Part 34 (1/2)

The victim?

England's young king.

The chief conspirator?

The king's uncle. The duke who saved my mother's life, and my own.

In the prophecy Lancaster is marked by his livery and his name, both disguised as they were in another poem you once shared with me. You called it an elegy, and you wrote it for the duke himself, on the death of his first wife. I can still recall the line, the company riding toward 'a long castle with white walls' as they pursue a white hart.

Lancaster, the White Hart: here again Il Critto chose carefully. His prophecy imputes the regicide to this same 'long castle,' a magnate and kingmaker whose ident.i.ty the verses barely conceal. Still less do they disguise the alleged victim, young Richard, whose badge bears the white hart.

Nor do they obscure the ident.i.ty of the author, despite your amusing effort to credit the work to your invented Lollius. Anyone familiar with your Book of the d.u.c.h.ess would easily detect your handiwork.

This, I believe, was Simon's hope. A master of deception, he used old parchment and disguised his hand to make the book take on greater antiquity. He then decorated the margins with plain but skilful drawings of the thistleflowers, plums, hawks, and swords that answered to the playing cards evoked in the prophecies.

Now it needed a final touch. Simon paid me a last visit on Epiphany Sunday, soon after your departure for Rome. Gone was the cavilling bitterness he had shown while the two of you were tilting for my attention. Instead he was all smiles and warmth. He expressed regret for his earlier behaviour, and we parted on the most pleasant terms.

The sole purpose of his visit, I know now, was to pilfer the cloth. He must have unpinned it from the tapestry while my attention was diverted, stuffed it away even as he lisped his pleasantries. It was then an easy matter to commission the embroidery of those simple shapes from Hawkwood's playing cards: plums, thistleflowers, hawks, and swords, surrounding the royal livery, tying the cloth inextricably to the book.

Now all that remained was to get the book into the hands of his master. 'By kingmaker's cunning a king to unking.' Simon wrote that line for Hawkwood. He knew this man, his grandiose designs, his thirst for new legitimacy in his homeland. To imagine himself as the kingmaker would feed his ambition and stoke his pride.

Yet to present the book directly to the great condottiero would have been unwise. Hawkwood is known to be changeable, and he might well have suspected a trap. So Simon arranged to have the prophecies made known to Hawkwood, dangled in front of the man like a riverbug before a pike.

Hawkwood, as Il Critto knew he would, bit.

You are asking yourself how I know all of this, by what means I gleaned this foul grain. There is a man in Hawkwood's inner circle, another Englishman. His name is Adam Scarlett. Though he has a less turbulent soul than his master's, his name is as respected as Hawkwood's, and nearly as feared.

Two evenings ago, a week after Simon's departure for England, Scarlett came to see my father. I heard their voices and walked over to the far north corner of the gallery, where there is a squint down to the hall below. He was asking about Simon.

'Il Critto spent much time in this house,' said Scarlett. 'Tell me all you know about him.'

My father replied that he knew nothing of Simon's doings beyond the failed courts.h.i.+p of his daughter. Why, what else was there to know?

'Master Gower's departure was somewhat abrupt,' Scarlett explained. 'Ser Giovanni sees no cause for concern in the matter. I am sure he is correct. But I am a thorough man.'

They went on like this for a while, as Scarlett plumbed my father's mind but found nothing. Then he asked a final question. 'Did Il Critto ever mention a book?'

'A book?'

Scarlett described the work to my father, explaining how it would abet Hawkwood's larger aims aims for which we are all labouring, as he put it and every word he spoke was a poisoned dart shot from his lips.

Prophecies.

The Duke of Lancaster.

The Earl of Oxford.

Sir Stephen Weldon.

St Dunstan's Day.

Treason.

Execution.

Rome.

France.

It was as if the thousand pieces of a shattered window rea.s.sembled themselves in an instant, and I saw it before me, in all its grim totality. Hawkwood, Scarlett, Simon, even my father: all of them in cruel confederation, striving for destruction. An intricate plot to destroy a duke, a king an entire realm.

I dashed to the gallery. The cloth was gone. On the bench below the tapestry I saw Il Critto, or rather my memory of him. His eyes wide as he gaped at the cloth, his long limbs coiled tensely as he gazed with jealousy on our swelling love. I knew everything, and the knowledge boiled me with terror. For your life, for the life of the duke, for the blood of all England.

Now it is clear what must be done. Simon has been gone for over a week. Your prophetic book precedes him, augmented with his final prophecy and even now making its way overland to London, by the Rhineland roads. When you return to Florence in another fortnight, you shall find only these parchments waiting for you, sealed with my ring, and a very wet kiss the only kiss you will receive for many months. For by then your bitter orange shall be gone.

Worry not for her safety, my poetical prince. There is still something of La Comadrejita in her, after all. She knows how to steal, how to stab, how to darn a gentleman's hose, wash a lord's pot, peel an earl's root. How to ask for a meal in a dozen tongues, yet garb herself as a peasant. How to barter like a tradesman's wife, yet mewl like a lady of the court. How to slit a man's throat. I dare say her life has equipped her for such a journey better than most.

She will act alone, her quest to find the book herself and prevent the fulfilment of Hawkwood's true aims. To find the book or die trying. A long journey to England, then, by land and by sea. And when she finds the book, when this accursed volume is in her hands at last, she will burn it to finest ash.

I leave you with one last enigma, my only heart, in the spirit of our games of love and verse. May it goad and p.r.i.c.k your mind as you follow our course to England.

Though faun escape the falcon's claws and crochet cut its snare, When father, son, and ghost we sing, of city's blade beware.

I shall gloss it for you when our lips finally touch and the danger is well past, though I suspect you will have puzzled it out for yourself by then.

Until that blessed moment, I remain yours most faithfully- Written at the Via dei Calzaiuoli,

by the Misericordia,

the Thursday next after Epiphany Sunday, by Seguina d'Orange

FIFTY-FOUR.

St Mary Overey, Southwark On the third day following the deaths of Sir Stephen Weldon and the butchers, as I dozed in the back garden, Will Cooper appeared at my side. 'Master Chaucer for you, sir.'

We drank small ale beneath the arbour, with the heavy scent of thirsty roses filling the air. Our talk was amiable, though he sensed my reserve. He would hardly meet my eyes, and he fidgeted on his chair.

'What's tickling your thoughts, Geoffrey?' I finally asked, wanting to get to it.

Chaucer let out a breath. 'I have been avoiding this conversation, frankly.'

'I should think so,' I replied indifferently, though over the following hours this indifference would yield by turns to wonder, then outrage, then gnawing doubt.