The People’s Queen. Vanora Bennett

the only loans the King can raise are ones that come from his own leading merchants. Thank God for the boom in the wool trade; these three Englishmen are richer than ever before. Not just from wool, because they are also traders in cinnamon and anise and coriander, pomegranates and almonds and oranges, shark’s fins, swordfish and mermaid’s tails, but it’s the high price of English wool these last years that has tipped them into grandeur. The King relies very heavily on Master Walworth and his two friends, now there’s no one else. Perhaps they should be grateful. But they aren’t, particularly. They’re honoured to be asked, of course, but…they don’t think they’ll get the money back. They click their beads, and calculate: the King won’t pay; the war damages our business interests anyway; the Duke wouldn’t win even if we bought him the best army in the world. Alice heard Walworth, back there at Chaucer’s, laughing with Brembre, muttering, obviously of the Duke, ‘Him? He couldn’t lead a pack of choirboys across Chepe – even with a map.’ So why throw good money after bad? The London merchants would rather keep their money in their counting-houses than finance the faint hope England can be glorious in victory. Secretly, Alice can understand why. But Edward finds it a mystery. He begs for their money, cheerfully and nobly enough; he relieves each faint-hearted new Mayor, each summer, of another large sum; he laughs behind their backs at their blind spot about glory; but he’d prefer not to have to humble himself.

      This, then, is the problem. Italian bankers: fabulously rich again, but not in the least interested in lending to a bad-risk King. England’s three mightiest merchants: rich and getting richer, but also clinging anxiously to their money-bags. Look at Walworth, back there, at Chaucer’s, tittering so sadly behind his hands for all to see: ‘Is my lord going to want fifteen thousand, or more?’

      But what if the King could find someone new, in England, who’s rich enough to borrow money from in the quantities he wants?

      That would be the solution.

      And what Alice suddenly saw, back there at Chaucer’s house, is that she is in a position to make this happen.

      Because, now, there’s Richard Lyons, isn’t there?

      She knows, who better, just how rich Richard Lyons has got. They’ve done well together out of the special wool licences; and Alice’s pay, like Latimer’s, has only been a small percentage. Lyons is rolling in it – so rich he could easily afford to lend £15,000 to the King. More, maybe. And the Fleming, unlike the established merchants, would actually like to become Edward’s backer. Since he got so rich, he’s started to crave respectability too. Walworth’s half seen the danger of Lyons; he’s trying to buy him into the establishment with a little job in the City government at Guildhall. But it’s not enough. Lyons is a big powerful man. Nothing would please him better than to bypass Walworth and the City altogether, and make the King his own personal client and friend.

      The only obstacle to what Alice has in mind is that Lyons doesn’t actually know the King yet. (Those wool licences were all Alice’s idea, and it was Alice who, for a consideration, got Latimer’s signature on the documents. She didn’t see any need, back then, to bother the King with detail.) But now…well, Alice can introduce Edward to Master Lyons, nothing easier. It’s time they met.

      It will make Alice laugh to put old Walworth’s nose out of joint, too. Walworth: so smugly goody-goody, so given to quoting annoying little rules at people, so respectable and pompous and conventional, with his much-paraded friendship with the aristocratic Bishop Courtenay of London and his suspicion of all the new preachers who don’t much like the Church of Rome. She knows Walworth isn’t really quite the paragon of virtue he likes to pretend, whatever his angel face might suggest. She knows he earns a fortune from his Flemish whorehouses at Southwark. And she can’t see why he hasn’t been able to live and let live over the question of the tax-free wool exports, when it’s been such a nice little earner for her and Lyons for so long. But, with the public fuss Walworth’s insisting on making, going blabbing to everyone and their aunt about it, arresting people even, questions are being asked; she’s got no real alternative any more but to get Lyons to stop. Just for that, it’ll do Walworth no harm to get a bit of a jolt.

      Everyone else will be happy. For this is the plan Alice is about to set out.

      First, Master Lyons must agree to stop using his special licences to export wool tax free. (Chaucer will be pleased – England’s official take from the wool trade will go up, which will make him look good. He might get a pay rise. And it’ll be good for Lyons and Alice and Latimer to move on from wool, and stop the talk.)

      Next, Alice will introduce Master Lyons to the King. The Fleming will then be allowed to lend the King a first sum of £20,000. (The King will like that bigger, rounder number better than Walworth’s grudging £15,000 and lending a bit more, to demonstrate generosity, will be no skin off Lyons’ nose).

      Third, Lyons will earn a premium of £10,000 on that loan. This means he’ll eventually be repaid a total of £30,000. (That very high 50 per cent interest rate will keep him very sweet, and the King never notices the small print.)

      Other merchants won’t be so envious that Lyons has got into the King’s good books when they find out that the Fleming’s willing to accept just half his repayments from the King in actual clinking countable gold coin. He’ll take the other half in the old, discredited debt paper on which the King made his empty promises to the Italians, years ago. Since the King defaulted on this debt, also many years ago now, those worthless old paper promises will not be exchanged at their face value, but at only half what’s written on the page – so any paper signed by the King promising to repay an Italian finance house 100 marks will, now, count as being worth just 50. Even so, prudent City men might feel Lyons was a fool to accept a promise of even 50 from this particular shifty King. (Alice knows Lyons won’t care, even if the King never pays a penny back against the debt. Lyons’ pay-off will be coming from that fat interest rate he’s also getting. Better yet, he’ll be building a relationship with the King, which will stand him in good stead later. So he’ll have nothing to complain of.)

      Best of all, this deal might finally end the festering nastiness between King and Italians.

      The Italian financiers, who years ago wrote off their loans to the King of England, will suddenly start getting repayments from the Crown, after all. Only on half of what they originally lent, true, but that’s more than they’ve been expecting for all these years. So they’ll be happy. It might be enough to persuade them that the King of England is sorting out the country’s finances. It might even just be enough to persuade the Italians to start lending to the King again…and then, with a combination of Lyons and Italians at his back, who knows what might not happen with the war?

      No wonder Alice is pleased with this plan. It’s big. It’s public-spirited. It shows her new maturity. And it solves everyone’s problems.

      Most personally pleasing of all, to Alice, is the knowledge that it all grew out of a chance remark at Chaucer’s table, a meeting of eyes between her and Lyons and Latimer while Walworth twittered on about loans; a clear-sighted moment of foreseeing the possible. She’s quietly proud that, even now that she’s so comfortable, and no longer the dewy young girl she once was, she’s still got her wits about her.

      How pleased Edward will be, she thinks, as Sheen comes into view through the trees.

      

      It’s chaos in the royal chambers: pale bare stone walls, an uncovered bed frame like a lone ship with no sails, a sea of half-open chests and sacks, and a tide of people sweeping over them, whispering furiously. They’ve turned up late at Sheen. Now tired ladies with muddy hems are doing their best to make up for lost time, pulling out hangings from boxes and pummelling the cushions their demoiselles are yanking from travel bags. Boys with brooms are banging the dust from them. The windows are open, and a chilly summer breeze is gusting at everything. Taller boys on stools and ladders are heaving up heavy brocades and tapestries, stretching to hook the worked cloth from knobs sticking out of the stones, accidentally kicking people passing by carrying clothes or brushes or bed linen or pomanders or perfumes, and hissing and cursing under their breath at all the fiddly effort required to create instant royal splendour.

      Alice