The Knight's Tale Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by M.J. Trow

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Also by M.J. Trow

  The Kit Marlowe series

  DARK ENTRY *

  SILENT COURT *

  WITCH HAMMER *

  SCORPIONS’ NEST *

  CRIMSON ROSE *

  TRAITOR’S STORM *

  SECRET WORLD *

  ELEVENTH HOUR *

  QUEEN’S PROGRESS *

  BLACK DEATH *

  THE RECKONING *

  The Grand & Batchelor series

  THE BLUE AND THE GREY *

  THE CIRCLE *

  THE ANGEL *

  THE ISLAND *

  THE RING *

  THE BLACK HILLS *

  LAST NOCTURNE *

  The Peter Maxwell series

  MAXWELL’S CROSSING

  MAXWELL’S RETURN

  MAXWELL’S ACADEMY

  MAXWELL’S SUMMER

  * available from Severn House

  THE KNIGHT’S TALE

  M.J. Trow

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First world edition published in Great Britain and the USA in 2021

  by Severn House, an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd,

  14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE.

  Trade paperback edition first published in Great Britain and the USA in 2022

  by Severn House, an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd.

  This eBook edition first published in 2021 by Severn House,

  an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd.

  severnhouse.com

  Copyright © M.J. Trow and Maryanne Coleman, 2021

  All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. The right of M.J. Trow to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-135-2 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-801-6 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0540-7 (e-book)

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is purely coincidental.

  This eBook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland

  ONE

  He crawled along the alleyway, dragging his useless legs, forcing himself over the cobblestones, inch by painful inch. His lungs burned in his chest and his mouth was bricky dry. All around him was darkness and the evil smells of the gutter. All around him was death. Somebody else’s, his own. It hardly mattered now. Ahead he could make out a light, dim, wobbling like a candle in a chantry for the dead; like the light at the edge of the world.

  He could hear his own breath like a rasp on iron, like a rusty saw on tough timber. His eyes were streaming, so was his nose, and warm drool hung from his chin in gleaming ribbons. The shivering, the aches, the tender skin, all that was past now, along with the sneezing. Now the pain under his arms and between his legs was like nothing he had felt before. His skin was black, the buboes weeping pus. Ahead of him he was aware of others, like himself; some staggering on swollen feet; some on all fours. Some had stopped, dead in their tracks, the air gone from their lungs, the life drifted from their bodies, just too exhausted to fall down. All of them were making for that light at the end of the alleyway, for that last glimmer of hope.

  Then he heard the sad clanging of the bell, tolling for the end of days.

  And the light went out.

  He sat bolt upright in bed, sweat trickling down his temples into the already greying beard. He blinked away the darkness and the crawling monsters numb with pain. He breathed in, forcing the clean air of the pre-dawn and the new season into his lungs. The creatures of the night had gone and only the solemn bell remained. That was the voice of Old Purgatory, the oldest bell of the Holy Trinity, louder, more commanding than the others. But the others weren’t far behind. St Mary and St Francis clanged from beyond the wall, in the godless encampments east of Houndsditch. His own parish of St Katherine Creechurch was next; higher, newer, a peal of friends. St Olave by the Tower cut them up and, to add to the cacophony, the bells of St Peter in the Bailey echoed around the castle walls and drifted south-east along the river.

  He kicked off the coverlet and forced himself upright. The memory of his dream had stiffened his limbs and dried his mouth; he stretched his arms and smacked his lips, coming to himself in his tiny room high above the street. He extended his back until he felt it crack and then collapsed in on himself, muscles loose, joints relaxed and waited a moment for his blood to stop pounding in his ears. Then, ready, he crossed the room in three long strides and wrestled with the window catch. Ahead of him, the Essex marshes wobbled in the early morning light through the thick, cheap glass. He threw the window wide and breathed in again. It was April, promising sweet showers and Zephyr, the west wind, was bringing the countryside to his nostrils, high in his eyrie over Aldgate. He put his hand on the wall as he leaned out of the window and knew that spring was come at last – all winter he had felt the clammy sweat of the stone and had sworn, as he had sworn for six winters already, that he would move out of this place as soon as he had the time to arrange an alternative. Then, spring had come, and he fell in love with his little stone-lined nest all over again. He checked the calendar pinned to the crossbeam, carefully positioned so that it didn’t poke him in the eye as he passed. Others were not so lucky, but frequent visitors soon learned to duck. He ran his finger along the line; yes, he was right. The Ram had already run half his course. This was the day.

  There was a commotion in the street below and he looked down. They were already there, as usual, the carts and wagons bringing food to the city. Draymen in their rough fustian, drovers from the shires with their flocks bound for slaughter at Smithfield, chickens squawking and flapping as though they couldn’t wait to feel the poulterers’ cleavers on their necks.

  The officer of the Watch craned his head up at him, the toothy grin unmistakeable under the kettle-hat.

  ‘Lauds, Master Chaucer,’ he called by way of explanation of the cacophony of bells. Every spire in the city, all one hundred and sixteen of them, was calling to each other now, reminding the world, with its thirty-five thousand inhabitants, that the sun was due soon and a brave new world beckoned.

  ‘Yes, thank you, Ludlum,’ Chaucer waved to the man. ‘I am aware.’

  And sudden
ly, Chaucer was aware of something else. Beyond the melee of wagons waiting for entry through the Aldgate, a solitary horseman waited patiently. There were other riders, too, messengers in the king’s livery, fluttering with the royal harts, huntsmen in their Lincoln green, the odd abbot on an ambling pad. But this particular horseman was different. The light was still poor and Chaucer had had one of those nights again, when the terrors of his childhood came to haunt him and the victims of the Pestilence crawled to drag him down with them to Hell. He rubbed his eyes. No, he was right. The bay was flecked with foam as though its rider had ridden through the night. His cloak was muddy. So were his boots. Chaucer had not seen this man for nearly twenty years, yet here he was, awaiting entry to the greatest city in the world and about to ride under Chaucer’s own home above the gate.

  ‘Ludlum!’ Chaucer called to the Watchman. ‘The knight on the bay.’ He was pointing vaguely into the crowd. ‘The bear rampant. Look, there on his jupon.’

  Ludlum’s view was very different from Chaucer’s. He was thirty feet below and he couldn’t see any bears at all, rampant or otherwise.

  ‘On the bay, man.’ Chaucer sensed Ludlum’s confusion. ‘Cloak, jupon, all a bit … well, a bit besmottered, if I’m honest. It’s Richard Glanville, an old friend of mine. Never mind the others. Let him through.

  ‘’Ere,’ a particularly sharp-eared shepherd had caught the conversation and wasn’t having any of it. ‘There’s a queue down ’ere, mate. That’s your French for a line. I’m at the front of it and whoever you’re talking about is halfway back, so you can stuff it, all right?’

  Ludlum’s face darkened under his kettle-hat. He gripped his quarterstaff in both hands and jammed it hard against the shepherd’s chest, forcing him backwards.

  ‘You!’ he snapped, looking down at the man from his imposing height. ‘Do you know who you’re talking to?’

  Clearly the shepherd didn’t.

  ‘That’s Master Geoffrey Chaucer, Comptroller of His Grace’s Woollens and poet to the court of the late king. And probably the present one. He’s the man who pays your wages in a roundabout sort of way. Now, you will, first and foremost, shut your mouth. Second, you will stand aside and let Master Chaucer’s friend pass. Otherwise you’ll still be standing there when I lock this bloody gate at the curfew bell tonight. Do we understand each other, thick knarre?’

  The shepherd blinked and swallowed hard. The officer of the Watch was not much smaller than the mighty stone towers he guarded. And he was bristling with weapons. And he had four or five armed men at his back. The shepherd decided in that instant that discretion was the better part of valour and Ludlum marched past him, kicking his sheep in all directions.

  Even with the officer of the Watch to expedite things, Chaucer knew that it would be a while before his old friend could get through the Aldgate and find someone to hold his horse – someone who wouldn’t have sold it on within the first ten minutes – so he had ample time to prepare. There was a sharp rap at his door and Chaucer opened it. The bells had slowed down now, so that only in distant St Dunstan’s in the West was some hapless minion still shredding his hands on the bell ropes.

  ‘Today’s the day, Master Chaucer.’ A beaming face looked up at him.

  ‘Come in, Alice,’ he said, ‘although there may have to be a change of plan.’

  ‘Oh?’ Alice swept past him, carrying bundles of clothes. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, I saw an old friend of mine in the crowds a moment ago, you know, waiting for the gate to open. Ludlum’s expediting things.’

  Alice had no idea what that was, but nothing would surprise her about Ludlum.

  ‘I don’t suppose for a moment that he’s come to see me; he’s probably here on some official business. But I can’t miss the opportunity.’

  ‘No, sir, of course not.’ Alice was busy arranging things on Chaucer’s bed. He was still in his voluminous nightshirt, but Alice had been doing for Master Chaucer for six years now and she felt comfortable around him. A proper gentleman was Master Chaucer, not one to take liberties unless such liberties were made available on a wooden plate. ‘Now,’ she said, standing back with some pride at the array before her. ‘The houppelande,’ she spread her arms across the three robes that lay there, ‘I thought the lime green, you know, spring, little birds singing all night, their little tongues bright with happiness, that sort of thing. I thought that fabric would be lovely. I had to darn it under the armpit there, but you’d never know …’

  ‘Yes, indeed, Alice, but—’

  ‘Right, so the lime green it is. Now, the liripipe.’ She held up her choice of hats with their sweeping, scalloped tails. ‘The dark green complements the lime, of course, though people might mistake you for a walking forest.’ She narrowed her eyes at Chaucer, imagining him dressed in his best. ‘If you have half an hour, I could run home and get some fur I had set aside. I could trim it a bit, break up the line. Or how about the black?’

  ‘Not too sombre, Alice?’ Chaucer wondered aloud.

  She held up both hats, one on each side of his face. ‘I think you could take the black,’ she said. ‘Gives you a certain …’

  ‘Gravitas?’ Chaucer suggested.

  She hit him gently with the green liripipe. ‘Oh, you scholars,’ she said. ‘I love it that a man I work for speaks Latin.’

  Chaucer smiled.

  ‘Here’s your purse.’ Alice had laid that out too. ‘You’re taking the poignard, I s’pose?’

  Chaucer looked at the dagger in its silver sheath. ‘I wish I didn’t need to, Alice,’ he said, ‘but these are dangerous times. And you can’t be too careful in Kent.’

  ‘Doggett has saddled your mare, Master Chaucer,’ Alice said, always proud of her husband’s harnessing skills, ‘and he’s done something or other with the bit, too. Apparently, she won’t pull so much to the left now.’

  Chaucer was glad to hear it. ‘That’s lovely, Alice,’ he said, ‘and be sure to thank Doggett for me. But …’

  There was another rap at the door.

  Alice tutted. ‘It’s like Westcheap and Poultry around ’ere this morning,’ she said and swung the door open. Faced with heraldry like the visitor wore, Alice immediately knew her place and curtseyed. It would never have passed muster at the royal court, but in Chaucer’s cramped quarters over the Aldgate, it served its purpose.

  A tired-looking rider stood there, his cloak thrown back to reveal a stained fustian jupon with a double-stitched bear rampant embroidered on the chest. His gilt-chased belt glinted in the morning sun and his sword-hilt lay awkwardly under his cloak, bunching up the fabric.

  ‘Master Geoffrey Chaucer?’ His voice sounded as tired as he looked.

  ‘Who should I say is calling, sir?’ Alice was putting on her best Stratford-at-Bowe voice.

  ‘For God’s sake, Alice,’ Chaucer said, ‘I’m standing right here. Master Hugh,’ he half bowed.

  ‘Master Hugh!’ The visitor’s face softened into a smile, the teeth regular and even under the feathery moustache. ‘That’s plain Hughie to you, Geoffrey. It always will be.’

  The two men hugged each other, the squire in his armour, the Comptroller of Woollens in his nightshirt, the years between them falling away.

  ‘I took you for your old father, down there in the crowd. How is the old bastard?’ A fear clutched Chaucer’s heart and a goose walked over his grave. Surely, a ride such as Hugh had undertaken could only mean bad news. He tried to keep his voice level and not meet trouble halfway. ‘When I saw you last, Hughie, dear boy, you were struggling with that quintain at Clare.’

  The squire laughed. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I’ve still got the scars.’

  The quintain was an unforgiving nurse. Little boys of ten would ride at full tilt and strike the hanging shield with their lances. That, in turn, would swing the pivot and the morning star, six pounds of murderous, dangling iron, would whizz through the air and crunch into their backs. What happened next was God’s will. But it made men of b
oys and it was the way Hugh Glanville’s world turned, if turn it did, on the backs of elephants riding the Great Turtle through God’s universe.

  ‘Where are my manners?’ Chaucer threw a pile of parchment scrolls off a chair and let the squire sit down. ‘I don’t usually eat this early, but I’ve got some … Alice, be a dear and get …’

  ‘No, no,’ the squire held up his hand. ‘Nothing for me.’

  ‘Wine, then? Alice …’

  ‘I won’t turn that down,’ Glanville said.

  ‘Alice. Two bottles of Lepe. Tell Winter to put it on my slate.’

  Alice sighed. It was what she had always suspected – Master Chaucer had no idea of the size of his slate and Winter was staring penury in the face. She made for the door at about the same time that Chaucer caught the look of horror and disbelief on Glanville’s face.

  ‘Wait a minute, Alice. On second thoughts, something from Gascony … er … just the one bottle, though.’

  Comptroller of the King’s Woollens Chaucer may have been, but he wasn’t made of money. Alice curtseyed and left.

  ‘She does for me,’ Chaucer told the squire, suddenly aware of an unspoken question hovering near the lad’s lips.

  ‘I’m sure she does,’ Glanville said. ‘And how’s Philippa?’

  ‘She’s fine,’ Chaucer said, perhaps a shade too quickly. ‘We write regularly.’

  ‘Still in Lincolnshire?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Chaucer told him. ‘Very flat, Lincolnshire, at this time of year. You’ve ridden straight from Clare, have you?’

  ‘More or less,’ the squire sighed and when Chaucer looked more closely, he did seem tired – he had dark shadows under his eyes and there were furrows in his face which didn’t belong in a man his age. ‘I set off in the early afternoon, oh …’ he pressed his fingers to his temples as he tried to recall – ‘three days ago.’ He looked up and it was hard to tell if he was surprised at how quickly the time had gone or how slowly. ‘It’s good to see you, of course, but … well, I came for a reason, a sad one, I’m afraid.’