He laughs, a little regretfully. ‘My reward, you see. For good behaviour. Being allowed to see my daughter.’
‘I was wondering why you’d got so tidy,’ she says affectionately, entering his story, relieved to leave the emptiness of her own day behind.
‘Not easy,’ Chaucer admits. ‘For me.’ He pulls a tragicomic face. ‘But then I’m not allowed to get drunk any more, either. Which makes it easier, I suppose.’ He steps back, but keeps an arm round her waist. ‘You’re looking so well,’ he says appreciatively. (Or is he just being kind?) ‘If only we could talk now. I want to hear everything. Everything. But…’ He suddenly looks anxious again, and glances round at the door.
‘I know,’ she says, looking into the fire, at all those dancing possibilities, changing shape. They all burn out in the end. ‘Philippa.’
She steps back. She can’t interfere with Chaucer’s new life. There’s no space in it for her. She’d better go.
But then she sees he’s looking at her with his old glinting mischief, and not saying goodbye at all. ‘We could talk, of course, only it would have to be later,’ he rushes on, brimful of his new idea. ‘If you had time, that is?’ She nods. What else does she have to do? If she’s this invisible to everyone, perhaps, she can even stay at an inn after all. No one will know, or care, will they? ‘Listen: wouldn’t you go and eat dinner at the Dancing Bear? They’re doing delicious pork stew there today. I know, because I’ve ordered some of it in for Philippa. Kill a couple of hours there. And after she’s gone off, clinking her money-bag, come back.’ He’s nodding at her with imploring lapdog eyes, begging her to agree.
She almost weeps at the warmth and charm of him. She nods. There’s a lump in her throat. She can’t speak.
He blows her a kiss. ‘Thank you,’ he says, sounding as light-hearted as she feels, though hurried, and then rushing her towards the door. ‘Now, don’t let her catch you. Quick, run!’
She’s still laughing to herself when she gets back down the stairs. She’s still laughing to herself when she reaches the Dancing Bear.
The light’s just beginning to steal in from round the shutters. The lovers are as soft and happy together as kittens, twined together in the bed.
‘I should go,’ Alice said, yesterday, when she came back to Chaucer’s door. ‘I’m not supposed to be in London, really.’
He just grinned, and pulled her into his stairwell, and up.
She’s been here ever since. Wat will wait a night. They’ve talked, and bathed, talked, and made love, talked, and eaten, talked, and built up the fire, talked, and made love again, talked, and lit the candles, and talked. She’s told him about the life she’s been living…about Aunty, about Wat, about the raggedy children, gone away. (‘She loves you, doesn’t she? Your Aunty?’ he says gently. ‘Oh,’ she shrugs, unfamiliar with the idea, ‘I’m what she has, that’s all. We’re all realists.’ But she’s been strangely comforted by the idea of Aunty’s love.) They’ve talked about Will. They’ve talked about Philippa. They’ve shrugged their unsatisfactory marriages away. It doesn’t matter, any of that, with someone you…Alice hesitates before the word ‘love’. It’s not as familiar a word to her as it is to this newer, calmer, wiser Chaucer. A night: it can feel like for ever, if you’re happy.
‘You saved me, you know,’ he whispered in her ear, half-jokingly, sometime in that night. ‘From staying a coward all my life. I’ve had one brave moment now. I can die happy.’
‘You saved me,’ she whispered back very seriously.
He only laughed. ‘And you have beautiful eyelashes. So long. Like tiny brushes, tickling. Here…and here…and here…’ He stops kissing them long enough to say: ‘If Philippa weren’t…if William…if they weren’t there, somehow, I’d marry you, you know, Alice.’ Then he moves his lips to her hair, so she can’t see his face; she has the impression he’s startled even himself with those half-serious words. ‘I’m only really alive with you.’
‘How?’ she asks his neck. He’s always only half serious. It’s an easy enough thing to say, she thinks, not very happily. But to actually do it…
He shakes his head above her. ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he muses. ‘We couldn’t be here, could we? You couldn’t, now, at least; and I couldn’t be with you in London…but I wouldn’t mind that. To be honest, I don’t like my life in the City that much, except for seeing Elizabeth. I spend all my time writing poetry these days, you know. Don’t want to be at court, either. Too complicated. Philippa…and as for the Duke, what he’s done to you…’ She can feel his head shaking again.
When he mentions the Duke, she appreciates his pained bewilderment on her behalf, though she also knows she’ll never explain what he doesn’t understand: why the Duke will always hate her. Chaucer would never understand that. There’s no darkness in him. She wishes there wasn’t in her, either, now.
But she sighs anyway. Because for a moment she hoped he had a plan, though she knew all along that he wouldn’t. How could he? What he’s saying, about being together, is only a playful fantasy. It’s stupid to feel disappointed.
‘So perhaps we could go away somewhere?’ he’s murmuring. ‘A long pilgrimage, say…the Holy Land…you can spend years on pilgrimages…and you’ve never seen Italy, either – the golden stone, the sunlight, the colours?’
She sighs again. After all, he’s just being a poet.
She doesn’t want to go. But there’s no choice. She can’t stay.
‘I must leave,’ she says, hating the fresh light, and the absent spouses, and the loneliness of everything that lies ahead, outside this bed, away from this man.
It’s only now, now that she knows for sure that the love she’d thought, for all those years, she felt for Will was a wraith of a nothing, a sick thing of the imagination, or of the past, that she understands how important it’s become to her to know that Chaucer is here. Alive…within reach…somehow, hers. But no more. Because of the Duke, not after today. He’ll be out of her reach, for ever.
He props his head up on his elbow, looking at her as if he’s memorising her.
‘I know,’ he says sadly.
She dresses, quickly. He watches her.
She’s surprised by the treacly blackness moving inside her again, the anger coming back. She’s had no time to think, for the past couple of days, about anything except the rush of immediate events. But now, as she pulls on linen, and kirtle, and gown, as she realises there’s no more to keep her here in this busy, happy, fleeting moment, she’s remembering another conversation from last night: the questions she’s been asking about her old friends and fellow-victims of Edward’s last Parliament. What’s become of Lyons? Where’s Latimer? What about Stury?
They’re all fine, it turns out. Prospering. Lyons is back in the City, making a new fortune, living in his enormous house in Vintry Ward, over the road from St James’ Garlickhithe. Stury is a knight of the privy chamber, close to the new King, and still blithely preaching Lollardy to the court. Latimer, briefly returned to the royal Council before being removed again after Edward died, has recently been made Governor of Calais, and is high in the royal favour in the army in France.
None of them has been forgotten. None of them has been told to keep out of London.
‘So it’s only me who’s lost out,’ Alice said, trying to keep bitterness out of her voice.
Chaucer kissed her, and said nothing. She knows he could have crowed: I always told you that might happen. There was nothing kind he could say, she supposes.
And now she can’t keep her last picture of the Duke of Lancaster out of her mind: the lustrous black hair, the neat pointed beard, the sharp brows, the very red lips, the long bone-thin limbs, and the sick, hateful black eyes, staring petulantly away from her in the chamber.
The Duke has the face she imagines on Lucifer; the phrase slips into her mind: the Day Star, the Son of Dawn…Aunty’s been on about Lucifer a lot, recently. One of Aunty’s hedge-priests has been translating Isaiah into English. The old w
oman can’t stop muttering the words in front of the fire. Lucifer, the all-powerful King of Babylon, who thought he could rise higher than God’s stars…until he was brought down to the abode of the dead to be taunted by the vengeful Israelites he once oppressed. Alice hears the taunts in Aunty’s voice. ‘How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low!’ And, in Wat’s answering bass: ‘Is this the man who made the earth tremble, who shook kingdoms, who made the world like a desert and overthrew its cities, who would not let his prisoners go home?’
How Alice longs to bring the Duke low; to be able to say those words to him while he lies, muddy and bloody, grovelling before her.
It’s because of the Duke’s hatred that she can’t come back to London…that she’s locked away from the court where she’d found her place…that she won’t see Chaucer again. The Duke has done so much to ruin her life. And she could see, back at Parliament, that he’d still like to do worse. He still wants to destroy her.
She thinks, and it’s a relief to admit the thought: And I’d like to destroy him.
‘What are you thinking?’ Chaucer says.
She shrugs. She’s so full of pent-up anger that she can hardly speak.
‘That I’d like to burn down the Savoy, with the Duke right in the middle of the bonfire…and his smug mistress, and your smug wife and my husband, too, if only I could think how…and then stay here for ever,’ she says, finally, in a bloodthirsty rush that, almost at once, embarrasses her.
She shrugs again. ‘A fancy,’ she half apologises, even managing something close to a rueful smile. A childish one, too, she admonishes herself. It’s stupid, worse than stupid, to blame the Duke for all her misfortunes. He’s done her wrong. Of course he has. But she’s partly to blame too. She remembers what she saw in the Duke’s eyes all right, when they were close – but only because she was thinking it too. She never told herself, back then, that it was a wicked thought. It never crossed her mind to apply moral rules to her plan; to any of her plans, because in those days she thought she could always get away with everything, for the rest of her days. She somehow felt everything was allowed to her, because she’d come so far that it just must be. But she didn’t know, until much later – until now, maybe – how suspicious her giddy rise must have made the people who’d grown up expecting to be at the top, when they found her among them. And she didn’t understand her own power, while she had it. She certainly didn’t realise how hard they’d all want to kick her once she was down, because they’d seen her in her glory, swanning around, hardly noticing them and their foolish fears and doubts. Perhaps she should have tried harder to understand. She might have saved herself. She might even have clung on…
She shakes her head, banishing from her mind the mental picture of flames licking at the Savoy, with the Duke’s screaming face in the middle. She wants to shrug all that hatred off. She’ll have to leave it behind when she leaves London. Might as well start now.
He shrugs, too. ‘That isn’t going to happen,’ he says, baldly. ‘But it’s not important. They’re not important. The Duke. My wife. Your husband. The world.’ He reaches up for her, pulls her down with him, gazes at her from close up. ‘What matters is that I love you. Remember that. Knowing it is our comfort. It’s what we have to hold on to. And there’s nothing any of them can do about that.’
She looks down, too stunned by the word ‘love’ to be able to move; how does he say, or think, these things, so boldly? Her eyes are suddenly glistening.
‘But, Chaucer, don’t you mind…?’ she almost shrieks, forgetting, for a moment, to strive to be philosophical. He’s been left behind, too, by the capriciousness of Fortune: trapped in the City, when he doesn’t want to be. Dumped by his wife. Returned to his father’s merchant life, when he’s so talented, so brilliant…‘Because it’s not just me. It’s you, too. You should be at court, too…glorying.’
Chaucer only smiles, rather sadly. ‘We’re not the same, Alice,’ he says. ‘You can change yourself – you have a genius for transformation – but I don’t want to become what I’m not. My father tried to make me an aristocrat. But I couldn’t fight. I found that out early on; I’m grateful I did. It’s not in my nature. If the price of a title, and a court life is to have to live with my wife, and go to France…well, it’s not for me. So I’m just trying to live the life God sends me, in my station, and be with my children…’ His face twists. ‘Whenever they’ll have me.’
He takes a deep breath. Trying to look encouraging, he says, even more softly: ‘There is degree above degree, as reason says…that’s my motto, Alice; I’m trying to be contented living within the degree I was called to.’ He shakes his head at her. ‘But I know it’s not your philosophy. Never has been. You’ve always wanted to rise; to glory. You must feel trapped. Locked out. But you’ll find your consolation somewhere. In Essex even. I promise you that.’
She breathes out. She buries her face in his neck and holds him tight. She’ll never feel this close to anyone again, she knows that now. She’s saying goodbye to love.
He’s murmuring something else, from the lips she can’t see, whispering into her hair. He’s saying, very softly, something about how she’s going to build up Gaines into a vast farm, and become the envy of all her Essex neighbours, or maybe buy them all out, and marry her children off to the best and richest of them, so the kids will become aristocrats in their own right, and Johnny a great man in his prime, with the longest crackowes in England. He’s saying no woman has ever risen so far, from so low, as she has – something she’s sometimes thought, not without pride, but never said aloud, so, even now, it’s strangely comforting to hear it from his lips. He’s telling her she should be proud of what she’s achieved. He’s telling her no one likes to be forced to scale back their ambitions, but she can still make a future she and her children will be proud of, even in Essex.
Still, she doesn’t want to hear any of that. It’s not important enough. She wants to say the words back to him, the love words, but they won’t come.
‘It’s all right,’ Chaucer whispers. ‘We’ll be all right. We both will.’
She lets go, and stumbles up. She nods, with a tremulous smile.
He finds his night-robe, and shucks it on, and follows her to the door.
He takes her hands, gravely, because they’re done with kissing, and this is farewell. He says, very tenderly, ‘Get your children sent back to Essex to you, at least. Promise me that. You’ll get such joy from them…you’ll never know joy like the love of your children…Make them your comfort.’
She’s pleating her lips together to stop her lips from quivering; but she can’t stop the tears. They’re running, hot, down her cheeks.
He kisses them out of her eyes.
He whispers, ‘I give good advice, don’t I? Usually? So trust me. Take back your children. Promise me you will.’
She can’t speak. But she nods her head.
And then he’s gone, and she’s looking at the door.
She’ll do it, once she’s back, once she’s grown accustomed to the small life that lies ahead. She’ll write to William, and to Greyrigg, as soon as she gets to Gaines. They’ll come back, a bit educated, a bit better at riding and sewing and Latin and archery than before; the children of a gentleman.
She’ll accept that she’ll never be able to make them look up to her as the person who brought them a glittering courtly life. She’ll accept that they will all be small people, for ever, shut away in the country, though at least they’ll be better off than the way she was, when she grew up, and more secure…Chaucer was right about that; perhaps she needn’t feel she’s failed altogether. There’s even a bleak sort of comfort in the thought. She has risen a long way, even now, from where she started. She can do what’s demanded of her now.
So, she’ll find it in herself to accept all that the future has in store now. She’ll learn to take pride in the children. Her shoulders are broad.
Yet, however hard she tries, she can’t answer t
he question of whether doing what she’s going to be doing from now on will ever compensate for the yawning abyss inside. Will it even begin to make up for her howling rage at the eyes sliding sideways; the people who no longer want to know her? For the emptiness of a future without Chaucer?
She doesn’t think so.
She tries not to think of Chaucer: the smell of him, the tenderness of that last moment in the doorway. She tries not to think: Never again…never again…
Still, she can’t stop her eyes filling with hot, wet liquid that she won’t shame herself by letting out, as she sets off for the river, and Wat, and the future she doesn’t want.
PART THREE
Regnabo?
Shall I reign again?
THIRTY-SIX
The children – taller, more dignified, Johnny in a well-made tunic and cloak, Jane and Joan in neat dark-green robes under their brown travelling cloaks – look hesitantly down from their horses.
Alice looks hesitantly up.
It’s Aunty who rushes past her, and, grabbing all three bridles, pushes the grooms aside. ‘Off you go, boys, off to the kitchen, you must be hungry, get some food,’ she cries excitedly, walking off towards the stables, pulling the horses, talking over her shoulder. ‘I want to see the kids.’ Her excitement is infectious; Alice is aware of answering smiles on her children’s faces. They’re already scrambling down off the ponies, and Johnny, first off, is walking proudly at Aunty’s side, putting his left hand round her in a one-armed knightly hug, leaning his head on her shoulder, saying, quietly, but not so quietly that Alice can’t hear him, ‘Look how tall I’ve got, I have to lean down to do this now,’ ignoring the girls wriggling and jostling and pushing each other, trying to break through between them, from behind, or from the side, for a place under Aunty’s arm.
They move off. Alice just stands, watching the glow, feeling left out, with the welcoming smile that’s come too late to her face beginning to fade.
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