He's married less to a princess than to a chivalrous cause. He's spent the past three years devoted to winning back the throne stolen from Constance of Castile's father by his b.a.s.t.a.r.d brother. But Enrique de Trastamara is still firmly on that throne, and John, on the rare occasions when he now enters Constance's rooms, can understand that the twitter of Castilian from her ladies is not as respectful as it might be.

Castile isn't the only dagger in his side. He's spent the past two years obeying the commands of his father, and his elder brother, those legendary commanders of the past, to win France. There's nothing he wants more than their approval; and there's nothing he more wants their approval for than success in France, the great dream of war that he and his siblings have grown up with. He loves, respects, admires, almost reveres, those two men, no one more, always has; he's done everything in his power to win them the country they want. But...he shuts his eyes against the vast futility of it. Weeks of heaving s.h.i.+p decks, the crash of water on mast, the gut-churning, the screams, the forced return to port - for what else can you do when even the seas and the winds turn out to be your enemy? The landscapes he and his men marched through for all those months, golden, silent, smoking, with every village and church abandoned and empty, every crop gone, or burning, and only the hills full of knowing eyes. Gone, now, Gascony, except for Bordeaux and Bayonne. He's lost the lot. And it's not even that he did anything wrong. He spent the money, he raised the armies, he provided the equipment, he led, bravely enough, from the front. There's nothing that even Edward, his brother, who will for ever be a hero in every Englishman's eyes for taking King Jean of France prisoner on the battlefield, can really reproach him with. He just didn't have the right tides, and winds, and weather. He's unlucky at war. That's all there is to it. At the times when his head aches, as now, he stops being able to remember that he's also known as the best, most dutiful, administrator in the country. There's no corruption, no waste, no mess, in John's Lancastrian lands. He's patron to artists and church-builders and castle-builders and writers (Chaucer, of course, whose spry wit he has always admired; and Stury, likewise; but also the morose John Gower; and Yevele the architect, who can make poetry from stone). John of Gaunt rewards the worthy, hurries the tardy, protects the vulnerable, builds and tends his wealth, is prudent with money, and safeguards the North from the Scots. He keeps his n.o.bles from squabbling. He keeps rivers flowing and fields tended. He loves his children. He looks after his soldiers. He treats his wife with honour. But none of it counts, when this mood is on him; the weight of military failure feels too much to bear.

If John were less taken up with his wish to please his father, by doing well at the French war, he might have been better able to examine this dark, inarticulate misery that comes over him whenever he's called south, and remembers France. It might have occurred to him that, deep down, he doesn't want to fight this war any more. He doesn't believe England has the right to France that his father claims; he doesn't believe England can take the French in battle either, if G.o.d isn't with them. Yet John doesn't know the words to express that belief - because in a land ruled since before most people were born by a warrior-hero King, the words of war are all people understand. Anything else they call failure. People have forgotten the language and virtues of peace, John no less than the rest.

Maybe that's why he's so attracted by men with golden tongues. John loves to listen to Stury, and Chaucer, and Gower, and John Wyclif, his father's eloquent confessor; he's enchanted by the quick play of words between these learned men, like sparks from a fire, or quicksilver. He'll never have that gift, but how intensely he appreciates it in others. If any of those men knew all he knows about the war, he senses, they'd find a way of talking about it that might adequately convey the unease he feels, even to men as pa.s.sionate about, and defined by, the war as John's father and brother. They'd find the words, if they knew. But they don't know. And they never will, because they don't go to the war.

So John keeps quiet, and soldiers on. That's what he was raised to do. It's what he did, before, when his sister-in-law unexpectedly died, doubling his inheritance from Blanche, and evil tongues said he'd poisoned Maud for the money. And when he has to be in the South, exposed to criticism, he lives with his headaches.

No one likes the truce he's been forced to make, for lack of English money, though he's quietly pleased it's allowed him to be out of France, and home. He's spent the months since tucked away in the North, on his lands, avoiding the court, where he's unpopular for having dissipated England's glory, and London, where he's apparently unpopular for having spent the merchants' money in vain on a failed campaign. (As though those limp-muscled moles of traders have a right to care, down in their burrows, counting their bags of coin; they get their interest paid, so what have they got to complain about?) He's just come south to see his father and brother, and do his business at the Savoy, and take the temperature of relations with France. On that front, everything is still inconclusive. There's no money to go on fighting, and, perhaps mercifully, no sign of money coming. So, at year-end, he'll go back to Bruges and try to negotiate another one-year truce.

But, meanwhile, he can return to the North for the summer, away from the complaints, and be at peace. And not alone.

He scans the trailing roses. He's looking for someone under these arches draped in th.o.r.n.y pink. He's looking for the one person who can charm his worries away; charm out the pain behind his eyes.

Not the knot of secretaries pursuing him from the palace side, thinking they're so clever he can't see them skulking there behind that hedge with their papers; they'll ambush him with their quills and ink as soon as he pa.s.ses back into their parallel avenue, hardly breathing with the breathless scale of their ambition. Their transparent cunning only makes him grunt, and, almost, grin. They're afraid of him. People often are, though he doesn't intend them to be. Usually. Anyway, they'll wait.

It's only when he hears a rustle from the other side, the river side, that he looks up. In an instant, the strain goes out of his head. If he could see himself from outside, he'd realise that the forbidding look his lean face so easily takes on has gone, too. His cheeks have lost their pallor. There's colour in his face, hope in his eyes. He looks, suddenly, tender...happy. He moves as fast as a black wind.

Alice bobs, and lifts laughing eyes to the Duke's face. 'Why, my lord,' she says, guilelessly, 'what a happy coincidence...as it happens, I was just thinking, there were a couple of things before you go...if you have a moment?' She's happy to have been able to catch him like this, for a few moments of what may seem to him like casual chat. It makes it almost worthwhile having had to accept the honour of being his d.u.c.h.ess's occasional demoiselle last year, even though Constanza, that pinch-faced sallow thing, never said much to Alice when she came, just lisped demurely away in Castilian to the other yellow-faced recluses and pretended Alice wasn't there. The benefit: Alice now knows some of the ways of the Savoy. She knows where people meet, and where they go to be private. It hasn't been hard to come across the Duke by chance.

She knows he's off any day now on his frantic ducal summer jauntings. To Tutbury Castle, by 26 July, where he's scheduled to find his Castilian lady Constanza and be reunited with her and their toddler daughter (and his son and two daughters from his first marriage, the little princesses now looked after by Katherine Swynford, who'll be heading north with him from here, for a meeting that will, come to that, also include the other de Roet sister, Geoffrey Chaucer's disagreeable wife, who'll be there waiting on d.u.c.h.ess Constanza, and the stuck-up sounding Chaucer children too). Perhaps unsurprisingly, after just five days of all those mothers and babies, he'll be hastily off again by month-end, and on to Leicester for the month of August to do some solid work governing his Duchy. A gallop back to London for 12 September, the anniversary of his first wife's death, the first time he'll have been in England to take part in the procession from the Savoy to St Pauls in the entire six years since she went. Then back north. Tickhill Castle in Yorks.h.i.+re by 22 September. South to the manor of Gringley in Nottinghams.h.i.+re by 23 September. South again, thirty more miles in the next two days, to Lincoln for a week. Then - and how grateful Monseigneur must be of this, after all that rushed time in the saddle - to London for the rest of the year.

She's so concerned for his future fatigue after that busy programme, and so pleased at her cleverness in finding him now, that it takes a moment for her to notice that he does not, altogether, share the pleasure.

He's poking at his forehead with his hand, wrinkling his brow, kneading it with his fingers.

She's dimly aware that, for one brief moment when she first appeared through the archway, and caught his eye, he looked happier. As if he'd been expecting someone.

'Do excuse me, Madame Perrers,' he says, rather faintly. He's dignified, though, and as courteous as if she were a queen. 'Splitting headache. But - talk - of course - delighted.'

And then he waits. Not coldly, exactly, but without noticeable warmth either.

Alice says, uncertainly, feeling the chatty brightness in her voice ring false, wondering if she's done the wrong thing by coming, but banis.h.i.+ng that thought, 'Well, Chaucer...he's settled in. I've been to see him a few times. He's getting on well with Walworth, who's being sworn in this week...It's all started off well.'

There's a faint noise from the tall Duke. Alice isn't sure that he's properly listening, but she takes the plunge anyway. He'll be so pleased to hear what she's got to say next; and he'll have all summer to reflect on how it's all thanks to her.

'Secondly, I've negotiated a deal,' she says, modestly lowering her eyes. 'Which I think will help your cause. I don't know if my lord your father mentioned...?'

He starts to shakes his head, then winces, and half closes his eyes instead.

'I've been lucky enough to be in a position to arrange a loan to the Crown,' she persists valiantly, 'from Richard Lyons. The Flemish vintner. To be signed in the next few days. Twenty thousand...'

She sneaks a look up; Duke John's eyes are closed fully now, his thumb and forefinger pressed above the bridge of his nose. Trying not to be discouraged, she presses on with the detail: the repayments in Italian debt paper, which in turn raise the possibility that the Italians may start lending to England again. She keeps waiting for the joyful smile to break out on his face when he realises he can do what all lords want, as a result of her cleverness, and go back to war.

'...So you can be confident, when you go to the peace talks at the end of the year, that you'll be negotiating from a position of strength,' Alice explains carefully, suppressing her impatience to share a moment of triumph with him, giving him an encouraging smile (is he simply not very intelligent? Why isn't he reacting?). 'At the very least. And, if the talks go badly, you'll probably even be in a position to go back to war. You could start planning a new campaign for next spring.'

In one part of her mind, Alice knows that, if she and Lord Latimer do cash in the discounted Italian debt paper at its full face value, there probably won't won't be much spare money in the royal coffers by year-end. But she has shut that knowledge away, almost forgotten it, at least for the purposes of this discussion: they'll cross that bridge when they come to it. be much spare money in the royal coffers by year-end. But she has shut that knowledge away, almost forgotten it, at least for the purposes of this discussion: they'll cross that bridge when they come to it.

For now, she's just expecting radiant grat.i.tude. Which isn't coming. What's wrong with the man? Why doesn't he do anything?

She's so uncomfortable with her bright voice and her brighter smile by now that she's almost ready to wonder whether he suspects the thing she's not telling him, when John of Gaunt finally nods. She breathes out. But there's no triumph, or even pleasure, in his face. It's the sick, pained nod of someone who's lost in their own physical discomfort, or, possibly, is actually displeased about what he's hearing. Absently, he says, 'Good.' Then, after a few experimental eyebrow wiggles, another 'good'. But what his face seems to be saying, or so it seems to Alice, is 'bad'.

The poor man, Alice thinks, trying to turn her puzzled disappointment at this lackl.u.s.tre reaction into anxiety for him. His pain must be agonising. She's never had a day's illness in her life and usually she is sceptical about other people's illnesses, a.s.suming they are exaggerating their symptoms, but not now. She has never had a headache like that so, she tells herself sternly, how can she hope to imagine the pain? More's the pity, she's sent her friar who understands medicine to Pallenswick, where she'll be sleeping tonight. But perhaps she should call at an apothecary in London, and send Monseigneur a potion. She's told him about the deal, which is the important thing. For now, he's too sick to express his appreciation. But once he's better, if she's been solicitous enough, he'll appreciate her concern almost as much as her commercial nous.

'I'm so sorry for your pain,' she says with real sympathy. But she can't leave him just yet. 'There was just one other thing.'

The Duke looks at her again with those dead-fish eyes, expecting nothing from her.

She sees she should go. But she has to say this. She knows it for another good idea.

It's Chaucer who first came up with this suggestion, for Alice has been dropping in on Chaucer fairly frequently, on the trips from Sheen to London she's been making to finalise the Lyons deal. He's so sharp-witted and so sweet with her that he's got behind her defences; she likes to sit and chat with him, as if she had nothing better to do. She finds excuses to visit him. It's years since she had a friend like him.

Chaucer doesn't know about the Lyons deal, of course. She's not telling anyone, except the Duke, till it's happened. (Even then, she's not going to tell anyone, ever, about the secret part. That's just for her and Lord Latimer and Lyons to know.) But she likes the way Chaucer worries about the public finances, like the conscientious official he is, and the way he's been talking long and honestly to her about his concerns (especially when he's a little tipsy, she's noticed; so Alice has made a point of making sure he's lavishly supplied with wine). Since Chaucer's started spending so much time with Walworth and the oligarch merchants, he's understood better than before how hard it's always going to be for the Crown to wring money out of either merchants or - if they ever dare call another Parliament - the people: the knights and small landlords. And Chaucer loves the King and the Duke, in that straightforward way that men do love the leaders who've been good to them; he's been putting his mind to helping them.

What Alice is about to suggest to the Duke is, she thinks, the best idea Chaucer's had. She smiles affectionately as she remembers the conversation. Chaucer laughing, with a bright, excited look in his eyes, as he said, 'Well, I can think of another source of money for the King...And I can tell you something for nothing: tapping that source would make the King very popular in London - or the Duke, if it was by his order...'

'What other source?' Alice said quickly.

'He should be getting money out of the Church, of course.'

Incredulously, Alice laughed back. What, go on bended knee to the Pope, or Archbishop? And come away with bags of money in your hand? She replied, 'Don't be silly, Chaucer. That's about as likely to happen as h.e.l.l freezing over.'

But Chaucer wasn't crushed by her friendly scorn. He's braver than you'd think, once he gets going with an idea. He just said, in the voice of someone who enjoyed arguing, 'Well, there are already people saying the Church should be stripped of its wealth. That it should be poor as Christ himself was...It's one of the things Stury says, for instance.' He couldn't restrain a grin at Stury's name, for it's hard to take the poetical knight's whimsical religious feelings seriously, so Chaucer rushed on, more earnestly: 'And there are people inside the Church who say the same sort of thing, too. Think of Wyclif.'

Wyclif. At first Alice conjured up the picture of Edward's chaplain without great enthusiasm. John Wyclif is a doctor of divinity at Oxford, a man in his forties, a person of indifferent, blunt, mid-height, mid-brown looks, with a chubby curve to his jaw and a fles.h.i.+ness to his lower lip. He's made it his life's work to disapprove of things. He disapproves of the war, for instance; says it's vainglorious. He disapproves of monks. And he disapproves of his wealthy masters in the Church of Rome. You'd never think Wyclif attractive to look at, even when he opens his plain face to you in a smile of unusual beauty and openness - until he speaks. He has a cultured voice, a dark, rich, melancholy voice, with a tremble of tragedy never quite absent. Women turn round and go thoughtful and a little pink-cheeked at that voice. Men fall silent. Even Alice has felt its power.

People who have heard Wyclif often find themselves enthusiastically converted to, and preaching and repreaching his pa.s.sionately expressed belief: that there are too many ecclesiastical foundations, on every street corner, in every field, and each of them rich as Croesus already, yet always with their hands out asking for more. He says it's time the Church gave up these ill-gotten gains, and rediscovered G.o.d.

There's a lot of that kind of talk already doing the rounds in London, a city whose walls are lined with monasteries and abbeys, and whose citizens are constantly having to put their hands in their pockets for whitefriars, blackfriars, greyfriars, pinkfriars, anyfriars. But for now, their resentful fundamentalism is quiet talk in the privacy of homes. The baleful glares of the big three victuallers - especially Walworth, who wants to keep civic and religious life pretty much as it is, doesn't like any kind of dissent, and appears at every ceremony beside William Courtenay, the Bishop of London - stop too much anti-clerical grumbling being heard in public.

Wyclif frightens Alice a bit. She thinks all that humourless magnetism dangerous.

But, as soon as she heard Chaucer say the prelate's name, she liked the inspired idea of having the Duke take Wyclif up and champion him. She liked it partly for the serious reason that Wyclif might indeed show the way to get the Crown a windfall of Church money, if he gave the Crown a template - a bit of memorable phrasing, a form of reasoning that everyone in the land would agree with - to justify merging some failing monasteries, confiscating some land and gold plate, and enjoying the profits. But Alice liked the idea most of all for its unserious side, because of the mischievous fun she also saw in it: the Duke and Wyclif collecting in money, the war coffers filling from the sale of Church property, Londoners praising the Duke's policy, while Walworth and his tame Bishop, guardians of the status quo, would have to stand crossly by with their noses well and truly out of joint. It was childish, Alice knew, but the idea of annoying them made her splutter with laughter.

She thought at once: Yes, I'll suggest that to the Duke. She knew at once, too, that she wasn't going to credit Chaucer with having had the idea.

Duke John knows it's a good idea too, as soon as she says the word 'Wyclif'.

Now the grat.i.tude's there, all right. His eyes fix on her: rapt attention as he considers the idea; then nods; then, as the smartness of it sinks in, admiring nods. Head to one side, mouth relaxing and broadening into a smile.

He takes her arm. His headache is forgotten. Again, he gives her that warm, surprised, look, that look of intimacy, of - almost - love. It seems to Alice to say, 'You could be my future.'

But all he says is one word. 'How?' he asks.

'Oh, any number of ways,' she replies glibly. She ticks some off on her fingers. 'Have him at your side. Give him a job. At the end of the year, take him with you to the next peace talks...to Bruges.'

Duke John murmurs, 'Take him with me...have Wyclif at the talks,' as if nothing could give him greater pleasure. He mutters, 'Yes.' She sees colour stealing back into his cheeks.

How strange, she thinks, confused, that he should be so unenthusiastic about one apparently perfect idea, which is actually being put into practice, then so overwhelmed by the next, which is so much vaguer.

It's wrong-footed her, this topsy-turvy reaction. She wants to understand him. And this...well, she doesn't understand it, quite.

But after a moment's suspended breath, she lets her worry go. She tells herself it doesn't matter. All that matters is that he's pleased about one of her ideas. He understands how useful she and her ideas could be in guiding his policy. Looking at his surprise and appreciation now - for she can see he hasn't really expected her to come back with anything this good - she's surprised, too, at the warmth inside herself, the great deep breath she draws into herself and then joyously lets go.

This is just the beginning.

She bows. She knows the rules of flirtation, and, even if this relations.h.i.+p is more about advancement and self-advancement than love, the rules are the same. She'll go now, while he wants more. She says, 'I won't hold you up any longer,' throws him a last smile, and makes off towards the palace, almost dancing through the little gaggle of secretaries hiding behind their bush.

She can feel his eyes, warm on her back. She's not looking, but she knows he's smiling.

There is a rustle from the river side of the walkway.

John of Gaunt looks around.

A tall blonde female form is waiting, motionless, under an archway. There are roses trailing past her shoulders. Katherine Swynford has the gift of quiet. She doesn't smile. There is a happiness inside her that needs no external expression to s.h.i.+ne out.

'Were you here all along?' he asks as he reaches her, bending his body towards and around hers. She shakes her head. She has the neck of a swan, he thinks.

She raises an eyebrow towards Alice Perrers' departing back. It is all part of the blessed peace of her that she doesn't ask unnecessary questions. 'A detail,' he explains, and his happiness grows when she nods, as if that's the end of it.

If there is one skill he does believe he is at last beginning to master, it's chivalry. He lost himself, long ago, in the long blonde loveliness of Blanche, his first wife; he'd have obeyed any order she gave, gone on any quest. He was young, then, and everything seemed simple and beautiful. But then she died. And, after that, everything else went wrong for years; there was so much more loss. His mother, gone, years ago now, while he was away in France; his father, so strange and absent-minded in age; his brother Edward, ill, and Joan, whom he used to adore, become cold and hardened by their family pain. Their tight-lipped little boy, Richard, his nephew, who hardly speaks. His own second wife, Constanza, locking herself away with the hard-eyed Castilian ladies and sallow little Catalina. Dust, ashes, ashes...

And then, one day, two years ago, with the needling Castilian in the background, a door opened, and there she was, in a shaft of sunlight: dear, familiar Katherine, who's always been underfoot, somewhere around at court, a good bit younger than him, a child. Whose loveliness suddenly looked so breathtakingly strange.

In that moment, John of Gaunt understood he'd found the meaning of his life. France, the war...everything else, in these past two years, has become distraction.

He can't be with her all the time, although in his secret heart of hearts a picture has begun to form of the two of them in a rose bower, at peace...

The reality of his life is that it hasn't been easy to be quietly together, even for a few days here and there, in the years since they found each other. She has her responsibilities, he has his. It's not just his wife, and France, that come between them. She's a war widow with four children being raised in Lincolns.h.i.+re. They've taken what precious secret time together they can. It's never been enough.

He was away in France, eighteen months ago, when she gave birth to his son, christened John Beaufort, in secret, from the court at least, at her manor house in Lincolns.h.i.+re. But they were both back at the Savoy in the spring. She came to London as soon as she was churched - just six weeks after being brought to bed. 'I wanted to see you,' she said simply. And everything was transformed when she was back: the very air brighter. She looked as young and slender as ever; unchanged by childbirth. How he wanted to see the child - his son. But he couldn't, of course. The baby was with a wet nurse at Kettlethorpe.

All he could do to show his love was to free Katherine from the deceit and embarra.s.sment of her job serving his wife Constance. He gave her a separate duty, making her magistra magistra to the daughters of his first marriage, giving the two little girls their own household, semi-detached from the rest of his court. to the daughters of his first marriage, giving the two little girls their own household, semi-detached from the rest of his court.

That would be a way to make it easier for him to see Katherine more, or so he thought. How wrong he was about that. By summer, he was off back to France, rushed on by the demands of the Crown, for more duty, more war, and more humiliation - nearly a year of it. By the time he finally took little John in his arms, the child was already walking; almost talking.

John's heard people make up ugly, despicable, whispered motivations for his loss of zeal for France. There's even a ludicrous rumour that he's loitering here in England, making truces with the French, because he's waiting for Edward to die, so he'll be at hand and can seize the moment to steal the throne of England from little Richard, his nephew. His lips thin at that memory. How people - merchants, those non-fighting fools of men, who have wormed their way into his father's trust with their money-bags and their sly eyes and their fat, comfortable, lives - can let filth like this into their minds, he doesn't know. How anyone who has ever talked to him him could believe such a thing of him is beyond him. No, could believe such a thing of him is beyond him. No, this this is the real reason for his private weariness of the business of war: the armies, the expeditions, the sea pa.s.sages. Not the softness of age, not the slyness of treachery. She is. Love is. is the real reason for his private weariness of the business of war: the armies, the expeditions, the sea pa.s.sages. Not the softness of age, not the slyness of treachery. She is. Love is.

So John is grateful, in a remote way, for hints and tips and nods and policy ideas and bits of advice from these bright-eyed, busy, clever, adviser types pus.h.i.+ng themselves forward: the Perrerses, the Latimers. They offer glimpses of possibilities which his father has never dreamed of. They have to be heard out.

But all he really wants is to be allowed this rare moment away from duty, alone with his lady, in peace, under a blue sky and a drift of roses, with only the doves breaking the silence, letting her smooth away his headache with her long white fingers.

A part of him is still thinking bits of ordinary, everyday, not unkind thoughts - 'I know a lot of people don't like Madame Perrers...pushy...common...but...clever too...don't see the harm in her myself' - when Katherine puts her mouth up close to his ear (she's as aware as he is of the secretaries behind the hedge) and whispers, 'Can you believe? We're going to have a baby...another baby...'

After that, he sees nothing, nothing, but the blue of Katherine Swynford's eyes.

A month later, when the Duke is already at Leicester (or perhaps, secretly, at Kettlethorpe with his lady) and Alice Perrers on her summer circuit between Sheen, or Havering, or Eltham, or Westminster, she is quietly pleased to hear, through her friend Lord Latimer, that John Wyclif has been given the Crown living of Lutterworth in Leicesters.h.i.+re, and has also been invited to accompany the Duke of Lancaster to Bruges next January, for the negotiations over the French truce and the threatened papal taxes.

That idea may bear more fruit later. Meanwhile, for the rest of that summer and autumn, Alice will be busy. Like Wyclif, she's been taking on new property. In 1374, so far, she has personally taken possession of the manor of Pallenswick, west of the riverside village of Hammersmith, and the nearby manor of Gunnersbury. Her business a.s.sociates, the land agents whose work she directs from her City home, have acquired on her behalf the manors of Culworth in Northamptons.h.i.+re, Fillyngley in Nottinghams.h.i.+re, Farndon in Northamptons.h.i.+re, and Kingham, near Oxford. The papers aren't through yet, but Edward has also promised to grant her several small Crown estates that have come free: the manors of Wantage in Berks.h.i.+re, Bentham in Salop, Whittington in Salop, Stanton Fitzwarren in Wilts.h.i.+re, and Crofton in Wilts.h.i.+re, all from the Fitz Waryn lands. There'll be work to be done on all these properties, sprucing them up for rental.

Mostly, though, Alice is enjoying the first fruits of her other money-raising idea: redeeming the Italian loans from the royal exchequer and taking her cut. She spends the first instalment of cash she receives from Lord Latimer on ordering a very expensive hanging for the great hall at Pallenswick. It is to show Delilah, sneaking up on Sampson, snipping off his hair. She asks for extra gold thread to be worked through everything.

NINE.

'I think I'm drunk,' says a surprised Chaucer. 'A littlebitdrunk.'

Alice laughs comfortably. She refills his cup.

How Alice darts around you. She's here, there and everywhere, fetching this, signalling to servants there, showing you one thing or another, affectionately ruffling the top of your head as she pa.s.ses. There's no stopping her. She must have had his cup filled far more often than he's realised. She's been making him dizzy for a while, all that das.h.i.+ng about. Bewildering. Especially since the walls started waving and wobbling too.

She's been showing him her new manor, at Pallenswick near Hammersmith, which she isn't going to leave her men to manage, but will use herself as a retreat from London and Sheen. The house, unused since the Mortality, is old and decaying, with holes in the roof and buckets on the floor and the mournful smell of damp everywhere. She's going to knock down most of it, and rebuild. But the park behind is full of trees with gold-green leaves, and the river sparkles through the windows ahead. And, even inside, she's already made pockets of portable luxury: a corner of the great hall, where the roof's sound, screened off with thick, lovely, colourful, draught-proof hangings, where she's sitting with Chaucer at a table, feeding and watering him with the gold cups and jewelled knives she's brought here.

These objects, so at odds with the dinge-spotted walls, make Chaucer uneasy. He's been uncomfortable since before the walls started behaving so strangely.

She shouldn't have so much gold on show, he thinks. He knows why, most of the time. It's just now, when he wants to tell her, that the reason escapes him.

She sits down again; there's mischief in her gleaming eyes as she grins up at him. 'Wrong to be drunk, Chaucer,' she's teasing. 'Sinful. Look what drink did to poor old Lot. Drunk as a drowned mouse, lying next two his two daughters, and, before any of them knew where they were...' She moves her fingers lewdly, thrusting one through two others, giving him a knowing look. 'So you take care.'

He doesn't care about Lot. Dirty old man. He cares about...'Too mush gold,' he slurs uncertainly. He never manages to tell her this thing, the thing that's always on his mind, except that now he's got her attention he's gone and forgotten it. But he's been trying for weeks now. 'Too mush...'

'Too much wine, I'd say,' Alice snips back. 'But never mind...I like you even when you're a bit cranberry-eyed.'

She's very pretty, wavering over there. Lovely smile. Lovely shoulders. He stares vaguely in the direction of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

'Drunk,' he says disconsolately. 'Never should have. Abominable stuff, drink. Sour breath. Foul to embrace. Can't keep secrets. 'Sgusting. Your throat a privy.' Then he says, 'So tired...do you mind if I lie down?' He knows she won't. She's his friend. Dearest friend in the world. Wonderful woman, Alice. She's laughing softly as she leads him off to an antechamber with cus.h.i.+ons.