The Yeoman's Tale, page 7
Chaucer stopped again, aghast. ‘Here? But …’ he looked around, frowning. ‘People eat here. Drink. Sleep. Surely, a body from the river with its head all but off can’t be kept here?’
‘Do you know,’ Gower said, ‘that could be Harry Baillie talking, if you add a few obscenities I doubt you are that familiar with. But, a long rant cut short, she is out in the stable, wrapped in an old carpet, to try to reduce the … well, not to put a fine point on it … smell. River mud and week-old flesh is not an aromatic feast, as I am sure you can imagine.’
‘Hardesty carried her here?’ Chaucer was aghast. It sounded an almost unbelievably unpleasant chore.
‘He and his horse. The creature had cast a shoe so wasn’t fast enough to get away, but it was an eye-roll away from panic when it got here. All the horses are spooked, that’s why the stable yard is in such chaos. Some are having to spend the night outside.’
‘I wondered why it was quite so bad.’ Things were beginning to fall into place, one by one. ‘Is there any way to tell who she is?’ Chaucer was feeling his inner storyteller take over.
‘No. I don’t know if you have ever seen a body which has been seven days in water …’
‘You keep saying “seven days”,’ Chaucer pointed out. ‘Is there any real way of knowing?’
Gower nodded. ‘I thought that, but one of Baillie’s stable lads – you know the one, about a hundred years old at first glance, perhaps only ninety when you look closer – he used to be a waterman and says he can tell how long a body has been in the water in increments of an hour. After six days, it’s a bit less precise, or so he says. But he has come out at a week or thereabouts. That’s in the water, and assuming she went in more or less at the point of death. So, add last night into the sum and I suppose … well, let’s call it a week, for simplicity’s sake.’
Chaucer suppressed a shudder. He had once forgotten a piece of cheese which he had been nibbling on when writing a particularly poignant part of Anelida and Arcite. In the excitement of the muse’s visitation, he had put the cheese under his pillow, and the horror of putting his hand into its maggot-eaten remains a week later had stayed with him since that day. So a seven-day body – he hoped he would be able to avoid having to see it; imagining it was turning his stomach.
Gower had never seen a man turn green in front of his eyes before, but he did so now and changed the subject, within its limits. ‘We can’t tell who she is, no,’ he said. ‘Her clothing might mean something to someone, but we haven’t had them laundered yet.’
‘Laundered?’ Chaucer was horrified. ‘Who would you ask to do that foul job, in the name of all that’s holy?’ His memory took him back to the sweet-smelling laundry at Clare last summer, and the soft rounded arms of Joyce, his old love, smoothing the linens with her stone, sprinkling them with perfumed waters. It seemed a lifetime away.
Gower looked surprised. He had assumed that Chaucer knew all about Barbara Baillie, for whom no job was too big, too small or too gruesome. ‘The lady of the house, of course. But then she was laid low with her pains and hasn’t been back downstairs as yet.’
Chaucer’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. The world was not just upside down but twirling round at random. ‘I heard the cries of a newborn as I set foot inside this inn,’ he said. ‘Surely …’
‘Mark my words,’ Gower said. ‘The woman will be downstairs and pouring ale before this morning’s out. Nothing keeps Mistress Baillie in bed for long.’
‘Har har.’ A passing potboy couldn’t help himself, with the master safely upstairs for now. ‘Certainly not Master Baillie, from what I hear. Why …’
‘About your work,’ a voice came from nowhere, simultaneously with the sound of a stinging slap around the head. ‘Master Baillie can acquit himself perfectly well in bed or anywhere else, if it comes to it.’
The potboy turned with a horrified look on his face. ‘Mistress Baillie!’ he croaked. ‘I … I wasn’t expecting …’
‘No one ever is,’ she said, following up the slap with another. ‘Now, about your business.’ She turned with a sweet, hostess’s smile to the two poets. ‘Gentlemen, welcome back to the Tabard. It’s an exciting day, one way and another, is it not?’
Chaucer bowed and Gower smiled. ‘Indeed it is, Mistress Baillie. I understand you …’ Gower had never been called upon to congratulate a new mother within less than half an hour of the birth, not even his own wife. He was sure there was probably a form of words for it, but couldn’t quite call it to mind.
She beamed. ‘A bonny, bouncing boy,’ she said. ‘He is at the breast as we speak. I shall call him Geoffrey John.’ She saw their startled glances. ‘Little Geoffrey has a wet nurse, gentlemen. Though Master Baillie and I work for our livings, we are not animals, you know. He is the very spit and image of his father – he has his nose, poor little chap.’ She thwacked Chaucer on the chest to share her amusement and almost knocked him flying. ‘Master Baillie is having a lie-down. Childbed always takes him like that. As a rule, I don’t pander to him, but I fancy he’ll have a lot on his plate, come sundown.’ She smiled again at her guests. ‘Well, I mustn’t tarry. I have linens to wash, as I understand. Poor soul. And those potboys – give them an inch and they’ll take a mile.’ She squinted over Chaucer’s shoulder into the bright yard outside. ‘Now, who’s that coming?’
The men followed her gaze.
‘Oh, for the love of God. It’s that “By Our Lady” nun and her hangers-on. And another dog, as I live and breathe.’ And she bustled off, muttering imprecations under her breath.
For a moment, Chaucer and Gower stood silently, recovering from the whirlwind that was Mistress Baillie. ‘Apparently,’ Gower said after a minute’s pause, ‘she is always rather quiet when she has been delivered.’
Without another word, the men scurried off to the best parlour – after Mistress Baillie, it was essential to have a brief rest before dealing with Madame Eglantyne.
‘In the name of God, go!’ The archbishop’s man held out his crozier in front of the mob. They filled Christ Church Great Gate, the stone carvings of archbishops long dead staring down at them in disbelief. Stone roses bloomed in the curves of archways and fox-faced devils leered down at them. The bolder of the rebels leered back.
‘Where’s Sudbury?’ Nameless called, sitting his stolen palfrey at the head of his men.
‘If you mean the archbishop, he’s not here.’
‘Sacristan,’ Nameless leaned forward in the saddle, ‘we have no quarrel with you or your monks. You’re like us, downtrodden minions. Our quarrel is with his High and Mightiness.’
‘And who are you?’ the sacristan asked. All his life he had trodden these hallowed stones, the ones where the rabble now stood. He had splashed through the puddles of the Dark Entry on his way to the great cathedral, its ancient stones grey in the winter snows or gilded in the summer suns. If this man had no quarrel with him, then the feeling was not reciprocated.
‘I am Wat Tyler,’ Nameless said, ‘and you’ll all know that name soon enough. We’re coming in.’
The sacristan and his monks closed ranks, their black and white robes a wall, thin and feeble against the multitude. Many were bowed and white-haired. One or two hobbled on sticks. They were no match for the men of Kent and everybody knew it.
Tyler threw up his arm, turning in the saddle to yell at the people at his back. ‘This is a house of God,’ he said. ‘You will respect it. We will leave our weapons at the door.’
There was general grumbling at this, but the sacristan was astonished to see men unbuckling knives and swords, resting pitchforks and billhooks against the cathedral’s tracery.
‘We’ve brought no alms either, sacristan,’ Tyler grinned, ‘if you’ll excuse the pun. I hope you’ll forgive that.’
Whatever the sacristan’s view, the monks were happy to have their lives left to them and they dutifully moved back to let Tyler dismount and enter the cathedral precincts. Some of the peasants, their eyes raised to heaven via the glories of the fan-vaulted canopy, made for the chapel of the Blessed Trinity. Many of them fell to their knees, as pilgrims had done for centuries, the wool of their worn hose scraping on the ancient stones.
Blue Tooth was there first, scowling at the chair of St Augustine that stood in a shaft of sunlight. He grabbed a priest who was scurrying past. ‘What’s in there, parasite?’ he asked.
The man crossed himself and whispered, ‘That is the reliquary of the Holy Blissful Martyr,’ he said. ‘It contains the scalp of St Thomas himself.’
Blue Tooth laughed. ‘Pity it doesn’t contain Sudbury’s,’ he said. ‘Had he been here, parasite, there’d be another martyr for poor deluded souls to pray to. Open it.’
The priest was horrified. ‘I cannot, sir,’ he said. ‘It is holy beyond our understanding.’
‘Bollocks!’ Blue Tooth sneered, the crowd at his back getting larger. ‘You mean you haven’t got a knife to gouge out the lead seal. I can help you with that.’ And in a second, there was a blade in his hand, glinting at the priest’s throat.
The man shrank back, terrified. Suddenly, a powerful pair of hands pushed Blue Tooth forward so that his head smashed into a marble pillar and blood ran again in Becket’s cathedral. The man fell with a groan and Wat Tyler stood over him, snatching up his secreted dagger. ‘I said “No weapons”,’ he said. ‘I said, “You will respect this house of God.” Here, priest,’ he turned the knife in his hand and held it, hilt forward, to the man of God. ‘Turn this into a ploughshare. Those of you who wish to pray here,’ he called to his people, ‘do it. The rest, outside with me. We have places to be.’
The best parlour was cool and quiet and Chaucer sat on the bench under the window, leaning back, eyes closed, trying to take himself back to a time when there wasn’t a rat of fear gnawing at his throat. Only a day or so ago, the thought of spending time with Madame Eglantyne would have had him scurrying for cover, but it held no terrors now. He would even pay back the money he owed to Maghfield – he had it in his purse, after all – or withstand the smell of the miller. He would do all that and more, if he could believe that the threat of armed insurrection was just a nasty dream he had had, snuggled in his feathers at the Aldgate. He smiled as he sat there; better still if he could still be in his bed, waiting to set off on his pilgrimage to the Holy Blissful Martyr. Briefly, and deeply, Chaucer slept, flinching now and again as a muscle twitched.
‘Is Master Chaucer quite all right, Master Gower?’
The ringing tones of the prioress filled the little room and drove out any serenity it had managed to hang on to.
Gower lowered his voice to a mere husk, hoping she would do the same. ‘He’s taking a nap, madame,’ he said. ‘He had an early morning.’
‘Early morning?’ the woman’s voice cut the air like a diamond cuts glass. ‘We all had an early morning, Master Gower. My priory is up and awake well before dawn or I would want to know the reason why. Matins waits for no woman.’
If the prioress’s nun had a comment to make, she kept it to herself as usual.
Gower smiled, as best he could. He was not an unkind man, but there was a streak in him which occasionally caused him to speak his mind rather too freely. He fought against this now; although Madame Eglantyne was a perfectly noxious woman who thought that the world revolved around her and her equally noxious dog, she was, when all was said and done, a nun. ‘Have you brought the sisters with you, madame?’ he asked, hoping that the answer would be no. If even one of them was like her prioress, it just didn’t bear thinking about.
Madame Eglantyne’s sniff could have been heard in the White Hall. ‘I have not, Master Gower,’ she said. ‘I asked them to accompany me, of course. But they preferred to travel south-west, to the priory at Elstow. It’s entirely up to them, of course,’ she went on, though her face was saying something altogether different, ‘but, speaking for myself, I would sooner sup with the Devil than spend a night under the roof of That Woman.’ She drew up her substantial bosom as she spoke and tucked Foo-Foo more comfortably under her arm.
Gower tutted sympathetically, although he had no idea at all as to what she was talking about. The nun continued to look non-committal, though there was something in her eyes that told the perspicacious poet that she wouldn’t have minded the comforts of Elstow Abbey one little bit.
‘They’ll be travelling for days, no doubt, and when they get there … well!’ The prioress’s eyes rolled and she leaned in closer to Gower, spraying him with angry spittle, ‘She will no doubt make them welcome, if she has room amongst all her guests. Elstow Abbey,’ she said, somehow making it sound like a curse, ‘is home to every wanton in the county, in my opinion. And that of the bishop, as if that makes any difference to her.’ She set her mouth and looked again at Chaucer, who made sure his eyes remained closed. ‘Are you sure Master Chaucer is all right?’ She nudged her nun. ‘Go and poke him. See if he’s still with us.’
Chaucer yawned extravagantly and sat up, looking about him as if bemused. There were some things he had done in his life he wasn’t proud of, some things he had connived at that he would, in hindsight, rather not have done, but allowing himself to be poked by a nun was not going to go on that list.
‘Oh.’ Madame Eglantyne sounded somewhat disappointed. ‘You are alive.’
‘I did say he was,’ Gower muttered, and had the pleasure of seeing the nun smile behind her hand.
‘He looked dead.’ Madame Eglantyne didn’t like to be wrong and dismissed the whole episode as if it had never happened.
‘Madame Eglantyne!’ Chaucer scrambled to his feet and went over to kiss her hand, trying to ignore the snarling dog inches from his face as he did so. ‘What brings you here?’
‘Thousands of peasants,’ she said, curtly. ‘As I imagine applies to you and Master Gower here as well as … the throng in the yard.’
‘It is rather busy, isn’t it?’ Chaucer agreed. ‘And Mistress Baillie has just been delivered of a son, so it’s quite an exciting day.’
The prioress struggled with her inner woman. Babies were, by definition, almost as cute as small dogs, and innocent, to boot. However, there was only one way that they could come into the world and that was by the same passage as a man’s … even in her head, Madame Eglantyne had to struggle with the words … membrum virile … had entered. Possibly more than once. So, on that score, babies were not good at all. However, there was a new soul in the world and so, as a good Benedictine, she should go and make sure that it knew all the rules, from the earliest moment. Gesturing to her nun, she left the room, calling for Mistress Baillie to assure her that all would be well. As the woman in question was at that moment in the cellar, broaching a barrel of sack with a spike and a mallet, the words fell on deaf ears, but at least the prioress had left the room and Chaucer subsided on his settle with a sigh.
‘Never mind, Geoff,’ Gower said. ‘It could be worse.’
‘Could it? Yes … the miller could have come back with her, for example. What made you think of him?’ Chaucer asked.
Gower laughed. ‘It was that sudden smell. It reminded me …’ He looked up at the figure which had suddenly loomed dark in the bright doorway. ‘Ah. Good morning, Master Inskip. I didn’t realize you were here as well.’
Chaucer closed his eyes and wished again he had taken his luck with the peasants.
‘Ar, yes, masters. Her Holiness goes nowhere without me these days. Too many of them common men on the road. She fears for her chastity, she do. It’ll be the rape of them Sabine women all over agen. So I come along as well.’ He looked around. ‘What does an honest man have to do to get a drink around here? I’m as dry as a nun’s …’
Gower and Chaucer, as one man, leapt for the door into the second-best parlour.
‘Stay there,’ Chaucer said, over his shoulder, ‘and we’ll get something sent in.’
‘It’s on Geoff,’ Gower added. ‘Least he can do.’
And after a small scuffle in the tight space, they were gone, leaving the miller to whatever thoughts he could muster, and some considered flatulence.
The sun was high in the heavens as Ezekiel and Hannah broke their backs in the fields along the river. It would be a good harvest this year, God willing, but even so, the weeds must be kept down. They were the devil’s children, Ezekiel’s old papa had taught him and his papa before him. The harvest came from God; the weeds from the Other Place.
‘Who are they, Zeek?’ Hannah was standing to ease her back and wiping the sweat from her forehead.
He straightened too and saw what she saw. An army of people were marching along the road, some breaking off to fill their caps from the river. They had jingling bells and flags. There were men, women and children, but mostly men.
‘It’s them,’ Ezekiel growled. ‘The rebels we heard about.’ He dashed across to his billhook and laid it against a tree stump. Across in Dickon’s strips, everybody was watching them too, wondering, worrying. Instinctively, Hannah summoned her chicks to her and the little ones, still all snot and curls, huddled against her kirtled skirts. Dickon sprinted through the corn shoots and stood elbow to elbow with Ezekiel.
‘What do you think, Zeek?’
Ezekiel shrugged. ‘We’ve got nothing worth taking,’ he said. ‘They’ll pass us by.’
‘His Lordship, though,’ Dickon scowled. ‘They’ll go for the manor house.’
‘That they will,’ Ezekiel nodded.
‘He’s our lord,’ Dickon reasoned. ‘We should do something about this.’
Ezekiel squinted at the man, bright in the sun. ‘What, you and me, do you mean?’ he chuckled. ‘Me with my bill and you with your sickle? That’ll stop them, all right.’
‘It’s our duty,’ Dickon insisted.
‘Don’t duty me, Dickon West,’ Hannah broke in. ‘From what I’ve heard, that’s what those rebels are all about. They say we don’t owe anybody our duty.’
‘But they’re the devil’s disciples, Hannah,’ Dickon said. ‘They want to turn the world upside down.’
‘Well, let ’em.’ The woman stood her ground. ‘I’ve got my babies here. So have you, Dickon. I’ll not see them trampled underfoot for His Lordship.’
