Within the Hollow Crown (15 page)

   For years all the best brains in the country had been concentrated on Continental wars while sores festered too long at home. Through sheer reaction Richard could see, by that gift of vision which most of his mentors had done so little to develop, that to reconcile the claims of rich and poor would be a finer job than either Crécy or Poitiers. But in the end it was irritation that drove him again to action.

   Such was his antipathy towards Arundel that he could scarcely breath in the same house with him. By every word and gesture the arrogant, tactless earl did his best to make the young king feel of no account; and, like most sensitive people, Richard was apt to become very much what his audience thought him. Yesterday he had risen above himself, cast off the fetters of tutelage, basked in the approval of all. Today Arundel and Gloucester, their nerve restored, behaved as if they had been in charge of everything and talked across him as if he were some witless page.

   "Of course, it's absurd trying to placate these canailles," snorted Arundel, who had never been called upon to come face to face with them. "You think you've made them generous concessions and they crop up somewhere else shouting for disendowment of the Church, a general holocaust of all laws and lawyers and the right to roam about our woods and kill any game they fancy."

   "But they went away reasonably enough yesterday when I talked to them and gave them my charters and banners," objected Richard, realizing as soon as he had said it how childish the words sounded.

   Arundel turned and stared down from his great height as if he had only just noticed that he was there. "What's the use of a few fancy bits of vellum and silk?" he asked rudely. "Hundreds of them 'em are still here—killing Flemings and dragging out poor devils who's taken sanctuary in the churches."

   Gloucester reached for the last spiced cake from the little tailor's depleted table. "If you ask me, most of them are staying less because they want more concessions than because they want to make sure of looting London before the scum of half a dozen other counties get in. You always get that when you think you've cleared up this sort of thing," he said, as if he had had life-long experience of dealing with insurgent mobs.

   Richard almost choked over his cup of Rhinish. "Then I sup-ppose you two think everything I did yesterday was w-wasted?" he said, stammering with rage.

   "Well, they say now that this Wat Tyler proposes to make himself King of London and split up the rest of England among his down-at-heel lieutenants!" laughed Gloucester, goading him. The man had got up in too much of a hurry to shave, and his nephew watched the masticating movements of his bristly blue jaw with loathing. "Does he?" Richard said, with dangerous quietness. "Then let's go out at once and find him."

   "If we knew where to look," shrugged Arundel indifferently, without troubling to move.

   Richard glared at him and sent a page for his horse. "Well, anyhow, I'm going down to Westminster," he said, with calculated insolence. "At least a man can sometimes hope to be alone in his own house."

   But apparently even that was to be denied him. His mother laid a restraining hand on his arm. "Wait a while, Dickon," she advised. "You remember how the governor of the Marshalsea prison escaped? Well, Brembre says the poor wretch took sanctuary in the Abbey and a pack of rebels are down there now trying to drag him out."

   "If you take my advice, madam, you won't listen to everything that pert grocer says," snapped Gloucester.

   But even to the most irreligious of them violation of sanctuary was a serious matter. It must be dealt with. For who knew when they, too, might stand in need of such protection! And having braved the mob once at Mile End they were not so much afraid, particularly as they were still wearing the same mail beneath their ordinary clothes. All except Richard, who had intended to stay in with his mother and Mundina. But only his body squire would know about that. And when Standish would have gone to get it, Richard pulled him by the elbow. "For God's sake don't make a commotion now," he muttered. "It will only upset my mother again and we shall never get out!" And a moment or two later he was hurrying out into the forecourt and leading the way down Ludgate Hill so that he wouldn't have to look at the self-righteous backs of men who thwarted him at every turn.

   As he and his followers crossed Fleet Bridge a breeze caught them from the river, ruffling the bedraggled velvet of their horses' trappings. Along the Strand the sun poured impartially on rose bushes in walled gardens and stiffening bodies half submerged in gutters that ran blood. It shone on the smouldering site of the once proud Savoy and on the fine new hall at Westminster. And as the party passed through the little riverside village of Charing it glistened unexpectedly on a golden cross borne by a long, winding procession of monks coming out to meet them. A scandalized fraternity chanting dirges over the woeful desecration of their abbey.

   The rebels had been to Westminster and gone. According to the Abbot they had dragged the unfortunate prison governor from the very shrine of the blessed St. Edward and taken him away to butcher him in Eastcheap. And God had not struck them down. There was nothing Holy Church could do about it. There was nothing stable or sacred any more.

   Shocked and sobered, the King and his followers went in and prayed. And because they knew that sometime today, sooner or later, they must come to grips with these vandals and end it all or be themselves destroyed, they made humble confession of their sins. Laying a hand on the pillar to which the wretched victim had clung for life, Richard wondered with good reason how it would feel to die; and then—more irrelevantly—what sort of things his uncle and Arundel were confessing. It seemed so unfair that the only sins he himself could think of at the moment were the very spite and anger they had provoked in him; whereas only yesterday he had made so fine an effort, created harmony and understanding and been at peace with the world.

   All thought of retiring to his rooms in the Palace to enjoy his books and his dog had been purged from his mind. There were sterner things to be done. Gathered in the chapter house, where the Commons normally sat, he and his party tasted the Abbot's famous wine and tried to draw up some plan of campaign. Because of the deserted streets scarcely anyone would know that they had left the Wardrobe. All the country westward lay open to them. The rebels were occupied with their horrid business in Eastcheap. It would be possible to reach Windsor before nightfall, disperse in various directions and raise a loyal army to march on London and encompass it. "That would be the safest thing to do," urged Gloucester.

   "Safe for us, milord—but not for London," pointed out Walworth, to whose valiant heart the city represented a sacred trust. "If someone had had the sense to do that a week ago it would have been the soundest policy, I grant you," he added pointedly. "But if we leave London now, however large an army we raise, there may not be much left that is worth fighting for when we come back."

   "Then we may as well ride back unmolested the way we came," said Thomas Holland, who had at least had the grace to return from the White Chapel and join them.

   But Richard, looking from a window at a panorama of walls and streets and spires sprawling to the feet of St. Paul's, shared the Mayor's feelings. These things had been handed down to him from his ancestors and were worth fighting for
now. "At least let's g
o back a different way and
chance
an encounter," he urged.

   Nothing loath, Standish took up his master's sword from the Abbot's long table. It was a big, bejewelled weapon which had belonged to Edward the Third and was far too heavy for Richard, who seldom carried anything more formidable than a dagger. Before handing it to Sir Robert Newton, whose privilege it was to carry it, the King's squire ran a tentative finger along the naked edge of it. "It seems shameful somehow," he observed thoughtfully, "that although these dogs have killed a mort of honest men, so far we've never so much as struck at one of them."

   Apparently there were many of the same mind.

   "Then let's make a detour…"

   "Better not go by Eastcheap—just now…"

   Richard was always impatient of argument. He drained his cup and bade the unhappy Abbot farewell. "Ludgate, Newgate, Bishopsgate, Aldgate, Aldersgate, Cripplegate, Moorgate—seven gates to London," he chanted, spinning a frivolous coin close beneath the new Lord Chancellor's aquiline nose. "With milord Mayor's permission, does it matter very much by which we enter?"

   The wine had warmed him.
He
would show this inflated blacksmith who was King of London!

It seemed fantastic to be riding in broad daylight through silent, deserted streets with danger lurking round every corner. It was very depressing when one thought of all the pleasant things one had hoped to do in London.

   It wouldn't have been so bad if Robert had stayed with him, or if Nicholas Brembre could have been diverting him with amusing gossip of all the latest disputes between the City Guilds. But Gloucester and Arundel insisted upon riding on either side, while pompous John Newton followed behind with the ceremonial sword. So absurd of them, thought Richard, to make a formal progress of it when they all knew they were going in fear of their lives!

   In order to escape the tedium of their conversation he closed his mind as much as possible to present reality. He wondered what his friends were doing—whether Robert were having similar adventures in Oxfordshire and if poor Tom were chafing with boredom at Framlingham. What a lot he would have to tell them when all this fracas was ended! Always provided, of course, that it
did
come to an end and that he himself were alive to tell about it…A sudden horror impinged upon his vivid imaginings. What if the sunshine and the wind in the trees and his friends' cheerful voices were to go on, while he was speechless clay, like Sudbury and that poor devil who had been dragged from the Confessor's shrine… But that didn't bear thinking about. Not while one was young and attractive, with all life clamouring to be tasted. One must grow up and buy beautiful things, make love and marry.

   Deliberately, to still the rising panic in his mind, he turned his thoughts to the bride Sir Simon even now might be negotiating for. Who would she be? There had been talk of one or two princesses but probably it would be that Bohemian girl, Anne, whom he had heard them wishing onto him in Council because she was related to the Emperor and her Flemish ancestry would improve the wool trade. He hadn't been much interested at the time. Boylike, he had been thinking more about the breaking in of Blanchette. But now he wondered what she would be like. Would she have warm dark eyes like Lizbeth, or mousy hair and thin lips like Henry's sister Blanche? Honey-coloured hair and white skin like the girl in the forge, or red-gold loveliness like his mother's? On the whole he hoped she would be a blonde. He rather wished he had been more explicit with Sir Simon. But Burley was a man of taste. He wouldn't bring him a perfect fright of a woman for all the wool in Christendom. And it wouldn't matter much, decided Richard in his youthful insouciance, so long as she had pleasant manners and smelled sweet.

   He was brought back to earth by a smell that was anything but sweet. He looked about him, sniffing, and became aware of the dismal lowing of penned beasts and a stench of rotting entrails. He remembered encountering it before and knew they must be nearing Smithfield.

   From a modish sleeve he drew the gay handkerchief which his uncles regarded as the last word in decadence, pressing it to offended nostrils. "I thought we passed a bill forbidding butchers to do their disgusting slaughtering so near the City walls?" he complained, turning to catch the Mayor's eye. "You should really speak to the alderman of this ward about it."

   But neither Walworth nor Brembre paid any attention. A sudden silence had fallen upon the company so that only his own petulant words and the clatter of hooves on the cobbles seemed to be audible. They all appeared to be listening to something else. Warned by the strained gravity of their faces, Richard forgot the offending stench and listened too. And presently he distinctly heard the familiar muttering of a mob.

   Coming to the end of a narrow street, and emerging from the protection of overhanging eaves into the great open space which served Londoners as meat market, lists and fair ground, they reined in involuntarily.

   Smithfield. The very place where the Mayor's tournament was to have been held. Richard saw it all. The huge arena of trodden brown grass. The mass of sturdy Norman buildings which he knew to be St. Bartholomew's Abbey. And the mob. But for them he might have been tilting in this very place. He and Robert, Henry and Tom. Pitting their promising youth, with keen rivalry and careless laughter, against half the chivalry of England, just as they had practised at Eltham. Trying to win the bets they had laid that happy summer morning when they had jeered at each other, tilting at the quintain. And a fine, cloudless day the spectators would have had for it! Only here were no multi-coloured pavilions and banners and fine ladies. No trumpeting heralds and knights in shining armour. Only a countless mass of drably dressed peasants lined up in the deep shade of the Abbey. The threatening rise and fall of their uncouth voices, and the still more ominous silence that fell upon them as they perceived the gaily dressed band of nobles. Taken equally by surprise, they stared back like defensive curs or stooped with primitive cunning to pick up stones. And riding up and down in front of them, barking out harsh orders, was a huge hirsute man on a gaunt black horse. A man Richard had last seen swinging a hammer in a humble workshop—beating ploughshares into swords—roused to murderous fury by the sight of insult to his daughter. An honest tradesman, turned brute. A desperate man, with a price on his head. The man who would make himself King of London.