Serjeant-at-arms Lyons barked a laugh. ‘After I kill you, I’ll take her to Knolles. You know full well he likes them young and juicy.’ He swung the falchion, aiming at a high slash to the head …
Wat took the blow on the shield, the clang travelling up the length of the bones in his arm. He cut low for the hip.
Serjeant-at-arms Lyons took the low blow with a grunt, armour guarding flesh. He switched hands, swung again, hard.
Wat parried, the clobbering weight of the falchion spraining his wrist, knocking the sword edge. He whacked Lyons back with the shield, pressing up after him as if he was in the shield wall, taking hammer blows high on the shield, slashing at Lyons’ hamstrings. A big man’s weakness was his knees, the rondel joints in the armour there.
Serjeant-at-arms Lyons bleated like a lamb as the blade bit into a chink in the mail back of his knee and severed the big tendon there. He hopped, skipped away, but Tyler bore down on him, and a push splayed him on his arse.
‘Bastard!’ Wat was onto Lyons in a fury, stabbing down at the face, the joins round the neck armour, seeking flesh, blood.
Serjeant-at-arms Lyons had never asked for quarter. He tried to defend himself, but the falchion was too heavy and the sword point too fast. Searing steel sliced through his cheek, into his mouth, severing his tongue, choking off his screams.
Wat twisted the blade in the skull, the grind of metal on teeth, and stood to watch while Serjeant-at-arms Lyons writhed, spewing blood, till the soul twitched from his body.
‘You’ll pay for this,’ Assessor Miller said. ‘This is murder. This is high treason.’
Wat was quivering, with battle-rage and with the terror of what he must ask Sophia: ‘Did they force you?’
Sophia shook her head. ‘No, Father. I’m all right.’
Wat stared at her dress, then advanced on the taxman, there would be no quarter given.
Assessor Miller backed away, into the side of his own wagon. ‘You are an outlaw from this moment. A traitor! Wanted everywhere. Any man can rightfully strike you down. Spare me, and I will see you treated with leniency.’
Wat threw down his shield, took a two-handed grip on the sword and raised it high over the taxman.
‘Mercy, sir? Mercy!’
The sword flashed down through the taxman’s jowls … gouts of blood … the head took flight … landed and tumbled into a clump of horse dung.
VI
Sophia was aglow, sat on a stool by the fire, leaning over a steaming skillet. She stirred away with a wooden ladle. The circles and slops soothed her. The gamey aroma of rabbit bubbled up through the stew. She scooped out a taste, blew steam off the carrots and meat and when it was cool enough, slurped at it. ‘Tasty, if I say so myself.’
‘Smells good,’ said Harry, sitting at the table opposite. He had a cloth bandage on his head and was nursing a tankard of small ale to kill the throbbing in his skull.
Sophia smiled. ‘That’s because it’s nearly ready.’
‘Snared that rabbit up in the woods by your mother’s grave three days ago.’ Wat looked dour in the flickering light of the table candle and the rush-light crackling in the wall-brazier. He knew it was the last rabbit he would snare on his farm, the end of their dream of the farm, of him as a farmer, growing corn, raising sheep, instead of man-killing. He would have to leave Magdalena’s cross untended; to leave her alone; to never again go up there and talk to her about what had happened in the day; how Sophia had done her proud or how she was her daughter, not his. Who would he talk to now? Who would hear his daily confessions? He had to bite back the sorrow! Lock it up. He must not let grief be the thief of all hope. A man cannot. Not when he is a father.
‘Bastards!’ Harry rubbed the rim of his pewter tankard. ‘We’ll tell the Justice what happened.’
‘Not before the soldiers do.’ Wat slaked a draught of ale, and for a second regretted that he had spared the wounded. Though what else could he do? His anger was spent. They were soldiers as he had been and would not disappear into thin air like wights. He could not hope to hide what he had done.
‘We were provoked,’ Harry said.
‘That’s not how it will be presented. We killed a taxman, a Royal Serjeant-at-arms. They will try us, hang us and the King will confiscate my property.’
‘What else is there to do?’ Harry asked.
‘Head for Flanders. Join the Free Companies under a new name. They don’t ask questions if you’re handy with a sword or a bow.’
‘You’re not planning on sending me to Aunt Heloise, are you?’ They had been to Flanders six years before, when Sophia’s mother had been alive. She remembered the channel crossing on the rolling boat, she had never felt so ill. Her father had gone to strike a deal with Magdalena’s elder brother, Hans, a wealthy wool merchant in Antwerp. Aunt Heloise was his second wife, the Mayor of Ghent’s daughter, and for some reason she was horrible to Mother, made her feel so small. To this day she did not know why. Mother had been beautiful. Kind. Generous. Bright. Well-born. Mother was no village gossip, would not speak ill of people even if they deserved it. The woman’s cruelty remained a mystery.
Wat shook his head. ‘Aunt Heloise, no. You’ll have to become a nun. A Flemish nun.’
Harry laughed.
‘That’s not funny, father,’ Sophia said.
Wat sighed. ‘When you’ve seen a crow peck out your dead mate’s eyes on the battlefield, everything is funny. Even losing all that you own, all that you fought for.’
Sophia felt her father’s despair keen as a knife cut, turned back to the hearth before her eyes teared. She bit the sorrow back and served the stew onto beaten copper plates. This was her fault. She knew. She could feel her breasts move as she walked of late. Sitting on her horse she enjoyed the rub of the saddle. Down by the riverside, she had shamed herself with her fingers. And she had tempted poor Nick, had stoked the desire in his eyes! God knew her sins. Those soldiers – devils sent to punish her – knew too.
Harry asked quietly: ‘What will we do, Nick and me?’
Wat picked up a flagon and served Harry more ale. ‘Tomorrow I’m thinking, we’ll all head into Maidstone, pay a visit to Jack. I’ll give you some money, Harry. You can’t come with us to the wars. You’re not soldiers.’
‘What about the Pillagers?’
‘You don’t want to join them. They’re the worst scum in Christendom and soon as look at you, they’ll cut your throat. We’ll have to go our own ways.’
Harry shrugged. ‘Is there money enough in the world to outrun the Justices?’
‘If you pray hard enough, who knows?’
Harry made a show of putting his hands together, closing his eyes, and praying. ‘O Lamb of God that takest away the sins of the world: have mercy on us. O Lamb of God that takest away the sins of the world: have mercy on us. O Lamb of God that takest away the sins of the world: grant us peace. Amen.’
Sophia served the men their plates of stew, along with a plate of buttered rye bread.
Wat did not feel like eating; his stomach was lead-heavy with dread, but he picked up his wooden spoon, winked thanks at his daughter and ate. Sophia was a good cook. Her late mother had taught her well in those short years they had had together.
They ate in silence, the scrapes of cutlery on plates threatened to make Sophia’s eyes water. She hated those little shrieks.
‘That was a hearty meal,’ Harry said when he’d finished.
Wat was still chasing the last couple of carrot slices through the gravy when he heard footfalls outside, a jabber of voices, the unmistakable chink-chink of mail and crackle-spit of torches. ‘They’re back.’ He went for his sword, propped at the hearth, and a one-edged baselarde.
Harry snatched up a kidney dagger from by the door.
Wat told Sophia: ‘Stay behind me.’
There was a rap on the door. Someone coughed.
Wat nodded to Harry. ‘Open it – careful mind.’
Harry opened the door, keeping it between him
and the rapper. His heart was beating like the clappers in a ringing bell. Sweat welled in the furrows on his brow beneath the bandage. The knuckles of his right hand throbbed as he drew the dagger back to gut this frigger.
Sophia watched over her father’s shoulder, breath baited, as the silhouette holding a long bow in the doorway, backlit by a swarm of torches, flared into …
Nick …
Nick shrugging, purple-faced, grinning ear to cauliflower ear. ‘I told a few people what happened.’
Wat let go a wheeze of a laugh. Talk about relief: he was never so pleased to see the villagers of Tonbridge standing there, and not the Justices. The cheering faces of these hard-working folk who’d welcomed him and his “in-comer” family to the village with arms that opened wider every day.
Harry stepped out of his hiding place to scold his son. ‘Why didn’t you say who you were, son? You scared the life out of us!’
‘It was a surprise.’ Nick stepped aside to allow the others outside into the gloaming.
As soon as the villagers saw their hero Wat they started to cheer, stabbing the twinkling twilight in the belly with their wicked-looking pole-arms – bill-hooks, pole-axes, halberds, glaives. Others thrust the up the staves of their war bows.
‘We’re with you, Wat!’ cried Abel, madly waving a Saxon battle-axe about. It had been hanging over his fireplace for years, gathering dust and cobwebs, now the bearded edge bayed for Norman blood.
‘If you hadn’t killed that leeching bastard, I would have!’ Ed shouted over the clamour, shaking the stave of his bow.
Wat held his palms up, calling for peace and quiet. ‘Listen! Listen to me folks? Thanks for coming out here tonight, but this is my problem. Go home to your families before there’s trouble.’
‘You’re not alone in this, Wat,’ Abel said. ‘People are resisting the tax all over England.’
‘There’s no getting away from taxes,’ said Wat. ‘No matter how much we all want to.’
‘They’re rising in Hadlow,’ Nick said, ‘And all over Kent. And Abel says there’s word from Essex that folk have told the collectors to get stuffed.’
‘Rumours. Rumours. Listen everyone! I’m an outlaw. I killed a taxman and a Royal Serjeant-at-arms. They will hang me.’
‘We will not let that happen,’ Abel said, ‘You acted in defence of your daughter. In self-defence.’
‘There are enough of us. They cannot hang you if we stick together,’ declared Ed.
‘By God, if we stick together they can’t force us to do anything from now on,’ Abel shouted.
Harry looked Wat in the eye. ‘I am definitely going to pray more often.’
VII
It was Trinity Friday. King Richard should have been at the mass in Canterbury, with his mother, mourning his dead father. I had great wealth and lived as a great nobleman; I had estates, houses, jewels, hangings, gold and silver, and horses, but now I am poor and weak where I lie in the deep grave. This humbling verse from the Clericalis Disciplina was what the Black Prince had chosen for the inscription on his effigy. He was a most uncommon man.
King Richard should have been there, staring with pity at the effigy of the Black Prince, praying for his immortal soul. Instead, he was sat at the Round Table in Windsor, waiting for his opponent to make his move. They were playing his favourite board game, Nine Men’s Morris, a cross between chess and noughts and crosses.
Sir Robert was taking his damned time over this move; the old rogue was as ever cunning, he hated to lose at anything and would do anything, anything at all to win.
Huffing, puffing, letting it be known that his patience was coming to an end, King Richard’s eyes skittered over the chivalric coats of arms of the Order of the Garter hung on the walls all around the Hall of St George. The shields were charged full of rampant lions, and fleurs de lis, a guardant griffin, a gyrfalcon cabossed, a furiosant bull, an incensed marcassin, passant dragons, flamant torches. Each beast represented a grey-bearded baron, earl and knight; all the preening, strutting chanticleers he ruled. If his late father, the Black Prince, had been crowned he would doubtless have degraded half of them, replacing them with the stout men of Cheshire, who he swore could be trusted to do what they so swore.
‘Pardon, Majesty, I think I have you,’ Sir Robert said.
King Richard surveyed the grid, filled with red and black counters, perplexed. He had countered all Sir Robert’s moves, stopped him making a line of three. ‘You cannot form any other mills. It is a tie at worst.’
Sir Robert slid a black player along a diagonal line on the board and nudged one of his king’s red counters off, removing it from play. ‘Game over.’
How had he missed that? A sitter! King Richard backhanded his eight red counters from the grid, tinkling across the flags. ‘Damn you, Sir Robert. You never let me win! A regent should let his king win!’
‘I am stupid enough to believe you have to learn to become a king, Majesty.’
King Richard wagged his finger. ‘That is blasphemy, Sir Robert. Blasphemy and treason in the same sentence. God makes kings the rulers of men.’
Sir Robert smiled knowingly, then nodded. He opined it best to let that sleeping dog lie, stretched out by the fire. The divine right to rule was important to the young king, who was very religious, very pious, in the manner of his beautiful mother, Joan. It was the opinion of the King’s mother that the boy should be virtuous so that when he became a full-grown king he could be viciously political without guilt eating overly at his soul. Chancellor Sudbury, Archbishop of Canterbury and Regent, supported her point of view, and that is one of the main reasons why there was so much sickeningly Frenchie pomp and ceremony at the Boy King’s coronation. It was why Richard was anointed with the Virgin’s Oil – a sacred unction said to have been received by Thomas a Becket at Canterbury for the coronation of all the Kings of England. It was why Richard was dressed up in Edward the Confessor’s robes and shoes, one of which was lost. It was why he was censed and sprinkled with holy water when he was crowned. It was why the ring, the sceptre, the rod were presented by his uncles. And it was why – after the coronation – Richard was carried back to Westminster on the shoulders of Sir Simon de Burley, preceded by a drôlerie of animal-headed minstrels, clowns and crowd-pleasing actors.
To be frank, he had known more manly women than Sudbury. Castilian harlots in particular; they had more beard, and come to think of it, were more honest and forthright in their dealings. The whole foolish Frenchie ritual of Liber Regalis be damned and blasted! King Richard II would not grow into some Frenchie whore, pimped out to ply his trade by the eunuch vizier. The boy would be an English king, a lion! It was up to Sir Robert and the warlock that was Sir Simon de Burley, to steer the boy through the dark arts of war and intrigue. They would make him understand that politics and diplomacy were war, the sinister arm, but a war for power nevertheless. In time, under their tutelage, the King would become a great warrior, wielding dextre and sinistre blows in succession, like his father and grandfather before him, for the glory of England.
‘Chancellor Sudbury!’ announced the guard.
‘Majesty?’ Chancellor Sudbury shuffled past the guards and into the hall as fast as his slippers could carry him. He was a tiny man, almost a dwarf, and forever dressed in all the ceremonial finery befitting of the Archbishop of Canterbury and Chancellor of England – the great seal of England adorning his right hand, the bishop’s crook in his left, lest taller, bigger men forget to pay him all his due in respect. ‘Majesty! Majesty!’
‘What is it, Simon-Says?’ King Richard asked. He loved using that nickname. It was so apt. Simon says do this. Simon says do that.
Chancellor Sudbury bowed from the neck, careful not to dislodge his mitre. Ve terre ubi puer rex est. Never had a more Ecclesiastical truth been written! “Woe to the land where a boy is king.” He prayed to the Good Lord to save his old ears from the imminent toddler tantrums! Without divine intervention, he had slim hope the boy would hold his temper when
confronted with news that the revolt was spreading like summer wildfire on heathland. ‘Grave news, Majesty.’
King Richard tutted. ‘Do you bring any other kind? Don’t tell me – your tender ministrations to the Essexmen have failed, and the other half of Essex is now in revolt?’
‘Trailbastons continue in Essex, Majesty,’ Chancellor Sudbury said, his voice going all thin and reedy. He coughed as much gruffness as he could muster back into it, and continued: ‘This is news from Kent. Grave news for Sir Robert, and the Crown.’
‘Spit it out, man!’ Sir Robert said. ‘Spit it out.’
Chancellor Sudbury made a show of clearing his throat. ‘A herald rode all night to tell us that yesterday in Tonbridge, Kent, Sir Robert’s tax collectors were assaulted. Assessor Miller and Serjeant-at-Arms Lyons were murdered.’
‘Lyons is dead?’ Sir Robert pushed himself slowly to his feet. He could not believe it! Lyons had campaigned in France for twenty-five years. He had seemed indomitable. Invincible. Mars, the god of war. ‘That is confirmed?’
Chancellor Sudbury nodded. ‘It is. By the men who survived.’
‘They murdered our tax collectors!’ King Richard flew into a fit of rage, slammed his fist down on the table as he had seen King Edward III do when riled. ‘They murdered our tax collectors? In time of war. That is high treason, is it not Simon-Says?’
‘It assuredly is, Majesty,’ Chancellor Sudbury said.
‘Who did this?’ asked Sir Robert.
Chancellor Sudbury felt a tug slyly at the corners of his mouth – a physical distaste – as he answered: ‘A free man, Walter Tyler, dealt the killing blows.’
‘Wal-ter Ty-ler.’ King Richard said. ‘You must send in the Justices, Sudbury, restore public order, try and execute this traitor.’
‘That is already under way, Majesty.’ Chancellor Sudbury made it his sovereign duty to always pre-empt the boy’s judgements, keep him on the back foot, for the good of the Kingdom, in the service of God, and of course the real power behind the throne, Head of the Regency Council, the Duke of Lancaster, John of Gaunt.
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