Bruce Holsinger - A Burnable Book

Hawkwood, as Il Critto knew he would, bit.

You are asking yourself how I know all of this, by what means I gleaned this foul grain. There is a man in Hawkwood’s inner circle, another Englishman. His name is Adam Scarlett. Though he has a less turbulent soul than his master’s, his name is as respected as Hawkwood’s, and nearly as feared.

Two evenings ago, a week after Simon’s departure for England, Scarlett came to see my father. I heard their voices and walked over to the far north corner of the gallery, where there is a squint down to the hall below. He was asking about Simon.

‘Il Critto spent much time in this house,’ said Scarlett. ‘Tell me all you know about him.’

My father replied that he knew nothing of Simon’s doings beyond the failed courtship of his daughter. Why, what else was there to know?

‘Master Gower’s departure was somewhat — abrupt,’ Scarlett explained. ‘Ser Giovanni sees no cause for concern in the matter. I am sure he is correct. But I am a thorough man.’

They went on like this for a while, as Scarlett plumbed my father’s mind but found nothing. Then he asked a final question. ‘Did Il Critto ever mention a book?’

‘A book?’

Scarlett described the work to my father, explaining how it would abet Hawkwood’s larger aims — aims for which we are all labouring, as he put it — and every word he spoke was a poisoned dart shot from his lips.

Prophecies.

The Duke of Lancaster.

The Earl of Oxford.

Sir Stephen Weldon.

St Dunstan’s Day.

Treason.

Execution.

Rome.

France.

It was as if the thousand pieces of a shattered window reassembled themselves in an instant, and I saw it before me, in all its grim totality. Hawkwood, Scarlett, Simon, even my father: all of them in cruel confederation, striving for destruction. An intricate plot to destroy a duke, a king — an entire realm.

I dashed to the gallery. The cloth was gone. On the bench below the tapestry I saw Il Critto, or rather my memory of him. His eyes wide as he gaped at the cloth, his long limbs coiled tensely as he gazed with jealousy on our swelling love. I knew everything, and the knowledge boiled me with terror. For your life, for the life of the duke, for the blood of all England.

Now it is clear what must be done. Simon has been gone for over a week. Your prophetic book precedes him, augmented with his final prophecy and even now making its way overland to London, by the Rhineland roads. When you return to Florence in another fortnight, you shall find only these parchments waiting for you, sealed with my ring, and a very wet kiss — the only kiss you will receive for many months. For by then your bitter orange shall be gone.

Worry not for her safety, my poetical prince. There is still something of La Comadrejita in her, after all. She knows how to steal, how to stab, how to darn a gentleman’s hose, wash a lord’s pot, peel an earl’s root. How to ask for a meal in a dozen tongues, yet garb herself as a peasant. How to barter like a tradesman’s wife, yet mewl like a lady of the court. How to slit a man’s throat. I dare say her life has equipped her for such a journey better than most.

She will act alone, her quest to find the book herself and prevent the fulfilment of Hawkwood’s true aims. To find the book — or die trying. A long journey to England, then, by land and by sea. And when she finds the book, when this accursed volume is in her hands at last, she will burn it to finest ash.

I leave you with one last enigma, my only heart, in the spirit of our games of love and verse. May it goad and prick your mind as you follow our course to England.

Though faun escape the falcon’s claws

and crochet cut its snare,

When father, son, and ghost we sing,

of city’s blade beware.

I shall gloss it for you when our lips finally touch and the danger is well past, though I suspect you will have puzzled it out for yourself by then.

Until that blessed moment, I remain yours most faithfully-

Written at the Via dei Calzaiuoli,

by the Misericordia,

the Thursday next after Epiphany Sunday, by Seguina d’Orange

St Mary Overey, Southwark

On the third day following the deaths of Sir Stephen Weldon and the butchers, as I dozed in the back garden, Will Cooper appeared at my side. ‘Master Chaucer for you, sir.’

We drank small ale beneath the arbour, with the heavy scent of thirsty roses filling the air. Our talk was amiable, though he sensed my reserve. He would hardly meet my eyes, and he fidgeted on his chair.

‘What’s tickling your thoughts, Geoffrey?’ I finally asked, wanting to get to it.

Chaucer let out a breath. ‘I have been avoiding this conversation, frankly.’

‘I should think so,’ I replied indifferently, though over the following hours this indifference would yield by turns to wonder, then outrage, then gnawing doubt.

He started with his arrival in Italy, and his introduction to Seguina d’Orange. Simon had been courting her and was obviously in love, yet she used him to meet Chaucer. They developed a quick intimacy and a ready attraction, meeting frequently as they moved among the English residents of Florence.

‘When you are newly in town, of course, everyone wants to hear about doings at Westminster,’ Chaucer said. ‘The king’s new wife, the buzz around Lancaster and the rivalries for the crown. Seguina’s stepmother was an Englishwoman — a Londoner, in fact, the widow of one of Hawkwood’s men. She had books and books of English romances, and Seguina herself spoke our language like a native. Her interest seemed only natural.’

He stared off over the priory walls, the line of his lips unbending. I stared at him in turn, wondering why I felt surprised at yet another example of Chaucer’s baffling selfishness. A married man attempting to seduce a young woman nearly betrothed to the son of his closest friend.

‘Seguina was a great story-teller,’ he went on. ‘The two of us swapped tales and enigmas like children trade river stones. Hers were fantastical, full of beasts and magic, caliphs and flying carpets, boiling oil, thieves visiting at night.’

‘And the prophecies?’

‘It started as a wager, really, a bit of a dare. I’ll write a new work, I told her. Not my usual fare. Something darker, but tuned to the ears of the gullible. When I finished it I planned to read it to her. I showed up at her father’s house, the draft in hand, quite pleased with myself.’ He turned to me. ‘Simon was there that morning, John. Come to pay a call, he said. Seguina invited him in, and together they listened to the prophecies as I read them aloud in the gallery.’ Chaucer was measuring his words, trying to soften a coming blow. ‘I suppose it was then that Simon saw his chance.’

‘His chance? What are you talking about?’

He swallowed drily, his slender neck bobbing with the effort. ‘A few weeks before my return to England I had to make a long-scheduled trip to Rome. I would be gone a month, perhaps more, before returning to Florence. The day before my departure, as I was packing my things, I realized it was missing.’

‘What?’

‘My little book.’

My little book . Chaucer’s phrase for the leathern bifold he kept with him at all times, replacing the inner quire as needed. I recalled our meeting at the customhouse, the new red cover such a surprising replacement for the hand-worn skin he had carried for so many years.