Then he blushes. He's given away the fact that he's been prying into her past all afternoon now, hasn't he? 'If that isn't an impertinent question,' he adds hastily. But he isn't too mortified. With Alice Perrers, he's beginning to feel, he can ask, at least. She won't hold a spirit of enquiry against him.

He's right. She doesn't look offended. She even hesitates, as if she might confide in him. There are memories in her eyes. For the first time, Chaucer sees the beauty of her.

But all she ends up saying, as Chaucer goes on looking expectantly into her eyes, is, 'Oh...I hardly remember. A day on the river...cygnets and ducklings...liverymen notching their beaks...a lot of laughing...spring in the air, I expect. But you know how it is. It seems so important at the time, but then you forget...'

Her voice grows lighter and more playful with every phrase. The moment has pa.s.sed. She isn't going to tell him anything.

He shrugs. There's something delicious in this conversation, even without the kind of confidences he's been fis.h.i.+ng for. So he doesn't much care.

But she isn't just teasing him. He can tell from the little furrow that now appears on her forehead - which, strangely enough, makes her look very young for a moment, not old - that she's thinking something serious, too.

'You know, Chaucer,' she adds (by now he likes the way she just calls him 'Chaucer'), 'I think people worry far too much about where they're from. It's not the past that counts, or where you're from. It's where you're going, and what you do when you get there. That's That's what matters.' what matters.'

Chaucer thinks this over, and finds that the honesty in this matter-of-fact statement of her ambition pleases him more than he might have expected it to. This clarity of hers must be what has so impressed the merchants. He thinks: I'll do what they do in future and forget her past. No point asking foolish questions.

There's another pause. The red begins to bleed out of the shadows.

She's staring out again at the greying fields. Without turning towards him, with her eyes fixed out there somewhere, she adds, with that near-wistfulness she's had earlier, that he took for the beginning of sincerity, 'Anyway, you can marry all you want...but there's only one person you ever truly love, isn't there?'

Chaucer wonders, but can't for the life of him tell, whether she means the King.

Chaucer goes to sleep in a mostly happy blur of impressions and memories, the majority of them concerning his new friends.h.i.+p with Alice Perrers. But when he wakes up before dawn with a pounding headache, full of worries again, what he remembers most clearly is that quiet, strange moment between Alice Perrers, and Lyons, and Latimer: the three of them muttering together, glancing quickly at each other, egging each other on to something he couldn't grasp.

Even when he thinks back on it now, in the scratchy predawn, tossing in his bed, reaching for the water jug, he can't imagine what that conversation can have been about.

FIVE.

'Why was Richard Lyons with us yesterday?' Chaucer asks through his headache. 'When he's a vintner?'

Walworth, who until July, when his mayoral job begins, will represent the City at the wool trade, looks up from his desk across the hall. Chaucer sees the fishmonger's lean jaw clench, and the beautiful peaceful eyes go flinty, so you can see that, despite the angel's golden hair, he'd be a bad man to cross.

Then the merchant's eyes clear and his wry smile comes, transforming the fighter back into a charmer. 'Ah,' Walworth says, easily. 'You mean you don't know why Lyons needed to meet the wool comptroller, since his business has nothing to do with wool?'

The clerks at each man's desk also look up. Chaucer's one puts down his quill. There are faint, expectant smiles on both pink young faces. Chaucer can practically see them craning forward.

Chaucer's feeling a little wary now. He never expected such a strong reaction. But he nods.

'As it happens, we'd all like to know the answer to that question, dear boy,' Walworth says, nodding to the inquisitive clerks to go back to their columns of figures. They bow their heads. Then Walworth smiles a little wider, till his flawlessly ivory teeth glint in the sun. 'Just why is is Master Lyons so interested in the wool business, when, as you say, he's a vintner?' Master Lyons so interested in the wool business, when, as you say, he's a vintner?'

Walworth does tell Chaucer what he thinks of the Flemish vintner, but only later, at midday, outside the Customs House, and out of the clerks' earshot. He links arms with Chaucer and walks him up Water Lane to Thames Street. He has to lean down and sideways to reach, and to murmur in, Chaucer's ear. He's tall and wiry, and as strong as a knight in the lists.

'We are very glad,' he begins, with what to Chaucer's ear sounds unnecessary formality, 'all of us, that it is you who have been chosen as comptroller - a man we in the City can talk to without reserve. Someone we can trust.'

Chaucer bows, out of courtesy and pleasure combined. Perhaps he's just being flattered. But his own instinct, likewise, is to trust the three merchants he's trying not to think of as Uncle Will, Uncle Nichol, and Uncle John. Still, he's puzzled. The subtext of everything he's been told in the past few weeks of briefings is that his job in London will be to stop these three men expanding their interests beyond what is proper, and taking for themselves what is rightfully the King's. Yet, in this deep, comforting, familiar voice, he already hears a note of appeal. as if William Walworth and his friends fear that their own rightful interests are being eaten into.

Walworth's saying: 'Ever since I've held office in the City, we merchants have been complaining to the King that he was selling Italians too many special licences to export wool from England without paying customs to you' - he bows at Chaucer the Customs Comptroller - 'as all Englishmen have to. We've complained long and loudly. And, it seems, he heard us. For at least two, maybe three years, no more licences have been granted to Italians.'

Chaucer has to half jog to keep up with Walworth's stride. He puffs, 'Yes?'

'But someone else has has been granted a special licence.' Walworth turns and arches an eyebrow. He wants Chaucer to guess who. It's a test of Chaucer's wit. been granted a special licence.' Walworth turns and arches an eyebrow. He wants Chaucer to guess who. It's a test of Chaucer's wit.

'Lyons,' Chaucer puffs, suddenly seeing it all - exactly how Lyons has become so rich, and why the merchants, who so obviously dislike and mistrust the Fleming, are nevertheless cautiously trying to bind him closer, and buy his loyalty to them, by giving him a post in their City administration. And why they're smarting.

Walworth nods. He looks pleased with Chaucer's quick response.

'We arrested some men at Southampton a week or so ago,' he confirms. 'They were loading cargo there. Sacks and sacks of wool, on a s.h.i.+p bound for Flanders. No stop at London or Middleburg planned, where they would have to pay customs. Naturally we tried to confiscate the cargo. My wool investigators are allowed to, even outside London, whenever they find contraband (and we'd had a tip-off that that's what this would be). But we couldn't, with this cargo, because there was nothing illegal about it. The men had a licence. An absolutely official licence, all green sealing-wax and royal stamps, straight from the King's administration. Made out to Richard Lyons.'

Chaucer wishes he could catch his breath.

'The King...wrote...Lyons a licence?' he pants. 'Himself?' He doesn't want to believe the King would have done down the merchants if he'd promised them not to sell any more foreigners any more special licences. Like everyone in the King's service, and in the country, he adores the old man. But he's heard about too many slips - and seen that fleeting, amused look in the royal eye too often - to know that loving the King and trusting him, at least with money, can't always be quite the same thing.

The whole business with special licences has always been pure foolishness, in any case. In principle, the King is cheating his own royal coffers - and therefore himself - by selling foreigners the right not to pay England's wool tax. But for a King who's always short of money, right here, right now, who's constantly scrabbling around for the coin to put down on that war-horse, or castle wing, or costume, on top of all the war expenses...well, in practice, it's tempting, any offer of a bag of actual gold, in the hand, no questions asked. Of course it is. Chaucer understands that. And as for the King breaking his royal word to Walworth and the other merchants, well, Chaucer can imagine how the King might finesse that, too. He can see Edward telling himself, with a bit of a grin, that even if he's promised not to sell any more licences to Italians, if it's a Fleming Fleming who comes along, offering the right price, why, that's quite a different matter... who comes along, offering the right price, why, that's quite a different matter...

There's resignation in Walworth's laugh. 'Things are never that simple with my lord the King,' he says. 'No, he didn't write the licence himself.'

Chaucer's panting, and guessing, ever more wildly by now. 'A forgery?' he says, trying not to sound too hopeful. He'd rather it was that.

Walworth shakes his head. 'Not that, either...the licence was signed', he says sadly, 'by Baron Latimer. It was quite legal. He's the chamberlain. He's authorised to sign on the King's behalf. The King's hand wasn't on it, but he must have known.'

'But then...' Chaucer is utterly out of his depth by now. So the licence was legal, and the King just slyly hiding behind his servant's signature. That much he's got straight, now. But what he can't for the life of him see is how Richard Lyons ever met the King to do this private deal in the first place? Flemish merchants don't go running around at court without an introduction, and Walworth, who is sometimes received at court, would obviously never take along a chancer like Lyons. Someone else must have taken him to the King. But who?

It is only now that the other, separate, picture Chaucer woke up with today comes back into his mind. Latimer looking at Lyons, and Lyons looking back across Chaucer's table, groaning with all that food provided by Alice Perrers. And Alice in between them, eyes darting from one to the other, and a little smile on her lips...

'...Mistress Perrers,' he says flatly. Of course. He's known all along, really, bar the details. It will be Mistress Perrers who's introduced the foreign merchant to the King, or simply made the deal for him without an introduction. She likes money, and she likes stirring things up, just for fun. She enjoyed putting Philippa's nose out of joint with her feast, Chaucer saw yesterday, as much as she enjoyed making sure that the merchants were being properly fed. She'll be taking a cut from this, just as Latimer will be. She has fingers in every pie, doesn't she?

He shakes his head in reluctant admiration. You have to admire Mistress Perrers' sheer audaciousness. Suggesting to him that he should be keeping watch on Walworth and his men, while all along she knows that if there's mischief in the City, it's happening somewhere entirely different; somewhere much closer to her own good self. No, there are no flies on her... her...

Chaucer's almost smiling at this new insight into his new patron when Walworth interrupts his reverie by grunting with satisfaction and squeezing his arm.

'You were always a bright boy,' he says. Then, more hesitantly: 'Of course, I can't swear this is true, but they do say that the house Mistress Perrers got in the City last year was a gift from Master Lyons...'

He stops walking. He's going to turn left down Thames Street, while Chaucer's going to go straight over. The thoroughfare is crowded with salesmen shouting their wares. Elbows and baskets and carts knock into both men as the streams of human traffic part and sweep on past them. But neither Walworth nor Chaucer notice. Their eyes are locked. Walworth isn't quite ready to bow farewell.

'And of course, what really worries me is who might be behind Mistress Perrers, trying to undermine...' Walworth pauses, searching fastidiously for the right word, then settling for, '...us.' Chaucer understands him to mean us us narrowly: the trio of merchant princes with power in the City. It doesn't actually include narrowly: the trio of merchant princes with power in the City. It doesn't actually include him. him. Still, he's flattered to be honoured by Walworth's confidences so soon in their adult relations.h.i.+p. And he wants to know more, of course. He wants to know why Walworth thinks Alice Perrers has gone to the trouble of putting Chaucer in the City, and of sending him off on this wild-goose chase of suspecting the top merchants are dishonest, while they nurse their own quiet fears about Still, he's flattered to be honoured by Walworth's confidences so soon in their adult relations.h.i.+p. And he wants to know more, of course. He wants to know why Walworth thinks Alice Perrers has gone to the trouble of putting Chaucer in the City, and of sending him off on this wild-goose chase of suspecting the top merchants are dishonest, while they nurse their own quiet fears about her. her.

Chaucer waits for Walworth to go on.

But then the future Mayor looks down at him, and, almost regretfully, puts his lips together. He begins gently to shake his head, as if wondering at himself. With a visible change of mood, he says, much more briskly, 'Listen to me, gossiping away like a Billingsgate fishwife - and you hungry and looking forward to your dinner. Age, dear boy, age. You'll have to forgive me.' He turns, and, smiling gaily over his shoulder, says, brightly, 'Till tomorrow.'

No point in showing disappointment. Chaucer waves and bobs his own cheerful bow. Thoughtfully he crosses Thames Street. But, on the other side, he stops again, looking back at the crowds packing the busy street without really seeing them. Who was Walworth about to say he suspected of being 'behind' the s.h.i.+fty money-making tactics of Mistress Perrers and Richard Lyons? And what stopped him finis.h.i.+ng that thought?

It can't have been, can it, that for some reason, remembered at the last minute, long after he'd started confiding, William Walworth has suddenly got it into his head that he should also be wary of him, Geoffrey Chaucer?

Chaucer shakes his head in wonderment. What would have given the merchant that idea? It can't surely have been something he said?

He shrugs. He can't think what he can have said, or done. He probably won't be able to guess, either. Not yet. He doesn't know enough about the City yet.

So Chaucer's about to turn around again and head on home, towards the dinner he'll buy at a cookshop somewhere (no point in keeping a houseful of cooks if there's just him to look after) when he notices a tall gold-and-silver head back on Thames Street, sticking out above the crowd, a few yards down from where he and Walworth have just parted.

Walworth, like him, has stopped, deep in thought, and is looking back unseeingly at the people, towards where Chaucer was standing a few moments before. Even at this distance, Chaucer can see him slowly shaking his head.

It is later still before Chaucer finally puzzles out what was on Walworth's mind. Late enough that it's dark, and the torches are at their windy last gasp out on the terrace where he's sitting with Stury, looking out over the rus.h.i.+ng water at the fire of stars above.

It's Stury who explains. The knight is pouring out more wine with an unsteady hand (unsteady because they have been here for hours, since before sunset, and they haven't bothered much with supper, because what do two poets need with food when they can drink and admire the view?).

'Your merchant friend was going to say he thinks Madame Perrers is the Duke of Lancaster's creature,' Stury says with hazy p.r.o.nunciation but complete certainty.

'Well,' Chaucer says, after a pause. 'Is she?'

He's not aware of any relations.h.i.+p between Alice Perrers and the King's son; the only time he's ever even seen them talk was at that ball, right after Princess Joan threw the wine. But unravelling what goes on in the City is making him realise how little he knows about anything. Nothing would surprise him any more.

Stury lifts his shoulders. 'Not that I know of, dear boy,' he says blithely. 'Though with her, who can say? Always two steps ahead, that one.' He raises the cup towards the full moon (he's given to toasting the G.o.ddess Diana), and then, after drinking the top inch, goes back to talking. 'All I can tell you for sure...no love lost between the Duke and Master Walworth and company here in the City, we all know that. If La Perrers and Lyons have got some scheme going, Walworth's automatically going to put one and one together and make three, and see the Duke lurking in the background.'

Chaucer nods. That makes a kind of sense. The Duke's hostility to the big three merchants is well known. He wants them humbled. So Walworth might easily imagine that the Duke is sponsoring a rival clique to unseat his City government, or just that the Duke is turning a quiet penny by protecting that rival clique. Chaucer's immediate reaction is that there can't be any actual truth in any of it, of course. The Duke's not only the soul of honour. He's also the richest man in the land. So he certainly doesn't need money from dubious City deals; and he surely wouldn't take it if it were offered.

Chaucer likes Duke John. The two men are of an age; they've crossed paths often at court; there's always been affection between them. Chaucer remembers the Duke's grief when his first wife died. Chaucer even wrote a poem in memory of that first d.u.c.h.ess. The Duke was grateful. Chaucer knows him for a man who can love deeply. And Chaucer admires that, the more so now that he knows how complicated marriage can be. He doesn't necessarily think the Duke's idea for a wife for him was the right choice; but giving him Philippa as a bride was well meant. He's grateful. He also admires the Duke's loyalty. John of Gaunt looked after him and Philippa (and her sister, Katherine) financially after that first wife's death cost the two girls their jobs as demoiselles. The Duke arranged their pensions. He lets the Chaucer children share the lessons of his daughters, when at court. Chaucer's also grateful that the Duke (unlike Philippa) admires his poetry, and has invited him to more than one court evening to read it out. He's even sympathetic to the Duke's brusqueness of manner, in which he sees shyness, not arrogance. The Duke takes pains. You can't not respect that.

But Chaucer is a man of measure. After a moment, he realises that when it comes to judging whether the Duke might dislike Walworth and his independent-minded London friends enough to encourage a rival clique, just to bring down his enemies...to destabilise London's leaders.h.i.+p purely out of spite...well, Chaucer doesn't really know enough. Yet.

He certainly doesn't understand why Stury's mouth is beginning to twitch.

'You don't know why Walworth got cold feet and ran off in the middle of that conversation, do you?' Stury's saying. He stops, waiting for Chaucer to catch up with the joke, grinning encouragingly at him.

When Chaucer's face fails to lighten, Stury drains the rest of his cup and bangs it down on the table. 'Sharpen your wits, dear boy,' he says mock-warningly. But he's still almost snuffling with barely restrained laughter. 'Welcome to the undeclared war of London. It's because it suddenly occurred to poor Walworth that, even if he likes you, even if he thinks of you as "that clever Chaucer boy, I've always said he'd make good", he can't trust you either...'

Chaucer has no idea what's so funny. 'But why?' he says, baffled. 'Why?'

Stury bursts out: 'Because he's bound to think you're you're the Duke of Lancaster's creature too, of course!' the Duke of Lancaster's creature too, of course!'

'But...' Chaucer begins to stammer through the splutters across the table. He's about to say, in the tones of an injured innocent, 'But I'm not. I'm the King's man.' Which, at least in a formal sense, is true. But then all the other circ.u.mstantial things come rus.h.i.+ng back into his head too - the pensions and the school lessons and the fact that he's known to admire the Duke and the job obtained for him by Alice, whom Walworth suspects of being in the Duke's pocket - and he realises that, yes, someone who fears the Duke might might indeed see Chaucer's appointment as just another part of some dark design by the Duke. indeed see Chaucer's appointment as just another part of some dark design by the Duke.

Then the sight of Stury, now helpless with laughter at the idea of him, Chaucer, plotting for financial or political gain, gets to him. He picks up his cup. He drains it. He's shaking his head at this first dizzying glimpse of how busily people in this City, peaceful though they seem, actually hate and fear and suspect each other. Stury's right; it is is all so absurd that it's funny. Whatever happens to him in London, he's beginning to see, at least, that he'll never be bored. After a moment, he too begins, rather hesitantly, to chuckle. all so absurd that it's funny. Whatever happens to him in London, he's beginning to see, at least, that he'll never be bored. After a moment, he too begins, rather hesitantly, to chuckle.

SIX.

As far as you can see, forward and back, are horses' rumps, fat and sheeny, some carrying people, some loaded with carpets and hangings and cus.h.i.+ons, some pulling carts piled with boxes and cups and dishes, but all ambling forward through Surrey towards the palace at Sheen.

Alice rides along through the spit of rain in a glow of contentment.

She's aware of boys putting sacking over ladies' knees up and down the train, to protect them in case the drizzle gets heavier. There are geese honking 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 a.s.sessors 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 n.o.blemen 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 w.a.n.gling 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 Ess.e.x, 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 G.o.d...touching me... 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. G.o.d'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.