in the reeds. A young man somewhere just behind Alice is singing a melancholy love song near the reasonably pretty, and unbelievably rich, Eglantine de la Tour. I know what you’re up to, you greedy boy, Alice thinks, not allowing the thought to alter her serene don’t-bother-me-I’m-busy smile. She also thinks: Good luck to you; someone’s got to get that girl’s money; why shouldn’t it be you? Let’s face it, who, in the normal run of things, does anything but protect their own interests?
Yet, whatever her own doubters and detractors in the City might be thinking about her, the reality is that Alice is not, for now, thinking of any new money-making scams. She’s done enough of that in the past.
She’s done so well out of so many sharp business ideas, even before she took up with the King nearly ten years ago. She’s made a good bit out of property, of course – buying, or begging, or borrowing, or just taking, always on the cheap, then sending in her team of quiet assessors and deputies to make improvements, buy up the next-door bits of land, build stout new buildings, take on good farm men to work the land, push back the forests, and generally shoot up the rental value, which she ploughs back into the next property that comes her way. In her time, she’s also done good business advancing scared noblemen the bags of coin they need to pay the ransoms on their poor beloved sons held in France (and relieving the hand-wringing fathers of collateral in the shape of their spare manor houses, so hard to sell or raise money on, or just charging them an excellent rate of interest). And, most recently, she’s been coining it, on the quiet, out of the wool trade, along with Richard Lyons.
But you have to be hungry to have the twitchy energy to get rich; you have to be scared of whatever it is, back there, that you’re getting away from.
And now Alice is in a kindly, glowing, magnanimous frame of mind, having seen the glimmer of a new future in which her position can be quietly consolidated, and she can feel more sure her wealth will be protected after Edward goes, now she is going to have a new patron in Duke John. It’s more of a relief than she expected. She must have been more worried than she knew about what would become of her. Her new serenity means that she is now able to think of other things; of helping people.
Her thoughts turn to Chaucer. Again. She’s pleased she’s done something good for him. She’s paid her debt, more than, by wangling him that job, which will not only help smooth relations between the Duke and London, if Chaucer does that emollient peacemaking thing he’s so good at, but will also raise Chaucer’s standing. It might even keep that disagreeable wife of his happy that he’s got a bit more money coming in, who knows? It feels so good, Alice reflects, to have done someone else a disinterested favour, for once.
It’s not just back-patting, what she’s thinking about Chaucer. She’s also remembering the wistfulness in his eyes as he looked out at Essex, saying ‘sometimes even one marriage’, and the wry spark in them when he added that second phrase, the one about ‘the woe in marriage’.
She likes the way he talks. He’s so hopeless at looking after his own interests, so apparently a fool, but then so intriguing to talk to, and therefore not quite the pushover he seems. He isn’t like anyone she’s ever known. When he says things like that, all sly and mischievous, and his face lights up, he becomes beautiful. She’s surprised at how softly she thinks that.
Maybe that’s why she’s found herself thinking that no one needs to spend their whole life hustling. Of course, if money comes your way, positively asking to be picked up, then why say no? But in the past few days she’s realised she can’t see the need any longer to make grubbing for gold the whole focus of her existence. No point in getting stuck there. Surely, by now, she’s reached a point in life where she can indulge her higher feelings?
Because Alice is happy, she’s feeling especially affectionate towards Edward, who is clip-clopping along next to her on his own bay palfrey.
She’s been remembering, as she rides, as she steals glances at his slumped old body, so tired now, how magnificent he’s looked in the past, tall and thin and energetic in his Garter robes. She’s been remembering him in gold, winning the joust – when he could still joust – and triumphantly bringing out her scarf from his sleeve, and waving it for all to see. She’s been remembering the thrill of his first embrace, of that then-handsome profile, half-seen from very close through her half-shut eyes, her terrified, thrilled thought: Lips anointed by God…touching me…
She doesn’t usually have time for nostalgia. But today she’s indulging herself. It’s making her kind.
Alice can’t wait to get to Sheen, because, once they’re there, and she’s settled Edward in, she’s going to tell him the business idea she’s had. (For Alice’s kindness to Chaucer has been rewarded. Back there, in London, while she was sorting things out for him, talking to merchants in his hall, she was struck by an inspired plan, one of those bolts from the blue. God’s blessings.) It’s not a selfish idea, this one; it’s not something that will benefit her. It will benefit Edward. It should make Edward happy – very happy indeed – because it should sort out Edward’s financial troubles for good. And making Edward happy, she thinks, more earnestly than usual, is what she wants most in life. He’s been so good to her. She’s treasuring her idea, looking forward to seeing his face when he hears.
Meanwhile, she should entertain him…while away the miles…make him laugh.
‘Look, a dragonfly,’ she says. She points it out, and, from astride his horse, Edward’s eyes obediently follow. The insect is glittering blue and green above the stream they’re crossing. Alice adds, ‘Same colours as my robe, do you see?’
Edward’s supposed to chuckle at that – to recognise it as the opening gambit in a game of jewellery-giving. But the eyes he turns to her are blank. He’s all cloudy and confused this morning. Perhaps she should have insisted on a litter. But he was so excited last night at the idea of seeing how his building works were going at Sheen that it never occurred to her he might be like this by daybreak.
Smiling brightly, because she doesn’t know how to behave with Edward except to flirt like a cheeky girl in the presence of the all-powerful, Alice leans over and takes his hand, as if nothing is wrong. ‘Look,’ she repeats, putting the limp, veined claw to her water-coloured taffeta sleeve. ‘I should have a dragonfly brooch made to go with this, shouldn’t I?’
He just nods without seeming to understand.
It’s not the first time; she can’t shake off the unease taking hold of her. Over the next hour, she tries all kinds of things to jog Edward back to his usual self. With that not-worried smile clamped determinedly to her face, she reminds him of how he had the French King John the Good living on English soil as his prisoner for seven years after Poitiers Field, where the Prince of England captured him. England’s most glorious victory, she says, and all yours and your son’s. You really are the king of kings. There’s no reaction. She says, ‘Do you remember? They say John and nineteen knights from his guard dressed identically for battle, to confuse our boys. But we got him anyway.’ She squeezes Edward’s hand. Still limp. ‘Do you remember, afterwards, after he got away again, back to France?’ she whispers with the brightness fading from her voice. ‘How his son escaped too, and the French weren’t paying the ransom for him, but he came back to you, all the way to London – of his own accord – because he didn’t want to dishonour the King of England, who’d treated him so well?’
Edward smiles vaguely. ‘I remember the pageant when he came back…and the procession,’ she falters. She keeps nodding, like an idiot, trying to force a proper response from him. ‘It was the most exciting thing I’d ever seen…I worshipped you that day…from where I was on the street, at least. No one in that crowd could possibly have been shouting louder than I was. And waving…’
He
