The Yeoman's Tale, page 23
Chaucer thought back and suddenly, he knew. ‘It’s Mistress Gillis’s savings from the housekeeping,’ he said. ‘Audric told us about that.’
Maghfield was doubtful. ‘I think if she could save that much, Geoff,’ he said, ‘then Arend was giving her too much in the first place. There are thousands of nobles there, if I am right.’ He grinned. ‘And I always am.’
‘I got the impression he kept her on quite short commons,’ Chaucer said and several of the peasants ambling along beside him turned outraged faces up at him. They may have lost their leader, but there was no need for folk to get nasty. ‘No offence,’ Chaucer hurriedly added.
‘He would,’ Maghfield agreed. ‘But it’s gold in that bag.’ He had enough foresight to drop his voice. ‘I would stake my reputation on it.’ He narrowed his eyes. They were gaining perceptibly on the Gillises, burdened as they were. ‘Leave this with me.’
He touched his spurs to his horse’s side and was level with Arend Gillis’s ear before the man knew a thing. Chaucer saw him bend down to whisper, saw Gillis step back, his face a picture of terror, and tried not to laugh as he tangled his legs in the handmade straps, and measured his length on the highway that was once again the King’s.
When he caught up with them, Gillis had regained some of his composure and was squaring up to Maghfield. Although not short, he was no match for the other man and was already going on the defensive.
‘How dare you do that?’ he screamed at Maghfield. ‘It’s none of your business what’s in this bag!’
‘I didn’t ask what’s in the bag,’ Maghfield pointed out, reasonably. ‘I simply said, “Hoo”. But since you bring it up – what’s in the bag, Master Gillis? Gifts for my wife, perhaps?’
Gillis looked as if he had just swallowed his own tongue.
Audric looked puzzled. ‘What does he mean, Father?’ he asked. ‘Why should we give any of Mother’s gold to Mistress Maghfield?’
Gillis’s shoulders sagged. What a dreadful thing to have a stupid child.
‘So, it is Fye’s gold!’ Maghfield didn’t mind standing corrected when he was standing corrected over an enormous mountain of nobles. ‘How much did you give her for the house accounts, Arend? Because I am bound to say, it was too much!’
‘We have her accounts book here,’ Audric said, holding it out. His father made a snatch at it, but was too late. Chaucer’s hand had snaked out more quickly than anyone could have expected and it was inside his houppelande as quick as winking.
The comptroller took a step forward and lowered his voice. ‘I think, gentleman, that rather than stand arguing, we share the load and get this bag into the Tabard. The peasants may be no longer revolting – in only one sense, of course – but that doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t have the skin off your back as soon as look at you.’ He turned his head and nodded in the direction they had come.
The peasants were less cohesive as a group than they had been, but there were still a lot of them, many still armed and out for a fight. The three Flemings took his point and, leaving him to lead the horses, set off at a steady trot towards the Tabard.
‘How did you get out?’ he heard Maghfield ask. ‘I understood that Hardesty was guarding the sally port.’
Audric’s broken voice rang out. He didn’t seem to have any control over the volume. Chaucer tried to remember those days, but couldn’t; surely, he had never sounded like that? ‘We used the other one. Nell showed it to us.’
Chaucer put that piece of information into a corner of his brain. He might never need it, but one never knew.
‘We’ll have to go through the gates this time,’ Maghfield said. ‘I assume that the salley port is too small for horses.’
‘Oh, yes,’ Audric volunteered. ‘It’s round the side in …’ He stopped as his father kicked him on the ankle. ‘Ow, Father! It doesn’t matter now, surely?’
Maghfield shook his head. It was a shame to see the House of Gillis come to a grinding halt like this. This lad couldn’t compute his way out of a hole in the ground. ‘Here we are, anyway,’ he said, and raised his voice. ‘Hoo! Hoo there! Let us in!’
A dubious face appeared over the top of the parapet, looking down at them sternly. ‘What is the password?’ the watcher said.
Chaucer pushed his way to the front. ‘The password? The password?’ It had been a busy day thus far and he was tired of all this nonsense. ‘We don’t have passwords now, do we?’
‘Oh, yes,’ the man on the parapet said, nodding his head slowly and sagely. ‘We had a meeting and decided we must have passwords from now on.’
Chaucer clenched his fists to keep his temper. ‘And when, my good man, did you decide on this password?’
The man was puzzled and bent his head below the parapet, to check with someone, clearly down below in the yard. After a muffled discussion, he was back. ‘About an hour since,’ he said.
Chaucer’s eye began to twitch, always a sign that his temper was queuing up to leave the sanctuary of his brain. ‘Well,’ he said, his voice frighteningly level, ‘how in Hell are we supposed to know? We’ve been gone since just after dawn, you, you … imbecile.’ There were better words, he knew, but it was all he could come up with at short notice.
They heard a muffled voice calling up from the yard.
‘Dunno,’ the watcher said. ‘I can only see the tops of their heads.’ The four men obediently looked up. ‘Oh, that’s better. It’s Master Chaucer, Master Maghfield, Master Gillis and that annoying lad.’
The voice from the yard became sharper and, with much grinding of chains and hullabaloo, the great gates swung wide and let the travellers in.
Chaucer and Maghfield were almost covered by a mob of people as soon as they got through the gates, clamouring for news. It seemed strange to them that no one knew of such momentous events, but – how could they? There were still peasants milling around outside, wandering up the road, just as before. No one could tell, from inside the inn, that they were a body with no head. The Gillises had skulked away, dragging their canvas with them, and Chaucer watched them go gratefully. It had become clear that Fye Gillis was no prize, but some people simply deserved each other. He hoped her money would make them happy; looking at their faces, avid with greed, it had, at least for now. He whispered to Maghfield, standing on tiptoe and pulling the man’s ear down to his level by leaning on his shoulder, that he must find Madame Eglantyne before anyone else did and, leaving the merchant venturer to tell his tale, slipped away, taking the pretty way under the bulwarks of timber.
Before he reached the inn door, he was stopped by an arm like an iron bar stuck out suddenly from behind a ladder.
‘Master Chaucer,’ the yeoman said. ‘Can I have a word with you?’
Chaucer was apologetic. ‘I must find Madame Eglantyne …’
‘She’s resting. I need a word with you. Now.’
Chaucer sighed. ‘If you insist. Why?’
‘Follow me.’ The yeoman sprang for the ladder and was up it like a rat on a gangplank. He stood at the top, blocking out the sun. ‘Come on. Follow me.’
Chaucer stood his ground. He had had enough of being told what to do for one day. ‘I will see Madame Eglantyne first,’ he said. ‘Then I will follow you.’ And, turning on his heel, he made for the door.
Madame Eglantyne sat with her nun beside her on a settle just by the window, in the wall opposite the door. Their heads were bowed and their fingers were busy with their rosaries. Chaucer, while never doubting their level of devotion, had never seen them at prayer before and for a moment was disoriented. He stood quietly, waiting for one of them to look up. The nun saw him first and she gently nudged the prioress.
‘Mother,’ she said, softly. ‘It is Master Chaucer.’
It was the first time the comptroller had heard her speak.
Eglantyne looked up and folded her rosary beads into a placket in her sleeve. The ubiquitous Foo-Foo was sleeping at her feet. She looked into Chaucer’s face and read it like a book. One tear slid down her cheek and dripped unheeded from her chin. She patted the nun’s hand. ‘Go, my child,’ she said, softly. ‘Get some air. I need to talk to Master Chaucer.’
The nun looked as if she might disobey, but, scooping up the unresisting dog, went out into the sunshine of the yard, where they could see her, standing still, listening to Maghfield’s recitation of the day’s events, stock still, like a pillar of salt.
‘You must be brave, Madame Eglantyne,’ he began, but she put a soft finger to his lips.
‘I know he is dead, Master Chaucer,’ she said. ‘I have felt it in my heart since last night. A part of me ceased to beat. Did he … did he give you anything for me?’
‘A letter, madam, nothing more.’ Chaucer suddenly had a horrible thought that she was expecting gold, but being with the Gillis family could do that to a man.
‘I was expecting nothing more, Master Chaucer,’ she said, some of the old asperity rising in her voice. ‘I have a similar thing addressed to him in my baggage wherever I go.’ Another tear ran down her cheek. ‘I suppose I can burn that, now.’
Chaucer reached inside his houppelande and pulled out something which didn’t feel like Sudbury’s letter. He looked at it as if he had never seen it before, then remembered – it was the book found with Fye Gillis’s gold. He would look at that later, then give it back to her husband. He foraged again and found the letter, the seal and ribbon bright as blood on the vellum. He handed it to the prioress.
She took it and held it to her heart, then looked at it with eyes made short-sighted by tears. ‘Look,’ she breathed, holding it out to Chaucer. ‘The print of his own dear fingers in the wax.’ She pressed her lips to the letter and bowed her head, consumed with sorrow.
Chaucer watched her for a moment then, as silently as he could, he crept from the room and closed the door. Without a word being said, the nun moved over and stood against it. Until she wasn’t needed, she would stand guard against all comers, while her prioress grieved for the man she wasn’t allowed to love.
Chaucer looked up at the parapet. Maghfield, his story done, for he was a man of few words, was there now, talking to the yeoman. It wasn’t possible to hear exactly what was being said, because the noise from the street was louder now, the peasants having become a mere rabble rather than a rabble led by someone, but it seemed that the merchant and Hardesty were planning the gradual decommissioning of the fortress that the Tabard had become. Neither man felt it would be wise to do too much too soon and they were both clearly enjoying the planning. Chaucer decided to leave them to it. He was tired. He was hungry. He was thirsty. And he was still more than a little frightened.
‘So, what was it all about, Will?’ Jack Chub asked his friend. ‘In the end?’
Lorkin looked at him. ‘The end, Chubby?’ He shook his head. ‘Oh, no, we haven’t got to the end yet. We’ve got to avenge Wat Tyler.’
‘Have we?’ Chub asked. ‘Why?’
Lorkin stopped. All day he’d been carrying a halberd and his arm felt like lead. Days of no work had already made him soft and he was getting used to the good life. ‘Why?’ he repeated, scowling at Chub. ‘We came close to changing the world, there; I don’t know if you realized that. And then some stuck-up ponce of a Lord Mayor kills the man what was going to make it happen.’
‘So, what are you going to do? Kill Walworth?’
‘Walworth and all his kind,’ Lorkin nodded, hauling the halberd over his shoulder. ‘We just need to bide our time, that’s all.’
At the entrance to the bridge, everything had already changed. The peasant guard had gone and grim men in kettle hats wearing the King’s livery stood there.
‘You’ll be leaving that behind,’ one of them grunted at Lorkin.
‘Do what?’
‘The halberd, knarre. Unless I miss my guess, that’s the property of His Grace the King of England. Lift it from the Tower, did you?’
Lorkin squared up to the man, but the keeper of the bridge was bigger than he was and better armed. And there was something in his eyes that neither Lorkin nor Chub liked the look of.
‘Come on, Will,’ Chub said. ‘Give the nice man his toy and let’s go home.’
For a moment, Lorkin hesitated. The keeper was huge. And there were another dozen more just like him, waiting for the nod from their commander. Although he knew neither word, discretion was the better part of valour and Lorkin instinctively knew it. He threw the halberd to the bridge-keeper, who caught it expertly, and the pair of them trudged past the shrine of St Thomas without a second glance.
In Southwark, the Winchester geese in their yellow hoods had rarely been so busy. The average rebelling peasant couldn’t afford much, but they’d clubbed together over the last few nights for the services of the girls and it had all worked quite well. Now, though, it was different; they all seemed to be leaving.
‘You’re not going, sweetheart?’ one of them said to Chub, pushing her naked breasts out at him.
‘Got to,’ Chub told her. ‘Be harvest time soon. That is, if they’ll still let us do it.’
‘You don’t want to worry about all that,’ the girl cooed, linking her arm with Chub’s. Some of the peasants, she knew, had suddenly come into money – somebody else’s – and they were worth cultivating. ‘You come with me. Old Bridie’ll take your mind off things.’
‘Bugger off, goose!’ Lorkin snarled at her.
‘Ooh,’ Bridie said, pulling a face at him. ‘Somebody got out of bed the wrong side …’ But she never finished her sentence. Lorkin’s right hand snaked out and caught her around the jawline. His left slapped her hard around the face and she reeled backwards. There was a knife in her bodice but she knew better than to try to use that. This knarre was built like a chantry and he’d probably just take it off her. Bridie bounced off the nearest wall and Lorkin aimed a kick which saw the girl double up in agony and slump to the street.
‘That’s enough, Will!’ Chub shouted and held his friend back. ‘Come on, now. She meant no harm. Let’s go. Let’s go home and put all this behind us.’ He fumbled in his belt and threw the handful of groats he had there onto the ground next to Bridie. She looked up at him with hatred in her eyes. Jack Chub had never got thanks when he had worked for his lord, scratching in the dirt for what was not even close to a living. He had got no thanks from the prisoners of the Marshalsea who he’d released from Hell. And now, he had no thanks from Bridie, even though he had just saved her life. He sighed. It was the way of the world. His world, at any rate.
Chaucer was surprised to find that Alice Doggett and Barbara Baillie got on like houses afire. By rights, they should have been like two cats in a sack, but they both settled into their shared kitchen like birds in their nest. Neither would share their recipes, but collaborations were another thing altogether, and they already had their heads together concocting a sweetmeat to celebrate the bringing low of the evil that was Wat Tyler and his men. It sounded rather gruesome – there was talk of strawberry compote to take the place of blood – but they were enjoying themselves mightily and Chaucer hardly liked to interrupt them. At the sound of his voice at the kitchen door, both women looked up frowning, but when they saw who it was they were suddenly twittering over him and leading him over to the table, where they fed him titbits as though he were a toddler and waiting to hear his tale.
Finally, fuller of sugar and spice than any man had a right to be, and divested of every detail of the day, they let him go back into the sunshine, carrying a goblet of Harry Baillie’s finest. He found a quiet spot and sat down, back to the sun-warmed stones, his eyes closed. He let the sounds and smells fade away first, then began to let the thoughts drift from his mind, spiralling up into a sky so blue it hurt to look at it. He was almost asleep when he remembered Fye Gillis’s book. He could feel it, heavy on his breast. The sensible part of his mind told him to ignore it, to give it unopened back to Arend Gillis, to walk away from the death of his wife, her gold, the miller, the yeoman, the merchant, the prioress; but the other part, the artist’s part, told him no, there was a story here as yet unfinished, and the book resting above his heart, weighing like an anvil, held the key.
Reluctantly, he opened his eyes and smothered a small scream. A man stood in front of him, black against the sun, his hand to his hip as though to draw a sword, a falchion, probably, his panic told him. He knew not to trust Maghfield. The man was a wrong ’un, no doubt about that.
The man stepped aside and, for a moment, Chaucer was blinded by the sun. Then he blinked, focused and saw that it was John Gower, one hand resting on his hip, as was his habit. ‘I’m sorry, Geoff,’ Gower said. ‘Did I startle you?’
Chaucer scooted along the bench and patted it. ‘Sit down, John,’ he said. ‘I am easily startled today. I have seen … well, perhaps not now. I will tell you some other time. But you are just who I need to see. I have … a decision to make and am having difficulty.’
Gower slapped his old friend on the thigh. ‘According to your Alice,’ he said, ‘you have trouble deciding what side of the bed to get out of in the morning.’
Chaucer was affronted. That kind of decision could make or mar a day. ‘So, Alice has been telling stories, has she?’ he asked, somewhat shortly.
Gower smiled. ‘She loves you, Geoff,’ he said, kindly. ‘You are like a father to her. She only told them out of fun. Apparently, she said, you have a tendency to stand at the window in the morning, scratching your—’
‘I expect most people do that,’ Chaucer headed him off. ‘But my quandary, John. Can you help me with it?’
‘I’m sure I would love to,’ Gower told him, ‘if I knew what it was.’
‘Hmm?’ Chaucer was still thinking things through.
‘What is it? Your quandary?’
‘We’ve been through so much, John,’ Chaucer said, at something of a tangent. ‘I have seen men killed today, as near to me as you are, run through without a thought. I have … well, I thought I was going to die today. And it made me wonder – does that kind of thing make the deaths of Mistress Gillis and Miller Inskip matter less? Or more?’
