The People's Queen Part 31

She's surprised by the treacly blackness moving inside her again, the anger coming back. She's had no time to think, for the past couple of days, about anything except the rush of immediate events. But now, as she pulls on linen, and kirtle, and gown, as she realises there's no more to keep her here in this busy, happy, fleeting moment, she's remembering another conversation from last night: the questions she's been asking about her old friends and fellow-victims of Edward's last Parliament. What's become of Lyons? Where's Latimer? What about Stury?

They're all fine, it turns out. Prospering. Lyons is back in the City, making a new fortune, living in his enormous house in Vintry Ward, over the road from St James' Garlickhithe. Stury is a knight of the privy chamber, close to the new King, and still blithely preaching Lollardy to the court. Latimer, briefly returned to the royal Council before being removed again after Edward died, has recently been made Governor of Calais, and is high in the royal favour in the army in France.

None of them has been forgotten. None of them has been told to keep out of London.

'So it's only me who's lost out,' Alice said, trying to keep bitterness out of her voice.

Chaucer kissed her, and said nothing. She knows he could have crowed: I always told you that might happen. There was nothing kind he could say, she supposes.

And now she can't keep her last picture of the Duke of Lancaster out of her mind: the l.u.s.trous black hair, the neat pointed beard, the sharp brows, the very red lips, the long bone-thin limbs, and the sick, hateful black eyes, staring petulantly away from her in the chamber.

The Duke has the face she imagines on Lucifer; the phrase slips into her mind: the Day Star, the Son of Dawn...Aunty's been on about Lucifer a lot, recently. One of Aunty's hedge-priests has been translating Isaiah into English. The old woman can't stop muttering the words in front of the fire. Lucifer, the all-powerful King of Babylon, who thought he could rise higher than G.o.d's stars...until he was brought down to the abode of the dead to be taunted by the vengeful Israelites he once oppressed. Alice hears the taunts in Aunty's voice. 'How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low!' And, in Wat's answering ba.s.s: 'Is this the man who made the earth tremble, who shook kingdoms, who made the world like a desert and overthrew its cities, who would not let his prisoners go home?'

How Alice longs to bring the Duke low; to be able to say those words to him while he lies, muddy and b.l.o.o.d.y, grovelling before her.

It's because of the Duke's hatred that she can't come back to London...that she's locked away from the court where she'd found her place...that she won't see Chaucer again. The Duke has done so much to ruin her life. And she could see, back at Parliament, that he'd still like to do worse. He still wants to destroy her.

She thinks, and it's a relief to admit the thought: And I'd I'd like to destroy like to destroy him. him.

'What are you thinking?' Chaucer says.

She shrugs. She's so full of pent-up anger that she can hardly speak.

'That I'd like to burn down the Savoy, with the Duke right in the middle of the bonfire...and his smug mistress, and your smug wife and my husband, too, if only I could think how...and then stay here for ever,' she says, finally, in a bloodthirsty rush that, almost at once, embarra.s.ses her.

She shrugs again. 'A fancy,' she half apologises, even managing something close to a rueful smile. A childish one, too, she admonishes herself. It's stupid, worse than stupid, to blame the Duke for all her misfortunes. He's done her wrong. Of course he has. But she's partly to blame too. She remembers what she saw in the Duke's eyes all right, when they were close - but only because she was thinking it too. She never told herself, back then, that it was a wicked thought. It never crossed her mind to apply moral rules to her plan; to any of her plans, because in those days she thought she could always get away with everything, for the rest of her days. She somehow felt everything was allowed to her, because she'd come so far that it just must be. But she didn't know, until much later - until now, maybe - how suspicious her giddy rise must have made the people who'd grown up expecting to be at the top, when they found her among them. And she didn't understand her own power, while she had it. She certainly didn't realise how hard they'd all want to kick her once she was down, because they'd seen her in her glory, swanning around, hardly noticing them and their foolish fears and doubts. Perhaps she should have tried harder to understand. She might have saved herself. She might even have clung on...

She shakes her head, banis.h.i.+ng from her mind the mental picture of flames licking at the Savoy, with the Duke's screaming face in the middle. She wants to shrug all that hatred off. She'll have to leave it behind when she leaves London. Might as well start now.

He shrugs, too. 'That isn't going to happen,' he says, baldly. 'But it's not important. They're not important. The Duke. My wife. Your husband. The world.' He reaches up for her, pulls her down with him, gazes at her from close up. 'What matters is that I love you. Remember that. Knowing it is our comfort. It's what we have to hold on to. And there's nothing any of them can do about that.'

She looks down, too stunned by the word 'love' to be able to move; how does he say, or think, these things, so boldly? Her eyes are suddenly glistening.

'But, Chaucer, don't you mind... mind...?' she almost shrieks, forgetting, for a moment, to strive to be philosophical. He's been left behind, too, by the capriciousness of Fortune: trapped in the City, when he doesn't want to be. Dumped by his wife. Returned to his father's merchant life, when he's so talented, so brilliant...'Because it's not just me. It's you, too. You should be at court, too...glorying.'

Chaucer only smiles, rather sadly. 'We're not the same, Alice,' he says. 'You can change yourself - you have a genius for transformation - but I don't want to become what I'm not. My father tried to make me an aristocrat. But I couldn't fight. I found that out early on; I'm grateful I did. It's not in my nature. If the price of a t.i.tle, and a court life is to have to live with my wife, and go to France...well, it's not for me. So I'm just trying to live the life G.o.d sends me, in my station, and be with my children...' His face twists. 'Whenever they'll have me.'

He takes a deep breath. Trying to look encouraging, he says, even more softly: 'There is degree above degree, as reason says...that's my motto, Alice; I'm trying to be contented living within the degree I was called to.' He shakes his head at her. 'But I know it's not your philosophy. Never has been. You've always wanted to rise; to glory. You must feel trapped. Locked out. But you'll find your consolation somewhere. In Ess.e.x even. I promise you that.'

She breathes out. She buries her face in his neck and holds him tight. She'll never feel this close to anyone again, she knows that now. She's saying goodbye to love.

He's murmuring something else, from the lips she can't see, whispering into her hair. He's saying, very softly, something about how she's going to build up Gaines into a vast farm, and become the envy of all her Ess.e.x neighbours, or maybe buy them all out, and marry her children off to the best and richest of them, so the kids will become aristocrats in their own right, and Johnny a great man in his prime, with the longest crackowes in England. He's saying no woman has ever risen so far, from so low, as she has - something she's sometimes thought, not without pride, but never said aloud, so, even now, it's strangely comforting to hear it from his lips. He's telling her she should be proud of what she's achieved. He's telling her no one likes to be forced to scale back their ambitions, but she can still make a future she and her children will be proud of, even in Ess.e.x.

Still, she doesn't want to hear any of that. It's not important enough. She wants to say the words back to him, the love words, but they won't come.

'It's all right,' Chaucer whispers. 'We'll be all right. We both will.'

She lets go, and stumbles up. She nods, with a tremulous smile.

He finds his night-robe, and shucks it on, and follows her to the door.

He takes her hands, gravely, because they're done with kissing, and this is farewell. He says, very tenderly, 'Get your children sent back to Ess.e.x to you, at least. Promise me that. You'll get such joy from them...you'll never know joy like the love of your children...Make them your comfort.'

She's pleating her lips together to stop her lips from quivering; but she can't stop the tears. They're running, hot, down her cheeks.

He kisses them out of her eyes.

He whispers, 'I give good advice, don't I? Usually? So trust me. Take back your children. Promise me you will.'

She can't speak. But she nods her head.

And then he's gone, and she's looking at the door.

She'll do it, once she's back, once she's grown accustomed to the small life that lies ahead. She'll write to William, and to Greyrigg, as soon as she gets to Gaines. They'll come back, a bit educated, a bit better at riding and sewing and Latin and archery than before; the children of a gentleman.

She'll accept that she'll never be able to make them look up to her as the person who brought them a glittering courtly life. She'll accept that they will all be small people, for ever, shut away in the country, though at least they'll be better off than the way she was, when she grew up, and more secure...Chaucer was right about that; perhaps she needn't feel she's failed altogether. There's even a bleak sort of comfort in the thought. She has has risen a long way, even now, from where she started. She risen a long way, even now, from where she started. She can can do what's demanded of her now. do what's demanded of her now.

So, she'll find it in herself to accept all that the future has in store now. She'll learn to take pride in the children. Her shoulders are broad.

Yet, however hard she tries, she can't answer the question of whether doing what she's going to be doing from now on will ever compensate for the yawning abyss inside. Will it even begin to make up for her howling rage at the eyes sliding sideways; the people who no longer want to know her? For the emptiness of a future without Chaucer?

She doesn't think so.

She tries not to think of Chaucer: the smell of him, the tenderness of that last moment in the doorway. She tries not to think: Never again...never again...

Still, she can't stop her eyes filling with hot, wet liquid that she won't shame herself by letting out, as she sets off for the river, and Wat, and the future she doesn't want.

PART THREE.

Regnabo?

Shall I reign again?

THIRTY-SIX.

The children - taller, more dignified, Johnny in a well-made tunic and cloak, Jane and Joan in neat dark-green robes under their brown travelling cloaks - look hesitantly down from their horses.

Alice looks hesitantly up.

It's Aunty who rushes past her, and, grabbing all three bridles, pushes the grooms aside. 'Off you go, boys, off to the kitchen, you must be hungry, get some food,' she cries excitedly, walking off towards the stables, pulling the horses, talking over her shoulder. 'I want to see the kids.' Her excitement is infectious; Alice is aware of answering smiles on her children's faces. They're already scrambling down off the ponies, and Johnny, first off, is walking proudly at Aunty's side, putting his left hand round her in a one-armed knightly hug, leaning his head on her shoulder, saying, quietly, but not so quietly that Alice can't hear him, 'Look how tall I've got, I have to lean down to do this now,' ignoring the girls wriggling and jostling and pus.h.i.+ng each other, trying to break through between them, from behind, or from the side, for a place under Aunty's arm.

They move off. Alice just stands, watching the glow, feeling left out, with the welcoming smile that's come too late to her face beginning to fade.

Aunty's been rus.h.i.+ng round for the past two days, preparing. Aunty's been carrying on like a lunatic. Aunty's been saying, 'They'll be so excited to see you,' and squeezing Alice, and rus.h.i.+ng off again, when all along it's been clear that it's her own excitement she's talking about, her own almost uncontainable love. Alice doesn't remember any of this excitement from when she was a kid. Back in those days, there was just the watchfulness, the waiting for the next s.n.a.t.c.h, the sheer thrill of surviving from one day to the next. But it was always fun, at least, she thinks; they always had a laugh. Alice never felt lost. She doesn't feel lost now, come to that. Not completely. She's grieving for everything else; but she's pleased to be back with Aunty. Perhaps, back then, they just never had the luxury of time, to think about love; or the words. Alice even said to Aunty, last night, 'Do you think people go on learning to love, better, all their lives? Do you you love these kids... love these kids...more...?' She didn't need to say more than whom. Aunty understood, and patted her shoulder, and grinned. She shook her head. Then she kissed Alice's forehead, and scurried on; and Alice sat astonished at the table, feeling the papery lip-print still on her forehead. Aunty's never done that.

It's Aunty who turns round now. It's always Aunty who sorts things out - a mother in all but name.

'Come on, love,' she calls with a hint of impatience in her voice. 'Don't get left behind. Because it's their mum they really want to see, isn't that right, kids?'

They tighten to Aunty.

But she pushes them forward. 'Give your mum a kiss,' she urges. And it's Johnny who comes, in the end: a bit shy, but with a cautious smile.

Alice steps forward too. She doesn't want to frighten him. He doesn't look as though he despises her, or knows her to be bad, deep down. She's warmed by that careful wish to please.

And she's pleased, in her own cautious way, when he approaches her from the side and puts his left hand round her back, in that same comradely knight's embrace. They walk into the house side by side.

Alice has spent the past fortnight trying to shut the past out of her mind.

It comes back, though. It sneaks up on her when she's alone at night. Aunty doesn't comment on her red eyes in the shadows of the morning. Aunty just gets her busy, out supervising something, or talking to someone. It pa.s.ses.

Alice wants it to go easily with the children. But she wants it to partly because she hears Chaucer's voice in her head, saying, 'Make them your comfort,' and she's trying to follow his advice. And whenever she thinks that it starts her thinking about Chaucer, standing in his nightgown, just inside his door, on the last day she'd see him, in one of the places she could no longer go...

Fiercely she dashes the wet from her eyes. Get a grip on yourself, she says. This is what is meant for you on this earth. Make the best of it.

But, even now the children are here, running around, happily checking on their beds and their favourite climbing tree and Tom the cook's missing finger, all the familiar things they've missed, with a Yorks.h.i.+re priest vainly following them urging them to sit down quietly and read their psalters with him - even now that a part of her is entering into the merriment of it - a deeper part of her is sad.

She wanted the children to be brought up like ladies and gentlemen. She keeps telling herself that. They should have been pages and demoiselles in a household by now. They should have...but that's excuses, not why she's sad. Not really.

She can't help herself. She feels left out. There's a world out there, getting on without her. Chaucer, at his table, writing. Chaucer, lying in the bed she used to-- She knows she's brave. She knows she'll conquer the sadness.

She thinks she will, anyway.

The meal's less shy. The priest who's come with the children has been put to bed with supper in his room: broth and bread. No point offering him him meat, Aunty says derisively. He's supposed to be poor, isn't he? Alice knows she'll have to do something about Aunty's hatred of priests; she knows the children have got to be educated, after all. But she'll do it tomorrow. She's tired. 'Wat'll be here tomorrow,' Aunty's shouting, comfortably, over the din of the fire, and the turning of the spit. (She's had a lamb slaughtered: 'No point not celebrating, eh?' as she said.) 'Up from Kent. Brentwood a.s.sizes in a day or two. Market, too. He never misses the fair there.' She winks. meat, Aunty says derisively. He's supposed to be poor, isn't he? Alice knows she'll have to do something about Aunty's hatred of priests; she knows the children have got to be educated, after all. But she'll do it tomorrow. She's tired. 'Wat'll be here tomorrow,' Aunty's shouting, comfortably, over the din of the fire, and the turning of the spit. (She's had a lamb slaughtered: 'No point not celebrating, eh?' as she said.) 'Up from Kent. Brentwood a.s.sizes in a day or two. Market, too. He never misses the fair there.' She winks.

'Why?' says Joan with wide eyes.

'I like fairs, I like jumbles and ribbons, can we go?' says Jane.

'You'll have to ask him why,' Aunty says. She winks again. 'I'd say there's a girl in it. Wouldn't you?'

Alice sees Johnny, who's fifteen now, after all, and nearly as tall as she is, blush at the idea. But the girls laugh delightedly. 'Is he in love, then?' Jane says, trying out the word, twisting her lips over it.

Aunty only shakes her head. 'You ask him, love,' she says. 'He hasn't told me me anything.' anything.'

Johnny's hovering not far away from Alice, having found her a stool. He gives her another careful, solicitous look. As if she's ill. As if he's going to look after her.

The children have never talked about her past life away from Gaines. They've never asked; she's never said. They have no idea, beyond Yorks.h.i.+re and Johnny's one trip to London. It's beyond their ken. Still, it must seem strange to them that she's back for good. Especially to him, because he's seen...the other thing. The luxury of it. The elegance. Perhaps that's why he's looking at her like that. Or perhaps the servants talked about it, up where they've been - about her disgrace.

'What did you learn up there?' she asks, fumbling for words. It hurts, in a way she doesn't understand, that they might know of her humiliation.

They burst into eager responses, all at once.

'We sewed. For hours every day. Stuck inside. I hate sewing. I hemmed and hemmed and hemmed and I lost my thimble and my fingers are stuck full of pinp.r.i.c.ks,' Jane says. 'They kept trying to make me do punching - nasty little holes. It kept going wrong though. And they wouldn't let me on to embroidery or tapestry 'cause I was so bad. Ever.' She doesn't sound as though she cares.

'"Pater noster qui es in caelis sanctificetur nomen tuum adveniat regnum tuum fiat voluntas tua sicut in caelo et in terra,"' Joan lisps, without pauses, and giggles when Aunty purses her lips. Teasingly, she adds: 'Amen!'

Johnny says, a bit hesitantly, 'No one really knew what to do with us. I worked with the reeve on managing the estate, a bit. And Father Thomas taught us some Latin. There was archery practice on Sundays, after church. And I went out riding with a boy from nearby, and his father taught us swordsmans.h.i.+p.'

The others have stopped now. They're nodding. He's their spokesman, Alice can see. He's good with words. He goes on: 'We didn't know what to do with ourselves at first. We couldn't understand the way they talked, even. And we didn't know anyone. And it was so cold. It's cold now, up there. There was still snow on the ground when we set out last week, and it's April. But it got better.'

'And it was better than being here...' Joan says.

Jane finishes: '...with him him.'

Aunty nods, bright-eyed, and says nothing. Alice nods too.

'They told us he was in France now,' Johnny went on, giving her another of those careful looks. 'They said you'd be going too, to be Lady of Cherbourg.'

Alice keeps the smile on her face - she doesn't want to disrespect their father - but she shakes her head. 'I don't think so,' she says. 'I'm staying here.'

'With us,' Jane says. She turns her eyes softly on to her mother.

They don't say anything for a few minutes, but Alice sees Joan's little dark head is nodding, and Johnny's come closer to Alice's stool. Alice can feel his warmth against her shoulder.

'They said you'd been in trouble,' Johnny says into the quiet. He's a brave boy.

'Over now,' Alice says quickly back, and then wishes she hadn't choked him off. He's braver than she is, perhaps. And she can see he's been worried.

'We prayed for you,' Joan says. She gives Aunty a triumphant nod. 'And, look, it worked, see?'

Aunty's over by the spit, prodding at the meat with a skewer. 'Come on, kids,' she calls in her rough rasp of a voice, ignoring Joan's religious enthusiasms. 'Let's get this carved and inside of you.'

They rush over to help. In the ensuing clatter of wooden platters and knives and squeals over spitting fat, with everyone giggling and b.u.mping into each other, Alice gets up from her stool. 'I'll fetch the ale,' she says. She gets down a jug from the shelf and goes towards the cool cupboard where the ale barrel is kept.

Then everything goes round.

From very far away, she hears the bang of metal.

She finds herself slumped, half-lying, half-sitting, on the floor, still holding the pewter jug. It has a big dent in it. She stares at it. How did that happen? It's a moment more before she realises someone's saying, very sharply, 'Are you all right?' When she looks up, she sees them all staring down at her. Aunty bends down and scoops her up.