The False Virgin (23 page)

They were interrupted by the arrival of supper, brought in by two lay brothers. With reluctance Geoffrey and Richard shifted from their places by the fire. The prior replaced the manuscript on
his desk and the two men moved to a table near a window, from which there was a view of the conventual church, a great shadow looming over the cloisters in the dusk. Candles were lit, food was
served, fresh wine poured, and the lay brothers withdrew as wordlessly as they had come.

At first they ate in silence. Geoffrey was right. Fish of this quality – turbot and sole – would not be served up in the refectory. Nor would the open pie of cheese and the custard
dishes that followed. Enjoying the food and wine, Chaucer was happy to wait and see where the Prior of Bermondsey would lead the conversation. He didn’t think it was a coincidence that
Richard Dunton happened to have on his desk the manuscript with the Beornwyn story while he was welcoming a new guest. And the prior had not recited that same story with real feeling just to show
off his oratorical skill.

The prior complimented Chaucer on the lucrative post to which he had recently been appointed: controller of the taxes paid on both the wool and the wine passing through the port of London. Since
it was John of Gaunt who was responsible for the double appointment, Chaucer played down his own merits and said something about the Duke of Lancaster’s generosity. The prior’s reply
was that John of Gaunt had good reason to be grateful to Geoffrey. Chaucer thought they were getting close to dangerous territory again but it turned out that Richard Dunton was referring not to
any secret understanding between Chaucer’s sister-in-law and Gaunt, but to a poem that he had composed a few years earlier in memory of Gaunt’s first wife, Blanche. The poem was called
The Book of the Duchess
. Copies of it were circulated in court, where it was also recited, and Geoffrey knew that the grieving John was consoled by the praise that he bestowed on ‘my
Lady White’. Now, the Prior of Bermondsey claimed that he too had been moved by this elegy to a noble woman. As he mentioned this, his glance shifted towards the Beornwyn manuscript lying on
his desk.

‘So you think I might do the same for the virgin saint?’ said Geoffrey, understanding the direction of the talk. ‘Do you believe that Beornwyn deserves a memorial in verse,
Richard?’

‘Far be it from me to dictate what you should write,’ said Dunton, leaning back in his chair, replete with food and drink, dabbing with a napkin at a spot of grease on his upper lip.
‘I am merely offering it to you . . . so you might read the story at your leisure.’

‘Then I’ll look at it,’ said Geoffrey. ‘Thank you.’

Although Chaucer took the thing out of courtesy, he had no intention of reading it through. The more the prior pushed the subject at him, the more he resisted. He’d glance at the
manuscript before handing it back together with some appropriate comment. He suspected that Richard was pressing the Beornwyn story on him because, if Chaucer were to turn it into verse and
circulate copies among the noble ladies and gentlemen of the Savoy Palace, then the whole business would reflect well on Bermondsey Priory and on Dunton himself. Cynical to think so, perhaps, but
Geoffrey couldn’t blame him for trying.

While the prior went off to compline, Chaucer returned to the guest-chamber that had been prepared for him. He was conducted there by a lay brother. The chamber was furnished with a bed, a large
chest, a stool and a small table set under a window, which was shuttered. Geoffrey was half amused, half irritated to see that on the table top was an array of quill pens, pots of ink and sheets of
paper. Not only was the prior determined he should compose a story (about St Beornwyn) but he was even providing the tools for the job, even if he had not gone to the expense of providing proper
parchment to write on.

Apart from the writing gear, the simple furnishings of the room were very different from the comforts of the Savoy Palace or Chaucer’s own accommodation at Aldgate. But he liked it in this
place. Being on the far side of the river turned London almost into a foreign country. His life in the city itself was his public life. Yet, while Geoffrey’s official positions at the port of
London were lucrative, as the prior stated, they were not very onerous. In the meantime his wife was attached to the Duke of Lancaster’s court and therefore better provided for than anything
he could arrange for her. Philippa kept the children, Elizabeth and Thomas, with her too. He was happy to see them – and their mother – now and then. Geoffrey found himself with time on
his hands. Time to write. The priory was a place where he was able to write. No doubt it was as riven with jealousy and pettiness as any place on God’s earth must be, but nevertheless the
atmosphere of labour and outward piety at Bermondsey was for Geoffrey Chaucer a spur to composition.

The bed in his room was well enough equipped to have a candle fixed to a bracket, which extended from the frame. Visitors were evidently expected to read and study. Once the lay brother
departed, Geoffrey stretched out on the bed, intending merely to cast his eye over the tale of St Beornwyn before settling himself to sleep. But half an hour later he was still reading, although
now with much greater alertness. He couldn’t have said exactly why. The story of Beornwyn was related in a dialect with which he wasn’t completely familiar, and therefore not always to
be understood straightaway. And, as he’d said half humorously to the prior, the unusual features of this life were actually quite normal, for a saint. So what gripped him? Was it the setting
on the rocky coast in the north country? The butterfly veil? The image of a woman, alone and assailed by attackers rising up from the sea? Some combination of these perhaps. Almost against his
wishes, he found himself becoming interested in this Beornwyn.

Eventually he put down the manuscript and lay back with his hands cradling his head. He no longer felt tired but fresh and lively, in mind at least. What could he do with St Beornwyn now? Was
she really as she had been written up in this story? The virgin who rejects an arranged marriage, the pure woman who keeps company with the angels. Geoffrey thought of his sister-in-law, Katherine
Swynford, another woman with a name for piety. Katherine was a young widow. She was also the lover of John of Gaunt, the third son of King Edward but in point of importance the second man in the
kingdom. Given the King’s decrepit state, some would say he was first in the land. When a respectable interval had elapsed after the death of his wife, Blanche, whom he had sincerely loved,
John married Constance, the daughter of an ousted (and now dead) king of Castile. By so doing, John had been anointed King of Castile, even if a rival claimant was inconveniently in possession of
the throne. Though Constance was a beautiful and highly eligible bride, this was a marriage of power and expediency. Geoffrey Chaucer didn’t think that John of Gaunt’s heart was in the
union, whatever his head and his father – Edward III – dictated. No, John’s heart and his other parts rested with Katherine.

Chaucer wasn’t certain when Katherine and John had become lovers but it must have been at least four years previously because there was a child of their union, a boy now rising three. He
could ask Philippa, of course, but his wife might not tell him, even assuming she was intimate with all of her sister’s secrets. But whenever it was that John and Katherine began their
liaison, both were widowed at the time. Now Gaunt had a queen and a mistress, the two often living under the same roof. Fortunately, the roof of the Savoy Palace was very extensive. To the outside
world, Katherine had a reputation as a pious lady (the true parentage of the child was known to very few). Yet while Katherine was genuinely devout, as Geoffrey was aware, she also had a hidden
passion for John of Gaunt.

He wondered if St Beornwyn had been, in truth, as pure and pious as
she
was painted. An unholy thought occurred to him, like a little imp darting through his head. Suppose Beornwyn were
no different from most other girls and women. Suppose she had rejected her father’s choice of husband not out of any desire to lead a virginal life but because she already had a lover. A
lover, whose identity or even existence had to be concealed for some reason – say, because he was low-born or came from a rival family. All speculation, of course, and probably a slander on
the dead lady. But no more unlikely than the story in the manuscript that the Bermondsey prior was urging on him. In fact, if Richard hadn’t stressed Beornwyn’s virginity so much, then
Geoffrey thought he might not be responding like this, with scepticism and a mischievous wish to undermine the legend. Chaucer did not disbelieve in the legends of saints. But he didn’t quite
believe in them either.

Almost before he knew it, he was lighting the candles that stood on the little table, sitting on the stool, picking up one of the quill pens, dipping it in the ink-pot and scrawling a few lines
on a sheet of paper. The outline of the piece was clear in his head. He would cast it in the form of a dream. The first few lines turned into a page and then several pages. The thing flowed, via
his hand, from his head onto the white sheets on the desk. He must have been writing for some time for he was dimly aware of the ringing of the matins bell, a time when it was closer to dawn than
to dusk. The candles burned down, and still he scrawled away. Eventually, as light was creeping back into the sky and the birds were beginning to sing, Geoffrey rubbed his eyes. Now he was tired,
but he was also satisfied. He left the scrawled sheets, returned to bed and settled down to sleep.

He woke at around the hour of terce, well into the day, so far as the monks were concerned. It was a sharp morning, the wind rattling at the shutters in the window of the guest-chamber. Geoffrey
returned to the desk, sat down and read through what he had written in one continuous rush during last night. Strangely, it seemed to have been written by a different person from the one who was
scanning it now. The piece began quietly enough, with the writer’s inability to get to sleep after hearing the tale of the terrible martyrdom of a pure and virtuous woman. Then, when at last
he begins to slumber, he starts to dream. In his dream the martyred woman is a very different being, a devotee not of Christ but of her passion for a man. She dies at the hands of the man’s
rival although the rumour is put about that she perished for her faith. When the dreamer awakes he is unable to decide which version to believe.

Geoffrey yawned. The piece needed plenty of work but the basic idea was there. It would surely go down well with a worldly audience such as the one at the Palace of Savoy. He wondered what his
wife, Philippa, would make of it.

Meanwhile Chaucer’s wife, Philippa, was not thinking at all of her husband, tucked away in Bermondsey Priory. If she had been thinking of him, then it would most likely
have been in a baffled sort of way. For she could not understand his attraction to Bermondsey. It was a hushed, bookish spot, full of men, away from the colour and flurry of court life at the
Savoy.

Like her husband, Philippa Chaucer owed her present position to John of Gaunt, and to the court service she had done for John’s mother, the late Queen, also called Philippa. Now she was
nominally in service of another queen, John’s new wife from Spain. But like her husband, she found herself with time on her hands. Her duties at court were so light that they scarcely
existed. She made a point of seeing her children often, but their immediate care and instruction was in the hands of others.

Philippa had just been talking with Elizabeth, her ten-year-old. Every morning she ran through what the girl had learned the previous day and gave her encouragement for the one to come. Because
she was not from England, Philippa was concerned that her daughter in particular should be familiar with at least the French and Dutch languages. Her son, Thomas, showed less inclination for
learning and, anyway, she felt boys were better able to fend for themselves.

After Elizabeth left, Philippa remained sitting by the fire. The morning was cold, with gusts of wind rattling the windows. There was a knock at the door. She recognised this knock and called
out for the visitor to enter. Carlos de Flores came in, bowing his head a little. She indicated he should sit opposite her, in the place recently vacated by Elizabeth. He smiled and sat down, all
the time regarding her with his steady brown eyes.

When John of Gaunt brought his new bride home to the Savoy Palace, the Castilian princess did not come alone. Constance arrived with a retinue of counsellors, priests and servants. And there
were others whose precise functions were not so well defined but who had to be found well-appointed lodgings somewhere in the rambling spaces of the palace. Carlos de Flores was one such
individual. His English was near-perfect and he had the manners of a courtier.

‘I trust I find you well, madam.’

Before Philippa could reply another gust shook the panes and cold air swirled round her feet.

‘Well enough . . . considering this weather.’

‘Ah, yes,’ said the Castilian. ‘The weather. Before I came to your country I was told that, of all things, the English like to talk about their weather.’

‘That must be because there’s so much of it to talk about.’

Smiling to show that he had understood Philippa’s joke, Carlos de Flores said, ‘You show yourself a true Englishwoman by saying so, madam, yet you are from Hainault originally, are
you not? You and your sister?’

Philippa wondered why de Flores was bothering to mention this. It was no secret that she and Katherine were the daughters of a knight who came from a small country snuggled into a corner of
Europe. Either the Castilian was just passing the time or he was showing that he had dug a little way into their histories.

‘We come from Hainault, yes,’ she said. ‘This England was hardly more than a place across the seas where our father went to serve the Queen. Yet the weather in Hainault was
very similar to here, Señor de Flores. In fact, I’d say it was worse.’