London - Edward Rutherfurd [249]
“And now, my friend, to other matters. Are you ready for your woman?”
At the doorway, Ducket took his arm: “You’re sure . . .” he began.
“She’s clean. I promise.”
“Have I seen her?”
“I saw you looking around for her,” Whittington laughed. “But she had a good look at you. She likes you.” And he led him into the courtyard outside. There was a small wooden staircase there which led up to a chamber overlooking the little walled orchard. A faint light came from under the door. “Up there, young Ducket,” said Whittington. “The gates to Paradise!” And without another word he strode up the alley.
So this was it. Would he know what to do? Would his manhood fail him? His heart was thumping as he made his way slowly up the stairs, and opened the door to the chamber.
The room was pleasant. There was a thick rush mat on the floor. On the right stood an oak chest, glowing in the soft light from the lamp that rested upon it. On the left, the window shutters were closed. In the middle of the chamber was a four-poster bed piled high with mattress and covers.
And upon the bed, quite naked, with her dark hair now down to her shoulders, lay the slim, pale form of Sister Olive.
It was Whittington who told Bull. In fact he told several people. He could not resist it, not because he meant any harm to Sister Olive but just to annoy her cousin Silversleeves.
Bull was furious. “That nun should be thrown out of her convent,” he cried. “As for Ducket, I’ll have him put in the stocks.” And it was only Chaucer, visiting later that day, who calmed him down.
“My dear friend,” he reminded him, “there are nuns in this city of the deepest devoutness. There are also, at St Helen’s, several women who have no vocation for the religious life but who find themselves in a cloister because their families put them there. If Sister Olive is not perfect, she’s very discreet; and I shall box Whittington’s ears when I see him for giving her away. Be merciful.”
“And Ducket?”
Chaucer smiled.
“From what I hear,” he said, “I should imagine he had a very nice time.”
A few days after this, Silversleeves, passing Ducket in the street, gave him a look that could have killed. Nor did it make it any better when, the next time he called upon Bull, the merchant, biting his lip, remarked: “Always a lot of scurrilous rumours about London, my dear fellow. Never listen to them myself.”
The only person in the household with whom the matter was not discussed was little Tiffany. For a day she could not discover what the shouts and whispers had been about. Her mother looked vague when she asked; no one else would tell. But at last the cook told her; after which, Tiffany considered the matter alone by herself for some time.
So, she thought: he knows. The thought was strangely exciting.
But that summer Tiffany learned that her childhood friend might have moral flaws of an altogether more serious nature. These might never have been suspected, but for a new development that now took place in England.
When the young king’s council, still desperate for money that spring, had gone as usual to the city for help, they had received a rebuff. “We’ve just paid a fortune to get our royal customers back,” the London men pointed out; and the sum they offered the council was quite inadequate. “Other means must be found,” the council decided. And so it was that, when the summer Parliament met, a different expedient was hit upon. “It’s a poll tax,” Silversleeves explained to Tiffany. “The principle’s quite simple. Every adult in England – man or woman, noble, free or serf – will have to pay a tax per head.”
Simple, certainly; but also revolutionary. For the paying of tax in medieval England had always been the privilege of the free minority in society. The citizen of London paid; his poor apprentice did