The People's Queen Part 36

The rebels have been drawn outside the walls of the City. So far, so good. There are hundreds of mercenaries, armed and quietly waiting, inside those courtyards back there, ready to prevent the men's return, or come out and finish off Tyler and his men if need be. But the King doesn't want that. He wants the day to end without bloodshed. He wants to persuade these men to go home peacefully.

Everything depends on that. Because if they don't, if they won't...

The King and what's left of the n.o.bility are out here, around Chaucer, utterly exposed to the enemy...endangered...

If the men won't go, it will be up to Walworth to change the strategy and attack. But Walworth's only a merchant. Because of the King's wish that there should be no bloodshed, Walworth's refused even to wear fighting clothes. It was all Chaucer could do to persuade him to put on a discreet metal breastplate under his gown, invisible to everyone, as Chaucer himself has done.

When it comes to it, does Walworth have the killer instinct? Will he dare attack?

Chaucer tries not to let his body tremble. He clenches his hands more tightly together. Don't give way to panic, he tells himself. Don't give way.

But he's scarcely breathing as the supremely confident Wat Tyler dismounts in front of the King, holding in his hand a dagger. The rebel leader half bends his knee, then takes the King by the hand, and shakes the boy's arm forcibly and roughly, saying to him, 'Brother, be of good comfort and joyful, for you shall have, in the fortnight that is to come, praise from the Commons even more than you have yet had, and we shall be good companions.'

Chaucer quakes at the brutal good cheer in that rough voice. The man's talking like a victor already; he dared call the King, G.o.d's anointed, 'brother'. But the King, small and young though he is, does not appear intimidated. All he says is, 'Why will you not go back to your own country?'

Chaucer can hardly hear the answer for the rush of blood in his ears. The man in front of him, in the pulsing centre of Chaucer's field of vision, starts ranting threateningly and waving his arms about and talking, on and on, in that strange, grating, rustic voice, about the charter that he and his fellows want, with all their demands met, before they'll go away. Only s.n.a.t.c.hes of the wild demands come through the roar inside Chaucer's head: '...the Law of Winchester...no more lords, barring only the King...Church lands to the people...only one bishop to remain...the serfs to be freed...all men to be free and equal...'

Chaucer sucks in more air just before the last threat. 'You'll rue it bitterly if you don't settle this to our pleasure...' he hears, almost fainting with disbelief.

The menace is enough to make Chaucer splutter out that breath, near-choking on it. All around him, he's aware of the darting eyes, the panic.

Only the King remains calm. He inclines his boy head, and replies, without emotion, that Tyler can have all that he, the King, can fairly grant, saving only the regality of his crown - whatever that means. Chaucer can't imagine. Perhaps that's the point.

'So now,' the boy adds, level-voiced and majestic, 'go back to your home, without further delay.'

It seems to Chaucer that the two sides have reached stalemate.

The King has told the peasants what to do. He has no more to say.

Tyler has no more to say, either. But he won't go. He's swaying, on his feet, in front of the King, as if he doesn't understand what's been said to him.

Walworth's doing nothing.

Time is suspended.

And, far away, the thousands of men on that side of the field are waiting and watching, as intently as the two hundred men over here.

'Water,' Tyler croaks. But when it's brought by a pageboy and he's gargled it down his throat and chin and front, and spat some of it out, it still doesn't seem to have refreshed him, or resolved him to obey his King. 'Beer,' the rebel leader calls hoa.r.s.ely, and spits near the King's feet.

Then, ignoring the horrified murmurs, and the hands going to belts and blades, he gets up on his knock-kneed pony again, and looks around, seeming dazed.

It's only afterwards that Chaucer pieces together what happens now with his mind: the various rushes of movement.

First, the pageboy, retreating to beside Chaucer, whispering loudly, 'No, it's him! It really is! The Canterbury highwayman! The greatest thief in Kent!'

Second, the skirl of horse-legs and harness, as Tyler lunges forward, apparently straight towards Chaucer, with death bulging from his eyes, bawling, 'You little f.u.c.ker,' and Chaucer ducks and dives for the ground. It's only a moment later, when nothing further has happened to him, that he looks up, feeling foolish, and sees that it's the boy Tyler was after: the boy Tyler's now got by the front of his tunic. And Tyler's got his knife arm up, ready to strike.

'Stop,' says someone else. A deep voice. A tall man, in a long robe streaming down his horse's side, steps forward into Tyler's long shadow. Walworth, taking command at last. As Chaucer scrambles back to his feet, Walworth intones: 'I'm arresting you for drawing your weapon before the King's face.'

Tyler drops the boy, not out of respect for the other boy, the royal one, and not out of fear of the man, but just because he's obviously going to try to kill Walworth. He stabs at him. Hard, upwards, under the ribs. In the stomach.

The blade screeches against something hard, and sheers off. Thank G.o.d for that hidden breastplate, Chaucer thinks. He looks down at his hand in surprise. His own dagger is drawn. He's moving forward.

Walworth's cutla.s.s is out before he even feels the dagger blade slide over his body armour. He brings his weapon down on the brute sitting on his s.h.a.ggy little horse. It hits the man's shoulder. A jarring of bone. A blush of red. Tyler dropping on to the animal's neck. A groan.

Tyler isn't dead. He backs off the blade, with sick eyes. He turns his little horse. It sets off across the tussocky gra.s.s towards his kind, with the rebel slumped on top.

But then, midway, he falls. He lies flat. Walworth breathes.

But the undead rebel rises.

He gets to his hands and knees. In a voice loud enough for Walworth to hear, so maybe loud enough for the others to hear, too, he quavers, 'Treason.'

And then he collapses again.

Chaucer's blade is still out.

Chaucer is one of half a dozen men who turn to Walworth with the beginning of disbelieving euphoria in their hearts, and on their faces. They've beaten the darkness. A merchant's led them to victory. We've won, Chaucer starts to think.

But only for a moment.

Because Walworth's not looking around, offering sweet praise.

Walworth's off too, up on his horse, with no more than a curt nod to the King, with his men streaming behind him. back to the City, leaving behind a company of men who, now he's gone, don't know whether he's following some plan of his own, or has just cut and run, and are beginning to remember, with dread, the thousands of men on the other side of the field, still watching and waiting.

The rebels don't know what's happening, or what to do, any more than Wat did. They haven't been able to follow what their leader's been saying to the King's men. They're too far away.

But they can see something's wrong now. Why is he lying there, so still?

In the half-dark, they stir, with confused questions, then the beginnings of anger.

What did he mean: Treason?

If they've learned anything in these last days, it's to be brave. No one helps you unless you help yourself. You can always do a bit more. So some among them start to bend their bows and untruss their sheaves of arrows, ready to shoot into the royal party. What have they got to lose?

But then another horseman comes out of the reddish glow of the cortege at St Bartholomew's gate. A boy, in gold, with golden hair, riding at a thunderous canter, with his right hand raised. A boy followed by a smallish man in long merchant robes, who's wobbling in the saddle, holding tight to the leather with one hand, a dagger as well as reins fumbled in the other.

The men ignore the retainer. It's the King they stare at. They pause. They waver.

This is what they wanted: the reward for their courage, the reward for their journey. The King. G.o.d's anointed. He's come to them at last.

'Sirs, will you shoot your King?' the vision shouts boldly into the great s.h.a.ggy Beast-shadow of the thousands of men, and his voice is just as you'd imagine a boy-king's voice: strong, and pure, and fresh, and as English as theirs.

'I will be your chief and captain,' the boy shouts. Only a boy, but with all the presence of mind and courage of his hero father, so beloved by them all. 'You shall have from me all that you seek, only follow me out to those fields there,' he finishes, and he points, decisively, to a place beyond the smoking ruins of St John's Clerkenwell, a mile further from the City.

Then the boy who is King of England turns his horse, and sets off there himself, at a walk, as if he's never even imagined fear, or an arrow in his back. After a quick glance back at the crowd, the retainer turns his horse and goes after him. After another moment, the bewildered men start following too.

They're sheep without a shepherd. They don't have a better plan.

They'll follow their chief and captain's plan. The trudge into the dusk becomes more certain, more rhythmic. How pink and white and fresh the King's cheeks are, in the red of sunset; how bright the gold glows, the gold of G.o.d.

The rescuers find them in the trampled wheat of Clerkenwell fields half an hour later: a sea of adoring men, cl.u.s.tered around their monarch, still shouting about their rights to fish in the rivers and hunt in the forests. King Richard hasn't lost his nerve. He's still talking back. It's nearly dark.

Chaucer looks up almost disbelievingly at the measured thud of approaching hoofs. He's been standing very still beside Richard, with his dagger arm up, for so long that his weary muscles are aching - for so long that, even if they did attack, he doesn't know whether he'd still have the strength to strike back as they took him down. But there's been no need. They've ignored him all this time, King and men alike, just as they've ignored the other members of the King's party, most of whom have, gradually, and far behind Chaucer, rea.s.sembled somewhere near their master.

Through the shadows, Chaucer sees Walworth's eyes seek him out and, for a moment, rest on him with approval. He thinks he might see a flicker of surprise in that other face too, for who'd have thought that, of all the knights and lords in the royal entourage, it would be quiet little Chaucer standing guard, and with that unlikely weapon, too?

Walworth's brought forth an army: seven thousand men, riding out of Aldersgate to rescue the King. He and Brembre and Philpot are each at the head of a cavalry of property-owners, each under the banner of a different London district, and Sir Robert Knolles' one hundred mercenaries are deployed at the flanks, pushing forward as if to encircle the rebels. Walworth hasn't lost his nerve. This is the end for the rebels.

When they reach the King, a band of lances pushes through and ranges itself around him: a wall of shining points. Chaucer lets his arm drop. In the midst of this glittering battle scene, he feels strangely at peace. He's done his duty; more than. He steps back and sheathes his dagger. The boy is safe. Not that the boy seems to care. He's a lion in a child's body.

'It would be easy to kill them all,' Knolles murmurs to his monarch. There are maybe twenty thousand of them, three times his own numbers; but they're on foot, without proper weapons, and tired, and muddled...lost.

But the King calmly shakes his head. He murmurs in reply, 'No: they've spared me...and three-quarters of them were brought here by fear and threats. I won't let the innocent suffer with the guilty.'

He turns to the crowd. Ringingly, he shouts, 'I give you leave to depart!'

And, quietly, the tramp of feet starts again, as the former rebels obey their King, and turn, and head out to the fields, for Ess.e.x, for Hertfordshire, for home.

As the mult.i.tude begins to disperse, watched by a slight boy on a charger, Walworth dismounts and fumbles with his saddle-packs.

Walworth has brought something with him to Clerkenwell fields: Wat Tyler's head on a lance. He plants the lance in the ground beside the King. The head stares back: a man too brave; a man who didn't know when to stop. A man who brought forth the Beast. The crowds avert their fearful eyes.

When the fields have emptied, and the King has returned to his overwrought, overjoyed mother at the Royal Wardrobe, this head will go to London Bridge, and Archbishop Sudbury's, with its nailed-down mitre, will come down.

Before that, while they're still watching the streams of humanity drain away from the dark earth among the midges, the King will call Walworth and Brembre and Philpot to him: men of courage, despite their servile rank; men of the sword. He will knight them all.

But, even before the knightings, Chaucer has slipped back from the jostling, triumphant throng around the King, and started walking his horse slowly back towards Aldersgate and the City.

He's more tired than he's ever been. And he doesn't want to be here, or be part of this celebration. He looked into Walworth's eyes as the merchant leader drove the lance with that b.l.o.o.d.y head on it into the earth. And what he saw frightened him. He's had enough of bloodl.u.s.t.

Besides, Chaucer needs to be alone. He's got something else to think about.

In the uncertain light of dawn, the law-abiding citizens of London cautiously put their noses outside their doors, and form groups to inspect the damage all around, and stand in knots on street corners, still looking over their shoulders, muttering, comparing fearful notes, but getting braver.

St Helen's is safe, though still barred. There are two ruined houses smouldering on Aldgate Street, but no more flames. Down at the Savoy, people say, there are still men screaming in the collapsed wine cellars. Those Those men. men.

But there are no markets working. No food coming into the City.

There are men barricaded inside a house in Milk Street, still fighting.

There are bowmen still picking off victims from the Guildhall roof.

Yet Mayor Walworth's guards are already going round the wards making arrests. There'll be executions soon enough. Exemplary ones, they say. Arms and legs chopped off. Quarterings. They say he's going to let the widows of the Flemings who were murdered kill their husbands' killers with their own hands.

But you still don't want to go too far afield. Not yet.

You certainly don't want to go outside the City walls. Because even if London's almost safe again, out there, all over the east, and to the south, and up in the Midlands, and beyond, who knows? They wanted the Duke, those those men. And he's still out there, on the loose. Who's to say men. And he's still out there, on the loose. Who's to say they they won't still get him? won't still get him?

Chaucer is one of the first out into the changed City.

He's lost his fear. He's made up his mind.

Before other Londoners are up, before the dawn's even properly broken, he's already picked his way through the rubble to the Customs House, checked it's safe, picked his way through more rubble in Vintry Ward to his father's neighbour's house, banged, got a sleepy Henry Herbury up, asked the bewildered old man to stand in as his deputy at the Customs House for a few days, and got him to sign a doc.u.ment temporarily taking control of Chaucer's property (including old Chaucer's large and gracious house, currently rented out), with instructions to pa.s.s it on to Geoffrey's children in the event of his death, just in case anything goes wrong. He leaves a letter for Elizabeth. In exchange for signing over his property, Chaucer also gets Herbury to sign a letter of credit for ninety pounds. Cash money wouldn't be safe, not today. He scarcely draws breath.

'But...where are you going?' Herbury says. 'You must be careful, my boy. These are dangerous times.'

'Do what I can to make things safe,' Chaucer says tersely.

Herbury nods sagely. 'Ah, joining a guard, eh? Admirable...admirable. I've heard Walworth's calling for volunteers,' he says. 'A great day for Walworth, this. And all of us Londoners. Splendid.'

'Out of London,' Chaucer says, reaching for the paper. But Herbury's got his hand on it. Herbury wants to talk. 'They say the Earl of Kent will have the Governor of Dover to help him calm Kent...Trivet, isn't it? One of the old condottieri condottieri?' he muses, happy at the thought of order being restored. 'Suffolk's off to Suffolk with five hundred lances...'

Chaucer reaches again for the paper, and then pulls back.

'And everyone seems to be going to Ess.e.x - the King's going himself, the Earl of Buckingham's being brought back from France...I also gather there'll be an army under Thomas of Woodstock...I've heard Sir Thomas Percy. And the usual suspects, too, of course. Locals like Fitzwalter; tough old war-horses like William of Windsor. They'll give those creatures something to think about. Brutes, one and all.' He chuckles.