They’re here to destroy. And they know their targets.
They ignore the Bishop of Salisbury’s palace, with all its rich treasures, as if it didn’t exist. They ignore the Whitefriars convent. But a huge detachment of men charges yelling into the next great enclosure, the Temple, where the lawyers of London have their chambers and their libraries. Cautiously, Chaucer follows them down Middle Temple Lane and watches, from a safeish distance, from behind a tree. There are men rushing in and out of every building he can see, busy and systematic as ants. They’re bringing out book after book of legal documents. They’re building them up into a giant bonfire outside the old round church – which is a copy, as Chaucer knows, and perhaps they do too, of the temple on the site of Christ’s Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and considered as sacred as the Jerusalem Sepulchre itself – and these men are not in the least bothered that this bonfire that some are setting light to now, and others are cheering on, is almost certainly sacrilege and will have them burning in Hell for ever. Chaucer retreats, carefully, back up to Fleet Street.
He’s missed the worst of the crowd pounding down to the Savoy, ignoring the Bishop of Exeter’s inn, and the Bishop of Bath’s, and the Bishop of Llandaff’s, and the Bishop of Coventry’s, and the Bishop of Worcester’s, too. It’s calmer now on the road. And there’s no point in hurrying. He already knows what he’ll see.
He can smell the smoke.
The Savoy is no longer white.
It is black, and red, and crackling, and there are guards in bloodied uniforms slumped ominously unmoving at the gates, with dark stains under their prone forms.
The same ant-men are inside, surging and scurrying around, thousands of them. There’s a crowd of them right in front of Chaucer, just inside the gates, with a beautifully embroidered quilted body-protector stuck up on a pole. They’re drawing arrows at it, like archery practice, yelling, after every thwang of the bowstring, as uproariously as if they were drunk (but they’re not), ‘We will have no king named John!’ It must be the Duke’s, Chaucer sees; they must have got into the treasury. He should feel sad to be a witness to this festival of hate; but he doesn’t feel anything, even fear, even these men’s excitement. He’s just eyes, for now; just stunned, stunned eyes.
Hesitantly, Chaucer moves on in through the gardens. He doesn’t think anyone will notice him. He feels invisible. They aren’t interested in him.
Yes, they’ve got to the treasury. There are dozens of them dragging out gold and silver plate on to the terrace that overlooks the river. It’s like a mad workshop out here, in the battering afternoon sun. Men sweating as they swing axes to bash and dent the finest work in Christendom with hideous metallic screeches. Men stuffing jewels into mortars and trying to grind them into knobbly paste. Men jumping on glittering necklaces, trying to smash them to bits with their boots (if they have boots, which many of them don’t). Men ripping tapestries and cushions and napery and hangings with their rippling blacksmiths’ or ploughmen’s arms. Men chopping up furniture, or pulling it apart in obscene games of tug-of-war. There are even two men who’ve put their hands through the sleeves of robes of cloth of gold, far too small for them, and are mincing about like great hairy ladies, yelling, ‘Will you dance, sweet madame?’ and tearing at each other’s bodices to reach for imaginary breasts, and thrusting their lanky pelvises at each other in quick, rhythmic snuffles of mirth.
Everywhere is the same. Men laughing insanely. Men shouting. Men sweating. Men grabbing at bits of shattered stuff and hurling it into the Thames.
There are rumblings and crashings from below, too: shouts, and the smash of metal on wood. They’ll have got into the wine cellars. They’ll be breaking open the barrels.
There are two directions the men go in, Chaucer sees, as the logic of the scene shifts and settles in his mind. There’s one stream of them throwing the unburnable valuables – what’s left of the jewels and metals when the axemen have finished with them – out over the terrace into the Thames. And there’s another stream of them carrying account books and papers, great piles of them, from buildings all over the compound into the oak-panelled great hall, where the shredded textiles are also heading.
The great hall is also where the smoke is coming from, and the crackling.
Chaucer’s not the only gawper lurking near the terrace, not by any manner of means. They’re all around, the other shadows and starers, like ghosts: shaking their heads, mouths hanging open. Mostly, no one notices any of them; they don’t even seem to notice each other. Not always, though. ‘Be you coming ‘long of us?’ one of the wreckers yells at one of his audience, cheerfully, without threat, and he’s rushed by before the man he’s addressed has a chance to fade back, or tremble, or faint with terror, which, Chaucer sees afterwards, were the only options on the watcher’s mind. It takes Chaucer another moment to realise, from that dialect, that the Kentishmen have got here too.
But, because he still feels invisible, Chaucer keeps moving on, as if in a trance. And when he comes upon one higgledy-piggledy heap of the Duke’s accounts that he recognises – in which his own pension, and those of Philippa, and probably (who knows?) the Duke’s various gifts to Katherine, are entered – lying on the terrace, abandoned, perhaps because they’re not sealed with green wax, he’s even bold enough to lean down and open his bag and stuff the rolls inside, before making a few vague steps in the direction of the men making the paper bonfire, as if to suggest he’s on his way there too. There’s not much he can save. But this is a God-given chance to do something, at least. It’s only after a few more moments, when he’s reassured himself that no one is looking at him, that he corrects his course again and goes on gliding inside.
How Alice would rejoice, he’s thinking, allowing his mind to consider her for the first time in a long time, because in that strange suspended state his mind is in right now there’s no pain. This is almost exactly what she said she wanted to see, the last time they spoke, isn’t it? He can almost hear her voice again, now; almost see that bleak look on her face. ‘I’d like to burn down the Savoy, with the Duke right in the middle of the bonfire…and his smug mistress, and your smug wife and my husband, too, if only I could think how…’
He smiles. He misses Alice’s energy. He even misses her vindictiveness.
He wishes she could see this for herself.
He hopes she’s been safe, out in Essex, where they say it’s been worst of everywhere, but there’s nothing he can do to protect her now.
Then, because nothing seems quite real right now except what’s going on before his eyes, and even that doesn’t seem very real at all, Chaucer forgets Alice and moves on. Tranquil. Light on his toes.
He’s actually in the hall with more of the intent, dancing, whirling maniacs, with his eyes stinging from the flames licking up over the giant bonfire, with his hands up to protect his face from the heat, wondering if there isn’t anything else lying about that he can stuff in his bag and save, when, through the spit and fury of the fire, he hears a scuffle behind him.
He turns. A group of the men hauling barrels towards the fire (wine barrels, he thinks) have dropped them and turned on one of their fellows. They’re pummelling the man, pulling at his tunic, grabbing his bag. The victim’s screaming like a stuck pig, digging his heels in, clinging on to whatever he can, but they’re lifting him up, whacking him as they go, shouting confused, furious words at him. There’s a moment of near-quiet – just the crackle, and the man’s enormous eyes. Then someone hisses, ‘That’ll larn you to go a-stealing,’ and someone else shouts, ‘We told you and told you, we do not do nothing of that like, right?’ and a bit of something glittery is thrown into the fire. ‘We are not thieves! We are the True Commons: zealots for truth and justice!’ yells another voice, a London voice. Then they throw the man in the fire too. A rush of flame and smoke envelops them all.
As the screaming gets louder, Chaucer fades out of the hall, ashen-faced. The bag on his back, crackling with its secret load, feels like a hot coal.
His legs are suddenly moving very fast. If they’re going to turn nasty, it’s time he got out of here.
It’s only as he whisks down a green alleyway outside, making for the Strand and hopefully home, that he hears two more voices, behind the hedge, out of sight. They’re breathless voices, busy, but surprised out of the trance-like destruction, for a moment, at least: ‘Tom? That’s never Tom Piper of Henney?’ Then, in a deeper voice, the reply: ‘Whoo-oop, Janny, bin heyah since the start, boy,’ and a clapping of flesh on cloth.
If they’re saying, ‘Whoo-oop,’ then those are Essex men.
The Essex men must have got in too. Through Aldgate.
Chaucer breaks into a sweat; he’s running.
He’s still running when he gets up the hill to the cathedral. He doesn’t even stop when, far behind him, there’s an almighty explosion.
Well, he does, of course. Just for a moment. Though he shouldn’t. But a man wouldn’t be human without a bit of curiosity. Anyway, everyone else on the crowded hill street has stopped too. They’re all craning their necks and shaking their heads. There’s awe on every face. There are giant flames and vast black clouds gushing out of the Savoy; as he gazes back, more pops and more vast flying chunks of masonry. ‘Gunpowder,’ he hears from some know-all.
The greatest palace in Europe, gone in one almighty flash. The Duke of Lancaster’s permanent presence in London, obliterated.
Those barrels, he thinks. The ones I was going to watch them chuck on the fire. Thank God he got out in time. Thank God. But there’s no time to waste. He turns, heaves in breath, and staggers on east, against the human tide.
It’s not just to put as much distance as possible between himself and that scene from Hell, back there.
It’s this. If the Essex men are here, they’ve entered through Aldgate. So what’s happened to his home?
Aldgate is open. He can see St Botolph’s beyond, and the houses of the eastern villages, and the fields. There are still rustics pouring in from the Essex encampment at Mile End, shouting and spitting and charging down the road.
But there are no gate guards that Chaucer can see. No dead men on the ground. No prisoners. No ugly scenes. There’s no smoke, either, and no torn masonry. The staircase to Chaucer’s apartment is intact.
He wriggles through the crowd and up the stairs. There’s danger everywhere outside. All he can do now is bar his door and sit tight. Wait it out, as his daughter’s doing. After a while, Chaucer’s heart stops thudding and the sweat on his skin dries and cools. He’s not exactly sitting tight. He’s still pacing around, wild-eyed and wild-haired, revisiting in his mind his most frightening moments out there.
When he’s recovered himself a little, he gets the rolls out of his leather bag and spreads them on his table. It’s only two years’ worth of household accounts, though even that’s better than nothing: a splinter of defence against the onslaught of the darkness these…others…are bringing into London. Chaucer’s a little cheered by that thought. He even summons up enough ordinary inquisitiveness to go through the rolls he’s grabbed and saved quite carefully – for what else is he going to do, here, today? He sees his own name twice a year (and that of his wife, rather more often, including as the recipient of a silver-gilt cup at Christmas that sly Philippa never mentioned to him she’d been given, which is listed here as being worth £5 2s. 1d., or half the entire value of Chaucer’s ducal pension for the year). He also sees some of the large amounts of money that the Duke seems to spend on fripperies for Katherine, on top of her already lavish allowances. Katherine has received, this spring alone, two tablets of silver and enamel for 7 marks, a silver belt costing more than 40 shillings, a three-legged silver chafing pan worth 33 shillings, a gold brooch in the form of a heart set with a diamond, and a gold brooch set with a ruby and fashioned in the form of two hands.
It seems nothing’s too good for the Duke’s women, Chaucer thinks sourly. But then he catches himself on that ungenerous thought, and imagines Katherine hiding wherever she is, with her secret children, and the fear they must feel now, with the peasants gone wild and out for blood, and finds that all he feels for her, really, is pity. Gold brooches won’t help her now, poor creature. He wouldn’t be in her shoes, if a mob of madmen like the ones he’s seen today is after her, too. He hopes she’s found a refuge.
Chaucer goes to the window.
There’s a nagging voice in his head, telling him he should do something more to defend what he holds dear. Take these rolls to Walworth, maybe. Show willing.
But there are no familiar faces or shapes out there. Just strangers, some yelling in their Essex voices as they head back through the open gates to Mile End, some drunk already, more coming in, with frightening joy on their turnip faces.
Irresolute, he stands and stares.
THIRTY-NINE
They come out of the woods, arising from the greenery like furtive spirits. They must have slept rough. There are at least ten of them, led by a woman with a tattered shawl draped over what may once have been a good robe. She has a baby in her arms, a very still baby. But what Alice notices about her first is her closed black eye and fat lip. And the children trailing behind have brambles in clothes blackened and scorched by fire.
It is nearly noon. There are no men at Gaines. They’re long gone, with their big staves and their big talk, following Wat. It’s just the women and children left behind: Alice and her baby, and Aunty, and the kids. All Alice knows of what the men are up to is what she hears, via Aunty, from the talk on the road: from the wives whose men come back for a snatched night at home, or those sent to the villages to gather reinforcements. What Aunty said this morning, stirring the pot with dark satisfaction, was that the men had left the green-wax fires burning in Chelmsford and Canterbury, and got straight into London. The King’s readily agreed to meet the True Commons. And not a drop of blood shed.
It’s Johnny who sees the arrivals first. Johnny, who stayed in the solar while the men were still milling about; who hasn’t had a good word for Wat or anyone else for weeks now, even before he stopped talking to Alice and Aunty altogether. Still in his mutinous silence, not meeting anyone’s eye, he gets up from the table and stares out of the window.
Then he walks out, across the courtyard, through the gate, across the field.
Alice sees something in the set of his shoulders, so she gives Aunty little Lewis, who’s heavily asleep, and follows Johnny out, feeling strange in the hot air of outside after her days in confinement, staring at the approaching woman with the black eye, and the children, and the cowered women behind, supporting a limping figure Alice can’t make out, and watching how they cringe down when Johnny, silhouetted against the sky, starts waving to them up ahead. He’s tall. A man, they might be thinking. But when they hear his thin boy’s voice, full of a concerned warmth Alice hasn’t heard in a while, not around her house, the women start moving forward again. Even from her distance, Alice can hear the kids begin to snivel as they stumble across the field towards safety.
Mary Sewale and her family have been in the woods for three days.
They ran out of the burning house when the mob got in. She doesn’t know what’s happened to her husband, the sheriff of Essex. She pushed the children out through the chicken hole, she says, and ran after them.
There’d been men all around the house for days before. A week. There was no food left by the time the crowd got in.
The Sewale children are wolfing down bread. Stuffing it in. They’re staring round Aunty’s kitchen with vacant eyes. They jump at every noise.
And the young girl with them, the one the two old servant women have been holding up, the one who was limping with the lost look on her face, and is now huddled down on the floor, crying in a forgetful sort of way, as if she doesn’t remember that there’s water on her face: she’s been…well, none of them can describe the outrage done to her. All the old servants can say, with that imploring look that begs you to understand, and with those occasional
flashes of rage at the memories they don’t want to revive, is that it happened after the mob got into the Sewales’ house at Coggeshall, and found this young Jane Ewell there too, and her new husband, the escheator of Essex.
They know what happened to him, all right. John Ewell came out of his hidey-hole when he heard his wife screaming. So they got him, and dragged him out. Cut his head off in front of the chapel. Tom Woodcutter did it, with this crazy look on his face. And the old women got Jane out the back, after the others. Into the woods.
‘But why were you all still there? Why didn’t you get away days ago?’ Johnny says very gently, with his hands on Mary Sewale’s. ‘When the rioting first started? Why didn’t he take you to safety?’
Mistress Sewale shakes her head. She can’t explain properly, even to this kind lad. Who can explain fear? She’s too exhausted; overwhelmed.
Alice, too. She’s got her baby back in her arms. She’s nestled in her corner, on her stool, doing nothing but staring down into his tiny face, watching his eyes open and gaze at her with that look that goes beyond trust. She’s taking refuge in that look. But there’s a terrible misgiving swelling somewhere deep inside her.
And not a drop of blood shed, Aunty was saying earlier on. Wasn’t she?
This isn’t what was supposed to happen, was it?
She peeks up. If Aunty’s also feeling a stirring of guilt, she’s not letting on. Aunty’s face is closed. She’s leaving the questions to Johnny.
Aunty’s heaving a big pot of water on to the hook over the fire. Then she takes the baby off Mary Sewale. It’s tied on, round my lady sheriff’s front. Aunty fumbles with the knots, then cuts them. It’s still not moving, that lump.
Aunty unwraps the swaddling. She lays the baby on the table to do it. Bluish stick limbs emerge, floppy against the wood. The stink is unbearable. So is the silence.
As if only just remembering her child’s existence, Mary Sewale gets up to help. She moves as if she’s in a trance. But her voice is strangely ordinary as she says, ‘She’s been sick for days. We couldn’t go, she was so sick. That was why.’ Then, leaning over, pale as a ghost, but still with that unnatural calm, ‘Is she dead?’
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