The Medieval Murderers - The False Virgin

Joan returned with a container of water, more cloths and other gear. Geoffrey was glad to hand back responsibility to her. He waited until she had cleaned up the boy’s wound and applied a poultice to his head before fastening the front door. Then together with Joan he assisted the lad up the steep steps to the first floor. The boy was shaky on his legs but otherwise seemed all right. He kept apologising to Chaucer for something he’d done – or hadn’t done – and muttering some words about a king, but Geoffrey waved it aside and was relieved when Joan dispatched him to lie down in the little chamber that mother and son shared.

It took him some time to piece together everything that had happened. He had an account from Joan and, later, when the boy was almost fully recovered, from little Thomas. It seemed that a well-dressed individual had come knocking at the Aldgate door, which was opened by Thomas, his mother being occupied on the upper floor. The man explained that he was calling on the King’s business and that it was most urgent he should see Master Chaucer. Was the gentleman in? Thomas said not (and Geoffrey reflected that anyone knowing his routine would also know he was unlikely to be in at that hour of the morning). The stranger asked if he could wait for the master of the house in his office. The matter was very urgent, very important. The King’s business, the King’s business. He repeated this many times over. He waved some scroll with a big red seal attached. By this time Joan had appeared. She didn’t say so but Geoffrey guessed she was a little overawed by the visitor’s manner, by his talk, by the sealed scroll. He was shown up to Geoffrey’s domestic office, which occupied a central space over the gate itself. She did not think to ask the guest’s name. Besides, what harm could he do in a musty old room full of books? Joan didn’t say this either, but Chaucer was familiar with the housekeeper’s opinion of his room and his books.

It was Thomas who did not trust the stranger or who became curious. After a few minutes, the boy crept to the door of Geoffrey’s room, which was not shut tight, and heard the sound of papers being rustled and the soft thud of items being shifted about. Thomas knew that something wasn’t right. He pushed his head round the door and saw the stranger bending over Chaucer’s desk, hurriedly pushing volumes and manuscripts to one side as if he wanted to be rid of them. Then he gasped and took a manuscript over to the window to look at it in a better light. He nodded to himself, went back to the desk and scooped up several more loose sheets of paper. Then he glanced round and saw the boy standing in the doorway.

All of this Thomas related in a clear, almost descriptive manner. He turned it into an exciting story. He even imitated the stranger’s sigh as the man realised he had found what he was looking for. Chaucer was proud of Thomas. He reassured the boy, who seemed more anxious that Geoffrey might not want to continue teaching him to read than he was concerned about anything else. Unlike his mother, he had a respect for the twenty-five or so handwritten volumes that had pride of place in the office and that Geoffrey regarded as his real treasure. Thomas had respect not only for vellum and paper but for the words written on them, even if he was not able to understand many of them yet.

Maybe it was this respect that caused him to start forward in an attempt to intercept the thief as he sprang from the room, carrying the bundled manuscript and papers. The man lashed out with his free arm and knocked the boy aside, but Thomas succeeded in regaining his balance and pursued the man along the passageway and down the spiral staircase. At the bottom of the steps he tripped and landed on the rush-strewn flagstones of the lobby. His mother, alerted by the noise, was not far behind. By now, the stranger had unlatched the front door and vanished into the street. Joan helped Thomas to the bench and started to mop at his wound. Shortly afterwards Geoffrey arrived home.

Thomas was not sure where he had received his wound. Geoffrey had noticed some drops of blood on the floor of the upper passage so he thought it might have been as a result of the blow from the man. Was he wearing any rings? he asked.

Joan could not remember but Thomas said, ‘Yes, Geoffrey, here and here and here.’ He indicated most of the fingers on his own hands. ‘And all different coloured stones too.’ Thomas was quite recovered by now and enjoying the attention.

Geoffrey thought that it was probably one of the visitor’s rings that caught the lad across the forehead. But if the individual was wearing rings set with different coloured stones, then he was no impoverished thief. He was no ordinary thief either, to be going and taking manuscripts.

Geoffrey went outside and questioned William, the porter who had a little wooden lodge on the inner side of the Aldgate arch. His job was to keep an eye on the comings and goings through the gate, which as well as being a busy entrance was a spot where various ne’er-do-wells were inclined to gather if not shoo-ed away. William’s work did not stop there. Every cart arriving with goods from the country had to pay a small fee, which went towards paving the streets. Early in the morning William removed the drawbars and swung back the great oak doors that kept the city safe during the hours of darkness, and last thing in the evening he did the same in reverse. William knew Geoffrey Chaucer, of course, the person with royal connections who lodged over his head. Geoffrey enjoyed his company and a chat every now and then. But the porter could be no help on this occasion. No, he had not witnessed a man making a hasty exit from Chaucer’s front door, let alone seen in which direction he might have gone.

Geoffrey had not held out much hope from William and he returned to his upstairs office and started to tidy the room. The thief had been searching for something specific and only disordered the owner’s documents and books, as Thomas witnessed. Even so, it took Chaucer some time to return everything to its place, checking to see that nothing was damaged. What was missing was, as he half expected, one of the copies of his poem about St Beornwyn, one out of the three manuscripts for which he had paid the St Paul’s copier two whole marks. In addition, a clutch of his official documents had vanished, material to do with the wine and wool imports. Geoffrey kept an orderly desk and had a fairly good idea of what had been taken: lists of quantities and commissions, mostly. None of it was a proper secret and none of it would be of much use to anyone outside the office of Controller of Customs. He suspected that the thief had snatched these pieces either in a panic or as a cover for his real objective, which was the Beornwyn story.

Well, if he was hoping to deprive the world of the fruits of Chaucer’s poetic skill then he was too late, for there were already two copies of the poem in circulation among John of Gaunt’s retinue at the Savoy. And Geoffrey still had possession of the original, which he’d penned at Bermondsey Priory.

Geoffrey couldn’t imagine who would take the trouble to make off with a poem. The only people aware of its existence were John of Gaunt and a handful of others in the Savoy, such as Thomas Banks. Yet if anyone in the Savoy was eager to see it then he merely had to lay hands on one of the copies that Chaucer had dispatched to the Palace. The description provided by Joan and young Thomas left no doubt that the thieving caller was a gentleman, one with many-ringed fingers, someone on the King’s business – though that part must be a lie surely. But nevertheless he was a person who was well-to-do, if not noble. It made no sense.

Then he spotted an overlooked manuscript lying in a dark corner. He picked it up. It was a scroll, fastened with an unbroken disc of red wax. The gentleman thief had arrived at Aldgate brandishing a scroll with a red seal. He must have dropped it in the rush to get away. Chaucer went over to the window and examined the seal. He thought he recognised the device imprinted in the wax, a rudimentary castle with three towers. He broke the seal without any qualms and unfurled the document.