The People's Queen Part 29

He goes still. He's recognised her voice, all right. He's just not sure...

She's in her nun's garb, she remembers. She puts down the hood.

He's never been given to displays of emotion. He looks at her for a long while before he answers, even more blankly, 'Alice.'

He's never been given to displays of emotion, she reminds herself. But she's not sure she can hear the tenderness she might have wanted in her husband's voice.

What follows next is almost enough to make Alice laugh, especially when she imagines Chaucer, sitting in his mess of bits of paper, with his endless flow of talk and ideas, with his generosity of spirit, with his eyes shining, picturing her in some happy-ever-after Christmas moment, being reunited with her lost love, being hugged by clean pretty rejoicing children.

William takes her inside, takes her upstairs, unb.u.t.tons himself, pushes her down on a bed, pulls up her skirts, and makes love to her, in no-nonsense military fashion, without a word of endearment.

He smells familiar, like remembered happiness. And everything, for days, has felt so unreal anyway. And she's interested. She lets it happen. This might be the future. Why protest?

But when he sits up and starts to talk - he doesn't seem to expect a word from her, even an explanation of the nun's habit he's just unseeingly desecrated - and she sits meekly listening and watching, relearning his tics of eye and mouth and expression, remembering the timbre of his voice, recalling, now she sees it again, that roll of fat behind his ears that she never liked, she begins to realise that, though he seems a greyer, harder version of the man he was before, she might have changed more. Did she really just sit, in this slumped silence that seems so familiar, while he gave orders, before? Wasn't she ever the centre of attention, back then? Didn't he ever listen while she laughed, and made jokes, and amused him with her wit? She begins to think that the woman she's become, in the years of running things, and planning things, and jollying people along, might never be able to accept that this man - this abrupt-mannered, cold-eyed, order-issuing soldier - could ever bring her the kind of happiness she's come to want.

It seems he's been here at this house for a week, and he's been travelling to find Alice for a good while longer; since soon after he received a letter from Chaucer, who'd thought, but not been sure, that Alice would sooner or later pitch up here. (Chaucer, she thinks, with a burst of nostalgia for her London friend's verve and intelligence; always one step ahead.) Because William didn't know exactly where to find her, he tried Wendover and a couple of her other manors en route. His next stop would have been London, except that when he reached this house, and found the children and Aunty Alison were still here, as they had been all along, he also heard that Alice had been arrested. So he decided to wait out the trial here. He hasn't been doing the things that Chaucer was advising Alice to when she reached Ess.e.x: letting the dust settle, getting the lie of the land, gathering strength. That isn't Will's way. He's a soldier. He's been making a thorough investigation of everything, putting everyone here through their paces, and smartening everything up.

'Servants were running wild when I got here,' he barks. 'So - had a few whipped. Discipline, you know. Discipline. All fine now.'

It's true, she realises. It's more orderly here than she remembers. The house is strangely neat. So is the yard. The usual clutter of half-mended farm implements and cracked leather buckets and discarded boxes and big bits of wood that might, one day, be useful for something has vanished from the courtyard. The peasants are in the fields, turning over the earth, ready for spring. The horses are in the stable. The servants are in the kitchen. The chickens are in the hen-run. There are cooking smells in the air.

It no longer looks the kind of place where the lord lives scarcely any better than the peasants he reigns over. Alice thinks, not without admiration, that with someone like Will in charge, who knows? The land at Gaines might actually make some money, for once. Of course, she also thinks, since Will's techniques seem to involve beating his subordinates into submission, the price would be unhappiness all round. But a proper income from the fields might be good.

Alice can scarcely think how Aunty Alison can have taken to this soldierly make-over, though she can imagine a good many tart comments that might have come from the old woman's lips.

'Whatever did Aunty say?' she asks with the beginning of a smile. She'll break the ice between them, she thinks, suddenly hopeful. She imagines she's going to hear about an epic tussle of wills. Then she'll tell Will a few stories about Aunty and her odd ways, perhaps; it will be the first laugh they'll share.

Will looks back, not registering the laugh. 'Your old nurse?' he replies seriously. 'Complained. Lippy type. I've moved her off to sleep with the servants. Right place for her. Been getting above herself; taken over running the house. Gossiping with serfs. Egging them on. Whatever next.'

Alice's eyes widen, though she stays tactfully silent. Poor Aunty. How furious she must be.

Will continues, even more sternly: 'She should watch herself. That old woman. Talks too much. No discipline. I've got half a mind to get her flogged too. Set an example.'

There is a moment's pause.

I must find Aunty, as soon as possible, Alice thinks, feeling her hands already flapping around uneasily on the quilts. I must find out what's been going on.

But she smiles up appeasingly at her husband. Cautiously, with sinking heart, she asks the next question. 'And the children...where are the children?'

He hasn't mentioned them, either. Not that he's ever shown much interest in them, in all those years in Ireland. But still...they're his own children...and his only children that she's aware of. They must be on his mind?

He looks blankly out of the window. She thinks, hopes, that he isn't too angry with her for letting them grow up such wild little peasants. It takes her a moment to realise that he might be feeling the same mixture of worry and guilt she does. He's been away all their lives too, after all. And he's their father.

'Sent them up to Greyrigg,' he says guardedly. 'No choice. Boy can't hold a bow, let alone a sword. Girls can't sew. No priest to teach them, here. They can hardly read. No French. And they can't so much as mumble a prayer in Latin. Best they go home. Get a bit of schooling.'

With the light on his granite face catching his pale eyes, he's handsome, as statues are handsome. How strange, Alice thinks; he's taken them on as his, then. She wanted that once. But now all she can think is how sad Aunty will be.

'They can come back in the summer,' he adds. 'Maybe. With a tutor. If they've done well.'

For all the harshness of his tone, Alice thinks she's hearing an apology, or the nearest he can come to it: a concession to the presumed maternal instinct in her that he thinks he must have gone against.

She lowers her head. She doesn't know what she feels. She thinks she's relieved. This is difficult enough as it is. So she nods.

'But, Will,' she says, giving in to the way things are going, since there's nothing else to do, and asking him for leadership, as she can now see she must always have done in the past, 'what will we we do?' do?'

She means, 'now that I've lost everything'. She means, too, 'now that you've lost everything'. Because, since he was sent home in disgrace from Ireland, he has no cosy government position, no favours from on high; just his rents from his northern manors, just obscurity, like her. Desolately, she thinks: All those years of effort, wasted.

He knows the answer. He's a leader of men. He always knows the answer. Will doesn't do might-have-beens, or regrets. He's accepted the way things are, after defeat in the last battle. But he'll always want to fight on.

'Let the dust settle,' he says firmly. 'See how the land lies. Then, see what we can get back.'

Alice recognises those phrases. William must have taken them from whatever Chaucer wrote to him. He's quoting, though he probably doesn't even realise that he is. For the first time, Alice feels just a little comforted.

But, in the weeks that follow, there's little else to comfort Alice. Over a muted Christmas, while she's trying not to think of the splendid style in which she's celebrated previous Christmases, running the court, William has a list made of her properties. Aunty, meanwhile, makes a list of gifts she's going to send after the children, from her and, as she tells Alice, 'from their mum. They'll like that.' There isn't a hint of reproach in her voice. She's obviously always said this. After Christmas, William sends clerks to each of the manors Alice so recently owned. Then William strides around, shouting at the clerks when they return, one by bedraggled one, with their separate pieces of inevitable bad news. William shouts at Aunty, that bristling stick of resentment, stuck away upstairs and in the kitchens, seething. William scarcely speaks to Alice, except to update her on the property news, or to order her to order Aunty to change the way the house is run, or to find grease for his armour, or better oats for his horses, or a priest, for G.o.d's sake, why is there no proper priest in this place?

He wants to do something to fight back. But he's lost, away from his troops and garrisons. He's not a man of the mind. He doesn't know how to fight, except with a sword.

Alice is too grateful to be alive, and free, too relieved no one has come after her, to feel as desolate, yet, as she thinks she will when she really begins to believe it's going to go on for ever. Still, time hangs more heavy on her hands every day. She tiptoes around. She rides around the bare winter fields, noticing how quiet the peasants have gone (they've never had serfs at Gaines; 'Can't see the point of it,' Aunty's always said). The servants' pay's been cut, she knows. Their hours have been raised. Aunty's seething (though only in a whisper). Those peasants were her friends.

She sneaks off to the solar and kitchens, sometimes, and talks to Aunty - tells her, in a whisper, the story of the trial, and the escape, and Chaucer's unexpected and triumphant rising to the occasion. 'He sounds a good boy, your Chaucer,' Aunty says, putting aside her own woes, and considering. 'We both like a lad with a bit of wit and mischief in him, don't we, dear?' Then her thin old face darkens, and her loose old-lady mouth tightens, as she mutters, rebelliously: 'Not like old Lord Misery-guts out there.'

Aunty has nothing much else to say about Will. But she tells Alice that the children knew, before they went north, that their mum was on trial. That they were worried. That they asked Aunty all the time, 'Will she be safe?' and that they had tears in their eyes.

Alice doesn't know exactly what the confusing feeling is, churning inside her, when she hears that. She just nods. 'It's for the best,' she says, wondering why her voice feels so choked.

'They'll have heard you're out and safe, at least, dear,' the old woman says rea.s.suringly, and her thin turkey-jowls quiver. 'The boy will have got there by now. That'll be a weight off. Poor little mites.'

Alice can't talk to Aunty all the time, because Aunty's so often out these days. To keep out of Will's hair, the old woman trots off to Brentwood every few days to hear the hedge-priest's insurrectionary sermons in the cemetery, outside church, on the days the real priests don't come out and chase him away. 'You should come too,' Aunty says with wickedness in her gra.s.s-green eyes. 'Ooh, how that man can talk. You'd enjoy it. I can tell.' But Alice knows Aunty just wants to rile Will with this invitation, because Will makes no secret of the fact that he wants to get the ranting revolutionary, who's called John Ball, locked up for preaching that there should be no more lords, and no more princes of the church either, and certainly no taxes. Alice doesn't want to rile Will, so she stays put. And when Aunty tells her that there's a bit of a society being formed among the hedge-priest's supporters, a secret sort of thing called the Magna Societas, and that they're doing a bit of letter-writing to spread the word among the people, because the collectors are out gathering this new poll tax, and it's an outrage, dear, just imagine, a groat a head, from the poorest in the land, when the wages have been cut back to twopence a day (by Lord Misery-guts and his landlord friends), and so Aunty's promised to help with the letters, because of course it's a good cause, and worth the time, only she's not that good with a pen, so perhaps Alice might...? Alice just smiles, a bit sadly, and shakes her head. Aunty's never allowed herself to be bored, however unpromising her circ.u.mstances. That hasn't changed. But Aunty's flirtation with a new form of risk isn't for Alice.

Sometimes Alice is so at a loss for ways to occupy herself that she even reads. Aunty scoffs, 'Well, look at you you,' when she catches her, but Alice thinks that's because the only book she has is a Bible. She can only half understand the Latin. Sometimes she wishes she'd asked Chaucer for some of his work. He writes in English. She's never read his poems.

Once every few days, Will unb.u.t.tons himself and pushes Alice down on the bed, with never an endearment, never a soft word. She opens her eyes, sometimes, and looks wearily around as he labours over her, grunting energetically. Was this really what she's swooned to remember all her life, this muscular, dull coupling? Surely she enjoyed herself more, laughed more, on those few s.n.a.t.c.hed nights with Chaucer, talking half the night; Chaucer, whom she's always taken so lightly, whom she's always thought of as a friend more than a lover. Why didn't she notice at the time?

There's no lightness now, that's for sure. Even if Will's not admitting it himself, even if his mind doesn't admit of might-have-beens, or deal in fancies, she can see he's angry with life for this reversal, angry with G.o.d, and angry with her.

What Will wants more than anything else, she comes to see as the estate visits go on, and the list-making, and the futile shouting, isn't her, it's getting the property back. All those estates she might have brought him; all those estates she had in her hand, and lost. He thinks of nothing else. He recites the names, and the fates, of each unknown manor. He knows the acreage. He knows the yield. He knows the rents. He knows who's taken over. He knows whom he'd get revenge on, if he could. But he doesn't know how.

It's February, or March, and the first green fuzz of buds is appearing on the bare branches, before she realises that she actively dislikes her husband. She doesn't want to hear him muttering the names of the estates she's lost any more, or shouting at any more clerks, as if it were their fault the lands have gone. She's lost in her numb grey cloud here; she's got no use for the rents she's lost, now she's got to be here. And nor does he. Yet he wants those lands more than she does, even though it was she who earned them, and on her back, too, half the time. With the first stirrings of conscious resentment, she thinks: It's wrong that he's so much more desperate than me for the profit he feels he should have made from pimping his wife, all those years ago, to another monstrously selfish old greybeard like himself.

She looks at that grey head, and the neat grey beard, and the too-broad shoulders, and she imagines him in another few years, bent, and frail, with aches and pains and weeping, stinking sores, demanding warmth, attention, time, respect, ointment and bandages, sucking the life out of her, out here in the mud and biting wind. They're all the same, old men. Their selfishness destroys you. And there was me, thinking I was using them them, when all along, my old men have been having the last laugh on me... me...

She almost laughs, at that, though joylessly. It's true. Here she is, right at the bottom again, in Ess.e.x with Aunty, with mud on her boots, nostalgically howling 'regnavi' - 'my reign is over'...And none of it need have happened, none of it might have happened, if she hadn't spent so much of her life trying so hard to manipulate all those old men.

None of her old men have done her any real good. Chaucer - clever, bright-eyed, young, unconfident Chaucer - is the only man who's been her friend, and who's actually helped her. He saved me, she says, out loud, trying out the words. No, he noticed noticed me, she corrects herself a moment later; that's what she's most grateful for, now she's with another unthinking old monster, who treats her as if she were invisible, unless she's being useful. Chaucer noticed me, and he thought about me, and so he saved me, and I've done nothing in return. I never even really thanked him. me, she corrects herself a moment later; that's what she's most grateful for, now she's with another unthinking old monster, who treats her as if she were invisible, unless she's being useful. Chaucer noticed me, and he thought about me, and so he saved me, and I've done nothing in return. I never even really thanked him.

If only she had, she thinks with painful nostalgia for him, and for the busy cheerfulness of those days rushing between court, and London, and Westminster, and Chaucer's rumpled bed. She's trying to make a kind of bargain with a G.o.d who she's pretty sure isn't listening: she should have thanked him...and she still could, if only, even just one more time, even for a moment, she could come out of this strange dull afterlife, this punishment for flying too high; if only she could see Chaucer again.

THIRTY-FOUR.

It will be nearly two years before Alice's wish to see Chaucer again, and thank him, comes true.

Meanwhile, Chaucer's advice to lie low and let the dust settle proves sound. The wheel keeps turning, bringing if not a return to Fortune's embrace at least another summer, and a harvest of sorts, and then, in the next bleak wintertime, when the only fruit on the skeletal trees is the crows with their melancholy cawing, black as ink blots, dropping like ghostly pears to swoop through the grey air, a new Parliament at Westminster.

Until she finds out what will be discussed at the Parliament, until she understands William's preoccupation, and the reason for his exchanges of messengers and letters with London, Alice doesn't feel the momentum of change. She's aware only of what stays the same. She knows, for instance, that Aunty still misses the children, who are still up north, because Aunty talks about them so often, and so softly. These aren't the stories Alice might have expected, either. There's never a word about training the kids up to be thieves, as Aunty once trained her: slipping in and out of windows, sliding through openings in sheds and barn, picking up unconsidered trifles and slipping them into poachers' bags. Instead, Alice has learned that stubborn little Joan has nightmares, but that when she wakes up from them, trembling and clinging to you in the bed, she's stoical enough to pretend they never happened. That Jane is a natural-born tree-climber, and kind-hearted enough with servants to save food to share with Hamo the ploughman's daughter, who's the same age as her. That Jane and her friend had to be stopped, when they were toddlers, from eating earthworms. That Joan's as light and wiry to hold as a ratting dog, while Jane's body has always been warm and barrel-shaped. That Johnny's freckles started to appear on his face soon after his sixth birthday, and that he's embarra.s.sed by them. That the little boy has the pure voice of an angel. That he can ride like the wind. That he had a wooden whistle made for him by Hamo, and that the girls liked dancing to the tunes he plays on it by the bonfires they lit in the autumn. And that Jane once leapt right through a bonfire, so high she didn't catch fire.

'They're better where they are,' Will grunts whenever Aunty asks, meekly enough, when the children will be back.

So Aunty's keeping herself busy with her hedge-priests instead. Not John Ball, at the moment; he's been clapped into Maidstone jail after an outing to Kent. But there's always someone floating through Ess.e.x on the tide of angry human flotsam and jetsam sweeping the roads of England, who's got a rousing sermon in him. Aunty takes food to them all in her basket. Alice has also seen her going to Will's little bag of money and filching coins from him, sometimes right under his nose, with a grin on her face. She knows the coins go to the hedge-priests too. Alice never stops Aunty. She just pretends not to see.

It's through Aunty and her friends that Alice hears her news these days - all the latest vicious stories about the Duke of Lancaster, who's the man everyone in the land, more than ever, loves to hate, as things get worse. These are stories she doesn't comment on, neither with Aunty nor Will. She won't let herself be drawn into conspiracy with Aunty; and with Will she's found that the sharp tongue and quick wit that once earned her her fortune just aren't there any more. He silences and intimidates her; he doesn't mean to, perhaps, but she can't talk easily to him, any more than his stern face seems able to soften when he addresses a rare comment to her. There's nothing between them. He's out supervising the farming, or he rides into Colchester to spend his days with his friends at the garrison there. He eats with her at the same table once every couple of days. They make quick, wordless love once a week. So when she hears the stories about the Duke, the last person she's going to share her feelings with is her husband. She just smiles with grim private satisfaction, and thinks: The Duke's made his bed, and now let him lie on it. He can't blame me for any of this. this.

The Duke has put aside all shame of man and fear of G.o.d, she hears; he sleeps with an unspeakable concubine named Swynford, a witch as well as a wh.o.r.e. He's so under her spell, or so cowardly, or both, that he's failed to sail for France...

The Duke sent his knight, Sir Ralph Ferrers, bursting into Westminster Abbey during Ma.s.s to violate sanctuary and murder a squire who was seeking refuge after escaping from the Tower of London, where the Duke had had him wrongfully imprisoned. The abbey has had to be closed, and reconsecrated. But the Duke's making no bones about defending Ferrers...

G.o.d's against the Duke, who's lost another siege, and another king's ransom in Englishmen's money, now he's finally set sail for Saint-Malo to fight the French...

The Duke's still out for revenge on Londoners for scaring him silly by trying to burn down his great big b.l.o.o.d.y palace. The latest: he's trying to destroy angel-face Walworth, the fishmonger. He's sc.r.a.pped the fishmongers' trade monopolies. He's kicked Walworth out of his government job as war treasurer, too...

They say the Duke hates Londoners, and this really proves it. He's also kicked John Philpot, the most powerful of the grocers, out of his government job. John Philpot, to whom he should be grateful; John Philpot, who's paid, out of his own pocket, for a private fleet of warships to protect the coast from pirates...

You'll never guess what. The Duke's plotting with the Genoese to destroy the London merchants. He's always with the amba.s.sador, Ja.n.u.s Imperial (and what kind of two-faced foreign name is that?); they say they're about to announce that England's trade centre will be moved, permanently, from London to Southampton...

Alice listens to the next story, too, with only her usual dark dream-like pleasure, right up to the incomprehensible punchline. For what seems an eternity, she doesn't even begin to understand the amazed, expectant look in Aunty's eyes.

How about this, then? They're so fed up with the Duke that the next Parliament's going to reconsider one of his cases. It's your case, Alice. Will's bringing an appeal.

'It's your case, Alice,' Aunty repeats. 'Will's bringing an appeal.'

As the moments pa.s.s, as the room spins, Alice realises Aunty's still staring at her, half-excited, but half-hurt, too, at having been kept out of the secret.

'Did you know?' Aunty asks.

'Didn't he tell you?' Aunty asks a little later, reading Alice's face more accurately. But Alice has picked up her heels and fled in search of Will.

'That's right,' Will says, shortly. 'Appeal in January. I'll be leaving for Westminster right after Christmas.' He looks as square and military and phlegmatic as ever; she can't see even a flicker of excitement in his eyes.

'But...why didn't you tell tell me?' Alice asks. She hears her voice, soft and trembling. She's had no idea. He's been doing something useful all this time, after all. He's been thinking about her. He's known how to make her case, in the right places. She's misjudged him. 'How...? When...?' she mutters, humbly. me?' Alice asks. She hears her voice, soft and trembling. She's had no idea. He's been doing something useful all this time, after all. He's been thinking about her. He's known how to make her case, in the right places. She's misjudged him. 'How...? When...?' she mutters, humbly.

He stands up. 'Men's business,' he says, even more shortly. 'I wrote in. I said I was your husband. They agreed at once to an appeal.'

Alice becomes aware of a little golden glow inside her chest.

After all these years, he's publicly acknowledged that he's my husband, she's thinking. There was something that touched him, after all, about our putting our hands together at the church door, in the dawn of time. Something he remembered. He's taken the children on...and now this, too. How little I've understood.

She tries to look into his eyes. She'd like to lose herself in them, as she once did; to enjoy feeling truly loved, and protected, and cherished, as she now thinks she may have been all along. She'd like to throw herself into his arms and surrender herself to his knowledge and wisdom, as utterly as she had all those years ago.

But Will's clearing papers, making things into orderly piles with big hands. He's not looking at her. He doesn't see the need for a loving moment. Now he's started, he's going to complete his staccato explanation.

He says, 'I told them they'd made a mistake to try you as a single woman. I told them they'd made a second mistake, arising out of the first. They were wrong to confiscate your property. As my wife, what you own rightfully belongs to me. And I've done nothing wrong, so they shouldn't have been punishing me. me. So I've asked them to return your estates to me.' So I've asked them to return your estates to me.'

Slowly, the rosy-gold feeling fades inside Alice. 'Oh,' she says flatly. Is that it? No exoneration for her, no vindication, no head held high? He's been far cleverer than she expected to get the case reheard at all. But, after all, has he really only wanted one thing all along: to make sure he gets the money she's earned him?

He has, hasn't he?

'They will, I think,' Will finishes. He nods, as if she should now be satisfied with his explanation; as if dismissing her from the environs of his business table. 'Don't worry your head about it. It's a formality. I'm dealing with it.'

Alice doesn't go. 'But,' she stammers. 'What about...?' Her voice trails away.

He looks impatient. 'What?'

She wrestles with the words. If only she could talk to this man she lives with, and is married to, who's such a stranger to her. The phrase 'a pardon' sticks in her throat. She wants to go triumphantly back to court, of course; she wants to be presented to the new King as my lady Alice of Greyrigg, a respectable matron who's been wronged. Why can't he see for himself?

'...ME?' she says in the end: an undignified sound, a kind of strangulated squeak, half-pain, half-fury.

He moves towards the door. 'This is is about you,' he says, with no great interest or affection, from the doorway. 'I'm cleaning up your mess. I'm saving you from yourself.' about you,' he says, with no great interest or affection, from the doorway. 'I'm cleaning up your mess. I'm saving you from yourself.'

The door shuts. But he was already gone, Alice thinks, long before he left the room. If, that is, you could ever really say he'd been there with her at all.

Just to show she's actually there, just to give vent to her suppressed anger, she starts ruffling through the piles of doc.u.ments he's been putting in order, messing up the neat military squares, making them human again.

Which is how she sees Chaucer's writing: a letter, and another, and another; a whole correspondence. She picks one up. A phrase leaps out. 'With feeling turning so sharply away from the Duke, now might be a good moment to request an appeal,' she reads. She drops it. She picks up another. At once, she sees: 'As far as recovering property is concerned, I would suggest you argue that they made a first mistake in trying your wife as a single woman, while knowing her to be married, and a second mistake in punishing her by confiscating her property, when doing so in fact const.i.tuted punishing you, an innocent man.'

So that's it. Chaucer's been writing to her husband. Chaucer's been framing the arguments Will's going to use. Naturally, Will hasn't mentioned he's had help. That's not in his nature. But this explains how her husband suddenly sounds so well informed. This is how he got the appeal lodged.

Dear Chaucer...

Thoughtfully, she picks up another page. She's looking for some other clue in that small, neat, speedy writing: some message, some hint, some flicker of affection, just for her. She reads: I suggest your primary request should be for the Parliament to reverse all previous judgements, and give Alice a full pardon. You could make the following two arguments. Alice should have been heard by the King's Bench in a case involving public funds, rather than by Parliament. Secondly, she wasn't given enough time to prepare a case, or locate witnesses.

'..."give Alice a full pardon,"' she repeats in a whisper. Chaucer understands what she wants. But then, he always has. The soft golden glow steals back into her (though it's not for the stranger she's married to, this time); as well as a not unpleasant breathlessness, and that dangerous dampness around the eyes that she's hardly ever felt, except in exceptional circ.u.mstances...except around Chaucer.