London

  “A duck?” The clerk looked disappointed.

  “In a river,” Ducket said.

  It turned out to be not as simple as Ducket had supposed. His first suggestion, a green duck on a blue background was instantly vetoed. “You can’t put one colour on top of another,” the clerk explained. “You put gold or silver on a colour, or a colour on gold or silver. It shows up better. We often suggest a river by some wavy bands across the field,” his guide suggested. “Let me show you.”

  And so it was, some time later, that Ducket found himself gazing at a sketch of a shield. The background was silver – which could also be shown as white. Across the middle ran two thick wavy bands of blue, for the river. And there were three red ducks, two above and one below the blue wavy bands. All of which, naturally, had to be given the correct heraldic description, known as the Blazon.

  “Argent, two Bars Wavy Azure, between three Ducks Gules,” the clerk announced firmly. “The arms of Ducket.”

  The figure who stood before the court in Rochester Castle had clearly seen better days. His black coat was badly stained. The tunic, though of expensive material, was worn. He was, perhaps, not aware that in the back of his hose there was a small, round hole through which the flesh could be seen. Chaucer and the sergeant-at-law accompanying him looked at the fellow curiously. It seemed to the poet that he had seen him before. The fellow’s name was Simon le Clerk. He said he came from Oxford.

  His defence, it had to be said, was good, and he made it soundly, in the tones of an educated man.

  “The truth is, your worshipful and learned sirs, that I did indeed take money from this miller here.” With a trace of distaste he indicated a stout and vulgar looking fellow. “He made a wager with me which I won. I considered him sober at the time, but if he wishes to plead that he was not, and it pleases your worships, I will return the wager, which was exactly half of what he says I took. The rest of his charge,” he shrugged disdainfully, “that I am a magician, a necromancer, and that I promised to turn base metal into gold, is absurd. Does he offer any evidence? Where are the tools of my nefarious trade? What beakers and crucibles? What concoctions and elixirs? Have any such things been found upon me or at my lodgings? Of course not, for they do not, and never have existed. There is not a shadow of proof for his assertions which are, I suggest, as base as the metals he claims I turn to gold. In short, your worships, it is he who seeks, in this preposterous matter, to manufacture gold – not I.”

  The judges smiled. It was neatly put. The miller was shaking his head and looking furious, but it was obvious he had no evidence to offer.

  “Pay back what you won,” Chaucer ordered, “and let the matter be closed.” And the sergeant-at-law was just nodding in agreement when Bull arrived.

  “Good God,” he cried, “it’s Silversleeves.”

  It was the last day of his sojourn with Chaucer. A year had passed since he had left London and, ever since the start of July, he had been feeling it was time to return. He had just been visiting the noble cathedral of Rochester that morning before making his way up to the castle where he was to bid goodbye to his friend.

  It did not take him long to tell what he knew, after which Chaucer summed up once more, but rather differently.

  “From the words of a witness of unimpeachable character,” he told Silversleeves, “we now learn that you have given us a false name, that you come from London, not Oxford, and that you were suspected of exactly this crime before. We have, therefore, your word against the word of this miller. And I must tell you that this court believes the miller.” He turned to the sergeant-at-law. “Is that good law?”

  “Good enough.”

  “Then,” pronounced Geoffrey Chaucer, Justice of the Peace, “I sentence you to repay this miller the entire sum he says you owe, and to spend tomorrow morning in the stocks.” He thought for a moment. “With a crucible hung round your neck.” English justice was commonsense, if nothing else.

  It was in a cheerful mood that Gilbert Bull the merchant rode back towards London and his house on the bridge. He had not told them he was coming.

  She had forgotten how angry he could be. As Tiffany stood before her father, three days after his sudden arrival, in the big upstairs room of the house on London Bridge, she felt almost like a child again. Red-faced, his blue eyes glowering, he seemed even larger than she remembered him. And he was in a towering rage.

  “Treachery!” he roared. “Your husband’s a Judas. I was right all along. Never trust a foundling. Bad blood.” He pointed at her. “You’re no better though, you little Jezebel!”

  “It’s not treachery,” she protested. “Our children are still your grandchildren.”

  “Oh but it is treachery,” he cried. “It’s the fortune of Bull you expect to inherit, not of Ducket.”

  “I did not realize you felt so strongly, Father.”

  “Then why did you do it behind my back?” he roared.

  It had been when the cook had referred to Geoffrey as “Master Ducket” that he had discovered. “You mean Master Bull,” he had corrected. “Oh no sir,” she had said, “he’s Master Ducket now.” And it had all come out.

  It was hard for Bull to say what had hurt him most: the deception they had used, the loss of his name – his immortality – in future generations, or the fact that thanks to Ducket’s brilliant business success, they no longer needed him. He would have scorned, in any case, to say such things. But there was one thing he could say, the most terrible indictment that any Bull could make of another man.

  “He broke his word,” he cried. And then, as Tiffany went very pale, he told her exactly what he intended to do.

  “At his age?” At first Ducket did not believe it.

  “Why not? He’s still vigorous.”

  “But to start all over again?”

  “It’s my fault,” Tiffany said. Her father’s sudden arrival had caught her off-guard. She had meant to break the idea of Ducket’s name change to him gently, at the proper time. But there was no excuse. She had been so busy thinking of pleasing the one man that she had grown careless of the other.

  “Does this mean I have to go back to being Bull?”

  “No good,” she said. “He doesn’t trust us any more. He thinks we’d change it back again, after he’s gone.”

  “Perhaps he’ll alter his mind?” But Tiffany shook her head.

  For Bull intended to marry again. “And if I have a son,” he had told her coldly, “it is he, and not you and Ducket, who will inherit.”

  But it was now, to his surprise, that Ducket saw a side of his wife that he had never seen before. For she shook her head, and her soft brown eyes suddenly went very hard.

  “I don’t think you quite understand,” she said quietly, “how much money we’re talking about.”

  “What can we do then?” he asked.

  “We’ve got to head him off,” she said.

  Dame Barnikel was rather surprised towards the end of the first week in August, to receive a visit from Tiffany. Since she only knew her slightly, Dame Barnikel was equally surprised when the girl indicated that she wanted to speak to her confidentially. But they sat down at a table, and after a little small talk, Tiffany broached the subject.

  “I’m worried about my father,” she began.

  Her description of the rich merchant was touching: a lonely widower, in need of the companionship of a woman of mature years. “Or,” Tiffany said quietly, “perhaps there are married women who might like a discreet friendship. He is in very good shape for his age. I wondered,” she said, “if you might know of anyone.”

  Dame Barnikel frowned.

  “Let me get this straight,” she said. “You’re trying to find your father a nice mistress.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re asking if I might know of anyone?”

  “I know your judgement is good, Dame Barnikel.” Tiffany paused. “Actually,” she said, “I think he’s always had rather an admiration for you.”

 
It was not her first port of call. Dame Barnikel was in fact the third woman with whom Tiffany had had a similar conversation. She probably would not have ventured into so vulgar a place as Southwark if she had met with better luck so far. But she had heard her father in the past refer to her, albeit with a laugh, as a fine woman. By now she was ready to try anything. As to her strategy, it was very simple. “He must either marry a woman past childbearing, or find a mistress he can’t marry. Which means she must be married already,” she had told Ducket. And when he wondered aloud if she could bring it off, “I’ve got to,” she said.

  “You’re thinking of me?” Dame Barnikel asked.

  “It just crossed my mind.”

  “You couldn’t let him find his own woman?”

  “I’m so fond of him. I don’t want him to get hurt.”

  Dame Barnikel looked her straight in the eye.

  “Lot of money at stake?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  And now Dame Barnikel laughed.

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “I’ve got a perfectly good Bull of my own.”

  And so the two women parted, the one to tend to her husband, the other to her inheritance.

  Tiffany’s problem was solved not by her own efforts, but by help from another quarter.

  Of all the members of the Commons who had gathered by the start of October for the opening of the new session, few were more quietly distinguished than one of the knights of the shire chosen for the county of Kent. For it was in this capacity that Chaucer, wool comptroller, soldier, diplomat, poet, Justice of the Peace and now representative of his county made his one appearance in that hallowed institution. Though he had not actually received the accolade of knighthood, he was, by convention as a county representative, referred to as a knight of his shire.

  Upon this notable occasion, it was entirely natural that Richard Whittington, mercer and gentleman, should have given a small feast in his honour at his house. It was also natural that he should invite their mutual friend Bull to be one of the party. And it was typical of his character that, as he considered what other guests to invite, he should have borne in mind the grave problem currently faced by his friend and erstwhile colleague Geoffrey Ducket.

  So it was a rather pleasant surprise for Bull to find himself sitting next to a woman whose quiet and subtle sensuality, as the evening progressed, he could not fail to appreciate. He was flattered also that she seemed to take an interest in him.

  “I believe,” Whittington murmured to him at the end of the evening, “she’s quite unattached at present.” While to Ducket the next morning he remarked with a laugh: “The beauty of it is, they certainly can’t marry.”

  There was no small excitement when it was rumoured that Bull had been seen purchasing a posy of flowers which, they had reason to think, he intended to present to Sister Olive.

  1422

  As the new century had begun, it was generally agreed in London that few families were more fortunate than that of Ducket. There were seven healthy children; Ducket himself continued to increase his own considerable fortune; and Tiffany became a far greater heiress than even she had hoped to be.

  For in the year 1395, first the heir to Bocton and then his grief-stricken father had died. The lovely old Kent estate had passed to Gilbert Bull, the surviving brother, who became the richest member of his family who had ever lived. Since, as he pointed out, he could not have very many years to enjoy the place, he quit the house on London Bridge, which Tiffany and Ducket took over, and went to live at his childhood home, where he remained. His affair with Sister Olive had lasted eight years and had been an unqualified success. Given her convenient and sensual availability, his desire for the rigours of matrimony soon left him. As he saw his merry grandchildren, he could not fail to be taken with them; and his family pride was somewhat mollified when it was pointed out to him, by one of the heralds at the College of Arms, that since Ducket had his own arms, and Tiffany was, as he put it, an armorial heiress, the arms of Bull and Ducket could be joined, leaving Bull at least a heraldic immortality for future generations. As he looked out from Bocton across the glorious sweep of the Weald of Kent, it seemed to Bull that the years of his retirement were bathed in a soft and gentle light.

  Yet, before he found final rest, some shadows were to cross even this pleasant landscape.

  Despite its early promise, the reign of young Richard II had ended badly. Many at court felt that the young man’s brave success at the time of the Peasants’ Revolt had gone to his head. Whatever his courage, he had shown none of the Black Prince’s ability as a commander. Wildly extravagant, some of his ideas, like the handsome new roof for Westminster Hall, were admired; others, like his reckless spending on his favourites, were not. And suddenly, shortly before the century’s end, his behaviour had become so erratic that, after a huge row over his feudal inheritance, John of Gaunt’s son Henry had taken up arms and deposed him.

  Henry IV, of the House of Lancaster, as his branch of the royal family was called, had governed well. But the business had offended Bull’s sense of propriety all the same. The new king had usurped another’s rightful place. The order of the universe had been disrupted. “In the long run,” he warned his family, “it will lead to trouble.”

  A deeper shadow had come a year later, in 1400.

  Plague. It had returned to London in the summer. Despite their protests, Bull carried his family to Bocton. There on the high ridge, just as when he was a youth, he had waited until it was past. Only when he was sure it was safe, in late October, did he venture back with them to London. To find that the darkness, once again, had taken from him one he loved.

  Chaucer had found a pleasant little house for his retirement, at Westminster, just between the palace and the Abbey with a charming walled garden all around. He had only been there a year, working on his Canterbury Tales when, quite suddenly, in that summer of the plague, his life was snuffed out.

  “Why didn’t I think of him? Why didn’t I bring him to Bocton?” Bull cried in misery. Though when he went to the house, it was not clear to him whether his friend had died of the plague or of something else. The gardener said plague; the monks said not.

  “But I can promise you this,” one monk assured him, “he made a good death. He repented of all his works at the end, you know. Impious and ungodly, those tales were. He said we should burn them all,” he added with satisfaction.

  “Did you?” Bull asked.

  “Those we could find,” the monk replied.

  Could his friend, Bull wondered, in the last extremities of pain, have cried out such a thing? Who knew? But as he considered Chaucer’s huge and panoramic work, unfinished at his death and so hopelessly, so mistakenly, in English, it hardly seemed to him to matter.

  “It will all be lost or forgotten anyway,” he said sadly as he left the house.

  The bells were tolling for vespers as he was led back through the Abbey. “Would you like to see his grave?” the monk kindly enquired, and led him to the place.

  “I’m glad, at least, he is buried in the Abbey,” Bull said. “He was an ornament to England. I’m pleased to see you recognized it.”

  But the monk shook his head.

  “You misunderstand, sir,” he explained. “He is here because of his house.” He smiled. “He was an Abbey tenant, you see.”

  Bull died five years after that and Bocton came to Tiffany. She went there more often than Ducket, though he too came to love the Bulls’ ancient place.

  “But my home is in London,” he would truthfully say. And he lived there contentedly. He saw his friend Whittington become mayor not one, or even twice, but a legendary three times. He saw him build many of the things he had always said he would, including a new water fountain. In his will, the mayor even provided for sanitary public lavatories not far from dirty old St Lawrence Silversleeves.

  He watched James Bull’s brewery prosper from its modest beginnings at the George to a great affair which supplied beer to the t
roops of the next king, Henry V, when they went to fight at Agincourt. He saw England, in its old conflict with France, once again triumph as it had in the days of the Black Prince. He saw his own children grow up and grow rich until it was nearing the time when he, too, should depart.

  Yet even now, as he grew old, and remained in the house on London Bridge, his greatest pleasure of all was to watch the river, not only in the evening out of the big window that faced upstream, but better yet, in the early morning, standing by the road on the Southwark side not far from the spot where he had first been found, from which vantage point he could gaze for an hour or more at the great stream of the Thames flowing eternally towards the rising sun.

  HAMPTON COURT

  1533

  She should not have entered the garden. She should have walked past when she heard the whispers. Hadn’t her brother warned her about such things?

  A sultry August afternoon; a clear blue sky. In its great deer-park beside the Thames, a dozen miles upriver from London, the huge, red-brick Tudor palace of Hampton Court lay in the warm sun. Across the green spaces before the palace, she could hear the distant sounds of the courtiers’ laughter. Further away, amongst the parkland trees, the deer moved delicately, like dappled shadows. There was a faint scent of mown grass and, it seemed, of honeysuckle in the gentle breeze.

  She had walked away to the riverbank, wanting to be alone, and it was only now, as she came past the hedge, that she heard the whispers.

  Susan Bull was twenty-eight. In an age which admired pale, oval faces, her features were pleasantly regular. People said that her hair was her best feature. When not pinned up, it hung very simply close to her face, only curling a little at her shoulders. But it was the colour that everyone remembered – a dark, rich brown with a hint of warm auburn that gave it a lustrous sheen, like polished cherry wood. Her eyes were of the same colour. But secretly she was more proud of the fact that, after four children, her body had not lost its slim shape. Her dress was simple but elegant: a starched white coif on her head, under which her hair was neatly tied, and a pale brown silk gown. The modest gold cross that hung round her neck suggested, correctly, that she loved her religion, though many a lady would have made a similar show of piety at the court, where it was quite the fashion.