The Knight's Tale Read online

  ‘Oh?’ The goose stepped out again. ‘Not your pa?’ Chaucer feared the worst.

  ‘The Duke of Clarence.’

  ‘Lionel?’

  ‘Dead.’

  ‘No!’ Chaucer crossed himself, muttering a prayer under his breath. The squire did likewise.

  ‘Ague?’ Chaucer asked. ‘Styche? Ipydyne?’ His eyes widened as he remembered his nightmares with a jolt. ‘Mother of God, not the Pestilence?’ And he crossed himself again, just to be sure.

  ‘No.’ The squire didn’t sound too sure, even to his own ears. ‘No, none of those. Father found him,’ he said. ‘Dead, in his bed.’

  A smile crept unbidden to Chaucer’s lips. ‘That must have surprised him, Lionel, I mean, as well as presumably your poor father. What with the wars, I expect he expected to meet his end in some muddy French field somewhere.’

  ‘That’s more or less what Pa said,’ Glanville nodded.

  ‘How’s he taking it?’ Chaucer asked.

  ‘Well, His Grace was no spring chicken, of course, so, in a way …’

  ‘And Violante? How is the duchess?’

  Glanville rolled his eyes. ‘You know these Italians, Geoff,’ he said.

  Actually, Chaucer didn’t. He kept away from the Italian merchants in the City and the only Italian book he’d ever read was by Dante Alighieri and it had left him rather cold. He shrugged.

  ‘Screams,’ Glanville explained. ‘Tears. She’s a rich woman now, of course.’

  ‘I’m sure she’d rather not be.’ Chaucer was always circumspect when it came to the fair sex. And nobility. He’d learned to be wary of both.

  ‘Quite. Anyway, there it is. Pa thinks there’s something odd about Lionel’s passing. All right, he was nearly seven feet tall, son of a king, brother of the Black Prince’ – they both crossed themselves – ‘a man of many parts, but a man for all that. I can’t give you any more details. All this happened three days ago, we assume in the night sometime. Pa found him early in the morning. His bedroom door was locked as usual, so he had to break in. And there he was, sprawled on the bed, the blankets all thrown back, as if he had been about to get up. Poor old Pa was quite shaken; it was a horrible thing for him, the dog howling, Violante screaming, the maidservants having hysterics. As soon as we got everyone in some sort of semblance of calm, Pa sent me south, for you. As I left, Clement was giving the old boy the last rites, though it seemed a bit late for that.’

  ‘Clement?’

  ‘Lionel’s new chaplain. I don’t much like him, I must admit, but there it is. Something of the Lollard in him.’

  Chaucer tutted and shook his head. Then he crossed himself, just in case.

  Glanville took in the array of clothes on the comptroller’s bed. ‘But, look, I’ve caught you at a bad time. You’re clearly on your way somewhere.’

  ‘Er … just my pilgrimage. I go every year if I can, looking for the Holy Blissful Martyr, you know.’

  ‘Becket.’ Glanville knew. ‘Talking, as we almost were, about dodgy churchmen.’

  ‘Ah,’ Chaucer smiled. ‘The youth of today. So cynical. No, it’s not so much the religious bit, important though that is, of course. It’s the company. All day, every day, I deal with merchants and toadies. City men who worship the groat and the angel. On pilgrimage, you get to meet really interesting people. Like … um, I don’t know, shipmen and pardoners and … and … people from Bath.’

  ‘Gripping,’ said Glanville.

  ‘However,’ Chaucer snapped back from the image of the winding Pilgrims’ Way that had formed in his head, ‘that’s off now. From what you tell me – and the speed of your arrival – your dear old pa needs my help.’

  Glanville was suddenly serious. ‘He does, Geoffrey,’ he said. ‘Will you come back with me?’

  ‘Of course. And, in many ways, it’s helped me out of a dilemma. I couldn’t decide which houppelande to wear. Now, it’s got to be funeral black.’

  The squire smiled. Just as well, he thought to himself; he wouldn’t be seen dead riding alongside Chaucer in that lime-green thing.

  Geoffrey Chaucer had always liked to think of himself as rather cosmopolitan. He had travelled more than any other man he knew and he sometimes smiled to himself as he made his way through the jostling crowds of the city that he had been further than anyone else he touched. But even so, he had been looking forward to his little jaunt to Kent. Santiago de Compostela was all very fine and good, but the people there were so terribly foreign. And even the smallest trinket to take home to show the less well travelled cost a small fortune – a cockle shell cost as much as a silver ring at home and, oddly, wives seemed to prefer the latter. He had often discussed his pilgrimages with his old friend Nicholas Brembre, a City man who, if Chaucer were to be brutally honest, took a bit of watching. He had already been Lord Mayor of London and it was through him and the great John of Gaunt that Chaucer had his lodgings, like hens’ teeth after the Pestilence. It was rumoured that Brembre had lent the king money. At the thought of him, a bright idea suddenly came to the comptroller and he did a sharp left turn down an alleyway, upending a woman with two baskets on a yoke as he did so.

  When he was shown into Brembre’s counting house, his cheeks were still red with embarrassment. Brembre jumped up and showed his friend and sometime adversary to a seat. He looked as if he might be on the verge of an apoplexy at the very least. ‘Geoffrey, you are unwell. Sit down and let me have someone bring you a drink. Some water, perhaps. I’ll send my man.’

  Brembre was not known for his generosity, but with the water in London being the way it was, Chaucer was surprised to find he was also intent on killing his friends. Brembre saw his expression.

  ‘Freshly drawn from my private well only this morning. I drink it all the time and look at me; fit as a flea.’

  Chaucer did look at the man and he did seem to be in the peak of health. Which would make his next few remarks if anything, a touch insincere, but he would have to try his best. ‘I am perfectly well, Nicholas, thank you for your concern. I merely had an altercation with a market woman and her language would make a sailor blush, let alone a humble Comptroller of the King’s Woollens. But you’ – he gazed at the wool merchant with a furrow in his brow – ‘are you well? You look a little peaky.’

  As blatant lies went, he had told worse, but the merchant looked sceptical and didn’t even glance at the polished mirror to his left. ‘I am feeling well, Geoffrey, as a matter of fact. I eat well – as you know – sleep well; in fact, I feel very full of the joys of spring. Business, I don’t need to tell you, is also booming.’

  Pies and fingers leapt into Chaucer’s mind unbidden. He thought he would try once more. ‘A holiday would do you good, Nicholas.’

  Brembre looked at Chaucer from under his suddenly beetling brows. ‘Geoffrey, you are trying to sell me something. I know that look.’

  Chaucer spread his hand on his chest and arranged his features in an expression of distressed innocence. ‘Sell? Me? What a suggestion!’

  Brembre laughed and got up, walking over to the door to open it. A cat, huge and brindled, walked in and jumped up onto the desk, sprawling out to be stroked. Although it looked as though it could bring down a deer single-handed, Brembre proceeded to tickle it under the chin, crooning endearments. There was a solid gold ball dangling from its collar. Eventually, he looked up. ‘Yes. Sell. You. I prefer straight talking, Geoffrey, so please, give it to me in simple language.’

  Chaucer took a deep breath. ‘I find myself … unable to go on my yearly pilgrimage due to the … illness of an old, dear friend. So I wondered if you would like to go in my stead.’

  Brembre thought for a moment, then smiled. ‘What are we talking about? Compostela? Rome? God, not Jerusalem?’

  ‘Canterbury.’

  ‘Ah. Well, that sounds like something I would consider, Geoffrey. I am assuming there would be a substantial discount?’

  ‘A discount, certainly,’ Chaucer replied. ‘As to substantial …
I am not a rich man, Nicholas.’

  ‘We’ll talk about that. Now, Canterbury; your usual, in fact.’

  ‘Yes. A lovely journey. Very restful. Very picturesque. Lovely at this time of year.’

  Brembre shook his head. ‘You don’t get out enough, Geoffrey,’ he said. ‘When does it leave?’

  Chaucer glanced out of the window, judging the sun. ‘In a couple of hours,’ he said, his smile becoming a little anxious.

  Brembre crooned a little more to the giant killing machine laid across his papers. ‘Oh, I am sorry,’ he said to the crestfallen comptroller. ‘That is far too short notice. I am not my own man, you see – for I must consider my cat, Geoffrey.’ The animal looked at Chaucer and almost seemed to grin.

  ‘If I said I would look after it?’ Chaucer suggested, but he knew the day was lost. With a sigh, he took his leave of Brembre and his obvious familiar – he would save that thought for if he ever needed any leverage against the man – and pressed on to face Harry Bailly, for what that was worth.

  As he walked across the bridge, he rehearsed through the conversation he would have with the landlord of the Tabard Inn and organizer extraordinaire when it came to pilgrimages short or long. It went surprisingly well, and so the Comptroller of Woollens was smiling as he turned into the stable yard, which was loud with stamping hooves and the cries of grooms, and pungent with that exciting smell compounded of leather harness, warm flanks and horse shit.

  ‘Master Chaucer!’ Harry Bailly hated it when his pilgrims turned up early. He hated it, he would have to admit if asked, even more than when they turned up late. Late and they could always catch them up on the road; anywhere the London side of Shooter’s Hill would do. Early and they would see all the little shortcuts that made the whole enterprise financially viable; the old nags made to look young again with a spot of soot smeared on the grey hairs in their manes; the wine being watered down or worse before being distributed into the leather bottles; the old bread made passable by a quick soak under the pump. ‘Master Chaucer! You’re a touch early, if you don’t mind my pointing it out?’

  The grooms froze. When Master Bailly was this polite, someone was going to get their ears boxed or they were going to lose a lot of money. Once or twice, it had memorably been both.

  ‘I’m sorry, Harry.’ Chaucer neatly sidestepped a prancing horse and joined the man on the threshold of his inn. ‘I’m afraid I have some bad news. I will not be able to come with you today.’

  Bailly’s eyes narrowed, but he wasn’t dismayed. The pace of the pilgrimage was slow enough that even several days in, a fastish rider could easily catch them up. ‘Tomorrow, then,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you a note for …’

  ‘No, Harry,’ Chaucer clapped him on the shoulder in a comradely fashion. ‘I won’t be able to come with you at all, in actual fact.’

  ‘Ah.’ This was different. This was money. ‘I can’t fill your place at this short notice, Master Chaucer,’ Bailly said, a basilisk smile creeping over his usually amiable features.

  ‘Goodness me, no,’ Chaucer cried. ‘I hadn’t expected you to.’ Something deep inside wanted to remark that filling Geoffrey Chaucer’s shoes was almost impossible under normal circumstances, the best soft moss apart, but there was something about Bailly’s bearing that warned him it would be unwise to employ too much levity.

  Bailly’s smile became more friendly. ‘Oh, well, I am pleased, Master Chaucer,’ he said. ‘Some people who cancel this late expect to get their money back. Ha. Ha.’ The laugh, if laugh it was, had no humour in it.

  Chaucer’s face fell. He had, indeed, expected his money back. After all, if he didn’t go on the pilgrimage, how could Bailly reasonably take his money? He would be wearing out no horse, sleeping in no bed, eating no food, drinking no second-rate ale. Not even having to negotiate the extortionate fees of the hermit of Blean. ‘But …’

  ‘Come now, Master Chaucer,’ Bailly said, stepping forward into the stable yard and leading the hapless comptroller. ‘Surely you must realize, as a man of business yourself, that certain disbursements have already been made.’

  Chaucer tried to look like a man of business but in truth he had people for that. He cocked an eyebrow at Harry Bailly and waited for him to explain.

  ‘I have hired the horses already, as you see. I can’t get my money back there. And then there are the beds on the way. The inns won’t be able to fill those at such short notice, so I will have to pay for those.’

  Chaucer nodded slowly. ‘But I won’t be eating the food …’

  ‘That’s very true, Master Chaucer,’ Bailly said, nodding. ‘But I fear that the unscrupulous innkeepers on the way will not give an inch in respect of that. They claim that they fill their pantries and their cellars especially for my pilgrims and, although I know and you know that that is nonsense, well, you know what a tight-arse that bloke who runs the Chequers of Hope is.’ He spread his arms in helplessness. ‘I’m afraid my hands are tied on that one.’

  The grooms looked at each other and smiled. They had rarely seen it better done and they had seen just this scene a lot.

  Chaucer looked at the ground and then the patch of sky above the stable yard, hoping for inspiration, but God had chosen this moment to be about His business elsewhere. ‘Money for the priests?’ he ventured. ‘At the cathedral end, I mean.’

  ‘Job lot,’ Bailly said, as quick as a viper. ‘Wouldn’t matter if only one pilgrim turned up, costs the same.’ He looked rueful. ‘It’s the incense, apparently. Same amount for any number of people. Then there’s the tolling. And the wages of the woman what scrubs the stones – can’t have you getting grubby knees, now, can we?’ He shrugged and smiled. He had won and he knew it.

  Chaucer put his hands behind his back and covertly counted on his fingers. ‘So, you would be able to give me a refund of …?’

  ‘Precisely nothing,’ Bailly said. ‘Wish it could be otherwise, Master Chaucer, but as I say, my hands are tied.’

  Chaucer looked at the man, wishing they could be, and to a cart’s tail as they whipped the rogue around the streets of the Borough. ‘If I were to book again for next year?’ Chaucer was clutching at straws.

  ‘Ah, now that would be different.’ Harry Bailly was in expansive mood and the grooms held their breath. ‘I could give you a discount of … shall we say, one thirtieth?’

  ‘A thirtieth?’ Chaucer couldn’t even do the sum. Pieces of silver swirled in his brain. ‘Could I have that now as a refund?’ Anything would be better than nothing.

  Bailly smiled and backed into the inn again, closing the door as he did so. ‘Ah, that would be wonderful,’ he said, ‘and I wish it could be done. But prices are going up everywhere. You know how it’s been since the Pestilence. Not just the labourers in short supply, you know. Come to think of it, it’s high time there was a Statute of Innkeepers. By next year, the pilgrimage as you have booked it will be more expensive. But a small deposit will secure. Let me know if you want to come along and I’ll put you on the list. Good day, Master Chaucer. See you in the Year of Our Lord 1381.’ And the door closed in his face and the bolt was shot.

  The grooms watched him trail dejectedly out of the yard. Chaucer shook his head as he made his way back to the bridge. That wasn’t how it was supposed to go at all. Not at all.

  TWO

  Chaucer had to admit that his old nag, the grey with the hard mouth, was not spoken of highly when men met to discuss horseflesh; innumerable times over the next three days, he found the animal trailing in the wake of the squire’s spirited courser. Touch of Syrian blood, he shouldn’t wonder, but then, what Geoffrey Chaucer knew about horses could be written on a pinhead.

  He was wearing funereal black as he trotted out along the old Roman road to Stratford. The legions had made it to get to Camulodunum, as they called Colchester. They would have got their feet wet wading through the Lea (hardy lot, the Romans), but some queen or other, and for the life of him, Chaucer could not remember which, had had the bow bridge bui
lt in 1110 so that any future Comptroller of Woollens would not have to paddle. What he did have to do was rummage in his purse for the toll, the squire having no spare coinage at that moment in time. As he pointed out to Chaucer, completely unnecessarily, jupons had no plackets.

  They rode on, the monks at the abbey on the Channelea toiling in the spring fields, sowing before they reaped the whirlwind. There were peasants in the manorial fields at Theydon Bois too, yoked to the oxen that swayed and bellowed in the furrows. Dogs ran at their heels, snapping and yelping, and little children fell over each other, throwing up showers of the warm, dark earth. The poet in Geoffrey Chaucer could not help being moved by it, but he was moved rather more by the huge shadows in Epping Forest, as night fell on their first day.

  The pair gave thanks at the little wayside chantry of John the Baptist, then collapsed gratefully into the hard testers of the Three Tuns. It had been a while since Chaucer had been in the saddle for this long and his arse let him know it; so did his thighs. His feet he couldn’t feel and, as soon as decency served, he bade his young friend goodnight and retired to bed, peeling off the hose and storing the moss carefully – it would do for another day. Supper did not impress. It was Lent, of course, so meat was out of the question; even eggs were off. The barley bread had seen better days, but the ale was surprisingly acceptable.

  There had been little chance during the ride for Chaucer to find out more about the Duke of Clarence’s death. The boy was full of tales of his own father, however, the knight who had fought with His Grace in France all those years ago. Hugh’s eyes positively sparkled when he spoke of the man’s exploits in Prussia and Latvia, where men had faces in the middle of their chests and women peed standing up. Against that, the mere death of a son of the king of England paled into insignificance.

  They were up before the sun, Chaucer reliving the agony of the day before as soon as he mounted his nag, as blister met saddle like the old friends they were becoming. They trotted ever north-east through the beeches and the oaks that crowded the rutted road like gathering demons, bright with green shoots though they were.