A Hanging Offense, Chapters 26-28

In which there is much jockeying for position among all the competing factions.

Chapter 26

    

     Joan peered through the door into the star-lit darkness. A shape moved up Holywell, a shape whose stride and outline she knew. He was coming, as he had promised.

     Every muscle in her being longed to run to him, to fold him in her arms and keep him safe, as she did with Ned, but such behavior would not do, and she forced herself to take the small satisfaction of seeing him approach.

     Whatever bold doings might come with the dawn, Cob came home to her.

     She reminded herself of her promise: no weeping. Show him, perhaps, what he stood to lose if taken by the soldiers, but never weep, never weaken the best parts of him, his courage and his mind. He alone of all the men in the vill saw clearly. He alone, of all the men in the vill, turned words to actions, and behaved with both fidelity and conscience. She would not weep.

     She turned and once more checked on sleeping Ned. He was good about sleeping through the night, but all the excitement of the last weeks had taken their toll, on him as well as his elders. Broken sleep was common, from the beginning of the rebellion, with alarms and celebrations both.

     When Joan turned again to the door, Cob filled it. She could see his shape; his golden eyes glowed in the light of the candle.

     “Husband…”

     He came to her, and, as ever, was generous in his lovemaking. She vied with him. Each urged the other onward. The time was short. Another time might never come.

     Fear that he might not return made her fix each caress, each thrust, each murmur, in memory, so that, if he died in this endeavor, she would still hold him alive in her love, enough to show Ned his father’s being. That need made her own sensation stronger and stronger, until she cried out in conjoined ecstasy and terror. Her tears ran down her face even as she climaxed, in spite of her resolve. She thanked the shadows that Cob should not see them, to make him regret his faithfulness.

     When they were finished off, she smothered her fear. Better to float in the dreamy after-time of love and lust mixed. Bad news would arrive soon enough. She pretended not to think.

     Ned stirred. He had slept through their carnality. Joan rose, took the now low candle in hand and padded in the dimness to his pallet. There, she knelt by the boy and let the yellow glow spill on him.

     Ned dreamt. His eyes moved back and forth under his closed lids. He muttered something fearful, wordless in the night, sat up and stared her in the eye, the purest dread writ plain on his face, then fell back to sleep so quickly that Joan put her hand to his chest to know him still breathing.

     Her own breath caught in her chest. Cob touched her gently.

     “He’s a wondrous boy.”

     “He is that,” Joan said. “Did you see?”

     “Just a dream, or night terrors.” Cob lied, to spare her fear.

     Joan pulled a light cover up to the now-peaceful boy’s chin.

     “He hardly needs that,” Cob said. It was an old argument they had.

     “Morning will bring a cold dew.”

     Cob, his shoulder still touching hers as they looked down on Ned, shivered. “I feel it now.”

     Joan, too, was cold. She leaned into his chest. Cob’s arms came around her, as strong as always.

     “You help me feel safe.” It was true, but who knew for how long. She must put no doubts in his mind, though her own heart overflowed with them. She would not send him into battle, if battle there must be, worried for her sake.

     “You are well-loved, Mistress Joan.” Cob nuzzled her neck. His stubbly beard and thick hair tickled. She pulled him close, and found the same spot on his neck.

     “As are you.” Then her throat closed and she could speak no more. She could only hold him, let his heart beat against her breast, and hers against his, drink in his smell, and fix all things about him in her memory. The whole nobility was arrayed against them, even if Walter atte Lee had only a small force. Cob had recreated Eden, if only for a moment of time. No one was subject to another in this new Saint Alban’s that her man had made out of nothing.

     But the serpent was coming.

     Joan loosed her grip and brushed back his hair, the more unruly for their love play.

     “I must go.” Cob matched her gesture with his own.

     Joan nodded. She turned him loose altogether. He brushed her lips with his, then knelt by little Ned, put a hand to the child’s forehead. Joan’s heart cracked open.

     Cob murmured something to the boy. He stood.

     “Right, then,” he said. Joan felt his awkwardness.

     “Go.”

     He nodded, then turned and went out the door.

     Finally, Joan let herself weep. She knelt where Cob had and swept Ned up in her arms. He yawned a dreamy protest, then fell back into sleep, while Joan cradled him and wept for Cob and for all the men.

    

*

    

     Cob’s heart warred against itself. Part of him still lay with Joan in his bed; and part of him lusted for the struggle to come, against Walter atte Lee or whoever the aristocracy might send once Lee had been bested.

     Holywell drew his feet downhill through a morning mist that clung to his skin like sweat. The fifty lances down below, dank and enclosed in their armor, would feel it worse than the Saint Alban’s men. Cob hoped for hot sunshine to steam them in their gear. One advantage to the rebels.

     He reached Ver bridge before he knew it. His men gathered around him.

     “What news?” he asked of Barber.

     “The camp’s awake. They must know we’re here.”

     Cadyndon came running from the lookout’s place. “They’re moving! Their camp is up and mounted and they’re headed straight for us.”

     Lee meant to march his men straight up Holywell to the monastery, as if he had the right. Cob arrayed what forces he had.

     “Archers—to the roofs. Make it happen, John.” Barber hurried to obey.

     Cob turned to Cadyndon. “It is not a feint—all of their company comes this way?”

     “All.”

     “Make sure of it. Take a half a hundred men and circle round behind them. Make yourselves a rear guard. Do not attack them, but give them no room to turn.” Thoughts awhirl, Cob turned away, but Cadyndon did not move. “Go!”

     A flurry of running men, each armed with a stout bow of yew and a quiver of arrows ran by them and up the hill. Barber arrayed them with certainty and skill atop the houses, until the whole approach to the town was flanked by men at the ready to rain down death on the invaders.

     Even, Cob realized, from the roof of his own house. His orders endangered Joan and Ned.

     He turned and ran uphill, heedless of the shouts of the men, until John Barber himself caught him up.

     “Cob—”

     “Joan, Ned!” he shouted. Breath caught in his chest. He had to take a precious moment to clutch the stitch in his side.

     “What do you take me for?” Barber answered. “I went to Joan. She wouldn’t leave.”

     And it was more than Joan. From out the doors of the houses lining Holywell, the people of Saint Alban’s lined the street. Their hair was tousled, their eyes bleary from sleep, but they were there, waiting, to see what might happen.

     A cry from below interrupted Cob’s thoughts. “They’re coming!”

     Cob looked back up Holywell. Joan stood in the doorway, Ned hoisted on her hip, like any other woman of the vill.

     “They’re at the bridge!” came another shout.

     Cob turned and raced down Holywell.

     It was true. He stopped his run at the Ver bridge, panting. Arrayed from the bridge on to the southeast were Walter atte Lee and all his company. Fifty lances looked a lot more impressive mounted and girded for battle than they did sleeping in their tents.

     At Lee’s side rode Richard Perers. The would-be knight had his helm’s visor up, and there was no mistaking the arrogant sneer.

     “We meet again, Grindcob.”

     The best thing was to ignore him and concentrate on the leader. Cob approached Lee’s other side. The soldier towered above him. His charger was a gray stallion, high-strung, dancing on his steel-shod hooves.

     “Sir Walter, I am Will Grindcob, and leader of these folk.” He waved his arm toward the town.

     “I had thought the abbot was your lord, Master Grindcob.”

     “Truly, he was, and not a bad one, as lords go, but we are done with all that. We have no more lords, and no more serfs neither in this place.” The words came from Cob’s mouth like water from a fountain. He had spent little time preparing for this moment, save the disposition of his forces. But the words came out of him in a torrent of truth. He stood the straighter for them.

     “I am sent by the King,” Lee said. “He would dispute your words.”

     “He gave us leave to make it thus,” Cob answered back. “We have his charter.”

     Lee took a moment to look over Cob’s head. He was no fool, Cob believed. He could see that if he proceeded up Holywell, he would be at the mercy of the archers on the rooftops.

     Perers circled round to place Cob, afoot, between the two chargers. “Let me kill him now, my lord. He is their leader. Without him, they will crumble in our hands.”

      “Would you do with me as you did with Wat Tyler?” Cob demanded.  Bravado was all that remained to him. His own people were yards away. He was just as vulnerable as Tyler had been. Too trusting by half. Perers’ horse crowded him against Lee’s. A hoof tread on his toes. Cob cried out in pain.

     Stupid, stupid to come among them on foot. He wanted Lee to trust him, and the only way was vulnerability. But he was trapped, as quickly as Tyler, and it lacked only the thrust of a blade to end his life.

     Steel slid against steel. Cob turned to face Perers. If he was to die, he would meet death face-on. He stared at the dagger in Perers’ hand and took a deep breath. The air tasted of morning.

     A shaft whistled through the space between the mounted man and Cob and struck the wooden stock of Perers’ saddle.

     While the arrow still shivered in the wood, Lee extended a gauntleted hand in protection over Cob’s head.

     “Perhaps, Master Perers, you might wait a trifle longer. Our mandate is not to kill, but to solve the problem that we all have in common.”

     Cob looked toward the town. Up the hill of Holywell, as far as he could see, men nocked arrows in their bows and pointed them at the array of troops led by Sir Walter atte Lee. Those same yew bows had served England well in the French wars. They served well likewise in defense of an Englishman’s rights.

     “What do you propose, Master—Grindcob, is it?”

     “I am no man’s master,” Cob said. “But you are in the right. We must talk. Let us escort you through the town.” They would pass right by the abbey, and let the abbot himself see that the rebels controlled the King’s troops. “Peacefully,” Cob added. “You come in the King’s name. We will listen to you as if you were Richard himself.”

     Without awaiting reply, Cob stepped off across Ver bridge and set his feet on Holywell. Behind him, leather creaked and harness jingled, hooves clopped on hard-packed earth, and half a hundred pairs of feet slapped onto the roadway. Before him, the rebels, his rebels, cheered back at the enormous grin that Cob felt spreading across his face. His back only itched a little, right between the shoulder blades, where a too-ambitious man-at-arms might let an arrow fly.

     But nothing untoward happened. Cob marched up Holywell, the soldiers of Sir Walter atte Lee at his back, his own men surrounding them. At the abbey walls, by Sumpter Yard, cowled heads appeared atop the ramparts. They bobbed and chattered, and Cob could well imagine what they chattered of—how the monks’ cause was now well and truly lost, if their would-be saviors came escorted by the rebels.

     He led them past the cross of Eleanor into the great market place between Holywell and Saint Peter’s Church. Cob took himself to the steps of the Moot Hall.

     “My friends, here is a knight, come from the King himself, as did we only a few weeks ago. He says he bears word from the King and Council, though by my lights, his words would mean more were they not accompanied by armored men and archers.” Before him were both soldiers and people. They came from all the towns nearby, to gain their rights in law as well as in fact, so that, when the world settled down again, they might still have what they strove for.

     Should battle break out between the two groups, Saint Alban’s market would overflow with blood. Near to a thousand filled it, and Lee’s men, armed and horsed as they were, would die hard and carry many with them.

     “We are a free people,” Cob shouted. “And we are strong with the strength of many.” The crowd’s edges rumbled assent. They shook their weapons at the soldiers in the center.

     “Because we are strong, we need not fear these men from the King. The King is our brother, and would not wrong us if he knew the truth of things.”

     Sir Walter atte Lee gently spurred his charger; the horse picked its way delicately through the assembly, past soldier and churl, archer and butcher, until it reached the steps of the Moot Hall. It moved with such care for the people around it that it might itself have been the envoy to the rebels. But it was Walter atte Lee who spoke.

     “Master Grindcob speaks us fair, and we return his courtesy. I would tell each man the nature of my errand on the King’s business.” He had a country accent, but his words sounded courtly enough. “And to that end, go to every man you can find and bid him come where all can assemble together.”

     Lee looked toward Cob. “Where would that be, Master Grindcob?”

     The question took Cob by surprise. “Deerfold Wood,” he answered by reflex, like a student caught napping. “But why wait? Tell us now what the King would say to us.”

     Lee looked out over the crowd. “Not all are here assembled. It would be best if representatives of all the surrounding towns heard me. It is early in the day. Some may still be sleeping.”

     “No one sleeps in Saint Alban’s town today, master knight.” While Cob talked, he calculated. Tensions were high. Armed men of differing sides stood within arm’s reach of each other. The smallest spark could set them aflame.

     “Very well.” Cob shouted. “Today, at nones, we all shall come to the meadow by Deerfold Wood, to hear this noble gentleman’s words.”

     Repeaters carried his words to those furthest from him. He heard his own speech spoken again and again, until all had heard it. Deerfold Wood, when the abbey bell rang for nones, the service of the ninth hour.

     Sir Walter atte Lee nodded to one of his captains. A single shouted command wheeled the whole troop, lances and archers, and started them back to their camp. Not another word was spoken on either side. The soldiers disengaged as smoothly as a sword slid out of its scabbard. The people let them go. Both sides, perhaps, feared the outcome of a fight.

     Cob shook off a premonition of dread. He took Cadyndon and Barber and a handful of others into the Moot Hall for a council.

     “Who knows this knight?” Cob asked.

     Cadyndon, the wanderer, answered. “His lands are small, but good, in parts of Hertfordshire nearer to London, but off the main track. I’ve heard of him. They say that for a lord, he isn’t bad. He treats his people fairly.”

     “But he has ‘his people,’ as you say.” Barber played idly with a razor. He had taken to honing the tools of his trade at every spare moment. It made Cob nervous. “His serfs.”

     “What noble does not?”

     “Exactly my point,” Barber said.

     The small, smooth stone hissed against the blade, the motion circular, repetitive, in an odd way comforting. Peace would come with death.

     But not yet.

     “We have to hear him out,” Cob said. “He comes from the King.”

     “Agreed.” Barber spat on the earthen floor. The hissing of the stone against the razor stopped.

     Cob turned to Cadyndon. He seemed to know everyone, everywhere. “Send out our heralds.” Many of the throng who had supported the Saint Alban’s rebels in the heady first days of revolt had returned to their villages, but it was early enough in the day that all could return. “They must go to all the vills and tell the councils there that Lee is arrived from the King, and wants audience with us all.” He smiled. “That should get their ears prickling.”

     Cadyndon repeated the message to make sure he had it right, then left.

     “And what are we to do, who must wait out half the day?” Barber asked. His stone smoothed the steel.

     “We wait,” Cob answered, “and we think what Lee could want.”

                

Chapter 27

    

     Thomas of Walsingham watched the entry of the soldiers from the top of the abbey wall at Sumpter Yard.

     “This will change things,” Father Abbot said from deep within his cowl. It was a steamy morning, moist with the promise of heat. The heavy monk’s habits caught the hot and damp and held it close to the skin.

     “For the better, your grace?”

     “Your task is to observe and record, Father. Mine is to thread a way through this time of difficulty.”

     Thomas bowed in acknowledgement of his fault. Lee had, of course, been in contact with the abbot and monks. Now, weeks after the troubles began, the peasants’ surveillance of the monastery had grown slack, the rebels more interested in their beer and in making a new society than in keeping the brothers penned up. The rash first days had given way to a sort of armed truce. No more burnings or searches took place. The monks and their servants were left alone, or worse, ignored.

     What, Thomas wondered, did the townfolk do about spiritual matters? Who heard their confessions, or shrived and houseled them at death? The order of nature had not changed. It was a matter of some concern amongst the monks. Of course, they did not normally go among the people, certainly not to minister to them. Secular priests were hired for such tasks, and served at the parish churches.

     Thomas had been writing, as he was commanded. So far, he had produced only notes, aids to memory, to keep the events straight in his mind. It was a difficult task, for the rebellion upset every notion of order and precedence. Not that the townfolk had never risen against the abbey in the past, but this time, as near as he could tell from the older chronicles, this time was different. This time, half the country was alight with alteration, and the rebels of Saint Alban’s had support from far and wide.

     Father Abbot grunted a command. “Bring me the knight, Croyser. To my parlor.”

     “At once, your grace.” Thomas climbed down from the wall and went in search of Sir William Croyser. The grizzled fighter was at the stable, seeing to the re-shoeing of one of his mounts. The stench of the horse-barn made the monk’s nostrils flare. He tried to breathe shallowly, but the stink clung to him like sweat.

     Thomas explained his errand.

     “He wants to see me.” Croyser watched the farrier measure the shoe to the horse’s hoof, his eye critical, his manner demanding. “About what?”

     “He did not say.”

     Croyser emitted another grunt.

     “What shall I tell him?” Thomas asked. The abbot would want either a solid excuse or the knight’s immediate appearance.

     “I’m coming.” Croyser turned to the farrier, who had been pretending not to listen. “See that it is well done. I’ll be checking.”

     “Aye, m’lord. I shall.” The farrier tugged at his forelock and bent back to his task.

     Thomas wondered what thoughts passed through the servant’s mind, if any did so. The laboring classes had always seemed to him at one with the warriors—bodies without sense, without awareness. They had enough language to understand what was required of them, but conscious thought? He had always doubted it, until now. Soldiers were in the same case—brutish bodies designed for one thing. Men who labored, men who fought, had no need for the finer thinking of a religious, who must interpret God’s ways to them. All either need do was obey.

     Until now. The monks needed the knights to force the rustics back into their places. With the grace of God, it would take no more than the threat of force. Thomas had no thirst for blood. The shedding of peasant blood would not fertilize the soil and grow better crops.

     The abbot’s parlor still showed the damage done by Cob and his fellows. Abbey craftsmen had planked over the floor where the peasants had torn up their old millstones. That the abbot wanted to meet Croyser in that place suggested that his anger had not abated.

     “Sir William Croyser,” Thomas announced from the doorway.

     “Enter.” The abbot’s voice was distant, sepulchral.

     Thomas led the knight in. Father Abbot sat on his throne at the far end of the room.

     “Your grace.” Croyser’s voice was sullen. He had come under summons.

     Father Abbot gave a languid, regal gesture with his hand.

     “He wants you to kneel,” Thomas whispered. Perhaps, at the far end of the room as they were, the abbot would not hear.

     “I know what he wants.” Croyser owed obeisance to the abbot. He was no hireling, but a vassal. He bent the knee.

     Both abbot and monk took note of the exact angle of the knight’s posture—sufficient to meet the bare requirement of obedience, insufficient to demonstrate the respect owed by a vassal to his lord. Father Abbot frowned at Croyser, but held his tongue. He looked up to Thomas and caught him watching. The monk blushed, his face crimson, his skin suffused with heat. He had violated the convent’s practice of maintaining custody of the eye. He bowed his head in acknowledgment of his error and blushed further. In chapter he must confess his fault.

     “What would you have of me, your grace?” Croyser demanded.

     “An armed force is in the town.”

     “Aye, Lee’s men. We have talked with them.”

     “And…?”

     “And nothing, your worship.” Croyser wiped a rivulet of sweat from his forehead. Was the knight nervous? “We know they are here. We might join forces with them, but the rabble are still too strong for us to be sure of victory. Better to wait and see.”

     “And that is your military judgment?”

     “Mine and Sir Walter’s,” Croyser said.

     “So I must still tremble before these filthy creatures? Still pretend respect to those who would tear the fabric of the world to pieces?” Father Abbot quivered with rage. The edges of his robe blurred with his anger. His voice rose in frustration.

     “Yes, your grace.” Croyser stood now, arms akimbo, like a man-at-arms, unafraid. “You must still keep up your pretense, until we can take them unawares.”

     “You have a plan?”

     “Sir Walter and I have constructed one, yes.”

     “And what is it?”

     Croyser glanced at Thomas, who knew himself mistrusted in the instant.

     “That’s as may be, my lord. I don’t tell you how to pray. I beg of you the same courtesy.”

    

*

    

     Richard of Wallingford rode with the men-at-arms to Deerfold Wood. He must ride at the front of the column, next to Sir Walter atte Lee, and give direction through the town and countryside. Strange that he had to do so for a man who had told the King and Council that he was a native of the area. Perhaps his manor had no dealings with Saint Alban’s. It was better perhaps to think with charity, for Dickon needed all the virtue he could find to keep conscience at bay. He wished for a helm, to hide his face from the people whose cause he once had championed. Instead, they hooted and jeered as he passed among them. Only the presence of men-at-arms all around him prevented the people from pelting him with rotten fruit, or worse.

     “Give them no heed,” his escort, Richard Perers, said.

     Dickon hated being stared at, hated being an object of suspicion, but who in all the world could trust him now, he who had changed sides and turned traitor? He rode with Lee’s troop, but no man among them gave him an instant’s trust.

     Deerfold Wood lay east and south of Saint Alban’s, past the end of Cock Lane, down a steep slope of the town’s backsides, outside the metes and bounds. It was the territory of the monastery, held directly by the abbot. Thus, when Cob had suggested it as a place of meeting, Lee had quickly accepted. It was church ground, he could argue, part of the patrimony of Christ.

     The commons believed differently. Dickon himself had said, only weeks before, that all the church’s lands be ceded to them, and the people had acted on that argument. Deerfold was theirs now, at least in their minds. They had torn down the gates and folds that marked the abbot’s property, and hunted the deer always forbidden them. Dickon still had the taste of stolen venison fresh in his memory.

     Outside the wood of Deerfold lay the meadow where the meeting was to take place. Perers growled something meant to go unheard as it came into view. Dickon looked at his escort without seeming to; blood engorged Perers’ face until Dickon thought the squire might die of apoplexy. The man’s forehead throbbed with his pulse. His breath whistled in and out between clenched teeth. His hands clenched white on the reins he had before held loosely, with easy confidence.

     Nothing was easy for the man-at-arms now. Perers’ jaws moved. His teeth grated loudly against each other, a scraping, bony noise that set Dickon’s own teeth on edge. The tendons in Perers’ throat stood out from the skin. His lips compressed to a thin, bloodless line. Creases marred his forehead.

     Dickon worried that the squire might die on the spot from unspoken anger. He might be Dickon’s custodian, but he was also protector. Few would cross the pockmarked, angry soldier.

     But one would. Dickon craned his neck to see ahead, where Perers’ gaze fell. Cob stood at the spot where mead met wood. Ranked on either side of him, surrounding the meadow, stood the archers who had prevented Sir Walter’s men from action at the morn. Their bows were strung; each held an arrow in his free hand. As yet, none had nocked their shafts, nor aimed his bow. It was just as Dickon had thought Cob might act.

     Lee held up a hand to halt his column. Perers reined his horse, but could not rein his temper. Cob leaned on the golden hilt of his great sword, taken from Perers by Joan Grindcob.

     “I’ll have my weapon back,” Perers shouted. “Now!” He spurred his horse toward Cob.

     Sir Walter atte Lee nodded. His two captains, Benstead and Stukley, rode from either side of the column and neatly intercepted Perers before he could do harm. Benstead grabbed Perers’ reins to immobilize him. Stukley leaned from his own mount to speak some words to the offended young squire.

     Dickon could not hear. The speech must have been direct, and profound, for Perers let himself be led from the field by Lee’s captains. Together, the three of them galloped back to town.

     Lee looked back to the column and caught Dickon’s eye. He nodded. Dickon rode forward, to Lee’s side in the middle of the open field. Every eye, again, fell on him like an arrow. Shame burned hot through his skin. He knew his face reddened. His hands trembled, and he forced them to be still.

     “Sir Walter.” Dickon made himself speak, as if nothing were the matter.

     “You know these people,” Lee said. “I don’t want you to talk, but listen closely. Tell me—after—if what I’m saying to them has any effect. I want your understanding of their reaction. Do you understand?”

     Dickon nodded. Lee wanted him to inform on his friends. Dickon lifted his eyes to meet Cob’s. Across half the field, his onetime comrade stared at him, as if at a demon.

     “Good,” Lee said. “Stay with me.” He kicked his horse’s flanks. Dickon followed mount and man at a walk. He stayed a step or two behind and to Lee’s side, as befitted his new station in life. Cob’s eyes followed him the whole way.

     “Master Grindcob,” Lee said. “may I speak?”

     Cob shifted his gaze to the knight. “Speak loudly, Sir Walter, so all may hear. The true commons hold no secrets from each other.”

     The commons ringed Lee and his men, including Dickon. Lee would not fight this day, so much was clear. Dickon watched Cob, Barber, Byker, Cadyndon—the men who once had placed their trust in him—for signs of violence. They stood alert. Barber and Byker, especially, watched the troops for any hint of trouble. Cob and Cadyndon mainly watched Lee, though Dickon still caught Cob staring at him now and again.

     Lee found the highest point in the meadow and began his speech.

     “Lords and friends, who have come together in this place, you have invited me to explain to you why I have come.”

     Lee’s voice boomed across the meadow, with no need of repeaters. A thousand and more people jammed the spot, soldiers crowded hard against commons. Dickon, insulated from the townfolk by layers of troops, watched as the edges of both groups jostled each other.

     “The King—you know this, all of you—is offended with you who disturb the peace of the realm.”

     “It’s not the King, but his council—the landowners and the bishops and monks.” The voice broke from the midst of the commons. Dickon knew it—old Benedict’s cracked and aching tenor. “Especially the monks!”

     Lee pretended not to hear.

     “The King rides through Essex with his army, where this rebellion began,” Lee continued, “and he makes harsh judgments against the rebels there, against their whole county and those who live there.”

     “Let him stay there, then,” another voice cried. Dickon stretched to see who spoke, but the throng of the commons hid him from view.

     Lee went on, doggedly. “When young King Richard learned of the troubles, harms, and injuries done against the monastery here—a monastery, I tell you, whose patron and advocate he is—he planned to come here himself, with his army, to settle his justice on all of you. What would five thousand men under arms do to this countryside? In Essex, wherever this army went, no hay, no grain, no fruit of the earth whatsoever survived their passing. All was taken or trampled into the dirt.”

     Lee paused for breath. His listeners grumbled among themselves. If the crops in the fields, now ripening toward harvest, were destroyed, people would go hungry come winter. Livestock needed hay; people needed grain.

     “Let the King keep his army away from here!” This time, Dickon knew who shouted—William Cadyndon, the vagabond miller, marked himself down for a traitor. “We do well enough without him.”

     Lee, too, saw who spoke. The knight would have Dickon write a list of malefactors.

     “I have come,” Lee said, “in place of the King. With my few men, I begged him to allow me to judge in his place, to save the countryside of Hertfordshire the devastation being visited on Essex even now. I am no stranger, but a countryman come among you to sort this business out.”

     Lee drew breath. Now he comes to the meat of it, Dickon thought. Even he is a bit frightened at what he will ask. He places everything at hazard now.

     “Do what you know you must,” Lee said. “Hand over to me the ringleaders of these troubles. Be eager to satisfy the abbot of this monastery, who is a holy man, and just. Then, Saint Alban’s people will recover the good will of young King Richard, and the King’s army will leave your fields untouched.”

     It was a worthy speech, Dickon thought, in difficult circumstance. Lee must, in the presence of the men he sought to arrest, convince the people to turn those men over. He offered peace and harvest against conflict and starvation.

     Dickon surveyed the faces of the townfolk. Some of them glanced back and forth between the rebel leaders and the knight’s soldiers. Did they measure their chances against the troops, or against Cob and his company? Dickon knew the faces. Some spat on the troubled earth of the meadow, in his direction.

     “I’ll have your answer.” Lee challenged Cob and all the rebels.

     A single slap of hand on hand answered him. Another such sound followed, and another, at measured, stately pace. The throng of folk opened before Sir Walter atte Lee.

     Cob’s wife, Joan, walked toward the mounted knight. She swayed from side to side, and at every movement of her hips she clapped her hands.

     Others joined in, only a few, at first, but the sound swelled swiftly enough, until hundreds of pairs of hands slapped together, in mock applause, with the sound of a whip crack, deafening, steady, measured, unstoppable. Dickon’s horse shied from the noise. The tradesman had the devil of a time keeping him under control.

     But Walter atte Lee refused to yield. Alone, he rode his charger past Joan into the field full of folk. He drew his sword and tapped eleven men on the shoulder with the blade, as if he were knighting them. Dickon noted well which they were—some innkeepers, hostile to the revolt from the beginning; two or three lesser rebels; and the balance men of the town who had kept themselves out of the fray thus far.

     The mock applause stuttered to a stop. Richard Perers reappeared and rode to Lee’s side. Dickon had to credit his courage, if not his sense. Lee’s men stood at full alert, swords half out of scabbards. The archers among the rebels nocked their arrows. Everyone stood on the edge of battle.

     “People of Saint Alban’s,” Lee cried out. “The twelve I have chosen shall meet me tomorrow, after mass, as a jury. In the King’s name I shall demand of them which persons shall be held responsible for the recent troubles.”

     Lee must have given some signal. As one, his soldiers formed up. Lee and Perers led the way through the crowd of commoners. Dickon found himself in the middle of the formation without quite knowing how it had happened, and it carried him along out of the meadow of Deerfold Wood.

     One of Lee’s officers—the younger one, Benstead—rode up to Dickon. “He wants to see you.”

     Dickon spurred his horse and came up to Lee’s side near the front of the column. They rounded a bend; the abbey’s tower came into view tall and close above a stand of green. A question had been nagging at Dickon, and once he was in Lee’s presence, he asked it.

     “You chose only eleven men.”

     “Did you note their names?” Lee asked.

     “I did.”

     “Good.” A smile creased the knight’s sweat-stained face. “You, Master Dickon of Wallingford, shall make the twelfth.”

     The order hit Dickon like a fist in the belly. “I can’t—I won’t—”

     “You can either lead this jury or be one of those charged by it, Master Wallingford.” The smile stayed on Lee’s face as if painted there.

     Dickon went cold inside and out. Goose bumps stood out all over him despite the heat of the day. “You ask me to betray—”

     “You have already done. All I ask of you is to keep on plowing the furrow you’ve started.”

     Another turn in the road hid the monastery from view. Dickon allowed his mount to carry him along while he absorbed the shame he must face. Another turn brought them to the monastery gates. The flint and brick towered over the men.

     “You know what Our Lord has to say about those who lift their hands from the plow, Master Wallingford.” Lee hastened toward the open gateway; his men followed in a stream on either side of Dickon. He found himself alone outside the gate.

     He looked back the way he had come. The commons, the people among whom he had spent his life, were nowhere to be seen. The town was emptied. Dickon nudged his horse’s flanks and slowly, slowly walked him into the abbey’s confines.

     A groom stood ready to hand. The boy held the steed’s head while Dickon dismounted. Lee and Perers and the rest already were on the ground, armor clinking as they stretched and moved muscles stiff from riding. Horses snuffled and clopped, anxious for water and feed. Stable boys rushed about, filled with the excitement of having a crowd of real soldiers and their mounts to care for.

     The abbey felt different to Dickon. The air of defeat that had hung around it was gone. A few monks walked by the troops; there was a spring in their steps of which they were completely unaware. Cob and Cadyndon and Barber might not know it yet, but the balance had already shifted between their power and the abbey’s. Lee’s men might not be sufficient, but they only comprised the beginning of the reaction.

     Perers strode up to Dickon, slapping his gauntlets against his metallic thigh. “Come with me. You will be privileged to sit in on the council of war, though for the life of me, I can’t see why.”

     Perers led the way from the stables to the abbot’s parlor. They entered from the south side, away from the church. Father Abbot and Thomas the monk, and a handful of others waited for them. Lee had already begun the meeting.

     The parlor’s floor, once made of the mill stones Cob had uprooted, now was paved with rough, broken mortar, soil, and rubble left from the uprooting. Dickon concealed a smile of pleasure at the memory of sharing out the stones, despite the fact that he had changed sides. It had been a glorious moment of reversal.

     “My lord abbot,” Lee was saying, “I shall have the conspirators in hand by the midday meal. They are nothing but rabble.”

     “And how shall you accomplish this miracle?” Thomas, Cob’s onetime teacher, interrupted.

     “My troops, which you have been good enough to shelter within your walls,” Lee said to the abbot, ignoring the monk, “are sufficient to put them all under the fear of God. Tomorrow, after mass, where I shall pray to Christ for success, I shall assemble a jury which will name the conspirators. I shall then take those named to Hertford, for punishment, and you shall have peace again.”

     Dickon stood aghast at the man’s vaunt. He spoke like Herod in the mystery plays, as if nothing under God’s sun would dare to interfere with his wishes.

     Dickon was not alone, to judge by the expressions on both abbot’s and monk’s faces. And Lee did not notice their reaction to his bragging, but went on about the foodstuffs and accommodations his men would need.

     “—doubt that it may be difficult for your kitchener, but my troops must have meat and bread.”

     “I think, Sir Walter,” the abbot said, a small smile touching the corners of his mouth, “that the Saint will be able to fill their bellies and give them room to sleep their fill. We have been host to kings and queens, and will again, before long, God willing.”

     “Oh, do not hope so,” Lee countered. “For if King Richard comes to this place with his army of five thousand and more, the countryside for miles around will be bereft—”

     “The countryside is richer than you know, Sir Walter.” The abbot turned away from the knight in a calculated slight. “Brother Thomas, will you see to the soldiers’ needs? I would speak with Master Wallingford a moment.”

     Dickon’s eyes snapped wide open. The command caught him by surprise. Perers’ gave him a look of purest hatred, and Lee glanced with some curiosity, as the monk Thomas ushered them from the parlor. In a moment, he stood alone with the abbot.

     “Please, Dickon, sit down. You’ve had quite a time of it.” The abbot’s tone was friendly, intimate, as if he quite understood all of Dickon’s problems. The merchant reminded himself that this abbot had ruled for thirty years, since the time of the black death, and knew a thing or two about getting his way. The abbot patted a chair near his, normally a place of high honor.

     “Please, Dickon, I am an old man, and not well.”

     What could he do but obey?

     “Your grace.”

     “Master Richard,” the abbot said, eschewing the familiar diminutive, “you have allied yourself to us, not without some risk.” The old man stared into his eyes, and Dickon would have turned away, but that he found himself forced to a stillness that was in its way comforting. This man knew him in his sins and betrayals and did not turn away. Yes, he would be used, turned against his neighbors, was already turned, and there was absolution ready to hand, forgiveness given before he could ask.

     “Master Richard, you have been named to lead the jury that Sir Walter calls together. How will it find?”

     The words poured from Dickon’s lips. “Sir Walter does not know the men of this town. He chose a dozen at random from the crowd of rebels. Had he chosen with greater care, he might have found a dozen who do not hold with the rebels, among the innkeepers and the better sort of folk. But he did not.”

     “Can you change the outcome?”

     “I think not, your grace. They all know I have changed sides.”

     The abbot laughed, a brittle, glass-like sound, pitched high and sharp. “It’s a good thing for us that you did, Dickon. You may give us the insight we need to come out well.”

     Heat flooded Dickon’s face and neck, invisible in the gathering shadows of the abbot’s parlor. The high windows caught the evening sun, but the light could not reach the lower recesses of the room. His shame caught in his throat, like a piece of ill-chewed meat.

     “Come, come,” the abbot said. “Be not ashamed. What you betray, you betray for the sake of Christ. He will see that you do not go unrewarded.”

                

    

Chapter 28

    

     Thomas of Walsingham, in his role as precentor, sang the Mass for Sir Walter atte Lee on the morning following. The monastery had fallen back into its usual rhythm of the opus dei, beginning with matins near midnight all the way through to compline shortly after dusk. The Mass for Sir Walter’s intentions —to pacify the town and restore the abbey’s pre-eminence—fit well with the monastery’s desires.

     It was the day following the feast of Saints Peter and Paul; Father Abbot had postponed that celebration until they should have need of it. So Thomas, wrapped in a cope of red, for the sake of their martyrdom, followed at the end of a long procession of chanting monks, from the western door, up the gently sloping floor of Saint Alban’s great long nave. Men’s voices swirled around the great church, high into the secret spaces, where visitors never went, and rattled the glass in the windows.

     Rare morning sun shone through that glass, casting rainbow after rainbow of color down on the men. Following the monks came the knights and men-at-arms of the abbey; following in turn came the Sir Walter himself, flanked by Stukley and Benstead, Perers and Dickon. After them came the fifty lancers—unhorsed now, of course—and over a hundred of Lee’s archers. It all made a fine, clanking, singing song of praise and intercession.

     The numbers were such that the Mass was given at the high altar, in the nave, rather than in the choir where the monks usually met, or in the Lady Chapel, at the eastern end of the church. Only the nave was large enough, and in its cavernous expanse, Thomas felt himself and all his fellow petitioners dwarfed. They made such a clatter of sound down on the stones that floored the great church, robes rustling, men singing, mail rattling and armor ringing, feet parading. But Thomas, at the end of the great procession as celebrant, saw them all, blasphemous though the thought was, as if from God’s view, and knew them for the small things they were, including himself.

     What temerity, to beg of the Father a victory over their brothers in Christ! Thomas shuddered at the act of sacrilege he was about to lead. He prayed, as he walked to the high altar, to think clearly and desire rightly during this petition and sacrifice.

     Then, as he climbed the steps, while all the other men arrayed themselves—soldiers and knights, monks and lay-folk, acolytes and lectors—the ecstasy of the Mass itself took him, as it often did. He sang the opening phrases. The brothers gave the antiphon in response, and he was gone into splendor.

     Thomas wondered, after, if he had not been given a taste of heaven, where the praise of the Most High was always on the lips of the faithful. His intention was lost to him in the rapture of celebration, in the music and the words and the hope.

     During the Mass, the people had gathered in Romeland. They were always ready to see the doings of the great, and never more than now in time of rebellion.

     With the dismissal, the lances clattered along the inside of the wall, towards their waiting mounts, out of sight of the mob on the far side. Lee’s archers ran up staircases and spread out atop the wall.

     Father Abbot took Thomas and other senior monks, still vested in their chasubles and copes, up on the wall between the church and the gate house to watch. They stood between a pair of Lee’s archers staring down at the people below.

     “This is how it should be done,” the abbot crowed.

     The very air was ripe with treachery. The greensward below was filled with innocents as well as with rebels.

     Sir Walter atte Lee joined the abbot, and, perforce, Thomas, on the wall. He gave a signal, and his mounted knights, all fifty lances, rode from the great gate and circled around behind the crowd of commoners.

     Dickon of Wallingford stood at Lee’s side.

     “He is not among them,” the merchant told the knight. “Nor are the others you named.”

     Dickon looked sick. His eyes were dull, his face the color of an unbaked pie crust. He stood as if chained to the spot.

     The jury had already met, in the abbot’s chamber before mass.

     “Tell the people your jury’s verdict, Master Foreman.” Lee’s voice whipped the terrified merchant, who paled even further. An swordsman nearby prodded Dickon toward the edge of the wall. The merchant caught Thomas’s eye, but the monk turned away, to his own shame.

     “The jury found that all the men suspected as traitors were good and faithful servants to the king. We could indict no one.”

     Thomas watched Lee through this playlet. It could only inflame the commons more to hear that their leaders were judged guiltless. Lee was up to something; and it kept his eyes from meeting Dickon’s.

     Sir Walter atte Lee had a grim smile pasted to his face. From below, perhaps, it might look like satisfaction, but treachery played at betrayal atop the parapet of the abbey’s wall.

     “The man,” Lee said loudly, “who changed sides in this dispute, under my hand, with the help of a jury of the town, says for all to hear that none has acted against the king’s peace.”

     The commons cheered Lee, where they had heard Dickon with suspicion. It was a measure of how Dickon had fallen in their estimation.

     “I now invite the jurors to join me for dinner. There is still much to discuss.”

     The jurors had been to the high mass. Thomas had not seen them since. Before he could wonder, however, Lee led a procession from the wall and out of the commons’ sight. The archers remained in place. A guard of men-at-arms—Richard Perers and a handful of other knights—escorted the little party back to the abbot’s parlor.

     There, the eleven missing jurors stood huddled in a corner, under the watchful eyes of Sir William Croyser.

     “Thank you, sir knight,” Lee said, waving his hand in dismissal. “That will be all.”

     Croyser had been the chief among the monastery’s men-at-arms. Anger flashed from his eyes at Lee’s dismissal. He nodded, curtly, turned on his heel, and strode from the room.

     Tables had been set for the meal. All morning long the abbey kitchens had been kept busy, roasting fowl and game, preparing all the bounty of midsummer for the feast. In the place where the abbot’s throne had stood, stood the head table, raised on a dais.

     “Father…” At Lee’s word, the abbot turned on his heel and stalked from his own parlor. It was better that the abbot not see some of the things that needed to be done. Thomas thought to follow, but Perers held up a warning hand.

     “You, brother Thomas, stay and watch.” Perers gave a lazy smile. Thomas halted. “This may be instructive.”

     Thomas had his own sympathies. Of course, he stood with the abbot and his brother monks with the nobility and against the commons in their revolt. Lucifer had revolted against the highest authority. The commons were in like case, with Cob as Lucifer and all the others as lesser devils, but Thomas knew them all, especially Cob, and knowing him made it the harder to condemn. He breathed a small prayer of thanks that his almost-son was safe, for the moment.

     Lee paced back and forth in front of the jurors. They were a sorry lot, men snatched at random from the townfolk. None of them had been ringleaders, save Dickon, few opponents of the rebellion. But like Thomas, they had family and friends on both sides of the dispute. Lee, however, demanded an end to such sympathies.

     The short knight moved closer to his jurors. “How can you say what you have said?” His voice came out shrill and hoarse, betraying him for the small man he was. “These men have risen against their King!”

     None would give him answer.

     “You!” Lee pointed a trembling hand at Dickon, who stood with the jury. “You were there—you were one of them! And now you claim to be loyal and true servants of the king.” Spittle flew from Lee’s lips. His face reddened.

     “We have the King’s own charter—”

     “Extorted by force!”

     “No!” Dickon cried. The other jurors shrank away until their backs crowded against the tapestry which showed the old King, Edward, young, kneeling with the abbot before the shrine of Alban. Dust fell from the fabric as their backs jostled it.

     “No—not by force.” Dickon found some courage, faced Lee. “By force of numbers, yes, for when the King saw how many of his subjects were hurt by the old laws, he agreed to change them. He promised us that it was so, and we took him at his word for he is the King.”

     Lee’s breath clawed deep into his chest and brought out a gobbet of phlegm and spat it into Dickon’s face. The merchant controlled himself with effort.

     Thomas stepped forward. His hands trembled, but he said what must be said. “You do your cause no good, Sir Walter.”

     Lee raised his open hand, as if to slap the offense away. Thomas tensed, but no blow fell on him.

     “Can I get no cooperation from anyone in this god-abandoned place? Are you all on the side of the rebels?”

     The parlor door flew open. Saint Alban’s had a dozen dozen places where what was said in one room might be heard in another. Father Abbot himself burst in and strode, with the hitch in his gait that his hernia gave him, to Sir Walter atte Lee.

     “These rebels are our children, Sir Walter.” His voice rasped with anger. “They are our people, however little you think of them.”

     The abbot turned to Dickon. The buyer and seller of things had recoiled from Lee. Dickon’s face had paled; his hands trembled.

     “Master Wallingford,” Father Abbot said, “you have thrown yourself on the mercy of Holy Mother Church, and she will not abandon you.” He shot another look at Lee. “No matter what the secular arm might think.”

     Thomas kept his silence, perhaps the wisest course of action he had yet followed.

     Sir Walter atte Lee, however, threw himself into the fray. “You would let this—this Judas—dictate the terms on which he deals with me, the agent of the King’s Council?”

     “I would.” Thomas’s heart rose with the abbot’s declaration. Perhaps there was a way through this maze of anger and hatred. “He is one of us,” the abbot went on, “as you are not.”

     “A two-faced lying—”

     “All of that,” Father Abbot said, “but ours, nonetheless.”

     Lee’s anger grew like steam in a closed kettle; it had no place to go. A vein throbbed in his forehead. His face grew as red as the apples that grew in the abbey’s orchard. Thomas worried that the knight might expire from an apoplectic fit there and then.

     “Take your soldiers and be gone,” Father Abbot ordered.

     “But who will protect you from the—”

     “You bring no safety, sir knight.” Thomas surprised himself by speaking out. From the abbot’s face, he, too, was surprised. “Your motives, I have found, are selfish only. The King will come, no matter what you do. Your only thought was to delay and prevent the damage to your lands, were His Grace to come through them directly from Essex.” Thomas did not know, as a matter of certainty, whether he spoke the whole truth, but Lee paled; Thomas had scored a hit.

     Lee turned back to Dickon.

     “I shall have the charters you extorted from the abbey. I shall have them now.”

     But Dickon had listened to the argument. “I hardly think, Sir Walter, that they’re worth your effort. If my lord abbot were to ask, of course, we would do our best to find them and return them, if we were able. The people have them, and may not give them up.”

     “They’ll give them up if we have to burn down the whole town!” Lee’s choler grew at Dickon’s intransigence; again Thomas thought he might give way to apoplexy.

     “Actually, Sir Walter, they might not.”

     “You shall not depart this room until I have those charters in my possession.”

     Dickon merely looked to the abbot.

     “Sir Walter,” the prelate said, “I have known this man all his life. All that time, I have been his lord. I have dealt with him on many matters involving trust and faithfulness. Never has he broken his word. He and I shall work this out, without the need of a go-between.”

     Dickon’s eyes widened at that. He knew the abbot for a harsh master, a bargainer of renown, an instigator of lawsuits. It even caught Thomas by surprise that Father Abbot should offer to do without a mediator between himself and the rebels, but Lee’s high-handedness had offended all of them.

     “Go, then,” Lee said to Dickon. “Find these charters amongst your cohorts and return them to the abbot in your own good time. I shall have done with you.”

     Dickon looked to the abbot, who gave a curt nod. He slipped out through the great church.

     “I shall leave you, then.” Lee bowed his head in a false show of respect. “Since you seem to be able to work through these matters by yourself.”

     Father Abbot made the sign of the cross to give the angry knight a blessing. Lee turned on his heel and stalked from the parlor in the direction of the stables.

     “We have not made a friend, today,” the abbot said.

     “Perhaps we have, your grace,” Thomas answered, “but not with Sir Walter.”

    

*

    

     Richard Perers watched with Benstead and Stukley. Lee’s two lieutenants made a practice of watching over the treatment of their war horses. Perers thought them overly solicitous of the beasts’ welfare, but Stukley had explained that Lee demanded such devotion. Perers would simply have beaten any servant who did shoddy work on something so important. The animals under Lee’s command did look well cared for and strong.

     Perers looked up to the sky, wanting a change of subject. The diligence of these two made him uncomfortable in ways he did not understand. A small cluster of clouds broke the monotonous blue in the northwest; there might be a change by nightfall, something to break the damp heat of the midsummer day.

     Then Stukley and Benstead were straightening up and brushing straw and manure from their clothing. Perers looked where they looked. Sir Walter atte Lee strode from the abbot’s parlor, and from the way his stubby little legs were pumping and the set of his jaw, he was more than a little angry.

     “You!” The noble finger trembled a bit as Lee pointed to Perers. “You know this rabble.” It sounded like an accusation, but Perers held his tongue. It turned out to be a wise decision. “If I want to talk to the whole town, every mother’s child in it, where should I have them meet?”

     “Well,” Perers said, “why not Deerfold again?”

     “No.” Lee gave no explanation.

     “Barnet Wood isn’t too far from town center. It is a kind of natural gathering place. And I think the serfs tore down the gates to it on the first day of the revolt. Everyone would think—”

     “That will do, then,” Lee said. “Go to their leader—what’s his name?”

     “Grindcob, your grace.”

     “Grindcob, then—and order everyone to appear there.”

     Perers smiled in anticipation. He owed the son of a miller a few knocks. “When, your grace?”

     Lee glanced at the shadows that lay short on the ground. “We’ll need some time to gather, as will they. In three hours, when they hear the abbey bell ring for nones. When you have done, come back. I have another task for you.”

     Lee turned away to talk to his two aides. It was, Perers believed, a calculated affront, but one he could afford to ignore in his pleasure at confronting Grindcob again. He strode across the turf, once green but now crushed into a muddy mess from the feet of all the men and horses quartered at the monastery. The stink of horse rode over every other sense—horse sweat, horse manure, horse piss. Perers loved every noseful.

     Finding Cob was easy enough. The son of a miller held a kind of court at the town’s Moot Hall, delivering himself of decisions as a sow delivers piglets. Peasants from all the surrounding villages surrounded him. They listened in rapt attention while he explained how things would work on the farms in the absence of the lords of the manors and all the people through whom the lord’s authority descended to the farmer in the field.

     Lee slipped in and waited at the back of the crowd while Cob talked. It was a way of gathering evidence against the upstart to be used later.

     But it didn’t work. Too many had been witness to his humiliation at the hand of Cob and his slut Joan. People descried him, and cried him out.

     Perers had no choice but to brazen things out.

     “I come as emissary from Sir Walter atte Lee.” He shouted over the mob. “He would meet with you.”

     Cob looked down the length of the hall at him. Overhead, timbers arched in imitation of the vaulting of the great monastery church. This place was, to Perers’ mind, a weak and pale imitation of the glory of the abbey. The great church embodied power and might, glory and honor. This Moot Hall was only a place for discussion, for argument, for the petty cares of those who had to argue things out because they could not command, a home for the weak. The weak had rebelled, and they were, for the nonce, in command, but it could not last.

     Down the length of the hall, a link of anger forged itself between the two men. The crowd parted, like the Red Sea in the priests’ tales, leaving the two men face to face, though a score of yards apart. Cob stood by a table on which were spread the plans and papers of rebellion. Perers held close to the door, surrounded by empty space; none of the peasants wished to be close to him, for which grace he was thankful. “What would Master Lee have of us?” Cob asked.

     “Your surrender, Master Miller,” Perers said, and it earned a small, nervous bit of laughter from the crowd. “But failing that, he would speak again to all the people of Saint Alban’s at the tolling of the abbey bell for the afternoon service, at the gate to Barnet Wood.”

     Perers left no room for denial. Following the delivery of his message, he strode out through the front door and into Saint Peter’s Street. More people had gathered; they chattered and lazed the day away. No one was about the proper work of the peasants. Those outside saw him and tried to surround him, bind him with questions.

     “What—have you come to accept terms, Master Perers?”

     “No,” another cried, “he wants his sword back. He lost it to a woman and comes to beg its return.”

     Perers quelled a flush of fury and pushed his way through the rabble. He took note—some would rue their jibes. Finally, he reached his mount. Atop the gray charger, he could finally escape from the crowd’s contempt. He was weaponless—it was foolish to carry steel where he was so outnumbered—but his steed had flanks and hooves to shove the unruly from his path, and Perers used them. It was something of a relief to hurt someone. Each cry of pain gave him strength.

    

*

    

     Cob stood atop the stairs to the Moot Hall. Perers shoved his mount through the crowd, careful to cause the most trouble he could. The cries of pain made Cob only the more certain that there could be no accommodation with Lee and his forces. Lee must leave, in disgrace, else men like Richard Perers would reassume the places they owned by right of birth. Everything would be lost.

     Henry Frowyk of Barnet stood at his side.

     “He’s a bad one.”

     Cob looked up to the sun. It stood at zenith or a little after.

     “How many bows can you bring to Barnet Wood?”

     “Enough,” Frowyk said. “My village and Berkhamstead and perhaps several others will supply. Do you plan to pretend to normality while Lee is near?”

     Cob grinned. It felt good on his face, that split between his ears. “I’m glad you’re on our side, Henry. You see right through me.”

     Cob spent the balance of the early forenoon gathering up all the people and ranging them to appear helpless in the field before Barnet Wood. The small stand of trees, home to one of the abbey’s enclosed parks and used to entertain visiting dignitaries with hawking and hunting, lay to the north of town, beyond the point where Saint Peter’s Street split, one branch pointing toward the village of Sandridge, the other toward the town’s end and thence to Harpenden. By the ringing of the monastery bell for nones, he had them arrayed like sheep for the slaughter.

     Exactly on schedule, as if he were a merchant himself, Sir Walter atte Lee led his column of horsemen and archers into the park. The men surrounded the commons of Saint Alban’s, who stood like sheep and allowed themselves to be encircled, as if Lee’s men were collie dogs sent to quiet the flock to slaughter.

     Cob stood atop the ruined gates, a conscious decision to remind the soldiers of the commons’ purposes and powers.

     “What would you have of us, Sir Walter?” Cob shouted the challenge as soon as he saw the knight.

     “Surrender!” rang the answer. Lee rode straight up to Cob, their eyes level with each other. “Return the charters you forced from the abbot. Obey the commands of King Richard. Return to your previous ways of living. Repair the damage you have caused to the property of others.” Lee pointed to the ruined gate, on whose rubble Cob stood. “Rebuild the houses you have burned. Replace the mill stones you have stolen. Beg forgiveness of your lord, the abbot of this place.”

     “That’s quite the list,” Cob said. He swung his arm wide to take in the whole of the commons of Saint Alban’s gathered at the knight’s behest. Ranked behind him were more than twice a thousand men and women and children. “We have, at your command, all left our houses empty, our shops unwatched, and come with our women and our children to this place.”

     Those behind him could hear him well enough. He pitched his voice to carry, so that all would know what took place here. “We have trusted you, sir knight, not to harm them. What do you say to us?”

     “I say it in a word, Master Grindcob.” Lee’s horse sidestepped. He jerked the reins until it submitted to him. “Obey.”

     Cob looked into Lee’s face. In it no mercy waited the chance to find a bloodless end. It owned creases and blots, beard and dirt enough to be a human face, but nothing of the common life had penetrated the man, nothing that Cob could build a peaceful end on. He gave the signal.

     From out the woods stepped three hundred men. Each man wore the green of Robin’s hood. Each man held a good yew bow. Each man nocked an arrow and aimed at a particular soldier in armor. Each of Lee’s soldiers imagined the points of two arrows nicking his skin, including Lee, and they faltered.

     “I think,” Cob said, “that you are in no position to force your will on us, Sir Walter. Best, perhaps, that you return to your manor, or perhaps to the King who sent you, and tell him that his loyal followers will have none of your old ways. Tell him the bargain stands. Tell him—in the words of the prophet—’Behold, I have done a new thing.’”

A Hanging Offense by Alan David Justice is licensed under a 

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