The genesis for my upcoming novel The Storyteller’s War lies in research.
We know quite a lot about Chaucer – certainly more than Shakespeare, who lived 200 hundred years later – because there are numerous records of the work Chaucer did over his nearly 40-year career with the crown.
These records were compiled for the first time by two researchers, Martin Crow and Clair Olsen, in their seminal book Chaucer Life Records, and published in 1966.
Buried within those records is a fact from another researcher. In 1955, Suzanne Honoré-Duvergé discovered in Olite, Navarre (in what is now northern Spain) a record granting Chaucer and two others a three month passage through Navarre; it was dated February, 1366.
Chaucer was a page working for King Edward the Third at the time, the lowest position at court.
King Carlos of Navarre tightly controlled access to the sole mountain pass through the Pyrenees, allowing trade – or an army – passage between Navarre and Aquitaine to the north, controlled by Prince Edward. South of Navarre lay the wealthy kingdom of Castile ruled by King Pedro the Cruel.
King Edward the Third, Prince Edward’s father, backed Pedro in the decade long war against his half brother, Enrique Trastamara, Pedro’s half-brother, who was in turn backed by King Charles of France. The ongoing war in Navarre and Castile was in fact a proxy war between England and France. Carlos changed his allegiance between them as often as most people change their underwear.
So what exactly was Geoffrey Chaucer, a lowly page, doing in Navarre in the middle of this broiling political cauldron two weeks before war broke out again?
The historian Marion Turner posits in her excellent biography of Chaucer, Chaucer: A European Life that Chaucer might very well have been there as a spy trying to gather information for King Edward or Prince Edward. He spoke French, English, Latin and probably a smattering of other languages picked up on the Three Cranes Wharf in London where his father unloaded wine from across Europe. We was clever with words. He was already well travelled, having gone to war in France at the age of 17, and possibly also to Dublin before then. Who better than a wine trader’s son and page to listen and learn?
And so the germ of The Storyteller’s War: Chaucer, Reluctant Spy was born.
Over the next few months I’ll share more interesting nuggets about Chaucer unearthed during my various research trips to Europe.