The Medieval Murderers - The False Virgin

Chaucer nodded, not expecting to get to the quick of the matter so soon.

‘I wish I had stayed my hand,’ Sir Edward continued.

Chaucer wondered whether he was about to hear a confession of murder but what the knight said next left him more baffled.

‘What were those lines in your piece?’ Jupe took a swig from his pint pot before, furrowing his battered brow, he recited from memory:

‘For woman may seem holy, pure and true,

Yet, all within, be frail as I or you.’

It took Geoffrey a moment to recognise his own handiwork. This was a rhyming couplet – and not a very good one either – from his poem about St Beornwyn. It occurred when the narrator was speculating that the good woman might not have been quite so good, after all. Sir Edward Jupe had seized on these unremarkable words after hearing them just once, he had stored them in his head, and was repeating them back to their creator. In other circumstances, Geoffrey might have been flattered. Now what he felt was a creeping dismay.

‘I don’t understand you, Sir Edward.’

‘What you said about women is all too true, Master Chaucer. Nevertheless, I regret what I have done.’

‘But I do not know what you have done.’

‘Why, I put pen to paper, as you do.’

If Chaucer had been baffled before, he was now utterly confused.

‘Sir Edward, let us speak plainly so as to avoid all misunderstanding. We are talking here of a Castilian gentleman by the name of Carlos de Flores?’

‘Oh, him.’

The expression on Jupe’s face was unreadable. Was it a grimace? A sneer? A trace of guilt?

‘You were observed talking with him at the Savoy Palace. You were angry.’

‘We exchanged words, it is true.’

‘Words before blows?’

‘No blows. I did not offer him violence,’ said the knight, in a mild, almost surprised fashion.

‘But you were seen following de Flores out of the room.’

‘I did not follow him, Master Chaucer. I merely left shortly after him.’

‘You did not see where he went?’

‘No, and I do not care where he went either. As far as I’m concerned he may go to… to the lowest pit.’

‘Sir Edward, you are aware that Carlos de Flores is dead? He was found on the foreshore of the river next morning.’

This time the knight did respond. His lined face became suffused with a dull red. He fumbled with his hands on the table and knocked over his pot of ale. Liquid dribbled, unregarded, onto the floor. This was no act, Geoffrey reckoned. Sir Edward was genuinely shaken by the news. It was some time before he said anything more, and then it was only to ask for confirmation. Briefly, Geoffrey Chaucer described the outward circumstances of the Castilian’s death.

‘So then, the fellow is no more. You cannot think I had anything to do with it, Master Chaucer. If I had fought with that foreign gentleman, it would have been done in the open and in an honourable manner, not using a knife in the dark down by the water.’

‘Yet you were in dispute with him over a lady?’

‘I discovered that my lady Alice had been… I found out that he had been pressing his attentions on her… and though she struggled to resist his blandishments…’ Sir Edward sighed.

Chaucer waited, but when no more came, he said: ‘What did you mean about regrets then? About putting pen to paper?’

‘When I left the Savoy Palace I returned to my lodgings on this side of the river. I fear that I was not altogether in my right mind. That very night I sat down and wrote to my lady Alice in a manner that was impetuous and foolish. I did not address her dishonourably but I believe I did not use those terms of respect and esteem that are her due. When I… when I came to myself again, it was too late to recall the letter. It had already been dispatched to the Palace. I sent my squire with the thing and he put it into my lady’s hands himself. And now she has opened it and, without a doubt, she has read my unkind words and read them again… and again…’

Sir Edward Jupe seemed to notice for the first time that he had spilled his drink on the floor. He watched the ale settling into the grooves between the flagstones.

‘Your squire can confirm all this? That he took the letter to the palace and so on.’

‘Why, yes. Simon would no more utter a falsehood than-’

The knight faltered. Geoffrey realised that he’d been about to say that he would never lie. Perhaps he thought it was too boastful a claim to make about himself. Chaucer clicked his fingers for the pot-boy and ordered another pint for the disconsolate lover. He might as well drown his sorrows. And Geoffrey too felt a certain sorrow for Sir Edward. He did not think that the lanky individual next to him had killed the Castilian. He was capable of killing, of course, but he would not do it on the sly.

When the fresh ale arrived, Chaucer took his leave of Sir Edward Jupe. On the way out he settled his score with Harry Bailey.

‘A good man, that,’ said the landlord, slipping the coins into his apron, and indicating the knight in the corner.

‘Yes,’ said Chaucer.

‘One of my most devoted customers too.’

Instead of returning to the Savoy, Geoffrey went back to Aldgate. There he was able to clear up at least one part of the mystery. To Joan and young Thomas he showed the ruby on the golden chain, which the steward had taken from de Flores’s body. The housekeeper did not recognise the item but Thomas, who had had enough presence of mind after the attack to enumerate the rings that the thief wore on his hands, said he was almost sure it was the one around the man’s neck. Geoffrey complimented him once more on his sharp eyes. Then he went into his office to think.

It was plain enough that Carlos de Flores was the one who’d stolen the Beornwyn copy from this very room. And the reason for the theft was that the Castilians in the Savoy wanted to get their hands on the poem to see whether they could use it as a weapon in their campaign against Katherine Swynford. They must have heard something of its contents but not been able to lay hold of one of the two copies that Geoffrey had already sent to the palace. The more he thought about the matter, the more obvious it seemed. Quite against Geoffrey’s intentions – indeed, the notion had never occurred to him – the poem about St Beornwyn worked subtly in their interest. That is to say, it could be interpreted as being against Katherine and so in favour of Constance.

Why else had the priest, Luis, been the only person to single Chaucer out for congratulations on the night of the reading, and why had he done so in a very public manner? The fact that Geoffrey was Katherine’s brother-in-law might be very useful to them. See, the Spaniards could say, even the family of John of Gaunt’s mistress disapprove of her and of her behaviour. Why, the poet Geoffrey Chaucer has penned a story about a woman who pretends to be pure but who is, in reality, driven by her passions, by her appetite for men. In itself, these whisperings would hardly be enough to drive a wedge between Gaunt and Katherine but it all helped to spread unease and distrust in the household. Once again, Chaucer wished that he’d never heard the tale of Beornwyn from the Prior of Bermondsey. It had brought him nothing but trouble.

But was the killing of de Flores connected to the wretched poem or not? Geoffrey had already spoken to two men, John Hall and Sir Edward Jupe, with reasons to dislike, even to hate, the Castilian. He still did not think that Jupe had killed de Flores. He believed the knight was genuinely a man of honour. But was it not conceivable that he had pursued his rival all the way down to the foreshore of the river and there, in a fit of drunken madness, stabbed him to death? Jupe would know where to strike quick and deep. It was the sort of violent action he could perform in his sleep. And, by his own account, he’d been the worse for wear. ‘Not altogether in my right mind’ was his roundabout way of describing his condition while writing the fatal letter to Alice Osterley. Geoffrey had just seen for himself that the knight was as ready to wield a pint-pot as he was a sword. And hadn’t the landlord of the Tabard called him one of his most devoted customers?