A Hanging Offense, Chapters 13-15

In which the rebels learn the difference between rebellion and governance, among other things.

Chapter 13

    

     Cob led the people from Fawnton Wood in a procession through Saint Alban’s. The entire town belonged to the abbey by law, but he stopped the march at one place after another and made a ceremony of handing it over to the commons. As they progressed from place to place, the crowd grew more and more excited. Cob felt their confidence swell. He had a piece of it, too.

     At Sopwell, the site of a cell of nuns affiliated with Saint Alban’s, he called the sisters out of their cloister. A bare dozen nuns, the entire company, emerged. The Prioress, an aged daughter of a local knight, himself long since dead, marched out at the head of her sisters.

     “What kind of men are you?” she demanded. “My daughters have never done you harm.”

     “And we mean you none now,” Cob answered. He sat squarely atop the mare he had ridden from London and peered down at the worn face of the prioress. A frown of outrage furrowed her brow. Her thin lips turned down in rank disapproval of his rabble. He grinned at her. “No damage will be done to you and yours, but we mean to hunt these grounds. We will have them to our own.”

     “And what of us, then?” the Prioress, whose name absolutely escaped him, shrilled. She pushed past him and called out to the crowd.

     “What of us women, who have done you no hurt? Will you threaten us with rape and pillage?”

     She was too anxious for the former by half. Her question earned the laughter of Cob’s followers, and her blushing shame delighted Cob. He had had his fill of the imperious.

     “No, my dear,” he said. Tears streamed down his cheeks. He had had some sleep, but not nearly enough to make up for two days’ waking. He reminded himself that he must be sober in his dealings with the religious. “No such luck for you.”

     That brought another burst of laughter from the commons.

     Joan appeared out of the crowd, her face as red as a brand. Ned, on her hip as usual, had his face screwed up as if he were about to break into a volley of tears.

     “Shame on you, Will Grindcob!”

     “What’s this?” Cob asked her.

     “Shame on all of you!” Before the priory church, no more than a chapel, stood a cross atop a small pile of worked stone.

     “Take him.” Joan handed Ned up to Cob, who perforce accepted his son into his arms, although unwilling.

     Joan jumped atop the stones and held the cross with one hand. The extra height put her on Cob’s level, her head above the crowd. The frightened nuns, at a glance from the prioress, formed a cordon around her.

     “Shame on all of you, I say.” Joan’s strong alto rang across the open space filled with rebels.

     Cadyndon grinned at Cob. Ned squirmed in his arms. Cob could do no more than look away from his lieutenant; a weak smile of defeat formed on his lips.

     His discomfort did not slow Joan. She harangued his followers.

     “These sisters have done you no harm. Why do you fright them? They have no weapons, no authority. They are easy victims of your anger and your disdain, but your true opponent lies inside the walls atop that hill.”

     She stretched out her arm to point west- and upward. There, the early sun caught on the brick and flint of the abbey’s towers, as if a light from heaven pointed the way.

     “These weak sisters owe you nothing,” Joan said. Her eyes fell on Cob. “Do they, husband?”

     Cob wrestled with himself. Joan contradicted him in front of his followers, and it galled him, but she had the right of it, and perhaps she was right as well to deflect the passion of the commons toward its true object.

     He slipped his gaze from her challenge and looked into the faces of the men—and women—before the priory.

     “We meant no harm,” he allowed.

     “Then,” Joan insisted, aware, he thought, of what she was about, “there is no need for such a gathering before the sisters’ house. Let them return.”

     The women in the crowd surged past their men and gathered around the nuns at the foot of the cross to which Joan clung.

     “We will stand bond for them,” Joan said.

     Cob tried to wheel the mare away, Ned’s weight heavy in his arms. The mare, picking up Cob’s uncertainty, skittered to the left. He tightened his grip on the reins, shifted Ned to the middle, and pulled the horse up short. She stopped, and he nearly lost his seat and his child in the same instant.

     Cob could not stop a glance across the crowd for Joan, even though they were in the midst of argument. She still clung to the tall cross. Her eyes, though, were wide with alarm, both for him and Ned. He grinned across the crowd at her, even before he quite had his balance back. Ned squealed with a mix of fright and excitement. For the moment, everything was well between them. Joan’s fear and anger melded into a rueful smile. Cob knew what she was thinking, had always known Joan’s thoughts, as she his. She was as stubborn as he, too.

     “She’s a match for you, that one.” Old Benedict looked up at him, a smile as sly as his own playing across his face. Cob’s sideways movement on the mare had taken him through the crowd. “This is no place for the boy. Let me take him.” Benedict held up his wizened hands.

     Ned was ready to get down. He leaned forward, heedless of the height, and sprang from Cob to the old man’s arms.

     Benedict grunted as he caught Ned. “You’re too much for an old man, Ned.” He shifted the boy ‘round to his shoulders. “Up you go. Tell me what you see!”

     Cob felt a stab of jealousy. Ned went with the old man so easily, without even a backward glance to his father. Cob’s eyes felt hot.

     He looked away, for Cadyndon or Barber or somebody, but Ned’s shrill voice turned him around again.

     “Bunny!” The boy had taken seriously Benedict’s admonition to tell what he could see.

     A gray hare, caught out in the open, darted for its hole in panic. Someone cut off its direct route. It moved left, still at top speed. Another person jumped into its path and dove for the speeding animal. The hare escaped his grasp, but now a dozen men had it fully surrounded. It screamed, and had not Cob seen the beast himself, he would have sworn it was a child in mortal fear.

     Mortal fear it deserved. The hare, a large doe heavy with milk, seemed to know there was no escape. The game laws forbade the taking of rabbits, and the conies felt themselves safe. Cadyndon ran toward the sound, broke through the wall of captors, snatched the beast up by the ears and silenced the shrieking beast with his knife. He held the doe up in the air for all to see. Her blood ran down his arm, her legs still kicked in the death agony.

     A fearful silence gripped the crowd, as if they still heard the rabbit’s screams.

     “Meat for the table!” Cadyndon broke the spell. “Meat from the abbot’s stores.”

     Cob snatched a pike from one of the crowd and spurred his mount to Cadyndon. He lowered the weapon’s point.

     “Spike her,” he ordered. “Let us show the monks that their laws are finished. The law of the commons runs here now, and we shall hunt, and fish, and eat what and where and when we please.”

     Cadyndon impaled the dripping doe. Cob lifted her high in the air, at the end of the spear. The commons cheered.

     “There will be more meat from the abbot’s table soon enough!” Cob shouted. “More than a single nursing doe! Follow me.”

     He slid from the mare’s back. The cell at Sopwell was only a little distance from Holywell. With the people at his back, he marched up the hill.

     Killing the rabbit was a second act of rebellion, and, like the first, the breaking of the folds, it was mostly symbolic. Now they would open the abbot’s gaol. The time for symbols was passed.

     If Thomas the monk had done his part, the porter would let them into the great gate house where the prisoners were kept. If not, they would have to force their way in. Guards, perhaps even the knight, Croyser, or his men, might be there, and they would not surrender easily. But there was no help for it. They had been warned, although none of the commons knew of the conference between Cob and the precentor.

     The commons must have sustenance, both breakfast and progress in the rebellion. All but one of the prisoners were in the gaol because they had violated one of the customary laws. It was the abbot himself who was the judge, though he most often delegated judgment to his bailiff or to the Prior. Both had fled at the first hint of rebellion, and Cob was grateful.

     Cob’s arm and hand were now sticky with the rabbit’s blood. The weight of the doe over his head made his whole arm tremble with effort during the walk up Holywell and around to Romeland. Who would have thought that a dead rabbit would make him quiver?

     At the monastery wall, by the great gate itself, Cob drove the butt end of the spear into the ground, moist from the preceding day’s rain. The doe wobbled. The people cheered again; they were full of cheers today, and he hoped they would have cause to cheer again, over something more meaningful than a mere symbol. Barber called for cords and stakes, to fix the spear in position like a newly transplanted tree, so that the winds or the jostling of the crowd would not topple this sign of revolt.

     Willing hands took the shaft of the spear from Cob and held it upright. Cadyndon hooted at the monks he hoped were within the doors of the gate house.

     The rabbit was dead, her ears limp, her corpse sagging. He wiped his bloody hand on the grass. Inspiration struck him.

     Cob bellowed, as much to warn the keepers within the gaol as to gather the attention of his followers.

     “Attollite portas, principes, vestras,” he shouted. “Et elevamini, portae eternales!” Most of the crowd was with him; they had all heard the Latin over and over in church and knew the gist of what he said. But there were faces blank with ignorance, and he rendered the words of the psalm into English as well: “Lift up your heads, O gates, and lift them high, O everlasting gates!”

     Now he backtracked into the body of the psalm—in English, for all must understand. “Who can ascend the hill of the Lord, and who can stand in his holy place? Those who have clean hands and a pure heart.” He wiped his still-sticky hand on his tunic, shaken, just a little, by the image he had chosen. “Who have not pledged themselves to falsehood, nor sworn by what is fraud.”

     “Very well.” Brother Harry’s deep voice came from an upper window of the gatehouse. He was the subcellarer, now without a lodging of his own. “It’s not necessary to preach a sermon. I’ve been warned you were coming. Will you tear down this building as well? Is it something I’ve done personally to offend you?”

     “Open up,” Cob ordered. Others in the crowd echoed his commands.

     “I’m coming.” Harry’s voice faded as he turned from the window and descended the stairs.

     The gatehouse straddled the road into the abbey grounds, two stories and more above the earth, and made a grand entrance for ceremonial events. It was also the town gaol, built of the same flint and brick as the rest of the monastery.

     Brother Harry pushed the main door open with a groan, whether his or the hinges’ Cob was not certain. The people surged in with shouts of triumph and excitement. Cob let them go. They knew what to do.

     “I appreciate the warning,” Harry said.

     “We appreciate your cooperation,” Cob replied. “though it’s a surprise to see you as porter.”

     “I volunteered. The others were afraid—terrified, actually. Most of them have heard the news from London, and expect to be handled like the archbishop. I think they suffer from a bad conscience.” Harry patted his ample belly. Today, he wore his black robes like a true monk. “You’ve spent some time within these walls.”

     Indeed Cob had. Two years before, to be precise, he had been imprisoned for weeks for breach of the peace. He had not been allowed to see Joan, or his newborn Ned, during that time. The monks had locked him naked and cold in one of the upper rooms, alone, save for the servant who had brought his food once a day. He had had to piss and shit into a bucket, which was emptied only when it overflowed.

     “Ah, Harry, it was worth the time,” Cob said. “I learned so much that I had not known before.”

     After the first week, he had been given a cellmate, an itinerant preacher, a very John Ball, though not the famous man himself. The priest had earned his own imprisonment by standing atop the steps of Saint Andrew’s church, hard by the abbey wall, and preaching the doctrines of Wycliffe. During their imprisonment, he and Cob had strengthened each other.

     It was the hedge-priest, who once had been a chantry priest and was turned out for his spurious ideas, who had introduced to Cob the idea of dissent. Together they had managed, with bread saved from their meager meals and with water in place of wine, to make a mass. It was Cob’s first illicit worship, the first time that he had conceived the possibility of unchurched communion.

     And yet, it was the hedge-priest who encouraged him to acquiesce to the abbot and convent, to undergo the penance they required of him. The memory came to such life that Cob smelled the bucket of filth, felt again the cold dampness of walls, the cramp of too much stillness.

     He had never seen the hedge-priest again. He sickened and died within days of Cob’s release.

     With whoops of glee, men poured from the gatehouse, men pale from being locked away, with muscles flabby from disuse. They came out arm in arm with the rebels, ready for a mug of ale under the summer sun, and they would have it.

     Cob planned three juries, and he wanted prisoners on each. Three juries to hear the same testimony. The church would not put a man to death, but Harold Bluefield could not live among people.

     It took all of John Byker’s considerable strength to herd Bluefield from the gaol into Romeland. Though trussed up with iron chains, and hobbled with shackles about his ankles, Bluefield gave off an aura of danger as fire gives off heat. The tall man’s eyes were the azure of the sky the day following a giant storm, his face smooth and pink, even boyish save for a red-gold beard, his forehead high and clear.

     Bluefield was not native to Saint Alban’s, but he had lived here long enough that all knew him. He had no trade, but traded on his strength. He was a muscle for rent. No task was too hard, no load too heavy—if Bluefield needed money. If not, nothing would make him work.

     Cob had considered his choice for the juries. The men on each panel knew the people involved, the situation, and would judge whether the accused was guilty. In some cases they need not even hear witnesses, but Cob would call forth Thomas the monk.

     He called the men together. Some had served before, and knew what to do. Cob, as a scribe, had observed often enough to take them all through their paces.

    

*

    

     “You may not go out, father!” The abbot’s face was a study in outrage. “You would put your life at risk. Worse, you would legitimize their so-called ‘trial.’ Your presence would sanction their behavior.”

     Thomas the Precentor nodded his understanding. “Of course, you have the right of it.” All the monks had seen or heard the opening of the gaol. Such a crowd of rebels, such a noise, made ignorance impossible. He knew what would come next, had prearranged it with Cob himself. He would not trouble the abbot with every detail, only those that were necessary.

     “Father Abbot, I thought to go see this trial as a witness, for the sake of the chronicle. The folds in the woods can be rebuilt. Any game the rebels take will be replenished in the natural order of things. But this—this is different. This trial of theirs is a usurpation of your rights as Lord of the monastery.”

     “Precisely!” Father Abbot exclaimed.

     “Which is precisely why one of us, a reliable witness, must observe. When the time comes—as it we pray it will—that the proper order of things is restored, the crimes of the rebels must needs be documented. There must be no doubt what has passed.”

     True enough, Thomas thought, but not his motive at all. Deceiving the abbot rankled, but the need was clear. Harold Bluefield must not go free.

     The trial, such as it was, took little time. Thomas gave his testimony, out of doors, in Romeland, under the trees that sheltered them from the summer morning’s sun.

     Bluefield was insensible, with no comprehension of the proceeding. The riotous crowd fell silent as Thomas testified. All three juries chosen by Cob listened intently. They were, Thomas noted, not merely rustics. A good half of them were men who owed the abbey for their livelihood, innkeepers and the like. Saint Alban’s was a pilgrim town. Strangers came and went here far more commonly than in other cities in the realm, because it lay on the road north from London one slow day’s travel from the capital. Such a town needed hostelers.

     Thomas explained the circumstances. He and a handful men at arms had come upon Harold Bluefield and a boy of the town after collecting rents out past Saint Michael’s church, near Watling Street.

     “We were walking past the old theatre,” Thomas said, “when we heard the cries. You all know what we found.” He shuddered at the memory.

     “You must say, Father Thomas.” Cob’s voice was gentle, but insistent. “We must have no doubt.”

     Thomas met his eyes. The golden man looked near to tears. Was it from anxiety that he might fail to convict Bluefield, or did something lie deeper within the rebel leader.

     “Several of us ran up the dike that surrounds the old pagan place. You know it. At the base of the single pillar that stands there, we found them. The boy still screamed, while this man”—he pointed at Bluefield—“buggered him.”

     Thomas shuddered, seeing it again as he spoke. “Blood ran down both of them, the boy’s blood. Sir William Croyser himself was with me. He and his men tore Bluefield from the boy.”

     Now the sight was as real to him as the trial, as present as the danger brought by the rebels. Croyser had barreled into Bluefield, who was so far gone in his assault that he never saw them coming. Unsupported, the broken boy had collapsed. Thomas went to him; the child’s blood stained his habit.

     The child trembled uncontrollably. Thomas cradled the shaking form. Bluefield fought with Croyser until the others caught him up. The giant, his breeches caught around his ankles, flung drops of blood as he struggled with the soldiers. Finally, they pinned him to the earth. Croyser had a dagger, which he placed at the criminal’s throat.

     Thomas, all the while, crooned comforting words to the child, but the boy was past hearing. Blood flowed from him.

     “Misery mi, Deus, succundum misericordian tuum. Misery mi, misery mi!” The giant mispronounced the words of his neck-verse, but they hung in the air, words of power, making him one of the Church, immune to a violent, legal death—“Have mercy on me, Lord, according to your loving kindness”—and such was Croyser’s devotion to God’s church that he hesitated with the knife. God knew where he had learned the holy words; every outlaw, Thomas supposed, knew them.

     “Stop!” Thomas ordered. He could do no other. Slick with the blood of the boy, he made Croyser stop.

     “I carried the child to Saint Michael’s church.” Thomas resumed his testimony, his hands now as slippery with sweat as they had been with blood that day. “Sir William and his men carried him here, to the gaol, where he has stayed to this day.”

     “And the boy?” Cob asked.

     Thomas looked at his interrogator for the first time. This was a conspiracy the two of them played out, cooperation in violation of the canons of the church, but better to sunder the laws than to allow Harold Bluefield out and about.

     “He died,” Thomas answered. “He bled to death from his wounds. He was—torn, inside. He died within the hour. I sang his funeral mass at Saint Michael’s.”

     Alban’s ash tree, by tradition the site of judgment at the abbey, was long gone. Thomas wished for the saint himself to return from heaven long enough to thunder at the killer.

    

*

    

     Cob dismissed the monk. Thomas had done what he wanted; Cob envied his freedom. He could simply walk away from the blood that was soon to stain this field. Nevertheless, Thomas stayed nearby.

     He polled the three juries. Did Harold Bluefield by his purposeful actions kill the boy?

     He did.

     Was the same Harold Bluefield likely to cause harm to others?

     He was. Such harm was a certainty.

     There was no getting around it. Cob believed that he had thought all these things through, that the commons’ demonstration of its legitimacy would make a difference. But now he came hard up against a wall of problems.

     He had the verdict he needed. The sentence must be for death. Bluefield could not be turned loose.

     Someone would have to kill him.

     Cob realized that every eye in Romeland, save Bluefield’s, was on him. The people waited, but the offender was too insensible to understand what was happening.

     Sunlight filtered through the oak trees’ heavy summer foliage. The great bulk of the abbey, the wall, the gatehouse, the town itself, pressed in on him. Green things greened more. The azure sky grew blue depths he had never seen before, as if he saw into it, as if it went on forever.

     The eyes waited. No one had the authority, save Cob. They all waited on him, and it was a wonder to Cob, not so long ago in gaol himself, that now all looked to him for judgment. It came to him now—revolt was not enough. Beyond the day of rebellion, they all had to find ways to live together, ways to manage their lives that were just.

     So far, early days still, every thought had begun in negation of what was, what had been for time out of mind. What might be? He would have to lead it. Who else could understand what was needed?

     It would begin in death. The execution of Harold Bluefield, necessary as it was, also made for Cob an opportunity. His authority would run even greater than the abbot’s, for the church could not kill a man. Its own canons forbade it.

     Who to perform the execution? There were practicalities to be considered. Bluefield was large and strong; he would not submit easily. Byker would enjoy the act. Cadyndon, like Cob, had no taste for blood. It had to be John Barber. He, too, had a taste for blood, but he was practiced in cutting, and knew the structure of the body, could manage the job without botching it as they had in London.

     Cob had his answers. He called Bluefield’s name. The giant looked up at him through clear blue eyes, barely comprehending that now came his end.

     “Harold Bluefield, three juries of good men and true have found you guilty of murder and other crimes.” Cob stared at Bluefield, wondered what was in the heart of a man who could perform such a crime as he stood condemned for. A trifle of movement caught his eye, but he could not see who made it. He slogged on, the words coming hard and slow, catching in his throat. He was acting the bailiff, and found the role nearly insupportable. “In the name of King Richard and the True Commons, I condemn you to be beheaded. The sentence is to be carried out immediately.”

     “NO!” The cry came from behind the court. A gaggle of men whom all knew to be Bluefield’s fellows, the strong men who held no trade but traded their occasional labor for bread and beer, surged through the crowd. At the head of the half-dozen or so was John Byker.

     “You are just like them, Will Grindcob.” Red rage mottled Byker’s face. “Are we to trade one master for another?” He pointed at Cob, playing to the crowd. Spittle flew from his mouth. “Who is this one-time monk to decide who lives and who dies?”

     Cob’s fears came true. Their unity, hard-forged as it was, cracked in the moment. They must stand together, and if they hoped to rule in the end, they must begin now.

     A stench rose up as the bullies surrounded Cob. They had started their day with pints of ale; they reeked of it and of sour sweat. Cob’s own bathed his body at the interruption. He must act.

     “Whose child then would you sacrifice, John Byker? Who would be the next to be torn asunder by this man’s lust?”

     Byker opened his mouth to speak, realized he had no answer.

     Cob took his argument to the people. The sweat still lay on his skin, but a power rose up inside him, as if the words were not his, but someone else’s.

     “We do not condemn this man to show our power.” But that would be one effect of it. If the commons were to rule, the commons must do the things that rulers do. He went on, a kind of double dialogue, his spoken words versus his thoughts. Both were true, and they contradicted each other.

     “It sickens me that we have no choice. It turns my stomach. But if we let Harold Bluefield live, we condemn one, perhaps many, of our children.

     “The world is changing, yes, and we are in the thick of that change. But there will still be evil in this new world.” And Bluefield was its embodiment.

     “At least the monks do not kill.” Byker had found his voice again.

     Even the crowd, though, saw the contradiction in Byker. It was he who first wanted to fire the abbey, burn the monks, and lead the orgy of destruction. The people murmured against him, a rising sound of neighbor to neighbor. Cob let it build, without pushing the point. He knew these folk; that knowledge gave him strength.

     Cob shouted to pull their attention back. He raised a hand and pointed to the prisoner. “Is it a mercy to this man to lock him forever in the abbot’s gaol? I have been inside, and I promise you, it is not.” He took a breath. The commons were reminded of the reason for Cob’s imprisonment, without his having to dwell on it.

     “Will John Byker and his company forever watch the man who broke a child’s body with his own, to stop it happening again?”

     Another voice rang out—that of Thomas, the monk.

     “Give him to me.” The old monk, Cob’s teacher and foster father, stepped toward Bluefield.

     Bless you, father, whatever you have in mind, Cob thought. He waited for the monk to continue.

     Thomas placed a hand on the condemned man’s shoulder. “I myself have testified against him. But whatever his crime, he is a child of Christ. Let me place him in God’s hands. An hour’s mercy is all I ask for him, to fit his soul for his end.”

    

*

     John Dene’s painting hovered over the waiting crowd. Let the monks have Saint Alban, Cob thought, we have Saint George. Better to have the saints locked in combat than the people and the monks, Cob thought.

     “It’s a good painting,” Cob told Dene.

     The painter could not be still. He paced up and down, threw off the compliments of the people, even Cob’s. “I was distracted. The dragon’s not quite right. All I could think of was Mary. The midwives keep me away from her. ‘Go out and rebel,’ they say. ‘Leave her to us.’ It’s a bad omen.”

     Dene had put every bit of his worry into the dragon, pierced by the lance of Saint George. It quivered on the boards, a painted thing caught in its death agony, the lance through its throat. Almost, Cob could hear its scream, the mouth caught opening for the final shriek before its demise.

     “There’s nothing wrong with it,” Cob said. “It’s perfect.” While they waited for the monk to finish with Bluefield, there was nothing Cob could do. He had already given Barber his task. “It should be with your other paintings inside the abbey church.”

     Cadyndon and two other men wrestled a great log into the clearing before the abbey gates. Dene kept glancing between the block and back toward the town where the midwives still held his wife and son.

     “Perhaps you should go to her,” Cob said. Barber came from the town, the sword of Richard Perers in his grasp. It caught a beam of the morning sun and nearly blinded Cob. Byker had entered his house without asking, but the sword was needed and would do as well as any. But John Dene was more important. “A husband whose wife is in travail should not be witness to a death.”

     “He must be baptized.” Dene trod the path he had set himself to pacing. Cob wondered if he had been heard. “She must be shriven, in case—.” He stopped, stared at Cob. “Where is a priest? Where have they all gone?”

     Clergy infested Saint Alban’s town like fleas. Secular priests of the four churches—Saints Michael, Peter, Stephen, and Andrew—served at the will of the abbot.

     “I looked, but they are all hiding. We are alone.” Dene stopped. He glared up at the sign he had made, his body taut with feeling. “They must have a priest.”

     Cadyndon, sweating from the effort of moving the log that was to serve as the block for Bluefield’s execution, approached. “We’re ready.” He glanced up toward the painting, drawn by Dene’s angry stare. “He looks like you.”

     Cob took his eyes from the painter, let them trail upward toward Saint George. The saint was painted with golden hair and eyes. He had not realized it until this moment. He shivered at the blasphemy. The dragon wore a mitered cap, a version of the headdress worn by the abbot on ceremonial occasions. Dene’s work painted Cob as the destroyer of the church.

     Cob tore his eyes away. How far was he willing to take this—what would replace the church?

     Joan was suddenly at his side. She pulled Cob away from the others. Dene still stood, transfixed before his painting. His lips moved in prayer. Joan’s face was fixed and serious.

     “The child came too soon. He can not breathe properly.”

     “How is the mother?”

     “Child-bed fever,” Joan answered. “We shall lose both of them. The midwives say it is only a question of time. He should go to them, and a priest be called. How is he?”

     “He knows already, waits for the summons.”

     “This is it, then. Will a priest come, do you think?”

     Who among them could even ask? Yet it was the duty of the clergy to aid the sick. “How long, do you think?” Cob asked.

     “Soon.” Joan was pale with fear. “Within the hour.” Every woman saw herself in like case, Cob imagined. Eve’s curse.

     Thomas chose that moment to return, along with Harold Bluefield, despoiler of children, and the men who guarded him. Bluefield was bound, his hands behind his back, chest thrust forward by the ropes. His face was turned toward the earth, which would soon receive him. Thomas, a hand on the guilty man’s arm, guided him across the grassy ground.

     Cob intercepted them, explained the new problem to Thomas.

     “The sign-painter’s wife?” the monk asked. “This is the fruit of your rebellion. Who would give comfort to his enemies?”

     John Dene remained staring up at his painting. Thomas glanced his way, then up at the panel. “Saint George looks like you.”

     “I’ve already noticed,” Cob answered. A sour taste coated his mouth. One death was necessary. Three deaths were too many. “I didn’t ask for—”

     “Every act has its consequences, William. If any of my lessons stuck with you, that should have been the one.”

     Cob had forgotten Joan. She shouldered past him and confronted the monk.

     “If any of your lessons stuck with you, monk, you would remember that your task is to baptize, to visit the sick, to do good to those who hate you.” She spat on the ground. “Or is conscience only something you use to make others do your bidding? A woman lies near death, and her child, and you can only make arguments. No wonder we have to rebel against you.”

                

Chapter 14

    

     The woman’s words struck Thomas like a rain of blows, but he refused to let her see their impact on him. He merely turned away from her and moved his charge, Harold Bluefield, across the green space, through the crowd, to the block. All the while, he murmured words of comfort to the man.

     Bluefield was insensible with fear, childish in his trust. Thomas had seen such a state before. He had striven to give the killer hope for the hereafter. One short shock of pain, he had explained, then it would be over, and Christ himself would be waiting, forgiveness in his hands.

     He hoped it would only be the one stroke. Sudbury had taken eight hacking cuts with the sword before he died.

     Thomas led Bluefield to the block, knelt at his side. “Pray without ceasing,” he commanded.

     Bluefield nodded. The commons gathered, an unnatural silence falling on them. In London, the crowd had crowed and cheered for the archbishop’s death. Here, it was different. Thomas recited the psalm of the shepherd, in English so the man would understand.

     John Barber, sword in hand, took his position at Bluefield’s side. “It will be better if you don’t look,” he told the prisoner.

     Bluefield laid his neck across the log.

     “Forward some,” Barber said.

     Thomas took Bluefield by the shoulder and moved him so that his neck was clear of the wood, looked up at Barber, who nodded. The condemned man’s flesh was damp with sweat. He trembled.

     “Pray, pray without ceasing,” Thomas ordered. He stood above Bluefield and made the cross over his bowed head. “Ego te absolvo peccatorum tuorum, in nomine patri, et filii, et spiriti sancti. Amen. Go to God, Harold.”

     He stepped back, out of the sword’s arc. Each of us does this alone, he thought. For all our words and hopes, each of us dies alone.

     Bluefield trembled. Get on with it, Thomas prayed, before he moves.

     Barber glanced at Cob, who nodded, his face grim, his mouth set. How do you do this, my child? Where is the boy who I raised?

     The sword lifted. Bluefield sobbed, but held still. Thomas prayed for a true stroke, for the soul of the man on the block, wordlessly, for the state of all of them, for things he could not even imagine.

     The sword fell.

     A clanging, untrue stroke cut partway through Harold Bluefield. The tip of the blade hit the log. Thomas made himself look. Barber wrenched the blade free, his eyes crazed like glass in the moment it shattered. Bluefield made no sound, but jerked like a puppet crossways on the block.

     It was Cob who found the strength to reposition the half-executed man; Cob who, blood-soaked, held him while Barber lifted the sword and managed, with the second attempt, to sever the killer’s head.

     The body convulsed once in reflex, then fell to the side. Cob let it go, turned away on hands and knees, and vomited into the grass.

     John Dene still stared at the painting he had made, but Thomas had prayers to say over the body, while the soul hovered. No one knew for how long a man might still be in the body whose head was severed.

     Not long, thanks be to God. The upturned eyes filmed over, went dull and blind. Thomas made the sign of the cross.

     Joan tugged at the monk’s sleeve. “It’s over. Come with me.”

     Cob and the others moved to dispose of the body. Harold Bluefield, whatever his crimes, had died in the odor of sanctity and deserved Christian burial. But Joan pulled on Thomas’s habit, and he had to follow.

     “Let the dead bury the dead,” Thomas mumbled, allowing himself to be led away. John Dene carried his painting high on its pole.

     Joan tugged him through the town, to the far end of Cock Lane, where the road to Hatfield began, a walk of more than a quarter of an hour. She had let go of him, and strode in front, Dene at her side. She had more care for the widower-to-be than for the monk. Thomas’s only functions would be to forgive, to baptize, to give the viaticum.

     While they walked, he rummaged through his habit. Within his purse he found a solitary Host, left from the fires of Highbury chapel. He clutched it, Christ present with him. The abbot had commanded no pastoral service to be given the rebels. John Dene was certainly one, but his wife—who knew?

     Joan swayed, at Dene’s side, her hips moving under her shift, subtle and suggestive. Joan, who had never a kind word or a generous thought for him, saw him, perhaps, as a competitor for Cob’s attention. Joan who, in the midst of all these terrors, still held a succubus’ fascination for him. Thomas prayed for an easing of temptation, and failed to gain the prize.

     Too soon, he found himself pulled through a door into a dark, wooden house that fronted on Cock Lane, through the stinking front room, with its paints and stains and brushes, the workplace of John Dene. The stench of rotten, sulfuric egg paint, of the dozens of substances the painter used in his work, assaulted Thomas’s nose. He was used to the stink of people; this smell was different.

     Another smell took him full force in the back room, the sleeping room, where the woman was half-upright in the marital bed. Sour blood, and worse fluids, made an effluvium of decay. Thomas breathed through his open mouth to fight the odor of rot, but knew he took in with every breath the coming death.

     “Help her,” Joan said. She stood, arms crossed, near the head of the bed, regal in her insistence. A pair of other women rose as Thomas entered, one holding a tiny bundle of cloth. Dene himself stood helpless, almost as pale in the face as the sweat and blood soaked figure on the mattress. He still held the painted Saint George. Thomas motioned to it; Dene leaned it against the wall.

     Mary Dene struggled to breathe. Even were the fetid air the breath of spring itself, still she would have struggled. She was drained of blood, her freckled skin so pale a gray, like the ashes of an oak fire, that Thomas doubted she would last the remainder of the morning.

     “Help her,” Joan repeated.

     Thomas knelt by the woman’s side and touched her hand. It was as cold and moist as a fish, slick with her sweat. “Mary,” he said, his voice suddenly constricted and weak.

     Her eyes opened. She recognized him for what he was, took a tortured breath, and wheezed, “The child. First the child.” She levered herself up on a trembling elbow.

     The elder midwife held out her bundle of cloth. Thomas took it, wondered for a moment that it had no weight, then pulled back a fold of fabric to find the tiny babe within.

     It was malformed. A cleft disfigured the face. It, too, caught at breath in such a way he knew it would not live.

     “Bring water,” he said. The younger midwife lifted a bucket. Thomas mouthed an abbreviated consecration of the foul water, then pronounced the words that would save the child from the pains of hell. “Ego te baptizo in nomine patri, et filii, et spiriti sancti. Amen.”

     Mary Dene let go. She fell heavily back to the bed. Her eyes closed. Her breathing shifted into a pattern Thomas had seen before. He handed back the child. Too late, now, for the viaticum. He pulled a tiny silver bottle from his purse, touched his fingertip to the opening, and anointed Mary Dene on forehead. The heat of her fever shocked him and he recoiled. Again he touched the chrism to her forehead.

     “Through this holy anointing, may the Lord in his love and mercy help you with the grace of the Holy Spirit.” Her forehead burned his finger. It was all he could do to hold it in place while saying the words. Mary seemed eased.

     He touched her left hand, which she had raised to point at the child. The palm was cold and damp. He rubbed a drop of oil into it.

     Her right hand was still under the bedcover. He looked up at Joan, who pulled it free. It, too, was chill.

     “May the Lord who frees you from sin save you and raise you.”

     Mary took her final breath and held it for a long moment. Then it rushed out of her while she collapsed. Her hand in Thomas’s grew heavier.

     “Pater noster…” he began. The midwives and Joan followed him through the Our Father.

     John Dene stared at the corpse of his wife as he had stared at his painting. He was far gone, and Thomas knew nothing of how to bring him back. He should have wept, or shouted, or stormed out of the dark and reeking house. Instead, he nodded once to the elder midwife, took up his sign, and left the house. The sign bumped against the frame of each of the doorways.

     “She is with God,” Thomas said of the dead woman.

     “Where is God?” The voice was piping and small. Joan Grindcob blushed and stood aside to reveal her boy, Ned.

     “What’s he doing here?” It wasn’t proper for the boy to be at a woman’s birthing.

     “He goes where I go,” Joan said.

     “Where is God?” Ned’s voice was high and piercing. A thin thread of irritation ran through, and Thomas heard his father’s demanding questions at the same age.

     Joan spoiled the boy, much as Thomas had spoiled William, his father. She should have silenced him before the priest.

     “It’s a fair question, Brother Thomas—where is God?” Joan had always enjoyed challenging him, enjoyed his blushes and his stammers, his inability to make an argument in her presence.

     Not now.

     Now, he would not allow her to make him play the fool. Her teasing was at an end. Always, it had been she who named the rules of the game they played. Even today, she had insisted on his coming, in the midst of the greatest scandal ever to play out in Saint Alban’s. He had obeyed her summons, half because of the need of the woman who lay dead before him, but also half for the one who had summoned. He was shamed, and would have no more of it.

     “That’s it, then.” He turned and made for the front of the house and the safety of the lane.

     “You didn’t answer the boy.” Joan’s voice pursued him through the door out to Cock Lane. “Where is God, priest?” He slammed the door shut and walked out into a drizzling rain. He raised the hood of his cowl to cover his head.

     Not everyone in Saint Alban’s was at the monastery gates. Saint Peter’s Church, at the far end of town from the abbey, looked to be locked tight against the crowds. He turned to the left where Cock Lane met Saint Peter’s Street, where the twice-weekly market had been held ever since the time of abbot Wulsin.

     No one was working. The marketplace was crowded with workers, out-of-towners, and serfs from the countryside. Young men and women strolled and gamboled as if it were a holiday. They jeered at him, but no one offered him harm. Perhaps the drizzle dampened their spirits.

     Even the Moot Hall was draped with idlers. What little government the folk of Saint Alban’s town had, they conducted there, with great solemnity, endless debate, and little effect. Thomas kept to the far side of Saint Peter’s Street, to avoid their attention, but his ploy failed. Men ran splashing across the broad, muddy road, surrounded him, as he had seen the boys in the school do to one of their despised fellows.

     “Which widow have you been ‘comforting,’ holy father?”

     A hand slapped the back of Thomas’s head. He stood in a growing puddle, his feet cold and wet.

     “He hasn’t been collecting rents, that’s certain.”

     One of the rustics stepped close and slapped him hard, back-and-forth, across the face.

     Father Abbot had counseled passivity. Do nothing, he had said to the remaining monks, those who hadn’t fled for fear of the commons, do nothing to give them excuse.

     But what now, when they needed no excuse? The slaps stung, and more. Thomas would be bruised on both cheeks, have none left to turn. Again the peasant slapped him, back-and-forth.

     Thomas raised his hands in self-defense.

     “Ooooooh,” the surrounding men moaned in mock fear, like school children.

     Thomas forced himself to lower his guard.

     The rebel slapped again, another back-and-forth, then stopped. “Are you getting so you like being hit?”

     Thomas shook his head.

     “Fight back.”

     Thomas stood mute. What answer could he give? The beating was as senseless as it was painful. He prayed for it to be over. Saint Alban, you were beaten. Stand at my side, and give me strength, until this be over.

     More than anyone, Thomas believed. Everything claimed for the church, Thomas insisted be true. He was not his namesake, the doubter. Every miracle, every dogma, every apparition, every sacrifice was the truth, the faith that held mankind to life. The rebel slapped him, and it was a hymn of praise to Christ who saved him. The sting of the fellow’s open hand was Christ’s own caress, the rain that drizzled down was the balm of heaven. Thomas was saved, and he had knowledge of it, and it was sweeter than any hope he’d ever had. No one, nothing, could take him from the love of God, no matter what. No rebel, no dying wife, no betraying friend, no swordsman, no abbot, no not even Thomas himself could divorce him from the sure and certain knowledge.

     So it was that he walked through the marketplace, as through a gauntlet, upright and strong, and the rebels stopped tormenting him. None of his doing, but real enough, the same. He went the whole length of Saint Peter’s Street, a half-mile slightly downhill, and turned right at the Cross outside the Waxhouse Gate, to follow down to Romeland. Back to Cob, if he remained. He walked as if Christ himself cushioned his footfalls. If he hurried, he might make it back to the abbey in time for nones, the service of the third hour of the day.

    

Chapter 15

    

     Dickon’s mare slipped downhill willingly enough. When she reached the valley of the River Ver, between Saint Stephen’s Church and Saint Alban’s, she took one look at the slope left for her to climb and refused.

     Dickon heeled her flanks, but it only aggravated her. He carried the most important letters ever seen in the kingdom, he was within sight of his destination, and the damned horse would go no further. The banner he had of the King, a long pennant with the arms of Saint George, hung limp from its standard.

     “No matter, master Richard.” Henry Frowyk, new come from Barnet with all his people, slipped from his own stallion’s back. “Take Whicker here. He’ll carry you up the hill in style. We don’t want the king’s letters delayed any longer than they have to be.”

     Dickon had come across the men at Barnet. They lined the road, waiting for word from London. At first disappointed with a lone rider, once he explained what he carried—the King’s letter of freedom—they surrounded him in triumph and escorted him the distance from their homes to Saint Alban’s.

     Dickon grunted his thanks to Frowyk. He had been awake through a night, a day, and another night. He had traveled to London with Cob and the others, with the King at Mile End, waiting with Wat Tyler for the King’s scribes to script the charter, and now the ride back home. He was tired and his bum ached from the saddle.

     But now the spire of the abbey was in sight. Frowyk’s white stallion twitched between his legs. The beast was still fresh, and seemed to understand the import of the day, for he started up Holywell Hill almost before Dickon nudged his flanks.

     The parchment of the royal charter, kept under his tunic for safety, scratched the skin of his chest. The banner snapped in the wind as he galloped across the Ver bridge. The Barnet men hurried to catch him up, but excitement at finishing his task spurred him forward, and he outdistanced his outriders and thundered up the hill, past the houses and gardens, all empty of life. He had done what was asked of him; now it was time to show his neighbors. Freedom rode with him.

     He looked back as he passed the White Hart, an old inn newly named for the emblem of the young king. Strung out on the hill below, the men from Barnet followed him, but the rushing enthusiasm of the young stallion had pulled him a hundred yards ahead. Dickon rather liked the thought of arriving heroic and alone. He heeled the horse’s flanks again. Its hooves splashed and spattered mud in all directions, but it carried him sure-footedly and grandly to the top of the hill and around the corner,

     He pulled the snorting animal to a halt. The area around the cross had only a few people about—and those the grander sort, who feared the rebellion and would have stood with the monks, but for the hazard to their heads. Dickon called to one, the keeper of the Fleur-de-Lys, the French inn, named for the Frenchmen kept prisoner there during the wars.

     “Where is everyone?” Dickon called.

     Matthew the innkeeper gave him a sour look. Dickon nudged the stallion in his direction, until he towered over the man. The horse, excited with the same exhilaration as Dickon, stamped and fretted, his hooves spattering mud on the innkeeper’s fine robes.

     Matthew stepped back. “Have a care, Dick-on.” The way he said the nickname constituted an insult that had been Dickon’s since boyhood. He let the horse stamp closer to the sneerer.

     “Where are they?”

     Matthew’s face showed his fear. The stallion blew and snorted in the man’s face, danced again on its muddy hooves. Dickon did nothing to restrain it.

     “I’ve asked you twice now,” Dickon warned. This was nothing like the daily round of buying and selling. Dickon swelled with purpose. His height and the horse gave him power, but not nearly the power of what he carried against his chest.

     The power must have shown. Matthew stepped up to the entrance of the Fleur-de-Lys, safe now from the stallion’s hooves, and pointed. “There—in Romeland.”

     Dickon jerked the reins and kicked the horse’s flanks once more. In moments, he thundered into the open green space of Romeland.

     “The King’s Charter!” he shouted. People looked in his direction. Their eyes widened. He could almost hear their thoughts—It’s Dickon—Dickon!—with the goods from London—and the surprise in their minds, too. They scattered before him.

     He slowed the stallion to a walk. The banner from the King’s hand fluttered around his face. The people closed in around his horse’s flanks. They reached up to touch the flag, the stallion, Dickon himself. Their hands patted his legs on left and right, as if he had become significant. The horse seemed to have a sense of the occasion, for he walked slowly and gently—but purposefully—through the tightening press of people.

     Dickon’s smile was real enough, and so was his relief. Agents of the aristocracy were out in the countryside, cautious as yet, but in combat against the agents of revolt. He had been lucky not to have come across any.

     And now he was home in triumph. He dropped the reins, trusting the horse, lifted the King’s banner high into the air, and waved it back and forth over his head.

     Across the crowd, close to the abbey wall, a human head, the bloody corpse of a rabbit, and a painting of Saint George and the dragon stood on 3 poles. Much had happened in his absence.

     Dickon searched out Cob, easy enough to find. As usual, the golden man was at the center of a knot of people. Cob’s eyes sought him, as well, following the disturbance through the crowd. They met under an ash tree, successor to Alban’s ash, perhaps. Cob reached up a hand.

     “Well done, Dickon. You must have ridden like the wind.”

     Dickon pointed to the two sets of remains. “What happened?”

     “The hare is a sign of our right to hunt,” Cob answered. “The head—” He paled, then seemed to pull himself up somehow. “The head was a nasty piece of business, but it’ll show the monks and the people too that we are sovereign. That is, it will depending on what you brought back. How did it turn out?”

     Dickon handed the banner to Cadyndon and slipped from the stallion’s back. He presented the King’s parchment to Cob. It dripped with wax seals and silk ribbons.

     Cob snorted a strange kind of laugh, as if he were at once pleased and disgusted. Dickon never did understand him.

     Cob broke the main wax seal and opened the scroll. That grin broke across his face like a wave reaching the shore. He let the scroll roll closed and pumped Dickon’s hand. “Well done, indeed, Dickon. Well done!”

     A thrill of resentment at Cob’s surprise warred with pride in Dickon’s heart, but he was given no time to dwell on them. Cob put the parchment back into his hands.

     “Tell them, Dickon,” Cob said. “Tell them what we have won here!”

     It was a recognition of his accomplishment. Dickon nodded to Cob and wheeled the horse and rode through the people to the steps of the abbey church. The great wall of the monastery reached to the west front of the church and split the porch in two. He dismounted and planted the King’s banner in the soft earth, then climbed the half-dozen steps. The people gathered to hear him, their voices buzzing. His head filled with the same buzz, as if bees made honey therein. Triumph was sweet, and being the bearer of good tidings was sweeter still. They might now call him Gabriel.

     “Cleave to the flag of the true commons,” Dickon called, “as soldiers cleave to the flag of their commander.” His voice rang out with confidence. He had thought about this speech all the long ride from London, had it letter-perfect in his mind’s eye.

     “I myself watched the King himself sign this parchment.” He held it high for all to see. The King’s name conjured like a wizard’s. Most men never saw the King, only heard his name used by others, but Dickon had seen young Richard, not yet a man, ride out from safety into the midst of the rebels, and ride safely away again, having given them fair speech and fair hearing, which was the more than their own abbot would give his servants.

     “Many of you went to London with us. Some of you fled, for fear of the disorders.”

     A voice rang out. “The murders, you mean!”

     The shout caught Dickon’s ear. He turned to the left, and saw the trunkless, bloody head he’d seen before. The voice could not have come from it, but—

     “What about the murders?” the head seemed to say, but the lips did not move.

     Dickon’s plan was falling apart before he’d even got started. He brandished the parchment. “I have this charter from the King’s own hand!” Did anyone else hear the voice that challenged him? No one looked to the dead head on a stick.

     “Read it out!” Cob waved and shouted again. “Read it to us!”

     Dickon nodded. “I shall read you the words of the King.” The seal was already broken. He opened the scroll and read, translating from the French on the fly. Dickon owned a certain pride in his French. It was an advantage in business to manage in other languages.

     “It’s addressed to the abbot,” he announced. “‘Dear friends in God—at the petition of our beloved lieges of the town of Saint Alban’s’—that would be us—‘of the town of Saint Alban’s, we do will and command, that certain charters, being in your keeping, made by our progenitor, King Henry, unto the burgesses and good people of the said town, of common, and of pasture, and of fishing rights, and of certain other rights, expressed in the same charters, as they say, you do cause to be delivered unto the said burgesses and good folks, the which law and right require; that so they may have no reason to complain to us hereafter. Given under our seal, at London, the fifteenth day of June, in the fourth year of our reign.’”

     The people cheered, as much for Dickon’s bringing of the charter as for the words in it. They knew who they were, and what the old ways were. Years before, old King Henry, the grandfather of young Richard who was now the king, had chartered the people of Saint Alban’s, for all their hospitality to the King and his court. For although the King sat in the abbot’s parlor and ate at the abbot’s table, he knew full well that it was the local people who raised the lamb, who husbanded the grain, who kept all his entourage well-housed while he was with them. Not even the great abbey could hold all the host of people who traveled with the royal personage. Dead King Henry, saint that he was, had known this. Young King Richard, his grandson, might learn it all anew, were he to come and visit. Under Richard’s father, Edward the Third, the abbots had made bold to steal the rights of the commons. Now they would have them back.

     Dickon had not been born a merchant. His father had been a tenant farmer on the monastery’s demesne land in Wallingford. He remembered the anger that came over him when an overseer ordered him about, an event that repeated over and over in his life.

     The monks were his overseers now, and he would have no more of their hauteur. The King’s letter gave him strength and overcame the habit of obedience, a habit he had worn as the monks wore their black robes.

     Dickon surveyed the crowd. Swelled by the arrival of the men from Barnet and some of the nearby villages, it numbered thousands now. Those who had ridden with him from London, whom he had left behind on the road, came in. As far as he could see, people filled Romeland, so that it was turned into a sea of commonality, of people like himself. The people spilled up the hill from Fishpool Street, and down from the High Street. So great was the press of the crowd that the trees sprouted people from their branches.

     Doubtful from the start, Dickon now believed. But at the same time, so great a gathering was unwieldy. His merchanting had shown him that the more involved in a negotiation, the smaller the chance of success.

     “Let us go within, and you, my friends, await us here.” He had never in his life spoken to so great a gathering. He waited, while the words he shouted were transmitted to the further reaches, as if he spoke in echoes.

     “We shall explain to the abbot what he must do. We shall have a new charter, new ways of living.” Again he had to wait while the echoes carried his plan down to Fishpool Street and out to the Cross.

     But this time the echo returned like water in flood, gathering speed and power as it came. It must have been the returnees from London, or perhaps the Barnet men, for it came with anger and loud shouts.

     “Kill ’em all!” one cried. “Tear the walls down,” shouted another. “Burn them out from their ‘sanctuary’!” And this last voice had a face—John Byker.

     Dickon had no choice than to let their fury run its course. He stood where he was and let the King’s banner flutter by his face. He had seen crowds go bad, most recently at Highbury—was it truly only the morning before? He glanced down at Cob, hoping for an idea, for help. Dickon was a rebel, but no arsonist, no priest-killer, no matter what the advice given them by the London rebels. Rebellion was one thing. Riot was another. In the disorder, everything could be destroyed.

     The King’s banner caught a gust of wind. Dickon caught it in turn and wiped the sweat of fear from his face.

     “There will be no burning,” he cried. “We have not come to destroy our lives, but to change them. We are not alone, and we are not weak.” He brandished the parchment like a weapon. “The King is with us—I have it from his own hand—but he will turn against us if we turn against him.”

     Never, outside of buying and selling, had Dickon acted with such audacity. It was like haggling over the price of barley, and so long as he could make himself think of it thus, he could keep his courage high. He had haggled with the cellarer and subcellarer over the price of fish. He could haggle with the abbot over the price of freedom, and with the wilder parts of the commons, as well. Everything was bargaining.

     “I need two men with me,” he called out. “Cob—you’re one.” He searched the crowd. Cadyndon and Barber were hotheads. He had in mind John Eccleshall, even more the hothead than the other two, such that he needed watching.

     Dickon found Eccleshall huddled with a group of ragtags, men without families, who earned their living by making trouble.

     He called the well-dressed man by name. Eccleshall looked up from whatever conference he had with the disreputable men. One of his fellows, who had been listening to Dickon, clapped him on the back and pushed him forward. The appointment of Eccleshall brought a cheer, and, Dickon hoped, a certain trust from the rowdier elements of the crowd.

     The two men named worked their ways through the crowd. Dickon called for ale, realizing again his fatigue and hunger. A glance at the sky told him it was not yet midmorning. Someone put a mug in his hand; he drank it off in a single draught.

     “You want me?” Eccleshall asked.

     John Eccleshall was the first man to riot in Saint Alban’s, before even Will Grindcob. Dickon reached down, grasped the man’s hand, and pulled him to the top of the steps.

     Eccleshall stood a head shorter than Dickon, but was a barrel of a man. By trade a carpenter, he made much of his living by tearing things down, had a positive talent for destruction. He was a bogeyman, used to frighten children into good behavior. Pocks marked his face; a scar ran down from eyelid to mouth, the result of an unfortunate encounter with the knight, Sir William Croyser, several years before. His workers, who aided him in his dances of destruction, were as frightening.

     “You want me?” Eccleshall repeated, as soon as he reached Dickon’s level.

     “I want you.” Dickon looked down on the shorter man’s pate. A crust of scab and dirt, leftover from some fight or another, covered a bald patch. Dickon restrained an urge to wrinkle his nose. No one bathed often—it wasn’t healthy—but Eccleshall reeked of sour ale and old spew. He was just the one to put the old abbot on edge.

     Cob reached the stairtop a moment later.

     “Let’s go find an abbot!” Cob grinned from ear to ear, and Dickon felt, however unjustly, that his place in the sun was being overshadowed.