The Great Revolt

by Paul Doherty

  A fresh rolling growl of angry voices echoed ominously. Athelstan glanced over his shoulder. Perhaps Ferrour could discover what was happening elsewhere, but that enigmatic intruder had apparently disappeared. The throng around the water-gate grew even more unruly, the prospect of imminent escape deepening their hysteria. Cranston supervised the embarkation of the Queen Mother, her ladies-in-waiting and other individuals on to one barge. He then turned, clasped Athelstan by the shoulder and drew him close.

  ‘Little monk.’

  ‘Friar, Sir John!’

  ‘My little friar, my greatest friend, follow swiftly. The barges will take us down to the Great Wardrobe at Castle Baynard, close to Blackfriars. Be there.’ Cranston tightened his grip then let Athelstan go, brushing the tears brimming in his eyes as he urged the royal party to settle comfortably and sit quietly. Accompanied by Flaxwith and his bailiffs, Cranston clambered in. The barge had taken all who could be safely berthed. Cranston shouted an order and the barge pulled away, its oars lowered, and the barge swiftly cut through the water of the moat, heading for the river.

  The second craft prepared itself. Athelstan grasped Sudbury’s arm, gesturing at him to get ready, when a shout went up. The friar glanced across the moat and his heart sank. An old woman had appeared, her walking cane jabbing the air like a spear, her strident voice echoing across the murky water. Immediately others appeared even as an archer came running down Red Gulley screaming that the Tower had fallen and the rebels were within its walls.

  Chaos descended. Across the moat bowmen appeared; they knelt, bows strung, and feathered yard shafts whistled through the air, shattering against the grim walls behind them. The war barge was still empty, except for its crew of Tower archers, who were now desperate to get beyond the reach of the rebel bowmen. One of them shouted, shaking his head, and the barge swiftly pulled away. Athelstan glanced around; some of those who had been with him had already fled.

  ‘We should seek sanctuary,’ he murmured. He led his little group back along Red Gulley to the White Tower and the relative safety of the Chapel of St John. Sudbury, Legge, Hailes and a few others including Henry of Derby clustered for sanctuary around the altar framed by the gorgeously carved rood screen. Verses from the psalms rang out: ‘The snares of death overtook me, the cords of Hell tightened around me,’ and ‘From my enemy, save me, Lord. Rescue me lest he tear me to pieces like a lion and drag me off with no one to save me.’ These and other chilling verses echoed ominously through St John’s as Athelstan heard the pounding on the stairs outside.

  The doors to the chapel were flung open, the archers on guard pushed aside as the rebels burst in. A sweat-soaked, filthy rabble, they poked the archers’ bellies and pulled their beards though they offered no further violence. Athelstan realised what must have happened. Gates and postern doors had been forced or likely opened through treachery. The Tower had fallen, there was nothing to be done. The rifflers who surged into St John’s Chapel now glimpsed Sudbury and the others through the rood screen, and they howled with delight, mittened hands brandishing knobbly cudgels and rusting blades. Athelstan took a deep breath, murmured a prayer and stepped across to block entrance to the rood screen. The insurgents thrust themselves forward led by a dwarf of a man garbed in a black, dusty robe, a coarse robe girdle around his waist, and stout marching sandals on his feet. This rebel leader was heavily bearded, though his head was completely shaven and shiny with sweat, his deep-set dark eyes bright with a blazing anger.

  ‘You are Athelstan?’ the dwarf asked. ‘I have seen you, though of course you did not see me. But the time for such hiding and concealment is over. London will be bathed in the light and fire of God’s justice. I am John Ball, priest of Kent, chaplain to God’s army.’

  ‘In which case you will respect God’s house,’ Athelstan retorted, staring at this self-proclaimed Vicar of the People, a hedge priest with a virulent hatred for Sudbury, who had imprisoned Ball on numerous occasions at Maidstone and Lambeth.

  ‘Stand aside, Brother.’ Ball lifted his crozier carved more like a war club than a pastoral staff.

  ‘Leave him!’

  A voice echoed from the chapel doorway. Despite the moans and chants from those huddled around the altar, everyone turned as Ferrour shouldered his way through the mob still bristling with weapons. Ferrour carried a seal in his left hand, a large green blob of wax with an insignia carved in red, the All Seeing Eye of the Great Community of the Realm. Everyone, even Ball, had to defer to this. Ferrour suddenly grabbed Athelstan by the shoulder and pushed him aside. The friar made to resist. Ferrour snapped his fingers and two of Ball’s henchmen grasped Athelstan by the arms and pulled him back between two of the pillars.

  ‘Stand away and stay away, Friar,’ Ferrour hissed. Athelstan stared at this man who seemed to change from one form to another. He abruptly recalled Ferrour disappearing just after they had entered the Tower.

  ‘You let them in?’ Athelstan gasped. ‘You disappeared; you opened some postern door. You told them about the water-gate; you—’

  ‘Enough!’ Ball shouted. ‘Seize our prisoners!’ Athelstan could only stare in heart-wrenching pity as Sudbury, Hailes, Legge and Gaunt’s personal physician Appleton were dragged from the altar and pulled through the rood screen to be greeted with raucous abuse. Henry of Derby was also pinioned but again Ferrour intervened. He plucked Gaunt’s fifteen-year-old son from his captors, whispered in his ear and shoved the lad through the crowd and out through the chapel door. Meanwhile the rebels had turned on their prisoners, stripping them of their clothes, throwing them to the floor to be kicked and punched. Sudbury tried to intone the litany of the saints whilst his comrades replied, through bloodied lips, the heartfelt pleas of ‘Orate Pro Nobis – pray for us.’ Ball ordered all four to be dragged out of the chapel and into the fierce glare of sunlight. Athelstan was also seized. John Ball, lips curled like a snarling mastiff, assured the friar he was safe in life and limb but he would have to act as the condemned men’s chaplain.

  ‘Condemned by whom?’ Athelstan tried to argue, but his words were drowned by the cries of the rebels waiting outside. The hedge priest held up his hands in salutation. Athelstan stared down at the rabble swirling across the great bailey. Here and there stood Tower soldiers, archers, servants and scullions, who were left unscathed on the unspoken agreement that they did not interfere. The rest of the mob which congregated there included peasants in their drab colours of brown, black or green. Others, the denizens of the notorious dungeons, mumpers’ castles and hell-holes of Whitefriars, Southwark and the Fleet, were dressed in garish garb, some of it undoubtedly plundered from the shops and stalls of Cheapside. They were all armed, many carrying warbows and quivers along with weapons stolen from both the Tower barbican and elsewhere.

  The appearance of Sudbury and the others provoked roars of approval followed by a litany of curses and abuse. The mob surged forward, weapon blades pointed at the prisoners. Nevertheless there was some order and discipline among the rebel ranks. Earthworms, gathered beneath the great, floating scarlet and black banners, moved through the mob which parted to allow Ball and the prisoners to be brought down the steps of the keep. An execution party emerged, and men led forward four hog-maned horses, undoubtedly taken from the Tower stables. Each horse dragged a simple, crude sledge, and the prisoners were forced to lie down and be lashed to one of these.

  The macabre procession then moved off. John Ball, chanting a psalm, was followed by the four horses and their sledges ringed by fearsome Earthworms, their faces hidden by the mask of a dog, weasel or some other creature. The mob, when it could, threw dirt and other refuse at the condemned men. Athelstan walked behind the last sledge and kept his eyes down as he tried to intone the vespers of the dead. Shouts and yells dinned about him, drowning the agonised cries of the condemned men, their naked backs cruelly shredded on the sharp cobbles and rutted trackways of the Tower.

  They left the fortress through the Lion Gate. An even greater horde was wait
ing to escort them up Tower Hill to the soaring, stark execution platform rising black against the summer sky. A clod of earth hit Athelstan. He staggered. A horn blew and a group of Earthworms immediately surrounded him, a shield against the ordure and filth now being pelted at the condemned men. Despite the obvious horror, the procession had assumed the air of some bloody carnival. Anarchy reigned under a council of monsters. Had Hell emptied, Athelstan wondered; were all the fiends of the pit streaming up to congregate alongside him to watch the grisly spectacle on the summit of Tower Hill?

  They reached the execution platform. The prisoners were roughly released from their hurdles and pushed up the ladder to the waiting executioners, whose faces were masked, unsteady on their feet after all the ale they had downed. Athelstan had no choice but to follow. He climbed on to the platform, now slippery with the blood from other unfortunates who had been brutally despatched, their blood-soaked, decapitated cadavers lying in a pile of sawdust, their heads stacked in a wicker basket nearby. Sudbury was the first to be hustled to the block. The frenzied crowd shouted their delight, though Athelstan heard other voices, more pitying, intoning the psalms and various songs of mourning. The friar sensed the horrors were gathering. He was sweat-soaked, sick to his stomach, yet he administered a general absolution to all four prisoners even though the words, ‘I absolve you from all your sins,’ seemed to stick in his dry mouth.

  Sudbury’s head was forced down even before Athelstan could finish the prayer. The archbishop knelt but then his fettered feet were brutally pulled back so his head crashed against the rough-hewn execution block. A blast of heat from a spluttering brazier carried across along with trailing plumes of black smoke to irritate the nose and mouth. The drunken flesher kicked Sudbury to be still and brought his cleaver down. Unsteady on his feet, the flesher missed the prisoner’s neck, slicing the archbishop’s half-turned head. Athelstan watched in horror. Sudbury was trying to get up, one hand raised in blessing, lips mouthing a prayer. Again the flesher struck blow after blow in a thickening spray of blood which splattered Athelstan’s face. More smoke billowed across. The crowd were baying like a host of fiends. The flesher was now using a knife to saw off Sudbury’s head. Legge and the others were crying piteously. Athelstan tried to walk forward but he couldn’t. The execution platform was moving, turning. Athelstan tried to stand still to free himself from the clammy terror which seemed to grasp his soul. He stared up at the sky and then collapsed in a dead faint.

  Athelstan opened his eyes. Benedicta was leaning over him. She forced a goblet between his lips, making him drink the mulled herb wine. Athelstan took a generous mouthful, sat up and stared around the dappled, shadowed orchard.

  ‘I have been here before.’ He grinned weakly. ‘It is not the garden of Eden, though you might be my Eve.’ Athelstan paused as others came out of the green darkness behind Benedicta. He gently pushed away the goblet and stared around the widow woman at those coming to greet him.

  ‘Well, I never!’ he breathed. Crim the altar boy, Imelda, Mathilda and other women of the parish gathered, all sorrowful-faced, to stare down at him. ‘Look,’ Athelstan pushed himself up against a tree, ‘don’t be so mournful. I am alive. I simply became weak. So much violence, the blood-splattering, the screaming and the yelling. Anyway, never mind that.’ He shook his head. ‘More importantly, what are you doing here?’

  Athelstan took the goblet and sipped. He felt better, cooler and calmer. Memories of the gruesome executions flooded back but he responded to these with a silent prayer. He looked about him. He was in a small tree-ringed glade. In the centre of this stood a broken fountain.

  ‘The Round Hoop tavern,’ he whispered as Benedicta and the others crowded around him. ‘Of course,’ Athelstan smiled, ‘I’ve had dealings with this place before.’ He blinked. ‘Almost a lifetime ago when all this trouble was still bubbling to the top of the pot. Now tell me, why are you here?’

  ‘We came looking for you, Father,’ Imelda, Pike the ditcher’s severe-faced wife, declared. ‘When they took our men, we fled, we hid. Now we have returned to hear dreadful stories.’

  Benedicta took up the story. ‘Now that the village menfolk have swarmed into London, the shire lords are raiding villages and hamlets out in the countryside.’

  ‘Raiding?’

  ‘They and their retainers. They take liveried men along with their chancery clerks who are taking careful note of who is missing and asking where they could be.’ Benedicta patted Crim, who crouched all smudge-faced next to her. ‘Not even children are safe. So,’ she gestured around, ‘we thought we could come and see if you, and Sir John especially, could help us. We crossed to Blackfriars. Brother Hugh the infirmarian informed us that you and Sir John had gone to the Tower.’ She sighed. ‘By the time we arrived the fortress had fallen and the rebels were swarming within. We watched the execution procession leave. I could see what had happened, that you were as much a prisoner as poor Sudbury. We had to stay to see what happened. On the platform you staggered and fainted. No one really cared.’

  She pointed at Imelda. ‘Father, she is a true iron-hard, warrior woman.’ Imelda blushed. ‘Oh yes, you were,’ Benedicta continued. ‘Imelda fought her way to the steps, screaming that the friar was our priest, an innocent in all this business.’ Athelstan smiled his thanks at Imelda and sketched a blessing in her direction.

  ‘We all climbed up the steps and carried you down. No one objected.’ Benedicta wiped a sheen of sweat from her face. ‘We brought you here and—’

  ‘What about the others?’ Athelstan asked. ‘The prisoners?’

  ‘Poor Sudbury’s head was hacked off; the others followed him to the block. The executioners were drunk, they were booed as butter-fingered fumblers. In the end they nailed Sudbury’s mitre to his head, then poled it and the others on staves.’ She looked away. ‘Paraded like rotten apples, necks all ragged, mouths stuffed with shit-strewn straw. They were exhibited up and down Cheapside before being spiked on London Bridge.’

  ‘What has caused all this?’ Judith the mummer’s voice quavered as it did when she delivered her lines in some miracle play. ‘Why the violence, the hunting down of certain individuals, their barbaric execution?’

  ‘Rumour,’ Benedicta replied. ‘Rumour claims that when King Richard met the rebels at Mile End, he offered them pardon charters for all crimes and treasons committed. Richard allegedly gave them royal licence to hunt down whomever his True Commons deemed to be a traitor.’

  ‘Which would explain the attack on the Tower and the capture and execution of Sudbury and the others,’ Athelstan remarked as he struggled to his feet. ‘I must go and find our Lord High Coroner.’

  ‘I suspect Sir John and the others have gone to La Royale, the great Wardrobe at Castle Baynard. Brother, we could take you there. Oh, by the way, I have told them,’ Benedicta continued in a rush, ‘about poor Pernel.’

  ‘Did any of you …’ Athelstan stood up. He felt better; his strength was returning and he was determined to join Sir John as quickly as possible.

  ‘Did any of us what?’ Judith the mummer asked.

  ‘Did Pernel ever talk to you about her past?’

  Imelda spoke up: ‘Once. Pernel had been sharing a pot of ale with Godbless. Deep in her cups, she was. Anyway, she talked about Ghent, Dordrecht and the towns of Hainault, Zeeland and Flanders. She babbled like a child about being in a nunnery, of falling in love, of being rejected, but it was all prattle and nonsense. I suspected she was telling bits about other people’s lives. She could become so confused, though.’ Imelda paused. ‘On two occasions she lapsed into a foreign tongue, I am not too sure what it was. Ah well, she is gone now.’ Imelda sighed. ‘And so has her house.’

  ‘What!’ Athelstan exclaimed.

  ‘Burnt to the ground,’ Imelda sniffed, ‘consumed by a roaring fire, red flames and black smoke. Definitely arson. We could smell the oil they used. Rioters, plunderers,’ she continued, ‘nothing is safe.’

  Athelstan nodded in agr
eement. He felt a strange sadness about Pernel. The poor woman had been murdered, then someone had crossed the Thames to burn her house, destroy her possessions and make sure there was no link to the past. Athelstan turned and walked into the cool green darkness. A thrush warbled its song to mingle with that of the constant cooing of the wood pigeons. The air was sweet, heavy with the scent of ripening apples and the fragrance of crushed grass.

  ‘Was Eden like this?’ Athelstan whispered to himself. ‘And beyond the walls, did the demons throng as they do now, their throats full of threats, mouths crying murder and mayhem?’

  ‘Brother?’ Athelstan looked around. Benedicta, holding Crim’s hand and surrounded by the other women, beckoned him urgently.

  ‘We must go Brother,’ she called.

  ‘Yes, we must,’ Athelstan agreed.

  They hurried out of the orchard, across the stable yard of the Round Hoop and out into the runnels leading down to the Tower quayside. The rebel horde had moved on but the streets still stank from the violent bloodshed. Tattered red and black banners floated from open windows. The corpses of two Flemings caught out in the street dangled from a tavern sign. A herald, garbed in the garish livery of the Upright Men, stood on a pile of rotting refuse and proclaimed sentence of death against the King’s uncle, Gaunt. The herald was sottish with drink but his voice was still clear as he proclaimed the regent, ‘An instigator of treachery, a cesspool of avarice, the charioteer of treason, the receptacle of malice, the disseminator of hatred, the fabricator of lies, an artful backbiter, notorious for deception …’

  Athelstan and his party hurried on. The tanning yards around the Tower had closed, but the stench from the workshops polluted the summer air, and the ground underfoot was still greasy with slops from the tanning vats. Athelstan walked carefully, lost in his own thoughts. He sensed that the bloodletting on Tower Hill had drained most of the hatred which had welled up along these needle-thin lanes around the fortress. Shops however remained shuttered, stalls removed, tinker tubs rolled away. The Tower wharf was empty though still a place of gruesome horror, the slime on the riverside mingling with the blood of other foreigners caught, summarily beheaded and gibbeted on the soaring scaffolds.