by M. J. Trow
‘You can’t lose your virginity twice, Geoff,’ the knight pointed out, gesturing as he did so to a lad bearing a dish of carved boar. ‘Let’s eat. We’ve done enough talking for one afternoon and we must keep our strength up.’ He speared a hunk of meat the size of his head and dumped it on his platter. ‘You?’ he stared at Chaucer, his eyebrow raised in query.
Chaucer looked down at his paunch and glanced up at Joyce, undulating like a Naiad amongst the pots and pans. He looked around. ‘Just some fruit, Rich, I think,’ he said. ‘An apple, perhaps. Ample for this time of day.’
‘The apples are a bit musty by now,’ Glanville said. ‘And one day’s abstinence won’t make you sixteen again, Geoff.’ He dumped a lump of pork on the comptroller’s platter. ‘Eat up. It’ll put hairs on your chest. Here.’ He called over another lad, carrying a charger full of some shapeless green stuff. ‘Have some cabbage. Coney food, I call it, but if it will make you feel better.’
Some green slime slid from the platter alongside the pork.
‘Come on,’ the knight said, round a mouthful of crackling. ‘After this, I’ll take you round the park. Help you get your bearings. New tilt yard since your day.’
Chaucer had nursed fond memories of Clare to him for many years. He had never lived in such a place since the day he took leave of it, though it was true he had rubbed shoulders with the great and good, and often at that. But Clare was his home, whenever he thought of ‘home’ at all, and it was a strange walk he took with his friend through corridors and rooms half remembered, and yet in many ways so changed.
After many twists and turns, he was still almost sure he knew where they were. Glanville opened a door that led to the kitchens and, to his surprise, Chaucer found himself in an enclosed courtyard, complete with a well.
‘Where … I thought that was the kitchen door,’ he said, looking lost.
Glanville looked puzzled, then his brow cleared. ‘I see where you went wrong,’ he said. ‘When we took the left turn out of the solar and went down the spiral stairs and then across the hall, you thought we were three rooms along from where we were. Lady Elizabeth had the other rooms added years ago – I’ve got so used to it I had forgotten how it used to be.’
They walked across the courtyard and went into the building again, by a small studded door in a corner. Along a dark passage, the sun could be seen shining in on worn flags through an open door. Beyond, the marble of a terrace shimmered in the spring heat.
‘I don’t remember a marble terrace,’ Chaucer said, as Glanville led the way.
The knight smiled. ‘Lady Violante has brought a taste of her homeland with her. In her first summer, she tried to persuade Lionel to brick up the fireplaces. Then she had a Suffolk winter and she ended up putting in more.’
Chaucer laughed. He remembered those mornings, snow sweeping in from the east, unimpeded, it seemed, by so much as a tree as Muscovy exhaled its frosty breath. Sleeping in your clothes, with a hat on the worst days. Breathing on the glass in a usually vain attempt to melt the frost enough to see how many more feet of snow lay outside. Happy days. Snow in London just wasn’t the same. For a start, it wasn’t half as cold! ‘But a marble terrace, though. That must have cost Lionel dear.’
‘It did,’ Glanville agreed. ‘But don’t forget, the Lady Elizabeth was no slouch. The lion house? The goldsmith’s workshop?’
‘True. True.’ By now, Chaucer was outside on the terrace, feeling the warmth from the sun-kissed marble seeping welcome into his soles. He leaned on the balustrade and looked out over the woods and parks of Clare. Turning to look back at the castle, rising grey and dour at his back, he had to share his thoughts. ‘This is lovely, Rich but … is it me, or does it look a bit … odd? As if …’ Chaucer sought for an analogy and, unusually for him, failed.
‘It is as if,’ a soft, lightly accented voice said behind him, ‘an old woman had suddenly thrown off her wimple and let her golden hair cascade down. The hair is no less beautiful for being on an old head, merely a surprise. Don’t judge my terrace, Master Chaucer, simply enjoy it. Lionel didn’t like me spending the money at first, but when it was finished, he loved to sit out here in the sun, and he didn’t like change, did he, Sir Richard? In some things, I should say. In other parts of his life, he embraced change, quite literally embraced.’
Chaucer bowed and blushed simultaneously. ‘I do like your terrace, Lady Violante,’ he stammered. ‘It is just that … the years … I don’t recognize …’
She smiled and waved aside his apology. ‘Don’t worry yourself, Master Chaucer,’ she said. ‘I do understand. But not all change is bad. Perhaps in a thousand years, when this castle is dust, my terrace will remain. People will walk along it and wonder who we were, who thought we could build for ever. Do you think that, Master Chaucer? How long will London stand, do you think?’
Chaucer knew better than most that London wasn’t built to stand. Almost every day, a house fell down, burned down or otherwise disappeared, to be swiftly replaced by another. London was built on sand and, if it outlived him, he would be amazed. Cities were ten a penny and went where the people went. And London was not to be compared with Clare, with its wide eastern skies and air full of the scent of new leaves and the sound of birds. ‘For as long as we need it, madam,’ he said.
Lady Violante blinked and smiled. ‘A very pretty answer, Master Chaucer,’ she said, then turned her attention to Glanville. ‘Are we to ride this afternoon, Sir Richard?’ she asked.
Glanville glanced at the sun. ‘I had no idea it was so late, my lady,’ he said. ‘Today has run away with me. I will go and make sure the horses are saddled and ready.’
‘Already done,’ she said. ‘I sent Niccolò and, as you know, what I send him to do, gets done.’
Glanville bowed. He didn’t trust himself with a spoken answer.
Violante inclined her head to Chaucer. ‘You will excuse us, Master Chaucer.’ It could have been a question, but in her mouth, it was an order.
‘Ummm … of course,’ he said, a little knocked off kilter. ‘I believe Sir Richard was going to take me—’
Glanville cut him off. ‘You’ll find what you need in the laundry, Geoff,’ he said. ‘I’m sure you’ll know it when you see it.’
Violante looked from one to the other. ‘The laundry?’ she said, puzzled. ‘Do you do your own laundry in London, Master Chaucer? No need for that here.’
‘Indeed, my lady,’ Chaucer agreed. ‘I simply need to ask … I have a houppelande of a delicate shade of green and I want to ask …’ He had rather boxed himself into a corner and rolled his eyes at Glanville.
‘… how to prevent it fading,’ Glanville continued, as smooth as silk. ‘He thought Hugh might know, but alas – no help. In fact,’ and Glanville laughed extravagantly, ‘he said he wouldn’t be seen dead in that colour. Didn’t he, Geoff?’
Chaucer was puzzled now, then realized what was going on. ‘Oh, ha, yes, indeed. Saucy young pup!’ And he too laughed, even less convincingly than the knight.
‘Well,’ Violante looked from one to the other, her eyes hooded. ‘If Hugh doesn’t know something about clothes, it isn’t there to know, Master Chaucer. But, if you will, please do ask my washerwomen. I understand they are friendly.’ She smiled at the two men. ‘At least, I don’t believe they have eaten anyone alive as yet.’ And with that, she turned on her heel and walked off, Glanville in hot pursuit. He grimaced over his shoulder at Chaucer and pointed to the other end of the terrace, then waved his arms this way and that. After the mime for ‘turn left, down the stairs and through the door to the right,’ Chaucer was hopelessly confused, so just set off hopefully, knowing he could always ask the way.
‘Will you hawk alone, sir?’ the Lady Violante nudged her chestnut forward towards the Nethergate.
Richard Glanville reined in his black, steadying the saker tied to his wrist. The falconers hovered at the horse’s haunches.
‘Send these men away, Richard. I need a word.’
The knight clicked his fingers and the falconers bobbed away, although they looked at the lady with apprehension; the peregrine on her gloved wrist flapped at the end of its lanyard, checking his head to make the jess-bells ring. That was His Grace’s hawk. It wasn’t right …
As if Violante had read their minds, she smiled at them. ‘Don’t worry, boys,’ she said. ‘I’ll look after Guesclin; he’ll come to no harm.’
‘You won’t be calling him that tomorrow, will you, my lady?’ Glanville smiled at her.
‘Why not?’ she asked, wheeling her mare round. ‘I think it’s a charming name.’
‘It’s a French name,’ Glanville reminded her. ‘Worse, it was named after Bertrand du Guesclin, your late husband’s sworn enemy.’
Violante laughed. ‘My husband had many enemies, Richard,’ she said.
‘Not many ran rings around him like Bertrand.’
‘The man’s a freebooter,’ she snorted, ‘a commander of jacquerie. He’s not even a gentleman. I’ll race you to the river.’
The woman was using the new side-saddle the Italians had introduced. Glanville knew it would never catch on, but he had to admire the way Violante handled it, cantering over the cropped grass that led to the Stour. He kicked his courser’s flanks with his spurs and followed her, the saker flapping and squawking on his wrist.
At the Stour’s bank, Violante reined in and Glanville drew up alongside, giving her a gentlemanly lead of a few seconds. When a lady says ‘race’ she really means ‘let me win’ and he was nothing if not chivalrous.
‘You needed a word, my lady?’ he asked her, as they let their horses amble alongside the river. The sky was a cloudless blue, a perfect hawking day, without a breath of wind. The peregrine certainly could hear a mouse move at three hundred paces and the saker wouldn’t be far behind. But Violante had other things on her mind.
‘Who was my husband, Richard?’ she asked suddenly, her voice small and alone in a big, friendless world.
Glanville checked his horse in surprise, jerking back on the reins. ‘My lady, I …’
She held up her free hand. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘He was the companion of my bed and board, my lord, my lover. But who was he? I can’t say I ever really knew him.’
‘He was the son of a king,’ the knight said, ‘the wisest king in all Christendom. He was the brother of its greatest knight, Edward, the Black Prince,’ and he crossed himself. He caught the look in her eye. ‘He was your husband, madam,’ he said softly, ‘and he loved you deeply.’
She nodded. Was it a trick of the light glancing up from the speeding waters of the river, or was that a tear that trickled from the darkness of her lashes? ‘And who would want him dead?’
Glanville leaned in closer, his arm on the pommel of his saddle. He didn’t think he was going deaf, but she was speaking so quietly and the river was loud just at this point in its journey. Besides, he needed time to think. ‘My lady?’
She urged her chestnut up a step or two, until they were almost knee to knee. She stroked the peregrine’s hood, making the bells tinkle again. ‘Isn’t that what your Master Chaucer is doing here?’ she asked.
‘He’s not my Master Chaucer,’ Glanville told her.
She smiled. ‘I rather suspect he’s not anybody’s Master Chaucer,’ she said. ‘Hugh tells me he’s a comptroller … what’s that? Some sort of glorified clerk? A book-keeper?’
‘Something like that,’ Glanville said.
‘But he’s something more, isn’t he?’ she asked, searching his face.
‘A lot more,’ he said.
‘He’s here to find out how Lionel died.’
‘God called him.’ The knight knew the platitudes well enough.
‘Don’t give me that priestly claptrap,’ she snapped. ‘Death helps those who invite him in. That’s why Chaucer is here, isn’t it? To find out who let Death in?’
‘Geoffrey Chaucer was His Grace’s ward, my lady,’ he told her. ‘I explained all that. He has come to pay his respects, that’s all.’
She suddenly reached out and gripped Glanville’s wrist. ‘Richard. You and I know that Lionel was an old man, but he was as strong as the lion after which he was named. There is something … unnatural … about his death. I am from Pavia – we know these things. You are from Suffolk, but you know these things too. Will you and this Chaucer find the truth? For me? Tomorrow, we will lay Lionel to rest, but I will never rest until I know what happened. You will tell me,’ she moved her chestnut closer still and leaned across and kissed him on the cheek. ‘You will tell me what you find out?’
‘Count on it,’ Glanville said.
‘I think it only fair to tell you,’ she said, lowering her eyes, ‘that in my opinion and that of my seneschal and brother, that it was that little witch Blanche.’
‘Witch is a hard word, madam,’ the knight said, alarmed. The last thing they needed was that kind of name-calling, which could end so horribly, if not watched.
‘Bitch, then,’ she said, looking him straight in the eye. ‘It’s not for me to tell you and Master Chaucer where to look, but, mark my words, she is the killer. She ensnared my husband with her unnatural ways and then she killed him.’
As Richard Glanville sat there, dumbstruck, Violante hauled on the rein and turned to ride for the ford and the woods beyond. ‘Come on, then’ she called over her shoulder. ‘It’s a good day for the hunt.’
Glanville watched her go, the peregrine squeaking and champing at its tether. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said, almost to himself, ‘please don’t mention the Guesclin name. Because tomorrow, the most powerful man in England will be here. And, just like he did your husband, Bertrand du Guesclin made a fool of him as well.’ And he drove his spurs home.
Chaucer was feeling quite exhausted by the time he pushed open the heavy door, pointed out to him by what seemed like the thousandth servant whose help he had sought. In some ways, he was grateful to be on foot rather than riding, so that another part of his body got a pounding it was woefully unused to. But enough was almost enough, and he promised himself that if the next door didn’t have a whole lot of boiling water and red-faced women behind it, he was going to give up.
He offered up a small prayer to St Christopher when he stepped into what to some might look like a circle of Hell. Huge fires were burning under cauldrons of seething water and the air was thick with a cloying steam. Here and there, a brawny arm broke through the miasma as it hefted a bleached stick, festooned with sodden cloth. Above the slapping of wet linen and crackling of fire came a sweet voice, singing. It wasn’t a tune he knew; he had no ear for a tune, a great sadness to him as he loved a cadence in the spoken word as well as the next man, but he could tell that it was a pretty thing and the words were clear and simple. They told of a lost love, of a maiden left forlorn, the usual thing, but without the graphic detail that he had often heard in the London inns. As soon as the singing ended, the women’s voices were raised in conversation again, shouting for the lye, the soap, the tongs. In this chaos, somewhere, was Joyce. But where?
Out of the firelit fog, a shape loomed, with arms like hams and a head swathed in a cloth. The face ran with sweat, but it was smiling and the eyes were kind.
‘I think you must be lost, master,’ the woman said. ‘Gentlemen have no place here. We deal in dirty linen here and nobody wants that washed in front of prying eyes.’
Invisible in the steam, women laughed, as women who work in Hell will on hearing a familiar joke.
‘I’m looking for someone,’ Chaucer said, adding, hurriedly, before another bawdy joke was offered, ‘I’m looking for Joyce, if she’s here.’
‘Joyce doesn’t work in here, sir,’ the washerwoman said. ‘She’s kitchens, she is. But you might find her out the back, there. Butterfield won’t trust us with Her Ladyship’s table linen, so Joyce does it.’ The woman looked over her beefy shoulder into the cloud. ‘Is Joyce here, does anyone know? Anyone seen Joyce today?’
A head stuck out from the ste
am, which was clearing slightly in the draught from the still-open door. ‘She’s out back, with the slickstones on the linen. Or she was just now.’
Chaucer stood, undecided. Was this an invitation to step into the clouds of hot and soapy steam, or would someone fetch her? He looked expectantly at the woman who had come to his rescue and she smiled back, but they seemed to be at an impasse. Eventually, the washerwoman realized that he was waiting for her to make a move.
‘I wouldn’t like to disturb her, master,’ she said. ‘That Butterfield, he’s a masterpiece when it comes to being strict. He comes in here once every week, he weighs the lye, he does, makes sure we’re not using too much. He takes the linen to the window, checks how white it is by a cloth he keeps in his pocket. Not white enough and … back it goes. No, I wouldn’t want to annoy Master Butterfield, and that’s a fact.’
‘I’ll not stop her work, mistress, I promise,’ Chaucer said, taking a small coin from his purse and looking at it ruminatively. ‘If someone could take me to Joyce, I would be more than grateful.’
The washerwoman’s eyes gleamed. The coin looked small, but who would pass up even a small coin for the sake of not annoying the seneschal, who in her opinion was getting above his station. ‘I shouldn’t, but I will,’ she said, coming to a decision. Turning, she raised her voice. ‘Gentleman coming through, souls. Dress according.’ She turned to Chaucer and explained in softer tones. ‘Some of the women get a bit hot in all this steam, master. They like to’ – she nudged him and nearly knocked him over – ‘get a bit comfy, if you know what I mean?’ She gestured vaguely at her own ample upper regions, mercifully swathed in an apron and a cambric shift. ‘We’ll give them a moment to cover up, then I’ll take you through. You might want to hang on to my apron strings and step careful – the floor’s slippery and you can’t see far ahead.’ She called, ‘Ready?’
‘Ready.’ Voices from the gloom told them it was safe for a man to walk through.
‘Come with me, then,’ the woman said, ‘but, like I said, step careful. Step careful, now.’