Within the Hollow Crown (6 page)

   Beverly was glad to give the order and the mob seemed equally glad to see his men move on. The party had served their purpose as an illustration to the preacher's exhortation, and official interruption had been momentarily staved off. But before reaching the end of the green the horses were all in a huddle again.

   "What on earth's the matter now?" asked Richard, who could see little for the soldiers in close formation about him.

   A page hurried forward to investigate. "It's milord of Derby, sir," he reported. "His horse has cast a shoe."

   "Scarcely surprising, considering the way he was pawing up the forecourt at Eltham!" De Vere laughed, with the forced hilarity of a man released from a nerve-racking situation.

   "There's a forge over there by the church. We may as well all go and take shelter," Holland shouted, above a prolonged clap of thunder.

   Richard was nothing loath. The borrowed cloak was rough and sodden against his neck. But at the bend of the road he looked back at the rabble on the green. Some of them had pulled sacks over their heads, but they made no attempt to shelter from the downpour. Even as he looked a vicious streak of lightning played over the scythes and billhooks in their hands. Yet they stood as if drinking in words of salvation. The priest on the pillory steps was still waving his arms about and his voice carried faintly across the stagnant water of the village pond. "Let's go to the King, who is young," he was urging. "If we go together"—some of the words were caught and torn away on a gust of wind which stirred the osier beds and ruffled among paddlings of ducks—"all manner of people…will follow us to get their freedom."

   As Richard came in sight of the long, low smithy, the solid Norman tower of the church hid from view both pond and green. He lagged behind a little, head down against the storm. What had seemed a communal jest a few minutes ago was now something which concerned him poignantly. He didn't want it to. He didn't want that man's damned eyes coming between him and the colourful luxury of mimes and tournaments, his words spoiling the taste of good food. And yet something in himself—something generous and eager and untarnished—leapt up to meet the challenge.

   "Let's go to the King, who is young—" their preacher had suggested. Not to the Uncles or the Councillors, who were old and experienced. Nor yet to the Commons, who should represent them. For what, after all, was the good of going to any of them?
They
never
had done anything to help. This idea of equality wa
s a new idea—an idea for the future. And perhaps one had to be young—to have the kind of imagination which hurts—to know, as Robert could, how it must feel to see one's wife starve and be forced to spend on someone else's unsuccessful war the money that might have bought her bread. Even those very small scraps of stale bread he had seen offered like gold and frankincense to the released prisoners. Perhaps one had to be young to
care?

   Parliament had all the figures and statistics, but the people were coming to
him. For the second time that day Richard felt that ther
e might even be advantages about being young—and a king…

It was dark in the forge except for the red glow from the furnace, and the place appeared to be already full of men. The tenseness of their attitudes could be felt rather than seen, and as the royal party entered they stopped talking and drew defensively about the anvil. But even between their clustered bodies the hissing, whitehot iron threw into relief the strange-looking object upon it; and the great, leather-aproned smith paused with uplifted hammer to glower at the newcomers from beneath his bushy brows.

   "Look! He's beating a ploughshare into a thing like a sword. What's the idea?" whispered Tom Mowbray, rather overawed by an interior so reminiscent of all the macabre paintings he had seen of Hell.

   No one answered until de Vere laughed, a trifle nervously, "Let's hope
we're
not!" he said, in French.

   The blacksmith took a pair of tongs and lifted the crude weapon from his anvil. He cooled it in a vat of water and thrust it beneath a pile of sacking which might have concealed the beginnings of an armoury. But there was nothing furtive about his movements. It was rather as if he warned strangers to mind their own business.

   "A good thing
someone
in this village is working today!" remarked Thomas Holland with asperity, as Bolingbroke's limping horse was led in.

   The smith shrugged tolerantly. Whatever his personal sympathies, his was the decent independence of an essential tradesman. Ploughshares or horseshoes, his furnace must still roar.

   Richard's eyes were becoming accustomed to the gloom. He noticed that the posse of labourers were drifting away by some back entrance through the house. Thomas pushed him towards a rough bench against the smoke-grimed wall where the shadows were deepest. "Go and sit over there," he ordered, without ceremony.

   Richard was glad to discard the dripping cloak, and sat down obediently. It was the first time he had been in a public smithy and it was interesting to watch the blacksmith's assistant work the bellows that blew the dulling embers to leaping flames.

   The smith had backed the black horse into a kind of wooden frame and lifted a forehock onto his knee. He was probing for a stone. His strong, work-worn hands were amazingly gentle. Richard loved to watch an expert at work, whether he happened to be blacksmith, goldsmith, fletcher or bowman. He felt exasperated when his half-brother began fussing about wine and food, and wondered why old campaigners should consider it such a calamity to miss a meal. He saw the smith look up at Holland's peremptory demand and fancied it was not altogether the glow of the furnace which kindled such sparks in the man's fine brown eyes. "There is water in the well," he answered curtly.

   But Thomas Holland had been hardened by the necessity of victualling armies in a ravaged land. "The young squire sitting over there is not over-strong," he insisted.

   Richard could have hit him. But he had the grace to realize that probably both he and Beverly must be feeling extraordinarily worried about having brought him into such strange contacts.

   "My daughter may have some bread," admitted the smith sullenly, and sent his assistant to find out.

   The man went to a ramshackle door at the back and called "Rose!" and presently a girl appeared. A tall girl with white skin and straight, honey-coloured hair. She had brought a pitcher of water and a wooden platter with some pieces of bread. Not the dainty manchets of white bread they were all accustomed to, but hunks of dark stuff, made of rye and bran and beans such as they had seen the hungry prisoners devouring. She stood hesitating for a moment or two, embarrassed at finding herself in such well-dressed company. Then, dazzled by the outstanding elegance of de Vere, she carried the platter straight to him.

   He refused it hurriedly. "Take it to the squire over there," he told her, with an apologetic grin at Richard. But she was oddly attractive in her grave, peasant way and he could not resist teasing her, and presently some of the other young men were ogling her too. Richard couldn't hear what they were saying for the roar of the bellows, but he saw the ingenuous blushes dyeing her neck and forehead and wished they would leave her alone. The girl was too simple for their sophisticated badinage. She was obviously in an agony of shyness—village bred and timid as a doe.

   When at last she broke away and brought him the bread he spoke to her with grave courtesy to make amends. She kept her eyes cast down, and he could see her breasts were still rising and falling quickly with agitation beneath the thin blue garment she wore. But she stayed close beside him, away from the others, as if she felt safe there. He ate a piece of the sour-tasting stuff out of curiosity, and looked past her through the open doorway. The place appeared to be reasonably clean. A pot was simmering over a few sticks and the remainder of the loaf was on the table. "Do you live in there?" he asked.

   "We all do," she said.

   "All?" he questioned. It didn't look big enough to house a couple of dogs. Yet in spite of such overcrowded conditions, she smelled sweet enough.

   She overcame her shyness sufficiently to look up, quizzing him with candid grey eyes that even held a hint of mockery. "My younger brothers and sisters, of course—and my father and I," she explained. He seemed quite a nice squire—less high and mighty than some—but, living in some noble's palace or knight's manor, he was probably quite stupid about the world outside.

   Richard stood up so that he could see more of the puzzlingly bare interior. "But there's no bed," he said, looking for some sort of curtained four-poster.

   Rose gave vent to a giggle and pointed to a pile of miller's sacks folded tidily in a corner. "I shake them every morning," she volunteered, wondering why he was so curious.

   Richard coloured at his own clumsiness. Even at Eltham and Westminster some of the servants slept on the floor, he supposed. "But your mother?" he persisted, under cover of the clanging of the hammer. Surely a woman would want a bed.

   "She died," Rose told him. And because of the way her eyes suddenly suffused with tears he sensed that it must have been very recently. Instantly all that he had been taught about the danger of going into the common people's homes came back to him. Instinctively, he drew away from her.

   Living so close to the crude fears of life and death, Rose recognized them immediately. "Oh, no, not the plague!" she assured him, laying a hand on his fashionable sleeve with the same sort of mothering gesture she might have used towards one of her brothers. But the withdrawn uncertainty was still in his eyes, and she wanted to bring him back to friendliness. There had been some quality in it that she had never so much as glimpsed in village lout or patronizing gallant. And because she knew that people often lied about the plague lest their neighbours should refuse to come near or bring them food, she spoke in an urgent whisper which seemed to wrap them apart from his companions. "Truly, it wasn't, sir! It was just that she was going to have another baby—and there wasn't enough food for us all—"

   Richard put the remainder of the bread back on the platter. It was true, then, in spite of the easy assurances—some of these people
were half starved…And yet she and her father and the forg
e looked relatively prosperous. He would have liked to ask her how it came about that a blacksmith's wife should die of malnutrition, but just then there came an angry commotion outside, the shuffling approach of many ill-shod feet, catcalls and jeering. He sprang up and was conscious that all his friends did likewise. The blows on the anvil hammered no harder than their hearts. They were only a handful—the hated handful who had manors and velvets and wine—and for the first time in their lives they realized how dangerous it was to be in a social minority. The rabble they had left on the green were coming along the lane. They were making straight for the forge with the crazy Lollard egging them on and half a dozen men riding in front. Holland, de Vere, and Standish whipped out their swords and came and made a little circle of steel about Richard. Beverly rapped out an order and the men-at-arms lounging outside scrambled into their saddles. Only the blacksmith appeared to be unperturbed. "It's not your lordships they're after— it's those damned snooping tax-collectors," he told them, as well as he could with a mouth full of nails.

   It was only then that they realized that the half-dozen horsemen in front were the pursued and the target for so much ribald venom. Sheepishly they put up their swords and relaxed. And the rabble, at sight of the soldiery whom they had previously defied, slunk back a little, suspecting a trap. As yet they dared not stop the taxcollectors doing their hated work. The lean, vulpine individual in charge had Parliament at his back. With his ink horn and stilo he appeared to be some sort of lawyer's clerk. He pulled up in front of the forge and consulted his assessment roll. "John Hilliard?" he read out inquiringly.

   The smith answered civilly enough. "John Hilliard lies in the churchyard yonder, but I am his son."

   The collector rested the roll on his saddlebow to cross out the name of the deceased. "And now the forge is yours, eh? What name shall I put?" Knowing the temper of the people, he was trying to be conciliatory.

   "Walter Hilliard."

   "Married? I'll be wagered you are, a fine figure of a man like you!"

   But Walter Hilliard, bending over the black's hoof, held no truck with lawyers, facetious or otherwise. "I am a widower," he said, driving in the last nail. "And all my children are under fifteen."

   "Then I must trouble you for your shilling, Walter Hilliard. And your man there. What's his name?"

   The scraggy little assistant, who had been trying to make himself as scarce as possible, came out from behind the bellows babbling excuses. He'd been shaking of an ague ever since serving with the Prince of Wales in Spain…He hadn't his health as other men… He hadn't the money…He would pay if their Worships would give him time…But his master shoved him good-naturedly on one side. "He's served me well ever since he was disbanded, and I'll pay his shilling as well as my own. And God curse all wars!" he said. He fumbled beneath his leathern apron for the purse hanging at his belt; but his fingers were all foul from his work. He looked round for his daughter and saw her standing close to a pretty, auburnhaired gallant, whose flattery would probably do her no good. "Come here, my girl," he called, "and take two pieces o' siller out o' my wallet."

   Rose moved obediently from the shadowed obscurity by Richard's side, and he thought she looked like a sliver of silver birch bark against the massive outline of her black-browed father. "'Tis all we have," she whispered, full of domestic concern, and stood holding the coins doubtfully on her open palm. But the smith smiled down at her as if, in a world where loss and injustice turned a man sour, she were all that kept life sweet. "Go give them to the scrivening vultures and be done with it," he bade her, careful to keep his great hands from soiling her gown. "There be things more precious than siller."