London - Edward Rutherfurd [233]
He laughed. “I don’t think so.”
“Would you do it for me?” she persisted.
He gave her a kiss. “I would for you,” he said.
When Ducket was twelve, Bull summoned him into the big upper room.
“It will soon be time you were apprenticed,” he said with a smile. “I want you to think about what you’d like to do. You can choose what you want.”
The great moment. He had been waiting for it for years.
“But I already know,” he blurted out. “I want to be a mercer.” Like Whittington. Like Bull himself. He looked at the merchant happily, and only after several moments wondered why the smile had died on his face.
Gilbert Bull was an intelligent man. For a second, he had thought the boy was being impertinent, then realized: he did not understand. How shall I tell him? he thought, and knew it was kinder to be firm at once.
“That is impossible,” he said. “The Mercers Guild is for merchants, people with money. If you were a Whittington, or . . .” he almost said “a Bull,” but thought better of it. The truth was that there were poor apprentices, even in the élite Mercers Guild, but he had no intention of placing this foundling there. “You’ve no money, you see,” he said bluntly. “You must learn a craft.” And he sent the boy away to think about it.
Ducket did not stay downhearted for long. A few days later, he was walking round the city, poking his head into this workshop or that, always cheerful and always curious. “God knows,” he muttered to himself, “there’s choice enough.”
Glovers making gloves. Saddlers making saddles. Lorimers making bridles. Coopers making barrels. Turners making wooden cups. Bowyers making bows. Fletchers making arrows. Skinners dealing in furs. Tanners curing leathers – the stench of the tanneries decided him against this. Then there were the shopkeepers – bakers and butchers, fishsellers and fruiterers. He could see himself as any one of these.
The issue was resolved, however, from another quarter entirely.
Though he was vaguely aware that Bull’s friend Chaucer had been his godfather, young Ducket seldom thought of the courtier. After all, he was usually away. But he heard the merchant speak of his progress from time to time. This had been considerable. From a humble page, the wine merchant’s son had progressed through the various stages of a young gentleman at court, making himself both useful and popular. This last came to him easily, for he had a naturally sunny temperament. “Amazing fellow. Never loses his temper,” Bull remarked.
“He knocked down a friar once,” his wife gently observed.
“All students do that,” Bull replied.
Chaucer had gone on campaign several times, been ransomed once, and studied enough law for any official appointment he might get. He also possessed one other talent: he could turn a pretty verse in French to please a lady or celebrate a great event. Lately, he had even experimented by rendering some verses into the Frenchified version of English spoken at the court – a daring novelty that the royal circle found charming. He had been included in a diplomatic mission, to broaden his experience. And a little while ago he had also received another significant reward.
In the large and sophisticated court of King Edward III, it had become usual to find aristocratic wives for rising young courtiers from the middle classes, and Chaucer, the popular wine merchant’s son, had been favoured with the daughter of a Flemish knight. “Yet doesn’t the fellow have the devil’s own luck?” Bull had cried happily. For Chaucer’s amazing good fortune was that his wife’s sister, Katherine Swynford was the acknowledged mistress of no less a person than King Edward’s younger son, John of Gaunt.
There were numerous royal sons, all handsome fellows who sported the long, drooping moustaches that were fashionable. If John of Gaunt was shorter and broader than his heroic brother the Black Prince, he was