A Burnable Book. Bruce Holsinger
had lost a couple of stone that winter; there was less to him since his latest return from abroad, and his unfashionable surcoat, of undyed wool cut simply with straight sleeves, lent an almost rural aspect to his bearing. Normally he would dress like a bit of a fop. I wondered what explained the change.
For a while we just drank, saying nothing, two hounds sniffing around after a long separation. Eventually he leaned over the board. ‘How has it been, John? You know …’
I looked away. ‘Let’s not bleed that wound, Geoffrey.’
He let that hang, then touched my elbow. ‘I hope it has started to heal, at least.’
‘I had her things removed and sold at Candlemas – most of them.’ Candlemas: purification, purging, the scouring of the soul and the larder. I thought, as I hadn’t in weeks, of Sarah’s prayerbook, its margins and flyleaves full of her jottings. It was one of the few of her possessions I had kept.
Chaucer moved his hand away. I asked about Philippa. He picked a splinter from the table. ‘Keeps to court, hovering around her sister and the Infanta. It doesn’t help that I’m travelling all the time. Calais, the cinque ports.’
‘And this recent trip, to Tuscany and Milan? The custom was able to spare you?’ Back in November Chaucer had arranged for a deputy to step in for him at the customhouse. His trip south had been planned hastily, and for reasons he had kept to himself.
‘Some negotiations for the chancellor: a bribe here, a false promise there.’ He pushed a lump of talgar across the table. The Welsh cheese was an epiphany on my tongue: tart, rich, deliciously illegal. ‘Though this trip was a bit less official than the last. Inglese italianizzato, diavolo incarnato.’ He feigned a sinister smile.
An Englishman italianized is the devil incarnate. ‘A judgment you inspired, I suppose?’
‘You’ve been practising!’
I hadn’t, though the odd lesson from Chaucer in recent years had taught me a few useless phrases. ‘Donde il formaggio?’ I said awkwardly, pretending to look around for the cheese.
He smiled. ‘It’s dov’è il formaggio, John, not donde. Where is the cheese, not where is the cheese from.’ He pushed the talgar my way.
‘Dov’è. Right.’ I knifed another wedge.
He went on about his trip. ‘And the books! In the Visconti libraries you can’t reach out a hand without—Speaking of books, I’ve brought you a little something.’ From his bag he removed a volume and set it between us. ‘Il Filostrato. A work that has reminded me of you since I first read it years ago, though I can’t quite say why. It’s a tragedy of the Trojan War, and a story of love. Not to your usual tastes, though I have a feeling you’ll enjoy it. And it will give me an excuse to teach you more Italian.’
I thanked him and stroked the embossed spine and cover. Calf, dyed a deep purple, cool and smooth. ‘The writer?’
‘Giovanni Boccaccio,’ he said. ‘I tried to meet him once, but he wouldn’t see me. A recluse, practically a hermit.’
‘Boccaccio.’ A name, like the talgar, worth savouring. I mouthed the rubrics as I leafed, admiring the ghostly thinness of the abortive vellum. No full-page illuminations, but the larger initials were ornate, with gold flourishes, a full palette of inks, descenders reaching out to curl around the peculiar beasts in the margins. There was a poem on the second leaf, a single stanza in a hand I knew well.
Go, little book, to our unfathomed friend,
Above his silvered head to build a shrine,
Retreat of Wisdom, Ignorance to mend.
Full oft there shall you comfort and entwine
His long limbs in bookish fetters benign.
Thou shalt preserve those aquamarine gems,
Or Gower’s friend shall cast you in the Thames.
As always Chaucer’s verse captured its subject with the precision of a mirror. My thinning hair, shot through with spreading grey. My long frame, which had two lean inches on Chaucer’s, and he was not a short man by any measure. Finally the eyes. ‘Gower green,’ a limner I once knew named their shade, claiming no success in duplicating it. Sarah had always likened them to her native Malvern Hills at noon, though she had died without fathoming the truth about these eyes, and their diminishing powers. Only Chaucer possessed that knowledge, expressed in a touching bit of protectiveness in the couplet.
I looked up to see him staring vacantly at the far wall. I closed the book.
‘Why did you want to meet here of all places?’
‘I’m less known in Holbourne,’ he whispered, in French, teasing, ‘where there’s smaller chance of recognition than within the walls.’
‘Ah, I see,’ I replied, also in French. ‘I am the object of a secret mission, then. Like your visits to Hawkwood and the Florentine commune.’
His smile dimmed. ‘Hawkwood. Yes. You know, I spent some time with Simon while I was in Florence.’
‘God’s blood, Geoffrey!’
He looked uncomfortable. ‘You didn’t write to him after Sarah died.’
‘No.’
‘He’s your son, John. Your sole heir.’
The child who survived, when three others did not. I drained my jar, signalled the girl for another.
‘Have you heard from him?’ he asked, reading my thoughts.
A fresh dipper, and I drank deeply. ‘Tell me about your sons instead,’ I said, in a feeble change of subject. ‘How is Thomas faring at the almonry?’
‘Well enough, I suppose,’ he said.
‘And little Lewis?’
‘With his mother, the little devil.’ He gave a half shrug. ‘Some call him the devil, our Hawkwood. But I suppose our king knows what he’s doing when it comes to alliances.’
‘What few of them he has left,’ I said.
He looked at me, smiling. ‘No King Edward, is he?’
I held up my jar. ‘Full long shall he lead us, full rich shall he rule.’
His smile faded. ‘Wherever did you pick that up, John?’
‘A preacher, versing it up out on Holbourne just now.’
‘Our sermonizers are quite poetical these days, aren’t they?’ he scoffed. There was a certain strain in his voice, though I thought nothing of it at the time.
‘Fools, if you ask me, to versify on that sort of matter,’ I said.
‘Better to stick to Gawain and Lancelot, I suppose.’
‘Or fairies.’
‘Or friars.’
We laughed quietly. There was a long silence, then Chaucer sighed, tapped his fingers. ‘John, I need a small favour.’
Of course you do. ‘Go on.’
‘I’m looking for a book.’
‘A book.’
‘I’ve heard it was in the hands of one of Lancaster’s hermits.’
I watched his eyes. ‘Why can’t you get it for yourself?’
‘Because I don’t know who has it, or where it is at the moment.’
‘And who does know?’
He raised his chin, his jaw tight. I knew that look. ‘Katherine Swynford,