The People’s Queen. Vanora Bennett

now Alice is in a kindly, glowing, magnanimous frame of mind, having seen the glimmer of a new future in which her position can be quietly consolidated, and she can feel more sure her wealth will be protected after Edward goes, now she is going to have a new patron in Duke John. It’s more of a relief than she expected. She must have been more worried than she knew about what would become of her. Her new serenity means that she is now able to think of other things; of helping people.

      Her thoughts turn to Chaucer. Again. She’s pleased she’s done something good for him. She’s paid her debt, more than, by wangling him that job, which will not only help smooth relations between the Duke and London, if Chaucer does that emollient peacemaking thing he’s so good at, but will also raise Chaucer’s standing. It might even keep that disagreeable wife of his happy that he’s got a bit more money coming in, who knows? It feels so good, Alice reflects, to have done someone else a disinterested favour, for once.

      It’s not just back-patting, what she’s thinking about Chaucer. She’s also remembering the wistfulness in his eyes as he looked out at Essex, saying ‘sometimes even one marriage’, and the wry spark in them when he added that second phrase, the one about ‘the woe in marriage’.

      She likes the way he talks. He’s so hopeless at looking after his own interests, so apparently a fool, but then so intriguing to talk to, and therefore not quite the pushover he seems. He isn’t like anyone she’s ever known. When he says things like that, all sly and mischievous, and his face lights up, he becomes beautiful. She’s surprised at how softly she thinks that.

      Maybe that’s why she’s found herself thinking that no one needs to spend their whole life hustling. Of course, if money comes your way, positively asking to be picked up, then why say no? But in the past few days she’s realised she can’t see the need any longer to make grubbing for gold the whole focus of her existence. No point in getting stuck there. Surely, by now, she’s reached a point in life where she can indulge her higher feelings?

      Because Alice is happy, she’s feeling especially affectionate towards Edward, who is clip-clopping along next to her on his own bay palfrey.

      She’s been remembering, as she rides, as she steals glances at his slumped old body, so tired now, how magnificent he’s looked in the past, tall and thin and energetic in his Garter robes. She’s been remembering him in gold, winning the joust – when he could still joust – and triumphantly bringing out her scarf from his sleeve, and waving it for all to see. She’s been remembering the thrill of his first embrace, of that then-handsome profile, half-seen from very close through her half-shut eyes, her terrified, thrilled thought: Lips anointed by God…touching me…

      She doesn’t usually have time for nostalgia. But today she’s indulging herself. It’s making her kind.

      Alice can’t wait to get to Sheen, because, once they’re there, and she’s settled Edward in, she’s going to tell him the business idea she’s had. (For Alice’s kindness to Chaucer has been rewarded. Back there, in London, while she was sorting things out for him, talking to merchants in his hall, she was struck by an inspired plan, one of those bolts from the blue. God’s blessings.) It’s not a selfish idea, this one; it’s not something that will benefit her. It will benefit Edward. It should make Edward happy – very happy indeed – because it should sort out Edward’s financial troubles for good. And making Edward happy, she thinks, more earnestly than usual, is what she wants most in life. He’s been so good to her. She’s treasuring her idea, looking forward to seeing his face when he hears.

      Meanwhile, she should entertain him…while away the miles…make him laugh.

      ‘Look, a dragonfly,’ she says. She points it out, and, from astride his horse, Edward’s eyes obediently follow. The insect is glittering blue and green above the stream they’re crossing. Alice adds, ‘Same colours as my robe, do you see?’

      Edward’s supposed to chuckle at that – to recognise it as the opening gambit in a game of jewellery-giving. But the eyes he turns to her are blank. He’s all cloudy and confused this morning. Perhaps she should have insisted on a litter. But he was so excited last night at the idea of seeing how his building works were going at Sheen that it never occurred to her he might be like this by daybreak.

      Smiling brightly, because she doesn’t know how to behave with Edward except to flirt like a cheeky girl in the presence of the all-powerful, Alice leans over and takes his hand, as if nothing is wrong. ‘Look,’ she repeats, putting the limp, veined claw to her water-coloured taffeta sleeve. ‘I should have a dragonfly brooch made to go with this, shouldn’t I?’

      He just nods without seeming to understand.

      It’s not the first time; she can’t shake off the unease taking hold of her. Over the next hour, she tries all kinds of things to jog Edward back to his usual self. With that not-worried smile clamped determinedly to her face, she reminds him of how he had the French King John the Good living on English soil as his prisoner for seven years after Poitiers Field, where the Prince of England captured him. England’s most glorious victory, she says, and all yours and your son’s. You really are the king of kings. There’s no reaction. She says, ‘Do you remember? They say John and nineteen knights from his guard dressed identically for battle, to confuse our boys. But we got him anyway.’ She squeezes Edward’s hand. Still limp. ‘Do you remember, afterwards, after he got away again, back to France?’ she whispers with the brightness fading from her voice. ‘How his son escaped too, and the French weren’t paying the ransom for him, but he came back to you, all the way to London – of his own accord – because he didn’t want to dishonour the King of England, who’d treated him so well?’

      Edward smiles vaguely. ‘I remember the pageant when he came back…and the procession,’ she falters. She keeps nodding, like an idiot, trying to force a proper response from him. ‘It was the most exciting thing I’d ever seen…I worshipped you that day…from where I was on the street, at least. No one in that crowd could possibly have been shouting louder than I was. And waving…’

      He nods, and squeezes her hand weakly back. But she’s still not sure he understands.

      It’s a mood, a vapour, she tells herself determinedly; it will pass as soon as he’s rested. She thinks: I’ll send him straight off for a nap when we arrive.

      

      This is how Alice has worked out that Edward can get the money he needs if he is to win the war in France – an outcome which, in turn, might bring Edward himself back to his old glory.

      It’s not simple. But then the problem of getting money for the war has become horribly tangled over the years of fading and failure.

      The only reason that England has not been utterly defeated in France is that, after his humiliation overseas last year, the Duke of Lancaster arranged a one-year truce on shaming terms. There is no money for more fighting, so, very soon, Duke John will have to leave England to negotiate another truce, and keep hostilities on hold for another year. The next talks, at Bruges, will be even more humiliating. English pride would prefer a different outcome. But English finances are not in a state to dream of that.

      King Edward can’t raise enough money for the wars in France nowadays because, back in the good old days of victory, he spent other people’s money so lavishly on warships and destriers and scarlet banners and golden trumpets that he bankrupted the finance houses of Florence and brought trading all over Christendom to a standstill.

      It’s taken decades, but at last the Lombard and Florentine bankers are shakily back on their feet. Yet the Crown of England still owes them thousands upon thousands of pounds, amounts carefully noted in clerk hand on the hundreds of dishonoured bonds and tallies that still flutter on desks and in counting-houses today, bonds as useless for the purposes of trading as the ragged pennants and banners of the knights of England, hanging lifeless and flat in their airless armouries, are for the purposes of war. There will be no new loans from the Italians until those hundreds of old insults to the financiers’ honour, those blows to their pockets, are rubbed out of existence.

      The whisper blows through the court with every