Vanora Bennett - The People’s Queen

Alice’s remark itself makes no sense to Chaucer. But the quick, guilty look Lyons gives Chaucer, once Alice has moved off to the next little group of men and the next conversation, makes the comptroller feel as if he’s somehow been hoodwinked. He can’t imagine how, though; and perhaps it’s just the wine, colouring his imagination too rich.

Still, the moment leaves him feeling uneasy. He doesn’t like not understanding.

Philippa doesn’t stay. As soon as the last guest has bowed and made his exit, Philippa stands up too.

She doesn’t want to discuss the dinner. She just says, very politely, that she’s expected back at the Savoy tonight. She can make the boat trip before curfew if she hurries.

‘But the children. They could stay,’ Chaucer mumbles disconsolately. He hasn’t even seen them yet. They would have been too young for the dinner. But he’s assumed they’re here – sleeping, perhaps, in the bedchamber? Or reading? Or walking around London, waiting for the business meeting to be over before the family reunion?

‘They’re not here,’ Philippa replies calmly. ‘They’ve gone down to Sheen early. There was a hunting party they wanted to join.’

He hasn’t thought enough, Chaucer realises, crestfallen. He’s assumed too much. He should have guessed they weren’t here.

Chaucer subsides into defeated silence. He submits when she comes to him and pecks him on the top of his slightly balding head before slipping out. He only remembers to stumble out his thanks to her for coming just in time, before the door shuts. He should be grateful, he knows. Philippa’s pragmatic enough to have realised it’s important to show a united front to the Londoners, who’ll want to see that the marital proprieties are observed in the Chaucer household.

She’s done what’s expected of her.

There’s no reason for him to feel sad, he tells himself, even if she’s going, and even if he hasn’t seen the children. She has her work. They have their lives. This is how things are done in the courtly world. Perhaps it’s only being back among merchants, today, and remembering his own childhood, brought up closer to his parents than any courtier’s son could dream of, that’s making him chafe…

If only the carts weren’t rolling quite so loudly through the gate under his feet. If only he hadn’t drunk that third cup of wine. Or was it the fourth?

He’s slumped at the table, finishing off what’s in the bottom of the cup, listening to the servants behind the door, banging and talking as they clear up the trays and plates, with the sense of anticlimax and disappointment gathering strength inside, as the shadows thicken, when there’s a knock.

He’s astonished to see Alice’s face around the door.

She smiles brilliantly, and the shadows retreat. ‘I thought I’d drop by for five minutes while my men are picking up the platters out there. I’d ask you for supper at my house…but you’ve probably had enough already, haven’t you?’ She twinkles at him. Hastily, he straightens up. ‘You’d rather sleep, I expect…’

He’s on his feet before he knows it. ‘The kindness ,’ he hears himself chirrup, excitedly, sounding far too eager. ‘The thought-fulness… finding the time to bring so much…your generosity… I can’t begin to tell you how overwhelmed I was…’

She doesn’t say anything. She looks straight into his eyes, almost tenderly. She shakes her head. After a moment, she says, ‘I’ve been thinking about you…About how strange it must have felt, for you, today – to be coming back to where you grew up.’ She takes his hand, not flirtatiously, more like a sister. ‘After everything else you’ve seen in your life.’ Her voice trails away, inviting confidences. ‘I could hardly imagine doing that, myself.’

A wave of emotion sweeps him. No one else has understood.

He’s felt so alone with those thoughts, until now. Suddenly he longs to pour out all the troubles in his heart. ‘A beautiful day,’ he begins gratefully; ‘I have so much to thank you for. Then: ‘I’m only sorry my children weren’t here to see it.’ He stops. It would have been an even greater pleasure, he’s been going to say, if Philippa hadn’t kept the children away. But he’s not quite a fool, even in his cups. He shouldn’t be sharing his troubles. ‘They went hunting instead,’ he adds hastily, choking off the self-pitying confidence he’s nearly shared, and trying to sound proud of his children’s courtly friendships. ‘At Sheen, Philippa said.’

It must be the memories of his own father that being in London today has awakened – that sudden recollection of a world in which a son’s place is at his father’s shoulder, learning his business, for all those formative years – that’s making him feel this sadness, almost grief, for his own absent children. Or it’s the drink. At any rate, Alice is giving him the casually concerned look of someone who doesn’t understand the pain he feels. He doesn’t think she has children of her own. For a moment he feels almost envious of the freedom from hurt that must represent; she can’t be expected to feel the twisting in his heart. He knows he’s talking too much.

Mildly, she says, ‘And there was me thinking you were going to tell me what it was like travelling in Italy.’ She laughs. He feels she’s expecting more. But he doesn’t know what.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘Must be a little bit drunk.’ She doesn’t seem to mind. Her silence goes on being warm and inviting. It’s a relief to have been able to confess something so innocuous.

After a pause, she says, ‘Oh, well, who isn’t, after a splendid dinner like yours? I felt a little tipsy myself.’

Still fuzzily, Chaucer now remembers that he’s asked quite a lot of people in this room, since his earlier exchange with Alice by the window, about her husbands. There’s been a quiet, nudging, whiskery sort of conspiracy about the answers he’s got, and more than one jovial ‘oh ho, my boy!’ But he senses that no one else really knows, either, what Alice was up to before she became the Queen’s demoiselle and the King fell in love with her. ‘She’s packed a lot into her years in this vale of tears, that one,’ someone said knowingly. ‘They say she was very friendly with Froissart, the Hainaulter,’ Lyons said, ‘and, or so I heard, with the knight who went to Ireland, what’s-his-name, Windsor.’ Lyons tried to wink at Chaucer but Chaucer shifted his eyes. ‘There was Champagne, the baker, I heard. When she was just a girl. And Perrers, obviously,’ someone else said. ‘After Champagne. Wasn’t she married to Perrers?’ Nods all round, though nods that didn’t seem to be backed by much precise knowledge as to which Perrers Alice might have lived with. One man opined, hazily, ‘Jankyn Perrers, was it? The Fleming?’ And, at the same time, another offered, ‘Sir Richard Perrers? Hertfordshire?’ All merchants know it’s a mistake to admit ignorance. Rumours and guesses – even foolish ones – are better than no knowledge at all. But still, this conversation soon petered out. The lack of real interest makes Chaucer see that, even to these men, who like to measure and map and mine every potentially useful relationship and contact, it hardly matters what Alice was before she was touched by the King’s grace, or whatever has made her the powerhouse she’s become. It’s her vivaciousness, and her current web of friendships, and her astonishing Midas touch, that interests them. Now, not the past.

But all those questions come rushing back into Chaucer’s mind when he sees her. Suddenly brave, he thinks: No harm in asking.

‘So…’ he says, feeling his tongue thick in his mouth, ‘how did you come to meet and marry Master Champagne, if you grew up in Essex?’