Sir Robert tugged at the beard on his chin. ‘Are you sure this varlet’s name is Walter Tyler?’
‘So the herald said. Why, Sir Robert? Do you know that name?’
‘I had a serjeant by that name under my command in France.’
‘This Tyler is a soldier of the King?’ asked King Richard.
‘Unlikely to be the same malefactor, Majesty,’ Chancellor Sudbury said. ‘It’s a common trades-name.’
Sir Robert shrugged. ‘Sudbury is right, for once. It couldn’t be that man. He was from the West as I recall, though I can never understand the dialects in confounded English. It sounds like they are chewing on their cheeks.’
‘Whoever this Tyler is, he will be dead and rotting in Hell before the end of the week.’ King Richard was not asking, he was decreeing. It felt good to issue a royal decree, a death decree! He simply uttered the words and without question traitors hanged from a gallows by a crossroads in some Godforsaken one-horse village. In Essex. In Kent. Wherever. His tongue was the two-edged sword of justice. He firmly believed that the King embodied the law and the customs of the realm, that the King was de facto, England. ‘Won’t he, Simon-Says?’
Chancellor Sudbury nodded, humouring the boy and his blood-thirst, as he always did – until it came to hearing the royal confession and issuing a divine penance. ‘Yes Majesty.’
Richard, by the grace of God, King of England and France and Lord of Ireland, to all and each of the justices, sheriffs, mayors, bailiffs and other faithful men of the county of Kent. Because we understand that various of our subjects have risen up against our peace and to the disturbance of the people, and have formed various assemblies in order to commit many injuries against our faithful subjects, we hereby notify you that these risings and injuries displease us immensely, are of a prejudice to the crown and of damage and commotion to the entire kingdom. Wherefore we command and order you to preserve the peace and resist said insurgents against our peace; you are to do this to the limit of your ability and with force, if necessary, so that damages or ills shall not continue to be perpetrated. And you are to omit nothing, under complete forfeiture of your goods; you must restore the peace; command all liegemen and subjects to desist utterly from such assemblies and return to their homes to live there in peace, under penalty of losing life and limb and all their worldly goods.
Witnessed by the King, at Windsor, 9th June, in the fourth year of his reign.
VIII
Adam giggled as the cock stretched its neck out and crowed at the hens pecking at the earth. Ed Smith loved the laughter of his children. It was so innocent, so playful and so contagious. He laughed himself, and hoisted his youngest up onto his shoulders, clamped his hands round the boy’s tiny feet, so Adam could see what was going on.
‘I am a giant,’ Adam said in a silly deep voice. ‘Look at me!’
The whole village, Tonbridge men, women and children, was gathered at Walter Tyler’s, had been since the scrake of dawn. They were all crushed into the yard ringing round a bonfire of ashes and embers, waiting for Wat to ride out of his barn and lead the menfolk into Maidstone town, to seek justice, and free John Ball.
For it had been decided by Abel and the Elders that they must free John Ball, the hedge priest imprisoned and excommunicated by the Archbishop of Canterbury for sedition, for preaching the True Commons should overthrow the False Nobles. John Ball would know what to do next. They’d drunk six barrels of ale in the night. Ed’s head was a bit fuzzy, but he was sure that was what had been agreed in the small hours of the morning. John Ball would save them all.
A hellish shrieking and stamping from inside the barn made Ed and a few other horse-wise villagers fall back from the entrance. He needn’t have worried. It was only that old serf Harry dragging out a donkey, laden with provisions, its head rearing in stubborn protest.
‘Come on you lazy shit-bag, or else!’ Harry yelled.
Ed and everybody else laughed. Adam laughed because everyone else was laughing.
Harry’s cracked head hurt so he whipped a stick on the donkey’s flank harder than he normally would have. The beast spun and dragged him back into the barn. He hung on. A stalemate. It would not go forwards. He would not go backwards.
‘What you wouldn’t give for a carrot,’ Ed shouted.
Adam giggled.
Harry struggled on, manfully failing until Sophia led her grey pony out of the barn and the donkey fell into step with its companion horse.
Inside the barn, Wat was dressing Sleipnir for war with the help of young Nick. The stallion was bedecked in a white and red trapper, covering the plate armour on the chest, forearms and cannons. ‘Might as well look the part,’ Wat told Nick.
‘You do that.’ Nick was in awe.
Wat was decked out in full plate himself, and wore a red jupon emblazoned with the golden Three Lions: standard issue for English men-at-arms. He mounted Sleipnir and with two clicks of his tongue and a ‘Yah!’ geed him out of the barn.
The village folk gave a great cheer as they saw him ride out, Ed included.
‘Is he a knight, father?’ Adam asked.
‘No, son,’ Ed said. ‘He’s one of us. He’s a serjeant.’
The Three Lions forked pennon that tipped his lance held high, Wat trotted through the cheering, rowdy throng in the yard. Truth be told, he did not share their joy, their hope, none of it. All he could think of was how he’d been up at the grave earlier with Sophia, explaining to Magdalena about why they were leaving. Weeping like a woman. Remembering the strange starlight in her eyes when she was thinking and the queer blackness of them when they kissed and made love. Leaning on her cross, he felt queasy like when he had been all the way up the bell tower at Calais Cathedral looking down at the ant-like people below in the square.
Ed lifted Adam off his shoulders, handed him over to the wife, and shot her a wink.
‘Be careful,’ she told him.
‘We will be.’ Ed nodded at her, flashed a hearty smile, then he yelled at the top of his bellow-like lungs: ‘Let’s go to town, folks!’
IX
Wat’s column followed a road that wound away from Tonbridge, into the hills between a wood of chestnut and oak trees. A herd of six or seven Cottager’s pigs rooted between the trunks, oinking noisily.
A league further down the road, a band of thirty men had set up a blockade, well-armed men, with swords and axes and shields and bows – the weapons of freemen, soldiers. But their heads were hooded and their faces were masked like brigands. ‘Woah, there,’ Wat told Sleipnir, and held up a hand to halt the marching men of Tonbridge.
The column stopped. There was an uneasy stand-off. Mutterings amongst the villagers.
‘Are they robbers?’ Nick asked Wat.
Wat shook his head. He might have been born under Sagittarius, the Sign of the Archer, but it was hard to see that far. This was why he was no archer. He had trained like every other freeman had to by law, but his eye was not good enough, nor his height great enough, to be accurate at long range. ‘Let’s nose a bit closer.’
They rode closer …
‘Too many mouths to feed to be robbers,’ Wat said when he got a clear view. He knew only too well what he was talking about. In leaner times, the early Sixties, when he was young and reckless and the war was slow, he had taken to dwelling in the forests, done his unfair share of brigandage. Many a king’s soldier had done a stint as a robber – what the Frenchies cursed as Routiers, what the Germans called the Rotten – in the Low Countries to feed his fury and quench his thirst for fine Frenchie wine. Not his proudest moment, but it was in the company of a dozen such outlaws, men who would cut your throat for a groat, that Wat had met Jack Straw, Long-Tail lummox archer, best bruiser and boozer a man could want to know. There are a few people a man meets who he seems to know from before, who were recognised as friends from the start, as if they were written into the book of a man’s life. Jack was such a man.
One of the hooded men, old and lanky, limped down t
he road towards the men of Tonbridge, hands held high. He wasn’t wearing a mask – beneath the bruises and swelling it was the face of the village Elder, Abel, and he called over: ‘My cousin and the freemen of Hadlow will fight for you, Wat!’
Wat leant over to whisper to Harry: ‘This is getting out of hand.’
Harry shrugged. ‘Don’t knock it. You’re becoming a local legend. The Robin Hood of Kent.’
Wat sighed. ‘I’m heading for Flanders with Jack, Harry. No matter what this lot think.’
But word spread ahead, runners carrying the message of revolt like torches, lighting the way. Wat could only look on in quiet despair as at Nettlehead, their ranks were swelled by twenty-five freemen, archers every one, and a hundred raggedy bondsmen baying for noble blood.
When the horde of orchard workers from the Abbey of Barming, carrying knives and billhooks, joined them, Harry was beaming, but all Wat could do was sigh. It was going to be difficult to slip away unnoticed. A dead-of-the-night job. The third part of the night, when old women died in their sleep.
There were not supposed to be serfs in Kent anymore but Wat was taken aback at how many serfs came loping in from the fields to join them, filthy men and women, skin and bone. He felt for them, these ragged bondsmen. Everyone knew their lot in life was a cruel one. They were called thralls in Saxon times, considered part of the land in law, they had the same value as the dirt. They were not allowed to look up from tilling the narrow strips of soil in the virgates, except to perform service to their feudal overlord, the man who owned them and their sequela – their children and children’s children. They were joining his column, rebelling, because they had nothing, absolutely nothing, to lose.
By the time they marched up to the gates of Maidstone, they were five hundred strong, of which one hundred were archers.
Anxious about getting shot, the guards had deserted their gateposts and fled to the safety of the castle, leaving only the fecal stench of the place to stand as a warning to beware of entry.
‘You are our captain, Wat. Lead us into the town,’ Abel said.
So, Wat took the lead and rode through the foul-smelling, shit-stained, narrow streets, all the way into the market square – with the aim of breaking off and getting to Jack’s house quick-smart, leaving them to their riot.
Townsfolk swarmed to join the column of villagers in droves, as if disorder was a plague. Beggars fled their pitches on street corners. Artisans abandoned their work. Butchers ran from their shops, cleavers and meat hooks at the ready.
‘Let’s break the gaol,’ Abel yelled and charged off towards the castle.
As the mob surged away, Wat took his chance. ‘Quick. Follow me!’ he told Sophia and the others.
Jack’s house was in Cheap Street, a narrow valley running between two low rows of leaning tenements. Wat steered Sleepy clear of the shit-clogged runnel in the middle of the street and dismounted outside the right house. He rapped on the door.
The knock stirred a dog into a baying fury deep inside. Nobody was a big dog, a Gascon mastiff bred for war, very territorial. The barks got bigger as he padded closer to the door. Claws raked wood. Snorts and sniffs. Infant-like mewls. Yowling.
Wat stepped back. Generally a man has to be wary of such hounds, even ones that had been befriended; they can do a lot of damage to flesh and bone in little time. But, at heart he knew Nobody was a big puppy. ‘Be a good lad, Nobody.’
‘Name yourself?’ a muffled voice called from within.
‘Wat Tyler.’
‘Well shag me senseless.’ Jack racked back the bolts on the door and opened it. He grabbed a hold of Nobody’s collar and dragged him back. ‘No jumping up on people!’
Wat held out his arms. ‘Good lad, Nobody, there’s a good lad.’
Nobody leapt towards Wat, nine stone of muscle, dragging Jack with him, and jumped up, paws on shoulders, licking.
Wat staved off the lapping, foamy tongue. ‘That’ll do, that’ll do, down, you big brute.’
‘Good to see you Wat,’ Jack said, letting the dog go so Wat could wrestle it to the ground.
Wat smiled at his old friend and comrade, furred up to the ale-bleary eyeballs in a silvered beard. ‘Come here, you old bastard.’
Jack hugged him. He wondered why his mate was in full armour but said nothing. If you’re going to learn anything, say nothing.
‘Have you been at the ale, already?’ Wat asked.
‘I never touch the stuff. You know me. Sober as a judge.’
Nobody bounded off to sniff the gutter and hose it with piss.
‘Hello, Uncle Jack,’ Sophia said.
Jack strode over, took her by the hand, and did a silly bow. ‘Sophia. More lovely every time I see you.’
‘You only saw me the other month Uncle Jack.’
‘So I did. The difference is amazing. The red rose blooms, and the thorns stab my heart.’
Sophia felt herself blush. She had ridden on Uncle Jack’s back as a girl – giddy up, horsey – and here he was flattering her as a woman. It was a strange feeling, the shame of lust, one to confess to a priest.
‘This is Harry and Nick,’ Wat said.
Jack nodded his hellos. ‘You’ll have to excuse Nobody everybody, he’s drunk before noon, again.’
‘Sounds like Nobody, right enough,’ laughed Sophia. Uncle Jack was always in his cups, but he was a merry drunk, except late at night when the fire was low and men spoke of war, she heard the stories from her bed. Some of them were about the glory, plunder, of a sack; some were about the loss of good mates; few were about wounds gone black, and slow deaths – horrors that time would not heal.
A huge roar of voices funnelled down the street from somewhere close by, too close. Vexed voices, merging into a single gigantic cursing it seemed, a destroying archangel unleashed, Lucifer blazing with fury, fallen to Earth to wreak revenge on God by tempting and tormenting the children of Adam and Eve.
‘Sounds like a riot brewing.’ Jack looked down the street towards the castle. ‘You’d best come in. The garrison will be round kicking arses soon enough. The magistrate is very judgmental.’
Wat shrugged. ‘It’s a little bit more than a riot, Jack. And I started it.’
‘Wouldn’t be like you, Wat.’ Jack shook his finger, smiled. He ushered them all into his home, then remembered the big nuisance of a dog was on the loose.
Nobody was halfway up the street, leg cocked, pissing a river onto a neighbour’s front wall.
‘Nobody! Get back here.’
X
‘Free John Ball! Free the prisoners!’ Abel shouted up at the soldiers on the crenellated battlements. His voice was one of hundreds shouting the same words in the same time, like monks in a monastery, chanting. It was almost religious. He had never felt so righteous, every beat of his heart was a surge of hot joy in his chest. God was with him, within him, the Holy Spirit, he was never more certain of anything.
‘Free John Ball!’ went the chant.
Abel had heard John Ball preach several times. The priest spoke so much sense about the True Commons and the False Nobles. Simply. Directly. He could fire folk up with his way with words. ‘When Adam dug and Eve spun, who was then the gentleman?’ John Ball preached. People could remember these sort of rhyming sayings, and talk about what they meant over the fire at night. There was much to talk about why, if all men were created equal by God, did some men try to lord it over others? What gave them the right if it wasn’t God-given? If they had no right, then there was something very wrong with how things were run.
‘Free John Ball!’ So loud as to be deafening. ‘Kill Fastolf!’
Magistrate Fastolf looked down on the mob from the battlements, the hate-filled faces of those devils screaming obscenities at him, baying for his blood, each one a personification of the Evil One. The crowd seemed to rush up at him, scaling the walls, or was he falling … he did not like heights any more than he liked riots and stepped back from the edge.
The traitor and heretic
John Ball had much to answer for. The priest had sworn from the moment he was cast into his cell that twenty thousand of the Commons would come to smash the gaol and free him. No one had believed him. Friars were liars. And a breach of the peace hadn’t happened here since … well, 1365, and that was a drunken brawl over a football match which the garrison had put down in a few bone-cracking minutes.
‘Kill Judge Fastolf!’
Magistrate Fastolf had been an advocate of tough justice but he was fair, always. And now they wanted to kill him? Ungrateful wretches! A lifetime of service he’d rendered. His old heart was weak and fluttering, trying to get out of his chest. If it could, it would fly away from here like a falcon leaving the falconer’s glove.
Serjeant Keye grabbed him by shoulder. ‘Sir, the men are shit-scared. They’re threatening to kill every last one of us unless we free Ball.’
‘That heretic will not leave here alive,’ said Magistrate Fastolf. ‘Chancellor Sudbury charged me to keep him here, and silence him.’
An arrow whooshed past Serjeant Keye’s head, reflexes making him duck … too late, so he felt clumsy and foolish. ‘We should open the gates and let them take him.’
‘Don’t be so bloody gutless,’ Magistrate Fastolf said. ‘This is why we have castles, to grind the bastards down. They cannot get in!’
A jubilant howl erupted from the mob below. It could mean only one thing …
Magistrate Fastolf ran to the battlements in dread … to see his worst fear realised. Treachery! Vertigo swoons, as the world turned upside down: his men had let the Devil into the keep.
XI
A cacophony of ding-donging. All the church bells of Maidstone peeled the alarm outside. The rhythm of ringing was all wrong, panicked, as if it were scared apes and monkeys swinging on the ropes.
Jack wrestled a twist of leather from a bottle of wine. ‘So, Master Serjeant Lyons is finally dead? I only ask because physicians can do wonders these days.’
Three Lions of England Page 5
