A Burnable Book: A Novel Part 27

'Because I'm your mouse, a little creature you can tease and claw till it dies?'

'Because-'

'Because you a.s.sume that John Gower-'

'Because I wrote the d.a.m.n thing, John!'

At last. I let his words linger. 'Say it again.'

He looked at me, eyes watering. 'Liber de Mortibus Regum Anglorum. The book is as much my invention as the book of d.u.c.h.ess Blanche, or the Parliament of Fowls.'

I sat back, a cold rage running through my veins. Then my joints relaxed, my vision starring as I stood and moved away from him. I honestly did not think he would admit it. Now that he had, I realized how keenly I had wanted it not to be true.

'John-'

'Go to h.e.l.l, Chaucer.'

'John, as your friend-'

'You are no friend. You are a curse.'

'-as your friend, John, I beg you to see all this from my angle.' From behind me I heard him rise, his shoes crackling the rushes. 'There are constraints on my position. My wife is Swynford's sister. To have revealed my hand in the composition of this work ... it's difficult to imagine the disaster that might have befallen the duke and his family.'

'And my family, Geoffrey?' I said faintly, still turned away. 'Why didn't you trust me with this information in the first place? Did you think I'd betray you to Westminster? You know me better than that.'

'As well as you know me, John.' I turned. Chaucer almost cringed; there were still things he wasn't saying.

'What about this Lollius, then? What was his role in writing the prophecies?'

Chaucer lifted a vase from a nearby shelf, wiping at the dusty bra.s.s. 'Lollius is also my invention. A Latinist of real distinction, and his stories are only now being translated into English. He's the auctor of what will be my own great work someday, a romance of Troilus.'

'Simon is missing, Chaucer,' I spat. 'Perhaps you might worry about your precious poetry some other time.'

He set down the vase, looking perplexed by his own narcissism.

'And the Lollius of Horace, the poet I chased through Oxford?'

'No relation,' he said. 'Though certainly an inspiration. To blame it all on Horace's Lollius, an unknown poet from ancient Rome? I couldn't pa.s.s it up.'

'But to write a poem prophesying the death of our king? You can't be ignorant of the treason statutes, Geoffrey. How many times have you heard them read aloud on the street? To compa.s.s or even imagine the death of our king: treason pure and plain. You know this. I cannot imagine what might have motivated you to write this sort of thing. And "long castle"? You used the same wording in your book for d.u.c.h.ess Blanche. You might as well have signed the d.a.m.ned thing!'

Chaucer was tapping his foot. 'But I didn't ah, what can I tell you, John, that you won't discover for yourself soon enough?'

'There's more?'

'I wrote the De Mortibus in Tuscany, John. In Hawkwood's company, during that visit last year. It was a jest, an amus.e.m.e.nt that took me a few mornings. I never intended it to circulate. But then it went missing.'

'Tuscany.' My skin p.r.i.c.kled into gooseflesh. 'Simon knew you'd written it, then.'

He nodded.

'Did he read it?'

'Oh, he read it quite carefully, I should think.'

So Simon knew the De Mortibus, had known of it all this time. There was something in Chaucer's tone, though, that bothered me. 'Are you suggesting Simon stole it from you, brought the ma.n.u.script with him from Italy?'

He looked at his shoes, a gesture I took then as a sign of shame. Despite his newfound forthrightness, he was still deceiving me, protecting me from knowledge he feared would destroy me. 'The timing doesn't work. It's true that those who took Simon must have made a connection between the book, his service with Hawkwood, and his return to England. But the De Mortibus came to London weeks before Simon's arrival.'

'Suggesting what?'

Chaucer's eyes clouded. 'Suggesting there are other forces at work here, John. Larger forces, with motives far from poetical.'

'Isn't there a simple solution?' I said. 'You wrote the prophecies, after all. You can prove it, for the original ma.n.u.script is in your hand. And you have the good will of the duke. Why can't we go to him and lay bare what you've done?'

'Impossible.'

'Why?'

'It's gone too far.'

'How so?'

'Well, for one thing, there are already multiple copies circulating. This one you've brought me is in Clanvowe's hand. I a.s.sume there are others. Who would believe I wrote it, even if I were to confess?'

'So you'll let another man be quartered for your own vanity?'

'It's not so simple.' Chaucer stepped close to me. 'The knowledge of this book reaches deep into Richard's faction. Some of the most powerful men in the realm are arrayed against Lancaster. Warwick, Arundel, Oxford, Buckingham, who knows how many others, all of them convinced that the thirteenth prophecy will shatter the duke's faction, pull the king away from his uncle. If it's known that the De Mortibus was written by Geoffrey Chaucer, betraying the king's affinity on the duke's behalf, why that would be just the wedge the earls need to drive apart Lancaster and the king, breaking an already fragile truce between Richard and Gaunt. Imagine it: Chaucer and Clanvowe, scribbling seditious prophecies at the behest of the recently deceased John Wycliffe and his chief supporter, the Duke of Lancaster. A scandal of the highest order.'

'So it all comes down to politics? Factions and alliances, t.i.tle and power, government and gossip.'

Chaucer waved a hand. 'Easy for you to say, John. You're a man without a faction the one fact about you everyone knows. The reason you were chosen for this task was precisely your neutrality. Your ability to do all your dirty work regardless of faction.'

'I "was chosen"? As if the pa.s.sive voice somehow excuses your choice of me as your tool?'

'Oh, you weren't my choice.'

I froze. 'Then whose?'

Chaucer's eyes closed.

'I am sick of your petty secrets. Who suggested to you that I be sent on this fool's errand?'

Chaucer puffed his cheeks, looked at the ceiling. 'Strode.'

Of course. 'And how long has Ralph known that you wrote the prophecies?'

'Since my return from Italy, the week before our meeting at Monksblood's. It was Ralph who convinced me I needed to recover the book. He believed it was already too late to confess I wrote it, which I was prepared to do. We needed your help, your skills. But then, when Simon returned, it was felt that you were too compromised. That you were both in danger.'

I thought again of my trip to Oxford, that earnest conversation with Strode about the allure of false propositions. Strode had been tantalizing me, then, with his own false proposition, encouraging my trip to Oxford, even going so far as to write a letter to Angervyle's keeper to help me find a book he knew I would never discover in the bishop's collection. The only factors he had not controlled were my meeting with Clanvowe and the knight's copy of the prophecies.

'Strode was protecting you,' said Chaucer. 'Getting you out of town when things were at their hottest. He continues to protect you, and me as well.'

'Protect me? From what? I don't need protection, Geoffrey. My son needs protection. He's the one suffering for my sake, as we stand here jawing about your ridiculous prophecies.' I felt short of breath.

'We all need protection,' Chaucer gently said, risking a hand on my back. Despite myself I did not knock it away. 'Don't you see? The book is an axe at our necks. I wrote it in Italy. Simon read it there, and he's missing. You are Simon's father, and you have a copy of the De Mortibus yourself. You received it from Clanvowe while dining with Purvey, Wycliffe's closest disciple. Barely four hundreds lines of my doggerel, and they threaten us all.'

'And King Richard.'

'And King Richard,' he agreed.

'Who is behind all this, Chaucer?'

'Hawkwood.' A blood-soaked name. 'I believe he's plotting a return to England. He wants to ensure his legacy, win a greater t.i.tle for his descendants. Rather than retiring happily to Ess.e.x, though, he plans to destabilize the realm by implicating Lancaster in this plot against the king. Hawkwood has Oxford in his pocket, you see. His ties to the de Veres go back two generations, and that's a family that would do anything to heighten its status. Weldon is the go-between. He's now Oxford's man, but for years he served Hawkwood in the White Company. He led the ma.s.sacre at Cesena, the slaughter of an entire town.'

I thought of the scar on Weldon's chin, the butchery of which the man had long seemed capable. 'And now Weldon is doing everything he can to see the plot to its completion.'

'It's why Simon was seized, I believe, because he's a.s.sociated with Hawkwood, and knows his plans.'

'As do you, Geoffrey.'

'Even Strode isn't safe,' he continued. 'The only thing to do now is to recover my copy, hunt down any others, and hope for the best. Unless-'

I looked at him. 'Unless?'

'Unless we can find the cloth.'

'What cloth?'

'An ornate piece of work, embroidered with the livery of Gaunt, the alleged conspirator, raising a sword against King Richard. It travelled with the book from Italy.'

'Who made it?'

He looked away and breathed deeply. 'It fits the De Mortibus as a glove fits a hand,' he said, ignoring my question. 'From Strode's inquiries we know that the book has been separated from the cloth. Whoever puts the book with the cloth, then-'

'Will destroy the realm.'

'Or save it,' he said. Then he actually smiled. 'There's one final wrinkle.'

'Why am I not surprised?'

'I have it from Strode that the book was brought into the city by maudlyns.'

'Maudlyns?' A stir of the absurd.

'Apparently some wh.o.r.e got ahold of it just as I was asking you to find it for me. You'll remember the girl's murder, outside the city walls-'

'In the Moorfields,' I said.

'They sold the book, or tried to. Strode doesn't know who paid them for it. He's trying even now to find out, asking all kinds of questions. The cloth, on the other hand, has not been seen.'

'So they still have it.'

'Presumably.'

I thought about this. 'And I suppose there's no one more suited, in Strode's opinion and yours, to extracting this cloth from the maudlyns of our city than one John Gower.'

'Well, if it's any comfort, you may be the only one looking for it.'

'Where should I begin?'

'Gropec.u.n.t Lane, I imagine. Or Southwark. Perhaps Rose Alley, in your own neighbourhood.'

'And how does one go about prying cloth from maudlyns, in your expert opinion?'

Chaucer turned to me, his brow a world-weary arch. 'Drag a sack of silver through the stews and there's no telling what you might find.'

He said it lightly, provoking me with a familiar humour that obscured those deeper truths he still had not revealed.

You will remember, my soul, that Dante Alighieri, the great poet of Florence, first saw Beatrice at a feast. He was only nine at the time, as was she, yet even then the arrows of Amor penetrated him deeply, inspiring wild thrums and tremblings and pulsations in his heart despite its tender age.

Our young lady was fully a woman when she first saw her love, though the effects on her soul were no less childish, no less urgent for her greater maturity.

It was an autumn evening on the feast of St Luke, just after the procession of the physicians along the square before San Simpliciano. The last company had pa.s.sed by, the raucous shouts of the children following in their wake, the oily whiff of torches in the air. As the final cl.u.s.ter of drunk doctors walked past she looked across the open s.p.a.ce to the opposite rank of spectators and there he was, in the smoky light: a fair-haired man, twenty years her elder, she guessed, broad of chest, long of leg, a face that brightened the air as if some new Apollo had deigned to troll the streets of Florence.

The man spared her no glance, turning from the procession and walking along the edge of the crowd.

She saw him again the next week, at the Broletto, pausing at a tinker's table while she examined silks. That day he wore a loose shirt of thin wool, a rough thing hardly fit for a clerk. As she pa.s.sed behind him she glanced at his hands, those long fingers stained with gall. A man given to writing, despite his unslouched back and clear-eyed gaze at everything around him. He smelled of balsam, of honey mixed with ale.

How she pined for him! How she ached to feel his touch, to guide his blotchy fingers in making of her very skin his vellum and his books.

Then, as she watched him stroll across the market street, he was stopped and embraced warmly by a man she knew quite well.

Il Critto! They were countrymen, of course, though there were so many Englishmen in Florence that she had not thought to ask her suitor about the one she most desired.

'Who was that old fellow I saw you with at the Broletto?' she casually asked him the next morning. They were in the upper gallery, finally usable after a months-long repair to the flooring, seated on the long bench beneath the Tribunale tapestry. Her stepmother sat with several visitors at a proper distance. Embroidery and gossip.

'An envoy from Westminster, and an intimate friend of my father's,' he said, suspecting nothing. 'He arranged my current position with Hawkwood, in fact. I owe him a great deal.' He was proud of his knowledge of Hawkwood's relations with the English envoy, whom he seemed to admire tremendously. He told her a bit about the man's employment (royal customs official), purpose on the peninsula (some discreet diplomacy), obsession (poetry), and wife (estranged).

With a frown and a strange tilt of his head, he pointed over her shoulder. 'Why, look there! Those are the arms of his greatest supporter.'

She turned, her gaze falling on the old cloth embroidered with the opposed livery of the foreign duke and prince. She felt it: the breath of Fate on her neck. To learn that the man she desired was in favour with the duke who had saved her life so long ago this was a destined match. Everything else would naturally follow.

So she dropped a hint, a mild suggestion, and the next day Il Critto (poor fool, she thought) dutifully brought the older man with him to her father's house.

It was a simple matter to put her ambitions in play. A half-hidden smile here, a dropped kerchief there. The Little Weasel no more, she had developed into a captivating beauty, one of the true gems among the ladies of the Commune. Soon enough his visits became the most longed-for part of her day.

They discovered in one another a mutual love of stories and poems. His verses were artful and urbane, pleasuring some hidden part of her with their depth of knowledge and craft. He whispered, too, from some of his more lecherous lays, comparing his desire to a written map of the world, himself to a cold fish marinated in the spicy sauce of her favour. She became an avid listener to this Narcissus of the North, his impenetrable self-regard only warming her further.