A Hanging Offense, Chapters 22-25

The cavalry is on its way, and that's not good.

Chapter 22

    

     “Ssh—he’s sleeping.”

     “There will be a riot—the hotheads are out of control.”

     “Then you’ll have to have it without my husband.” Joan Grindcob hushed John Barber and William Cadyndon straight out of her house. Was there no one left in Saint Alban’s with any sense? She supposed she would have to wake him. The troubles had started late Thursday. He had gone to London overnight and returned late Friday. All day Saturday and deep into the night made it Sunday today, and no church bells had rung them to Mass, and Cob had had no sleep for all that went on, save for a catnap yesterday.

     Joan sighed for him. Twice she had outfaced him in front of his followers, and he had taken it twice with good humor. Few men could manage such without anger, but Cob had done so. She bolted the front door and slipped into the back room. Ned still slept, at last, and was like to stay snoring little boy snores for some time. Cob slept with a stray dream-smile on his lips. She supposed he must wake, and leave her for his rebellion, but if he had to go, she could send him with a good will. And wake him in the best way. She glanced at Ned; he slept the sleep of the innocent.

     Joan slipped out of her shift. She smiled. This business of revolt kept her husband too much out of her bed. All work and no play made Cob a dull boy.

     She loved the feel of his skin on hers. Her underclothes fell to the floor atop her shift. She lifted the blanket; it was too hot for blankets anyway.

     Cob had slept where he lay, still encumbered by his clothes. She set to work removing them without waking him. Time enough for that soon. The tunic was no barrier. She unlaced his hose and slid them down. The fine, golden hair on his nut-brown legs seemed to stretch in the air. She blew on his thigh, ruffling those hairs, and smiled to see something else rise as well.

     She glanced at his face, wondered what he might dream. So much took him away. For the nonce, he was hers, to do with as she willed. She slid a hand up his thigh and cupped his balls in her palm. Even here, his hair grew gold. In his sleep he stirred and his legs parted for her.

     Enough of toying with him. He was ready. She was ready. How long, she wondered, would it be before he woke?

     Dreamfucking was always the best.

    

*

    

     Thomas, in charge of the scribes, presided over the ceremonies of signing and sealing in the chapter house. A pall of smoke drifted on the breeze from the town, but none rose from the abbey, for which he and all the brothers were grateful. It could have gone quite the other way, save for the actions of Dickon of Wallingford.

     Dickon was cloistered in the dormitory, where few townfolk would be interested in going, the family he had brought in hidden in one of the lesser guesthouses. Both were hidden, because the commons walked freely in the monastery now. Cob, Cadyndon, Barber, Eccleshall and all the rest paraded through the grounds with their banners and pennants, with the express permission of the abbot himself.

     “I will have them think they’ve won, Father Thomas. If they believe it, then they can do us no harm.”

     “But it’s sacrilege—”

     “I quite agree.” Father Abbot nodded.

     “Then how—?”

     “The King will come.”

     “Will he?” Thomas wondered out loud.

     “You have heard the lords Seagrave and Percy.”

     The rebels paraded through the cloister. They wrapped their heads in black cloth and pretended to be monks. They rolled their eyes; minced in tiny, dainty steps; some pretended to carnal actions with each other, a scandal which did not—thanks be to God—trouble this abbey.

     “Let them have their day,” Father Abbot said. His voice grated, as if metal scratched against mettle. For too long, the old man had had to pretend, to dissemble. Thomas finally understood. Humiliation taken early in a fight might save deeper humiliation later on. It might, like Christ’s, lead to victory. “Now, bring them in.”

     Father Abbot turned from the window and seated himself behind a long table. The rebels would need a sense of ceremony.

     The abbot bowed his head into a pretence of humility. The monks present had been well-briefed, and learned the truth of their abbot’s acts as Thomas had.

     Thomas nodded to Brother Harry, the subcellarer whose house had been burned at the beginning, just two days before. He lifted the bolt and threw the double doors open.

     The commons crowded in. Cob, especially, grinned in all directions, as pleased with himself as if he had just come from the marriage bed. His color was up, he looked rested, the very picture of a man at the pinnacle of his success.

     Appearances could indeed deceive. Thomas wanted to warn him what was coming. Already the monks, among themselves, spoke of vengeance to be taken when the King’s troops came, and drew a list of those whose necks might stretch.

     The monastery’s chief inhabitants came, like Thomas, from the gentry, or even the aristocracy. They came to the abbey having no taste for physical combat, or as younger sons who would never stand to inherit family lands or titles, but with the marks of their status all over them. Thomas knew himself argumentative and proud, quick to judge and harsh in those judgments, and thought himself a step or two more advanced than his brethren on the spiritual journey they took together. And he longed for the appearance of young Richard the King at the head of an army so great that it would leave nothing, not a single blade of wheat, where it had trod. Young Richard, who had so bravely outfaced the tens of thousands at Smith Field, who had dissembled so carefully at Mile End. Come soon, Lord Richard, Thomas prayed.

     Cob danced to the table where the abbot sat, as if a kind of madness had taken him. He dropped the newly written charter down, and bid the abbot sign.

     “And seal it, too—mustn’t forget that.”

     Cob stood before the abbot, humming a rude and secular tune, and had no apparent awareness of his japery. Thomas knew him man and boy; whatever else he was, Cob was an innocent. He was one of the few men Thomas knew who was of a piece. He wore his gargoyle smile.

     Thomas leaned over the abbot’s shoulder to examine the text Cob had placed for signature. Cob’s hand showed in every letter. Cob wrote the Saint Alban’s hand, as did Thomas and all who came through the scriptorium, a tiny, almost crabbed style of lettering that made the best use of the sheet. Thomas had learned it from his predecessor, and he from his, and so forth back to Matthew Paris and Adam the cellarer, perhaps even to some other monk, his name lost in the Anglo-Saxon mists. The document would convince some future historian that it had been written within the monastery walls. Thomas would copy it for the record, and then destroy the original.

     Cob had found the time to paint the initial capital letter blue, and another gold. Father Abbot saw it, too, and glanced up at Thomas in anger. Thomas shook his head minutely. Better not to give any sign to Cob that his frail joke had caught their eye. It would only encourage the rebel to further outrages.

     Besides, they had the word of the King’s seneschal himself that aid was coming. All they need do was endure, howsoever they might.

     The abbot dipped his quill into an inkwell and signed the bottom of the charter in his own name, and appended his title, Abbas. For the brotherhood, Thomas was to sign, in the absence of the prior. He placed his name at the bottom of the sheet and left room for the seal of the convent. He took up the seal, an image of Alban himself holding a palm, the symbol of pilgrimage. Archdeacon Roger, he of the scriptorium, poured a thin stream of wax to the proper spot at the bottom of the parchment. Thomas applied the seal.

     Something went wrong. Thomas struggled to remove the piece of metal without damaging the document. It stuck fast.

     “Blessed Alban will not let go of this false charter,” Roger said. “He disapproves.”

     The abbot compressed his lips, until only a thin line showed where his mouth belonged. Thomas worried the seal, but it would not come free of the wax.

     “Oh, for the love of Christ!” Cob snatched the sheet from Thomas. He had always had the knack for paper, ink, and wax. “It’s not a damn miracle, Roger. It’s dirt.” He took a knife from his belt and rapped hard on the back of the seal.

     It let go, and the parchment fluttered to the ground, but John Barber caught it dancing in the air and gave it a kiss.

     “We will keep this little treasure.”

     Thomas’s hand had shot out, as if of its own volition. It was a document, after all, and thus his to deal with. A flush of shame crept up his face. He turned away in anger. What would the commons do with such a thing? Where would they keep it that was safe from wind, weather, and mob action. Not even the scriptorium had been proof against all things.

     “Take it to the moot-hall,” Cob said, “and let everyone see it who wants to.”

     The commons cheered their victory. They raised John Barber on their shoulders and carried him shouting from the chapter house. Of the commons, only Cob remained.

     “I am told that you had two visitors,” he said.

     The abbot merely raised an eyebrow.

     “You are not a man to submit easily.”

     The abbot gave no answer. Cob turned to Roger, the Archdeacon. “It was just dirt, you know. Not a miracle at all.” He left to join his fellows.

     “Was it not a miracle?” Roger asked.

     “I do not know,” Thomas said.

     “It was—at the least—an omen,” the abbot said. “They will not prevail.”

    

Chapter 23

    

     The boy Richard was magnificent. No one had thought he might come of age in this crisis. Royal blood will tell, Walter atte Lee believed, and he had now seen the evidence for it.

     First, the young king had won over Tyler’s multitude immediately following his murder at the hand of Richard’s retainers, in the plain sight of the commons. Extraordinary, everyone agreed. Then, somehow, a true army had been gathered—including, Lee suspected, some who had been on the other side in the days before—an army which took the countryside by storm.

     The battles in Essex were short, sharp, and decisive. The King’s troops were by and large hardened men, used to large-scale fighting, armed cap-a-pie with the best of modern weaponry.  The rabble were disheartened, disorganized, dismayed, and defeated, time after time. They did not lack for bravery. Too often, men had stood against Lee and his charger while trying to aim a yew bow, without armor, and been cut down in the arc of the knight’s heavy broadsword. Lee was not squeamish, but he hated to see bravery wasted by incompetence.

     The King’s troops had many such battles to fight. In council, the word was that they would turn for Hertfordshire, and specifically Saint Alban’s, after dealing with Kent and Essex, where the revolt had come to birth. Lee went to Richard himself to make his plea. His manor was nearby, and the farmland would be devastated by the passage of thousands of troops.

     “My Lord King,” he said when ushered into the presence, “my home county of Hertford is, like this of Essex, risen against church and crown. Saint Alban’s in particular is ruled by the rabble.”

     Richard, who heretofore had been petting the dog on his lap, looked up sharply. Lee caught his breath. King Richard was, as always, beautiful, almost feminine. But where before Lee had seen a child, now he saw cunning and an implacable will.

     “That rabble is my people,” Richard said. His hand never stopped moving over the hound’s head, never changed its rhythm.

     What did that mean? Lee was not a subtle man. He plowed ahead. “My Lord—”

     “They are yet a rabble, though. You have the right of it.” Richard smiled at the hound. His hand never stopped its caresses.

     Lee hesitated. The King looked up at him. “Come, man—spit out what you’ve come to say. We’ll be here all day if you don’t.”

     “My Lord, I seek your leave to go to Hertfordshire, and see what may be done to end the rebellion there.” One of Richard’s counselors murmured into the King’s ear—Trysilian.

     “And how many troops would you need, Sir Walter?”

     “Saint Alban’s is small, but a good show of force might stop it  without fighting. Without damage to crops and property.”

     “And how do you plan to effect this?”

     “In any struggle, there are leaders. I plan to gather them like flowers in a field, that stand up the highest, and cut them off.” Lee drew his finger across his neck. “Those who remain will not raise their heads so high again.”

     Essex was far from Saint Albans. The King nodded his assent.

     Trysilian smiled, the smile of a serpent, and kept his counsel.

    

*

    

     In the days after the successes for the commons of Saint Albans, the folk of the other towns, most of whom had aided the revolt, come before the abbot, who ordered their new charters of liberties written and sealed with more haste than the rabbit the rebels had killed on the first day. Watford and Cashio, Rickmeresworth, Tring, Barnet, Redbourne and a dozen more confronted their liege lord with their complaints, and he, under Cob’s direction, listened with feigned patience and humility.

     Cob knew it was all show. Father Abbot, having ruled his lands for thirty years and more, had not newly discovered the justice of their cause. But if it were pretense, then the rebels would put pretense to their own use.

     With so many in the town to treat with the abbot, even the innkeepers were coming around. They did not like the rebel patrons, but their coin rang with the same clangor as the money of the better sort of pilgrims. And, in truth, it was the better class of rebel who had the money to stay at the better inns nearest the abbey. Some of the poorer sort were housed against the summer rains in the homes of the townfolk, although many preferred to camp in Romeland, where they could keep pressure on the monks.

     The earliest crops were starting to come in. The grain harvests, barley, wheat and rye, were yet months away, but the small gardens grew green to bursting with peas and beans, herbs and onions, and fruit began to weigh down the branches of the trees. Peas must be shelled and set to dry. The long fast of winter and spring was ended, and the earth was fruitful and generous, and no time could be spent on politics while food was waiting to be preserved.

     Cob used this time to consolidate the commons’ gains. A mode of governing must be established, for, no matter how pure the rebels’ motives—and, he owned, few of them were—quarrels would break out, rivalries return, questions of precedence and ownership would flare like the torches of the nights of the revolt. This was the hard part.

     Rebellion came easy to Cob. All his life there had been authority—God’s authority, the monks told him, the way ordained by Christ for the governance of His people. Some fought, some prayed, and the greatest number labored to support all. Injustice, apparent at every turn, from the nobles who held the commons in check to the clerics who mouthed prayers while demanding more and more from the people—injustice gave the lie to the grand theory of society. The people, who labored, had no rights but to serve their masters. Rebellion came easily.

     Cob struggled with what would come in place of the old ways. Some said that there would be no bishops save one, and no monks, but that all would earn their own food. The idea was attractive, but who would be left for prayer, for fighting against the enemies of England? Law there must be, and a means of forcing obedience. He was not fool enough to think rebellion solved all problems.

     It must be a council, for the area that could be reached in a half day’s travel. More distant places could rule themselves as they saw fit. The beginnings of his council would be found among the rebels themselves. Each town or vill must rule itself, but be able to call on its neighbors for aid, whether from threats outside their bounds or threats within.

     Dickon was being sticky. Cob wondered what had happened to his erstwhile partner. Surely he knew that the death of Tyler, or someone like him, had to be inevitable. Of course, rumors came to the town about fighting in Essex, of the debacle in London after the murder of Tyler. The abbot himself had sent for Cob, because the King had asked for troops from Saint Alban’s as was his right under law.

     They met in the abbot’s pentice, an open, roofed structure hard by his private residence within the abbey. The gates stood open these days. Soldiers made note of who came and went, Cob was certain, but no gate belonging to the monastery was now barred to the passage of the commons—gates and fences in the forests as well as in the town.

     “There have been some problems,” the abbot began. “I hate to bring them up again, but—”

     “Poaching you will have to put up with.” Cob was obdurate. The abbot insisted on claiming property rights, but what was property next to hunger? “The people are meat-hungry.”

     “As you say.” He nodded, the motion barely visible within the cowl. “King and council bid us send them soldiers. Have you any objection?”

     Troops to silence the rebels in Essex, then Kent, then here to Saint Albans. But we are different. We have not killed a single noble, monk, or cleric.

     “Let your troops go,” Cob said. To interfere with the calling in of feudal obligation would only draw armed attention to Saint Albans. The king would eventually arrive; if he found an accomplished fact here, where things worked in the new way, the rebellion might survive.

     “If my men-at-arms depart, what about your hot-heads?” the abbot asked.

     Cob understood the monk’s concern. Men like Eccleshall and Byker were left unsatisfied by the surrender of the monks to all things demanded of them. Rather than work with them to build new ways of living with each other, they wanted only to destroy the old ones. Then, Cob believed, when all was flame and chaos, they would take what they wanted. Flame and chaos were their allies. Old scores were to be settled, old pains avenged.

     Cob answered the old priest. “Suppose we send some of them along?”

     The abbot laughed aloud. “King and council want soldiers for London, to keep the peace there while the army quiets Essex. You would send foxes into the chicken coop.”

     But Cob warmed to the idea. “It’s perfect. Your men can watch them. In London, they can do less harm. They would have fewer excuses for hatred. And there would be fewer chances for them to make mischief here. Two problems solved.”

     The abbot threw back his cowl. His rheumy eyes sparkled with pleasure. Cob wondered what thoughts slithered through that clerical heart, what gave him such enjoyment. “We will do it, by Christ. You are a better adversary than ever I gave credit for, William Grindcob. No wonder that the commons now call you their king.”

     Cob grinned, ashamed. “I am no king, your grace—merely a man who finds himself with a thousand tasks and no one else to lay them off on.”

     “I can work with you. Whom shall we send?”

     Too bad, Cob thought, that he sees in me someone to deal with. We cannot replace him. He is a snake, a lawyer, and will twist every tiny happening to his own advantage. I must grow more like him, or give the governing over to fire-brands like Byker and Eccleshall.

     He could send Dickon, who would then watch over the wild men. It would give the merchant some meaningful task, and yet keep him out of Cob’s way and business. Something had changed within the man. He had already given up.

     He told the abbot his choice, which met with ready agreement.

     “Dickon and I have crossed words almost as much as you and I,” the abbot admitted, “but he is, for a commoner, relatively honest.”

     Cob’s anger flared at the abbot’s words. For a commoner. And the worse was that the celibate patriarch had no notion that the commoner to whom he spoke might have an honor of his own. Surely, this abbot, this scion of the family de la Mare, which had produced leaders in Parliament and in the king’s navy, would be heedful of his own honor and brook no complaint about it.

     Cob banked the hot anger into a cold resentment, another brick in the wall of old hurts and new irritations that made rebellion inevitable. From more than hunger, more than injustice, more than bondage, the commons rose from the rank of chattel to the dignity of men—and women, as Joan would be quick to add.

     Cob put the flint-hard rage into the place where he kept such things from his betters, and adopted the outward show of agreement. Hypocrisy was sometimes the only mask that worked.

     “You couldn’t have a better man than Dickon,” he said. “He likes London and knows all sorts of folk.”

     “Then we are agreed.” The abbot lifted his cowl over his head. His face disappeared within it. The conference was ended.

     Cob felt peculiarly unsatisfied.

    

*

    

     Richard Perers leaned against the flint and brick wall of the abbot’s residence. Arrogance hung over him like a shroud. As the abbot entered, the man-at-arms looked up from the task of cleaning his fingernails with a dagger. Tiny bits of filth lay at his feet.

     “I heard. That splits the leadership. Wallingford has been as dangerous as any of them. With him out of the way, Sir Walter will only have to deal with this Grindcob.”

     “The party travels forth in the morning.”

     “Good,” Perers said. “I’ll join them in the City and see to their arrest.”

    

*

    

     Sir Walter atte Lee rode at the head of a column of men. He had passed near London, then turned to the northwest into Hertfordshire. A thin mist hung in the air. The skies were gray and thick with cloud. Lee reveled in the English weather. Dampness and mildew were in his bones; they gave growth to the land. He hated the thought of what the king’s troops would do to his beloved Hertfordshire. They would trample the green growth of summer’s bounty into the muddy ruin of triumph. He wanted no part of it.

     Edward Benstead cantered up at his left hand. Lee heard him coming, and barely nodded in acknowledgement. Benstead, a younger knight in both years and experience than Lee, was overanxious, overly excited about the chance for action.

     “The column is in order, my lord. Some complain about the mud and rain, but I told them ‘This is England, after all,’ as you suggested.” Benstead mopped a mixture of sweat and mist from his forehead. “How did you know they would laugh, and obey?”

     Lee sighed. Benstead was always wanting to know something, as if knowledge would save him some day.

     “They laugh because their captain has made a jest, and it is politic,” Lee explained. “They obey because their captain has reminded them of their duty. All else is mere show.”

     Benstead shook his head; he would be one of those slow to learn. “But it was I who told them—”

     “But they know me,” Lee said. “They expect it of me. You were the channel.”

     Lee spurred his horse to pull ahead. The bounce of the horse gave comfort. He loved the pull and tremble of muscle flexing between his thighs, the power the horse shared with him. Automatically, he bent his legs in rhythm with the warhorse’s gait. Runner’s hooves thudded a tripping cadence into the soft earth; his shoes threw great clods of dirt behind. His armor and Lee’s rang and clattered, a jangling song of war.

     From one man, or even from the hundred who followed him, that song soared brilliant over the earth, but sung by the thousands in the King’s command, it would sour the green and growing things. The warhorses would trample the grain underfoot in the field. The foragers and cooks would strip the peasantry of the wealth that ought, by right, to come to Lee and the others of the gentry whose lands they traveled on.

     Another jangling, thudding set of hoofbeats gained on Lee. That must be young Richard Perers, the swordless squire. Lee would not turn to see; Perers thought himself so high, after Smith Field, that Lee would not give him the precedence he desired. The boy—for boy he was, no matter how old—was all bluster and bold front. He had a disgraced family history to live down, and believed that audacity would carry him past the shame of his beautiful but aging aunt. Lee did not turn to see the boy gain on him. Nor did he spur Runner on.

     Perers drew alongside and matched Runner’s pace. His mount was borrowed, unfamiliar, whereas Runner was Lee’s best charger. It would be no contest, should Perers want one.

     “My lord!” The squire shouted over the din of their run, across the space that separated them. He had joined the column in London. Rebels still plotted in the city, but they were headless with Tyler dead, powerless with the great mass of their fellows dispersed back eastward to Essex and Kent.

     Lee gave him a bare glance. Helmet off, hair streaming in the damp air, Perers was a study in beauty. Like his shameless aunt, he was fair to behold. He did not lack for courage, but he was not of good stock. The line threw up stunning, magnificent sports, but the next generation would be low and fruitless. Lee was a man of the land, and preferred the steady and predictable to the flashy and spirited. Nevertheless, a boy like Perers had his uses.

     “My lord,” Perers repeated. His mount struggled for breath, its sides heaving, spittle flying from its mouth. Runner, by contrast, galloped steadily, almost without effort, in superb condition.

     Lee pulled gently on the reins, just enough to communicate, not to impede. Runner was more intelligent than most of the men who followed them; he needed only the slightest hint to understand Lee’s desires, whereas his troops and serfs had to be cajoled or beaten into proper service. Runner’s strides lessened; the joyful muscles between Lee’s legs eased their straining gradually, taking long, indulgent moments to change. Runner knew his own needs, knew they were in no danger, knew better than Lee to slow gradually rather than all at once. Finally, he slowed to a walking pace, all from that simple pressure on the reins.

     “What do you want, Richard?” Lee asked of Perers.

     They rode on Watling Street, the old Roman way, the great north road.

     “The prisoners—”

     “The prisoners are safe enough amongst my men.” Lee spent more time plotting than was good for a man. His brain was ever alight with possibility and shaping the future to his benefit, and assumed that others would share his concern. After all, he must reason, was not Richard Perers the center of God’s creation? He must speak to the abbot, once he was safe within the monastery walls, about his creature Perers. Trust in such men had toppled empires.

     Lee had already heard the tale time and time again, but Perers was his only recent source from Saint Albans, since the lightning visitation of Percy and Seagrave.

     “Speak, lad.”

     “Among those prisoners is one Richard of Wallingford. Fear of hanging has changed him. He, along with the man Cob, led the rebels in our town.”

     “And your point, Master Perers?” Lee spoke the title with a certain edge, calculating to find what thoughts were truly in the squire’s mind.

     “We can use him, my lord, to slip back into his old ways and spy out for us what the rest of them may do.”

     “He has changed his loyalty twice now in a week,” Lee said. “I will not trust him.”

     “But my lord—”

     “Enough,” Lee ordered. “Return to your place in the guard on those men.”

     Perers opened his mouth to speak again, but thought better. He wheeled his sorry borrowed horse and trotted back to the column.

     Lee waited. One of his lieutenants would see and follow. The other would join him.

     In a moment, it came to pass. Lee appreciated Benstead and Stukley. They knew him, knew his ways and his desires. He slipped Runner off the road into a clearing at the foot of the hill that led into Barnet to allow the column of men to pass.

     Benstead and Stukley had swapped posts. The former rode near Perers, near the guard that surrounded the Saint Alban’s men. Geoffrey Stukley disengaged himself from the troops and cantered to Lee’s side.

     Where Benstead was all young, eager pup, anxious to learn and to emulate his captain, Stukley was stolid, certain of himself, and Lee’s contemporary in age and experience. A heavily-muscled, barrel-chested fighter, Stukley waited for Lee to speak. He knew his place; Lee appreciated him the more for it.

     “We shall reach Saint Alban’s within two hours, Stukley.”

     “Aye, sir.”

     “Have you thought how to deploy our men?”

     “Aye, sir.”

     “And how would that be, Master Stukley?”

     “That would be as your lordship wishes, your lordship.”

     They played this little game whenever a fight was in the offing. Always away from the men, who would take Stukley’s part as insolence and imitate it.

     It was not insolence. Lee was asking Stukley’s advice, and the lieutenant was showing his subordination, in a jesting manner.

     “As I wish it, yes.” Lee leaned toward Stukley, across the gulf that separated their two horses. “What if I wished to take Saint Alban’s without killing all the inhabitants thereof?”

     “Can’t be done. Not with our few men. The king might, with his thousands, but our bare hundred and a half wouldn’t defeat the town’s alewives.” Stukley hawked and spat. “Not if they’re of one mind.”

     Lee jerked his head toward the men from Saint Alban’s whom they’d taken in tow in London. “Some of them have doubts.”

     “Some of them’d change their loyalties seven times in seven days.”

     “This Wallingford was a leader in revolt.”

     “And now his innards have turned to water. Do you want his kind around you?”

     “Honor may be satisfied without a fight,” Lee said.

     Stukley nodded, as if he agreed, but said, “Or with one.”

     “Don’t be too anxious—we may have one yet.” Lee thought out loud. “We shall send the captives, with word that the leader of the townfolk come meet with us. We may speak them fair at first; it will not dull our blades.”

     Stukley nodded and gathered his reins.

     “Bid the men look sharp. They will have posted sentries, even so far as this town of Barnet. Words may outrun our horses.”

            

Chapter 24

    

     Dickon, mounted on one of Walter atte Lee’s horses, slowed at the foot of Holywell Hill. All the way from Barnet, Dickon thought he heard voices, sounds parallel to the track of Watling Street, tripping through the fields and forest, damp as he with mist and mud.

     “Dickon’s a traitor,” they sang, in the cruel lilt of schoolboys. “Dick-on’s a trai-tor. Dick-on’s a trai-tor.” Up Holywell they pursued, secretly, out of sight but present nonetheless, like God’s angels, like the Fiend’s demons.

     He could not hurry. The hill was muddy and slick from rain.

     The eyes slowed him, too. Like the voices they were unseen, but Dickon knew without looking that something looked on him as he rode up the hill at the pace of torture.

     He had no speech to make. Whatever eloquence he once believed in had deserted him now. He was an empty man. A watched man. The eyes of the commune ogled him from ahead and to his sides. The eyes of the soldiers pushed him up the hill, past the old well of Alban from which the hill took its name. He thought to turn off to his right, to take the twisting path to the ancient well, where the saint had asked for water on his way to execution. How happily old Alban had trod this very way, sure of his salvation. How sadly did the eyes keep Dickon to the straight path, allowing him neither welcome nor retreat.

     The rain misted around him. The turn to Alban’s well, where he might have prayed, dropped behind. Too soon, his trudging mare moved past the Sumpter Yard of the monastery, the gate propped open by the rebels.

     The monks sang a distant Vespers on this eve of the feast of Saints Peter and Paul. The apse of the great church stood nearest the gate, and their massed voices sang Nunc dimmitis, now let your servant depart in peace. They had hope of salvation, a place of belonging; Dickon had none. He did not pause. Sound carried well in the mist. But he could not depart.

     They surrounded him just past the Sumpter’s gate. Dozens of men and women appeared as if from the mist itself. They spoke him fair and welcomed his return. Dickon’s belly twisted with the news he had for them of Walter atte Lee’s intent.

     “Where is Cob?” he asked.

     “At the Moot Hall,” they told him.

     The building stood on Saint Peter’s street, halfway between the town square and Saint Peter’s parish church. Dickon lifted an empty prayer to the keeper of the keys, but it would not rise above the mists. It did not work. Nothing interrupted the final leg of his journey of betrayal.

     He dismounted. Someone—John Dene, the painter—took the reins. Cob met him at the door.

     “Dickon—welcome back. I hadn’t thought to see you so soon.”

     A welcoming hand took him by the arm and led him in out of the wet. A fire blazed in the hearth. Wood smoke scented the dry air within. Steam rose from Dickon’s wet cloak.

     Cob led him to a trestle table, put a mug of ale in his hands. Dickon let it happen.

     “Look what we’ve been about.” The former scribe waved at the dozens of papers and parchments scattered on the table. “The abbot has let us alone, thanks be to God, and we haven’t been resting.” He started on a long list of changes made in the governance of the town and the abbey demesne lands. Serfs and tenant farmers were to have their own ground, enough for a family to live on. Common land would be tended in common, with a share going to the abbey, but men would be paid for their labor, either in kind or in cash. Cob was near to bursting with pride. Dickon tried to care.

     “What is it?” Cob asked, after Dickon could rouse no interest and his pretence was seen through.

     Dickon looked up into the open face of his one-time friend. “Fifty lances, a hundred archers of the King’s, and I am sent to tell you of their coming here.”

     Cob grinned that maddening smile. “We know. Did you not feel our eyes upon you, these last ten miles? And before that, in Barnet, and in London itself?”

     Dickon slumped in the chair. “Have you no fear, then?”

     “You mistake, Dickon.” Cob paced about the hall. “First in thinking we did not know. Second in thinking we could not match them ten times over.”

     Dickon had seen Cob like this before. The man had more energy than any dozen, when the humors struck him. He could move a throng to believing in themselves, as well, and Dickon felt himself stir in answer to Cob’s enthusiasm. He began to argue.

     “They come from the King!”

     “Then they are well-disposed toward us,” Cob answered. “Did not the King himself give us warrant?”

     Dickon stood and flung off his sodden cloak. “They are sent to put us down!”

     Cob rounded on him. “Where is your heart, Richard? Your courage?” In the light cast by the fire, spittle flew from Cob’s mouth. “When we began this, what hope had we? We were few, and the help from London far distant. Now we have allies—they know the fight is here, if fight there will be—men from all the villages—from Tring, Barnet, Redbourne and the rest. Enough to make certain no fight will have to happen.”

     Cob snatched up the tankard of ale from Dickon’s spot and drank it off at one draught.

     “We shall go out in the morning armed as Sir Walter’s troops are, with the yew bows we have practiced with since the time of the French wars, and we will meet these troops. We will find out their business here. If they come peacefully, without intent to harm us, nothing will happen. If not, we will chase this Walter from our town—our town, mind you—like men, not sheep, along with the knaves that come with him.”

     He turned on his heel and strode from the Moot Hall. Dickon stared after him. Cob was making himself believe this fable of high resolve in the face of an enemy, but he would fail, they would all fail, and every thing would return to the old ways.

     Dickon followed in Cob’s footsteps. He must report to Sir Walter. He had accepted a parole, and must abide by its terms. Outside, the mist had lifted. A freshening breeze chased white clouds through an azure sky. Golden evening sun glowed on the abbey’s roof and scattered back across the vill.

     The crowd had swelled. Dozens had become hundreds while Dickon had been closeted with Cob, who had disappeared as quickly as if he had never been. Dickon faced them alone.

     “What happened in London, Dickon?” John Barber shouted.

     “We were taken.”

     Barber pushed forward. “Taken?”

     “Arrested.”

     “Who did this?”

     Dickon explained what had no explanation. The Saint Alban’s men sent to swell the King’s forces had not all wanted to fight against their fellows. Some had swung over to the side of what few rebels remained in London, been recognized by Richard Perers, and been caught. Dickon was in the middle, and was arrested as a ringleader. He tried to put the best face on it in front of the commons, but the words clogged his throat like phlegm, and they knew him.

     “But you escaped.” Hope and doubt warred in the barber-surgeon’s face.

     “I was sent. Fifty lances and a hundred archers lie tonight at the foot of Holywell.”

     A buzz of words filled the air, as if honey bees spoke. Every face among the crowd turned to another, mouths moving, talk spouting to and fro, and all of it pointless, useless, because of the force that lay at the foot of Holywell. The mob could not act; leaders were required, and what did it matter who held the whip hand? They had been wrong to rise against their masters, not because their cause lacked justice, but because someone must lead. Even Cob knew that. This mob would shout and debate like peasants arguing over whose strip of land the plough would furrow first, then they would turn to Cob, who was only another leader, a sort of noble raised up from the commons. And when he was gone, they would turn to another. It might as well be the abbot and the king.

     Force would win. And only a leader could bring force to bear, someone the people would follow.

     Dickon stepped down from the steps of the Moot Hall. The horse he had ridden in stood in patience, jostled a little by the throng. She kicked out at one who came too close.

     “Where are you going?” Barber demanded.

     “I must return.” Dickon reached the mare and laid a hand on her neck to calm her. She whickered her distress, but settled at the touch of one she knew the smell of.

     “To whom do you return?”

     Dickon patted the horse once more. He mounted before answering. It gave him a better chance of escape.

     “To the camp at the foot of Holywell.”

     “But why, Richard?” Barber was no longer angry. His eyes grew bright with water. He snatched the reins. “Why do you desert us now, when we need every man?”

     “Because I have given my parole.”

     “To a man who would put us back in servitude.”

     Dickon stared down at the barber’s balding pate, the uncomprehending eyes. “Because you will lose.”

     He kicked the mare’s flanks, but Barber still held the reins; the confused horse stepped first one way, then the other. “Let me go.”

     “You’re a traitor, Dickon.” Barber released the leather.

     Dickon jerked the reins and urged the mare forward. The people crowded against her sides and she could make only slow headway. A stone flew past Dickon’s head, then another. He pushed his way through the press of people. Before he reached the fringes of the mob, the chant began, the chant he had seemed to hear on his way into town. Now, the sound whipped at him, and it was not imaginary.

     “Dick-on’s a trai-tor. Dick-on’s a trai-tor.”

     The noise followed him down Saint Peter’s Street, past the town square, and all the way down Holywell to the encampment of Sir Walter atte Lee. That night, when he tried to sleep, guarded by Richard Perers, the words of his fellow townsmen, his commune, pounded into his ears. 
     “Dick-on’s a trai-tor. Dick-on’s a trai-tor.”

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A Hanging Offense, Chapters 19-21

Courage, cowardice, and betrayal. Nothing new.

Chapter 19

    

     After leaving the abbey at Saint Alban’s, Richard Perers traded his squire’s livery and fine clothes for the rude leggings and tunic of a villein. The idiot must have had fleas or lice, for Perers itched abominably. He hid the body in the bushes by the side of the road.

     Perers muddied his face and placed two pebbles in his mouth to help him drool. That and the flea-bitten clothing helped when a patrol of Essexmen happened upon him along Watling Street, the road from Saint Alban’s to London.

     “Hey, you!” the leader of the Essexmen called.

     Perers grunted with a rising inflection. If he spoke they would know him for what he was.

     “Yes, idiot, I mean you. Who else is there on this road?”

     Perers held up his left fist. He pointed with his other hand at the leader himself. The index finger of his left hand came up. He pointed then at the next man at arms. Another finger, then another, until he had used up his left hand.

     The patrollers laughed at his antics. Perers let some drool overflow from his mouth. He hid both hands behind his back with a flourish, waited a bare second to make sure he had the attention of all of them, then brought out his right hand clenched into a fist. Again, he pointed with his free hand until he used up all the fingers available for counting. He stared at those remaining, held both hands up in front of his face, and shrugged.

     Their laughter came easily. They were so ready to believe that he had to rein in his contempt and pretend to smile along with them. The men from Essex had no more intelligence than those of Saint Alban’s who had guarded the roads leading away from the abbey. One of those men had given his clothing along with his life to aid Richard Perers on his journey.

     The Essexmen let him pass. Perers exaggerated the odd, swinging gait he used. Let them think him crippled as well as foolish and dumb. In a short time, they would think again what kind of man Richard Perers was.

     The encounter with Grindcob and his woman still rankled, half a day later. She had disarmed him, and her clerk of a husband had humiliated him before hundreds who knew him. That, too, would be remedied.

     Once out of sight of the Essexmen, he abandoned his lumbering, uneven walk, spat out the pebbles that made him drool like a dog, and ran. A horse would draw too much attention; a man on foot was more likely to be one of the rebels, or of the peasantry they affected to love. He settled into a steady, confident pace, one foot after the other striking the beaten earth of Watling Street.

     The road itself was tradition. First built by the Romans when they invaded Britain, it had been in use for over a thousand years. Tradition made things work. Tradition made Richard Perers a knight, or would have had his father not run afoul of the abbot years before. Custom defined him as a man better than most, and he meant to keep it that way. The rebels who now roamed the cities and the countryside must be eliminated and order restored. And if Richard Perers made his name doing it, the family’s place and reputation would be restored.

     He left the road as he neared London. Better to struggle through briars and puzzle out the twisting lanes than to run afoul of the rebels who must guard London’s approaches. Once in the city he could blend in, one amongst the multitude, and so it proved. Countryside blended imperceptibly into townscape. Fields gave way to large gardens, forest to orchard. Richard Perers poked his tousled head out from between two apple trees and found himself in a part of London he knew well.

     He needed to find the court, or what remained of it. Saint Alban’s didn’t matter to him nearly as much as his own family’s status, but that status depended on what happened to the monks. The abbot would restore his clan to its rightful place, if Richard could bring aid to the monastery.

     The court had to be either at the Tower or Westminster. The city itself separated the two places. The Thames was the quickest way. His roundabout escape from the countryside had brought him out nearer the tower; that would be his starting place.

     People clotted the streets around Tower Hill like curds in cheese. They had no order, and were of the meaner sort. His rank appearance and dishevelment made him fit right in. He heard accents from half the realm, which helped his journey. None would question a stranger where all were strangers.

     He took care not to move with too great an appearance of purpose. The mob acted with holiday abandon. Much ale and wine flowed. People milled and jounced against each other. From some distance he smelled the smoke of burning. The wind came from the west. Someone pressed a pewter mug into his hands. He sniffed—wine, a fresh, young spirit from Gascony.

     “Drink up, friend. It’s from the archbishop’s palace.”

     Perers tilted the cup and drank deeply.

     A hand reached out from the crowd and stopped him. “Save some for the rest of us!”

     Perers let it go. The anonymous hand took the cup and vanished back into the mass of stinking villeins. The archbishop had had good taste, but he wouldn’t have any use for the wine, now.

     The movement of the crowd shifted. He had no choice but to let himself be carried along, a piece of flotsam on a human tide. It took him through the meaner streets of London, the press moving with demonic speed, voices roaring all around. They shouted about this abuse of power, that bit of faithlessness on the part of the clergy or the aristocracy. Some split off from the crowd when they passed through the district where Flemish weavers lived and dragged the men and their families out into the streets to be beaten and trampled by thousands of stinking feet, but he had no concern for the victims. The mob hurried onward, always onward, the singular voices merging into a roar like a storm upon the ocean. Perers found himself shouting with the others, as protective coloring at first, then because he was caught up in frenzy for its own sake.

     Whatever power moved the horde ceased in an instant. Perers’ own momentum spilled him out the front, where the king’s court, mounted and armed, surrounded an open space. The horses’ hooves chewed up the turf. In a no man’s land between the swarm of the commons and the mounted men-at-arms, Richard Perers fell to hands and knees. A mailed and mounted man bore down on him. His charger’s hooves stopped scant feet away and spattered him with clods of earth.

     “How’s your Aunt Alice, boy?” The voice reeked with familiarity. “What are you doing here?”

     The knight reached down, snatched Perers by the arm, lifted him bodily into the air and set him behind the saddle.

     “Hold on! No time to waste.”

     Perers obeyed, still not knowing who his rescuer was. They galloped across the open space. The line of troops opened to let them into the armed circle, and in the instant Richard Perers found what he had sought—the king’s council and the King himself.

     The knight lifted his visor. Perers grunted as he dropped to the ground. Sir Thomas Percy stared down at him.

     “What are you doing with them, boy?”

     Perers rubbed his arm. The horseman’s gauntlets had left bruises. “Seeking you and yours, Sir Thomas. I have been sent for aid by the abbot of Saint Albans. He is hard pressed by the rebels.”

     Percy dismounted in a clatter of steel.

     “Hertfordshire crawls with vermin,” Perers went on. He refused to let the august company he was in confound him; it took a certain effort. “The villeins have come to the abbey by the thousands, and they mean to have their way.”

     Percy thought for a long moment. All around them, steel clanged on steel, as if there were a battle. But no fight took place. It was only the sound of armored men moving about.

     “Come, lad.”

     Perers followed. The knight stood high in the royal councils. The Percies were an ancient family from the north, a hard-fighting clan never without a place among the king’s advisors. Perers had seen this one before, a younger scion of the race of warriors who all had a reputation as hot-tempered men, jealous of their privilege, ready to quarrel at the drop of a glove.

     Percy led him to the inner circle. Young King Richard sat at a small table, where a group of grizzled older men all talked at once. Richard was still beardless at fourteen years of age.

     “What do you have?” The largest of Richard’s counselors spoke first. Sir Hugo Seagrave, his face scarred from battles long ago, stood the tallest of the retinue. That same face darkened on recognizing Perers. Seagrave had been counselor to old King Edward, and conducted many an intrigue against Richard’s aunt Alice. “What do you want?” His voice was a snarl.

     Richard Perers explained his mission from the abbot. The king’s interest showed on his face.

     “This will be an opportunity for your family to gain redemption,” the boy-king said.

     Aunt Alice had been, years before, the mistress of Edward, Richard’s grandfather. Perers hated the troubles her existence put in the way of his ambition. Everywhere he turned, he confronted the shame of her having gone before him. She had poisoned the family name. The king, bless his soul, understood. Perers wanted nothing more than to be judged for who he was and what he could do for the crown.

     “Tell us your tale,” the king ordered. Seagrave frowned, but kept silent.

     Perers knelt before the king, five years junior to him. Mud oozed against his knees. “Your grace, not only London and your court are pressed by these rebels. Your royal abbey is likewise endangered. I myself have seen the whole commons of Hertfordshire gathered at the monastery gates, with threats to burn the monks out if their demands are not met. There are few troops, and many rebels. Father Abbot has sent me to beg your aid.”

     Richard’s unlined brow furrowed. “We had not heard.”

     “There were people from Saint Alban’s here yesterday, my lord,” Seagrave agreed. “You signed a charter for the commons.”

     “There were so many,” the king said.

     “Your grace—” Perers said, his heart in his mouth. He had not expected aid from Seagrave. “Your grace, they have taken the charter you intended only for good and used it to threaten and terrorize your monks. The abbey’s gaol has been thrown open, the prisoners set free.” He took a breath. They didn’t know the worst. “And they have executed one prisoner, pretending that they had the right of punishment, against your power.”

     Seagrave huffed and puffed with outrage. He had some relation to the abbot. All the aristocracy were related to each other in some manner, though after Aunt Alice, none would acknowledge any relation to the Perers clan.

     Percy swore from the edge of the gathering. All eyes, save the king’s, turned toward him.

     “That is a royal prerogative, my lord.”

     Seagrave nodded agreement, as did the other graybeards. Perers allowed himself a small, tight smile of satisfaction at piercing their self-conceit. He had their attention; there was no time to waste.

     “Sirs, and my liege,” he said, “if you can spare a force to Saint Alban’s now, we can take the rebels easily. They have been without sleep since Thursday, save for bits of rest snatched as catch can. They are exhausted. They must rest, and we could take them in their snoring.”

     The King and all the graybeards stared at him, as if he had sprouted horns and turned himself into the green man on the spot.

     “A hundred men—” he sputtered. Incomprehension filled their eyes. Could the old truly be so dense? They were supposed to be wiser than the young.

     “Would you take from the King a hundred troops that were needed for his safety and the continuation of the reign?” Seagrave demanded.

     “Perhaps later,” the King said, “when things have settled down here. In the mean time, we may spare two men to carry word to do as we have done in London. It has not been without cost, but we still survive to carry on our rule, as the abbot of Saint Alban’s must do. Our most trusted pair shall go to him, and take him our command.”

     The King commanded Sir Hugo Seagrave and Sir Thomas Percy to the abbey. Percy was young, filled with eagerness for the fight, but untested. Seagrave, on the other hand, was valued, but not too much. His presence at Saint Alban’s would give the abbot some degree of comfort, and his voice would be listened to.

     “Master Perers, remain with us,” the boy-king said. He might be youthful, but he was learning his craft in the struggle with the commons. And, not to put too fine a point on it, he was showing courage where many of his nobles were paralyzed with fear.

     “We are pleased to learn that many of our friends remain loyal in Hertfordshire,” the King went on, “and that one of them is our young Master Perers.” He turned to a younger knight, who, like Perers, stood at the fringe of the council.

     “Sir Walter, take this bold youth into your charge. See him fed and rested, learn what he has to tell us. Let us know what may be done for our loyal folk, when the time comes for setting things aright.”

     The king turned away. Something seemed to bite him, for he slapped at his neck, looked at Perers, and said, “And get him some clothing not so flea-bitten.”

     The King turned back to his council. Perers felt the sting of dismissal, but it eased as soon as Walter atte Lee took him in charge and led him to the supply wagon.

     Lee was a small man, a full head shorter than Perers, but he carried himself with a confidence the messenger from Saint Albans could only envy. Likewise from Hertfordshire, he came from a family unsullied by scandal, untouched by shame. Like the rest, he wore an undercoat of padding, but it hung loosely over his slender frame.

     “Not the best of situations, is it?” Lee made a conversational sally as they walked to the wagon. Smith Field lay within sight. Below and before them, the commons of two counties, Essex and Kent, plus the rabble of London, gathered before them. Off to one side of the King’s council, the burgesses of London held a council of their own, a raucous, crude group of men, their voices raised in dispute. Overhead, the sun poured its rays over the afternoon’s damp. The air was sticky and thick.

     “Strip,” Lee said.

     “Here—in the open?” Perers asked.

     “That was a royal command,” Lee said. He shouted to one of the nearby servants. “Bring clothing for my guest—and weapons.” The servant hurried to obey.

     Perers was ravenous. From the area of the wagon, the smells of roasting sausages and royal venison arose. His hurt pride vanished in the rumblings of his belly.

     “When did you last eat?” Lee asked.

     “I don’t remember.”

     Lee poured a tankard of ale and tore a chunk of pandemaigne from a loaf with his own hands. “Here—your journey was thirsty work, I’m sure.”

     Perers’ opinion of the short little knight rose as he poured the ale down his throat and chewed the fresh, crusty bread. Eating and drinking made him even hungrier. When Lee handed him a dripping slab of venison, stinging hot from the flames, Perers held out his tankard for more ale. The slight knight obliged.

     Perers wiped the deer’s grease from his mouth. His first hunger now assuaged, he looked at Walter atte Lee again. His companion had a high forehead, a sign of intelligence to be sure, and clear, pale blue eyes. Freckles dotted his face. His wide gaze and small mouth gave him the appearance of an innocent, but no innocent would have risen to grasp the trust of the King.

     Lee took the tankard and refilled it. “I’m rather proud of this little ale. The brewer is on my manor.”

     Perers accepted the drink. The venison was salty. He cut a slab with the knife he always wore on his belt. “Where’s that, sir?”

     “Quite near Saint Alban’s, actually. My father may have known yours.”

     “‘May have known?’”

     “He’s gone,” Lee said. “The manor is mine, now.”

     “Manor?” Perers asked, his mouth still thick with meat and beer.

     “Kimpton.” Lee said. “It’s not the greatest of our holdings, but they do brew a fine ale. More?”

     Perers held up his hand in refusal, waiting for a belch to relieve the pressure on his belly. Finally it came.

     “Your pardon.”

     “I take it as a compliment to my ale.”

     It was odd, Perers thought, to be eating and drinking as the forces of good and evil prepared to meet each other on the field of the smiths. The body had its needs, no matter what great events were in hand.

     The servant reappeared with an armload of clothing.

     “Strip,” Lee repeated, and there was no humor in his eyes now.

     Perers itched like a mangy dog. Heedless now of the servant, Lee, and the others, he slipped the filthy tunic and leggings from his skin. The servant held out an undergarment.

     “Look.” Lee pointed down to Smith Field, where the commons gathered. It was the place of tournament and fair, celebration and marketplace. During the market, a buyer could pick out which pig, cow, chicken or duck one wanted from a flock and the butcher would slaughter it on the spot. So long had this market gone on that the ground was soaked in blood.

     “Still they pour in,” Lee said, “like a flood. They would destroy us, you and me. They claim faithfulness to our King, but he, too, would be washed away with church, gentry, and law if they had their way.”

     The anger that had driven Perers all the way to London came back upon him, washing away all thought of food and drink, washing away even the awe he felt at the presence of the King and council. It was a flood-tide of feeling. Lee spoke only the truth. The rebellion threatened the whole realm, more than Richard Perers had believed possible. Perers drew on the tunic held by the servant.

     “Who leads them?”

     “A tile-layer.” Lee spat the words. “Walter Tyler, by name and trade. He spoke to the King yesterday, pretending respect while demanding an end to everything. Even your men of Saint Alban’s hold with him. I saw them yesterday at Mile End.”

     Tyler was like Grindcob, then—a villein, no more than a tradesman with hope of turning himself into a leader by turning the world upside down. The servant offered a suit of padding, meant to cushion between a knight’s flesh and his unyielding armor. Rusted mail came next; it was so tight he had to accept the servant’s help. Lee himself handed him a sword, but Perers refused it.

     “I have a debt of honor to redeem,” Perers said, “before I can lift a sword again.”

     Lee shrugged and held out the weapon for the servant to remove.

     Again, he pointed at the great mob below. “Look.” It moved, like a herd of sheep. There were even sheepdogs of a sort, marshals who rode horseback at the edges of the mob, guiding it to the center of the field. At the front of the flock a giant rode atop a huge gray horse.

     Perers pointed at him. “Is that Tyler?”

     Lee peered. “It is.” He checked his sword. “Come—the battle is to be joined. Stay at my side. We guard the King himself.” All around them metal clanged. Men mounted horses, the burgesses of London as well as the knights and other men-at-arms. Every man knew his duty. As they rode down the hill into Smith Field, the gentry surrounded their King.

     Perers rode forward with the others atop one of Lee’s mounts, an irritable chestnut stallion. At the head of the column rode Richard the King. Guarding his right were knights of the realm, warriors clad in mail, helmeted, visors open, gauntleted hands empty of weapons. At his left hand the chief burgesses of London rode with swords in hand.

     Perers swayed a little in the saddle and his bladder ached from the drinking of so much ale, but the ride to the center of Smith Field took next to no time, and Sir Walter atte Lee let him canter to the front, nearest the King. It was an honor, perhaps given for the courage of his journey from Saint Alban’s. Perers found himself tangled with the merchants at the King’s left. He belonged with the nobility on the right, but it would have to do.

     One of the merchants, William Walworth, London’s mayor, garbed in all his ermine finery despite the heat, rode out ahead of the royal party, to the ragged lines of the rebellious mob. They shouted and cheered and catcalled, stamped their feet in excitement and made the sign against the evil eye at the lord mayor.

     A gesture from a single imposing figure, silenced the mob. Walter Tyler rode forth mounted on a small dappled gray horse, a pony. His feet dragged on the ground. A single vexillator, a flag-bearer, went before him. The banner bore the arms of the King himself. The white hart fluttered against a blue field and led the trio of men across the open space, back toward the King.

     Perers was close to the principals in the negotiation. He leaned forward the better to hear.

     The peasant, Tyler, was everything Lee had led him to expect. Tall, hairy, astoundingly muscular, Walter Tyler carried himself as if he were royalty, and the King merely an appurtenance to his own glory. He stank of garlic and old ale. A family of robins could have nested in the wild thatch of his hair. Like Grindcob back in Saint Albans, he smiled incessantly. What was it about these damnable rebels that made them happy all the time? It must be a sign of their stupidity.

     Tyler slid his long legs from his pony and dropped to kneel before the king, a few yards in front of Perers. Young King Richard waved the mayor back into the ranks, at Perers’ side, heedless of the danger he put himself in. Perers reached for his sword, but it lay back in Saint Alban’s, where he had lost it to Grindcob. Worse, to Grindcob’s shrew of a wife. His hand closed on empty air.

     Tyler, rising at the royal bidding, took the King’s hand between his own callused, meaty paws and shook it as a dog shakes a rat in its teeth.

     “Brother Richard,” Tyler said, “fear not, for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all the people. Within a fortnight, if all goes well, the commons of England will have good reason to thank you. We shall be friends, you and I.”

     Perers startled at this familiarity, and he was not alone. Hands touched weapons all around the King, but Tyler seemed not to notice.

     The peasant leader made his demands. It did not matter what they were; that this craftsman was making demands on the King himself was sufficiently damning. It was lese-majeste of the highest order.

     Perers forced himself to listen. Tyler made a catalogue of complaint, alike in tone if not in kind to the whining of the peasants in Saint Albans. He wanted a repeal of the Statute of Laborers. He wanted all men to be free and equal before the law—an abolition of rank, in other words. He wanted the aristocracy to give up its position and its power, and the same for the church.

     The King, the only cool head among the nobility, and he only fourteen, listened to Tyler’s ranting in silent dignity. When the rebel leader paused, Richard asked, “Is that the list, Master Tyler?”

     “It is, your grace.”

     “Nothing to add, then?” The King’s voice was high, because of his youth, but steady and unafraid. Perers found himself admiring the child-king. Young Richard had a steady mind and was not intimidated by the thousands and thousands of rebels ranged across the gathering place. Perers quite approved of his demeanor.

     “Then you shall have what you seek, Master Tyler. We agree that the commons of England have been ill-used. We agree that they shall have the rights of hunting and fishing to feed themselves. We shall call a Parliament to review the laws of the realm. Further, we grant you an amnesty for all that has passed thus far, on condition that your people go back to their homes, and leave it to us to sort these things out. Will you trust us?”

     “I’ll have it written out,” Tyler said. “Can’t trust a nobleman.”

     Perers bit his tongue. The clod had no respect for king or anyone. That Tyler had spoken truthfully made no difference. What was the point of being noble if it did not give power to the holder of the title?

     “Bring me a drink,” Tyler demanded. “It’s thirsty work, trying to find a way to agree with you.”

     King Richard nodded to a servant, who dashed to the rear of the party. During his absence, a stony silence fell. Tyler broke the tense stillness with a braying laugh.

     “You’re watching it all trickle away, aren’t you?” He addressed himself to the gathered nobles of the court and the burgesses of London. He ignored the King. He let his long stride pace him back and forth before the witnesses, taunting, threatening. “You’re thinking now, are you not, how to work around your young king’s amnesty, his agreement, his honest and plain dealing.” He curled his lip on the final phrase.

     Perers smelt Tyler’s rancid breath as he first passed by. He lunged, or tried to, but Lee’s hand on his shoulder stopped him. “Not now,” the young knight whispered. His fingers pressed hard on Perers’ collarbone.

     Tyler ranted up and down the line of King Richard’s party. Only the arrival of the page quelled him long enough to raise the proffered flagon.

     Tyler rejected the water with a peasant’s canny suspicion. “Is this what you give me—it’s warm as piss!” He flung the flagon into the air. Perers caught it, sniffed, and grinned to himself. Mare’s piss, to be exact, a mare ripe in season. He understood the game, and awaited his chance to play a role.

     “Bring me ale!” Tyler called. His face flushed red with anger. A vein swelled in his temple. Perers could count the pulses, even from a dozen feet away.

     The page returned immediately with a foaming flagon. Perers slipped it from the boy’s hand and stepped forward, out of the line of retainers, into the space where king and rebel met. Tyler had turned away. Perers slipped between his young lord and the peasant leader.

     “Your ale, Master Tyler,” Perers said.

     Wat Tyler pivoted in surprise. Perers flung the contents of the flagon into his face.

     Tyler spluttered in shock, then roared in fury. The king’s horse danced away from danger. Perers waited until the last possible instant, gauging his man’s rage, then spat straight into Tyler’s eyes.

     It stopped the rebel’s onrush, but only for a moment. Perers used the instant to duck back behind his own lines. Tyler followed at his heels.

     The trap closed as if rehearsed. Walworth, the mayor, thrust his sword into Tyler’s belly, and jerked it out again all in one motion. Gut-stabbed, Tyler staggered back into the open space. He dropped to his knees, the first act of humility he had performed that day. Blood poured from the wound. Another man, unknown to Perers but clearly part of the conspiracy, lunged forward and push his dagger into Tyler’s ribs.

     It all happened so smoothly that Perers doubted the evidence of his eyes. Tyler was down and dying. All around, the loyalists to the crown drew swords, and Perers would have, too, but that he had none.

     It was King Richard, though, who, unprepared for the aristocratic betrayal of the truce, took matters in hand.

     Across the open space, the mob realized that something had gone wrong. Shouts and cries rose from the unlettered bunch as they began to understand that their leader had been killed, even as Tyler lay quivering on the bloody earth.

     King Richard rode toward them, before any of his bodyguard could react.

     “Thus always to traitors!” he cried to the commons. “Your captain lies on the earth, never to rise.”

     They wailed in grief, the commons did. Perers took heart from their dismay, but feared for the life of his king. Young Richard paraded his steed back and forth before the rebels.

     “I am your captain now.” He wheeled the horse in an abrupt turn, the mirror of the turn of fortune for the uprising. “Did you not pledge your faith to ‘King Richard and the true commons’?”

     He was magnificent. He glowed in the afternoon sunlight. Radiance sparkled from his crown and the cloth of gold he wore, from his eyes and his red-gold Plantagenet hair. Never was king more splendid, not old Edward on the battlefields of France, nor Alfred facing down the Danes. Young Richard bent the wills of twenty thousand armed and angry men to his own desires, broke their rebellion, shattered their revenge, smashed their unity into shards of weak obedience.

     And did it all with words.

     Richard Perers saw much more, but the back of the rebellion was broken in the instant Tyler died, and he had had a part in it.

            

    

Chapter 20

    

     The abbot’s summons came to Thomas of Walsingham as he was sitting down to his first meal of the day, sometime near midafternoon. The troubles disrupted everything about the monastery’s routine, including the infrequent meal times.

     Of all the brothers, only he had ventured outside the walls and gone amongst the rebels. His fellows avoided him, whether because they thought him a traitor or because they were afraid to be associated with him, he did not know. Special friendships were discouraged; he had no trusted companion with whom he could speak. His confessor had fled to Tynemouth with the Prior.

     Thomas shoved his plate away. The stew had no savor for him, in any case.

     Two men sat with the abbot at the head table, placed on a raised dais at the front of the refectory. Being singled out from among the other monks drew attention, created jealousies, which would bring Thomas criticism in Chapter. He made the requisite stops up the eight levels, said the ritual prayers, blessed himself and the gathering. It took some time, and he was burning with curiosity before he reached the seat at the side on a knight he did not know.

     “Brother Scriptorius,” the abbot said, his face uncharacteristically full of good cheer, “you know Sir Hugo Seagrave, the king’s seneschal.”

     Thomas bowed his head in greeting proper to a religious.

     “But you do not know the news he bears.”

     Would Father Abbot never get to the point? His eyes gleamed with amusement, bright pleasure across his visage. “And this is his companion, Sir Thomas Percy.”

     The scion of the northern Percies stood and took Thomas’ hand. Thomas returned the greeting like an automaton. The desire to know that had burned on the way up the steps now coruscated. His heart beat the faster. Sweat broke out on his brow. He panted.

     “Please, Father, be seated.”

     He let go of Percy’s hand and lowered himself into the chair. A plate was hurriedly set before him by one of the abbey servants. Wine flowed into a pewter flagon. The special treatment stirred Thomas. The ordinary monks drank water or ale. He took a sip; the wine came from the abbot’s own cellar, reserved for use with guests of the highest importance, a soft, dry red from Gascony.

     “Tell my historian what you have told me,” the abbot said.

     Seagrave leaned forward. Every eye in the refectory was now on Thomas and his august companions. All the monks must want to know what news the visitors brought, but it was only fitting that the word must trickle, like a rivulet, from the greater to the lesser, and with the flight of the Prior and his fellows to safe haven, Thomas ranked highest among the remainder of the monks. If he felt scraped raw by the delay, his brothers must be gaping wounds of curiosity.

     “Tyler is dead. We saw him slain ourselves.”

     “Tyler could not die; you can not kill the devil.” The words flew from Thomas’ lips. “It is a deception.”

     “No deception,” the abbot insisted. “Our own Richard Perers was party to it. These men saw the fiend breathe his last.”

     “Is the rebellion at an end, then?”

     “The King and council have taken the first steps, but it will be some time before they can effect their plans,” Percy, heretofore silent, said.

     Seagrave favored Percy with a cold stare. The younger knight returned it with full intensity and ploughed on—loudly.

     “The rebels shall learn to regret that ever they took arms against you, my lord abbot. Or against any of their betters.”

     The monks broke into a cheer.

     Seagrave frowned, as if to complain about his youthful companion’s lack of discretion, but did not voice it. Percy belonged to one of the most powerful families in the realm. The seneschal lived up to his reputation as a man of discretion and a bit of a coward.

     “My Lord,” Seagrave said, softly and leaning close to the abbot, so that Thomas had to strain to hear, “the advice of the king and council is to dissemble with the mob. In time, we will return, with a host of men-at-arms so great that we shall not leave a blade of grain standing in the fields.”

     “There is no need to mute your speech, my lord seneschal,” the abbot said. A smile, rare over the last days, wrinkled his face. “There are no secrets amongst my monks. Were you to bring this news and tell us only, somehow the rest of the town would know.”

     That was true enough, Thomas thought. The brothers mostly came from the nobility or the gentry, usually younger sons. They gossiped constantly, even in good times. When trouble threatened, they were like a flock of old women trading scandals. Secrecy within the monastery walls was an impossibility.

     But word would spread without the walls soon enough. Servants of the abbey, even those whose livelihood depended on the abbot’s favor, would talk to their families in town. Cob and all his friends would know soon enough. Perhaps he could buy some goodwill with the commons for the monks by going to them before the gossip spread. Perhaps he could save a life or two if they would give over their revolt before the force of the crown came into play.

    

*

    

     Thomas again made his way down to the mill. He had escaped the meal and the complacent conferences between abbot, council, and king’s messengers as quickly as he decently could. The sun was out, and smoke rose from the town, which could only mean that some of the hotheads among the commons were wreaking havoc. Later, he would find out what burned, which houses had been destroyed, and add them to the list of rebel outrages.

     The abbey’s enclosure lay quiet. No one worked while the troubles continued, and he understood. What point in blacksmithing, in cleaning, in tending the crops while ruin lurked without? Like the others, he neglected his own customary tasks, the supervision of the scriptorium and the copying of texts. More important matters occupied him.

     Would Cob know to meet him? No one would be using the mill, not now. The abbey servants were all a-twitter with the news from Smith Field. The rebels still crowded Romeland outside the great gate, those who were not burning church properties. He needed a quiet talk with Cob.

     The mill was deserted.

     Thomas dabbled one foot in the mill race, thinking of Cob’s early years in this spot. The rebel must be made to understand that his experiment with self-government was ended. If Cob backed off now, before things went any further, even the abbot might forgive him enough to let him live. Tyler was dead. John Ball would soon join him. Then local leaders of the rebellion, unless they recanted their rebellion early enough.

     Thomas was no mystic, no seer, but it took only memory to see into the future. The King and council would gather forces, and they would pick off the rebellious commons group by group. No one but the King could rally enough force, no one but his council could lead the men-at-arms needed for a fight. It might take some weeks, even months, but young Richard and old John of Gaunt and the rest of the council would stand for the old ways with all the might in their possession.

     Thomas peered out through the gaps between the boards. Cob would not come. Cob would not hear his arguments. Cob would not live. The nearest thing Thomas had to a son would predecease him. A lump rose in his throat, because the knowledge was sure and certain, not just one of those sudden fears that beset all who love another. The best predictor was the past. The King and council would react without Christian charity, more like the Romans when Spartacus led a revolt of slaves, and every road leading into Rome from the south was lined with crucified corpses blackened with crows and ravens tearing out the rotting flesh.

     Again, Thomas stared through the gaps between the boards. No one, nothing moved between the mill and the abbey. Cob would not come.

     Thomas felt like a part of the mill itself, doomed to perform his function, unable to stop the turning of the great wheel, no matter what he himself wanted. Cob was lost to him.

     Cob would not come. Thomas gathered his skirts for the steep trek back up to the monastery. Tears stung his eyes and blurred his vision, but his feet knew the way.

     Halfway up the hill he had a change of heart. Defeat need not be inevitable. The hope of the rebels poisoned his heart. He thought he could—dimly—see a way through the darkness. The tears dried as hope took hold on his heart. By the time he crested the hill and reached the great gate, Thomas was running. The hem of his habit followed him like the wake of ship.

     The gate stood open. How to defend, when you can not know who might come as foe, who as friend? When foe and friend might trade places in an instant?

     “Cob!” Thomas shouted at the gatekeepers, both rebel and loyal, and who could know the difference? He passed through and found himself helping the rebel mob fill Romeland. “Where’s Cob?”

     People he had known all his life stared at him open-mouthed, as if he had lost his wits in toto. Still, he called for Cob. A space grew around him, as if he were a blight. The people backed away, still staring, talking now to each other from the sides of their mouths, staring at this wonder. Monks did, occasionally, run mad.

     He found Cob easily enough, once he used his eyes. The people opened a path, as if they were the sea and he Moses, so agitated was Thomas. It felt odd to look at himself from the outside; perhaps a bit of madness made him stronger.

     He stumbled up the last of the steps to the porch. Cob caught him and prevented him from falling.

     “Thomas, Thomas—what’s the matter?”

     But before he could answer, he saw the bulk of Sir William Croyser. Adversaries crowded each other in full view of the commons—Cob and Thomas, Dickon and Croyser. Cob found value in such open confrontation; Thomas thought it foolish.

     The abbot had sent Croyser, then, as Cob had ordered.

     “What is it, Thomas?” Dickon, too, asked.

     But in front of Croyser, who would report straight back to the abbot, Thomas was tongue-tied. Coward, but he could not voice the warning that he had run like a lunatic to bring. Croyser’s gaze fell upon him, like a wet cloak. The soldier was too canny to raise an eyebrow. Word of something odd would return to the abbot.

     “I—I—”

     “I must tell you, Thomas.” Cob still held him. “Tyler is dead. We have had word from London. The mayor himself killed him.”

     So Thomas need not tell after all. Of course the rebels had friends in the City. The news of the slaying had reached them as soon as it had come to the monks. Anyone could use the road. He had been a fool to think it could all be kept secret.

     Croyser smirked. Thomas frowned. Smugness did not become the knight. As if Sir William heard his thoughts, his smile fell away.

     “It does not affect our cause,” Cob said. “The abbot has acceded to all our demands. He has sent this knight to tell us so. He will accept our charter, and the charters of all the commons, from all the villages. He says ‘there has been too much rancor among us.’ He speaks like a Christian.”

     “The abbot sends his greetings to the commons,” Croyser said, “and offers to fix the seal of the abbot and convent to the charter at your convenience.”

     Thomas thought Cob would rush inside, pleased with the acceptance his demands had found. He was wrong.

     Instead, Cob called to the crowd. Some ate and drank, some slept, for the days had gone without interruption, and most were sluggish with sleeplessness. Some threw dice. Some wrestled, as if it were a festive market day. Mothers nursed infants. Children of greater age raced around the trees playing tag and hide-and-seek. It was as if the world had gone on holiday for them.

     They all paused. Cob gave a moment for the sleepers to wake.

     “Fellow citizens!” Cob used a word never applied within the monastery’s demesne. “We have won our demands. The abbey has seen your strength and determination.” He pulled a piece of new vellum from his tunic and showed it to the crowd. “Here is our own Magna Carta, one for the commons this time.”

     A cheer rose from the people gathered. Thomas shuddered at the betrayal taking place before him. He tried to speak, but Croyser watched him, eyes cold and threatening. He could tell Cob, he believed, but not now, not under the eyes of the knight.

     At that instant, a mule-drawn cart trundled out from the great gate. Barrels of ale from the monastery brewery and loaves of bread steaming from the ovens filled it to overflowing. The crowd murmured and pointed. The poor servant of the abbey leading the mules had to endure their catcalls and jokes. Cob pointed at the offering.

     “The abbot has sent us a gift, in token of his peace. Bread and ale for all.”

     A cheer interrupted him. People surged toward the wagon.

     “There’s plenty to go ’round,” Cob cried. “Take yourselves to Gunnar’s Stone, where our beating of the bounds can begin!”

     “The seal—” Croyser said.

     “The seal can wait,” Cob shot back. “The people must be served first.”

     “But the seal—the abbot is waiting!” Thomas objected.

     Cob was too filled with his triumph to observe the courtesies due to rank and position. It showed in his eyes, his demonic grin, his hurried, jumpy appeal to the commons. He jammed his so-called “Great Charter” back into his tunic.

     The rabble surged toward the street. Croyser and Thomas were caught up in the tide. Only the knight’s strength—and the sword he bared as the mob bore down on them—prevented their being carried away. Croyser spared on arm to wrap around Thomas and pulled him into the abbey church. Together, they slammed the great door closed.

     The man-at-arms dropped the bar into place and leaned heavily against the great oaken door. Someone struck the door hard. The sound echoed within the narthex, but in a few moments, the noise faded away. The promise of ale and bread took the commons toward their perambulation of the boundaries noted in the charter.

     “Just as well they stayed out,” Croyser said. He panted from the effort of rescuing Thomas.

     “I thank you for your help,” Thomas said. He trembled with release. Outside was every reason for authority to hold sway. The mob might have killed them without intent, simply because of the people’s enthusiasm for their so-called freedom. If nothing convinced Thomas of the evil of the rebellion, that mindlessness was sufficient.

     “We don’t want them knowing about Seagrave’s visit—that’s what I meant.” Croyser sheathed his sword. It slid home with a clean, metallic click. “The abbot’s got the right of it, though—let them think themselves winning and they’ll leave us alone.”

     The great church stood empty. Nothing was as it should be.

     “I’m for something to eat.” Croyser smacked his lips. “Haven’t had anything since breakfast.”

     “You go ahead,” Thomas said. He wanted to be alone. “And thank you once again.”

     Croyser climbed the handful of steps into the nave and strode down the long south aisle. Light through the stained glass windows made him glow. The sword in his scabbard slapped against his leg with every stride. Thomas waited until he turned right into the south transept. The route would take him through the slype. It was the long way around, but neither man would dare a sole venture into Romeland. Some of the commons might still be present, waiting.

     Thomas waited until the Croyser’s martial noises faded and he heard a door close, wood upon stone. He mounted the four stone steps from narthex to nave, feeling every day of his age. The whole of the great church rose before him. Midsummer midafternoon now, the light came from the south and west, filtered through the colored glass, and cut through the building on the bias. Despite the reassurances offered by Seagrave, the seneschal, and the hot-blooded Percy, he feared that it might all come to nought.

     With all the uproar, the schedule of the opus dei, the work of God, had been disrupted. Not until this moment had even Thomas recalled his obligation. Perhaps Christ would understand. But now that he had remembered, the obligation stirred in him a sense of missing the normal rhythms of his day. He walked the great length of the nave, passed through the shafts of light that broke the church’s darkness, and made his way with echoing foot steps to the choir.

     The dark wood wrapped around him. Here, only a few days before, he had looked up from his service book and confronted the intruders. Not since then had the psalms been sung. Their lack opened a hole in his heart. God was neglected, and must often suffer disregard, Thomas had enough wisdom to know that the neglect had its effect on him. He took his place and knelt at his prie-dieu. The oak hurt his knees. To ease the pain, he leaned back against the misericord, a sort of half-seat to provide rest for weary monastic buttocks.

     The chant welled up in Thomas unthinking, unwilled, the song and breath of ages. Plainsong filled his heart and lungs, a prayer to a distant, silent God, a savior who seemed to live only in the hope of the hopeless. The words came later.

     Judica me, Deus… Give judgment for me, O God, and defend my cause against an ungodly people; deliver me from the deceitful and the wicked....Why go I so heavily while the enemy oppresses me?

           
     

Chapter 21

    

     Tyler was dead, but Saint Alban’s was filled with life. Cob marched at the front of the procession, Joan at his side, Ned atop his shoulders. The ale-carts groaned under their celebratory weight, lightening at every stop.

     “Where to now, Da?” Ned piped from above. His voice almost disappeared in the joyful noise of the crowd. Cob’s shoulders ached with weariness, but triumph made light of Ned’s weight.

     Cob turned round and walked backwards. The throng stretched a mile and more along the road, twisting and turning, a disorderly, joyful procession, led not by priests, for once, but by the people themselves. His heel caught on something—a loose stone—and he nearly tumbled, Ned and all, to the ground, but Joan caught them both and steadied them.

     Someone pressed a flagon of ale into his grasp. He drank it greedily. It was late in a long, hard day, the time of year when days were longest. Time stretched out ahead, a shadow of something new.

     “Here’s another marker,” Joan said. Cob had nearly walked right past.

     Every twist and turn of the procession’s route came at one of the ancient spots that marked the boundary of Saint Alban’s town. They had reached Gunnar’s Stone, near Kingsbury, a mile and more west and north of the abbey, after stopping at a dozen and more spots, where, each time, a different member of the commons had read out the appropriate passage from the charter Cob had written and the abbot was to seal.

     Old Thomas had thought them mad, to first proceed around the town, before the seals of abbot and convent were waxed in place on the parchment, but he had not understood and Cob had no heart to explain that the truth of the matter was not written on vellum but in the actions of the people. The monks, for all their learning, believed wrongly that writing was all, that all that mattered could be copied down in chancery script, set firm and unchanging in letters.

     They had proved their own lie by hiding the gold and azure charter. Later, Cob planned to send to the cell at Tynemouth, in the north, or to go himself, for all that the prior had stolen. For now, the commons took possession of their home by seeing, in common, the points that defined their possession. All would know, not solely those who could read a bit of parchment.

     Gunnar’s Stone lay between Fishpool Street and Folly Lane. Cob let Ned hop to earth, and gave him over to Joan’s keeping. South and west lay the ruins of the old Roman city, covered with the green of growing grain.

     The people slowly gathered. Cob grinned at their unruliness, their release. Victory, even with the cost of Tyler’s death, made the risks taken thus far seem small and unimportant. One man’s death would not destroy the hope he saw in their faces.

     But one man’s fears might. Dickon had come along, but his face soured with every advance the commons made along the route. By this, the last station but one before returning to the starting point, the merchant looked as if he’d taken a physic prescribed by the local wise woman.

     “Take care of Ned.” Cob could not take his eyes off his partner. It had never been an easy match. Dickon needed the recognition afforded by leadership, but lacked the spark that made people follow him. And, truth be told, he wasn’t quite as bright as he might have been. Not that Dickon was a fool; no one who traded and bargained like Richard of Wallingford could be thought foolish. Perhaps he had too much to lose, too much invested in the buying and selling.

     Cob pushed through the crowd.

     “What’s wrong?” he asked.

     Dickon shook his head.

     “Don’t play with my understanding, Dickon. I see your face from afar and know that your mind is disturbed.” He took Dickon by the arm and led him away from the crowd. Part of Cob’s mind realized that he was play-acting, performing for those eyes which always watched a leader. Dickon let himself be led. He trembled, ever so slightly, under Cob’s touch.

     Under the shelter of an oak thick with summer’s greenery, and out of easy view of the throng, Cob held Dickon at arm’s length. “Is it Tyler’s death?”

     Struck dumb either by fear or shame, Dickon managed a single nod. He swallowed a sob, nodded again.

     “But nothing’s happened.” Cob patted at Dickon’s arm.

     But Dickon would not speak.

    

*

    

     Dickon watched through tear-stained eyes as Cob walked away.

     The king would come, and with him would come his justice. The commons were fools to believe that their rule could last. Tyler’s killer would be knighted, not punished. Dickon imagined what it would feel like to mount the gallows, hands bound tight behind, to feel the coarse rope drop heavy on his shoulders, the hangman pull the noose tight. Would he even be able to stand up, or would his legs betray him at the end?

     Tyler had seemed a giant back in London, at Mile End. The thousands of people at his back made him, Dickon had believed, safe from whatever deception, whatever danger, the nobles might work against him.

     He had been wrong. Those same twenty thousand had watched him murdered, and lifted not a single hand in his defense. They were new to government, whereas the aristocracy had studied deception a thousand years and more.

     Cob had climbed atop Gunnar’s Stone, before the mass of people he led from place to place, in celebration. They cheered him. Cob lifted a mug to them to return the salute. And when the time came for the king’s justice, they would abandon him, just as Tyler’s men abandoned their leader. The commons were not to be trusted.

     Dickon needed someone with whom he could bargain.

     He slipped away, shielded from view by the trees that grew along the river. The cheers of the commons sounded thin in the summer afternoon. He held to the tree-shaded, well-worn path. Water flowed, slow and sluggish in the summer’s heat, at his right. Ducks and geese swam and ducked their heads into the slow current to dabble for bits of food. Nature did not change, no matter man’s actions.

     Dickon walked alone in the shade. The abbey’s mill race blocked his way. To the right, across the river, stood Saint German’s church, a small structure built of the same flint and Roman brick as all the churches of the town. Each stood at the behest of the monastery. This one, named for the Gallic bishop who had worshipped at Alban’s tomb hundreds of years before, lifted itself out of the old Roman wall. Above, northward, the abbey buildings rose as if growing from the hill on which the town sat.

     Dozens of structures, surrounded by a double wall, littered the visible side of the hill. The great church, the gate house, the stables, guesthouses, kitchens, dormitory, chapter house, scriptorium, infirmary, alms-house, the craftsmen’s workshops, armory—all testified to the power of the monks. The townfolk might overwhelm it for a time, but behind their liege lord, the abbot, waited thousands of men-at-arms. Dickon’s vision grew; they were not yet in sight, but those fighters approached. They made the law, and he depended upon it in his bargains and his contracts.

     Yet he had made an oath: King Richard and the true commons. Not the commons who met in Parliament. The true commons, the faithful. What if the king, though, held not with the commons, but with his nobles, his prelates, his churches? The commons would be crushed, and Dickon with them.

     The river gathered speed at the mill race. It foamed and burbled past the channel that went under the great turning wheel. A single grain of wheat had no importance. The mill stone crushed it to powder, no matter how the grain felt, no matter how many other grains were crushed along with it.

     The guards set by Cob against the town’s approaches had joined the celebration. No one from the commons watched. Dickon was as alone as he cared to be.

     He left the mill and trudged by the wall up to the great gate. Romeland stood empty, littered with the debris of the great gathering of the commoners, the gate still standing open. The noise of the celebration came to him on the wind; Cob and the others were finishing the beating of the bounds. Dickon had only moments before they would reappear, half drunk with ale and half with triumph.

     He slipped into the monastery. It, too, seemed deserted. He skirted around the church. The abbot or the senior monks might be in the chapter house. The servants of the abbey were nowhere to be seen. He turned round the corner of the abbot’s residence. A powerful hand gripped his shoulder.

     “What’s this?” Sir William Croyser peered into Dickon’s face. The knight’s eyes held a contempt Dickon never wanted to see again.

     The gauntleted hand tightened. Despite himself, Dickon cried out in pain.

     “Wait ’til you feel the rope of the gallows, if that hurts too much,” Croyser said.

     “The abbot.” The pressure on his shoulder doubled in an instant. “I must see the abbot.”

     “To what purpose?” Croyser pushed Dickon to his knees. “More ultimatums? More demands?”

     Worse than the pain was the threat of exposure. Dickon looked around. No eyes were visible, but anyone might be watching from a hidden place.

     “I was—”

     “Get out!” Croyser lifted him from the earth, a hand clutching at his collar and another the waist of his tunic. Dickon squalled, but the knight snarled a warning. Croyser carried him across the open ground within the gate and dumped him, like rubbish, out into Romeland.

     He was still nursing his injured pride when the shouts of drunken men and women, children’s catcalls, laughter and song, and the creaking of the ale-carts and the grunting of the men who pulled them signaled the arrival of the mob from Fishpool Street. Dickon slipped around the edge of the abbey wall, pressed his back hard against the flint and brick, and waited to see what would happen.

    

*

    

     Joan Grindcob led her stumbling husband through the crowd. She held Ned’s hand at one side and Cob’s at the other. He grinned blearily at her. The last several pints had done for him.

     Cadyndon and Barber, thanks be, opened a path through the throng. Cob had not slept more than a few hours since Thursday, and here it was Sunday afternoon. The entire rebellion had been one long holiday, but she had to take her boys home and get them rest. She lifted poor, sleepy Ned into her arms, and wished she could do the same for poor, sleepy Cob.

     Others could stand before the commons for a while. Others could attract the ire and attention of the abbot and his loyal servants. Perhaps it would made a difference later on.

     The little party reached the thinning edge of the crowd, but the two men did not abandon her. Barber still limped, from the knight’s blow to his foot. It had only been a pair of days. But he and Cadyndon supported Cob at the shoulders and hauled him down Holywell Hill and to their dwelling. She let the two mismatched men tuck him into bed.

     “We’ll come back if we need him,” Barber said. “But nothing else should happen for a while. The sealing of the charter can wait a few hours. Everyone’s tired.”

     Joan tucked Ned in beside his father, thanked them, and let herself settle down. Not enough to sleep, but enough to pause and take a long look at her two men.

     In sleep, the pair looked more father and son than awake. The unruly golden hair, the freckles on forehead and cheeks gave proof, if any were needed, that they were son and father. They even lay in the same position, on their left sides, knees drawn up slightly, as vulnerable as fawns in the forest.

     The front room of the house, where Cob plied his trade as a clerk, was a mess. Too many people had been in and out. She flattened sheets of vellum where draughts had been written of the final charter, the one to be sealed by the abbot and convent in the evening. Let the bloody abbot wait a few hours. It would be a blessing for him to learn a little patience, to be at someone else’s beck and call for once.

     Cob muttered in his sleep, sat up, then fell back. Poor man. He was asleep again before she could reach the bed. She would wait a while, then wake him in the best way, if Ned would stay asleep.

    

*

    

     Dickon slipped back into the crowd. Cob was nowhere to be seen. Other voices lifted as men talked with each other and jockeyed for the favor of the mob. Cob was honest; what he said, one might believe.

     But William Eccleshall cared more for vengeance than for redress of grievances. He started in small ways, talking with other men—notably Cadyndon and Barber. Eccleshall had taken it badly when Cob dismissed him from the conference with the abbot, but the man had taken the chance to ingratiate himself with the people while Cob and Dickon were occupied in real work.

     Others listened as Eccleshall spoke. Not once did he mount the steps of the western porch of the great church to harangue them, tell them what to do. He moved, instead, from one knot of people to another. He spoke of their courage, their determination, the wrongs they had long lived with, the arrogance of the gentry and the church, the long oppression of the people at the hands of the abbey.

     Eccleshall found willing listeners in the throng. With Cob absent, they longed for someone to tell them what to think. Eccleshall had his own ideas, and John Byker, William Cadyndon, and John Barber were nearby to add their approval. They agreed loudly when Eccleshall mentioned the abbey’s wealth, the commons’ poverty. They nodded sagely when Eccleshall reminded everyone that certain abbatial officials had houses in the town. They lingered when he moved to another group, and stoked the fires of the commons’ anger.

     Eccleshall finally mounted the steps, more at the urging of others, it appeared, than from his own desire. Like so many of the actions Dickon had seen of late, it stank of pretense. Eccleshall wanted to appear, like Caesar, to reject the crown offered him.

     Three times he started up the steps, and twice he turned and came back down. The third time, he claimed them for his own. Cadyndon and Barber stood guard before him as they had done for Cob just hours earlier.

     When he finally spoke for all to hear, Eccleshall took a step that Cob had been unwilling to make. He demanded that the abbot surrender the charter of Offa, with the initial capitals of gold and azure, without further delay, or he would destroy the great gate itself.

     No one of the monks was present in Romeland, but Eccleshall could depend on someone within hearing his words. The assembly of half again a thousand folk in the foreground of the monastery guaranteed listeners.

     “One man,” Eccleshall cried to the commons. “All it takes is one man with the courage to light the flame. We will burn their gaol house to the earth, and no gateway shall be built to replace it, and the abbey and every thing in it will be held in common for the commons. One man’s courage is all that’s needed.”

     Dickon was one man. If this fire were lighted, it would take with it all hope of managing a peaceful revolt. Once lighted, such a flame could not be extinguished merely by wishing. It would burn through the monastery—through gate house, stables, guest houses, cloister, dormitory and all. And when it was done with the abbey, the houses of the commons themselves lay hard against the abbey wall. Fire respected no rank. The name of commoner would not stop it.

     Dickon mounted the steps. He pushed past Cadyndon and Barber, who, knowing him, made only token resistance. Eccleshall’s mouth gaped in surprise. He hadn’t expected contradiction.

     The people waited to hear him. He stared out at their open mouths, fierce eyes. They were on the brink of conflagration and awaited only the spark that they thought would come from him.

     “You fools!” The words leaped from Dickon’s throat like flame from a furnace. The crowd flinched at his fury. “What are you doing? What deeds do you have in mind?”

     He fixed his gaze on the out of towners, John Frowyk and the others from Barnet, from Luton, from Rickmeresworth, and all the other villages dependent on the abbey. “You strangers—do you want to raze these buildings. Do you have the courage to strike the first blow? It’s a strange courage that will destroy the place another man has built. This is the home of the saint. The monks are no more than caretakers, custodians of our shrine.”

     An unaccustomed sweat broke out on his face. Salt water ran into his eyes; he swiped it away, to see the people more clearly. Their numbers had doubled with the influx of new folk.

     Eccleshall grabbed at his arm. Dickon swung around. Rage distorted the man’s face into the mask of a gargoyle. Dickon shook him off. Some of the people surged forward, to his aid. He held up a hand to halt them.

     “I am a burgess of this town, a member of the council,” Dickon shouted, “and this man would tell you I am wrong. All my life I have lived among you. You know me for a man of fair dealing. You know Cob, as well, as one of you, a man who has no great love for the monks. But they are our fellows.

     “Stop and think—what will come of razing the abbey? The King holds Saint Alban’s close to his heart, as did his father and grandfather, all the long years back to King Offa. The monks have done badly, yes, but with your help they have already agreed to the new charter.” He took a breath, his chest heaving. “They have already agreed. You have won more from them than we had hope of when we—Cob and I—began these few days of freedom.”

     He threw out his hands. Eccleshall had to duck to avoid being struck. Cadyndon and Barber stared up at him with new respect. Cob was elsewhere, but the invocation of his name had been enough for the moment. John Byker, unlit torch in hand, crept away while all eyes were on Dickon.

     There was still rage enough in the commons that Dickon had to lead them away. “I know how deep your anger is—I feel it, too. But if you fire the abbey, the King’s revenge will surely follow. Trust me in this, as you have trusted thus far.” A sword turned in his heart. Trust led to betrayal as surely as fall followed summer.

     “They killed Tyler,” someone shouted from the crowd.

     “They did,” Dickon answered. “And they will kill you, too, if you continue this way.” How to turn them, with the small authority he owned? “Listen to us who live among you, and wish you well. We will lead you.”

     A crash turned every eye toward the town. The stink of old wood burning floated over the people. Dickon searched for sight of Byker and did not find him.

     “To the town!” He pointed, and, surely enough, a thin column of black smoke twisted upward into the blue sky.

     Everyone knew what a fire might do. Not only the guilty would burn. The entire town might vanish in the space of an hour, as flame spread from one wood-framed, wood-shingled structure to another. Dickon pushed through the crowd, which poured from Romeland towards the thickening column of smoke, eager to see whose house was afire.

     The houses of Richard the Scrivener and Robert Chamber once stood next to each other, in the better neighborhood. The flames from those two houses joined hands and leaped across the narrow lane to the roof, and thence down into the body of the houses of John the Clerk and Simon the Limeburner. All four men were townsfolk employed by the abbey, and mainly in the production of legal documents.

     Dickon smelled the air. Something more than burning oak and wooden shingles—a thin, pungent finger of it reached into his nose. Around him, the people formed bucket brigades and splashed the homes of the innocent on either side, but let the guilty burn.

     The stink proved that the burning of these four houses had not come by accident. The appreciative crowd’s roar rivaled the rush and crackle of the fires. Dickon shoved people aside, heedless of their complaints, their farm implements, their swords and bows. Of a sudden he found himself through the front of the jeering mob. John the Clerk’s wife and children stood before him, their faces dark with soot, their clothing’s edges singed black. Eleanor Clerk, pregnant as usual, stood in mute shock, her arms locked around her young son and daughter. The eyes of all three were hollow and empty, wounded, staring not at the flaming house, but at the mocking crowd surrounding them.

     The stench thickened here, as if the air itself might burst to flame. Dickon felt his stomach twist, his vision narrow. He took Eleanor by the shoulders—her husband was among those sheltered in the abbey, for fear of the commons—and pushed back through the throng. He had managed only a few yards when a man stepped in their path.

     John Dene, the painter, gave off the fumes of his craft, the substances he used to thin his paints and clean his brushes. He had painted his face blue, like an ancient Celtic warrior. His eyes were as hollow as Eleanor’s, his clothing singed like hers.

     “Make way, John,” Dickon said. “I’m taking them to a place of safety.”

     But Dene blocked their way. He pointed at Eleanor’s round belly. “That’ll kill you. Keep away from your husband, should you live through this delivery.”

     Dene’s gaze flattened, as if he had run out of whatever quality was driving him. Dickon slipped around Eleanor, to move him away. John Byker appeared at the painter’s side. He held a still-glowing torch in his right hand.

     “Now, Master Dickon, treat this man with some kindness. He’s just lost a wife and child.”

     “I’ll take this woman and her children away from here,” Dickon insisted.

     “To her husband, and him not man enough to watch over his own.” Byker waved the torch in small circles.

     Dickon pushed between Dene and Byker, but the latter swung his torch. The heat still in the embers flashed on Dickon’s face.

     Dickon warded off the torch and gained a burn on the arm for his pains. He pushed Eleanor Clerk and her children from harm’s way, and followed close behind. Byker, his rattish eyes gleaming with reflected firelight, grinned like a gargoyle and brandished the flaming brand.

     Byker must not have meant to kill. The woman and her progeny slowed Dickon’s flight more than enough to allow Byker to keep up his threats and taunts for the whole distance.

     “Traitor,” he shouted. “Coward.” Others followed along, and repeated the cruel words. Dickon tried to concentrate on the woman and her children, but the accusations were true and therefore stung the more. He was afraid, and he would betray the commons for the sake of his life, if only he was given the chance.

A Hanging Offense by Alan David Justice is licensed under a 

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

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