The Knight's Tale Read online

  Chaucer could feel the floor like glass under his feet. The woman, though as close as an apron string, was almost swallowed up by the steam and women, but made it to the other end without undue incident. His guide pushed open a door and yelled, ‘Joyce. Gentleman to see you.’ As she turned to go, she laughed and nudged Chaucer again, nearly bowling him over. ‘I thought she’d give all that up, at her age, I must say. But to each his own, that’s my motto.’ With a final glance at Chaucer and his fairly ample charms, she went back to her copper and the shouts and laughing of her washerwomen.

  Joyce was passing a glass slickstone over a length of linen stretched over a frame, outlined by the sun coming through the high window behind her. The room was mercifully free from steam and, for that alone, Chaucer was very grateful. He stood silently for a moment, waiting for his first love to look up from her work. She carefully placed her slickstone in its cradle and gave the handle of the frame a half-turn, to stretch the linen to its furthest extent. She leaned sideways, looking along the surface, and flicked an almost invisible speck away with a practised finger. She looked up, finally.

  ‘Her Grace is very particular,’ she said, checking once more and then stepping back. She looked Chaucer up and down, but not with disdain. ‘Hello, Geoffrey. I don’t believe you’ve changed a scrap. Not like me. Grey hair, look.’ She flicked her plait over her shoulder and held it out for his perusal.

  Chaucer was dumbstruck. That he had changed, there was no doubt. He could have been carrying that youthful Chaucer she had deflowered in the stable loft curled up in the front of his gown. His hair was grey and scrubby. His beard was long and greyer than his hair. For all that life had not been unkind to him, he looked years older than his age. And yet, standing there in the warmth of Joyce’s smile, he could have been sixteen again. ‘Joyce … I …’

  ‘Still the old tongue-tied Geoff,’ she laughed. She took his arm and tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow. ‘Come and sit in the sun with me for a while. Tell me what you’ve been doing with yourself. Married? Children?’

  Chaucer allowed himself to be led, like a milk-fed calf to slaughter. ‘Umm Yes. And yes.’

  She laughed and sat down on a sun-warmed wall on the edge of an old orchard, full of gnarled apple trees. Blossom was breaking over her head and a light breeze skipping down the valley ruffled her hair where it had come loose from the plait. She patted the wall and he sat beside her. ‘That’s no answer. What’s her name? How many?’

  ‘Ummm …’ Chaucer was known for his way with words, and yet this serving woman seemed to have robbed him of every one. ‘Philippa. Pippa, everyone calls her. Three children.’ He counted on his fingers. ‘Yes, three. Two girls, one boy, Thomas.’

  ‘You don’t seem too sure.’ She looked at him askance. ‘How can you not be sure how many children you have?’

  ‘Well, they’re lodged in fine houses, you see. For their education. We don’t see each other much. The youngest, that’s Agnes, she’s with her mother.’

  ‘And where’s that?’ Joyce had never taken much notice of the people around her, the ones above her station. Now she came to think of it, though, there did seem to be children with no parents among the household. Poor little things. She would have to bear that in mind the next time one of the brats spat at her or called her wench. Poor, motherless mites.

  ‘Lincolnshire.’

  ‘And where do you live?’ Now she was beginning to regret all those dreams, all those longings for a life with young Geoff Chaucer, all that time ago. She would rather live the way she did, all hugger-mugger with her children and the man of the moment, than in splendid isolation, without husband or children.

  ‘London. Aldgate, to be precise.’ Chaucer was beginning to regain the power of speech. ‘I have a room. I …’ He realized that to describe the way he lived would only incite this woman’s sympathy. There was no way on God’s earth that he could make her understand how he loved his little room, his books, his meals sent up from the inn that he rarely paid for. ‘I’m very comfortable. I am’ – he smiled and sketched a quick bow – ‘Comptroller of the King’s Woollens.’

  ‘That sounds nice. He has a lot of woollens, does he, the king?’

  ‘All woollens belong to His Grace, I suppose, but … I suppose you could say, I work for the customs.’

  ‘Oh. Well, that sounds nice, as I said.’ She grabbed his hand. ‘It’s just so good to see you, Geoff.’ What she didn’t tell him was that she was now certain her eldest wasn’t his. She had often wondered, but now she saw the nose, the eyes, the mouth, she could see that what her mother had always told her was right – the lad was the living spit of the blacksmith’s apprentice, Matty, who had come along very soon after Geoff had gone. In some cases, within the hour. She didn’t know whether to be glad or sorry. She looked again at the comptroller. No, on balance, probably glad.

  ‘Tell me about yourself.’ Chaucer’s innate good breeding reasserted itself. He hadn’t been brought up by Lionel of Antwerp to behave like a knarre.

  ‘Oh, I haven’t done anything, Geoff. Not like you, moving to London, three children in great houses, no, nothing like that.’

  ‘Oh.’ Chaucer was horror-struck. ‘Four children. I forgot Lewis. Sorry.’ He saw the look on her face and realized he was a knarre after all.

  ‘I have nine children living, four dead. I don’t live in the castle, not with all that brood. I have a house down in the town, only small, but it’s mine. My father built it and I live there with him. He’s a bit infirm these days, so he needs some looking after. But the children help me, they keep him happy.’ She smiled and she really did look happy; Chaucer was envious, suddenly.

  ‘Who did you marry, in the end?’ Chaucer knew that when he was a lad, disporting himself in the hay with Joyce, he wasn’t the only apple in her barrel. He was intrigued to know who she had chosen. His money was on the blacksmith’s eldest.

  She laughed and clouted him on the back, almost knocking him off the wall. ‘I never got married, Geoff! Who’d have me? Three fine boys by the time I was eighteen, none of them with a father I could name for sure. I never hid what I am. I just like …’ she knew the words she would use among her friends, but she didn’t know if Chaucer would even know what they meant. She lowered her eyes and blushed. ‘I have a bit of a reputation, Geoff. I’m where the men go when their wives aren’t the friendly sort.’

  Chaucer was shocked and yet somehow not surprised. She had brought experience to the hayloft which he hadn’t encountered often since in women twice her age, and never in Pippa’s bed. ‘Well …’ he was somewhat stuck for words, then he smiled at her. It was hard not to smile when Joyce was near, as many men in the castle could attest. ‘You’re happy, and that’s the main thing.’

  ‘It is, Geoff. I’m not as busy as I was, to tell the truth. The duke took up a lot of my time, o’ course. But then he went abroad and met the duchess, so that slowed him down for a bit. Then there was Blanche …’ She looked at Chaucer and, for the first time, her brow was furrowed. ‘To tell you the truth, Geoff, that did irk me, did that. I was carrying my youngest when he brought the duchess home, so that was fair enough. But this Blanche … well, she’s no better nor she should be, and I was ready for getting back on the horse, as you might say, by then. But no, he moves the hussy into his bed …’ Her brow cleared again and the smile was back. ‘Still, she’s got her comeuppance, hasn’t she, Geoff? Back at home and bound for a nunnery, so they say.’

  ‘So they say,’ Chaucer echoed. If his list got much longer of people who wanted to kill Lionel of Antwerp, it would be easier to list those who didn’t want to kill him.

  ‘He didn’t love her, though,’ Joyce mused. ‘He couldn’t love nobody what Ankarette didn’t like.’

  Chaucer searched his brain. ‘Ankarette?’ He’d heard that name before.

  ‘His wolfhound. Great thing. Size of a donkey, near enough. Slept on his bed and all sorts. She wouldn’t mind me, nor the duchess. But she kicked up hel
l when that Blanche was there. He had to tie her up outside he did, while he did his doings.’

  The final sentence gave Chaucer pause, but he worked it out slowly, using his fingers. ‘I see. But Ankarette was in the room when they found the duke dead?’

  ‘Yes. I took her down to the kitchen and fed her, calmed her down. She was howling fit to wake the dead. That’s how we knew there was summat wrong, see.’

  ‘Yes, I see. I didn’t know she didn’t like Blanche.’

  Joyce sniffed. ‘She’s a hunting dog. She knows a gold-digger when she sees one.’

  Chaucer hadn’t been aware that that was one of the quarries of the hunt but was always ready to learn.

  ‘She’s a lovely old thing.’ Joyce was presumably back on the subject of the dog. ‘Shared His Grace’s food and everything. Treated her almost like a child, he did. Fed her from his dish. Even gave her a drop of wine sometimes.’

  Chaucer was not a pet lover. He had had enough of Nicholas Brembre’s cat to last him a lifetime. But he was polite. ‘Where is the dog now?’

  ‘She’s living in the kitchen. They give her scraps, but I take her for a walk when I can.’ She jumped up. ‘I ought to be there now. They’ll be wondering where I’ve got to.’

  Chaucer had become so embroiled in Joyce and her life he had almost forgotten the question he had for her. ‘Was there any food or drink in His Grace’s room?’ he asked.

  Joyce shook her head and her plait swung from side to side. ‘Oh, no, Geoff. Not a morsel. Now, I must run.’ And run she did, with the grace of a girl, leaving Chaucer feeling strangely lonely without her.

  FOUR

  Peasants toiling in the fields below the castle saw them first, a small army coming from the south-west. At their head fluttered a banner they all knew, the leopards and lilies of England. They were less sure of the differencing that marked the flag as that of the Duke of Lancaster.

  Giovanni Visconti saw it too, standing, as he was, on the battlements of the keep. ‘Who is this, Signor Chaucer?’ the lad asked. Beyond the heraldry of Milan, the Italian was lost.

  Chaucer had not been looking forward to this moment. ‘That is John of Gaunt,’ he said, ‘the late duke’s brother. Your own brother-in-law, if you keep track of that kind of thing.’ He turned to Giovanni. ‘And he’s the most hated man in England.’

  There must have been two hundred men in Gaunt’s entourage, all armed to the teeth, with the duke’s badge stitched to their jupons. Giovanni swore he could feel the earth tremble under the thunder of the trotting hoofs, but it might have been the wind on the battlements. He turned to say something, but Chaucer had gone, his brain whirling as he hurried down the spiral of the stairs. Halfway down, he stopped to look out of the arrow-slit. No, he hadn’t imagined it. That was Gaunt all right. Back in the day, he had written a poem in honour of the Lady Blanche, Gaunt’s wife, and now, he regretted it. It wasn’t his best work, but as a young man he had stood open-mouthed at Blanche’s beauty. A lovely face and a lovely soul. Like most men, Gaunt included, Chaucer loved her in his own, distanced way. But The Book of the Duchess would lie closed for ever now; the great lady had been called to God twelve years ago and Gaunt had married some Spanish tart as part of his latest political adventure. If there was some awkward position to take, an attitude to strike, Gaunt would do it. If there was a flow to mankind, a direction in which the world turned, Gaunt would be travelling in the opposite direction, pushing against the tide. So many metaphors swirled in Chaucer’s head; he had composed a dozen different greetings before he reached ground level.

  At the Nethergate, Gaunt’s column halted, all snorting horses and the creak of leather. Butterfield and his people were all there, paraded in their Clarence finery for the most powerful man in the land. Gaunt did not wear the crown, but he who did was a twelve-year-old boy and everyone knew it was the Duke of Lancaster who actually called the bow-shots.

  ‘You are?’ Gaunt threw back the weepers of his liripipe so that his bearded face was in evidence.

  ‘Butterfield, my lord.’ The seneschal rose from his deep bow. ‘His late Grace’s …’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Gaunt snapped. ‘Where will I find the duchess?’

  ‘If you will follow me, my lord?’ Butterfield clicked his fingers and a lackey dashed to hold Gaunt’s bridle. The Duke of Lancaster dismounted. He followed no one, but there were certain practical considerations he could not avoid and he let Butterfield take him across the bailey, staff bowing and curtseying in all directions.

  ‘Good God!’ Gaunt stopped in his tracks, unbuckling his sword and throwing it to a minion. He didn’t look where it was going; in Gaunt’s world, where he threw something, there would be someone to catch it, and he had never been wrong yet. ‘Geoffrey Chaucer, as I live and breathe.’

  The Comptroller of Woollens had thought he had better get this over with. He bowed at the foot of the stairs. ‘My lord,’ he said, and was a little surprised when Gaunt whipped off his glove and held out his hand. For a moment, Chaucer wasn’t sure how to respond.

  Gaunt sensed his dilemma. ‘Well, shake it, man. This isn’t Spain. We don’t kiss rings here except in the case of the king. Or, God forbid, the Pope – and we’re not likely to get a visit from him in the next six hundred years – whichever one we’re talking about.’

  Chaucer shook Gaunt’s hand.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ the duke asked him.

  ‘You may remember, my lord, that I was ward to His Grace back in the day. I owe him a great deal.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Gaunt said. ‘Paid your ransom, didn’t he – that Rheims business?’

  ‘Indeed, my lord. Were it not for His Grace, I’d still be mouldering in some French oubliette.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Gaunt mumbled. ‘Well, Chaucer, I’ll be here for a few days, see my brother laid to rest. We must talk. Relive old times.’

  ‘I’d be delighted, my lord.’ Chaucer could gush for England when he had to. ‘But first, please accept my condolences.’

  ‘Yes,’ Gaunt sighed. ‘Well, to be frank, Lionel and I were never close, especially recently. He was drifting towards the Italian states, I to Spain. By the way,’ he nudged Chaucer closer to him, ‘I don’t want to chance my arm at all, but come Michaelmas, you might be talking to the new king of Castile.’

  Chaucer looked gobsmacked. ‘My lord,’ he managed. ‘I mean, Your Grace.’

  ‘Yes, well,’ Gaunt tapped the side of his nose. ‘That’s strictly entre nous, as we used to say during the war. Butterwick,’ he spun to the seneschal, ‘don’t just hover there, man, where’s that sister-in-law of mine?’

  Chaucer bowed as the duke made for the stairs and, suddenly, Giovanni Visconti was at his elbow. ‘My God,’ the lad’s whisper was barely audible, ‘that’s him!’

  Chaucer tried to follow the pointing finger but all he could see was a mass of men, some dismounting, others still in the saddle, and a wall of noise as they gabbled among themselves.

  ‘Who?’ he asked. ‘Where?’

  ‘There, on the black. Giovanni Acuto.’

  Chaucer, ever the scholar, translated in his head. Giovanni Acuto was Italian for that civilized language, Latin, Johannes Acutus. That, in turn, in English, was John the Sharp. And that meant that Chaucer was none the wiser. The duchess’s little brother looked at the comptroller; was the man some kind of idiot?

  ‘John Hakvod,’ he explained.

  ‘Hak …’ Chaucer frowned. ‘Oh, Hawkwood!’ Realization dawned; the groat had dropped.

  ‘I saw him in Milano once,’ the boy burbled. ‘Oh, I cannot have been more than twelve.’

  Chaucer looked at him; was that yesterday?

  ‘He was there with his White Company,’ the lad went on, ‘offering his services to Uncle Bernabo. They say he earns eighty thousand florins a year.’

  Chaucer’s jaw dropped. That was twice the money that passed through his hands at the Wool Exchange and he had never seen so much in one place in his life. Clearly, he was in the wrong
job. But he knew more about John Hawkwood than the boy at his elbow. His White Company were freebooters, men the French called jacquerie, who sold their souls to the highest bidder. They raped and plundered, sacked monasteries and cut men’s legs off for laughs. He might never have seen the man before, but he knew his reputation.

  And as he watched, John Hawkwood dismounted. He hauled his bastard sword from the saddlebow and hung it over his shoulder so that the blade hung down his back. Then he made for the archway where Chaucer and Giovanni stood.

  ‘Giovanni Acuto!’ the boy said excitedly, remembering just in time to bow.

  Hawkwood was a head taller than the Italian and broad with it. In an age when the moustache bristled supreme, he was clean-shaven, his hair close-cropped and tawny, his eyes hard grey.

  ‘Do I know you, boy?’ he asked.

  ‘No, sir,’ Giovanni said. ‘Well, in a way. We are family, you and I.’

  ‘Mother of God,’ Hawkwood muttered. ‘How so?’

  ‘I am Giovanni Visconti.’

  Hawkwood blinked at him.

  ‘Bernabo, the Lord of Milano, is my uncle. Once removed, of course.’

  Of course. As Hawkwood knew well; it was the Italian way.

  But Giovanni Not The Sharp was well into his family tree by now. ‘Your wife, Donina, she is Bernabo’s daughter, if a little the wrong side of the highway. So we are … cousins, sort of.’

  Hawkwood winked at him. ‘Stay with the “sort of”,’ he said and walked on. He was on the first step when he all but collided with Butterfield, having left Gaunt with his brother’s widow. ‘Sir John,’ the seneschal said and the mercenary cut him dead.

  ‘Do you know that man?’ Chaucer asked Butterfield as he passed.

  The seneschal looked a little discomfited. ‘Doesn’t everybody?’ he asked. ‘He’s—’

  ‘John the Sharp,’ Chaucer chimed in, ‘of the White Company.’ He flashed a glance at Giovanni. ‘Yes, I know.’

  It was raining the day they buried Lionel of Antwerp, as if Heaven itself wept and the angels bowed their heads. Monks from the priory of Clare carried the coffin, adorned with the duke’s arms and a funeral helm hung with black. Behind walked John of Gaunt, a black cloak over his heraldic jupon, the one he had worn not long before when he had buried first his big brother, the Black Prince, and then his father. The Plantagenets were wilting fast. Behind him walked John Hawkwood, unusually unarmed, although he carried a slim Italian dagger in his sleeve as was his wont; even in peaceful Suffolk, you couldn’t be too careful.