Katherine (61 page)

True it was that some of the rebels had gone home as they received their charters, but not nearly enough of them. Thousands still roamed the London streets looting and butchering according to their whims. And a messenger from Wat Tyler made it clear that there were still many points to be discussed, and new concessions to be granted.

On the next morning, Saturday, Richard and his party hurriedly breakfasted in the wardrobe's small congested Hall while they held yet another worried conference.

"Your Grace will have to meet these accursed ribauds again, I fear," said Lord Salisbury gravely. "We'll never rid the City of them else. We must still play for time."

The Princess Joan threw down her wine cup and set up a wail, clasping Richard feverishly to her dishevelled bosom. "I'll not let him go out to those fiends again. How dare you ask it, my lord? See how white he is and how he trembles. Jesu, would you
kill
your King?"

"Nay, Mother," said Richard wanly, struggling out from her smothering embrace. "I'm weary, of course, and sick at heart, but there's no cause to fear them. They love me," he said with a faint proud smile.

Richard gazed distastefully at his uncle, whom he loathed, and thought that if his eldest uncle, John, were here, matters might not have gone so badly for them as they had. But that it was equally fortunate that Edmund had sailed for Portugal before the uprising, for Edmund was a muddle-headed ass.

"We might risk open fight," said Sir Robert Knolles, knitting his jutting grey brows, "but 'twould be safer to put it off a day or two until we can raise more men. This has come to us so fast-" He shook his head.

"Blessed Virgin, but
how
fast!" cried the Princess, beginning to weep again. "Only two days of this terror and it seems - dear God, I can scarce remember when it started."

She wrung her hands, remembering the first moment that she had felt fear, Thursday morning, when she had looked from her turret window in the Tower and seen the Savoy on fire, and then fires everywhere - in Southwark, in Clerken-well, in Highbury.

"Ay, Your Grace," said Salisbury decisively to the King. "You must meet the rebels again, this afternoon. We'll tell them to come to Smithfield this time, 'tis nearer."

That afternoon Wat led his men towards the new rendezvous at Smithfield. He had been temperate these past days when he knew so much depended on clear thinking, but now, with complete victory all but won, he had been lustily celebrating, drinking mug after mug out of a cask of rich vernage that some of his men had taken from a Lombard's cellar.

It had been impossible to continue enforcing the prohibition against all thievery, or to keep a watchful eye on so many men. Besides, the Lombards like the Flemings didn't count. They were lucky if they kept their heads, let alone their wine.

Wat had made himself fine for this second interview with the King. He had donned a fashionable red-and-blue-striped tunic that had belonged to one of the decapitated merchants and a golden velvet cap furred with ermine, such as only lords were allowed to wear; and he carried in a jewelled sheath at his girdle a nobleman's dagger. For now that all men were to be free and equal, a tiler could dress as he pleased to do honour to his King, and his own leadership.

Wat and John Ball rode from the rebel camp at the head of their forces, but Jack Strawe lay sodden in a tavern and did not appear. Wat traversed the blood-soaked pavement of the

Chepe and turned up towards Aldersgate and Smithfield. The sun beat down hot, and his face dripped beneath the velvet cap, but the wine bubbled pleasingly in his veins and he began to sing:

The mill is now alight!
It turneth full o' might
Wi' will and wi' skill
We swinked at our mill
Till it goeth right, right, right!

"Good times be a-coming for all, m'dear," cried Wat exuberantly, turning his flushed face on John Ball, who rode silently beside him.

"Ay, as
God
hath willed it," said the priest solemnly. "Wat, ye're something drunk. Have a care now how ye handle yourself with the King."

Wat grinned. "King and me's good friends. We understand each other. Mayhap King'll dub me a lord this day. Lord Wat I'll be. Lord Walter o' Maidstone." He chuckled happily.

The priest shook his head and said nothing.

They rode on into Smithfield, where horse markets and tournaments were usually held, and the peasant forces poured in after them to line up in rows along the western side.

Cob was in the vanguard. He shinned up a little apple tree that stood on the edge of the great parade ground, for he was determined to see all that took place this time, and have a good look at the King. That would be something to tell them in the alehouse at Kettlethorpe. With luck he'd be the first one home with the glorious news. "You're free, men, all o' ye, and I saw the King twice when he said so!" To be sure, nobody from the northern counties had got any charters yet, but Cob didn't see the need of writing to confirm the King's word. He had almost started for home last night, but had waited to see the meeting today when Wat was going to get for them a lot more liberties. Game and forest laws were to be abolished, so everyone could hunt where he pleased; all outlaws were to be pardoned, and a lot more wonderful things that a man had never dared to dream of.

Richard had sixty men with him today, knights and lords in flashing armour, and as he rode to the east side of the field near St. Bartholomew's walls, his heralds' trumpets sounded with a flourish. Then the King, wasting no time, rode out to the centre of the field, accompanied by Mayor Walworth and a squire. The mayor beckoned to Wat, who trotted up blithely and, dismounting, bobbed his knee to Richard, before seizing the boy's hand in his great hairy workman's paw and shaking it vigorously.

On the edge of the field the watching lords stiffened at this effrontery, and the mayor tightened his grasp on his sharp three-edged cutlass.

"Brother," cried Wat, beaming up at the King, "be o' good cheer, lad, here's near forty thousand commons I've brought to ye, for we be staunch comrades, you and me."

Richard withdrew his pale small hand from the tiler's sweating clasp and said with childish earnestness, "Why won't you all go home to your own places?"

Wat drew back and swaggering a little said, "By God's skin and bones, how can we go home till we all get our charters? For sure ye see that, King, don't ye? And there's more grants we must have too!"

"What are they?" asked Richard quietly.

The tiler drew himself up and ticking each off on his stumpy fingers rehearsed all the demands that he and John Ball had been discussing for weeks.

When he had finished, Richard inclined his small, crowned head and said quickly. "You shall have all this. 'Tis granted."

Wat drew a great exulting breath, yet uneasiness penetrated his fuddled wits. The King's young face was unsmiling, the bright blue Plantagenet eyes were narrowed, and not as friendly as Wat had thought them.

"Now I command that you shall all go home," said Richard sternly.

"Sure, sure we will," said Wat, but he was dismayed. The comradeship, the equality had somehow disappeared, and he tried to recapture them. He mounted his horse, so that he should be on a level with the King. "Me throat's dry as a bone, King," he cried. "How about a spot o' wine, how say ye? Shall we share a drink to seal the pact?"

Over Richard's delicate face hot colour flowed. He gestured to his squire, who ran and dipped water from a well near the priory and bringing the dipperful back to Wat, held it out to him with sneering insolence.

"Water? Phaw!" cried the discomfited tiler, seeing that the King had drawn away from him. Wat glared at the squire, slobbered up a great mouthful and with a vulgar noise squirted it out again on to the dust.

"By God!" cried the young squire. "This greatest knave and robber in all Kent, look at the respect he shows the King's Grace!"

Wat started and his hand flew to his dagger. "What was that ye called me?"

"Knave and robber!" shouted the squire.

Wat pulled his dagger, and kicking his horse, charged - not at the King as it might seem - but past him towards the squire, who ran.

The mayor had been waiting for a chance. He spurred his horse, crying, "So, ribaud, you'd draw steel against your King!" and with his cutlass slashed sideways down at Wat, carving deep into his shoulder. The tiler staggered, plunging his dagger blindly at the mayor but it glanced off the coat of mail.

Richard's horse reared and snorted, and the boy pulled him in and away from Wat, who lay thrashing on the ground, while Walworth and the squire hacked at him with furious blows of sword and cutlass.

"What's happening?" cried voices from the rebel side. "Wat's down, what is't?" And someone else, seeing a sword flash, cried, "The King is knighting Wat!"

Cob from his tree saw differently. Soon they all saw - Wat's terrified horse galloped across the field dragging the tiler's dying, bleeding body by the stirrup.

"Christe, Christe!" cried John Ball in a voice of agony. "They've killed Wat!"

The rebel army stood gaping, paralysed. The lords across Smithfield drew back white-faced and murmuring. Richard sat his horse stiffly in the centre of the field. Then there was a ripple of movement down the rebel line. Here and there a bowman unslung his bow uncertainly and drew arrow from his quiver. No one else moved. They waited for some signal, but none came.

Richard looked at the bow-tips that twinkled in the sun, the arrows being slowly notched and pointing down the field at him. He flung his head back and dug the golden spurs of knighthood into his horse's flanks. He galloped straight towards the rebel lines and shouted, "So now
I
shall be your leader, as you wished me to!"

The bowstrings slackened. The rebels looked at one another, at Wat's body and up at the shining crowned youth who beckoned to them.

"Ay!" they cried. "Our little King is leader! Richard! Richard! We hold wi'
you,
Richard!"

A bondsman from Essex ran out from the crowd, cast himself to his knees and kissed Richard's foot. The King looked down at him and smiled.

The mayor had galloped up behind and pulling his horse near said in a low voice, "Lead them to Clerkenwell, Your Grace, and keep them there, I'll soon be up with reinforcements." He spurred his horse and headed into town.

"Follow me, good people!" Richard called. "Follow now your King!"

The peasant army gazed up at him with confiding trust. Had he not given them their freedom? Had he not shown himself their friend? Richard wheeled his horse and started off up along the Fleet towards the open farmlands, past the smoking ruins of the treasurer's priory that they had fired.

When Walworth and Sir Robert Knolles arrived later with troops and the hastily summoned citizenry, the mayor also bore with him Wat the tiler's head mounted on a pike. The rebels stared at Wat's head in terror and turning again to the King begged for mercy, which he sweetly granted, looking like the young St. George himself as he smiled at them all and accepted their homage.

The peasants' great revolt was ended.

They dispersed fast and were permitted to leave, most of them exceeding joyful, for they had their charters and the King's word that they were free; and when they understood that Wat had drawn a traitor's dagger against the King, they conceded that his death had been inevitable. Nor did those who lingered deem it unfitting when they looked back and saw that the King was knighting Mayor William Walworth.

Only a handful were heavy-hearted on that Saturday night and joined John Ball, who fled up towards the Midlands crying that this day's deeds were not as God had willed it, that the fellowship must go on, that its work was but half completed, crying, "Put not your trust in princes!" Few listened to him.

Cob left London too that night. He joined a company of homegoing northerners who had not yet their charters, but one of the King's men explained that there was no cause to wait, soon proclamation would be made throughout the land that serfdom was abolished.

So Cob and his companions started on the North road to Waltham, and as they marched they sang.

The fine weather broke during that night while most of the rebels were marching home, and Sunday morning in London dawned in a sticky drizzle. The loft above the fish-shop was dank and grey when Katherine opened her eyes. She lay quietly for a time on the feather bed looking up at the rafters and wondering exactly where she was, aware at first only of hunger and weakness and that there was a sore place on the back of her head. She knew that a long time had passed since she had been fully aware, though she had a confused memory of wandering through streets with Cob o' Fenton, of lying down up here and waking sometimes to drink water; but mostly she had slept. There had been a confusion of terrible dreams: sinister faces leering like gargoyles - Jack Maudelyn, his jaw jutting out one-sided in a monstrous way, a man with a red beard who, while shattering Avalon's window-panes with a pike, counted inanely, "Oon, twa, tree - -" There had been a huge glowering black-jowled man who kept saying, "Who
are
ye then?" There had been sticky pools of blood with Joli-coeur's crystal splinters glittering in them.

Katherine twisted her head from side to side to throw off the clinging haze of horror, but the dream memories persisted. Now she saw Brother William's pallid doomed face as he cried out, "God in His mercy save you, Katherine!" and heard the dull squashing thud before he fell by the fireplace. She saw Blanchette in a blood-soaked grey chamber robe, smiling a secret smile, curtsying to the man who asked, "Who are ye then?"

Katherine shuddered and sat up dizzily. Her gaze focused slowly and was caught by the little wooden Calvary that stood on a bracket above a Pessoner clothes coffer. She stared at the cross, which was the size of Brother William's crucifix and of the same dark wood, she stared until it wavered and grew, until it loomed big as a window and blotted out all light behind it.

"No," she whispered, shrinking back on to the bed, "Jesu, NO!" She pushed her hands out in front of her as though she pushed against a falling weight. Her breath came ragged and fast. After a moment she pulled herself off the bed and looked down at her green gown. It was cut short below the knees and spotted with little charred holes. This is the gown I put on Thursday morning in the garde-robe when Brother William came to warn us, to warn me and Blanchette. She lifted the skirt and looked at her shift; there were scorches on it, and red burns in the flesh of her thighs.

"God have mercy on me," said Katherine aloud, "for those were no dreams." Her nails dug deep into her sweating palms, she stumbled through the door towards the stairs.

An hour ago Master Guy had brought Dame Emma back from St. Helen's priory, the danger being over; and the good-wife was standing by the hearth directing the maids, who were setting the place to rights again.

Dame Emma started as Katherine wavered down the stairs clinging to the rail. "Sweet Mother Mary!" cried Emma running to her, "Guy said ye were asleep - dear, dear." She clicked her tongue as she saw Katherine's gown, the matted tangled hair.

"Blanchette - -" said Katherine in a faint dead voice.

"I must find Blanchette. She ran away in the Savoy - what day is it now?"

" 'Tis Sunday," said Dame Emma. "But ye can't go anywhere like that, my lady.
Sit down!"
she cried sharply as Katherine swayed. "God love us, what's happened?"

"Happened enough, in truth," said the fishmonger. Now that the revolt was over, he was expansive with relief. "Poor lass's been lying up there mizzy-headed for days."

At his wife's shocked exclamation he said defensively, "Old Elias, he looked to her, brought her water."

Dame Emma poured forth a stream of anxious inquiry, then checked it for more practical matters. She made Katherine sit on the settle and put a pillow to her head. She fed her wine sip by sip until faint colour came back to the hollow cheeks.

Katherine did all that she was told and concentrated her mind on regaining strength fast. By noon the swimming feebleness had gone, and she was ready.

"Have you a horse that I may borrow?" she said to the hovering dame. "I must find Blanchette. God help me that so much time was lost." She spoke with a steadiness that silenced the good wife's protests.

Emma docilely commandeered her husband's gelding and had a boy saddle it. She dressed Katherine in one of Hawise's old russet-coloured kittles, but nothing would persuade her to let Katherine go unaccompanied through the streets. The revolt in London had ended but there were still carousing rebels left, and punitive bands of the King's men riding about and restoring order while they searched for Jack Strawe and one or two of the other leaders who had forfeited the right of amnesty. Master Guy had gone to bed exhausted by the last days' events, but the Dame decided that she herself would go pillion behind Katherine. She was motivated not only by kindness but by a livery curiosity.

Secluded as she had been in St. Helen's during the three days of rebellion, she had heard nothing but the wildest rumours of burnings and beheadings, and she thought them much exaggerated. She sympathised with Katherine's anxiety over her child, of course, but she thought that that worry would doubtless be soon resolved. The little lass would be found hiding in some safe nook in the Savoy.

Katherine made no objection to Dame Emma's company, nor to the presence of the armed prentice that the Dame routed out from the fishhouse. She did not speak as they rode in a grey drizzle through London streets towards Ludgate, and beyond it to the Fleet.

Dame Emma's cheerful chatter was soon hushed, her fat comely face fell into dismay and finally to round-eyed horror when they skirted the ruins of the Temple. Ahead of them on the Strand, the Savoy had always loomed in a mass of crenellated walls, of gleaming white turrets and pinnacles with fluttering pennants, and the gold spire on the chapel topping all.

Now there was nothing. No shape against the empty sky - nothing but a vast expanse of rubble behind a shell of crumbling blackened walls.

Katherine dismounted, while the prentice held the horse. She began to walk towards the ruins, Dame Emma behind her. A little group of folk stood in the fields where Katherine had lain on Thursday. They were gaping at the remains of the Savoy and muttering to each other. As the women approached, a goggle-eyed man greeted them with the familiarity of shared excitement and cried, "It do be a horrid marvel, don't it? There was a score o' rebels trapped in there, they say ye could hear 'em screaming till Friday eve. Be haunted now for sure, John o' Gaunt's Savoy'll be - I'll not go down the Strand after sundown, that I won't."

Katherine walked past the group and turned through the blocks of fallen masonry that had been the gatehouse. She clambered over the still warm rubble into what had been the Outer Ward.

"Lady Katherine," panted Dame Emma, wheezing and clattering after her, "come back - there's naught to find in there ye can see, and there's danger - that bit o' wall maught fall."

Katherine stumbled on, picking her way over charred fragments of beams and blackened stones until she stood near the falcon mew, which was now a heap of wood ashes. She looked up at the roofless segment of Thames-side wall that stood silhouetted black against the horizon, its vacant window-frames showing lancet shapes of the grey sky beyond. She saw, high above, the outline of the fireplace that had been in the Avalon Chamber, but the great rose marble mantel had fallen to the paving below and shattered.

Up there, where there was now no floor, they had stood on either side of the fireplace when Brother William was killed - she and Blanchette. On that spot the girl had spoken to the black-jowled leader before she ran from the room towards the stairs. Katherine turned to look for the Great Stairs that had led up to the Privy Suite. From the place where the stairs had been a little cloud of steamy smoke still rose, hissing faintly under the rain.

"Sweeting," said Dame Emma, laying her hand on Katherine's arm, "come away, do. There's naught here but ruin. The little lass'll have run to safety somewhere, ye'll find her."

"To safety?" repeated Katherine. "Nay - she did not think of safety when she ran from me crying that I was - was - oh

God-" she whispered. "Dame Emma, go away. Leave me alone awhile. Leave me - -" She sank to her knees by a block of burned stone and lifted her eyes up to the empty slits that had been the windows of the Avalon Chamber.

Dame Emma obeyed, so profoundly shocked that she did not heed the blackening of her neat kidskin shoes and the tearing of her fine woolsey gown. She withdrew to the mass of fallen stone at the gatehouse. Heedless even of the rain, she settled herself to wait. She looked back into the distance where she could just see Lady Katherine kneeling, and Dame Emma's eyes crinkled up like a baby's, tears spilled from them.

She shivered as the rain soaked through her mantle and dampened her plump shoulders, and she looked to see if Lady Katherine were not yet ready to leave this dreadful place. Katherine had moved, and was now with bent head walking slowly about the Outer Ward. While Dame Emma watched, she saw the tall russet-clad figure lean over and pick up something, then stand stock-still, holding it to her breast for some moments before coming towards the dame.

Katherine held out an object on her open palm. "Look," she said in the heavy far-away tone, "do you see this, Dame Emma?"

It was a small silvery half-melted mass. The dame asked uncertainly, "Is't a clasp?"

"I think so," said Katherine with stony quiet. "It might be the clasp on Blanchette's chamber robe."

The dame stifled her gasp of dismay and cried heartily, "Nay, 'tis no clasp, and if it were - it means naught."

"It lay in the ashes of the falcon mew," said Katherine. "She loved birds, perhaps she ran there." Then had Blanchette run also to the men who caroused drunkenly in the cellars? "I shall be a whore, good sir - mayhap a murdering whore like my mother." No memory was spared Katherine now of what had taken place on Thursday.

"Blanchette was touched by madness when she ran from the Avalon Chamber," said Katherine in the same toneless voice. " 'Twas not from the horror of the Grey Friar's blood upon her, but from the horror of what she had heard him say before that."

"Think not o' horrors, dear," cried Dame Emma. "Come away - this does no good."

"Ah, but
I must
think on it," said Katherine. "I can no longer hide from truth. Good dame, my friend, you don't know what my sin has been. I did not wholly know, but the Grey Friar did, and God in His vengeance has stricken my innocent child as the first means of my punishment."

"Nay, nay," Dame Emma expostulated, pitying the lady's haggard look, thinking that this morbidness was well explained by all the fearful happenings of the last days, but anxious only to get Katherine back to dryness and comfort.

Katherine said no more, and came with Dame Emma, un-protesting. She mounted the horse where it waited down the Strand. They rode a little way until they came to the Church of St. Clement Danes, where Katherine pulled up the gelding. "It was here that I married Hugh Swynford," she said.

"Oh ay - I'd forgot," answered the dame, puzzled. " 'Twas so long ago."

"I thought it was long ago." Katherine looped the reins on the pommel. "I know now it was but yesterday." She dismounted. "Dame Emma, I've kept you out enough in the rain. Please leave me here and go home. Nay, I've no need of protection - Jesu, do you think
any
danger could matter to me now?"

"But the services are over - there's no one there," protested the dame staring at the empty little church.

Katherine gave her a faint blind smile. She turned into the church porch as the dame reluctantly rode off.

Katherine knelt by the altar rail where her Nuptial Mass had been celebrated, and her eyes fixed themselves on the ruby light above the sanctuary. She knelt motionless, forcing herself back into that moment when a man had knelt with her, a man to whom she had given forced unconsidered vows - until at last she reconstructed the presence of that stocky armoured figure beside her. She felt the surliness, the roughness that had revolted her then, but she felt plainly too, as she had not then, the pathos of the clumsy groping love to which she had made no return but endurance and a pitying contempt. That love of Hugh's had burgeoned again for Blanchette - and had no chance to flower.

Katherine, inflexibly reliving the moments of her marriage, heard the rustling in the back of the church, the clink of golden spurs - she saw the priest hesitate and stop, the leap of flattered awe in his eyes. She saw herself walk down the aisle into the Duke's arms, yielding to him her mouth, her body, her allegiance; in the presence of the husband she had sworn herself to - and in the presence of God.

Here in this church had been the beginning of two long roads, one that ended in a shabby little room in Bordeaux in a death that would not have been except for her; the other road had ended in blood and fire and madness in the Avalon Chamber. Yet were they not the same road after all?

Above in the tower the bell began to toll for vespers, and Katherine arose and pushed aside a leather curtain. It was the priest himself who hauled the rope, and he stared at her in astonishment.

"Father," said Katherine, "was it you who was priest here fifteen years ago, did you once come from Lincolnshire?"

"Ay, my daughter." He was a mousy ill-fed man with anxious darting eyes, a sickly rash on his face - and in the sparse grey hair of his tonsure. "What is it?"

"I wish to make confession to you."

Father Oswald was at once flustered. He disliked the unusual, and he tried to put Katherine off by saying that it was

Sunday, that she was not of his parish, that in any case it was time for vespers.

She replied that she would wait and looked at him with so tragic an urgency that he became still more confused, until she added in a strange voice, "I am a Swynford, Father - Katherine Swynford, Sir Hugh Swynford's widow - ay, I see that means something to you." For he started and the raw scabs on his face blended with its sudden redness. He remembered well the marriage now, it was to Swynford influence that he had owed this living twenty years ago, and he remembered the moment when the great Duke and Duchess of Lancaster had appeared in the back of his church, for he had boasted of it often.