The great lords and gentlemen sat round the table in the Council Chamber in the White Tower, and out of the summer night came the shouts of the peasants. They had lit bonfires in the square of St. Catharine’s and were making merry, there being no lack of meat and drink, for they had taken whatever they desired to lay their hands upon. Hundreds of them were drunk before sunset, and the multitude kept up a fuddled uproar, marching to and fro under the walls, hammering on pots and pans, and making every sort of noise that it was possible for tipsy fools to make.
The King was not at the council board. He had gone to his chamber soon after sunset, and ordered all the windows to be closed, for the wild shouts of the mob had terrified him, even as a child is terrified by the howling of wolves on a winter night. Salisbury, Simon of Sudbury, and Walworth the Mayor had gone to his chamber, to find it lit by a blaze of candles, and the King abed with a great purple quilt, embroidered with golden suns, pulled up over his head. He had turned his face away and refused to speak with them, muttering that one of his uncles had conspired to raise the rage of the people against him.
These three councillors had looked at the room with its tapestries of green and red, its eastern carpet, its mirrors, its hutches packed full of jewels and clothes. It was more the room of a woman, soft, sensuous, with bunches of flowers in bowls, and a lute inlaid with mother-of-pearl lying on a scarlet cushion. The smell of it was like the smell of some rich courtesan’s chamber.
This lad in the bed was not to be counted on. Salisbury and his companions stood by the door, whispering.
“He is best left where he is.”
“Better still in his mother’s bed. He is the greatest peril we have to fear.”
“If these rebels can but get him into their hands they will make him hop as they please.”
“It would be giving them our heads. Now—this bastard!”
They returned to the Council Chamber, where some of the younger men were standing at the windows looking down at the bonfires and listening to the shouts of the crowd. Salisbury drew Knollys aside before the Council gathered about the board.
“Your fellow must serve. They shall change caps to-night. I have planned what to say to these gentlemen.”
They came together round the great table, and the King’s half-brothers and some of the hot-heads were for a night attack. They talked of arming every man they could muster, opening the gates, and sallying out to attack the mob. The peasants were drunk and fuddled, and could be slaughtered like sheep in the shambles.
Salisbury put their desperate measures aside with the wise air of a sage captain.
“Sirs, we have spoken with the King. He has taken heart of grace, and swears that to-morrow he will speak to these people as their King. Brave words will win more from them than blows.”
They were for arguing the point.
“What, treat with these clowns?”
“Let the King go into the midst of them!”
“They’ll not stand against gentlemen and men of metal. The whole pack is drunk.”
It was Walworth who smothered their adventurous truculence. He had his spies in the crowd. Two of them had been let in at the water-gate, and he had spoken with them after leaving the King’s chamber.
“Sir, a few thousand tipplers do not make up the whole mob. Do you think that the men who have raised this storm against us are mere sots and fools? I tell you I know the truth, and how matters lie out yonder. The Tiler and his comrades have thousands of fellows ready in the streets, men who are too savage against us to throw away their chances for a pot of ale. All the pother down yonder is so much froth. Those who are sober are on the watch, and would thank us were we to open the gates and fight with them, one man against ten, and in the dark. I tell you they would ask for no easier way of putting your heads upon their pikes.”
The hot-heads were less ready to put on their harness when they had heard what Walworth had to promise them.
The Council broke up, and the two earls, the archbishop, and the Lord Mayor passed straight to the chamber of the Princess, the King’s mother. Though it was past midnight they found her up and dressed, and walking restlessly to and fro between her state bed and the window. She was alone, having just returned from the King’s chamber, and her face looked white and hard.
She turned on them sharply, and spoke as though she were in a fierce haste to have some shameful truth confessed.
“Gentlemen, since our case is so desperate, it must be as you please. I have spoken with the King.”
They saw her wince and stiffen her neck and body.
“I have spoken with the King. I had thought that I should strike a new courage into him, that he would be shamed, stung to the quick. Well, it is not so. Do what your wisdom desires. I have no more to say.”
Salisbury stood forward and bowed his head before her.
“Madame, trust us. The case must be desperate when we use so desperate a disguise. You yourself have suffered at the hands of these common men, and they have grown more savage since they have grown in strength. Let us remember that the King is but a lad.”
She turned away from him and went and stood by the window, her eyes hot with tears.
“Do not seek to soften it. What must be must be, and yet was ever a woman’s pride so humbled!”
She grew inarticulate, stood awhile with one hand at her throat, and then swung round and faced them.
“Gentlemen, to save a son and a kingdom I pluck my child out of the throne, and like a hen I hide him under my feathers. The secret must be kept, well kept.”
They answered her together:
“Madame, it shall be. All our lives depend on it.”
“Then let it be done quickly. I have spoken with the two women I have chosen; they are in my closet and can be trusted to the death.”
Salisbury looked at her questioningly.
“Would it please you to see this young man—to assure yourself?”
Her face flushed.
“See him—this—this——! Sir, are you blind to what my pride bears in suffering? Let me never set eyes on the young man.”
Her voice choked in her throat, and feeling like men convicted of some great meanness, they passed out and left her.
A squire was on guard outside the King’s door—a grizzled man, lame of one leg from a wound in the French wars, taciturn, with a mouth that shut like a trap.
Salisbury spoke to him, with a hand gripping his arm below the shoulder.
“There is great trust placed in you, Cavendish. Has Sir Robert Knollys made it plain?”
The squire nodded.
“I would have listened to no other man.”
“Thunder, think you we play such a game as this for the joy of it? By my soul, Cavendish, we are like to lose our King, and our heads, unless we have a King with some blood in him. You have eyes and a shrewd head, and the devil’s own courage. Play the game through. Is Sir Robert Knollys within?”
“He has been there this half-hour.”
“Open, and let us pass.”
They found Knollys standing with his back to the window, arms folded, teeth biting at his moustache, his eyes watching the King, who sat half-dressed in a gilded chair, his hair over his face, his whole body shaking. The lad might have had St. Vitus’s dance by the way he twitched and fidgeted. His eyes had a scared and empty look. There was no shadow of kingliness upon him, nothing but the terror of an animal that seeks to slink into a corner.
“Sire, will you come with us to Madame, your mother?”
He stood up, fingers twitching, staring at them stupidly.
“Put a cloak about him.”
Knollys took a red cloak from a stool, threw it over the King’s shoulders, and wrapped it round him.
“You must cover your face, Sire. Friend Walworth, will you go before us, to see the way is clear?”
The lad stood pulling his lower lip with thumb and forefinger, his eyes looking vacantly at Salisbury’s shoes. A hood was found, and put on back to front so that it served as a mask. He said nothing, but let them do with him what they pleased. Simon of Sudbury took him by the hand. Cold and moist, it clasped his with a spasmodic twitching of the fingers.
Salisbury glanced meaningly at Knollys.
“You shall see us anon, sir. Cavendish knows all that can be known.”
When the King had gone to his mother’s chamber to lie hidden in her bed, Knollys took a candle from a sconce, traversed a gallery, and made his way up a newel stair. The door at the top was barred on the inside. He knocked thrice, and the door was opened.
Knollys wasted no words.
“Come.”
Fulk followed him, and they passed down the stairway and back to the King’s chamber. Cavendish was waiting outside the door. He stared at Fulk with the air of a watch-dog half loath to let a stranger into his master’s room. But one clear look at Fulk’s face made him stand back with a growl of astonishment.
“S’death!”
Knollys smiled grimly.
“It was what I said, Cavendish, when I first set eyes on our man. Come in with us, for you are the councillor we need. You have seen the King in the flesh, naked and dressed, day in day out.”
They went in and barred the door on the inside.
“Now for the play. Out with the clothes, Cavendish. Sit you down, Fulk Ferrers, well in the light here. Have a good look at him, Cavendish. Hum! What about a razor?”
Cavendish scanned Fulk’s face, feeling his chin, and looking him in the eyes as though challenging his courage.
“A little cropping of the hair and a scrape with a razor. Too much on the upper lip, too, for a lad of fifteen. Let’s hear your voice, brother.”
Fulk smiled at him.
“Like you, sir, I serve the King.”
“Too much trumpet in it! Softly, more softly, and it will do.”
“Good Cavendish, to-morrow he has to play the hero, and heroes speak like clarions! We shall put it about the King has dreamed a most marvellous dream and come to his kingliness thereby. Now for the toilet.”
Cavendish turned to and served as barber, robeman, and player. He knew all the tricks of the King’s person, how he looked, spoke, wore his clothes, carried his head, and sat in a chair. He prompted Fulk all the time he was busy with him, acting the tricks and mannerisms himself, and making Fulk act them after him.
The result delighted Knollys.
“Thunder! you have quick wits and a sharp eye. The King’s rings—you must wear the rings.”
The business was nearly ended when they heard footsteps without and the sound of voices. Someone knocked, and Knollys went to the door.
“Who’s there?”
“All’s well, Knollys.”
“Tarry one moment.”
He let Cavendish finish with Fulk before he opened the door and suffered the two earls, Walworth, and the archbishop to enter. They paused on the threshold, and stood looking at a young man seated in the King’s chair, wearing the King’s clothes with an air of fine serenity.
They were astonished, and, drawing near, stood about Fulk, staring at him.
Cavendish gave a short laugh.
“Sire, here are your good councillors.”
“Gentlemen, you are very welcome. What commands shall I lay upon you?”
Salisbury’s eyes flashed under a frowning forehead.
“Young man, know you what you carry on your shoulders?”
“Your heads, sir—and my own.”
“Aye—and more than that. Here’s my sword. Swear on the cross thereof that you will keep troth with us.”
Fulk swore, looking straight in Salisbury’s eyes.
“Good, you are in our hands, and we in yours. Now, let us get ready for to-morrow’s hazard. None of us will get much sleep to-night.”
Cavendish went to stand on guard outside the door, while Fulk sat in the King’s chair with five pedagogues to put him through his part. It was a long lesson that they gave him, and a merciless catechising followed the lesson, lest some small thing might betray them.
Salisbury spoke last.
“Hold aloof, proudly. We will stand about you, and keep meddlers at a distance. Remember, a King may please himself, but when you meet with these peasants, ride high in the saddle, and yet with a kind of valiant frankness. A mob should be treated as you would treat a strange dog. Never flinch, and yet be not too familiar.”
They watched Fulk’s face as though trying to forecast the issue of the morrow. He sat erect in the chair, mouth firm, eyes steady.
“Sirs,” he said very quietly; “if I am my father’s son I have the blood of mastery in me. It will be served.”
Friday’s dawn came in stealthily, with a mist that foretold heat, masking the windings of the river. The King’s standard on the White Tower hung in folds against the pole, and haze covered the city, a silver fog through which the towers and steeples struck, sending their wind vanes and fleches to glitter in the sunlight.
Knollys and Walworth the Mayor were on the platform of the White Tower soon after dawn, peering down like hawks into the dark spaces outside the walls. What would the mob’s temper be? What manner of sunset would follow this stealthy dawn? There was much movement down yonder. All through the night a restless murmur had risen from the streets and alleys. Seen through the haze, the square of St. Catharine looked like a stagnant pool swarming with tadpoles.
Soon after dawn hundreds of peasants came crowding to the gates and walls. They crowed like cocks, and the conceit seemed to please them.
“Cock-a-doodle-do!”
“Up, all slug-a-beds! St. George and the King!”
They took up the cry.
“Ha, for King Richard and the Commons! Send us out our King.”
Other great lords joined Knollys and Walworth on the platform of the White Tower. They stood in a group, close to the drooping standard, listening to the cries of the mob. Their faces were very grave and grim.
“To-day’s game is a game of chess, sirs, and it is the King’s move. Knights, castles, and bishops are of no account.”
“All hangs on the courage of a bastard!”
“A good hawk or I’m no judge. Let’s fly him.”
Salisbury struck the standard pole with his fist.
“St. George and King Richard for Merrie England! That is our cry. The lad shall serve. Let these hinds march to Mile End, and meet the King face to face. We will send our trumpeters to the outer gate. Now God in heaven alone knows what this day will bring.”
It was six o’clock when trumpets sounded from the outer gate and a herald wearing the King’s coat stood out against the sky line. Thousands of heads came crowding forward. The herald held up his hand for silence, and his big voice carried.
“Give heed, give heed!”
Someone bawled, “Crow, good cock!”
“St. George and King Richard for England! Ye Commons and good men all, take heed, and hear the words of the King. ‘I will come forth and speak with my people, and meet them face to face. None shall stand between us. I, Richard the King, am King!’ Therefore, sirs, march you to Mile End peaceably, in good order, like honest fellows. The King will ride out and bring you banners. Shout for St. George and King Richard!”
And shout they did, like madmen.
The King’s company gathered in the great court, while the King heard Mass in the chapel, Simon of Sudbury serving at the altar, little thinking that it was to be his last Mass. Salisbury, Warwick, Knollys, Walworth, and Cavendish were with the bastard King. He walked in their midst down the stairway, and they held close to him when he came out from the gloom of the entry into the full June sunlight.
His banners were gathered below. Trumpets blew; the men of the guard tossed their pikes. All eyes sought the King. He was in red and white, a light gold crown set upon his velvet cap, his sword at his side, a rich collar of gold about his throat, his gloves studded with jewels. He stood there for a moment at the head of the stairway in the midst of the great lords, his face white in the sunlight, the proud face of a King.
A great silence held. Those who gazed upon him wondered. It was a King who had come out to them—not a cringing, frightened boy. The weak figure had stiffened; the eyes were furtive no longer; the mouth was straight and purposeful.
But no idle gazing was to be suffered. The great lords kept close about their King, and stood round him while he mounted his white horse. He looked at no one, spoke to none, but kept his soul for the great adventure. The trumpets blew, the banners swayed; King Richard, at the head of his lords and gentlemen, rode forward to meet the Commons.
Cavendish rode a little behind the King and on his left, a grim man with watchful eyes. Salisbury and Warwick were close at his heels. Knollys and Walworth rode with the main company, shadowing the King’s half-brothers, Sir John Holland and the Earl of Kent.
There was a moment’s halt under the arch of the outer gate, for one of the bars had jammed in its socket; and while the porters were tugging at it Knollys came pushing forward till his horse was close to the King’s.
“Sir, a word in your ear.”
He leant over.
“Sir, you have two half-brothers, you remember, apt to be hot-headed fools. I have caught them giving each other strange looks. The mob does not love them.”
“Let them bide in the Tower.”
“Sir, it would be better to rid ourselves of them. Take your chance, or shall I bid them save their skins?”
He beckoned to Salisbury, who edged his horse up. Knollys spoke in a whisper.
“The Hollands have scented a fox.”
“Send the young hounds hunting it! The two young meddlers!”
Knollys bit his moustache.
“I carry the King’s orders. A word to them—that their heads have been asked for! We will wait our chance on the way, and smuggle them into the city to hide.”
“Good, very good.”
One of the porters who had been peering through the grille came to them with a white face.
“Sirs, the crowd is great without.”
“Tsst! they have marched to Mile End.”
“Sirs, not the Kentish men.”
Fulk waved him aside.
“Well, am I afraid of my own people! Open the gates. Let the trumpets blow. Now, sirs, for St. George and Richard of England!”
The gate swung back and the young King on the white horse rode out into the sea of heads and faces. For the moment a great silence held—the silence of a mistrustful crowd whose goodwill hangs upon the flash of an eye or the set of a head; but this lad with the crown rode out proudly. His eyes were steady and fearless, and he smiled at the crowd.
“Good sirs, well met.”
His courage captured them. The cock of his head, the braced-back shoulders, the blue metal of his eyes, these things counted. These rough fellows from the fields shouted tumultuously and crowded about him.
“King Richard for Merrie England!”
Fulk stood in his stirrups.
“Sirs, I am Richard your King. To Mile End! Follow my banners.”
The crowd made way for him, and he passed with his company of lords and gentlemen, who rode close together and scarcely looked at the crowd. The banners swept under the arch of the gate, and the men of Kent were on the move—all save a few who seemed to stare and loiter as though a King and such a company were not to be seen more than once in a lifetime. The porters were closing the gate when these loiterers gathered suddenly, rushed in a body through the barriers, hurled back the half-closed gate, and struck down the guards and porters. They stood there shouting and tossing their weapons.
The tail of the King’s company was not fifty paces away, and some of the riders faltered; white faces looked back over half-turned shoulders.
“S’death—they have taken the gate behind us!”
Salisbury spoke through clenched teeth.
“Ride on, ride on, sir. Look not back.”
Fulk had not faltered. He looked at the Kentish men who crowded round him, and smiled.
“Shout for King Richard, sirs.”
And they cheered him gallantly.
Fulk rode on, to behold a marvel—a marvel that wiped the crowd of faces away from before his eyes. Halfway across St. Catharine’s Square a wagon was standing in the thick of the press, with a swarm of brown figures clinging to it to get a view, and in the front of the wagon, like a red torch burning amid brushwood, stood Isoult of the Rose.
They looked at each other, these two—Fulk, like a man who stares into the heart of a fire; Isoult, with eyes that showed at first no more than a tired wonder. She saw the red bridle tighten, the white horse draw in. Then the truth leapt at her out of the eyes that had flashed with a startled swiftness to hers.
Then she saw the red bridle jerked and Fulk’s profile, stark and clear, as he pressed his heels into the white horse’s flanks. God, how nearly he had betrayed himself when his heart had leapt in him with a cry of “Isoult, Isoult!”
All the blood in his body seemed thundering into his brain. He had to steady himself, clench his teeth, fix his eyes on the tops of the houses, ride on without so much as another side glance.
She was not dead then, but living, with red lips and raven hair. How had it happened? Was she a traitress after all, and had she but tricked Merlin to save him out of pity? Pity! He looked as though he had been struck with a whip, his face white as a frost, with tense lips and quivering nostrils. Pity!
Wrath blew through him like a winter wind. She might betray him—he who was playing the King—if he had betrayed himself to her in that one flash of the eyes! He set his teeth. And then from some more passionate memory a braver faith leapt to the challenge. What ignoble thoughts were these! She was alive, but what might life have meant to her, to a falcon with a broken wing? He seemed to see Merlin grinning at him from under his cowl—Merlin with the lean and hungry mouth and the big teeth that glistened.
His heart cried out with new passion, “Isoult, Isoult!”
He found Salisbury riding at his side and staring at him with curious eyes.
“Sir, you look grim.”
Fulk twisted out a smile.
“Good sir, that may be true. I would ask for nothing better than to trample on these gentry as one tramples on corn.”
“S’death, go gently. Speak them fair. Make promises. We must humour the beast till we have the twitch on his nose.”
“The King makes for the King to break. My lord, I take you.”
So “The King behind the King” rode on.
Isoult was still standing in the wagon, staring like a blind woman at the White Tower. The brown figures beside her had swarmed down to follow the King’s banners, and the crowd had melted like mist, some hundreds of the rougher sort charging down to the gate that had been seized by Wat the Tiler and Jack Straw.
A man climbed into the wagon and touched her shoulder, and, turning sharply, she looked into the eyes of Guy the Stallion.
“Come, girl, all the fun of the fair! Am I to miss it because I am your gallant?”
She let him draw her to the tail end of the wagon, but when he sprang down and would have put his arms about her to lift her to the ground she repulsed him fiercely.
“Off, fool!”
He snarled, and showed his teeth.
“I hold the end of the leash, my falcon, and, by cock, you are too fine a bird to be lost.”
She went with him, mute with scorn, yet conscious of her own helplessness and that she was at the mercy of such men as these. Moreover, she was still blinded to all other things but that vision of Fulk Ferrers, turned King, and riding a great white horse. She might have let him go by with nothing more than astonishment that two mortal creatures should be so alike, but for the way his eyes had fallen on her.
As they passed through the gate she glanced at Guy, who carried his naked sword over his shoulder, and her heart leapt in her at the thought of the bold game Fulk was playing. How had it come about? Where was the real King? Why had the great lords ventured on such a hazard? Had they set him up with his hawk’s eyes and the proud throw back of his head to play a part that was beyond the courage of the stripling Richard? Would he carry it through, tame this herd of wild beasts, and turn them again into quiet oxen? And what if the trick were discovered? What of Merlin, the Grey Friar?
She heard Guy rap out an oath.
“Bones of the saints, here’s blood!”
A shouting mob came pouring through one of the inner gateways. Carried in the midst, like a man in a mill-race, was Simon of Sudbury, the Archbishop, and Chancellor. His vestments had been half torn from him. His white face was splashed with blood, the mouth awry, the eyes staring.
Guy pressed Isoult back against a wall.
“S’death, they have caught Master Simon! I know that fat face of his.”
Wat the Tiler broke away from the crowd, and his beard was all froth and spittle from shouting.
“Friend Guy, there are swine to be stuck in yonder. Rout them out—the Prior of St. John, and some of Lancaster’s rats.”
He stared hard into Isoult’s eyes.
“Go and show the Red Queen a fine colour. Simon of Sudbury’s head is going to dance on a pike.”
When the mob had passed Guy seized her wrist and drew her on, and she went with him, mutely, as though the old Isoult were dead in her, the Isoult who could rule men with a flash of the eyes. She thought of Fulk on his white horse riding out proudly to face these boors, and she prayed fiercely that he might fool them. She was weary of this mob adventure; and, loathing these hinds with a great loathing, she believed once more in the pride of the sword, scorning the baser clay that stank of the potter’s hands.
They reached the great court about the White Tower, and here Bedlam—a bloody Bedlam—had been let loose. The mob swarmed everywhere. They had driven a dozen of the King’s knights into a corner and were pulling their beards and spitting in their faces. Two hacked bodies lay close to the chapel entry, the bodies of two of John of Gaunt’s men who had been caught in his hated colours. From the windows of the White Tower came yells and curses. A man leant out, waving a red hand.
“Taken—taken—bully Robert Hales!”
The mob roared.
“Bring him out! Throw him down!”
A whirl of figures came down the outer steps with an old man in their midst. His fierce white beard stuck out under a grim mouth; the swineherds and scullions had not cowed him.
They dragged him this way and that, like hounds pulling at a fox.
“A horse-block! A horse-block!”
One was found and rolled forward, and Sir Robert Hales thrown across it, face upwards, his hands clutching the air.
Guy rushed forward, and jostled through.
“My stroke, sirs. Room, room! I’ll do’t at one swash!”
Isoult quailed, and turned away.
The door of the White Tower stood open at the head of the steps down which the men of Kent had dragged Sir Robert Hales. The steps themselves were deserted for the moment, and Isoult climbed them and fled into the cool gloom of the great tower, trying to forget the sight of the old man flung face upwards across the horse-block. A desire to escape from these wretches seized her, and she fled along passages and up stairways, knowing not where she went, but seeking for some place where she might hide.
Loud laughter and a pother of rough voices broke suddenly from a room at the top of a short flight of broad steps. Isoult heard the proud, but appealing voice of a woman and the laughter seemed to falter and die down.
The door was half open, and Isoult, gliding along the wall, climbed the steps and peered through the gap at the hinges.
It was a noble room hung with sky-blue arras dusted with silver stars, and over by the window stood a great bed covered with a canopy of purple cloth. Hutches and chests had been broken open, and rich clothes and stuffs of cloth of silver and gold had been scattered about the floor. In the bed sat the Princess, the King’s mother, white as her own night gear. Three women cowered in a corner. A dozen or more peasants were crowded round, snapping their fingers in the Princess’s face, jeering, and threatening to pull the clothes from her, and thrusting the points of their pikes into the bed.
“Men of Kent, have you forgotten Edward the Black Prince?”
She faced them fearlessly, in spite of deathly fear, and the white pride of her face was like a white flame, keeping the men back. They were awed and, a little ashamed, faltered, grinned at each other, and then slunk back towards the door.
Isoult hid herself in a dark recess in the thickness of the wall, and they went crowding down the stairs past her.
“I’ve seen the King’s mother a’bed, Jock!”
“That be some’at to remember!”
Isoult was still in hiding when one of the Princess’s women came to the door and ran down the flight of steps. She looked this way and that like a frightened deer, and then, putting her hands to her mouth, called up the great stairway.
“Eustace! Geoffrey!”
She stood listening, her face strained and expectant. Down the stairway came two men, descending step by step, the one in front craning his head forward to see that the way was clear.
“Quick, for the love of Our Lady. The wretches have been here!”
They disappeared with the woman into the Princess’s room.
Some instinct kept Isoult hidden in the dark recess. She heard voices, eager, conspiring voices that spoke in hurrying undertones. Then, footsteps approached. The door creaked; there was the sound of heavy breathing. A woman came out and went gliding down the stairs to see that they were clear. She called back, “Come.”
Isoult saw the Princess carried out on a mattress laid upon the frame of a pallet bed. The men were at the head and foot, a woman at each side. A purple quilt covered the Princess, who lay with a veil thrown over her head.
They disappeared round a bend of the stairs, and curiosity made Isoult follow them, shadowing them round each corner and along each gallery as they went down and down into the deeps of the tower. She nearly betrayed herself at the end of a long, dim passage where a door had to be opened and the Princess’s bed forced through.
Then an oblong patch of daylight shone out abruptly. A flight of steps went up towards it, and Isoult saw the bed-bearers struggling up towards the light.
Near the top of the steps one of the men missed his footing and slipped sideways against the wall. The bed tilted. There was a cry. One of the women clutched the Princess, but Isoult saw a lad’s head and shoulders jerked out from under the quilt.
There was a moment’s agony. The bed was righted; the lad thrust back under the quilt. One of the women who had crept on ahead came back, waving them forward. The knot of figures struggled out into the daylight and disappeared from Isoult’s view.
She ran up the steps, and her eyes came level with the flagstones of a small courtyard. The men and women had carried the bed across it, and were disappearing through a doorway in the opposite wall. One of the women glanced back anxiously over her shoulder, for she could hear men coming down a long slope that led into the courtyard. She did not see Isoult.
Then they vanished through the doorway, and Isoult climbed the last steps, and running across the court, laid her cheek to the doorpost, and peered round. A sloping passage went down under a vaulted roof, and at the end of it she saw water swishing to and fro, and the legs of a man standing beside the black snout of a barge.
All of a sudden she understood. Richard the King was hidden in that bed, and they were smuggling him out of the Tower lest this bold trick should be betrayed.
She heard voices behind her, and starting back into the courtyard, found herself looking into the eyes of Guy the Stallion. He carried a bloody sword over his shoulder, and some of the lowest curs from out of the city were at his heels.
“Hullo, my wench, what tricks have you been playing?”
He caught her by the bosom, and she humoured him, knowing Fulk’s peril and her own.
“Playing at hide and seek with the Knight of the Bloody Sword, O brave Sir Guy!”
She laughed in his face.
“Come. I hear the Princess is above. I have a desire to look on a Princess.”
“By cock, you shall. We’ll show her a comelier woman than herself.”
At Mile End Fulk Ferrers sat on his white horse, a little apart from his lords and gentlemen, who held together like desperate men expecting treachery. With the rich colours of their clothes and the glint of their harness they looked like some noble pile of plunder heaped up in the midst of a ploughed field, for the brown men of the soil in their thousands closed them in on every side.
Fulk had ridden forward thirty paces ahead of his company. He sat there on his white horse, with the peasants crowding round with their solemn, hairy faces. Imperturbable, stung to a tense audacity, he looked down at them with fearless eyes; sometimes he smiled; he knew himself their King.
“Sirs, here are we together, King Richard and his Commons. Speak out. Am I afraid to listen to your desires?”
They surged round him, looking up into his face, held by his blue eyes and the mouth that did not falter. He had left over yonder the lords whom they hated, and had ridden into their midst, a King who was not afraid.
They cheered him.
“Long live King Richard.”
He held up a fist.
“Long life to myself, say I, my friends. But to your business. I am your King. I am here. I listen. Let no one come between us.”
A hundred voices shouted for all manner of changes, but since their cries smothered each other, they grew more silent, and pushed some of their leaders and spokesmen to the front. Wat the Tiler, Jack Straw, and John Ball had remained behind with those who had seized the Tower, but Merlin stood hidden in the crowd, whispering to his neighbours and prompting them in their demands.
“Sir, noble sir, land at fourpence an acre.”
“We will be serfs no longer.”
“Down with the market tolls.”
“No more grinding at the lord’s mill.”
“No heriot, and no dues, and no fleecing of a poor man when his wench marries.”
For an hour or more Fulk sat there in their midst, listening to the babel of their desires, patiently, proudly, knowing behind his pride that for the moment the kingdom was at their mercy. The great brown mob palpitated about him. He was a rock in the midst of the sea, a solitary oak on a wind-blown heath.
His hand went up for a great silence, and it came—after much wrangling and shouting.
“Sirs, it seems to me good that men should be free. I, Richard the King, grant you your desires.”
They surged round him, shouting like madmen.
“King Richard! King Richard!”
“The King’s word carries!”
“We knew we would have justice if we had the ear of the King.”
“St. George for Merrie England!”
“Yes, yes; and let the clerks put it all in writing.”
Fulk turned his horse and made a sign to Cavendish to approach.
“Let my banners advance. Room, sirs, room for my banners.”
Yet to one man in the crowd the game was going too smoothly, and that man was Father Merlin. This lad on the white horse seemed likely to carry the people away with him, and Merlin stood biting his nails and watching Fulk malevolently from under his hood. This young King on the white horse held the grey friar at a disadvantage. The one was lifted up valiantly before all men; the other lurked in the crowd, fearing to thrust to the front because of his grey frock.
“Fools, fools, to be cozened!”
A snarl of rage broke from him when the crowd honoured the King’s banners. Each county was to have its banner, and the men of each county were to march back with the King’s banner to their homes. Clerks were to be set that night to make out the charters, and two men from each county were to tarry behind their fellows to carry the charters into the countryside.
A voice trumpeted its scorn.
“Fools, you are being tricked, sent home like sheep!”
Fulk heard the cry. His face seemed to glow like white metal. He stood in his stirrups, high above the crowd.
“Who is it that challenges the word of the King? Let him stand out.”
He had the crowd with him, and angry shouts went up.
“Bring the rat out.”
“Who calls the King a liar?”
“Smite the churl on the mouth.”
Merlin pulled his cowl down, pushed through, and slunk away.
“Pax, pax,” he said; “it was not I who challenged the King.”
But his red mouth looked fierce, and his eyes formidable, under his cowl.
In another hour this great crowd had been tamed and won, the men of each county standing massed about the King’s banners. A clerk sat on an overturned tub beside Fulk’s horse, dipping his quill into the ink-horn at his girdle, making a rough draft of the King’s charter to the Commons. And the men who were to tarry behind stood and looked over the clerk’s shoulders, knowing nothing of letters, but seeing in them symbols of strange power.
Fulk sent a trumpeter to start the men upon their march. They circled round him with their banners, like a huge wheel with the figure on the white horse for the hub. The King’s lords and gentlemen thanked God and the saints for a marvel.
“To your homes, sirs.”
Fulk returned to his lords, and saw that a dusty, grey-faced man was standing beside Salisbury’s horse. Walworth and Knollys were whispering together, their heads almost touching.
“To the Tower, my lords.”
Salisbury covered his mouth with his gloved hand.
“Listen. The Tower is ours no longer.”
He pushed his horse close to Fulk’s.
“Wat and his ruffians broke in. Simon of Sudbury is dead, his head hacked off on Tower Hill. Others are dead with him. By God, we are on the edge of hell. Keep a brave face.”
Fulk’s eyes flashed.
“Have I faltered? Have I not poured out lies without flinching?”
“Sir, you have saved the kingdom. But he—the other——”
“What! have they taken him?”
“Our Lady be thanked, no. We had news. Something was carried out in the Princess’s bed, put aboard a boat, and smuggled to the Wardrobe in Carter Street.”
Fulk’s lips came together in a hard line.
“By the Cross, the ice is thin. We have got rid of these good sheep, but should we be betrayed——”
“We shall be, with Simon of Sudbury. Wat and John Ball have their thousands still—beasts who have tasted blood.”
“Then whither go we, since the Tower is ours no longer?”
“To the Wardrobe, sir, to comfort the Princess.”
The trumpets sounded, and the King’s company unwound itself into a trail of steel and colour. Fulk rode forward on his white horse, Salisbury beside him, Cavendish close on his other flank.
“King Richard! King Richard!”
Fulk’s eyes glittered. He spoke to Salisbury under his breath.
“Sir, my tongue burns in my mouth. The promises I have made these poor fools!”
“You have put the twitch on the beast’s nose. Who rules, the herd or the herdsman?”
“Give me Wat and his bloody rogues, and that grey friar—I’ll speak fire to them, and show them the sword.”
They re-entered the city, and were stared at by people whose eyes were sullen and threatening, men whose blood was ripe for violence, men who thought of the plunder and the wine and the bodies of women surrendered to their desires. Here Merlin came by his own again. The sheep were pattering back to their fields, but the wolves remained.
Fulk met the eyes of these lust-hungry men. His face grew more bleak, his eyes full of a hard, cold light.
“Sir, this pleases me better.”
“These curs that snarl?”
“By my troth, yes. Have we no swords, no good men to read these scullions a lesson?”
“Gently, by God, gently. Fifty thousand men are not to be whipped by five hundred.”
“Fifty thousand!”
“The scum of the city is with them. Who does not love plundering a rich man’s house?”
They came to the Walbrook and the bridge was narrow and the press great. Fulk had to rein in; the great company behind him swayed like a dragon with painted scales.
Fulk’s eyes fell into a sudden stare.
On the parapet of the bridge sat Isoult with Guy the Stallion standing beside her. She was so close to him that Fulk could have touched her with the point of a sword.
Their eyes met, and held. Fulk saw that she knew him, and into Isoult’s face the blood crept like fire.
She held her head high so that her throat showed.
“Long live King Richard, long live the King!”
Fulk’s eyes stared into hers, and they were the eyes of a strong man and not the eyes of a boy.
The crowd gave back, and he rode on with a voice crying within him, “Isoult—ah, Isoult!”
The woman on the parapet found a man gripping her wrist. She glanced down and met the red eyes of Guy the Stallion.
“God’s death, wench, I see light.”
She did not falter.
“And all heaven opened, Sir Guy!”
“That was no King!”
“His ghost then!”
“It is that bastard of the forest, Fulk Ferrers, and you know it.”
She laughed in his face.
“Friend Guy, you have drunk too much wine.”