Absently, he listened to the king's sentries, keeping vigil at their posts, arguing with the rebels. Disembodied threats jangled in the darkness.
"We will not leave until we obtain from King Richard all we want!"
"Tomorrow we will storm the Tower and kill you all."
Another shouted for the head of Simon Sudbury, a third for the treasurer, "Hobbe the Robber." Then the voices evaporated, like clouds torn apart by the wind.
Candlelight from the turret in which Richard and his councilors were closeted spilled onto the battlement. Inside Matthew knew his peers were still arguing a course of action. Richard remained temperate, refusing to call on loyal citizens or the Tower garrison to put down the rising. Instead, seeking common ground, he expressed his desire for another meeting. Which many of his advisors, fearing for their necks, counseled against.
Sir Robert Knolles, the freebooter, called from the Tower door. "His Grace has come to a conclusion. He wants to meet the rebels on the morrow at Mile End. He seeks your opinion."
Matthew sighed. His gaze wandered across the city, as if to probe its secrets. In a few hours the drunken shouts would die down along with London's fires and the city would settle in as it always did. Thoughts of his family and their welfare were always in the background, even as the kingdom crumbled around him. He imagined Margery, could actually see it, both her and Serill lying dead somewhere along the route to London, rebels having slit their throats and tossed their bodies in a heap somewhere.
"Are you coming?"
"Aye." He thought suddenly of that long ago time, the night before his knighthood ceremony, when he and Robert Knolles' nephew had wagered with loaded dice. When Harry had been alive and no one could have imagined that England would ever come to this...
Knolles prodded him. "His Grace awaits."
Matthew passed a hand across his eyes, as if to rub away the past, turned and moved along the battlement toward his king.
Chapter 22
London
At seven o'clock on the morning of June 14, 1381, Richard II rode out from his stronghold, bound for Mile End. The peasants who were gathered around the Tower exit parted enough to allow the king and his royal party past, then closed ranks behind them.
The day was already uncomfortably warm, with an unpleasant sultry edge. No wind stirred the dull green dress of the commons, or the royal pennons carried by Richard's outriders. The white harts clung close to the spears upon which they were fastened, like fearful children hiding their faces. Beneath his pourpoint, sweat trickled down Matthew's back and arms—as much because of tension as the heat. They were riding into a snake pit, that much he knew. His every nerve was taut, his attention heightened as it always was before conflict.
Plain-garbed men either watched sullenly or shouted insults, calling for the heads of Richard's ministers, though there were some shouts of "Long live the king!" Many pressed close, grabbing at stirrups and bridle reins. Matthew's destrier, Stormbringer, snorted and nervously tossed his head, shying away from the rebels. It required much forbearance for Matthew to keep his sword sheathed, to keep from smiting the hands grabbing at him, to ignore the taunts.
Taunts from fellow Englishmen.
So difficult to accept that his countrymen were now arrayed against them. But now was not the time for musings about England's sorry state of affairs. Now, he, they all must be on the alert for if any of the mob lost his temper and acted impulsively, goading the others to violence, Matthew and his fellow knights would be hard pressed to protect their sovereign.
Ahead, he could just glimpse the white feather in King Richard's hat as he followed Aubrey de Vere bearing the sword of state. Though Richard must surely also be aware of the danger, he continued to act with remarkable composure.
Prince Edward would be proud, as I am. My lord's offspring is proving to be a king worthy of my life.
Which was good. Because Matthew would not wager that any of them would live to view another sunset.
Beside him, Lawrence Ravenne swore. "Look at the whoresons," he said between clenched teeth. "How dare they lay their filthy hands upon their king?"
A grunt was Matthew's only response.
They passed through Aldgate, onto Hog Lane, to where the road ran directly to Mile End, an attractive village a mile beyond the city. Mile End possessed a handful of taverns and was a favorite for vacationers, who enjoyed strolling its open stretches and partaking of the fresh air. Today Richard and his men were greeted by twenty thousand villeins and freemen.
Matthew's eyes scanned the endless sea of faces. He thought suddenly of Thurold Watson, who would surely be here. Might he know Margery and Serill's whereabouts? Or what about that Lollard priest? If he spotted John Ball, he would at least shout out a query.
King Richard calmly approached the rebels. Wearing his blue and silver coat and jeweled gloves, and with his exquisitely fashioned boots thrust in shining silver stirrups, His Grace appeared more a creature of fantasy than flesh and blood. So bedazzled were the commons that no one answered him when he first addressed them.
"My friends, I am your king and lord. What do you wish from me?"
Finally, one rebel, Wat Tyler, the ex-soldier from Kent, dared to come forward, to act as spokesperson. "We want you to set us free forever, us and our descendants and our lands," said Tyler and a handful of other chosen or self-designated leaders around him. "And to grant that we should never again be called serfs or held in bondage."
Richard graciously agreed to these points and all the others they presented, as if they were of no consequence. Did he really mean to grant such boons? Surely not; surely he was simply stalling until reinforcements would arrive from elsewhere in the kingdom. But even a compliant king could not agree to the last.
"All ministers of the crown who are obnoxious to the commons must be punished."
If Richard were shocked by this demand—for he well knew that the commons found many of his own friends and relatives obnoxious—he merely demurred with a mild shake of the head. "There shall be due punishments for those who can be proven traitors by due process of law. I cannot promise more."
He then had the commons form two lines. "I confirm to you that you shall be free," he said, and granted a full pardon for all the wrongs done by the people of Kent, Essex, Sussex, Bedford, Cambridge, Stafford, and Lincoln—providing they returned quietly to their homes.
Beside Matthew, Lawrence Ravenne mumbled, "Aye. Promise them lakes filled with wine and a sky flung with diamonds, so long as they depart."
Matthew nodded. If Richard actually meant to honor such ridiculous demands, their entire society would disintegrate like sand castles at high tide. Besides the rebels had been so violent, 'twould take generations to heal the wounds.
King Richard then ordered thirty secretaries to begin drawing up the letters containing his promises; representatives of each county were given royal banners as proof of his protection. Flushed with their victory, some of the commons began to disperse.
"'Tis over then?" Ravenne asked, relief evident on his face.
Matthew could not quite believe it, particularly when the rebels realized that the king could actually grant few if any of their demands. They could hope, but their hope would prove ill-placed. Centuries of grievances would not be soothed with one conciliatory meeting.
Matthew's doubts were well founded, for when King Richard and his bodyguard returned to London they found that rebel gangs still roamed the city. Most shocking of all, the Tower drawbridge had not been raised, leaving His Grace's residence vulnerable. Because the rebels had arrived bearing one of the young king's royal standards and also his letters patent with a ribbon hanging from it to which was attached England's Great Seal, the guards had allowed them entrance.
Inside, four hundred men, led by an Essex man named John Starling, had ransacked King Richard's rooms and even intruded into the Queen Mother's quarters. There Joan of Kent, still abed, promptly fainted, only to be ignored as the rebels probed with thei
r weapons beneath her bed frame. The king's cousin and John of Gaunt's son, Henry of Bolingbroke, was saved by a member of the royal guard named John Ferrour, who hid Henry in a cupboard and who would much later be pardoned "in a wonderful and kind manner." By protecting young Henry of Bolingbroke, Ferrour had this very day unknowingly altered the course of English history.
Simon Sudbury and the treasurer, Robert Hales, however, would find none to save them.
Sudbury was saying mass in tiny St. John's Chapel on the second floor of the White Tower. Several others were there, including the hated Hales. Sudbury had previously heard all their confessions and was chanting the Seven Penitential Psalms when the chapel door flew open. Just as he intoned, "All the saints pray for us," the rebels, led by John Starling, burst in.
"Where is the traitor?" Starling cried.
Knowing his time was at hand, that the peasants had every intention of violating sanctuary, Simon Sudbury regained his courage enough to step forward.
"Behold the Archbishop whom ye seek." John Starling and several other rebels pinioned his arms behind him. "No traitor, no plunderer of the Commons he," continued Sudbury to no avail.
Robert Hales and three others were also tied. Then the Archbishop of Canterbury was led up to the battlements and shown to the cheering crowds now filling the courtyard, and even those beyond the walls who, in last night's darkness, had been crying for his head.
Time to kill a churchman, nay, two churchmen, for Robert Hales, Grand Prior of the Knights Hospitallers, was also dragged to Tower Hill. A substitute block and axe had to be found for these spontaneous executions. John Starling volunteered to wield the ax.
An executioner was a professional whose skill, often passed down through the family, lay in performing his duty as swiftly and painlessly as possible. There was an art to decapitating a man, as there was to his hanging, drawing and quartering. Unfortunately, John Starling had not the expertise or the desire to expeditiously dispatch Simon Sudbury.
Sudbury's arms were unbound and he was given a few minutes to pray.
The archbishop cried, "Take heed, my beloved children in the Lord, what thing ye now do. For what offense is it that ye doom to death your pastor, your prelate?"
His guileless act only infuriated Starling and the rest who replied that Sudbury should know all too well his many sins.
"Oh, take heed lest for the act of this day all England be laid under the curse of the interdict."
As in the bad old days of John Softsword and his quarrel with Pope Innocent? If the peasants were aware of such ancient history, today they scoffed.
John Starling ordered Simon Sudbury to lay his head upon the improvised block.
Starling swung. The first blow inflicted a deep wound to the archbishop's neck.
Sudbury cried, "Ah! Ah! This is the hand of God!" Instinctively he raised a hand to the wound. The second swing amputated several fingers.
Eight blows it took to sever Sudbury's head; Hales and the others not so many. All their heads were then carried to London Bridge where they were set upon stakes.
Later John Starling would stalk about London with the bloody ax suspended around his neck, boasting that it had been his hand that had killed the Archbishop of Canterbury. Even after the Essex peasant was eventually brought to the gallows, he continued exulting in his deed.
In Chepe, the decapitations continued, this time with an eye to prominent citizens such as Richard Lyons, who, during the Good Parliament, had tried to bribe Prince Edward and the old king with barrels of gold. Lawyers were targeted. Apprentices fled from shops and warehouses, armed and crying, "Clubs! Up, Clubs!" to beat their masters. In the Vintry, commoners massacred forty Flemings and left their headless corpses heaped in a pile. One hundred fifty more were dragged from their homes or from the churches where they'd sought sanctuary, and killed on the spot.
After word reached King Richard of the White Tower's breach, he and his men retreated to the Wardrobe, which had once been used for transacting important business, as well as storing valuables, and where the Queen Mother was now ensconced. Still seemingly unruffled, His Grace comforted his mother before putting his clerks and secretaries to work copying out the changes he had earlier promised the rebels.
With night's fall, terror reigned. The more rational had already begun abandoning London for their homes, leaving only the most savage.
Understanding in his heart that their cause was lost, even John Ball had retreated, if only temporarily. Right now the commons appeared to have the upper hand but John knew better. Freedom, equality, had been in their grasp, he believed it, but the rebels would pay dearly for their lack of restraint. When it came to brutality, they would be no match for their lords, regardless of the disparity in numbers.
John Ball need not be a prophet to know what was about to unfold.
* * *
On the night before the final fateful confrontation, Thurold Watson visited the Shop of the Unicorn. He was in high spirits, confident of victory, boasting of the commons' superior numbers, the lords' refusal to fight and the king's seemingly malleable acceptance of even the most outrageous demands. Listening, Margery found her temper unraveling and bit back sharp words. No good could come of this, regardless of the outcome. Was Thurold meaning to taunt her when he knew of her fears for Matthew? Or was he simply euphoric—and insensitive—because the realization of his dream seemed within his grasp?
More like a nightmare, she thought, watching her stepbrother pace from the counter in the front area to the furnace, anvils and smithing tools, and back again. Since the revolt, the Shop's doors had been barred and its windows barricaded. Currently, Serill and the servants, quiet as whispers, were huddled in the living quarters. No doubt some feared that members of the rabble might pull them from their hiding places into the streets. As they'd pulled dozens of Flemings from the Church of St. Martin in the Vintry for committing the unpardonable crime of mispronouncing "bread and cheese" as "broke and case"—and beheaded them on the spot.
"I am beginning to question whether your friends are proving worse than those they seek to overthrow," Margery said, after Thurold fell silent. Only a single candle, its flame dancing when he passed, lessened the gloom in the long, narrow room.
"What mean ye?"
She shrugged, telling herself they mustn't quarrel, but unbidden the words spilled out. "You've killed hundreds of foreigners, not to mention the Lombards whose mansions you've also sacked. And you seem to take great delight in slaughtering the city's lawyers, tax collectors and jurymen on the slightest pretext."
Thurold waved his hand imperiously, as if such deaths were of little importance. Margery's mouth tightened. Hadn't that always been one of the commoners' lamentations against their lords—their arrogance and indifference to the lives of others?
"If this is how you behave when you rule," she persisted, "what makes your tyranny preferable to John of Gaunt's?"
"Someone must allus lose. This time 'tis they, and they must pay the price. After all the evil ones be killed, ye'll see the rightness of our acts."
"John Ball did not see the rightness! He withdrew in disgust."
"Priests be na like soldiers. They've no stomach for bloodshed." Thurold paused to face Margery.
He thought of Wat Tyler, one of those who'd come forward to act as leader after John Ball had retreated. John might be a priest but he had more courage than a hundred soldiers, and Thurold was ashamed of his cavalier description of his friend. Men like Tyler were more interested in saving themselves from the axe than furthering any larger cause. But admitting to such doubts might somehow cause God to look unfavorably upon the uprising and they'd come so far...
Margery and Thurold glared at each other. In his plain garb Thurold appeared indistinguishable from thousands of other rampagers she'd seen this past fortnight. But he'd been true to his vision from the day he'd met John Ball, or perhaps from the very beginning, as a wee one tucked in his cradle. Furthermore, though the rightness of a cause did
not mean that it would prevail, Margery did believe Thurold was right. And admired him for his passion, as she loved and admired him for so many things.
"I wish..."she began, but she had had no idea how to continue for she could not formulate what it was she sought.
Thurold balled his fists, then expelled his breath in an involuntary sigh. "I know King Richard's promises might be empty as air. I just so need to believe."
That Margery could understand. She touched his arm in a conciliatory gesture.
In a soft, barely heard voice, he continued, "I dreamed last night of Alice. I swear, 'twas so real."
She was surprised by this unexpected twist to their conversation. She couldn't remember the last time she had dreamed of her mother.
"And Giddy, too."
Margery's eyebrows lifted. She hadn't contemplated her half-sister in years and when she tried to conjure Giddy, she kept shape-shifting into Serill. Had the three-year-old's eyes been dark like Thurold's or blue like Alice's? And what about the color of her hair? Had it been the same shade as the broom Alice had used to sweep the earthen floor? As golden as summer wheat? As brown as the banks along the stream behind their cottage? Or red? Somehow that seemed right. Ugly, Margery had thought it, the color of sunrise before the day arrives. Orange, pink. The same color as Lawrence Ravenne's?
Sweet Jesu, no, do not let me even think such a thing...
"...'Twas na like a regular dream.'Twas more like... they were standing right above me, where I'd bedded down."
A Child Upon the Throne Page 23
