He swallows.

'It must have cost a pretty penny,' he says, changing the subject. 'That hanging.'

She gives him that careful, squinty, narrow-eyed look that he's seen from her once or twice before. She's measuring him, he thinks; seeing if she can trust him.

He holds his breath. Whatever it is, he wants to know.

She nods. 'Mm-hm,' she says. She glances carefully up at him again, and then turns her attention to her sleeves, to get them just so. 'Well, I can afford it. I've made some money recently.'

'Mm-hm?' he enquires. But something in that last look is making his stomach turn. Suddenly he's not so sure he does want to know.

'On the debt paper,' she finishes carelessly. 'A bit of speculation. Only, of course, that's for your ears only, Chaucer, because I trust you. You mustn't tell a soul.' She looks up again, more boldly this time. She wants to see the effect this confession is having on him.

It's explosive. Chaucer's Adam's apple is gyrating up and down his throat as he swallows, and swallows again. She's admitted it. He feels sick. 'But I asked you. Last year. And you said' - he chokes - 'you weren't doing it.'

She isn't bothered. She's still looking pleased with herself, still talking. He forces himself to make sense of the carefree words coming from her mouth. She's saying something about how, last year, she was only dabbling. It didn't really count. She wasn't really lying to him, back then. But after New Year she decided she could be making more exchanging debt paper. Much more.

'...because it really struck me, over Christmas, that there might not be much longer with Edward,' she's saying. 'And that the Duke might not be the kind of master I needed afterwards, either. So I thought, in for a penny, in for a pound...time to hurry up.'

Chaucer's shocked. Before New Year, Alice always used to sound so full of hope that she could make the Duke her future protector...mentor...patron; and she'd seemed so excited about her plan to put the war finances on a better footing, which she thought would do it. Chaucer's always thought it would, too. He's spent all this time trying, dutifully, to help Alice's cause by trying to promote a better relations.h.i.+p between the Duke and the City, and always speaking well of the Duke to Walworth (not with that much success, admittedly, as Walworth is still deeply suspicious of the King's son; but at least the Duke has been away for most of this year, and so, to Chaucer's pleasure, there've been no actual clashes between my lord of Lancaster and the City, these last months).

Can she really have had this more criminal second plan on the go the whole time - a 'plan' that seems to amount to no more than helping herself from the treasury and hoping no one notices? A 'plan' that, when she's caught, as she inevitably will be, will wipe out all the good her clever financial thinking has done her? And can it really be that seeing the Duke only had eyes for his mistress at Christmas has been enough to make her give up on all those earlier hopes - intelligent hopes, too - of the future she could perhaps have earned by serving him well? Can Alice be such a faint-heart?

He can't believe his disappointment. He thought she was better than this.

Her voice is still chirruping on. 'And now I've got almost all my properties rebuilt and in good order. My rental income's going to be up substantially from now on, and I've even been able to buy some new places. I'm in good shape for the future.' She beams proudly.

'You fool,' Chaucer says, slowly. 'You gave up all the good you were doing and opted for stealing just out of pique? Because he's sleeping with Katherine?'

She looks at him, as if he's shocked her. Then she shakes her head. 'No,' she says, more seriously. 'It's not that, Chaucer. Not at all.' She stops fiddling with her bodice. She faces him, fair and square. 'Look, I always thought I had to choose: serve him, or steal from him. If I served him well, I'd impress him, and be able to stay on at court. If I stole from him, I'd have to leave court after Edward...but I might at least go richer. And I didn't know which to choose. I spent all last year worrying, which would be my best course of action?

'But after Christmas, when the Duke just wasn't interested in knowing anything about the detail of the good work I'd done, as long as there was some vague picture of things getting better that he could enjoy (while the Duke stuffed his face with honeyed peac.o.c.k and whispered sweet nothings in Madame de Swynford's ear), I realised I'd been wrong. I suddenly saw that I didn't have to choose. I could do both.'

She puts a soft hand on Chaucer's arm. 'He hasn't stopped liking me now he's got her,' she goes persuasively on. 'He still thinks I'm a good adviser, you know. I saw him again in January, on his way to Bruges, when she wasn't there, and he was all charm and grat.i.tude. He just can't be bothered with detail, any more than his father can. They're princes. They only see the big picture. They want life served up to them like a great big golden pageant. How it all actually happens, how the mock-castle bursts into flames without setting the real hall alight, how the ice swans get on the table on a hot April night - well, they leave that for the servants to worry about. So he'll never know if I'm taking a bit on the side. Even if it's quite a big bit. He can't possibly find out, not for a long time, now he's stuck at Bruges talking. And even if, when he gets back, he does find out some money's been going, maybe even too much for any more war plans, he won't have the eye for detail to work out where it's gone or who's taken it. He certainly won't suspect me. me. He trusts me. I can tell him what I like. I can say, "Oh, those government clerks, always got their hands in the money-bags, nothing you can do to stop them, or check," or, "Perhaps Master Walworth's had a hand in it," or anything I like, and he'll believe me. He might even be secretly relieved if there's not enough money for the war - he doesn't really He trusts me. I can tell him what I like. I can say, "Oh, those government clerks, always got their hands in the money-bags, nothing you can do to stop them, or check," or, "Perhaps Master Walworth's had a hand in it," or anything I like, and he'll believe me. He might even be secretly relieved if there's not enough money for the war - he doesn't really want want to fight. He'd rather have peace, if he had an excuse that wouldn't make him look cowardly.' to fight. He'd rather have peace, if he had an excuse that wouldn't make him look cowardly.'

She gazes at Chaucer, with something between defiance and anxiety in her eyes. 'So,' she finishes, 'I've seen the light. I can steal a bit, and and stay. I can do it all.' stay. I can do it all.'

Chaucer's lost for words.

'Oh, Alice Perrers,' he says, in the end. 'You think you're being clever. But you're not. Just greedy. The Duke won't need to go through the books himself to find out you've been stealing. You've got enemies all over the place. They'll be more than willing to take care of the detail for him - point out how. And if they do catch you out, you'll have lost him, and all your money too.'

She lifts her shoulders. He can't dent her confidence. 'But they won't,' she replies quickly. 'They can't. There's no proof I'm involved.'

'Of course there must be proof!' he cries, and he's astonished that she can possibly not have thought of this. Shock tingles through every careful clerkish bone in him. 'The prices that the treasury paid for your paper will have been written down every time, in their account books. Quite openly. Yes?'

She nods, mutely. But there's still a glimmer of impudence on her face.

'And the prices that the Italians paid will have been written down in their their account books. Also quite openly. Yes?' account books. Also quite openly. Yes?'

She nods again. But she's still not looking abashed.

'So all anyone needs to do is compare the two. And see the profit you've made. Yes?' Chaucer insists. He's almost shouting, he's so eager for her to get the point.

She shrugs. 'But so what?' she says carelessly. 'They never will. No one ever does do that sort of thing, really. You know that. People are lazy. They always mean to check up, but then they just...you know...go for dinner, or something.'

'Unless they really hate someone,' Chaucer says lugubriously. 'They do then.'

An indulgent smile is coming on to her face. She turns to face him and takes his shoulders. 'You've been listening to too much tavern gossip. You should drink less,' she says more gently. 'I'm not a fool, I promise. Whatever you think. It's all sewn up. Foolproof. All the paper that's been redeemed at the treasury is in Latimer's name. It was his idea in the first place; officially, he profits. And all the paper that's been bought up from the Italians is in Richard Lyons' name. The paper loss is in his name. So there's no connection between them, or the two sets of transactions; and no paperwork involving me at all. Just a little bag of money, every now and then. My savings' - she pulls her eyes down at the corners, turning her face into a comic old-woman mask - 'for my declining years.'

Chaucer is feeling sick again. Latimer too. He's glad he didn't go to Latimer now. In a way, he thinks, perhaps she's right: there's nothing linking her to it. Still, he wishes she hadn't told him. After all, he doesn't want to know all this.

Weakly, he says, 'But what if, say, someone starts investigating Latimer? Won't he just throw you to the wolves?'

She stretches out her hands on plump little arms. She looks bewildered. 'But why would they?' she says simply. 'Seriously, who would want to hurt Latimer? Don't be naive, Chaucer. Everyone's on the make. There's not a soul in the royal household who hasn't helped himself to something at some time. It's honour among thieves. There's no one who'd do the dirty on anyone else, in case someone came sniffing through their own dirty linen. They wouldn't take the risk. You can always find a bit of dirt on anyone, if you dig deep enough.'

It sounds so simple.

'No, you can't,' Chaucer says mutinously.

'I reckon even you're not too n.o.ble to have taken a sweetener every now and then.'

'Yes I am,' he says. But she only laughs.

'I must go,' he says. He's feeling offended. He doesn't like being laughed at, or accused of corruption.

But she steps up to him again and pulls his arms around her. 'You should be pleased I've stopped thinking you have to choose your pleasures in life, Chaucer,' she whispers in his ear. 'And you don't have to, either. You know that really. Look. Here we are, the two of us. Here you are, being offered me, as well as...' She twinkles. '...whatever else you love. So are you going to turn it down?'

As she turns her face up to his, and her lips seek his out, Chaucer knows he's not.

FIFTEEN.

Peter de la Mare's hair is greyer than before. There's the beginning of a stoop in his back. He hasn't got eyes for the luminous evening sky, however deliriously the birds are dipping and swooping, however sweetly the waves are lapping on the riverbank beyond the terrace at Kennington Palace.

He's feeling discouraged.

He's been in and around London and Westminster for weeks, on this latest visit alone. Yet he can't find the killer facts he needs. Just rumours, so many rumours.

He can guess that the government's money must be draining away because of some illicit connection between City and court - the two money centres of the kingdom. But that's a hard thing to pin down. For who knows both worlds well enough to see how they might be brought together to the detriment of the kingdom? Certainly not Peter de la Mare, who knows neither world very well.

He sighs.

In the City, all they do is mutter about Alice Perrers stealing, or being behind other people's thefts, as if every other soul in London were a model of irreproachable probity (except possibly the Fleming, Lyons; they don't seem to like him him much, either, but then who does like foreigners?). The top merchant, Walworth, can't stop himself; he almost twitches with dislike when he hears Mistress Perrers' name. And it's no better at court, where Sir Peter's met at every turn by a wall of polite, smiling hostility. They show him the account books, but they explain nothing. It's clear they don't want outsiders sticking their noses in. much, either, but then who does like foreigners?). The top merchant, Walworth, can't stop himself; he almost twitches with dislike when he hears Mistress Perrers' name. And it's no better at court, where Sir Peter's met at every turn by a wall of polite, smiling hostility. They show him the account books, but they explain nothing. It's clear they don't want outsiders sticking their noses in.

Yet Sir Peter knows, without needing any financial expertise, that if he is to honestly try to improve the state of the nation's finances he will need to present to the Parliament he will lead a charge sheet that features something more precise than vague accusations against a woman of known loose morals with ideas above her station, and a foreigner. They're such obvious scapegoats. They can't, alone, have brought England to the pa.s.s it's in. He'd be a laughing-stock if he settled for that trite explanation. There'd be people snickering behind their hands up and down this London river. And it wouldn't improve the finances or cut out the moral rot he senses everywhere if he did take that easy option.

But that's just the point of principle. It doesn't help him with the detail.

If only he could find an ally, an insider. If only someone who understands these matters from close up could talk him through exactly how the government's accounts translate into reality. Who takes what, how and why; who has to nod and wink when.

Without that...

He sighs again.

When the boat comes to take him to his final interview of the day, it's a moment before he can summon the strength of purpose to disengage himself from the post he's leaning against, and step down.

Lord Latimer's face is splendidly relaxed as de la Mare walks into his office. He's at his desk, writing, but that doesn't diminish his animal vigour, the rippling power of his shoulders as the pen scratchily chases words across the page.

A magnificently furred dark green velvet coat, thrown over the back of his chair, slips down as he straightens. Lord Latimer turns, raises an eyebrow, and, with a powerful movement of his arm, pushes the offending item down out of sight.

De la Mare is too much of a gentleman to do anything so obvious as to suppress a sigh at being called in and then kept waiting. He knows the virtue of discipline.

So he waits. But the hair on the back of his neck is p.r.i.c.kling, as it always does in Latimer's presence. Discipline is one thing, but you can't altogether suppress instinctive dislike. Latimer was a good soldier once, de la Mare has heard. But back then he probably didn't cultivate this deliberately splendid, sun-kissed, jewel-winking appearance, or have that hypocritical smile forever on his lips.

'Ah, Sir Peter,' Latimer finally purrs, looking up at the gentleman from Herefords.h.i.+re as if he's only just noticed his guest's arrival. 'Do take a seat.' And he gestures. But he's still fiddling with the papers on his desk, demonstrating the amount, and the importance, of the work before him. De la Mare is increasingly certain that the lord chamberlain is nervous.

'Now, to business,' Latimer says, bestowing a joyous, sharptoothed smile on de la Mare. 'You'd like to see the schedule of the treasury's Italian debt repayments, I understand?'

De la Mare nods, and bows. His letters of introduction from the Prince of England have opened many doors. A clerk is dispatched for the books.

Latimer, meanwhile, rises, and, with great affability, leads de la Mare over to the window for a little sack while they watch the sunset and wait. The chamberlain lets his arm linger, warm and confiding, on the Herefords.h.i.+re gentleman's unrelaxed back. He sips, and gazes into de la Mare's eyes, and asks solicitous questions in a velvet voice. Are his rooms comfortable? Are his preparations advancing for the Parliament? Does he have any idea, yet, when it will be?

Leaning even closer, Lord Latimer murmurs, 'I don't envy you the task you've set yourself, Sir Peter. It's never easy to find the source of corruption anywhere, of course. But in London, where every merchant is so very private in his dealings, and yet so demanding of respect and courtesy, it must be all but impossible...' The chamberlain's face expresses utter admiration for de la Mare's dedication to duty, but also an invitation to share a bit of a sly laugh at the merchants.

De la Mare allows himself a smile. 'I hope to make progress,' he says evenly.

'I know more now, after all these years,' Latimer goes smoothly on. 'But oh, how deceptive I found appearances in London at first.' He chuckles. Then he starts shaking his head, as if some highly amusing memory has come back to him, quite by chance. He continues, reminiscently: 'For instance, I remember how utterly astonished I was to hear that William Walworth's air of angelic innocence didn't stop him running his little sideline in brothels, over Southwark way. Flemish tarts: less talk that way than with London chatterboxes.' He looks brightly at de la Mare, like a fisherman at a fish, to make sure Sir Peter's swallowed the hook inside that bit of bait. He shakes his head again. 'You'd never guess he was that type to look at him, though, would you?'

More rueful headshakes. Then there's another story, this time about the King's man in Ireland, William of Windsor, who, according to Latimer, has been taking vast sums from London to pay for the defence of Ireland, and, at the same time, wringing vast sums out of the locals - with nothing much to show, in terms of castle walls or soldiers, for either input of money. 'All vanished,' Latimer says. He opens bewildered arms. 'You'd never guess it to look at him him, either. Soldierly type. Seems honest as the day is long.' He smiles. 'No, you never can tell.'

At last the books come. Latimer retreats, after solicitously settling de la Mare at a table, with light, and wine, and a clerk to hand. 'Take all the time you need,' he breathes, as he withdraws. And: 'If there's anything further I can do, please don't hesitate...'

'Thank you,' de la Mare says shortly.

But he leaves an hour later, and has himself rowed back to Kennington, without further comment. He's searched the accounts thoroughly. He's been unable to find even a hint of dishonesty. Again.

He just has two new random rumours to add to the collection of slanders that everyone living in these overcrowded buildings on this stinking river seems to spend their time pa.s.sing on. Walworth was just as bad, earlier on. Telling him Lyons the Fleming was illegally using his heavies in the ports to confiscate imported spices from the grocers' s.h.i.+ps, so he could do Brembre and Philpot out of business by letting scarcity force up the prices, then selling the stuff on himself. Telling him, too, that Alice Perrers and the Duke of Lancaster were secretly and illegally funding a mercer candidate for mayor, to get him and his cronies out of office. But then everyone's got a rumour to tell about Alice Perrers.

De la Mare has heard that she's getting a cut out of the treasury thefts, too. He's heard that her property holdings have trebled in size this year alone. Walworth thinks she must have spent three thousand on houses. He's even heard that she goes and sits on the King's Bench, in the King's own place, and dictates the outcomes of court cases. To hear them all talk, she's the mastermind. In league with the Duke. In league with Lyons. In league with the Devil himself.

They don't seem to realise that he's not unaware that she's the easiest person to blame.

Peter de la Mare is a man of principle. He'll carry on working at this task until he succeeds. But he's so weary of all this London dishonesty. Court, City: each lot as bad as the other. Rotten to the core, all of them; scampering around like human rats, growing fat on what they've stolen.

He can hardly bring himself to bow to the preoccupied-looking official who walks him back out to the jetty. Baron Scrope, the treasurer: tall and stooped and furrow-browed.

'All was well, I hope?' Scrope murmurs, as de la Mare steps stiffly down into the boat. De la Mare closes his eyes. His head aches. He just wants to be away, over this river of sewage, and into the privacy of his room. Through thin lips, he replies, 'No discrepancies.' Then, as the boatman turns, and Scrope tightens his cloak, ready to go too, de la Mare adds: '...that I could see.'

He feels Scrope's eyes, steady on him, as the boat pulls out.

Peter de la Mare has felt honoured, ever since he was elected to Parliament as a Herefords.h.i.+re knight, to represent the people he lives among, and to lead them. He's been waiting two years since then for the King to actually call the Parliament, true; but when the time finally does come for the a.s.sembly to meet, here, he wants to be ready to speak out in the name of justice for his kind.

Peter de la Mare has no pretensions to earthly greatness. He doesn't want a life at court, or in the King's armies - the dangers of both seem to him far to outweigh the advantages. He's not interested in fabulous wealth. He doesn't really understand the courtly lords, like Latimer, who, while of not much greater estate than himself, make it their life's work to better themselves, and absent themselves from their country homes for years on end, as if they were no more than landless, rootless merchants, interested only in money. He's more than content with the life G.o.d has sent him to this earth to lead, out on his lands. What Peter de la Mare wants to achieve, from the Parliament he's preparing so carefully for, is the preservation of that way of life for country gentlemen like himself. For, as he sees it, the activities of the lords of the court have become noxious enough to threaten the destruction of the modest hopes and dreams of the country gentry. And he's a brave enough man to want to root out the evil.

Thanks to his marriage, he's well off: a lucky turn of events for a younger son, and one for which he is thankful to G.o.d. He's master of a compact, efficient estate of three thousand acres, with woods, and fis.h.i.+ng, and a rabbit warren, and a park, and corn, and sheep, centred on Yatton, in the Wye Valley, where he lives with Matilda and young Roger and little Janey. He also owns a second estate, bigger yet at five thousand acres, and given over almost in its entirety to sheep and cattle husbandry, over at Little Hereford. His net income has shrunk, as everyone's has, with the rise in wage demands from the peasantry, from near PS400 a year in his youth to just over half that now. But he still has no serious financial worries for himself, even if, every time a Parliament has taxed him one-fifteenth of his movable property to pay for the war, he's been forced to sell off a few more fields, to raise the cash money, and whittled a bit more off the estate he hopes one day to leave to Roger.

But his years as the Earl of March's seneschal (another piece of divine providence, for which he gives more thanks), riding out as far as the Welsh border with the county elite to negotiate disputes over land rights, and collecting iron ore dues from the mines in the Forest of Dean, have given him first-hand knowledge of the parlous state other gentlemen of his county find themselves in.

There are fewer and fewer knights today who can afford the privilege of kitting themselves out for war, which, when Peter de la Mare was a young man, was the surest way of earning yourself advancement in life and a profitable lifelong allegiance to a greater lord, such as he himself now enjoys, with its fees and annuities in return for duties done. Now, he sees fathers everywhere, especially the poorer ones, saying, What's the point? All that expense, and then all you do is twiddle your thumbs and polish your plate armour and wait for a call-up that never comes...or, if it does, brings you no financial reward, since there have been no victories, and no spoil, for so many years. For a knight whose landed income from rents is already down near twenty pounds, the minimum needed to qualify for s.h.i.+re offices, it's a finely balanced question, these days, whether there's any advantage at all to be got from laying out money to equip their sons for war.

Yet there's not much point, either, in hoping for wealth from farming, when the peasants demand as much as fourpence a day in labour, and the price of corn is dropping every year.

Some of the lesser knights have chosen to seek out tenant farmers, rather than manage their fields themselves. But the tenant farmers are stuck in the same double bind of paying more for labour and earning less from their crops; and if your tenant farmer's a reliable man, but his crop's smaller than he'd hoped, and has sold for less, what can you do but accept two-thirds of his rent, or less?

So there are gentlemen all over Herefords.h.i.+re facing decline. Men who hold manors on boggy land that won't quite do for pasture; men who find their position undermined by vacant tenancies and mounting arrears of rent. Men who've given up hope that the war will save them. Men, like Sir Peter's old friend Sir John Verney, driven distracted by the fear that their meagre estates won't provide a living for their younger sons; any more than war will, or the legal education they can't afford, which might turn a boy into a good administrator, or the Church, which will swallow the child up. Men forced to entertain the thought that beloved sons like Roger Verney, with his fresh pink cheeks, schooled in the rudiments of church Latin and a good deal more chivalric literature, may, one day, if a willing heiress can't be found (and where can a willing heiress be found, if you can't afford to leave your dwindling lands?), be forced to follow the plough.

Peter de la Mare has spent so many years thanking G.o.d for his own lucky escape from genteel poverty - in the shape of Matilda's blue eyes and lavish marriage portion - that he's only recently realised, as his own son grows up, how much worse things are getting for the country gentry of today.

His cla.s.s is the backbone of England, he's always known. He's always been proud of that fact, and deeply aware of his duty. But it's only in his middle years that he's understood what this now means to the officials who rule the land in the King's name: that his is the cla.s.s on whom England's tax burden must fall.

Since Peter de la Mare was a boy, in King Edward's early years, the national tax burden has trebled. The officials at Westminster now expect to be kept afloat by impoverished gentlemen such as the ones from Herefords.h.i.+re - even men who can only pay the tax if they sell their land, and lose their status, and, with tears in their eyes, put their sons back to till the soil.

'If it's for the good of England...' de la Mare always used to say to Verney (trying not to see the mute plea in Verney's eyes, but wouldn't my Roger and your little Janey, so pretty, so prosperous, be a good match?), 'then, however hard it seems, we have to pay the King his tax, and keep hope in our hearts.'

But that naive acceptance was before his eyes were opened...

...which they were, three years ago, during his annual visit to St Albans, to his elder brother Thomas, the Abbot there. Thomas, whose obsessive following of the affairs of the nation stems, probably, from his futile lifelong rebellion against their father's decision to take him out of the world and settle him in the Church. Ambitious Thomas, now almost a prince of the Church, whose frequent court cases and elaborate financial arrangements on his wealthy abbey's behalf have given him an insider's view of what's going on in London, and at court. Well-connected Thomas, whose long-standing friends.h.i.+p with the Prince means his opinions have often been tested against the greatest in the land. If anyone understands what's going on at the heart of England, Peter knows, it's Thomas.

'You think it's all for the good of England?' Thomas said, with that hard look that twists his face into ugliness. 'All the sufferings of good, honest men like John Verney?'

And, without another word, he took Peter off to the scriptorium, to look at the abbey's chronicle of current events, kept by the young brother with the fat pink cheeks by whom he seems to set so much store.

What Peter read there changed his life for ever. The chronicle's account, down in plain black and white for anyone to see, talked of the carryings-on at court, the senile King, the grasping Devil's-sp.a.w.n wh.o.r.e, and the cabal of courtiers stealing every penny of his own and John Verney's money that has gone into the royal coffers for years, to spend it on their own ill-deserved comforts and misbegotten brats. As he read it, Peter felt his heart beat faster, and his blood throb in his temples, out of sheer fury at the injustice, the outrageous wrongness, of it.

He went straight back to Hereford and got himself elected to represent the Commons of England - the esquires, the gentlemen, the minor n.o.bility, and the City rich - at the next Parliament.