The Swanne, Southwark
The Year of Our Lord 1401
In the second year of the reign of Henry IV
The shingle swung in the breeze coming off the river, the sun striking the fresh paint and making it glow. One could almost believe the water bird depicted upon it was actually buoyant.
“The Swanne, eh?” called a singsong voice from the adjacent house. It was my Flemish neighbor, none too happy the former bathhouse owner had sold the premises to another bawd, a bawd with such a good reputation for looking after her girls that many of them had already left their current employers and sought work—and refuge—within her walls.
I welcomed all who would be part of my family, just as Geoffrey suggested. You see, the quires with his final but unfinished poem weren’t all he gifted me, nor this run-down, wondrous house that, with Master Stephen and the girls, I would turn into a profitable enterprise. He’d also left a box. It came a month after we’d moved in, delivered in person by Adam Pinkhurst.
The scrivener made the excuse of bringing Wace to see his mother’s new home, ignoring that Wace was already more than conversant with the site and had in fact helped the day we ferried our belongings across.
While Leda and Wace went to the High Street to buy something for nuncheon, Adam joined me in the room I’d decided to make my office, handing over a plain wooden box.
“This is for you, from Master Geoffrey.”
Unwilling to open it before an audience, I chose instead to show Adam around. The house was the one I’d first clapped eyes on the day I crossed the river. Three stories with an attic and mews and an inner courtyard that could house carts and horses. It had been run-down and sorely in need of repair, but it was large. If ever I needed to keep a good store of supplies, it had a huge cellar that could hold everything from barrels of wine and ale to sacks of flour, wood, and so much more. I had both a bedroom and an office on the second floor. The girls entertained customers on this floor and in some of the rooms on the one above. Most of the third-floor rooms were private bedrooms. The lower floor had a large kitchen, buttery, a grand hall, and two smaller rooms, one of which I gave to Master Stephen. Within a month, we’d seven extra girls working, two more maids, and another burly man, chosen by Stephen, to help keep order about the place. Word got around I was a friend of Ordric Fleshewer, so, even though this was an exaggeration, and I was greeted with hostility by the Flemish and with warnings by the squint-eyed bailiff, Lewis Fynk, thus far no real trouble had occurred. But I knew it wouldn’t be long. I was resented. I was a woman, alone. It didn’t stop me declaring my widow status loud and long. But I was a legitimate businesswoman. The Bishop of Winchester (after some persuasion from Father Malcolm and the Dean of St. Michael’s) had granted permission for me to run a bawdy house and taken my fees.
Adam seemed impressed with the house and could see the efforts we’d made to clean and improve it. As I outlined my plans, he nodded. “I can’t say I understand Geoffrey’s motives—he could have left what he had to his children. As it was, they received very little. Oh, don’t worry, Mistress Alyson, they know nothing of this. Of you.”
I didn’t want to point out that his children had no need of coin, having done very well for themselves.
“Actually, Master Adam,” I said, “I go by Goodwife Alyson these days. Goody, if you prefer.” Thank you, Lowdy, thank you, Geoffrey.
“My apologies, Goody Alyson.”
It also didn’t do any harm for my neighbors and the authorities to know that I’d a man, albeit dead, at my back. If I had to use one to give me legitimacy, then by God (I smiled) I would. My choice.
I waited until Adam left, taking Wace with him, before opening this last gift. I was anxious about what it contained. What if, somehow, all this good fortune wasn’t mine after all? What if it was some great cosmic joke that would be ripped away the moment I lifted the lid?
Before I opened it, I quickly checked on Milda, who, more and more, was taking to her bed. Just before we moved, she had been laid low with an illness. The doctor didn’t know what it was, but the Bankside physician, a Moor named Marcian Vetazes, said with surprising frankness that it was unlikely she’d improve and to make her as comfortable as I was able. It was the least I could do.
Finally, closing the door of the office, I was alone. I lit a candle and, with a mixture of dread and excitement, opened the box. On top was a note addressed to me. Below it, tied in a huge bundle, was every single letter I’d ever written to Geoffrey. My early ones, written for me by Father Elias, my first clumsy attempts at writing to him myself, replete with blots and terrible errors and crossings out. Then the later ones, from Rome, Jerusalem, Canterbury, and everywhere else I used to travel.
I couldn’t believe he’d kept my correspondence. But why not? I’d kept everything he’d ever sent me, or had, until much of it was destroyed in Honey Lane. I shook my head, determined not to cry. This was lovely. Beyond what I ever expected. Just like this house, I thought, looking about with wonder, as I oft did.
Finally, after some fortifying sips of ale, I was ready to read his final piece of correspondence.
Most humble and dutiful commendations to you, Alyson.
I hope you’ll forgive my presumption in buying you a place in Southwark. I know you were determined to make your own way and not be controlled or have to bow to the authority of those who by chance of birth are granted it. I reasoned that with me dead, you have no one to answer to, no gratitude to express, and it’s my dearest hope that you will take this in the spirit it was given, with my deepest affection to someone I’m proud to call both cousin and friend.
I had to stop and take a deep breath.
Knowing you as I do, I fear you’ll be concerned that in giving you the house, in which I pray you are now comfortably ensconced, my children will be deprived.
I wasn’t, but bless him for thinking that of me.
But my gift does not come without one request. Indeed, a couple. First, I ask that you look to my Lewis now and then. Lewis, in case you haven’t already guessed, is my child by that woman you abhorred, Cecilia de Champain. While you were right to warn me about her, once I owned my part in Lewis’s making, she dropped all the charges against me, provided I supported her and my son. Oft wanting coin myself as a consequence, I cannot regret Lewis, who is cut in my image and, I’m told, has my love of words and will make a good living using them. I pray it is so.
Well, I’ll be damned . . .
Which leads me to the other children . . . I know you were always perplexed by my relationship with Philippa, wondering why I didn’t try harder to be a good husband and father, oft hovering around the subject without asking directly. I feel I owe you an explanation. It’s easier from beyond the grave where our only judge is God the Father, who, in my mind, I’d rather sit before than you, Alyson, the wife who once wished to rule her men.
The truth of the matter is, neither Thomas nor Helen are mine, at least, I don’t believe they are. I’m certain they’re Gaunt’s spawn. The man loved de Roet women—his Katherine and her sister, my Philippa, though she never really was mine, was she?
So often men and even the fairer sex look to their children to carry their blood, their name and, if greatness should elude the parent in their lifetime, then they pray their children will achieve it on their behalf, make them immortal. I was never destined for greatness or, it appears, to have a family—a legitimate one at any rate. In that way, my dearest friend, we’re more alike than not.
For years, you yearned for a family. I did too. But what I discovered in my dotage, and wish to share with you, is that it’s not too late; it’s never too late. If I learned one thing from you, dear heart, it’s that families come in different guises. One has only to look at what you created with Alyson, with Mervyn Slynge and his household. What you built in London—first in Honey Lane and then at St. Martin’s. You made the family you always longed for, and while it didn’t come without terrible cost and grief, knowing you, it will continue to grow and thrive.
What I must also tell you, and it’s my deepest regret that I never said this to you personally, is that, you, Eleanor, Alyson, have always been family to me. I didn’t always appreciate that, but you embraced me in ways a man can only dream. You blessed me with your good heart and goodwill and trusted me with your secret hopes and fears. You’re the wife of my soul—one to whom I could cede control and know it was in the best of hands.
It’s my greatest hope you’ll truly forgive me for using elements of your life, of yourself, in my poems. I ask that you recall you’d oft castigate me for not writing about real people. You were right, so I am honoring you by writing about one of the most real and magnificent people I’ve ever been blessed to know.
If ever I’ve caused you harm or hurt, or ever do, it’s never been my intention. Go forward, dear heart, full of the courage and spirit that bubbles forth within you. Be mighty and loud and let your bright light shine. The world will be dimmer if you don’t. Find love—and love fully. Whoever is fortunate enough to earn that from you and give it to you is blessed indeed.
I speak from my experience, the one of having known and loved you and, I know, been loved in return.
Written on the Feast of the Eleven Thousand Virgins. (Aye, I chose the day deliberately.)
Yours, in greatest affection and admiration now and forever more,
Geoffrey.
I sat until the room grew dark and cold. Awash with feelings, I was tossed on wave after wave of remembrance, moving through time like a traveller in a tale—from Bath-atte-Mere to Bigod Farm and beyond, until I finally drew to a halt, here in Geoffrey’s most generous gift, The Swanne. Ugly now, I would ensure, like the hatchlings that burst forth from the egg, like the old bride in the Wife’s Tale, it became beautiful, elegant, and soared over every other business on Bankside.
Finally, as the stars burst into the firmament and the noise from the nearby tavern began to carry, I rose, lit a fire and some candles. Yolande came and asked if I wanted anything to eat. When the door opened, I could hear laughter and the pleasant chitter of the girls and the deeper tones of Master Stephen and the new man, as well as the excited calls of Harry, who, it seemed, had found an owlet in the rafters.
“I’ll be down shortly, Yolande. Don’t wait.”
With a warm smile, she shut the door.
I returned to my seat with a goblet of wine and read Geoffrey’s letter again.
“Find love,” I whispered. Easy for him to say. Oh, I could find a prick to plough me and transport me to heavenly delights and, now I was here, as often as I wished. The idea made me grin. But love? Real love?
Did I need it? Did I want it?
Aye, who didn’t? Geoffrey knew that. He’d wanted it too, hadn’t he? That’s why he wrote about it the way he did. Oh, I’d read all his quires, all of his wondrous, funny, moving, spiritual, thoughtful, dramatic poems. There wasn’t one tale that didn’t talk about love in some form, marriage too, whether it was love for fellow man, woman, sprite, goddess, or God.
I rose after a few minutes and, looking through the window at the twinkling stars, raised my goblet.
“Here’s to you, my love. May I become what you always intended. My own woman.”
I drank, blew out the candles and, shutting the door, went downstairs to join my girls, my family in the kitchen, the heart of our home and business—the place that Geoffrey, through love—and mayhap a little guilt at stealing my life for his poem—bequeathed me.
’Twas a trade—his words about me for this. I’d call it a bargain.
It was also a great chance, an opportunity.
Geoffrey’s balls in a vice, I’d seize it and turn all our dreams—mine, Alyson’s, Lowdy’s, Geoffrey’s, the family I had, and the one still to come—into a damn fine reality.
One so bright with promise and love, words can scarce capture it.
* * *