Bruce Holsinger - A Burnable Book

‘He contacted Simon on your behalf, then, while in Tuscany?’

The baron scoffed. ‘Hardly. We slipped one of our own men into his entourage.’

‘Who?’

His look told me I didn’t need to know. ‘Simon got our message, did what we asked him to do. What he did next, though — copy Chaucer’s book, pen a treasonous prophecy? That was all Simon, I’m afraid.’

He avoided my gaze, and I felt a sting of remorse, knowing what he must have been thinking. His father’s son, apples falling close to trees. Everything I thought I knew about Simon had proved mistaken, as if my own son were a distant stranger, or one of Mandeville’s monsters, a three-headed beast perched on the edge of the world. From a counterfeiting traitor to a loyal spy for the realm to a forger and cryptographer for a mercenary, in the space of a few days.

The chancellor looked at me, not unkindly. ‘To be around a man like Hawkwood for that long, it has to rub off on you.’ Thinking this would comfort me. ‘Chaucer’s company returned from Italy in early March. Simon had already been here for weeks, though without showing himself to anyone, including you.’ I nodded vaguely, remembering Simon’s appearance at St Mary Overey — exhausted after the long road from Italy, he had told me. ‘Once I learned your son was back in London my intention was to bring him in, hold his feet to the fire. Make him tell us why he had left Florence without warning us.’

‘When did you know he had returned?’

‘You’ll recall our chance meeting on Cat Street, that day you were searching out Strode’s clerk. Ralph himself had just told me Simon was back.’

Strode had been feigning ignorance that day about Simon’s return, then. Yet another deception. ‘You covered well, my lord.’

He waved it off. ‘When Simon came in that same week he told me he had simply left Hawkwood’s service a few months before. That he hadn’t bothered writing in advance of his return but had done everything we asked of him, and more. Then he was overheard having a heated conversation with Chaucer during the Garter morrow feast out at Windsor, telling him he planned to sell his little book to the highest bidder, get him strung up for his treachery. It was only then that we began to suspect Simon’s connection to these prophecies.’

‘Was that one of Oxford’s men, then, at the river inn?’ This was the question that had confused Chaucer during our last conversation.

‘No. It was my man More. He and Simon had arranged a meeting during the feast, supposedly in order for Simon to hand over the book and reveal everything he knew. They met in the courtyard. But Simon demanded money — lots of it — and claimed to have offered the book to the Earl of Oxford, with Sir Stephen Weldon acting as agent. I couldn’t let that happen. Simon was speaking too freely about it all. I worried that the whole thing would explode in our faces. So, once More reported back to me, we decided to bring Simon in, press him harder this time.’

‘Then he was taken.’

‘Weldon got to him first. Plucked him right out of your house before your return from Oxford. Took him God knows where.’

‘How did he escape?’

‘Don’t know. Don’t know that he did escape, or that he was even under duress. But it was clear that Simon had been lying through his teeth, both to our man in Florence, to me at Westminster, probably to Hawkwood and Oxford as well. He’s been playing us all against each other, and where his loyalties lie is anyone’s guess. Chaucer confirmed as much.’

‘I thought Chaucer was ignorant of it all.’ Until he discovered Seguina’s letter, at least — the one part of the whole story I had kept to myself.

‘Of Simon’s role, yes. But he learned more than he wanted to about Hawkwood. It seems Chaucer was digging around in some Genoese shipping manifests, tracking sacks of English wool, when he discovered a large number of commissions from Hawkwood for transport of troops this upcoming summer. It gave him a glimmer of Hawkwood’s plans. He never confronted Sir John about it.’

I considered this. ‘Chaucer knows more than anyone what the man is capable of, I suppose. Hawkwood would torture his own leg if it was holding out on him.’

‘Our man’s dispatch reached us a week before his return, though none of us made the connection with the prophecies and Hawkwood’s plot against Gaunt until much later. Only Simon knew all of that.’ He looked at the three books, still opened on his desk. ‘Now you’re suggesting the king himself is the real target after all.’

‘I believe so, my lord.’

‘I’ll admit the timing is — harrowing. France knows Richard is weak. The Scottish border needs defending. Word is King Richard will march up there this summer, leaving London and Westminster vulnerable.’ He puffed his cheeks. ‘You have to admire Hawkwood’s audacity. Circulate a prophecy incriminating Lancaster, get him hanged, then go for the king. Once they’re both out of the picture, swoop in and help install a new sovereign.’

‘A kingmaker indeed,’ I said, thinking of that line from the thirteenth prophecy, and marvelling at the cold ingenuity of Simon’s poetry. I thought of Hawkwood in Florence, still believing all of this was unfolding hundreds of leagues to the north.

Then the chancellor dropped his last surprise. ‘Though we won’t have to worry about Hawkwood supporting an invasion, whatever happens after the truce expires.’

‘My lord?’

‘Simon left a little gift for Hawkwood a few days before his departure from Florence. An encrypted message, accusing one of his closest men of betraying his greater ambitions to us all along.’

‘What man?’

‘Adam Scarlett is his name. Hawkwood’s chief lieutenant. A number of months ago we intercepted a rather shocking letter from Scarlett to one of his associates in Paris, boasting of Hawkwood’s plans to join forces with the French following the truce. Simon was instructed to find some way of scuttling Hawkwood’s plans. In the process, he believes, he will have turned the condottiero against his most loyal man.’

‘I see,’ I said, and I finally did. ‘So that was the true purpose of last Autumn’s diplomatic mission to Italy. Chaucer’s mission.’

‘Yes, though again, Chaucer was kept ignorant of Hawkwood’s plans until he discovered them on his own. In any case, Simon believes the device he created will convince Hawkwood of Scarlett’s disloyalty, and that its discovery will stem any further militant plans on Sir John’s part toward England.’

I was incredulous. ‘So Simon, despite all he’s done, will stay in Hawkwood’s good graces.’

‘And in ours, to a point,’ said the baron, with another of his pragmatic shrugs. ‘Our business now must be the king.’

I thought for a moment, trying to push aside all the chancellor had told me in order to focus on the plot at hand. ‘Can the festivities be cancelled, or abbreviated in some way? What if the cardinal were to process with the archbishop only rather than with the king and his retinue? I imagine you could come up with an excuse for the royal absence.’

He shook his head emphatically. ‘Richard won’t hear of it. He regards the abbey as his personal shrine, the embodiment of his invulnerability. You know the places his mind is taking him these days. By now he’s convinced himself his survival on St Dunstan’s Day was a miracle. That it was God’s hand that shot the butchers.’

I pointed up. ‘An angel’s, perhaps?’

He scoffed. ‘God, an angel, royal archers — all the same to His Highness. In any case, halting the procession and Mass is out of the question. We’ve just got through that whole Dunstan’s Day business. If Mars himself were to come hurtling at the king I couldn’t get him to change course.’