotten him. She’s already tripping lightly forward and putting her hands very gently on Edward’s shoulders. ‘Mon amour,‘ she murmurs in her London French, and the King stirs. When, slowly, reluctantly, he opens his eyes to the harsh world, and his gaze falls on her, the set misery on his grey face lightens strangely and, to John’s wonderment, a disbelieving smile even comes to his lips.