The People's Queen Part 20

A sound from behind the gates turns Alice's eyes sideways. Suddenly she sees why this man's so brave. She almost stops breathing.

There are more men behind these two, pacing around outside. Men on horseback. Men with glittering points of metal raised. Fifteen, maybe twenty of them. Ready for trouble.

Master Broun's at Alice's side. He hasn't seen the hors.e.m.e.n. He nudges her. There's a question in his eyes. The other land agents are ma.s.sing: shoulders squaring, fists at the ready. She only has to say the word.

She shakes her head, just a fraction. This mustn't turn into a brawl. Too dangerous. Those men have a troop of horse with them, but that's not the only reason. The point is, they're not footpads. They're here on someone's orders. She has to find out whose.

'By what right?' Alice asks, hands on hips. Shouts, more like. She's comforted enough by the phalanx of solid, disciplined black at her back for that, at least. 'You have no right.'

Gruffly, staring at her with violence in his eyes, the other man says, 'Never you mind.' No 'mistress', no 'my lady'.

'I insist on knowing,' Alice says with the freezing fires of h.e.l.l in her voice. 'Or I'll have the King himself hound you down to the end of the earth.'

Silence.

Anger takes Alice over; she's hot with it again.

'What are your names?' she grinds out between clenched teeth.

Silence.

The men glance at each other. One - the man holding the friar - nods. The other strides off and mounts his horse. The first man bundles the friar off towards the other horse, and heaves him up over the saddle. The friar's groaning, and moaning, and mumbling prayers now; Alice glimpses his eyes, white all round the edges, fixing imploringly on her as the horse skitters round.

She follows them. She grabs the bridle. But the man grabs it back, making the horse shy. They both jump back to avoid the flailing of hoofs.

The man jerks his head at the friar. 'He'll know the witchcraft you you've been working, won't he?'

He stops talking. He sees, after a triumphantly vindictive glare at Alice, that he's silenced her. Seizing the horse's head, he clicks it on.

His parting words, as he walks out of the gate to a thin hurrah from beyond, with his victim moaning pathetically from over the horse's back, are: 'And you'll burn for it, mark my words, you b.l.o.o.d.y Jezebel.'

When Alice turns back to face her household, the six men at her shoulders and the many servants at the windows see that her face has turned as white as chalk.

Broun says, 'We can go after them.' The men shift on the b.a.l.l.s of their feet. The horses are moving away at a walk. They can still hear them.

He wants to. They all want to. She wants them to. No one bullies Alice Perrers and gets away with it...

...but she daren't. She doesn't for a moment think that ape meant what he said about burning. But still. She can see it's political, this arrest.

She shakes her head. Sucks in her lips. 'I'll raise it at Council,' she says more threateningly than she feels. 'Tomorrow. I'll get Father John back, and these ruffians flogged.' Perhaps, if she says it confidently enough, no one will realise that there's no Council tomorrow. There's just the Parliament. And this arrest must be linked to that.

'Come,' she says less certainly to the saucer eyes and round mouths, trying to put the picture of Father John, bundled over the horse's back, out of her mind. His eyes...

And then, seeing the old man's utter dejection in her mind's eye, she suddenly knows fear as well as anger: the black, consuming, treacly tide of fear, lapping at her very weak, very frail, very mortal bones. And what fear does is to concentrate her mind absolutely, and on herself alone. Suddenly she knows exactly what is the most important thing to do, right now. The only thing. She must get the paperwork sorted out. Leave no unexplained business. And she must do it now.

Northamptonshire and Nottinghamshire are dealt with; the West Country holdings are tidied up too. That's the bulk of it. But there are still loose ends, and there could be more men coming, any time. They haven't even begun on Southcote Manor, in Middles.e.x. Or Stoke Mandeville in Buckinghamshire, or the lands near Oxford. They haven't finished the London properties.

'Back,' she says, faster, trying to turn her rising panic into businesslike briskness, already striding towards the hall. She's thinking: I'll send Broun and Mulsho with the money to London...No, too much temptation; I'll put it all behind the stone in the fireplace after all...She snaps, over her shoulder: 'We've still got several matters in hand. And you all need to be out of here by nightfall.'

She's still at the top. She has nothing to fear. She tries to rea.s.sure herself, as she tucks trembling hands under the table where the men can't see them, by imagining that children's game again: the bright coin, sparkling away on top of that thin column of flour, however close the knife comes.

It's still there. Isn't it?

TWENTY-ONE.

There's vindictive joy in the air in the City. It's like a feast day, or what a feast day would be if there were a patron saint of revenge. The taverns are full of gloaters, spilling out into the wet streets, not caring about the gusting rain, shouting: all those incomers, the servants of all those parliamentarians, and all the natives of London, too, chewing over the gossip as if they were brothers in hate, yelling to their friends, spitting hailstorms of chicken legs out into the gutter.

Chaucer leaves work early - he doesn't care any more what he's promised. There is no normal life in the City any more, just this. He goes straight to a corner in the Burning Bush, where he sits, jostled and fearful, to listen to the bloodcurdling talk. There's ice in his heart.

There's talk of only one thing: the opening of Parliament, with the Lords packed into the White Chamber at the palace, and the Commons packed into the chapter house of the abbey. Even the Prince of England has had himself carried into the proceedings, on a stretcher, with death in his face.

Chaucer's no fool. Ever since he heard that the Prince was at Westminster, he's been full of dread. He understands at last. He reads the Prince of England's presence in that chamber as proof that this entire public puppet-show is a battle between two string-pullers: the royal brothers of England. The Prince of England is striking at his over-ambitious younger brother through the Parliament. The ciphers and proxies of one prince are about to be brought low by the ciphers and proxies of the other. And that's a frightening prospect for anyone who owes his position in the world to the Duke - as Chaucer does - and senses defeat in the air.

Already, in a controlled, clever way that speaks of months - years, maybe - of strategy and careful planning, the Commons, that many-headed, many-voiced tool of the Prince of England and his wife, have taken control. The lowly knights and burgesses of the Commons have given their voices n.o.bler weight by demanding and getting four barons included in their number, and four earls, and the bishops. And they've elected the knight from Herefordshire as their Forespeaker: Sir Peter de la Mare, who, because he's the seneschal of one of the chosen earls, Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, ultimately, like the Earl, owes loyalty to the Prince.

It is this Peter de la Mare who has led his men into the White Chamber to stand among the Lords today, and listened to the Crown asking for money: a first, dry, detailed, inaudible speech from the Chancellor, followed by an address from the scowling, furious Duke of Lancaster, who hates explaining himself to his inferiors, and hates making speeches anyway, and who's mumbled and shouted his way through his own uneasy speech asking for money, which everyone could hear but no one could quite get the drift of.

Tomorrow, it is this Peter de la Mare who will answer the demand of the Crown for a new tax. 'And it'll be fighting talk, I tell you,' the one-eyed drunk next to Chaucer says, elbowing him in the ribs and spitting approvingly into the rushes.

Chaucer knows, before another word is said, that he's somehow going to sneak into the chamber too, just for that speech tomorrow. He has to hear it. He's more afraid of staying here, and not knowing what battle lines are being drawn up between King and Commons, than he is of being caught. He can't not go.

Yet Chaucer feels a shameful coward all the way west. He takes a boat, very early in the morning, before it's properly light, before the crowds get out, covering his head against the rain and also against any eyes that might report him to Walworth. He goes straight to the treasury at Westminster Palace as if about to ask to draw his pension. That's what he'll tell anyone if they ask. He thinks he'd be convincing. He almost convinces himself, on the boat, that this really is his plan. The pension's not actually due for another month, though; he's pretty sure the treasury will be deserted, and then he can just sneak down the corridors...

And so, soon, from a dusty gallery above where the Duke and his entourage have taken their places to speak for the Crown, he's able to stick his head out and see the tops of parliamentary heads, a bobbing of faces, the Prince's litter in the far corner, and, rising to his feet at the front of the crowd, the lean grey shape of Peter de la Mare. For a daring moment, Chaucer peers forward for a glimpse of the man's face. The knight looks...exalted, he thinks. He sinks back.

Chaucer's cramped between some stacked-up benches. He's fighting sneezes in his nose and pins and needles in his feet. But he can't help but admire the natural beauty of the knight's angry, yet always dignified voice, reaching him through the echo and dust motes, as de la Mare begins his speech.

'Lords and magnates, by whose faith and industry the government of the kingdom ought to be carried out, I will by no means try to conceal from your wisdom how weighed down the common people have been by the burden of taxes, now paying a fifteenth, now a tenth, or even yielding as much as a ninth to the King's use. All of which they would bear cheerfully if the King or the kingdom seemed to gain any advantage or profit from it. It would also have been tolerable to the people if all that money had been spent in forwarding our military affairs, even though these had been unsuccessful. But it is obvious that the King has neither received advantage nor the kingdom any return from it. And so, because the public was never told how such great sums of money were spent, the common people are demanding a statement of accounts from those who received the money, for it is not credible that the King should need such an infinitely large sum if his ministers were loyal.'

Now de la Mare's voice is drowned out by sound. Slightly scared cheers from the knights. Growls of anger from elsewhere. It's breathtaking. Chaucer shakes his head at the sheer bold daring of the man.

'He said no,' Chaucer mutters, trying to take it in. 'The Commons is refusing the King's tax.'

How he wishes he could peep through the boards beneath his own feet and see the Duke's reaction to being told to explain to his inferiors where the last lot of tax money has gone. On the other hand, he thinks, hastily, at almost the same moment, how very glad he is to be up here, safely out of that scrimmage.

Cautiously he pulls back his head right back, crouches down tighter and takes a deep breath of dust.

What follows, once the hubbub dies down, is even more shocking. De la Mare follows up his opening speech by insisting that this Parliament be turned into a trial.

The Commons, he tells the chamber, will not give the King a penny in tax until the Crown has heard the case he wants to bring, on behalf of his fellow-knights and -burgesses, against the highly placed thieves he will identify. He wants the Crown to guarantee to produce every man and woman named by the Commons, so they can have their day standing up in public in this chamber, answering de la Mare's charges.

Chaucer can't believe his ears. There's never been anything like this before. De la Mare is turning the world upside down. The Duke will never...will he?

He hugs his knees, waiting for the shouting to die down, or turn violent. This is just the kind of insolence from the lower orders that could send the Duke into a fury.

If the Duke does start raging, Chaucer wonders, what will happen?

He doesn't think it would be right for the Duke to start raging.

It's Chaucer's strong instinct that what's going on here is too highly organised, too purposeful, and too broad, to be deflected by royal anger. Anger might only make things worse.

If the Duke starts raging, Chaucer wonders, should I go down - go to him - try to calm him?

He's often calmed the Duke down before. But now, with Walworth among the members of the Commons, across the room? Chaucer doesn't know the answer.

And there's no need, for now, as it turns out. He doesn't even hear the answer from the Duke's camp, when it comes. It's too quiet. And the Duke is right below where he's crouched, so he can't see why.

But he can guess that the Crown has, reluctantly, agreed, when the knights and burgesses who are just about in his line of vision start grinning and clapping.

As de la Mare rises to his feet again, with his arms outstretched to hush his fellow knightly mutineers - for he's a man who exists to promote order - Chaucer is tiptoeing out of the gallery.

Back on a boat to the City, his head whirling with the extraordinary shape that public events are taking, and the terrifying courage of the knight of Herefordshire in taking on the Duke of Lancaster (even if he's tacitly backed by the Prince), Chaucer somehow also finds s.p.a.ce, in a corner of his mind, to think of himself. Partly he's pleased to have whisked in and out so quietly, without being seen. But he's also ashamed of himself. Skulking in the gallery; scurrying through servants' entrances. What a pitiful figure I cut, he thinks.

He doesn't agree with the demands of the Commons, of that he's sure. It's beyond Chaucer to imagine that it can be right to question the Crown's natural authority in the way he's just heard de la Mare do. Yet at the same time he can understand why the knights of the shires and the burgesses of the towns of England are so discontented. And something in Sir Peter, that gravitas, that courage, that voice raised before the crowd, fearlessly expressing the Commons' point of view, has stirred his soul. Sir Peter, today, looked and sounded like an avenging angel.

Now, Chaucer's good enough at quiet diplomacy, and accomplished at reading out poetry he's prepared to a receptive audience, too, but he gets rattled by the eyes on him when he attempts public oratory. So he's surprised to find himself thinking, rather wistfully, as he reviews the tumultuous events of the day in Westminster: If I get a chance, perhaps, soon, I can do my small part too.

In the Burning Bush, on the way back from work that evening, a.s.sorted drunks are comparing notes. There's a podgy type who's been here all day, listening to the gossip, and is positively chuckling for joy at de la Mare's outspokenness. His spherical front ripples softly under his tunic again whenever he thinks of it. He's a tanner; he stinks, Chaucer thinks fastidiously, of half-cured hides.

'...and let me tell you, brother, he knows what's been going on, all right. He's done his homework. You can see that straight off.' The fatty takes another deep draught of ale. 'So it's going to be a cracking few months, I'd say,' he says with gusto, wiping the foam moustache off his sweaty red face. 'For all of us, right? Watching them get their come-uppance. Best sport we'll have had for years. G.o.d speed good Sir b.l.o.o.d.y Peter, tha.s.swhatIsay.'

'Who,' Chaucer says faintly, 'do you think they'll call?'

The man raises fat fingers. 'Well, Latimer, for a start,' he says knowledgeably, banging two sausages of index fingers together. 'Obviously. And all the rest of the bent little chisellers at court. Then, from over here in the City, Richard Lyons and his lot, I expect. And that's only the start.'

Chaucer stammers: 'But those people are already going to be heard, aren't they? Here in the City...I mean, because the aldermen are investigating the rumours about the debt fraud...and that's what this is about, really, isn't it?'

The tanner roars with laughter, and, when the gales subside, pats Chaucer so hard on the back he thinks his ribs might crack. 'Nah, mate, you're way behind. That piddling little trial - the alderman one? It's off. I heard down the Dancing Bear at noon - Walworth told the aldermen this morning that they're shutting it down so they can have it all out in Parliament instead. And quite right too. We might actually find out what's been going on, this way. The Parliament way: impeachment, they're calling it. They might all actually get punished. Whereas, leave the case here in the City, and what would happen? Nothing. You know that as well as I do. Lyons would get the little bags of gold coins out, and one of those aldermen would be hushing the whole thing up as soon as someone bunged him a bribe.'

'But why'd he do that?' shrilled a skinny greybeard. 'Walworth? He's got no call letting London cases go out of London. It's up to us to get the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, innit? They're our b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, in'they?' His rheumy eyes pop indignantly with London pride.

'Nah,' a whole chorus of amused voices answers, though kindly enough. 'Come on, use your head, Granddad. Walworth's not Mayor any more this year, is he? But he is is a member of the Commons, innee? So where would he want the biggest trial of the year to take place?' a member of the Commons, innee? So where would he want the biggest trial of the year to take place?'

The grey head nods. 'Yeah, I see now - he'd want it in Parliament, of course. Better for him. This way, he gets to stuff Warde, and get all the glory for himself. And next year we'll all want him to be Mayor again.'

There is a wave of wise nodding and grunting.

Meanwhile, the numbness in Chaucer's heart is darkening into something like physical pain.

It's not that he wants crime to go unpunished, exactly. He's just frightened of the pent-up rage he can see spilling out, everywhere he looks, and whom it will end up being unleashed on.

He hardly dares ask, but at last he gets it out.

'And Alice Perrers?'

It's a fletcher, long and thin as the arrows he makes, who answers, with a smile - an unlovely smile, showing off his black stumps of teeth. He draws in a great gout of unclean tavern air, enjoying the revelation to come.

'The witch, mate?' he says cheerfully. 'Well, I'd say her her goose is well and truly cooked. Her flesh might be getting a cooking soon too, from what I hear, though we won't know the worst of it till tomorrow. They've got her doctor, see...some filthy little friar. De la Mare's brother went after him. Found him down Hammersmith way. He was spilling his guts before they even started roughing him up, that's what they're saying. Magic rings, spells and potions, G.o.d knows what. No wonder we're in the state we're in today, with her getting up to all that right under our noses for all these years. They say the friar will be the first up for questioning before the Duke tomorrow.' goose is well and truly cooked. Her flesh might be getting a cooking soon too, from what I hear, though we won't know the worst of it till tomorrow. They've got her doctor, see...some filthy little friar. De la Mare's brother went after him. Found him down Hammersmith way. He was spilling his guts before they even started roughing him up, that's what they're saying. Magic rings, spells and potions, G.o.d knows what. No wonder we're in the state we're in today, with her getting up to all that right under our noses for all these years. They say the friar will be the first up for questioning before the Duke tomorrow.'

Chaucer doesn't often go out of his way to pray. But he does now. He tips his hat to the drunks and goes out of the tavern, through the rain, round the corner to All Hallows church, where he sinks to his knees under the rose window.

His prayer for Alice is without words. He can only hope G.o.d will pardon his incoherence and see his sincerity.

This is what he's feared. Worse. This is the plunge into the abyss.

Chaucer sits nailed to his desk from dawn to dusk the next day, hardly daring to look up; every moment an eternity.

By the next evening, however, as he walks home, head down, he realises that the hopes of the City haters that Alice Perrers would be burned for witchcraft have faded out.

He doesn't even have to go to the tavern to find out, they're all shouting so loud about it in the street. His ears p.r.i.c.k up; then his head perks up; then his feet go faster. By the time he reaches the first drinking spot, despite all his earlier good resolutions, he's got nothing on his mind more pressing than diving inside again.

The old friar who's been tortured has indeed brought to Parliament his pathetic tales of Alice practising black arts to bewitch the King into unlawful love. But no one could believe the obviously made-up confession. Even the knights felt sorry for the friar. When the Duke cut short the hearing by ordering the Archbishop of Canterbury to take the old man back, and keep him out of harm's way in a friary, the Prince's men, even Peter de la Mare, didn't object.

Chaucer has something else on his mind. He's buying the fat tanner a drink, trying to keep the relief off his own face. He's thinking: It's the Duke's wisdom today that's saved Alice. (Chaucer wouldn't have expected such wise restraint from my lord, to be honest. There've been outbursts of n.o.bleman's fury, more often.) My lord got it so right; cooperate with the Commons and let their anger dissipate. There'll be plenty more false accusations and climb-downs. He must just sit tight. Because what can a bunch of country squires hope to know, really, about the high finance of the realm?

But it's Chaucer's quiet euphoria, rather than the tanner's good cheer, that dissipates as the evening wears on - as it becomes obvious to him that the crowds in the taverns haven't understood the latest hearing quite as he has.

Chaucer hunches miserably over his tankard, listening helplessly to the wolf-whistles and the cat-calls. He wishes he knew where Alice was, or that he dare send a messenger, or, at least, that there might be something hopeful to send a message about. But not this. 'Witch!' halloo the skinners and fletchers and ropemakers. 'b.i.t.c.h!' roar the caulkers and the hoopers in response, punching meaty fists into the beery air.

Hating her is making them happier than they've been for years. Even now the charge has been shown to be absurd; even though she's not going to burn, they're still as ecstatic thinking of it as if they'd got Alice chained to a stake, right here, right now, choking in the smoke from the flames devouring her, and were laughing in her dying face. It's as if all the diffuse anger at the state of things that they've felt for so long has been focused, channelled, narrowed; directed at one small target. Chaucer stares at the froth on his ale, wailing, inside his head, at them all, 'But why her? She's only ever done what you've done, had the same fun you've had, helped herself here and there - just like you, only on a bigger scale, because she could. But she's no worse than anyone else. So why pick on her?'

But he knows, deep down. The penny has dropped. They're enjoying howling about Alice because they've been shown, by today's events, that she's the weakest of the high-placed people they blame for their troubles. Vulnerable. Flour on her face; scared eyes in the white. She might not be a witch and therefore easily burnable, but she's still the one Fortune's about to bring down. The victim. Her time at the top is over. Of course it's her blood they're after.