London - Edward Rutherfurd [243]
On this occasion however, they found the customs man just as he was leaving for his home, and so they went back there with him. Chaucer’s lodgings, which came with the customs position, were delightful. They stood beside the Aldgate entrance to the city in the eastern wall, a few hundred yards from the Tower, and they included a large and handsome room over the gate itself, with a splendid view towards open fields down the straight old Roman road towards East Anglia. There they found his pleasant, dark-haired wife busy with a baby, and Chaucer led them to the big rooms upstairs.
The room was certainly pleasant, and yet, as Tiffany whispered to the boy with a nudge: “What a mess.” There were several dozen books – a large collection by any standards – piled here and there on tables. Some were bound in leather, others not, some written in handsome calligraphy, others in hands so crabbed it made one’s eyes swim to read them. But it was not the books that were so untidy, but the pieces of parchment. There were sheets everywhere, in stacks or singly, some neatly copied but most half-written and covered with corrections.
“This is my retreat,” Chaucer smiled apologetically. “Here I read and write every evening.”
Tiffany knew about his literary activities from her father, and thinking of her own schooling she asked: “How many lines can you write in an evening?”
“I throw so much away,” he confessed. “Sometimes I can hardly get a line out.”
“So I don’t think,” Tiffany said to Ducket afterwards, “he can be very good at it.”
It was after they left Chaucer and walked along the old road outside Aldgate for a little way that Tiffany, who had allowed herself to start musing about her husband, suddenly turned to Ducket.
“Do you know,” she remarked, “I’ve never been kissed. I suppose you know how.” He did. “Do it, then,” she said.
Ducket found Benedict Silversleeves waiting for him on his way home at the southern end of London Bridge. Whatever Whittington might think, to him the young lawyer was impressive.
Silversleeves could not have been more polite. He spoke quietly and with dignity. He happened to be walking out of the Aldgate that afternoon, he explained. “So I think you know what I saw.”
Ducket blushed. He hoped, the lawyer went on, that the apprentice would forgive him, but he hoped, equally, that Ducket was not trying to take advantage of a young girl from a very different station in life – “and who is, you see, my kinswoman.” What could he say? That she asked him to? Any apprentice would have thought that was low. “You may feel it’s none of my business,” Silversleeves continued, “but I think it is.”
No, Ducket could not fault the man. Silversleeves was acting properly and he felt ashamed.
“Well, there we are,” the lawyer said. “Goodnight.” And perhaps, Ducket thought, he’d better not see little Tiffany for a while.
More than a year had passed since his interview with his rich cousin, but James Bull was not discouraged. “The girl’s still young,” he told his family; and he still hoped to receive, at least, an invitation to the merchant’s house some day. His mind had been on just this subject – and on the beef pie his family was to eat that day – when, entering the city through Ludgate on a wet November afternoon, his attention was caught by a pretty young girl, carrying a basket and hurrying home. It was Tiffany.
Having seen her, he hesitated for only a moment. For after all, he told himself, she cannot mind as long as I am honest. With a clear brow, therefore, he strode forward and placed himself in her path. It was just starting to rain.
“I’m your