The Knight's Tale Read online

  ‘You know this place is a thieves’ kitchen, Geoffrey, don’t you?’ Hugh asked, remembering to rein in his bay so that the comptroller could keep up.

  ‘It is?’ Chaucer hadn’t heard that, but then, he didn’t get out of London much, apart from the pilgrimages, so it was hardly surprising.

  ‘Robber gangs here in the old king’s day,’ the squire nodded. ‘Merchants, priests; nobody was safe on the road.’

  Chaucer’s frozen grin said it all. He carried his poignard at his hip, as all men did in King Richard II’s England, but he wouldn’t say he was a dab hand with it. He glanced at Hugh’s broadsword slung from his saddle. Three feet of finest Toledo steel. But how useful was the lad with that? He certainly looked the part, like a crusader coming home from the wars, but he was so young. He’d barely finished shitting yellow.

  ‘Over there,’ the squire pointed, ‘is Dead Man’s Bottom.’

  Chaucer acted nonchalant; didn’t everywhere have one of those?

  ‘Two children were found there only last year,’ Hugh said. ‘Michaelmas time. They’d been horribly mutilated.’

  Chaucer tutted and shook his head. Not for nothing did men call this the hurling time; God himself was surely out of his Heaven.

  ‘Naturally, in other countries – Father’s Prussia or Latvia for instance – everybody would assume the Jews were responsible, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ Chaucer nodded.

  ‘But as they’re rather thin on the ground here … it was probably the pig.’

  ‘A pig?’

  Hugh chuckled. ‘Sorry, Geoffrey,’ he said. ‘Not just any pig. The pig. A boar the size of a horse. Epping’s teeming with them. Normally, of course, they’re shy woodland creatures, but every now and then, one turns rogue – and then, look out.’

  Chaucer’s eyes swivelled wildly in all directions before focusing on the squire again.

  ‘I know of two knarres who broke their spears trying to kill him, but he got away. So, keep alert, eh? Eyes and ears. He’ll bring that horse of yours down in three shakes of a porker’s tail. And once you’re on foot … well, I don’t have to paint you a picture.’

  The squire did not. And Chaucer was glad he was wearing funereal black.

  Great Dunmow was already looking forward to its summer fayre, when the great and good of Essex and half the thieves of London would wend their way to the bustling town, giving thanks to God and dear old Henry III who had granted the place its charter all those years ago.

  Cattle filled the High Street and an entire gaggle of geese took exception to Chaucer – or perhaps the grey legs of his horse – as he rode by them. The last time he had been hissed at like that was a particularly nasty Friday in the company of a large number of Merchant Adventurers. He didn’t want to go through that again.

  ‘I’d like to be here for the flitch trials,’ he called to the squire. ‘Six bachelors and six maidens – could they find that many, do you think? – competing for half a pig. Nice to see these old traditions still being observed, isn’t it?’

  But Hugh Glanville wasn’t listening. He was following an older tradition still, tilting his bascinet at a pair of ladies of the town who were lolling on a balcony near the town hall. He was not to know they were for the exclusive use of the mayor, but from the low cut of their bodices, he must have realized that they were not nuns of the Augustinian persuasion. Chaucer rolled his eyes. What was it about a certain type of woman and men in armour?

  The great castle of Clare stood on its motte over the Stour. The two horsemen cantered through the orchards, the pear blossom bright in the afternoon sun. Tenants, some wearing the bull livery of the Duke of Clarence, waved at Hugh. Others looked askance at Chaucer. Even those with long enough memories would not recognize the chubby horseman with the greying hair and beard now. Could that really be the ruddy-cheeked lad with the auburn thatch who had once ridden at the quintain with the squire’s father? Followed the dogs through the forest looking for stags? Crashing through the undergrowth with a hawk on his wrist and the bells ringing in the morning? They were different days. But they were the days of Chaucer’s youth. And that, in a way, was why he had come back.

  They rode under the Nethergate and the memories came flooding back. Chaucer half-expected to feel the cold water hit him on the head and shoulders from the murder-holes above as Richard Glanville ambushed him again. The pair of them had had a running joke for years – how many windows at Clare castle? As boys, they’d hung flags and kerchiefs from every lintel, arrow slit and even, dicing with death on the slippery slopes, the garderobes. They’d done this dozens of times, but they’d always been foiled. That old bastard Griswold, the duke’s seneschal, had got wise to them and told the servants to take the cloths away. Surely, the old shit was dead by now? Even so, this was not the time to indulge in schoolboy pranks; the castle was in mourning.

  ‘Welcome, Master Chaucer.’ A solid-looking man in the duke’s livery was holding the grey’s bridle. ‘Butterfield, the duke’s seneschal. I am sorry to meet you in these circumstances.’

  ‘And I you, Master Butterfield,’ the Comptroller of Woollens was glad to leave the saddle again.

  ‘I’ve put you in the Auditor’s Tower, sir. I hope that meets with your approval.’

  Chaucer smiled. He had lost his virginity in the Auditor’s Tower; he wondered briefly if little Joyce still led her ducks to water in the swannery. But then, the years had passed. Little Joyce probably wasn’t so little any more; she’d probably be a grandmother with several chins and hips like a drayhorse.

  ‘If I may pay my respects first?’ Chaucer said.

  ‘Of course. You remember your way to the chapel?’

  Chaucer did but he let the seneschal take him, across the inner bailey, up the spiral staircase, worn with a thousand feet, Chaucer’s among them, up to the light, airy solar where the sun burst through the oriel window and lit the warm stone with spring. Then, they turned sharp left, Chaucer remembering just in time to duck. It had been years before the bruises had healed from his boyhood collisions with the unforgiving stones here.

  The chapel of St John was peace itself, exactly as Chaucer had remembered it. Well, perhaps not quite. A dead man lay on a table in the nave, the flesh equivalent of the marble effigies around him. He was covered from head to toe in a shroud, bound above the head and below the feet. Even so, there was no mistaking Lionel of Antwerp, taller than two cloth yards and broad with it.

  ‘He is clean shriven,’ a voice said at Chaucer’s elbow, ‘cleansed of his sins by contrition of heart and by absolution.’

  Chaucer turned. The man was his height, perhaps ten years younger, with the alb and tonsure of a cleric. ‘Father Clement, I assume.’ Chaucer extended a hand.

  ‘You are well informed, Master …’

  ‘Chaucer,’ the comptroller said. ‘I was once a ward of His Grace.’

  The priest took Chaucer’s hand. ‘I understood from Sir Richard that you had been sent for. Though why, I cannot fathom. The wardship was a long time ago, wasn’t it?’ The priest looked the comptroller up and down, with a look that could etch stone. He was clearly less than impressed with what he saw.

  ‘It was,’ Chaucer conceded, ‘but I owe this man my life.’

  ‘Indeed?’ Clement gave Chaucer the air of a man who wanted to know too much. But the comptroller had nothing to hide – well, not much, anyway.

  ‘In the wars against France,’ he said, as the priest relit one of the candles which had gone out, ‘Richard and I were in the duke’s company at Rheims. The king was there too. It was all rather awkward, but I managed to get myself captured. The duke arranged my release – paid for it himself.’

  ‘Oh? How much?’

  Chaucer’s eyes narrowed. Hardly an appropriate question for a churchman to ask. But no one fazed the king’s Comptroller of Woollens. ‘Sixteen pounds, as it happens. How did he die?’ One awkward question deserves another, Chaucer thought.

  ‘God called him,’ Clement
said.

  Glib bastard, Chaucer thought. ‘Of course,’ he nodded, ‘but that doesn’t give me the how and why, does it?’

  ‘And why should you want to know that, Master Chaucer?’ Clement turned to face the man.

  ‘Because I asked him to.’ Another voice made both men turn. Richard Glanville stood half in the shadows, the candlelight glowing on the gilt embroidery of his houppelande. ‘Geoffrey Chaucer!’ The knight crossed the chapel in three strides and clasped his arms around the man.

  ‘Sir Richard,’ Chaucer tried to bow, but it was difficult in the grip of a man who had once unhorsed the Chevalier Melanges, the biggest bastard in the French army.

  ‘Sir Richard, my arse,’ the knight laughed. ‘Oh, begging your pardon, Father,’ and he crossed himself. ‘It’s Rich, Geoff.’ He took in Chaucer’s expression. ‘Oh, I know – the years have been less than kind. The moustache is fuller, as is the waist, but it’s me, all the same.’

  ‘It is,’ Chaucer smiled, and for a while the two old friends just stood there, arms locked, grinning at each other. Then, the moment vanished, and they both remembered where they were, and why.

  ‘What price this?’ Chaucer asked. He was looking down at the shrouded man.

  ‘We needn’t keep you, Father,’ Glanville said. For a moment, the priest hesitated, then he bowed curtly and left, gliding over the flagstones like a ghost. ‘I don’t like that man,’ the knight said when he had gone.

  ‘Your son doesn’t either,’ Chaucer said.

  ‘What do you think of him, Geoff?’ the knight asked.

  ‘A fine boy,’ the comptroller said. ‘A man, I should say.’

  Glanville slapped him on the shoulder. ‘You won’t say that tomorrow,’ he chuckled.

  ‘Oh? Why?’

  ‘I sent him to you in his armour – nothing like a bit of heraldry to clear the crowds, eh? Tomorrow you’ll see him in all his finery – the rings, the hair. Don’t get me started on the perfumes – musk, ambergris, cardamom – I can’t keep up.’

  ‘A ladies’ man, eh?’ Chaucer winked.

  ‘You could say that. Now,’ he sighed, ‘shall we?’ He untied the shroud knot and pulled the cloth back. Chaucer was mildly astonished. The years had fallen away from Lionel of Antwerp – he looked half the age of the men still standing. His long hair was combed out over his broad shoulders and his beard was neatly trimmed. In the week since death had called him, time had taken its toll and the nose, forehead and lips were taking on the waxy sheen of death. But otherwise, in the cool of the chapel, he could still be taken as only sleeping. Glanville pulled the shroud back and the Duke of Clarence lay as naked as the day he was born.

  Chaucer crossed himself. ‘What am I doing here, Rich?’ he asked. ‘The man looks as if he’d just fallen asleep.’

  The knight looked at the Comptroller of Woollens. ‘You are a wise man, Geoffrey Chaucer,’ he said, ‘the wisest man I know. And you once said something to me that I’ve never forgotten.’

  ‘Really?’ Chaucer couldn’t imagine what that might be.

  ‘You said “beware the smiler with the knife”.’

  Chaucer chuckled. In that silent, death-canopied chamber, it sounded stark, disrespectful and he crossed himself again. ‘I was probably pissed when I said that,’ he said. ‘And anyway, how …?’

  ‘How does it fit the passing of Lionel of Antwerp? I don’t know. That’s why you’re here. This place,’ he waved his hand, ‘this castle of Clare is full of smilers. We just need to find the hand that held the knife – albeit a metaphorical one. Who have you met so far?’

  ‘Apart from you and Hugh, er … the seneschal. What’s his name? I confess I was half dreading it might still be Griswold.’

  The knight laughed. ‘Butterfield, you mean,’ he said.

  Chaucer nodded. ‘And the priest, Lionel’s confessor.’

  ‘There’s two to watch for a start. Smilers both, but I wouldn’t turn my back on either of them. And you’re right, by the way, to include me and Hugh.’

  ‘Rich,’ Chaucer was shaking his head, frowning.

  ‘No, no, I’m serious. I was first finder – I smashed Lionel’s lock and found him dead. That means men can point a finger at me. As for Hugh, he’s a good boy; he’d follow his old pa through the fire and into Hellmouth. If I said, “Kill Lionel”, he’d do it, no questions asked.’

  Chaucer looked down at the dead man’s face. ‘But he looks so peaceful,’ he said.

  ‘Death does that,’ Glanville nodded. ‘Smooths the wrinkles. But you and I have seen death, Geoff, up close and personal. I know “unnatural causes” when I see them. So do you, or you wouldn’t be here.’

  Chaucer sighed. If Richard Glanville said something did not sit right, that was good enough for him.

  ‘All right,’ he said, ‘Tell me everything.’

  ‘I will, of course. But not here. It’s cold, for one thing, and I don’t trust that priest … let’s get His Grace back in his shroud and we’ll talk in my chambers. There’ll be comfortable seats, some wine and no ears that shouldn’t be there.’ The knight looked round, his eyes heavy with too many sleepless nights, and with sorrow. He bunched the linen shroud together and tied it at the head. Chaucer went to the foot and tied it there. With gentle hands they smoothed the fabric down and soon Lionel of Antwerp slept again, inside his chrysalis, a butterfly who would never fly again. The two men stood for a moment with bowed heads, each alone with their thoughts. They differed in the detail, where the Devil lurks, but one thing they had in common; they would find who had killed this man to whom they both owed so much. And then, woe betide.

  Chaucer sat back on a cushioned settle in Sir Richard’s solar high in the Confessor’s Tower and looked around. His own little garret in Aldgate would have fitted comfortably in one corner and left room to swing any number of cats, even ones as giant as Nicholas Brembre’s familiar. He warmed the wine between his hands and inhaled the bouquet. Richard Glanville lived high off the hog; Chaucer hoped that it wasn’t simply self-interest which had called him to Clare. What would happen to the household, now that Lionel of Antwerp was dead?

  A small fire was burning in the enormous fireplace and Glanville threw on a couple of small logs, which spat and hissed as the flames took them. The knight turned to Chaucer and spoke over his shoulder, as men will when they are not sure of the response they will get.

  ‘I suppose you’re wondering whether I called you because I don’t want to lose all this,’ he said, and Chaucer shuddered, as if a goose had walked over his grave.

  ‘No, no, of course not,’ he said, he hoped sounding sincere. ‘I know you are above such things, Rich.’

  Glanville threw himself down on a couch on the opposite side of the fire and reached for his goblet from the small table between them. ‘Lionel was good to me, Geoff, both in life and death. His widow will keep the castle, unless she remarries, in which case he has made other arrangements; a distant cousin, I believe. But I, whether the Lady Violante or others are mistress or master here, can keep these rooms until I die, with a modest income.’

  Chaucer was surprised. That was unusually generous, he knew.

  ‘I gave up everything for him, you see,’ the knight said, simply. ‘Hugh’s mother lived with her parents for almost the whole of our marriage. I barely knew the woman, but even so, it would have been good to have a home instead of traipsing about this country and any other you care to name in Lionel’s wake. I am blessed that Hugh has come to live with me, follow in my footsteps, you might say. It could have been so different – and Lionel knew that. He was not an ungrateful man.’

  ‘You sound as if he may have had other failings, though.’ In his work as comptroller, Chaucer had developed a keen ear for the word unsaid, which so often meant more than a dozen spoken,

  ‘Not failings as such, no.’ The knight sipped his wine, giving himself time to think. ‘He was …’ he looked up and smiled, the years dropping away. ‘Well, you must remember. He was a bit of a one fo
r the ladies.’

  Chaucer raised an eyebrow. That was an incredibly polite way of putting it. It was a well-known fact that when Lionel of Antwerp rode to town, the womenfolk would hide. They’d hide – but then come out in twos and threes, to be snared in his net. He never had to pay for a woman and there was no coercion. His immense height, his flowing hair and roving eye did all that for him, and no one with delicate sensibilities would approach his tent when the flap was down. ‘An understatement,’ he chuckled. ‘But not lately, surely?’

  The knight laughed, silent tears pouring down his cheeks. ‘Yes, lately. That’s why no one thought to break the door down sooner. We all assumed he was … busy.’ He brushed away the tears and looked solemn. ‘Although Lady Violante is a hard one to love, sometimes, we did feel for her. It wasn’t like Lionel to be quite so … shall we say, blatant. He had imported a girl from the town, young enough to be his daughter, granddaughter, even, at a pinch. And he flaunted her at feasts, took her to his bed, kissed her – and more – in full view of everyone.’

  Chaucer was shocked. He knew the reputation of Lionel of Antwerp back in the day was of a louche and rapacious lover, but he had never thought him to be ungentlemanly. ‘Did no one … remonstrate?’ he asked.

  ‘I would imagine that the Lady Violante did. In fact, no, I know that the Lady Violante did. We could hear her remonstrating all over the castle, often with the music of breaking glass in the background. She has always been a tricky woman to serve. Her maids come and are gone in days, often, because of her tantrums. But she isn’t old. She is still beautiful. And why should Lionel take a common townswoman to his bosom when he had such beauty at home?’

  ‘Love is a funny thing,’ Chaucer remarked. There seemed little else to say.

  ‘Talking of which,’ Glanville said. ‘I have been more than uncivil. How is Pippa these days? I didn’t ask.’

  Chaucer smiled and spread his arms, with a chuckle. ‘Well, you know Pippa. Always busy. I hear regularly from her – still serving her mistress out in Lincolnshire.’