The Knight's Tale Read online

  An evil look came over the old man’s face. ‘She be about five Suffolk feet,’ he said, knowingly. Then he tapped the side of his substantial nose. ‘Mind you, ask me, they’re all the same length laying down.’ He already had the silver in his hand when loyalty to his current master got the better of him. ‘Why would you want to know about Mistress Blanche?’ He peered up into Chaucer’s face.

  ‘To pay my respects,’ the comptroller lied. ‘My wife is an old friend of Mistress Blanche’s second cousin.’

  ‘What, that Agatha Tickhill? She’s no better nor she should be, though perhaps I shouldn’t say, your wife being a friend of hers.’

  Bugger, Chaucer thought, but he was in this up to his liripipe now and to back down might seem cowardly. ‘That’s her,’ he beamed cheerily, with a wink to show Ratcliffe that they were all men of the world here.

  Ratcliffe looked down at the coin in his hand. ‘I dunno,’ he said, ruminating on the state of the nation. ‘Money don’t go nowhere nowadays, do it?’

  Chaucer had heard heavier hints, but not for some time. He passed the old man another coin. Ratcliffe bit this and instantly regretted it as a partial molar joined the phlegm on the floor. He winked back at Chaucer. ‘I’ll send her to you,’ he said. ‘Around twelve of the clock. No promises, mind.’ And he was gone.

  Chaucer tried to stay awake. The bed was excruciating and the feather pillows felt as if the goose itself was still under the linen. Even so, the minnow pie had been excellent and the wine was not bad in a Suffolk sort of way. So, as midnight approached, he found his eyelids drooping and the candle’s glow getting ever fainter as the wick sank into the tallow and sputtered and flickered as it drowned.

  ‘Marie?’

  Chaucer sat bolt upright. All right, so he’d been asleep. But he hadn’t had his usual terrifying dream, of the damned souls of the Pestilence crawling towards him, ready to drag him down to Hell. But, surely, he had heard a voice; sometimes, in the night, he heard Pippa calling him, but she never called him, what was it?

  ‘Marie?’

  Yes, that was it.

  ‘Marie? Is that you?’

  Chaucer blew out the remains of the candle. He reached out for the poignard hidden under the coverlet and tightened his grip on the hilt.

  ‘Marie, for God’s sake,’ the voice hissed, exasperated.

  ‘Yes,’ Chaucer whispered back, hoping in his sibilance to pass for the female of the species.

  ‘Let me in. It’ll be Matins shortly.’

  Chaucer heard the bed creak as he left it. He crossed the floor, the rushes rustling under his feet, and he lifted the door latch, tucking himself behind the oak as he did so. A black-robed figure stepped in. Chaucer had seen Richard Glanville in action; he knew exactly what to do. He grabbed the cowl and swung the man sideways onto the bed. In an instant, he was astride him, the dagger-blade at the man’s throat.

  Whoever was lying between his legs gave a little squeak, then lay still.

  ‘Marie?’ he was still whispering.

  ‘Don’t be so bloody silly,’ Chaucer said. ‘Do I look like Marie?’

  The man on the bed couldn’t see anything. All he knew was that Marie had never pulled a knife on him before. He reached up towards Chaucer’s face, feeling the beard, the moustache.

  ‘Do you mind!’ Chaucer knocked his hand away. Then he got off the night visitor and wrenched back the curtains. The man on the bed was a Benedictine monk, to judge by his habit, and his head was newly tonsured. He had sandals on his feet and a terrified look on his face.

  ‘There’s been some mistake,’ he said.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ Chaucer growled. In the face of a man of God, he would normally have put his dagger away, but the last few moments had been peculiar and he wasn’t taking any chances. ‘Who’s Marie?’

  The monk half sat up, crossing himself in the half-light. ‘Marie Lairre,’ he blurted out. ‘That’s not her real name, of course. It’s just what I call her.’

  ‘Of course it’s not,’ Chaucer said, and waited for an explanation. When clearly none was forthcoming, he prompted the man. ‘So what is?’

  ‘Blanche,’ the monk said. ‘Blanche Vickers.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Sunex Amures.’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Father Innocent.’

  Chaucer snorted. ‘Pull the other one,’ he said. ‘How old are you, boy?’

  ‘Twenty,’ Innocent told him.

  ‘And you hoped to be a monk, eh?’

  ‘I am a monk,’ Innocent retorted.

  ‘Not after tonight, you’re not. Tell me, is this the usual place you and Blanche meet?’

  ‘Yes,’ the monk confessed, his subterfuge uncovered, his world collapsed.

  ‘For Bible studies, no doubt,’ Chaucer shook his head.

  ‘I have sinned.’ The boy’s lip quivered.

  ‘Save that for the abbot,’ the comptroller said, ‘and don’t feel too badly about it. I get the impression that Mistress Blanche spreads her favours in more directions than yours. What’s all this Marie Lairre, Sunex Amures stuff?’

  The monk was blushing in the half-light, but Chaucer couldn’t see it. ‘Just a little game we had,’ Innocent said. ‘Sir … whoever you are. I know I have broken my vows and that I will burn in Hellfire for eternity.’

  ‘Pretty much,’ Chaucer nodded.

  ‘But … Blanche and I, we’re in love, you see.’

  Sweet, thought Chaucer, but he’d probably been cynical enough for one night and said nothing.

  ‘The names we made up, I suppose, disguised my appalling lapse from God’s grace.’

  Chaucer slipped the poignard away. ‘Whatever happens now, lad,’ he said, ‘is between you and your God. Mistress Blanche doesn’t know I’ve found you out and neither does the abbot. Neither of them will know from me.’

  The monk burst into tears and Chaucer, not for the first time and probably not for the last, found himself gently patting a sobbing Benedictine.

  Chaucer’s life seemed to be controlled by bells. Nothing was as irritating as Aldgate in the morning, but the bells of the abbey near Borley woke him early. He smiled to himself as he thought of the frustrated – and probably now terrified – Innocent Sunex Amures, going about his ecclesiastical business with Chaucer’s face imprinted on his memory and Chaucer’s dagger-point tickling his chin.

  But the smile on Chaucer’s face did not last long. There was a thud on the walkway beyond the wall and the door crashed back. Armed men stood there in a cluster, blocking out the early morning light. The comptroller rolled sideways to grab the poignard but he was far too slow and a quarterstaff smashed into his shoulder and against his hand and then he was pinned against the rough stone wall, sitting up in bed with his nightshirt around his neck.

  ‘I should put that away, Master Chaucer,’ the first man said, glancing down. ‘Not very seemly for a man who carries the king’s cypher.’

  Chaucer hauled at the shirt to give himself what dignity he could. ‘What is the meaning of this?’ sounded an official and outraged enough tone to take.

  The man clicked his fingers and the quarterstaffs were pulled back. Chaucer had more room now to see to his dress and took the opportunity to straighten his beard at the same time.

  ‘Perhaps you could tell me,’ the man said, ‘Why, for instance, would you want to meet my daughter at midnight?’

  Chaucer peered up into the man’s face more closely. ‘Ah,’ he said with the air of a man with his fingers in a mousetrap, ‘You’re Peter Vickers.’

  ‘Nearly,’ the man said. ‘I am Sir Peter Vickers.’

  ‘Really?’ Chaucer had recovered his sang-froid. ‘I must have a word with my old friend the Garter King of Arms; he seems to have left you off his list.’

  Vickers spat onto the now less-than-fresh straw. ‘About Blanche,’ he said, levelly.

  ‘Yes.’ Chaucer tried to get up but was prodded back with a quarterstaff. ‘I did not suggest the hour – you
r man Ratcliffe did. I want to talk to her about the death of His Grace Lionel of Antwerp.’

  ‘Foreign bloody place, Antwerp,’ Vickers said, ‘I shouldn’t wonder. What do you imagine my Blanche knows about Lionel of Antwerp’s death?’

  ‘She was with him the night he died,’ Chaucer said. Vickers slapped him across the face with his right hand. ‘That’s a damned lie!’ he growled.

  ‘Is it?’ Chaucer licked the trickle of blood from his lower lip. ‘Let’s let Blanche be the judge of that, shall we?’

  Vickers raised his hand again, but Chaucer’s brain was faster than any hand in Suffolk, except perhaps one and his was the name he invoked now. ‘I wouldn’t do that, Master Vickers,’ he said. ‘Not with John Hawkwood on his way.’

  ‘Hawkwood?’ Vickers narrowed his eyes. ‘On his way? What, here?’

  ‘The same,’ Chaucer nodded. He was lying through his rattled teeth of course, but he’d square it all with his confessor the next time he saw him. ‘He’s made a fool of you once. And this time, he’ll have his White Company with him.’

  Like everybody in England, not to mention France, Peter Vickers had heard of the White Company. They hung men in chains from the walls of manors like his, ripped out tongues with red-hot pincers, hung heads from their horse-harnesses as trophies. And he himself had seen what he could do with a knife; old Tom’s body in the hayloft awaiting burial was testimony to that.

  Vickers grabbed Chaucer by the lapels of his nightshirt and hauled him upright. ‘You’ll never even attempt to come near my daughter again,’ he said, and drove his knee hard into Chaucer’s groin. ‘Throw this bastard out of here,’ he snapped, spinning on his heel as he left.

  Vickers’ people were used to seeing men who had somehow upset their lord and master being given the bum’s rush. Chaucer was half carried, struggling and kicking, to the main gate. Here he was dropped on the grass, quietly grateful that it wasn’t in the moat, and his clothes, bag and dagger were thrown at him. The laughter died down from the manor walls and people went about their business again, happy with the day’s free entertainment.

  It was only now that Chaucer began to feel his aches and pains. His lip throbbed and he could see part of it, an ugly purple through his moustache if he looked down. At least one tooth was loose and his ribs and forearms were dark with the bruising of the quarterstaffs. The knuckles of his right hand were huge and painful. So it was slowly and deliberately that he laced up his houppelande and looked about him for new moss for his shoes.

  ‘Psst!’ A sibilance came from under the gateway’s arch. Chaucer looked up. There was his mare, saddled and bridled and a spotty lad holding it close to him. He was beckoning Chaucer over. The comptroller creaked into an upright position and wandered over. The animal’s nose felt warm, soft and comforting and her eyes were kind and gentle. He pressed his forehead against her warm cheek and drew a deep breath. Almost safe.

  ‘Beg pardon, sir,’ the lad bumbled.

  ‘Yes, boy?’ Chaucer kept his head against the horse’s cheek and his eyes closed. He did his best to speak through the swelling lip.

  ‘Ratcliffe’s compliments, sir. He says he’s sorry about last night, giving you what you probably take to be false and misleading statements about Mistress Blanche. And to make up for it,’ the lad glanced in all directions before continuing, ‘he says you’ll find her at the Dominican Priory at Bures. Yonder,’ he pointed to the south-east. ‘An hour’s ride.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Chaucer said, though why he should believe old Ratcliffe after the fiasco of last night, he had no idea. He took the animal’s reins and let the boy ease him up into the saddle. He looked down at him. ‘I don’t suppose old Ratcliffe was sorry enough to return my angel?’ he asked.

  The lad shrugged.

  ‘No,’ said Chaucer. ‘I didn’t think so.’

  Chaucer was not a natural horseman at the very best of times. An ambling pad was just about acceptable, anything with any life in it at all was something he looked at with trepidation. Riding a horse with somewhat of a mind of its own when nursing more bruises than he had ever had before was almost insupportable. But he had set out from Clare with the intention of seeing Blanche Vickers and – possibly – solving the puzzle of the death of Lionel of Antwerp and, by all that was holy, that was what he was going to do.

  In truth, he felt a little sorry for the girl; if the convent was to be her life from now on it seemed a little harsh. Yes, she had crept into the bed of a man old enough to be her grandfather with nothing but gain on her mind. Yes, she had led on a young man of whom Chaucer was very fond, only to break his heart. Yes, she had midnight trysts with young and vigorous monks in hidden rooms in her father’s house. Chaucer paused in his musings and had to admit that – even taking just the things he knew about her into account, and he suspected there was probably far more – a convent was almost certainly the right place for her. As long as the walls were high and the locks strong.

  The comptroller glanced at the sky. The lad at the gate had said that the priory was an hour away but, somehow, it seemed much further. His bruises had settled into a dull ache now, from their screaming agony of earlier. His lip, though still swollen, was no longer visible when he glanced down. But his buttocks had taken the path of least resistance and were now totally numb. He knew when he eventually reached his destination, he would need some very serious help were he to be able to dismount from his horse.

  He and his mount had settled into a friendly amble along an undeniably pretty path. The green shoots over his head were letting through some dappled sun. The birds were singing their heads off, a starling above the rest running through its repertoire of their calls, including a very fair representation of distant bells. Chaucer smiled. Starlings were so often looked down upon – except as a fine dinner, wrapped in pastry – but they were the clowns and entertainers of the bird world, with their spangled feathers and jaunty air. He wished he spent more time in the country. Aldgate was all very well, but you could spend a week there and not see so much as a blade of grass, nor hear a bird except the wheeling gulls from the river.

  The horse slowed and then stopped. Chaucer looked up suddenly and realized he may well have been asleep, he hoped for not too long. If he had passed the priory, he would have wept; he didn’t want to spend another minute in the saddle if he could help it.

  A grey wall was to his left, unbroken by windows and with just a single door, set towards one end. He looked up and saw soaring towers, cut with fine tracery, through which bells could be seen, swaying gently to and fro. He had time to consider the fact that he had never seen that before when the air was filled with the sound of pealing brass. He covered his ears and the mare jinked, making every bone in Chaucer’s body shout for mercy. If it hadn’t made him and his mount jump, the sound would have struck him as very beautiful, but here, just above his head, it was a cacophony. It was also a nuisance; he knew that it meant the beginning of Sext, and so no one would answer the door or speak to him for a good while.

  He was in a quandary. He couldn’t get off his mare unaided but, then again, he couldn’t bear to stay in the saddle either. The horse dropped her head to crop the short grass and he nearly shot over her neck. The thought of putting up with this for the best part of an hour just couldn’t be countenanced and he shook the stirrup leathers and urged the animal on. He had worked out that if he could tether her to a tree, then he might be able to swing one leg over and make a controlled fall to the ground.

  The mare, for once, seemed to understand what was wanted of her and strolled amiably enough across the grass to a tree on the far side of the door. Now he was nearer, Chaucer could see the little wicket in the gate and the barred window in the wicket. His heart fell. This meant a strict house; although the rules were laid down in all priories up and down the land, for some prioresses, especially the ones in retirement from the world after a husband or three, rules were made to be, if not broken, at least bent. Such women made sure that the door stood open at al
l times and visitors were welcomed. The strict ones made their premises as hard to broach as the Tun. This one seemed to be one of those, damnation to it.

  The grey stood patiently by the tree until Chaucer had wrapped the bridle around a low branch. If he had been able to read the animal’s mind, he would have found that she was as keen to get rid of her rider as Chaucer was to dismount. Once he was sure that the mare was not going to be able to bolt, Chaucer tried raising a leg to swing it out of the saddle, but it didn’t seem keen to comply. Shifting his weight to the other buttock, stifling a yelp of pain, he tried again and this time managed to end up with one foot in the stirrup and one knee on the saddle, unable to go either forward or back. The horse shifted her feet petulantly. With most of Chaucer’s weight on one side, the girth was digging in cruelly and she wasn’t planning to stand this much longer. She shook her head, trying to free the bridle from the tree and that was enough to dislodge Chaucer, who fell like a sack of flour to the ground.

  The animal looked down and wondered for a moment whether it might be her fault that the fat rider who had been such a burden for so long was flailing on the ground with a rather strange purple hue around his lips, but decided that, as a beast of burden, it was never her fault. And anyway, the horse reasoned, those flapping black things running towards him would probably see him all right. The mare snipped off a new leaf with her teeth and chewed thoughtfully. It would all work out, she was sure.

  ‘Mother! Mother! Is he dead?’

  Chaucer had been unconscious briefly but now wondered, as he came to, whether it might be worse. Was he dead? He hadn’t called for his mother in years. Then, he became aware that it wasn’t his voice. So why were these women calling his mother? He opened his eyes.

  ‘Of course he’s not dead,’ a voice said behind his head. ‘Look, his eyes are opening.’ A face swung into view. ‘Are you all right, my good man? We saw you fall. You are dreadfully bruised. How did that happen in a simple fall from a horse?’

  ‘Perhaps he falls off a lot, Mother,’ a voice said, off to one side, and was rewarded by giggles from other unseen people.