The two Abbeville serjeants crashed into a pocket of men-at-arms, sending several foes sprawling into the sod. But there were two Frenchies with pole-axes who knew their stuff – tripping a horse, dismounting a rider, setting about smashing through his plate with heavy blows.
A vicious whirling melee ensued around the downed man – a crude dance of men and mounts and cutting steel. Serjeant Baker fought like a demon to protect his comrade until he got pranged in the helm with a quarrel from a Genoese crossbow, and slumped dead across his charger’s neck. That left the Frenchies to close in on the downed man, smash him senseless with pole-axes, and slot him with a lance through the joins.
Jack steered clear of a charging Frenchie knight and rode his horse headlong into a serjeant wielding a pike. The huge gutted mount shrieked, crumpled, and Jack, Giant or not, went flying over its neck to hit the ground hard and tumble a few times. A haze of blue sky and nose stinging the tang of blood, he forced himself up, drew his dagger. The Frenchie serjeant ran at him, shouting their stupid war cry: ‘Montjoie St Denis!’ He parried two loose blows to get in close and stabbed the fucker with the long dagger under the left armpit – in right up to the quillons. Lung punctured, the man sagged to the ground. St Denis was a useless saint to invoke. St George did the job right proper. Dragons beware! Frenchies beware! He ran back to retrieve his bow stave from the dead horse, sighed with relief; it was still in one piece.
Wat could see the momentum of the charge had been absorbed. Now the Frenchies had the advantage, and rallied. ‘Retreat lads, retreat!’ he ordered.
Wat’s lance disengaged and turned tail. All except Jack who was afoot, being circled by two wary Frenchie squires, armed with sword and mace, trying to work up the nerve to attack.
‘Come on then, children!’ Jack bellowed, slashing out a circle wide as his long arm with the long dagger.
Goaded, the squires closed in for the kill.
Wat rode up and saw the French lads off by reining the charger into a full striking rear, clipping one of them, propelling him into the other. When the stallion hit the ground Wat offered his hand, grabbed Jack by his arm, and jerked him up into the saddle: the strain told on his shoulder like someone had lit a fire there.
‘Yah!’ Wat yelled, taking off up the highway. He was glad his charger made up for its quirks with sheer pace. Two men on its back was no hindrance. This was why he’d not gelded it. Geldings were like monks – had no spunk, no vim, no spirit. Spirit was everything!
IV
With the sun sinking like a molten shield into the hills of Normandy, Sir Robert halted the column at a broken stone cross marking a crossroads. It seemed like a fitting place. Crossroads were where nobles hung criminals so they would be seen by passers-by, a reminder to be good, to be obedient. ‘Sound Assembly.’
Master Serjeant Lyons had the herald spit notes into his bugle to summon the men and the women, to what would be Wat’s flogging.
Wat took his plate armour off piece by piece, dragged his mail-coat over his head, then peeled the padded jacket off his torso. His bare arms were white, latticed with whiter scars. His back was heavily scarred from a flogging he’d provoked six years back. Another donkey-headed captain. Same charge.
‘I might have known this wasn’t your first taste of the whip Tyler,’ Sir Robert said, on his high horse.
Wat paid Knolles no heed. He’d take his beating without complaint and that would say all there was to say about cunting Sir Robert Knolles.
As one, the fighting men had made their minds up. Even though the action had achieved nothing of import, they were in agreement. Wat had done the right thing by the Abbeville lads. The heroic thing. A throng of archers, serjeants and whores circled around him. Some shook his hand, serjeants gave him the thumbs-up, archers the victory ‘V’. They weren’t here for a gloat; their presence was compulsory. He chose to be all bravado for them, an actor cavorting in a Mystery Play, as if he had no terror of the scourge. It would annoy the shit out of Bastard Knolles.
‘Here, Wat.’ Ruth Wright, a black-haired, carnal-eyed girl of seventeen, slipped Wat a bottle of Burgundy. ‘Knolles won’t miss it.’
Wat smiled, popped the stopper and handed her it right back. ‘You first.’
‘Thanks.’ Ruth laughed and took a swig.
‘If he doesn’t want a glug, give it here,’ Jack said.
Ruth passed the bottle back to Wat. ‘I’ll nurse you after it’s over.’ The words had come unbidden, and she flushed.
‘There’s an offer I can’t refuse,’ Wat said, thinking of her hands ministering to him, taking away the pain, giving him pleasure … But, no. Those roll-in-the-hay days were long gone. He was married. Nine years. To his lovely Maggie. There are so many things in life a man just cannot have because … because … because. He gulped down the wine, savouring the rich biliousness. The fucking Frenchies could press furious good wine! He’d give them that.
‘We don’t have all day, Master Serjeant,’ Sir Robert said. ‘Lash him to the wheel. Let us hear the song of pain.’
Master Serjeant Lyons whipped the ground to break up the crowd, strode in and took Wat by the crook of his arm. ‘Come with me.’
A drummer rolled his sticks on the hide of a drum as Wat let his hands be tied to the spokes of a wagon wheel.
‘I’ll go easy,’ Master Serjeant Lyons whispered in his ear. ‘You make it look hard.’
Wat dragged in a deep breath. This was going to be hard, even if Lyons went easy. He was no Flagellant; the licks of a whip, the flesh-stripping barbs, purged no sins for him. He would try to block out the maddening pain with memories of his daughter Sophia. Her glorious squeals as he chased her through his hay field on all fours, like a hound after a fox. Her head barely the height of the hay, hair trailing the same glorious gold. But she was not his little girl anymore. Now she was ten. Ten! And very proud of being ten.
Master Serjeant Lyons measured his stance, raised the scourge.
‘Ten of your best, Master Serjeant,’ Sir Robert stressed.
Sophia had the look of her mother Magdalena – a Flemish angularity that stirred the heart and broke it into pieces all at once. When Wat prayed, which was not often, he thanked the Lord for the saving grace of their beauty in all the sinful ugliness of the world.
The scourge swished, the barbs and hooks on the leather fronds ripping fire into his skin. Dear God! Holy Christ! He slumped into the wheel, blowing and groaning and bleeding. Jesus … fucking … Christ. He glared out from under the arch of his arm at Bastard Knolles, a murderous hate. Give me strength!
Master Serjeant Lyons lashed in the scourge again. And again. He put his back into it, not taking anything easy at all. Again! The blood, red trails of spatter in the air, the copper-tang filling in his nostrils, stiffened his cock to bursting.
Tax has ruined us all,
The death of so many men proves this,
The King thereof had small,
The greedy stole the lion’s share,
Off the needy, not one and all,
Causing sorrow in the end,
Repent, revere God, should be the call,
To account for the sins of the evil.
Anonymous (circa 1381)
Part One
John Ball, sometime priest of St Mary’s, York, late of Maidstone Gaol, greets you well John Nameless, John Miller, John Carter, John Tyler, John Baker and bids you stand together in God’s name. I am writing letters, lighting the watch-fires, sounding the alarm bells. Know your friends from your foes! Beware or be in woe of the guile of Hobbe the Robber and all his fellows. The time is coming to chastise those who lead hounds, fly hawks and own the fields, the woods, the roads, our very houses. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost we will end their prideful wars, their corrupt taxes, their robbery without shame, gluttony without blame. John Trueman – bid Piers Plowman go to his work with right and might, will and skill! In the name of the Trinity this is begun. If the end goes well, all is well. Amen. Amen
.
20th March, in the year of Our Lord, 1381.
I
Windsor, Thursday 6th June in the year of Our Lord, 1381
Black. All the clothes the servants of Princess Joan were packing were black, and she was dressed in black – as she had been every day since June 8th, 1376 when her beloved Edward died. Wagging tongues at court found her mourning period of five years self-indulgent. Her son, the Boy King, was one of them – he kept telling her Sir Robert nursed hopes of marriage, kept hinting she was still the Fair Maid of Kent, ‘la plus belle et plus amoureuse’ in all the land, and that Old Father Time had been immensely kind to her. As if she would consent! Sir Robert was heroic and chivalric and vaguely handsome in a black-hearted way, but he was no nobleman, no great lord of men; he was jumped-up gentry no matter how much treasure he had pillaged from France.
‘Mind that dress Genevieve,’ Princess Joan told her Norman lady-in-waiting. It was the dress she had worn to Edward’s funeral.
‘Oui, Majesty.’ Lady Genevieve took more care packing the dress.
King Richard strutted into the bedchamber. He was right royally furious. Once again, he had been put in an impossible situation, caught between his own desires and matters of state. He was worried he would look like a coward. ‘Leave us be!’ he shouted to the servants.
‘Calm yourself, Richard.’ Princess Joan’s face tempered into steel as the fourteen-year-old tyrant herded her servants out, arms whirling windmills.
King Richard pulled her funeral dress out of the trunk and threw it on the bed. ‘You’re not going, mother! The King forbids it.’
Princess Joan picked up her funeral dress, smelt cedar wood as she smoothed the ruffles. She had loved Edward at first sight, and he her. Theirs was a true romance, a tryst of souls like the bards sung of. It was a shame that Edward’s only living son was too young to understand the power of love. She had tried to explain love to him. But telling one who has never loved about love is like trying to describe the colours of the rainbow to a blind man. ‘I am going, Richard. So is your brother Thomas.’
‘Then our half-brother is a bigger fool than you!’ King Richard tugged more of her clothes out of the trunk. ‘Half of Essex is up in arms. Now the Kentishmen are resisting the collection of the poll tax. The Pilgrim Road is lawless. Anything could happen between here and Canterbury.’
Princess Joan walked round her son and slammed the lid of the trunk. ‘The holy day of Trinity is the anniversary of your father’s death. We will pay homage to his memory, outrages or no!’
The Black Prince deserved to be remembered as the great hero of Poitiers, the man who led an army of a mere six thousand souls to ruin and defeat the whole of France, taking King Jean Le Bon hostage for ransom of six million gold ecus and winning the principality of Gascony in the Treaty of Bretigny. There was not an Englishman alive who did not think he would have made the finest king. King Edward IV he would have been, but for the malady that afflicted him after the battle of Najera, that turned his bowels to water, his blood to poison, and his flesh to porridge. King Richard truly hated that he would miss honouring his father, but folly was folly whatever way you looked at it, and the lesson to be learned from his father’s death was to weigh up all risks carefully, and act accordingly. ‘Sudbury isn’t going, mother. He won’t be saying the mass, and as Regent he strongly advises the King not to go.’
Princess Joan swished past her son, out of her bedchamber, talking as she went: ‘So much for the Chancellor of England! So much for the Simon Sudbury, Archbishop of Canterbury. I’m sure a more true-hearted priest will honour the Black Prince of Wales tomorrow.’
King Richard pursued her into the huddle of servants in the hallway. She was shaming him. She would not see how this was publically shaming him and he could not say so. ‘How dare you walk away from me? Stop this moment!’
Princess Joan stopped – to address Lady Genevieve. ‘Finish packing. Have the men bring my wardrobe to the carriage.’
Lady Genevieve curtsied. ‘This I will do.’
King Richard called after her. ‘I cannot come, mother.’
Princess Joan shrugged her shoulders. ‘That is your choice, Richard.’
‘The King has no choice but to be king.’ King Richard sucked at his thumb, bit off some shredded skin round the cuticle and chewed on it. Tasted like salted ham. He was suddenly ravenously hungry. He did not understand that this was guilt eating him up from inside like a tapeworm.
II
Royal Serjeant-at-arms Lyons, dressed in the King’s livery – a green tabard with the rearing white hart on it – led a lance of light cavalry into the village of Tonbridge, Kent. It was his pig of a job to enforce the collection of the third poll tax for Sir Robert. He had seven men to stop the locals tearing the fat twat of a tax collector they were escorting limb from limb. Two were veterans of the Scottish Borders, the others useless whelps straight off their mothers’ teats. Fucking liabilities.
As they crossed the village green, an old hag spat at Assessor Edmund Miller, on his wagon. The spittle smelt vile and stained his finest Dunster coat. ‘Be gone, witch!’ he shouted at her. Spit he could take. Flying shit he had to take sometimes. The death threats in the last ville, Hadlow, were a different matter. The Elders would pay. It was a small world. The long arm of the law, swinging the mighty sword of justice, would reach out and cleave the heads off those felons. He was a tax collector. No one could hope to avoid taxes, not even the dead, if he had anything to do with it.
After a riot broke out in the last ville, Serjeant-at-arms Lyons had decided not to order a public gathering to collect the tax. They would do it house by house; that way they could keep the numbers down, keep the peace. He halted the men at the smithy where the beefy, soot-stained smith and an older man in a red turban, were standing, arms crossed, defiant. The hot air billowing from the forge was eye-watering with the reek of burnt metal and bone.
Abel Ker was a village elder of Tonbridge. A runner from Hadlow – his second cousin, Alfred – had told him what had happened and as Elder, he felt emboldened to spout what everyone else was thinking. ‘Look Ed,’ he said, ‘a daylight robber, come to steal your hard earned money.’
God had not gifted Assessor Miller with height so much as prodigious girth, so he stood up on the wagon to look imposing: ‘I’m here to assess and collect your poll tax in the name of the King. How many in this house?’
‘What’s this poll tax for?’ Abel asked, the tippet-tail on his liripipe turban shaking as if alive. ‘To fight the Frenchies? To fight the Scots? To fight the Spaniards? Or, to line the pockets of “King John” and his puppet regents?’
‘Less of your lip, old man, or I’ll clap you in the stocks!’ said Serjeant-at-arms Lyons. He dismounted and loomed over Abel.
Assessor Miller lifted his ledger and jumped down off his wagon. ‘I’ll say it one more time civilly – how many in this house?’
‘Me. My wife. And three sons under fifteen,’ Ed Smith sighed. He didn’t want trouble but Abel was right. He was buggered if he’d pay a shilling a head on top of all the taxes on movables and manorial dues. Money didn’t grow on trees – unless you owned an orchard. It came after hammering metal into thousands of arrowheads in scorching heat for hours on end, getting kicked shoeing horses, sharpening all manner of shears, ploughs, hoes and, of course, the lord’s frigging ceremonial sword – ‘ceremonial’ because the bloody beautiful thing had never been used against the Frenchies, not even once in fifty years of war.
‘Call them all down here,’ Assessor Miller instructed.
‘You wouldn’t take his word for it? Bare-faced cheek!’ Abel went off on a rant as was his wont at village meetings. ‘You don’t trust us and yet we’re supposed to trust you with our coin. We’re paying you five times the rate of the last poll tax. Tell us, where does all the shitting money go? Do you know?’
‘I warned you!’ Serjeant-at-arms Lyons said, and grabbed Abel by the collar. ‘Lads!’ The two veteran serjeants dismo
unted, sensing the onset of violence, hankering to embrace it like a long-lost friend.
Abel struggled to get out of the vice-grip but could not. ‘The nobles don’t pay their share. The church doesn’t either. Only the poor working men pay for the war. Go on – tell us why?’
Serjeant-at-arms Lyons laid his other hand on the man’s flapping arm and gripped hard. He growled into his stupid face: ‘Life isn’t meant to be bloody fair.’
‘You don’t have to get lairy, serjeant,’ Ed said. ‘Marion! Children! Come down here!’
There were bumps and bangs and floorboards creaking upstairs as the whole family made to come down and present themselves.
Abel struggled with Serjeant-at-arms Lyons, trying to wrench his right arm off his collar. ‘Take your hands off me or there’ll be trouble.’
‘Too late.’ Assessor Miller shrugged. ‘We’ve had nothing but griping bastards all day. It gets wearing.’
‘This is what trouble feels like,’ said Serjeant-at-arms Lyons, thumping Abel in the guts, knocking the wind clean out of him, dropping him to the floor. He loved these Frenchie gauntlets; the knuckledusters were so punishing!
Ed squared up to the tax collector, fists clenched in white fury. ‘Abel is our village Elderman. Treat him with respect.’
The two veteran serjeants advanced on Ed, bloody-minded, drawing their swords.
Assessor Miller shrank back behind his escort. ‘Fancy swinging on the end of a rope, do we?’
Ed’s family reported down into the smithy as bidden. Marion’s eyes, wide – wide, with warning. The fearful eyes of a dog-cornered doe. He could not let anything bad happen to them. The thought of them hurt … The fight drained right out of him.
Three Lions of England Page 2
