The People's Queen Part 35

Chaucer doesn't bother going to Mile End either.

He ventures out once, at dawn, to check on St Helen's. Five minutes there, five minutes back. All quiet. All safe.

In hope, he watches the crowd stream out for their seven o'clock meeting with the King, enjoying the rhythm of those feet thudding through the gate and away. During a long and wakeful night, he's almost decided several times that he must go to Walworth and volunteer to serve with him against the rebels. But that resolution has left him too sick with fear to sleep. Only the news, at sunrise, of the royal meeting unglues his eyes and cleanses him of the scratchy foreboding that's been gripping his body. Perhaps, if that goes well, he won't need...

An hour or so later, with foreboding, he watches many of the rebels stream back.

And then the bloodletting that the King has accidentally permitted begins.

Chaucer doesn't see a lot of it, at first, because he doesn't, after all, arm himself and rush out to find Walworth. The dread comes back. He stays at home, listening. Getting the lie of the land before venturing out, he tells himself (though he knows, really, that he's just hiding from his duty).

At least, from the safety of his window, he hears everything. Everyone does. There are whispers from window to window, for hours more, explaining the latest screams and crashes, the latest plumes of smoke.

There's a mob wandering around with heads on sticks, gone Charing way, towards Westminster. They've nailed Sudbury's red mitre on to his head.

They're allowed, some people whisper. The King's agreed: Sudbury was a traitor. Hales too. No, whisper others; it's the peasants who are the traitors. No one knows who's right and wrong any more. Even the King, hiding out at the Royal Wardrobe with his mother, watching the disembodied heads bob past, and the chanting rebels, may not be sure.

Then it gets too confused. No one can understand the mobs any more. It's just wild cries, and draggings, and the crashing of gla.s.s. The windows of Aldgate Street bang shut. The talk stops.

All the same, Chaucer steels himself to go out again at midday to make sure Elizabeth is safe. And, as soon as he's out, he feels strangely calmer. Just going into the street, being active, is less terrifying than sitting inside, alone, feeling a victim, listening, watching...waiting.

Yet his heart is still beating many times faster and louder than usual. The atmosphere of threat is palpable. First it's too quiet, just him walking over broken gla.s.s, in sinister sunlight, through the no man's land of a city without law. And suddenly, without warning, it's too noisy: screams, a torrent of arms and shouts and blows. These aren't even the big fights; these are private questions: a hasty settling of scores, feuds, and business problems, while no one's paying attention. A smash and grab, netting a silver candlestick or cup. Moments to be forgotten with all speed, afterwards.

Within minutes of venturing out, for instance, Chaucer comes across a band of burly Kentishmen obeying the orders of Sir Robert Allen, the fishmonger: evicting another younger fishmonger. 'My house,' Allen's yelling as the man's dragged kicking out of the door, with pots and pans hurtling after him and a wife still screaming fit to bust somewhere inside. There's a torn-up lease at Allen's feet. 'Not yours. Don't forget it. And don't come back.'

Human nature at its worst, Chaucer thinks wryly. But he's almost cheered by the familiar, petty sight confronting him. This is just everyday spite and opportunism, not the terrifying work of the Devil that the incomers seem to be bent on. Still, he makes himself very small. He knows Allen won't want anyone to have seen him do this.

On Bishopsgate, once he's checked that the gates of St Helen's are still stoutly barred and the walls unattacked, Chaucer breathes so much more easily that he decides not to go straight home.

The flicker of courage he's found burning in himself is strangely exhilarating. He doesn't want to wall himself in again just yet. He's happier out here, where there's no time or s.p.a.ce to think; where everything is action, one foot in front of the other. Perhaps he will, after all, try and find Walworth; it's easier to be brave out here than cowering at home. But where? Walworth will be with the King. And, though nothing is certain any more, the last Chaucer heard, from his window, was that the King was at the Royal Wardrobe, right across the City. As he thinks, he's already sneaking off west down Catte Street, across Broad Street and Coleman Street and Chepe Wards, towards Cheapside, the market zone, the centre of everything, flattening himself against walls and in doorways, just in case, whenever he hears the sound of running, or the smash of wood and gla.s.s that signals looters.

It's only after he's branched off Catte Street down past the mercers' mansions of Milk Street, thinking that if all goes on being relatively quiet he might brave the conduit on Cheapside and drink some water - he's as dry as a desert - that he sees the real violence consuming the City today.

There are excited screams up ahead, where Milk Street meets Cheapside, and the great rumble of a crowd.

It's almost welcome, the sound of people, after all his tiptoeing around. And Chaucer's confident enough by now of his ability to melt back into the brickwork to keep moving forward.

He's safe enough, he realises, as he inches up. They're all too busy shouting to take any notice of him. It's deafening, on Cheapside.

It takes him a minute to see what's going on through the shifting of shoulders. The men are dragging victims up from Bread Street, in grand Vintry Ward, on the south of Cheapside. The cobbles and slabs of Cheapside are dark and glistening. There's a pile of bodies, lying still, nearby.

They have no heads, he realises with a sudden rush of nausea. The bodies end in brown and red at the neck. Separately, there are heads staring out, dead-eyed, wild-haired, from underfoot, between people's legs, where they've rolled.

They're executing them, here. Chaucer hears the thwack of metal through flesh...a groan...though it might be just his imagination. He doesn't really know, any more, what he's hearing, and what he's just making up.

'Who,' he whispers, or maybe shouts, at the white-faced woman peeping out from a half-shuttered window upstairs. She's got the view.

'Flemings,' she mouths back.

He knows. He breathes out. Then it's just another bit of private score-settling, he thinks; violence against Flemings always is, in London. The Flemish merchant families are too well-off, and too favoured by the Crown, to be safe in the City. No wonder the London mob's gone hunting them down in Vintry Ward. They set fire to Walworth's brothel in Southwark this morning, too; he's heard that. They chased the Flemish tarts into the fishponds.

It's horrible, this; nauseating. Just the smell of the blood is turning his stomach. He'll go home in a minute. He's had enough. But at least, he rea.s.sures himself, it's the same stuff: just Londoners released from the rule of law into b.l.o.o.d.y Carnival, giving free rein to their most savage instincts.

'Thirty-five of them, hiding,' the woman shouts, and suddenly, because the noise is shifting, he can hear the roughness of her voice. 'In St Martin in the Vintry, rich b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.'

She doesn't say more. She's seen something Chaucer can't, from up there. She turns, as if her head's been pulled by an invisible string. At the same time, a murmur goes up across the b.l.o.o.d.y junction, which swells to a roar.

Chaucer's eyes swivel towards the sound too.

The crowd's yelling, 'Wat! Wat! Wat!' and for a moment, as it shifts and sways, a stringy bareheaded man with his hair all over the place and wild eyes comes into view, muscling a prisoner twice his size forward towards the block, pulling him by his beard. The victim's face is blackened and swollen over what were once fine merchant clothes: a long gown with some sort of damask figuring. He's hopping on one leg, dragging the other painfully behind him.

Then the crowd tightens again, and the vision is lost.

Chaucer looks up. So that's Wat Tyler, and some of this crowd must be Ess.e.x men. But seeing the rebel leader he's heard so much about with his own eyes isn't the reason the knot in his stomach is tightening. Something's bubbling up inside - some combination of names and memories. He can't quite grasp it, yet. But it's already making him feel so sick with dread that he thinks he might vomit.

'Lyons,' the woman mouths down at him, jerking her head towards the centre of the crowd.

'What, Richard Lyons?' Chaucer mimes back. That wreck, that condemned man, the magnificent merchant prince he knows? Alice's old ally, back then...before?

'Fleming,' she confirms soundlessly. 'Richest b.a.s.t.a.r.d of all.' She runs a finger across her throat.

Chaucer closes his eyes as the darkness comes down. He gets round the corner, away from the cheering and screaming, before he's violently sick.

If it were Londoners killing Flemings, it would make sense. But Wat Tyler's not from here. He's an Ess.e.x man, some say; or a Kentishman. An incomer. And what would an incomer care about Flemings?

Why would an incomer, and a man on a mission of his own, someone with so many other demands on his time and attention, care enough about Lyons to lead him personally to his death?

Chaucer groans out loud. He's remembering what Alice told him last time they met, when they sat up for a night and a day talking, about why she'd charged in and disrupted proceedings at the King's Bench all those years ago. That was the one ill-considered act the Parliament managed to get her for, in the end; and for years Chaucer hadn't understood why she'd been so rash. When he finally asked her, her answer was simple enough. Because Lyons asked her to, she said. It was Lyons' man, caught in some dishonesty at the ports. That was it...Lyons firing the man later; the man weeping drunkenly at the Dancing Bear; talking about Alice. Yes, it's all coming back now...Chaucer even remembers the suddenly impish grin on Alice's face, when she said, with a bit of her old defiant insouciance, 'I agree, it was madness, but I don't really care. Because what came out of it wasn't all bad. The man turned out to be someone I grew up with and hadn't seen for years. My brother from the tilery. Wat.'

Wiping his mouth, straightening up, Chaucer tries to see reason. There must be a lot of Wats and Walters out there in Ess.e.x. It's a common enough name. But - he's still feeling dizzy - Wats who are tilers? And tilers with a grudge against Richard Lyons?

If...then...could Alice herself somehow be tied up with what started, back in Ess.e.x, as an uncannily well-planned attack on state finances, but, here in London, is blossoming into a gigantic act of hatred against the Duke and his allies?

His stomach churns again. He puts hands on his knees and surrenders to nausea.

Chaucer's still emptying his guts on the stinking cobbles when he feels hands on his shoulder.

Rough hands.

They pull him upright.

They're all around him. They stink. Their laughing eyes mock his fear.

'What's this, then? Delicate stomach not enjoying our justice?' a taunting voice comes from behind the wall of muscle. And, as Chaucer's hair is pulled back to force him to stare straight ahead, he sees the stringy, red and brown-streaked Wat, grinning at him with wild eyes.

'You a Fleming?' Wat says.

Chaucer doesn't like that grin. He shakes his head, or tries to; but he's held too tight. He can only move his eyes. He mumbles, 'No.'

'Just a sympathiser, then?' Wat says, sticking his face right near Chaucer's, so Chaucer can see the bloodshot whites of his eyes, and smell the black teeth and the wine.

Wat's got a blade in his hand. Chaucer's head's so far back that he can't get it properly in his sights. It's flashing around just below where he can focus.

'No,' he says. Wat only grins wider. There are guffaws from behind.

Chaucer thinks: Is this this Alice's brother? He also thinks: Am I going to die? Alice's brother? He also thinks: Am I going to die?

The grinning stops. Chaucer didn't think it was possible for Wat to get any closer, but the face is right up in his now, eyeball to threatening eyeball.

'Your name, citizen,' Wat rasps. 'And your calling.'

They're still wondering, Chaucer sees, with the strange calm that has come over him since he felt the first hand on him, whether they haven't caught another foreigner, or at least someone in the Flemings' pay. Wat wants to kill again. But, Chaucer also sees, he's not far gone enough to do so without an excuse.

'I'm the wool comptroller at the port,' Chaucer forces out, gambling that the impeccable Englishness of this calling will work in his favour. 'Geoffrey Chaucer.'

It doesn't go down well with Tyler's men. 'Baa, baa!' one of them starts yelling, and they all burst out laughing. The others take the cry up. They start singing, 'Baa, baa, black sheep!' They're grinning at him. They're coming closer.

But Chaucer hardly hears them. He doesn't understand the look in Wat's eyes. A blink or two, as if astonished. Then the face pulls back, to maybe a foot or two away, far enough to focus, anyway, and Wat Tyler actually looks at Chaucer, seemingly searching for something. The blade goes out of sight.

'Not Alice's Chaucer?' Wat says in what sounds like a stunned, slack-jawed sort of question. 'The dad?'

The men behind and in front don't know how to respond. The jeers die away. The hands half pulling out Chaucer's hair loosen. Taking advantage of that, Chaucer shakes his head loose.

After another wondering shake of the head, Wat comes to. He waves a curt hand. The men drop Chaucer altogether.

'Go,' Wat tells him. And Chaucer walks.

It's only when Chaucer's moved his legs, one in front of the other, with excruciating care, all the way to the Catte Street turning, that he starts to shake. He leans against a wall, in blissful solitude, waiting for his jelly legs to regain their bone and muscle.

He let me go, Chaucer tells himself, over and over again. His teeth are chattering; he's cold and hot. Because I'm Alice's Chaucer. The dad.

He's too joyful at just being alive to wonder overmuch, for now. But he knows, at least, that he was right: Tyler is Alice's Wat.

She's not here, though. This can't be her doing. She's not here. Chaucer's too overwhelmed to do more than repeat that to himself for a few more moments.

But he hasn't got time to think of Alice now. He'll have to save that for later.

It's the thought of Wat pushing Lyons forward to his death - of those bulging eyes, and the darkness in them - that's propelling him. With the heat and excitement of that last encounter still on him, he sets off at a crazy pace, arms swinging, legs covering seven leagues with every stride, faster than he's ever walked before, to find Walworth; to stop the man with the murderous eyes.

The day and night that follow are the time of the Beast.

The chroniclers, locked away wherever they're hiding, will spill almost as much ink on their descriptions of the horrors that follow Corpus Christi as the rebels are now spilling blood.

Brother Thomas Walsingham, who, today, is not writing his usual spiteful chronicle in the scriptorium at St Albans, because, along with Abbot de la Mare, he's being frogmarched to London by rebels, will call the rampaging men the wh.o.r.es of the Devil, and describe the way they invade Princess Joan's bedroom in the Tower as if it were a rape. They search the most secret places there at their wicked will, he'll say; they lie on the fainting Princess's bed and demand she kiss them. They drive their swords violently into the bedclothes, over and over again.

These and other atrocities they committed, sparing none of any degree or order, whether in churches or public places, or in houses or the fields, and wherever they raised a clamour against anyone, the rest quickly gathered, knowing that he would be beheaded, without either fear of G.o.d, or reverence for Holy Church. And when they had spent the whole day in those and many other execrable deeds, at last they wearied of such work, and being flown with unaccustomed and immoderate quant.i.ties of wine, and the night approaching, they might be seen lying scattered in open places, or under walls, like so many slaughtered swine. And indeed during the night, many of them, in their drunken state, secretly slew companions against whom they had grudges, so that there was much bloodshed that night, among their own number as well as other people.

No law-abiding person goes out on the street, because there is nothing down there but the smell of blood, and the sound of burning, and the sting of smoke, and the crash of collapsing buildings, and noises round corners. Rumours pa.s.s from window to window. Tyler is going to light fires at the four corners of London and burn it down. Tyler will tie up the King to a horse and parade his prisoner around the shires. Tyler will abolish the Church and execute all lords and bishops. John Ball will be Archbishop. Tyler will be King of the Commons. Fear paralyses so many people. But does hiding from the Beast do any good?

At dawn on Sat.u.r.day, the mob bursts into England's holy of holies, Westminster Abbey, and corners the fugitive Marshal of England, Richard Imworth. They find him hiding behind the marble pillars at the tomb of King Edward the Confessor, clinging to his belief that sanctuary won't be desecrated.

An hour's forced march later, his head joins the others lolling wide-eyed at the corner of Cheapside and Milk Street.

'It's not too late,' says Walworth the merchant, with iron in his voice. 'Attack.'

Chaucer's standing quietly behind him, his sallet chafing at his neck, trying not to feel sick. Walworth has no doubts. Walworth's plan is the last chance. But can it work?

Half of the n.o.ble lords whose job is to fight, but who yesterday counselled appeas.e.m.e.nt, are dead. The rest are too frightened to speak.

The young King takes a moment to put aside the belief of his entire short lifetime that the n.o.bility is the only order of society with G.o.d's grace to defend the realm. Then, still doubtfully, he puts his faith in the merchant Mayor, and nods.

Preparations. The King at desecrated Westminster, praying with the hermit of the abbey gardens. Walworth, in London, repeating his instructions to Chaucer. Chaucer, slipping from one great house to the next, with his heart in his mouth, murmuring Walworth's instructions. Inside the courtyards, hushed clanking and whispers.

The sun hangs low and red and glowing in the sky by the time two hundred n.o.blemen, on horseback, in velvets, make their way behind the boy-King to Smithfield, where, long ago, in the gra.s.sy s.p.a.ce between the walls of St Bartholomew's Priory and Hospital and the Charterhouse and the Mortality ma.s.s graves, and the sluggish waters of f.a.ggeswell Brook and the river Holborn, Alice Perrers once reigned for the day as King Edward's Lady of the Sun.

The rebels have been called to one more meeting. This time, Tyler has come.

The King's party draws rein on the east side of the square, in front of St Bartholomew's. Walworth's in his long merchant gown behind the King. Chaucer, in another long gown, behind Walworth. All along the western side, with the rivers behind them, are the tousled, stinking others, thousands of them, roaring.

Of all the royal party, it is Walworth who's ordered to ride across the empty s.p.a.ce in the middle, and shout out for Tyler to present his demands to the King. Wat Tyler rides forward on his little hackney.

All eyes are on him.

Chaucer's whole body has become a drum beat. It's so loud and insistent that he can't think. So much could go wrong.