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.”
A Hanging Offense by Alan David Justice is licensed under a
If you've come to this story in the middle, it begins here.
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